Author: James Hobson

1404 Articles

Make An HD Projector For Next To Nothing!

March 13, 2014 by 54 Comments

Need a high definition projector? Don’t have a thousand bucks sitting around? Then this hack is for you! [TheJinxster] threw together this awesome HD projector, and it cost him absolutely nothing to build!

He started by picking up an old overhead projector off of Freecycle. Freecycle is a great grassroots network, kind of like Kijiji or Craigslist — but everything is free. It’s all about reuse and keeping useful things out of the landfills. Anyway, he also had an old LCD monitor sitting around gathering dust…

Putting two and two together he took apart the LCD, laid the bare screen on top of the glass and, well, that’s it! It’s seriously that simple. The hardest part was taking apart the monitor — the overhead projector and mounted lens took care of the rest. The beauty with a system like this is you can get high definition out of a relatively small and cheap LCD panel! The only thing is it won’t last forever — LCDs (especially monitor LCDs) aren’t designed to pass through that much light.

Don’t believe us? Check out the following video.

Continue reading “Make An HD Projector For Next To Nothing!” →

Hacked Turntable Plays A Tree’s Rings Instead Of Records

March 12, 2014 by 54 Comments

Here’s another one of those crazy, weird, artsy-style hacks. Somebody decided to see what tree rings sound like by making this rather unorthodox turntable.

All things considered, the cross-section of a tree trunk does kind of resemble a vinyl record. [Bartholomäus Traubeck] noticed this and decided to see what would happen if you could listen to it.

Of course… it’s not quite that simple. When you cut a slice of wood, you’re not leaving any grooves in the rings, so you can’t just throw it on a slightly modified record player. What [Traubeck] had to do was engineer a record player with a Playstation Eye camera strapped to the end of the arm — simple image recognition software creates a signal based on the pattern of the rings, knots, and other imperfections in the wood. This is then filtered into a program called Albeton Live, and converted into a very angst-y piano track.

Take a listen and let us know what you think!

Continue reading “Hacked Turntable Plays A Tree’s Rings Instead Of Records” →

Prop Replica Tesseract Case Has Some Serious Tech Inside

March 12, 2014 by 4 Comments

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[Dustin Evans] is a big fan of the recent Avengers movies — heck, we are too! So he decided to make this awesome Tesseract Case prop replica!

Tesser-what? A tesseract, or cubic prism is a geometric shape that is technically a four-dimensional hypercube — in the Avenger’s movie, it is an incredibly powerful and unstable alien energy source.

To make the replica, [Dustin] picked up a cheap aluminum tool case from the hardware store, took some measurements and began designing the inside of it using SketchUp. He’s crammed in an Arduino with a spectrum shield, a BlueSmirf Bluetooth modem, a Raspberry Pi, a 7″ LCD, speakers and an amp, a WiFi card for the Pi, and a few strips of Neopixels. It is running Raspbian with a stand-alone version of XBMC, which means using AllCast he can wirelessly control the box from a phone or tablet — now all he’s missing is a mini-generator that can put out a few million watts!

Continue reading “Prop Replica Tesseract Case Has Some Serious Tech Inside” →

LED Throwies Turn Statues Into Heart Attack Risks

March 11, 2014 by 42 Comments

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[Mike] has just put a new spin on LED throwies — turning innocent statues into scary possessed demons of the night. He calls them Statueyes, and while it’s not quite vandalism, you might still cause a public disturbance.

If you’re not familiar, magnetic LEDs throwies are a fun little way to add some light to the city at night. They’re a little bit wasteful (sometimes you can’t retrieve them), but so cheap to make it’s sometimes worth it. Depending on what you’re using them for they can open up a whole world of possibilities — like this location tracking augmented reality using IR LED throwies!

Anyway, the main difference with [Mike’s] take on the project is he’s using home-made play-dough which allows him to stick these creepy eyes on non-metallic statues. The Play-Doh in question has an interesting ingredients list: flour, water, salt, vegetable oil and… cream of tartar? It’s the classic edible Play-Doh recipe, but to the unfamiliar it certainly sounds odd.

How cheap do you think we could make these with a simple dimming circuit? Imagine seeing a statues eyes light up as you’re walking by…

Automated Light Painting Makes It Easy

March 11, 2014 by 10 Comments

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What can we say — we’re a sucker for projects that feature our favorite logo. This is the Parallax Propeller Automated Light Painting Machine  — and no, it’s not a persistence of vision setup.

[Daniel], [Nathan], and the folks over at Embedded Aesthetics are big fans of Hack a Day and are very excited to share their new project. It’s a fully automated light painting setup that features an X-axis slide, a strip of RGB LEDs, a Parallax Propeller (microcontroller), and a DSLR — all you have to do is choose an image, and press start.

They first started light painting with their LED Paint Brush, an equally awesome, but slightly less automated tool. They’ve created this one to be a bit more interactive — in fact, you can actually go on their website, upload an image, and it will paint you a picture! But… it’s not available right now.

Continue reading “Automated Light Painting Makes It Easy” →

Remote Shutter Release Lets You Be A Hipster From A Distance

March 11, 2014 by 19 Comments

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So, you’re taking high resolution photos with your ancient medium format film camera — but you can’t be at the camera. Well, if you’re [curlyfry562] you build your own remote controlled mechanical shutter release!

Due to the age of the film camera, there really aren’t many (or… any?) off the shelf solutions to this problem. Especially not with the list of project goals [curlyfry562] came up with:

  • It must be triggered by a remote TTL signal
  • The wireless range must be at least 100ft
  • It has to be reliable — medium format film is expensive!
  • It needs to be easily mountable and removable

With his goals clearly set, he began work. He’s using 2.4GHz xBee modems which have a DIO pin — if you link up two for DIO line passing, then they act as clones of each other — change the state of one, and the other one follows. Using this he’s wired up the output to a microcontroller, which than powers a servo to depress the mechanical shutter release. It’s actually quite brilliantly simple.

If you don’t need quite as much range — check out this remote shutter release made from a wireless doorbell!

[Thanks Daniel!]

Missing Drone Posters Are A Hilarious Look Into The Future

March 10, 2014 by 86 Comments

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Sure there are reward posters for missing cats, dogs, and other various pets — but now in Denver, a man named [Merrick] makes a plea for his $2400 missing drone.

We couldn’t help but chuckle at this news story because it could be the tip of the iceberg. As drones become more and more common place, seeing missing posters for them could become pretty normal! The problem is, when you’re using a long-range drone, and flying it in a city, it is very possible to lose your line of sight and lose the device altogether. That is exactly what happened to poor [Merrick] the other day. Thinking quickly, he started making lost drone posters, and after channel 7 news reported on it, it was discovered in an alleyway the following day. The person who found it thought it was government related and didn’t want to mess around with it — it’s a pretty serious looking drone. Continue reading “Missing Drone Posters Are A Hilarious Look Into The Future” →