[Ozan] sent in his first attempt at making his own heads up display. The optics are very simple in design, and he gutted a commercial heads up display (ICUITI) for the LCD panel and interface electronics. I haven’t played with many head mounted displays since the Nintendo virtual boy. I’m not up on my field of view calculations, so it’s difficult to equate this to a commercial headset.
Month: November 2006
Podcast 8
Here’s podcast 8. I walk through some of my favorite hacks and discuss the prizes for the design challenge. It’s back to mp3, so the rss feed should pick it up and keep people happy. Help me out and send in some questions for the podcast!
Tesla Gone Wild
I’ve gotten quite a few good submissions lately, so don’t get mad if you’re not up. I can’t resist high voltages, so this Tesla coil project capable of 30 inch lightning bolts built by [PlasmaFire] caught my eye. Not too bad for a high school project.
From his description: The Tesla Coil that I built runs on normal house current (120VAC, 60Hz), fed through line filters to two Franceformer 9060 P-E neon sign transformers that output 9000 volts at 60ma each. After going through a high-voltage Terry-style RFI filter, the power is stored in a 4.0-joule capacitor bank. This energy is dumped into a copper-coil primary. The secondary, made from cast acrylic and motor winding wire, and a topload, made from dryer duct, aluminum foil tape, and a wood disc, complete the overall assembly.
(oh, and just for fun: the cylon roomba. Thanks [tod])
Design Challenge Prize Update Delta
OK guys, I can finally announce all of the prizes for the Hack-A-Day Design Challenge! I’ve been waiting to get things in hand before announcing them all – Everything’s arrived, and it’s a pretty sweet haul.
- Fabienne’s Hack-A-Day iPod Nano
- MAKE Controller
- MAKE Daisy mp3 player kit
- SUMO Omni Beanbag
- 120 LED Assortment Package
If you’re busy, maybe you just don’t know how sweet some of this stuff is.
Fabienne kindly consented to give up her very own Hack-A-Day engraved iPod nano. It’s been used and the inside thoroughly inspected, but it’s otherwise unmodded.
MAKE gave us one of their new open source MAKE controllers – I opened up the one they sent and it’s pretty sweet. The 55Mhz Atmel SAM7X CPU is on a daughter-board, and the main board has terminals for every connection you could want, along with USB, Ethernet, CAN, Serial… They also sent along one of their new Daisy MP3 player kits. Unlike the controller, this one has to be put together.
Andrew over at sumolounge.com hooked us up with one of their SUMO Omni bean bags. This thing is awesome. It’s the biggest bean bag I’ve ever seen. (I may have to buy the winner another one, my daughter has been going nuts over it )
Finally, [Alan] of Alan’s Electronic Projects sent us a set of his 120 LED assortments along with a handy resistor pack for using them with 5vdc to get things going. The set even includes some 13000mcd white LEDs for making your own portable tanning device.
How do you win all this sweet stuff? You send in a design! You’ve got until December 25th!
DIY Electric Car Heater
[lgtngstk] was tired of driving his cold Honda Civic to work. He built an instant on electric heater for his car from a toaster and an ATX power supply. The toaster elements were mounted to one half of the case, while the fan was left in it’s stock location.To get the fan blowing hard enough, he whipped up a DC voltage doubling circuit. To finish it out, he added relay control and plenty of new holes in the case.
Crazy Holidays Extra
After sushi-thanksgiving at my house, I’m beat – but you guys have been busy on the tips line.
In one of those special moments of vengance, the ‘real’ ps3 grill was created. (It’s been built, don’t be fooled by the fund raising graphic they were too lazy to remove.)
In another moment of consumer electronics death, a 25mw 405nm laser was obtained from a blu-ray DVD burner and turned into the closest thing to a light saber I’ve seen.
[James Coxon] sent in his autonomous RC car project (link dead, try Internet Archive). I found his Pegasus high altitude balloon project even more interesting.
If you haven’t already heard about it, if you can hack this ps3, you’ll actually get to own it. Thanks [good4me] and [wierdguy].
[Chris_rybitski] sent in his music syncro’d christmas light control – he runs the AC audio into diode rectifier to drive a SSR.
If you really hate squirells, [Alexiy] thinkgs you might find a remote controlled airsoft gun handy.
Don’t forget to check out the Hack-A-Day Design Challenge. I already announced the iPod, the MAKE controller and Daisy MP3 player kit, but look for another prize announcement soon.
Let the holiday geekery continue!
Bio-ElectroStatic Generator
[Matt] sent in Electrifried 2 – the second version of a device with one purpose: shock your friends like you’ve got a giant shag carpet. The ion generator is used to provide create a static electric charge on demand. Looks like another great alternative use for a negative ion generator that could take evil christmas giving to a new level.
