Parallel parking system

parking

Autoblog dug up this classic mechanical engineering project from 2006. A team of five University of Toledo students constructed a system to help parallel park a car. First, you drive nose first into the space. Hydraulic rams then lower the drive wheel out of the trunk, raising the rear of the car. The single wheel is also hydraulically driven and … Read the rest

Hacking at Random 2009 call for papers

With the Chaos Communication Congress concluded, it’s time to start looking towards the next massive European hacker event. This means Hacking at Random August 13-16th in the Netherlands. It’s a four day long camp experience that will feature many conference talks, interactive projects, and more.

The team has selected three tracks in their official call for papers: Dealing with data, … Read the rest

Light to sound converter

lightnoise

[Alex] built what he calls a light to sound converter. It reacts differently depending on the type of light: remote controls, light bulbs, TV screens, etc. A photodiode is used with an amplifier to pick up the light change. That signal is dumped through a dual opamp. He swapped in several different types of photodiodes and settled on the … Read the rest

Tiny projector teardown

projector

The team from Tech-On has taken the time to teardown two interesting microprojectors. The first model they tackled was the Optoma PK101. It’s based around a digital micromirror device (DMD) like those used in DLP. Separate high intensity red, green, and blue LEDs provide the light source. A fly-eye style lens reduces variations between images. They noted … Read the rest

Game Boy Pocket backlight

gameboy

[palmertech] and [Bibin] have both completed backlight projects for the Game Boy Pocket recently. The most difficult part of the transplant is carefully removing the reflective backing on the LCD. After a thorough cleaning, a diffuser and backlight panel were added. [palmertech] used a backlight salvaged from a DS, while [Bibin] built his own using LEDs. You can see … Read the rest