Unlocking The Crippled Potential Of An Unmanaged Switch

May 26, 2010 by Mike Szczys 35 Comments

[Sprite_TM] outgrew the features of the cheap unmanaged TL-SG1005D switch he was using on his home network. Instead of buying a new and much more costly switch he cracked the cheap one open and found that the RTL8366SB chip inside possessed the ability to work harder but was crippled for sale as a low-end model. It wasn’t as easy as that oscilloscope firmware upgrade we saw a while back. He had to add an AVR ATmega88 to send I2C commands to the switch. Turns out that the I2C protocol wasn’t standard and after much head scratching he found some Linux drivers for the chipset that gave him enough info to send the configuration commands he needed. Now he’s go the managed switch he needed for his VLAN for the cost of a microcontroller and some wire.

Mass Storage Business Card

May 25, 2010 by Mike Szczys 28 Comments

Just snap off the corners and this business card can be used as a mass storage device. Well sort of. The tab left over has four traces on the back to make it USB compatible. The PIC 24FJ64GB002 microcontroller on the card registers as a storage device and launches [Ramiro’s] resume and a cover letter loaded as an HTML file. He’s made it as useful as possible by including access to the SPI and I2C bus connections but he’s also included some firmware to act as a data logger or an oscilloscope. At about 5 euros a piece you won’t be distributing these willy-nilly but it’s not too much more than handing out breakout boards with your name all over them.

Maple R3 Now Shipping

May 24, 2010 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

Leaf Labs is now shipping the Maple R3 boards. [Phil Burgess] gave the platform a look just before launch last fall and the high-powered prototyping board is now even better. New features come in both hardware and software varieties. The bootloader can now be upgraded without additional programming hardware, there’s hardware SPI and I2C interfaces, and a newly-polished IDE for Linux and Windows. At $50 it’s a good way to get access to the power of the ARM Cortex M3 processor at the center of the board. We’ve seen several projects that use the mbed, which is in the same class as the Maple, but we’re waiting to see what you’ve accomplished with this little devil.

Open Source STM

May 22, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 22 Comments

We hope you paid attention in advanced theoretical and quantum physics classes, or making your own Open Source Scanning-Tunneling Microscope might be a bit of a doozy. We’re not even going to try to begin to explain the device (honestly we slept through that course) beyond clarifying it is used for examining the molecular and atomic structure of surfaces; but for those still interested there is a nice breakdown of how Scanning Tunneling Microscopy works.

[Thanks Rich]

Building An Oak Telescope

May 17, 2010 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

You might not think about the finish of your homemade telescope but if it’s build from solid oak you probably should. [Gregory Strike] built this 8″ telescope a few years back but just posted about it a few days ago. The optics are quite expensive but the rest of the build was done dirt cheap and he did a great job of it.That includes taking care to finish the oak boards that make up the octagonal body of the instrument.

This is much more approachable for the average hacker than something like the 22″ binocular build (or going way too far and building your own observatory). [Gregory] developed his design after looking at a couple of others. If you need a bit of a push to get started check out the telescope resource we ran across in our days of Internet infancy.

Final Projects: WiFi Coil Gun Turret

May 17, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 14 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU3QB3ScnGQ]

[Chris Farnell] and [Michael Helms] are the brains behind this scary looking piece of machinery. It is a Coil gun, mounted on a turret, that is controlled over WiFi. If that wasn’t scary enough, they have rigged it to their iphone/ipad for remote shooting. Though it looks bulky, you can see that it is surprisingly responsive in action.

Hack A Day’s Dictionary Of Questionable Utility™

May 15, 2010 by Phil Burgess 43 Comments

We frequently receive inquiries from eager readers asking how they can best get started in electronics and computer projects. Countless great books have been written on these subjects, and of course now there’s our answers.hackaday.com site. But there’s a difference between being “book smart” and being “street smart.” What are the terms that you really need to know to get ahead in this field? We’ve collected a few of our favorites here.

Have any terms or definitions to add? Leave a note in the comments!

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