portable

142 Articles

8-bit Computer For On-The-Go Programming

June 16, 2017 by 13 Comments

If there was one downside to 8-bit computers like the Commodore 64, it’s that they weren’t exactly portable. Even ignoring their physical size, the power requirements would likely have required a prohibitively large power bank of some sort to lug around as well. The problem of portability has been solved since the late ’70s, but if you still want that 8-bit goodness in a more modern package you’ll have to look at something like retrocomputing madman [Jack Eisenmann]’s DUO Travel computer.

The computer is based around the ubiquitous ATmega328 which should make the ease at which it is programmable apparent. Even so, its 14-button keypad makes it programmable even without another computer. While it has slightly less memory than a standard C-64, it’s still enough for most tasks. And, since its powered by a 9-volt battery it doesn’t require any external power sources either.

The most impressive part of the build, however, is the custom programming language specifically tailored for this platform. After all, a 14-button keypad wouldn’t be a great choice if you had to program in Perl or C all the time. There is some example code on the project page for anyone interested in this specific implementation. While it’s not the most minimal computer [Jack] has ever built, it’s certain to be much more practical.

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Portable Jacob’s Ladder For When…You Know… You Need A Portable Jacob’s Ladder

June 9, 2017 by 32 Comments

When do you need a portable Jacob’s Ladder? We don’t know, but apparently [mitxela] doesn’t want to leave home (or the laboratory) without one. So he built a portable unit that works for a few minutes on a battery. In the video (see below), he says he wouldn’t presume to claim it was the smallest Jacob’s Ladder ever, but he thought it might be a contender.

The battery is a LiPo cell and although it might last up to four minutes, [mitxela] points out that the transistors probably wouldn’t survive that much on time, despite the heat sinks he put in place. The whole device is 45mm square and 17mm thick. Of course, the wires add some height (about 150mm total).

We were hoping to see more of the insides, but we presume this uses one of the cheap high voltage modules you can procure from the usual Far East sources–or, at least–it could. The rest is just laser cutting and workmanship.

If you haven’t encountered them before (outside of old monster movies), a Jacob’s Ladder lets high voltage ionize the air down at the bottom of the narrow gap. The ionized air is hot and rises, and the current flows through it, despite the electrodes getting further apart. Of course, that means you shouldn’t put on in your zero-gee space station.

You might think a portable Jacob’s ladders is unique. Turns out, it isn’t. If you want something easy (and perhaps not as portable), you can’t get much easier than this one.

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Go Portable With GameCube Advance SP

May 27, 2017 by 12 Comments

Off the hop, we love portable consoles. To be clear, we don’t just mean handhelds like the 3DS, or RetroPie builds, but when a maker takes a home console from generations past and hacks a childhood fantasy into reality — that’s amore. So, it’s only natural that [Bill Paxton]’s GameCube re-imagined as a Game Boy Advance SP has us enthralled.

Originally inspired by an early 2000’s imagined mockup of a ‘next-gen’ Game Boy Advance, [Paxton] first tried to wedge a Wii disk drive into this build. Finding it a bit too unwieldy, he opted for running games off of SD cards using a WASP Fusion board instead. Integrating the controller buttons into the 3D printed case took several revisions. Looking at the precise modeling needed to include the L and R shoulder buttons, that is no small feat.

Sadly, this GameCube SP doesn’t have an on-board battery, so you can’t go walking about with Windwaker. It does, however, include a 15 pin mini-din VGA-style port to copy game saves to the internal memory card, a switching headphone jack, amp, and speakers. Check it out after the break!

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Portable Bluetooth Speaker Reacts To Sound

May 1, 2017 by 11 Comments

[IanMeyer123] should be working on his senior design project. Instead, he’s created a sound-reactive Bluetooth speaker that may not earn him an A grade but will at least keep the team entertained.

[Ian] started with the amp and power. The amp is a 15 watt, 12 volt model based on the popular TDA7297 chip. Power comes from a portable laptop battery rated at 185 Wh. [Ian] himself said that is absolute overkill for this project. While [Ian] hasn’t run any longevity tests on his setup, we’re guesstimating it would be rated in days.

