Pi Zero Transforms To Game Boy

November 12, 2016 by Al Williams 11 Comments

[GreatScott] bought a Game Boy case. Normally, you’d assume you wanted this to repair a damaged Game Boy, but in this case [GreatScott] used a Pi Zero and some 3D printing to build a game system into the tiny box. You can see some videos, below.

Two interesting parts of the project are the source of the LCD display (a rearview camera screen) and the selection of batteries. Lithium ion batteries are all the rage. But if you watch the news, you know there are some safety issues with using the batteries, especially if you use them improperly. [GreatScott] decided to go with nickel metal hydride cells which still need a protection circuit, but are typically less of a danger than the newer technology cells.

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Raspberry Pi Spies On… Err… Monitors Baby

November 12, 2016 by Dan Maloney 7 Comments

“Quick! We’re having a baby and we need a baby monitor!” Rather than run to the local big box and plunk down cash for an off-the-shelf solution, any self-respecting hacker would rise to the challenge and hit the shop to build something like this live streaming eye-in-the-sky baby camera. Right?

At least that’s how [Antibore] handled the situation, and the results are pretty good. He designed his build around an old Raspberry Pi 2 that was hanging around. That required a WiFi adapter, and since he wanted video and audio he needed a camera and mic. The first USB mic had a nice compact design but didn’t perform well, so a gutted gooseneck mic soldered right to the USB connector joined the design spec. A camera module, cell-phone quick charge battery bank, and a 3D printed case round out the BOM. A knitted cozy to keep it looking warm and fuzzy was provided by the mother-to-be — although we think it looks a little like [Mike Wazowski].

This self-contained unit will work anywhere it has access to a WiFi network. Mounted on the baby carrier, it’ll provide a live stream to any browser and provide the new parents with a little peace of mind.

There are a lot of baby monitors on the market, some of them terrible and in need of a rebuild. Kudos to [Antibore] for deciding to roll his own custom solution and for getting it done before the blessed event. Now how about painting that nursery?

Transparent Rocket Engine

November 12, 2016 by Manuel Rodriguez-Achach 45 Comments

Rocket engines are undeniably cool. Experiencing the roar, seeing the fire, and watching the rocket blast off into the sky… what else can you ask for? Well, for [NightHawkInLight], a transparent rocket body is the answer.

Based on previous work by [Applied Science], he uses an acrylic rod as the rocket body and as the fuel. Bring a flame into the acrylic, apply oxygen from a canister at the other end of the body and voilà! The rocket engine starts nicely, and even better, the intensity of the burn can be controlled via the amount of oxygen provided.
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Vote With Your Feet

November 12, 2016 by Bryan Cockfield 25 Comments

Gamifying life is silly, fun, and a great way to interact with those strangers who you pass everyday. Here’s one example that might just pop up along your next walk to work. It’s a way to take a very unscientific straw poll on any topic — you won’t even have to use your hands to cast a ballot.

A group called [Vote With Your Feet] has come up with a novel way of casting ballots. Simply walk down the sidewalk and through one of two doorways, each labeled with either side of a dichotomy. Each doorway is able to count the number of people that pass through it, so any issue imaginable can be polled. They already did vim vs emacs (59 to 27), and we’d like to see Keynes vs Hayek, or even Ovaltine vs Nesquik. Users can send the machine new issues for the masses to vote on, so the entertainment is quite literally limited only by your imagination.

The physical build is well documented. Since this is used outside, the choice of a flipdot display (of course always fun to play with) is perfect for this high-contrast in any level of light. Each doorway has a break-beam sensor which is monitored by the Raspberry Pi driving the overhead display (here’s code for it all if you want to dig in).

The point of this art installation like this is to get people to interact with their environment in a novel way, which this project has accomplished exceptionally well. In 3 days, they registered over 10,000 votes which are viewable on their website. If you have a project in mind that calls for data visualization you might want to keep this in your back pocket.

We have also seen other ways that doorways can count people outside of voting, if you’re looking for any inspiration yourself.

ESP8266 Lullaby

November 11, 2016 by Al Williams 22 Comments

The ESP8266 is certainly a versatile device. It does, however, draw a bit of power. That isn’t really surprising, though, since you would expect beaming out WiFi signals to take a little juice. The trick is to not keep the device on all the time and spend the rest of the time in deep sleep mode. [Marco Schwartz] has a good tutorial about how to use this mode to run for “years” on a battery.

[Marco] notes that even using a 2500 mAh LiPo battery, he only gets about 30 hours of operation without sleep. By putting the chip in sleep mode, the current consumption drops from about 88 mA to just over 8 mA. That’s still high, though, because the board has a power LED! By removing a jumper or cutting a trace (depending on the board), you can drop the current draw to about 0.08 mA (80 uA) when it’s not doing anything.

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MicroLisp With Matching Parens

November 11, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

Lisp is a supremely elegant programming language, but you won’t find it around much today. That’s a shame; in the 80s and 90s, all the cool kids were using Lisp machines, computers dedicated to the creation and interpretation of Lisp. While the AI renaissance of the 80s is dead, replaced with the machine learning fad of today, Lisp machines have gotten much smaller. Now, they’ll fit in your pocket, and they have parenthesis matching, to boot.

If this build looks familiar, you’re not wrong. A while back, we saw a similar pocket Lisp computer based around the ATMega328 microcontroller with 32k of Flash and 2k of RAM. That’s not a lot by any measure, and a much more suitable processor for an AVR-based pocket Lisp machine would be the big boys of the ATMega family.

The new and improved version of the Tiny Lisp Computer is built around the ATMega1284. If it’s capable enough to run a 3D printer, it should run Lisp very well. With more program space and more RAM come more features including matching parens when entering code, a serial monitor interface, and a program editor – basically a text editor on the chip.

Apart from the larger chip, the circuit remains relatively unchanged. The display is still an OLED that can be had for a few dollars from the usual online retailers, and the other bits of circuitry are still just a handful of resistors, caps, and wire. An off-the-shelf FTDI module (or whatever serial chip you desire) can be added to connect to a serial terminal, and support for a PS/2 keyboard rounds out the board.

A Trove Of Arcade Projects

November 11, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 4 Comments

[Ryan Bates] loves arcade games, any arcade games. Which is why you can find claw machines, coin pushers, video games, and more on his website.

We’ve covered his work before with his Venduino project. We also really enjoyed his 3D printed arcade joystick based off the design of a commercial variant. His coin pushing machine could help some us finally live our dream of getting a big win out of the most insidious gambling machine at arcades meant for children.

Speaking of frustrating gambling machines for children, he also built his own claw machine. Nothing like enabling test mode and winning a fluffy teddy bear or an Arduino!

It’s quite a large site and there’s good content hidden in nooks and crannys, so explore. He also sells kits, but it’s well balanced against a lot of open source files if you’d like to do it yourself. If you’re wondering how he gets it all done, his energy drink review might provide a clue.