FLAMEnco Guitar

July 31, 2013 by 11 Comments

flamenco

[John] says, “I noticed an unfortunate lack of many flamethrower guitars on the web so I filled the need. ” That’s just awesome by us.

This series of guitar-mounted flamethrowers started with a small build, able to shoot a six-foot flame for about 40 seconds. Yes, very theatrical, but not something you’d want to change out after every song. From there the builds progressed to systems with more barrels, more fuel tanks, and a huge system that shoots 18-foot long flames colored with standard pyrotechnic supplies.

It should go without saying that this stuff probably isn’t something you should try at home. That being said, you really have to admire the craftsmanship and tenacity to make a guitar mounted flamethrower. Just don’t bring it to an indoor gig.

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Trust Hacking: How The Bitcoin System Works

July 31, 2013 by 38 Comments

how-bitcoin-network-functions

[Scott Driscoll] sent us a link to his Bitcoin explanation a couple of weeks ago. We glanced at it but moved on rather quickly. It’s been popping up here and there and we finally gave it the time it deserved. This video is interesting in that it doesn’t just focus on what the Bitcoin actually is, but how the Bitcoin system works when it comes time for money to change hands.

Quite early on in the explanation he mentions that “The Bitcoin system is amazingly designed so that no trust is needed”. That’s a powerful statement. For instance, if you sell your car, one of your friends will probably tell you not to take a check. That’s because a check means you’re trusting that the buyer actually has a balance in their account to cover the transaction. With Bitcoin the transaction carries its own proof that the currency is available by including information about the past transactions through which those Bitcoins were acquired.

If you have some idea of what public/private key pairs are you’re already equipped to understand [Scott’s] lecture. After you make it through the 22 minute video maybe you should get down to work doing some Bitcoin mining at home.

An Introduction To Inertial Navigation Systems

July 31, 2013 by 53 Comments

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Long before ships relied on GPS to determine their location – and even before radio navigation systems such as LORAN, vessels relied on a still impressively sophisticated means of determining their position: inertial navigation. The theory is simple: if you keep a few very accurate gyroscopes and accelerometers on board, you’ll be able to calculate where you are relative to your previous position. Since electronic gyros and accelerometers are all over the place, [Sebastian] thought he would have a go at creating his own inertial navigation system.

The difficulty in using this method is that every gyroscope invariably has some error. Since the measurements from the gyros and accelerometers are integrated together, the error is also integrated, resulting in an increasing positioning error as time goes on. With a few clever algorithms and very good sensors, it’s possible to minimize this error.

[Sebastian] doesn’t have really great hardware – he’s only working with a accelerometer/gyro breakout board that’s good enough for experimental purposes. After reading the accelerometer data with an Arduino, he’s able to capture all the sensor data and read it into a Python script.

The next steps are to figure out a decent algorithm to integrate all the sensor data, and possibly add a barometer and magnetic compass for better compensation for errors. The project is still in the early phases, but seeing as how an inertial navigation system is one of the engineering triumphs of the early 20th century, we’re eagerly awaiting any progress updates.

Xbox 360 Light Right And RF Module Connected To Raspberry Pi

July 30, 2013 by 22 Comments

rpi-connected-to-xbox-lightring

If you want to mess around with your Xbox 360 controllers on a computer Microsoft would be happy to sell you a USB dongle to do so. But [Tino] went a different route. The board that drives the Xbox 360’s status light ring also includes the RF module that wirelessly connects the controllers. He wired this up to his Raspberry Pi using the GPIO header.

The module connects via an internal cable and is treated much like a USB device by the Xbox motherboard. The problem is that it won’t actually handle the 5V rail found on a USB connector; it wants 3.3V. But this is no problem for the RPi’s pin header. Once a few connections have been made the lights are controlled via SPI I2C and [Tino] posted some example code up on Github to work with the RF module. He plans to post a follow-up that interfaces the module with a simple microcontroller rather than an RPi board. If you can’t wait for that we’re sure you can figure out the details you need by digging through his example code.

Any-size SIL Connector Kit

July 30, 2013 by 12 Comments

any-sized-SIL-cable-kit

Etching and populating a board is childs play compared to finding connectors which link several components. But Hackaday alum [Ian Lesnet] and his crew over at Dangerous Prototypes have come up with a solution that makes us wonder why we haven’t seen this long ago? They’re prepping an any-size ribbon cable kit.

So lets say you do find the type of connector you want. You need to cut the ribbon cable to length, crimp on the connectors, then seat those connectors in the housing. We’ve done this many times, and being cheapskates we use needle-nose pliers instead of buying a proper crimper. This solution does away with that grunt work. The kit will ship several different lengths of ribbon wire with the connectors already placed by machine. This way you peel off the number of connectors you need, select the proper house size and plunk it in place. Also in the kit are several lengths of male, female, and male/female jumper cables you can peel off in the same way.

Now what are we going to do with the rest of the spool of ribbon cable sitting in the workshop?

Touch Control For Every Key On The Keyboard

July 30, 2013 by 22 Comments

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Of all the musical instruments out there, the keyboard is among the worst for changing the pitch and timbre of individual notes. Wind and stringed instruments can do this easily in the hands of a skilled player, but outside the wheel and joystick controls of a few electronic keyboards, tickling the ivories means the only thing you can really change about how something sounds is the volume.

TouchKeys wants to put an end to this severe lack of dynamics available on keyboard instruments. Basically, it turns every single key on a keyboard into a multi-touch sensor, allowing any keyboardist to change the pitch, filter, timbre, or any other parameter of their instrument simply by moving their finger around on a key.

TouchKeys works by overlaying all the keys on a keyboard with circuit boards that plug into a module hidden under the hood. These boards are studded with capacitive sensing points, allowing a computer to recognize where the player is touching each key, and modifying filters or volume for each key independently.

The TouchKeys Kickstarter is offering a kit to equip a 25-key keyboard with these sensors for about $550. A hefty price tag, but hopefully we’ll see this tech in real production keyboards in the future.

Breakout Board For $11 LCD Module With Small Pitch

July 30, 2013 by 8 Comments

breakout-for-strange-pitch-LCD-screen

[Ibrahim] picked this little LCD module out because of its price point and resolution. In single units you can grab one of the 128×32 pixel displays for just $11. The only problem is that the pinout is too small to use with a breadboard. He whipped up a breakout board for it that throws in some extras.

First off, we like it that the board doesn’t add much to the part’s outline. What it does add is a Low-DropOut voltage regulator and a level converter. The upper range of the LCD’s input voltage is 3.3V, and these added parts make it possible to drive the device using 5V hardware like the Arduino Uno pictured above. While he was adding in parts he included a MOSFET to switch the backlight. This way he can use PWM for dimming as well.

We usually hit eBay when looking for LCD screens. A search for the NHD-C12832 part number didn’t turn it up. We tried out FindChips for the first time (owned by Supply Frame who just bought Hackaday) and it works just as well as Octopart which we’re more familiar with since we’ve seen some hacking of that site before.