
[Tuckie] sent in his wireless fireworks controller. The electronic parts are off the shelf – a 12 channel relay board and remote provide the guts. He used a rock tumbler to mill the black powder needed to make the detonators. A combination of the fine ground black powder, nichrome wire and ping pong balls makes up the business end … Read the rest
Wireless fireworks controller
Make your own Aerogel

Our own [Eliot] dug this one up from the grave. While the recipe has been online for a while, do you know many 10 year olds who made their own Aerogel, that wonderful insulator that’s essentially gelled air? [William] made some(cache) for his science project in 2002. He started with Silbond H5, a combination of ethyl … Read the rest
Semi-duplicate post extra

[bgugi] was the first to notice that yesterday’s post had been seen before, tucked away in an extra last year. (I do check for these things, but it slipped through.) I honor of my little lapse, here’s a fully loaded extra.
[Matt] scored some interesting hardware next to one of the local dumpsters. He also just put up part one … Read the rest
USB Gaming arm band o’ pain

[Nuri] sent in his rather interesting gaming feedback device. The TrakonyaMutatorUSB is a USB based armband that’s designed to shock you when you get shot or killed in your game. I can’t comment on the safety of this thing, but I guess it could be a good gift for your enemy gamer.
Update: Just to clarify a bit, This is … Read the rest
Recycle those old RF modulators

[Shadow] sent in this handy idea. For many, it’s sort of a captain obvious hack, but I’m hoping that this might keep a few of these things out of the trash. He needed to send video around the house from a media PC, and happened to have an old XBox RF modulator sitting around. He popped it apart and located … Read the rest
Spectrum ZX Laptop

[Jim] sent in this interesting laptop modding project. He started with a Spectrum ZX and a Toshiba Libretto 110. The libretto kept its brains, but the lower case and keyboard was replaced with the ZX hardware. Since both machines use matrix style keyboards (but different matrix layouts) he was able to create a passive adapter circuit to match things up.… Read the rest
Low voltage coil gun

[Andrew] sent in his low voltage coil gun. He used some control hardware that most hardware hackers probably don’t have on their shelf, bit it’s still a good proof of concept. Each coil is driven by a dedicated relay, and a PC power supply feeds the system juice, while a programmable logic controller does the work. Since it’s just a … Read the rest
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