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[Collin] loves piezos - and why not? According to him, they are about as close to magic as you can find in the world. We can't really disagree on that one - there's something oddly enchanting about piezoelectric materials. Most commercially used piezoelectric devices that you find today are constructed out of man-made ceramic materials such as Lead zirconate titanate, and can be found in … [Read more...]
The London Hackspace crew was having a tough time getting their Kinect demos running at Makefair 2011. While at the pub they had the idea of combining forces with Brightarcs Tesla coils and produced The Evil Genius Simulator! After getting the go ahead from Brightarcs and the input specs of the coils they came up with an application in Openframeworks which uses skeletal tracking data to … [Read more...]
It seems that nearly everything is automated these days. Everywhere you look, people are being removed from processes in order to make them more efficient and less prone to mistakes. [Jon] however, saw one process that automation has yet to touch in a significant way - playing the harmonica. He constructed a harmonica-playing machine that can play a handful of simple songs with a few button … [Read more...]
[jnorby] knows what it's like to leave the house with her baby in tow, only to realize that she has left something she needs at home. Instead of relying on a paper checklist, she decided to craft her own diaper bag that alerted her if she had forgotten to pack a particular item. She built her bag from scratch, wiring small circuits into each of the pockets she created on the inside of the bag. … [Read more...]
[Relwin] has being working on using LEDs as bi-directional devices. The setup above allows him to use each LED as an input, looking for a bright light source and then syncing up with the activity it receives. It is the most basic of communications using the components. The hardware at the heart of the system is a PICAXE development board on the left. The blinking light to the right causes the LED … [Read more...]
[Caled] shows us how to build a tilt and pivot camera base. One of these can be quite handy for taking precisely aligned images that can later be stitched together into panoramic, or even spherical images. We have grand visions of being able to produce something along the lines of these stunning interactive images with hardware that is cheaper and easier to build than this other motorized … [Read more...]
Here's a PIC based frequency counter that outputs the count via an RS232 serial connection. [Oakkar7] tipped us off about it after seeing the AVR based counter we featured yesterday. This project is a bit older and a bit dirtier. Inside the metal DB9 housing you'll find just seven parts. The most important is a PIC 16F628 which handles both the counting and the serial communications. We're not … [Read more...]
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