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Hack a Day

• January 06, 2013
• 8:00

  Playing a WAV file with 64 bytes of RAM

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jacques] thought his doorbell was too loud, so of course the first thing that came to mind was replacing the electronics and playing a WAV file of his choosing every time someone came knocking. What he ended up with is a very neat circuit: he used a six-pin microcontroller with 64 bytes of RAM to [...]

  Tags:  wav file ram jacques pin-microcontroller wav-file doorbell microcontrollers  

• 6:59

  Hardware SPI with Python on a Raspberry Pi

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  While the Raspberry Pi has very good support for an I2C bus, a lot of very cool chips – including the in system programmer for just about every ATtiny and ATmega microcontroller – use an SPI bus. [Louis] sent in a tutorial for getting hardware SPI on his Raspi, and even though it’s rather limited [...]

  Tags:  raspberry Hardware spi louis spi-bus system-programmer microcontroller raspberry  

• 5:01

  Who would win in a fight, robot [Lemmy] or robot God?

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  So this is what happens when a fan of The Rock-afire Explosion grows up. Meet Compressorhead, a musical trio of hydraulic and pneumatic musical mastery. Compressorhead is a lean band, consisting of only three members. Stickboy, the drummer, is a four-armed beast reminiscent of [General Grievous] that plays a 14-piece Pearl kit with a double [...]

  Tags:  robot compressorhead fight rock-afire-explosion pearl general-grievous god robot-god pearl-kit robots  

• January 05, 2013
• 7:01

  Brute forcing a GPS PIN

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [JJ] picked up a Garmin Nuvi 780 GPS from an auction recently. One of the more frustrating features [JJ] ran into is it’s PIN code; this GPS can’t be unlocked unless a four-digit code is entered, or it’s taken to a ‘safe location’. Not wanting to let his auction windfall go to waste, [JJ] rigged [...]

  Tags:  gps pin auction pin-code digit-code windfall robots hacks  

• 5:01

  Hackaday Links: January 5, 2013

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Do not aim laser at remaining eye Over on the reddits, [CarbonGod] thought he had a slightly overpowered laser pointer. His red laser pointer had a label that said it outputs less than 5 mW. The only problem is it melted black plastic and heated a thermocouple up to 140°F. [CarbonGod] is begging, borrowing, or [...]

  Tags:  carbongod laser pointer red-laser-pointer thermocouple hackaday hackaday links  

• January 04, 2013
• 14:14

  Electric Imp makes a cat door Tweet its activities

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This Tweeting cat door uses the Electric Imp to read a sensor and report back to the server. The hardware is pretty neat. The board hosts an ARM Cortex-M3 processor and gets on your home network via WiFi. The mini-USB cable simply provides the power. Programming is done over the network. Our own [Brian Benchoff] [...]

  Tags:  electric imp cat brian-benchoff cat-door power-programming cortex ARM  

• 13:14

  Is entropy slowing down your Android device?

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Lambgx02] got tired of his Android device getting bogged down and decided to dig down to the cause of the issue. His investigation led him to believe that entropy is causing the slowdown. He believes that his workaround reduces 90% of the lag on the average Android device. So how is it possible that entropy [...]

  Tags:  device entropy android workaround slowdown hacks  

• 12:14

  Estimate velocity using quadrature encoder data

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Many motors offer a quadrature encoder that give feedback on whether, and in which direction, the motor shaft is moving. But if you’re clever about analyzing the data you can use a quadrature encoder to estimate motor velocity. [Jason Sachs] makes the case that it’s fairly easy to get this wrong. Lucky for us he [...]

  Tags:  encoder quadrature velocity jason-sachs motor-shaft sachs microcontrollers  

• 11:14

  Dedicated Pandora player plus AirPlay built around the Raspberry Pi

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Shaun Gehring] wanted an Internet radio player. Although he did have some troubles along the way, the final project turned out very well. Housed inside this case which used to house a spindle of bland CDs is a Raspberry Pi that plays Pandora radio and serves as an AirPlay receiver. The GPIO header of the [...]

  Tags:  raspberry airplay player pandora shaun-gehring internet-radio-player pandora-radio linux hacks  

• 10:00

  Van de Graaff generator built for a few dollars

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This Van de Graaf generator was built using mostly parts on hand. The only thing that was purchased for the project was the Christmas ornament shaped M&M candy tin that serves as the collecting sphere. We didn’t include the in-action shot in the banner because it’s so dark. But sure enough, this will generate the [...]

  Tags:  generator graaf hand van-de-graaff van-de-graaf-generator van-de-graaff-generator van-de-graaf toy hacks  

• 9:01

  Case feeder makes your ammo reloading more efficient

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  For those that are into reloading their own ammo you know that getting an efficient assembly line process figured out will make your sessions much more enjoyable and productive. [Msoejacobsk] knew that he could buy a case feeder for his system, but didn’t want to shell out two hundred bucks for it. After a bit of [...]

  Tags:  feeder ammo case assembly-line weapons hacks  

• 8:01

  Pictures from weather satellites with a USB TV tuner

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Several times a day, a NOAA weather satellite passes over your head, beaming down pictures of weather systems and cloud formations. These transmissions aren’t encrypted, and given the requisite hardware it’s possible for you to download these images from space as [Lovro] shows us in a tutorial video. To get these near real-time satellite pictures, [...]

  Tags:  weather usb satellite usb-tv-tuner real-time-satellite-pictures weather-satellites radio hacks  

• 6:01

  Touchscreen control for a Reprap

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  After you’ve got your Reprap running smoothly with acceptable resolution and good quality prints, the next order of business for any 3D printer hobbyist is headless printing. While the greatest and newest 3D printers come with controls to allow jogging, homing, temperature control, and printing from an SD card, the home-built versions will require an [...]

  Tags:  touchscreen reprap control 3d-printer acceptable-resolution order-of-business printer hacks  

• 4:24

  Turning a Raspberry Pi into an SNES

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Back at the turn of the century, shoving MiniITX motherboards into just about everything was all the rage with the technologist crowd. [waterbury] had the idea of making a computer out of an SNES, but with the added ability of reading SNES cartridges. This idea had been floating around in [waterbury]‘s head for years now, [...]

  Tags:  waterbury snes idea added-ability all-the-rage raspberry raspberry  

• January 03, 2013
• 14:01

  Arduino using a straight key for Morse code assistance

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  For those unfamiliar with Ham Radio, there are lots of fancy tools these days to make it easier for the radio operator. But enthusiasts still like to get back to basics, and one way to do this is to participate in Straight Key Night. This is when you pull out your traditional Morse code keyer [...]

  Tags:  key code radio morse morse-code-keyer straight-key fancy-tools hacks  

• 13:01

  Building a rather rudimentary Arduino tank bot

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The tank robot builds that we see are often quite complex. This lets them do great things, but makes the platform scary for beginners. Here’s a tank build that would be a great first project, especially if you’re more interested in the programming side of robotics than you are in the hardware itself. [Paul Bleisch] combined [...]

  Tags:  tank arduino bot paul-bleisch s-a-tank programming-side robotics hacks  

• 12:01

  OCR automatically reads a power meter

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Chris] tried his hand at using Optical Character Recognition in his server power monitoring rig. The image above is what the IP camera used in the setup sees. He’s included a bright light to ensure that the contrast is as great as possible. After applying a threshold filter to the captured still, he is able [...]

  Tags:  power meter ocr chris optical-character-recognition power-monitoring power-meter green hacks  

• 11:01

  Tie tack sends Morse code seasons greetings

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  For [Davide Gironi] made a holiday tie tack this year. It’s not made to look like Santa Claus, Frosty, or a Christmas tree. He simply wishes you a Merry Christmas (‘Buon Natale’ in Italian) by flashing the message in Morse code. Two LEDs have been added to a plain tie tack. It is tethered to the [...]

  Tags:  code tack tie morse natale merry-christmas claus morse-code seasons-greetings tie-tack led  

• 10:01

  Web-based TI graphing calculator emulator

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  You can leave the TI graphing calculator at home thanks to this web-based TI-83 and TI-84 emulator. As with pretty much all emulators, this depends on a ROM image from the actual hardware to work. But if you have one of the supported calculators (TI-83+, TI-83+ SE, TI-84+, or TI-84+SE) you can dump the image [...]

  Tags:  calculator image emulator ti-84-emulator calculator-emulator graphing-calculator Software hacks  

• 9:01

  Sump pump monitor emails and raises alarm if water rises

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Matt] literally finds himself in a sticky situation. There’s an oil slick in his sump well. These wells work in conjunction with drain tiles to pump water away from the foundation of a house. Unfortunately the tar that was used to waterproof the outside of his foundation is also washing into the sump and gumming [...]

  Tags:  foundation sump water matt drain-tiles sticky-situation conjunction home hacks  

• 7:01

  Solar Powered Wifi Radiation Sensor

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Manish] packed lots of functionality into this radiation sensor module. The device is completely solar powered and weatherproof, so it can be mounted anywhere. It uses a Geiger Muller tube to monitor radiation and connects to the internet using wifi network to report the readings. The design uses an Arduino Pro Mini to perform the [...]

  Tags:  wifi sensor radiation geiger-muller-tube radiation-sensor sensor-module arduino hacks  

• 6:01

  An absurdly clever thermal imaging camera

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Thermal imaging cameras, cameras able to measure the temperature of an object while taking a picture, are amazingly expensive. For the price of a new car, you can pick up one of these infrared cameras and check out where the drafts are in your house. [Max Justicz] thought he could do better than even professional-level thermal [...]

  Tags:  temperature imaging camera maxjusticz thermal-imaging-camera thermal-imaging-cameras infrared-cameras digital cameras hacks  

• 5:01

  Accurate timers with an AVR

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  An awful lot of microcontroller projects use timers to repeat an action every few minutes, hours, or days. While these timers can be as accurate as a cheap digital wrist watch, there are times when you need a microcontroller’s timer to measure exactly, losing no more than a few milliseconds a day. It’s not very hard [...]

  Tags:  avr microcontroller accurate microcontroller-projects milliseconds wrist-watch microcontrollers  

• 3:01

  Tentacles and phalanges made from drinking straws

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  He human hand is one of the most impressive pieces of machinery – biological, mechanical, or otherwise – that you’ll ever lay eyes on.  With two dozen degrees of freedom, the hand can gently caress the most fragile flower petal without bruising it, or beat a hammer into an anvil with tremendous force. Simulating the human hand, however, [...]

  Tags:  tentacles drinking hand drinking-straws fragile-flower flower-petal robots hacks  

• January 02, 2013
• 14:01

  Battery teardown to get at the cells inside

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Most of what people call batteries are actually cells. All of the common disposable alkaline batteries from AAA to D are single cells. The exception is the 9v battery which actually has six smaller cells inside of it. [Tom] took a look inside three different batteries to see what cells they’re hiding. Since he no [...]

  Tags:  teardown alkaline battery tom alkaline-batteries 9v-battery  

• 13:01

  Morse code flower is trying to tell you something

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  To the casual observer this flower looks nice as its illuminated center fades in and out. But there’s hidden meaning to that light. Some of the blinks are longer than others; this flower is using Morse Code. [Renaud Schleck] wanted to try a few different things with his MSP430 microcontroller. He decided on an LED [...]

  Tags:  flower something code morse-code morse renaud-schleck schleck msp430 microcontrollers  

• 12:01

  Color changing bag matches clothing color, tells you what’s inside

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Adding some lights to your everyday items will certainly give you a style leaning toward the world of Blade Runner. But if you can add functionality to control the blinky components you’ve actually got something. A great example of this is [Kathryn McElroy's] Chameleon Bag. It’s a shoulder bag with a light-up flap. It can [...]

