Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys stomp through a forest full of highly evolved hardware hacks. This week seems particularly plump with audio-related projects, like the thwack-tackular soldenoid typewriter simulator. But it’s the tape-loop scratcher that steals our hearts; an instrument that’s kind of two-turntables-and-a-microphone meets melloman. We hear the clicks of 10-bit numbers falling into place in a delightful adder, and follow it up with the beeps and sweeps of a smartphone-based metal detector.
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Direct download (60 MB or so.)
Episode 066 Show Notes:
New This Week:
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
- Any Remote Can Be A Universal Remote
- Old Laptop Gets New Lease On Life With Raspberry Pi
- A Smart DIY Metal Detector
- The Clickiest Keyboard Ever
- DJ Scratches Out Club Music With Tape, Not Turntables
- A DIY 10-bit Relay Adder
Quick Hacks:
- Elliot’s Picks:
- Mike’s Picks:
Tiptronic, or robotic clutch in general, is not really a substitute for a traditional torque converter automatic. It works if you’re going fast around a track and trying to minimize your shifting times, but crawling around in traffic tends to get herky jerky because the torque control depends on the throttle instead – the gearbox is just on and off. It gets worse when the car gets older and everything starts going out of tolerance and out of tune.
Imagine in a manual gearbox if you had to either floor the clutch or dump the clutch all the time. It would work if you had perfect touch on the throttle. Now in a real car, after about 5-8 years of abuse, the engine won’t idle at exactly 900 RPM anymore because the ECU is hunting for the right mixture…
I had to look this up. Seems like tiptronoc is one type of automatic transmission that allows the driver to tell it when to shift up or down a gear:
http://wikicars.org/en/Tiptronic
LOL. I guess I’ve become German. Here we use “tiptronic” like Kleenex.
What I meant was the Porsche/Audi/VW version of the you-shift-it automatic, rather than the stuff the F1 drivers race around with by the same name.
Anecdote time: I drive stick, but I’m totally fine with automatics. I somehow just get into “automatic mode” and shut off my left foot entirely. The one thing that can wake it back up, though, is trying to shift one of those automatic-manual things. The hand-foot coordination is just too strong…