[Pablo] likes to buy and repair broken cameras. When he was in need of a way to test the shutter speed, his brother came up with a great idea. Harvest the photo transistor from an old ball mouse. It turned out to be just as easy as it sounds. He plugs the circuit into some sound editing software to get the signal. We think this is pretty slick.
[via Makezine]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuDZnJX5kqw]
[Jeri] got her hands on some of the DuPont Luxprint EL ink and had some fun conducting experiments. She tried different materials for the base and the display itself. Not only does she just play with materials, she also tears apart a VFD and an LCD to see if she could use them for parts. The LCD turned out to be the most successful. We saw this stuff show up at the Bay Area Maker Faire and we’re excited to see it become more accessible.
[via Makezine]
[Razor] shares with us the plans for an intelligent battery charging circuit. Instead of blindly charging your battery into oblivion, this one shuts off once the battery is fully charged. It is a nice clean circuit that can be adjusted and fine tuned to your specific needs via some trim pots and dip switches.
[via HackedGadgets]
The Superprobe is a logic analyzer, multimeter, and much more rolled into a fun to build project. [Ben Ryves] didn’t come up with the original idea, but he definitely took a good thing and made it better. You can use it to test logic, inject logic into a circuit, read capacitors and resistors, test frequency, read the device address from 1-wire devices, and more. Interchangeable probes, choice of internal or external power, simple two-button operation, and a powerful PIC microcontroller at the heart of it all make this a fantastic tool for your electronics workbench. Check out the quality video after the break that [Ben] put together to show off the results of his tinkering.
Being able to see what you’re doing can be the hardest part of drilling the through holes in those freshly etched printed circuit boards. We don’t know why we didn’t come up with this, but [Markus Gebhard] solved his shadowy woes with his 20-LED Dremel light ring. Honestly, how many times have we seen lights rings in photography without putting it together that a light ring is perfect for this purpose. So kudos to [Markus], now we’ve got to go and dig up some surface mount LEDs and uncork the copper chloride.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF4cw41SMvY]
[Scott] over at curiousinventor.com has posted an instructable detailing how to use an Arduino and a power drill to spool solder. The Arduino senses the speed that the drill is going via an opto interrupter and a laser and adjusts with a servo hooked to the trigger. While we don’t think many people will be dying to spool some solder, this system might be useful for all kinds of things, like winding yarn or making coils.
