Old radio + old phone = Android media station

andoid-media-station

[Bjørn] combined some aging electronics he had around the house to create this Android media center. The enclosure is an FM-radio, but since he only listens to online media it wasn't of much use to him. After sizing it up he realized it was a perfect candidate to receive his old HTC Hero Android phone. The upper portion of the stock radio used to host controls for tuning the FM dial, adjusting … [Read more...]

Workout timer has its own fight bell

workout-timer-with-fight-bell

This workout timer turned out great. We think [Douglas] managed to end up with a professional look and a full range of features even though he was doing a lot of learning along the way. He wanted a clock that was capable of counting up or down to time different segments of his workout. In order to be really useful it needed to have a remote control and a way to signal when time had run out. He … [Read more...]

LED tutorial demystifies several control techniques

LED_driving_and_controlling_methods_14

Controlling LEDs is really quite simple. As you know, they need to be current limited which is as easy as applying Ohm's law to your given set of values. To make things even more even there's a slew of constant current LED driver chips out there that can be had for a song. But do you have any idea how those constant current circuits work? If not, then [Giorgos Lazaridis'] guide on LED driving and … [Read more...]

Reinventing The Clapper with a knock-based home automation controller

toktoktok-controller

Clap On!... Clap Off!... was super awesome when The Clapper came out in the mid-eighties. Now [Mathieu Stephan] is trying to make the concept much more functional. He put together a controller that lets you knoch on walls to control things around the house. It's called the Toktoktok project and uses small boxes to receive user input and control items like lamps and computers. A piezo element … [Read more...]

Building a magnetic rotary encoder

magnetic-rotary-encoder

[Long Haired Hacker] has undertaken a high-resolution 3D printer build. He got his hands on some motors to drive the build platform but it doesn't have a built-in encoder. He knows that optical encoder wheels can have problems due to dirt and grim as well as ambient light so he set out to find a better way of providing feedback to the controller. He ended up building his own magnetic rotary … [Read more...]

Hard resetting your Ford Touch system the easy way

ford-sync-reset

[Jeff Clymer] owns a Ford Focus, and while he’s generally happy with the car, the “My Ford Touch/Sync” system can be buggy at times. He spends a lot of time in the car each day, so when the entertainment center locks up as it is frequently known to do, he has to turn off the car and pull a fuse to reset the system. Since pulling a fuse while on the road is pretty impractical, he decided to … [Read more...]

Reverse engineering a Nokia LCD

display

LCD displays taken from old Nokia phones have been a staple of the hardware makers for years now, so we're very happy to see [Andy] reverse engineering a full color QVGA display so we can move our grayscale projects over to a full-color display. The screen in a Nokia 2730, 5000, and 7100 cell phone is a wonder of technology - its 18-bit color with a very high-resolution piqued [Andy]'s … [Read more...]