Robert Crumb Ghetto Hacks

August 15, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 36 Comments

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[Robert Crumb], the celebrated artist who created the commonly recognized keep on truckin, Fritz the cat, and mr natural can be seen here doing a ghetto hack. His record was warped, so he had to melt it in the oven to flatten it out. While [R. Crumb] may not be the epitome of celebrity and wealth, he got us wondering, what celebrities do ghetto hacks? More importantly, what ghetto hacks do you continue to do, even though you could afford to just simply replace the item? In case you missed the ghetto hacks thread, here it is.

Solid State Tesla Coil

August 14, 2009 by Steve Watkins 9 Comments

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While researching solid state Tesla coils we stumbled across this old project. As you have probably guessed from the pictures, this coil is meant to actually play music. Knowing how to add eye catching flare, the coiler uses a Plexiglas frame turned light pipe; only to be complimented by an audio amplifier complete with graphic equalizer. There is a video of the coil in action on YouTube. We have covered singing tesla coils in the past. Other twists on the classics include the tesla coil guitar amp and a hand held plasm gun.

Logging Weight Changes

August 14, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

scale

This is a classic example of a well done hack, simply for the sake of hacking. [Jorge] wanted to be able to chart his weight changes. His solution wasn’t to simply buy a scale that could be hooked to the computer. Those are available and aren’t really that expensive. He could have even used pencil and paper to chart it in a few seconds. Instead, [Jorge] started hacking. He took apart a digital scale he already had and installed his own circuit to display weight and write the values to a CSV. The CSV resides on a removable card which can then be put in his computer to chart the data in openoffice.

Giant Bulb VU Meter

August 8, 2009 by Eliot 20 Comments

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The latest Inventgeek project is a 12 outlet control box. They decided to demo it using a giant bulb based VU meter. The control box has 12 individual outlets hooked up to two layers of six solid state relays. [Jared] notes that SSRs can be very expensive, but he purchased his on eBay for ~$10 each. Wiring and installation on this project is incredibly clean and they plan on using the control box for future how-tos. The simple audio circuit used for the VU is based on the LM3915. You’ll find full plans on the site or you can watch the overview video embedded below.

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Paintball Turret Plans Released

August 3, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 20 Comments

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[Jared Bouck] is on a roll this week. We just covered his Diamond thermal paste and now he’s got more for us. To celebrate the re design of his website, he has released the plans for the paintball turret. As you may recall, we absolutely loved this design when he originally showed it to us. Though he has had kits available for a while, he has finally put the plans up for download. You can cut your own parts and build it yourself. He mentions that version 2 is coming shortly, we wait with bated breath.

1wire Attic Cooling

July 31, 2009 by Steve Watkins 28 Comments

blower

[RagingComputer] built this 1-wire attic cooling fan. He’s using an Ubuntu server loaded with OWFS to control everything. The 1-wire temperature sensor is interfaced using USB while a serial x10 module sends out commands to be received by another x10 module near the fan. Back in the day we had covered a linux home automation project. We also covered HVAC hacks such as the smart attic fan and a 1-Wire HVAC monitoring system.

1-Wire HVAC Monitoring System

July 29, 2009 by Steve Watkins 10 Comments

1-wire hvac control

The 1-Wire HVAC monitoring system is for residential Geothermal HVAC systems. This project utilizes the so called 1-wire temperature sensor. A single board computer handles the brunt of the work including web accessible trend data. With access to the underling temperatures, the over all system performance may be gauged. Earlier this year we covered a HVAC web enabled monitor that adds an element of control. As the industry adopts modern control architectures, we hope to see more HVAC hacks around.