We’ll Take The Fries.

November 1, 2009 by 32 Comments

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We’ve all been there; hardest decision we’ve ever had to make. College and debt or freedom but no career? Start a family or live out alone? The number 2 with a small shake or side of fries?!

[Leon] sent in his random number generator, oddly enough not to just generate a number, but help us through with those life altering decisions. Using a noise diode like setup he’s able to generate random bits, which an ATtiny24 then converts and displays on a 7 segment LED. His generator also has the ability to set upper and lower limits. Seems like an awful lot of work to avoid the freedom of choice paradox, but we enjoyed the project none the less. Check out a video after the break. Continue reading “We’ll Take The Fries.” →

Easy Dial Telephone

November 1, 2009 by 30 Comments

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[Taufeeq’s] Grandmother needed to be able to call her family members but due to ailing eyesight and memory this was a difficult task. He decided to help her with this by building a telephone that will auto-dial a number at the push of a button. [Taufeeq] built a case to hang on the wall which houses a hook for the receiver and two auto-dial buttons. The buttons are lighted and loosely based on the LED push buttons we covered in January. Housed in a separate box are a microcontroller and a dual tone multiple frequency IC used to dial the numbers. These are patched into a PCB from a standard telephone.

The result looks great and makes using the phone much easier with the simplified controls. We’ve included the demonstration video after the break.

Continue reading “Easy Dial Telephone” →

Android Ported To Meizu M8

November 1, 2009 by 8 Comments

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[Evow04] has been working hard to run Android on a Meizu M8 smartphone and we’re beginning to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The Meizu M8 is a Chinese cell phone very similar in appearance and hardware to the iPhone. The factory firmware runs Windows CE 6 but there is no official support for Android. It looks like [Evow04’s] upgrade method is fairly easy; copy an IMG and BIN file to the root of the phone, backup the Windows CE portion, and then use the upgrade mode to flash the two files.

We’re pretty impressed with Android, especially the potential that it represents. Having another device that runs the OS is a good thing but at $350-$400 this isn’t any cheaper than just buying an Android phone.

Happy Birthday Internet, Here’s $40,000

November 1, 2009 by 45 Comments

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Darpa has another contest coming up. You may remember some past Darpa competitions, like the 2007 Urban Challenge. Where hackers, engineers, and scientists alike came together to build autonomous vehicles. The game this year is to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet.

The rules are simple enough, find a bunch of red balloons and mark their latitude and longitude. The hard part? There is only 10 balloons – spread across America. It will take an extreme amount of social network engineering, but it all pays off with first place receiving $40,000.

Another Mini KeepOn?

October 31, 2009 by 21 Comments

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[Eustice Scrubb] has posted some videos and pictures of a robotic “eye stalk” that he’s building. It looks like the final version is using 3 servos in an arrangement like tendons through a slinky jr. The ping-pong ball on the top has a BlinkM inside it. You can see a video after the break that shows the three servo tendons in motion. The whole thing is controlled by an Arduino and one of his pictures states that it plays mp3s and has an internal pendulum. None of his pictures seem to implicitly state what it is meant to do though.

Continue reading “Another Mini KeepOn?” →

Name That Thing

October 31, 2009 by 55 Comments

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[Alan] over at HackedGadgets.com has been doing a “Name the Thing” contest where he occasionally posts an image and people try to figure out what it is. We’ve seen similar posts on some other web sites too. We usually don’t post them here because they’re not only not a hack, they’re usually not even projects. This one, however, caught our eye.

We apologize for posting this, without telling you what it is. The simplest explanation is that curiosity is getting the best of us. We were hoping that you guys could help out. What is this thing? Can we have two?

Broken TV Brought To Life In LEGO Body

October 31, 2009 by 21 Comments

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After letting it sit around for about 3 years, [Blake] decided it was time to fix his broken 15″ television. A little trouble shooting showed the problem was with the inverter. The backlight would come on for a few seconds, off for a few seconds, then repeat. By freeing the Magnavox 15MF400T from its metal case he got it working again, but couldn’t find the source of the short. His solution: build a new case out of non-conductive material. Voilà! We have the 15″ LEGO monitor.

It’s not a very complicated LEGO build, but it’s the first case mod we’ve seen in a long time that isn’t strictly gratuitous.  Join us after the break for more pictures. Continue reading “Broken TV Brought To Life In LEGO Body” →