St. Optimus of Prime

st-optimus-of-prime

We're pretty sure they're not canonizing alien robots, but this Optimus Prime stained glass sure looks good enough for a place at the local cathedral. It is [Kobachi's] very first glass project, but we'd say he's got a bright future ahead of him. Especially since it's about ten times more complex than the assignment called for. The design is based on artwork by [NinjaInkArt] called Optimus … [Read more...]

Minecraft clock radio puts a creeper head next to your bed

minecraft-alarm-clock

This clock radio plays tunes from Minecraft and it's decorated to look just like a creeper head. In the game mob heads are available as decoration and [Young_Maker] liked to spice up his virtual bedside table with a creeper head. But we think it looks just as good in its physical form. The main part of the clock is an Arduino with a character LCD screen. A DS1307 real-time clock makes sure the … [Read more...]

Open source capactive charger resurrects an electric skateboard

mikey-sklar-on-electric-skateboard

Here's [Mikey Sklar] posing on his new electric skateboard. Well, it's new to him at any rate. He bought it used on eBay for $250. That may not sound like much of a deal, but these will run more like $800 retail. The savings comes because the thing would no longer charge. But it took him just an hour and a half with his capacitive charger to resurrect the flat lithium cells. The first thing he … [Read more...]

LED Pocket Watch

LED Pocket Watch

[Frank] wanted a classy way of telling the time, so he built up a LED Pocket Watch. The watch features 132 LEDs for displaying the time, two buttons to activate and change modes, a vibration motor, and a buzzer. It's controlled by a picoPower ATmega645P, which has enough pins to drive the array of LEDs, an internal real time clock, and low power consumption. The device is housed behind laser … [Read more...]

Guitar foot controller uses DSP for audio effects

guitar-pedal-dsp1

This a screenshot taken from [Pierre's] demonstration of an electric guitar effects pedal combined with DSP and Pure Data. He pulls this off by connecting the guitar directly to the computer, then feeds the computer's audio output to the guitar amp. The foot controls include a pedal and eight buttons, all monitored by an Arduino. Pure Data, a visual programming language, interprets the input … [Read more...]

Color LED matrix VU meter shows how to use FFT with Arduino

color-LED-matrix-vu-meter-uses-fft

If you've ever wanted to make your own VU meter but were scared off by the signal process you need to study this tutorial. Hackaday Alum [Phil Burgess] developed the device using an RGB LED matrix, microphone, and an Arduino. You'll notice that is doesn't include an MSGEQ7 chip which we see in most of these types of projects. We have seen a few that use the Fast Fourier Transform to map the … [Read more...]

Coin-op Sega Rally used to race RC cars

sega-rally-used-to-race-rc-cars

Head to head video game action can't even compare to this use of a coin-op Sega Rally game to race actual RC vehicles. Take a close look at those screens and you'll see there are no computer graphics, just a feed for a camera on each of the toy cars. The project was conceived for the Sapo Codebits VI conference in Portugal. The arcade cabinets had their controls connected to an Arduino, but … [Read more...]