Follow along as reader [anonymous Gort] swaps the guts of two hard drives to bring one back from the land of the dead.
Someone at work had a laptop computer they never backed up. They traveled 1000 miles to give a presentation, using the laptop
Author: Eliot1332 Articles
Crystal Radio Built From Modern Junk
[h. p. friedrichs] (AC7ZL) has some great plans for building a crystal radio. The stator coil and output coil are wrapped around the outside of a CDR sleeve. The tuning capacitor is constructed by sandwich two clear CDs between metal and attaching this inside the top of the sleeve. The rotor shaft is mounted using the bushings from a pair of disassembled potentiometers. A hot needle is used to tap the stator coil through the housing every fifth turn. Even though the parts aren’t very traditional it looks like a really solid radio. He’s got instructions for building a matching ear piece out of tea tins too.
Hack-A-Day Extra
My biquad how-to was up on Engadget yesterday; lots of good comments. I’d play with it some more, but it is getting way too cold outside.
The Team Hack-A-Day folding forum is growing, but where is kcrone_ (one of our biggest producers)? Found on the forum: Kit’s automated vodka filter.
Build A Google Maps Service
[8Ball] was interested in building a Google Maps based service, but didn’t know where to start. Luckily he stumbled across Peter Rukavina’s Charlottetown Transit Map. The project shows the bus routes and has schedule popups linked to each of the stops. Peter was nice enough to include full source code for how this was implemented in PHP and Javascript. He also describes setting up the necessary MySQL tables.
Simple MP3 Player
I’ve seen a lot of MP3 player projects, but this has to be one of the simplest designs yet. Control is from a PIC16LF877. Files are read from the compact flash card’s root directory in the order in which they were copied. This data is streamed byte by byte to the vs1001k decoder chip with a built in DAC.
If this project seems a little hard you might want to check out one of Raphael’s other projects: Alarm Clock of the Short Now [via MAKE]. It’s designed for people that don’t have a regular sleep schedule, like me.
[thanks iamdigitalman]
Liquid Nitrogen Icecream
While sitting in the heat at Defcon I wondered what the best activity for next year could be. I think liquid nitrogen ice cream has some great potential. It’s a pretty common freshman chemistry demo where you add liquid nitrogen to a standard ice cream recipe. As the -320degreeF nitrogen boils off it freezes the ice cream mixture resulting in one of the smoothest ice creams you’ll ever encounter. It is a simple task and you’ll see quite a few people that have tried it if you just google for it. Wear eye protection and heavy rubber gloves when working with liquid nitrogen. You’ll need at least a 5:1 ratio of N2 to ice cream. Mix it in a large metal container; a pressure cooker is probably your best bet. Most recommend mixing with a wooden spoon, but I think I’ll agree with DocBug “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing with power tools“.
[thanks XyTec]
All-weather WiFi Enclosure
Reader [Krome] wanted a reliable, modular, weather proof WiFi bridge. The outer weather box was purchased for $50. The main radio is a proprietary Wi-Lan HP45-24. A lightning arrestor is included because this proprietary box was purchased before the WiFi band was official allocated and would be hard to replace. A Linksys WRT54G is used as the local access point and is connected to a Hyperlink 500mW amplifier. The Wi-Lan box and the amplifier have their antennas connected to panel connectors on the outside of the box. The WRT and Wi-Lan box are both powered by an ATX power supply while the amp is connected to the pass-through. Looks like a really solid setup and it should be easy to replace individual components if they fail.
