Author: Caleb Kraft

1567 Articles

CNC Music Factory Still Alive

April 3, 2009 by 33 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKCX1CeXIjA]

With some careful programming and probably tedious testing, [Tim] was able to get his CNC router to play [Jonathan Coulton’s] “Still Alive”. He didn’t just tell the motors to spin at the correct speeds directly though. He computed the 3d vectors necessary to produce the notes. The router thinks it is just doing its job.  We would love to see those vectors rendered out in 3d space. Imagine having a physical sculpture of “Still Alive” as seen by a CNC machine. This reminds us of the Obsolete Technology Band.

[via Skullydazed’s twitter]

RF Modem + 250mW Amplifier

April 2, 2009 by 37 Comments

rf

[Trax] sent in his writeup on this RF modem with built in 250mW amplifier. The original power of the RF transceiver was around 10mW, his final results after testing were nearly 250mW. He was able to to easily transmit data over 1000 meters using his test setup. He states that he was actually able to achieve this without an antenna on the receiving side. That’s pretty impressive performance. It’s also worth noting that he soldered all of the components in place using a home clothing iron and some soldering paste. That must have been fairly tedious.

Capslocker 2

April 2, 2009 by 19 Comments

caps

Almost exactly a year ago, we posted the random USB capslocker. [Garrett] has revisited the idea to build a smaller, neater version. He has posted the build process to give us an idea how he goes about building things. The overall build is quite nice, but part if its neatness can be attributed to the fact that he had access to an Epilog laser cutter. If you think you might be using one in the near future, this is a great writeup for you.

[via the Hack a Day flickr pool]

KanEye Tracking System Preview

April 1, 2009 by 23 Comments

[vimeo=3952932]

[Tempt One] is a graffiti artist who has Lou Gehrig’s disease. He can no longer physically produce art, since his disease has taken his ability to control his arms. His friends, won’t let that be the end of it though. They’re building a visual tracking system to let him work by moving his eye. It seems like it would be very difficult to get any kind of a smooth curve out of eye movement, but the short demonstration video, which you can see after the break, does a decent job, at least for something this early in development. The source code isn’t released yet, but they do plan to do so.  If you wanted to make your own, you could find some info in a past post of ours. We’re guessing they intend to use it with something along the lines of the laser tagging system.

Continue reading “KanEye Tracking System Preview” →

The Dream Tablet

March 31, 2009 by 12 Comments

dreamtablet

[Matthew] has completed this Dreamcast tablet modification. That’s right, you’re looking at a Dreamcast laid out in tablet format. We’re not really sure what advantages the tablet layout has, since it’s not touch screen and you probably need to put it down to play anyway. The laptop or clam shell might have been a smart choice simply for screen protection. Putting that aside, this is really cool. He had to do some extensive re working of the motherboard in the Dreamcast to get it to fit. Interestingly, he hacked together a custom disk drive for it too. You can see detailed pictures of the entire process, including the construction of the case, on his site. Great job [Matthew].

[Thanks John, via Fusion Mods]

PSP As A Status Monitor

March 30, 2009 by 23 Comments

[Avi] sent in his PSP as a status monitor hack(zip). He’s using Lua on the PSP, so you have to install LuaPlayer. The computer side is written in python, so it should be cross platform. Last time we saw a psp as an extra monitor, it had more capabilities, but it was limited to Windows. You’ll find the Lua script as well as the python in the zip file. It’s a nice use for an extra psp.