Sonic Screwdriver Shuts Off Mains

May 30, 2019 by Lewin Day 10 Comments

In the world of Doctor Who, the sonic screwdriver is a versatile tool with a wide range of capabilities. [Hartley] wanted some of that action for himself, and built a device of his own.

Unable to recreate the broad swathe of features from the show, he settled on something easier. The device is fitted with an ATTiny85, and a 433MHz transmitter. It’s programmed to switch wirelessly controlled mains sockets on and off. This lets him control appliances in his house with a flick of a screwdriver. Power is supplied by the classic AA battery, with a boost converter stepping it up to 5V to run the electronics.

It’s all wrapped up in a 3D printed case, that was carefully designed to fit all the parts inside. A paper mockup of the PCB layout was also used in the design phase. [Hartley] took full advantage of CAD software, to ensure everything fit correctly first time.

It’s a fun project, as sonic screwdrivers often are. Video after the break.

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This TARDIS Is Bigger On The Inside

September 21, 2018 by Rich Hawkes 24 Comments

A few months ago, YouTube user [Maladroit Modeller] uploaded a video of his model TARDIS from Doctor Who which shows an inside that’s bigger than the outside. Recently, [Maladroit Modeller] posted some pictures and has now uploaded a video showing how it’s done.

The TARDIS model itself is a 3:75 scale “Spin & Fly” model. The case to show everything off is built from foam core and the interior is built from foam core, silver paper, cardboard, styrene and other bits and pieces. There looks like there’s some EL wire being used, too, along with a lot of LEDs.

The build looks great and the illusion works very nicely in the video. Check out the video after the break, and then check out the “how it’s done” video for an explanation. Continue reading “This TARDIS Is Bigger On The Inside” →

Building A K9 Toy

June 22, 2017 by Rich Hawkes 6 Comments

[James West] has a young Doctor Who fan in the house and wanted to build something that could be played with without worrying about it being bumped and scratched. So, instead of creating a replica, [James] built a simple remote controlled K9 toy for his young fan.

K9 was a companion of the fourth Doctor (played by Tom Baker) in the classic Doctor Who series. He also appeared in several spin-offs. A robotic dog with the infinite knowledge of the TARDIS at hand, as well as a laser, K9 became a favorite among Who fans, especially younger children. [James] wanted his version of K9 to be able to be controlled by a remote control and be able to play sounds from the TV show.

Using some hand-cut acrylic, [James] built K9’s body, then started on plans for the motion control and brains. [James] selected the Raspberry Pi Zero for the controller board, a Speaker pHat for the audio, a couple of motors to move K9 around, and a motor controller. K9 is controlled by a WiiMote and has a button on his back to start pairing with the WiiMote (K9 answers with “Affirmative” when the pairing is successful.) When it came to the head, [James] was a little overwhelmed by trying to make the head in acrylic, so he got some foam board and used that instead. A red LED in the head lights up through translucent red acrylic.

It’s a great little project and [James] has put the Python code up on Github for anyone interested. We’ve had a couple of robot dog projects on the site over the years, like this one and this one.

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Hackaday Links: March 6, 2016

March 6, 2016 by Brian Benchoff 12 Comments

There’s the R2 Builders Club, hundreds of people are building BB-8, but there are a few robots that don’t get enough love from the amateur propsmiths. [Kenneth] just finished up his build of Crow from MST3K. He built Tom Servo a year or so ago and K-9 from Doctor Who. The beautiful thing about building MST3K robots and Doctor Who props is that you’re probably working with a larger budget than the prop department had.

Heathkit’s new website is up. The two products we know about so far – an AM radio kit and a slim jim antenna – can only be described as, ‘meh.’ Still, there are a few upgrades for old kits available and the requisite amount of nostalgia.

On today’s issue of, ‘should not be attempted by anyone, ever, under any circumstance’ here’s how to build a table saw at home. Yes, it’s a table saw built from a piece of aluminum, styrofoam, hot glue, and a shoe box. The guy really botched it by not going for the zero clearance insert here, but at least the fence is only a few dozen degrees off parallel with the blade.

[Mathieu] is working on a Mooltipass Mini. It’s tiny and the scroll wheel thingy makes things fun.

March 18th through March 20th is the Midwest RepRap Festival in Goshen, Indiana. This is, by far, the best conference, meetup, or festival we go to year after year. We’ll have a few members of the Hackaday crew at the event, and rumor has it the Internet has made it to Indiana this year.

Adafruit got a writeup in the New Yorker. The article is technically about the art of PCB design, but as with most general interest pieces on electronics it is awash in non sequiturs and simply defining the terminology.

