Flowerboard LED Cube

December 21, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

Here’s a neat 4x4x4 LED cube made with an ElecFreaks Flower Protoboard.

A few days ago, we posted a neat new prototyping board made specifically for SMD work. Instead of the usual ‘holes-with-circles’ protoboard layout, the ElecFreaks team decided to go with a flower-shaped pad. This makes it especially easy to deal with SMD components when building whatever. To demonstrate their new protoboard, ElecFreaks built an awesome-looking 4^3 LED cube. Just look at those solder traces.

The LED cube itself is nothing we haven’t seen before, but the construction of this thing is amazing. The entire build is on the Arduino Mega Flower shield, meaning there are no wires at all. Everything, from the resistors to the transistors, is an SMD component. The only problem now is bending and soldering all those LED leads.

This Flower Protoboard is starting to look more and more interesting; check it out in action after the break.

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EFF On Securing Digital Information When Crossing The Border

December 21, 2011 by Mike Szczys 47 Comments

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, long-time defenders of the common man’s rights in the electronic realm, has published a guide to keeping your digital devices private when entering the United States. It seems the defenders of freedom and liberty (ICE, DHS, TSA, and CBP) are able to take a few freedoms with your liberty at a border crossing by seizing your devices and copies of the data they store for up to five days. This requires no suspicion of wrongdoing, and copies of this data may be shared with other agencies thereby negating the five day limit.

Do you have a reason to protect your digital property? This is discussed in the paper. It may be confidential information, by way of a business contract or professional relationship (Doctors, Lawyers, Journalists, etc.). Or you may just want to keep your privacy on principle. No matter what your stance, the EFF has covered all the bases in this intriguing read. We think the best advice they give is to make an encrypted backup of your data on the internet, blank your computer before the border crossing, and restore it when you get to your destination. If you don’t have the data with you, it can’t be compromised. It that’s not an option, they have plenty of guidelines on cryptographic techniques.

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Reverse Engineering The Icebreaker POV Toy

December 21, 2011 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

[Ch00f] spent some serious time figuring out how the Icebreaker POV toy works. This is a pretty cool device about the size of a toothbrush holder. It’s in a clear plastic case, which lets the row of 32 surface mount LEDs shine through. But making light isn’t their only function. You can use the device to scan in a high-contrast design, then ‘play it back’ using the persistence of vision display properties of the LED strip.

Perhaps the biggest question on [Ch00f’s] mind was how the sensing is done. He made a series of observations, then started monkeying around with the LEDs to investigate them. It seems that one LED is lit up while the ones around it are used as light sensors. This becomes more confusing once he realized that the display was multiplexed.

His write-up includes a collection of schematics that can be pieced together to conceptualize the entire circuit. The image above was taken during this process, using an LED to check the connections on a part. This let him prove that it’s an N-channel MOSFET. He plans to take what learned and roll it into his own project.

[via Reddit]

Numitron Tube Tutorial

December 21, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

Nixies and VFDs are great displays, but when using them you’ve got to deal with some fairly high voltages, at least for the micro projects we see on Hack a Day. Luckily, there’s another ancient technology that can be driven at tiny voltages. [Kenneth] put up a great tutorial on Numitron tubes to show the Internet how to get these guys working.

Numitron tubes are like Nixies, but instead of the ten number-shaped filaments in each Nixie, Numitrons are old-school seven-segment displays. [Kenneth] picked up a few on ebay and the seller was kind enough to include a Russian data sheet. Each filament in his IV-9 Numitrons required about 20mA to light up, perfect for the constant current LED drivers [Kenneth] picked up

The test circuit consisted of an ATtiny2313 and an A6278 LED driver. The code on the ATtiny cycles the digits 0 through 9. This is sent through the LED driver and lights up the tiny filaments inside the tube. Check out the video after the break to see the Numitron in action

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Hackaday Links: December 21, 2011

December 21, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 19 Comments

The “Little Drummer Boy” On a Scanner and Drum:

There’s little more information on this hack, however, it’s quite interesting seeing an automated drum and a scanner playing a familiar Christmas tune. Check out the video of the duet in action!

A Radial Engine Model:

Through the process of experimentation, two “radial engine models” were produced. The engine model shown above uses a gear-reduced motor to power it. The other model uses CNC-cut gears and a motor from an air freshener!

Tips and Tricks on Repairing LCD Monitors:

So do you have a broken LCD monitor? Using techniques described in his post, [Neoxity] claims to have been able to repair 50 out of 60 broken monitors using techniques described on his blog.

Flex Cables:

While we’re on the subject of [Neoxity’s] page, why not check out his discussion on “flex cables” used for DIY. Like the humble resistor, they’re not glamorous, but you’d be hard pressed to find an electronics assembly without one.

Illegal Numbers:

Although not a hack in itself, the “illegal number” is a really interesting concept (mentioned by one of our readers in the comments). Since all data and programs can, at their core, be represented by a series of 1s and 0s, this can also be interpreted as a number. Thus, some numbers actually represent copyrighted or trade secret data that would be illegal to possess.

Keeping Axolotl Healthy And Cool

December 21, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 44 Comments

The real life ~~Mudkip~~ ~~Wooper~~ Pokemon seen above is an axolotl, a salamander-like animal that lives in only one lake near Mexico City. These adorable animals can be bred in captivity, but keeping them is a challenge. [LRVICK] decided he didn’t want to throw down hundreds of dollars for an aquarium cooler so he built his own out of parts usually used for keeping computers nice and cold.

Commercial aquarium coolers that would meet the requirements start around $300 and go up from there. Not wanting to spend that much, [LRVICK] found a 77 Watt Peltier cooler for $5 and figured he could make it work. Off-the-shelf parts for water cooling CPUs were used to construct the aquarium cooler – a water block on the cold side, a huge heat sink and fan for the hot side, and a bunch of tubing goes up to the tank.

Now [LRVICK] has an axolotl housed in a very professional-looking aquarium that is a steady 65 degrees. He’s got a very nice build, and the axolotl looks very happy.

[Ben Krasnow] Sticks LEDs In His Contacts Just For Kicks

December 20, 2011 by Mike Nathan 86 Comments

[Ben Krasnow] wrote in, saying that every so often a news story appears covering a project in which researchers embed a single pixel LED display inside a contact lens. The most recent article he saw featured a contact-wearing rabbit, and not being one to shy away from damaging his own body in the name of science, he decided to try the experiment on himself.

He started out by soldering a tiny 0402 SMD LED to a hand wound coil, laminating the display between a pair of regular contact lenses. After trying to adhere the lenses to one another using water, he opted to tack the edges together with a pair of hot tweezers, making for a more secure but uncomfortable piece of eyewear. The LED is powered by a simple inductive coil he put together, which uses a spark gap transmitter to flash the LED on and off.

If you’re not freaked out by people sticking things in their eyes, be sure to check out the video below to see [Ben’s] augmented contact lens in action. While it might not give him Terminator-like vision, it’s pretty awesome considering he pieced it together in his workshop in his spare time.

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