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Hackaday Links: January 13

January 13, 2012 by 18 Comments

An 8×8 LED Matrix Game Grows Up:

[Pixel Land] is an iPhone game similar to [Super Mario Brothers] using a virtual array of 8×8 pixels. This wouldn’t normally be interesting, but we’ve actually featured “this” game as an 8×8 LED matrix game.

How to Drill Golf or Ping-Pong Balls:

Drilling golf or ping-pong balls is not easy.  This simple drill press fixture makes that job easier and repeatable. So the next time you want to make lots of diffusers for your LED board, this might be a good device to consider!

The PICkit 2:

If you’ve ever wanted to get into PIC programming, possibly the PICkit 2 would be for you. [Ray] has written a review of his first experiences with setting it up and programming.

Mr Bitey is hungry for resistors!

Is light industrial machinery a hack? It’s a hard thing to define, but if so [Mr. Bitey] would meet the qualifications.  It also meets the qualifications of having a great video, and name, so be sure to check it out!

A [Snap Circuits] Programmable Robot:

The robot pictured above on [Instructables] was built using [Snap Circuits], with parts that literally snap together. A neat concept, this construction set seems to fall somewhere between traditional Legos and push-in breadboards.

Hackaday Links: January 10, 2012

January 10, 2012 by 14 Comments

They can put a man on the moon, but they can’t put a man in LEO

Yeah, we’re enraged by that headline. Anyway, NASA put up a whole bunch of projects and made them open source. From the looks of it, there’s plenty of cool stuff: genetic algorithm libs, toolkits for astrodynamics simulations (on the Goddard site), and this cool thing.

Nyan all the disks!

[brainsmoke], a hacker over at revspace, made an assembler version of nyan cat that can be placed on the bootloader of any disk. Just a reminder that you shouldn’t mount everything out there. We learned that lesson the week we discovered a penicillin allergy.

It’ll replace the Buffy poster.

[Anthony Clay] has been working on a set of EE posters that he’s putting up as a Kickstarter. They’re Ohm’s Law, resistor calculator, capacitance, and inductance posters that would look great above any workbench. He’s looking for ideas for other posters, so drop him a line and vote for the 7400 logic poster. All of them.

Ooooohhhh MIDI sampler

A while ago, we saw this neat MIDI Arduino shield. The Kickstarter reached its funding goal (there’s still time left!), but now [Keith] writes in to tell us that the AvecSynth library is platform independent. You could use this to record and play back MIDI messages. MIDI tape delay, anyone?

Open mind, not mouth.

With the success of the Stanford AI class last year, it looks like MIT is really getting their head into the game. Think of it this way: it’s MIT opencourseware that can lead to credentials. Now the only question is, ‘how do you prank a virtual campus?’

Hackaday Links: January 5, 2012

January 5, 2012 by 23 Comments

Now make it life size

Here’s a scale model of the classic Playstation game Wipeout. It uses quantum levitation, superconductors, liquid nitrogen, and incredibly detailed models of the cars in Wipeout. They’re able control the speed and direction of the cars electronically. Somebody get on making one of these I can drive. Never mind, it’s totally fake, but here’s a choo-choo that does the same thing. Thanks for the link, [Ben].

Found a use for eight copies of Deep Impact

Where do you keep all your wire? [Paul] keeps his inside VHS tapes. It’s one of the most efficient ways of storing wire we’ve seen, just don’t touch those VHS copies of the original Star Wars trilogy.

There’s MAME machines for pinball?

MAME arcade machines are old hat, but we’ve never seen something to emulate pinball. The build uses two LCD monitors, a small computer and PinMAME. There’s videos in the build log; tell us if we’re stupid for wanting to build one. Thanks go to [Adrian] for sending this one in.

LEGO binary to decimal conversion

[Carl] is doing a few experiments to see if it’s possible to build a calculating machine out of LEGO. He managed to convert four bits of binary into decimal. We’ve seen a LEGO Antikythera mechanism but nothing on the order of an Analytical Engine or some Diamond Age rod logic. Keep it up, [Carl].

Lubs and Dubs that aren’t for dubstep

The folks at Toymaker Television posted a neat demo of heart rhythms emulated with a microprocessor. It cycles through normal sinus rhythm, atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, and everything else that can go wrong with your heart. We know some nurses that would have loved this in school.

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.