[chris] sent in this inexpensive personal radar project. It uses a servo mounted IR range finder to locate and display the distance to an object. (Lake a parked car as shown in the demo video) The project is destined for some robotics projects – and who doesn’t love LED display proximity sensors. It makes me think of the direction finders in every other 80’s action movie. It’s gotten some attention on Digg, but I like it for the inexpensive build and the excellent use of a PIC 18F452.
PWM Audio Generation With An AVR
[Dane] sent in his sweet AVR hack. He used the PWM output to play pre-recorded audio output. It’s not very high quality, but it could be useful for adding low cost audio feedback to your projects.
$20 Mini-dvd Player LCD Hacking
[Jeff] sent in this nice how-to on gutting the 2.5″ LCD from a $20 mini dvd player. After removing the player hardware, he shows where you’ll need to tap the circuit to feed it composite video. Looks like just the thing for those portable console projects.
DMX Light Control For Home Automation
Generally, the only time I’ve ever seen DMX in use is for stage productions. [Dan] sent in his home light control project – he used a RS-232 to DMX interface and a bunch of commercial DMX dimmers. His light switches were replaced with potentiometers connected to the system via CAT5 cabling. The POTs send 0-10v up the line to the dimmers, and the manual control can override the automated(DMX) settings. The system is simple, robust and responsive – avoiding the delay pitfalls usually incurred by systems like X10.
Monday Retinal Extra
Look ma, it’s my retina. Here’s a short collection of hacks to make yours happy.
[Brian] sent in this odd collection of information he calls the open source biohack kit. The info is interesting, but everything is inside a giant zip file. I think it could benefit from a better online presentation.
[insomartin] sent in a simple design to create a USB piezo drum pad controller. The parts count is pretty low and the drum pads are created using the usual DIY piezo speaker sensor.
[Emilio] sent in his Nokia phone turned SMS remote control project.
[Ian] over at diylife put together a handy USB analog gauge interface.
[Jock] sent in something similar, but this time the project uses gauges from a car for driving games.
In order to continue mocking Boston, [doug] sent in his moononite project.
DIY Actuated Ball Valve
[Derek] sent in this electric ball valve he built for his bio-diesel reactor. If you haven’t checked, the commercial versions are pretty expensive. His solution was to mate a salvaged saturn wiper motor (sans control board) with a polypropylene bolted ball valve.
Oh, and happy birthday to me.
Cellular Data Controlled Robot
[Jatinderjit] sent along the latest in LEGO robotics. The cell phone controlled robot. It’s based on a LEGO Excavator kit with a few spare parts via ebay. The controller is a Nokia phone running a small webserver. A PIC 24F microcontroller runs the show as it receives commands via the phones IR interface. The phone uploads images from the on-board camera as fast as it can update it. Think of it as a poor mans mars earth rover.
FYI, This puppy made engadget while I was working it over, so the site might get a bit overloaded in the near future.
