Misc Hacks

4181 Articles

Window Unit Turned PC Water Cooler

February 11, 2008 by 18 Comments


I almost passed this one up because it was shotgunned across a few blogs, but it would be a shame to pass up on a good hack. [Mike] decided to use a standard window AC unit to cool the CPU in his rig. The A/C unit was modified to place the evaporation coil inside a fish tank filled with glycol/water antifreeze coolant. To cool the CPU, he used a normal water block, but insulated the coolant lines between the cooling unit and the machine. That should give you the idea. For more details, have fun deciphering his project in pictures. [via]

Bonus: [Johnny] sent in the NASA workmenship guide. It’s pretty interesting to see what the space boys require for their electronics work.

Cheap 360 Degree Head Tracking

February 9, 2008 by 10 Comments


[Joel] sent in his efforts to build an inexpensive 360 degree head tracking display. He’s using a Playstation six axis controller as the key to his helmet tracking system. The demo is short and to the point. He’s using the usual Glovepie driver to provide the software interface and what looks like off the shelf hardware on the helmet.

What really grabs my attention is the low cost of getting into VR now. Assuming that you own a computer, you can build your own VR setup for the cost of a Playstation controller and a cheap heads up display. (Remember these?)

Personal (IR) Radar

February 8, 2008 by 12 Comments


[chris] sent in this inexpensive personal radar project. It uses a servo mounted IR range finder to locate and display the distance to an object. (Lake a parked car as shown in the demo video) The project is destined for some robotics projects – and who doesn’t love LED display proximity sensors. It makes me think of the direction finders in every other 80’s action movie. It’s gotten some attention on Digg, but I like it for the inexpensive build and the excellent use of a PIC 18F452.

Monday Retinal Extra

February 4, 2008 by 10 Comments


Look ma, it’s my retina. Here’s a short collection of hacks to make yours happy.

[Brian] sent in this odd collection of information he calls the open source biohack kit. The info is interesting, but everything is inside a giant zip file. I think it could benefit from a better online presentation.

[insomartin] sent in a simple design to create a USB piezo drum pad controller. The parts count is pretty low and the drum pads are created using the usual DIY piezo speaker sensor.

[Emilio] sent in his Nokia phone turned SMS remote control project.

[Ian] over at diylife put together a handy USB analog gauge interface.

[Jock] sent in something similar, but this time the project uses gauges from a car for driving games.

In order to continue mocking Boston, [doug] sent in his moononite project.