Deathly Hallows Mark The Passing Of Time

January 14, 2013 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

Whether you’re a Harry Potter fan or not we think you’ll enjoy this Deathly Hallows clock. The body is modeled after the triangle, circle, and line that make up the symbol that played a prominent role when concluding the fantasy novel series. A bit of motion and a couple handfuls of LEDs are what allow it to display the time of day.

[Yeenasty] started by building the triangular surround out of wood. In the center he added a circular veneer which was partitioned into twelve chambers. These indicate the hour and are illuminated one at a time from midnight until noon. Once all of the LEDs are switched on (as seen above) they are then extinguish one at a time from noon until midnight. [Yeenasty] mentions that this means the clock isn’t overly bright during the night-time hours.

Minutes are displayed by the wooden slat in the middle of the ring of LEDs. Here it’s showing 30 minutes after the hour because it is vertical and the bottom red LED is lit. The hand is mounted on a 180 degree servo so when it has made half of a rotation the hand backtracks 29 minutes and the LED at the other end is illuminated to continue progress around the face of the clock.

[via Reddit]

Extending The Features Of An IP Camera

January 11, 2013 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

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[Dave Astolfo] wanted to be able to let his CNC mill run by itself with the ability to monitor it remotely. The only problem with that idea is that if he checked in and saw something bad happening he needed a remote kill switch as well. He ended up killing two birds with one stone by adding extra features to an IP camera.

These Internet Protocol cameras are pretty nifty. Just plug their power cord in and they’ll connect to WiFi and start streaming video. Many of them offer features like pan and tilt, and this model even features IR LEDs for night viewing that can be switched on and off through the web interface. That’s the point at which [Dave] started his hack. He patched into the leads on the IR LEDs. They’re monitored by an ATtiny85. When he turns on the LEDs via the webpage the ATtiny85 senses it and drives a servo motor to push the ESC key on the keyboard. As you can see in the clip after the break, this will stop the milling in its tracks. We especially liked the use of LEGO Technique pieces to make the servo mount removable.

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Arduino Using A Straight Key For Morse Code Assistance

January 3, 2013 by Mike Szczys 28 Comments

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For those unfamiliar with Ham Radio, there are lots of fancy tools these days to make it easier for the radio operator. But enthusiasts still like to get back to basics, and one way to do this is to participate in Straight Key Night. This is when you pull out your traditional Morse code keyer and have a chat with others around the world. The most recent event was on New Year’s Eve. The only drag is that it sometimes takes a while to find another Ham who’s listening, and this can mean repetitively keying the letters QC SKN for long periods of time (QC invites listeners to respond, and SKN is to inform them you’re participating in Straight Key Night). Sure, a programmable keyer will do this for you, but that is against the spirit of the event. [Mike Herr] found a grey area by mechanically interfacing an Arduino with a straight key.

You can see the straight key being pressed by a hobby servo in the image above. The servo is driven by the Arduino, which will transmit the series of letters automatically. As you can see in the video after the break, once [Mike] hears back from a fellow operator he switches to a huge wooden straight key for the rest of the conversation.

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Wave That Roman Candle Around Without Risking Your Digits

December 31, 2012 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

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Some people don’t mind missing a finger or two, but we’re quite attached to all of ours. That’s why we’ve never held on to the fireworks after lighting the fuse. [Dzl] and his son wanted to be (at least somewhat) safe while still having that kind of fun. So they built this rig which lets you wave around a roman candle from a safe distance. It’s not strictly limited to one type of firework either. You can see there is a PVC barrel which will send a bottle rocket off in whichever direction the thing is pointed. As you’ve guessed, a test run is shown off in the video after the jump.

The rig is build from laser cut nylon parts. Don’t fret if you lack the equipment to automatically reproduce this. It’s not that hard to fabricate these types of parts by hand. And the motors that make it go are just hobby servos rigged for continuous rotation. [Dzl] did add external potentiometers for position feedback.

This is a tame way to celebrate the New Year, which is nice if yesterday’s project was a bit too hard-core for you.

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PyMCU Test Project Looks Like A Minecraft Mob

December 20, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

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Hackaday’s own [Jeremy Cook] has been testing out the pyMCU board and managed to put together an animated block head that looks like it could be a foe in Minecraft. That’s thanks mostly to the block of foam he’s using as a diffuser. The face of the project is a set of LEDs. These, along with the servo motors that move the neck are controlled using Python code which you can glance at after the break (there’s a video demo there too).

We first saw pyMCU early in the year. The PIC 16F1939 offers plenty of IO and acts as a USB connected bridge between your hardware and your Python scripts. Speaking of hardware, the test platform used to be an RC helicopter. [Jeremy] scrapped most of it, but kept the servo motors responsible for the pitch of the rotors. The board makes these connections easy, and the concept makes controlling them even easier. In fact, there’s only about 17 lines of code for the functions that control the servos. The rest is a simple UI built with Tkinter.

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Man Proposes To Girlfriend With An Arc Reactor

December 19, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

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Thinking long and hard about how to propose to his girlfriend, [Ed] hit upon a great idea: use an arc reactor as the ring box, with enough LED lights to outshine all but their love, and servos to present the ring and tug at the heartstrings.

[Ed] set about giving his now-fiancé from his arc reactor heart by building a simple circular arrangement of adafruit RGB LED strip and an Arduino. There are two modes for this arc reactor: a light up mode that simply looks awesome, and a ‘ring mode’ that uses two servos to open the front cover and bring the engagement ring into view.

After [Ed]’s fiancé said yes, the cover in the center of the arc reactor closes for its continued use as a desk ornament. You can check out [Ed]’s proposal contraption in action after the break.

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Tea-bagging An Arduino

December 17, 2012 by Mike Szczys 35 Comments

tea-bagging-arduino

[Dmitry Narkevich] likes a strong cup of tea and his method of getting there is to oscillate the tea bag as it steeps. But why take the time to do this when you can make an Arduino brew your tea for you. As you can see, he rigged up a system to move the tea bag as it steeps in his metal bottle.

The motion is provided by a hobby servo connected to an Arduino. This makes timing the process very simple and we’d imaging it’s only a matter of time before he adds an alarm so he’ll know when it’s ready. But the real hack comes in the apparatus that connects the servo to the bottle. Since he’ll be drinking out of it the assembly needs to be easy to remove and should be able to stand up to the abuse of being clamped on and taken off a few times each day.

The base of the device is a guitar capo. This is meant to gently clamp to the finger board of a guitar using spring tension so it is already covered in rubber which gives it a firm grip on the bottle’s opening. The servo is connected to a metal part from a stapler, and the string drapes over the body of a disposable pen. Don’t miss this in action in the clip after the break.

If you don’t have a servo on hand you could try using the sled from an optical drive.

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