The ThingamaKIT is an anthropomorphic analog synthesizer kit from Bleep Labs. Using “LEDacles”, photoresistors, knobs, and switches, it generates interesting high pitched vocalizations. Bleep Labs sent us a review unit and this article shares our experiences building and using the kit. We’ve also included a tutorial on making some hacks, modifications, and circuit bends to it. Skip to the end to see a video of our hacked kit in action.
[Rogers Gomez] has posted up this hybrid tube based headphone amplifier over at DIY Audio. Being a fan of tube amplifiers, but wanting something with lower voltage and lower cost, he put together this little system out of spare parts he had lying around. He wanted it to have as few parts as possible and be able to power his 32 ohm Grado headphones.
He states that he’d built several YAHA amps, and a Szekeres Mosfet follower and was curious how they’d sound together. He was pleasantly surprised with the resulting quality.
There are less than 30 individual components involved in the project. The complete parts list and schematics are available from the site. He notes at the very end, to unplug your headphones when powering up as there is a surge that could damage them. That might be good to know at the beginning just in case you get eager to test it out.
[Thanks, Gio]
Deogen is a small, self contained device for testing monitors. It was designed back in 2000 to reduce the amount of space and effort required to test monitors in a computer shop. The initial design used an AT90S1200 microcontroller to generate test patterns for the monitors. Being about the size of a portable CD player, it was much easier to take to any monitor and plug in for testing.
Version two of the device, pictured above, is much smaller, being about the width and height of a credit card. The depth is slightly larger than a 9 volt battery. Compared to the last vga test project we ran, this one is tiny. The unit boasts a decent set of features, such as; eight test patterns at four different resolutions, battery or DC power, and small form factor.
The processor of version two is an ATtiny2313 at 20MHz, and controls the H sync and V sync signals directly. The RGB is converted to analog using a resister network. The power circuit is custom made for low power consumption, though they note that a 78L05 equivalent unit could be used in its place.
The plans for the PCB and the software are available from their site. Head on over and check out some pictures of it in action.
[Thanks, Philip Fitzgerald]
[Scott] shot us a tip about some progress on hacking those creepy [Elvis] heads produced by Wowee. The head uses a flash cartridge to store all the data used for the motion/audio control. The cartridge uses NAND flash, so a quick solder job to an XD flash card reader yielded a useful dump of the memory cartridge – which happened to be fat32 formatted. There’s still plenty of work to do, but it seems that it’ll be trivial to replace the data with custom audio and motion commands.
[GonzoMPM-1] Has gutted an NES knock off called Super Joy III and crammed it inside of a light gun. Inspired by a daughter that loves duck hunt, he wanted to consolidate the package and make it more portable. He’s managed to pull off some nice finish, it look almost professional in the picture above. The unit is powered by 3 AAA batteries in the handle. The game system works just fine, and he claims that the controls are actually more responsive now. The light gun works as well if you have a CRT television around.
You many notice that there is no cartridge slot. There really isn’t a need for one in this mod. The Super Joy III comes equipped with 76 games on the board. He notes that he can make an external cart at some point, but may leave it off in favor of the compact design.
While he acknowledges that this is not a completely self contained gaming device, we feel it earns honorable mention for being cool.
[via technabob]
USB NES controllers are old school these days, but [Jay] put together a nice new take on the project. He shoehorned a USB interface adapter, USB hub and a USB memory stick to store his collection of NES roms and emulators right on the controller. He even dug up a black USB cable to keep the original look of the controller. Now he can just plug in and load his game selection directly from the controller.
Today, [sprite_tm] let us in on one of his pet projects. This is an inexpensive portable game platform runs about $50 and happens to use an ARM CPU and a 320×240 color LCD. Because it’s so cheap, he’s been working on reverse engineering the thing and there’s already a proof of concept homebrew version of Pong out for it.
Update: Yeah, yeah – title’s fixed.
