I’ve been known to modify an innocent kitchen appliance or two, but Derek Bradford has me beat. Derek is on the third iteration of his ‘uglyroast‘ coffee roaster. Since the nearest Home Depot is a continent away, he’s limited to simple parts and tools. The beans are heated with a gas stove. The second version used an electric fan and a camp stove. The latest one has a dedicated motor and sits over a gas range.
Cupric chloride is generally considered a better etchant even though it is not as well known as ferric chloride. [Rolan Yang] has a photoset of the process. Cupric chloride is usually sold as a photography chemical. The best feature is that the solution can be regenerated so you won’t be disposing of nearly as much etchant. I found a great page detailing the process for the hobbyist.
Want your home automation system to know the exact position of your garage door not just whether it is open or closed? Then the ultimate garage door monitor is for you. There has got to be at least one person that needs that, right? Well for the rest of you it is a handy guide for how-to implement analog sensors (like this potentiometer) into your home automation by way of an analog to digital converter.
[thanks ledtester]
Two clever students at MIT have built this impressive brute force safe cracker. Their target: a document safe with a S&G 8400 lock. The 8400 is a group 1 manipulation proof lock. Group 1 locks will resist manipulation by an expert for at least 20 hours. These guys used a stepper motor to move the dial and built a custom controller for it. The dial has butterfly knob in the center which must be rotated before and after each combination. That job is handled by a hobby servo. The torque required to open the safe is higher than the stepper motor, so when the optical encoder detects that the motor has stalled you know you’ve found the combination.
Related: Automated Master Lock crackers
The Church of Wifi has been really busy since we last checked in with them. They showed a lot of cool projects yesterday. I was really impressed by the modded WRT54Gs that their members have been building. beakmyn’s self contained war driving box article was what really kicked this off. He covers adding GPS, SD card, and all the needed software to the WRT. Once completed all you have to do is plug the box in, go for a drive and then just pull the card when you get home to retrieve the data.
Defcon is off to an incredibly slow start; It’s already 2 hours behind because of safety inspections (not surprising). I wouldn’t be too annoyed, but the first talk of the day is Joe Grand explaining the LED badges. They apparently made 6,055 of these LED badges. There is a PIC10F202 on the back and a switch to change between different flash modes. He even included solder pads to reprogram it. They’re encouraging people to hack the badges and come up with something new. More pictures after the break.
Joe Grand’s operates Grand Idea Studios and has quite a few projects on his site. He also talked at Maker Faire about his Simon game.
The Casio SK-1 was one of the cheapest sampling synths on the market when it was released. It has since become a popular target for circuit benders. Check out this awesome SK-1 mod with custom case and panel. You may remember reader [jumpstart]’s bent SK-1 as well. Make even had a article on the SK-5. If you don’t want to chop up your keyboard too much, [mike] pointed out that you can add your own MIDI-in port with minimal work. Highly Liquid even offers the parts as a kit.
