Author: Matt Terndrup

87 Articles

The Walking Dead Survival Box For The Zombie Apocalypse 

September 10, 2014 by 51 Comments

When the world comes to an end and zombies run through the streets like a blood thirsty disease, it will be absolutely necessary to store a weapon (or five) away just in case an undead creature tries to get inside. In addition, stopping crooks from ransacking back up supplies will also be a primary concern as well as savage, brain-eating beasts take over the cities. Keeping objects safe with a lock box like this one would deter both undead creatures and mischievous thieves. Or at least that is what was going on in [Mattt Reamer’s] head when he took on this build.

[Matt] is a UX designer who drew inspiration from the wildly popular television series The Walking Dead. He even 3D printed the Walking Dead’s logo on the front of the blood stained box attributing the idea to the show.

The setup here uses an Arduino Uno which is powered by a 9-Volt battery. The fingerprint scanner unlocks the box by verifying the print against a reverence copy stored in the code. When the program authorizes the scan, a servo opens up the latch allowing the contents within to be retrieved. Video of the full system can be seen after the break.

Now all that comes next would be to protect those fingers.

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Dude, Where’s My Car?

September 10, 2014 by 62 Comments

Someone just stole your car. They took it right underneath your nose, and you have no idea where it is. Luckily, you have a GPS tracker installed and can pinpoint the exact location of the vehicle that thief drove away with.

Having a GPS tracker in your vehicle becomes extremely useful when something unexpected happens. Taking the necessary precautions to ensure a secure tracking system can save a lot of time and money if the car suddenly disappears.

Helping to solve the vanishing vehicle problem is the bright, young team at Cooking Hacks who created a step-by-step tutorial showing how to create a homemade GPS tracker. Their design is Arduino based and has a GPS+GPRS shield with an antenna attached to continuously pick up the location of the vehicle. Making a call to the Arduino inside triggers an SMS message to be sent back with the specific GPS data of where the tracker is stationed at. Information is then set to a server and inserted into a database, which can be accessed by opening up a specialized Android app.

We’ve seen similar ideas before, like this GPS tracker for stolen bikes, but this project by Cooking Hacks is unique because of its mobile phone integration with Google Maps. Not to mention, their video for the project is fantastically awesome.

If you have developed a system like this, be sure to let us know in the comments; and don’t forget to check out their video after the break.

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Tracking Footballs With Magnetic Fields

September 8, 2014 by 33 Comments

Official NFL footballs are crafted by hand by a company in Chicago called Wilson Sporting Goods. The footballs that are made there typically range from 11 to 11.5 inches in length and weigh anywhere between 14 and 15 ounces on average. Originally, animal bladders lined the outside, occasionally from the inside of a pig, giving the traditional American football the long-standing nickname of a “pigskin.” Now a days, they consist of cowhide leather or vulcanized rubber with laces that are stitched to the top adding mass. This causes the oblong spheres to be naturally lopsided. This is fixed by inserting extra weight to the opposite side of the football balancing it out. Knowing this, a clever hacker will realize that the balancing spot is a perfect place to subtly add a motion tracking transmitter like this one. Doing so makes it possible to the track not only the position of the ball on the field, but its precise location in 3D space!

Since each football is unique, variations between one ball to another exist. This means that embedding a circuit into a football only modifies the equipment slightly, which is a good thing because sports fanatics tend to be very opinionated about whether or not technology should influence the game. So long as the transmitter and loop antenna added to the air bladder doesn’t pass that threshold of about an ounce (or so) difference in weight, then the football itself really isn’t affected much.

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Let The Bass Cannon Kick It!!

September 7, 2014 by 51 Comments

If you’ve ever found yourself immersed in the wild realm of electronic dance music, then chances are you’ve probably heard [Flux Pavilion]’s dubstep banger ‘Bass Cannon.’ The music video released for the track shows [Flux] and his minion [Doctor P] performing twisted audio experiments on unexpecting research candidates by blasting them in the face with strong waves of sound vibrations, which blew back the hair of the people strapped to the chair. The audio trials took place inside what looks to be a warehouse filled to the brim with speakers, heavy duty subs, and sound boards; making it more like a ‘room of bass’ rather than a bass cannon itself. Yet, it inspired one of Hackaday’s Alum to literally create a bass cannon himself. And as you can see in the video below, his device packs quite a punch.

