Electronic Vuvuzela

July 13, 2010 by 27 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHsgRuAKJdQ]

Want to annoy fellow fans but  don’t have the lung power to do the job? [Hunter’s] electronic vuvuzela is just the thing you need. The plastic noisemakers were so prevalent at the world cup this year that some folks came up with audio filters to remove the sound. The electronic rendition is much smaller, using a 555 timer to mimic the instrument on a small speaker. [Hunter’s] build has buttons for five different notes which can be altered with some potentiometer. There’s no schematic but then again for something that’s annoying you don’t want to make it too easy to replicate.

Update: Hunter added the schematic to his site which spell doom for those who enjoy peace and quiet.

Vuvuzela Removal

June 15, 2010 by 41 Comments

We’re hearing complaints everywhere about the noisemakers called Vuvuzelas during the world cup. Whether you are a fan of the sport or not, you can appreciate when a fellow hacker gets annoyed and start hacking. [Tube] has created a software filter that manages to remove the sound of the Vuvuzela from the videos. He shares the process of how it was all created, using Logic Express and a Mac mini (Google translation). Maybe this will also provide some relief from the constant stream of Vuvuzela whining as well.

[via DVice]

Monitor UV Exposure With Your Sunglasses

May 12, 2010 by 20 Comments

Tired of those awful sunburns? [Nikko Knappe’s] UV sensing glasses will warn you before you become crisp and red as a lobster. The bump added to the bridge support hides a TSL230R light frequency sensor. The device automatically switches on when the arms are unfolded and starts tracking cumulative exposure. If it detects a rising UV level, or you are about to burn based on skin type, an LED inside one arm of the frames will flash to inform you.

This has some potential if you think David Brin’s Earth outlines how climate change is really going to play out. Either way it’s still fun and we give bonus points to [Nikko] for disguising the lilypad that controls this as a flowery hair-pin.

Naval Academy’s AUV Team Project

April 13, 2009 by 10 Comments

auv1

[Daniel] sent us over to the blog for the Naval Academy’s Autonomous underwater vehicle entry for the AUVSI competition. You can follow along as they design, build, and test this years entry. It really looks like it would be fun to be the guy who gets to swim with them, like in the latest post in their blog. Their entry, named “Awkward turtle” can be seen above in orange, pictured with their 5th place winning previous entry.

Uv Oven From An IKEA Cabinet

October 23, 2008 by 7 Comments

This may not be an amazingly complicated project, but it is a very elegant and fairly cheap way of building a UV oven for exposing PCBs. [aris] started with an IKEA FIRA cabinet. He basically left the framework as an empty shell and made a make shift top hinged door to enclose it. Mounted in the top is an array of 35 UV LEDs powered by an HP printer transformer.  He did not have a timer circuit, instead he just watched the clock and unplugged it at the right time. You can see from his pictures that his results were quite good.

If you don’t want that piece of furniture taking up room, and don’t mind using a little more elbow grease, you could follow our directions on how to make your own single sided PCB. If money isn’t an issue either, you can always just get your PCBs laser etched.

UV Light Table

January 14, 2008 by 14 Comments


[Jared]’s back in action over at Inventgeek. Now he’s got an odd use for an old LCD: creating an ultraviolet light polarizing table. He gutted the LCD and swapped out the CCFL lams for some UV versions. The result isn’t much more than an interesting conversation piece, but it’s nice to see a use for screens that would otherwise end up in the recycle bin.