This one came out over a year ago and we missed it. [Daqq] has made a plasma ball out of a nixie tube. All that was required was the transformer from a cold cathode meant for computers and a nixie tube. He did have to do a tiny bit of modification to the power supply, which you can see on the project page. This isn’t the most useful project, since you can’t really see much of the plasma, but it is really cool nonetheless. We think this would make a really neat button. You can see a video of it in action after the break.
home entertainment hacks770 Articles
Classy Hard Drive Speaker Set
Hard drive speakers aren’t anything new, but they have yet to be done very professionally. Most hard drive speaker hacks are awesome, but aren’t meant to be a showpiece. [Oliver] took the opportunity to put together a set of 20GB drives and a custom-built acrylic case with a horizontal VU meter up front. The project is well-photographed and documented and can be recreated without the use of laser cutters or other expensive tools. The only thing it’s missing is an iPod dock!
Related: Giant bulb VU meter
Tube Amplifier In A PSU
[Niclas] sent us his home made tube amplifier. For the case he used a computer power supply unit, took out the guts and replaced them with the amplifier board. He based this build off of an existing design but took a more minimalist approach. The wooden face plate has an on/off switch, an audio jack, and volume control. Apparently, the tubes are floating loose inside of the case. We’d recommend a more secure mounting method for these delicate parts.
Controlling An R/C Car With A Pic16F84
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hoFxx1EaN8]
[GuySoft] sent in this project. He doesn’t normally mess with electronics, but decided to give it a try. He chose a fairly complicated project to be his first, but seems extremely comfortable with it. This project was to control his R/C car with a pic16f84. That chip was chosen simply because it was the only one available at local stores. Though we’ve seen much more complicated projects in the past, he does a great job of showing exactly what has been done. He shares his thoughts and source code with us as well. He has express a little frustration about the closed source compiler he was using, so if anyone has any suggestions for him, he would probably appreciate it. The funny part is that he mentions that people would just tell him to “get an AVR”. We think the readers here will probably be happy with how he pulled it off.
Rock Band Drum Set Remake
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQhAx4l0fvs&feature=player_embedded]
We’ve seen some impressive mods for the popular video game Rock Band, from new cymbals to an air powered kick pedal, but we cant say we’ve seen someone go as far as the folks over at EDrums. They start off making their own mesh heads, a junction box to connect everything, and then a base to hold it all together. It is definitely some dedication and hard work for a setup that will only be used in the living room in front of the T.V. Check out some more video of it in action, and a comparison to the original Rock Band drum set, after the break.
Uzebox Video Player
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWWsSn_QKLM]
Everyone’s favorite open source game console, the Uzebox (also cloned as the Fuzebox), just got a new feature hacked into it – a video player. At reduced quality (8-bit color), the Uzebox was able to play ‘The Matrix’ off an SD card @ 30fps plus the audio @15kHz. That’s a pretty impressive feat when one considers it is running on 4096 bytes of RAM. The video file had to first be converted into a series of pictures through a Photoshop macro in order to be playable. A Uzebox can be built with little more than a few resistors in addition to an overclocked ATmega644P, and AD725 (which has been skirted in certain incarnations).
In-depth MAME Cocktail Cabinet Build
Recently, a friend of ours got married who is a Ms. Pac-Man fanatic. His best man set out to fulfill the groom’s dream of owning a Ms. Pac-Man cocktail cabinet. The problem is that the unit he was after was selling for $2500. It’s great to buy the real thing (and with guest contributions he did,) but if it’s not available consider building your own.
[Alex] has put together a comprehensive guide for building a MAME cocktail cabinet. Unlike the mini-cabinet we saw last week, this is intended to be used sitting down and features controls on more than one side. His guide details the use of an original arcade CRT or an LCD flat panel, high-end controls via an I-Pac 4 controller, and a PC running MAME and MaLa software for Windows. The result is a professional looking build with controls on three sides of the table.
[via Gizmodo]