  Tags:  color bag clothing kathryn-mcelroy clothing-color blade-runner shoulder-bag led hacks  

• 11:01

  An amplifier circuit good enough to eat

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Dino's] kitchen skills match his hardware hacking prowess. Look really close at the image above and you’ll realize this collection of transistors and passive components is edible. Rather than decorating cookies for the holidays he built this audio amplifier from gingerbread, icing, and candy. The thing is, [Dino] almost always has that extra touch to [...]

  Tags:  amplifier kitchen circuit dino amplifier-circuit audio-amplifier decorating-cookies cooking hacks  

• 10:16

  Three conceptual approaches to driving a WS2811 LED pixel

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Cunning_Fellow] published a post with three proof-of-concept approaches to driving a WS2811 LED pixel. We looked at a project early in December that used an AVR microcontroller to drive the RGB package. [Cunning_Fellow] saw this, and even though he doesn’t have any of these parts on hand he still spent the time hammering out ways [...]

  Tags:  led cunning pixel avr-microcontroller conceptual-approaches proof-of-concept hacks  

• 9:01

  A very dash-ing iPad mini

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The work which [Mark] did to mount this iPad mini in the dashboard of his Ford truck is commendable. It looks like it came from the factory this way, and the functionality matches that illusion. He actually started the project before he had the iPad mini on hand. A PDF that mapped out the exact [...]

  Tags:  mini work ipad mark ford-truck dashboard tablet pcs hacks  

• 8:01

  A Gamecube and N64 console mashup

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Hailrazer] over on the Made by Bacteria forums was a bit tired of all his consoles cluttering up the space underneath his TV. No worries, though, because it’s actually fairly easy to combine a Gamecube and an N64 into one system that looks very professional. While [Hailrazer]‘s Gamecube was left reasonably complete, not including the addition [...]

  Tags:  hailrazer mashup gamecube bacteria consoles nintendo hacks  

• 6:24

  Frankenstein, an all-tube home theater amplifier

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Here’s an exercise in excess if we’ve ever seen one. While working on his undergrad at Michigan State, [Gregory] thought it would be a great idea to build an all-tube home theater system. He calls his seven-foot tall rack of amplifiers ‘Frankenstein,’ and we’ve got to agree this build is an impressive monstrosity of engineering prowess. [Gregory]‘s [...]

  Tags:  theater frankenstein home gregory michigan home-theater-system monstrosity prowess classic hacks  

• January 01, 2013
• 11:21

  This day in Hack a Day history: January 1st 2005

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  A new feature that we’re playing with is an occasional look back at this day in Hack a Day history. While we’re still hotly disputing exactly what, when, and how to show, we thought today would be a great day to introduce the idea. So, in on this day in Hack a Day history we’re [...]

  Tags:  day hack history january-1st new-feature news  

• 9:54

  Hackerspace intro: Greenville Makers in Greenville, South Carolina

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you happen to live in the Upstate of South Carolina, and your New Year’s resolution was to get involved with a hackerspace, the [Greenville Makers] are definitely worth checking out. Right now they have several projects their members are working on, including a VoIP payphone (work in progress), and of course several 3D printers [...]

  Tags:  intro hackerspace upstate greenville south-carolina greenville-south-carolina work-in-progress new-year Hackerspaces  

• 7:01

  [Jason Scott] throws down a preview of his DEFCON documentary

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Let’s face it, we all love DEFCON. Even if you’ve never been there before, we think it would be a huge struggle to find a reader who hadn’t been enchanted by at least one of the many hacks and talks that come out of the conference every year. We’ll prove it to you in a [...]

  Tags:  documentary preview defcon jason-scott hacks cons  

• 5:01

  That’s not beer! A biofuel fermentation controller project

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Any home brewer will recognize the setup pictured above as a temperature controlled fermentation chamber. They wouldn’t be wrong either. But you’re not going to drink what results. This project is aimed at providing a temperature controlled environment for fermenting biofuel. [Benjamin Havey] and [Michael Abed] built the controller as their final project in his microprocessor class. [...]

  Tags:  biofuel fermentation project michael-abed benjamin-havey home-brewer havey microprocessor green hacks  

• December 31, 2012
• 14:30

  Retrotechtacular: Fluid Coupling

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We realize the transmission fluid of an automobile’s automatic transmission is used to transfer the power from the engine to the drive shaft. But after watching this Department of Defense video from 1954 we now have a full understanding of the principles involved in fluid coupling. Like us, you probably have seen a diagram of a transmission [...]

  Tags:  fluid transmission coupling drive-shaft transmission-fluid engine hacks  

• 13:00

  Ice record single needs six hours in the deep freeze before you can listen

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This delightful marketing ploy requires the listener to fabricate their own record out of ice. The band Shout Out Louds wanted to make a splash with their newest single. So they figured out how to make a playable record out of ice. The main problem with this is the grooves start to degrade immediately when [...]

  Tags:  freeze record ice shout-out-louds deep-freeze ploy digital audio hacks  

• 11:30

  Wave that roman candle around without risking your digits

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Some people don’t mind missing a finger or two, but we’re quite attached to all of ours. That’s why we’ve never held on to the fireworks after lighting the fuse. [Dzl] and his son wanted to be (at least somewhat) safe while still having that kind of fun. So they built this rig which lets [...]

  Tags:  roman wave candle lighting-the-fuse roman-candle digits weapons hacks  

• 10:02

  Make your own plastic friction welder

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Fran] shows us how to build a plastic friction welder. It’s a method of connecting plastic pieces. While it’s new to us, apparently this type of tool was given to kids about forty years ago to use with craft project (when plastic was all the craze). The tip of the friction welder is a styrene rod. [...]

  Tags:  welder friction plastic fran plastic-pieces craft-project styrene tool hacks  

• 7:31

  Tamagotchi hacking, in depth

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  In this strangely fascinating talk, you can follow along as [Natalie Silvanovich] reverse engineers some tomogotchi. Even if you have no interest whatsoever in tomogotchi, you’ll probably pick up a trick or two by listening to how she went about taking over the toy. She can now push her own images to the screen, and [...]

  Tags:  depth tamagotchi tomogotchi natalie-silvanovich natalie images handhelds hacks  

• 4:00

  Building a hardware security module

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Stefan] was nervous about putting the secret key for his Amazon Web Services account in his config file. In the security world, storing passwords in plain text is considered a very bad thing. but luckily there are ways around it. [Stefan]‘s solution was to make a hardware security module out of the newest ARM-powered Arduino [...]

  Tags:  security Hardware module stefan amazon-web security-module arduino hacks  

• December 30, 2012
• 15:00

  Ringing in the new year with an Arduino and Calcium Carbide

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  It’s the first we’ve heard of it, but a New Year’s Eve tradition in The Netherlands called Carbidschieten sounds like it’s just up our alley. Basically, a small chunk of calcium carbide and a little bit of water is placed in a metal milk churn. The carbide decomposes into acetylene and a flame is held up to [...]

  Tags:  year carbide calcium eve the-netherlands calcium-carbide ringing-in-the-new-year little-bit-of-water arduino hacks  

• 13:00

  USB microscope used for soldering very small things

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Lasik eye surgery is pretty common these days, but there are of course easier and cheaper ways to solder SMD components. [techpawpanda] wanted a video camera to see what was going on when he placed and soldered very tiny components on his board, but commercial SMD video cameras were terribly expensive. He wound up using [...]

  Tags:  smd video usb smd-components tiny-components video-cameras tool hacks  

• 10:01

  Breaking the new Neo Geo handheld wide open

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  In case you weren’t aware, there’s a new Neo Geo console on the block. It’s called the Neo Geo X and brings back more than a few pains of nostalgia for classic arcade games of the 90s. After receiving their brand new Neo Geo portables, members of the Neo Geo forum decided to do a [...]

  Tags:  neo geo case classic-arcade-games neo-geo nostalgia linux hacks  

• 6:53

  [Prusa] interviews a whole bunch of RepRappers

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Any time a media outlet or conference wants an expert on 3D printing there are two people to turn to. The most famous is [Bre Pettis] of MakerBot. The other is an awesome guy named [Prusa], designer of the most popular RepRap and possibly the most popular 3D printer of all time. He’s been putting [...]

  Tags:  prusa bunch time 3d-printer reprap media-outlet printer hacks  

• December 29, 2012
• 9:01

  Engadget trying out some crowd-funding

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Engadget has decided to give this whole crowd-funding thing a try with a competition called Insert Coin. This is part of an upcoming event called Expand that is supposed to let us get inside information on gadget construction and conception. This actually sounds refreshing compared to the giant commercial that other tech conferences can be [...]

  Tags:  thing try engadget gadget crowd contests  

• 7:01

  Bluetooth hack for Serioux Panda speakers

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Bogdan] received this set of Serioux Panda speakers as a gift. I turns out that they sound very good and he decided to make them more useful to him by converting them to work as Bluetooth speakers. To begin with he bought the cheapest A2DP device he could find. This is the protocol that identifies [...]

  Tags:  panda serioux bluetooth bogdan hack digital audio hacks  

• 5:00

  Make your own machinable wax

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  No matter how easy it is to throw a piece of metal or plastic onto a tool and start making chips, the price of materials does add up. [rawkstar320] has been using machinable wax – a very hard wax that is up to the task of being cut with tools spinning at thousands of RPM [...]

  Tags:  piece wax matter david machinable-wax hard-wax rpm misc hacks  

• December 28, 2012
• 11:31

  Nerf Sentry Gun for the Apocalypse

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you’ve ever wanted to shoot someone with a Nerf gun, but just didn’t have the energy to get off the couch, this hack may be for you. It’s also a good way to ward off zombies if another apocalypse, Mayan or otherwise, is on the horizon. Although the effects are very cool, as seen [...]

  Tags:  nerf sentry apocalypse gun sentry-gun nerf-gun arduino hacks  

• 7:00

  A portable CNC mill

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Second only to a lathe, a mill is one of the most useful tools to have in a shop. For [juppiter], though, a proper multi-ton mill would take up too much space and be a considerable investment. His solution to his space problem is actually very clever: he converted a small, inexpensive benchtop mill to [...]

  Tags:  space mill cnc cnc-mill juppiter space-problem tool hacks  

• 5:00

  Ask Hackaday: How do you give a project away?

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  A few weeks ago, we caught wind of a DIY version of ‘smart tweezers’ from [Kai]‘s workbench that are able to measure SMD resistors, caps, and inductors. At that time, [Kai] hadn’t quite finished the software portion of his build, leaving him with a pile of parts and non-working PCBs. The code is finished now, meaning [...]

  Tags:  hackaday project kai smart-tweezers software-portion inductors Ask hackaday  

• December 27, 2012
• 7:00

  DIY SMD stencils made with a craft cutter

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Unless you’d like to spend hours with a toothpick and a tub of solder paste, stencils are the way to go whenever you’re placing SMD parts. While most commercial and industrial SMD stencils are made out of laser cut stainless steel, [Peter] figured out a piece of plastic and a $300 craft cutter is equally [...]

  Tags:  smd cutter craft peter solder-paste-stencils toothpick stainless-steel tool hacks  

• 6:00

  Overclocking microcontrollers

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We’re all familiar with overclocking desktop computers; a wonderful introduction to thermal design power and the necessities of a good CPU cooler. [Marcelo] wanted to see how far he could overclock a microcontroller – in this case an ATMega328 – and ended up with a microcontroller designed for 20 MHz running at 30 MHz. To [...]

  Tags:  cpu-cooler microcontrollers desktop-computers microcontrollers  

• 3:00

  Making a TARDIS bigger on the inside

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Over Thanksgiving, [Greg] had a little time on his hands and decided he needed an afternoon project. Having a few bits of plywood, an xacto knife, and some blue paint on hand meant a miniature TARDIS would take shape on his workbench. After finishing the model, [Greg] continued improving it with a blinky LED when [...]

