Basic Stamp Controlled Kegerator

kegerator

evan jensen sent us a link to his basic stamp kegerator.  the microcontroller monitors and regulates the temperature, and outputs status information and the name of the current beer to an lcd display.  this looks like a fun project if you are looking to get started with hacking electronics.  for our non beer drinkers, i can assure you that root beer is also best served cold and from a tap.

i’ve never used a basic stamp before, but i’ve noticed that a lot of other people are using the microprocessor to do cool things, including james the weather ballon hacker from earlier this week.  i just ordered a starter kit last evening, so if people are interested maybe i can post an introduction when i receive it.

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Hackaday Links

hackaday links

more details on how google maps works
sleep with your nintendo controller
smartphone motion dectector
saturn in blue
cassini multimedia archive
and raw images from the huygens probe
the end of the hubble?
techno + tron video samples + midi step ladder
secure your wireless email in osx: ssh tunneling overview
neal stephenson on science and the economy, past, present and future
howto: cure cancer
tracking kids with rfid.  also good for livestock.
usa today discovers podcasting. so can you.
display ie favorites in your start menu
hacker revolution

Note: These links are not paid and our not for sale. Any advertising on HackADay is clearly labeled. These are links that our readers have sent in that we thought  the HackADay crew would like to check out.

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Howto: Geocaching With Google And Terraserver

terraserver hackaday headquarters
if you’re into geocaching, terraserver and google maps can be your greatest allies.  well, maybe second greatest, right after your trusty gps receiver.  with terraserver, you can pull up hires satellite photos and topo maps of just about everywhere in the continental us.  with google maps, you can easily pull up a road map and driving directions.

however, one thing i noticed when google maps launched was that it’s interface is conspicuously lacking a lat/lon entry field.  it turns out there are a couple of query parameters that you can use to pull up coordinate based maps.  with this info, you can make a simple form to pull up both map results for a given latitude/longitude combination, which should hopefully be a handy tool for your next gps treasure hunt.  continue reading to see how this works.

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Hackaday Links

hackaday links test 2

weather balloons for sale on ebay
360 degree views of the apollo missions
google maps!
beautiful and unique snowflakes
lock picking championship of the world
the definitive mit lockpicking guide
or, heck, safe cracking for computer scientists
hacking the no-fly list
disabling gps network to foil terrorists and probably aid workers
why couldn’t i instant message all day? answer: we ain’t tellin’
meatbops: britain licencing human cloning
searching for bobby phisher
robo scratch dj
mac mini recording studio howto
whoah, another monocycle.  kaneda must be so jealous.  well, maybe not.
mac mini server
looking forward to seeing this
google 302 pagejacking

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High Altitude Linux Weather Balloon

weather balloon

“i found it in my cow pasture, buried in the snow. i was riding my 4 wheeler.”  that’s what the postcard said when it returned to me after i sent it up with a helium balloon a couple weeks ago.  it traveled roughly 100 miles.

but i digress.

james meehan’s story began quite similarly, but he decided to take his balloon fascination to a much more fascinating and hackerly level.  follow the link to read about how he designed and constructed his linux powered weather balloon, complete with gps, packet radio uplink, and video camera.  he says it’s the coolest thing he’s ever done.  i can’t really vouch for what else he’s done, but this project is pretty darn cool.

when you’ve finished marvelling at this hack, make sure to also check out the home brew, high altitude glider we wrote about a while back.  i love this high altitude mischief.  if you know of similar projects, send ’em in!

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Shuffle Array

shuffle raid array

i saw this just moments after posting yestrday’s article, so i’ve been itching to get this one up before everyone has read it already (apologies to those that have).  here’s a quick howto that shows you how to make a raid 0 array out of 4 ipod shuffles.  is it just me, or does this one look an awful lot like that weird boomerang from krull?

the basic setup is applicable to normal usb flash drives as well.  it’s not super fast, but it does allow you to use several devices as a one single, larger drive.  there’s really nothing stopping you from making a software raid array out of anything.  take the floppy disk array as an extreme example.

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Diy Dual Conversion Ups

diy ups

for a while now, i’ve been grabbing cheap used ups boxes to run my home servers off of.  problem is, they are just about useless.  i can run an old p2 (no monitor!) off of one for about 5 minutes before it fails.  even if i were to chain a few of them together, the puny sla batteries in them typically go dead a month or two after i buy them anyway.  consequently, i’ve been going through them like candy.

searching for a solution, i came across this article for building a diy ups.  with an inverter, a power supply or charger, and a car battery you can have yourself a pretty solid dual conversion ups that is expandable to meet your downtime needs.  it’s worth a read even if you just want to know how a proper ups works.

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