Altoids Upstaged By Gift Card Tins

February 7, 2010 by Phil Burgess 27 Comments

Nothing Earth-shattering here. Just, dare we say it, really cute!

The venerable Altoids mint tin has become an icon of the maker culture. Browsing through past articles on Hack a Day, Adafruit or Instructables, you’ll find project after project for which these pocket-sized enclosures provided just the right fit. Eminently practical, affordable, but the aesthetics have occasionally left something to be desired.

We recently stumbled upon these nifty gift card holders that resemble miniature versions of current-generation game consoles. They might be the perfect housing for your next microcontroller project…

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Pre-spun Hard Drives

February 5, 2010 by Mike Szczys 56 Comments

This device is lovingly called the SPINmaster. [Linux-works] built it to spin up multiple hard drives before the motherboard starts up. It detects the power-up from the PSU and uses a relay to hold the motherboard in reset, indicated by the red LED. Each of four relays then spins up a hard drive and illuminates the green LED when ready. Once all green lights come on the reset relay shuts off and the bios starts up. This type of staggered startup takes a lot of the load off of an under-powered PSU. He’s posted firmware and there’s a schematic available too. We took a look at his video but there’s not much to see as it’s just the inside of the machine while it boots up.

The Mechanical Diode

February 3, 2010 by Mike Szczys 70 Comments

A diode allows current to travel in only one direction. With that in mind, [Alex] built a mechanical diode that will only allow gear rotation in one direction to be transmitted through the system. But wait, by connecting two of these devices together he’s built something of a mechanical rectifier. An electrical rectifier converts alternating current to direct current and this mechanical version outputs clockwise rotation no matter what direction of rotation is coming into the device.

There’s video which we’ve embedded after the break as well as many pictures on his site but not much explanation. Here’s what we’ve deduced. The two large gears are inputs. Mounted on top of them is a smaller ratcheting gear that will only turn in one direction. This ratcheting gear selects whether the smallest gear on the left or right will rotate, which then feeds the output gear at the top of this image. Continue reading “The Mechanical Diode” →

PHP Runtime Rewritten, By Facebook?

February 3, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 42 Comments

Yes, its true. Facebook has completely rewritten the PHP runtime to make it faster and more efficient, and its completely open source. Named HipHop, its described as a source code transformer, changing PHP into optimized C++ which is then compiled using g++. Thus keeping the best aspects of PHP while taking advantage of the performance of C++. Using HipHop, the Facebook web server CPU usage has been decreased by about fifty percent! And who would have thought that this and many other cool advances in programming, started at a Hackathon.

Beginner Concepts: 555 Push Button Toggle

February 2, 2010 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

PIC, AVR, and Arduino are ubiquitous in projects these days and a lot of the time it’s easy to over-complicate things with their use. In this case, [Tod] wanted to use a momentary tactile switch to turn something on and off. Instead of going with a microcontroller he built the circuit around a 555 timer. What he really needed in this case is a flip-flop but lacking a chip for that he went with the 555 because it has one built-in. Three resistors and a capacitor later he’s in business, adding another resistor and a transistor to deal with the load switching. We’ve embedded video of the circuit controlling an LED after the break. This IC ends up in a lot of projects so dig through your parts bin and give this circuit a try.

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Frustromantic Box, A Reverse Geocache

January 21, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 44 Comments

One of the best feelings in the world is when one of our posts inspires a fellow hacker to plan, create, and execute his or her own project.

[Russ] let us know about his Frustromantic Box which he gained inspiration from the original Reverse Geochache we posted about. For those out of the loop, the box is locked and will only open in a certain location. The current distance to the location is displayed on the screen when a button is pressed, and usually there is a limited number of button presses (3 presses for those that know geometry, 50 for everyone else). As soon as the box is at location, it will open.

The Frustromantic Box uses an Arduino, classic HD44780 display, a servo, and the pièce de résistance EM406 GPS. All built in time to frustrate his wife for Christmas.

Live High Altitude Balloon Launch

January 21, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 22 Comments

[Terry] is planning to launch his high altitude balloon within the next few days. As we’ve seen before he has gone for a general setup – GPS tracking, environment sensors including temperature and humidity and pressure, and 2 on board cameras – all with an expected height of about 100,000 feet. What makes this project unique is the transmission of live telemetry data to a Google Maps or Google Earth interface.

The planned launch date is Sunday the 24th about 00:00 UTC so long as the Civil Aviation Safety Approval for the launch is passed.

As a final note [Terry] wanted to let inspiring balloon launchers to check out the UK High Altitude Society – who have been an invaluable source of information.