this is really fantastic.  christiana yambo over at censtron wanted to show us how to make a wave vessel — a television-turned-audio oscilloscope machine.

their documentation shows you how to take an old television set and hook it up to your stereo for audio/visual effects the likes of which most people only see in winamp.  a switch on the side of the tv allows you to choose between two visualization modes.

you can see a video of the wave vessel in operation on their site, complete with a ‘you spin me round’ dead or alive soundtrack.  my opinion: pete burns looks much better on the wave vessel.

Continue reading “Wave Vessel: Audio Visualization” →

hackaday reader john young writes:

This is a beautiful hack.  Australian grad student Scott Mitchell turned a (pedigreed, as it turns out) sixties desk lamp into a parabolic microphone, a la Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation.”  If that movie had spy-desk-lamps, that is.

the result is a really nice looking, covert, directional mic with integrated amp.  the cmoy amp circuit that is used is described in detail and scott does a really nice job of seamlessly integrating the power led, volume control, and  headphone socket into the lamp.  awesome.

Continue reading “Covert Desk Lamp Mic” →

a couple folks sent this in (thanks!)–if you have an xm direct and want to use your pc to control it (and record with some of the apps that allow that) here’s a way to do it without paying $40 to $50 for the cables currently being sold, this one comes in at $15 and it’s a pretty simple project. nicely done jcdillin.

Continue reading “Making Your Own Xm Commander Cable” →