Automotive Current Monitor

December 16, 2009 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

If you’ve ever had a car with an electrical system problem you know how hard it can be to pin-point the source of your woes. Here’s a hackery solution that uses a diy PCB to monitor the current being drawn off of the alternator.The sensing is provided by an Allegro ACS758 integrated circuit. This chip measures current up to 150A and outputs an analog signal that can be measured by a microcontroller. In this case an AVR ATmega8 measures the signal and spits the info back to a PC via the serial port. This data can be graphed to help locate when too much current is being drawn for the battery to remain charged.

Check out that CNC milled PCB, what a beauty!

[Thanks Joshua via Elektronika]

Embedded Games: Rogue

December 12, 2009 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Here’s a handheld version of Rogue. Rogue is one of the first graphical computer games and takes the player through a dungeon-exploring adventure. [Manuel] built this around a PIC 16F876 microcontroller and a KS0108 graphic LCD screen.

Hot on the heels of the pixellated Mario game, these embedded handhelds make for fun projects and great gifts. There are few parts used and [Manuel] etched his own PCB. Take a look at the schematic, this is a great platform to start with but the sky’s the limit on writing your own games.

FPGA Driver For PSP Screen

December 12, 2009 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

Friends are constantly giving us their old electronics. We love it because our junk box is a never-ending pile of possibilities. We’re really starting to amass a collection of LCD screens that are not easily interfaced and this project gives us some hope for the future. [Philip] has been posting about using an FPGA as a driver for a replacement PSP LCD screen.

Many projects source cell phone LCD screens that have their own driver chip that can be addressed over SPI for use with a simple microcontroller. More complicated screens need a more involved control scheme and this is where the Field Programmable Gate Array takes over. [Philip] lays out the steps he’s using to implement his controller, from setting up the correct voltage levels, to planning for coordinate addressing, and even some of his follies with reverse current. We think this would be a great way to introduce yourself to FPGA projects.

WiiMote + IPhone Update

December 10, 2009 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

Using a Wii remote as the controller for iPhone games? Brilliant! We’ve been waiting to see some creative usage of this pairing since we covered it back in August. [ZodTTD] is the person who ported MAME over to the iPhone. Now he’s added support for the Wii remote in Mame4iPhone via the BTstack project. BTstack seeks to add Bluetooth stack functionality to devices that don’t have it or where it is limited (the iPhone).

We’ve embedded video after the break of the WiiMote used to play a MAME game. [ZodTTD] is also the author of nes4iPhone, we hope that’s the next project he will add BTstack support to!

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Robot Hands You Your Ass At Beer Pong

December 9, 2009 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

Guess who built this contraption? You’re right, college students. But as much as we like to make fun, the subject of Beer Pong is our addition, not theirs. The device uses an air stream that can be directed along two axis to control and sort ping-pong balls.

Unlike the lethal ping-pong ball launcher, the goal here is elegant control of the ball. They’ve achieved a great success. Watch the video after the break to see balls sorted into beakers by color, transferred to vessels over a large distance, and navigated through an elevated obstacle course. To give us a hint of what you can do with this, we see the machine controlling an apple, an onion, and a water bottle at the end of the video.

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Ionocraft Aka Lifters

December 8, 2009 by Mike Szczys 40 Comments

It’s hard to believe that in five years we haven’t covered lifters before. This realization was sparked when [Tyler] tipped us off about a lifter project demonstrated at the Kansas City hackerspace called CCCKC.

Lifters, the casual name for ionocraft, fly without combustion or moving parts. We’re not going to tackle the particulars of what makes flight possible, but high voltage is required to feed the phenomenon that provides the lift. One of the first comments when we asked what to do with old CRT monitors was to use them for lifters. The flyback transformer puts out plenty of voltage if you can tap into it without killing yourself (no, seriously, that’s an issue).

This is the method that the CCCKC folks used. Take a peek at the video after the break. If you’re thirsting for more fun with lifters, stop by the Lifter Project.

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Simple Liquid Dispenser For Auto-cocktails

December 7, 2009 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

[Qdot] came up with a simple way to dosing out liquids to use in his Bartris project. As you can see above, flexible tubing is connected to some inverted bottles that house the liquid. A chopstick is attached to a board on one end, and via string to a servo on the other. When the servo turns it pulls the chopstick tight against the board, cutting off the flow of liquid through the tubing. This isn’t as elegant as the system the Bar2D2 uses but it’s a heck of a lot less expensive.

You can check out some of the build pictures in his Flickr pool. He’s included this concept in a project he calls Adult Mario. Watch the video after the break but the quick and dirty is that the more coins you score in Super Mario Brothers, the more beverage is rationed out into your cup. Ah, human lab rats, is there nothing they won’t do for booze?

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