L3D Cube Takes The Work Out Of Building An LED Cube

November 29, 2014 by 29 Comments

Building an LED cube usually means a heck of a lot of delicate soldering work. Bending jigs, assembly jigs, and lots of patience are the name of the game. The problem multiplies if you want to build with RGB LEDs. [Shawn and Alex] are hoping to change all that with their L3D cube. Yes, L3D is a Kickstarter campaign, but it has enough good things about it that we’re comfortable featuring it here on Hackaday. What [Shawn and Alex] have done is substitute WS2812b surface mount LEDs for the 5mm  or 3mm through hole LEDs commonly used in cubes. The downside is that the cube is no longer visible on all sides. The upside is that it becomes a snap to assemble.

The L3D cube is open source hardware. The source files are available from separate software and hardware Github repositories. Not next week, not when they hit their funding goal, but now. We seriously like this, and hope all crowdfunding campaigns go this route.

The L3D cube uses an open source Spark Core as its processor and WiFi interface. Using WS2812b’s means less I/O pins, and no LED driver chips needed. This makes it perfect for a board like Spark or Arduino.  On the software side, the team has created a Processing Library which makes it easy to create animations with no coding necessary.

L3D has all the features one would expect from an LED cube – a microphone for ambient sound visualizations, and lots of built in animations. It seems [Shawn and Alex] have also created some sort of synchronization system while allows multiple cubes to work together when stacked. The team is hoping someone will come up with a 3D printed light diffuser to make these cubes truly a 360 degree experience.

The L3D cube campaign is doing well, [Shawn and Alex] are close to doubling their $38,000 goal. Click past the break to check out their Kickstarter video!

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The Zork Virtual Machine Implemented In Hardware

November 29, 2014 by 10 Comments

Zork, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and all the other Infocom text adventures are much more clever than the appear at first glance. They actually run on a virtual machine, with all the code for the game files squirreled away in the Z-machine format. This is great if you’re writing a game for a dozen platforms; once you have an interpreter running on one system, the entire library of games can be shipped out the door.

While the Z-machine has been ported to all the retrocomputers you can imagine and a few different brands of microcontrollers, no one has yet implemented the Z-machine in hardware. There’s a reason for this: it’s crazy. Nevertheless, [Charlie] managed to implement the Z-machine in an FPGA, using only a few extra commands for driving a display.

zork2The circuit is constructed with a $10 eBay special FPGA, the Cyclone II EP2C5. Other than that, it’s just some Flash, some RAM, a display, and a whole lot of wire. The standard Z-machine spec is followed, version 3 specifically, meaning this text adventure on a chip can run nearly every Infocom game ever written. The most popular ones, at least.

This isn’t [Charlie]’s first time in the ring with the Infocom Z-machine. He ported the Z-machine to a freakin’ pen a few years ago.

You can check out [Charlie]’s video demo below. Because there was a bit of extra space in the FPGA, [Charlie] managed to put a Mandelbrot implementation and Space Invaders in as an easter egg.

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ArTICam Interfaces Game Boy Camera With TI Calculators

November 29, 2014 by 4 Comments

[Christopher Mitchell] has given Texas Instruments calculators the ability to capture images through a Game Boy Camera with ArTICam. First introduced in 1998, The Game Boy Camera was one of the first low-cost digital cameras available to consumers. Since then it has found its way into quite a few projects, including this early Atmel AT90 based hack, and this Morse code transceiver.

TI calculators don’t include a Game Boy cartridge slot, so [Christopher] used an Arduino Uno to interface the two. He built upon the Arduino-TI Calculator Linking (ArTICL) Library  to create ArTICam. Getting the Arduino to talk with the Game Boy Camera’s M64282FP image sensor turned out to be easy, as there already are code examples available. The interface between the camera sensor and the Arduino is simple enough. 6 digital lines for an oddball serial interface, one analog sense line, power and ground. [Christopher] used a shield to solder everything up, but says you can easily get away with wiring directly the Arduino Uno’s I/O pins. The system is compatible with the TI-83 Plus and TI-84 Plus family of calculators. Grabbing an image is as simple as calling  GetCalc(Pic1) from your calculator program.

So, If you have an old calculator lying around, give it a try to enjoy some 128×123-pixel grayscale goodness!

A Staple Gun, Caulking Gun, And Four-Barrel Shotgun

November 29, 2014 by 51 Comments

In its native form, [Clint]’s K-441 is a caulking gun, able to apply silicones, resins, and liquid rubber from a reservoir with compressed air. It’s accurate, powerful, has a huge capacity, and looks strangely steampunk, even for caulking gun standards. This isn’t any normal caulking gun; this device was made from a staple gun. Oh, it also fires shotgun shells with the help of four rifled barrels.

