Hackaday Links: August 22, 2010

August 22, 2010 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

EL back-lit keyboard

A couple bucks worth of EL wire gives a nice green glow to [Mark Shasha’s] T400 Elite. Hopefully [Jeri Ellsworth] has some time to pull those how-to videos together so that we can make our own EL wire to replicate this hack.

Mini kaboom

This tiny cannon is right out of Night at the Museum. It works just like its much bigger brothers would; fill with powder, insert cannon ball, and light with a fuse. Both the introduction and the follow-up videos document the destruction of various objects using the diminutive weapon. [Thanks Thorsten]

Don’t close that browser

We use Google Chrome quite a bit because it tends to be more responsive when opening massive numbers of tabs while researching featured hacks. But there’s some things we don’t like about it. Lack of built-in PDF support under Ubuntu comes to mind, but a smaller thorn in our side is that closing the last tab will also close the browser window. [Ted Schaefer] got tired of the same thing so he wrote an extension called Last Tab Standing to trap that last browser tab, opening the default window instead of closing the browser.

Amiga demo winner

This 4K demo for the Amiga AGA is the top ranked submission from Breakpoint 2010. [Osgeld] tipped us off about this and made the point that although it’s four times the size of those 1K JavaScript demos, the Amiga code doesn’t get to take advantage a pre-existing framework like Java does enjoy the benefits of running inside of a browser . Is this doing more with less?

Transformers balloon sculptures

If you’re having trouble finding that art piece to fill up your dining room you should consider building transformers out of balloons. The sculpture above is a free-standing Optimus Prime but the artist has also turned out Megatron, Grimlock, and others. [Thanks W01F]

Making EL Wire

August 15, 2010 by Mike Szczys 43 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RKBGxJJmwg]

[Jeri Ellsworth] adds electroluminescent wire to the list of things she makes. The materials list is incredibly low. The common components are epoxy coated magnet wire for the center conductor and bare wire for the second conductor. The part you don’t have on hand is phosphors, although she does link to a source.

The bad news: she doesn’t show us the build process or share the details about the inductor that fires this thing up. The good news: in-depth videos are on the way. In the mean time you can marvel in her glowing success at the end of the video, or check out some of her other electroluminescent fun.

Out Now: EL Coat, Coming Soon: EL Hat

August 10, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 41 Comments

[Render] says his coat is simply “enhanced with EL wire”, but we know the truth. He’s secretly an alien that can’t block out all of his glowing green skin with a the black coat. No? Fine,

You can put away the sewing machine, [Render] simply used a needle and fishing line to attach ~50-70 foot of electroluminescent wire to the outside of a coat he picked up at a local clothing shop. Solder and program in an inverter and controller board thanks to SparkFun, and you’re ready to go.

Just double check all your connections, high voltage directly on your person is not fun. Trust us.

Electro Luminescent Fun With Jeri Ellsworth

June 14, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuDZnJX5kqw]

[Jeri] got her hands on some of the DuPont Luxprint EL ink and had some fun conducting experiments. She tried different materials for the base and the display itself. Not only does she just play with materials, she also tears apart a VFD and an LCD to see if she could use them for parts. The LCD turned out to be the most successful. We saw this stuff show up at the Bay Area Maker Faire and we’re excited to see it become more accessible.

[via Makezine]

BAMF2010: DIY Electroluminescent Displays

May 27, 2010 by Phil Burgess 14 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPclj5lbz48]

In this video from Maker Faire, [Jon Beck] of CLUE — the Columbia Laboratory for Unconventional Electronics — demonstrates the unexpected ease of creating custom electroluminescent (EL) displays using materials from DuPont and common t-shirt screen printing tools. Eagle-eyed reader [ithon] recognized the Hack a Day logo among the custom shapes, which escaped our notice at the time. Sorry, Jon! Very cool project, even if the setup is a bit steep. You’ll find links to materials at the project site.

If the interviewer seems especially sharp, that’s because it’s none other than [Jeri “Circuit Girl” Ellsworth], who makes transistors from scratch and designed the C64 DTV. We’re not worthy!