There’s some really cool stuff to find if you wander around a Michaels craft shop or Hobby Lobby long enough. Recently, [Ben] picked up a craft cutter – a small vinyl cutter-like device meant for scrapbooking and other crafty endevours. He’s using this machine to create solder paste s...
Centuries ago, craftsmen and smiths of all sort spent hundreds of hours crafting a crossbow. From the fine craftsmanship that went into making the bow to the impeccable smithing a windlass requires, a lot of effort went into building a machine of war. Since [Chris] has a 3D printer, h...
[Todd Harrison] wrote in not with a project but with a video tour of his local hackerspace: HeatSync Labs in Mesa, Arizona. He took a camera along with him over the weekend to record what you can expect when visiting the space. You’ll find the tour embedded after the break. It starts ...
The popularization of FPGAs for the hobbyist market means a lot more than custom LED controllers and clones of classic computer systems. FPGAs are also a great tool to experiment with computer architecture, creating new, weird, CPUs that don’t abide by the conventions the industry has...
It’s no secret that cats have a weakness for the little red dot produced by a laser pointer. [Rodney] put that trait to work by automating the movement of a red laser pointer. After mounting it on a servo motor he got down to work programming an Arduino to move it in a playful manner....
The two main components are already in place: a clear glass vessel for the water and a way to heat it. The real trick is to use the heating element to gently warm the water to the appropriate temperature. Perhaps the key piece of the project is that the device already had a timer that...
The return vehicle is unpowered, but that shouldn’t be a problem as launching from a weather balloon will provide plenty of altitude for the flight. Because the temperature experienced in that part of the atmosphere is so cold [David] had to take several things into account. Obviously...
Their “MakerBot Digitizer” is most likely based entirely on open source technology or readily available hardware that people have already been using for several years. And I’ll take some issue with the statement “the fact remains if you’re sourcing a 3D printer for a high school shop ...
I think the development environments and toolchains available for each platform are vital. I switched from PIC to AVR because AVR-GCC is a strong development option that lets me work on my preferred systems with no hassle — when I made the switch, the PIC dev tools were lackluster on ...
With daylight savings time starting up, you might not have quite as much need for lighting, but this pair of hacks should keep everything well lit whether outside or indoors. Check out the videos of both in action after the break. The first lighting solution comes to us from [Ben]‘s Y...
This is [Paul Mandel's] Ground-truth velocity sensor . That’s a fancy name for a device which tracks the movement of a vehicle by actually monitoring the ground its travelling over. This differs from simply measuring wheel rotation (which is how traditional odometers work) in that tho...
Android is the prime OS for developing applications in today for many reasons. The main reasons being that it is Open Source and Intuitive. In addition it uses Java for development, which is quite an easy language to get used to and develop in. This being said, a lot of you have great...
[Ken Foster], owner and creator of this $40K+ beast, worked with welder [Gary Webb] to custom design and fabricate every component of the vehicle, from hinges to hydraulic systems. They claim not a single part came from a box. The cooking area, complete with speakers and spotlights, h...
The narration and subtitles of the video found after the break are both in Portuguese, but it’s not hard to figure out what’s going on here. He begins by using double-sided foam tape to secure the piece of copper clad board to the hard drive platters. You’ll want to center it as best ...
Dispensing change for low-stakes gambling March 9, 2013 By Brian Benchoff Leave a Comment Every year, [Nathan] hosts an Oscar party with a lot of drinking, adoring the off-color comments of [Joan Rivers] and some low stakes wagering. Everyone throws a dollar into the pot for a particu...
Thought of the same thing aswell when i first learned about peppers ghost, but i don’t think it would work in the context your giving. you’d just get a strange image that can only be viewed from one angle, you wouldn’t be able to rotate around it and see different ‘views’ because the ...
At this point the series includes six lengthy segments. The first episode, which you’ll find embedded after the break, starts with an external overview of the hardware. [Mike] mentions that it’s not functional at that point. He guesses that this has to do either with security settings...
None of it is. It’s got a static sound to it because this was about the best you could by rapidly changing the volume of the SID chip to play a rudimentary digitized sample. The C64 was never designed to play digitized samples and so it was a hack that worked although very primitive. ...
In regards to bandit’s comments, they are something the abled bodied community may no be able to understand. Alex’s comment goes to show that those within the disability community can’t fully understand the experiences of others within the community. I don’t think it’s not that bandit...
This is [Wpqrek's] Commodore 64 modified to go on the road with him . The elderly machine has a special place in his heart as it was what he learned to code on. He performed a series of hacks which house everything necessary to use the machine inside the original case. Obviously the h...
A 2:1 gear reduction slows down a spinning shaft to half speed and doubles the torque. Repeat this a few times, and you’ve got a ludicrous amount of torque moving too slowly to see with even precision instruments. That’s the idea behind [Jeshua]‘s project, a Printed Machine partially ...
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...
