[Vincent] on the EEVblog forums had an idea for an inexpensive resistor substitution decade box.
The build uses cheap decimal thumbwheel switches he bought on eBay. Each switch is wired up with resistors for each digit, and each switch is wired up in series. The result is a small, easy to read resistor box with a range of 1 Ω to 10 MΩ.
When we first covered [Markus]’ portable SID player we starting dreaming about an alternative universe circa 1987 that included a pocket-sized music player called the Commodore ePod. [Markus]’ updated firmware that connects his SID player to a PC will have to do for now, we suppose.
Continue reading “Followup: Portable SID Player Is Now PC Output”
[Jeri Ellsworth] has been working on a direct conversion receiver using an FPGA as an oscillator and a PC sound card DSP. Being the excellent presenter she is, she first goes through the history and theory of radio reception (fast forward to 1:30), before digging into the meat of the build (parts 2 and 3 are also available).
[Nathan] got his hands on a chipKIT Uno32 development board and wrote a Pong sketch that you can play with a VGA monitor. We love the hardware that makes this feel very much like the classic. It uses a collection of resistor-based digital to analog converters to generate the color signals for the VGA protocol. The score for each player is show on a 7-segment display instead of being printed on-screen. And the paddles are made up of a pair of potentiometers.
You’ll remember that the chipKIT Uno32 is an Arudino compatible 32-bit development board. This project shows how the hardware handles, and how easy it can be to generate VGA signals with it if you know what you’re doing.
For those interested in the game physics themselves, [Nathan] provided a nice explanation about ball movement at the bottom of his post. If you need even more details, dive into the code package that he links to.
[RB] at Embedded Lab sent in a great guide on how to control appliances with a remote control using a really clever implementation of a decade counter and IR receiver.
The build itself is very simple – just a relay connected to mains power and a handful of resistors and transistors. The device is controlled with a decade counter and an infrared module usually found tucked away in the bezel of a TV.
When everything is plugged in, the first pulse from the remote switches the relay on, providing power to the outlet. When a second pulse is received, the reset pin on the decade counter is activated, setting the device back to its original off state. It’s a pretty clever build, and could be built with parts lying around the bench.
The project is powered through wall power with the help of a transformer and a 7805 regulator, but we think the size could be reduced with a pass-through power enclosure – the circuit certainly is small enough. In all, a very nice, low component count build.
[Niklas Roy] sent in a project he just completed called PING! Augmented Pixel. At first glance the entire build is just a plain jane retro video game stuffed into an ATmega8 but looks can be deceiving. The video game is actually an augmented reality device that inserts a pixel into a video feed. The bouncing pixel can be manipulated with a camera – push the pixel and it goes off in another direction.
The project runs on an ATmega8 clocked at 16 MHz, and reads the video feed with the help of an LM1881 sync separator. There’s no schematics, but he thankfully included some code for his project. Everything is set up for PAL video, but this could be easily adapted for NTSC. Any Hack A Day readers want to take up the challenge of building this from just a description?
[Niklas] says there’s no reason this couldn’t have been done by Atari in the late seventies. There were economic reasons for not putting out a video camera controller, of course, and the R&D department may have been too busy playing Breakout with their eyebrows.
Check out the demo of the augmented pixel after the break.
Continue reading “Augmented Reality Game Could Come From The Seventies”
One thing we can all probably agree on is that Tesla coils are one part high-voltage electricity and two parts pure awesome. [Rob Flickenger] thinks so too, and he built a pretty nice one in his workshop some time ago. He took a bunch of pictures showing off the coil’s capabilities, but he thought that one photo taken from a single angle didn’t do much to relay just how fantastic it is to watch a Tesla coil in action.
Taking a cue from the Matrix movies, he bought a stack of Canon point and shoot cameras and constructed a bullet time rig in his workshop. In order to get the pictures just right, he flashed each camera with a customized version of the CHDK firmware that allowed him to trigger all ten shutters with a single button press. A few scripts help facilitate collecting all of the images for processing, after which he identifies the good shots and stitches them together. You can see the awesome results in the video below.
[via LaughingSquid]
