The HD4478 is an extremely common LCD controller. The folks at Sorgonet got this particular display out of an old credit card reader. It’s easy to talk to these controllers using just a parallel port cable. With the lcdmod project you can send text strings directly to the display from the command line. Sorgonet has a lot of related LCD links if you are interested in putting a display on your next project.
[thanks h-tech]
While sitting in the heat at Defcon I wondered what the best activity for next year could be. I think liquid nitrogen ice cream has some great potential. It’s a pretty common freshman chemistry demo where you add liquid nitrogen to a standard ice cream recipe. As the -320degreeF nitrogen boils off it freezes the ice cream mixture resulting in one of the smoothest ice creams you’ll ever encounter. It is a simple task and you’ll see quite a few people that have tried it if you just google for it. Wear eye protection and heavy rubber gloves when working with liquid nitrogen. You’ll need at least a 5:1 ratio of N2 to ice cream. Mix it in a large metal container; a pressure cooker is probably your best bet. Most recommend mixing with a wooden spoon, but I think I’ll agree with DocBug “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing with power tools“.
[thanks XyTec]
The Bt878 chipset is fairly common on TV tuner cards. The chip has a built in analog to digital converter with a sample rate of 119kHz to 448kHz, well above the standard audio rate of 44kHz. The hardware has to be hacked a little to inject your signal since the chip is usually receiving audio from the turner. With some driver hacking this chip can be pushed to 896000 samples per second. Recent developments make things even easier with ALSA support.
[thanks rockarolla]
Max and Phildog hit the shooting range this weekend to see if they could accurately measure bullet speed using Audacity. Using Audacity to examine the wave form they can determine the time between the shot being fired and striking the target. This time needs to be adjusted based on the known distance to the target. They’ve got data from quite a few different guns, but this is just a test run and they’re still improving their technique.
This coil launcher is based on a disposable camera flash system. It uses the charging system from one camera plus the the flash capacitors from four cameras. The coil is 200 turns in 10 layers wrapped around a glass tube with a 3mm inside diameter. The projectile is a 2.5mm diameter nail. It certainly isn’t as high powered as some of the systems we’ve featured, but firing at 20-25m/s it can still be dangerous.
[thanks phuzzy3d]
[Aj] found this great article for building a really cheap microscope. The goal of the project is to construct a compound microscope that is superior to the cheap toy/children’s microscopes. Besides standard construction materials it uses the lenses from four disposable cameras. The article also covers a lot of possible improvements to the ‘scope: focus control, fine focus control, condensers, different eyepieces.
We’ve hit on a few EM projectile systems recently, so [Jason Rollette] thought it would be a good time to cover his railgun. I couldn’t agree more. Jason has been keeping his Railgun Blog up-to-date from nearly day one. Right now he is assembling a larger capacitor bank to power the gun. The PVC piping you see in the picture is part of the injection rig; If the projectile is stationary when the gun is fired it would get welded to the rails (if not worse). Check out Jason’s Railgun Blog for details on his project plus a lot of informative links.
