$5 Toy Car Upgraded To Record The Ride In HD

November 26, 2012 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

We hope [Kabir’s] driving skills are top-notch because the camera stuck to the front of this toy is a high-ticket item. It’s ironic, since the donor toy for this hacked RC car only cost about five bucks. It had been gathering dust in the dark reaches of his bedroom until he sat down and gave it a proper upgrade.

He started the project by getting rid of the stock battery and moving to a pair of Lithium Polymer cells. They give the vehicle more power and more than twice the running time between charges. A couple of springs were added to the suspension system for a smoother ride. Turning had been a problem since the original design offered no control over how far the wheels turn. You can just make out the body of the servo motor he rolled into the system to allow for more precise turning.

The most recent addition is the HackHD camera on the front of the vehicle. It records to an SD card rather than streaming the video in real-time. Check out the clip after the break to see the interesting perspective achieved by filming so low to the ground. The one thing we would add is a cage around that board which retails at around $165.

Continue reading “$5 Toy Car Upgraded To Record The Ride In HD” →

Making A Touchless Vibrator With Reverse Engineering

November 25, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 135 Comments

Here’s one for the ladies (and men, we guess) out there.

[Beth] recently bought a LELO Lyla vibrator for herself, but found operating this wireless vibrator to be an exercise in mood-killing awkwardness. Wanting a more natural interface, she decided to reverse engineer a remote control vibrator. Here’s a cache; [Beth]’s blog has been up and down all day.

The LELO Lyla comes with a wireless control in the form of a neon pink remote. [Beth] thought this remote was a little clunky and felt like programming a VCR – something she doesn’t like in a sex toy. With the goal of improving this remote and allowing for a better user experience, [Beth] tore down this remote and began to build her own.

The new vibrator remote would have to be touchless – there’s nothing that kills the mood faster than mashing buttons. By using ultrasonic sensors, [Beth] would be able to control the intensity of her vibrator by simply waving her hand; a much more natural interface. With the control interface out of the way, the only thing left to do was to figure out how to control the business end of the vibrator.

The remote for a stock LELO Lyla comes with a MSP430 microcontroller and a 2.4 GHz CC2500 radio controlled over an SPI interface. Instead of disassembling the microcontroller and figuring out the firmware from scratch, [Beth] decided to sniff the SPI bus and make her own controller.

After attaching some 0.1″ headers to the stock remote and soldering a few wires to the microcontroller, [Beth] captured the SPI data with a Propeller dev board. By streaming the SPI traffic to a terminal, she was able to figure out exactly how the remote works and set out on building her own.

The new remote was built out of an Arduino Pro Mini, ultrasonic sensor, CC2500 radio and a four digit 7-segment display. After printing an enclosure, [Beth] had a very easy to use, hands free vibrator.

In the video after the break you can see [Beth]’s vibrator in action. She’s still looking for a few more ways to improve it such as predicting the movements of her hand with a phase-locked loop, but for now we’ll just tip our hat to [Beth] for a very awesome hack.

Continue reading “Making A Touchless Vibrator With Reverse Engineering” →

Turning The Hexbug Spider Into A Line-following Robot

November 12, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 7 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quDHhuEsxEg&w=470]

You may be familiar with the Hexbug Spider, a small electronic robot toy sold at Target and Walmart for $20. While they’re able to be commanded to move forward, backward, and spin around on a dime, there aren’t any external sensors to make it really exciting. [Eric] sought to remedy this and came up with a line-following board replacement for the Hexbug Spider.

The stock Spider has a small circuit board that allows for the control of two motors with a remote. [Eric] removed this control board and replaced it with his own, powered by a TI MSP430 microcontroller. On this board, [Eric] included a pair of IR LEDs, able to detect the path of a white line drawn on the ground. With just a little bit of code, [Eric] made his $20 Hexbug Spider into a very cool looking robot.

[Eric] figured out how to improve his robot toy, but the power of the MSP430 microcontroller he used doesn’t limit him to only following lines. By using an MSP430 Launchpad, anyone can upload new code to the improved Spider, and even add new sensors to this creepy walking robotic toy.

Hacked Farm Toy Plays Simon

November 4, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

My kids have a plastic farm toy. It moos, it oinks, it neighs, it
baas, and frankly, it grates. But since I tricked it out with an
attiny2313, at least it can play “Simon Says”.

This is what [Tom] said in his email to us. We love that when the toy annoyed [Tom], he improved it.

He started by inserting his own electronics. Using an ATTiny2313 for the brains, he proceeded to make it into an interesting game of “simon says”. Each stall is a button and has a nice bright LED in it to help you follow along. Interestingly, he preserved the original electronics as well and added a switch so he could change modes. Great job [Tom]!

Catch the video after the break.

Continue reading “Hacked Farm Toy Plays Simon” →

RC Airplane Made From Political Signs

October 27, 2012 by Jeremy Cook 30 Comments

Whatever candidate (if any) you’re in favor of, we could bet that you’re probably tired of seeing advertisements and political signs everywhere. [Mark] wrote in with a hack that allows you to actually use these signs for something fun, making a RC airplane!

[Mark] gives a full bill of materials in his article, but the featured component is campaign sign. This isn’t LawyerADay, so we’re not sure of the legality of taking them. After election day at least, it’s doubtful anyone will care. Of course you’ll also need a motor, prop, and RC controls, as well as some dowels to attach the tail section to the main body, so don’t buy the “campaign promise” that this is a free airplane.

CAD diagrams are available of the cutouts, as well as how to cut the signs to form hinges without any other parts. This is quite clever, and a video of the plane in action on a table is available on the site. According to [Mark], no video was rolling on its test flight, but it did fly before some interference grounded the plane. Hopefully he’ll be able to get some footage of it in action soon!

Small Server For Model Trains

October 26, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

For reasons we can’t comprehend, model train layouts are incredibly popular in Germany. [Gerhard] is one of those model train aficionados that has moved far beyond a layout with a transformer controlling the speed of the train; he sent in a tip for a very tiny Rocrail server he built to control the locomotives moving across his layout.

[Gerhard] uses Rocrail – a control system for train layouts large or small. Rocrail comes in both client and server configurations. The client is able to run on iDevices or Android. [Gerhard]’s server runs on a very tiny Linux computer tucked away under the layout.

Instead of a Raspberry Pi ([Gehard] couldn’t get one in time for this build), he used a Carambola board. The Rocrail server is installed on this single board computer and connects to a CAN bus controller. It’s a step up from [Gehard]’s previous CAN/Ethernet gateway built around OpenWRT, and makes the entire device much smaller.

[Gehard] doesn’t have a video of his layout in action, but after the break you can see how much the German people love their model trains at Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg.

Continue reading “Small Server For Model Trains” →

Automatic Airsoft Turret

October 25, 2012 by Jeremy Cook 8 Comments

[Valentin] wrote in to tell us about his automatic Airsoft turret. What it lacks in accuracy, it more than makes up for with sheer volume of fire. The pellet container is able to hold 500 6mm bbs, so make sure to get out of the way after this device is armed.

The device itself is a great example of physical hacking, harvesting parts from a motion sensor as well as a G35 gearbox from Airsoft gun. For physical rotation, it uses a reversing platform reminiscent of the way a useless machine works (see this [HAD] article for more useless machine info). Even if you’re not interested in building a turret, this machine employs some very interesting concepts, so it’s worth checking out.

When live action Team Fortress becomes a fad, maybe these will make an appearance. Until then, check out the video of this turret after the break, or check out the original article for more pictures and video! Continue reading “Automatic Airsoft Turret” →