Upgrade An Electric Lock Keypad

November 30, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

lock_buttons

[OldGrover] bought a Weiser electronic lock. Only 6 months after installing it, the keypad stopped working. Instead of just accepting this, [OldGrover] built a better button pad for his lock. He decided to go with big push buttons instead of a similar to stock membrane system. After tracing out where the original buttons connected, he attached his new buttons and enclosure. Pretty simple really but it fixed the problem and kept the lock out of the landfill. Now, he has a unique looking keypad on his front door.

Composite Video Through Cat5

November 28, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 48 Comments

cat5_composite

[mixadj] needed to run some video cable from one part of his house to another. He was lacking the proper amount of video cable, but had a bunch of cat5 laying around. so he built a converter to run his composite signal through the cat5. He states that he wouldn’t run it more than 70 feet without amplifying the audio somehow. Aside from that, the performance is supposedly decent. This just adds to the multitude of other uses for that Ethernet cable. We’ve seen voice, data, composite video, VGA, and power. What else have you seen run over cat5?

Make Your Own Holiday Lights

November 28, 2008 by Caleb Kraft No comments

lights

No matter what holiday you choose to acknowledge, you probably enjoy the thought of getting to put lights up everywhere. We know we do. Here are some instructions on how to make your own string of color changing lights. Sure, you can probably just buy a string of color changing lights for cheaper, but then you couldn’t arrange them however you want on the line, and you also wouldn’t get the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

Ti-84 LED Mod

November 20, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 29 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrSJz9-ImHo]

Add lights to your graphing calculator. Do it now. [Sil3ntP8nd8] added some, and seems to have done a decent job. They are spread around the back, supplying a nice even light on, well, on whatever is under your calculator. It may be difficult to see too much detail though on account of the water marks. You have to protect your intellectual property though. This almost compares to the DS LED monstrosity we covered recently.

Improved LED Menorah

November 13, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

Reader [Mike] was not too impressed by design in a recent post we did on an LED menorahs. Doing what any self respecting hacker would do, he designed and built a better one then sent it in to us. He just happened to have an AVR ATtiny13 sitting around, so he used that for the brains. It has single button operation, is powered by 2 AA batteries, and even simulates the candles burning out. His custom PCB turned out quite nicely as well, the power plug connects to the batteries in a way that uses them as a base. Check out his site for detailed plans and source code. Great job [Mike].

Mutant Lab Halloween Extravaganza

November 13, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 4 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVnGLCG9Nzg&feature=channel]

Take a tour of the Mutex laboratories, where mutants are made and nothing could possibly ever go wrong. [Steve] directed us to these videos of the Halloween set up he did with his son this year. Neighbor kids got to go on an action packed tour where mutants break free from their cages and have to be neutralized with special ray guns. Wow, why didn’t this guy live near us when we were kids? Check out a behind the scenes walk through with some good technical stuff after the break.

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Liquid Tree

November 11, 2008 by Kimberly Lau 22 Comments

Liquid Tree is decorative, functional, and green. It’s a liquid feedback display created by [Jia Yi Lin] that is designed to tell you exactly how much water you’re wasting in the shower. Behind the pretty tubes is some interesting hardware. [Lin] used an Arduino board, and based her code off the Unipolar Stepper example. She’s posted her own code and wiring for the project. When hot water is turned on, the motors decrease the amount of liquid in the tubes. This causes the pattern to slowly disappear, indicating water consumed.

[via NOTCOT]