In a project that you’re sure to read about in police blotter someday, [Jair2k4] built a pair of Taser gloves that will shock your victim with they laying-on of hands.

Not surprisingly, this project was spawned from a conversation at work about what tech would best suit a vigilante crime fighter. [Jair2k4] suggested taser gloves, which drew a laugh, but also stuck in his mind. His prototype takes advantage of the flash circuitry from a disposable camera to step up battery voltage all the way up to 300 volts.

The gloves he’s using are rubberized fishing gloves which help ensure that he doesn’t shock himself. Wire travels from the capacitor to conductors sewn into the fingers and thumb of the gloves He’s got video embedded on his post that shows the bright spark and loud zap of a discharge when the conductors get close to one another. Altoids tins lined with electrical tape house the hardware, with a momentary push button used to charge the devices.

Hopefully criminals will not mind waiting for you to charge your weapons before they attack. But then again, [Jack Buffington's] own version of a taser glove had the same issue. That one used conductors on the knuckle side of the glove, and involved long wires tethering the glove to a belt pack. Locating that back as a bracelet is a nice improvement on the idea.

Hackaday headquarters has recently been overrun by techno-groupies hanging around outside so we decided to take some measures to discourage that. A word of warning though, if last week’s video ruffled your feathers then you probably shouldn’t watch this one. In this video [Jack] shows you how to create a stun glove using a disposable camera and some leather spikes. To prove that it really works, he intentionally takes a jolt from it courtesy of Hackaday’s security chief [Vlad].

Check out the video after the break.
Read the rest of this entry »

Instructables user [Admiral Aaron Ravensdale] just finished a high voltage plasma bulb build that makes creative use of off-the-shelf parts. As a self-described steampunk, [Adm. Ravensdale] also earned some cred by included working gears in his build.

The heart of the build is a “flicker flame” candle light bulb. These light bulbs have two flame-shaped plates inside the bulb to act as electrodes. Instead of the Argon that normally fills an incandescent light bulb, the candle bulb is filled with Neon. When excited, Argon gives off a rather unnatural purple glow – not very convincing for a simulated candle and certainly not steampunk. The Neon in the flickering candle bulb gives off a brilliant orange, perfect for simulating a flame and will surely impress the duchess during afternoon tea.

After the right plasma bulb was found, [The Admiral] scavenged the rest of the high voltage electronics from disposable cameras. Attaching three electrodes to a brass gear, the entire mechanism was made to spin using parts from an old clock and a CD drive motor. We’re always impressed with the scavenging abilities of steampunkers – we’d still be waiting for our gears to arrive if we attempted this. Check out the video of this really cool and very inexpensive plasma bulb after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

High speed video is everywhere these days, but the cameras and necessary equipment is a bit out of reach for a hobbyist. [Bassam] found a compromise and came up with a way to shoot high-speed photographs using a sound triggered flash.

Read the rest of this entry »

Disposable cameras are quite cheap, and include circuitry that produces very high voltages. Because of this, they have been harvested for many projects. We’ve seen them used for coil guns and large high voltage power supplies, even for fixing rechargeable batteries that won’t charge. The latest in the long list of uses is to create nixie tube drivers. [the_don125] shows us how to use a single disposable camera to power 2 to 3 medium sized Nixie tubes. Be careful, as we said before, this project deals with high voltage.