Making A Propane Tank Hank Drum

March 12, 2013 by Jeremy Cook 39 Comments

A [Hank Drum], as explained here, is a steel drum-type instrument made out of a propane tank. The name comes from the [Hang] or [Hang Drum] which is significantly more expensive than that $40 or so an empty propane tank costs. Of course, you’ll have to do some work to get it to play beautiful music, which can be seen in a time-lapse construction video after the break.

The details of how this instrument was made can be found here, including how to lay everything out and cut out eight relatively neat “tongues” for producing different tones. I used a Dremel tool, but this can also be done using saber saw for a curved top. This method is explained here with a template, but the results may not be as neat.

If you want to try this yourself, make sure to use an empty, unused propane tank. This is extremely important. For another entirely different homemade instrument, why not check out the [Whamola] that we made a year or so ago? Continue reading “Making A Propane Tank Hank Drum” →

DEFCAD, The Island Of Misfit Objects

March 12, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 128 Comments

Defense Distributed, the guys working on 3D printed guns and lower receivers for an AR-15, have a storied history with makers, corporations, and our elected representatives. When the news broke they were designing a 3D printed weapon, their $25,000 leased 3D printer was taken away from them. When their designs were too controversial for Thingiverse, they were taken down. Defense Distributed keeps on firing back, though, and now they’re hosting their own 3D model repo called DEFCAD.

In another one of Defense Distributed’s well-produced promo videos, they make their case for a repository of 3D models that doesn’t respond to takedown requests. Basically, 3D printing is a disruptive technology and is too important to be beholden to copyright lawyers, talking heads of the media, and, “the collusive members of the maker community”.

DEFCAD isn’t only about guns. They plan on hosting anything those in the upper echelons of power don’t like – or at least those with a copyright, patent, or trademark gripe – and never responding to a takedown request. It’s a great idea, somewhat akin to The Pirate Bay for physical objects, but actually popular.

“Hacking The Xbox” Released For Free In Honor Of [Aaron Swartz]

March 12, 2013 by Eric Evenchick 23 Comments

[Bunnie], the hardware hacker who first hacked into the original Xbox while at MIT, is releasing his book on the subject for free. The book was originally released in 2003, and delves into both the technical and legal aspects of hacking into the console.

The book is being released along with an open letter from [Bunnie]. He discusses the issues he faced with MIT legal and copyright law when working on the project, and explains that the book is being released to honor [Aaron Swartz]. [Swartz] committed suicide in January following aggressive prosecution by the US government.

The book is a great read on practical applications of hardware hacking. It starts off with simple hacks: installing a blue LED, building a USB adapter for the device’s controller ports, and replacing the power supply. The rest of the book goes over how the security on the device was compromised, and the legal implications of pulling off the hack.

[Bunnie]’s open letter is worth a read, it explains the legal bullying that hackers deal with from a first hand prospective. The book itself is a fantastic primer on hardware hacking, and with this release anyone who hasn’t read it should grab the free PDF.

Hackaday Links: March 12, 2013

March 12, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 28 Comments

Thankfully saved from steampunkers

meter

[Chris] found a really cool pocket watch-style multimeter in a box of junk that was passed down from father to son. There aren’t any markings on it, so he’s looking for any information he can get on it. It’s a cool piece of vintage tech in any occasion; check out the pics he sent in below:

Here’s a fix for your illegal stuff

[Don] ‘acquired’ one of those China-only Raspberry Pis, but after plugging it in, only the power light would stay on. The fix, apparently, is putting these three files in the /boot folder of a Red Pi SD card.

Not a pocket watch

meter

[Tom] picked up an old DC volt meter in an antiques shop. He quickly gutted it to make an analog meter display for his Raspberry Pi. There’s a few status lights to remind [Tom] of something he hasn’t figured out yet. Bonus points for a cheap buck boost converter, though.

Smashing monitors? Really?

NESIT Hackerspace

The Meriden, CT hackerspace, the New England Society of Information and Technology, was vandalized last week. They’re dealing with some real punks here; their computers weren’t stolen, they were just smashed. NESIT is looking for donations (both money and equipment), so if you have a few monitors or old boxxen and live around there, consider donating them.

Help a guy out here.

survey

[Jonathan] is a real cool dude that’s working on his master’s thesis on ways to build a sustainable company through the development of open source hardware. He wants you to take a survey. How do we know he’s cool? He had something posted on HaD back when we had the old black and white and scotch tape images.

Molding Rubber For A Pre-production Prototype Using A 3D Printed Model

March 12, 2013 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

molding-rubber-for-production-models

When you’re getting close to a production run the prototypes really need to hit the mark before pulling the trigger. [Bob’s] still hard at work getting his scoreboard off the ground and his most recent endeavor was to find a way to prototype the rubber gasket without blowing his shoestring budget. His solution was to harness the power of 3D printing to generate a model from which he could create the mold from which he cast the rubber part.

To make things a bit more difficult, the band isn’t just decorative, it doubles as the tactile part of the scoreboard buttons. You can see all six of them (before being painted to make them stand out) in the inset image above. Just above that image is a picture of the mold making process. The toothpicks are suspending the 3D printed model of the rubber band while the lower half of the silicone mold sets up. Once that had happened [Bob] sprayed release agent to ensure the top half of the mold wouldn’t stick while it cured.

The results turned out just great. Sure, this isn’t the way to go if you’re making a lot of these things. But we’re impressed at the quality he achieve for a one-off item.

If the finished product on the left looks familiar it’s because we looked in on the project last June. [Bob] continues with improvements and plans to launch a crowd funding campaign this week.

Camera Adapter For A Microscope

March 12, 2013 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

camera-adapter-for-stereo-microscope

[Steve] really has a nice microscope setup in his lab now that he built a video camera adapter for his stereo microscope. The image above shows the magnified view of the circuit board on the LCD screen behind it. This lets him work without needing to be in position to look through the eye pieces. The hack is a perfect complement to the custom stand he fabricated for the scope.

The camera attachment can be seen attached to the right lens of the scope. It’s an old security camera which he already had on hand. The stock lens wasn’t going to bring the picture into focus, but he had some different optics on hand and one of them fit the bill perfectly. The rest of the project involves fabricating the adapter ring on his lathe. It slips perfectly over the eyepiece and even allows him a bit of adjustment to get the focal length right. The best view of this is shown off in the video after the break.

Continue reading “Camera Adapter For A Microscope” →

Two-wire Serial Backpack For GLCD Screens

March 11, 2013 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Debraj] wrote in about his 2-wire serial backpack he developed for a Graphic LCD screen. It’s build on a hunk of protoboard and uses a pair of 595 shift registers to translate incoming serial data to the parallel interface which is used by the LCD screen. It takes more time to push commands this way, but the interface is still quite snappy as you can see in the clip after the jump.

The real trick here is how the hardware has been configured to get away without a third wire for latching the shift registers (if you need a primer on 595 chips check out this feature). The idea of using a latch is that all of the data can be shifted in over the serial pin before it appears on the output pins. Otherwise, the GLCD would see each bit as it shifts into the register, wreaking havoc on its communication protocol. [Debraj] gets around this by using a diode AND gate trick he learned from this other serial LCD project.

One good thing about this method is the 595 chips have a wide range of control voltage that will allow you to drive this with 3.3V or 5V microcontrollers. But you do need to implement the communication protocol and push those commands via serial. For nearly the same cost in chips something like an ATtiny2313 could be substituted to make an even simpler addressing scheme — or even switch to 1-wire protocol. But you’d then lose the wide input voltage tolerance.

Continue reading “Two-wire Serial Backpack For GLCD Screens” →