Hackaday Links: August 18, 2013

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Let’s start off with some lock picking. Can you be prosecuted if it was your bird that broke into something? Here’s video of a Cockatoo breaking into a puzzle box as part of an Oxford University study. [Thanks Ferdinand via Endandit]

[Augybendogy] needed a vacuum pump. He headed off to his local TechShop and machined a fitting for his air compressor. It uses the Venturi Effect to generate a vacuum.

Build your own Arduino cluster using this shield designed by [Bertus Kruger]. Each shield has its own ATmega328. Many can be stacked on top of an Arduino board, using I2C for communications.

[Bunnie Huang] has been publishing articles a few articles on Medium called “Exit Reviews”. As a treasured piece of personal electronics is retired he pulls it apart to see what kind of abuse it stood up to over its life. We found his recent article on his Galaxy S II quite interesting. There’s chips in the glass, scuffs on the bezel, cracks on the case, and pervasive gunk on the internals.

We’d love to see how this this paper airplane folder and launcher is put together. If you know of a post that shares more details please let us know.

Squeezing the most out of a tiny microcontroller was a challenge. But [Jacques] reports that he managed to get a PIC 10F322 to play a game of Pong (translated). It even generates an NTSC composite video signal! Watch the demo video here.

16 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: August 18, 2013

  1. Velleman sells (or once sold around 8 years ago) a solder yourself PONG kit, where the only fancy bit in the kit was a PIC microcontroller programmed with PONG game on it.
    So that’s not a new concept.

    1. I don’t think Jacques ever claimed it to be a new concept. What is impressive with his design, in my opinion, is the microcontroller he used (and optimizing his assembly code to make it work!!!). The PIC10F322 is a tiny chip with only a small amount of program memory and it also has very powerful hardware peripherals which enabled him to offload the audio and video output. This allowed him to fit the remaining code in the limited program space. Quite impressive in my book!

  2. it would be cheaper to buy

    http://www.ebay.com/itm/Air-Vacuum-Pump-with-R134A-and-R12-Connectors-Auto-Home-Air-Conditioners-Tool-/251310710344?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&hash=item3a83491e48&vxp=mtr

    than to machine one.

    with goldman sachs inflating the costs of aluminum

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=goldman+sachs+aluminum&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1

    getting the block of aluminum to machine is very expensive probably more than the cost of the ebay item

    then labor of machining is quite expensive too.

  3. Out of interest isn’t the Venturi vacuum pump essentially the same design as is used for water injectors on steam engine boilers? Genuine question as I’m not particularly familiar with this kind of thing

    1. Not entirely. Water injectors on steam engines use the combined effects of the high energy/velocity high pressure steam, the venture effect and condensation of said steam upon “impact” with the cooler feed water. (Steam ejectors, aka vacuum generators used for the brakeline vacuum, use a much more similar effect although again, they use the condensation of steam to further boost the vacuum)

  4. i thoroughly enjoyed the Bunnie’s ‘exit review’– i turned around and read his 2 previous exit reviews as well. that is the kind of info i enjoy seeing in reviews, even if it’s a type/style of product i don’t have a direct interest in.

  5. I hear the DOD bought that paper airplane machine and are going to pour billions into development to urn it in to a rapid drone prototyper. That Cockatoo isn’t so smart, my cat can open a can without touching it, she just cries till I do it.

  6. Bunnie Blogs are always interesting. I’ve bookmarked his blog and love to read them. His translated interview for the Chinese software developers network is a must read.

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