Bass Bump Headphone Amp

November 4, 2013 by Eric Evenchick 19 Comments

bass-boost-headphone-amp

Headphone amplifiers make for simple, practical electronics projects. The Bass Bump Headphone Amp is no exception, since it’s made out of easy to source parts, and can be built on a proto-board.

We’ve seen many variants of the classic cMoy amplifier, including this pretty one. The Bass Bump differs by providing control over bass frequencies. It does this by putting a filter in front of the amplifier, with a potentiometer to select the mix of frequencies. This goes into a LM386 audio amplifier. At the output is a Zobel network to keep the impedance low at high frequencies. The amplifier can be powered from either a 9V rechargeable battery, or a USB port.

It’s a simple build, but definitely a good one to try on a rainy day. The write up explains how the analog circuitry works, and gives you full instructions on how to build it. After the break, check out a video overview of the project.

Continue reading “Bass Bump Headphone Amp” →

Musical Pencil Synthesizer

September 29, 2013 by James Hobson 16 Comments

ScreenShot031

Here’s another fun weekend project for the hacker younglings, a musical synthesizer that plays different musical tones based on the resistance of your conductive graphite drawing!

Like our recent post on a DIY Metal Detector, this project makes use of the ever relevant 555 timer. Except in this case they are using a more modern TLC555 timer which only requires 3V instead of the typical 4.5V. It’s a fairly simple project that you should be able to complete in just a few hours.

The circuit is quite basic. The 555 timer outputs in astable mode, which means there is a continuous stream of pulses from pin 3 which go right into the speaker circuit. The rest of the circuit monitors the resistance of whatever the pencil is touching, including you! Changes in resistance result in the variation of pulses outputted by the 555 timer.

As always, the video guide is after the break.

Continue reading “Musical Pencil Synthesizer” →

Almost Free Robo Mower

October 27, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

We’ve always felt that the hacker community is a unique one. Make reader [Gnomic] is reinforcing that feeling by running his own contest with unused equipment. [Gnomic] is offering a free Robot lawnmower to someone, as long as they send the completed project writeup to Make. The mower is a Robomower RL 850 and you have to pick it up in Richmond Va. To enter, you have to email [Gnomic] your proposal within the next 10 days. He will then choose what he feels would be the most interesting one to give the mower to. We’d love to see one of our readers get in on the action with this one. We would really love to see our logo on the final robot when it gets published to Make.

Bay Area Maker Faire 2010 Video

May 26, 2010 by Phil Burgess 15 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lliJ1vLoAoU]

Since the previously-posted stills can’t quite convey the chaos of last weekend’s Maker Faire, here’s some video from the event to help get you through hump day. It’s like three liters of Jolt Cola in a two liter bottle.

One thing even video can’t adequately capture is our gratitude toward our readers at the show who took time to express their appreciation for the blog. You guys and gals rock our world. Thank you!

Bay Area Maker Faire 2010 In Pictures

May 24, 2010 by Phil Burgess 12 Comments

Just when you think it couldn’t possibly get any bigger and crazier, they manage to outdo themselves again. The Bay Area Maker Faire wrapped up Sunday evening, but we have so many story leads that we’ll probably be busy until next year’s event. In the meantime, here’s just a tiny, random sampling of the countless delights that greeted visitors this past weekend.

Continue reading “Bay Area Maker Faire 2010 In Pictures” →

Make Magazine – Open Source Hardware 2009

December 15, 2009 by James Munns 5 Comments

Former HaD’er [Phillip Torrone] has written an extensive collection of Open Source Hardware projects for Make Magazine. This impressive list covers over 125 projects and kits, broken into 19 categories including 3d Printing, Music, Robotics, and Wireless systems. A number of these projects have been either extensively detailed or mentioned on HaD, so there is bound to be something for everyone here.

[Phillip] is not only detailing these projects for people new to the Open Source Hardware movement, but is also calling for new and unheard of projects to be listed in places like this, as well as central locations such as the OSH Wikipedia page. We are sure that a number of HaD readers will be answer this challenge.

Thanks again to [Phillip] for sharing this with us.

Space Invader Button

April 14, 2009 by Eliot 36 Comments

[Marcus] saw [Alex]’s 64 pixel project and decided it could be implemented in even less space. Pictured above is his Space Invader button with a bicolor LED matrix. The controller board is all SMD and piggybacked on the matrix. An ATmega164P drives the 24 pins via transistors. In addition to animation, the board can do LED sensing too. It’s a very clever project and [Marcus] has some notes about working with such tiny components. You can see a video of it below. Continue reading “Space Invader Button” →