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Hackaday Links: January 2, 2012

January 2, 2012 by 27 Comments

The worst computer keyboard, ever

[Gerardus] found an old BBC Master Compact computer for $15. The only problem is the computer didn’t have a keyboard. It’s not a problem if you can make a keyboard out of an old breadboard. It’s not a Model M, but it works.

Emergency ribbon cable repair

[Thomas] works in a hospital. One night, a piece of equipment went down because of a bad ribbon cable. Doctors were yelling at him to get the equipment up and running so out of frustration, he took stapler to the cable. It held up until a replacement arrived. Check out these pics: one and two.

Nobody remembers Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland

Here’s [Alan]’s gigantic Nautilus art car with a huge mechanical iris. Just watch the video and be amazed. We won’t hazard a guess as to how much money went into all that brass and copper, but we can confirm an Arduino controls the iris. Check out the build page.

Light up street art

[Grissini] put up an instructable for a light box that displays [Bansky] street art. We’d go with some RGB leds and a [Keith Haring] motif, but more power to ya.

A theater wind machine

This wind machine was built by [Willaim] for his High School’s choir concert. It’s basically a concrete form tube with plastic lids taped on and a piece of pipe serving as an axle. The machine makes a wind noise with the help of some nylon pants.

Hackaday Links: December 25, 2011

December 25, 2011 by 13 Comments

Ah, Christmas. That wonderful time of year when you can roll out of bed to the screams and wails of children, grab a hot cocoa, and spend several hours arguing with an 8-year-old about which LEGO set to build first. Simply magical. While you’re waiting for the Doctor Who Christmas special to come on, settle down with these wonderful Christmas-themed builds that came in over the last few weeks.

One step closer to Robot Santa

Here’s an interesting way to spice up your seasonal headwear. [Mark] took a Santa hat and added a string of multicolored LEDs to the brim. The lights were picked up at a drug store for a dollar. Control is through a simple push button connected to an ATtiny13. Press the button, the lights cycle in a different pattern. Very cool, so check out the video.

A holographic holiday tree

[Auger] posted this very cool light up Christmas tree decoration on Instructables. This tree is made up of three pieces of acrylic. Different designs were laser cut into each piece of plastic – candy canes for the ‘red’ piece, stars and tinsel for the ‘yellow’ piece, and the tree for the ‘green’ piece. LEDs of the respective colors are cemented to the bottom of each bit of plastic. It’s called light piping and is used everywhere. This is the first time we’ve seen three colors, though.

This is what nerds do, and it’s awesome

[Rickard Dahlstrand] was playing around with his phone trying to take deliberately fuzzy pictures of his tree. He noticed the dashes produced from the LED Christmas lights must be produced from PCM dimming. Going through the EXIF data in the picture, he found the exposure time was 1/17th of a second. 1/17 of a second = ~ 58 ms / 5 (cycles on the picture) = ~11 ms per cycle = ~100 Hz frequency on the PCM dimming. Of course this is just about 2 times the line frequency in [Rickard]’s native Sweden, so we’ll call this confirmed. There’s no blog post for this, but we’ve never seen a clearer example of applied geekery. Simply awesome.

Yeah, we measured [Rickard] on a nerd meter

In the spirit of giving, [Johannes] decided to tell the entire world exactly how nerdy he is. He built a ‘Nerd Alert’ meter out of an old 1950s Japanese multimeter. The old guts of the meter were chucked, and a simple amp made out of a transistor amplifies the current flowing through the user’s fingers. A neat scale ([Johannes] measures somewhere between Amiga Workbench and Space invaders) replaces the old, boring, number-based one. Again, no write-up, but here’s some awesome build pictures.

Finally a use for all those old radio tubes

[AUTUIN] took apart a vacuum tube with a blow torch and a diamond cutting wheel. Surprisingly, he was able to put it back together, but not before making a wonderful Christmas ornament. There are two copper wires inside the envelope that are the leads to a single orange-red LED. The whole thing is powered by a watch battery. We’ll be sure to reference [AUTUIN] next time we have to take apart a glass bulb, because he managed not to burn, cut or blind himself.

Six things in a links post? It’s a Christmas miracle!

[Darryl] sent in a nice tool to select and display all of the hacker/maker merit badges available from Adafruit. Oh, we’re still trying to figure out who to give 10 badges to. We’re giving away skull ‘n wrench badges to the top ten hacks ever featured here. Leave a note in the comments, or tell us who should win.

Holiday wishes

Now put the computer down and go spend some time with your families, or failing that, strangers. Of course there’s an all day Doctor Who marathon, and that thing isn’t going to watch itself…

Hackaday Links: December 21, 2011

December 21, 2011 by 19 Comments

The “Little Drummer Boy” On a Scanner and Drum:

There’s little more information on this hack, however, it’s quite interesting seeing an automated drum and a scanner playing a familiar Christmas tune.  Check out the video of the duet in action!

A Radial Engine Model:

Through the process of experimentation, two “radial engine models” were produced.  The engine model shown above uses a gear-reduced motor to power it.  The other model uses CNC-cut gears and a motor from an air freshener!

Tips and Tricks on Repairing LCD Monitors:

So do you have a broken LCD monitor? Using techniques described in his post, [Neoxity] claims to have been able to repair 50 out of 60 broken monitors using techniques described on his blog.

Flex Cables:

While we’re on the subject of [Neoxity’s] page, why not check out his discussion on “flex cables” used for DIY.  Like the humble resistor, they’re not glamorous, but you’d be hard pressed to find an electronics assembly without one.

