Hackaday Links: January 24, 2011

January 24, 2011 by James Munns 34 Comments

New Project Hosting site

[Paul] wrote in to tell us about his brand new hack hosting service, HackHut. Based on WordPress with some modifications, it is definitely worth keeping an eye on as new features emerge.

Instructabliss

Speaking of project hosting, Instructables are a common source of projects as well as complaints. Instructabliss by [Daid] is an often mentioned solution in our comments, and we thought we would bring it up so commenters don’t have to. We understand why it was made and think it was a clever hack, but we don’t officially endorse it. We survive on Ad revenue, if someone were doing this to us, it would hurt. We’re also not sure about the legalities of such a service, so keep us updated.

Grass Burning Robot

[Sebastian] brings us his grass burning, flame throwing robot. This robot takes in SVG files to create its burn path, and burns away. Not too many details, but be sure to check out the photos on his site.

[via Make]

Hackaday Links: January 2, 2011

January 2, 2011 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

DIY driving controller

It looks like this steering wheel, shifter, and foot pedal were all made from string and garbage. That being said, you can see it works quite well. The setup just pushed keys on the keyboard, which reminds us of the junky plastic add-ons for the Wii remote. [Thanks Toumal]

Taping PCI express

[Pseudolobster’s] company was putting together point-of-sale machines for a retailer. They had surplus computers which really brought the price down but ran into a snag when adding the second monitor. The boxes wouldn’t play nicely with PCIe 16x. His solution was to scotch tape pins 19-82 on the cards, effectively turning them into PCIe 1x… and it worked! No link here but we wanted to share the trick anyway.

USB character display

[Simon Inns] shows how to add a character display to a PC case. We’ve seen him work with these PIC 18F2550 controllers several times before but we like how nicely this piggy-backs the display board seen in green.

Hackaday Links: December 26, 2010

December 26, 2010 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

Obligatory tech tree

It’s hard to let a Christmas go by without looking in on a geeky Christmas tree project. Luckily, [Peter Davenport] decided to share his Arduino and LCD shield tree.

Blinking USB dude

If you’ve got a 555 timer and some commonly salvageable components give this blinking LED man a try. The version above is USB powered but that’s just to take advantage of the 5V regulated power.

Propeller business card

[Jay’s] business card is packing quite a punch with this Propeller microcontroller. We love seeing electronics design in cards (however unrealistic the price and portability may be), and this is a big processing upgrade compared to the Tiny85 based offering.

Flying high in NYC

We leave you with a spectacular view of New York City. This breathtaking footage is just as fascinating as the first videos we saw from these folks.

Hackaday Links: November 28, 2010

November 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

The Clock Clock

This digital display is made from several analog clocks with thick hands. Together they make something of a 7-segment display, which can be used to display the time. It reminds us of the “Shared Time” installation we covered previously. [Thanks Drum365 via Anonimiss Files]

Quickly desolder lots of parts

[Rhys Goodwin] is grabbing parts from junk PCBs but he’s not using a rework station. Instead it’s a hot-air gun and a brisk tap on the bench to send the parts flying. Well, at least he’s not using a blow-torch like [Ben Heck] does.

Binary Hero

This bank of 8 toggle switches is the controller for Binary Hero, a geeky take on Guitar Hero. When you see a decimal number come down the screen set your toggle to the binary equivalent in time or the game will be over before you know it. [Thanks Fabien]

Quick fan POV

[GMG] took a small persistence of vision board and slapped onto an oscillating fan blade. Along with a couple of magnets on the safety cage this display is a persistence of vision hack you can pull off in an hour or two.

Speed up laser etching

[James] figured out a way to cut down on the time it takes to etch multiple copies of one item with a laser cutter. It doesn’t run the laser faster, but orients the pieces in a way that means less movement of the head while the laser is not on. Read through his article and see if this method can help you out when doing some CNC work.

2010 Hacker Gift Guide

November 17, 2010 by Joseph Thibodeau 28 Comments

You’ve probably been fantasizing about getting amazing gifts this December, like robots with servo-mounted laser pointers and authentic battle damage. It’s time to realize that it’s unlikely that this will happen. Stay calm. You can still get sweet hacky things if you just forward this gift-giving guide to your friends and loved ones.

Join us after the break to see what we want and be sure to let us know what you’ve got your eye on.
Continue reading “2010 Hacker Gift Guide” →

Some Weekend Robot Goodness In Link Form

November 6, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

PBS Newshour did a piece on robots. They talked about NASA’s bot pictured above, Asimo, Big Dog, PR2, Robbie the robot and a few others. We didn’t see anything new, but we really do like the coverage getting out there. We also never need an excuse to watch that guy kick big dog around for a while. We know it’ll only be a matter of time before the tables are turned.

Willow Garage, the folks behind PR2, are conducting a survey to see what your favorite robot is. Their list is pretty short, but they did leave a spot for you to add a name. The picture above, is not from willow garage though. This is the picture I got from BotJunkie (we love this site) where I found this story. They didn’t attribute the artist, but I feel they need credit, it is an awesome shirt.

It turns out that it is a t-shirt design available at the chopshopstore. You can see that their eyes are done in glow-in-the-dark material. On a side note, the hackaday store just got glow in the dark material yesterday(as well as a re-design) and will be announcing several new designs in the near future.

I personally inherited several huge boxes full of sci-fi pulp. The robots I’ve seen in these are amazing, ranging from amazingly ridiculous to amazingly awesome. I’ve only just begun scanning in the covers, and plan to post at least one a day. You know what would be awesome though? If I had one of these.

Even More Halloween Links

October 31, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

We know you just got a links post a couple hours ago, but more people tipped us off to some great Halloween stuff and we just couldn’t wait.

[Michael] came up with this fantastic idea for a flying ghost. He’s using a twin prop tilt rotor design to fly his ghost all over the neighborhood. It has a camera mounted on board and the footage is both fascinating and, toward the end, quite funny. Nothing beats chasing children down the street in first person from a flying ghost.

[Trey] wrote in to show off his 47 foot wide spider. He made it himself out of black painters plastic that he heat welded together using a heat gun. In the video you can see his victim, a dummy mounted on a salvaged rotissierie.

[Floe] has been thinking about this one for quite some time. He finally decided to build his flame throwing jack-o-lantern, a concept we approve of. Using two servos, one to start a pilot light and one to spray a travel deodorant, it is pretty simple. He used a ceramic jack-o-lantern so it would be sturdy enough, and marginally less flammable.

Here’s a safer Jack-o-lantern for you. [Paul] wrote in to show us his LED synchronized Jack-o-lanterns. While they may not be ground breaking, we just love seeing that logo out in the wild. Maybe we’re just egotistical, maybe those toothpicks just brought back fond memories. Why didn’t we ever run that Jack-0-lantern carving contest? Oh well, maybe next year. You can see a video of it in action after we get it uploaded correctly to our youtube channel.