Halloween hangover: talking heads

Here’s a Halloween prop leftover; [Chris] built his own version of singing heads from Disney’s Haunted Mansion on his porch for last year’s ghoulish decor. A projected image of actors singing a spooky song gives each of the four Styrofoam mannequin noggins its own digital life. There’s an optical sensor on the porch stairs that is tripped by unsuspecting candy-seekers. … Read the rest

Outside-air cooled PC

[Brian] came up with an interesting PC cooling setup. He lives up north where it’s chilly in the winter. Using a bit of dryer ductwork and he was able to harness the outside air to cool his box. The system uses a window insert along with a dryer hood to suck in the outside air with a PC fan. We … Read the rest

DIY air gap flash saves at least seven grand

Did you know that a standard camera flash is much too slow to capture high quality images of bullets? A relatively long flash duration results in blurred images of the bullet. By building this air gap flash a bullet can be frozen in mid-air, producing some stunning results. There is an element of danger here, and not from the … Read the rest

555 based AM radio transmitter

Bust out that 555 timer and use it to build your own AM radio transmitter. The circuit that [Rtty21] is using only needs the timer chip, an NPN transistor, three caps, three resistors, and a potentiometer. It generates an amplitude modulation signal around the 600 kHz range which you will be able to pick up with any normal AM … Read the rest

Beer catapulting fridge

We’re not sure where the fascination to have your libations flung at you came from, but we can’t say we’re entirely against it. This beer catapult robot will pull a cold one from its gullet and fling it to you, or in your general direction. While he doesn’t have the source code available for the Arduino bit, we’re OK with … Read the rest