Hackaday Links: March 20, 2011

March 20, 2011 by Mike Nathan 21 Comments

SNES Arcade Cabinet

[Daniel] let us know that he finished up a SNES arcade cabinet he has been working on for awhile. It looks so good, he says that his wife has even agreed to let him keep it in the house!

DIY Overhead projector beamer

[Liquider] sent us some information about a DIY beamer he built using an overhead projector and an old LCD panel. It looks like a great way to get a big-screen wall display set up in no time.

WordClock gets a makeover

[Doug] wrote in to share with us some progress he has made on his WordClock. You might remember our coverage of this creative timepiece a little while back. This time around, he has built a new control board, and is using vinyl stencils for a much cleaner look.

Interactive water fountain

[Gerry Chu] is well known for his water-based imagery and projects. His most recent project is a water fountain that interacts with passers by. There are no real build details as of yet, but we hope to see some soon.

Sixty Symbols explains why glass is transparent

Do you think you know why glass is transparent, but a brick is not? If you looked it up via Google, you are likely mistaken. A professor from the University of Nottingham explains why the Internet is so, so wrong about this, as well as how energy gap determines if photons of light can make it through a piece of glass. [via i09]

Hackaday Links: March 6, 2011

March 6, 2011 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

Omnidirectional personal transport

[Dan] sent us a link to this Honda U3-X personal transport device. It’s kind of like a Segway that can move in any direction but our head already hurts from the thought of going over backward on one of these.

How light bulb filaments were developed

Now that incandescent light bulbs are about to be outlawed here in the US, we thought you might enjoy learning how the filaments were developed. This another video by [Bill Hammack], the engineer guy, and we’re big fans of his work.

Wooden stove reflow

Who needs a PID controlled skillet when you can reflow on this wooden stove? Well maybe not reflow, this is more of a salvage operation.

Javascript control

We’ve seen more than enough Arduino controlled outlets. But if you’re interested in using Javascript to control the Arduino this post may be just what you’re looking for.

Sledgehammer keyboard

[Taylor Hokanson] built a qwerty keyboard that you hit with a sledgehammer. Enough said. [Thanks Larry]

Hackaday Links: February 27, 2011

February 27, 2011 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

Odd project materials

[Juliansr] wrote in to tell us about a site that sells bendable, moldable, stretchable, and other ‘able’ materials you might want to use in your next project.

(2 * 9V) = Flashlight

[Lasse] built a flashlight with two 9V batteries. One is a normal battery, the other has been gutted and is used as a connector and enclosure for an LED and resistor.

Ghetto flat screen mount

Don’t despair if you can’t afford a mounting bracket for that new flat screen. All you really need is a few screws and some garbage ties.

Tennis ball stand

This crafty solution to charging a phone makes sure that you’re also able to read the display. Since tennis balls lose their pressurization over time it’s a good use for the flat orbs.

Message visor

Get your message across while blocking your view of… everything with this message displaying visor. It’s like a Daft Punk helmet without the helmet.

Hackaday Links: February 21, 2011

February 21, 2011 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

PCB Stand

Part PCB, part old IC, and held together with hot glue. It doesn’t take much to make this electronics stand, but it’ll certainly add to the geek level of your desk.

Decorate with light

This busy living room is actually decorated all in white. The patterns that give it life are on lend from a projector and what we’d imagine is some fantastic software. [Thanks MDV]

Flashing butt on your bike

[Eli] sewed lights and flex sensor into her jeans. Now her butt flashes in heart-shaped patterns as she rides. She actually robbed one of the flex sensors from this project to complete that explosive high-five project.

Mini-rake’s progress

A lathe and some sand that needs tending is all that [Spatula Tzar] needed to get this zen garden rake under way. We like how she used a vacuum bag to infuse the wood with mineral oil.

Paper and electrons

This collection of musical projects forsakes common substrates and builds the mess of circuit boards on pieces of paper. Not much information but the strangeness is worth a look.

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