[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU3QB3ScnGQ]
[Chris Farnell] and [Michael Helms] are the brains behind this scary looking piece of machinery. It is a Coil gun, mounted on a turret, that is controlled over WiFi. If that wasn’t scary enough, they have rigged it to their iphone/ipad for remote shooting. Though it looks bulky, you can see that it is surprisingly responsive in action.
[vime0 =http://vimeo.com/11700747]
We’ve been watching the progress of this build for a while on Flickr. It looks like they’ve finally completed the electromechanical game, Running with the bulls. Based off of the event by the same name, you have to keep your guy from being trampled by the bulls as the charge. The entire bull structure is pulled forward on a timing chain with a stepper motor with each bulls individual side to side movement being servo driven. It actually looks kind of fun.
Yes, that picture you are seeing is serious. [Roland] needed a chip for a damaged piece of electronics. He was lucky enough to find one on an old board at a local shop. The problem was, he didn’t have the hot air gun to remove the chip the correct way. Instead, he simply cooked the board over a candle to melt the solder. Interestingly, after he cleaned the candle-cooked board, it looked like it survived without damage. The chip worked fine and fixed his problems. Sometimes, we just don’t have the right tools for the job.
[via HackedGadgets]
[John Park] is documenting his build of a Nerf Sentry gun. So far, he’s rigged the trigger and set up the motorized base. He’s documenting the process in fantastic detail with great photos along the way. If you want to see what it will be like when it is finished, check out these other Nerf sentry guns that we’ve featured in the past.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP8JgqmVES8&]
[MODDEDbyBACTERIA] has posted this instructible on how to make a bluetooth SNES controller. The bulk of the parts come from a bluetooth MSI game pad, so this isn’t a scratch build, but the amount of modifications required definitely qualify this as a hack. We were quite surprised that he managed to stuff all of that back into the case as well as he did. Great job.
This XKCD comic takes a playful swipe and almost everything, including the Arduino. We’ve heard people claim that we have some sort of favoritism toward Arduino, and we don’t. People just submit a LOT of projects with them. But there is one point that we’ve seen a few times that should be addressed. In our categories we have an “Arduino hacks” section. That will not be going away, again, because we get so many submitted. However, shouldn’t we also add some categories for other stuff? Should there be a “pic hacks” category, or maybe just “microcontroller hacks” category?
Let’s not making this an Arduino bashing thread. Instead, give us some good ideas on other categories you would like to see for sorting.
[via littlebirdceo]
Unlike many chemistry projects we post here, making magnetite nanocrystals doesn’t require anything that can’t be found in a local grocery store. All that is required is oil, vinegar, crystal drain opener, and rust. We don’t recognize the specific brand of drain cleaner that they are using, but we’re sure that you could find one with the same ingredients. Magnetite nanocrystals are used to remove arsenic from water. If you are in the USA or most of Europe, that’s not a big concern, but it can’t hurt can it?
[via Make]
