What Has 114 LEDs And Is Always Running?

September 29, 2011 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

The answer, of course, is a word clock. This is actually [Eric’s] second version of a word clock. Like the first one, it uses 114 LEDs to back light the words on the display.

In his first iteration he used an Arduino to drive a Charlieplex array of lights. It was an 11 by 10 grid, plus four LEDs to display the in-between minutes as dots at each corner of the clock face. This time around he’s still using an Arduino, but the lights have seen a huge upgrade. In one of his build pictures you can see the reel of RGB led modules which have two RGB LEDs and an HL1606 driver on each segment. These are SPI controlled, making them easy to hook up, using just a few data and power bus rails. Check out the test video after the break that shows what this grid is capable of.

In case you can’t figure out what time is displayed above, you might check out an English version of a Word Clock face to help in your own build.

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Sustainability Hacks: Automatic Window Control

September 29, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 43 Comments

Sometimes, changing one little bit of a green hack turns it into a build that wastes as much energy as our gaming rig. [Dr. West]’s automatic window controller is one of these builds. The good news is the window controller can be easily modified to cut energy costs in the fall and spring.

[Dr. West] doesn’t have any control over the heat in his apartment and for the entire Canadian winter, his apartment gets really hot. He doesn’t pay for his heat, so he does what any of us would do – crack a window. Inspired by this post, he put a linear actuator in the frame of his kitchen window. [Dr. West] didn’t want to damage the window frame, so he attached the actuator to a piece of square aluminum tubing that mounts to the existing screw holes.

The electronics, [Dr. West] used a Rabbit 2000 dev board, LCD display and keypad, and built an H-bridge circuit on a bit of breadboard. Because of a port conflict and admitted laziness, an Arduino is used to read the thermistor. The display shows the current and desired temperature, and the Rabbit opens and closes the window accordingly. All the source code is posted in the forum post.

While it’s not the most ‘green’ idea to dump heat from a building’s HVAC system out into a frozen tundra, this would be a great build to automatically open and close windows in the more temperate seasons. Open windows during the day, close them at night and you’ll have no more problems coming home to a house that’s either too hot or too cold. Check out a video of the automatic window after the break.

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CV Sequencer With A TV Out

September 27, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

[gijs] sent in the control voltage sequencer he’s been working on that uses the TVout Arduino library to provide a graphical interface.

The sequencer doesn’t produce any sound on its own. Instead, it outputs a Control Voltage so other synths can be sequenced with [gijs]’ TVSCV. Before MIDI came around, CV was the standard to connect synthesizers and drum machines together. Even today, a lot of boutique synths have at least one jack for CV. [gijs]’ build is really interesting because of the user interface – the TVout Arduino library was used in conjunction with a tiny CRT to change values, timing and speed of the CV output. The TVSCV is able to sequence two different channels of CV at 10 bit resolution with 16 steps per bank.

From the video after the break, the TVSCV sounds like it can produce what would be the trippiest soundtrack ever conceived for an Atari or NES game. It’s a great bit of kit, especially when connected to an Atari punk console or a TR-808 and a glitch delay.

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Toilet Paper Printer Made From Scrap Parts

September 27, 2011 by Mike Nathan 18 Comments

toilet_paper_printer

Some of our favorite hacks are those made with scrap materials, so we were delighted to see a contest being held by the German technology magazine c’t which focuses on using salvaged components. “Mach flott den Schrott” is the name of the competition, which loosely translates to “Make fast the scrap”.

German builder [Mario Lukas’] entry into the contest (Google Translation) is definitely unique, and certainly fits within the theme. He built a toilet paper printer that uses a bunch of recycled components to write anything he desires on a roll of the soft white stuff. His blog walks through the build details, including a bill of materials for all of the scrap bits he used to put it together. Several CD-ROM drives, printers, and even inline skates donated some components to the printer, while an Arduino controls the entire printing process.

Though [Mario] is using RSS and Twitter feeds as a data source for his toilet-side scribe, we imagine it will only be a matter of time before advertising companies seize upon this sort of technology to create personalized advertisements geared towards a decidedly captive audience.

Continue reading to see a quick video of his toilet paper printer in action.

[via Make]

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Voxel Shield Makes Driving LED Cubes Easy

September 26, 2011 by Mike Nathan 21 Comments

voxel_shield_led_cube

An Arduino can handle running a small LED cube on its own, but if you’re planning on building something big, eventually you are going to run out of pins. For something like an 8x8x8 cube, odds are you will have to turn to shift registers to get the job done. While you could design a breakout board full of shift registers on your own, [Connor] has done the work for you and produced an easy to use Arduino LED cube shield.

He calls his creation the Voxel Shield, and it incorporates 9 SN74LS595N shift registers and an external power plug for all of your LED cube needs. The shield can handle addressing up to 512 LEDs, making it an easy way to drive an 8x8x8 cube or even a 64×8 LED matrix.

It’s a nice clean and compact way to drive a large number of LEDs, so if you have the need, be sure to swing by his site – he has made his schematics and board layout files available to all comers.

[Thanks, Thomas]

Automated Humane Pest Control

September 24, 2011 by Mike Nathan 36 Comments

rat_trap_2000

[Tobie] seems to have a bit of a rat problem.

While most people would be inclined to simply buy the oversized Victor spring-loaded rat traps and call it a day, [Tobie] is a bit more humane. To help remedy his problem while also ensuring that no rats are harmed in the process, he built the Rat Trap 2000.

Self-described as completely over the top, the Rat Trap 2000 lures the rodents into its containment area with apples and corn, securing them inside using a servo-actuated trap door. The door is triggered by an Arduino that monitors the holding pen for movement using an IR sensor. All of the action is captured on video using the web cam on his Eee-PC, as you can see in the very short video below.

This certainly isn’t the most cost-efficient way to control your vermin problems, but if you’ve got some spare parts laying around, why not? It’s far more humane than some of the other rodent control solutions we have seen, and it sure beats living with rats!

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Space Camera Streams Data During Flight

September 19, 2011 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

Take the risk of not recovering your hardware out of a near-space camera launch by streaming the data during flight. [Tim Zaman] is part of a team that developed the rig seen above. It sent 119 image back during the recent balloon launch. This included transmissions from as high as 36 kilometers.

The main hardware included a BeagleBoard with connected Webcam housed in a Styrofoam cooler for thermal protection. Pair that with a GPS module for location tracking, and a GPRS module for data transmission and you’re in business.

But that’s not all that went up. The team built a backup hardware module in case the primary failed. This one also had a GPS and GPRS radio, but was driven by an Arduino.

The radio connection made it easy to recover the hardware. GPS data led the team directly to the landing site. The package came to rest on the roof of a building, but we guess that’s more convenient than getting snagged at the top of a huge tree.

Don’t miss the hardware detail video that we’ve embedded after the break.

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