Moon Phase Light Modification

August 19, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0yKRRh9LF0]

In this project, a moon phase light is modified to show the actual moon phase based off of your computer’s internal clock. From the factory, these moon lights are updated via an infra red remote control. He pulled the brains from the clock and replaced them with an Arduino. He then runs a program that updates the Arduino based off of the system clock. He has also added an internal clock to maintain the settings so constant updates are not required. It would have been nice to retain manual functions via the remote so you could press a button for a full moon without having to change your system time.

[via littlebirdceo]

Kegbot

August 19, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

beer

The folks at Revision3 really know what gets our pulse going. In this episode, they show us how they built a radio controlled keg. Not only is the system built sturdy enough to cart around the keg, it is also built with the capability for the driver to control the beer flow. This isn’t too shabby for a pretty quick project, but it still can’t compare with Bar2D2.

Cheap SD Card Cradle

August 18, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 30 Comments

SD (Custom)

When utilizing an SD card in your projects, you would generally buy an SD card slot to wire in. Sometimes, you just don’t plan that far ahead, or maybe you just want to play with an SD a little bit to see what you think. [Kroden] shows us how to make a fairly simple and cheap SD card dock. The result is actually pretty impressive looking. He has simply bent some header pins and soldered them together to make a simple SD slot. It can even be adapted to a horizontal layout for more permanent use.

The Wake Up Machine

August 18, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

Meet the Wakeup Machine. It is here to ensure that you are up and ready to go when the time comes. This machine will vibrate your bed, remove the sheets, make coffee, play music, even adjust the temperature in the room for optimal wake up experiences. We like the large heavy industrial look of it too, but after looking inside you’ll see it is only a prototype which could be made much smaller with its own pcb. This thing brings back fond memories of Rube Goldberg style alarm clocks from movies such as Pee-wee’s big adventure, Back To The Future, and even Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. You can see some videos of the device on the page as well as download complete plans in pdf format. The did forget one feature though.

[via makezine]

WiFi Spectrum Analyzer

August 18, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 18 Comments

ez430 (Custom)

[Tim] noticed a 2.4Ghz WiFi spectrum analyzer on thinkgeek a while ago and got curious. He knew that the spectrum analyzers with which he was familiar were giant expensive units, so he got curious what this little dongle was. It turns out, it really wasn’t much at all. Just a simple wireless receiver. He decided that rather than spending the $399 for one, he would toss one together using an Xbee. His total cost ended up at roughly $50 for basically the same unit. While he doesn’t give a schematic, you can download his source code on the site.

Automated Blinds

August 17, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BendxUgRh0]

Inspired by the multitudes of other automated window blind projects, [John] decided to build his own simpler design. Knowing his Arduino was massive overkill (yes, we hear you all cheering) he picked up a picaxe 08m starter kit. Looking at his very simple circuit, you’ll notice there are no resistors or capacitors. He designed it to take commands from his PC via IR. The final product is fairly well hidden, and should his girlfriend ever be upgraded to wife, we assume he’ll hide it better. Good job [John]. We’re no strangers to automated blinds, we’ve seen them a few times.

Snes On An Xbox360

August 17, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 34 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBDYbRxYax4]

Surprisingly the Xbox 360 hasn’t seen a lot of homebrew action. [tmbinc] has taken it upon himself to port the Snes9x emulator to it. There’s no pretty GUI, and its not running on top of linux or anything. This is native, directly to the hardware emulation. He believes this is the first to do so. Unfortunately, it will not work on the most up to date Xbox 360s.

[thanks xb0xguru]