betsy

LED suit lights up the night

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:37:39 +0000

When the tipline popped up with this LED suit, part two, by [Marc DeVidts] we were expecing a simple led version of the previously known EL coat. Well we were right and wrong in the same instance. Correct in that like predictions, the outcome is stonking great. Wrong in that this suit far outpaces EL [...]

Alarm clock learns new trick, opening doors

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:37:38 +0000

Waking up at 5:30 in the morning. [Mark Stead] didn’t like the idea either when his chickens started crying to be let out. One simple solution obviously is to eat the chickens build an automatic door opener. The mechanism starts out with an old style mechanical alarm clock, add a geared motor with some creative [...]

How to fix AVR-SIZE on Ubuntu 10.04

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:37:38 +0000

The program avr-size is part of the AVR-GCC toolchain used to develop programs for that line of microprocessors. The program tells you how much space the code will take up on the chip, important information if you’re trying to cram a program into a small program memory. Perhaps more importantly, it shows you how much [...]

Using quality optics with a webcam

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:37:38 +0000

[Devon Croy] built a case to join a webcam sensor with a camera lens. The box is a PVC conduit box you’d find at a home center. He used JB Weld to attach four bolts to the back of the box. These are used to fine-tune the mounting plate for the webcam sensor to ensure [...]

Open source version of the Play Station 3 Jailbreak

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:37:37 +0000

Don’t steal. It’s a lesson that children are taught from the youngest age and a core principle in every society. The PSGroove sets out to follow this mantra in several ways. It is an open source implementation of the PSJailbreak hardware we covered a couple of weeks back. It’s difficult to find a definitive source [...]

Replacing the driver board in an old-school door chime

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:37:37 +0000

[Dan Kouba's] parents replaced their doorbell button with one that lights up and found that the chime wouldn’t stop sounding after the button was pushed. These lighted buttons use an incandescent bulb in parallel with the button (a piece of hardware we’ve hacked in the past). It draws a small amount of current which isn’t [...]

Making a smaller keyboard

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:37:37 +0000

The keyboard on [Marek's] laptop stopped working. He didn’t want to buy a replacement so he decided to start using an external keyboard. But hauling around a full 104-key model is a bit of a pain so he decided to make himself a shorter keyboard. He basically chopped off the 10-key pad on the right [...]

Wearable controller for your paintball tank

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:37:36 +0000

If you’re too frail to take the full impact of a paintball round let this tank serve as your surrogate. The camera perched on top of the platform feeds video back to the operator’s head-mounted display. Instead of using a joystick or other traditional controller, the user aims by looking around, with his or her [...]

Build your own magnetic levitator

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:37:36 +0000

Here’s a great magnetic levitator build. [Scott Harden] dug up the link after seeing that awesome rotating globe this morning. This version hangs objects below an electromagnet but it has a sensor system to provide a constant distance between magnet and object even if the payloads are a different weight. This is done with a [...]

Floating globe, hacked to rotate

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:37:36 +0000

[Alexy Sha] has done this fantastic hack, where he modified a magnetic floating globe to be motorized and spin on a tilted axis. The original globe was simply levitating via a magnet mounted inside. Though you could spin it by hand, it wasn’t motorized, and actually floated completely vertically instead of being tilted. [Alexy] wanted [...]