Flip camera microscope and macro lenses


Flip cameras are fun and easy to use, but not particularly versatile. If you’ve had poor results at macrophotography with a Flip, you might be interested in these DIY lenses. One is macroscopic lens for taking photos and video of small things, and the other is a microscope for even smaller things.

To construct the macro lens, you’ll need … Read the rest

SSD hard drives tank laptop battery life


Tom’s Hardware has been running some tests to challenge the common assumption that SSD hard drives use power more efficiently than magnetic plate drives. Their results were quite definitive: not only are they not as energy efficient, SSDs actually use more power than conventional hard drives.

What they found is that most plate drives are at peak consumption (up … Read the rest

Xbox 360 controller remixed for optimized FPS play

[F00 f00] of Acidmods was not satisfied with his first-person shooter gaming experience, so he modded an Xbox 360 controller so that A, B, X and Y buttons are on the underside of the controller, on the inside edges of the wings where the player’s fingertips usually go. He also moved the right thumbstick up a bit so that it … Read the rest

Time Magazine’s favorite robots


Time Magazine recently posted a photo essay of some of their favorite robots. The article was composed in response to the recent release of the Pixar film Wall-E, and features some of the cutest, most cuddly automatons in the world. We were more interested in the most functional ones, huggability notwithstanding. See some of these Hack a Day … Read the rest

British Steam Car


The land-speed record for steam-powered locomotion has been holding steady for 88 years at 127mph, but a team of British engineers and stunt drivers will attempt to break it with the Steam Car.

The Steam Car works by burning liquid petroleum fuel at 750° F, which heats 10.5 gallons of water, converting into steam. The steam passes through lagged … Read the rest

LED Painter


The people at Brilldea have come up with LED Painter, a 16-channel RGB LED controller capable of controlling up to 48 independent LEDs. It uses a Texas Instrument TLC5940 to control the LEDs and can be connected to more LED Painter boards, creating a large array of RGB lights. The TLC5940 itself has been modified to make connecting independent … Read the rest

External CD-ROM turned Class A headphone amp


[Gio] sent in this slick Class A headphone amp. An old CD-ROM case was gutted to hold the goods. The design is fairly simple. Cost can be kept fairly low although the capacitors can add up if you’re a fanatic about quality. If you’ve ever lost any of your headphone gear to sticky fingers, you know that having it blending … Read the rest