[ch00ftech] Visits a Shenzhen Market

On a business trip, [ch00ftech] visited a Shenzhen electronics market and documented the trip. Some of the attractions included multiple Apple stores of questionable authenticity, stores selling PC components with no manuals, drivers, or packaging, and a variety of LEDs and lasers.

[ch00ftech] showed off the loot from the trip, including breadboards, perf boards, LED matrices, and an RFID reader … Read the rest

Print your own Supercaps

[Gil] recently wrote in to tell us about some awesome research going on at UCLA. Apparently by layering some oxidized graphite onto a DVD and tossing it into a lightscribe burner, it’s possible to print your own super capacitors; some pretty high capacity ones at that.

For those that are unaware, supercapcaitors are typically made using two electrolyte soaked, activated … Read the rest

Hackaday Links: February 1, 2012

The only thing he needs now is a micro and RTC

For [Dino]‘s 44th Hack A Week extravaganza, he made powered window blinds in five minutes. It’s a simple build with a small gear motor and a bit of tubing to adapt the shaft to the control rod of the blinds. Good job [Dino].

BecauseCamelCaseWillKillYourPinkieFinger

The wonderful [Lizzie] over at … Read the rest

You’ll shoot your eye out with this laser-filled tennis ball

laser-ball

We love lasers, you love lasers…who doesn’t love them?

[Matt Leone] recently took his passion for lasers over the top and built a little something called the Laser Ball. Fed up with the deluge of of LED cubes floating around online, he says that the Laser Ball is the new sheriff in town – and we’re inclined to agree.

He … Read the rest

The Engineering Guy explains fiber optics

engineering_guy_fiber_optics

[Bill the “Engineer Guy” Hammack] is back with another lesson in the science behind the technology we know and love, but might not fully understand. This time around he discusses fiber optic cabling and how it is used to relay data across distances both small and large.

He starts off by showing how laser light can be easily transmitted from … Read the rest

Laser microscope projection

looks totally safe to me

Ok, we’ll start this off by saying, looking at lasers can damage your eyes. Be careful. Now that we’ve got that absolutely clear, we couldn’t help but find this super quick and dirty laser microscope fascinating. Basically, they are just pointing a laser through a drop of water suspended from the tip of a syringe. The image of the contents … Read the rest

Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition 2010 Day Two Report

Culture Shock II, a robot by the Lawrence Tech team, first caught our eye due to its unique drive train. Upon further investigation we found a very well built robot with a ton of unique features.

The first thing we noticed about CultureShockII are the giant 36″ wheels. The wheel assemblies are actually unicycles modified to be driven by the … Read the rest