Hackaday Links: Sunday, June 16th, 2013

June 16, 2013 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

Summertime means mowing the grass and now [Everst X] can do so in 7.1 channel delight thanks to his wireless headphone antenna hack which extends the range.

[Kevin] is trying to build a better reverse geocache box. It’s not the GPS that he’s improving, it’s the latching mechanism. He’s got four linear latches actuated by a single servo.

What’s a links post without some blinky lights? This week we take a look at [Daniel’s] hack which connects the Ikea Dioder to a router.

It’s a pretty early prototype but we like where [Shae] is going with his spouse-friendly silent alarm. It’s a wristband you wear to bed that wakes with vibration rather than sound.

[Leland] wrote in to share his multi-console emulator. It’s built using a Raspberry Pi and he plans to fit everything inside an original Game Boy case.

Fans of the game Candy Crush may want to take a look at this hack for the iPhone version. It attacks the game by accessing the file system of a jailbroken device.

Water Tank Level Meter Prevents Overflow

June 16, 2013 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

roof-water-tank-level-meter

Most of the homes in the area where [Raikut] lives have tanks on the roof to hold water. Each is filled from a well using a pump, with gravity serving as a way to pressurize the home’s water supply. The system isn’t automatic and requires the home owner to manually switch the pump on and off. [Raikut] made this process a lot easier by designing an LED bar indicator to monitor the water level.

The sensor is very simple. Each LED is basically its own circuit controlled by a transistor and a few resistors. A 5V signal is fed from 7805 linear regulator into the tank. The base of each transitor is connected to an insulated wire, each extending different depths in the tank. As the water rises it completes the circuit, illuminating the LED.

[Raikut] is conservation minded and built a buzzer circuit which is activated by the LED indicating the highest water level. If someone walks away from the pump switch while it’s filling the alarm will sound as it gets to the top and they can turn it off before it wastes water.

[via Reddit]

Autonomous RC Car Navigates By Waypoints

June 16, 2013 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

autonomous-rc-car

Check out this autonomous RC car which [Jason] built for the chipKIT design challenge. It’s been able to successfully navigate a planned route taking just a few waypoints as inputs.

Obviously this uses a chipKIT as the controller, the max32 to be specific. [Jason’s] write-up shows off all of the components of the design, but you’ll have to head over to his recently posted update to hear about the custom board he had spun to host them all. It starts with a GPS module, but that’s only accurate enough to give the rover the big picture. To handle getting from one waypoint to the next successfully he also included a gyroscope which provides very accurate orientation data, as well as optical encoders on the wheels for on-board distance traveled information.

We hope he’ll keep refining the design and make a trip to next year’s Autonomous Vehicle Competition.

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