From Broken Laptop Screen To Portable Light Table

August 21, 2014 by James Hobson 16 Comments

Light table from broken LCD

If you’re like most of us here at Hack a Day, you probably shudder at the amount of e-waste that gets thrown out — here’s a clever way to make some good use out of a broken laptop screen!

[Victor] recently received a broken laptop from a friend, and as it turned out, only the LCD was broken. It’s old though so he didn’t want to buy a new screen for it. Instead he chopped it in half and used the functioning half as a media HTPC for his TV. He was about to trash the screen when he had an idea — the LCD was busted, but the back light wasn’t!

He carefully took apart the screen and removed the LCD portion, making sure to leave the back-light and various filters in place. The tricky part is getting the back light to work, and even that’s not too difficult. Depending on your donor laptop it may be an LED or CCFL back light — if it’s LED, it’s pretty simple, if it’s CCFL, you’ll have to figure out how to power the inverter board to get it to work. [Victor] reverse-engineered his and found a schematic for the inverter online, throwing together a little circuit to give it power — he even added a potentiometer to have variable brightness!

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Biometric Secured Golfcart Allows For Keyless Start

August 20, 2014 by James Hobson 22 Comments

Fingerprint Secured Golf Cart

Who uses keys these days, really? Introducing the world’s first(?) biometric secured golf cart. Gives “push to start” a whole new meaning!

[Ramicaza] lives in a small community where many families (including his!) use golf carts to commute short distances, like to the grocery store, or school. Tired of sharing a key between his parents and siblings, [Ramicaza] decided to soup up his ride with a fingerprint sensor allowing for key less start.

He’s using an ATtiny85 and a GT511-C1 finger print sensor from SparkFun. After throwing together a circuit on a breadboard and testing the concept he went straight to a PCB prototype for install in the cart. What we really like is the case he integrated into the golf cart’s dash. It features a flip-up lid which turns the circuit on when it is opened, and off when it is closed to save battery. Scan your finger and a relay triggers the ignition allowing you to drive away.

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Hands Free Recording – Looks Silly But Is Super Effective

August 19, 2014 by James Hobson 16 Comments

Video goggles

While most hackers probably like to claim they’re good at everything, no one is good at filming one-handed. Setting up a tripod and adjusting it every shot can be tedious — wouldn’t it be great if you could just film what you see?

That’s what inspired [Hans de Bruin] to make these camera goggles. He’s using those big old school safety glasses that you can remove the glass lenses from. From there he traced the outline and 3D printed an adapter that would fit snugly in the glasses while holding up a video camera — He’s using a Chinese version of the GoPro called the SJ4000, but it should fit a real one too.

But wait, you’ll get a headache staring into one pixeley LCD screen! [Hans] also added a biconvex optical lens between his eye and the camera – it’s the same kind used in Google’s Cardboard VR kit.

Sound like a tool you could use? Head on over to Thingiverse to grab the files and print it out!

Pressure Gauge Used to Monitor Internet Usage

Steam Gauge Keeps Track Of Your Internet Usage

August 19, 2014 by James Hobson 14 Comments

There’s a certain appeal to analog gauges in a vastly digital world. [Ed Konowal] is a Network Operations Supervisor for a school district in Florida — part of his job is to ensure a stable and fast internet connection, so he decided to make an internet usage gauge for his office.

What we really like about this hack is the fact that [Ed] had no idea how to do it. It’s a simple enough idea, right? Google was his friend and Ed started learning about all kinds of things. Raspberry Pi’s and Arduinos, wireless receiver/transmitters, servos and steppers, Python…

After quite a bit of trial and error, [Ed] eventually settled on a wired design which uses a Raspberry Pi running a Python program to poll the internet bandwidth, which in turn calculates the servo position for the dial and sends that number to the Arduino to move it into position. This repeats every 10 seconds. Pretty cool!

Kind of reminds us of this project to make custom gauges using a stepper motor breakout board!

[Thank Justin!]

Pool Cleaning Robot Rebuild Works Like A 3 Dimensional Roomba

August 17, 2014 by James Hobson 26 Comments

Pool Cleaning Robot

Pools are great – Cleaning them, not so much. [Davide Gironi] had a pool cleaning robot, but years of working in a chlorine environment resulted in one of its gaskets failing, destroying the electronics inside. Instead of replacing it, he decided to try his hand at rebuilding it using an AVR ATmega8 microcontroller.

But wait! Wasn’t there a warranty? Expired. Couldn’t he just get a new board from the manufacturer? Costs almost as much as a new robot – time to open it up!

He’s broken the project into two parts, the out of water timer circuitry, and the robot itself. The timer is responsible for converting 220VAC to low voltage DC for the robot, and for turning it on and off based on a schedule (duh). He’s using an ATmega8 based countdown programmable timer which he designed himself for a previous project.

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Real Life GTA? Driving A Car In Third Person Is Hard!

August 17, 2014 by James Hobson 23 Comments

Can you drive a car in third person?

Do you fancy yourself an excellent driver in video games featuring a third person view for the driving experience? Ever wonder what it’d be like in real life? [Tom] and [Oli] wanted to find out so they decided to setup this awesome experiment.

They’re using the Bovingdon airfield, which was a Royal Air Force station during WWII — today it stands empty and is a beloved testing ground for many custom vehicles in the UK, like [Colin Furze’s] world record-setting baby carriage. The car chosen for the challenge is a Mazda MX-5 Miata, which we don’t think they care too much about considering the potential obstacles they’ll be hitting!

The driver wears a set of video goggles, and a co-pilot comes along for the ride to help prevent any major collisions. A hexrotor drone is flown by another person who attempts to keep it mostly behind the car in the stereotypical third person view. The video signal is then transmitted down to the driver in real time.

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Melting Chocolate – FOR SCIENCE!

August 16, 2014 by James Hobson 15 Comments

The Ultimate Fondu Melting Pot

[Patrick Herd] was in Sweden recently and decided to help out a team of high school students in the International Young Physicist Tournament — The challenge? Chocolate Hysteresis.

Chocolate what? When chocolate melts, it doesn’t actually re-solidify at it’s melting point — in fact, it’s quite below that. The challenge here is figuring out a scientific way of measuring the time (and temperature) it takes to return to a solid state. This in itself is kind of tricky considering you have to accurately measure the temperature and be able to empirically tell if its solid or liquid.

The first scientific apparatus they came up with was the Chocolate Rig V1 – a very simple peltier heated and cooled calorimeter. They used an Arduino to control the temperature and a motor shield to power the peltier plate. It kind of worked but they discovered it was difficult to assess the physical state of the chocolate. This is when [Patrick] started doing some research and discovered rotary viscometry.

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