Laser-cut Puzzle Box

January 3, 2010 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

One of our fondest memories from the 1980’s is watching Magnum P.I. on television. Higgins, Magnum’s employer, had a puzzle box that Magnum could never figure out how to open. Now you can laser cut a puzzle box for yourself and recreate some scenes from television’s glory days.

The design for the box pictured above is not new. The plans for the Cubey 2 project have been around for a while but relied on your mad-woodworking-skills to turn out the pieces. Since we’re not great with a chisel we were happy to see vector graphic and encapsulated postscript files to robotically aid in production. Once the puzzle parts have been assembled a facade is adhered onto each side to hide the pieces. This means you can go for Higgins’ traditional puzzle-box look or sport the hellraiser.

Qube, Not An Arduino Clone

January 3, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 34 Comments

What allows the everyday user to tinker with microcontrollers, IO, interrupts, serial communication, and even analog readings? How about individual modules that add the ability to communicate over bluetooth or add LCD support? If you were thinking Arduino, you would be wrong. It’s actually [Nilok’s] Qube, which at first seems like another Arduino clone however the Qube is based on PIC – not AVR. Another difference is the sweet black anodized case the Qube is planned to be put in.

While all this seems amazing at first, there is of course a catch – it looks like the first models are pre-order only for staunching price of $70! Sorry, but Arduino wins at half the cost.

Regardless, [Nilok] has documented the entire process and it’s amazing to read through; he even includes some guides on solder paste and bootloading USB. And who knows, maybe he’ll release open source. His site seems a little slow, we recommend the Google Cache.

RFID Emulator

January 3, 2010 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

[Alexander] built an RFID emulator. It uses a wire coil (not pictured here) and an ATmega8 to represent any tag that is EM4001 compliant. This iteration requires connection to a computer to send the tag ID information to the microcontroller. In the video after the break it looks like he’s using a DIY RFID reader to test this. If the two were combined, cutting out the need for a computer, he would have an RFID spoofer on his hands.

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Making A Rail Gun (again!)

January 1, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 24 Comments

[Rp181] is at it again with version 2 of his rail gun project (link dead, try Internet Archive). The original did have some power with 18 400V 3900uf capacitors, but he’s ramped it up to now using 40! Reaching more than double the amount of joules of energy, 12kJ vs. the 5.6kJ! Some other changes include a new injector solenoid setup and revision 3 of his breakwire chronograph. Sadly, he doesn’t mention if this is as green as his first rail gun. Check out a video of just the injector firing and an animation explaining some new updates after the jump.

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Simplest Most Useless Machine

December 30, 2009 by Mike Szczys 42 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z86V_ICUCD4]

[Brett] posted about his most useless machine build. His project gives us a chance to massacre the language in the title because it uses the lowest parts count we’ve see with these machines. The logic is controlled by our friend, the 555 timer. Add to that just one servo motor, two switches, three resistors, two caps, a diode, and a battery pack and you’re in business. The hardest part to find locally is the servo but check at a hobby/RC store. If you don’t have to put in a parts order this can be your next impulse project.

Shadow Buttons

December 28, 2009 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

This art installation uses buttons made of light. A projector fills up the walls and ceiling of a room while a webcam monitors the pattern for changes. When the luminosity of a given area changes due to a shadow, a midi event is triggered. The software that controls the system is written in C# and uses the Emgu CV library to handle the image processing. In the video after the break you can see that creating shadows with your hands prompts changes in the image as well as the sound.

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RFID Control Concept

December 26, 2009 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

That’s not a smoke detector, it’s an RFID detecting puck. [Eric] and [Brent] have been working on this concept to produce a virtual knob. When the device detects an RFID tag it vibrates, then the puck can be turned like a virtual knob, an accelerometer picking up the motion data. The build is rounded out with a XBee module for connectivity and housed in a printed case.

The video after the break shows the device controlling colored lights. There is a different tag for each color and when the reader is over one of them the puck can be rotated to turn brightness up or down. We foresee a lot of great uses for this. Turn it into a thermostat for public places by adding a character display to the mix. A tag can be affixed to a wall, when you want to change the thermostat setting just hold the puck over the tag and turn until the screen displays the desired temperature.

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