Hackaday Links: February 23, 2014

February 23, 2014 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

You can pick up a tiny laser pointer on the cheap if you know where to look. But when it comes time to replace the multiple button cells that power it be prepared to clean our your wallet. [KB3WZZ] got around that with the cap from a ball-point pen. He drilled holes in the end plug of the pointer, and used wire and a plastic pen cap as a battery adapter. He’s powering it from USB, but now that you have wires exiting the case you can use any source you wish.

[Gerben] tipped us off about the trinket clone he built himself. It’s a tiny sliver of a PCB which he etched, populated with through-hole parts only, and finished off with some finger nail varnish to prevent shorting and corrosion. The solder-covered edge connector for USB was left unvarnished of course.

If you live in a college town you are probably quite used to seeing futon pads and frames on the curb waiting for the garbage collector. A little bit of ingenuity, and some added lumber, will turn a futon frame into a respectable shelving unit. [Thanks Martin]

Complicated bench equipment + good lighting + a great camera = an awesome teardown. This time around it’s the guts of a Keithly 2002 8.5 digit mulitimeter laid bare. [Thanks David]

Here’s a PCB laminator hack that is definitely worth a look. The original unit was acquired on eBay for about $25 and had a thermostat whose performance wasn’t optimal. A bit of alteration for the thickness of the substrate, and you’ll never hand iron a toner transfer board again! [Thanks William]

Last summer we heard about Scout, an ocean-going drone trying to cross the Atlantic. We just checked the live tracking and the craft is still at sea. But a much smaller 5ft vessel made it from New Jersey to Guernsey (an island between the UK and France) after traveling for about 14 months. [Thanks Rob]

If You Own A Camera You Need To Try Light Graffiti

November 22, 2013 by Jeremy Cook 24 Comments

Do you have a camera that’s capable of controlling how long of an exposure it takes? With this and any small light source, you can make a really awesome illuminated image like the one featured above. Combine this with the hacking skills that you’ve hopefully learned from reading Hackaday, and the visual possibilities are endless.

Let’s look at the background of this entertaining light hacking technique, and how you can make images like this yourself!

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Use Your Smartphone As A Microscope For Less Than $10

October 30, 2013 by Phillip Ryals 22 Comments

[Yoshinok] recently posted an Instructable on doing a $10 smartphone-to-microscope conversion. The hack isn’t so much a conversion as just a handy jig, but it’s still interesting. The basic idea is to set up a platform for the slides, and to mount the smartphone directly above. The trick, and the reason this can be called a microscope, is that [Yoshinok] embeds the lens from a cheap laser pointer into the smartphone holder. He is able to get 40x optical magnification with the lens, and even though it sacrifices quality, he uses the built-in digital zoom to get up to 175x magnification.

By itself, you could use this with a light source to magnify 3D objects. [Yoshinok] demonstrates this with a dime. But since the slide holder is made of clear acrylic, he mounted a cheap LED flashlight in the base to serve as through-sample lighting. Using this setup, he was able to observe the process of plasmolysis.

If you have kids, this is certainly a project to do with them, but we can’t help but think it will be useful for non-parents alike. This sort of magnification is good enough for simple lab experiments, and given that most Hack-a-Day readers have these parts lying around, we figure the cost is closer to $0. If you give it a try, let us know your results in the comments!

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Hackaday Links: January 5, 2013

January 5, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 29 Comments

Do not aim laser at remaining eye

laser

Over on the reddits, [CarbonGod] thought he had a slightly overpowered laser pointer. His red laser pointer had a label that said it outputs less than 5 mW. The only problem is it melted black plastic and heated a thermocouple up to 140°F. [CarbonGod] is begging, borrowing, or stealing a power meter from an engineer friend, but until then we’ve got measurements from [The_Sourgrapes]. His lasers put out 105 mW (red), 56 mW (blue), and 53 mW (green).

While <5 mW lasers are fairly safe, these lasers that are labeled as having < 5 mW of output are not. Now if we only knew where to buy these overpowered lasers…

It’s impossible to find this video in HD

rickroll

[Zach] created a physical rickroll device. It’s an Arduino and an MP3 shield hooked up to an ultrasonic sensor. When someone walks within six feet of the device, the Arduino starts playing Never Gonna Give You Up. When that person walks away, the song is paused only to start again when something else is detected by the ultrasonic sensor. There’s a hilarious video of [Zach] triggering his physical rickroll device, or you can check it out on the build page.

Hey, you! Write some code!

react

[William] wrote in to tell us about a project called ReactOS. The goal of the project is to create a free and open source operating system that is binary comparable with Windows XP. Yes, this project has been around for a very long time, but with Microsoft dropping support for XP, the ReactOS team could really use a few devs to get a beta out soon. If you know a bunch of low-level Windows stuff but haven’t ever contributed to an open source project, check out the developer’s wiki.

I’m [Johnny Knoxville] and this is electrostatic discharge

ouch

It looks like [Mehdi] is making a few instructional videos for EEs and those tinkering around with electricity. So far he has tutorials for making proper wiring connections, what not to do with ESD, how to take capacitors for granted, and demonstrating how electricity can kill you.

Penitent man shall pass…. Penitent man shall pass…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj8wXlSXGk0&w=470]

If gift giving were a contest, [Bradley] would win. His sister’s favorite movie is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, so when he needed to wrap a gift (a coffee cup, fittingly), he went all out. All the challenges required to obtain the Holy Grail are present in this present including the breath of God (needs more circular saws), the name of God (why was the letter ‘J’ even in the movie?), and the Leap of Faith (sand included).

Coming up for his sister’s birthday, a face-melting hair dryer.

[ch00ftech] Visits A Shenzhen Market

September 17, 2012 by Eric Evenchick 33 Comments

On a business trip, [ch00ftech] visited a Shenzhen electronics market and documented the trip. Some of the attractions included multiple Apple stores of questionable authenticity, stores selling PC components with no manuals, drivers, or packaging, and a variety of LEDs and lasers.

[ch00ftech] showed off the loot from the trip, including breadboards, perf boards, LED matrices, and an RFID reader all for very low prices. There’s also the Class 4 laser pointer that cost about $120 and has a power output of “between 500 mW and 8000 mW.” Given the 500 mW power restriction on lasers sold in the US, it’s fair to say that this thing should be handled with care. Hopefully the included safety classes actually block the specific wavelength of the laser.

The staff in these stores were very knowledgeable and knew part numbers and inventories by memory. One of the biggest surprises was just how low the prices were. While Radio Shack has started to carry some more parts for hackers, it seems that nothing stateside can compare these Chinese electronics markets.

Control Your House By Moving Your Arms Like You’re Directing Traffic

August 27, 2012 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

This home automation project lets you flap your arms to turn things on and off. [Toon] and [Jiang] have been working on the concept as part of their Master’s thesis at University. It uses a 3D camera with some custom software to pick up your gestures. What we really like is the laser pointer which provides feedback. You can see a red dot on the wall which followers where ever he points. Each controllable device has a special area to which the dot will snap when the user is pointing close to it. By raising his other arm the selected object can be turned on or off.

Take a look at the two videos after the break to get a good overview of the concept. We’d love to see some type of laser projector used instead of just a single dot. This way you could have a pop-up menu system. Imagine getting a virtual remote control on the wall for skipping to the next audio track, adjusting the volume, or changing the TV channel.

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