Dollar Store Arc Reactor Build

May 31, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

Some people have a real knack for sourcing parts at the dollar store. [James] is one of those people, having built this Arc Reactor replica using mostly dollar store goods.

The light source is an LED disk light that was removed from its enclosure. A sink strainer, the plastic holder from a package of sewing pins, and some wire mesh go together to make the first layer of the bezel. The push-pin holder is what has the ring of narrow rectangles around the bright center. It was painted black and attached to the sink strainer which provides the concentric holes in the center of the device.

For the detail around the outside [James] went with some clear-plastic drinking cups. By cutting off the top centimeter of each and stacking three together he gets the clear base he was after. The rest of the parts were gathered from his electronics supplies. DIP sockets straddle the drinking glass rims, and are wound with copper wire for the look seen here.

We put this near the top of the dollar store builds along with this Blade Runner umbrella.

Ironman Replica Twofer

May 23, 2012 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

We think it’s a bit to late to show up for a screening of The Avengers in full costume, but an arc reactor T-shirt would be pretty cool. [4ndreas] built a chest strap that looks much like [Tony Stark’s] chest-mounted power source. It has a 3D printed enclosure which hosts the ATmega8 and 22 LEDs which provide the pulsing goodness. The thin cellphone battery helps to keep the size of the package to a minimum ~~and a strategically placed hole in a black T-shirt completes the look~~. It’s even bright enough to shine through the fabric of this black T-shirt.

But if you insist on head-to-toe regalia you’ll appreciate [James Bruton’s] Ironman suit replica build. Not only does he look the part, but he’s trying to build as much functionality into the project as possible. Most recently he finished the helmet. It’s got a motorized faceplate and LED edge-lit eye plates to impress hackers and cosplay fans alike.

Find video of both projects after the break.

Continue reading “Ironman Replica Twofer” →

Hacking Magnets Into Your Skin

May 13, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 79 Comments

[Dave] loved his iPod nano so much that he implanted 4 magnets in his arm to hold it.

Ok, go ahead and shout “fanboy” at your screen and say something snide about apples products or lament the poor working conditions at foxconn. Got it out of your system? Cool.

Actually, if we had to guess, [Dave] really isn’t doing this all for his love of the device or the company. It is much more likely that he is just really into body modding and this was a convenient theme for a mod. We find the idea pretty interesting. We’ve seen implants before, but they are usually of the RFID type. Typically those are used for some kind of security or computer control.

Implanting a magnet, however, is interesting because it could almost give you a “sixth sense” You could detect what was magnetic, and how magnetic it was. If we were going to do something like this, we would probably go fully sub-dermal though to help avoid infection.

What other kind of implants could you realistically do with today’s technology to give yourself other senses?

Sign And Speak Glove

May 4, 2012 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

This wire covered glove is capable of turning your hand gestures to speech, and it does so wirelessly. The wide range of sensors include nine flex sensors, four contact sensors, and an accelerometer. The flex sensors do most of the work, monitoring the alignment of the wearer’s finger joints. The contact sensors augment the flex sensor data, helping to differentiate between letters that have similar finger positions. The accelerometer is responsible for decoding movements that go along with the hand positions. They combine to detect all of the letters in the American Sign Language alphabet.

An ATmega644 monitors all of the sensors, and pushes data out through a wireless transmitter. MATLAB is responsible for collecting the data which is coming in over the wireless link. It saves it for later analysis using a Java program. Once the motions have been decoded into letters, they are assembled into sentences and fed into a text-to-speech program.

You’ve probably already guess that there’s a demo video after the break.

Continue reading “Sign And Speak Glove” →

A Blanket That Detects Its Own Orientation

April 24, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

If you want to capture a 3D model of a physical object, you could use a Kinect, a couple of lasers, constructive light, or even a simple touch sensor mounted on a robotic arm. Those are all expensive devices, and somewhat unnecessary now that you can just throw a blanket over an object and get a 3D model instantaneously.

The project is called IM BLANKY and it’s supposed to reproduce 3D shapes by simply throwing it over an object. The petals in the flower motif are pieces of conductive fabric that serve as contacts for the electrified tassel in the center of each flower. When the blanket is thrown over an object, the tassel is pulled by gravity, makes contact with one of the six conductive petals and sends a tilt switch to a microcontroller.

While we’re not too sure about the resolution IM BLANKY will provide with only 20 tilt sensors, but we imagine this could be used for a few medical applications.

via dvice

Badges? We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges!

April 19, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 5 Comments

In a an obvious marketing move akin to a drug dealer offering up free samples, Urban threads is offering free badge plans for hackerspaces that have robotic embroidery machines. We’ve seen this trend of badges coming up lately and we don’t know if it is the boy/girl scout in us, or the punk rocker that makes us pine for them. You may laugh, but look at that skull with the welding goggles on. If you don’t think that’s badass… then we disagree.

The idea of giving some away free isn’t new. You can download free photoshop brushes, free fonts, free circuits and all kinds of other free stuff from sites that sell better versions as well. We just couldn’t pass up the chance to point out that skull, and helping out hackerspaces is always good in our eyes. So, who has one of those embroidery machines?

Closing In On Nixie Cuff Links

April 4, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

It’s not Nixie cuff links yet, but we’re seeing a lot of potential for a few very classy accoutrements with [thouton]’s Nixie tube necklace.

The build was inspired by this much clunkier necklace that found its way onto the MAKE blog. Unlike the previous necklace, [thouton] used a much smaller Mullard ZM1021 indicator bulb. Instead of the normal 0-9 digits in a Nixie, this tube displays only A V Ω + - % and ~, betraying its pedigree as part of the display from an ancient multimeter.

To power the bulb, [thouton] is using a single AA battery and a boost converter salvaged from a camera flash unit. All the circuitry is on a little piece of perfboard encased in a handsome aluminum tube. Power is delivered through two terminals with a bit of audio cable standing in as the chain of the necklace. We suppose this could be re-engineered to use a coin cell battery; although a coin cell doesn’t offer as many amp hours as a AA cell, [thouton] is confident the AA will last for a few days. A coin cell would be more than enough for a night on the town, though.