Misc Hacks

4137 Articles

Cheap Function Generator

January 5, 2007 by 5 Comments


I’m inclined to put up [nuxie1]’s function generator how-to because he also submitted a very nice Design Challenge entry. The generator is based on the cheap XR2206 IC which will generate functions at up to 1Mhz. Definitely handy to have around.

His Design Challenge entry was really over the top. It’s another USB PIC programmer, but he laid out three different desings. A full-on SMD, a home build SMD and a through hole board. Nice work.

We’ll be announcing the winner of the Design Challenge in another week and a half or so – we got quite a few entries and it takes a while to really review them.

DC Entries: Relay Board, PONG

January 4, 2007 by 95 Comments


I’ve got a couple more design challenge entries for ya. (The first one made the entry deadline, but he had to repost it to another web host – no whining about how it was posted on the 26th)

[Joe]submitted his Parallel port relay board. He’s still working on the software to drive it, but the board looks good. He suggests cutting a parallel cable to make the input. (I’ve done it, it’s a pain) I’ll suggest soldering the inputs directly to a solder style DB25 – or add some edge traces so that a cheap solder style connector can be attached directly to the board.

[Andrew] built and submitted UPONG – Pong on a LED dot matrix display. It reminds me of the pong hat. He’s even put up a video of the game in action.

AVR Laser Projector

January 4, 2007 by 22 Comments


I’ve seen a few simple DIY laser projectors that just oscillate the beam. This one (scroll past the pong game) has 16 lines of resolution. Sixteen mirrors are rotated by a motor, and an AVR controller pulses the laser to draw the image. Via Asish’s Programming Journal (Worth checking out, he’s been doing several webcam laser pointer projects.)

Pin Terminal Tetris

January 3, 2007 by 13 Comments


I’ve never trusted putting my PIN number at a store, and now I’m glad I don’t. In an effort to prove just how hackable those handy input terminals are, [saar drimmer] and [steven murdoch] replaced the guts of a pin terminal with… tetris. Hmm, now I need a gameboy tetris fix Thanks [terti]

A word of warning, the embedded video made Mozilla nutty on my usually rock solid machine.

Snowboard CNC Machine

January 1, 2007 by 10 Comments


Happy new year! I think we’ve covered the DIY CNC stuff a plenty, but I can’t resist posting this one. Remember the DIY snowboard? Recently, quite a few small quantity and home builders have cropped up. (I’m even planning to build my first board later this month.) [Mike Magruder] of happy monkey snowboards built a CNC gantry router just for cutting out wooden snowboard cores. The frame is built from structural aluminum (not cheap) with the usual steppers and some gecko drives running the show. The cable guide track and dust collector even make it look like a professional product. [Mike] also built a sweet press, but I’m going to be using vacuum bagging.

DIY Canon Lenses

December 30, 2006 by 6 Comments


Remember the cheap tilt-shift lens? [Rodolfo] let me know about his set of modded Canon lenses on Flickr. The FD 50mm prime is pretty cheap off ebay – he removed the FD mount and uses it sans rear-end. We’ve seen a nicer version of this before. His macro lens caught my eye – it’s a combination of a cheap F/1.8 50mm and the handy, but cheap EF-S kit lens that comes with the Rebel XT series. (I might have to make one of those) Finally, we have the most original legal use for a Chinese lantern and duct tape that I’ve seen. It’s like the tilt shift, but the addition of the 50mm creates some interesting effects. Hit up wikipedia If you want to know more about the EF/EF-S mounts and adaptation issues.