Digging Deeper Into The Apollo Saturn V LVDC

February 11, 2013 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

LVDC-NAND-proto

[Fran] went all-out with her reverse engineering of the Apollo Saturn V LVDC board. Regular readers will remember that she was showing of the relic early this year when she took the board to her Dentist’s office to X-ray the circuit design. Since then she’s been hard at work trying to figure out how the thing functions using that look inside the board and components. When we say ‘hard at work’ we really mean it. Not only did she explore many different theories that resulted in dead ends, she also built her own version of the circuits to make sure they performed as she theorized. Above you can see her version of the NAND/AND gates used on the hardware.

We find her explanation of how the logic devices were originally fabricated to be very interesting. They started with a ceramic substrate and used additive processes to form the traces and add the gates. We’ve embedded her video explanation after the jump.

Continue reading “Digging Deeper Into The Apollo Saturn V LVDC” →

GLCD Clock Project Packed With Great UI And Features

February 11, 2013 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

This Graphic LCD clock doesn’t have a fancy case, but [Gregory Wright] built in so many great features we think it will serve as inspiration for many projects to come. If he does decide to add a case it will be quite easy as there are no buttons to work around.

Without buttons how can the thing be adjusted? He decided to go with an IR remote control for all settings. This gives him a lot more options than a handful of buttons would have. Plus, heavy sleepers will need to find the remote control in order to shut off the alarm. We also think it’s interesting that the 595 shift registers he used have a low enough data high threshold (3.15V when VCC is 4.5V) that he didn’t need level converters to drive the 5V display with his 3.3V MSP430 Launchpad.

Check out his video after the break to learn about all the features he included in the UI. Our favorite is shown on the bottom right where it says “Hello World”. This is an area dedicated to a custom message for each day. He uses it to remind him about trash day (now there’s a feature!).

Continue reading “GLCD Clock Project Packed With Great UI And Features” →

Harry Potter Location Clock Spies On Your Smart Phone

February 11, 2013 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

The location clock found in the Harry Potter books makes for a really fun hack. Of course there’s no magic involved, just a set of hardware to monitor your phone’s GPS and a clock face to display it.

[Alastair Barber] finished building the clock at the end of last year as a Christmas gift. The display seen above uses an old mantelpiece clock to give it a finished look. He replace the clock face with a print out of the various locations known to the system and added a servo motor to drive the single hand. His hardware choices were based on what he already had on hand and what could be acquired cheaply. The an all-in-one package combines a Raspberry Pi board with a USB broadband modem to ensure that it has a persistent network connection (we’ve seen this done using WiFi in the past). The RPi checks a cellphone’s GPS data, compares it to a list of common places, then pushes commands to the Arduino which controls the clock hand’s servo motor. It’s a roundabout way of doing things but we imagine everything will get reused when the novelty of the gift wears off.

Minecraft For RPi Released

February 11, 2013 by Eric Evenchick 12 Comments

Mojang, the folks behind Minecraft, have officially released Minecraft: Pi Edition. This free version of the popular game is optimized to run on the Raspberry Pi hardware, and has an API that exposes the game’s internals to a variety of programming languages.

Mojang intends this release to be an educational tool for teaching and learning programming. Since the API provides instant feedback in the game, it could be an interesting way to make learning to code fun for people of all ages.

Having access to the API on a RPi also means that the game can be connected to the real world. For example, using Python and the RPi.GPIO, pins on the GPIO header can be used for output or input. This creates a slew of possible hacks that interface with the game.

Any ideas on what you’d like to do with Minecraft on a RPi? Let us know in the comments. Also, we coincidentally just printed a minecraft pick on our 3d printer. There’s a time lapse video of it after the break!

Continue reading “Minecraft For RPi Released” →

LED Tells You When Your Server Has Melted

February 11, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 37 Comments

LED

One of the benefits of writing for Hackaday is the ability to command at will a legion of readers to descend on unsuspecting web servers. Most of the time a server can handle the load of thousands of connections. On the rare occasion, though, a server is turned into a pile of slag and dross to the satisfaction of us here at Hackaday and to the ire of admins everywhere.

Checking to see if your server is still running or not isn’t terribly interesting, though. [Eric] thought it would be cool to have a proper physical visualization of how busy his server is, and ended up using a blink(1) USB-controllable LED to display his current server load.

The blink(1) is a small, USB controlled RGB LED that can be used as a universal indicator light. [Eric] had the idea of plugging it in to one of his servers and having the brightness of the LED change in response to the load on the server. He did this with a Python script that queries the Google Analytics API and returns a value from 0 to 255 in response to how popular his server was in the last 10 minutes.

Of course, there’s always a chance Hackaday could Slashdot his server. In that case, the blink(1) glows a steady red, alerting [Eric] to his popularity.

Programming In 3D With 3DPL

February 11, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

cubes

Here’s an interesting tool for making simple 3D games. It’s called 3DPL, the 3D programming language, and it’s a real-time interpreted language that allows you to create cubes and other primitives that respond to user input and internal logic. Not only that, but you can build 3D versions of breakout and asteroids very simply with only a few lines of code.

3DPL is based on Unity with a lot of JavaScript influences. Building a cube in 3DPL is as simple as declaring it with a name and position in 3D space. There are a few functions that can be applied to these cubes – they can be made to rotate at the press of a key, or translated in space to collide with each other.

It’s still a very early build, but looks to be pretty interesting for an ‘introduction to 3D graphics programming’ perspective. You can grab a copy of 3DPL to try out over on [amigojapan]’s github. Hopefully we’ll see a gravity method soon for a proper 3DPL Tetris implementation.

Turning An IPhone Into A Karaoke Machine

February 11, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

setup

Instead of booking an MC for your next karaoke party, take a look at [Paulo]’s build that turns any iPhone into a karaoke machine.

There are thousands of YouTube videos out there of songs with lyrics – a much more advanced version of the mainstay of any karaoke get together, suitcase full of CDs and a video monitor. The only problem in turning these YouTube videos into a karaoke party is putting a drunken slob into the mix. [Paulo] recently solved this problem with a karaoke mixer that adds a microphone input to any analog audio feed.

But this is only halfway to a karaoke machine. To finish the build, [Paulo] created an amplifier (with a fabulous Manhattan-style PCB) for an iPhone’s audio output. The video output can be sent directly to a monitor, allowing for the full karaoke experience.

Since [Paulo]’s karaoke mixer uses an XLR jack for the mic, it’s still possible to make karaoke worse by adding vocal and other miscellaneous effects.