Fresh hacks every day
Self-declared Mad Scientist and Instructables user [Trevor Nestor] recently built a pulse laser pistol and decided to share his build process, so that you too can build a ray gun at home. The gun is made up of mostly scavenged components, save for the Neodymium:YAG laser head, which he purchased on eBay for about $100. He does say however, that you can score an SSY-1 laser from an old rangefinder, … [Read more...]
The usual way send data from a microcontroller is either over RS-232 with MAX232 serial ICs, crystals, and a relatively ancient computer, or by bit-banging the USB protocol and worrying about driver issues. Not content with these solutions, [Scott] came up with sound card μC/PC communication that doesn't require any extra components. [Scott] bought a cheap USB sound card dongle on eBay … [Read more...]
Here is an example of what happens when someone is tempted to use their hacking skills for evil. Hopefully it goes without saying, but do NOT try this one at home. When his wife asked for a divorce [Andrew Castle] obviously did not like the idea so got busy building himself a DIY electric chair, placing a metal chair in his garage he wired it up to a 240V 13 amp wall output with the intention … [Read more...]
[Rob] Was cleaning out his car hole when he stumbled across a servo, a PC cooling fan, an Arduino and apparently a whole lot of bubble mixture. With all of this, some scrap timber and a few trips to the dollar store, he was able to whip up this bubble blowing bot to entertain his children. It looks like a fairly simple mechanism, the servo tips the old pipe bend into the sudds and … [Read more...]
A week or so ago we featured an FPGA MIDI interface. Since then the builder has gone crazy with his FPGA and revised his code to include polyphony and PWM output, and posted a polyphony demo. In our previous coverage of the build, the synth was monophonic, and the MIDI implementation was pretty shaky. After realizing the hard work was done, [Mich] re-wrote the MIDI interpretation module to keep … [Read more...]
Hackaday reader [svofski] sent in a fantastic looking hard drive-based POV clock (Google Translation) created by a maker in the Sichuan province of China. The clock, like the one [svofski] built, relies on LEDs placed behind the spinning platter to create the POV effect. Quite a few carefully placed cuts have been made to the platter, which make up the segments required to display both numbers … [Read more...]
Behold [Quinn's] broken salad spinner, and just when lettuce and other garden produce are hitting their peak. We were surprised to find out that she was able to get the mechanism apart to fix the broken cord. We're sick and tired of ultrasonically welded plastic enclosures that lock out the most well-intentioned repairman. But in [Quinn's] case there were a few plastic plugs hiding the screws … [Read more...]
Subscribe for weekly videos
Recent comments