Author: James Hobson

1404 Articles

Retro TV Breathes New Life With A Raspberry Pi

December 9, 2015 by 33 Comments

There’s just something so satisfying about industrial design from the years past. [Kenneth] found an old “portable” tube TV and decided to give it a little upgrade so he could keep it around the house.

It was a black and white Singer TV, with a whopping 6″ tube display. Using his trusty screwdriver set he took the whole thing apart, keeping only the frame and outer casing. Inside he jammed a 5″ LCD display, a Raspberry Pi and a power supply — with some room to spare. He also replaced the speakers with some upgraded baby woofers and an audio amp for the Pi.

The end result is a pretty snazzy little device capable of playing movies, games, or hypothetically, even as an all-in-one computer — but who actually uses a Raspberry Pi as their daily driver? Especially one with only a 5″ display…

But it’s a cutie, and sits nicely on the coffee table. For a larger retro TV rework, we’re quite partial to this conversion of a Philco TV (a sub-brand of Phillips) with a flat panel LCD.

[via r/Raspberry_Pi]

Impressive NFC Controlled Infinity Mirror Table Cuts No Corners

December 9, 2015 by 14 Comments

If you’re looking to add a bit of the future to your living room, you might want to look at this tutorial to build a very professional infinity mirror table.

It’s an IKEA RAMVIK coffee table, modified to include RGB LEDs and a one-way mirror for that ever-so-awesome infinity effect. And technically, you only have to cut one hole in the table.

By placing a large mirror underneath the glass, wrapping the inner edge with a strip of RGB LEDs and coating the original glass top with a reflective car tint, it’s a pretty simple hack that results in a very polished product — not something that can be said for most of our projects!  But to make it even better, [Pierre] added an NFC chip under the table, allowing you to control the color with just a tap.

Continue reading “Impressive NFC Controlled Infinity Mirror Table Cuts No Corners” →

Hairband Lights Up Depending On Your Mood

December 7, 2015 by 13 Comments

After learning how to use the ESP8266, [Chirag Nagpal] decided to do a fun project to experiment that polls data from Twitter. He calls it the Sentiband, and it analyses your last tweet’s sentiment and changes color accordingly.

There is an API available called Sentiment140 (Formerly ‘Twitter Sentiment’) which is capable of determining the emotional content of a tweet on Twitter. It uses classifiers built from machine learning, and was developed at Stanford by a few CS graduates. We’ve seen it used before on a Christmas tree ornament on a much larger scale, analyzing all holiday tweets to light up your tree.

[Chirag’s] version allows you to set a username and display the latest sentiment of that user’s tweets hidden in the subtext. Three LEDs light up; green for a positive tweet, red for negativity, and blue for neutral.

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Herring Bone Bed With Secret Compartment

December 7, 2015 by 7 Comments

Why buy a bed when you can make an even fancier one — with a hidden compartment!? After [Vitiello] couldn’t quite find a bed frame he liked, he decided to make his own, using a herringbone pattern for the woodwork.

We’ve shared quite a few awesome home-made kid’s beds lately, like this beautifully hacked IKEA bed (complete with a hidden room!) and this Avenger’s themed Helicarrier bed, featuring a remote control dart turret. So after we got over feeling jealous that we weren’t three feet tall and able to have a bed as awesome as those, we saw this herringbone bed. And while it doesn’t have a hidden room, it does have a pretty awesome secret compartment which helps ease the pain.

Built out of about $250 worth of cedar planks, [Vitiello] did a great job with both the design and build. He purposefully made the headboard rather thick to accommodate an LED lit shelf, and of course, the hidden compartment accessible from the side. And since he could, the LEDs are remote controlled — and of course color changing.

[via r/DIY]

Airsoft Sentry Gun Keeps Your House Guarded

December 6, 2015 by 18 Comments

Ever since automated turrets became a thing in video games, people have strived to make their own — let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want an automated defense turret? Well, [Austiwawa] just finished making a pretty awesome Airsoft gun turret, and decided to make a video tutorial on how he made it.

The inspiration comes from Project Sentry Gun, a long-standing website dedicated to teaching people how to make automated sentry gun turrets. We’ve seen projects use this to turn Nerf guns into turrets, and people have even made their own paintball gun sentry turrets.

Following along the build only takes about 5 minutes of your time and summarizes the process very concisely. We particularly like the main rotation axis — one RC servo motor and 4 casters make up a controllable lazy susan that reduces the load on the servo motor and allows you to mount a pretty big gun on the turret.

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Smart Coaster Informs You When Your Drink Is Ready

December 4, 2015 by 4 Comments

How many times have you made a cup of coffee or tea and it’s been too hot to drink, and then by the time you get to it, it’s become too cold? While very much a #firstworldproblem, [ToniTheAxe] decided to fix it — and enter a contest at the same time. He calls it the µCoaster, and essentially, it is a temperature sensing alarm clock.

The coaster uses a TMP006 infrared temperature sensor which measures the temperature of whatever you place on the coaster indirectly. It also doesn’t use much power. He designed the PCBs around this and created a very nice looking coaster that’s powered off of a button cell battery — he thinks it’ll last for around 6 months with daily usage — though that depends on how bad your caffeine addiction is.

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Volvo Trucks: Kid Tested, Mother Approved

December 4, 2015 by 57 Comments

If that looks like a four year old with a remote control driving a full-size dump truck — that’s because it is. As part of their Live Test Series, Volvo made a ridiculous obstacle course, and then let a four year old take the wheel of one of their heavy duty dump trucks. Viral advertising maybe — but too awesome not to share.

And don’t worry, there is a hack involved! The remote control setup in the truck isn’t that polished, and can’t possibly be a commercial “RC kit”. Which means some lucky hacker got to build a remote control system for a freaking dump truck. Consider us jealous.

Surprisingly (or maybe not), the truck seems to withstand everything the four year old throws at it. Including rolling it sideways down a hill, and of course smashing through an entire building. It’s well worth the watch and had us grinning from ear to ear.

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