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Nintendo Keyless Entry

December 8, 2008 by 17 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUm7daf36Mk]

The Nintendo keyless entry system will vigilantly guard your door from intruders. Enter the right code and you get access, enter the wrong code and it will deny you and take your picture. [action_owl] did a fantastic job on this lock, using mainly recycled parts like an old CDRom and an Arduino. It works both with or without the computer. If you choose not to use the computer, you don’t get pictures of the people who entered the code wrong.

We like this project, but we feel it needs to be pointed out that this lock is pretty useless. Everyone already knows the code to get in is UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A.

PS2 Controller Thermometer

December 7, 2008 by 11 Comments

ps2-temp

Finding themselves in need of a thermometer that could communicate with the computer, The Cheap Vegetable Gardener resorted to a bit of hacking. They created this PS2 controller thermometer by attaching some thermistors to the analog stick inputs. Each PS2 controller could collect data from up to four thermistors.  There is an auto shutoff feature built into the controller that shuts off the analog signal after a period of non use. To overcome this, they simply taped the L2 button down.

[thanks Shawn]

Track The Sun For Home Lighting.

December 6, 2008 by 14 Comments

sun_track

Have a room in your house that really could benefit from some sunlight? Build a Suntrack to reflect light in as long as possible. The two axis motor set up is built from a couple of  satellite dish positioning motors with the control electronics removed. The whole thing is controlled with a PIC 18f2520.  Once calibrated, it will reflect the sun into your room, updating every twenty seconds. While this may not be the most efficient way of lighting a room, it is a cool way to do it if you absolutely must have sunlight. We can’t help but wonder if there would be a way of using a solar powered system to do this to save energy. Could this possibly be done using BEAM “head” circuit?

[via Hacked Gadgets]

IPhone Controlled Dog Treat Dispenser

December 5, 2008 by 6 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L3hdPxMa_o]

[Stephen Myers] has been toying around with some beta ioBridge hardware. He decided to build a remote control dog treat dispenser. ioBridge‘s hardware is built specifically to make web enabling projects easy. The main controller board has four I/O channels that speak to addon modules. It has an ethernet port on the main board and an easy to configure website.

[Stephen] used a servo addon board for his project. The dispenser is built from a scrap CD spindle attached to a servo. He can issue commands from his iPhone, which shows live video of the kennel. He’ll be building several other automation projects based on this system.

[via TUAW]

Working With Relays

December 5, 2008 by 24 Comments

relay

SparkFun’s latest tutorial shows you how to work with relays. A relay is an electrically operated switch. In this case, they’re using it to switch a 120V AC outlet. The article carries the standard warnings about how not to kill yourself with AC (plus some non sequitor linking throughout). As an extra precaution, they chose a GFI outlet. You probably know how a relay works, but it’s worth seeing how they implemented it. They use a transistor to prevent overloading the microcontroller’s GPIO pin. The control pin is pulled to ground to keep the relay off. A diode is placed across the relay coil to manage the power flow when it discharges. An indicator LED is included to show when the relay closes. This is a great foundation for an automation project, or maybe you just want to terrorize your cat.

Intro To Charlieplexing

December 3, 2008 by 4 Comments

charlie

[sixerdoodle] sent us this nice firefly project that serves as an intro to charlieplexing. We’ve mentioned charlieplexing before, in our LED Life post and the Breath Controlled LED candles post. This project is quite simple and focues mainly on how to make a charlieplexed circuit work.

The goal was to create a tiny firefly bottle with SMD LEDs and as few wires as possible. In the video, after the break, it is hard to tell just how small this thing is until we see the battery. There are clear directions and fantastic pictures detailing exactly how to set up a charlieplexed circuit with 6 LEDs.

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