Apparently the iPhone jack isn’t quite standard – it’s a bit recessed to the point that third parties are offering adapters for it. [John] offers this simple method for modding Etymotic’s fine ER6i headphones. (If only I could find mine. I haven’t seen them for 8 months.) I suggest using a utility knife over a pocket knife. It’s simple, easy, and will probably work on most headphones.
Misc Hacks4177 Articles
Haptic RADAR: Electronic Whiskers
[thomph-zhu] sent in this interesting project. If you’ve ever wished for cat like senses, you’ll dig this. It’s a set of electronic whiskers – it uses IR to detect nearby objects, and vibrates against your head upon detection. It’s definitely an interesting use of tactile feedback. The initial idea is for construction safety, but this could be useful for plenty of other applications. (Robotic control, etc)
Copper Multi-tool
I definitely dig this one. (McGuyver was my favorite show as a kid, and it definitely reminds me of that show.) In order to perform on demand unlocking of doors without bump keys or lock picking, [Dean] keeps a roll of copper wire, augmented with a 1/4 inch bolt. It’s handy for yanking on doors or mounting a camera. Most doors are designed to keep users in, not out…
Update: Here’s a new link.
Remote Control Your Blinds
I was dredging my brain for interesting topics to cover and this vertical blind hack popped into my head. The page isn’t the prettiest, but it’s the hack that counts. The mechanism is constructed from PC board. A motor fitted with a ball chain drive gear pulls the chain in either direction. When the end of travel is reached, a micro-switch is triggered by the stand off that’s actuated by the chain. The motor is driven by a pair of relays that latch to form a simple direction control. When power is triggered on or off, the motor starts moving until the stop is triggered.
Hard Drive Clock (not A Lame Clock With A Hd Face)
[Fred] sent in this awesome hard drive clock. Nope, just parts of a HD into a clock, but the actual drive mechanism and heads are used for this one. The arms move in and out to indicate minutes and the platter position is used to show the hour. It uses a 50hz clock, logic chips and some scrounged parts to get it all done.
Electric Screwdriver Antenna Tuning
I just realized that we’d never covered the classic amateur radio antenna hack – known as the mobile electric screwdriver antenna. I was looking for a decent writeup, and ran across this interesting tunable indoor antenna. [W2BRI] put together a 5 foot cube loop antenna built from copper pipe. The tuning mechanism uses an electric screwdriver to tune his giant PC Board tuning capacitor. Looks like a nice solution if you’re into radio and have pesky neighbors.
Mega8 Logic Tester
[Ast] sent in his time sampling logic analyser (in German, so use the fish) based on a Atmel Mega8 and a FT232 USB interface and several logic chips. It can store time captures in memory, then upload them to a PC via USB. Looks like a great tool for advanced logic testing.
