Geodesic Dome Shelter From Cardboard

February 10, 2006 by 17 Comments

geodesic dome

Here are some really thorough instructions for building geodesic domes. This particular set of plans was developed by some Burning Man attendees who wanted a comfortable structure that would stand up to the elements. The dome is made of 30 triangles cut from double layered cardboard, 5 wood triangles with vents, 5 wooden doorway triangles, and 5 cardboard doors. The majority of the triangles are bolted together to form pentagons that are then bolted to each other. With all of the triangles painted and seams sealed with duct tape the structure is water proof. All of the dimensions and assembly instructions are provided to create a dome 12’7″ in diameter and 6’3″ in the center.

[thanks l0cke]

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Power Glove Mouse

February 9, 2006 by 14 Comments

power glove

Feeling a bit nostalgic, Hack-A-Day reader Brandon has been hacking on a Nintendo Power Glove. The original Power Glove was sold by Mattel as a unique controller for the NES. It used ultrasonic sensors to determine orientation and could detect four different positions per finger. The finger’s resistance varies depending on how much it is bent, so Brandon used an LM339 comparator to determine the mouse clicks. For the actual mouse interface he used the guts of a Gyration mouse. He’s got a video of the beast in action plus links to an original Power Glove ad.

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Hack-A-Day Extra

February 9, 2006 by 18 Comments

playstation 2 linux kit

I told my friend that I would promote his radio show, but we would probably DOS the streaming server. He said, “Go for it!” If you are interested in dance/electronica, listen to You are so beautiful, beautiful robot every Thursday, 7-9PM CST. Click for the live stream.

[Sean Hillmeyer] notified us that DC480 will be handling the TCP/IP Enabled Contest at Defcon again this year. The contest rules are on their site. We saw at least one of the entries last year.

It has been nearly a month since I put one of these posts together. Which means our Team Hack-A-Day folding team has produced over 12.5 million points and are now in the top 50. Watch out team “Linux”?! Continue reading for lots of links.

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AccelR8, A Homemade G-meter

February 8, 2006 by 11 Comments

g-meter

Jesper has created an automotive performance meter using a handful of ICs. The key chip is the ADXL202 from Analog Devices. It measures acceleration while the AVR 8515 keeps track of time and does all of the calculations. All you need to do is enter the weight of the vehicle and the meter will calculate your 0-60 mph time, 60-0 braking distance, and maximum horsepower. There is a complete schematic on Jesper’s site, but the code still needs to have a few bugs worked out. This project is essentially a reproduction of the first generation G-TECH/Pro meter (bunnie has a picture of the original board). The new generation G-TECH meters are fun to play with and do interesting things like determining the engine RPM by measuring the noise in the electrical system.

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3D Board Modeling With Eagle And POVRay

February 7, 2006 by 15 Comments

eagle 3d

Sometimes the two-dimensional layout of a circuit board doesn’t tell the whole story so Matthias Wei?r created Eagle3D. Once the board is laid out in EAGLE you export it using the Eagle3D tool. The tool has predefined parts that it then uses to render the board in 3D using POV-Ray, a free ray-tracing program. There are a lot of parts included already, but you can define more using POV-Ray’s Scene Description Language. Using POV-Ray you can also make 3D movies your board

Air Cooled Mouse Pad

February 7, 2006 by 13 Comments

air cooled mouse pad

Jared and Dan from Inventgeek have just posted their latest how-to: The air cooled mouse pad. They know that there are air cooled mice that you can buy, but why should you have to use an inferior mouse for gaming just for one feature? They decided instead to convert an Antec laptop cooler into the ultimate gaming mouse pad; One that keeps your hand cool and lets you use whatever mouse you prefer.

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The Mac Minitosh

February 6, 2006 by 15 Comments

minitosh

Hack-A-Day reader [Lee Olivares] stuffed a Macintosh Plus full of new hardware without butchering the case. From the original test fit he could see that the Mac Mini’s DVD slot lined up well with the original floppy slot, so it just needed to be widened a little bit for clearance. The monitor is black and white, but a separate VGA port has been split off for an external monitor. The original motherboard was cut down so that the original power switch and ports could be used. Any new ports were hidden behind the battery cover.

[thanks Lee and Adam]

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