Brushless Gimbal 3D Printed And Bolted To Quadcopter

June 18, 2013 by Mike Szczys 37 Comments

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A handful of 3D printed parts, some brushless motors, and a bit of control hardware add a flair of cinematography to this quadcopter.

[Sean] sent in a tip about his work after seeing yesterday’s feature of a brushless gimbal being used to improve image stability with a shoulder mounted camera. That rig was designed to be used with a quadcopter, and this hacks shows why. It’s obvious from the demo footage that the gimbal — which is mounted directly to the frame of the TBS Discovery quadcopter — does a great job of keeping the image steady. The panning and tilting in directions contrary to the physics of flight make for a much more interesting video experience. Watch the inset video which is a live feed from the aircraft to the pilot. As the quadcopter makes very sharp banking turns you wouldn’t even be able to tell the pitch or roll have changed in the HQ version.

You can see a pair of images detailing the 3D printed parts and the assembled gimbal below.

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Raspberry Pi Tor Proxy Lets You Take Anonymity With You

June 15, 2013 by Mike Szczys 41 Comments

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Your web traffic is being logged at many different levels. There are a few different options to re-implement your privacy (living off the grid excluded), and the Tor network has long been one of the best options. But what about when you’re away from you home setup? Adafruit has your back. They’ve posted a guide which will turn a Raspberry Pi into a portable Tor proxy.

The technique requires an Ethernet connection, but these are usually pretty easy to come by in hotels or relatives’ homes. A bit of work configuring the Linux network components will turn the RPi into a WiFi access point. Connect to it with your laptop or smartphone and you can browse like normal. The RPi will anonymize the IP address for all web traffic.

Leveraging the Tor network for privacy isn’t a new subject for us. We’ve looked at tor acks that go all the way back to the beginnings of Hackaday. The subject comes and goes but the hardware for it just keeps getting better!

This Week On HANDMADE.hackaday

June 9, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

This week on HANDMADE.hackaday we’ve seen a pretty good variety of skills.

HANDMADE.hackaday.com is growing quickly. Keep sending in those good tips! We have some videos of our own planned as well, keep an eye out for those!

Whats Up With These Subdomains At Hackaday?

June 5, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 54 Comments

We recently added two subdomains to hackaday.com

LIFE.hackaday.com : learn tips and tricks to make your life better.
HANDMADE.hackaday.com : Celebrating craftsmanship

We thought we would share our thoughts and goals with these wonderful additions.

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Announcing LIFE.hackaday

May 29, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 80 Comments

Over the years we’ve had a tons of tips sent in that were more along the lines of “lifehacks”. Simple little tips to make life better. While we would occasionally squeeze them into hackaday, many got left behind. Now we’ve created an entire site called LIFE.hackaday that we’re filling with all these great ideas. Finally, a place for all those docks people send us!

Occasionally, there might be something that we feel works for the “classic” hackaday and “LIFE.”, in which case, we may just mention it here. We hope that by creating another site, we can give people the “lifehacks” they want while keeping hackaday focused on hardware hacking.

We have some other tricks up our sleeve, but they aren’t quite ready to be revealed yet.

Hackaday Links: Sunday, May 26th, 2013

May 26, 2013 by Mike Szczys 56 Comments

The warmer months cometh and it’s time to think of this year’s Burning Man. [Matt’s] already set himself up with a sound-reactive LED project he calls the Seed of Life.

Older readers, and those who really know their hobby electronic history, will know the name Heathkit. Many readers tipped us off about their triumphant return. We’re not sure what form this reincarnation will take, but you can help shape it by participating in the survey.

Dust off that MSP430 launchpad and turn it into a composite video Pong console.

Here’s a way to use your Android phone as a computer mouse.

We’re not quite sure what this is, but turn your volume down before watching the video about a modular sythesizer hack.

[Arkadiusz Spiewak] wrote in to share some of the printing success (translated) he’s had recently with the H-bot style printer we saw a while back.

Strap an Arduino and an Electric Imp to your arm (and everyone else’s) and it’ll remember everyone you meet. You know, kind of like Google Glass but with geeky arm-wear instead of geeky headgear?

And finally, [Nerick] has just finished a thermometer project using Nixie tubes (translated).