Weekly Roundup 11/26/11

November 26, 2011 by Jack Buffington No comments

In case you missed them the first time, here are our most popular posts from the past week:

In first place is a post about [Yves Rossy’s] flight suit that he built that literally allows him to jump out of an airplane and really fly instead of falling with style.

Coming in at second place is one that brings our plans of blowing up the Death Star just a little closer. It is a true 3D display that uses lasers to ionize the air at just the right places to produce 3D images.

In third place is one that we might build ourselves one day. [dimovi] figured out that he could take apart a computer monitor and remove its polarization filter to make a display that looks like just a white screen to everyone who isn’t wearing polarizing sunglasses.

Next up is a post about a LED wall that was hand built by [Martin].

Finally we have a teardown of a Verifone payment module that [Jerzmacow] kindly put online. This device has all sorts of useful parts inside.

Weekly Roundup 11/12/11

November 12, 2011 by Jack Buffington 1 Comment

In case you missed them the first time around, here are our most popular posts from the past week:

In the #1 spot, we had a post about a tri-color laser projector that really is a well-done project. This projector sweeps the lasers around in vector mode using a pair or mirror galvanometers so would be perfect for playing asteroids in vivid full color!

In at #2 is a post about a PVC pipe gun that can shoot AA batteries at 600 batteries per minute!

Next up we have a post about the US military finding that due to Chinese counterfeit electronics, some of its weapon systems are defective. This has become a more serious issue in recent years. It has effected hackers too as shown in this Sparkfun post from last year.

After that, we had a post about a novel and somewhat scary way to post bulletins on a board without using tacks. How do they do that? By carefully using 20,000 Volts! Yikes. We’ll stick to tape next time we run out of tacks thank you very much.

Finally, we have one about a spot welder built out of some super capacitors and carbon rods. This one probably produces equally large sparks where it is welding and at the triggering mechanism!

Weekly Roundup 11/5/11

November 5, 2011 by Jack Buffington No comments

In case you missed them the first time, here are this week’s most popular posts:

Our most popular post is about an octocopter that is big enough to hover a person who is perched perilously in the center of an angry array of blades that are counting on Murphy’s law for their chance to taste a little human blood.

Next up is a post about an interesting clock made out of Legos that uses a mechanism similar to the one inside of a combination lock to display the time.

In third place is a post about [Lizzie] and her ‘ball of dub’ that is hard to explain but interesting to listen to.

Next we have a post about how some Occupy Wall Street protesters are generating electricity despite having their generators confiscated. This one is about the hack folks, not the protest. Let’s try to keep the comments civil…

Finally, we have one about a new circuit board put out by the folks who brought us the Beagleboard. This one is called the Beaglebone and it is packing some serious firepower for just $89! We can’t wait to see what our readers come up with these puppies (pun intended)!

Weekly Roundup 10/29/11

October 29, 2011 by Jack Buffington No comments

In case you missed them the first time, here are the most popular posts from this week:

Our most popular post this week was about how to use HTML5 to display sensor data. This is a pretty interesting demo of the new web technology.

Next up is a post about an animatronic zombie that can crawl around via remote control. It is surprisingly maneuverable and would definitely be creepy crawling towards you in the dark dark middle of the night.

After that is a post where our own [Kevin Dady] created a new charger for a cell phone that he recently acquired. This is a pretty comprehensive tutorial that could be of use to others who may have misplaced their charger and have some spare parts lying around.

Next we have a post about a new technology that has been created that lets you render objects into photos that have been previously taken.

Finally, there is a post about a research project that uses a Microsoft surface and a whole mess of proximity sensors to detect where people are located and which hand they are touching the surface with.

Weekly Roundup 10/22/11

October 22, 2011 by Jack Buffington No comments

In case you missed them the first time, here are our most popular posts from the past week.

Our most popular post of the week was about a ball that has a matrix of 256 LEDs encrusted onto its surface, allowing all sorts of patterns to be displayed.

Next up is a post about the vibrator shield for the Arduino. If you must mix sex and nerdy things, this is one route to happiness. This post is safe for work but the links may not be.

After that we had a post about a novel way to take panoramic pictures. In this post, you will see a ball that has an array of 36 cameras embedded into it. If you throw it into the air, it will take a picture at the apex of its travel.

In fourth place, we have a post describing how you can add an external GPU to your laptop. If you only have a laptop and are looking to play with the latest and greatest graphics, this is one route that you could take.

Finally, if you like things that glow, this one is for you. This post links to a video showing you how to make luminol using household chemicals.

Weekly Roundup 10/15/11

October 15, 2011 by Jack Buffington No comments

In case you missed them the first time around, here are our most popular posts from the past week.

Our most popular post of the week was one about a rocket that was built by the [Qu8k team] that was their entry for the Carmack Prize, which put up a purse of $10,000 for proof and a nice writeup about a rocket that can launch to at least 100,000 feet. The rocket that we posted about managed to launch to 121,000 feet!

Next, we had a post about another space-related project called KickSat where they are hoping to launch many single-circuit-board satellites into space.

Our third most popular post is about an octocopter built by the German effects company OMStudios to fly a RED Epic camera around and above film shoots because training large birds to do it just wasn’t working.

Next we had a post about how to build your own 23″ Android tablet. Now you can make *everyone* around you jealous of your mad Angry Birds skills.

Surprisingly, our previous hackaday-original post about how to put your logo into a QR code hit the top five list again.

Since we have previously featured the QR code post in our weekly roundup in the past, we’ll break the rules and give you another so that we are featuring five new posts for this week. At number six, we have a post about how to play dubstep live on real instruments.

Weekly Roundup 10/8/11

October 8, 2011 by Jack Buffington No comments

In case you missed them the first time, here are our most popular posts from the past week.

Our most popular post this week is about a clock modeled after Lord Vetinari’s clock in Discworld that ticks at random intervals but keeps accurate time.

Our next most popular post is of a project that takes two 3.5″ floppy drives and uses them to play the Imperial March from Star Wars.

Next we have a post about a way to jam WiFi by sending out deauthentication packets.

Fourth in our list is a post about some really interesting turn signals and other lights that [StarfireMX] created for his car that are chock full of RGB LEDs. This allows them to do all sorts of interesting things other than just blinking.

Finally, we had a post about a robot that has some really interesting ‘wheels’ that aren’t like anything that we have seen before. They are something between an omniwheel and a tank tread and look like they would be fun to play with.