[Dennis] is using a robotic arm as a chess opponent. Rather than using an under-board movement system, a Lynxmotion AL5A robotic arm plucks each piece and moves it to the next space. He tells us that he's using a Python script that he created to process the moves and decide what's next. That must mean he's using a webcam to capture the location of the pieces on the board. About half way through … [Read more...]
What kind of LED matrix does your vodka come with?
April 14, 2010 By 40 Comments
Medea Vodka comes with a bottle that includes a blue scrolling LED Marquee. OK, great? It's an interesting marketing ploy but kind of a waste don't you think? Friends, it's up to us to repurpose this hardware. It can't be that difficult to hack into the programmable display and make it do your bidding. Our friend Google tells us that you can get your hands on this 750 milliliter bottle for about … [Read more...]
All about VLF radio
April 14, 2010 By 19 Comments
If you're interested in learning about Very Low Frequency communications take a look at what Larry has to offer on his site. He's put together a guide to VLF receivers that is short enough to read and clear enough to understand with rudimentary knowledge of circuits. He builds a simple receiver as a working example and a high-powered transmitter that can put out over 2600 watts. Let's face it, … [Read more...]
Electronic wind chime
April 14, 2010 By 16 Comments
The Winduino II uses fins to pick up the movement of the wind and translate it into music. Each fin is attached to the main body using a piezo vibration sensor. The signals are processed by an Arduino housed inside and the resulting data makes its way to a computer via a Bluetooth connection to facilitate the use of Max/MSP for the audio processing. Included in the design is an array of solar … [Read more...]
PWM fan controller for external hard drive
April 14, 2010 By 27 Comments
[Alan] noticed that his external hard drive was getting quite hot to the touch after a few hours. He says that it was probably designed to handle the heat sufficiently, he thought it would be fun to beef it up. He's using a pic 12f675 microcontroller as the brain and an LM35 temperature sensor. The Fan speed is varried in 8 steps from 35 degrees C to 45 degrees C. … [Read more...]
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