Fresh hacks every day
We have been featuring some home made capacitors this week, and [Mike] wrote in to share his with us. While rolled capacitors are nice, they can be somewhat difficult to construct and grow to unwieldy sizes as capacitance and voltages increase. His solution is to stack the layers up using plastic plates. In this forum post he explains that using disposable plastic plates and tinfoil you're able … [Read more...]
[PT] just published an editorial calling on manufactures to transfer knowledge about products they are discontinuing by making them open source. He makes his case on the basis that millions of dollars and innumerable man hours go into developing these products, only to be lost when the company decides that the project is no longer (or maybe never was) profitable. We have to say he's got a … [Read more...]
Something new is coming to a store near you: electronic price tags. [deadbird] decided to get one and see what makes it tick. First off it just looks like an LCD with some coin batteries and a simple board, but removing the batteries it was found that the text still appeared on the screen meaning its an E-Ink display. Close examination of the chips on board shows that this model has an ATMEL … [Read more...]
Seeed Studios, makers of the Seeeduino and fabricators of small-run PCB orders have put out a call to help develop an open source radiation detector. Will it be of any help to people in the area of Japan that is at risk? We really can't say. But if you can lend some expertise with this, it can't hurt. We've already seen a simple dosimeter project but this one sounds like it's more on the level of … [Read more...]
Idle developers of the world take inspiration from this project and unite to create your own version. It's called the Junkyard Jumbotron because it takes many different displays and allows them to be used as one big interactive display. The image above shows a collection of smartphones displaying a test pattern. The pattern is unique for each device and is used to calibrate the display. Using a … [Read more...]
In her new element-14 video [Jeri Ellsworth] explains some concepts about “free to you” energy and features the LTC3109EUF, an Auto-polarity, Ultra low Voltage Step-Up Converter and Power Manager, along with the LTC3588EMSE a Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Power Supply. Using the LTC3109EUF she is able to power a modified Nintendo Entertainment System, and LCD using a small generator … [Read more...]
What if you could make paper react on physical input. Maybe you want it to shy away and close up if someone reaches for it too fast, or maybe you want some realistic paper flowers? Moving on to that great first step is Animated Paper, which is simply nitinol memory wire bonded to paper via our favorite tool, duct tape. Memory wire is first bent to its desired shape, and in order for it to hold … [Read more...]
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