Crawling zombie is shockingly creepy

crawling-zomie-prop

When [Mark] sent in the tip about this crawling zombie prop he said that it didn't sound scary but warned us that it is terrifying when you see it. He's absolutely right, the video after the break shows some remarkably undead movement from the thing. This crawler is actually radio controlled. Details are brief, but there's plenty of pictures and the start of a build tutorial for the hardware. … [Read more...]

DIY thermostat keeps the harsh winter cold at bay

diy_attiny_thermostat

[Phil’s] parents grow their own organic food, but the harsh Ukraine winters make storing it a difficult proposition. Since it can drop to -30°C on occasion, they asked him to find a way to keep their storeroom at around 5-7°C above zero. He decided to construct his own programmable thermostat to keep things in check, and has been documenting the process as he goes along. The thermostat uses … [Read more...]

3D printed electromechanical computer

gear

A few nights ago, [Chris Fenton] was hanging out at NYC Resistor putting in some time on his electromechanical computer project. You might remember [Chris] from his tiny Cray that he's putting an OS on. It seems [Chris] is going back in time about 150 years and has set his sights on a 3D printed version of [Babbage]'s Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine was is a remarkable feat of … [Read more...]

[Vigo's] stare follows you wherever you go

vigo-stares-as-you-pass

To decorate the office for Halloween [Eric] decided to make [Vigo the Carpathian] stare at passersby. We hope that readers recognize this image, but for those younger hackers who don't, this painting of [Vigo] played an important part in the classic film Ghostbusters II. In the movie, his eyes appeared to be following anyone looking at the painting. [Eric] grabbed a Kinect and used Processing … [Read more...]

Hacked parking disc can be controlled remotely

reverse_engineering_parking_disc

If you have ever traveled around Europe, you are likely familiar with parking discs. Required in many countries that would rather not deal with parking meters, these devices are placed in the front of a car’s window, and indicate when the vehicle was parked. When parking enforcement officers come through the area, it makes quick work of identifying which cars need to be ticketed. [Michael] … [Read more...]

Recreating the Commodore PET with an FPGA

commodore_pet_fpga_clone

[Thomas’] love affair with Commodore computers spans well over 30 years, and not too long ago he decided to recreate one of his favorite Commodore offerings, the PET. As we have seen with similar undertakings, this sort of project is no easy task, but [Thomas] seems to be making his way along nicely. Using a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA on the Digilent Nexys3 dev board, he has implemented the Pet in … [Read more...]

A Simple Induction Heater

induction-heater-wiring

For those of you not familiar, an induction heater is a device capable of heating something up very rapidly using a changing magnetic field. [RMC Cybernetics] decided to build one and was nice enough to write up the project for the Internet's learning and amusement. A full explanation as well as a schematic and build instructions are provided on their website. This heater works using a … [Read more...]