Every Bluetooth speaker needs a sweet light show, right? [Ian] wrapped his 2″ full range speakers in Neopixel rings from Adafriut. The WS2812’s are driven by an Arduino. When music is playing, MSGEQ7 allows the Arduino to play a light show in time to the beat. When the stereo is off, a DS3231 real-time clock module allows the Arduino to display the time on the two rings. If you’re curious about the code for this project, [Ian] posted it on his Reddit thread. Reddit isn’t exactly a great code repository, so please, [Ian] setup a GitHub account, and/or drop your project on Hackaday.io!

[Ian] didn’t realize how many wires would be flying around inside the speaker. That may be why the wiring looks a bit scary. All the chaos is hidden away, underneath a well-built wooden case.

If you want to see another take on a Bluetooth speaker with a Neopixel display, check [Peter’s] project here. Interested in more portable power units? This one’s for you!

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Portable RetroPie Suitcase For Multiplayer On The Go!

March 5, 2017 by 11 Comments

Portable gaming — and gaming in general —  has come a long way since the days of the original Game Boy. With a mind towards portable multiplayer games, Redditor [dagcon] has assembled a RetroPie inside a suitcase — screen and all!

This portable console has almost everything you could need. Four controllers are nestled beside two speakers. Much of the power cabling is separated and contained by  foam inserts. The screen fits snugly into the lid with a sheet of rubber foam to protect it during transport.

Tucked behind the monitor rests the brains of this suitcase console: a Raspberry Pi and the associated boards. [Dagcon] resorted to using a dedicated sound card for the speakers, diverting the output from the HDMI port. An LCD screen controller was also necessary as the screen had been re-purposed from its previous life as a laptop screen. [Dagcon] offers some tips on how to go about accomplishing this yourself and a helpful Instructables link.

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Portable RetroPie Builds On The Shoulders Of Giants

January 12, 2017 by 36 Comments

For anyone wanting to get that shot of nostalgia without the hassle of finding an NES Classic, the Retropie project is a great starting point. Of course, it’s not too noteworthy to grab a Raspberry Pi, throw a pre-built distribution on it, and plug in an SNES to USB converter. What is noteworthy, however, is building a Retropie that’s portable and that has the quality and polish of the latest build from [fancymenofcornwood].

render-blowup-of-retropieFor starters, the laser cut wood case was custom-made. From there, all of the PCBs were fitted including specific ones to handle each set of buttons (complete sets of D-pads, shoulder buttons, and joysticks) and another for the 5″ HDMI screen. It has stereo speakers and its own headphone jack (to the envy of all new iPhone owners), and is powered from a Raspberry Pi 2 running Retropie 4.1. The battery pack shouldn’t leave you stranded, either, especially not if you grew up playing the Sega Game Gear.

The quality of the build here is outstanding, and its creator made a design choice to make it easily replicable, so if you’ve wanted to play N64 or PS1 games while on the go, this might be what you’ve been waiting for. There are lots of other options for getting some fun from a Retropie going though, from building one into a coffee table to re-purposing that infamous Game Gear.

Obligatory clip of this portable playing Doom is found after the break.

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Battery Powered Fog Machine Just In Time For Halloween

October 27, 2016 by 31 Comments

[makendo] needed a portable fog machine for an upcoming project. It seemed like the kind of a thing a liberal application of money on the Internet could fix in no time. But quality fog machines are too expensive, and the cheap machines are just, well, cheap. Stuck between $800 and quickly broken crap, he decided instead to fashion his own.

Fortunately for him, a recent fad has made it so that a certain segment of the populace absolutely require dramatic clouds of scented drug fog or they get cranky. The market saw an opportunity, cost optimized, and now there are many portable fog machines just waiting to be born in the form of an e-cigarette. However, an e-cigarette needs interaction from a person’s lungs to provide an annoying cloud. So he modeled up a 3D printable case that would blow air into the intake of the e-cigarette. Instead of filling a person’s lungs with a cloud of eye drops and nicotine, it would let out a steady stream of fog.

This device does burn through emitters, because the e-cigarette was not designed for this kind of heavy duty. Even reading the Amazon comments for the $800 dollar version, this is fairly normal for these things. So now [makendo] is able to produce a nice cloud of smoke whenever he needs and it only set him back around $40 US dollars.