  Tags:  tardis time thanksgiving greg afternoon-project blue-paint xacto-knife cellphones hacks  

• December 26, 2012
• 14:17

  Toner transfer for resist and silk screen using printable vinyl

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This toner transfer method uses a different material than we normally see. The red sheet being peeled back isn’t toner transfer paper. It’s printable vinyl used for both the resist and the silk screen. The application process is almost the same as any other toner transfer PCB fabrication material. The printable vinyl stick is first [...]

  Tags:  vinyl toner transfer toner-transfer-paper fabrication-material silk-screen misc hacks  

• 12:01

  Buzzed Buzzer gives you a Breathalyzer test while ringing in the new year

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We’re not sure if there’s enough time to get a parts order delivered, but no geeky New Year’s party will be complete without a party buzzer that doubles as a Breathalyzer. The Buzzed Buzzer hides all of the necessary bits inside of a paper and plastic party favor. We guess it only buzzes if you’re over [...]

  Tags:  party buzzed buzzer ringing-in-the-new-year breathalyzer-test necessary-bits arduino hacks  

• 9:01

  Raspberry Pi used as a Squeezebox server

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jacken] loves his lossless audio and because of that he’s long been a fan of Squeezebox. It makes streaming the high-bitrate files possible. But after Logitech acquired the company he feels they’ve made some choices which has driven the platform into the ground. But there is hope. He figured out how to use a Raspberry [...]

  Tags:  raspberry squeezebox server lossless-audio bitrate digital audio hacks  

• 5:01

  Interfacing a GPU with a CPU

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Quinn Dunki] pulled together many months worth of work by interfacing her GPU with the CPU. This is one of the major points in her Veronica project which aims to build a computer from the ground up. We’ve seen quite a number of posts from her regarding the AVR-powered GPU. So far the development of [...]

  Tags:  gpu interfacing cpu veronica quinn-dunki computer hacks  

• December 25, 2012
• 13:01

  Magnets keep the shower curtain from groping you

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We guess we’re glad to hear that other also suffer from the phantom shower curtain liner. On occasion the shower curtain will start closing in on us around the bottom of the shower. We’re not certain of the phenomenon that causes it. Perhaps it’s static electricity like when a comb repels a stream of water. [...]

  Tags:  curtain liner magnets shower-curtain static-electricity comb home hacks  

• 12:01

  Train set built in a suitcase does more than you’d think

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Mario] can take his train set on the road with him because he build the thing inside of a suitcase. That in itself is pretty neat, but he pulled off more than just laying down a ring of track and surrounding it with realistic scenery. This train set is automated. The suitcase itself looks a [...]

  Tags:  road suitcase train mario realistic-scenery arduino hacks  

• 11:10

  Put that headphone jack anywhere you want it

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Check out this brand new Yamaha keyboard. The fact that we’re seeing the guts means that [Todd Harrison] can kiss his warranty goodbye. But by now you should know that he doesn’t look to others when something goes wrong with his electronics. This time around he’s not repairing anything. He didn’t like having to plug [...]

  Tags:  headphone brand jack todd-harrison headphone-jack yamaha-keyboard musical hacks  

• 9:01

  Router jig for a perfect circle

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We once enlisted a contractor to cut a plywood circle for a cat condo we were building. Now we’re embarrassed that we couldn’t come up with a solution as eloquent and easy to use as this circle cutting router jig which [Grays42] built. He’s using a small trim router for the job. The jig is [...]

  Tags:  router circle jig cat-condo perfect-circle tool hacks  

• 5:01

  Portable audio rig that turned out great

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Michael] wanted a stereo that he could use outside, be it at the beach, beside the pool, or while tailgating. He decided to build this boom box himself, and didn’t cut any corners when it came to a professional looking finish. Because of the locale in which he plans to use the stereo he went [...]

  Tags:  rig stereo portable michael boom-box pool digital audio hacks  

• December 24, 2012
• 14:01

  UPDATE: Roll your own GPS can now track twice as many satellites

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Andrew Holme] wrote in to tell us about some work he’s done to improve his scratch-built GPS receiver. He figured out a way to use the same hardware but double the number of satellites it can track to a total of eight. When we looked at the original hardware about a year ago it was [...]

  Tags:  gps Hardware update andrew-holme holme number-of-satellites scratch hacks  

• 13:01

  How to write your own Minesweeper solver

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We think we have found project that will take over our holiday free time. [Bai Li] just published an excellent article about writing a program that can automatically solve the game of Minesweeper. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Minesweeper gives you a grid in which land mines have been randomly placed. As you click [...]

  Tags:  minesweeper solver project land-mines free-time Software hacks  

• 12:01

  Robot can barely move with so much hardware strapped to it

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We think that [Andrej Škraba] needs to start looking for a beefier motor platform. This little robot has so much hardware strapped to it the motors can barely keep up. But with a little help it can make its way around the house, and it takes a whole lot of connectivity and computing power along [...]

  Tags:  kraba Hardware robot andrej computing-power whole-lot robots hacks  

• 11:01

  A concrete table with a little blinky built in

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Members of the Warp Zone hackerspace wanted a coffee table that was beyond ordinary. They ended up pouring a concrete base for the glass top (translated). There were several things to address during the design. First off, they wanted to integrate LEDs in the concrete sides. Some consideration had to be made for portability as [...]

  Tags:  table blinky warp warp-zone concrete-sides concrete-base Hackerspaces  

• 9:00

  Olin College Penny Press

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Inspired by souvenir penny presses, [Robert] built the Olin College penny press. This machine stamps out coins with the school’s name and a variety of other patterns. He built it as part of a mechanical structures course, with the goal of designing something that used large forces. Crushing a penny takes about five tons of force. To [...]

  Tags:  college penny olin robert penny-press mechanical-structures olin-college toy hacks  

• 7:00

  Hackaday Links: Christmas Eve, 2012

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  It’s Christmas Eve, the perfect time to interact with your extended familial units, eat cookies, nog things up a little, and watch Die Hard. Christmas Eve also means it’s a low-effort day here at Hackaday, so here’s a few cool things we’ve run across in the past few weeks. A Round OLED Display That right there [...]

  Tags:  eve christmas hackaday christmas-eve oled-display hackaday links  

• 5:01

  Pulling the LCD screens out of a MyVu glasses display

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [John Floren] really sells us on a pair of MyVu 301 Video Glasses. He lists the features as being bulky, ugly, and uncomfortable. That’s the reason why he’s showing you how to crack open the glasses in order to steal the tiny LCD modules. The LCD screen for each eye is mounted inside of the [...]

  Tags:  video-glasses lcd-screens lcd-modules video hacks  

• December 23, 2012
• 12:01

  Animated holiday wreath from a string of LED lights

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Dennis Adams'] wreath lights project looks pretty good. But he did some amazing coding to produce a whole set of interesting animated patterns that really seal the deal for the project. Don’t miss the video after the break where he shows off all of his hard work. He started with a string individually addressable LEDs. [...]

  Tags:  wreath string holiday don dennis-adams holiday-wreath animated-holiday holiday hacks  

• 10:01

  Sensor sleeve makes tablet use easier and benefitial for disabled children

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Pinch-zoom is a godsend (and shouldn’t be patent-able) and although we mourn the loss of a physical keyboard on a lot of device we use a tablet nearly as often as we do a full computer. But the touch screen interface is not open to everyone. Those who lack full dexterity of their digits will [...]

  Tags:  sleeve sensor tablet touch-screen-interface physical-keyboard disabled-children pcs hacks  

• 7:40

  Log coasters made with just two tools

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Still looking for that perfect gift? [Joel Witwer] shows us how to make a log coaster set and holder on the cheap. He figures he spent just $5 on the project and from what we can tell that all went to some polyurethane which he used to finish the wood pieces. It started with an interesting-looking and [...]

  Tags:  coaster log gift joel-witwer coaster-set wood-pieces witwer home hacks  

• December 22, 2012
• 12:10

  An even more useless machine

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Here’s the most useless machine we’ve seen so far. It comes from the workshop of [forn4x] and happily turns itself off whenever any one of its eight switches are flicked to the on position. The build began when [forn]‘s Canon 850i printer gave up the ghost because of a broken print head. All the other [...]

  Tags:  machine forn workshop canon-850i ghost misc hacks  

• 10:01

  Fabricating hardware from the original arcade Pong schematics

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This heavily populated PCB is a recreation of the original arcade version of Pong. That is an important distinction because the home version of Pong used a specialized chip to do much of the work. This is basically all stock logic, which explains the high component count. We wonder how many quarters it took just [...]

  Tags:  version arcade pong arcade-version component-count classic hacks  

• 7:49

  FireHero: Raspberry Pi Controlled Pyrotechnics

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  To put on a live pyrotechnic show at a music festival, [Chris] built the FireHero 3. The result is remotely controlled flames shooting up to 100 feet in the air. The system is controlled by a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino. A server runs on the Pi and allows a remote computer to control the [...]

  Tags:  raspberry firehero controlled chris arduino remote-computer raspberry  

• 5:01

  Building a tornado in a bottle

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Recreate the look of a tornado by building this water vortex art piece. The components that go into it are all very simple and can be found in your recycling bin with the exception of a motor and a way to drive it. The hard part is going to be getting to the point where [...]

  Tags:  tornado bottle recreate tornado-in-a-bottle recycling-bin art-piece misc hacks  

• December 21, 2012
• 14:36

  Adding task lighting inside a desk

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Mahesh Venkitachalam] wanted to light up the dark recesses of his desk. What good is all that storage if you can’t see a darn thing in there? His solution was to add LED strips which turn on automatically when the door is opened. The design is quite simple. A 2N2222 NPN transistor is responsible for connecting [...]

  Tags:  desk task lighting 2n2222-npn-transistor dark-recesses task-lighting led hacks  

• 13:01

  Adding a timer feature to this desk lamp

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Steven Mackaay] added a simple user interface that implements a shutoff timer for his desk lamp. His project log comes in two parts, the breadboarding and the actual implementation. He wanted a few things out of the build. The first is an LED that would help him find the lamp in the dark. The second [...]

  Tags:  desk lamp timer steven-mackaay desk-lamp breadboarding user-interface microcontrollers  

• 12:01

  Webcam eye-tracking moves robot-powered Skittles candy

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This is a great hack, and it’s an advertisement. We wish this were the norm when it comes to advertising because they’ve really got our number. Skittles enlisted a few engineers to build a web interface that moves robot-powered candies. When we started looking into this we figured that a few robots were covered with [...]

  Tags:  webcam candy skittles skittles-candy eye-tracking web-interface robots hacks  

• 11:01

  Making graphene with a DVD burner

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  A group of researchers have figured out how to produce graphene using a DVD drive. This discovery helps clear the path for mass production of the substance, which was discovered in the late 1980′s. More recently, the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to a team that produced two-dimensional graphene; a substance one just [...]

  Tags:  dvd graphene substance nobel-prize-for-physics mass-production chemistry hacks  

• 10:01

  Wooden box repeats rhythm used when knocking on the lid

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Paul Mandel] just finished building this knock box project. It’s a familiar concept that uses a solenoid to tap on the side of the box. The Arduino driven setup monitors vibrations on the lid. When you knock on the box, it records the pattern and plays it back using the solenoid. He was inspired by [...]

  Tags:  box solenoid lid paul-mandel rhythm arduino hacks  

• 9:00

  Raspberry Pi laptop is just a little too big for a pocket

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Over on the Parts People blog, [Nathan] created his own Raspberry Pi laptop. It’s got all the bells and whistles, including a keyboard, trackpad, battery, and even a 3D printed case. Of course [Nathan]‘s laptop contains a Raspi, but the other included parts are where this palmtop computer is turned into something useful. For powering [...]

