RFID Triggered Presentation Box

February 11, 2011 by Mike Nathan 12 Comments

blasphemous_bible_box

[Lace] needed to build a “box project” for his college art class and figured he could spice things up a bit by adding some electronic components to the mix. His project, dubbed the ‘Blasphemous Bible Box‘ consists of a bible opened up the section of the book of Revelations that discusses the mark of the beast in an old cigar box. The box is normally locked, but has been programmed to unhook an internal latch when he passes the RFID chip embedded in his hand over it. The effect could have been achieved using a simpler circuit, but the enclosed Arduino seems to do the job decently enough. [Lace] has not mentioned if he has considered revising the box any, but a spring-loaded external latch secured with a magnetic lock would make for a nice effect if version 2 was ever built. Adding a servo to slowly open the box as well as including a speaker blaring Carmina Burana – O Fortuna upon opening would be pretty cool as well (hint, hint). We have video of the box in action after the break.

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Thermic Lance Made From Spaghetti

February 11, 2011 by Mike Nathan 38 Comments

[Frogz] sent in a video he found of a thermic lance constructed from spaghetti. If you are not familiar, thermic lances are typically comprised of an iron tube filled with iron rods, which are then burned using highly pressurized oxygen. This lance however, was built by tightly wrapping a bundle of spaghetti in aluminum foil and attaching it to an oxygen tank. While thermic lances are commonly used in heavy construction where thick steel needs to be cut, [latexiron] and his friends use theirs to cut apart a chair. While we don’t necessarily condone drunken destruction of innocent patio furniture, we can’t help but watch this video again and again in amazement of the incredibly novel use of everyday pasta. You too can join in the drunken revelry after the jump. If food-based cutting torches are your thing, be sure to check out this bacon lance as well.

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Hamster Powered Strandbeest

February 7, 2011 by Mike Nathan 22 Comments

hamster_strandbeest

Gakken magazine featured a miniature wind-powered Strandbeest recently, converting it to run on everything from rubber bands to solar power. [Crabfu] thought it would be worthwhile to hack the Strandbeest kit that shipped with the magazine as well, so he started to brainstorm. Well-known for his steam powered hacks previously featured here, he did originally consider adding a steam plant to the walker. In the end, he scrapped that idea due to concerns about heat and weight. Thinking about it further he settled on something he considered ridiculous, even stupid: A hamster powered Strandbeest.

[Crabfu] added a few components including a hamster ball and a simple chain drive from a Meccano building set before testing the device with a toy train as the power source. Once he was certain that he had the proper gear ratio set, in went a friend’s hamster. The device worked wonderfully, much to the delight of his nieces, as you can see in the video on his site.

Ego Box Monitors Web Hits

January 29, 2011 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

[Bogdan’s] latest project is a box that displays web hits for a chosen site. He calls it the Ego Box because depending on how traffic goes it either bloats or crushes your ego. This provides similar functionality as our Troll Sniffing Rat but the biggest difference is that this is a stand-alone Ethernet device. That’s thanks to the ENC28J60 Ethernet controller chip which manages the stack and has been quite popular in DIY electronic projects. In order to monitor your hits [Bogdan] crafted a bit of code to add to the header of your index page. It increments the counter file each time the page is loaded, and the Ego Box simply monitors that file, displaying the traffic on an eight digit 7 segment display.

[via Adafruit]

Dance For A Dollar With The YayTM

January 21, 2011 by James Munns 22 Comments

The YayTM is a device that records a person dancing and judges whether or not the dancing is “Good”. If the YayTM likes the dance, it will dispense a dollar for the dancers troubles. However, unless the dancer takes the time to read the fine print, they won’t realize that their silly dance is being uploaded to YouTube for the whole world to see. Cobbled together with not much more than a PC and a webcam, the box uses facial recognition to track and rate the dancer.

The YayTM was made by [Zach Schwartz], a student at NYU, as a display piece for the schools Interactive Telecommunication Program. Unfortunately there aren’t any schematics or source code, but to be honest, having one of these ~~evil~~ embarrassing boxes around is probably enough. What song does the YayTM provide for dancing, you ask? Well, be sure to check it out here.

EDIT: [Zack] has followed up with an expanded writeup of the YayTM. Be sure to check out his new page with source code and more info. Thanks [Zack]!

Making Boxes From Soda Cans

January 21, 2011 by Mike Szczys 55 Comments

This shiny little box was made from a soda can. You don’t need much to pull this off; an aluminum can, sand paper, scissors, a ballpoint pen, a straight edge, and some time. The embossing is done with the tip of the pen, but there’s a bit of a trick to it. The designs are first pressed into the metal from the underside of the aluminum. It is then flipped over and the outlines are traced, with one last tracing of the shape from the underside once that is completed. We think you’ll agree that this results in an impressive relief of the design.

This would make a nice project for that wedding ring you’ve been carrying around sans-case. Or perhaps this is just what you needed as an enclosure for your next project. You’ll find an instructional video after the break.

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Intermediate Concepts: Building Discrete Transistor Gates

January 20, 2011 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

[Simon Inns] has put together a lesson in digital logic which shows you how to build your own gates using transistors. The image above is a full-adder that he fabricated, then combined with other full adders to create a 4-bit computer.

Don’t know what a full adder is? That’s exactly what his article is for, and will teach you about binary math and how it is calculated with hardware. There’s probably at least a week’s worth of studying in that one page which has been further distilled into the five-minute video after the break. Although building this hardware yourself is a wonderful way to learn, there’s a lot of room for error. You might consider building these circuits in a simulator program like Atanua, where you can work with logic gate symbols, using virtual buttons and LEDs as the outputs. Once you know what you’re doing with the simulator you’ll have much more confidence to start a physical build like the one [Simon] concocted.

Finding this project a little too advanced? Check out our Beginner Concepts articles to help get you up to speed.

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