A Nicely Designed Stereo Tube Amp

August 2, 2014 by Mathieu Stephan 23 Comments

Most of the work that [Ron] has done in the past with vacuum tubes and solid state electronics has been repair. At 59 years old, he finally put together his own stereo tube amplifier and we have to admit it definitely has an awesome look.

The platform is built around the well-known 6V6 beam-power tetrodes which are mostly used by major audio brands for their guitar amplifiers nowadays. The Dynaco 6V6 circuit based PCB was bought from China and minor changes were made to it. The amplifier uses one transformer to convert the US 120VAC into 240VAC and 9VAC, the first being rectified by a glassware PS-14 power supply while the later is converted regulated at 6.3V for the tube heaters. The output stage consists of two Edcor audio transformers (one for each channel) that converts the high voltage for its 8 ohms speakers. The home-made chassis provides proper grounding and as a result you can’t hear any background noise.

We are very curious to know if some our readers have been experimenting with glass tubes for audio applications. Please let us know your experience in the comments section below.

Hijacking Chromecast With The Rickmote Controller

July 28, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

rick-astely With a simple $35 dongle that plugs right into your TV, it’s possible to enjoy your favorite TV shows, YouTube channels, and everything else Chromecast has to offer. Being a WiFi enabled device, it’s also possible to hijack a Chromecast, forcing your neighbors to watch [Rick Astley] say he’s never going to give you up.

The rickmote, as this horrible device is called, runs on a Raspberry Pi and does a lot of WiFi shennaigans to highjack a Chromecast. First, all the wireless networks within range of the rickmote are deauthenticated. When this happens, Chromecast devices generally freak out and try to automatically reconfigure themselves and accept commands from anyone within proximity. The rickmote is more than happy to provide these commands to any Chromecast device, in the form of the hit song from 1987 and 2008.

Video demo of the rickmote below, along with a talk from ToorCon describing how the hijacking actually works.

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A 7″ Touchscreen TV Remote Control From Scratch

April 14, 2014 by Adam Fabio 26 Comments

[Jason] always wanted a touchscreen TV remote control. He could have pressed an older Android tablet into service, but he wanted to roll his own system. [Jason] gathered the parts, and is in the process of building his own 7″ touchscreen setup. He started with a 7″ LCD capacitive touchscreen. He ordered his display from buy-display.com, a Far East vendor.

[Jason’s] particular display model comes mounted on a PCB which includes controllers for the display and touchscreen, as well as some memory and glue logic. The LCD controller board has quite a few jumpers to support multiple interfaces and options. While the documentation for the display was decent, [Jason] did find a few errors. After getting in touch with tech support at buy-display, he wrote a simple application which determines which jumpers to set depending on which hardware interfaces are selected from drop down lists.

With the LCD sorted, [Jason] still needed a processor. He selected the venerable Microchip PIC32MX series. This decision allowed him to use a Fubarino for the early prototypes, before switching to his own board as the system matured. [Jason] was able to get a simple GUI up and running, with standard remote buttons to control his TV and cable box. Code is on his Github repository.

[Jason’s] most recent work has centered on cutting the cord. He’s switched over from DC power to a 2600 mAh LiPo battery. Click past the break to see [Jason] test out his fully wireless work in progress.

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Magic Screwdriver Decides If You Watch TV Or Not

March 31, 2014 by Rich Bremer 8 Comments

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Video projectors are great. They can easily produce a very large image to watch. With that large image comes a large screen, and who wants to look at a large screen when not watching TV? Well, [Steve] didn’t either so he set out to make a powered retractable screen for his projector. The best part about this one is that it is done in true DIY/hacker fashion. The parts used are definitely not intended to be used as anything close to a projector screen and the overall cost is kept to an absolute minimum.

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The BitBox Console Gets Upgraded

February 23, 2014 by Eric Evenchick 16 Comments

The Bitbox, an open source game console, has received a number of updates in the past couple of months. Last time we covered this DIY console, [Makapuf] had just managed to get the first revision to run a simple game. The second revision will increase the colors to 32k, add another channel of sound for stereo, switch controllers from PS2 to USB, and add support for Olimex’s UEXT expansion devices.

While the hardware upgrades are impressive, there’s been a lot of work on the Bitbox software as well. A new game demo called Fire was created as a set of tutorials to help people start developing for the console. There’s also a BitBoy, a GameBoy emulator for the Bitbox. BitBoy is a ported version of gnuboy for the ARM Cortex-M4 processor that powers the Bitbox. It successfully emulates a number of commercial GameBoy ROMs.

We’re looking forward to seeing what’s next for the Bitbox. After the break, check out a video of BitBoy running on the Bitbox.

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SoundCube: A Companion Cube That Can Talk

February 23, 2014 by Marsh 2 Comments

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The Enrichment Center likely disapproves of the SoundCube: a portal music box in the form of a Portal Companion Cube. [Andreas] finished this project a couple of years ago, but we’re glad he’s finally had time to give a rundown on the details at his blog.

The build is primarily a modified speaker box cube—constructed out of what appears to be MDF—with four Alpine SXE-1725S speakers placed at the center of the middle faces. The faces were routed out to resembled the Companion Cube, while the electronics mount and the speaker grills were 3d printed. Inside is a homemade amplifier built around an Arduino Mega, with a TDA7560 quad bridge amplifier, a TDA7318 audio processor, a Belkin bluetooth receiver, and a 3.5″ touchscreen for volume control and for input selections.

Two 12v 7.2Ah lead-acid batteries keep the cube functional for an entire weekend of partying, but probably add a few pounds to the already hefty MDF construction. Check out [Andreas’s] blog for more pictures and his GitHub for all the necessary code.

HTPC For Lunch

February 18, 2014 by Marsh 14 Comments

xbmcLunchbox

If you’re hungry for a portable HTPC (Home Theatre PC) solution, maybe packing everything into a stylish mini lunch box is the way to go. [tomhung] wanted a quick and easy way to drag his media around while he’s away from home, but in an intentionally portable, self-contained enclosure, and the Star Wars lunch box provided plenty of space for the necessary guts.

Inside, he’s stacked the RasPi and a USB hub on top of one another. Each is mounted to its own platform made out of plastic DVD covers, and kept separate by standoffs carved from what appear to be the casings of inexpensive plastic pens. The stack also includes a 250GB 2.5″ HD, which [tomhung] simply attached with velcro for easy removal. The cables underwent minor surgery to keep the rat’s nest under control, and although the interior may still cause cable management enthusiasts to cringe, the exterior of the box cleans up well for its evening out. [tomhung] fit a simple 6-port keystone wall plate to the face of the lunch box to provide simple connections for all the important plugs.