Scott was tired of throwing money away on cans of compressed air (who pays for air?). He decided to build a compressed air can that could be recharged. The aerosaol can that he used should be able to handle at least 200psi. The travel DC air compressor is only good for 50psi so he doesn’t expect this to turn into a frag grenade anytime soon. It’s not nearly as powerful, but at least now it’s “as free as the air you breathe”.
I’m at Defcon in Vegas and I’ve already managed to give away 1 of 5 boxes of shirts in the space of 3 minutes. I guess writing “FREE” on the box worked. If you’re here and want to get a shirt either look for me or drop your contact info on the tip line and I’ll work something out (if you’re at Defcon). If you got a free t-shirt today, hopefully you’ll contribute to the tip line as well. We will have more shirts in the future (seriously don’t worry if you don’t or can’t get one of these), but if you’re here you might as well jump on the opportunity. There is a picture of me after the jump to help you identify me in the wild.
Reading [computerguru365]’s infrared security camera build you may wonder “Why did he build it like that?” Well, he was working with what he had. He disassembled a webcam and removed the IR filter (sound familiar?). He mounted it in a stripped power supply case with the zoom assembly pulled from an old camcorder. The zoom control was wired to the back of the box. The final addition was an IR array to the front. You could probably buy a better product off the shelf, but if you’ve already got the parts, why not
It has been a while since I’ve mentioned our unofficial Folding@home team; that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped crushing the competition. We recently completed 25 million points and are ranked 32nd in the world. Pretty good for a team that only really got rolling last October. That much processing power would rank us as #91 in the Top 500 Supercomputers list. To join the team or just to celebrate, head over to the unofficial forums or stop by #hackaday on EFnet.
[thanks Tired2]
Continue reading “Team Hack-A-Day Completes 25,000,000 Points”
[RafkeP] from Divxstation has created this clever hack to clone the Philips Electronics Ambilight technology used in their flat-panels. Ambilight is an RGB backlight that changes color based on the on-screen image. It’s supposed to make the viewing experience more comfortable. The MoMoLight uses a directshow filter to calculate the average color on the top, left and right border of the screen. It sends this information to a microcontroller that does PWM control of three separate banks of red, green and blue cold-cathodes. LEDs could be used instead. Monitoring the top, left and right would be called Ambilight 3 according to Philips’s naming scheme, which doesn’t actually exist yet.
[thanks mathias vdb]
The Team Hack-A-Day forum recently started a thread to discuss homebrew CNC. Computer Numerical Control machining is a very popular topic in our community because of the prohibitive cost of buying a machine off-the-shelf. Searching through the archive it seems we’ve only covered one actual CNC machine; since people have been building these things for so long, it’s hard to come up with the definitive CNC project. We’ve also featured the Etch CNC, designed by the AXIS developers to verify their software.
My coworker Will O’Brien, who writes how-tos for Engadget, recently started working on a new CNC mill. You can expect a write-up on that in the future. Also, Lady Ada recommends Drill Bit City for sourcing cheap carbide bits.
If there is enough interest, Team Hack-A-Day might add another forum for CNC projects.
For those who don’t know: Team Hack-A-Day was founded by Hack-A-Day readers to support our Folding@HOME efforts. Through their work we are now the #37 team (and still gaining) having produced nearly 20 million points in the last 8 months.
[thanks Tired2, op for #hackaday on EFnet]
I admit it. Most the weekend I was making quips about the Segway polo guys like, “Those guys look like walking would do them some good, especially that one.” Well, Will and I finally put two and two together and realized that “that one” was Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. He is feared on the polo ground because he has got at least three backups with him and doesn’t mind breaking one.
