Year: 2011

Xteardown

February 23, 2011 by 9 Comments

A hot topic in the gadget world right now is the Sony Ericsson XperiaPlay phone, and while that is not our usual cup of tea, when we see the newest toy stripped down to its bits n pieces it piques our interest.

This 8 page teardown of the XperiaPlay (google translated to english) takes you though all the steps needed to dismantle your new joy. Every screw, clip, header and connector, each in order so you can get it back together again.

As the carnage progresses time is taken to point out some of the parts of the phone. From the mundane like I/O jacks, to the more interesting like the Synaptics touch pad driver that are handling the “analog” sticks, the Cypress multi-touch controller for the screen, and of course, the brains.

(thanks Frogz)

Mystery Box Out Of Lego

February 23, 2011 by 8 Comments

[Todd] recently completed completed his biggest LEGO project, and its pretty wild. The Mystery Box is an 8 compartment LEGO brick puzzle box, covered in a psychedelic pattern of interconnecting question marks.

The question mark pattern was inspired by a few things, the book called “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” contained an illustration that looked sort of like a M.C. Escher painting, which with some looking around brought up tessellation. With the look in mind [Todd] sat down with a paint program, drew out a grid, and started flood filling blocks until the pattern was perfect.

In puzzle box tradition, to gain access to the contents you must remove each compartment in the specific mystery order, and to accomplish this was no easy task. Lego Digital Designer was used to prototype everything on the box and then once happy, [Todd] broke the model down for a parts count.

Nearly 8,000 parts, 35 brick orders, and some long waits, the box was finally completed and its definetly worth a look. If you’re not that extreme, they also make cool electronics enclosures.

MIDI Controller Fit For An Arcade

February 23, 2011 by 6 Comments

arcade_midi_controller

MIDI controllers can be relatively expensive depending on feature sets and requirements, so Instructables user [fraganator] went about building one on his own for just under $100. He originally wanted to replicate a commercially available MIDI controller, which used arcade buttons in lieu of the more common rubberized buttons, since they are large and have a better feel when pressed. Once he drew up plans for his MIDI clone, he realized he wanted more features in his controller than were available in the commercial version, so he started revising.

His final plan included three rows of four arcade buttons as well as four rotary and two sliding potentiometers. All of the components were mounted in a small keyboard enclosure, then wired to an Arduino clone, which manages all of the controller’s functions. The controller is connected to a PC via USB and can perform any number of operations once the buttons are mapped in MIDI-compatible software.

There are no videos of the controller in action just yet, though [fraganator] says one is forthcoming.

The Interstellar Clock

February 22, 2011 by 21 Comments

[Alexander Avtanski] has put together a nice clock to meet all your interstellar travel needs. Besides being another PIC based timer, this is a neat little project because it incorporates pretty much every feature you could think of when building a clock for our solar sytem.  For example, it has 16 independent timers and alarms, it can  simultaneously give the time for multiple planets, as well as keep track of other stellar events like the eye of Jupiter or the phases of the moon. To get this project off the ground [Alex] reverse engineered an old dial up modem to serve as an enclosure and power supply and then added in a rechargeable battery so that his  his interstellar clock wasn’t tied to a wall.

[via make]

DIY Racing Sim Shift Box

February 22, 2011 by 13 Comments

diy_pc_racing_shiftbox

Ask anyone who has ever owned a car with a manual gearbox – in real life and in video games, nothing beats stick shift. Rather than shell out gobs of money to purchase a pre-made shift box, forum member [nikescar] built his own for about $20.

Using some scrap wood and a plastic cutting board, he went to work building a prototype. The “H” shift pattern was designed in CAD and laid over the cutting board, which was hand-cut with a Dremel. Using some tips found online, he constructed a simple shifting mechanism, then wired in a cheap USB game pad found on Ebay. Using safety pins as temporary micro switches, he ran a few laps, and was quite happy with the results. Once the switches arrived, they were fitted to the shift box and it was off to the races.

[nikescar] reports that the shifter works extremely well, allowing him to row through the gears with the greatest of ease, sans any fear of breaking things. Keep reading to get a better look at the shift box internals.

Continue reading “DIY Racing Sim Shift Box” →

ITalkman Refrigerated Franken-phone

February 22, 2011 by 12 Comments

italkman_frankenphone

[Jani] over at MetkuMods was commissioned to build a prize for an on-air contest held by MTV3 in Finland. Well known for some of his previous work, he was a natural choice for this project. The only stipulation for the build was that it contain three specific items: a Mobira mobile phone, an Apple iPhone, and a refrigerator. For those of you who don’t know, a Mobira Talkman is an old-school “mobile” phone built by Nokia in the 80’s that weighed in at 11 pounds, and was far from convenient to use. In this case however, the size of the phone is an advantage since he was able to gut it and use the frame to make up the body of the refrigerated compartment. He sacrificed a soft-side portable heater/cooler bag, removing the built-in peltier cooler and associated components, later grafting them onto his Talkman case.

The next task was to add the iPhone to the Talkman. Rather than have the old handset sit there uselessly, [Jani] decided to mount a small Bluetooth hands-free module inside the handset, allowing it to answer calls, adjust the volume, and change music tracks on the iPhone. The iPhone was put in a hard plastic case, then mounted to the Talkman handset where the keypad and display used to reside.

All in all, the iTalkman is a pretty cool looking device, though we wouldn’t want to be tasked with lugging that thing around all day!

DARPA’s Hummingbird Spybot

February 22, 2011 by 21 Comments

Nope, this isn’t some extravagant fishing lure, it’s the US Government’s newest way to spy on its people enemies. The hummingbird bot has no problems flying like an actual hummingbird while recording video. It was developed by a company called Aerovironment as part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract. Of course details are scarce, but you can see the device flying around while broadcasting its video feed after the break. Sure, it’s making much more noise than you would expect from an actual hummingbird, but this is just the version that they’re shown off publicly, right?

It has certainly come a long way since the company was awarded the contract few years back. We assume that the hummingbird is the realization of research efforts pumped into their ornithopter project. Those proofs of concept from 2009 on what was called Project Mercury showed off a winged flyer in a controlled environment. To see this year’s model flying out in the open is pretty neat.

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