Super Winch Makes Sledding 100% More Fun

March 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 23 Comments

sledding_winch

As every kid quickly finds out, sledding in the winter is awesome until you have to trudge back up to the top of the hill. If your sledding run is reasonably short, this isn’t a problem, but if you sled on huge hills like [Josh], you need to figure something out.

He had a go kart motor sitting around, so he figured he might as well put it to good use as a sledding winch. The winch runs a continual loop of over 1000 feet of rope, and is able to pull 3 adults up a 30 degree incline fairly easily. They say that necessity is the mother of innovation, but at some point you have to ask, “Does sledding really require an 8 HP motor and a continuously variable transmission?” The answer, of course is a resounding “Yes!”

Not only does this winch allow [Josh] and his friends to get back to real business of sledding in a hurry, it actually makes sledding fun in both directions.

Keep reading to see a video of the winch in action, and be sure to check out some other fun uses for winches we have featured in the past.

[via Neatorama]

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IPhone-based Universal IR Remote

March 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 29 Comments

If you have a reasonable home theater setup in your living room, odds are you have up to half a dozen remotes sitting around. Short of trying to get your cable receiver’s remote to control everything or laying down some cash for a Harmony remote, what’s a hacker to do?

[Andrey] decided he wanted to use his iPhone as a universal IR remote, but he didn’t want to pay very much to do so. Instead of buying a dongle at the store, he soldered some IR LEDs to an old headphone plug, creating a mini IR dongle to control his equipment. After studying IR signaling a bit, he got to work encoding IR remote commands into wav files using Python. The files are then played on his iPhone, allowing him to submit certain commands to his TV set.

Unfortunately, the process of manually converting IR codes to audio files doesn’t quite seem like the most efficient way of doing things. There are other IR dongles currently on the market that utilize the headphone jack, most of which provide pretty robust software for free. These might make a good alternative to manually creating audio files for each IR command. We honestly haven’t seen any teardowns of these retail IR dongles posted online, but it would be interesting to see how they compare to what [Andrey] has put together.

Walking Motion Analysis Using Wii Remotes

March 1, 2011 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

WiiGait is not a political scandal, it’s a project that records motion data while walking. [Bilal Chishti] and [Zassa Kavuma] are strapping a Wii remote onto each leg and recording the sensor data while making video of the walker at the same time. The two are using an Ubuntu box to pull the sensor data from the Bluetooth-enabled devices and utilizing its built-in webcam for the video. They graph the data for each axis and we’re sure that syncing up data anomalies with the video is just a matter of matching timestamps.

So what good is this? The creators are keeping us in the dark about an end-goal for collected data; this may just be for the experience of using the hardware. But we could see it having uses in making distance runners more efficient, or teaching that bipedal robot how to balance.

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Encase Yourself In Carbonite With Kinect

February 28, 2011 by Mike Nathan 9 Comments

kinect_plastic_renders

There never seems to be a lull in the stream of new and novel hacks that people create around Microsoft’s Kinect. One of the more recent uses for the device comes from [Interactive Fabrication] and allows you to fabricate yourself, in a manner of speaking.

The process uses the Kinect to create a 3D model of a person, which is then displayed on a computer monitor. Once you have selected your preferred pose, a model of the image is rendered by a 3D plastic printer. Each scan results in a 3cm x 3cm plastic model complete with snap together dovetail joints allowing the models to be combined together. A full body scan can be constructed with three of these tiles, resulting in a neat “Han Solo trapped in Carbonite” effect.

Currently only about 1/3 of Kinect’s full resolution is being used to create these models, which is pretty promising news to those who would try this at home. Theoretically, you should be able to create larger, more detailed images of yourself provided you have a 3D printer at your disposal.

Keep reading for a quick video presentation of the fabrication process.

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Portable Gaming For Retro Console Lovers

February 28, 2011 by Mike Nathan 10 Comments

atari_2600_portable

There have been a fair share of portable video game console conversions over the years, but few tug at our retro-loving heart strings more than this one. Modretro forum member [Mario] constructed a fantastic looking portable Atari 2600 using a Flashback 2 Atari console clone.

He hacked apart the Flashback board to fit inside a small plastic case, then added a 3.5″ LCD screen, as well as some donated controller bits from other portable game systems. A pair of rechargeable batteries were added along with a small amplifier and speaker for sound.

While the Flashback comes with 40 games built in, he really wanted to add a cartridge port, so with the little bit of space he had left in the case, he did just that. When everything was finished, he sprayed on a few coats of retro orange paint and called it a day. Really the only thing that’s missing is some nice fake wood veneer and maybe some shag carpet.

Continue reading to see his portable creation in action.

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Direct To PCB Etch Resist Printing

February 28, 2011 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

Here’s a step-by-step guide for printing etch resist directly to copper clad boards. Two methods of making printed circuit boards at home have long dominated as the favorites; using photo-resist, and the toner-transfer method. The latter involves printing board artwork on a laser printer and then ironing it onto the copper clad. We’ve seen some efforts to print toner directly to the copper, or to use ink to adhere toner and then heat fuse it, but this hack is the first one we remember seeing that uses an inkjet printer directly.

The best reason inkjet printing isn’t often used is do to the ink’s iability to protect copper from the etchant. This method uses MISPRO ink that is pigment based and will resist the acid. An Epson Stylus Photo R260 printer was chosen because you can get refillable printer cartridges which work with the ink, and they’re fairly easy to modify. In order to feed substrate through the device it needs some physical alteration to make room for the thickness of the material, and an ATtiny13 has been added to trick one of the sensors.

Unfortunately we didn’t find photos of the printed resist. But there is source code available for the tiny13 if you do give this a try.

[Thanks Pavlejo]

Bluetooth-enabled Talking Chicken

February 28, 2011 by Mike Nathan 4 Comments

bluetooth_chicken

[Jeri Ellsworth] sent us a video walkthrough of a hack she did a few years ago using a toy chicken with a motor operated mouth. She wired up a Bluetooth headset’s audio output to a LM386 audio amplifier, which drives the speaker she added to the chicken. The output of the audio amplifier was also connected to a 555 timer in bistable mode to activate the motorized mouth. The motor simply opens the mouth when activated, allowing the built-in spring to snap it shut when the 555 is reset.

Obviously Jeri didn’t send us an old project just for kicks, she wanted to remind all of our readers that the 555 Design Contest comes to a close tomorrow night, March 1st at 11:59 EST. If you haven’t submitted an entry yet, get something started while there is still time!

Keep reading to see Jeri give a quick video overview of her talking Bluetooth chicken.

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