[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF2dI7RiMVQ]
[Csaba Bleuer] has built this really nice POV LED sphere. Looking at the hand drawn schematic, it appears that he’s using an Atmega8 as the core. The resolution is pretty decent, and even shows fairly well on camera despite the refresh issues. Although much cleaner, it looks like a similar implementation to this one that we covered back in october of last year. He’s still got some polishing to do to match “the orb” though.
Ah, the heady aroma of damp engineers! It’s raining in Silicon Valley, where the 2010 Embedded Systems Conference is getting off the ground at San Jose’s McEnery Convention Center.
ESC is primarily an industry event. In the past there’s been some lighter fare such as Parallax, Inc. representing the hobbyist market and giant robot giraffes walking the expo. With the economy now turned sour, the show floor lately is just a bit smaller and the focus more businesslike. Still, nestled between components intended to sell by the millions and oscilloscopes costing more than some cars, one can still find a few nifty technology products well within the budget of most Hack a Day readers, along with a few good classic hacks and tech demos…
Sometimes, sitting in a windowless office can drive you crazy. Adding a little bit of life and color can really help. [Gripen40k] did this by building a biosphere. He didn’t have any windows though, so he made an LED light on a PIC based timer. What is interesting is what he did with a thermistor. The Cree LED bulb that he salvaged was going to be submerged in the water, so he had to do some workarounds to keep from over heating the biosphere. Read the project log for more details.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO2-tqoyGik]
Take a few moments and watch this 3 axis rotating LED light display fire up. The final effect of being an RGB glowing ball is nice, but we’re fascinated with the structure. There are tons of great detailed pictures of the assembly on the forum thread to feast your eyes on. Just getting power to the LEDs was a feat, he passes their power through 6 slip contacts. Parts were pulled from an old VCR and some old fans.
[via HackedGadgets]
There’s nothing groundbreaking about this hack, called the TweetWall, but the craftsmanship is gorgeous! [Yergacheffe] had access to the right tools; an epilog laser and a thermoplastic bender (an item we didn’t know we needed until now… thanks a lot). It has the usual bits you’d expect in a Twitter ticker, an LED matrix and an Arduino. There is also an OLED screen that displays the avatar of the current Twitter feed. Because data is transferred over a serial connection the SD slot on that screen is used to cache images which helps to keeps the messages coming without delay. The end product is quite good, we’d expect to see it hanging on the wall of the pub down the street.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBH6vQhKaiY]
This cool mod brings force feedback to the Nintendo DS. There’s a motor with an offset weight mounted inside the DS for vibration and some nice SMD LEDs plopped in there for good measure. The force feedback is being controlled via a picaxe mocrocontroller and triggered from the analog audio signal. While using the analog audio may not be the most precise method, he says that the results are pretty decent.
[Thanks Dan, via HacknMod]
[malikaii] needed to set up some kind of tripwire style alarm system for his office. His bosses kept sneaking in to find him slacking. So, like any loyal hacker, instead of just working harder he built an alarm system. After a failed attempt to recreate an IR alarm circuit he found on the web and built from old appliance parts, he found the Hack a Day article about harvesting McDonald’s toys. The end result was a fully functional IR detecting alarm for the office doorway. This is pretty simple really, the best kind of hack.
