Drinking games and digital logic

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For those of you who might have forgotten, let's go over the rules of Centurion. The object of the game is for every minute, for 100 minutes, drink a shot of beer. It doesn't sound like a lot, but after completing the challenge you'll have had 3 liters of beer (or about eight and a half 12 oz cans) in just under two hours. When [Peter] played Centurion, he found the biggest problem was - … [Read more...]

Building a replacement for a broken dehumidifier controller

dehumidifier-replacement-controller

We've thought of doing a project like this ourselves as the dehumidifier we ordered online runs the fan 24/7 no matter what the humidity conditions. But it wasn't that [Davide Gironi] was unhappy with the features on his unit. It's that the dehumidifier controller stopped working so he replaced it with one of his own design. The original humidity sensor was mechanical and simply broke. He used an … [Read more...]

Adding Bluetooth remote control to PC speakers

adding-bluetooth-remote-control-to-pc-speakers

[Andrzej's] plain old computer speakers are ordinary no more. He pulled off a fairly complicated hack which now lets him control speakers via Bluetooth. He had a set of Creative brand computer speakers with a volume potentiometer that needed replacing. He was having trouble finding a drop-in replacement part and decided he would just go with a rotary encoder. Obviously you can't just drop one … [Read more...]

Atomic skull clock reminds us we’re dying

atomic-skull-clock

Whether you like it or not, every second that passes brings you one step closer to your own demise. It's not a comforting topic to dwell upon, but it's reality. This art installation entitled 'Memento Mori' is a haunting reminder of just that. Even with all the advanced technology we have today, we still have absolutely no way of knowing just when our time will come. [Martin] cast a real human … [Read more...]

Hacking a Coffee Machine for a Better Brew

Coffee Machine

Senseo coffee makers are automated brewers that use coffee pods. [Ronald] had one, but wasn't satisfied with the quality of the coffee it produced. His solution was to hack it apart and build his own automatic coffee machine with the innards. The coffee brewing part of the system is controlled by an ATmega8. This reads the temperature using the NTC sensor from the original machine and actuates … [Read more...]

Nixie clock that doesn’t skimp on the number of tubes

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[Nina Blum] figures that if you're going to the trouble of driving Nixie tubes you might as well use a lot of them. The details about this clock, which were sent directly to our tips line, lists a total of thirteen tubes used. There are six Russian IN-8 tubes (large digits), four Z573M tubes (small digits), but the colon tubes and the sine wave tube part numbers were not specified. An ATmega8 … [Read more...]

Nixie Clock Without a PCB

Lethal Nixie Cube

Looking for an artistic way to build circuits? Don't want to design a PCB? The Lethal Nixie Tube Clock is a free form circuit that gives you the time one digit at a time. It uses a IN-1 Nixie tube to display the digits. This is driven by ten MPSA42 high voltage transistors. A IRF520 N-FET, inductor, and a diode are used as a switching power supply that generates the high voltage needed to … [Read more...]