Fine-pitch SMD soldering with minimal tools

fine-pitch-smd-assembly

We try to stick to the 0805 parts because they're still big enough to solder by hand. But [Scott] shows us that it doesn't take too many special tools to reflow fine-pitch components at home. In this case he's using 0402 resistors, a footprint that we consider functionally impossible to solder using an iron. The two parts of the equation that he spent some money on are professionally … [Read more...]

Carabiner helps you hone your milling skills

Magnabiner-Build-your-own-Carabiner

[Christian] is learning to use the metal milling tools at what we assume is his local Hackerspace. We love this about the communal spaces, they provide so many opportunities to delve into new fields. He embarked on a voyage that included visits to most of the machinery in the shop as he build his own carabiner with a magnetic gate. He's not going to be hanging off the side of a mountain from it. … [Read more...]

Reverse engineering old PDA software

reverse-engineering-old-pdas

[Troy Wright] acquired a lot of twenty broken Dell Axim PDAs. This type hardware was quite popular a decade ago, but looks archaic when compared to a modern cell phone. That's why he was able to get them for a song. After a bit of work he managed to resurrect eight of the units, but was dismayed to find there's no published method for controlling the back light from software. For some reason … [Read more...]

Playing MP3s from an FPGA

fpga-mp3-player

Building an audio player is a fun project. It used to be quite a task to do so, but these days the MP3 decoder chips are full-featured which means that if you know how to talk to other chips with a microcontroller you've got all the skills needed to pull off the project. But that must have been too easy for [Ultra-Embedded], he decided just to build an MP3 player out of an FPGA. It's not quite … [Read more...]

Controlling a DSLR with a Nintendo DS

camera

At Hack a Day, we've seen dozens of intervalometer builds that open and close a camera shutter remotely. [Luke Skaff] decided to take these builds to the next level by automating a camera's focus and shutter with a Nintendo DS. [Luke]'s build is based on the Open Camera Controller project that puts the power of an intervalometer, sound trigger, sequencer, and HDR bracket shooting into the … [Read more...]

Brewtarget: open source homebrewing

Several of us here at Hackaday Brew our own beer. Needless to say, we got a little excited when we saw members of the open source community building a brew tracking system. Brewtarget is an open source tracking system that you could download right now and begin tracking and building your recipes. It looks like there is a fairly active development group working on it and even a feature request form … [Read more...]

Avoid shaky camera movements with gyroscopic stabilization

gyro

Right after "no editing whatsoever", the "shaky camera" is the bane of YouTube viewers the world over. [David] came up with a nice solution to the problem of shaky cameras that uses gyroscopes to even out the bumps of making a great movie. Most cameras attached to moving frames - from the zip-line cameras at NFL games to police helicopters and aerial reconnaissance drones - have some sort … [Read more...]