Light Up Your Day With This LED Clock

We love clocks, and [Chris] got our attention with the internet enabled Light Clock. Time is displayed via RGB LED strip in a number of different ways around a 3D printed white disk. All the modes are based on two selectable colors to indicate hours and minutes, either in a gradient fashion or a hard stop.

Light is provided by a 144 LED neopixel strip and is powered by a beefy 4 amp 5 volt power supply, which also powers the controller. Brains are provided by a ESP8266 powered NodeMCU-12E board, and software is written using ESP8266 for Arduino core.

Being a WiFi enabled micro controller it is a simple matter of connecting to the clock using WiFi and using the embedded web pages to select your local timezone, color palette, and display mode. The correct time is set by network and will never be wrong. While there is a Kickstarter for selling the finished project, instructions and software are provided for making your own if you wish.

Join us after the break for the promotional Kickstarter and demonstration video

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Easy Power Supply Mod Takes Control

Inexpensive bench top power supplies are great for the home hobbyist, featuring wide voltage range and current limiting for a low price. What’s not to love? The controls; most have a single-turn pot that is typically very fidgety, especially at low voltage.

The solution is to replace the factory pots with nice wire-wound 10 turn units in order to gain 10x the precision. Of course nothing is ever drop in, the new pots didn’t fit the old holes, but that is nothing a few moments with a drill can’t fix. Also the original knobs no longer fit, but that’s just an opportunity for a knob upgrade.

The end result is still a power supply with fidgety controls, but instead of holding your breath, tippy tapping knobs to get within 100mV of your target, you can dial right in to within 10mV of your target. That makes life much easier, especially on low voltage projects that may not have power regulation quite yet.

Join us after the break for a video with all the info.

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Ditch The IPad; Build A Commodore 64 Tablet

The classic Commodore 64 has had its share of modernizing in the OS department. From its roots starting up a basic prompt, to full high resolution GUI packages like GEOS, to today where [Jim_64] added a tablet like launcher complete with a touch screen interface.

The GUI itself takes advantage of the high resolution graphics of the C-64 that looks similar to iOS, Icons are selected via cursor keys or joystick (what? no light pen?) and launch the various functions they represent. To add to the tablet-like feel of the OS, an off the shelf 3m touch screen panel and its corresponding RS232 interface board were obtained from digikey.

With the panel securely attached to the monitor, XY data from the various finger pokes are sent via serial at a blazing 1200 bps where the program interprets the position. Using the available demo (download sideA and sideB) and off the shelf parts, this should be easy for anyone with a classic C-64 to set up in their own home and have some fun.

Join us after the break for a few demo videos!

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Home Made Tumbler Diffuses Clear LEDs

What happens when you have a large stash of clear LED’s but you want or need diffused models for a project? You could go buy some more, but [Tyler] says no! Go grab some scrap from the shop, and make yourself a sand tumbler to diffuse the LED’s you already have.

The tumbler mechanism is similar to a rock tumbler, but is crafted out of bits of wood, some rods, a spaghetti sauce jar, and a DC motor which is available out of the types of machines we already tear apart. Once constructed, fine dry sand and the LED’s are loaded in the jar and is set to tumble for several hours.

Once done its easy to fish out the now diffused LED’s, which have a more even glow over their clear counterparts which shoot most of the light directly out of the end. Although it takes time, its a lot easier than trying to manually diffuse LED’s by hand, and if you need more than just a few its a massive labor saver.

Join us after the break for a quick video showing the results of different attempts during the learning process.

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One Dollar USB Sound Card Turned O-Scope

Using the inputs on a computer’s sound card is an old trick to fake a very simplistic, AC coupled, slow oscilloscope. You can get DC operation by desoldering a couple capacitors, but if the sound card is integrated into the motherboard it raises the stakes if you mess that up.

[TMSZ] has a better option, a ~1 dollar USB sound card which is easily hacked to work as a simple oscilloscope. Easily found on eBay, the 7.1 virtual channel sound card is identical in brains to a more expensive c-media model, but the layout of the PCB makes it easier to bypass the DC blocking caps. Software and DLL files to use the sound card with Miniscope v4 — a Windows GUI for oscilloscopes — are also linked, so getting set up should be fairly simple.

Now of course this is not lab-grade measurement equipment: the sampling rate is limited to 44KHz and the voltages must be in the typical “line level” range, under two volts. If you don’t mind a little extra noise, you can increase the input impedance with a single resistor. This extends the input range up to six volts, which covers most hobby and microcontroller usage.

So if you’re really in need of a scope, but only have a buck to spend, this may be just the hack for you! Those willing to shell out a hefty sum for a high-end headless oscilloscope should look onto the virtual bench.

Wheel Of Password!

Before the rise of the Nintendo Gameboy, Tiger LCD games were the king of handheld gaming. Inexpensive and appealing to a wide audience, you still often find them “in the wild” or lurking in your house, even today. When [Lee] found a “Wheel Of Fortune” model laying low in a box, having a look inside and turning the handheld into something it’s not.

Being based on a game show, this specific model has a feature most Tiger handheld’s don’t: a cartridge slot. Originally intended to supply additional categories and phrases, the slot is a wide open bus to the internal CPU. It didn’t take long for the some probing with the Bus Pirate to decode the data protocol.

So what does one do with a hacked game show game? Well you could just make it say goofy stuff, or you could make it into a TOTP password generator. Future plans are to take off the computer umbilical cord and bit bang the cart slot with an AVR. Once done anyone, trying to break in to [Lee’s] PC will never suspect the innocent old toy is the key to the kingdom.

Join us after the break for a quick demo video

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Animated Jack-o’-Lantern Really Connects

Days past people used to just carve a scary face in a pumpkin, drop in a candle and call it a day, but for our kind of crowd that’s not going to cut it. [Alexis] stuffed this Jack o Lantern with a lot of brain power and even connected it up to the internet for community control.

At the core of the festive decoration is a spark core, which allows micro controlled special effects to be triggered via Twitter. RGB LED’s change colors, flicker and flash and even a spooky ghost pops out of the top. Along with all that, a sound sensor is added in so the lights can react to the ambient sound around the lantern.

If you get too close an ultrasonic sensor will trigger the ghoulish treat with lights and animation, but what about spooky sounds? That is also included thanks to a toy found at the local discount store, which had its guts removed and its trigger button replaced with a transistor.

Now sights and sounds can all be controlled remotely or in an active response mode to entertain all the little goblins visiting the house this Halloween. Join us after the break for a quick demo video and don’t forget to send in links to your own pumpkin-based hacks this week!

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