Every electronics workbench could benefit from having a bench power supply. Converting a PC power supply works, but often, it involves splicing wires and limits the supply to only bench use, and building one from scratch is definitely an undertaking. To counter this, [silic0re] and his father came up with a detachable adapter that simply plugs into the existing connectors. The adapter provides posts for four different voltages and can be built in no time. It’s nice to see a solution that will let you use any power supply laying around without having to worry about the dangers of opening it or cutting it up.
This bit of nostalgia really caught our attention. A german hacker or “inventor” as we were called back then, came up with this interesting concept. He would project an image on to the moving blades of an Autogiro, relying on the POV effect to make it appear complete. While this is not the same system of utilizing POV that we currently use, it relies on the same principles. It looks like he’s hanging the projector or “magic lantern” from below the Autogiro, using the length of the rope to hang it as a focusing system. Were this to have actually gone into production, it probably would have really freaked people out. If only he had had access to something along the lines of the ceiling fan POV system.
[thanks itay]
[update: Why didn't we look around for this earlier. It was brought up in the comments, there is in fact a POV system for R/C helis. http://www.nightgraphix.de (translated)]
Swedish hacker [Hans Andersson] is no stranger to puzzle-solving robots. His prior work, A Rubik’s cube-solving robot called Tilted Twister, made waves through the internet last year. [Hans’] latest project only has to work in two dimensions, but is no less clever. This new robot, built around the LEGO Mindstorms NXT system, “reads” a printed sudoku page, solves the puzzle, then fills out the solution right on the same page, confidently and in ink. It’s a well-rounded project that brings together an unexpected image scanner, image processing algorithms, and precise motor control, all using standard NXT elements.
The building instructions have not yet been posted, but if the video above and the directions for his prior ’bot are any indication, then we’re in for a treat; he simply has a knack for explaining things concisely and with visual clarity. The source code and the detailed PDF diagrams for Tilted Twister are as gorgeous as his new robot’s penmanship.
Robot enthusiast [Vitalijus Rodnovas] built this rig to allow a humanoid robot to mimic his own body movements in real time. [Rodonovas] refers to his man-machine interface as a “master-slave suit,” but elsewhere this is often called a waldo after a prescient 1942 [Robert Heinlein] novella. This project page is slight on details and is mostly written in his native Lithuanian, but the pictures speak volumes, and with a little help from Google Translate we can learn the essential facts: The robot itself is a commercially-available kit, the Kondo KHR-1HV from Japan. The custom-built harness uses a collection of surplus Soviet-era military potentiometers (acquired on eBay) to read the positions of his elbows and shoulders, then an ATmega8-based interface board translates these readings into motion commands sent to the robot’s onboard controller. Some additional notes and code can be found on the RoboSavvy Forum.
Does it work? Just watch. His grin as the video progresses is infectious!
[Patrick] has a pair of Klipsch speakers that continually needed the volume knob cleaned. After a bit of research, he found it was a common problem with the potentiometer chosen for the task. He decided to resolve the problem, not by replacing that potentiometer, but by modifying the speakers to be passive and running them from an external amp. While this does sound simple at first, he wanted to retain the rest of the electronics in the unit, so a bit of hacking was required. You can follow along through the whole process on his site.
[Reid] wrote in to show us how to add a second hard drive to his Macbook Pro. He found that he hardly ever used his DVD drive, so sacrificed it in favor of added storage. What he found was that it had a proprietary adapter that he was unable to find for sale anywhere. Making an adapter may seem like a pretty simple hack, but this could save some people considerable time. Its also worth noting that upgrading the firmware got him an 18% speed increase, so don’t ignore those updates. We don’t see too many mac hacks around here, you may recall the mac tablet hacks and the logo monitor.
External antennas on netbooks are notorious, from EEE PCs to the Panasonic CF-R1, but this is the first on an Acer Aspire One we’ve seen. [xRazorwirex] sent in his external antenna hack for the 802.11n capable D150, with the intention of increasing performance, but he says he can’t attest to any change. Unfortunately the lock slot had to be removed, but a small price to pay for a big increase in connectivity. The process seems simple enough, and could probably be done within a half an hour. Now that there is an external link why not build a Cantenna, hop in the car, and HeatMap the neighborhood!
Although we’ve covered DIY ECGsbefore, [Scott Harden] sent in his version that gives an in-depth explanation of what to do with the collected data. He built a basic battery-powered op-amp-based ECG for under $1. The circuit just amplifies the signal from the chest leads and feeds it into a computer via the microphone port. He then used GoldWave to record, filter, and save the signal. From there, he used python to analyze the heartbeat and calculate his heart rate and further manipulate the data. His previous blog posts go into more detail on how the python code works and why he chose software over hardware filters.