This device that shoots lead, steel, and glue started off its life as an ordinary staple gun, with the usual 23lb pull you’ll find on these guns. By adding a few plates, hand-winding a spring, and milling a few parts, [Clint Westwood] turned this staple gun into a device that would shoot a single .410 bore shell. A practice round as far as shotguns go, but still a serious amount of punch.

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Frappé Coffee Robot Offers Automated PIC-Me-Up

November 29, 2014 by 4 Comments

Although [Giorgos Lazaridis] has graced Hackaday several times, we’ve never covered the build of his frappé machine which reader [Jim] encountered after searching for information about the PIC16F1937. His site shows the build as in-progress, but he definitely has a working prototype here, and it’s definitely awesome.

Frappé coffee is made by mixing spray-dried instant coffee, a small amount of cold water, and sugar to taste in a manual shaker or a milkshake machine that uses a single beater. More water and/or milk is added as desired to top off the glass. The method was invented by accident in Thessaloniki, Greece, and has become quite popular.

In addition to sixteen pages of detailed build logs, [Giorgos] shot videos that demonstrate each of the modules that make up the machine. The operator puts a glass in a holder attached to a turntable. It moves first to the coffee and sugar dispenser, which fall through the same easily removable funnel. The next stop combines the add-water-and-beat steps beautifully. A length of hose strapped to the beater’s housing dispenses the initial cold water base. Then, the beater lowers automatically to beat the mixture. After mixing, the beater is drawn back up an inch or so, and more water is dispensed to rinse it off. Then the beater is fully withdrawn and the glass is filled the rest of the way. The final stop for the frappé is essential to the process: a bendy straw must be added. This is vitally important, and [Giorgos] handles it admirably with a stinger that shoots a straw into the glass.

[Giorgos]’s coffee robot is built around a PIC16F1937. He rolled his own PCB for the motherboard and each of the machine’s modules. There is a lot of logistical ingenuity going on in this project, and [Giorgos]’ build logs convey it all very well. Be sure to check out [Giorgos]’ machine in action after the break. The full set of eight videos that shows each module and culminates in the one below is well worth your time.

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Micro Word Clock

November 29, 2014 by 45 Comments

A word clock – a clock that tells time with words, not dials or numbers – is one of those builds that’s on every Arduino neophyte’s ‘To Build’ list. It’s a bit more complex than blinking a LED, but an easily attainable goal that’s really only listening to a real time clock and turning a few LEDs on and off in the right pattern.

One of the biggest hurdles facing anyone building a word clock is the construction of the LED matrix; each LED or word needs to be in its own light-proof box. There is another option, and it’s something we’ve never seen before: you can just buy 8×8 LED matrices, so why not make a word clock out of that? That’s what [Daniel] did, and the finished project is just crying out to be made into a word watch.

[Daniel]’s word clock only uses eight discrete components: an ATMega328p, a DS1307 real time clock, some passives, and an 8×8 LED matrix. A transparency sheet with printed letters fits over the LED matrix forming the words, and the entire device isn’t much thicker than the LED matrix itself.

All the files to replicate this build can be found on [Daniel]’s webpage, with links to the Arduino code, the EAGLE board files, and link to buy the board on OSH Park.

Turn Cordless Tool Batteries Into USB Chargers

November 28, 2014 by 27 Comments

It is the unspoken law of cordless tools – eventually you will have extra batteries lying around from dead tools that are incompatible with your new ones. Some people let them sit in lonesome corners of the garage or basement; others recycle them. [Eggmont] was facing this dilemma with a Makita battery from a broken angle grinder and decided to make a USB charger out of it.

[Eggmont] took the simplistic approach, using an old cigarette lighter-to-USB adapter. First, [Eggmont] removed the battery connector from the bottom of the broken angle grinder. Next, the casing surrounding the cigarette lighter plug was removed so that the adapter’s wires could be soldered to the contacts on the battery connector.  The USB ports were then glued onto the top of the connector. The adapter was rated 9-24V input, so it was fine to use it with the 18V tool battery. Since the battery connector is still removable, the battery can be recharged.

Tool manufacturers are tapping into the market of repurposing old batteries for charging mobile devices. Both DeWalt and Milwaukee Tool have now created their own USB adapters that connect to their batteries. Or, you can purchase the Kickstarter-funded PoweriSite adapter for DeWalt batteries instead. Compared to their cost, [Eggmont’s] project is very economical if you already have the battery at hand – you can find the USB adapter for less than $10 on Amazon.