Raspberry Pi Car Deck

December 27, 2013 by James Hobson 25 Comments

You can get all sorts of cheap car stereo decks from China, but where’s the fun in that? [Sentcool] is an IT specialist and electrician, and he decided he wanted something a bit more unique for his car — so he built this awesome Raspberry Pi car setup!

He’s using a Raspberry Pi Model B R2, a standard LCD car display (from China), a small 12V audio amplifier and an NF filter. The image above is from the first test of all the components together. He originally wanted to use a touch screen, but thought it might be too expensive for the project, so instead he’s carefully soldered switches onto some ribbon cable for the Pi’s GPIOs. Don’t you just love stripping ribbon cable?

From there it was just a matter of creating a nice wooden face plate and jamming everything into the center console of his car. It looks pretty good although the buttons could use some work — Don’t worry though, [Sentcool] is already thinking about upgrading it.

See more after the break!

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Fubarino Contest: Bluetooth Control For PC PSU

December 27, 2013 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

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[Mike] wanted to have remote control of the power on his computer. But Wake-on-LAN wasn’t really all that interesting to him. Instead he set out to build this Bluetooth controller which manipulates the motherboard directly (PDF).

Having been a winner of the Trinket Contest he based the project on that board which is seen on the left. There is also an RN-42 Bluetooth module and a couple of TI TS5A3157 analog switches. Once the prototype is finished the entire thing will run off of standby power and be located inside the case of his computer. The breadboard version just switches a couple of LEDs, but that will end up connecting to the pins for the power buttons once installed.

The video after the break shows off the easter egg. The device is controlled by [Mike’s] custom Android app. Every 42nd time he sends a power command the device calls back with our URL.

This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!

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Hacking A Christmas Tree For Less Blinkyness

December 27, 2013 by Todd Harrison 42 Comments

What good is a fiber optic self-lighting Christmas tree if it flashes so fast it will put you into an epileptic attack? The answer is “Not very good”, if you ask [Mads Nielsen] a.k.a [EcProjects]. So [EcProjects ] started a little project to slow the Christmas tree’s blinkyness down to a more reasonable rate. The task didn’t seem too difficult at first but turned into a quality tutorial building a variable frequency H-bridge motor control.

After opening the base of the tree [EcProjects] found a 12 volt AC geared synchronous motor turning a multi colored translucent plastic disk. A bright spotlight was shining upwards through the turning disk into the ends of hundreds of small fiber optics. This mechanism dumps loads of multi colored light out the ends of the fibers at the tips of the Christmas tree branches as the disk turns.

His goal was to slow down the motor; however, the rotation was based on the 50 Hz mains signal. In order to continue using this motor a lower frequency AC power source was needed. What follows in the video is an excellent lesson on how an AC synchronous motor works plus how to build a variable frequency control and H-bridge using some transistors, resistors and CMOS 4069 inverter chip.

In the end the frequency drive could only be lowered to about 30 Hz before the synchronous motor would stall and reverse using his design. [EcProjects] was bold enough to include several fails which always provides more opportunity for learning and is greatly appreciated.

If you believe you have a better solution please share your idea in the comments. I’m sure the first proposal will include an Arduino and servo modified for continuous rotation, but any solutions would be fascinating including modifications to his design. You can join us after the break to watch the video.

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Fubarino Contest: Oscilloscope Clock

December 27, 2013 by Mike Szczys 1 Comment

Before hearing about the Fubarino Contest [Joseph] never considered adding an Easter Egg to one of his own projects. But after seeing so many contest entries we think this is just the kind of fun extra that needs to make its way into every design!

The subject of his entry is an oscilloscope clock which displays our URL instead of the numbers usually found on a clock face. He’s using a SparkFun board to generate the clock — a piece of hardware we saw about 18 months ago hidden inside of a vintage scope. The feature is unlocked only when displaying roman numerals in combination with a special serial command.

Replacing the numerals with the URL isn’t entirely straight-forward. Since an oscilloscope is a vector display [Joseph] actually had to build his own array of start and end coordinates for each character. Luckily he did a fantastic job of documenting this which will allow you to make it say anything you wish.

This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!

Elinchrom EL-Skyport Triggered By Arduino

December 27, 2013 by Phillip Ryals 1 Comment

[Toby] has an Elinchrom EL-Skyport, which is a wireless flash trigger. He decided to see if he could trigger it using an Arduino, and came up with a nice proof of concept. This little device was not meant to be user serviceable, as can be seen in what [Toby] uncovered while taking it apart. But once he had it disassembled, he cataloged everything inside, and then he awesomely went to the trouble of drawing up a schematic. With that knowledge, he began reverse engineering the SPI protocol used, which almost deserves an article by itself.

It was a long road to get there, but in the end [Toby] built a prototype Arduino shield that houses an nRF24L01+ module. These are very cheap to pick up on eBay. He gives us the details on hooking up the module, though he had to go through extra hoops since he was using the Arduino Leonardo. Still, once you’re up and running, you can make use of one of the existing libraries specifically for this module.

Thanks to his effort, the rest of us have one more device to hack on. Thanks [Toby]!

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Fubarino Contest: Home Automation And Candle Flicker

December 27, 2013 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

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Here’s a set of holiday themed contest entries:

With a home automation system already in place, and considering the time of year, [Thom] chose to use his Christmas tree lights as the contest easter egg. When he uses his smart phone to set the fifth channel of the lighting controller to a 50% duty cycle it causes the string of lights to mete out the Hackaday web address as a series of dots and dashes. You can find the code here (DOC).

[Jacques] offers up a flickering LED as the host of his hidden easter egg. When you short the two leads of the LED for a little bit it forces the PIC 10F200 into a different mode that then flashes our URL in Morse Code. Have a look at the assembly file. His implementation was based on the reverse engineering we saw recently.

This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!

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Cleaning Slides With Plasma

December 27, 2013 by Eric Evenchick 36 Comments

[Ben Krasnow] hacked together a method of cleaning sides using plasma. His setup uses a mechanical vacuum pump to evacuate a bell jar. This bell jar is wrapped with a copper coil, which is connected to an RF transmitter. By transmitting RF into the coil, plasma is created inside the bell jar.

Plasma cleaning is used extensively in the semiconductor industry. Depending on the gas used, it can have different cleaning effects. For example, an oxygen rich environment is very effective at breaking down organic bonds and removing hydrocarbons. It is used after manual cleaning to ensure that all impurities in the solvents used for cleaning are fully removed. According to [Ben], it’s possible to get a surface atomically clean using this process, and even remove the substrate if the energy levels are too high.

These machines are usually expensive and specialized, but [Ben] managed to cook one up on his bench. After the break, check out a video walk through of [Ben]’s plasma cleaner

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