Sonoluminescence is one of those strange phenomenon that many would never encounter outside an academic environment. For those who have never heard of it, Sonoluminescence is when tiny bubbles suspended in a liquid emit light while being vibrated at certain frequencies. We were pleased to see that some plans are out there on how to build your own device to produce it.
[via io9]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_jwcCseDk0]
[Dale Dougherty] interviews [Steven Levy] about the history of hacking. [Levy]’s book Hackers has been released in a 25th anniversary edition. The interview alone is fascinating and the book is a must read for any hacker. If they offered a course in hacker culture somewhere, we’re positive that this book would be the textbook. The 25th anniversary edition has been updated to include major figures from the last 25 years including [Bill Gates], [Steve Wozniak] and others that have impacted our lives drastically.
[via MakeZine]
[Yosh] came through with a link to the Snake playing LED matrix that he read about in our links post from yesterday. It seems that [Arty Fart] actually built three of these in green, yellow, and red. You can see him throw one together (an 8-10 hour job) in the video after the break. In addition to playing Snake the PIC 16F877A can also scroll messages, play a mean game of Tetris, and show a Pong screen saver on the 144 LED display. We love the clean build and the urge to make another LED matrix is becoming irresistible.
Now off to eBay for a good deal on a bulk LED order. Continue reading “Links Expanded: Snake On LED Matrix”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc3OrrsnMHs]
Here’s a Direct-to-Garment device that uses a stock printer. [Jeff German] used an Epson R1900 with the stock firmware to get the results seen in the video. His hardware modifications involve adding two buttons to the printer’s circuit board. For DTG beginners this certainly lowers some of the obstacles to getting started. [Jeff] is working on detailed instructions but for now take a look at our own How-to for building a DTG printer.
[Lain Sharp] modified this guitar tuner so it can be used by his blind friend. In the picture above you can make out a small white project box that houses the additional electronics. Inside is another battery and an ATmega168 providing a connection for an earphone. The AVR chip connects to each LED on the tuner and converts the visual tuning meter to an audio cue. Check out the demonstration clip after the break to see how it works.
Now if we could just figure out how to get our strings in tune with our built-in keyboard.
Straight out of Ghost in the Shell, the Laughing Man makes his appearance in these security camera shots. [William Riggins] wrote us to let us know about his teams Famicam scripts. After taking a screen shot, faces are detected and counted, ‘anonymized’, and the final image is uploaded to Twitter.
The process is rather simple, and sure beats wearing a bunch of white reflective camouflage. All that’s left is detecting specific faces to make anonymous, and of course uploading the script to every camera in the world. Easy, right?
Precision CRT manufacture
Here’s a great video from Tektronix about building a precision cathode ray tube. The tube manufacture method was developed to use in oscilloscopes and we’d guess it dates back to the early 1960’s. [Thanks Bill]
Snake on an LED matrix
We would have done a full post o this beautifully built LED matrix but we just couldn’t find much information on it. For now, enjoy the video of the device playing the classic game of Snake. [Thanks Xdr]
Wire bundling
We’re not sure if this is brilliant or just snake oil. Here’s a method of bundling wires together by twisting them with an electric drill. We’ve always just used our hands but we’ve never really worked in any kind of volume either. [Thanks Kacper]
