Fubarino Contest: NTP Clock

December 29, 2013 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[Toni] has been playing around with NTP, the Network Time Protocol. This allows the alarm clock build to keep very accurate time by synchronizing with an NTP server on the Internet.

The project serves as a bedside alarm clock. When it comes time to wake in the morning an alarm sounds and the screen switches from using a blue backlight to using a red one. This is show in the video below, but you’ll want to turn down your speakers before watching it; the alarm sound will have no problem waking you up in the morning. After the unwelcomed jolt you’ll get a glimpse at the Easter Egg which reminds you to check for new posts on Hackaday.

Afraid of ending up with a steaming pile of slag instead of a server [Toni] asked us to host the project files. You can find the first-hand description of the project and a link to the code below.

This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!

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Fubarino Contest: Micro Voltmeter

December 28, 2013 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

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This collection of hardware is a diy voltmeter. It can measure up to 17V with 1 microvolt resolution while taking seven samples per second. The LTC2400 ADC board is used to make the measurements, with the Arduino processing the output and taking care of the display and user input buttons.

In addition to showing off what the thing can do in the video after the break, [Luis] gives us a look at the easter egg he added to the project. When you have a source that is very precisely 12V, the meter will read out Hackaday.com!

Incidentally the display used in this hack is one we’ve seen before. Obviously this is a convenient way to add interactive controls to your projects.

This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!

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Fubarino Contest: Custom Mech Warrior Online Controller

December 28, 2013 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

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Twenty-two keys, a push button, three flip-switches, and a touch screen all let [Dominic] take his Mech Warrior Online game to the next level. He found that there are so many key bindings in the game it ends up being a huge pain to try to adapt his behavior to a static keyboard layout. Not only does the controller give him a specialized keypad, but he designed the touch screen interface to act as on-the-fly remapping. It even looks like something that would be mounted in a Battle Mech cockpit! What we can’t understand is why he didn’t tell us about this sexy peripheral hack much sooner?

What finally prompted him to tip us off about his project was the Fubarino Contest. Above you can see the easter egg he added to the controller. When the bottom five buttons on the touch screen are mapped to “31337” (aka “elite) the Teensy 3.0 board that drives the controller will automatically load up Hackaday in his browser.

This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!

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Fubarino Contest: Serial Data Transmission

December 28, 2013 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

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[Jesus] is helping his cousin learn about microcontrollers. Right now they’re on the subject of serial communications, which turned into a nice way to add a Hackaday Easter Egg.

Using and FTDI chip in conjunction with the PIC 18F4550 (it’s a little soon for them to tackle implementing USB directly) the serial data is shown in a terminal window. At the same time the binary value of each byte is flashed on the PORTD LEDs. When the chip receives the characters “hack” it immediately echos back the recommendation to check out the awesomeness that is Hackaday. He posted the code used in this example as a Gist.

This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!

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Fubarino Contest: Bluetooth Control For PC PSU

December 27, 2013 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

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[Mike] wanted to have remote control of the power on his computer. But Wake-on-LAN wasn’t really all that interesting to him. Instead he set out to build this Bluetooth controller which manipulates the motherboard directly (PDF).

Having been a winner of the Trinket Contest he based the project on that board which is seen on the left. There is also an RN-42 Bluetooth module and a couple of TI TS5A3157 analog switches. Once the prototype is finished the entire thing will run off of standby power and be located inside the case of his computer. The breadboard version just switches a couple of LEDs, but that will end up connecting to the pins for the power buttons once installed.

The video after the break shows off the easter egg. The device is controlled by [Mike’s] custom Android app. Every 42nd time he sends a power command the device calls back with our URL.

This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!

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Fubarino Contest: Oscilloscope Clock

December 27, 2013 by Mike Szczys 1 Comment

Before hearing about the Fubarino Contest [Joseph] never considered adding an Easter Egg to one of his own projects. But after seeing so many contest entries we think this is just the kind of fun extra that needs to make its way into every design!

The subject of his entry is an oscilloscope clock which displays our URL instead of the numbers usually found on a clock face. He’s using a SparkFun board to generate the clock — a piece of hardware we saw about 18 months ago hidden inside of a vintage scope. The feature is unlocked only when displaying roman numerals in combination with a special serial command.

Replacing the numerals with the URL isn’t entirely straight-forward. Since an oscilloscope is a vector display [Joseph] actually had to build his own array of start and end coordinates for each character. Luckily he did a fantastic job of documenting this which will allow you to make it say anything you wish.

This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!

Fubarino Contest: Home Automation And Candle Flicker

December 27, 2013 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

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Here’s a set of holiday themed contest entries:

With a home automation system already in place, and considering the time of year, [Thom] chose to use his Christmas tree lights as the contest easter egg. When he uses his smart phone to set the fifth channel of the lighting controller to a 50% duty cycle it causes the string of lights to mete out the Hackaday web address as a series of dots and dashes. You can find the code here (DOC).

[Jacques] offers up a flickering LED as the host of his hidden easter egg. When you short the two leads of the LED for a little bit it forces the PIC 10F200 into a different mode that then flashes our URL in Morse Code. Have a look at the assembly file. His implementation was based on the reverse engineering we saw recently.

This is an entry in the Fubarino Contest for a chance at one of the 20 Fubarino SD boards which Microchip has put up as prizes!

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