  Tags:  raspberry laptop pocket nathan bells-and-whistles palmtop-computer raspberry  

• 7:00

  Open source software defined radio transceiver

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  As the year draws to a close, we must look back and look at the advances in amateur radio this year. The RTL-SDR tuner hack, a USB TV Tuner to create a software defined radio receiver, is one of the greatest hacks of the last 12 months and a great justification for 2012 being the [...]

  Tags:  year radio Software usb-tv-tuner radio-transceiver open-source-software Hardware  

• 6:00

  Arduino compatible Christmas tree

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  It wouldn’t be the holidays without an LED Christmas tree, and luckily [Danilo] brings the goods with an Arduiinofied LED Christmas tree (Italian, translation). In the past week, we’ve seen LED Christmas trees of digital logic and a great freeform circuit version. Unlike these other builds [Danilo]‘s LED tree uses a piece of protoboard masterfully cut into [...]

  Tags:  led christmas tree digital-logic christmas-trees italian-translation hacks  

• 4:01

  3D Printing Records

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This is a working record created with a 3D printer. [Amanda] came up with a process that converts audio files into 3D models. These models can be printed and played on a standard record player. The real work is done by a Processing sketch that creates a STL file. [Amanda] started off by trying to [...]

  Tags:  printer printing record amanda printing-records stl-file 3d-printer printer hacks  

• December 20, 2012
• 14:15

  We are the Borg. We will add heat and distance sensing to your vision.

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Gregory McRoberts] was born with reduced vision in one eye and has never experienced the three dimensional sight which most of us take for granted. Recently he was inspired by the concept of a hearing aid to build a device which can augment his vision. Behold, the very Borg-like eye-patch that he wears to add distance and [...]

  Tags:  heat vision distance borg gregory-mcroberts mcroberts eye-patch hearing-aid wearable hacks  

• 13:15

  Tesla Model S handle dispenses beer; hides when done

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Let’s face it, sometimes you need to take time out from engineering cutting-edge electric vehicles to over-engineer a beer fridge. And to tell you the truth, after seeing what [Matt Brown] managed to pull off we now have a gut-felt yearning for one of our own. He took a beer fridge and added a vanishing [...]

  Tags:  tesla fridge beer beer-fridge electric-vehicles hacks  

• 12:15

  3D printed Christmas cookies

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Here is yet another way to get into the holiday spirit at your local Hackerspace (or at home if you’re happen to have your own 3D printer). [Ralph Holleis] wrote in to show off his 3D printed Christmas cookies. The majority of the info on this project comes from the video embedded after the break. [...]

  Tags:  christmas way holiday ralph-holleis project-comes-from christmas-cookies 3d-printer printer hacks  

• 11:15

  Scavenged tube television makes a nice fish tank

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [McCaulsey] found an old TV waiting for garbage pick-up on the side of the curb. He brought it home and gave it a new life as an aquarium. His technique is a little rough, but the finished look is exactly what he was going for. He picked up the cheapest aquarium set he could find [...]

  Tags:  aquarium tube scavenged fish-tank old-tv home hacks  

• 10:01

  Mains rated solid state relay test box

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We like our nice, safe, 5V prototyping projects where the only thing that might get fried is a chip. But there are times when you want to switch appliances for one reason or another and then you’re going to want a mains rated relay. [Viktor] got tired of having exposed high voltage on the bench [...]

  Tags:  mains state relay solid-state-relay relay-test high-voltage tool hacks  

• 9:10

  pyMCU test project looks like a Minecraft mob

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Hackaday’s own [Jeremy Cook] has been testing out the pyMCU board and managed to put together an animated block head that looks like it could be a foe in Minecraft. That’s thanks mostly to the block of foam he’s using as a diffuser. The face of the project is a set of LEDs. These, along [...]

  Tags:  pymcu minecraft project jeremy-cook test-project foe microcontrollers  

• 7:00

  Modifying an EEG headset for lucid dreaming

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Michael], [Tom], and a few other people on the Lucid Scribe Database project have been using off-the-shelf EEG equipment to invoke lucid dreaming. Yes, that’s where you take control of your dreams and become a god. This requires wearing an EEG setup while you sleep, and these products aren’t very comfortable sleeping wear. [Tom] decided to take [...]

  Tags:  eeg modifying headset michael tom scribe-database database-project medical hacks  

• 5:00

  Custom MOTD for the Raspberry Pi

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  With so many uses for a Raspberry Pi in a headless configuration – especially with the impending release of the Raspi Model A – we’re surprised it has taken so long for someone to send in a way to create a custom message of the day that is displayed whenever you SSH into everyone’s favorite Linux [...]

  Tags:  raspberry motd custom impending-release message-of-the-day custom-message raspberry  

• 5:00

  Two computer vision builds from Cornell

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Bruce Land], professor at Cornell, is a frequent submitter to our tip line. Usually he sends in a few links every semester from undergraduate electronics courses. Now the fall semester is finally over and it’s time to move on to the more ambitious master’s projects. First up is a head-mounted eye tracker, [Anil Ram Viswanathan] [...]

  Tags:  semester cornell computer bruce-land ram-viswanathan eye-tracker computer-vision Hardware  

• December 19, 2012
• 15:01

  Which way do non-polarized film capacitors go? There is an answer.

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you, like us, thought that capacitor orientation only matters for polarized varieties like electrolytic capacitors you should read through this article. [Bruce Trump] looks at why some film capacitors have a stripe printed on one end and why their orientation can matter. He has an image rolled into his post showing both axial and [...]

  Tags:  way orientation film bruce-trump film-capacitors electrolytic-capacitors capacitor Hardware  

• 14:01

  Comprehensive home PCB fabrication tutorial

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  From what we’ve seen we’d say [Jianyi Liu] is really good at etching PCBs at home. Now you can learn from his experience. He just published a mammoth guide to fabricating your own PCBs at home. That link goes to his index page which leads to all eight parts of the guide. He starts off by [...]

  Tags:  pcb home guide liu etching-pcbs index-page chemistry hacks  

• 13:01

  Stellarino brings Wiring-style coding to the Stellaris Launchpad

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Sultan Qasim] wrote in to tell us about the work he’s been doing on the Stellarino library. It’s goal is to break down the coding barriers present for those looking to move from Arduino to ARM. This is accomplished by facilitating Wiring-stlye code for the Stellaris Launchpad ARM development board. Right off the bat [Sultan] [...]

  Tags:  launchpad stellarino stellaris sultan-qasim sultan arduino qasim ARM  

• 12:01

  Months of failure lead up to this EL panel dimmer that pulses to the music

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Way back in March [Ch00f] took on a for-hire project to make a suit that lights up to the music. He decided to build something based around a pulsating EL panel. He’s put a lot of time and tried of a few different techniques, but he finally has a working EL panel dimmer. This is [...]

  Tags:  dimmer music panel pulses failure misc hacks  

• 11:01

  Sound reactive Christmas tree makes folks happy

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This non-traditional Christmas tree in Victoria, British Columbia is bringing people together this holiday season. It boasts over 800 lights that react to sound. You can see the pulsing and color changing that go along with some Tuba carols in the clip after the break. The art installation was commissioned by the Downtown Victoria Business [...]

  Tags:  christmas sound tree british-columbia victoria traditional-christmas-tree victoria-british-columbia victoria-business holiday hacks  

• 9:21

  Reverse geocache based on STM32 and GPS wristwatch

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Renaud Schleck] somehow got lucky enough to find a GPS wristwatch in the trash. It had a broken LCD screen so its wouldn’t be of much use on that next hiking trip, but he knew it still had potential. He used the GPS module and a few other parts to build this reverse geocache box. [...]

  Tags:  wristwatch gps geocache renaud-schleck gps-wristwatch schleck gps-module hacks  

• 8:21

  Stellaris Launchpad and booster packs used as frequency analyzer

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jordan Wills] got tired of being limited to eight pixels of resolution and having jumper wires littering his work space. He set out to upgrade his Stellaris Launchpad frequency analyzer project using booster packs. You may remember the initial iteration of the project which used an 8×8 LED matrix to map audio spectrum. With this [...]

  Tags:  launchpad booster stellaris jordan jumper-wires audio-spectrum frequency-analyzer news  

• 7:00

  O Christmas tree of digital logic

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Chris] over at PyroElectro is getting into the swing of the holidays with a LED Christmas tree build. Unlike the other electrical Christmas trees we’ve seen this holiday season, [Chris] designed his tree entirely with digital logic – no microcontrollers included. The tree [Chris] constructed on a piece of perf board is a beautiful spiral [...]

  Tags:  logic pyroelectro tree chris o-christmas o-christmas-tree digital-logic christmas-trees led hacks  

• 5:00

  Man proposes to girlfriend with an arc reactor

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Thinking long and hard about how to propose to his girlfriend, [Ed] hit upon a great idea: use an arc reactor as the ring box, with enough LED lights to outshine all but their love, and servos to present the ring and tug at the heartstrings. [Ed] set about giving his now-fiancé from his arc [...]

  Tags:  girlfriend arc reactor tug-at-the-heartstrings servos led hacks  

• 4:00

  Building Pong for an 8-pin micro

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  For playing around with video signals and trying to create a an interesting microcontroller project, you can’t do better than the classic Pong. We’ve seen our share of microcontroller-based pong builds, but rarely have we seen an 8-pin microcontroller recreate every part of the first video game. [Tim] started his PIC12F1840-based Pong build with just [...]

  Tags:  video microcontroller pong tim classic-pong microcontroller-project video-signals microcontrollers  

• 3:00

  Manuel the Scottish moose speaks your tweets

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The folks over at Torchbox needed a Christmas card this year. Previously, the most poplar holiday card was a web page that gave their visitors a chance to activate a ‘snow machine’ and spray confetti on a random employee, all while being streamed online. They wanted to replicate this bridge between virtual and real life [...]

  Tags:  card moose scottish manuel snow-machine tweets christmas-card raspberry  

• December 18, 2012
• 15:01

  Heavy metal computer case desk

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This desk is also a computer case. From this view it may not seem like much, but the build log has hundreds of images which could be called metal fabrication porn. The desk surface is made of wood, but all of the other parts were crafted from stainless steel. The three components that weren’t fabricated [...]

  Tags:  desk metal computer desk-surface metal-fabrication computer-case hacks  

• 14:01

  Hacked together NAS in a box

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [David] is serving up files on his home network thanks to this Frankenstein’s monster of a Network Attached Storage device. It looks like he raided all the good bits from his parts bin to bring it all together. The case is a tin box which may have been for a card/board game or some holiday [...]

  Tags:  network box hacked david tin-box network-attached-storage parts-bin computer hacks  

• 12:01

  Using newlib with Stellaris Launchpad

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Brandon] is taking us further down the rabbit hole by demonstrating how to use newlib with the TI Stellaris Launchpad. This is a nice continuation of the framework he built with his post about using GCC with ARM hardware. But it is most certainly one level of complexity deeper than that initial article. Using newlib [...]

  Tags:  newlib launchpad stellaris brandon rabbit-hole initial-article ARM  

• 11:01

  Organ pedals fill in when your bass player is missing

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Since his string bass player isn’t always around [Antoine] built his own electric bass stand-in using the pedals from an old organ. The project — which he calls the Organ Donor — was inspired by a similar standalone organ pedal bass project. That instrument was built using a 555 timer to generate the sound. But [Antoine] [...]

  Tags:  bass player organ antoine string-bass-player bass-project organ-donor musical hacks  

• 10:01

  Electric clothes drier repair heats things up

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [How To Lou] sure has shown us how to do quite a few things. This time he’s dealing with an electric clothes dryer that won’t heat. We’ve been elbow deep in our own appliances and we think [Lou's] matter-of-fact demonstration will help you gain the confidence to investigate problems before deciding if it’s a job [...]

