Month: July 2011

LED Headgear Is Marvel Of Free-formed Circuitry

July 17, 2011 by 6 Comments

Hackaday contributor [Nick Schulze] popped out an impressive set of LED headgear for a hat-themed party.

[Nick] is no stranger to working with LEDs. Previously he built a blue 8x8x8 cube something like this other 512 node full color version. He had a bunch of LEDs left over from that project and decided to put them to good use.

The first part of the build is the frame itself, made from thick fencing wire. He just started bending it around his head and got an uncomfortable head-shaped hoop to which he could solder. From there, enameled copper wire wraps its way through the system, supplying logic levels to all of the LEDs. Everything is done without a circuit board of any kind. The LED drivers themselves are attached by first using a zip tie to affix a resistor to the frame, then by soldering the TLC5916 chip to that resistor. Even the ATmega8 is included dead-bug style by soldering it to the frame which we think servers as ground. Program it with the free-floating female pin header and you’ll get the fantastic animations seen in the video after the break.

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FPGA Arduino Shield Uses Kickstarter As A Preorder System

July 17, 2011 by 35 Comments

[ Jack Gassett] is working on an FPGA shield for the Arduino. At first the idea of this expansion board seemed a little silly. But [Jack] mentions that the FPGA board can be quite useful for adding higher-order electronic complexity like HDMI capabilities to an Arduino. We’re not totally sold on the idea, but he’s not making the board solely for use with an Arduino either.

The plan is to use a Xilinx Spartan 3A FPGA which comes in a ball-grid array package. And that is the reason [Jack] decided to use Kickstarter for this project. He shared some of his issues with BGA components in a home manufacturing process a while back. To get these working reliably you need to have them professionally assembled, and that requires a sizable upfront investment. But as we read through his proposal it struck us that he’s actually using Kickstarter as a preorder system. You can get a base model with just the FPGA soldered on the board for $55. Not bad considering the chip will cost you at least $20 without assembly. Each level up includes a few more components like SRAM or add-on PCBs.

We get a lot of tips pointing to Kickstarter proposals but this is one of the few that seems right on the mark for supporting open and innovative development. Great work [Jack]!

[Thanks Simon]

Don’t Buy An IPAD, Make One!

July 17, 2011 by 37 Comments

When [Liu] decided he wanted one of the new iPads, rather than fork out the cash he decided to build his own tablet Mac. His creation functions just as you would expect any tablet PC with some nice extra features such as running on Windows XP for any of you Microsoft lovers. [Lui’s] tablet apparently only cost him about $300USD, about half the price of the real thing. The two part video shows the entire construction in fast forward including a demonstration of the final working product. It looks like the tablet is built using spare tablet/laptop components and the case is constructed from sheet aluminum before being painted and labelled with apple stickers. The final product is a bit thicker than the real thing but looks great in the laptop style case [Lui] has whipped up. Kudos to the guy for saving a few bucks and making something great in the process, the video after the break is definitely worth a watch. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of thing, actually we’ve seen a few.

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Megavallometer Camera Trigger

July 17, 2011 by 4 Comments

megavallometer_camera_trigger

[Tobe] has an intervalometer for his camera, but he wanted a device that could trigger the shutter using several different methods, not just time. He calls his creation the Megavallometer, which can utilize any one of three distinct criteria.

He recently purchased an Arduino and a couple of shields, so he figured this would be a perfect project in which to use them. He hooked up a microphone and a photodiode to the Arduino, allowing him to use both sound and light to trigger his camera, depending on which mode he selects. Of course, the Megavallometer still incorporates the functionality of a standard intervalometer as well.

Once connected to his camera he selects one of the three trigger programs, and the Arduino handles the rest. If either the light or sound triggers are selected, the respective sensors measure the ambient levels upon selection, allowing for accurate results in any setting.

While the Megavallometer is a bit larger than other intervalometers we have seen, it looks incredibly useful and can likely be strapped to a tripod or similar if need be.

If you have a minute, be sure to check out the video on his site for a sneak peak if his Megavallometer in action.

Android Controlled T-shirt Cannon

July 16, 2011 by 33 Comments

Every year, Qualcomm hosts the “Battle of the Schools.” This year the goal was to build homemade contraptions that would be judged on how cool they are. [Doug DeCarme], [Shaver Deyerle], and [Zach Rattner] – three Qualcomm employees at Virginia Tech – built an Android controlled t-shirt cannon for this event and ended up tying with Michigan State for first place.

The cannon is built around an Arduino Uno and a BlueSMiRF Bluetooth modem. [Doug DeCarme], the Android developer of the group, put together an app that would fire each barrel independently. The valves for the cannon are just 150 PSI inline sprinkler valves, bought from the local Home Depot. From the project breakdown, the team spent less than $150 on entire project.

From the video, we see that they’re getting some pretty good distance firing t-shirts at 160 PSI. Although we question the wisdom of using PVC as a pressure vessel holding 160 PSI, changing the PVC to a proper air reservoir wouldn’t be that hard.

VGA Pong On A ChipKIT

July 16, 2011 by 1 Comment

[Nathan] got his hands on a chipKIT Uno32 development board and wrote a Pong sketch that you can play with a VGA monitor. We love the hardware that makes this feel very much like the classic. It uses a collection of resistor-based digital to analog converters to generate the color signals for the VGA protocol. The score for each player is show on a 7-segment display instead of being printed on-screen. And the paddles are made up of a pair of potentiometers.

You’ll remember that the chipKIT Uno32 is an Arudino compatible 32-bit development board. This project shows how the hardware handles, and how easy it can be to generate VGA signals with it if you know what you’re doing.

For those interested in the game physics themselves, [Nathan] provided a nice explanation about ball movement at the bottom of his post. If you need even more details, dive into the code package that he links to.

Playing DVDs On An IPad

July 16, 2011 by 25 Comments

[Harrison Jackson] figured out how to add DVD playback to an iPad. It doesn’t require a jailbreak, or any hardware modifications to your prized tablet. The work is done with some server-side processing and played back through the browser.

The popular open-source multimedia player VLC has the ability to encode from the command line during playback. [Harry’s] option flag mastery of the program allows him to convert a DVD to a 320×240 format that is iPad friendly. But this alone doesn’t get the video any closer to being on the iDevice. You’ll need to be running a webserver that can stream video. This example is on OSX, but since he’s using an Apache server it should be simple to reproduce on any Unix variant. Once you’ve enabled m3u8 files in the Apache mime-types, the iPad browser can be pointed to the file address VLC is kicking out and you’ll be watching a movie in no time.

We’ve wondered about replacing our home theater front-end with an ATV 2 running XBMC but the thought of having no optical drive in the living room requires some contemplation. If this becomes a feasible option (that isn’t downscaled from DVD quality) it will be a no-brainer to make that jump.

Don’t miss the demo video after the break. Full instruction are in the comment section of that clip.

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