LEGO Gearbox – Seven Speed Plus Reverse

April 8, 2010 by Mike Szczys 44 Comments

We know LEGO is a very versatile medium to build with but this is beyond what we considered possible. Seven speeds and a reverse gear were built into the gearbox for this LEGO vehicle. It’s not completely an original design, but adds to the five-speed design found in a ten-year-old LEGO set. See it demonstrated in the video after the break. The design uses a sequential gearbox; shifting is accomplished by clicking the stick up or down depending on how you want to shift. If you’ve got enough parts on hand you can build this using the assembly photos that [Sheepo] posted.

Can’t get enough of the gears? Check out this model of a double clutch transmission.

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Arduino Implemented On An FPGA

April 8, 2010 by Mike Szczys 36 Comments

If you think that Arduinos are overkill in most projects we can do one better for you. [Jack Gassett] has a virtual Arduino running on a Field Programmable Gate Array. We checked in with [Jack] back in November to see his work with the AVR8 Soft Processor, an FPGA version of an AVR chip. Because the Arduino uses AVR it wasn’t too much of a leap to make this Arduino compatible. We’re lacking in imagination when hit comes to using this method productively, but we’re sure someone will find a way.

[Thanks Drone]

Teletype Twitter Frontend

April 7, 2010 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

The folks from NYC Resistor got their hands on a teletype machine and hacked it to monitor Twitter. This eighty-year-old beast bangs out messages that it receives at 45.45 baud. This isn’t a project that turns something into a teletype, but rather finds a different way to feed the machine data. In this case, a python script parses Twitter and sends the data it finds to an Arduino board. The Arduino in turn formats the message into the serial format necessary to communicate with the device. To the left you can see a trend plotter, learn more about both in the video after the break.

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Fully-automated Golf Ball Gun

April 7, 2010 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

If you get in the line of fire this golf ball launcher is gonna leave a mark, or worse. It’s based on the same premise as the sausage gun, but now everything is automated and no meat products are used.

A hopper stores a row of golf balls. When it comes time to load, a ball falls into the chamber, starter fuel is sprayed into the combustion area with the aid of a fan, and after both chambers are sealed the propellant is ignited.

We’ve embedded two videos below for your amusement. It looks like [Chrille] and his friends are being careful with their creation. We’re glad for that because this is about as dangerous as the high-velocity ping-pong ball launcher. Continue reading “Fully-automated Golf Ball Gun” →

Logic Clock Without An On-board Oscillator

April 7, 2010 by Mike Szczys 58 Comments

[Lucassiglo21] developed this logic clock without using a crystal oscillator or a resonator. Instead, he’s letting the incoming electricity keep the time for him. The supply is AC at 50 Hz so he’s using some 4017 decade dividers to reduce that down to a 1 Hz signal. From there it keeps track of the ticks just like the last digital logic clock we saw.

If you’ve used AC line frequency as the clock source in your project we’d like to hear about it. Send us a tip and make sure your writeup includes a schematic. We’re especially interested to see if anyone has a good way of using this method with inexpensive microcontrollers.

On-the-go Prototyping

April 6, 2010 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

[Riley Porter] has been working on several different custom enclosure designs. Above, you can see his Proto Desk which holds a breadboard, Arduino, and has two recessed boxes with sliding tops for components and patch wires. He’s got a miniature version that gets rid of the breadboard, as well as slick-looking cases for the Bus Pirate, tinyISP, and face plates for word clocks.

Well, if you’ve got a laser cutter you should be using it right? We’ve seen [Riley’s] wares in the past; he wrote the guide for laser cutting solder stencils.

[Thanks Brian]

Peering In A The A4, The IPad’s Brain

April 6, 2010 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

Sure, tearing down devices to see what components are in there is fun. But tearing down the components themselves is even more fun. iFixit sent off their iPad guts to be laid bare after they were done with their iPad teardown. We’ve seen pictures of stripped chips in the past, but the work that Chipworks is doing for iFixit is quite amazing. Get the skinny on just about every part in there from the package markings and the die photos provided in their analysis.

The iPad has already been rooted, but you never know what power can be unlocked if you know what you’re working with. We’re thinking of the 50MHz to 100Mhz oscilloscope hack.