Beer security system keeps freeloaders out of your stash

beer-security

The crew at the Milwaukee Hackerspace are pretty serious about their beer. They used to have a fridge filled with cans, available to all at the hackerspace, but they decided to beef things up and create a secured beer dispensing system.

Like many others we have seen, their kegerator is built into an old refrigerator, complete with a tap built … Read the rest

Second run at taser gloves uses bug zapper parts

[Jair2k4] ditched the Altoids tins and found a new voltage source for this latest rendition of his taser gloves. Regular readers will remember his first iteration which used wrist-mounted enclosures containing the flash circuitry from disposable cameras to shock the wits out of someone with the laying on of hands. This one is a complete rework but it follows … Read the rest

Using WebSocket with PIC microcontrollers

[Blaise Jarrett] has been grinding away to get the WebSocket protocol to play nicely with PIC microcontrollers. Here he’s using the PIC 18F4620 along with a Roving Networks RN-XV WiFi module to get the device on the network. He had started with a smaller processor but ran into some RAM restrictions so keep that in mind when choosing your hardware.… Read the rest

TV-B-Gone can double as a camera remote control

[Christopher] found a way to get a bit more mileage out of his TV-B-Gone kit. The little device is intended to turn off every television in range with the push of a button. But at its core it’s really just a microcontroller connected to some infrared LEDs. Instead of sending codes to shut of televisions, you can rewrite the firmware Read the rest

Bomb disposal robot with Lego gripper

[Krash] had a lot of fun hacking up his Spy Gear TRAKR; we’re just lucky he was able to move a suspicious Shrek doll before it detonated.

The now discontinued Spy Gear TRAKR serves as the basis for [Krash]‘s build. This tiny remote-controlled toy transmits video back to its remote and makes us very jealous of the awesome toys … Read the rest

Video: Analog to Digital Conversion on the ATmega328p

In this week’s video, we continue on where we left off last week with another in our series of videos where we discuss how to program for the ATmega328p processor. This week, [Jack] takes a look at the analog to digital converter and takes us through how to set things up and then how to perform a conversion using the … Read the rest

Halloween Hacks: A Jacob’s Lantern sure to win the carving contest

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jacobs-ladder-pumpkin

[Matt] entered himself in a pumpkin carving contest this year, even despite the fact that his artistic skills were a bit…lacking. He knew that he had very little chance of winning the contest unless he had a great gimmick to make his creation stand out, so he started brainstorming.

[Matt] figured that since his design would have to be somewhat … Read the rest