  Tags:  electric repair drier lou electric-clothes-dryer matter-of-fact elbow hacks  

• 8:54

  Welding with over a hundred A123 Lithium cells

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Doctor Bass] needed to do some welding on his electric bicycle. The problem is that he’s never welded before and doesn’t have any tools for it. As you can see, that didn’t stop him. He used a bicycle battery made from reclaimed DeWalt A123 cells to power his diy welding rig. He has a huge [...]

  Tags:  bicycle lithium welding doctor-bass lithium-cells electric-bicycle a123 news  

• 7:04

  Build a $360 synthetic aperture radar with MIT’s OpenCourseware

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  A few profs from MIT’s Lincoln Lab are giving those poor MIT undergrads something to do over winter break: they’re teaching a three-week course on building a laptop-powered radar system capable of radar ranging, doppler, and synthetic aperture imaging. Interestingly, the radar system that teams will build for the class has a BOM totaling $360, [...]

  Tags:  aperture mit radar lincoln synthetic-aperture-radar lincoln-lab radar-system radio hacks  

• 5:01

  The Hexapod Hexacopter

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Over at Mad Lab Industries, they had the idea of building a quadcopter that could walk and fly. By combining a hexapod with a hexacopter, they ended up with this creation. The hexapod part started off with PhantomX Hexapod Kit, but it was far too heavy to fly. To reduce weight, they manufactured carbon fibre parts [...]

  Tags:  hexacopter mad hexapod mad-lab carbon-fibre fly robots hacks  

• 4:01

  Tindie gets Fundraisers for kickstarting and group buys

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The etsy of electronics project, Tindie, has a brand new feature: It’s a Kickstarter-esque endeavor called a Fundraiser that allows you to sell your projects to other electron enthusiasts. Of course the new Tindie Fundraisers may soon be just another Kickstarter clone for “exciting,” “new,” and “innovative” Arduino dev boards, something we’ve lamented before. We’re really interested in seeing [...]

  Tags:  group fundraisers tindie dev-boards etsy kickstarter news  

• 3:01

  244 9 Volt Batteries in Series – Arcing Ensues!

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Here’s another hack that we would definitely discourage you from trying at home, 244 9 volt batteries wired in series. There’s really not much more to it than that, but [jersagfast] takes this setup through its paces arcing through air first, a LED light second, and then a CD. The air arc is probably the [...]

  Tags:  volt air series 9-volt-batteries paces arc misc hacks  

• December 17, 2012
• 15:01

  Watermelon air boat

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We think you’ll turn a few heads in Central Park if you’re driving a water melon around when everyone else is piloting sailboats. This watermelon is both sea worthy and radio controlled thanks to the work which [Starting Electronics] put into it. We used this image because it shows you what’s inside of the hull, [...]

  Tags:  boat air watermelon central-park water-melon air-boat toy hacks  

• 14:01

  More details about laser cut gingerbread houses

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Members of Sector67 tried their hands at laser cut gingerbread houses. The Madison, Wisconsin based hackerspace is using the tabbed box method of assembly for the corners of the structure. They’ve also put up a bunch of information about laser settings and published the recipe used to mix up a sheet of gingerbread. This quite [...]

  Tags:  gingerbread cut laser wisconsin madison gingerbread-houses madison-wisconsin cooking hacks  

• 13:01

  Silent HTPC build is an art piece for the livingroom

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This sexy beast is [DeFex's] new silent home theater PC. To give you an idea of scale, that motherboard is a Mini ITX form factor. Mounted below it is the solid state drive which is an SLC version chosen because they tend to last longer than the MLC variety. This distinction comes with a price [...]

  Tags:  silent art htpc pc.-to solid-state-drive mini-itx sexy-beast computer hacks  

• 12:01

  Update: Touch Tunes Jukebox universal remote

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Reza] continues his work with the remote control protocol for a Touch Tunes Jukebox. This time around he had a universal remote PCB fabricated and wrote code to skip to the next track. Regular readers will remember that he started by making an Arduino transmit all possible remote codes to give him free credits. This [...]

  Tags:  jukebox touch tunes touch-tunes control-protocol arduino digital audio hacks  

• 11:01

  Repair your ice maker motor without buying a whole new assembly

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  There are a number of things that can go wrong with an automatic ice maker. But one of the more common problems is that the motor which scoops the ice out of the integrated trays can burn out after years of use. [Dave] recently repaired a common ice maker motor and shows us how cheap [...]

  Tags:  maker motor ice dave automatic-ice-maker repair hacks  

• 9:03

  Tea-bagging an Arduino

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Dmitry Narkevich] likes a strong cup of tea and his method of getting there is to oscillate the tea bag as it steeps. But why take the time to do this when you can make an Arduino brew your tea for you. As you can see, he rigged up a system to move the tea [...]

  Tags:  tea arduino tea-bagging tea-bag cooking hacks  

• 7:00

  Automated PCB panelization

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Some PCB production houses – Seeed Studio and itead studio, especially – allow you to upload a gerber file and receive a printed circuit board very inexpensively. The pricing structure for these board houses is based on predesignated board sizes – 5cm square or 5×10 cm – and sometimes a project is just too small [...]

  Tags:  pcb board studio printed-circuit-board gerber-file panelization tool hacks  

• 6:00

  Custom desk is a custom computer case

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Paul] had been kicking around his idea of a perfect computer desk for some time, and when given the opportunity to remodel his office decided it was time to build his dream computer case. The desk itself is made of hickory with a formica top to match the other workbenches in [Paul]‘s workspace, The two largest drawers [...]

  Tags:  custom-desk dream-computer perfect-computer computer hacks  

• 5:00

  Using arcade monitors with the Raspberry Pi

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Along with the growing popularity of the Raspberry Pi, we’ve also seen a related uptick in MAME arcade cabinet builds. Putting this $35 computer in an arcade cabinet makes a lot of sense, but connecting it to one of the monitors found in old arcade cabinets is a bit of a pain. Luckily, [Celso] figured [...]

  Tags:  raspberry arcade cabinet mame-arcade-cabinet arcade-cabinets uptick raspberry  

• 4:00

  Electronically controlled NFC tag

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Per] is replacing his car stereo with a Nexus 7 tablet. It’s a great modification to add GPS, navigation, and a good music player, but [Per] wanted to pause his tunes and tell the tablet to go to sleep with an NFC tag. This means building a an NFC tag he can turn on and off, [...]

  Tags:  nfc tag tablet per gps-navigation music-player good-music radio hacks  

• 3:00

  ATTannenbaum

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  It’s that special time of year again where the smell of baking cookies fill the house and shopping mall parking lots are filled with idiots and very angry people. [Kevin] thought it would be a good idea to build an LED Christmas tree and ended up building a great looking tree that’s also very simple. [...]

  Tags:  attannenbaum tree time kevin special-time christmas-tree parking-lots attiny hacks  

• December 16, 2012
• 12:13

  Beautiful tube amp uses a TV tube

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Most audio tube amps we see use common tubes – usually a 12AX7 for the preamp and one of the more common power tubes such as an EL34.[Daniel], on the other hand, decided to build his own audio tube amp with a 13EM7, a tube originally used for a television’s vertical oscillator. The resulting project [...]

  Tags:  amp beautiful tube daniel power-tubes tube-amps tube-amp misc hacks  

• 10:00

  Displaying text on random strings of Christmas lights

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  With the help of a microcontroller, a few strings of GE Color Effect Christmas lights can be easily turned into a fully programmable LED strip, or if you are so inclined, a huge RGB LED display. [Hubbe] had a few strings of these Color Effect Christmas lights, but didn’t want to spend the time arranging [...]

  Tags:  color effect christmas christmas-lights random-strings microcontroller holiday hacks  

• 8:35

  [Bunnie] builds a laptop for himself, hopefully us

   » ‎ Hack a Day
    [Bunnie Huang], creator of the Chumby and artisan of chips and electrons, is building his own completely open source laptop. It’s called the Novena, and is powered by a quad-core ARM CPU, it’s got enough bells and whistles to make any hacker happy including an on-board FPGA, dual Ethernet ports, and enough GPIO pins [...]

  Tags:  laptop bunnie huang bells-and-whistles chumby fpga Hardware  

• December 15, 2012
• 13:00

  Solving a Rubick’s Cube with LEGO and popsicle sticks

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We’ve seen automated Rubick’s Cube solvers before, but never one that has garnered as many awards as [James]‘ popsicle stick and LEGO Rubick’s Cube solver.\ To keep the project complexity down, [James] opted not to use a webcam to detect the color pattern on each face of the cube. Instead, he wrote a little Python [...]

  Tags:  lego rubick cube james project-complexity popsicle-stick arduino hacks  

• 11:00

  Adventures in mold making and making your own enclosures

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The folks at SC-3000 survivors have been working on a cartridge capable of storing dozens of games for the ancient Sega SC-3000 computer. The PCB works beautifully, but making a case for their cartridge left them with few options. They could use a 3D printer or simply collect a whole bunch of used cartridge cases, but making [...]

  Tags:  cartridge mold adventures 3d-printer pcb tool hacks  

• 9:08

  A thermal imaging camera for your phone

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  When last we heard of a cheap thermal imaging camera accessory for any smart phone, we were blown away at how easily a very expensive electronic device could be replicated with an Arduino and enough know how. Now, that thermal imaging camera is a kickstarter project and provides a cheap way to put a thermal imaging [...]

  Tags:  imaging camera phone thermal-imaging-camera cheap-thermal-imaging-camera arduino Hardware  

• December 14, 2012
• 16:01

  Leveraging the GPU to accelerate the Linux kernel

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Powerful graphics cards are pretty affordable these days. Even though we rarely do high-end gaming on our daily machine we still have a GeForce 9800 GT. That goes to waste on a machine used mainly to publish posts and write code for microcontrollers. But perhaps we can put the GPU to good use when it comes [...]

  Tags:  gpu machine leveraging linux-kernel powerful-graphics microcontrollers linux hacks  

• 15:01

  Self-balancing unicycle using Arduino and Sparkfun IMU

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Here’s proof that you can build cool stuff with simple tools. This self-balancing unicycle uses an Arduino and a five degree of freedom IMU from Sparkfun to keep the rider upright. Well, it’ll keep you upright as long as you have good side-to-side balance. But that’s true of any unicycle, right? The Raptor was built by [Nick [...]

  Tags:  unicycle sparkfun arduino nick degree-of-freedom imu transportation hacks  

• 14:01

  Raspberry Pi used to automate a dimmable light bulb

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Stephen] took the safe route when getting his Raspberry Pi to dim an AC light bulb. He didn’t roll his own outlet box with a mains-rated relay inside, going with a mechanical connection instead of electrical. By attaching a servo motor to the dimmer knob the RPi can adjust the light level without risk of electric shock. [...]

  Tags:  raspberry automate bulb stephen mechanical-connection electric-shock servo-motor raspberry  

• 13:06

  Webmote: control anything with web-based remote

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We’ve seen a lot of projects that let you control all of your devices from a smartphone. But this universal web-based remote control system looks like the most versatile we’ve seen yet. The project is called Webmote as the controls are served up as a web interface so that you’re not limited to say an [...]

  Tags:  webmote anything control web-based-remote-control universal-web web-interface home entertainment hacks  

• 9:37

  A Hexapod Robot Made from Scrap

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Many if not most good hacks come from scrap or unused parts, but this hexapod robot takes it to a new level. [Helmut] wrote in to tell us about his ‘bot built from discarded electronics. As with most of the little walkers that we’ve featured here, this robot features some basic obstacle avoidance with a [...]

  Tags:   

• 8:36

  Deck the cubes

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [MrBuildIt] has lived up to his name when it comes to this year’s Christmas decorations. He built a rig that spreads Christmas cheer from one end of the cubicles to the other. In the demo video after the break you’ll see that the system is controlled by a nicely polished Android app. It lets you [...]

