[sophia] sent in this interesting little video of a USB popcorn popper. It might just work too – we’ve burned our digits a time or two on a hot flashlight. The bottom is a jar lid, fitted with a pair of high intensity flashlight bulbs. These are wired directly to a USB cable (maybe a bit unwise). When plugged in, the bulbs are on and heat the metal container. Just add oil and popcorn… As usual, you can catch the video after the break.
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Optical DJ Controller
[Adrian] sent in this sweet little optical DJ controller. The ‘turntable’ was made from a CD and an encoder wheel created with a laser printed transparent overhead sheet. You can score some optical gear from a spare mouse, or just buy the parts. A PIC18F452 encodes everything into a midi signal. You can find a good photo of the schematics here. And you can hit the demo video after the break.
Laser Exposing PCB Resist
[andre] sent in his first attempt at using a HD-DVD laser diode to expose photosensitive resist to create PC boards. We’ve been meaning to give this a shot with the ol’ Epilog laser cutter. For the test, he coated the board with some resist and hand exposed it with the laser. Finally, he etched it with some sodium hydroxide.
Programmable AVR Thermostat
This nifty thermostat is actually built from just a few off the shelf components. A Dallas DS1820 1-wire temperature sensor provides and an Olimex ATMega development board. If you’re not so handy with the soldering side, you can pull this one off. The device can be programmed by the button cluster and will even output status via the serial port.
Use Junk To Measure Your Caps And Coils
[Cliff] sent in [N5ESE]’s junk box project page. Most of the projects are amateur radio specific, but one that caught my eye was his capacitance checker
RouterTerm: Atmega Serial Terminal
[Adam] sent in the RouterTerm. It’s an ATMega8 with an LCD, PS/2 keyboard input and a 16×2 LCD. No source/schematics yet, but he claims that he’ll get around to it if enough people ask. It was built specifically to talk to an Edimax BR-6104KP router with Linux on it.
Hackit: Network Attached Storage?
With each passing day the rate we acquire digital media increases (we don’t even bother unpacking our CDs when we move anymore). Large publishers have started moving away from DRM, which means we’ll be buying even more digital media in the future. Acquiring all of this nonphysical property puts importance on not just making it easily accessible, but also protecting it from destruction. Slashdot asked for reader suggestions of what NAS to buy; we’ve compiled some of the options below and want to know what you use.
