Finally, A Quiet Xbox 360

December 23, 2008 by Eliot 25 Comments

coolers

Frustrated by the constant din of his Xbox 360, [Janne Ström] took action. The original case wouldn’t have near enough room for the additional cooling that needed to be installed, so he picked up Lian Li’s XB01 case replacement. He followed the illustrated disassembly guide to get the Xbox stripped down to just its motherboard. He then began fitting his coolers of choice: two massive Noctua NH-U9D0 units originally intended for AMD Opterons. The asymmetric heat sinks are intended for applications like this where dual sockets could make other devices difficult to place. Clearly the hardest part of the installation was applying an appropriate amount of thermal compound and then slowly tightening the hold down screws to guarantee even pressure. The resultant system ended up being quieter than the first camera he attempted to record it with and the attached power supply. You can see a video of it below.

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Wiimote Driven Motion Effects

December 22, 2008 by Eliot 5 Comments

[vimeo 2515709]

Check out the video above by [Adrien Mondot] for a extensive demonstration of eMotion being used with a Wiimote. eMotion is a physics based visual tool for the Mac. It’s designed to enhance performances by reacting to real world motion. Its grounding in physics makes the resultant motion appear more natural than if they were arbitrarily generated. The video above combines eMotion with the output of Wiimote Whiteboard, a low-cost interactive white board that uses the Wiimote camera plus IR light pens. While the video takes place in a small area, we can see how this could be scaled to a much larger space with IR lights mounted to performers.

[via CDM]

WiFi Streaming Radio

December 19, 2008 by Eliot 9 Comments

wifiradio

[Jeff] is continuing to work on his WiFi streaming radio project and is now into part 7. The reason it’s taken so long is because he’s bothering to document every single piece of the system instead of assuming too much of the reader. The core of the system is an Asus WL-520GU wireless router. It is supported by OpenWRT and has a USB port for use with an external audio card. mpd, Music Player Daemon, is used for playback. This latest part features adding an LCD display for the current track. The router board already has points for the serial port, so it’s just a matter of adding an AVR to talk to the LCD. The next step is building a simple user interface and then boxing everything up. You can view a video of the display below.

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Modifying R/C Frequency

December 19, 2008 by Caleb Kraft No comments

rc_mod

Cheap radio controlled toys can provide countless hours of amusement, especially when friends have one too. You can’t always plan ahead enough for everyone to have a different frequency and sometimes, it just isn’t an option anyway. There is a solution, and it isn’t very difficult. [frickelkram] takes us through the process of changing the frequency that the toy runs on. He starts with the simplest way, which involves replacing one piece in the controller and simply adjusting the receiver. He notes that this often fails as the receiver just isn’t built to be adjusted easily. He continues to show how to get it done even if the first method fails.

Digitally Assisted Billiards

December 10, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 29 Comments

pool

[Justin] sent in his Digitally Assisted Billiards project. Using a web cam, a computer and a projector, these guys have set up a system that shows you the trajectories of your current shot. It detects the angle of the cue and displays a glowing blue line showing where each ball would go and where the collisions would be. It is a bit slow right now, and made somewhat less accurate by a low resolution web camera. This could be a fantastic teaching tool if it were to get some more polish. The source code is available on the site, so you could try this one out at home.

22″ Binocular Telescope

December 9, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

binocular

This is the worlds largest known visual binocular. Why binocular and not just a regular telescope? Well, it all has to do with clarity. Apparently when you can use both eyes, you can see much more detail and pick up light better. The author states in one story that he was able to see a spiral galaxy clearly with a binocular telescope, but couldn’t see it at all with a monocular telescope of the same power.

There is information on several models on the site. Look in the right hand column as well for useful links to parts distributors.

[via Hacked Gadgets]

Simple Laser Projector

December 8, 2008 by Eliot 21 Comments

laserscanner

[kap4001] built what has to be the simplest laser scanner possible. It’s two servos strapped together with zip ties plus a 5V laser module. They’re connected to a Pololu serial servo controller. The laser is pulsed by switching the DTR line. You could use it to draw images like the one above… except that’s an 85 second exposure.