Year: 2012

Reading Punch Cards With An Arduino And Digital Camera

July 30, 2012 by 27 Comments

[digitaltrails] wanted the data on a few old IBM 80-column punch cards he had lying around, but didn’t have decades old computer hardware in his garage. He decided to build his own out of LEGO, an Arduino, a digital camera, and a bit of Python.

The hardware portion of [digitaltrails] build includes a crank-operated feed mechanism made entirely out of LEGO. For each turn of the crank, the feed mechanism sends one card down a chute where a photodetector wired into an Arduino tells a camera to take a picture. After that, a servo is activated, sending the card into the ‘already scanned’ bin.

On the software side of the build, [digitatrails] used the Python Imaging Library to scan one row of pixels where each column is expected to be. The software outputs the code and data contained on the 80-column card as well as a very cool ASCII art version of each card.

Considering you just can’t go down to Fry’s and buy an IBM 80-column punch card reader, we’re loving [digitatrails]’ clever way of getting data off an otherwise unreadable storage medium. Check out the video of the card reader in action after the break.

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Gumball Machine Delivers Ebooks And Games To Your Phone

July 30, 2012 by 9 Comments

Instead of rock-hard bubble gum that loses its flavor after 2 minutes, this gumball machine delivers apps and games directly to your smartphone.

The communications protocol used by this app-delivering gumball machine isn’t bluetooth or WiFi but near field communication. This protocol allows for a point-to-point network between the app dispenser and a phone to deliver games, music, videos, and ebooks to any compatible portable device.

The hardware for the gumball machine is a Galaxy Tab, an Adafruit NFC shield, two Arduinos, and a few switches and other components stuffed into an old gumball machine. To get purchase an app, just put a quarter or two in the machine, turn the crank, and put your phone up against the dispenser. Through the magic of near field communications, you phone or tablet receives whatever media you purchased.

Near field communication has been a standard for a while, but hasn’t been available in most phones. With oracles of Apple speculating the upcoming iPhone will have NFC capability other phone manufacturers are sure to pick up the tech. Very cool project, and we can’t wait to see some truly home-brew versions of this build.

Vidia after the break.

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Refurbing An Old Piano With Carbon Fiber

July 30, 2012 by 20 Comments

[Chris] picked up a baby grand. Of course for a complex mechanical device made out of wood, it wasn’t in the best shape. He’s doing his best to refurbish this $350 piano and turn it into something that plays and sounds like a $200,000 concert grand

The 1941 Kimball baby grand piano [Chris] picked up for $350 was a complete mess when it arrived in his house. After cleaning up the wood and replacing some felt the piano looked much better, but [Chris] wanted to make it play better.

After picking up a set of hammers from a 1909 Steinway, [Chris] tore apart the action on his Kimball. The Steinway hammers were removed from their shanks, carbon fiber shanks glued into place, and the entire assembly put back into the piano.

With new felt, new hammers, and light weight shanks on every key, [Chris] has a remarkable piano that is most likely better than new. Not a bad result for a $350 piano.

You can check out [Chris]’ build video after the break along with a little [Mozart] (we think) after the break.

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Building The Most Offensive Video Game Ever

July 29, 2012 by 76 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pZ70teW678&w=470]

[Autuin] created the most offensive video game ever. Inside a small cocktail arcade cabinet, he installed his own video game that recreates the experiences of the Space Shuttle Challenger and her crew on their last flight.

The build started off by picking up an old cocktail version of Space Zap from The Hackery, a neat little recycling place that turns old computers, monitors, and even old arcade machines into something useful again. After [Autuin] lugged his arcade machine back to his home base at Free Geek Vancouver.

After drooling over the 30-year-old circuitry, [Autuin] disassembled the old machine and installed a mint condition 19″ VGA monitor where an ancient black and white CRT once resided. The control panels replete with their comically large buttons were refurbished and connected to an Arduino and the whole shebang hooked up to a slightly outdated computer.

The real magic happened when [Autuin] coded his game. He created a few sprites from NASA archival footage and made a game where a shuttle takes off and is controllable by each player. As the most offensive video game ever, the space shuttle blows up shortly after launch, declaring ‘game over’ for both players.

[Autuin] will be showing off his new arcade game with a new bezel and cabinet graphics during Vancouver’s Eastside Culture Crawl this November. The game will probably be updated by then; we suggested editing the ‘time to explosion’ to T+73 seconds, but [Autuin] said he’s thinking of ways to make it even more awful.

Checking Network Status With A Traffic Light

July 29, 2012 by 14 Comments

If you’ve ever dealt with a buggy Internet connection, you know how frustrating it can be. This project takes the guesswork out of mashing F5 over and over, or simply walking over to your router and ‘turning it on and off again.’

Necessity is the mother of invention, and when the folks at the Bitlair hackerspace in Amersfoort, Netherlands got tired of opening up a terminal to see if their network connection was down at this weekend’s Haxogreen camp they did what any self-respecting hackerspace would do: make a traffic light monitor the Internet.

The traffic light is controlled by a Raspberry Pi the Bitlair folks had lying around attached to a spare traffic light they somehow obtained with a relay. Green means the Raspi can reach 8.8.8.8, red means there is no connection, and flashing lights means there is packet loss.

Not bad for a project put together in a few hours. Now if we only knew how they obtained a traffic light, ‘just lying around.’

Video after the break.

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Geigers On A Plane

July 29, 2012 by 37 Comments

[Thomas] took a Geiger counter he built on a plane. Why? Because he can, much to the chagrin of airport security.

[Thomas]’ Geiger counter is built around an old Russian SBT-10A detector containing ten separate Geiger tubes. This tube was connected to a circuit containing a LiPo battery, a few high-voltage components, and an audio jack connected to the tubes themselves. When alpha, beta, or gamma radiation hits one of the Geiger tubes, an enormous click is sent to the audio jack and into the microphone jack of a small netbook.

Right after boarding a plane in Dublin, [Thomas] booted up his computer, started recording in Audacity, plugged in his Geiger counter, and stored his experiment safely in the overhead compartment. After landing in Prague a few hours later, [Thomas] saved the 247 MB .WAV file and began working on a way to convert clicks in an audio track into usable data.

The audio output on the Geiger counter overloaded the mic input on his netbook, making ‘event detection’ very easy with a small C app. After plotting all the data (seen above), [Thomas] had a complete record of the radiation on his 2-hour flight.

Because there was far less atmosphere to absorb cosmic radiation, [Thomas]’ radiation dose was 9.1 microsieverts. Much more than at sea level, but nothing even air crews need to worry about.

Book Review: The Dangers Of Computer Hacking

July 29, 2012 by 30 Comments

Years and years ago, someone gave me this book as a gift. [John Knittel], a co-author thought I might find it amusing. The book, titled The Dangers of Computer Hacking, is a grade school level breakdown of, well, computer hacking and the dangers thereof. At the time, I thought it was rather fun and amusing. Since then, it has sat on my shelf without much action.

Last weekend, however, my 8 year old son was building perfectly spaced shapes for his slinky (new plastic slinkies suck) and found this book. I snatched it up and read through it real quick. The realization came to me that though this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek(check the topics on the back cover), this book is actually a fantastic reference for the un-initiated.

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