  Tags:  christmas mrbuildit deck christmas-cheer christmas-decorations cubicles holiday hacks  

• 7:37

  DSLR trick lets you change focus after taking the picture

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Here’s two photographic takes on the same subject, each with a different depth of focus. [Chaos Collective] came up with a way to make interactive still images that allow a user to adjust the depth of focus by clicking on different objects in the image. This was inspired by the Lytro camera which uses an array [...]

  Tags:  depth focus dslr depth-of-focus still-images chaos digital cameras hacks  

• 5:00

  IFF system keeps you from shooting your friends

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  An IFF system – Identification of Friend or Foe – are used by military aircraft in battle situations to determine if another aircraft is being piloted by a fellow aviator or an enemy. For the boots on the ground, friendly fire is generally regarded as a very bad thing, so a few students in [Bruce [...]

  Tags:  aircraft system iff bruce fellow-aviator friendly-fire military-aircraft microcontrollers  

• 4:25

  Almost building an engine from hardware store parts

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  You can build a surprising amount of stuff from parts you can pick up at a hardware store. Sometimes, though, getting a project built from sections of pipe is very, very difficult. That’s the case with [Lou]‘s hardware store engine: despite an inordinate amount of cleverness, he just can’t seem to get an engine made [...]

  Tags:  engine store Hardware lou hardware-store cleverness store-engine engine hacks  

• December 13, 2012
• 13:30

  Hackaday Links: December 13th, 2012

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Cardboard box computer [Alistair] chapman had a Laptop with a broken screen sitting in his parts bin. He knew he had an LCD panel on hand that would probably work with it, but it wouldn’t fit in the case. His solution was to transplant all the computer parts into a cardboard box from a motherboard. [...]

  Tags:  box cardboard computer alistair cardboard-box box-computer hackaday hackaday links  

• 12:30

  How to used an Android device with a shattered screen

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This screen is not just cracked, it’s devastated. We can all agree that you’re not going to be carrying this around with you anymore, but it might still be useful in other endeavors. [Mr Westie] wanted to use it for the camera which is undamaged. The issue is how do you control an Android device with a [...]

  Tags:  device android screen mr-westie westie endeavors hacks  

• 11:30

  Using two chargers with one laptop

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This one’s a riot! [Nico] got a new computer and didn’t want to change the six power supply cords he had strategically placed around his home and at work. So he just added a second charging jack that accepts a different style connector. First off the laptop is used — but it’s new to him. So cracking [...]

  Tags:  riot laptop computer nico power-supply-cords style-connector different-style laptops hacks  

• 10:30

  ARM powered rack mount USB test equipment

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This is a device which [Limpkin] has been developing at his day job. It’s a high-speed testing interface for use with Physics experiments. We find it interesting because it uses an ARM microcontroller to implement CDC and MSD over USB. The design is in two parts to make it work in a rack-mount situation. That [...]

  Tags:  ARM rack test mount-usb physics-experiments usb-test rack-mount ARM  

• 9:30

  Python can be your best friend when it comes to binary math

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you’re into microcontrollers you know the ability to think and perform math in binary is a must. [Joe Ptiz] has been looking for a way to keep from being distract by the math when coding while still keeping the binary strings in the forefront of his mind. The solution he came up with is [...]

  Tags:  friend python math joe-ptiz binary-strings forefront microcontrollers  

• 8:31

  Rooting your AT&T U-verse modem

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Unhappy with the performance of his U-verse modem [Jordan] decided to dig in and see if a bit of hacking could improve the situation. Motorola makes this exclusively for AT&T and there are no other modems on the market which can used instead. Luckily he was able to fix almost everything that was causing him [...]

  Tags:  rooting verse modem jordan modems motorola Hardware  

• 6:49

  A pair of N64 portables

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Casemodding has moved far beyond the old portabalized Ataris and NESes of only a few years ago. Now, the new hotness is more modern consoles including the GameCube, Dreamcast, and the venerable N64. Two N64 case mods rolled into our tip line over the past few days, and we can’t think of a better display [...]

  Tags:  pair casemodding ataris hotness tip-line handhelds hacks  

• 5:02

  Converting a Chinese laser cutter to work with Mach3

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Like most of us, [Chris] has pined over the very, very inexpensive Chinese laser cutters available on eBay for a while now. When most of us disregarded these machines due to their inability to work with the file formats commonly used with laser cutters, [Chris] took the plunge. He was a might disappointed the included software didn’t [...]

  Tags:  laser converting cutter chris laser-cutters laser-cutter ebay hacks  

• December 12, 2012
• 14:30

  Macro assembly for AVR chips

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Here’s an interesting tip that can help improve your ability to write assembly code. In an effort to remove the complexity of assembly code for an AVR project [Quinn Dunki] figured out how to use macros when writing AVR code with the GNU toolchain. Anyone using AVR-GCC should keep this in mind if they ever [...]

  Tags:  code assembly avr gnu-toolchain quinn-dunki macro-assembly microcontrollers  

• 13:30

  Twitter radio

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This anthropomorphized wood bowl will read Tweets out loud. It was built by [William Lindmeier] as part of his graduate work in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. View the clip after the break to see and hear a list from his Twitter feed read in rather pleasant text-to-speech voices. The electronics involved [...]

  Tags:  twitter radio wood william-lindmeier text-to-speech-voices interactive-telecommunications new-york-university arduino hacks  

• 12:30

  LiPo internal resistance measurement tool

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This is a scratch-build meter for measuring the internal resistance of Lithium Polymer cells. [Bleuer Csaba] uses the LiPo cells for RC vehicles and thet take quite a beating from the motors  they’re supplying. This means that he only gets about 100-200 cycles out of each cell. To figure out where one is in its life cycle [...]

  Tags:  measurement lipo resistance lithium-polymer resistance-measurement internal-resistance Hardware  

• 11:30

  Super slim wristwatch build

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This slmwtch lives up to its name. When the LCD screen is folded back onto the PCB the entire thing comes in at just 2.35mm. That’s including a coin-cell battery not shown above. Wow! Part of what makes this possible is the specialized PCB design. [Anders] didn’t want to add more thickness than the screen [...]

  Tags:  super pcb screen anders pcb-design coin-cell cell-battery clock hacks  

• 10:30

  Unlocking Verizon Galaxy Note II and Galaxy S3

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Adam Outler] and friends have been hard at work unlocking the bootloader of some Verizon Android devices. His most recent adventure involves unlocking the Verizon branded Samsung Galaxy Note II. You can’t run Cyanogenmod on a device that has a locked bootloader. This is presumably why it took no time at all for the XDA [...]

  Tags:  bootloader galaxy verizon adam-outler xda android hacks  

• 9:30

  Observe a satellite’s Morse Code message today!

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you live in the Eastern portion of the United States and the skies are clear you can see a student built satellite flashing LEDs in Morse Code today. But don’t worry. If you it’s cloudy or if you live elsewhere there are several other opportunities to see it in the coming days. This is [...]

  Tags:  observe today satellite morse-code united-states morse-code-message flashing-leds eastern-portion led hacks  

• 8:20

  Tablet rig takes sheet music digital

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Bill Dudley's] wife wanted to use a couple of different tablets for displaying sheet music. Sure, a proper music stand will have no trouble supporting the weight of the device, but if it’s not secured it place you may soon have a broken device. [Bill's] solution was to build this tablet stand out of PVC. [...]

  Tags:  sheet tablet music bill-dudley bill proper-music music-stand musical hacks  

• 6:01

  Raspberry Pi Hacking, Commando Style

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you’re lacking useful equipment for your Raspberry Pi hacking adventure, such as an HDMI monitor or power supply, this handy write-up will show you how to continue your hacking. All you’ll need is a laptop, the Raspberry Pi itself, an SD card, and an Ethernet and micro-USB cable. As noted in the article, it’s [...]

  Tags:  raspberry hacking commando commando-style sd-card raspberry  

• 4:24

  Digital IR Theremin

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This Digital IR Theremin creates tones based on the distance of an object from its IR sensor. There’s no microcontroller here, since the project is part of an Introduction to Digital Electronics course. Instead, it uses a handful of comparators, transistors, AND gates, and a 555 timer to make noise. The comparators are connected to create [...]

  Tags:  digital distance theremin digital-electronics-course introduction-to-digital-electronics digital-ir musical hacks  

• December 11, 2012
• 15:01

  Garage door opener using Siri and Raspberry Pi

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [DarkTherapy] wrote in to tell us about his garage door opener that works with Siri and a Raspberry Pi. It’s pretty hard to find a picture that tells the story of the hack, but here you can see the PCB inside the housing of the garage door opener. He patched the grey wires into the [...]

  Tags:  door garage opener raspberry siri garage-door-opener home hacks  

• 14:01

  Virtual chess uses glove controllers

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Check out the game of chess going on above. It’s a virtual game where each player uses a glove as the controller. Or course the game board and pieces are missing from this image. They’re displayed on a computer monitor which both players can see. The hardware rather simple, and we think it would be [...]

  Tags:  game glove chess virtual-chess game-of-chess virtual-game microcontrollers  

• 13:01

  Table golf

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This could be the dawning of a new hackerspace sport. [Antoni Kaniowski] and [Rohit Sharma] came up with a delightful game of desktop golf. But the control scheme has a decidedly geeky flair. They’re using salvaged parts from an audio device and a hard drive to control the swing of the mechanical golfer just out of [...]

  Tags:  table hackerspace golf rohit-sharma delightful-game control-scheme toy hacks  

• 12:01

  Open Compute Project Hosts Hackathon

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The folks at Open Compute Project are running their annual summit in January, but this year they’ll be adding a hardware hackathon to the program. The hackathon’s goal is to build open source hardware that can be applied to data centers to increase efficiency and reduce costs. The Open Compute Project (OCP) is a foundation that develops open hardware for [...]

  Tags:  compute project open project-hosts open-source-hardware open-hardware news  

• 11:01

  Retrotechtacular: A 1983 walking robot called ODEX-1

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  ODEX-1 is called the first commercial walking robot in this video from 1983. Of course you will quickly recognize this as a hexapod. It’s hard to get over the fact that what was so advanced at the time can now be built at home relatively inexpensively. As with most of these retrotectacular posts the presentation is a [...]

  Tags:  retrotechtacular robot odex walking-robot hexapod robots hacks  

• 10:01

  Arduino Esplora makes a great controller

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The folks at Arduino seem to be stepping up their game. With the new Arduino Leonardo board able to emulate USB keyboards and mice right out of the box, it seems the perfect time for Arduino designers to come up with a proper video game controller. This new board is called the Arduino Esplora and [...]

  Tags:  controller arduino esplora leonardo usb-keyboards game-controller perfect-time hacks  

• 9:01

  Rolling your own furnace controller

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Viktor's] found an opportunity to put his embedded design skills to use when the furnace controller in his building went out. He admits it would have been much easier to just purchase a replacement, but not nearly as fun. Instead he built this furnace controller based on a PIC 18F4550. First off, you may find [...]

  Tags:  controller rolling furnace 18f4550 design-skills home hacks  

• 8:01

  Building a tiny arcade cabinet from a Game Boy Advance

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jani 'Japala' Pönkkö] found a way to make his old Game Boy Advance exciting again. He poured a ton of time and craftsmanship into building a miniature arcade cabinet. He did such a good job it’s easy to think this is a commercial product. But when you open the back of the case to switch [...]

  Tags:  arcade game cabinet game-boy-advance arcade-cabinet nkk nintendo gameboy hacks  

• 7:01

  An interview with the creator of Slic3r

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  When in Rome, most people visit great works of art, see masterpieces of architecture, or simply try to convince random tourists that a modern recreation of naval battles in the Colosseum would be really cool and somebody should really get on that. [Andrew] had a different idea, though. He thought meeting up with Slic3r developer [Alessandro Ranellucci] [...]

