My what a large capacitor bank you have

[Daniel Eindhoven] put together this 11,344 Joule capacitor bank that he says would be perfect for weapons such as a rail gun, coil gun, or electrothermal-chemical gun. He machined a couple of aluminum plates to act as a positive and negative bus. The two are separated by a denuded sheet of PCB (making us wonder how he got Read the rest

Building a remote control

Here’s a homebrew remote control that [Jad Berro] is developing. He’s using a tank robot to test it out but eventually he plans to use it to control an RC plane thanks the 434 MHz wireless module inside. There’s no shortage of input, with two analog sticks from a PlayStation controller, several momentary push buttons, and some toggle switches. Although … Read the rest

Arm mounted light cannon; villains beware

In a hack worthy of the flick Kick Ass, [Chein] built this arm-mounted light weapon. The lamp in the palm of your hand has a ring of LEDs for a nice glowing effect, but the real story is the xenon bulb at its center. The flash capacitor and charge circuit from a disposable camera are used to step up … Read the rest

Making glow sticks at home

Even if you have no interest in making these yourself, you might enjoy this educational instructable about making your own glow sticks. Comprised of a very short list of chemicals, all available online, the process is fairly simple. If you’re feeling like you want to take on a little more complicated chemistry project, you can also make the Read the rest

Servo controller board

This board is [Eric Seifert's] venture into working with AVR microcontrollers. He has worked with PIC microcontrollers in the past and used the goal of developing a servo controller board as his motivation to try the grass on the other side of the fence. He found he likes the AVR line for its ease of development under Linux, a feature … Read the rest