Obama-1 Desk Spy Satellite Aims For High Approval Ratings

August 13, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 22 Comments

This miniature “spy satellite” may not gain the ire of the Chinese People’s Army, but it will certainly look rad on your desk. Besides looking cool, this “satellite” is able to transmit video up to 300 feet away and has sun tracking solar panels for battery recharging. Additionally, it has a LED “thruster” and speakers.

One cool thing about this build is that the body was made out of a lamp from Goodwill. Recycled/thrift store enclosures always make a good addition to your project as they won’t break the bank. Additionally, they may yield some other bonus parts when taken apart. In this case, the lamp fit into the project scope perfectly, but anyone trying to duplicate it might not be so lucky.

Creative use of other household materials rounds out this build, with solar panels taken off home garden lights, and part of a nose hair trimmer used as the “thruster” body. This well-build project is a great example of how to convert household items into something totally different and unique.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGqTmnSP71U&w=470&h=349%5D

Two-axis Panning Time Lapse Rig Built From Lego

August 12, 2011 by Mike Nathan 14 Comments

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[Jochem] wrote in to share a neat time lapse camera dolly he constructed out of Lego bricks. He is a big fan of the two-axis panning time lapse effect where the camera moves while recording images. He figured it would be easy enough to construct one of his own, so he dug out his pail of Lego and got to work.

The rig consists of a stationary motor platform which pulls a movable sled using a simple gear and string. The motor platform is controlled by an Arduino, which pulls the movable sled along every so often, snapping pictures along the way. [Jochem’s] Nikon D80 supports shutter release via IR, so he programmed the Arduino to send a quick IR pulse each time it has finished moving the dolly.

The rig looks like it works pretty well as you can see by the video below, but [Jochem] says that it still needs a bit of work. We just can’t wait to see what other time lapse movies he puts together once he finds an “interesting” time lapse subject.

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DIY Orb Display Puts The Earth In Your Hands

August 8, 2011 by Mike Nathan 24 Comments

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[Nirav] liked the idea of having his own personal Earth at the tip of his fingers, and since that’s not happening any time soon, he decided to build the next best thing. Sure, he could have simply gone out and purchased a globe, but there is no fun in that. Instead, he shows us how he put together an interactive spherical display that won’t break the bank.

The sphere uses a Microvision SHOWWX to drive its display, which projects an image inside of a frosted glass light fixture. The pico projector gets some help from a 180° fisheye lens along the way, enabling the picture to be stretched across the entire inner surface of the globe.

[Nirav] used his 3D extruder to build a base for the globe, which attaches to the projector via a printed mounting plate. A GorillaPod was used to keep things upright while he dusted off his trigonometry skills in order to figure out how to get the image just right.

We think that he did a great job – it definitely looks to be on par (albeit a bit smaller) than the eye of Sauron globe we saw a while back. We can’t wait to see a video of this thing in action once it’s completely finished!

Model Rocketry From The Rocket’s Point Of View

August 3, 2011 by Mike Nathan 30 Comments

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When someone writes in and says, “Hey, I strapped a camera to a rocket and took videos of it launching!” it’s really hard for us to not get suckered in. Try as we might, we just couldn’t resist taking a look at the videos [Vlad] recorded of his model rocketry “exploration”.

Inspired by our 4th of July post featuring POV videos of bottle rocket launches, he bought himself an 808 keychain camera and decided to try his hand at some high flying video. He strapped the camera to his 46” Estes rocket with a few pieces of scotch tape in an effort to keep weight down, and set off to his launch pad.

He used a Estes C6-5 engine for each launch, which he estimates took the rocket up to a height of 300 feet rather than the typical 500 feet, due to the added weight. While not particularly useful, the video is still awfully fun to watch, and perhaps it will inspire others to mount cameras on even larger, more powerful rockets.

We can only hope.

Continue reading to check out the videos [Vlad] shot, but be warned, the descent is vertigo-inducing.

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NTSC Video Out With The Papilio One

July 28, 2011 by Mike Nathan 13 Comments

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[Ben Leperchey] is working on building a Sega Master System clone using the Papilio One FPGA board, and although his ultimate goal has yet to be reached, he’s bringing some great stuff to the table in the meantime.

One component that is necessary for any sort of game system clone is NTSC/PAL video output, naturally. Since no one had constructed a TV output “Wing” (The Papilio One’s version of a shield or breakout board), [Ben] went and did it on his own. Using only 14 resistors and a low-pass audio filter, he was able to get the video output he was looking for with relatively little trouble. His VHDL code running on the Papilio does all the hard work of creating the video signal, while the wing he designed mostly handles the connectivity.

This is one of the first few projects/components we’ve seen come out of the Papilio camp, and it looks like things are off to a good start. We can’t wait to see the Master System implementation once it has been wrapped up!

Continue reading to see a quick video demonstration of the Papilio One and [Ben’s] TV output wing.

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Adding Video Out To The Open Pandora

July 22, 2011 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

There’s very few users out there who actually have their hands on an Open Pandora Console. But the ones who do might find this hack useful for getting TV out up and running. It’s actually not hard at all, but if you don’t want to alter the hardware on the device you’ll first have to find a cable plug that will fit the EXT jack. This proved more difficult than it needed to be, since TI carries the connector but only sells them in multiples of 2200. A group buy was organized and we’d bet you can still get in on that action.

The connector in question carries TVout1 and TVout2 conductors. These correspond to the Luminance and Chrominance signals needed for the S-video protocol. But [MarkoeZ] wanted to use a composite connection. Turns out that’s not hard either, he hooked up the ground from the plug to the ground of the RCA jack, then connected both video lines to the center conductor, making sure to add an inline 470pf capacitor on the Chrominance side. Check out the demo video embedded after the break to see the final product.

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LG TV Hacking Via Serial Connection Or IR Codes

July 21, 2011 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

[Brendan Robert] has been sending us forum thread links outlining the things he’s learned while hacking LG televisions. They were a bit hard to follow for the uninitiated, so we asked if he could give us an overview of what he’s been working on. Not only did he do that, but he made a little Hackaday shout-out seen above by adding the skull and cross-wrenches as one of the menu overlays.

He’s using a TV as his computer monitor, which he picked up at a discount because it was a display model. Without the original remote, and wanting to have features like power-saving mode which is standard on monitors but not on this TV, he decided to see what he could accomplish. A couple of things made this quite a bit easier. First, there’s an RS232 port built into the back which removes the need to investigate and solder your own onto the board. Secondly, since LG built on the Linux kernel for the set, you can download some of the firmware sources from their website.

What he came up with is a script that will find and communicate with the TV over the serial connection. The test script used during development polled every possible command, looking for valid return values. Once [Brendan] established which commands work and what they do, he was able to take command of the unit, writing scripts to adjust brightness based on the ambient light in the room as seen from the computer’s webcam. Make sure you check out the sub-pages to his post that detail the brightness adjustments, stand-by functionality, custom overlay graphics, and the extra commands he uncovered.