A leyden jar is basically just a simple home made capacitor. We’ve shown you how to make them before. This, however, is how you make a ridiculously large one. [Nickademuss] used a five gallon bucket to make his leyden jar. That’s five whole gallons of lightning. The video, which you can see after the break, shows it light up the entire room when it lets out a fairly formidable spark. This is dangerous folks, be careful.
Surprisingly, one of the most common complaints we hear from people trying out macs are the fact that there isn’t a right click. The latest version, the unibody, has an option that remedies this, but older versions are stuck without. While you could always plug a USB mouse in, that is hardly a hacker’s solution. [spiritplumber] sent us this mod he did, adding right click functionality to his Macbook Pro. It is worth noting that this is meant for the 2006 to 2008 version of the Macbook Pro. You’re on your own for different ones.
[spiritplumber] points out that there are test points on the back of the track pad that emulate certain events. One of wich, just happens to be a right click. He shows us how to wire this, to a home made contact button under the right corner of the track pad. This can be potentially hazardous to your macbook, so be careful and follow his tips for soldering. If you want, you can do the same to the opposite side for your left click, or just leave it the way it is. You can see a video of it in action after the break.
[Steve] was discussing airsoft with a friend when he came up with this idea. His friend was lamenting the lack of “action” style targets for their airsoft hobby. [Steve] took this as an opportunity to make his own automated target system. The targets themselves are made from Construx, a paper target and a piece of cloth to stop the airsoft pellets. Controlled by an Arduino and an ioBridge module, it has a web interface so he can switch programs from up range. You can see a video example of him shooting some targets after the break. Next,he should make it twitter where each target was hit.
[Steven] managed to get his hands on a Panasonic CF-R1 for pretty cheap. Though it is a decently powerful machine, it was built in 2002 and didn’t come with an internal wireless card. It did, however have a mini-PCI slot. [Steven] promptly installed a wireless card, but found the internal antenna lacking. The solution was to custom mount an external antenna. Mounting it was fairly easy, he removed the phone jack and epoxied the connector in its place. The reception was greatly improved. He says he went from seeing 6 access points to 31 as soon as he installed it. Similar things have been done to the Eee PC 900.
At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Chumby unveiled their latest prototype. It’s a network connected digital picture frame that runs Flash widgets. Just like the current Chumby model, they’re publishing the software and hardware under a license designed to let you hack it. They let us borrow one of their open chassis evaluation kits to teardown and photograph. We’ve got more pictures, full specs, and the schematics below.
[Matt] was looking into some software that allows him to use his audio card as a means to control analog audio devices. After seeing how it worked, he got an idea to try to do the opposite. He is sending a signal into his audio input, and piping it to a pice of MIDI software. The input he has chose is a foot switch. To create the signal, he simply needed to supply voltage while the switch was depressed. You can see above that he used a battery and a simple contact switch to send the signal. He then piped it to a virtual MIDI port using Maple Virtual MIDI Cable. Unfortunately, this isn’t suitable for knobs, but that may be next on his list.
[jwad650] wanted a remote controlled power strip. These are fairly expensive, with a single outlet running roughly $15. He was able to build a 6 outlet version for about $50. He is using an SIS-7c to decode signals from a universal remote. Each plug is individually controlled by a 3Amp relay. Be careful making this, there’s lots of nasty shock potential in that mess of wires. We recommend that you confine it in an enclosure as well. [jwad650] plans on adding an enclosure, as well as LED indicators and fuses. You can see a video of it in action after the break. If you want more information about working with relays, check out the working with relays writeup.
