Motion Controlled Reddit Vote Sign.

April 27, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 14 Comments

A little while back I attended the largest east coast gathering of folks from the ever popular social news site, Reddit.com. Those of you familiar with Reddit already know that it is all about link aggregation. Users post links to interesting websites and material, and can then vote up or vote down content based on interest or relevance. Through the magical site algorithms original and interesting content is, as implied, aggregated up to the front page. The whimsical nature of this big DC event lead many people to furnish signs of all types based on the culture of the site, internet memes, etc… The signs that really caught my attention were based primarily on the stylistic site layout, blowing up mail icons and other Reddit specific graphics.

The concept of using site graphics gave me the idea of being able to personally vote up or down other peoples’ signs. It was far too easy to just make a cardboard arrow, and I don’t have a color printer. I happened to have a shelved coffee table project involving orange and blue LEDs. Same colors as the arrows! Sweet. To make this project work I would have to work entirely from my project pile, there simply was no time to order anything from the internet. I managed to crank out a functional up/down voting sign in 3 days leading up to the gathering (and the morning of), here is what I did:

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Can Crusher Keeps Track Of Your Recycling Efforts

April 25, 2011 by Mike Nathan 27 Comments

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Instructables user [MRHint] was inspired by his friends’ recycling efforts, and decided to start recycling as well. The one thing he noticed was that they typically had no idea how many cans they had stored up, nor how much their bags of cans weigh. He figured that he could somewhat automate the crushing process while keeping an accurate can count using a handful of electronics and some elbow grease.

He started by designing a can crushing rig that would use an old windshield wiper motor he had sitting around the house. The motor is connected to a pulley, which drives a set of threaded rods connected to his movable crushing panel. When the motor is started, the panel is drawn against a stationary board, crushing the can.[MRHint] also had an unused Arduino hanging around, so he used it to control the crusher as well as keep track of how many times the crusher had been run.

From what we hear the whole setup works pretty well, but as with any project he sees plenty of room for improvement. Future changes may include a more powerful motor and a chain/sprocket setup in place of the belt and pulley he currently uses. Do you have any other suggestions for [MRHint]? Let us know in the comments.

Portal Turret Plushie Is Cute And Harmless

April 25, 2011 by Mike Nathan 16 Comments

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As many of you are probably aware, Portal 2 was released last week, and gamers have been going crazy over it. Over the years, people have constructed replicas of their favorite in-game items and “characters”, including portal guns, companion cubes, and turrets.

After playing Portal 2 for a bit, [Jonathan] wanted a turret of his own quite badly. Rather than construct it from hard plastics and resins however, he decided he wanted to construct a cuddly turret that talked.

With the assistance of his friend [Leigh Nunan], he is now the proud owner of a plushie turret. It’s a bit smaller than you might expect, but it is packed full of turret personality. The plushie plays audio from the game, can sense motion near its face, detect if it has been tipped over, and also knows when it has been picked up. [Jonathan] added all of these features by stuffing an Arduino inside the turret, along with a wave shield for playing sounds. Proximity and motion sensing are provided via a trio of different sensors, enabling the turret to behave in the same way its in-game brethren do (minus the machine guns).

It really is a neat little toy, one we would no doubt be glad to have around. Keep reading to see a short video of his plushie turret in action.

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The Vibrotron

April 24, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 18 Comments

Behold the Vibrotron! Constructed by the Carnegie Melon University robotics club, the vibrotron is a piece of a larger project called the robOrchestra. The mechanics in action here are quite simple. You have two reservoirs of small steel balls. One at the bottom, one at the top. The bottom ones are fed to the top ones using an Archimedes’ screw. Once at the top, they are dispensed through some tubing down to plink off of a vibraphone key. All of the timing is done via solenoids mounted at the end of the tubes. The final product reminds us of the Animusic animations that were put out a few years ago.

For this system, since they wanted this to be an automated and reconfigurable bot, they are using an Arduino to control the solenoids. This way they can change songs as they please. We have to admit though, we’d love to see one where the timing for the song was all done through tube length or some other passive system allowing it to be hand cranked and purely mechanical.

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Mini LED Message Board Built From Retro Displays

April 24, 2011 by Mike Nathan 19 Comments

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[Iain] is getting to the point in his life where he finds himself waxing nostalgic about various different technologies from his youth. One item he has always been fond of is first generation 7 segment consumer LED displays, like those found in old calculators.

He was excited to find one of these displays at the bottom of a box full of electronics odds and ends he received from a friend. After identifying the display and tracking down a data sheet online, he decided that he wanted to build some sort of little gadget out of it.

His first inclination was to build a tiny text scrolling gadget from the display, and thus his “Personal Electronic Retro Telegram” (P.E.R.T) was born. With Arduino in hand, he prototyped the circuit on a breadboard, then sent away to have some PCBs built. Once he received the boards, alll of his prototyping components were swapped out with SMD versions, including a TQFP ATMega168 chip in place of the full-sized Arduino board.

The final result is a nice melding old and new technology which he decided to give to his girlfriend as a gift. Continue reading to see a quick video of the P.E.R.T in action.

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Beat707 Takes It’s Cue From A Vintage Drum Machine

April 22, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 19 Comments

We always like musical hacks at hackaday, so we were pleased to see the team at [Beat707] come out with their Beat707 MIDI groove box.

The Beat707 takes it’s inspiration from the venerable Roland TR-707. Like the Roland, the Beat707 can save songs and has MIDI In and Out. Unlike the TR-707, the Beat707 doesn’t have an audio out – it’s purely MIDI based. Don’t think of that as a drawback, though. Just connect the Beat707 to your favorite softsynth and start jamming out.

The Roland TR-707 was heavily used by acts like the Chemical Brothers, Aphex Twin, and the Cocteau Twins. Because of this history, the popularity of the TR-707 has exploded over the past few years, and getting a hold of a real TR-707 has been an expensive proposition. While rebuilds of vintage synths like [Ladyada]’s TB-303 clone, the x0xb0x have been around for a while, we’re pleased that more projects are paying their dues to the great music machines of the 1980s. Do any hackaday readers want to tackle an 808 or 909 for their next project?

Video of the Beat707 after the break.

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Rule Your Furnace With This Network-enabled Thermostat

April 22, 2011 by Mike Nathan 13 Comments

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Adafruit forum member [Stephanie] embarked on a mission to replace the thermostat in her home with one that was far more robust and full of electronic goodies.

Her goal was to build a networked thermostat that allowed for 2-way communications between the base station and any other networked device, such as her laptop or iPhone. She wanted to not only be able to monitor her furnace and air conditioning systems remotely, but to control the units from afar as well.

The brains of the thermostat have changed throughout the project, becoming simpler as time went on. It is now controlled with just an ATMega328 mounted to the back of an LCD display with a Wiznet network module where an Adafruit Ethernet shield used to reside. The thermostat shows the current temperature, set temperature, and time on the front mounted LCD, the latter of which is provided by a Chronodot module. It also has an on board LED that can be seen from afar, indicating whether the heat or air conditioning is running,

Right now the thermostat can be controlled at the unit itself, or remotely using a Telnet session. [Stephanie] is currently happy with the setup, but future plans include creating an iPad application to provide a more user-friendly interface.

If you are interested in learning more, or building one yourself, be sure to swing by her blog for a far more in-depth look at the build process.