I’m more into this one just for the simple USB plug than the joke that it’s used for. I’ve seen similar on extra small USB flash drives, but those are generally pre-etched. The idea is to use a piece of proto board to make a USB plug an mount a superbright LED on it. Pie indeed.
Author: Will O'Brien805 Articles
SMS PIN Sentry Reader
[Mr G] in London sent in his pin sentry hack. He wasn’t pleased that the device looks like an old calculator, so he rigged up a SMS board to send him his pin on demand. He multiplexed the output of the display driver to the SMS board. When he authenticates from his phone, the board sends a message with the latest code.
PySight Post Halloween Entertainment
[John] sent in this setup that he hacked together for Halloween. He used a MacBook Pro with built in camera, a projector, a bed sheet, a kid friendly laser pointer and a hacked together combination of PySight and PyGame. The result was a fairly easy game of shoot Marshie. Nice!
DIY Servo Motor Controller
[Jim Fong] sent in this demo of his version of the UHU servo motor controller. [Uli Huber] has actually shipped over 2500 controllers for the servo. He doesn’t charge much for the chips, and only asks for something like a token beer in return for his work. I used [Jim]s boards in my mini mill controller, so I know he does good work. This servo controller really is a big deal. It can handle high power, and servo motors are *the* way to build a fast milling/robotics setup.
If you’re into Cons, you might be interested that the first round of Shmoocon tickets went up for sale today – looks like they’re already out, so keep your eyes open if you want to go. It’s a decent con that takes place in DC. I know that I’m planning to be there.
Happy Halloween Extra
Happy Halloween! I’m in the mood for an extra, and I’ve got some stuff that’s been turning to zombies from the tipline.
Pictured above is a nice simple LED pumpkin sent in by [John]- perfect for the hacker with less than stellar art skills.
Let’s not forget [mastershake]s Hack-A-Day pumpkin from last year. Where’s the THAD pumpkin you promised? [Wolfgang] sent in these mini pumpkin bots – they look like toys, but they’re made from XBox parts and radio control cars.
Last year Max sent in his talking Halloween basket. (I always wanted to strap that voice module to a co-workers chair…)
[Brandon] built a budget (~$150) guitar hero controller out of a Gibson Epoch guitar from target.
This scanner cam has been around for a while, but I admire how he keeps fine tuning and tweaking the design. Thanks to [Loopymind] for passing it along.
I keep getting emails telling me that Google Earth has a flight simulator. Yes. We all know about it.
Ion Cooler 3.0 (return Of InventGeek)
[Jared]s been taking a bit of a hiatus, but he assures me that he’s gearing up for a bunch of new projects. The first sign that he’s awakened from his slumber is his latest take on the Ion Cooler. This time he’s built a CPU specific version. The cooler is made from off the shelf materials – heap pipe heat sink, copper pipe, tack nails, acrylic and even the ion generator are easy to get. It’s an interesting way to cool your PC if your comfortable with 10,000 volts or so next to your CPU.
DIY Ultra Wide Band Radar
[Andy] sent in this pdf (mirror) describing a simply diy UWB Radar project. It’s not intuitive, but by using a wide frequency range for low power, short distance purposes, the system should avoid interfering with other radio systems. The paper has a complete circuit schematic, and offers some suggestions for adding communications to the signal. Unfortunately, to really tune the thing, you’ll need a kick-ass oscilloscope.