  Tags:  creator slic interview alessandro-ranellucci andrew rome when-in-rome naval-battles colosseum printer hacks  

• 6:01

  Breadboard friendly FPGAs

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Regular Hackaday readers will be familiar with all the cool things you can do with FPGAs; emulating old video game consoles, cracking encryption protocols, and DIY logic analyzers become relatively simple projects with even a modest FPGA dev board on your workbench. Many FPGA boards aren’t geared towards prototyping, though, and breadboard friendly devices are [...]

  Tags:  fpga breadboard fpgas video-game-consoles fpga-boards old-video-game Hardware  

• 5:01

  Beautiful table made from a bowling alley

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  For a workbench, desk, or even a dining room table, there’s nothing quite like a massive piece of laminated maple put to use as the surface of a table. Whether in the form of butcher block, a shop class table, or in [Dillon]‘s case, a reclaimed bowling lane, laminated maple provides one of the best possible table surfaces. [...]

  Tags:  maple bowling table dillon table-surfaces bowling-lane butcher-block home hacks  

• 5:01

  Beautiful table made from a bowling alley

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  For a workbench, desk, or even a dining room table, there’s nothing quite like a massive piece of laminated maple put to use as the surface of a table. Whether in the form of butcher block, a shop class table, or in [Dillon]‘s case, a reclaimed bowling lane, laminated maple provides one of the best possible table surfaces. [...]

  Tags:  maple bowling table dillon table-surfaces bowling-lane butcher-block home hacks  

• 4:00

  Level converters to make all your hardware (5.5V and under) play with each other

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  I finally set aside some time for one of my own projects. I have been playing around with ARM microcontrollers a lot lately and wanted to try out my GLCD display that uses the KS0108 protocol. It’s 5V but I had heard that some of these displays will work with 3.3V TTL. But the datasheet [...]

  Tags:  level Hardware time v-ttl level-converters datasheet ARM  

• 3:01

  Standalone air quality monitor based around Raspberry Pi

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  You can have a lot of fun tinkering with the Raspberry Pi. But in addition to the low-cost hobby potential it is actually a great choice for serious data harvesting. This air quality monitor is a great example of that. The standalone package can be taped, screwed, bolted, or bungeed at the target location with [...]

  Tags:  air quality standalone target-location standalone-package raspberry green hacks  

• December 10, 2012
• 14:01

  Homemade tank joins the battle in Syria

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  What does a hacker do when going into battle for the freedom of their country? He builds a tank from scratch, of course. It’s a little bit of a stretch calling it a tank as it lacks treads. But it’s got a high-caliber gun mounted on top and has been heavily armored. There is room enough [...]

  Tags:  homemade tank battle syria caliber-gun scratch little-bit transportation hacks  

• 13:01

  Web scraping tutorial

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Web scraping is the act of programmatically harvesting data from a webpage. It consists of finding a way to format the URLs to pages containing useful information, and then parsing the DOM tree to get at the data. It’s a bit finicky, but our experience is that this is easier than it sounds. That’s especially true [...]

  Tags:  act tutorial web dom dom-tree finding-a-way web-scraping misc hacks  

• 12:01

  OLED name badge with rechargeable LiPo cell

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Here’s a project that let [Rick Pannen] try his hand with an OLED display and a rechargeable power source. He calls it OLEDuino which is a mashup of the display type and the Arduino compatible chip running the whole thing. He figures it will serve nicely as a geeky name badge but also ported a Breakout type [...]

  Tags:  badge name oled rick-pannen name-badge oled-display mashup arduino hacks  

• 11:01

  Simulating CRT or Vector displays for more realistic emulation

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Scaled down it’s not as obvious that this image isn’t a crystal clear rendering of Mortal Kombat gameplay. But we’ve linked it to the full size version (just click on the image) so that you can get a better look. Notice the scan lines? This is the result of an effort to more accurately mimic [...]

  Tags:  simulating image crt realistic-emulation vector-displays scan-lines video hacks  

• 9:36

  Transmit FM using Raspberry Pi and no additional hardware

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Now here’s a project that actually hacks the Rapsberry Pi rather than just using it as an embedded computer. [Londons Explorer] figured out how to turn the RPi into an FM transmitter. For now it’s done entirely in the user space, but we’re sure it could be improved if someone wanted to drill down further [...]

  Tags:  raspberry transmit Hardware fm-transmitter rpi radio hacks  

• 5:01

  Morse Code Transceiver Based on Gameboy Color Camera

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  For their final project in a microcontrollers course, [Trudy] and [Josh] designed a pair of morse code transceivers. To send the message, they used an array of IR LEDs. The message is received using a Gameboy Color Camera, which takes care of basic image processing. This allows a 8-bit ATMega1284p microcontroller to handle transmitting and [...]

  Tags:  color camera gameboy morse-code josh trudy ir-leds color-camera nintendo hacks  

• 4:01

  An automat of wireless 3D printers

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  There’s a lot of really cool 3D printer stuff happening in the fashion district of NYC this month. It’s called 3DEA, and shows off  the awesomeness of Shapeways, Ultimaker, and the Up! 3D printer to all the fashionistas, trend setters, and the caliphate of coolness that is midtown Manhattan. The folks at Ultimaker wanted to [...]

  Tags:  printer automat ultimaker manhattan 3d-printer fashion-district wireless-3d printer hacks  

• 3:01

  10 ways to etch PCBs at home

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  There are a ton of benefits for etching your own circuit boards at home, chief among them the ability to design a circuit in the morning and have a prototype in your hand by lunch. There’s always the question of how to etch the board, but [NurdRage] over on Youtube has all the chemistry covered on [...]

  Tags:  circuit home etch pcbs youtube prototype chemistry hacks  

• December 09, 2012
• 11:01

  FUBAR Labs builds a rocket engine

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Graham] over at FUBAR labs took it upon himself to build a rocket engine. This isn’t a simple solid-fuel motor, though: [Graham] went all out and built a liquid-fueled engine that is ignited with a spark plug. The build started off with a very small ‘igniter’ engine meant to shoot sparks into a larger engine. [...]

  Tags:  fubar rocket engine graham rocket-engine solid-fuel engine hacks  

• 10:01

  The Burrito Bomber

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The Burrito Bomber, created by the folks at Darwin Aerospace, claims to be “the world’s first Mexican food delivery system.” The delivery process starts with the customer placing an order through the Flask based Burrito Bomber webapp. The customer’s location is grabbed from their smartphone using the HTML5 Geolocation API and used to generate a waypoint file [...]

  Tags:  delivery burrito bomber darwin food-delivery mexican-food flask drone hacks  

• 8:01

  USB NeXT Keyboard

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Ladyada] and [pt] had an old keyboard from NeXT, but since it used a custom protocol it wasn’t usable with modern hardware. So they built a custom device to convert the NeXT protocol to USB. The device uses a Arduino Micro to read data from the keyboard and communicate as a HID device over USB. It [...]

  Tags:  keyboard next usb ladyada protocol arduino hacks  

• 6:01

  160 Mac Minis, One Rack

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Steve] needed an alternative to the Xserve, since Apple stopped making it. His solution was to stick 160 Mac Minis into a rack. That’s 640 real cores, or 1280 if you count HyperThreading. First, Steve had to tackle the shelving. Nobody made a 1U shelf to hold four Minis, so [Steve] worked with a vendor [...]

  Tags:  rack xserve alternative steve mac-minis cores apple macs hacks  

• December 08, 2012
• 14:47

  More Fun with Syma 107 Reverse Engineering

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jim] used a logic analyzer to do some in depth analysis of the Syma 107G helicopter’s IR protocol. We’ve seen work to reverse engineer this protocol in the past, but [Jim] has improved upon it. Instead of reading the IR output of the controller, [Jim] connected a Saleae Logic directly to the controller’s circuitry. This allowed him [...]

  Tags:  syma protocol logic jim ir-protocol logic-analyzer reverse-engineering toy hacks  

• 10:01

  [Staci Elaan]‘s awesome portable tesla coils.

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We stumbled onto [Staci's] videos a while ago when we posted this big tesla gun. While it wasn’t the first portable coil we had seen, it was certainly an impressive implementation. In the comments we found [Staci] had already been making these for a while. Hers were big and small, had awesome modulation, and looked [...]

  Tags:  while gun tesla staci staci-elaan tesla-coils elaan classic hacks  

• 7:00

  Bird buggy soothes a screeching parrot

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Andrew] has enjoyed the company of [Pepper] the parrot for more than a decade, but the screeching of a bird in the next room is something you just don’t get used to. [Pepper] gets very lonely some times, and short of having someone carry him around on a shoulder, there’s not much that will calm [...]

  Tags:  parrot buggy bird pepper andrew robots hacks  

• 5:28

  Building a spectrum analyzer with parallel processing

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  It’s the end of the semester for [Bruce Land]‘s microcontroller design class at Cornell, and the projects coming off the workbench this semester look as awesome as any before. For their final project, [Alexander Wang] and [Bill Jo] designed an audio frequency spectrum analyzer using two microcontrollers in a parallel setup. This spectrum analyzer takes an [...]

  Tags:  semester analyzer spectrum bill-jo bruce-land alexander-wang frequency-spectrum-analyzer microcontroller-design Hardware  

• December 07, 2012
• 15:01

  Driving a WS2811 RGB LED pixel

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Alan] has been working on driving this WS2811 LED module with an AVR microcontroller. It may look like a standard six-pin RGB LED but it actually contains both an LED module and a microcontroller to drive it. This makes it a very intriguing part. It’s not entirely simple to send commands to the module as the timing must [...]

  Tags:  led rgb module alan avr-microcontroller pixel hacks  

• 15:01

  Driving a WS2811 RGB LED pixel

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Alan] has been working on driving this WS2811 LED module with an AVR microcontroller. It may look like a standard six-pin RGB LED but it actually contains both an LED module and a microcontroller to drive it. This makes it a very intriguing part. It’s not entirely simple to send commands to the module as the timing must [...]

  Tags:  led rgb module alan avr-microcontroller pixel hacks  

• 14:01

  Autonomous helicopter works like a Wii remote

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jack Crossfire] took one of those inexpensive indoor helicopters and made it autonomous. He didn’t replace the hardware used for the helicopter, but augmented it and patched into the remote control to make a base station. The position feedback is provided in much the same way that the Wii remote is used as a pointing [...]

  Tags:  autonomous-helicopter wii-remote position-feedback toy hacks  

• 13:01

  $250,000 hard drive teardown

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Have you ever seen hard drive platters this big before? Of course you haven’t, the cost of this unit is way beyond your pay grade. But now that it’s decades old we get a chance to post around inside this beast. [Dave Jones] — who we haven’t seen around these parts in far too long [...]

  Tags:  teardown haven drive dave-jones platters beast decades Hardware  

• 12:01

  Online radiation monitoring station

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This is a Geiger counter which charts its readings on a webpage. [Radu Motisan] put a lot of time into the build and it shows. This thing is packed with features and the hardware choices were the best combinations found through several iterations of development. In addition to radiation levels the sensor unit takes several [...]

  Tags:  online station radiation geiger-counter hardware-choices radiation-monitoring microcontrollers  

• 11:01

  Building an ARM cross compiler on OSX

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We’ve tried building our own ARM cross compiler on a Linux box and it’s no picnic. Luckily there is a free cross compiling toolchain available through Mentor Graphics (formerly called Code Sourcery G++). But those looking to develop on a Mac aren’t so lucky. There is help via a script, and [Michael] wrote a guide [...]

