Bubble Display

March 25, 2011 by Kevin Dady 25 Comments

As hackers we have come up with some pretty wild and unique ways to display data, but that never stops us from creating even wilder ways such as this Bubble Display. Inspired by a Hackaday article called Liquid Display the bubble display started out as a one column lexan tank so the team could check out different liquids, and build methods, which gave them the opportunity to test out their wet/dry vacuum in the basement as well.

After the leaks were solved in the prototype, different fluids were tried out to see what would work best, glycerine (though the most expensive out of the 3 items tested) gave the best performance in how the bubbles rose to the top, and the uniformity of each individual bubble.

The final tank design features (24?) channels to keep bubbles from interacting with each other and are fitted with some Parker A005-C23-2P pneumatic valves hooked up to a standard air compressor. Electrically it’s pretty standard, with the solinoid driver stuff all run by a PIC18F4455 clocked at 48MHz.

Software wise the device has 3 modes, one mode allows users to enter text or simple bitmaps from a computer using a homebrew GUI written in Visual Basic, there is also a demo loop for when you still want to show it off, but there is not someone there to constantly bang data into it, and finally a live keyboard mode which acts as a bubble music visualizer when there is a keyboard connected via MIDI. Check all 3 out in a short video after the break.

Continue reading “Bubble Display” →

More High Voltage Experimentation With A Flyback Inverter

March 24, 2011 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

[Electorials] actually makes working with a flyback inverter sound rather easy. This comes hot on the heals of the huge high voltage collection we saw the other day, but slows way down in the presentation of information. This makes the project very approachable for the newbie, especially considering that the majority of the testing is done with low voltages.

He’s using a flyback transform for this project, which can be pulled from an old CRT monitor. Once you have one in hand, all that’s required to figure out how to use it is a voltometer, a 9V battery, a MOSFET (also salvaged in this case), and miscellaneous components. Once he establishes what each external connection does electronically, [Electorials] builds his circuit on a breadboard, then uses it to create plasma in the bulb above as well as to light up a CCFL.

Virtual Serial Bridge

March 24, 2011 by Kevin Dady 10 Comments

When you are running emulators or virtual machines it may be sometimes handy to be able to connect a serial port from the guest machine to the host machine. [Aurimas] had that issue, and also had a fun fix for that using 2 USB <> Serial adapters, but as you can imagine that is not a ideal solution, enter the Virtual Serial Bridge.

Digging around Vmware it was found that the support for what he needed was there, but not really used. A little addition of a few lines to the guest OS vmx file and configuring the socat multipurpose relay package. Though the instructions revolve around the Mac platform as the host and Windows as the guest socat and Vmware you can probably mix it up with any software that uses the serial port and a *x or windows host.

Fusion Reactor Wins Science Fairs

March 23, 2011 by Mike Szczys 36 Comments

[Will Jack] built a heavy water fusion reactor and then won district and regional science fair projects with it. Someone give this man a job!

We looked in on his fusion reactor about a year ago. At the time he had managed to build a magnetic containment field but didn’t have the voltages or the deuterium necessary to achieve fusion. We’ll that’s all changed. Using a boron-10 lined sensor tube he’s managed to detect the rise in neutron counts that would indicate fusion. Remarkable. He’s now working on a refined gas system that will allow him to increase the deuterium purity by cutting down on the leak rate. He mentions a few other hardware improvements such as a new containment unit and an ion source upgrade. Both of these concepts go beyond our knowledge so do make sure to put on your Nuclear Engineering hat while reading through his project update.

Surplus Military Gear Keeps Your Hands Free, Calls Private

March 23, 2011 by Mike Nathan 16 Comments

heli_helmet

[Julian] was rummaging through a military surplus store when he spotted a pair of old helicopter pilot helmets that he absolutely had to have. At $25 they were a steal, but pretty useless in their current state. He decided to modify one of the helmets for use while playing video games, but he didn’t stop there.

The helmet had two decent speakers built-in so he kept them, but tweaked the wiring from a mono-only configuration to accept stereo input. A RF wireless headset was disassembled and wired into the helmet so he could use it for playing video games while his wife is asleep. As an added bonus, the headset he used happened to have an AM/FM receiver built in, so he can enjoy music while sitting around with his helmet on as well. A Bluetooth cell phone headset was also torn down and wired into the helmet for gaming and handling phone calls. The Bluetooth mic was extended into the original mic stem built into the helmet, keeping things authentic-looking.

Overall it’s a quite a useful recycling of some old military junk. It’s a great idea though the helmet looks like it could be a touch cumbersome after awhile.

High Voltage: How To Cook Your Goose In 62 Easy Steps

March 22, 2011 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

Prepare to learn. [Grenadier] has put together a collection of information about AC electricity that can safely be called a super-post. In 62 parts he covers a myriad of topics, some of them safe, many of them not so much. You may want to spend time reading through everything that he has to offer, but just in case you don’t, step one is a table of contents. In it you’ll find a listing of major points including transformers of every kind imaginable; from microwave ovens, neon signs, bug zappers, x-rays, and televisions. [Grenadier] covers the type of transformers that these items use, where to find them, and how to set up your own experiments. There’s plenty of pictures and several videos where the high-powered sparks fly. We feel like there’s enough here that we can be satisfied with vicarious AC interactions while safely in front of our monitor and far away from the heart-stopping action.

[Thanks Marcus]

Magic 8 Thing Answers All Of Your Burning Questions

March 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

magic_8_thing

[Pete] was hard at work putting off a repair job for a friend, and wondered how much longer he could possibly procrastinate. With no fellow humans in earshot to which he could propose this question, he thought it would be great if he could ask a Magic 8-ball for an answer. Alas, he doesn’t have a Magic 8-ball, so he would have to build one if he wanted his answer.

Continuing to delay the repair job, he scrounged around his house and dug up an ATmega328 to control the 8-ball and a LCD panel to display the sage-like responses. He wanted the 8-ball to be as authentic in operation as he could, so he had to locate some sort of sensor that would register if the device had been shaken. With no accelerometer at hand, he opted to use a mercury tilt switch that he scavenged from an old thermostat. He wrote some software to display the responses from the original Magic 8-ball when shaken, then he threw the components together in a small plastic case.

As you can see in the video below, his Magic 8-thing works just like the original, sans the dark fluid and icosahedron. If you were wondering, he did finally ask the 8-thing whether he had procrastinated long enough on his initial task – the response: “Yes”

If you’re in the mood for more Magic 8-ball shenanigans, check out these posts!

Continue reading “Magic 8 Thing Answers All Of Your Burning Questions” →