Wireless BlinkM Control

January 10, 2009 by Eliot 5 Comments

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[John] has been working with several BlinkM RGB devices. He’s created a controller to talk to each of the BlinkMs wirelessly and change their behavior. The core is an old relay tester box used to test telephone circuits. Each of its four knobs are connected to the analog inputs on the Arduino. The signal is transmitted using RFlink devices. Each BlinkM is paired with an ATmega168 and receiver. The control box also has a switch to send the same signal to all of the devices at the same time. The transmit and receive code are available on his site. You can find a video of it embedded below.

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DC Gearmotor Teardown

January 10, 2009 by Eliot 15 Comments

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The RepRap project has made heavy use of the Solarbotics GM3 Gearmotor as part of their extruders. Unfortunately they’ve proven to be underpowered for the task and the plastic gears could cause future problems. [Zach] decided to investigate some other options. He bought a pile of motors from Kysan to try out. He posted a teardown of one of the motors on Flickr. He found it not only easy to disassemble, but the metal gears were also easy to put back together. Next up is testing it on the machine.

Intel 4004 Internals

January 9, 2009 by Eliot 15 Comments

The silicon wizards at Flylogic have certainly posted an interesting chip this time around. The Intel 4004 was the first widely used microprocessor. The logic gates are much larger than you’d find in modern chips. The unique feature is that each gate is designed to make the most efficient use of the silicon instead of the standardized shapes you find now. They’ve uploaded a full image of the chip.

For an introduction to silicon hacking, we reccomend [bunnie]’s talk from Toorcon and [Karsten]’s talk from 24C3. You can find many more posts on the topic in our silicon tag.

NoiseAXE Minisynth

January 9, 2009 by Strom Carlson 8 Comments

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The NoiseAXE is a miniature synthesizer based on the Picaxe 08M microcontroller. Its operating principle is fairly simple: a conductive stylus touches the leg of one of eight resistors to play one of eight notes, while a photoresistor controls the amount of modulation, creating a variable vibrato effect. While the synthesizer’s output is rather limited (the NoiseAXE isn’t exactly a Yamaha DX7), it’s still a pretty cool little project; you could use its unique sounds to add that gritty analog touch to your next electro hit. Check out the video clip below to see and hear it in action.

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Bouncing Ball Analog Computer

January 7, 2009 by Eliot 12 Comments

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[Eric Archer] constructed an analog computer to model the physics of a bouncing ball. The core is a TL074 opamp that does all the integral math. He had no trouble finding descriptions of analog computers, but how to set the initial conditions was rarely covered. The controls include potentiometers to set the initial velocity, force of gravity, and coefficient of restitution (how much energy is lost in the bounce). The output is displayed on an oscilloscope. He mentions that this output could be used in electronic music, citing Aphex Twin’s Bucephalus Bouncing Ball. Watch the video below for a demo of all the features.

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Plasma Thruster

January 7, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 34 Comments

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Some of you probably have plans to build your own spaceships, we know we do. Well, the propulsion system can be a bit tricky, especially if you plan on using plasma drives. This breakdown and build of a simple plasma thruster should help you on your way. All you really need is some Argon, a large capacitor bank, and a custom nozzle. You’ve already got most of that right? As usual, be very careful. This is high voltage and very hot.

Light To Sound Converter

January 4, 2009 by Eliot 21 Comments

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[Alex] built what he calls a light to sound converter. It reacts differently depending on the type of light: remote controls, light bulbs, TV screens, etc. A photodiode is used with an amplifier to pick up the light change. That signal is dumped through a dual opamp. He swapped in several different types of photodiodes and settled on the BPW34 intended for visible light. He’ll be incorporating this into a much larger project.