[Bob van loosen] added a remote learning circuit made from a PIC 16F84A to his Onkyo receiver – which happens to have remote buttons and a ttl control link for external devices. The PIC listens to the remote link on the receiver. By grounding a pin, it will learn the next remote command that’s received. In this case, he uses it to swap the left/right front/rear signals to gain proper speaker orientation when he switches between his TV and Computer. This would make an entertaining external dongle if you combined it with a smoke generator…
Misc Hacks4135 Articles
Soldering Iron Indicator Mod
At first glance, [sprite_tm]s weller mod seemed a bit trivial. In reality, it’s like art with analog electronics. He wanted to add an indicator light for the heating element. To pull it off, he built a funky diode capacitor circuit to create a pseudo-regulated DC voltage, then used a zener diode, a potentiometer and a transistor to make a simple voltage switch that activates a transistor driven LED.
DIY Beamer Control
I was poking around the lumenlab forums and ran across this nice little project. It’s designed specifically for diy projectors. I settled for a simple thermal switch for my cooling, but this provides temperature monitoring/protection, dual fan control, lamp hour counter, serial interface and optional LCD controls. Everything you need to build your own is there, but it’s mostly in german.
Now I’m outta here – I’m going scuba diving.
DIY Altimeter Extra
Last year a friend of mine was kind enough to watch me jump out of a perfectly good airplane. While pondering that incredible adrinaline rush, I thought it was time for an altimeter hacking extra. (Don’t answer your phone for at least 12 hours after the jump or you might accidentally tell your mom…. Even if you’re 30 and in another state, you’ll probably get yelled at.)
The 2004 KAP rig on this page caught my eye. It features a small dongle that logs altimeter data when the shutter is activated on the camera. Schematics are in the pdf. The rest of the setups are pretty freakin’ impressive too.
Of course, there’s the classic model rocket altimeter project. If you’d prefer to leave off the cost of a basic stamp, try the more recently updated recording altimeter. It’s got a nice low parts count.
If you want something a bit more versatile, check out this RF transmitting altimeter. It’s still in progress, but it’s getting a thorough writeup as it progresses.
We’ve seen them before, but I’d be remiss not to mention a GPS data logger. (I took my old garmin foretrex on my skydive, but didn’t have a decent signal until I was out of the plane.
If someone finds a diy audible altimeter, let me know.
Keyless Entry For Your Apartment
[Ryan] sent in his simple but effective keyless entry hack for his apartment. Many shared apartment buildings have doors that allow residents to buzz visitors inside. He interfaced a keyless entry remote with the entry button on his intercom system. Press the button and voila – open sesame. It’s almost a head slapper because it’s such a simple hack, but sometimes those are the best.
Computer Controlled Coffee Roasting
I knew about this when it came out, but it never made it’s way to Hack-A-Day. We’ve mentioned a computer controlled roaster before, but this one is far and away the best I’ve seen. [Jeffrey Pawlan] has been selling individual units to the coffee industry (and extreme coffee geeks) – with good reason. He modified an already sweet Hottop coffee roaster (~$500 US) to be completely computer controlled. He wrote a complete software interface that accounts for room temperature to create complex, repeatable roast profiles. More than anyone, I’ve lamented the lack of details on the system. It’s a safe bet that he’s using more than a few thermocouples with a multi-line A/D converter. Anyone feel like writing some open source coffee roaster software? Modifying my current setup wouldn’t be that difficult.
Dive Computer Interface Hacking
Dive computers help divers keep an eye on bottom time and calculate nitrogen saturation during dives. Many of them, like the Suunto above have a built in provision for downloading dive data post dive. [
CIBDiving] figured out a way to enable this missing feature on one of Suunto’s cheaper computers. The Gekko has the same pins as the more expensive units, but Suunto’s download manager won’t allow you to download the data. By using a simple software patch, [CIBDiving] tricked the software into pulling down the data.
You can buy a cable to pull down the data, or you can build your own serial or USB level shifting interface.
