Fresh hacks every day
Some readers may remember [Paul] from his project Jak, the blackjack robot; but his interests have moved toward coil gun creation. Maggy, his latest weapon, may not be the prettiest of coil gun we've seen, or the most environmentally friendly, but does look to be promising. Featuring a triple stage, logic based accelerator instead of the typical single stage, it can fire a 10 gram projectile … [Read more...]
I can hear the comments now: "Not a hack." Yeah that might be true, but it's still enormous puppets running around Berlin - that in its own right is pretty cool. The show, put on by the street theater group Royal De Luxe, is part of the 20th anniversary for the fall of the Berlin Wall. Spectators watched as the Big Giant rose from the water in search of his niece, the Little Giantess. We won't … [Read more...]
[Oleg] of Circuits@Home and maker of the USB Isolation Board and the USB Host Shield has a new, two-part hack for his chemistry set. In Part 1 of this hack, [Oleg] discusses the method he uses to make a stir bar spin and what types of stir bars work the best. Part 2 discusses the motor control code and circuit. Given the ample amount of capability leftover in the Arduino he used, we would like … [Read more...]
The fantastic Creatrope blog has a great article on quickly assembling animatronic Halloween gags using salvaged electric motors, pvc pipe, and “grid beam” construction. Grid beam is a prototyping and building medium that’s like a giant hippie Erector set. You can’t buy grid beam, but with a drill press, a jig, and some square stock you can create your own unlimited supply. It’s … [Read more...]
[Mike Galloway] set out to install a lighted starscape in the ceiling of the baby room. We remember first coming across this type of thing at a Planet Hollywood restaurant at least 10 years ago. We've always wondered how difficult this type of thing is to install. This setup involves an LED based illuminator and bundles of fiber optics. [Mike] first mounted the illuminator in the corner of the … [Read more...]
At this year's PICNIC conference [Neil Mendoza] and [Edwin Dertien] built a giant Etch-a-Sketch to help bring attendees together. The drawing area is a rear-projection screen, rather than a physical powder based setup, and is surrounded by the familiar red frame with vertical and horizontal control knob. Because the two knobs are too far apart for one person to use at the same time, two people … [Read more...]
Yesterday we issued a barcode challenge in honor of the Barcode's birthday. Congratulations to [The Moogle] for winning this challenge. His submission offers a very detailed explanation of how he solved the puzzle using Photoshop, OpenOffice Calc, and some web resources. We've got a detailed writeup on it after the break. Honorable mentions go to [nex] for putting up a Java solution and to … [Read more...]
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