[Vsergeev] built an echo pedal for a guitar or with other audio manipulation applications. He used an mbed microcontroller for the project. You may remember Hackaday writer [Phil] labeling the mbed an ‘Arduino on steroids’, and it certainly handles this audio processing quite well. We’ve included a clip of the echo effect after the break. During the design process, [Vsergeev] used LTspice to simulate the analog circuitry and make things right before committing to the physical circuits.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cardboard record player

[Yen] tipped us off about this cardboard record player. It’s a marketing tool that you receive in the mail. Inside the cardboard packaging is a record and the packaging itself can be folded into a player.

Hackable handheld

The NanoNote is a tiny handheld housing a lot of power for a small price. It ships running openWRT and sports a full keyboard, 336MHz processor, 32 MB ram, and 2 GB of flash memory. Not bad for $99. [Thanks Drone via Linux Devices]

Virtual page flipping physical interface

Love reading ebooks but miss flipping through the pages? [Marcin Szewczyk] developed this interface that lets you flip a couple of sheets of plastic to turn and fan through pages on the screen.

Augmented reality tat

Not interested in supporting an ink artist or just can’t decide on the design? Perhaps you should get an augmented reality marker tattooed on your arm and have the art digitally added for those who have already made the switch away from using their analog-only eyes. [Thanks DETN8R via Asylum]

Cooking with a CPU

[Bo3bo3] is practicing the art of cooking with processors but he’s bumped things up a notch. Instead of cooking inside a computer case, he removed the processor from the board and made it USB powered. [Thanks Waseem]

[Dmritard96] built this automated watering system to keep his garden growing while he’s out-of-town. It uses rain barrels, which capture and store rainwater, as a source. These barrels provide very low water pressure so he’s added a battery-powered pump along with a solar array for recharging. Don’t worry, if the rain barrels run dry there’s a float sensor that will switch the system over to city water and stave off those wilted leaves.

Here’s an interesting idea: replace a disposable coin cell battery with a capacitor in order to filter the noise from an external power supply. [David Cook] is taking advantage of the falling costs of digital calipers. He’s mounted one on his milling machine but noticed that with an external power supply the readings would sometimes reset in the middle of his work. The LR44 cell he’s replacing makes for very difficult in-place soldering so instead of permanently replacing it he built an insert that matched the form factor. The outer ring is from a piece of copper tubing and soldered to a PCB that he etched.

If [David's] name sounds familiar it’s because we featured his Happy Meal toy scavenging a while back.

[Thanks Thomas]

We see it all the time, a post based on an Arduino board with multiple comments calling it overkill. How exactly should you control your homemade peripherals if you’re not using a microcontroller (uC)? [JKAbrams] and [Tim Gremalm] answered that question with this printer port (LPT) adapter. They wanted an indicator light when someone in an IRC room was talking to them. By connecting a blue rotating light through a relay to the output of this fob they’ve done just that, but there’s room for much more.

The adapter uses a Darlington transistor array IC to protect the computer. A resistor between the LPT and the base pin on the chip ensures that current flow will be well within the safe levels for the computer. The Darlington transistor amplifies the output using an external power supply in order to drive heavier loads.

If you want a deeper understanding of the printer port check out this tutorial. LPT ports are becoming less common and that’s why so many projects are migrating over to USB (plus there’s no need for external power with most USB connected projects) but if you’ve got one, it’s probably not being used for anything else.

Everything about this Turing machine is absolutely brilliant. A Turing machine uses a strip of material to record, calculate, and change data. [Mike Davey] built this one using servo motors, a Parallax Propeller, felt-tipped pen, and 1000 feet of film leader. The machine writes characters to the leader, reads them using a grayscale camera, and erases them with a rotating felt cylinder.

Watch the video after the break, it covers every one of the intricate details that add up to [Mike's] perfect build. We loved his Nickel-O-Matic but he really outdid himself with this one. With our mouths still agape we’re going back for our fifth viewing.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Luis Cruz] built a gaming console with motion control. The circuit above connects via composite video to a television and communicates with a wireless controller. The controller is on a smaller breadboard which includes an accelerometer for the input and the infrared circuitry necessary for wireless data transmission back to the home system. Take a look at the first game he developed for it in the video after the break. There’s some details available (ie: he’s using ATmega168 and ATmega328 chips) but we’ve asked him to post code and schematics which he is currently cleaning up for mass consumption.

Ah, the 8-bit sound in that game takes us back to the glory days of Atari and Intellivision.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a collection of little LEGO oddities. Some of them exhibit a purpose, such as this interesting take on a line-following robot. Others, like the four seen above, are just automatons built to bring a smile to your face through their motion. There are dozens to choose from, with several pictures and a video of each. See the clips of these four after the break. Oh, and don’t worry, we didn’t find any LEGO iPhone docks, just cleaver mobile creations.

Read the rest of this entry »