Hackaday Links: November 2, 2014

November 2, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

Russians blowing up capacitors! As we all know, electronics only work because of blue smoke. [kreosan] is releasing this blue smoke from a few hundred caps. Fun times, even if they are a large number of inert tube shields in their collection of caps.

[mayhugh1] over on the home model engine machinist forum has built an 18 cylinder radial engine. It’s based on the Hodgson 9-cylinder radial engine that has been around for a while. The crank case is machined from a 5″ diameter rod of aluminum. There’s a Picassa album of the engine being constructed as well.

[Richard] wanted a Minecraft server, but not just any Minecraft server; this one demanded a custom case. A grass block was the inspiration, acrylic the medium, and a quad-core Mini-ITX the guts of the project.

Halloween was last Friday, and as always the tip line filled up with costume builds. [Leif] built a Ghostbusters costume complete with Muon trap, [Jeff] printed out some ~~steampunk~~ post-apocolyptic goggles, and [Green Gentleman] made a death-a-corn, although we’re struggling to figure out why the last one isn’t called an acorn-‘o-lantern.

[Matthias Wandel], a.k.a. the woodgears.ca dude, is well-known in certain circles for being a wizard of wood. One of the first projects that put him on the map was a pantorouter – a router to cut mortises and tenons. He’s going back to his roots and building a bigger version. This version uses models of routers that are available outside North America, and in the latest video [Matthias] has it dialed in very well.

The Open Source Remote Control was an entry for The Hackaday Prize that didn’t make the final cut. It’s now an indiegogo project, and has some really cool tech we can’t wait to see in mainstream RC transmitters.

Hackaday Links: BSAPEDWLOVKTUB.YBKAB

October 26, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

Here’s something that’s just a design study, but [Ivan]’s Apple IIe phone is a work of art. You’re not fitting a CRT in there, but someone out there has a 3D printer, an old LCD, and a GSM module. Make it happen. See also: the Frog Design Apple phone.

A few days ago we posted something on an old ‘286 machine that was able to load up the Hackaday retro site. For a few people, this was the first they’ve heard about our CSS and Javascript-less edition designed specifically for old computers. They dragged out some hardware, and [WTH] pulled up the site on a Dell Axim.It’s actually somewhat impressive that these machines have SD cards…

[Arduino Enigma] created a touchscreen Enigma machine. Why haven’t we seen an Arduino Colossus yet?

The crew at Adafruit now have a Flying Toaster OLED, which means we now have flying toaster bitmaps for all your OLED/graphic display projects.

[Ian] had an old rackmount programmable voltage standard. This was the remote programmable voltage standard, without front panel controls. No problem, just get an Arduino, shift register, and a few buttons. Video right here.

A few months ago, [Jan] released a neat device that stuffs a modelling synth inside a MIDI plug. He’s selling them now, and we’d love to see a few videos of this.

Hackaday Links: October 19, 2014

October 19, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 26 Comments

Introducing the Hayes Smartmodem 1200. The era of the single station microcomputer…. is over. The Hayes Smartmodem offers advanced features like auto answer and auto dial. Now if we could only find an ‘RS-232 Computer.’

Have a 3D printer and an old router? How about controlling your printer with Octoprint? For some cases, it might be better than using a Raspberry Pi and OctoPi, but you won’t get a camera for streaming pics of your builds to the web.

Last year, [CNLohr] built a microscope slide Minecraft thing and in the process created the smallest Minecraft server ever. The record has now been bested with the Intel Edison. There’s a bit of work to install Java, but the performance is pretty good for one player. Bonus: Minecraft is a single threaded app, so you have another core for garbage collection.

Remember the Scribble pen, that showed just how gullible people are and how crappy tech journalism is? They’re back with a beta program. A mere $15 guarantees you a scribble pen for their beta program. I wouldn’t give these guys $15 of someone else’s money, but lucky for us [ch00f] bit the bullet. He’ll be updating everyone on the status of his fifteen dollars, I’m sure.

Hey, guess what will eventually be in the Hackaday store? Keycaps for your mechanical keyboard. Yes, we actually figured out a way to do this that makes sense and won’t lose money. Pick your favorite, or suggest new ones in the comments:

BSAPEDWLOVKTUB.YBKAB

Hackaday Links: October 12, 2014

October 12, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

Remember in the late 90s and early 2000s when everything had blue LEDs in them? Blinding blue LEDs that lit up a dark room like a Christmas tree? Nobel prize. There’s a good /r/askscience thread on why this is so important. The TL;DR is that it’s tough to put a p-type layer on gallium nitride.

Have a Segway and you’re a member of the 501st? Here’s your Halloween costume. It’s a model of the Aratech 74-Z speeder bike, most famously seen careening into the side of trees on the forest moon of Endor.

[Andrew] needed something to do and machined an iPhone 5 out of a block of aluminum. Here’s the video of icon labels being engraved. The machine is a Denford Triac with a six station auto tool changer. He’s running Mach3, and according to him everything – including the correct tooling – cost far too much money.

Another [Andrew] was working the LEGO booth at Maker Faire New York and has finally gotten his LEGO Mindstorms Minecraft Creeper build written up. Yes, it’s probably smarter than your average Minecraft Creeper, and this one also blows up. He also had a physical version of the classic video game from 1979, Lunar Lander. Both are extremely awesome builds, and a great way to attract kids of all ages to a booth.

