Chainsaw Powered Bicycle

July 11, 2009 by Gerrit Coetzee 37 Comments

chainsawbike

We’ve covered weed whacker bicycles before and you can even buy 66cc conversion kits now. [geoff390] posted a few videos over on YouTube about another motor option. In the first video embedded below, he goes over the basic parts of his bike. The chainsaw motor is mounted to the side of the back tire and a metal drive wheel extending from the chainsaw shaft makes contact with it. The motor assembly is mounted on a hinge and the friction between the drive wheel and the back tire is adjusted with a turnbuckle. He posted a more detailed second video in which he goes over some of the finer details of the bike and some of the issues he’s had. Continue reading “Chainsaw Powered Bicycle” →

Cheap Cup Holder Laptop Tray

July 11, 2009 by Gerrit Coetzee 52 Comments

bigfront

[Michael Davis] sent in his homemade laptop tray. He does a lot of traveling in his Toyota Tacoma and was looking for a good way to mount his laptop inside. Unfortunately, [Michael] soon discovered that commercial laptop trays can be very expensive and difficult to install. He saw an opportunity in the empty cup holder in his car. Fifteen dollars worth of PVC pipe fittings and a piece of plywood later he had a laptop tray.

Strobit Wireless Widget Project

July 11, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

Strobit looks like it could be a project to keep an eye on. The entire project is open source, including the hardware. The aim is to build a low cost, low power, wireless enable arduino powered widget. This seems like it could really cut down on the development time of many projects we’ve seen here. Development is still ongoing but it looks like they’ve already implemented some mesh networking similar to the zigbee systems.

[via hackaday flickr pool]

Balloon Based Satellite

July 10, 2009 by Steve Watkins 14 Comments

balloonsat

This project provides an opportunity to conduct near space experiments. The flight computer, BalloonSat Extreme, is controlled by a BASIC Stamp 2pe. The complete BOM with PCB artwork is provided. There is enough hardware to control cameras, servos, a Gps, and five digital I/O. The computer is also equipped with a 12 bit ADC to log experiment results. The device seems limited to 30KB of storage. Though the author suggests this memory limitation is more than adequate, we are wondering if an implementation of the Nyquist sampling theorem is in use at all. For further reading the author has provided information regarding Amateur Radio High Altitude Ballooning.

[via adafruit]

Smart Can Crusher

July 10, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 15 Comments

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/4821403%5D

[Mangonha] has put together this interesting project involving aluminium can recycling (translated, sortof). They’re using an arduino to tally up how much aluminium they have accumulated. That information is then passed on and displayed on a google map. There are families that go around collecting the cans as a means of income, and this system could be very helpful to them. They state that their goal is to eventually have restaraunts and more families included. We’re a bit curious about how helpful this really is. How is that information actually changing the actions of the collectors? Would a simple flag on your door or window signalling enough cans to pick up or not be just as effective?

[via the Make flickr pool]

Robots Learning Facial Expressions

July 10, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 30 Comments

einstein (Custom)
Researchers at UC San Diego have been working on a robot that learns facial expressions. Starting with a bunch of random movements of the face “muscles”, the robot is rewarded each time it generates something that is close to an existing expression. It has slowly developed several recognizeable expressions itteratively. We have a few questions. First, are we the only ones who see a crazy woman with a mustache in the picture above? Why is that? What makes [Einstein] look so effiminate in that picture? Secondly, what reward do you give a robot? You can actually see this guy in action in a video after the break.

Continue reading “Robots Learning Facial Expressions” →

Hacking An IButton

July 9, 2009 by Zach Banks 36 Comments

breadboard1

Maxim’s iButtons, which are small ICs in button-sized disks, are starting to show up in more and more places. They have a range of uses, from temperature loggers to identification, and all use the 1-wire protocol to communicate. Over a furrtek, they hacked an iButton used for buying things from vending machines and created an infinite money cheat. They built a small rig based on the ATmega8 to read and write data to the chip. The data was encrypted, so it wasn’t feasible to put an arbitrary amount on the card. Instead, they used a similar technique to the Boston subway hack and restored a previous state to the iButton after something was bought. They also created a hand-held device to backup and restore the contents of a button for portable hacking.

[Thanks furrtek]