2011 was an interesting year here at Hackaday. We have about 24% more viewers now than we did last year. We started producing our own video content and we have shown some pretty interesting projects in our daily posts. In this post, we are gathering together the best of the best.

Our #1 post for the year with 175,000 views is about a 1 megawatt laser pulse pistol. Not only does this build work but it also looks cool. It’s definitely one to take a look at.

Coming in with 157,000 views is a post about how to insert your logo into a QR code. This one was done by our own [Brian Benchoff] and was a runaway success from the first week that we posted it.

In third place with 151,000 views is a post that could help you if you are trying to pick a development board to learn a new processor with. This post breaks down the various development boards available at the time of its writing into three different categories organized by price.

In fourth place with 114,000 views is one about an unique lock composed of color changing buttons. Your pass code is a series of colors instead of digits in an ordinary code lock. This build fits behind a standard wall plate so that it can be mounted cleanly using off-the-shelf hardware from the hardware store.

Wrapping things up at fifth place is a post describing how you can download books from Google using an utility called Google Book Downloader. We have no idea of the legality of this one. The original link is down but it seems that it is still available elsewhere on the internet.

In case you missed them the first time, here are our most popular posts from the past week.

In first place is a post that made our mothers’ wash our mouths out with soap. It is a periodic table of swearing!

Up next is a post about a micromouse robot that can run a maze faster than you would think is possible. Watch out lab rats, it’s gunning for your job.

Are regular violins too low tech? Would you rather play an instrument that could survive a few minutes with Chuck Norris and still keep playing the sweetest melodies? [Ken] created a violin out of carbon fiber that fits the bill.

Want to brake some aluminum? (or bend for the white collar folks out there.) In this post, you can see [Rupert's] build where he has created a metal brake out of little more than bamboo and some hinges.

Last but not the least is [Zach's] build that changes the brightness of his Christmas tree lights based on the pitch of the notes from the Star Wars theme.

In case you missed them the first time around, here are our most popular posts from the past week.

In first place was a repeat from last week of how you can make a privacy screen from an old LCD display. We want to serve up fresh stuff in this post though so we’ll add one to our top five this week.

Coming in at second place is a post about [Alex's] real-life Star Trek door that opens and closes pneumatically. Live long and Prosper [Alex]!

Following up in third place is a post about a proposal to build 100 government-run hackerspaces in China. Surely there will be bureaucracy and red tape involved involved with such a thing but maybe the U.S. could take a note about this and help us stay competitive with the rest of the world.

Next we have a post about a project where [Brainiac27] built a 1300 lumen bike light. For those of you who don’t follow the latest in lighting trends, that is like having a 100 Watt spot light mounted to the front of your bike!

Following that, take a look at this post about [FXI Technologies]‘ new dongle that lets you run android on any computer or HDMI television. This thing is the size of a thumb drive and yet packs some pretty serious fire power.

Finally, if you are looking for an interesting way to work with plastic, take a look at this post where you are shown how to make prosthetic parts using old soda (or pop if you are one of THOSE people :) ) bottles.

In case you missed them the first time, here are our most popular posts from the past week:

In first place is a post about [Yves Rossy's] flight suit that he built that literally allows him to jump out of an airplane and really fly instead of falling with style.

Coming in at second place is one that brings our plans of blowing up the Death Star just a little closer. It is a true 3D display that uses lasers to ionize the air at just the right places to produce 3D images.

In third place is one that we might build ourselves one day. [dimovi] figured out that he could take apart a computer monitor and remove its polarization filter to make a display that looks like just a white screen to everyone who isn’t wearing polarizing sunglasses.

Next up is a post about a LED wall that was hand built by [Martin].

Finally we have a teardown of a Verifone payment module that [Jerzmacow] kindly put online. This device has all sorts of useful parts inside.

In case you missed them the first time around, here are our most popular posts from the past week.

Our top contender is a post about a giant snake robot that is modeled after a snake that we know of through fossil records that was up to 50 feet long. This one is pretty interesting.

Next in line is a post about a special setup where things are being projected onto a nearly invisible mist of water that literally makes the images float in midair.

After that we have a post about another creation by [Photonicinduction]. Surprisingly, he isn’t destroying something with this one and it isn’t dangerous. Nevertheless it is still interesting. Check out his home power backup system that also (there is some debate going on with this claim) reduces his electricity bills.

In fourth place we have a post about how to make your own aerogel. For those of you who haven’t seen this stuff in person, it is the least dense solid that exists. You can literally see through it.

Finally, we conclude with one about an animatronic Horus Guard mask. If you are a fan of Stargate, this is one to check out.

This week, we are bringing you the final video in our series where [Jack] uses the 3pi robot as a fancy development board for the ATmega328p processor. Today’s video deals with interrupts. If you have been wanting to have your programs do more than one thing simultaneously, interrupts are the solution. [Jack] discusses various ways that you can use interrupts in your programs and then shows how he created a interrupt routine that drives the 3pi’s beeper. He also shows the routines that enable, disable, and control the interrupt.

Since this is the last post for this series of videos, we are posting the code used for all of the previous videos. Click here to grab a copy.

For our next series of videos, we are going to attempt something more challenging so most likely we will be taking a couple of weeks off to do some development before presenting it here. Stay tuned folks, we’ll be back.

Video is after the break…

In case you missed any of the previous videos, check out these links:

Part 1: Setting up the development environment
Part 2: Basic I/O
Part 3: Pulse Width Modulation
Part 4: Analog to Digital conversion
Part 5: Working with the 3pi’s line sensors

Read the rest of this entry »

This week, we are serving up part five in our series where we are using the Pololu 3pi robot as a fancy development board for the ATmega328p processor. This week we are taking a quick break from working with the perpherals specific to the processor and will show how to work with the 3pi’s line sensors. A quick look at the schematic for the 3pi might lead you to think that you should be reading the line sensors with the A2D peripheral. Even though they are wired to the A2D pins, they need to be read digitally. In the video, [Jack] will show how to read raw values from the sensors and then how to calibrate the results so that you can get a nice clean 8-bit value representing what the sensors are seeing. Of course, that would happen under normal circumstances. Murphy had his way in this video and it turned out that our studio lighting was interfering a bit with the sensor readings when we were shooting so we didn’t get as good of a calibration as we would have liked when we shot.

Video is after the break.

In case you have missed the previous videos here are some links:

Part 1: Setting up the development environment
Part 2: Basic I/O
Part 3: Pulse Width Modulation
Part 4: Analog to Digital conversion

Read the rest of this entry »

In case you missed them the first time around, here are our most popular posts from the past week:

In the #1 spot, we had a post about a tri-color laser projector that really is a well-done project. This projector sweeps the lasers around in vector mode using a pair or mirror galvanometers so would be perfect for playing asteroids in vivid full color!

In at #2 is a post about a PVC pipe gun that can shoot AA batteries at 600 batteries per minute!

Next up we have a post about the US military finding that due to Chinese counterfeit electronics, some of its weapon systems are defective. This has become a more serious issue in recent years. It has effected hackers too as shown in this Sparkfun post from last year.

After that, we had a post about a novel and somewhat scary way to post bulletins on a board without using tacks. How do they do that? By carefully using 20,000 Volts! Yikes. We’ll stick to tape next time we run out of tacks thank you very much.

Finally, we have one about a spot welder built out of some super capacitors and carbon rods. This one probably produces equally large sparks where it is welding and at the triggering mechanism!