Hackerspaces (or hackspace in this case) come in all shapes and sizes, from those just starting up, to some that are very impressively equipped. [Dominic] wrote in to tell us about the Nottingham Hackspace , which would fall solidly into the second category. We’d invite you to take a ...
Way back before the advent of commercial DSP, musicians had really cool looking gear. One of these devices to change the sound of organs, guitars, and other electronic instruments was a Leslie speaker – a speaker cabinet with rotating horns that gives that wonderful warm warble heard ...
With the gravitas of [Michael Douglas] in Wall Street and the technological amazement of [Zach Morris] on Saved By The Bell, the classic 1980s ‘brick’ cell phone has a lot to offer these days. Not only is it large enough to be used as a blunt weapon, it’s also useful as an anchor and ...
Although having a 3D printer means you can create custom object of your own design, that doesn’t change the fact that most object printed on Makerbots and RepRaps are copies, or slight derivations, of already existing object. If you need a gear, just go grab an OpenSCAD file for a gea...
Inspiration – (Dr. Evil voice on) When I was in first grade, like many of us we were tasked with building the “best” valentine’s day card box and then seeing who won. I tricked mine out, wrapped it in foil, used pink and purple hearts, and made the opening the shape of a heart, I thou...
[Fabian] ran across a very, very inexpensive RFID reader on Deal Extreme a while ago and with money to burn, added it to his cart. When the USB RFID reader arrived, he noticed something fairly odd about it (French, Traduction ). The RFID reader presented itself to his computer as a US...
It hasn’t been a week since Minecraft for the Raspberry Pi has been released, and already we’re seeing some cool builds that bridge our analog world with Minecraft voxel land. [Martin] got his hands on the Raspi version of Minecraft and decided to take advantage of the API Mojang thre...
[The Backwoods Engineer] tested out a new accessory kit for the STM32-F4 Discovery board. The image above shows two boards communicating with the UDP protocol . Notice the extra PCB into which each Discovery board has been plugged. This is a third-party add-on which adds Ethernet, RS-...
Yet another project that proves you need to acquire a laser cutter. This Airsoft turret rotates, tilts, and includes a hopper for ammo . All of the pieces were cut from acrylic. The base includes a bracket which keeps the large rotating gear level by sandwiching it between the layers....
[Kenneth Finnegan's] post about this 24-Port HP ProCurve 2824 Ethernet Switch teardown was a delight to read. He’s taking an introduction to networking class at California Polytechnic State University. One of their labs included virtual machines shooting thousands of new MAC addresses...
Check out the third button down; when was the last time you added voice commands to your project? It’s worth clicking through to see just how simple that portion was. App Inventor — a Google cast-out that is now maintained by MIT — is a graphical tool that unlocks the power of an Andr...
You can see the effort he made to keep the board symmetrical which will help when it comes time to balance the aircraft. At the center of the PCB is the jewel of the sensor array, a combination accelerometer and gyroscope. This location will help easy the trouble of designing PID algo...
It seams like the 3D designer has made such a good job that most of the discussion are immediately moved in the body/mechanic domain. But, when you are saying “not particularly intriguing” did you also took in account what is “inside” of this pretty looking body? In particular, there ...
Sweden is coming out of the depths of a cold, dark winter. What better time, then, to enjoy the last few weeks of frigid temperatures, short days, and frozen lakes and rivers? That’s what Orsa Speed Weekend is all about; tearing across a frozen lake by any means necessary, including j...
Plug in the power and Ethernet and this Raspberry Pi board will automatically collect Windows hashes from computers on the network. With a couple of RPi boards on hand [Travis] was searching for more hacks to try with them. This made a great little test to see how the board performs w...
This television is perfect except for its low resolution and the fact that it can’t be seen by the naked eye. [Chris Shen's] art installation, Infra, uses 625 television remotes as pixels for a TV screen . There’s a little bit of insight to be gained from the details which [Chris] sha...
The hardware comes in two pieces. The first is a mini-PCIe card to USB interface. This is handy if you want to add a Bluetooth dongle permanently to your computer. But he’s got other things in mind for it. After hacking the BIOS (which for some reason limits what you can plug into thi...
I’ve always wanted to see this! My modem curiosity has peaked lately as I’ve been wanting/trying to set up a PPP or dialup connection across wireless via some GMRS walkie talkies my dad gave me. I was going to crack them open, look for the IC(s) responsible for the transceiver and dat...
[Reza's] methodical investigation of this remote controlled outlet let him patch in with an Arduino using a 433 MHz transmitter . This is a single-device unit, but the techniques used here should allow you to take control of wireless rigs that have multiple modules to control many dev...
“but of course there are a few security implications of having your electric kettle connected to the Internet.” Like what? I leave my kettle on at the wall all the time, I press the manual button on top when I want hot water, -the kettle turns itself off when it’s boiled. What implica...
If you value your time and want to be able to quickly & easily build prototypes or permanent projects then there is not a better choice. Maybe slightly more expensive than other options but most Gadgeteer mainboards typically have much more powerful than your typical mcu also. So, if ...
The cube is able to process 142 frames per second, that is, 1 frame every 7 milliseconds. Within this time period, it loops through a still frame 7 times (Each cycle of POV lasts 144 microseconds). This is able to compensate for flickering during video recording, allowing all camera’s...
What can you do with ten buttons and ten lights? A lot. [Andrew] and [Nathan] found a collection of Hale Research keypads being thrown out, and decided to host the Keypad Contest . The goal of the contest was to create something nifty using the ten buttons and ten lights on the keypad...
[Enrico] figured out a way to fully automate his pet food and water . The system is in two parts, the water trough as seen on the left, and the food dispenser whose control hardware is shown on the right. The system is even hooked up to the network so that he can make sure it didn’t b...
This hexapod was made almost entirely via 3d printing (translated ). The parts that you need to supply include a few fasteners to make connections, twelve servo motors, and a method of driving them. As you can see in the video after the break, all those parts come together into a litt...
This pass through audio modulator lets you playback stereo audio on two Tesla coils . But don’t fret, you can just use mono files if you only have one coil on hand. On one side there are inputs that connect to the audio source. The other side drives the Tesla coil, switching it on and...
I am not sure if the whole wedding party and family consists of electronics hackers, it would certainly result in promising offspring, but the likelihood of it is small in reality. Let’s assume most guests were surprised by the novelty-invitation and will not ask for the ATtiny’s sour...
We’ve seen computers built in Minecraft out of redstone, the game’s version of electricity, circuits, and digital logic. We’ve even seen a few redstone contraptions controlling real-world devices. [Angus]‘ build, though, takes things to a whole new level. He’s created a bridge between...
You heard us right, the stirrer is not combined with the plate, but resides on the underside of the same PSU enclosure. The plate itself is from a unit he bought at the store and cannibalized. The light switch dimmer lets him adjust the heat it puts out. When not hot, he can flip it o...
For a theatre production, [Jason] needed a way to automatically open and close doors as a special effect. His solution, hosted on Github , lets him remotely control the doors, and put them into a ‘freak out’ mode for one scene in the play. Two Victor 884 motor controllers are attached...
