This isn’t quite a traditional Hackit, but I think you guys will dig it. Here’s the challenge: Given a budget of $600, put together the best hacking workbench you can. Don’t include computers or the actual bench in your budget. Oh, and you have to spend it all.
By the way, the best five submissions will get a chance to win a secret prize that I’ll be announcing around the end of next month.
Last time, I challenged everyone to shout out with new ideas for those old TiVo boxes. The response was fantastic. I’m not feeling too exotic tonight, so I’ll make it easy: The laptop. Years ago I found an article on using old laptop screens to make an electronically dimmed window. At tie time, LCD panels were $1000 items. Today, screens and old laptops can be picked up for a song.
Since ‘Hackit’ is a new idea, I’m still working out just how I’m going to handle it. Each week I’m going to bring up some hardware. You guys get to pick your brains and suggest new, interesting projects. Every so often, I’ll tally up some of the best ideas and put up a bounty for pulling one of them off. Maybe it’ll be cash, maybe some spiffy hardware – I’ll let you know when we get to it.
So, got a better idea? Let’s hear it.
(I’m in a robot mood this week, ok?) [Wyatt] sent in his posterbot. Lacking the gift of girly handwriting, he grafted an inkjet printer onto his Roomba to make posters for him. There have been other bots to do this, my favorite being the graffitiwriter. Of course, [Wyatt]’s bot is less likely to get you arrested.
Want a shirt?
By the way, I’ve got a spare Hack-A-Day shirt sitting here. Send in a link picture of your Hackspace to the tips line. The best/worst will get some attention and the best one gets an official Hack-A-Day shirt.
I thought I’d mentioned every entry of the contest, but I managed to let one slip through the cracks. One of our favorite hardware hackers [sprite_tm] submitted this AVR ARM dev board/game console. The LCD is from a Nokia 5110. The brain is a LPC2103 ARM controller, and is designed to run a chip8 emulator.
I’ll keep this short and sweet. Fabienne, Eliot and I unanimously chose [Nuxie1]’s entry as the winner. His board is a nicely done USB PIC prototyping board. [Nuxie1] gets some sweet prizes and some bragging rights. Congratulations [Nuxie1]!
It seems that our tips line has been screwed up for the last week or so. If you’ve got something good, don’t be afraid to re-submit it.
Here’s the final batch of entries we received and considered for the Design Challenge.
[Chris] sent in a stereo amplifier (watch out for pop-ups) designed for iPods (or similar) using LM386 amps and a minimal parts count.
[Fabian] submitted this excellent tube amp. It’s based on the ECC83/12AX7 tube, and runs off a mere 12-14VAC.
[Edgar] sent in this combination PIC/AVR programmer.
Finally, we’ve got a simple PIC/EEPROM programmer by [Ian]. (view the unzipped version here)
We finally came to a decision about the winner of the Design Challenge! (But I’m not telling you until Friday.) Before the winner is announced, there are some more entries that deserve attention.
First, there’s [Henk]’s g-force meter. It’s based on an ATiny26 micro-controller, 30 LEDs to display the force and the ADXL103 accelerometer.
There’s an adaptation of the no parts pic programmer, by [Patrick].
[Evan] sent in his PIC prototyping board using the monster PIC18F4550.
I’ll have one more batch of entries later this week, and the winner will be announced on Friday. Yes really. I’m going to give it a few days just to make sure that all of our DNS issues have cleared up.
