If you’re making a GPS-enabled project, you may have noticed the commonly available GPS modules are pretty expensive – usually around $50. Here’s one for $8 . It’s a U-blox PCI-5S GPS receiver on a PCI Express card. There are test points for serial and USB data, though, so fitting thi...
Here’s an interesting build that combines light, sound, and gesture recognition to make a 360 degree environment of light and sound. It’s called The Bit Dome , and while the pictures and video are very cool, we’re sure it’s more impressive in real life. The dome is constructed of over...
I recently completed a PCIe soft IP core design; the connection between the core and the PHY was 250MHz (4ns). You’re required to use time constraints (and give it an idea of how long each trace is between the FPGA and PHY) to get it to work. That was using a device without built-in P...
You shouldn’t be surprised that the event posting starts with Peep waterboarding. But from there the rigs do get a lot more creative. For instance, the electric chair above connects the bunny to a stun gun (there’s no mention of what that big set of capacitors has to do with this. The...
I had the idea to make some kind of alarm that would go off if anyone but me removed the wallet from my pocket. A quick google search revealed tons of wallet alarms, but I noticed that they all had a credit card form factor(that’s good) and would make noise when exposed to light(that’...
Children of the information age are doomed to have the worst handwriting just for lack of use if nothing more. But some students at Olin College harnessed technology to find a solution to that problem. Meet Herald, a CNC machine that can produce beautiful calligraphy . The machine use...
Using just a few ordinary around the house items, [The King of Random ] turned a cordless electric drill into a human powered electrical generator. If the drill is run in reverse and cranked by hand, the generated energy can be transferred through the battery terminals to a connected ...
“I don’t understand, you don’t have the technology.” OK, so it’s not actually a futuristic tool with the same capabilities as the one off the hit TV series Dr. Who, but this homemade “sonic screwdriver” is a multifunction device that’s pretty cool nonetheless. Created around an Arduin...
SMD components may be a little challenging for the home builder – even though the’re inordinately practical for homebrew PCBs – but if you play around with electronics and solder long enough, you’re eventually going to run into the horrors of BGA parts. Instead of convenient pins, BGA...
The sword on the left has an electronic stun mechanism built into it. it works by energizing two blades which are separated by nylon bolts and spacers. Look closely at the tip and you’ll see the blue glow which indicates high voltage. To shock your victim you have to touch them with b...
The first part shown in her video (embedded after the jump) is to make a mold for the candies. You probably have a few bags of LEDs in your parts bin. Those along with a trough made of foam core come together to create the form for the silicone mold. After mixing, pouring, and hardeni...
In a testament to both his technical ability, and possibly even more so his tenacity, [Chris] was able to get Debian 6.07 running on a PowerMac destined for destruction. He had slated a few hours to upgrade this 56 Megabyte monster, but it turned out to be a several-day event. Those t...
Ahhh space. The final frontier. While many people dream of one day becoming an astronaut (and possibly battling aliens or cylons), it’s a select few who actually make it their reality. Fortunately for us, there’s a middle ground that allows the masses to still have some fun in the sky...
[Brian] has brought together a powerful collection of hardware to build a robot. The end goal is to have a robot that’s controlled by a Wiimote . The Wiimote communicates over Bluetooth with a Raspberry Pi, which is running a Python script. This script uses the CWiid Python module to ...
This innocent looking Maglite houses a piston and barrel, making it into a functional pneumatic BB gun . A Maglite was chosen due to its high durability, and easy access to the internals. A schrader valve sticks out of the battery cap, which allows the gun to be charged using a standa...
If you want to check your house for hot air leaks, take pictures of the heat coming off a rack of equipment, or just chase the most dangerous animal, [Arnie], through the jungles of central america, a thermal imaging camera is your friend. These devices normally cost a few thousand do...
We’ve seen our share of replica props, but [Nathan]‘s replica of the spy’s sidearm from Team Fortress 2 is the bee’s knees. The build began as an off-the-shelf Airsoft gun. After removing the barrel and cylinder, [Nathan] used Apoxie Sculpt and a whole lot of sanding to turn a stock p...
This thing is so cool it almost looks fake. But [Matt Richardson] isn’t a hoaxster. He actually built what might be called a heads-down display for your bicycle . He refers to it as a headlight because it borrows a similar function. It mounts on the handlebars and shoots light off the...
[Christopher] is really going the distance with his liquid-filled 3D printed lens project . The idea is to create a bladder out of two pieces of clear plastic. It can then be filled with liquid at a variable level of pressure to curve the plastic and create an adjustable lens. He was ...
The rig pulls a printed object up from the ooze on the build platform. They’re using resin that is cured with visible light. That’s why you see the level in the foreground; the bath needs to be a uniformed thickness so that it solidifies correctly when the light hits it from the under...
This isn’t a thrift-store coffee table modified as a craft project. [Dandujmich] built it from the ground-up using framing lumber, bottle caps, plastic resin, and some electronics for bling. The first step was to see if he had enough caps on hand for the project. It’s hard to grasp ho...
I hate when people refer to the lightbulb conspiracy. Because there’s two sides to the story. The other side is, that tungsten filament lightbulbs last longer at the expense of energy efficiency and brightness, so companies that boasted longer life bulbs did it by cheating elsewhere –...
. It gives a lot of details about the drive electronics and code used, but there are some gaps in the instructions for building the track itself. [Ben] forged ahead, purchasing linear bearings and a double-guide rail from IGUS. He didn’t mention the price on that item but we found 100...
[Simon], a gardener in the United Kingdom, created this super cheap and easy to build rocket stove . The great thing about this little guy is that the methods and materials used to create it are so basic, anyone should be able to quickly make their own for just a few bucks. If nothing...
Unlike the hatchet-based system shown off in the first episode this machine has a hopper into which several Oreos may be loaded. The demo cookie is like none we’ve seen before because the top portion is pushed off as if it took no effort at all. The creme is then softened with a strea...
Sure, we could just slap the steam-punk label on this doorbell hack, but we think that cheapens it. The rig uses a combination of mercury switch and creative mechanics to form a doorbell . And we think it goes beyond aesthetics to a statement of who you are starting with the front doo...
They’ve bought an RV and are headed for your state with buckets full of hobby electronic hardware. It’s SparkFun’s National Education tour and if you want them to host a workshop for kids in your area now’s the time to sign up! It’s no stretch to say that our everyday lives are tightl...
Hardware design enthusiasts should already be salivating just looking at this image. But [Ken Shirriff's] write-up on how the 8085 processor’s registers were designed will put you in silicon reverse-engineering heaven. He manages to get to the bottom of the tricks the designers used t...
Over on the xda developers forum, [exception13] shows us the work he’s put into geting Debian running on his Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 , allowing him to dual boot Android and Linux on a single device. The project is still in a fairly early state, but so far [exception13] has most of th...
If there’s one problem with the RepRap, it’s the cost of filament. Sure, there’s also the computationally difficult problem of slicing 3D models, but a 5 to 10 times markup on turning plastic pellets into filament is the biggest problem. It’s even a bigger problem than the problems of...
