Trashed LCD Monitor Turned Into A Light Box

May 8, 2013 by Mike Szczys 30 Comments

light-box-from-lcd-monitor [x2jiggy] was given a non-functioning LCD monitor. He made a small effort to trouble-shoot its inability to display anything on the screen but couldn’t get it working again. When that failed he decided to repurpose it as light box instead of just sending it off for recycling.

Monitor manufacturers put in a lot of effort to make sure the back lights distribute brightness as evenly as possible and that will make this a pretty good light box. [x2jiggy] starts off the conversion by removing the case. While it was off he gave it a new coat of paint. The LCD panel, the PCB that drives it, and the light diffuser sheets were all removed, leaving just the backlight and inverter PCB. A bit of probing with the multimeter and he even found a place to connect a toggle switch to actuate the inverter’s power. You can see the silver switch he added to the bezel in the image above. The full build video is embedded after the break.

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RedBull Creation Contest Entries Revealed!

May 8, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

The Redbull Creation contest is underway and the entries into the first stage have been submitted. As a judge, it is my duty to watch every single one of these and cast my vote on who should continue to round two. I won’t be sharing my vote with you, but I thought you might enjoy watching the entries yourself! Remember that the rules for this round were simply “build something amazing using this box full of cool stuff we sent you.”.

I have to say that the entrants really kicked things up a notch this year. These projects are so amazing that choosing 3 to be the “most awesome” is proving quite difficult. I’d also like to take yet another opportunity to mention that we think that this is such a wonderful method of promotion. RedBull could be making sappy commercials about polar bears drinking their beverage, but instead, they are encouraging people to make AWESOME things(yes, they have commercials too). Other companies should take note, like Oreo did!

You can view all the entries here.

Karma Controller Makes Reddit A Game

May 8, 2013 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

karma-controller-reddit

[Will] likes Reddit so much he built this dedicated controller that lets him play the social website like a video game.

He calls it he Karma Controller. In this case, ‘Karma’ refers to ability to accumulate a large number of net up-votes on a Reddit post. The device features seven buttons which are all it takes to up and down vote, navigate up and down on the Reddit listings, toggle images, as well as open and close new tabs for the comments section. We’re wondering if it allows you to follow a link to the post source too?

One of the reasons that we’re featuring this is that it’s only [Will’s] second electronics project. If you’re still reluctant to get your hands dirty we hope this acts as inspiration. He started by building the first version on a hunk of protoboard. The Digispark microcontroller seen at the top reads from his button network and communicates with the computer via USB. Once the design was proven he had some help etching this circuit board which is version 2. He shows it off in the clip after the jump.

If you just want some buttons for voting you should take a look at this project which includes a 3D printed enclosure and button covers.

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Weather-O-Matic Displays Digital Weather On An Analog Face

May 7, 2013 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA

This clean-looking readout uses analog dials to display the weather. [Nuno Martins] calls it the Weather-O-Matic and after the jump he explains what went into the project.

The hardware is about as simple as it gets. Each hand has a servo motor attached to it. An MSP430 gets the weather via a serial connection to a computer (data is scraped by a Python script) and sets the dials accordingly. The microcontroller also takes user input in the form of a single button on the side of the frame. The words on the left side of the dial are Portuguese for Today, Tomorrow, and After (meaning the day after tomorrow). Pressing the button multiple times will scroll through these three words, followed by the forecast temperature high and low for that day being displayed.

The nice thing about this is that the servo motors will stay in place if you cut the power to them. We bet if he wanted to make this a permanent fixture in his house he could get it to run well on batteries by using the sleep function of the microcontroller and adding an RF transceiver to communicate with the server.

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3D Printer Used To Make Custom Blade Server Type Mounting System

May 7, 2013 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

3d-printed-blade-server-mounts

We usually have no problem hacking together electronics into something useful. But finding an enclosure that makes sense for the build can be a real drag. In this case [Vincent Sanders] already had a working ARM build farm that leveraged the power of multiple ARM boards. But it was lying in a heap in the corner of the room and if it ever needed service or expansion it was going to be about as fun as having a cavity drilled. But no longer. He took inspiration from how a blade server rack works and 3D printed his own modular rail system for the hardware.

Each group of boards is now held securely in its own slot. The collection seen above mounts in a server rack which has its own power supply. This image is part way through the retrofit which explains why there’s a bunch of random pieces lying around yet. Instead of printing continuous rail [Vincent] uses a threaded rod to span the larger frame, securing small chunks of rail where needed by tightening nuts on either side of them. The white and red trays are prints he ordered from Shapeways designed to secure the eurocard form factor parts.

[Thanks Thomas]

Fabricating A Mechanical Wristwatch At Home

May 7, 2013 by Mike Szczys 38 Comments

Our mouth is still agape after digging through [Tom’s] watchmaking blog. This gentleman spent several years designing and machining his own mechanical wristwatch. A dozen years ago or so [Tom] answered an ad for an apprentice watchmaker. He worked on watches and came across a book that detailed how timepieces are made. He was told that no-one does it like that anymore, which only fed his curiosity. What he came up with is, to his knowledge, the first timepiece every made in Australia.

It’s no secret that we have a thing for clocks. But we feature digital timepieces almost exclusively. We’ve love mechanical watches too but don’t see them as hobby projects very frequently. After looking at what goes into the mechanism it’s not hard to see why.

[Tom] was faced with a variety of challenges along the way. One of the biggest was having to come up with tools that would let him perform the precise milling work necessary to achieve success. You’ll want to read through his movement design and manufacture posts. He laid out the plan in CAD, but ended up using some hacked together milling tools to get the job done.

[Thanks Amit]

DVD Laser Diode Used To Build A Laser Engraver

May 6, 2013 by Mike Szczys 49 Comments

[Johannes] has been reading Hackaday for years but this is the first project he’s tipped us off about. It’s a laser engraver built from a DVD burner diode (translated). It turned out so well we wonder what other projects he’s forgotten to tip us off about?

This is the second CNC machine he’s seen through from start to finish. It improves upon the knowledge he acquired when building his CNC mill. The frame is built from pine but also uses bits of plywood and MDF. It can move on the X and Y axes, using drawer sliders as bearings. The pair of blue stepper motors drive the threaded rods which move the platform and the laser mount. Just above the laser he included a small DC fan to keep it from burning up. The control circuitry is made up of an Arduino Nano and a stepper motor driver board. Catch a glimpse of the engraver cutting out some stencil material after the break.

There must be something about Spring that brings out the urge to work with laser diodes. We just saw a similar 1W cutter last week.

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