Stereo Guitar

July 27, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 39 Comments

stereo_guitar

[Megatronix] wrote in to show us this pretty crazy guitar mod. He has re wired the pickups to make the guitar a “Stereo Guitar“. Generally, the two pickup locations on a guitar are there to provide tonal variation. You can adjust the influence of each to get the sound you want. [Megatronix] decided to re wire the setup so that one is the left channel and one is the right. Thus providing actual stereo sound from his guitar. This will limit his tonal variation considerably, but should at least serve as a proof of concept. We really want to hear a recording of it in action though.

NES Workbench

July 24, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

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

[Miltron] dropped us a tip about his NES workbench. Knowing that when you get frustrated with whatever project you are beating your head against, you need an outlet, [Miltron] decided to build some relaxing NES fun into his workbench. He’s using a NES on a chip though any multi game-in-a-controller setup should work. He has gutted a PSone LCD and mounted it all together nicely so he can game at any moment. You might recall one of [Miltron]’s earlier projects, Das Uber Airsoft Turret. How long will it be before we see integrated LCDs into our toolbox lids or workbenches from the factory?

Adding RDS Decoding To A Vintage Radio

July 24, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 18 Comments

c_670_rds4_sm2 (Custom)

[Edo] wrote in to show us how he added RDS decoding to a radio made in 1957. RDS or Radio Data System is a protocol for data transmission. This allows date, time, artist info, and more to be broadcast along with the music. Its a nice feature that many new cars come with from the factory. [Edo] wanted to add it to his old radio though. He kept the radio stock looking, choosing to use an external LCD to display the data. He has posted the information on where to splice in to add this unit to pretty much any FM radio as well as posting the schematics and source code for the unit itself. Look at the very bottom of the page for the download link, its a bit hidden with the advertisements.

Snake Bot

July 23, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

sb head (Custom)

[Husstech] wrote in to share his Snake Bot with us. Initially inspired by this post about SickSack, a snake bot, he set out to build his own version. While the concept and even the design aren’t particularly new or groundbreaking, he is very thorough in his documentation. Since this was a project for school, the PDF of his project includes research, schematics, cost breakdowns, and results. We really like the camera and head design, it looks very insect like. You can see a video of the final version being shown off after the break, or you can see an earlier version that is decidedly more phallic.

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Touchpad + Arduino

July 23, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

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

[Jani] directed us to his tutorial on making a laptop touchpad work with an Arduino. After seeing the recent post on touch pad and VFD hacking, he couldn’t resist finding one of these to play with. He shows us how to connect it all up and offers two methods of using the data from it. The first method is to determine the direction of finger travel and the second, shown above, is to use it more like the volume control on an iPod. Source code for both is available on his site.

Archie The Helper Bot

July 22, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 30 Comments

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

We noticed this article on BotJunkie about Archie the helper bot. Archie is supposed to help out around the house with cooking, cleaning, and other mundane tasks. [Evan] makes a very good point though. Why do people insist on putting creepy heads on their robots. They aren’t making them any more endearing, it’s just creepy. While that is a very astute observation, we would like to add some more. Watch the video above, and study the image after the break. Archie doesn’t seem to be a functional bot. He never moves in the video under his own power. The scene where they “walk” him along is comedy gold. His head keeps falling backwards,or possibly off. And what use is a helper bot that doesn’t have actuated hands? The video is in German, so maybe we’re missing something. Maybe Archie is a mock up or a joke and we just needed translation.

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Ceiling Fan POV

July 22, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 30 Comments

FDG3AFAFXETSIYM.MEDIUM (Custom)

We know some of you are getting sick of POV projects, but this one was just so cool, we couldn’t resist. [UncleBone] thought POVs were pretty cool, and wondered if he could use one on his ceiling fan. It would have been a breeze just to toss something like the RGBike POV on there and call it finished, but he designed his own. Opting to blow away the norm of using a single row of LEDs, he chose to do 5 different rows of LEDs, one for each blade. The whole thing is controlled by an Arduino, with a spreadsheet for image manipulating. Unfortunately, we don’t see any source files for the project available. Maybe he’ll put them on there if we ask really nicely. If he could get it playing animations, we would just chill and watch it for hours.