Author: Will O'Brien

805 Articles

DC Entries: LVP/Logic Probe And A Wireless Antenna

January 2, 2007 by 16 Comments


I’m sick today, but finally getting some entries up. [Albert] designed this board which can be either a low voltage PIC programmer or, if you lack a programmer to get the initial flash data on the PIC, the through hole components make a logic probe. He rounded out the board with a silk screened logo and a prototyping area. He was also kind enough to provide an eagle library with the Hack-A-Day logo.

Our second featured entry of the day: [Pablo] put together a simple Hack-A-Day 2.4ghz antenna. He built and tested it – It functions nicely as a directional 2db antenna. His proposed use: limit your neighbors access to your AP by aiming the unetched backside at them.

Snowboard CNC Machine

January 1, 2007 by 10 Comments


Happy new year! I think we’ve covered the DIY CNC stuff a plenty, but I can’t resist posting this one. Remember the DIY snowboard? Recently, quite a few small quantity and home builders have cropped up. (I’m even planning to build my first board later this month.) [Mike Magruder] of happy monkey snowboards built a CNC gantry router just for cutting out wooden snowboard cores. The frame is built from structural aluminum (not cheap) with the usual steppers and some gecko drives running the show. The cable guide track and dust collector even make it look like a professional product. [Mike] also built a sweet press, but I’m going to be using vacuum bagging.

Airport Express Repair

December 31, 2006 by 6 Comments


[Eduard] was kind enough to pass along this airport express psu repair how-to (Translated version). The old Airport had those pesky capacitor issues. Apparently the power supply in the little buggers can have issues. The solution? Add a pile of voltage regulators and some smoothing caps to get things powered back up. No word on how the new PSU affects sound output.

DIY Canon Lenses

December 30, 2006 by 6 Comments


Remember the cheap tilt-shift lens? [Rodolfo] let me know about his set of modded Canon lenses on Flickr. The FD 50mm prime is pretty cheap off ebay – he removed the FD mount and uses it sans rear-end. We’ve seen a nicer version of this before. His macro lens caught my eye – it’s a combination of a cheap F/1.8 50mm and the handy, but cheap EF-S kit lens that comes with the Rebel XT series. (I might have to make one of those) Finally, we have the most original legal use for a Chinese lantern and duct tape that I’ve seen. It’s like the tilt shift, but the addition of the 50mm creates some interesting effects. Hit up wikipedia If you want to know more about the EF/EF-S mounts and adaptation issues.

OpenTom – Roll Your Own TomTom Distro

December 29, 2006 by 21 Comments


TomTom already runs Linux. The OpenTom project (Internet Archive Link as of 2022) has documented the hardware and software to allow custom software builds to run. The Wiki covers everything from build tools to hardware connections. So far, a mp3 player has been released using the build tools. Hmm, I might have to pick one up to develop on myself.

Thanks to [kniVes788] for the tip.