Almost Free Robo Mower

October 27, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

We’ve always felt that the hacker community is a unique one. Make reader [Gnomic] is reinforcing that feeling by running his own contest with unused equipment. [Gnomic] is offering a free Robot lawnmower to someone, as long as they send the completed project writeup to Make. The mower is a Robomower RL 850 and you have to pick it up in Richmond Va. To enter, you have to email [Gnomic] your proposal within the next 10 days. He will then choose what he feels would be the most interesting one to give the mower to. We’d love to see one of our readers get in on the action with this one. We would really love to see our logo on the final robot when it gets published to Make.

RGB LED Headband

October 23, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 20 Comments

Hard to imagine this going on business trips to Shangai

[Johncon] wrote this fantastic instructible showing us how to make an RGB LED headband. This should come in really handy the next time we find ourselves needing one… it happens. He picked up this little RGB LED strip while on a business trip to Shanghai. He had to reverse engineer the chip that controls each pair, but once that was done there wasn’t much left to do. He’s using a picaxe microcontroller since he had some lying around and, as he points out, they require very little external hardware.

He says he’s going to be ordering more of this LED strip soon and is willing to make a group buy if anyone is interested.

[via MakeZine]

Panaplex In A Jar

October 22, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

Check out this home made panaplex display. Panaplex displays are closely related to nixie tubes, but instead of layering individual numbers and lighting them separately, it uses pieces to build the numbers like a digital display. [Lindsay] managed to make one at home, using a jam jar as the vacuum tube. Argon as the gas in the tube gives it a pleasant purple color. We really think the end result is fantastic, you can see some build pictures and a run through of the numbers on the site. Unfortunately there aren’t any videos of the display in action.

[via Makezine]

Hacking TVs In 1954

October 19, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 32 Comments

shaddap already!

This gem was published in Mechanix Illustrated magazine in may of 1954. AT that time, a remote control was the stuff of science fiction. This article shows the modern man how to modify his television to include a fancy button to stop all noise. This button, affectionately labelled the “SHADDAP” was marketed as a way to relieve the pain of long winded commercials. Basically, it cut the connection to the speaker, nothing super fancy. Is that an altoids tin as an enclosure?

[via BoingBoing]

The Polyplasmic Archophone

October 16, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 41 Comments

The polyplasmic archophone is a fresh approach to high voltage “arc music“. They are using an Arduino clone to convert signals for the ignition coils. It is still unfinished, but the effect is decent. In the end it will have 2 tiers of voice coils for a total of 13. They are using different materials for the antenna so they can get different colors of sparks. You can see a video of it after the break and we must say the effect is quite nice. Change the lighting on that video and we could imagine this being the set to a [Joules Verne] movie.

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Adafruit Industries Opens A Job Board

October 15, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

Adafruit industries is doing their part to help the hacker community with their latest addition, a job board. It just went live today so there aren’t many jobs posted, but we expect that to change in the immediate future. you can also post your services offered there, if you’re looking for work. We really appreciate when companies support the hacker community, so we tip our hats to you Adafruit.

Spherical Multitouch Rig

October 15, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

We all love a little bit of multitouch, but we’ve seen so many setups that it is getting a bit less exciting. This one will get your attention with its unique shape. It is a spherical multitouch using all open source software. Well, since the poles are unusable, it might just be toroidal, or cylindrical, but it is still impressive. They are using a convex mirror mounted to the upper most point of the frosted sphere to reflect a projector mounted at the bottom of the base. A web cam pointed at that same mirror picks up reflected IR light from a few emitters. You can catch a video of it after the break.

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