A Bright Idea

May 30, 2011 By 43 Comments

[Jeri Ellsworth] had a bright idea – a brain-activated light bulb that floats above your head. While out and about, she saw some guy with a video game icon attached to metal rod sticking out of his backpack. The rod made the icon appear to be floating above his head (think The Sims), which was the inspiration for this LED powered light bulb. The bulb is connected to a metal rod, as well as a metal hoop which is springy enough to keep a pair of electrodes snugly attached to your head.

Those electrodes, along with a third probe used for noise reference, are hooked up to a AD620 instrumentation amplifier. With the help of op amps, it modulates the red or green LEDs that are attached to the back side of the light bulb. The end result is an amusing way to show brain activity while being grilled on a Q/A panel, or while just wandering around taking in all the amazing sights presented at Maker Faire.

Join us after the break for a video demonstration.

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Filed Under: HackIt, led hacks Tagged With: , , ,

Bouncing ball analog computer

January 7, 2009 By 12 Comments

bounce

[Eric Archer] constructed an analog computer to model the physics of a bouncing ball. The core is a TL074 opamp that does all the integral math. He had no trouble finding descriptions of analog computers, but how to set the initial conditions was rarely covered. The controls include potentiometers to set the initial velocity, force of gravity, and coefficient of restitution (how much energy is lost in the bounce). The output is displayed on an oscilloscope. He mentions that this output could be used in electronic music, citing Aphex Twin’s Bucephalus Bouncing Ball. Watch the video below for a demo of all the features.

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Filed Under: misc hacks Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Light to sound converter

January 4, 2009 By 20 Comments

lightnoise

[Alex] built what he calls a light to sound converter. It reacts differently depending on the type of light: remote controls, light bulbs, TV screens, etc. A photodiode is used with an amplifier to pick up the light change. That signal is dumped through a dual opamp. He swapped in several different types of photodiodes and settled on the BPW34 intended for visible light. He’ll be incorporating this into a much larger project.

Filed Under: digital audio hacks, misc hacks Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Arduino Duemilanove

October 19, 2008 By 7 Comments

The latest generation of Arduino hardware has been released. The Arduino Duemilanove (2009 in Italian) has the same form factor as previous generations. The specs are essentially identical to the Diecimila, but there have been a few changes to the hardware. The power source is no longer chosen using a jumper. A MOSFET and dual OPAMP have been added to the board to automatically selected between USB power and the external plug. Automatic hardware resets are optional now. Next to the USB port are two solder pads labeled RESET-EN. Cut the trace between them to kill the reset. If you ever want it back, just bridge the pads. The hardware was updated to correspond with the release of Arduino cofounder [Massimo Banzi]‘s new book.

Filed Under: Arduino Hacks, misc hacks, news Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

LED lightbar controller

June 12, 2008 By 3 Comments


[Adam Grieg] recently posted this video of his LED lightbar controller at work making a strip of LEDs flash to the beat of his music. The controller does it by picking up the music via an electret microphone, then amplifying it with an LM386 Amp. The ATtiny13 microcontroller keeps track of the noise level and makes the LED array flash whenever it senses a peak.

In addition to the parts listed, [Grieg] used a small SparkFun box as the enclosure for the controller. If you’re considering trying your hand at this project, check out [Grieg]‘s schematics and code. It’s relatively cheap to make, so it wouldn’t be that hard to rig up several of these set to flash at different frequencies.

[via SparkFun]

Filed Under: led hacks, misc hacks Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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