DoomBox: Classic Keys Meet Tiny Screen

March 1, 2010 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

The doomBox is a dedicated gaming rig for lovers of ID Software’s classic title. [JJ] built this from an old Kodak DC290 camera that had a broken lens. Since this runs the Digita OS, he was able to use the Doom port that already exists. But the camera’s factory buttons were not well suited as controls. By whipping up his own button board, and using the traditional keyboard keys for the button caps, he achieved a much more comfortable (yet squint-inducing) gaming experience. The finished project resides in an all-too-familiar black project box. See him fire it up after the break.

The original Doom for Digita OS pages seem to be down so here’s an alternate if you’re interested.

Update: Looks like the original website is back up.

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Phone/webapp Written In Ploy To Appear More Popular

March 1, 2010 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

That title’s not really fair to [Evan], but he did write a cellphone tetris game that causes your handset to automatically telephone him if you win. He’s using two applications that we’re not very familiar with, Twilio and Tornado. The former handles control input from the cellphone via their simple API. The latter is a web server and web framework that runs the actual game.

If you’re interested in how he put the two together you can poke around in the code. If you really don’t care about how it is done, you might just want to win the game, automatically giving [Evan] a call, running up his wireless bill in the process.

Help us add some value to this article by leaving a comment. We’d like to know how Twilio compares to Google Voice which doesn’t seem to have a published API (but there is some work in that area). We also think web-based cell phone interactivity, already popular in hacks, is just beginning to build some steam. What are the tools you use to make cellphone interfaces easier and quicker to implement?

Biped Walks With Eight Servos

March 1, 2010 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLUeQ1SkhK0]

This tiny biped shows a lot of coordination in its movements. As you can see, eight servo motors account for the locomotion with an ATmega8 as the brains of the operation. Posts for the first and second generation of this little guy feature several videos. We gather that a spreadsheet is being used to tweak the preprogrammed movement sequences. Trial and error, that’s how humans learned to walk, right?

[Thanks Lazas]

Open Source Logic Analyzer

February 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 88 Comments

Hackaday alum [Ian Lesnet] has been working in cahoots with a dedicated team of developers to produce the OpenBench Logic Sniffer. This caseless logic analyzer can operate at 100MHz and sample 32 channels at once. Better yet, a digital oscilloscope add-on is in the works. The pre-order comes in at $45, that’s a lot of functionality for just a few greenbacks. We’ve embedded a demo video after the break that details installing and using this device under Ubuntu.

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112-LED Coffee Table

February 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 30 Comments

[Joe] tipped us off about his 112 LED coffee table. This 12-ups the LED matrix from Friday and 31-ups the Shiftbrite table. Driving this grid is an ATmega328 in i2c slave mode. It listens for display data from a second ATmega328 and uses that to set the array of TLC5940 driven LEDs appropriately. Separating the processing microcontroller from the display microcontroller allows for fast and smooth display changes that can be seen after the break. [Joe’s] table exhibits exquisite cable management, clean code, and an amazing amount of flexibility. Maybe [Caleb Kraft] will finally pony up the dough and make this project for his own home.

[Joe] waited until he saw some other LED tables to send us a link to his hack. This is obviously an awesome project, one that we want to see just as much as our readers do. So please, don’t wait for someone else to stumble upon your project, send us a tip once you’re done sharing the details.

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Extreme Piano Transplant

February 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

We always wondered what happens to ancient pianos when the internals can no longer be kept in a playable condition. [Jean Philippe Roch] gutted his elderly upright and fit a Korg Triton inside. After the break you can watch a few videos including a slide show of the work log. [Jean] separates the Korg keyboard from its case and places it in the empty upright piano rank. He then mounts the Korg’s controls in the front panel and adds motorized control to reveal this hidden secret. The project is finished with speakers in the bottom portion of the upright and blue LED lighting effects.

The result is a pretty nice show-piece. It’s not as hacky as vocoding, but we really love the finished look.

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Thwart Robbers With An Old Smoke Alarm.

February 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 50 Comments

[Anders] tipped us off about his hack that re-purposes a smoke alarm as a burglar alarm. Unfortunately, he came home in the middle of a burglary but wanted to be ready the next time someone tries to break in. By cleverly patching into the test button on an old smoke detector he created a circuit-trip alarm. One side of each piece of wire is secured to the frame and jam of a window. A paper clip completes the circuit by pinching the two bare conductors. If the window is opened the connection is lost and the alarm sounds.

We see a few problems with this system. First off, never hack your ONLY smoke detector, you are putting lives at risk by doing so. But [Anders] says he’ll have a replacement detector and since these things need to be replace every ten years or so, chances are you can find an old one kicking around. We’d recommend disguising the case so that people aren’t confused about it being a smoke detector. Secondly, he’s mounted the alarm right in the window frame so most likely an invader will just smash the thing to bits.

Anyway, it’s still an interesting reuse of these ubiquitous, and life-saving, devices.