Emulating Ink Cartridges

February 2, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 15 Comments

[Smartie_on_computer] wanted to do some experimenting with an epson printer. After getting a somewhat disassembled one, the first step was to simply get it running. Unfortunately, one of the ink cartridges was missing and these printers refuse to do pretty much anything without all the cartridges installed. Rather than go purchase a costly cartridge that they didn’t intend to actually use, [Smartie_on_computer], chose to emulate the cartridge using a microcontroller. After some searching for the protocol used on the cartridge, the info ended up being in the patent. [Smartie_on_computer] now has a functional printer that is destined to be a 3d printer in the near future. You can see a video breakdown after the break.

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Digital Measuring Tape

February 2, 2011 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

You’ll never come up short with this measuring tape. That’s because there isn’t actually any tape in the device; it measures distance based on the rotation of a wheel. Roll it across the room and you’ll get an accurate measurement of the distance the little bugger traveled. Like the Etch-a-Sketch from Monday this uses the encoder wheel from a mouse as the input. The IR emitter and sensor from the ubiquitous peripheral find a new home on the PCB that hosts the PIC 16F819. It monitors the rotation, turns it into inches, then spits that number out on a 7 segment display. Handy, and cheap!

Bringing An LCD Viewfinder Back To Life

February 2, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

[Foobarbob] posted a pretty simple job of bringing an LCD viewfinder back to life. He doesn’t specify what was wrong, but since he replaced the backlight, we’re guessing that was the main issue. It was pulled off of a JVC camcorder. The camcorders with LCD viewfinders are getting more and more common at garage sales, so we’re surprised we don’t see more of these used. [Foobarbob] cracked it open, traced out the power lines and replaced the backlight with an LED and a makeshift diffuser made from a bottle cap. His results look great, we could see this being perfect for an HMD, or possibly a home made VR helmet.

Automating Automatic Racing

February 2, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 27 Comments

Hackaday forum user [Nikescar] upgraded his XBox360 hard drive. During this upgrade, his Forza 3 game save was lost. He had accumulated millions of in-game dollars and really wanted to get back to where he was. We’re not familiar with the game, but he says that one easy way to make some money is to allow the AI to run races for you while you do other things. Unfortunately, this requries coming back to the system and starting a new race every hour or so. Luckily, [Nikescar] had an arduino lying around doing nothing, so he patched it into the controller and had it carry out a the correct button press sequence on a schedule. Now his virtual driver makes virtual money while his virtual-person keeps it going. His real person sleeps.

Building Infra Red Light Sources With Regular Lights

February 2, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 23 Comments

[Oneironaut] sent us another IR hack. This time it is a writeup on the best ways to create IR light sources from regular lights. Since normal flashlight bulbs emit a broad enough spectrum to include visible light and IR light, this basically comes down to filtering. [Oneironaut] explores different light sources and different materials in depth, along with great pictures to show his results. This is a great resource if you’re needing to do some night vision for cheap.

Shiny Acrylic MAME Box

February 2, 2011 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

This nice table-top MAME arcade features a two-toned acrylic case. [Fabricio] spent about 50-60 hours designing the 29 parts that make up the enclosure. Originally the sides were meant to be orange but one design flaw meant he had to have them recut and only had enough black stock for the job. But we like it this way. The screen is just over ten inches and inside you’ll find a mini-ITX motherboard with a gig of ram and a solid state drive. The seven page build log features some bending, glue, screwing, and wiring that really show off the depth of the project.

This results a very modern look but if you like your retro gaming to appear vintage we recommend this cocktail cabinet.

Water-dosing Coffee Maker Augmentation

February 1, 2011 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

[Arthur Benemann] has the worst part of making coffee licked. His add-on for a drip coffee maker fills the water to the proper levels for you, saving the drudgery of rinsing out the carafe, carefully filling it to the appropriate level, then pouring it into the machine without getting everything wet. This isn’t limited to a full pot, but is user selectable by the cup based on how many times in a row you hit that red button. One LED gives feedback on the selected mode, then the device uses a washing machine water valve to turn on the tap for the appropriate amount of time. We’re a little bit leery of connecting homebrew hardware to the water pipes in our house. Make sure you’ve done a good job of debugging so that an infinite loop doesn’t flood you out.