IntoDream, The ‘portable’ Dreamcast

What looks like an absolute mess of wires,5 fans,3 batteries, and other miscellaneous equipment squeezed into a Tupperware box on the left? At first we didn’t believe it, but it is actually [John’s] fully functioning slick-looking portable Dreamcast on the right. The system runs Quake 3 for a little over 2 hours, not too bad considering it is also powering a VMU, rumble pad, 5 inch LCD screen, and did we mention 5 fans! All in all, it’s still smaller than the original Xbox controller, and we like that one of the greatest consoles is getting some well deserved respect. Check out the work log and a video of it functioning after the break. Continue reading “IntoDream, The ‘portable’ Dreamcast”

Interactive Beer Pong Table

Do you find that beer pong is too dull on its own to keep your attention? Do you require flashing lights to accentuate your imbibing?  Here’s the perfect solution. Make an interactive beer pong table. It didn’t take much to sell us on the idea. We think everything needs a few more lights.

The idea is that as the game progresses, you get different feedback from the lights visible in the picture above.  [rohitk] is using an Arduino and some pressure sensors to tell when each cup is removed. Based on this the LEDs change color.

Social Media HUD

[youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnPfnEWFie0%5D

After [Gregg Benjamin] read our story about a simple physical email notifier, he decided to test his skills and add some touches of his own. Rather than limiting his notifier to just email, he has added support for displaying Pandora Radio songs, Facebook notifications, and email all to a LCD. He even has included code for an optional motion detector, as well as support for text message notification. We always love it when our stories inspire our readers to bring their own various solutions to similar problems, so we hope some of you take the code he has supplied (written in python for desktop side, and Arduino sketches for the microcontroller side) and add support for your own interests. Might we suggest RSS feed support, or other social media such as reddit or Google Reader? Let us know if you add something cool, and we might do a follow-up!

[Gregg] doesn’t have a blog of his own, so we have posted the demo video to YouTube, and he has provided all of his related code and images to Megaupload (warning, file is ~115 MB). Sorry to anyone looking for a blog link.

BrickAVR: The Proto-brick

Sometimes, prototyping systems need to be robust, full-featured, and powerful. Other times, nostalgia and simplicity are much more appealing. Rather than buying a pre-made prototyping board, one of our readers grabbed some parts lying around, including an Atmega8, a SMD 16Mhz oscillator, and a 6 pin ISP header, and performed some circuit origami free-form soldering (thanks [Gilberti]!). After it was assembled, he realized that it fit in a hollowed out 2×6 Lego brick rather easily. After adding female headers to the pins, as well as a label and some hot glue to seal it up, he was left with a fully functional, and most likely very durable centerpiece to a project. We would love to see this worked into a Lego Mindstorm robot, just for the sake of fitting in.

Make Magazine – Open Source Hardware 2009

Former HaD’er [Phillip Torrone] has written an extensive collection of Open Source Hardware projects for Make Magazine. This impressive list covers over 125 projects and kits, broken into 19 categories including 3d Printing, Music, Robotics, and Wireless systems. A number of these projects have been either extensively detailed or mentioned on HaD, so there is bound to be something for everyone here.

[Phillip] is not only detailing these projects for people new to the Open Source Hardware movement, but is also calling for new and unheard of projects to be listed in places like this, as well as central locations such as the OSH Wikipedia page. We are sure that a number of HaD readers will be answer this challenge.

Thanks again to [Phillip] for sharing this with us.