Author: James Hobson

1404 Articles

Introducing The Nintendo Guitar Boy

September 18, 2015 by 10 Comments

Need to thrash out some wicked 8-bit riffs? There’s only one guitar you should be doing that with, and it’s a Guitar Boy!

[Fibbef], an administrator on BitFixGaming boards built this as an exhibition piece for his 2015 Game Boy Classic build off. He started the build just three months ago and we have to say we’re impressed. It’s a fully functioning Raspberry Pi Game Boy emulator — and a full fledged electric guitar. The A and B buttons double as volume and tone dials for the guitar, while also being push buttons for the Game Boy!

Under the hood is a Raspberry Pi B+ running RetroPie v2.3, with a 5″ LCD display, custom wooden buttons, the entire body is hand made, and a plexiglass shell covers the whole thing.

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Automated Bubble Gun Just Because

September 16, 2015 by 12 Comments

After a recent trip to Disney Land, [Thomas] came home with an electric bubble gun. [Thomas] is a full-grown man. But since when did that stop us having fun blowing bubbles?? Obviously, a project was to be had using this fun little toy. So he decided to automate it.

So after taking some measurements with his trusty calipers, [Thomas] got on the computer and started designing an enclosure for the bubble gun using SolidWorks. It’s pretty simple. He designed it to hold the bubble gun in place, and allow him to attach a small RC servo motor in order to trigger the switch. Hooking that up to an Arduino Micro and he was now able to trigger it remotely.

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Thermal Vision HUD

Thermal Vision HUD Isn’t Only For Fighter-Jets!

September 15, 2015 by 37 Comments

In case you weren’t aware, thermal vision units have seen huge price reductions lately. There’s a few on the market for under $300! While that might still seem expensive, remember, it’s thermal-freaking-vision. [Tim] bought a Seek Thermal as soon as it was available, and just recently finished his first project with it — giving his car a thermal HUD for driving at night.

The Seek Thermal is a small thermal imaging unit that has a micro USB attachment for phones. Simply plug it in, and your phone becomes the preview window. But for mounting on your car, you can’t have it behind a window, because most glass is not transparent to heat wavelengths, so [Tim] had to get creative.

He designed and 3D printed a magnetic mount for it to sit on the hood of his car. But in the case any debris from the road hit it, he wanted to protect the lens. So he started looking up thermally transparent materials — turns out they’re really expensive.

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Xerox PARC Exploding Chip

This Post Will Self Destruct In 10 Seconds

September 15, 2015 by 62 Comments

Ah yes, the classic Mission Impossible ultimate message security — after verification and playing the message, poof — it’s gone. You could design explosives into your electronics to have the same effect… or you can use Xerox PARC’s new chip, which features a self-destruct mode.

Wait, what? Yup — some engineer at Xerox decided to develop a chip that can literally self-destruct. It was developed for DARPA’s vanishing programmable resources project, and well, it sounds pretty promising for the future of high-security applications. Continue reading “This Post Will Self Destruct In 10 Seconds” →

A Gramophone For Your Pebble Smart Watch

September 13, 2015 by 2 Comments

At a recent Pebble-themed hackathon, one of the teams created a pretty cool device called the TimeDock Sleepeasy.

It’s a gramophone inspired docking station for your Pebble Time smart watch. And it’s not just a 3D printed mount — nope, there’s an Arduino inside! The team’s plan from the beginning was to make an interactive docking station for the Pebble that would allow it to talk to you without actually pressing any buttons on the watch.

It was rather tricky getting the Arduino Uno talking to the Pebble, but once they figured it out they had a lot of options for interaction — they ended up using an ultrasound sensor so you can just wave your hand at the TimeDock and it would tell you the time.

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Building A 3D Printed Laser Tube

September 13, 2015 by 42 Comments

A YouTuber by the name of [1kreature] is doing some excellent research into building his very own 3D printed laser tube.

It all started after he managed to find an extremely high voltage pulse driver. In his video he assures us we should never buy one. He then designed some 3D printed fittings for a clear acrylic tube that allow for pneumatic and electrical connections. Using a hand pump to create the vacuum inside was the most difficult, so he quickly upgraded to a proper industrial vacuum pump.

Apply the vacuum, turn on the pulse driver… and well… see for yourself!

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Telecom Time Machine

Marty! You’ve Gotta Come Back With Me!

September 11, 2015 by 19 Comments

Like any good plan, you should always start with the intention to build a time machine. That way if your future self succeeds, your current self doesn’t have to worry about actually doing it!

Well, unfortunately it hasn’t quite worked out for hosts of [Toymaker], but they have managed to make a pretty authentic Telecom Time Machine instead!

What they’ve created is something called a “dumb terminal”. Back in the days of yore before personal computers existed, if you wanted to get “online” you would have to do so at a dumb terminal. It’s essentially a monochrome monitor, a keyboard, and a serial port. You would have to actually connect to the mainframe to do anything — but back then, you couldn’t just hook up a modem — oh no, you had to use an acoustic coupler to connect. You had to play sounds through your telephone in order to communicate with the mainframe. How’s that for a bit of history with your morning coffee!?

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