Automated guitar pickup winding

[Robert Pickering] shares his automated guitar pickup winder with us. He built it for his senior project at Old Dominion University. Two stepper motors are used to wind the magnet wire around the pickup hardware. The unit is PIC based and about six minutes into the video (embedded after the break) you can see that he used wire wrapping for … Read the rest

Fisheye lens for your SLR

[Bhautik Joshi's] fisheye lens hack works well and looks OK too. It uses a door peephole from the hardware store as the fisheye and a slide projector lens to enlarge the image for proper sizing on the camera’s sensor. He included an EOS lens adapter so that it is easy to install and remove, then grabbed a soda can and … Read the rest

Twittering pub hanging

There’s nothing groundbreaking about this hack, called the TweetWall, but the craftsmanship is gorgeous! [Yergacheffe] had access to the right tools; an epilog laser and a thermoplastic bender (an item we didn’t know we needed until now… thanks a lot). It has the usual bits you’d expect in a Twitter ticker, an LED matrix and an Arduino. There is … Read the rest

Just the right controller for any game

[Patrice] hacked all of his classic controllers for use when playing games on an emulator. He made the base station starting with a USB gaming controller. From there he soldered wires connecting the PCB pads for all of the buttons to the pins of a d-sub connector. The same is done on the classic controller, allowing him to switch them … Read the rest

GPS embedded in visor

We’re all for putting a GPS where it doesn’t normally go, but we’re not sure [Roberto's] version* is the best of locations. Take for example [Jair2k4's] GPS. It doesn’t block out 50% of his vision of the road and the impending accident in front of him.

Regardless, the solid aluminum and seamless mounting really does make it look … Read the rest