[Oscar] built a miniature replica of a blinkenlight computer last year for the Hackaday Prize. This was the PiDP-8/I. While it looks awesome, the PDP-8/I is inherently limited. [Oscar] has his design methodology down, and now he’s working on a miniature replica of the king of the PDPs. It’s the PiDP-11/27. It’s just a prototype and render now, but the finished project will have custom switches, a handsome bezel, and will be much more capable.

MAME is now FOSS. That’s great news, but think about the amount of work that went into making this happen. MAME is 19 years old, and that means everyone who has contributed to the project over the years needed to sign off on this initiative.

A Functional Sonic Screw Driver (Well, Kind Of)

March 6, 2015 by James Hobson 14 Comments

[Jerome Kelty] just finished building this awesome data-logging Sonic Screwdriver with his 6-year-old son [Sam]. The Halloween previous, [Jerome’s] older son had dressed up as the Doctor, which had inspired [Sam] to make his own Sonic Screwdriver — however he declared that his screwdriver needed to actually work!

They sat down together and decided what it needed to be able to do. [Sam] has a pair of hermit crabs, so they thought it would be handy to be able to measure the temperature and the humidity of their habitat. It needed a flashlight for obvious 6-year old reasons, and it had to make the right sound effect when you used it too!

[Jerome’s] first thought was to 3D print it, but was met with a resounding no: “It needs to be metal!”

So out came the sketchpad and they started designing it to be cut on the lathe, using a combination of aluminum, brass and wood.

Many weekends later [Sam] and his dad finished the body of the screwdriver and started work on the electronics. To keep it simple they used an Arduino Pro Mini 5V with a Sparkfun OpenLog to record all the data — and a handful of sensors of course!

After modifying the body a few times they finally got all the electronic guts to fit inside the screw driver. It features an SD card you can remove to see the OpenLog data, but as a “cool factor” [Jerome] also programmed in the temperature sensor to output to the RGB LED, so little [Sam] can point at things to determine how warm or cold they are.

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Hackaday Links: November 30, 2014

November 30, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

Tired of wiring up the power rails and serial adapter every time you build something on a breadboard? [Jason] has you covered. He put his Breadboard Buddy Pro up on Indiegogo, and it does everything you’d expect it to: power rails, USB to UART bridge, and a 3.3 V regulator. Oh, he’s not using an FTDI chip. Neat.

With Christmas around the corner, a lot of those cheap 3-channel RC helicopters are going to find their way into stockings. They’re cool toys, but if you want to really have fun with them, you’ll need to add a penny.

Here’s a crowdfunding campaign for a very interesting IoT module. It’s a UART to WiFi adapter that has enough free Flash and RAM to run your own code, GPIOs, SPI, and PWM functions. Wait a second. This is just an ESP8266 module. Stay classy, Indiegogo.

Mankind has sent space probes to the surface – and received pictures from – Venus, Mars, the Moon, Titan, asteroids Itokawa and Eros, and comet Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. In a beautiful bit of geological irony, every single one of these celestial bodies looks like a rock quarry in Wales. That quarry is now for sale.

Here’s something exceptionally interesting. It’s a browser plugin that takes a BOM, and puts all the components into a cart. Here’s the cool bit: it does it with multiple retailers. The current retailers supported are Mouser, Digikey, Farnell/Element14, Newark, and RS Components.

Want a death ray? Too bad, because it’s already been sold.

Wiimote Controlled Extermination: Dalek-Style

May 31, 2014 by Marsh 11 Comments

Dalek Build

Convention-goers have likely strolled past a number of Daleks: the aliens drive around the event space, spouting threats of extermination and occasionally slapping folks with a rotating eyestalk. [James Bruton] has been hard at work building this Wii-remote-controlled Dalek with his fellow hackers at the SoMakeIt Hackerspace (you may remember our write-up from earlier this year).

Most Dalek builds seat a driver inside the body at the helm of a salvaged electric wheelchair, where they plunk around using a joystick control and simmer in an increasingly potent aroma. This version started like most, with a wooden structure from plans sourced at Project Dalek. Inside, however, [James] and his crew have tapped into the wheelchair’s motor controller to feed it a PWM signal from an Arduino Shrimp, which is linked to a Raspi. The Pi receives a Bluetooth signal from a Wiimote, and, through their custom Python script, directs the Dalek with ease.

They’re still working on finishing the Dalek’s body, but they’re using some clever tactics to push onward: using a 3D-printer to solve some of the nuanced styling choices. They’ve uploaded a gallery with additional photos on Facebook, and you can watch them goofing around with their creation (losing their balance and nearly exterminating themselves) in a video after the break.

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