Day: September 1, 2013

Hackaday Links: September 1, 2013

September 1, 2013 by 21 Comments

hackaday-links-chain

[Anton] has been doing some Commodore 64 Datasette experiments. He managed to connect the C64 audio traces to his smartphone and use it for tape playback.

Not wanting to actually disassemble his Mendel 3D printer, [SteveDC] figured out how to make extenders that increase his build height by about 40%.

We have fond memories of owning an 8088 PC. We did a lot of experimental programming on it but never anything as impressive as getting the TCP/IP stack to run on it. Then again, we’re not sure there was such a thing back when we owned the 10 MHz hardware. That’s right, the microcontrollers we mess around with now days are much faster than that old beast was.

When he goes running at night [Tall-drinks] straps a pico projector to his chest. We guess you’d call the readout a heads-up display… but it’s really more heads-down since it’s projecting on the pavement.

See how things heat up as a Raspberry Pi boots. This video was made using a thermal imaging camera to help diagnose a misbehaving board.

We don’t have very many trinkets on our desk (that would steal space normally reserved for clutter). But be would happily make room for this motorcycle model made from VCR parts (translated).

A Real Car Remote Controlled With An Arduino… What Could Go Wrong?

September 1, 2013 by 39 Comments

[Gilad] tipped us about his latest project, where he adds plenty of pneumatics and electronics into his wife’s car to remote control it.

The brake/throttle pedals are actuated by pistons controlled by electronic valves, and a standard DC motor is in charge of turning the wheel. The Arduino code tells us that the valves will be opened as long as the remote up/down channel is above/under given values. The frame is based on Festo aluminium profiles and we’re not sure where the mains used for the DC/DC converters is coming from.  As the valves use 24V and the motor 12V, standard N-Mosfets and power relays are used for voltage conversion. The remote controller [Gilard] used is actually 20 years old, so the output signal of the receiver isn’t actually really clean.

We do hope to never see this car on the road….

Obstacle Avoiding LEGO Rover Uses CDs For Wheels

September 1, 2013 by 3 Comments

lego-rover

This rover built by [Sath02] is a great example that you don’t have to be a mechanical engineering wizard to get into robotics. He used LEGO pieces to help ease the difficulty of getting a rover up and running.

In this case the use of LEGO is strictly structural. The electronics are not the NXT parts you would expect to see when working with these popular toy blocks. Instead he’s put the Arduino Palm Plus into service. It’s an Arduino board that has rows of holes at either end to make it LEGO compatible. It also carries an LM293D motor controller and [Sath02] added an XBee module for wireless control.

At the top of the assembly is an IR distance sensor which is used for obstacle avoidance. You may not be interested in building and exact replica, but the techniques he uses for attaching the distance sensor, CD wheels,  and fabricating the rest of the rover are good examples if you take on a LEGO build in the future.

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Build A File Server Inside An Old External Optical Drive Enclosure

September 1, 2013 by 20 Comments

This one nearly ended up in today’s Links post, but on second look we think it deserves a feature of its own. [Profezzorn] designed some mounting brackets to house a file server inside of an external drive enclosure. Click on the instructions tab to get a bit more of the story.

The enclosure that he’s using is meant for a 5.25″ optical drive. It comes with a USB to SATA converter which is how he connects the hard drive to the Raspberry Pi serving the files. His mounting system uses the original holes in the enclosure, the threaded holes of the drive, and the holes in the RPi PCB to mount everything with just ten screws. The enclosure included a Molex power connector. He sacrificed an old connector to make a custom cable for the Pi’s power.

Add a portable power supply, do a little work with the Linux configuration, and you could easily turn this into a pirate box.

Scratch-built Gigapixel Scanner

September 1, 2013 by 26 Comments

scratch-built-gigapixel-scanner

The presence of a camera in this image may be a bit confusing since we’re calling it a scanner. What’s actually going on is that macro-images this piece of art are being captured automatically. The multiple shots will later be assembled into one fascinatingly high-resolution image. The CNC scanner rig is [Charlie Romer’s] summer project.

Unfortunately [Charlie] hasn’t yet collected all the information on the project into one place. After the break you’ll find more images, as well as a few demo videos. The best place to start is probably his proof-of-concept from this Spring. He shows a single-axis CNC mount for the camera. It takes an entire row of images. The assembled photo from that test is shown below. We believe the faint yellow dots in the macro part of the example are fingerprints purposefully left by the printer called printer stenography to help prevent forgery.

The larger rig uses movement on two axes. The idea is that the artwork will be perfectly positioned so that manual focus set at one point will work along all points in the capture routine. He’s using a lamp for a light source but we’re sure he will upgrade so something like a ring light as the project continues.

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