Month: May 2012

Building The Backend Of Internet Controlled Devices

May 28, 2012 by 2 Comments

[Adam] and [Jeremy] took on the challenge of designing a system that would make it easy to control appliances from the Internet. We’ve seen the concept many times before; it involves some method of switching mains power and connecting that mechanism to the Internet. This design is both well planned and nicely executed.

We’re always very interested in the power switching for a project like this. It’s good that an approved electrical box houses all of the high-voltage parts in the project. Here a GA8-2B02 solid state relay switches power between the incoming cord and the two outlets. We didn’t get a look in the box, but hopefully there’s a partition between those wires and the low-voltage control wiring which uses a standard 3.5 mm audio jack as an interconnect.

An ATmega644 drives the control signal for the relay. It’s connected via Ethernet cable to the Internet through the use of an ENC28J60 chip which takes care of LAN communications. This is essentially a light-weight web server that will be easy to adapt to receive commands from just about any web-connected sender.

[Thanks Bruce]

Hipster Chandelier

May 28, 2012 by 16 Comments

This chandelier is something we’d expect to see on sale in the local gallery store. [Starkec] made it a couple of years back and we just love the look. The materials are pretty common, and you can throw it together in an afternoon.

The diffuser are made from clear glass soda bottles. After removing the labels and giving them a good cleaning, they were each set upside down and sprayed with some glass frosting spray. A four-conductor telephone wire serves both as the support for the bottle and electrical path for the RGB LED inside of each. The original screw cap for the bottles makes it a twist to install them after the soldering is done. There are two common color buses so that alternating colors can be shown at the same time. After seeing the video we think you’ll agree that the wiring scheme makes for some great animated effects.

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Turning A Pedal-powered Tractor Into A Power Wheels

May 28, 2012 by 22 Comments

A while back, [Stefan] bought a pedal-powered tractor for his son. It was a fun toy, but what it really needed was an electric motor. After a fair bit of tinkering, [Stefan] turned a pedal-powered tractor into a battery-powered Power Wheels.

Before turning his son’s pedal tractor into a battery-powered ride, [Stefan] ordered a 250 Watt motor and a Pololu motor controller. After tearing out the pedal parts, the motor was attached to the tractor with a few bits of wood (giving the tractor running boards), and a bike chain was run between the rear axle and motor. A pair of small 12 Volt batteries provide all the power and a Hall effect sensor in the handlebars provides the throttle.

Right now, [Stefan] has his son’s new battery-powered tractor set to a top speed of 5 km/h, or just a little bit faster than walking speed. [Stefan] says the tractor has a top speed of about 15 km/h, or about 10 mph; much too fast for a kid’s toy. After the break there’s a video of the tractor rolling along, and [Stefan]’s son having a great time.

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Mini Pinball MAME Machine Is Small Enough To Fit In Any Game Room

May 28, 2012 by 14 Comments

A huge collection of pinball machines in your basement is one of the crowing achievements of a geek, but what if you could have a huge library of physical pinball machines at you fingertips? [veriix] shared an imgur gallery in a reddit post documenting his wee little pinball machine he built from scratch.

Inside the pinball cabinet, there are two monitors. A 4:3 Samsung monitor serves as  the backglass for the machine while a 23″ HDTV provides the playfield. On the software side of things, [veriix] used PINMAME and Visual Pinball 9 running on an old motherboard he had lying around. The result is impressive. The HD monitor playfield provides the right perspective to fool [veriix]’s brain into thinking he’s playing a real pinball machine.

We’ve seen PINMAME builds before, but those were encased in full-size pinball cabinets that took up far too much room. [veriix]’s machine is much smaller, and perfect for the garage, den, basement, or anywhere you’d like to set up an awesome game room.

You can check out [veriix] playing his mini pinball machine after the break. Thanks [Johnny] for sending this one in.

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Turning A 1942 Lathe Into A Functional Piece Of Art

May 28, 2012 by 28 Comments

A couple of years ago, [macona] picked up a 1943 Monarch 10EE lathe. This monstrous machine is not only an amazing piece of engineering but an awesome work of art; not only can this lathe manufacture parts with exacting precision, it’s also a wonderful piece of machine age design.

The Monarch 10EE lathe was extremely high-tech for its time, and the War Dept Detroit Ordinance District tag on the cooling pump bears this machines lineage: this lathe was most likely used to make very precise military equipment such as the Norden bombsight.

After 60 years of faithful service, [macona]’s lathe picked up several coats of paint in different colors and generally fell into a state of disrepair. [macona] spent a great deal of time overhauling this lathe by replacing a bent feed rod, troubleshooting the motor problems, and eventually replacing the whole motor with a modern AC brushless servo. You can check out the improvement the AC servo made in a video after the break.

Of course no post about a rebuilt lathe would be complete without a few beauty shots. We’re extremely thankful for [macona] for not only restoring this machine, but also for sharing it with us. Thanks to [macona]’s restoration, this machine will hopefully be around for another 60 years.

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Fine Tune Your Morse Code Skills With This Mint Tin Practice Keyer

May 28, 2012 by 9 Comments

mint-tin-keyer

Hackaday reader [svofski] wrote in to share a device he built, which would be useful to any ham operators out there trying to hone their CW skills. He calls his practice keyer the Morseshnik, and it is a combination of various items [svofski] found while digging through his parts drawer.

He disassembled an old hard drive, saving its read arm to serve as the keyer’s paddle. He purchased some small angle brackets to create a set of contacts for the device, between which the lever sits, automatically centered by a pair of springs.

An MSP430, which was also collecting dust in [svofski’s] junk pile, resides inside the Morseshnik’s mint tin base on a small DIY PCB. It allows him to toggle between manual and automatic keying modes with the flick of a switch as he whiles his time away practicing his dits and dahs.

Continue reading to see a short video of the Morseshnik in action, and swing by his site for code and PCB schematics should you want to build one of your own.

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The Styharp, An Instrument Modeled After A Pig Sty

May 28, 2012 by 4 Comments

This is a first for us. We’ve never heard of an instrument modeled after a pig sty before. The Styharp, built by [Yann Seznec], for [Matthew Herbert] is meant to be a mix between performance and visual art. [Matthew]’s followed a pig from birth to the plate and made an album from the sounds he recorded. The project is called “one pig”. This would explain the reason behind modeling an instrument after a sty.

[Yann] started with a Gametrak controller, basically a reel of line connected to a potentiometer. He ended up using 12 of these, which each have 3 outputs. This gave him plenty of ways change the sound during the performance. You can see a little bit of him demoing it after the break.

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