Hackaday Links: April 13, 2011

April 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 34 Comments

Oven parts scrounging

In response to last week’s post about parts scrounging with a heat gun, Hackaday forum member [BiOzZ] decided to try doing the same thing in his oven. It seems to work quite well, but we’re wondering if there should be any concerns over the lead content of the solder. Anyone care to chime in?

Spill-proof parts holder

Have you ever been in the midst of disassembling something and knocked over your container full of screws onto the floor? [Infrared] has a simple solution to the problem which also happens to keep a couple of plastic bottles out of the landfill.

Easy button stops abuse of the word awesome

Do you often repeat a word ad nauseam? Make author Matt Richardson does, and he hacked a Staples “Easy” button to help him break his addiction to the word “Awesome”.

Cheap Remote-controlled baseboard lighting

[Sean] scored a pair of LED deck lighting kits for a steal and decided to install them into his newly renovated kitchen. They are currently remote operated, but he plans on adding an X10 interface as well as PIR sensors for automatic triggering in the near future.

Yet another LCD recapping guide

It starts with a finicky backlight, or perhaps a high-pitched whine from the back of your display – by now, we’re sure that everyone knows the symptoms of an LCD panel that’s just about to die. [Eric’s] Syncmaster recently quit on him, so he pried it open and got busy recapping. It’s running again, and he wanted to share his repair process in case others out there own the same display.

Quiz-o-Tron 3000

January 16, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

Who would have known that being given the task of planning a holiday party at a wine bar would turn into a hacking project? Well, here’s how that happened. A committee was in charge of the festivities and had decided on doing a mock game show. It wouldn’t really feel like a game show unless you had a contestant lockout system where the first one to hit the button gets a light and a sound while the runners-up get nothing. This is where [RoysterBot] comes in. He built the Quiz-o-Tron from 4 “easy buttons” from staples and an Arduino. After having finished it, he found the system to be somewhat lacking in the excitement area. When a button was pressed it only lit an indicator on the main Quiz-o-Tron box. He decided to add a small circuit inside each of the Easy Buttons using a 555 timer and some LEDs to give them some better feedback. Apparently he was going to patch into the speaker as well, but didn’t have time to get that added.

[via Adafruit]

Arduino As IPod Remote Control

September 8, 2009 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

[David] had an Arduino in search of a project. He decided to make an Arduino powered iPod remote control using an ipod connector breakout board and a 3.3v to 5v level converter (both from SparkFun). The circuit was built on a mini breadboard, controlled by an Arduino Mini, and housed in an Altoids tin. To talk to the iPod the Apple Accessory Protocol is used. With driving in mind [David] connected a Staples Easy Button as the play/pause button. This is a good example of how to interface Arduino with iPod. Using his example code we’d like to see more people working on homemade iPod accessories.