Drop F-bombs Into A Magic 8-ball

January 31, 2011 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

People in search of something profane to adorn their coffee table need look no further. [Wizgirl’s] magic 8-ball hack lets you change the messages inside, and her messages all include the most powerful of four-letter-words. To do so she completely replaced the message cube inside with one she built from a sheet of plastic, plastic label-maker labels for messages, and craft googly eyes to make it float… Brilliant.

The whole thing was reassembled along with the original fluid but she’s not done yet. A bit of creative case modifications leaves this magic 8-ball looking like a cartoon bomb, complete with a thick white fuse. She’s now the proud owner of a magic f-bomb.

[Thanks Osgeld]

Evalbot Nunchuck Control

January 31, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

[Martin] got his evalbot recently and wanted to try controlling it with his Wii nunchuck. After some trial and error, he finally got it working. He’s shown that controlling the bot with the nunchuck was actually pretty simple, but there are some other tips that could be pretty helpful in the process. One was the fact that the point where he’s taking power for the nunchuck could easily be shorted on the motor. He wrapped his in tape, but we could see this little bug pestering us for a while before we figured out what it was. You can download his code and see his build process on his site. Be sure to catch the video of it working in both accelerometer and joystick mode after the break.

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Insane Covert IR Illumination

January 31, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 37 Comments

[Onironaut] over at lucidscience sent us a link to his latest project, some IR illumination panels. At first, we were mildly enticed by his usual high standard of photography and description. It was just an array of LEDs though. Still, we kept hitting the “next page” button because he goes into such great detail. Then we saw version two. Instead of simply being an array of IR LEDs mounted outside for his security camera, he has mounted 1536 IR LEDs inside an old flat panel monitor. That’s a fake monitor producing 180 watts of IR light, and we think that’s even at half power! He replaced the screen of the display with one way mirror, so you would have no idea that it isn’t just a normal screen sitting on his desk. Great job as usual [Onironaut].