Handheld CNC Fabrication

February 20, 2012 by 34 Comments

While loading a 3D model into a CNC program and letting a machine go to town on a piece of stock is awesome, there’s a lot to be said about the artistry, craftsmanship and tactile feedback of carving a project by hand. [Amit Zoran] and [Joe Paradiso] created a nice bridge between these two approaches with their hand-held, but still digitally controlled milling device they call The Free D.

The Free D looks like your run-of-the-mill handheld Dremel tool with an engraving attachment and a few extra servos attached for good measure. These extra parts serve a purpose: the tool actually keeps track of its own orientation in 3D space. With the help of a few magnets underneath the work piece, the Free D sends its orientation back to a computer running a CNC program. When the computer detects the engraving attachment is getting too close to the desired shape, the Free D automatically retracts its own tool head.

Given the insanity or expense in building our buying a mill with six degrees of freedom, the Free D looks like it could be a useful tool in a few model maker’s toolboxes. Check out the demo video of the Free D after the break.

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Bringing The Stars To Your Baby

February 19, 2012 by 35 Comments

[Zach] saw a stuffed animal that projected some simple stars on the ceiling. This gave him an idea that he could build a tiny star projector for his 3 month old daughter’s room.  The idea is to put an LED inside a ping pong ball with tiny holes and rotate it slowly.

The electronics are fairly strait forward. He’s using an MSP430 to control the servo and LED, allowing him to set different speeds and turn the whole thing off after a certain amount of time.  The ball took a little bit of trial and error though. He first started by drilling some holes, but found this to give poor results. The holes were just too big. He finally ended up heating up a  sewing needle and melting tiny holes in the ping pong ball. That worked perfect.

After the break you can see a video of it moving. The servo is pretty loud, which might actually be a good distraction for a 3month old, but might be something to address in the future.

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Hackaday Links: February 19, 2012

February 19, 2012 by 16 Comments

Industrial control robot band

Remember Animusic, a series of videos featuring computer-generated, highly  implausible instruments? Intel made their own to demo their industrial control tech. From the looks of things, we’re putting money on a bunch of MIDI triggers bolted onto plastic panels; now it’s slightly less impressive and the reason we’re looking at xylophones on eBay right now.

Quadrocopters everywhere

[Jouni] sent in his quadrocopter build that was inspired by the Japanese spherebot we caught earlier this year. [Jouni] used a carbon fiber frame to  prevent the copter from bumping into things. Other things bumping into it are another story entirely.

This is my gun. There are none like it, because I printed it.

[Landru] printed a Nerf gun on his 3D printer. The only non-printed parts are a few screws, springs and an o-ring. [Landru] promised to put the files up on Thingiverse, but we can’t find them.

Media center auto power on circuit

[Dizzy]’s media server doesn’t have an ‘AC power loss reset’ feature in its BIOS, and he can’t jumpstart the thing by shorting pins on the ATX power socket. He came up with a very clean, minimal solution to starting his server after a power loss. Nice job, [Diz].

Better run, better run, outrun my soldering gun

Alright, circuit board shoes probably aren’t that comfortable, or useful, but we did find a like to the works of [Steven Rodrig], an artist who works in the medium of PCBs. The recycled circuits don’t do anything, and that’s giving us a few ideas on how to improve a digital banana.

Ask Hackaday: Did You Catch The Grammys?

February 19, 2012 by 82 Comments

Although award shows aren’t necessarily our thing, [T. D.] sent in something that piqued our interest. His friends recently got back from the Grammy awards where they witnessed thousands of LED bracelets blinking in time to a performance by Coldplay. A little bit of YouTubing pulled up this video that demonstrates the effect (because that video will probably be taken down shortly, just pick something from this link).

[T.D.]’s friends brought one of these bracelets back with them and like a good Hackaday reader, he cracked it open. This is the precious board pic that [T.D.] sent in. We’re pretty confident that the IC is an ATMega48PA, but beyond that we’re not quite sure how these bracelets can, “light up and flash at precisely the right time” as [T.D.] puts it.

From what we saw on the Grammy broadcast, it’s possible these bracelets merely flashed whenever the user clapped their hands. A circuit that simple doesn’t require a microcontroller, so we’re left wondering what the heck is going on here. If you’ve got an idea of how these choreographed light display bracelets work, drop a note in the comments.

EDIT: Commentors have pointed out these wristbands are called ‘Xylobands.’ There’s a great video of these wristbands in action at the 2011 X Factor finale.

The PANIC Button Saves You From Bad Music

February 19, 2012 by 15 Comments

Having a communal music collection being played on random can be really fun. You experience new music and get to hear old favorites. However, not everyone shares the same taste. Sometimes, you absolutely need to just skip the song coming on, for the sake of everyone involved. That was how the Panic button was born.

Starting with a joke panic button that would play an alarm sound, they promptly tore the guts out.  They inserted a minimus board, which has an AT90USB162 its brain, and includes onboard USB hardware.  When you slap the panic button, it emulates the key press that goes to the next track, thereby saving everyone from whatever monstrosity was threatening their ear drums.

Weekly Roundup 2/18/12

February 18, 2012 by No comments


In case you missed them the first time around, here are our most popular posts from the previous week:

Our most read post is one about [Ben’s] project where he created an electric motorcycle that has a range of 20 miles. This is a pretty comprehensive tutorial that goes into some good detail about what you will need to do to convert a motorcycle over to electric.

Coming in at second place is [dmw’s] project where they created their own keyboard from scratch. We’re not too sure about the choice to stick the space bar(s) up in the corners but otherwise it looks like a really nice build.

Are you one of *those* people who likes to make the presents that they give as difficult as possible to open? Our #3 post of the week is one project that you should definitely check out. In this post, [Neowinian^2] shows how he and some friends encased some wedding cash inside of a giant cube of sugar!

Have you always wanted to say that you took some classes at MIT but were caught by the little technicality that you didn’t live in Boston? Fret no more my friend, MIT has just announced an online class program. You won’t be able to get a MIT degree remotely quite yet but this is a step in that direction.

Finally, we get to another keyboard project. This keyboard is a programmable keyboard that almost looks like the keypad on the end of an accordion (plus some other goodies). This keyboard was built by [Tim Tyler] and is designed to allow you to take full advantage of your thumbs instead of banishing them to the space bar.

Control A Playlist With Your Mind

February 18, 2012 by 9 Comments

Because switching apps to change a song is such a taxing ordeal, [Oscar Celma] and [Ching-Wei Chen] decided to use their collective brainpower to change Last.FM playlists with their minds. They call their project Buddhafy, and it works by taking off-the-shelf EEG hardware and tying it into music streaming APIs.

For the build, the guys used a NeuroSky MindWave to read alpha waves inside [Oscar]’s head. The data from the MindWave was passed into a Python script that sends requests to the Last.FM and Spotify APIs. High alpha waves in brain wave patterns correspond with concentration or a deep meditative state. If [Oscar] concentrates very hard, he’ll be rewarded with calm and relaxing tunes. If [Oscar] loses focus, the music changes to the best song ever written.

The guys put up the slides from the presentation they gave at MusicHackDay in San Fransisco this last week. There’s also a video of their build in action; you can check that out after the break.

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