Most of us know [Adam Munich] as the guy who built this portable x-ray machine that could look through just about anything. He’s also built a nuclear bomb detector and has documented several radiation safety techniques, but every once in a while he decides to make something utterly ridiculous like this! He describes his homemade bass cannon as having a variety of fun and exciting uses including a mobile party on one’s shoulders, a way to frizz your hair, or an electrifying method to scare the neighbors.

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Tasting Music, With A Side Of Meatballs

September 6, 2014 by 13 Comments

Imagine eating food customized just for you based on your music preferences. This is exactly the premise behind a student-developed application called BeatBalls. This musical cooking platform translates artists and songs into delicious meatball recipes.

BeatBalls uses a computer algorithm that takes into account a variety of factors including key, tempo, cadence, and duration of the song to manifest a unique combination of ingredients. [Maria], who tipped us off about the project, told us in an email that Beatballs used the echonest API to determine elements of each song.

Anyone can go to the BeatBalls’ website and enter their favorite musician, group, or track into the online meatball generator, which outputs unique components to the screen. A few good suggestions are Meat Loaf, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and Bassnectar, which produce some delectable results.

Students involved in the project also created a machine to mix, roll, and cook the meatballs automatically. Team member [Samuel] told us that the system has three Arduino controllers that are hooked up to a remote server with an Ethernet shield and WiFi router. A set of servos and a DC motor controls the mechanisms that pushes the meat through and adds spices to the ingredients.

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3D Printing A Daft Punk Helmet

September 6, 2014 by 6 Comments

Thanks to the awesome people over at Adafruit, you can now print your very own Daft Punk helmet! It is designed with a hollowed out shell and translucent material which allows for colorful LEDs to be inserted into the mask, which can light up just about any room. This makes the headset great for Maker Faire, household parties, and underground EDM raves.

The epic costume was inspired by the infamous electronic music duo from France who is known for hiding their identities behind intricate and complex masks. This version, however, is perfect for the Do-It-Youself builder on a budget assuming you have access to a Taz 3D printer through your hackerspace or a friend.

The entire helmet is 3D printed as one piece using a semi-transparent PLA filament with NeoPixel strips (144 pixel per meter) laid inside. It takes about 3 days to complete the printing job (assuming no errors arise during the process). After everything is finished, glossy gold paint is applied and the polished outcome is enough to turn some heads. Plus, this mask makes a great addition to any builder’s homemade ‘trophy’ collection.

A natural next step would be to add sensors that can detect bass vibrations. This could be used to change the colors of the display based on the music that is being played nearby. We’ve seen this sort of thing before on a few Daft Punk helmet builds that are far superior to this one. Of course the difference here is that the Adafruit version can be build in a reasonable amount of time by a mere mortal. Those other examples were life commitments as far as projects go!

Don’t forget to check out the video of this one in action after the break.

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Environmental Sound Detectors 

September 6, 2014 by 22 Comments

We all know that sound. That sound of a noisy yapping dog, or the sound of a disruptive garbage truck loudly picking up the trash while making a ruckus along the way. It can be extremely distracting and frustrating to deal with. And more often than not, we have little control over the noise pollution in the area. Unless of course, you build a monitoring solution to raise awareness of the situation, like this one that [Edmund] made.

It was designed in conjunction with the Earth Journalism Network (EJN) in order to, as their website states, “facilitate story-telling of the sources and health impacts of noise from around the world“. An Arduino Pro Mini was the backbone of the project. Being open-source in nature meant that it could be customized easily with a wide array of sensors. [Edmund] chose to use an Electric Imp adding WiFi capability to the device. His step-by-step tutorial showed the design process, leading into the prototyping of the parts, and contains schematics for the circuit. As of the time that this article was published, the coding section of project hasn’t been released yet, but the first three parts give enough information to get the ball rolling.

This type of monitoring solution has the potential to record the noise levels of neighborhoods all across the world. With a large enough pool of data, API’s can be developed for uses like house hunting web searches that show which areas in town are the quietest, or which ones are the loudest. This will surely provide a wealth of knowledge about noise pollution, and it will be interesting to see how people utilize this (and projects similar) in the future.