Slowing A Bopit So The Littles Ones Can Play Too

December 5, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[Johnny Halfmoon] wanted to help out his three-year-old who was fascinated by the Bopit electronic game. In its stock condition it’s a bit too fast for the young one, so he cracked it opened and added the option to slow things down.

Above you can see the Bopit Extreme with the top half of the case removed. Although not hard to get open (there’s just 12 screws to remove) the spring-loaded appendages will fly apart when you do. He warns to pay attention at how they go back together.

There’s one axial resistor which affects the running speed of the game. [Johnny] desoldered this, replacing it with a circuit that toggles between that original resistor and a potentiometer. Now, one switch position allows for normal play, the other allows for adjustable speed based on the potentiometer position. Check out the results in the clip after the break.

Looking for some other fun electronic toy hacks? Why not try out this cursing Simon Says?

Continue reading “Slowing A Bopit So The Littles Ones Can Play Too” →

Paintball Chronograph

February 6, 2011 by Caleb Kraft 20 Comments

This slick little chronograph can tell you how fast your paintballs are going, as well as what your firing rate is. In this instructible by [Klash69], you can see how to build one for yourself for less than $40. Chronographs themselves aren’t usually too interesting, but we thing he has done a great job here. You have a nice compact package with a big bright display. All it really needs now is a smooth enclosure. As far as the tech details go, he’s using IR sensors spaced 4 inches apart for detection, at the barrel. We’re not experts, but we think this might not work as well on a gun due to muzzle flash, someone who actually knows should let us know in the comments. The brains are a PIC18F13k50 and you can download a full parts list and schematic on the instructible.

You can see a video of it in use after the break.

Continue reading “Paintball Chronograph” →

Sluggy Wind Speed Sensor

December 4, 2010 by James Munns 7 Comments

Sometimes when we look at a hack, its to see how someone chose those parts for the project. In this case, it would have been hard to see it coming. [Janne Jansson] decided to combine a set of measuring cups, a hacked Linksys NSLU2 NAS, and a PS/2 Mouse together to make a self-contained Wind Speed Sensor for his roof. The measuring cups act as wind catchers, which in turns drives the rotation of one of the mouse ball sensors. This data is then logged and transmitted by the NSLU2. The NSLU2 is running a custom Linux based firmware, similar to how OpenWRT works for wireless routers.

To calibrate the device, he also made the best logical choice: to duct tape it to the hood of his car along with a much more expensive wind sensor and use that data to make his own device as accurate as possible. When placed atop his house with a 1500VA 220V UPS, the device managed 250 days of uptime before meeting its demise. Those 250 days also included 5 days of being frozen solid, yet still transmitting (somewhat meaningless) data. All of the relevant code and build instructions are available, for those of you with similar parts to spare.

Maze-solving Robo Mouse

October 29, 2010 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

Looking for something to build that will be challenging and interesting to laypersons at the same time? Take some inspiration from this maze-solving robot mouse. It take the idea of a line-following robot, and makes it infinitely more cool. The tiny rover uses sensors to map out a physical maze. Once it figure it out, you put it back at the beginning for a speed run to the finish. We’ve embedded the video below showing the whole process. Looks like the speed-run is completed in just under five seconds.

Now that you’ve enjoyed a virtual mouse in a real maze, check out a real mouse in a virtual maze.

Continue reading “Maze-solving Robo Mouse” →

Projectile Speed Sensor

September 7, 2010 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

[Mike] built a sensor rig to measure projectile speed. The setup uses a tunnel with two sensors in it. Each consists of a laser diode on one side focused on a photodiode in the other. The two are monitored by an op amp and measured by an ATmega128 microcontroller. When the beams are broken the elapsed time between the two events is measured in order to calculate speed. There is a setting to adjust the calibration for a range of speeds, which came in quite handy as [Mike] initially tested the device with rubber bands before moving on to a pellet gun and then a rifle.

It seems like he’s tempting fate by shooting a target just a few inches below his exposed circuitry but his marksmanship prevailed. We’ve seen bullet speed detectors in the past, used just for the delight of seeing how fast the projectile is moving, and also to capture an impact at just the right instant.

A Cop In Every Car

April 6, 2010 by Mike Szczys 73 Comments

[Michael] designed this display board to mimic the appearance of a police car pulling you over. It resides in the rear window of his car (facing forward) as the controller board measures the speed of the vehicle. An Arduino grabs NMEA data from a GPS module and compares it with a table of speed limits. If you are speeding, based on your current location, the reds and blues flash as if you’re getting pulled over. The thrill of getting busted for a lead foot doesn’t sound like much fun to us but to each his own.

Incidentally, [Michael] is using the EM406 GPS module, the same one as the Frustromantic Box used.

PHP Runtime Rewritten, By Facebook?

February 3, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 42 Comments

Yes, its true. Facebook has completely rewritten the PHP runtime to make it faster and more efficient, and its completely open source. Named HipHop, its described as a source code transformer, changing PHP into optimized C++ which is then compiled using g++. Thus keeping the best aspects of PHP while taking advantage of the performance of C++. Using HipHop, the Facebook web server CPU usage has been decreased by about fifty percent! And who would have thought that this and many other cool advances in programming, started at a Hackathon.