Arduboy Classic Plays On Original Game Boy Screen

August 18, 2015 by Kevin Dady 10 Comments

The Arduboy is a Kickstarter backed, 8 bit video game console that mimics the look of a very tiny Nintendo Gameboy. The Arduboy Classic is actually using the case, button and LCD screen from a classic Game Boy.

[uXe] is using the same brains, an ATMEGA32U4, along with a 328 as a co-processor to handle the classic “creme-n-spinich” gameboy screen. 2K of dual port ram acts as a buffer between the two micro-controllers meaning they can not only run while not being in lock step with eachother, but that each micro can read or write to the ram at the same time.

Currently the whole setup is spread out on a breadboard while all the interfacing is worked out, but it is working quite well. Future plans are to make a drop in motherboard replacement for the classic game system, and there is ample room for all the new electronics on the original footprint.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Arduboy project, check out our interview with it’s creator, [Kevin Bates]. That and the demo of [uXe’s] hack based on the project are both found after the break.

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Lessons From The Fablab Masters

August 18, 2015 by Richard Baguley 8 Comments

I spent some time recently at the Fab11 conference, a gathering of the people behind the Fab Labs that are springing up all over the world, where entrepreneurs, hackers and the curious can learn about making things. So, it was no surprise that this was a great place to pick up some tips on designing, building and hacking things. Here are a few of the lessons I picked up at this fascinating gathering of the fabbers.

Build Quickly

If you can make something in an hour, you’ll make it better in a day

said [Joris Van Tubergen]. He knows something about making unusual things because he 3D printed a full-sized Elephant. To do this, he worked out how to hack the Ultimaker 2 3D printer to print to an unlimited Z height by flipping the printer upside down and moving the Z motor to lift the printer rather than the print head. With a few tweaks to the software, he could then print full-height elephant slices to speed up the process. He is absolutely right: while it is tempting to endlessly fiddle with a concept on paper, you learn more by building a prototype, even if it doesn’t work.

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Literal Breadboard Hack Forces It To Accept Dual Pin Headers

August 18, 2015 by Al Williams 37 Comments

Usually when there is a clear demand for something, some entrepreneur will fill that demand. Unfortunately, no one seems to think there’s a need for a solderless breadboard product that can handle boards that have a dual row header. These devices have 0.1″ spacing in both directions, so while they will fit in a standard breadboard, the contacts will short out the adjacent pins on the device, which makes it worthless.

[Baz] needed to connect an RF24L01 module to a breadboard. Instead of connecting leads to the device or devising a breakout board, [Baz] actually hacked his breadboard. To make an area to plug in a dual row device, he took the breadboard apart, pulled the spring contacts, cut them, and then put them back in.

Of course, you have to make sure the cut is wide enough that the two parts of the spring won’t touch. It looks like [Baz] used a small screwdriver to help the springs keep their shape and cut them with simple diagonal cutters.

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Woodworking Blemish Removal Technique Pops Your Clamping Dimples

August 18, 2015 by Sonya Vasquez 43 Comments

If you’ve done any woodworking in the past, odds are likely that you’ll eventually end up fixturing your stock in the crushing grip of a vise or C-Clamp. The results are painful, leaving a lasting impression of the clamp jaws on your beautiful, otherwise-unmarred piece of stock. Often, you’ll need to design around this issue, fixture it gently, or cushion the grip with a softer intermediate material. [Chimponabike] had other thoughts, though, and developed a technique for successfully popping the dimples out, returning clamped wood to its perfectly unmarred form.

The Technique itself is dead simple and takes only a few minutes to perform. Simply apply a small amount of water, let it seep into the wood, and then bring a hot iron down onto the soaked wood to evaporate off the soaked water–instantly inflating the wood back into its original form!

It’s not the first time we’ve abused our tools and home appliances to do some clever things with wood, but it’s certainly worth adding to that “Tome of Techniques: Wood Edition” that you’ve been building in your browser’s bookmarks bar.

Thanks for the tip, [James]!

Hackaday Prize Entry: Project Dekoboko 凸凹 Maps Bumpy Roads On A Bike

August 17, 2015 by Richard Baguley 14 Comments

If you live in New England (like me) you know that the roads take a pounding in the winter. Combine this with haphazard maintenance and you get a recipe for biking disaster: bumpy, potholed roads that can send you flying over the handlebars. Project Dekoboko 凸凹 aims to help a little with this, by helping you map and avoid the bumpiest roads and could be a godsend in this area.

The 2015 Hackaday Prize entry from [Benjamin Shih], [Daniel Rojas], and [Maxim Lapis] is a device that clips onto your bike and maps how bumpy the ride is as you pedal around. It does this by measuring the vibration of the bike frame with an accelerometer. Combine this with a GPS log and you get a map of the quality of the roads that helps you plan a smooth ride, or which could help the city figure out which roads need fixing the most.

The project is currently on its third version, built around an Arduino, Adafruit Ultimate GPS Logger shield, and a protoboard that holds the accelerometer (an Analog ADXL345). The team has also set up a first version of their web site, which contains live data from a few trips around Berlin. This does show one of the issues they will need to figure out, though: the GPS data has them widely veering off the road, which means that the data was slightly off, or they were cycling through buildings on the Prinzenstrasse, including a house music club. I’ll assume that it was the GPS being inaccurate and not them stopping for a rave, but they will need to figure out ways to tie this data down to a specific street before they can start really analyzing it. Google Maps does offer a way to do this, but it is not always accurate, especially on city streets. Still, the project has made good progress and could be useful for those who are looking for a smooth ride around town.

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Bed Lights Keeps You From Stubbing Your Toe When Nature Calls

August 17, 2015 by Kevin Dady 30 Comments

While out shopping for bed’s with his better half, [Shane] tried out one of the more expensive, all “bells and whistles” included models. While the aforementioned featurees were impressive, one stood out: motion controlled underlighting for when you had to get up in the middle of the night.

Knowing that this feature would be easy to replicate [Shane] went about making his own version. Using PCV pipe to make the framework for the LED’s a 9 volt DC power supply, and a list of electronic components all that was left to figure out was the motion controls.

PIR motion sensors are the natural choice and its simple enough to hook them up to the micro of your choice and bang out some code. It’s just as simple to hard wire them into a circuit skipping the added cost of the micro and complexity of the software.

The two PIR sensor outputs are wired though a diode OR gate, to a potentiometer to control sensitivity, and then to a pair of NPN transistors to ultimately control power to the LED strips. Now they have motion controlled night lights for their bed when nature calls in the middle of the night.

Growing Copper And Silver Crystals For Art

August 17, 2015 by George Graves 35 Comments

Usually when Hackaday covers electroplating techniques, it’s to talk about through-hole PCB plating. But did you know you can use the same method to produce beautiful copper and silver crystal structures?

[Fred and Connie Libby] are kind enough to share how they make their crystals that they sell in tiny glass vials you can wear around your neck. The process is simple as you would think; it’s just an electrolyte solution, with a current passing through it, depositing the metal in an ion-exchange. Rather then stop once the part is sufficiently covered, you let the process run amok, and soon large crystal formations begin to emerge. [Fred and Connie] share their technique very briefly, so if you’re looking for a more detailed how-to guide, you can find one here.

Although silver crystals are a bit out of our budget, we wonder how large of a copper crystal could be grown? Large enough to be displayed on a coffee table? Surely such a work of art and science could be an interesting conservation piece in any hacker’s home.