Hackaday at CES

Hackaday is going to the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This year’s show runs January 7-10 and we’re going to use every minute to scout out hacking’s past and future. We’re looking for hacks from the past that have made it into new, commercially available electronics. We also want to get a look at the products that … Read the rest

Shadow buttons

This art installation uses buttons made of light. A projector fills up the walls and ceiling of a room while a webcam monitors the pattern for changes. When the luminosity of a given area changes due to a shadow, a midi event is triggered. The software that controls the system is written in C# and uses the Emgu CV libraryRead the rest

Moolodeon electric accordion

[Lee] wanted an electric Melodeon to use with his band. A Melodeon is a chromatic accordion and there are people who already make electric versions but they are a little too expensive for him. Instead, he bought a toy accordion and added electronics to it.

After being thwarted by forgotten PIC skills of yore, he went with an Arduino … Read the rest

New Year’s party favor?

[Infernoz] built a POV display to help ring in the new year. There is a low component count; an ATtiny26, DIP switch, power switch, CR2032 battery and holder, pin header, 8 LEDs, and a pull-up resistor. The board is single sided without any jumpers that we can see. He’s moving the display by swinging it on a rope but the … Read the rest

Lightdrawing Robot

Long exposure “light drawing” photography has become pretty popular lately. We see images pop up all the time that look pretty cool. [Nils] wasn’t feeling particularly artistic himself, so he made a robot to do the hard work for him. he can program patterns in, and it will replay them by changing the color of the light on top … Read the rest

Industrial CNC controller retrofit

[Jerry] had a beefy CNC lathe whose controller wouldn’t respond. He cracked open the case and found a large scorch mark surrounding one of the servo controllers. Rather than just replace the IC and still be stuck with a 23-year-old controller he decided to retrofit the machine with modern controls.

The journey from a brick of steel to an … Read the rest

Star Trek submarine

You can try to be unimpressed. You can attempt to feign disinterest. But even the most casual Star Trek fan will get giddy watching this model submarine in action.  Apparently there is a group that builds under water R/C vehicles from static models. It’s not Star Trek exclusively either, we saw some anime vehicles as well as a … Read the rest