We think in might be absurdly vain, but wouldn’t it be fun to give everyone in your family a chocolate modeled after your mug this holiday season? [Eok.gnah] has already worked out a system to make this possible. It consists of three parts: scanning your head and building a 3D model from it, using that model to print a mold, and molding the chocolate itself.

He used 123D to scan his face. No mention of hardware but this face scanning rig would be perfect for it. He then cleaned up the input and used it to make a mold model by subtracting his face from a cube in OpenSCAD. That needs to be sliced into layers for the 3D printer, and he used the Slic3r program which has been gaining popularity. Finally the mold was printed and the face was cast with molten chocolate. We’d suggest using a random orbital sander (without sand paper) to vibrate the bottom of the mold. This would have helped to evacuate the bubble that messed up his nose.

You know, it doesn’t have to be your face. It could be another body part, even an internal one… like your brain!

Virtual card games proliferate the interwebs, but this card-playing telepresence device is unique. [Patrick] calls the project Vanna, and we’d bet that’s an homage to the tile-flipping TV star [Vanna White]. Much like she flips the blank tiles to reveal letters, this device can flip the hand of cards either face up or face down.

Each of the six card trays is connected to a stepper motor. The local player deals the hands, placing each card in a tray so that it faces the webcam for the remote player. That remote player has an on-screen interface that can discard by tilting the tray forward and dropping the card on its face, or play a card by tilting toward to the local player so they can see its face value. All becomes clear in the clip after the break.

The hardware is USB controlled from a Windows machine thanks to the PIC 18F4585 which controls it. But it should be quite simple to get it talking to the OS of your choice.

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What started off as a fun project using light bulbs picked up some sponsorship and is going on tour. This project now uses LED modules controlled on the 2.4 GHz band to turn buildings into full color displays. It’s the product of students at Wrocław University of Technology in Poland. The group is something of an extra-curricular club that has been doing this sort of thing for years. But now they’ve picked up some key sponsorships which not only allowed for upgraded hardware, but sent the group on a tour of Universities around Europe. Who would’ve thought you could go on tour with something like this?

Much like the MIT project we looked at in April, this lights up the dark rooms of a grid-like building. It does go well beyond playing Tetris though. The installation sets animations to music, with a custom animation editor so that you can submit your own wares for the next show. Don’t miss the lengthy performance after the break.

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[Spork] over on the Netduino forums wanted to push the limits of what his little board could do. He put together a chronometer to measure the velocity of rifle rounds and Nerf darts using an Arduino-compatable CPLD shield.

The project is built around a pair of commercial CED M2 chronograph sensors; because people have the tendency to shoot through these sensors, they’re available as replacement units for much less than the cost of a complete chronograph setup. [Spork] couldn’t figure out a way for his Arduino clone to read pins with a resolution of 1 microsecond, so a Amani GTX CLPD shield was added to the build. This programmable logic chip takes the output from a chronometer sensor, starts a timer, waits for the second sensor to trigger, and stops the timer. From that, the velocity of just about any projectile can be calculated.

Of course, [Spork] needed to test his new device, so he took it out to the range and fired 25 rifle rounds through his chronometer. The result was a very nice, normal distribution centered around 2400 feet per second, exactly as would be expected. Although [Spork] didn’t test out low-velocity projectiles such as Nerf darts, we expect the same reliable results.

via majolsurf

We think it’s a bit to late to show up for a screening of The Avengers in full costume, but an arc reactor T-shirt would be pretty cool. [4ndreas] built a chest strap that looks much like [Tony Stark's] chest-mounted power source. It has a 3D printed enclosure which hosts the ATmega8 and 22 LEDs which provide the pulsing goodness. The thin cellphone battery helps to keep the size of the package to a minimum and a strategically placed hole in a black T-shirt completes the look. It’s even bright enough to shine through the fabric of this black T-shirt.

But if you insist on head-to-toe regalia you’ll appreciate [James Bruton's] Ironman suit replica build. Not only does he look the part, but he’s trying to build as much functionality into the project as possible. Most recently he finished the helmet. It’s got a motorized faceplate and LED edge-lit eye plates to impress hackers and cosplay fans alike.

Find video of both projects after the break.

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Many of us have had this exact thought and wondered if it was feasible. As it turns out, you can, in fact, just buy a bunch of magnets and make a levitating bed. Those magnets need to be extremely strong, so [mememetatata] used some rather large Neodymium magnets. This frame involved some careful planning since these magnets can actually be quite dangerous if not handled properly. [mememetatata] did manage to get everything spaced correctly and now has a bed that can levitate holding up to about 250 lbs. We really want to know what it feels like. That kind of thing seems as though it would be difficult to describe.

As usual, more information might be available in the reddit thread.

[thanks poisomike87]!

[Jeri] built this really cool C64 bass Keytar from a commodore64 and a cheap bass guitar. She’s using an FPGA to do the string detection and the key scanning, it then sends everything to the original 8bit sound chips. The reason that she is using a bass guitar is that the commodore sound chip only has 3 channels. There’s an interview with her from the maker faire, and if you keep watching, there are some other interesting projects too.

She notes that the implementation she went with has many performance issues due to the overtones the strings create when played. If she did it again, she’d go another route. Since [Jeri] has previously created the fully functional C64 games on FPGA, maybe she’ll add some video synth to this down the road.

We’ve been eagerly anticipating the first launch of our new space era. Like it or not, NASA isn’t going up anymore, so someone else has to. When we posted that the launch event was going to be broadcasted live (which ultimately failed), there was a lot of debate in our comments on the subject of private vs government entities doing the space traveling. There was also a lot of childish bickering.

Just to clarify, Hackaday’s official stance is, “Go to space”. We do not care if it is the government, [Elon Musk], The russian space program, a hackerspace in a home made rocket, or an evil billionaire. We just want space research to continue. Sure, there are drawbacks to some of these, most notably that the evil billionaire would most likely be doing this to kill us all, but at least the research would be funded.

You can watch a short clip of the launch, and while you do so, remember that on board that ship are the ashes of actor [James Doohan] also known as [Scotty]. That’s pretty awesome.