[Wilfred] was testing a titanium 3D printer at work and was looking for something to print. The skull ‘n wrenches was a suitable candidate, and the results are fantastic. From [Wilfred]: “Just out of the printer the logo looks amazing because it isn’t oxidized yet (inside the printer is an Argon atmosphere) Then the logo moves to an oven to anneal the stress made by the laser. But then it gets brown and ugly. After sandblasting we get a lovely bluish color as you can see in the last picture.”

The folks at Lulzbot/Aleph Objects are experimenting with their yet-to-be-released printer, codenamed ‘Begonia’. They’re 2D printing, strangely enough, and for only using a standard Bic pen, the results look great.

Everyone is going crazy over the ESP8266 UART to WiFi module. There’s another module that came up on Seeed recently, the EMW3162. It’s an ARM Cortex M3 with plenty of Flash, has 802.11 b/g/n, and it’s $8.50 USD. Out of stock, of course.

Hackaday Links: October 5th, 2014

October 5, 2014 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

Good news from CadSoft this week. They didn’t miss all the complaints about their decision to use a Node Lock License for EAGLE 7. This had meant that users of the popular PCB design software would be limit on how many machines they could use the software with a license. They have removed License Management from the package (and all the citizens rejoiced).

We’re tripping over the growing pile of hardware that boast the “next-big-thing” in getting devices onto a network. That’s not a complaint at all. This time around it’s a cell chip, the U-blox SARA-U260, which can connect to 3G on the AT&T network and is just 16x26mm. They call it world’s smallest but we have no idea if that’s true or not. Anyone have a source and/or pricing for these? [Thanks Austin]

This guy loves his Nixie tube. How much? To the extent that he built up a hardware and software interface that behaves much like a pet. It’s voice activated, and the infectious delight of [Glasslinger’s] video demo is in itself worth watching. [Thanks Morris]

Making this Magnetic Stripe Reader work as a USB device is really nothing more than adding a serial-to-USB converter. The journey to find the way to add the converter makes for a fun read though.

We know from watching Breaking Bad that you can kill power to a building by shorting the power lines outside with a huge bouquet of mylar balloons. This installation is a twist on the idea. Connecting one mylar balloon to a Van de Graaff generator and floating it next to another results in an oscillating repel-discharge-repel cycle. [Thanks filnt via NPR]

Hackaday Links: September 28, 2014

September 28, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 46 Comments

Kyocera is vastly expanding their product lineup with the Shop Sink 3530. The perfect addition to your copiers, fax machines, and laser printers.

About a year and a half ago and with objections from the editorial staff, we did a Top 10 hacking fails in movies and TV post. The number one fail is, “Stupid crime shows like NCIS, CSI, and Bones.” A new show on CBS just topped this list. It’s named Scorpion, and wow. Dropping a Cat5 cable from an airplane doing an almost-touch-and-go because something is wrong with the computers in the tower. Four million adults age 18-49 watched this.

[Derek] found something that really looks like the Hackaday logo in a spacer of some kind. It’s been sitting on his shelf for a few months, and is only now sending it in. He picked it up in a pile of scrap metal, and he (and we) really have no idea what this thing is. Any guesses?

[Sheldon] has a teardown of a vintage voltage and current standard. Just look at those hand drawn traces on a single sided board. Beautiful.

[Art] has another, ‘what is this thing’. He has two of them, and he’s pretty sure it’s some sort of differential, but other than that he’s got nothing. The only real clue is that [Art] lives near a harbor on the N. Cali coast. Maybe from a navigation system, or a governor from a weird diesel?

So you have a Kinect sitting on a shelf somewhere. That’s fine, we completely understand that. Here’s something: freeze yourself in carbonite. Yeah, it turns out having a depth sensor is exactly what you need to make a carbonite copy of yourself.

Hackaday Links: September 21, 2014

September 21, 2014 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

Obviously the best way to show you’ve pwned a piece of hardware is to run Doom on it. This time around it’s not just a hardware hack but a security hack. [Michael Jordan] demonstrates a network vulnerability on a Canon printer by making it run Doom. [Thanks to all who sent this tip to us]

Fans of the photo-resist method of PCB etching will appreciate this Bromograph built from an old all-in-one-printer. When gutted, the body of the printer makes a nice enclosure for four UV Lamps. The treated copper clad goes face-down on the scanner glass with the printed transparency between the two. [Michele’s] early testing shows really great results.

[Tom] sent in a link to this video biography of the rLab hackerspace. It shows off the space and its members but also tells the story of a tight-knit community. We enjoyed hearing that almost everything in the space is salvaged and repaired; a great way to acquire equipment on a tight budget while also building the skills of the members.

The bulbs in projectors can be quite expensive to replace. This hack adds an RC filter to the bulb and claims to greatly extend its life. Does this really work and why isn’t it built into the projector?

[Steve Maher] built a GRBL board that is the same form-factor as a DB25 connector housing. It’s basically an Arduino derivative that includes a USB connection, a separate jack for STOP and CYCLE START switches. If you’re not familiar, GRBL is an open source project that lets your drive parallel-port-based hardware with a machine that doesn’t have a parallel port.

Finally, have you heard of the ZofzPCB program before? It’s a way to visualize your gerber files in order to perform a final sanity check before sending your deign off for fabrication. [Thanks Boldport]