DIY Mood Lamp Looks Store-bought

November 17, 2009 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

[NeZoomie] built an RGB mood lamp as his first electronics project. He certainly hit it out of the park with this one, ending up with a design so clean it could be a commercial product. The controller is an Arduino board (further proof that this is a fantastic entry-level platform) that interfaces with 8 RGB LEDs. He’s built an enclosure out of thick polypropylene that does a great job of diffusing the light and adding a stylish look. The control system features a rotary potentiometer from SparkFun and what he calls a tilt-potentiometer of his own design after drawing inspiration from Hack a Day.

Blinky things are fun and that’s why we see a lot of mood lamps around here. Take a look at the video after the break and if you’ve got the parts, give this one a try!

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BEAM Robot Tumbles Aimlessly

November 17, 2009 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Harm’s] tumbling robot from a few years back is an excellent study in simple motion. Foregoing wheels or legs, he uses four flippers to roll the robot around the room. Two motors are used, each in charge of two flippers. Identical but separate circuits drive the motors with a 74HC240 gate IC monitoring the continuously rotation. When a flipper becomes stuck, the circuit reverses the rotation of the motor so the simple bot can tumble its way out of a jam.

The circuitry is less advanced than some of the BEAM builds we’ve seen before. That doesn’t diminish the cleverness of his design and we think BEAM robotics are great way to get your head out of the computer code and go hardware only. After the break you can take in some video of the tumbling motion. We’ve also included a video of another bot from his website that uses concentric rings for another type of unique locomotion.

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Banned Xbox 360’s – Boon Or Bust?

November 17, 2009 by Mike Szczys 103 Comments

We’re sure you’ve heard about Xbox 360s facing an other round of bans from Xbox Live last week. It seems that living in a hole, or even in Grenora, North Dakota couldn’t help you escape hearing this from every news source possible. Apparently, this has caused a slew of banned consoles to go up for sale in a buyer-beware quagmire. This is a joke in several ways; didn’t the hardware problems of the machine already make the used market risky enough? Now consumers will be even more wary, losing game sales because less people are buying used consoles.

If you have just the right kernel, and a copy of your CPU key, and a second unbanned Xbox 360, you may be able to reactivate your machine. But how many people have those things available to them? Undoubtedly an Xbox 360’s desirability is greatly diminished if Xbox Live is removed from the equation. This is something Nintendo could learn from when it comes to the Wii (no online multiplayer with New Super Mario Bros Wii?… Really?). So whether you are the one who was banned, or you decided/were tricked in to purchasing a banned console, what are you going to do with it now that online play is out of the picture?

We’ve seen the console emulating SNES games and even XBMC run with the help of Ubuntu. Leave us a comment and tell us if you are planning to just go without Xbox Live, use the machine as a desktop running Ubuntu, or spearhead the effort to repurpose this powerful (and flawed) hardware platform. Will you go out and capitalize on cheaper hardware, or have you been burnt by the grim reality of a crippled rig?

RFID Door Lock – The Right Way

November 17, 2009 by Mike Szczys 40 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT7E_GEIPVg]

[Pcmofo] has shared a well-built, well-explained example of how to implement an RFID key system for a door. We call this the right way because it is well thought out and functional. In the past we’ve seen doors that unlock via a secret knock, keypads, and RFID, but they are all non-permanent solutions capable being transplanted from one door to another. Rather than building a mechanism to turn the door handle, this implementation uses an electric strike mounted in the framing of the door to allow access. These are used for security doors in buildings and are built to keep your door secure.

The hack in this case is the electronics. Using an AVR ATmega168 running the Arduino boot-loader, [pcmofo] has prototyped a two-part design. An RFID reader is mounted outside the door with data wires running to the inside where the microcontroller resides. A hard-coded RFID card is used as a “master” to train any number of tags for entry. The master puts the device in training mode and the next tag to be read is added to the list of tags authorized to open the door.

We like messy wires and quickly thrown together devices but this is built to last and will look great once mounted in an appropriate enclosure.

LED Ring Light

November 16, 2009 by Mike Szczys 30 Comments

diy-ring-light

[Jani] built his own photography ring light based on automotive LED rings. The rings he used are meant to encircle headlights on a car and are available at a low cost. The assembly is built around a filter that attaches to his camera lens. Two rings of LEDs are then glued to a case made from the plastic of a CD-R container. To diffuse the light, he sanded both sides of the clear plastic housing to make it translucent.

LED rings operate on DC power and unlike a ring flash, they provide constant light to help set up your shot. His finished project is well-built and should come in between $10-20.

Radio Assisted Drawing Device

November 16, 2009 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

radio-assisted-drawing-device

An exhibition just wrapping up at the Russian Frost Farmers Gallery in New Zealand presented an interactive artwork hack. Called the Radio Assisted Drawing Device (R.A.D.D), it is a plotter that mounts on the wall. It isn’t computer controlled, but rather relies on a remote control with two sticks to move the plotter Etch-a-Sketch style.

A clear gantry mounts vertically and travels along the top edge of the wooden backing. A slot cut in the acrylic steadies the plotter and allows for smooth vertical movement. Obviously built by hand, the mechanics seem to have tight tolerances for precise movements of the stylus. See the exhibit in the video after the break.

Wouldn’t you love to have one of these on the wall at your next party? It adds a whole new spin on a guest book.

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Auto-drummer

November 13, 2009 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COl1xmWAjUw]

Mix a cup of mechanical engineering with a dash of drum set and you end up with Steve, the robotic drummer. We know that it uses an MSA-T Midi Decoder but that’s about the extent of what has been shared. Just from observing the video, we think Steve’s got a few things going for him when compared to PEART, the robot drummer we saw back in 2005. Steve features two sticks for each drum and symbol and seems to be quite responsive.

Steve’s great, but we still think Rick Allen’s got this thing beat. Although this is a quality build, there’s no replacement for a human that can bang the drum in millions of subtly different way. That isn’t to say we don’t see potential in the hack. Perhaps it’s time to update a classic idea, the robotic orchestra. Don’t know what we mean? Check out 3:58 into the video embedded after the break.

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