[Wolf] sent in this site a while back, and I thought that this frequency meter how-to looked pretty useful. It’s based on an Atmel AT89C52 and a gutted multi-meter. The circuit isn’t too bad. (The worst of it has to be all the display lines.) The Atmel grabs the signal to be measured and drives the display, so the parts count is pretty low.
hack115 Articles
Switchmode Power Supply Hacking (power Your Laser)
[Mike] wanted a better power supply for his argon laser, so he modded some switchmode power supplies. With a few tweaks, he had a few adjustable voltage outputs and a nice solid supply of electrons for his laser projects. If you need a lab quality adjustable power supply for your projects, this is a nice way to get it on the cheap. (He’s in the UK, but the same ideas should apply to us models.
Paintball Minigun
Every so I often I Google “paintball minigun“. This time it actually turned up something good. Special effects builder Rick Galinson has been working on a… wait for it… paintball minigun (cache). There is a video of a dry fire run on his site. He’s apparently having trouble with the triggers; I just want to know how he plans on loading it.
Rick has a lot of other cool projects. He’s got a cool two arm minigun prop (cache) (looks like Monev the Gale), A remote controlled submarine (cache), and a really cool telemetry suit (cache) for collecting upper body movement data.
For completeness’ sake you can check out Monty’s Miniguns for information on other paintball miniguns and miniguns in general.