Illegal Numbers:

Although not a hack in itself, the “illegal number” is a really interesting concept (mentioned by one of our readers in the comments).  Since all data and programs can, at their core, be represented by a series of 1s and 0s, this can also be interpreted as a number.  Thus, some numbers actually represent copyrighted or trade secret data that would be illegal to possess.

Hackaday Links: December 16, 2011

December 16, 2011 by 8 Comments

Free-form Christmas ornament

Here’s [Rob]’s free form circuit that’s a Christmas ornament for geeks. It looks great, but sadly isn’t powered through a Christmas light strand. It’s just as cool as the skeletal Arduino we saw.

Prototyping with flowers

Well this is interesting: protoboard that’s specifically made to make SMD soldering easier. The guys at elecfreaks went through a lot of design iterations to make sure it works.

We’ll call it Buzz Beer

The days are getting longer and cabin fever will soon set in. Why not brew beer in your coffee maker? It’s an oldie but a goodie.

Christmas oscilloscope

With just an ATtiny and a little bit of  futzing around changing the coefficients of a partial differential equation, you too can have your very own oscilloscope Christmas tree. Don’t worry though, there are instructions on how to implement it with an Arduino as well. HaD’s own [Kevin] might be the one to beat, though.

So what exactly does a grip do?

You know what your home movies need? A camera crane, of course. You’ll be able to get some neat panning action going on, and maybe some shots you couldn’t do otherwise. Want a demo? Ok, here’s a guy on a unicycle.

Hackaday Links: December 11, 2011

December 11, 2011 by 23 Comments

Drilling square holes

We’re still a bit baffled by the physics of this, but apparently it’s possible to drill a square hole with a round bit. This video shows square holes being milled using a cutter which is offset from the center of the bit. [Thanks Jordan]

LED Motorcycle headlight driven by mains

[William] found a way to use a big capacitor and bridge rectifier to run this H4 LED headlight bulb in a mains sconce lamp.

Electronic slide whistle

Here’s an electronic instrument that [Dorian] made. It uses a linear potentiometer and a button and works much like a slide whistle would.

Robot rocks out to Daft Punk

[Adrian] didn’t just make a robot arm out of CD cases and a mints tin. He built the arm, then made a music video featuring it.

More light-pipe sensor experiments

[Uwe] has been working on an input sensor using a flexible light tube. It is a similar idea to these optical flex sensors, but [Uwe] tried several variations like filling the tube with alcohol.

Hackaday Links: December 7, 2011

December 7, 2011 by 12 Comments

LED Neurons

[Alexandra Olivier] put up an art installation at Wellesley College that looks like a bunch of neurons built out of LEDs. The neurons are connected to a couple PIR sensors and ‘fire’ whenever movement is detected. The result is a lot like being inside a brain. Fitting, then, that the installation is called Social Synapses.

Last year’s big toy was always evil, though

Last year, [Andrew] had to fight the throngs of shoppers to get the must have toy of the season, a Zhu Zhu pet. Since these robotic hamster things have spent the last 11 months in the back of a closet, it seems reasonable to make them evil. They’re still not as evil as a demonic Furby….

So we call it a bifocal, right?

There’s an old photography trick for a really hacky macro setup – just turn the lens around. Well, what if you wanted automatic metering and flash control? Simple, just electrically reverse the lens. Bonus points for being able to use the lens regularly as well.

Control all the bands

Well here’s something cool: an all-in-one USB 315mhz, 433mhz, and 868mhz transceiver. What can you do with it? Well, [codeninja] can control the outdoor lights for two of his neighbors, open gates and doors, crash his weather station, and just about anything else in those bands. It’s pretty much like war driving for important stuff nobody cares about.

So this is our favorite holiday now

There’s a Dutch tradition to play Sinterklaas and make someone a present. [Jenor] decided to build an antique-looking DC voltmeter with a pair of vacuum tubes. The tubes don’t work anymore, but the heaters still provide a nice warm glow. It’s a bit large to be regularly used as a piece of test equipment, but it really does look awesome. Very steampunkey, and it’s the though that counts anyway.

Hackaday Links: December 3, 2011

December 3, 2011 by 35 Comments

Honey, would you like some cheese? WHIRRRRRRRRR

[The Timmy] broke his manual cheese grater. It would be a waste to throw away a perfectly functional tool that’s only missing a handle, so he kicked it up a notch with a cordless drill. Now [Tim], “can grate with incredible speed and power for even the toughest of cheeses.” Anyone have a broken pepper mill?

The most adorable oscilloscope

We’re not much for plugging products, but this scope is really cool. It’s designed to fit on a breadboard and is smaller than some ICs we’ve seen (68000, so yes, it is). We’re wondering why there hasn’t been a homebrew version of this yet.

Now do an R/C castle

Here’s a minifig-sized R/C LEGO car made by [brickmodder]. It has a custom drive train and steering mechanism that uses the smallest servos [brickmodder] could find. How about an R/C pirate ship next?

It’s probably an ad for something

Here’s some sort of code thing that asks the question, “Can you crack it?” Apparently, it’s for UK cryptanalyst recruiting. You won’t get a 00-designation, but woo Bletchley Park.

Inverting an inverter

[Manfred] is putting an alternative energy setup on his land. Of course he needed an inverter to charge his batteries, so he went with a highly regarded (high price) box. What he got was anything but. You’re going to need at least ten minutes to go through this hilariously sad teardown of a high quality Taiwanese inverter. Oh, [Manfred] is awesome. Just look at his microhydro plant.