Dollar store Terminator replica

dollar-store-terminator

Okay, now we think [James] is just on a mission to see what he can build using the dollar store as his parts bin. This is the nearly finished replica of the cyborg skeleton from the Terminator franchise. It's made mostly from things that cost $0.99. Actually we've got that a bit wrong. [James] is really shopping at the £0.99 store but the concept is basically the same. He's already shown us … [Read more...]

Linux picture frame serves as wireless Raspberry Pi display

wireless-display-for-rpi

Here's a novel approach to adding a display to your Raspberry Pi. Instead of using a wired display -- either via the HDMI (which can feed a DVI port with a simple hardware adapter) or the composite video out -- [Chris Bryden] decided to use Bluetooth to provide a wireless display. This really depends on the hardware that you have available. He snapped up a hackable digital picture frame for a … [Read more...]

Building a CMOS clock on a breadboard

cmos

If you're going to learn digital logic, why not aim high? That's what [Easton] and his friend did when they built a clock using only 4000-series logic chips. On a breadboard, no less. For a 1 Hz clock, [Easton] and his friend used a 4060 counter paired with a flip flop. This counts off 59 seconds until, with the help of an AND gate, the seconds counter rolls over to zero. After repeating that … [Read more...]

An interview with Laen (the force behind Dorkbot PDX)

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[PT] recently interviewed [Laen], the man who makes it cheap and easy for hobbiests to have small PCBs manufactured. He created Dorkbot PDX's PCB group order, a rapid turn PCB service which we see used in projects all the time (pretty much any purple PCB has gone through [Laen]). Turns out his real name is [James Neal]. He's a sysadmin by trade but deals in recreational circuitry at night. We … [Read more...]

Quadrotor opera begs for lasers and Pink Floyd

quad

In case quadrocopters aren't cool enough, here's an orchestrated quadrotor light show that was shown at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this last week. With 16 quadrotors and a few can lights, it's a light show not to be missed. This quadrotor show was created by a collaboration between KMel robotics and Marshmallow Laser Feast. The guys behind KMel are the same … [Read more...]

Resurrecting a PS3 controller that won’t charge

resurrecting-a-sixasix-that-wont-charge

[SJM4306] grabbed a used PlayStation 3 from a game store that was going out of business. He got a pretty good deal on what had obviously been the floor model for a number of years. The one real problem was the controller that came with it. The thing was so filthy that he literally used gloves to disassemble and sanitize it. It worked just fine after that,until he discovered that it wouldn't charge … [Read more...]

Using an HD44780 character LCD with the Raspberry Pi

i2c-hd44780-for-RPi

[Tech2077] is one of the lucky ones who already got his hands on a Raspberry Pi. He's been looking into different interface options with the GPIO header and just posted a guide to using an HD44780 character display with the RPi. We like this approach because instead of doing some hard-core LCD work he's using prototyping equipment you probably already have on hand. Getting a character LCD … [Read more...]