home hacks

1891 Articles

IPhone Look-alike On Your Kitchen Wall

January 23, 2010 by 37 Comments

[Ryan] and his wife wanted to have a touchscreen interface in the kitchen to store their recipes and for various music, video, and Internet entertainment. We know where they’re coming from, we’re quite tired or cleaning flour (or worse!) off of our palm pilot screen after baking. The display you see on the wall is just the interface, a computer is stored in the cabinet below the counter. He’s running Windows 7 and using a custom graphic interface which is intended to mimic the looks of the iPhone. He’s sharing the UI as open source and has just started a forum for those interested in trying it out and adding to the available features.

One thing we noticed in his writeup, he prototyped this with an old 2 GHz computer but upgraded the hardware because it was too slow. This pushed to total build price to about $1350 USD. We can’t help but mention that using a Linux based system may have saved him from the upgrade. We know there’s some extremely powerful media software that runs on light hardware specs.

[Thanks Hannah]

Ideas Based On Photo Frame Clock

January 23, 2010 by 28 Comments

[Mahto] bought a digital picture frame but the image quality turned out to be terrible. He decided to turn it into a clock in a unique way. He loaded up 720 images, one for each minute in a twelve hour period. He then used an Arduino to simulate a button once a minute, cycling to the next image.

This is a simple solution and it works. Visions of hardcore hacks danced through our head when we first looked at this. We’re wondering if there is a way to inject image data into the frame’s memory? How about rewriting the SD card location where the image file that’s currently being displayed is stored, then having the frame reload the picture? Those are projects for a snowy weekend, but we’re sure that [Mahto] finished this hack long before we would have because he kept it simple.

Sooner or later we’re going to need a category for all of these clock hacks.

[Thanks Drone]

Hack Together A Coffee Roaster

January 22, 2010 by 14 Comments

For most people, making coffee entails taking a couple scoops out of a can of pre-ground coffee, adding water, and pressing “Go” on the drip machine. To others coffee brewing is an artform, and want as much control over the process as possible. For those without an overflowing bank account for a home roasting machine, Evil Mad Scientist Labs have put together a general guide for throwing together a Coffee Bean Roaster and cooler (which is apparently just as important as roasting) from a low cost hot air popcorn popper. The home roasting scene is even big enough to warrant its own Wikipedia page, which also mentions using a popcorn popper as a bean roaster.

The guide includes some great simple circuit diagrams to keep in mind when hacking your own, as well as a good explanation why you shouldn’t just clip out the heating coil for cooling mode.

Coded Entry Using Your Wristwatch

January 21, 2010 by 24 Comments

[Ziyan] and [Zach] built a door entry system that uses a code entered from your wristwatch. They’re using the TI eZ-430 Chronos that we saw in November. There is a project box mounted over the deadbolt lever. Inside, the wireless fob waits for the watch to connect. When a watch has connected and the correct code is received (using 128 bit encryption) the fob actuates a servo to turn the lock. On the user side of things the code is entered by tapping the watch. The built-in accelerometer picks up these taps and relays them to the door unit.

It’s a heck of a project! Check out their demonstration video after the break. We’d like to see a mechanical option for escaping the apartment in case the door unit fails but otherwise we think this is perfectly executed. We’re looking forward to seeing more projects that tap into this TI hardware.

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Buzzle: A Morse Code Puzzle Box

January 21, 2010 by 11 Comments

[lucasfragomeni] built the Buzzle after being inspired by the reverse geocache puzzle. The Buzzle was built as a gift to a friend. It’s a tricky gift too. His friend can’t open it until he decodes the words being displayed in morse code via an LED. A word is chosen at random, so you would have to decode it each time you want to open the box. That’s a pretty neat security feature. Sure it’s not the most secure, but it would keep casual peepers out. Unfortunately, the box was empty when his friend received it.

SheevaPlug PBX

January 20, 2010 by 25 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIcTWya7TQA&feature=player_embedded]

[Greg] has been working on a version of Debian/ FreePBX/ Asterisk for people to be able to drop onto a SheevaPlug. If you haven’t seen it, the SheevaPlug is a tiny computer housed in a wall plug. They made some waves when they were announced last year, and we’ve spoken of them several times. [Greg] is offering up the operating system in a pre configured format for SD cards so you can just download it and drop it in your SheevaPlug. Yeah, there’s a little bit of work to do before it will boot, which you can see in the video above.  Thanks for sending this in [Greg], keep up the good work.

The Most Complicated, And Simplest Binary Clocks.

January 18, 2010 by 19 Comments

We were going to take a break from posting clocks. Really we were. This one came in the tip line today though, and we just couldn’t pass it up. [Alex] has built, what might be the most complicated clock we’ve seen. At least, it would appear that way initially. This Binary clock shows Hours, Minutes, Seconds, Days, and Months. He started with a picaxe, but eventually settled on an Mbed. Yes, he knows it is overkill, but it worked out pretty well.

As for the simplest, that came into our tip line as well. [Toby] sent this in, and agrees with us that it is hardly worthy of being called a hack. However, in light of the complicated one above, we didn’t see any harm in posting its opposite. Check it out after the break.

Continue reading “The Most Complicated, And Simplest Binary Clocks.” →