Amazing Backyard Rocket Ship Tree House

February 21, 2011 by Mike Nathan 26 Comments

Ravenna_Ultra-Low-Altitude_Vehicle

If you thought you had a cool tree house as a kid, think again. Tasked with landscaping his back yard and building a tree house for his son, [Jon] decided to go all out and build him a rocket ship instead.

Rising 15 feet into the Seattle skyline, the tree house known as the Ravenna Ultra-Low-Altitude Vehicle (RULAV), is sure to be the envy of every kid in the neighborhood. [Jon] and a friend worked for well over a year on their creation, welding, grinding, painting, and riveting their way along. After the structure was built, they fabricated some custom PCBs, using them to build the ship’s 14 control panels. The entire operation is controlled by a custom OS built to run on the three ATmega MCUs that manage operations.

Not content with just a handful of knobs and switches, the ship contains over 800 LEDs among its laundry list of electronics goodies. Compressed air is used to shoot water from positioning “thrusters”, while a paint mixer spins under the ship to simulate the rough and bumpy nature of space travel. The simulated launches are capped off with plenty of authentic NASA-style audio and a sub woofer that gives everything a deep, resonating rumble.

The project is truly amazing, and a ton of work went into every little detail in order to make this the most spectacular tree house ever seen. [Jon] definitely takes the award for “Coolest Dad Ever” for this build, even we’re jealous!

The pictures certainly don’t do it justice, so be sure to check out the video below for a quick introduction and demo of this awesome project.

Thanks to [Jeremy Elson] for the tip.

Continue reading “Amazing Backyard Rocket Ship Tree House” →

Toy Helicopter Charging Fix

February 20, 2011 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

[Onefivefour] was surprised that his E-flite Blade MCX radio controlled helicopter came with a charger that used AA batteries to recharge the lithium batteries in the flying unit. Yeah, that’s a bit crazy. He set out to modify the base unit to work with AC power. There are four batteries inside this base unit, one of them powers the charge detector circuit and the others are used to juice-up the chopper’s rechargeable cells. He took a 5V regulated charger from a Motorola cellphone and modified it to interface with the contacts for the three AA cells. Like the Magic Trackpad hack, he did this without altering the holder by cutting a couple of pencils to length and attaching the positive and negative contacts from the AC charger to them. Check out the video after the break for a walk though, noting how he still has the option to go back to battery power if he so chooses.

Continue reading “Toy Helicopter Charging Fix” →

Bluetooth Tomy Omnibot Hack

February 19, 2011 by Mike Nathan 10 Comments

tomy_omnibot_hack

[DJ Sures] sent us his most recent hack, and it’s one that is sure to please those who enjoy a good dose of 80’s nostalgia. He located a Tomy Omnibot on eBay and snatched it up immediately. While he was waiting for it to arrive, he planned out what he would add to it once it showed up at his door. Once the robot was delivered, he cleaned it up, painted it, then got down to business.

The original robot had no ability to move its arms or head, so he immediately added servos to enable those actions. A wireless camera was inserted between the Omnibot’s eyes, and a wireless mic was mounted in his chest. He has also added some features found in his previous projects, such as voice recognition, visual recognition, voice synthesis, and the ability to remotely control the bot. He plans on adding an ultrasonic ping sensor and IR floor sensors in the near future. This is a great build so far, and it sounds like he has plenty more in store.

Be sure to stick around for a video of the robot in action, and if you are interested in some of [DJ Sures’] previous work, check these out as well.

Continue reading “Bluetooth Tomy Omnibot Hack” →

Hacking Teddy Ruxpin

February 18, 2011 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

[DJ Sures] got his hands on a broken Teddy Ruxpin doll and decided to give it a new robotic life. You may want to ask the children to leave the room before viewing the video after the break. It starts right off with little Teddy having his throat slashed in order to get at the parts in the head. After retrofitting the eyes, mouth, neck, and arms with servos, Teddy gets a Bluetooth upgrade that lets you control his movements wirelessly. [DJ Sures] even has plans to get the little guy up and walking, far exceeding the original capabilities.

Continue reading “Hacking Teddy Ruxpin” →

WWII’s Top Cryptography Comes To A Child’s Toy

February 15, 2011 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

This toy has some upgraded internals that turn it into an Enigma machine. We absolutely love the idea, as it takes a toy that your child may have grown out of, and uses it to provide teachable moments dealing with both history and mathematics. But who are we kidding? We want to make one just because it’s a fun project.

[Sketch] grabbed this toy from a thrift store because it has a full keyboard that he can use to make his own machine. It’s powered by an Arduino, with a four-line character LCD display taking the place of the original. His post covers the methods he used to figure out the keyboard wiring, and also contains a cursory overview of how the Enigma Machine functions. See a video of the finished project after the break.

If this wet your appetite, also check out the paper Enigma Machine we covered during Hackaday’s first year.

Continue reading “WWII’s Top Cryptography Comes To A Child’s Toy” →

Model Car Additions Make Us Hear Knight Rider Theme

February 12, 2011 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

This collection of model vehicle hacks adds obstacle avoidance in an attempt to make them autonomous. At the front end you’ll find two PCBs which use IR approximation to monitor the road ahead. We’re not familiar with this particular use of these IR receivers (TSOP1738) which we’re used to seeing in remote control receiver applications but if recent posts are any indication we think you’ll enjoy the use of a 555 timer on each of those boards.

The rest of the hardware is pretty common, a PIC 16F628 does the thinking while an L293D h-bridge drives the motors. Alas, we didn’t find a video, or even a description of the finished project. But there are full schematics, board layout pictures, and the code for both this vehicle and a second Tank version.

[Thanks Pieter]

555s For Your Mouse And R/C Airplane

February 1, 2011 by Noah Dunker 18 Comments

[lenny] decided to build a 555-based auto-firing mouse based on a 555 after seeing a similar PIC-based project we posted earlier. Lenny’s version is self-contained in one mouse without requiring a second mouse to act as the rapid-fire button. It uses only a handful of components, costs less than $5 to build, and doesn’t require any programming.

But then, [wfdudley] shakes things up a bit. He added a 4022 counter IC and some diodes to act as logical “OR” gates in order to create a unique blinking pattern (short-short-long) for the lights on a friend’s RC airplane. While this project involves more components, it’s definitely a trickier problem to solve with a 555 timer IC. We love seeing people choosing simplicity in design over popular off-the-shelf microcontroller frameworks as these two have done.

Don’t forget, the 555 Design Contest is still going strong, and you’ve got the entire month of February to submit your awesome designs. We wanted to highlight two of the more clever 555-based hacks that we’ve had in our backlog for a while, though.