Author: Will O'Brien

805 Articles

Speedy2 R/C Speed Controller

December 26, 2006 by 7 Comments


Alrighty, this is a pretty straight forward one. [Jason] discovered our tips line – he sent in quite a bit of stuff. I scored a pair of $120+ RC cars for $25 each recently, and this would come in handy. In fact, the store drone that checked me out didn’t believe that I could build my own speed controllers cheaper than they $30 units they had on the shelf. This R/C car speed controller uses a SMD pic 16F84 accepts standard servo input from a stock controller. It uses several fets to drive a motor at up to 40 amps. Everything you need, including eagle cad files is included in the zip file.

(I’m down in San Antonio this week – so far it’s been fun. I finally picked up a panavise junior and restocked my heat shrink and soldering supplies. )

Design Challenge Deadline

December 26, 2006 by 8 Comments


Just an official heads up – the deadline for the Design Challenge is up. We recieved some great entries and we’ll be reviewing them on Hack-A-Day as we wind up to our announcement of the winner. (Yes, if you submitted an entry, you’ll get some coverage) Thanks for all your efforts!

Wave Bubble Portable RF Jammer

December 25, 2006 by 58 Comments


Hack-A-Day friend [Limor] AKA [ladyada] has been promising a portable RF jammer for a while. guess what she sent me for Christmas? The Wave-bubble is a self tuning RF jammer – good for around 20 feet of RF enforced peace. (It outputs .1-.3 watts) With a pair of less efficient antennas, it even fits inside a pack of cigarettes. She’ll never sell these because the FCC would come-a-knockin, but if you’ve got some major skills, you might be able to build one. (I’m going to believe her take on this, I’ve seen her work in person and it’s some damn fine stuff)

Merry Christmas! Get your Design Challenge entries in today!

Make Your Own CO2 Laser

December 24, 2006 by 12 Comments

We all remember the diy cnc laser. In my quest to bring you guys fresh stuff, I found an interesting design [archived page](the author says he built his in the 80s) for a home-built CO2 laser. The dimensions are missing, but the design is pretty simple. If you like some textbook style reading, the hyperphysics server is your friend. I finally bought a mini mill to go with my lathe – this could make an interesting machining project. Get a mini-fridge compressor to for the vacuum source, and the gas is easily acquired from the local welding shop. I’d bet Surplus shed probably has some workable optics.

The 25th is the deadline for the Design Challenge. Don’t freak out, just get it submitted before I get up on the 26th, and I’ll call it good.

Gauss Pistol Redeux

December 23, 2006 by 21 Comments


Remember this? We hit it last year. [William] has been working hard, and made plenty of improvements. Aside from building it in black, he’s built a new model. He’s even hoping to release it as a kit in 2007. The latest version uses a PIC to fire the coils and manages the batteries, uses a pair of IR sensors to time the projectile, laser sighting and improved charging. It’s still only slightly more powerful than a CO2 BB gun, but one hell of an engineering challenge. Theoretically, these could be more powerful than traditional firearms, but power limitations keep them repressed like mid-evil peasants.

DIY ‘PS3 Sixaxis’ Controller

December 22, 2006 by 10 Comments


[max] lets us know about this DIY ‘PS3 SIXAXIS’ style programmable controller. It’s a USB device that uses an accelerometer to provide an interactive human interface. They put one inside a model airplane and use it with a flight-sim. (I’d like to see them add some gyros to add some realistic resistance to the plane interface.)

Laser 3d Scanning With A Webcam

December 21, 2006 by 15 Comments


[Jan] noted that they’ve come up with an interesting, low cost method of 3d scanning over (Update: http://www.david-laserscanner.com/wiki) at the Institute for Robotics and Process Control. Once the software is calibrated with the preset background image, a laser line is run over the object (Just think about every sci-fi laser scanner you’ve ever seen) The software appears to measure the contour of the object by the breaks in the line as it’s passed over the object. Once a mesh of measurements is taken, the object can be reconstructed in the software. According to [Jan] “With Their technique they won the Main Prize of the “work group for Pattern recognition” this Year in Berlin.” Now, make it work under something besides windows and .NET.

Get your Design Challenge entries in! The 25th is rolling up on us quick!