Today I’m jonsing for my mig welder that was lost during a move. Remember the microwave oven foundry? If you’ve got a few old ovens around, you can gut em and build an arc welder. The transformers generate the voltage, and an SCR circuit makes the arc adjustable. Of course if arc isn’t your style, you can build your own TIG welder. Since you can score an arc for $150-300, but a TIG costs more – I’d go TIG.
SMS VCR Remote
You guys love those erricson phones. Mark sent in this SMS VCR remote control. I guess it’s an alternative to a TiVo, or handy for those one man sting operations. I started poking around the site and discovered a few more interesting projects. The toilet telemetry was a bit odd. I want the duck taped kitchen timer for my espresso bar.
Canon DSLR Serial Control
We’ve seen diy shutter remotes before. Canon’s digital SLRs allow control of the camera over USB. Unfortunately they limited the exposure time to 30 seconds via USB control on some of them. To get around it, several (amateur) astronomers have built a serial interface to exploit the remote shutter control port normally used for accessories.
Hack-A-Day Mini-extra
Eric sent in his aux-in jack for his factory oldsmobile radio. We seen similar stuff before, but the implimentation is clean and simple.
I can’t read Czech, but [Dzinn] sent in some interesting looking lens mods for a Gsmart LCD3 digital camera. The mod is clean and allows SLR type lenses to be used in place of the original (fixed?) lens.
[Dheera] sent in the latest in uses for blue LEDs – a classic building window 6×6 matrix display.
I dug up some more cool tube projects. The Altoobs – a altoid tin based ham transmitter. Too bad the power supply is freakin huge.
I was looking for one of these the other day. This hybrid (solid state + tube) headphone amp is portable, running off of 12V. The site is loaded with headphone amp designs.
Ion System Cooling
Jared sent us his latest inventgeek project. We love their work, and this one’s really unique. By combining the ion cooling, lots of heat sinks and ram drives, the machine is truly silent. Ion buildup isn’t just a problem for space ships anymore.
Tube Headphone Amp
I built a chu moy headphone amp a while back, but tube amps are getting my interest. Chu Moy released a nice writeup of a tube based headphone amp. Ironically, tubes are easy, getting the right transformer is the issue these days.
More Keyboard Lighting
[sfriswolker] sent in his progressing black keyboard lighting mod. The first version used a CCFL. When that burnt out, he rebuilt it with LEDs. [google english transations – part 1 and part 2]
