Years Of Robotic Projects – Dumped For Your Enjoyment

October 18, 2011 by 7 Comments

Meet tippy, just one of the multitude of robotic projects [Oneironaut] has taken on over the years. He ‘dug deep’ and put together a huge data dump of pictures and descriptions of his old robotic projects, then posted them for your enjoyment. When he wrote in to Hackaday on Monday he mentioned 33 pages of them, but he must be adding material as he finds it because we see 52 pages.

These aren’t micro-robots either. These are I’m going to chase you down because I’m your worst nightmare robots. They use heavy welded-iron frames, lead-acid batteries, and gear-motor driven locomotion. Some of his project names include The Tank, The Sentinel, and The Megatron. Bookmark the link you see above, because you’re going to want to spend some time sifting through the candy-shop of projects which seem to be too plentiful to be the hobby of just one man. Although we shouldn’t be surprised, just look at the multitude of spy-gadgets he’s come up with lately like the GPS tracker and the long-range laser night vision.

Throw Together A Temperature Logger In Minutes

October 18, 2011 by 17 Comments

[Rajendra] found an easy way to make a USB temperature logger. He already had a USB to UART adapter that takes care of the heavy lifting. On one end it’s got the USB plug, on the other a set of pins provide a ground connection, 3.3V and 5V feed, as well as RX/TX lines.

To get the hardware up and running all he needed was something to read a temperature sensor and push that data over the serial connection. An 8-pin microcontroller in the form of a PIC 12F1822 does the trick. It runs off of the 5V pin on the USB-UART, and uses the ADC to get temperature data from an MCP9701A sensor.

The sample rate is hard-coded into to the PIC’s firmware, but adding a button, or coding some serial monitoring could easily make that configurable. [Rajendra] used Processing to write an app which displays the incoming temperature info and uses the computer to time-stamp and log the inputs. We could see this as a quick solution to tracking wort temperature during fermentation to make sure your beer comes out just right.

Building The Second Tiniest Tetris

October 18, 2011 by 10 Comments

A few years ago, [Richard] pulled a crushed camcorder out of a junk box at a hamfest. After pulling the half-inch CRT out of the viewfinder, he needed to find a project. [Richard] ended up building the second tiniest game of Tetris we’ve ever seen.

After futzing around with the CRT, [Richard] discovered that one of the pins would accept an NTSC input. He also found a similar project that used a dime-sized CRT to play Tetris. With ready to go code, [Richard] started assembling his project into a handsome wooden box.

There are two PCBs for the build – a CRT driver circuit, and a small custom board that handles the game and controller code. The circuit for the game board was found on this site, but the featured boards there were too large for the project. A stripped-down board was fabricated by BatchPCB and put into the box.

There aren’t any controls on the console itself, for that a standard DB-9 connector was installed so a vintage Atari joystick could be used. For a more ergonomic Tetris experience, a Sega Genesis controller could be used. For something that looks like it comes out a steampunk laboratory, playing Tetris is a bit unexpected. Check out the demo video of the screen at 20x magnification after the break.

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Tiny MP3 Module Is Perfect For Your Next Project

October 18, 2011 by 22 Comments

tiny_embedded_mp3_module

If your next project needs the ability to play MP3s but you don’t have a lot of room to spare in your enclosure, [Boris] has just the thing you need. His tiny embedded MP3 module supports playback of up to 65,536 songs or as many as you can fit on a 16GB microSD card, which isn’t bad in the least.

The module relies on a PIC24F for input and control, while a VS1011 handles all of the MP3 decoding responsibilities. He says that the module would be great for voice-enabled vending machines, telephone systems, cars, and more.

With such a wide range of possible applications, he decided that the module should be able to support several different input methods. The board can be controlled via a set of digital input buttons, which is perfect for direct human interaction, while it also supports serial control for scenarios where it is part of a larger embedded system.

Of course, we’ve seen tiny MP3 players like this before, but we like the fact that this module was designed to operate in standalone mode or as a component in a larger device. Of course all of the device’s schematics, code, and a BoM are available, allowing you to build your own if you are comfortable with SMD soldering.

A CD Changer Made Of Wood

October 18, 2011 by 15 Comments

Although this is by no means a new hack – it was made circe 2002 – this wooden CD changer is an interesting piece of machinery. The whole thing is a simple pick-and-place device. The gripper is brilliant in it’s simplicity, using only a rubber band, wood, and a solenoid. It grips the CD by the middle hole, picks it up, and the assembly then travels to the CD tray or the stack. Everything works with DC motors and string, and several micro-switches make sure everything is picked up and dropped in the correct position.

Although we may think this is a pretty cool device, [Matthias] is quite humble about his machine’s abilities. In his estimation, although one could probably duplicate 12 CDs with relative ease, if you really wanted to duplicate a large number, it’d be best to buy one. Maybe he works in manufacturing.

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Powering Kids’ Toys By Hand

October 18, 2011 by 17 Comments

hand_cranked_toy_piano

[Dominik’s] daughter had an old toy piano that she loved, but when the batteries started to die down, it played awful tones and sounded generally out of tune. While this is likely something our circuit bending friends might be interested in, [Dominik] preferred when things sounded more cheery.

He considered simply replacing the batteries, but it seemed like a far better idea to do away with them altogether. he hunted around for a solution, and eventually found one at the local IKEA store. He grabbed a LJUSA hand-powered flashlight and disassembled it, saving the crank and circuitry.

He installed the crank on the back side of his daughter’s piano, and mounted the electronic bits inside the toy’s shell. The crank spins a brushless motor, generating an AC current which is rectified to DC before being stored in a capacitor. He says that a 30 second crank will play just a few tunes, which isn’t ideal, though it is better than frequently replacing batteries.

[Thanks, Roger]

On The Life Of [Dennis Ritchie]

October 17, 2011 by 40 Comments

Chances are you have already heard of the passing of [Dennis Ritchie]. We admit, we’re among the throngs who knew little of his life, but [Cade Metz] has posted an excellent remembrance of his life which we think is well worth reading.

[Dennis] passed on October 12th at the age of 70. This image shows him receiving the National Medal of Technology awarded to him by [Bill Clinton] in 1998. His legacy lives on in the work that earned him this award as the creator of the C programming language; a side project which he developed to help him achieve the creation of a new system kernel called UNIX. This work, of course, was the precursor that led to universal software packages like OSX, iOS, Linux, and even Windows (which at one point was itself written using the C language).

There has been some Internet fodder regarding media coverage of [Steve Jobs’] death and not of [Dennis’] passing. It’s harder for those lacking experience with programming to comprehend [Dennis’] contributions. We’re glad to have an opportunity to pass on the story of his life and to take a moment to appreciate his accomplishments.

[Thanks Dave]

[Photo Source]