DIY emergency lighting system

diy_emergency_lighting_system

When the power goes out at home, what do you do? Most of us probably scramble around the house looking for a flashlight. [Gigawatts] wanted a better solution, so he built an emergency lighting system based off a standard household UPS. A while back he had constructed a relay-switched outlet box to help periodically restart his cable modem which would get hung up a little too often for his liking. … [Read more...]

Hackaday links: February 21, 2011

links-pcb-phone-stand

PCB Stand Part PCB, part old IC, and held together with hot glue. It doesn't take much to make this electronics stand, but it'll certainly add to the geek level of your desk. Decorate with light This busy living room is actually decorated all in white. The patterns that give it life are on lend from a projector and what we'd imagine is some fantastic software. [Thanks … [Read more...]

Blinky headgear

blinky-visor

[Everett Tom] added some blinking LEDs to his visor while honing his PCB design skills at the same time. He started with the TI eZ430-F2013 for prototyping the blinking circuit along with its mode toggle buttons. Once this was worked out he used BatchPCB (a low-cost professional board fab option) to manufacture a board. The final design hosts an MSP430 F2013 microcontroller as well as the voltage … [Read more...]

Arduino levitation

arduino-magnetic-levitation

Here's the proof that Arduino is a tool for serious prototyping and not just a toy. [Norbert Požár] built a magnetic levitation device that combines an Arduino with an electromagnetic driver circuit and a magnetic field sensing circuit. Unlike other other levitation setups that use optical sensing, this implementation uses a hall effect sensor on the electromagnet to maintain the distance … [Read more...]

Motion activated monitor wakeup

motion-controlled-monitor-wakeup

This hardware is used to keep a computer monitor awake when there is motion in the room. The monitor displays important information for firefighter in the vehicle bay, but only needs to be on when they are getting ready to go out on a call. The solution is a simple one, a PIR sensor combines with a mouse for motion sensitive input. When the PIR sensor detects motion it causes a mouse button click … [Read more...]