It seems like creating an automatic dorm room door opener is a rite-of-geek-passage each fall. [Adam], a student at Vassar, passed with flying colors by creating this clean setup. We’ve got video, more pictures, and a description after the break. Continue reading “Add A Key-fob Opener To Your Door”
[Rob928] has done a fantastic job converting his Dell mini9 into a tablet. He has done several updates, such as an SSD hard drive and touchscreen. The final product looks quite nice. From a few feet away, we wouldn’t have noticed that it was a home made one. We’ve seen several tablet conversions before from macbooks to EeePCs.
[via Engadget]
‘There’s a sucker born every minute” -P.T. Barnum
This morning we’ve been having a heated discussion at the Hack a Day offices (read: legion of doom) over Dyson’s new offering, a “bladeless fan”. At first this seemed extremely exciting, but how is the air being moved? We were hoping for a device operating via ionic wind but that’s simply not the case. Some of us think the bladeless claim is an outright lie, others understand it from a marketing stance, but we all agree: a fan with blades is still moving the air.
Dyson’s own information page states that “an energy efficient brushless motor” draws the air in with similar technology used in “superchargers and jet engines”, both of which use blades! The fan blades are in the base of this unit, they take in air and blow it out the ring. Just because you can’t see a fan, can we call our computers bladeless, or an air conditioner bladeless?
Enter the P.T. Barnum reference. Known as a man who could sell anything, his legacy lives on in the Dyson corporation. At 200 british pounds (~$320) for a ten inch desk fan, what are you getting that’s better than a traditional fan? The design supposedly amplifies the air movement fifteen times, but we’re skeptical about that figure as there’s no energy-saving claim to go along with such an incredible power boost. One thing is certain, you will NOT get a fan without blades for your sterling… just one with hidden blades plus a huge marketing campaign.
[Thanks Gareth]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsTKAtBBkfU]
Behold the Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod (DASH). The video above was presented at the 2009 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. In it we see the toils of a team from UC Berkeley’s Biomimetic Millisystems Lab. They’ve developed a robot propulsion system that mimics some of the best aspects of cockroaches and other insect bodies: speed, economy of motion, ability to survive large falls without damage, and the capability to traverse obstacles. Let’s take a look at how they put this together after the break. Continue reading “DASH: Clever Construction And Resilience In Robotics”
Today, it is not difficult to find all kinds of watches with LED displays. After [Paul]’s grandfather, a master horologist and pocket watch collector, passed away, he decided to retrofit a broken watch left to him with a custom LED face. Starting from scratch, he designed a PCB complete with 133 (hand soldered) LEDs, room for a temperature controlled oscillator for real time clock capabilites, a LiPo battery, and a cell phone vibrator to provide a simulated “second hand tick” feeling. The whole watch is powered by a PIC 16F946.
This is currently version 1, and he has already begun work on version 2. He plans on adding a more compact, lower power TCXO, automatic NTP syncing, and a USB port for charging and reprogramming. He has a number of detailed videos, and we have a demo video after the break.
[digg=http://digg.com/gadgets/LED_Pocket_Watch]
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/7019823%5D
We love CNC hacks, so when [Jonny] sent in his nearly complete CNC router we were ecstatic. There are only a couple of posts thus far, and it takes some digging, but its pretty easy to understand his mindset and overall plan while making the CNC. It currently has full 3 axis movement and he replaced the previously dinky Harbor Freight Dremel with a much more powerful DeWalt that even Tim Taylor would be proud of. Software side of things he uses a combination of EMC2 and their collection of open source CAM codes. The project is coming along nicely and more updates are promised. Check out some more videos after the break. Continue reading “CNC Router On The Way”
OpenMoko, the company behind the FreeRunner open-source phone, released their latest product today: WikiReader. It’s a small mobile device for browsing Wikipedia. Rather than use a wireless network to pull data off of the web, it has local copy of the database on a 8GB microSD card. This approach has been used before, and it lets the WikiReader be compact and really cheap. It uses a Kindle-esque touch-screen display that allows it to run on 3 AAA’s for about a year. The device itself costs just $99, but you can choose to receive updates by snail mail for just $29/year. Alternatively, you can just download the +4GB file and dump it on the card.
Like the FreeRunner, this project is also open-source. The code isn’t available yet, but they say it will be released soon. With luck, the device will be really easy to hack.
