Hackaday Links: June 22, 2012

For when you want something huge machined

Turn your volume down for this video. It’s the HSM-Modal CNC mill carving a full-sized car out of styrofoam, applying clay to the foam core, and machining the clay at 50 meters per minute. Yes, we’ve seen this machine before, but never in action. It only took a little over 24 hours to make this full-size model car.

Microscope into a drill press

If you need to drill some PCBs, [wotboa] has a neat build for you. He built a micro drill press out of a microscope. It’s a damn good idea if you can find a quality microscope base; those things usually have exceptionally high precision. The ‘hack’ part is a $7 Harbor Freight rotary tool, some PVC pipe, and a PWM control for the motor – home-made, natch.

I’m telling you, they need to get [River] out of the library. Work on it [Moffat].

[Alan] made a TARDIS book case, and he decided to share the plans with us. Just the build to combat the severe lack of woodworking and Whovian stuff on Hackaday. Vashta Nerada hopefully not included.

Money can’t buy happiness, but you sure can sell it

[Greg] sent in some info on Disney’s ‘glow with the show’ hats they sell at the California Adventure park. For $25, you get a hat with RGB LEDs in the mouse ears that synchronize with the World of Color show every night. There’s a better description of the hats here, but we’re thinking these are very similar to the Coldplay Xylobands we saw at this year’s Grammys. Anyone want to tear some mouse ears apart?

An exceptionally low-tech radio telescope

[Impulse405] found a poor man’s radio telescope on Instructables and decided to share it with us. [Z0rb] found a 10-foot dish in the garbage and quickly absconded with this retro hardware. After adding a power supply and a meter-based total power receiver, [Z0rb] had a radio telescope that covered wavelengths from 850 to 2200 MHz.

17 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: June 22, 2012

  1. I was told the Mickey Mouse Ears use IR for control. perfect for a crowd all facing the same direction at the same time in on place. It would be cool to then have locations around the park where your hat will do something special when you pass by.

    1. They had small LED pins that were ir controlled back in the early ’00s. When I worked at epcot back then they used to give us a bunch of ’em free and we’d pull ’em apart and play with them. They accept certain ir commands at different venues and do different light shows depending on the venue.

    2. Yup! I brought in an IR camera a few days ago; they’re broadcasting the signal from multiple towers in the front of the crowd. I wanted to record their signal with a IR sniffer I built, but I couldn’t get close enough :( Fast pass next time! It’d be awesome if we could figure out their protocol and make custom receivers… I’m thinking a super bright full body light show ;)

  2. We have a saying, “to hammer nails with a microscope”. Usually it goes about using inadequate and expensive things where something cheap and simple is perfect for the job. This is of course inapplicable to this microscope drill stand ;)

  3. A friend is attempting to figure out the hat protocol for the color hats. Anyone can help? We got raw data dumps that do appear to follow a language form.

    1. Ooo, ooo, I’ll try to help! I don’t have an annual pass anymore, so I just finally got around to visiting and getting my light-up ears. Have you made any progress figuring out the protocol? I was just about to start planning a way to get data from the show, but if you’ve already got dumps that would save time. Let me know how I can help!

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