[bunnie] is one of the main people behind the Chumby, and even he can’t resist modding the things. He decided to outfit one with a larger LCD – using a stereo microscope to do the really fine pitch work – and a laser cutter to create a custom bezel for the finished piece. The new LCD is still a touchscreen and allows the Chumby to display 640×480 resolution over the stock 320×240. The mod requires a few parts, but the ultimate difficulty is caused by the surface mount connectors. If you’d rather have some software fun, you might want to check out [bunnie]’s Chumby wifi sniffer.
Author: Will O'Brien805 Articles
H2O Spectrum Analyser
[Ray] noted that spectrum analyzers have become a favorite project for FPGA evaluators and sent in his groups version from 2004. His team used a combination of MatLab, an Altera FPGA and sixteen pumps to produce real-time sound spectrum output.
Wii Nunchuck Arduino Pan And Tilt Camera
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD_-YnFZFP8&hl=en]
I found this while looking for a teardown of a Wii Nunchuck remote since they’re cheap and include a 3 axis accelerometer. I mentioned an interface board the other day, but the responsiveness of the interface in this video grabbed my attention. If you like it, you should check out this [via] Nunchuck Arduino RF controlled robot. You can find details on that bot here. The accelerometer itself only runs about $10, but it’s a pretty small SMD part.
FRS Foxhunting For Model Rockets
Since we had a FRS radio hackit a while back, [Weirdguy] sent this in. [Scott] gutted a frs radio and added it to his rocket chassis. It’s powered on for the flight, and he can listen to the rockets progress. To locate the rocket once it’s on the ground, he built a 462Mhz Yagi antenna to use with a Radio Shack hand held scanner. This is old hat for most Ham Radio guys – they do ‘Fox Hunts‘ for hidden transmitters just for fun.
Beer-30, OLED Style
[Matt] built this OLED display based clock for his electronics class. He used an ARM7 processor, designed a nice custom board for it and got busy. The clock face is actually a picture of the watch, and the hands are drawn on top as the time changes. Here’s to the first OLED project on Hack-A-Day.
Custom Mounting Manual Minolta/Sony Lenses
We usually get Canon mods, but [polossatik] sent in some interesting Sony/Minolta lens modding work by [Shaocaholica], who’s been really been taking lens modding to a new level of quality. He picked up several old Rokkor F1.2 lenses and swapped parts around to make four decent lenses. Then he had [Pete Ganz] turn down some new mounts on his lathe. Finally, a quick round of epoxy to add a lens id chip activates the on board image stablization and focus confirmation. Be sure to check out the photo build log here.
MIDI Controlled Xmas Bells
This video is [Jim]’s 12 year old [Adam] describing a modded a set of electronic christmas bells that take midi input thanks to a propeller controller. Looks like [Jim] helped a bit, but it looks like a great way to introduce young minds to hardware hacking. You can grab details on the board design here.
