Laser cutter owners may find this online box design tool which [Jon] built quite useful. It’s got a few more joint options than the Inkscape box design add-on does. Apparently the US Navy has the ability to bring down drones in a flaming pile of laser-caused death . [Thanks Joshua] [M...
One aspect of the Raspberry Pi that has always challenged us is the power supply. It was a great idea to power the board from a standard micro-USB port because economy of scale makes phone chargers (even in the 1A range necessary for stable operation of the RPi) cheap and easy to acqu...
Sending data from a microcontroller to a PC usually requires some sort of serial connection, either through fiddly on-chip USB, FTDI chips, or expensive radio ICs. [Scott] didn’t want to deal with this when creating a network of wireless temperature sensors, so he hacked up a few chea...
For how awesome Google Voice is, we’re surprised we haven’t seen this before. [Steve] is using Google Voice to run commands on just about any Linux box. Google Voice doesn’t have an official API, and existing unofficial APIs weren’t up to snuff for [Steve]‘s project. He ended up writi...
Look closely at the screen capture above and you’ll see some stuff that shouldn’t be there. The team developed a set of tests used to determine obstacles in Mario’s way. The red lines signify blocks he will have to jump over. This also works for pits that he needs to avoid, with a dif...
My final project is build a robot that plays air hockey? Where do I sign up? Apparently you get yourself a seat in ECE496 at Clemson University. They have been using the concept as a final project for at least a couple of years. [Abe Froman] was on the winning design team this year an...
![Just put your lips together to turn on a lamp - The inlaid image is a controller board which [Limpkin] developed t...](http://static.openruby.com/assets/pages/a6/e9/a6e9b68840fef02f5d8430d7f748eaa4_100.jpg)
The inlaid image is a controller board which [Limpkin] developed to add whistle control as a home automation option . It has an effective range of around fifteen feet and does a good job of detecting whistles from many different people. Here is one of the test subjects (captured with ...
Google Glass is a year or so out, and even after that we’re still looking at about five years until we’re all upgraded at the behest of our robotic overlords. [justurn] simply can’t wait, so he decided to submit to the cybermen early with his Android-controlled wristwatch attached wit...
With high-speed cameras you’re able to see bullets passing through objects, explosions in process, and other high-speed phenomenon. Rarely, though, are you able to see what happens when light shines on an object without hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. A group of r...
The team at North Street Labs really went all out with this Tic-Tack-Toe stomp box . At its most basic it’s a blinky version of the simple two-player game. But there’s always some added appeal when you make large manifestations of normally small items; the 10x Arduino is a good exampl...
![Reading Game Boy carts with I2C - After seeing a Game Boy emulator for the first time, [Thijs] was amazed. A small...](http://static.openruby.com/assets/pages/fe/ec/feec8a285d7b49228c74042bcfe7fb57_100.jpg){kind=small}
After seeing a Game Boy emulator for the first time, [Thijs] was amazed. A small box with just a handful of electronics that turns a Game Boy cartridge into a file able to be run on an emulator is simply magical. [Thijs] has learned a lot about GB and GBC cartridges in the mean time, ...
We’ve seen these exact modules before, referenced in a project that created an edge-lit Nixie tube from scratch . Each digit in the display is made from a piece of acrylic with tiny drill holes which trace out the numerals. The acrylic is bent so that the edge exits out the back of th...
Here’s an Android powered pen plotter that does it all. It was built by [Ytai Ben-Tsvi] to take with him to Maker Faire. He’s the creator of IOIO , a hardware interface module designed to communicate with an Android device via USB (host or OTG are both supported). The physical hardwar...
For those of you who might have forgotten, let’s go over the rules of Centurion. The object of the game is for every minute, for 100 minutes, drink a shot of beer. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but after completing the challenge you’ll have had 3 liters of beer (or about eight and a ha...
We’ve been following the work of [Andrew Holme] and his homebrew GPS receiver for a while now. A few years ago, [Andrew] built a four-channel GPS receiver from scratch, but apparently that wasn’t enough for him. He expanded his build last year to track up to eight satellites, and this...
Do you ever wonder why geese always fly together in a V-shape? We’re not asking about the fact that it makes the work load much less for all but the lead goose. We mean how is it that all geese know to form up like this? It’s is the act of flocking, and it’s long been a subject of fas...
![Magnetic CNC marble maze - [Martin Raynsford] figured out a way to sneak some learning into a fun package. He did](http://static.openruby.com/assets/pages/87/a1/87a18da2229e095b07f2076a8b838c11_100.jpg)
[Martin Raynsford] figured out a way to sneak some learning into a fun package. He did such a good job the test subjects didn’t even know they were teaching themselves just a tiny bit of CNC programming. The apparatus above is a marble maze, but instead of building walls [Martin] simp...
The main problem is that this gun is made of plastic and contains only very little metal and thus can’t be reliably detected by a metal detector i.e. at an airport. That’s way this type of gun is problematic even in the USA where everyone can buy a gun without any special permission. ...
One aspect of the project which really struck home with us was his machine-shop-101 style tricks to mate the axle of the motor with the wheel. He has a process which ensures you will find the exact center of a cylinder as you work. This starts by lining up a bench vice on his drill pr...
Usually a hack like this includes some test measurements that confirm the hardware is actually sampling at the higher rate, and is not just claiming that it has the ability to do so. We’d love to hear from you in the comments if you’ve got this piece of bench hardware and decided to t...
What you see above is the meat and potatoes of the hack. The well is where water from a bottle drains into the cooler. This has been covered with a sheet of acrylic to keep the drinking water clean. There is a copper pipe which has been plumbed into the tap water supply. The other two...
Watching the installation process makes us think that [Lou] might be a little reckless. He’s up in the attic mounting a winch to the rafters before he cuts the board holding the fifty-pound chandelier’s junction box in place. He mentions foregoing the recommended cable fastener in lie...
[Alessandro Grossi] is breaking the rules by using a 100mW laser for the project. He thinks that the Italian government prohibits anything over 5mW, but also mentions that the lens used to turn the laser dot into a vertical line drops the power dramatically. The beefy diode does still...
[Dave Nunez] wanted arcade quality controls when gaming at home. The problem was he couldn’t decide on just one console to target with his build, so he targeted them all. What you see above is a single controller that connects to many different gaming rigs . He took a simple-is-best a...
They built their own helium-neon laser tube, which is shown on the right. The gentlemen involved were engineers at a company called Electro-Optical System (EOS) by day, and Ham radio enthusiasts by night. With the blessing of their employer they were able to ply their hobby skills usi...
We’ve talked about the ease with which these locks can be cracked. But [Ross] points out that the resources we linked to before are flawed . To get the combination as quickly as possible the team has implemented an algorithm discussed here . Their machine uses a stepper motor to turn ...
I’ve been having fun with the newsletter, and we have over 2500 people subscribed. Up to this point they have mainly just been composed of information about the videos I’m making. I’m going to change that this week. The emails will now also have 10 random hacks, probably the most popu...
The camera in question is a GoPro Hero 3. It differs from its predecessors in that the composite video out port has been moved to a mini USB connector. But it’s still there and just a bit of cable splicing will yield a very clear signal. The image above shows the camera in the middle,...
[Henrik] really turned out a nice little Geiger counter board based on a cold war era Geiger tube. It works in much the same way as other projects along the same lines . It does run on batteries if needed, which is no small feat since the tube wants high voltage to operate correctly. ...
body and wheels are 3D printed , with black bands for tires to help give it some traction. Note the connection in the center of the body which allowed him to make a longer part by printing in two stages. On the electronic side of things he’s using an Arduino Nano. A level converter le...
