VFD As A Sound Amplifier

April 22, 2010 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

[Alessandro Lambardi] had some vacuum flourescent displays that he pulled from junked VCRs. His latest project is an experiment to use one of the VFDs as a headphone amplifier (Wayback Machine Cache). This means he’s trying to use them as vacuum triode amplifiers, aka vacuum tubes. He did get it to work but as he suspected, the output is fairly low power. It may be possible to use this setup as a preamp and build an actual tube amp to use along with it.

Update: Thanks to [Fallen] for mentioning that we’ve covered this concept in the past.

[Thanks Muris]

Android On The IPhone

April 22, 2010 by James Munns 40 Comments

[youtube= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yO2KQHkt4A%5D

Android, on the iPhone? We’ve covered iPhone Linux before… and if you look back, we mentioned the possibility of porting Android to the iPhone (even way back in 2008!). Well we are proud to announce that The Future is Now! The details are a little slim so far, but the iPhone is seen running a stock Android 1.6 install (Donut), and has support for Wifi, GSM networks, and even uses openiBoot to dual boot to the regular iPhone OS if you aren’t particularly committed. Right now the developers are considering it an Alpha version, and have provided all you need to perform this particular brand of Cult of Apple heresy. One catch though, the developers say that they only have it working on the 2G models, so sorry all you 3G(S) folks (for now). Dont get too down, and keep an eye open, something like this is bound to attract new talent to push the movement.

Anyone out there with a 2G and some free time? We would love to see some users showing off Hackaday on their hacked up iPhone!

USB VU-meter

April 22, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 14 Comments

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsg24MGNpRc&feature=player_embedded%5D

WaitingForFriday’s [Simon Inns] is quite possibly the USB interface and PIC master. This week he let us know about his VU-meter repurposed as a computer performance monitor using a PIC18F2550 and his open source USB Generic HID communication class. With PWM the meter’s needles and RGB LED can be accurately set and even dampened for CPU usage, network usage, HDD utilization, and even memory usage. Oddly enough, in his software we didn’t find the ability to use the device as a VU-meter – go figure.

Are You Human? Resistor Edition

April 21, 2010 by Mike Szczys 72 Comments

[PT] tipped us off about a new way to screen bots from automatically leaving comments. Resisty is like CAPTCHA but it requires you to decipher color bands on a resistor instead of mangled text. This won’t do much for the cause of digitizing books, but if you can never remember your color codes this is a good way to practice. Resisty comes as a plug-in for WordPress, add it to your blog and for a geek cred +1.

Flaming Hot Brick Plays Games, Promotes Tendonitis

April 21, 2010 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

The continuing battle for smallest console-made-portable continues with this N64 portable hack. Unlike the last two that we saw, this version opts for an over-under rather than side-by-side control scheme. This results in a small overall size, but because this thing is a thick brick we wonder if playing for hours would just leave you horribly mangled and crippled from the elbow down. [Bentomo] may have thought the same thing because he also built a breakout connector to use the original controllers (and play with more than one player on that tiny screen). If you’re a slave to the build details like we are check out his build log and the video after the break.

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Replicating Connectors By Machining PVC

April 21, 2010 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

[Alex] bought a hang on tank filter for his aquarium. Unfortunately it was made for a different water level than he was using and didn’t have the ability to adjust that he needed. Add to that the non-standard pipe sizing which compounded the problem by making it difficult to extend the intake and output tubes. He overcame this by machining PVC pipe to match the stock connectors. After turning the PVC on a lathe he added a neoprene o-ring and painted the assembly black. The new connector allows standard size PVC fittings for easy changes in the future, and it keeps his turtles healthy and happy.

All-terrain Camera

April 21, 2010 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

One part remote control car, one part camera, and two parts flash make up this all-terrain camera. The folks at Burrard-Lucas photography put together this guerrilla device to capture images of some of the world’s more dangerous wildlife like elephants and tigers (oh my!). This project furthers our opinion that great photographers need to be great hackers to get the shots they want.

[Thanks UC]