CD Phonograph Brings Old-time Charm To Modern Music

March 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 23 Comments

phonograph

[Jozerworx] had always wanted to build a CD player that looked like an old-time Victrola Phonograph player, though he never seemed to be able to find the time to do it. With all of his other projects out of the way, he decided to finally get started on building his phonograph.

He went garage sale hunting and found the perfect base for his project – an old wooden box adorned with tarnished brass hardware. He started in on the project immediately, dismantling a cheap CD player and mounting the motor/laser assembly on the top of the box. The CD player internals were installed inside the wooden box, along with a small audio amplifier stripped from a portable iPod speaker.

A brass horn was fashioned out of an ornament, in order to complete the phonograph feel, but also to act as a passive amplifier. He then mounted a series of switches on the top of the box to allow him to control the CD player’s basic functions.

[Jozerworx] says that it sounds decent, though there are some things he would change. He plans on switching out the audio amplifier and possibly the speakers at some point in the future. He is also still keeping his eye out for a larger, and more effective horn.

DIY Laser Light Show Is Sure To Please

March 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 12 Comments

cigarbox_laserlightshow

[Pete] had some spare time on his hands over his spring break, and he was itching to build something. He settled on a laser light show since, after all it was spring break, and what says “Party” better than a laser light show?

He glued three hobby mirrors to three small motors, mounting the motor assemblies on the lid of a wooden cigar box he bought for next to nothing. When the laser is pointed at the mirrors, they reflect the beam off one another, and finally against a projection surface, creating interesting shapes and motion. He programmed an Atmega328 to control the laser light show when in automatic mode, and added 4 pots to control the mirrors’ spin rate when set in manual mode.

The visuals are pretty cool, as you can see in the videos below. We love the laser light show concept, and [Pete] definitely gets extra points for his cigar-box casing as well.

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Reverse Engineering The Playstation Move

March 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 12 Comments

playstation_move

[Kenn] is working on building a quadrocopter from the ground up for a university project. Currently, his main focus is building an Inertial Measurement Unit, or rather re-purposing a PS3 Move controller as the IMU for his copter. He previously considered using a Wiimote Motion Plus, but the Move has a three-axis magnetometer, which the Wii controller does not.

The ultimate goal for this portion of his project is building custom firmware to run on the Move’s STM32-Cortex microcontroller, allowing him to obtain data from each of the controller’s sensors. Through the course of his research, he has thoroughly documented each sensor on his site, and dumped a full working firmware image from the Cortex chip as well. Recently, he was even able to run arbitrary code on the controller itself, which is a huge step forward.

[Kenn’s] project is coming along very nicely, and will undoubtedly be a great resource to others as he continues to dig through the inner workings of the Move. Be sure to swing by his site if you are looking for information, or if you have something to contribute.

Reverse Engineering The PSP

March 13, 2011 by Chris Nelson 14 Comments

The original PSP may be old news but there is an interesting relic of a website (translated) dedicated to the reverse engineering of a PSP (and exploring Saturn?). To determine the true capabilities of the PSP they desoldered most of the ball grid array chips and then hand soldered 157 jumper wires to allow for direct memory access. In later pictures it shows the PSP hooked up to external hardware for on the fly memory modification. Unfortunately the details are sparse and it doesn’t appear as if they will be updated anytime soon because the website has been “deleted and freezed because of spam. may ineffaceable curse prevail on the spammers.” Still this doesn’t detract too much some very impressive soldering.

Bristlebot Mod Never Rubs You The Wrong Way

March 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

controllable_bristlebot

[Underling] sent in his bristlebot project that aims to put a new spin on controlling bristlebot movement. We have seen several attempts at bristlebot directional control in the past, but none of these methods really fit what he wanted to do. His goal was to use a single brush rather than two, and be able to aim the bot in any direction at will.

He tried several different designs, but settled on what you see in the picture above. The large brush head is fitted with a vibrating motor on the front as well as a cell phone battery near the midsection. These pieces are placed in the center plane of the brush as to not influence the direction of movement. A separate servo-like motor is placed on the back of the brush, and each side of the motor’s arm is attached to a paddle that extends down the sides of the brush. When the motor is activated, one paddle is pressed in towards the bristles, while the other paddle is pulled away. This causes an immediate shift in direction, and should provide for a relatively tight turn radius. It should be noted that he also took the time to remove bristles from the center of the brush where the steering paddles are located in order to improve turning performance.

Unfortunately [Underling] does not currently have a video camera with which to show off his work, but we hope to see some action footage in the near future.

Sleek Numitron Clock Tells The Time And Temperature

March 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

Instructables user [janw] is a big fan of nixie clocks, but he had never built one before. He decided he would rather start small and build a clock using numitron tubes first, before moving to nixies. He preferred the simpler tubes due to their much lower voltage requirements and the fact that he would not have to use any specialized power supply for his project.

His clock serves double-duty, functioning as a thermometer as well. Timekeeping is regulated with a DS12307, and temperature is monitored using a DS18B20 single wire sensor – both of which are pretty common in these sorts of projects. Both are wired to an Atmega48 MCU which serves as the brain of the clock.

The numitrons were mounted in a handsome 5-layer milled acrylate stand with a pair of buttons mounted on the bottom which allow him to set the time. It really is a spectacular looking timepiece, and a great first effort on [janw’s] part.

Be sure to stick around to see a video of the clock in action.

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