  Tags:  cross ARM compiler michael mac mentor-graphics cross-compiler sourcery ARM  

• 9:31

  Design a Gingerbread House in CAD, then cut pieces with a laser

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This is one of those ideas that’s so simple we can’t believe we haven’t heard of it before now. [Johan von Konow] is upping his holiday decorating game this year by designing his Gingerbread House in CAD and cutting it out on a laser cutter. If designed well this will easily allow you to increase the [...]

  Tags:  gingerbread cad house johan-von-konow laser-cutter holiday-decorating johan cooking hacks  

• 8:01

  Mass storage bootloader for Stellaris Launchpad

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Andrzej Surowiec] liked the functionality of the mass storage bootloader available on some NXP LPC development boards. His latest project was to write a mass storage bootloader for the Stellaris Launchpad. It allows you to flash your compiled firmware to the chip simply by mounting the board as a USB storage device and copying over [...]

  Tags:  storage bootloader mass andrzej-surowiec usb-storage-device mass-storage stellaris ARM  

• 7:13

  Printing press made from Ikea furniture

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Those planning to get married take note: real hackers print their own invitations on a press which they built. [Jenny] and [Charles] actually did this for printing the cover pages of their ceremony programs. They built their press using a chest of drawers from Ikea. If you look closely you’ll see the printing plate is [...]

  Tags:  ikea printing press charles jenny chest-of-drawers ceremony-programs printing-plate lifehacks  

• December 06, 2012
• 13:01

  Dithering in Processing

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  To be honest, we’ve heard of dithering but that’s the extent of our knowledge on the topic. After looking through [Windell's] post about using Dithering in Processing we can now say we’ve got a base of knowledge on the topic. Dithering is used to produce an image out of two colors that our eyes can [...]

  Tags:  dithering processing knowledge two-colors extent video hacks  

• 12:01

  Tutorial designs 3D printed cases for your projects

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Landon Cox] recently finished up a 3-part tutorial on designing project enclosures for 3D printing. The series is great if you have not yet tried your hand at this realm of the 3D printing universe, but there’s a lot to take away about design and modeling even if you don’t plan to print your creations. [...]

  Tags:  part printing tutorial landon-cox universe printer hacks  

• 11:01

  Backyard Zamboni keeps the best diy ice rink in town

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We’ve known people to put down a small ice rink in their back yard during the winter. But a machine to resurface these diy rinks is unheard of until now. The big name in rink resurfacing is Zamboni, the person who invented this method of keeping the ice pristine. This has almost everything you would find on [...]

  Tags:  zamboni ice rink back-yard diy tool hacks  

• 10:01

  25 GPUs brute force 348 billion hashes per second to crack your passwords

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  It’s our understanding that the video game industry has long been a driving force in new and better graphics processing hardware. But they’re not the only benefactors to these advances. As we’ve heard before, a graphics processing unit is uniquely qualified to process encryption hashes quickly (we’ve seen this with bitcoin mining). This project strings [...]

  Tags:  gpus force processing video-game-industry graphics-processing-unit project-strings security hacks  

• 9:01

  Voice controlled video game uses “Biu” and “ahh” for control

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This video game gives your thumbs a rest while stretching those vocal chords. The pair of microphones seen above control the video game on the LCD display. Saying “Biu” will launch a projectile while “ahh” adjusts the flight path. The system was developed by [Tian Gao] as a final project for his ECE 4760 course [...]

  Tags:  video game biu flight-path vocal-chords projectile microcontrollers  

• 8:04

  Acoustic levitation of water droplets

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  These water droplets are not falling; they’re actually stuck in place. What we’re seeing is the effects of an acoustic levitator. The device was initially developed by NASA to simulate microgravity. Now it’s being used by the pharmaceutical industry do develop better drugs. The two parts of the apparatus seen in the image above are [...]

  Tags:  acoustic levitation water acoustic-levitation water-droplets levitator chemistry hacks  

• 6:01

  Voltage logger does it the right way

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The folks over at Adafruit have been busy designing an LED matrix wristwatch for a while now. The circuit works great, but since this watch is powered by a coin cell battery, they’d really like to get the power consumption as low as possible. This means they needed a test rig to measure the consumption [...]

  Tags:  logger voltage consumption test-rig power-consumption coin-cell tool hacks  

• 6:01

  Voltage logger does it the right way

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The folks over at Adafruit have been busy designing an LED matrix wristwatch for a while now. The circuit works great, but since this watch is powered by a coin cell battery, they’d really like to get the power consumption as low as possible. This means they needed a test rig to measure the consumption [...]

  Tags:  logger voltage consumption test-rig power-consumption coin-cell tool hacks  

• 4:00

  Earning free credits on a jukebox with an Arduino

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Not since the great jukebox war of 2007 has anyone been as dangerous as a drunken friend with a wallet full of one dollar bills. Now whenever [Reza] goes out to the pub, he can play tracks on the TouchTune jukebox for free. TouchTune jukeboxes are basically a computer with a touch screen monitor connected [...]

  Tags:  jukebox touchtune earning drunken-friend arduino dollar-bills digital audio hacks  

• 3:01

  Sunrise alarm clock uses DCF77 for perfect time

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Here’s a sunrise alarm clock that keeps perfect time. It was designed and built by [Renaud Schleck] who also published a post detailing the process. As you can see, a series of white LEDs inside of the transparent case which provide the simulated sunrise. As the days get short and the nights longer we do [...]

  Tags:  sunrise clock alarm renaud-schleck transparent-case schleck alarm-clock hacks  

• December 05, 2012
• 15:00

  Hackaday Links: December 5, 2012

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  PS1 hombrew competition The PlayStation Development Network is hosting a six-month long competition to develop homebrew games for the original PlayStation.We don’t get many homebrew games for old systems in our tip line, so if you’d like to show something off, send it in. This is how you promote a kickstarter [Andy] has been working [...]

  Tags:  competition homebrew playstation andy playstation-development hackaday kickstarter hackaday links  

• 14:01

  How to configure Eclipse for the Stellaris Launchpad

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We’re partial to using gedit and a makefile for our AVR projects. But for the most part we don’t a debugger with those smaller chips. Now that we’re getting going with ARM processors we use debugging all the time and Eclipse is a great way to combine code writing, compiling, and debugging in one place. [...]

  Tags:  configure stellaris eclipse arm-processors gedit ARM  

• 13:01

  The story behind developing the Sifteo from an engineer’s perspective

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The video game industry must be one of the most secretive sectors when it comes to developing the electronic hardware used in the gaming consoles. The big guys don’t want to give anything away — to the competition or to the hackers who will try to get around their security measures. But it seems Sifteo [...]

  Tags:  sifteo engineer story video-game-industry electronic-hardware security-measures Hardware  

• 12:01

  The beginnings of a geeky wristwatch

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Wow, we’re seeing all kinds of good stuff from NYC Resistor today. [Caleb] found this link to [Hudson's] early work on a geeky wristwatch. It is based around an HDSP-2112 eight-digit alpha-numeric display. Each digit is a 5×7 array of LEDs, but the look of it really reminds us of [Woz's] Nixie Wristwatch. The nice [...]

  Tags:  stuff wristwatch geeky hudson caleb hdsp nixie clock hacks  

• 11:01

  Use an old laptop as a second desktop display

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  When we’re trying to get a relatively complex project to work we often end up with twenty windows open. When this happens we’re usually referencing multiple data sheets, webpages, and trying to write code that the same time. We’ve seen people with two or three monitors to alleviate the situation (often called a battlestation), but [...]

  Tags:  use desktop laptop old-laptop battlestation complex-project laptops hacks  

• 10:01

  Air Harp using the Leap Motion

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  He’s just pointing in this image, but this Air Harp can be played using many fingers as once. It’s a demonstration which [Adam Somers] threw together in one weekend when working with the Leap Motion developer board. We first heard about this slick piece of hardware back in May and from the looks of it this [...]

  Tags:  harp air leap adam-somers developer-board musical hacks  

• 8:39

  Common Linux tools on Android without root by installing BusyBox

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Adam Outler] shows us how to expand the Linux tools available on Android without rooting the device. He does this by installing BusyBox. The binary is copied to the device using the Android Developer Bridge. He then opens an ADB shell, adds execution permissions to the binary, and runs it. BusyBox calls itself the Swiss Army [...]

  Tags:  android busybox linux adam-outler linux-tools swiss-army hacks  

• 6:00

  RC car transforms into RC robot

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  After nearly 30 years since the first episode of Transformers aired, someone has finally done it. A company named Brave Robotics out of Japan has created a true transformer robot that is half remote control car and half remote control bipedal robot. According to the Brave Robotics’ site, this creation is the result of more than 10 years. [...]

  Tags:  robot brave car japan remote-control-car transformer-robot robotics robots hacks  

• 5:00

  An introduction to vector displays

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Unlike the CRTs found in big old televisions, vector displays are a bit of a historical oddity. Instead of sweeping an electron beam across the screen from left to right and top to bottom, a vector display draws lines between two points on a screen. Once used in arcade games such as Asteroids, Tempest, and old FAA [...]

  Tags:  introduction vector screen tempest vector-displays old-televisions electron-beam classic hacks  

• December 04, 2012
• 15:01

  Japanese Drumming Sensei

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you’re looking to learn the art of playing Japanese drums, or Taiko, this hack, done as a school project by [Cornell] students, could be a really helpful aid. The project write-up is very impressive and includes a detailed explanation of their work, the source code, and a bill of materials if you’d like to [...]

  Tags:  drumming japanese project cornell-students japanese-drums bill-of-materials musical hacks  

• 14:01

  Building a pirate cannon for fun and plunder

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Our days by the pool are behind us for the year. But playing pirate ship with a 2-year-old does sound like quite a bit of fun. That’s why [The Stone Donkey] built this pirate cannon prop complete with firing sounds. The simplicity of the design is pretty brilliant. Three segments of PVC and five fittings make [...]

  Tags:  cannon pirate fun pirate-ship bit-of-fun toy hacks  

• 13:01

  Simplifying fabrication of soft robots

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Soft robots are a peculiar wing of technology. They don’t use frames and motors for locomotion, but as the name implies they are made of soft materials. They move by pumping fluid — it could be air or liquid — in and out of bladders that push or pull against the body itself. [Matthew] points [...]

  Tags:  soft fabrication simplifying matthew soft-materials bladders locomotion printer hacks  

• 12:01

  DCF77 signal filtering and decoding

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Udo] decided to build a clock using the DCF77 radio module seen above. This of course has been done before: the hardware draws a clock signal from the atomic clock in Braunschweig, Germany. So he grabbed a library for Arduino and got to work. But he was getting rather poor results and upon further investigation realized [...]

  Tags:  signal clock dcf udo germany braunschweig-germany clock-signal atomic-clock radio hacks  

• 11:01

  Clock display taller than you is just what your living room has been missing

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Sure, it’s time to get the countdown clocks ready to ring in the new year, but why limit it to just one night? If you end up building a six-foot digital display you can count down trivial events; like the remaining seconds of freedom before you have to pimp yourself out in that drab cubicle. [...]

  Tags:  room clock display trivial-events cubicle countdown led hacks  

• 10:01

  A study of GCC and the TI Stellaris

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  There are several things that we really like about the TI Stellaris. We think the peripheral library — called Stellarisware — has a pretty intuitive API that makes it easy to get into. But we’re also quite impressed that the software comes with makefiles that build the libraries and examples using your own GCC cross [...]

  Tags:  gcc study stellaris makefiles ARM  

• 8:25

  RS-485 node control for Arduino

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Wanting to control a split flap display that was not near a computer [Tom] looked to a common solution for communicating over distances not practical for I2C or SPI. He developed his own hardware and packet format using the RS-485 protocol. This is part of a larger project he has been working on to feed [...]

  Tags:  arduino node control tom split-flap packet-format hacks  

• 8:25

  RS-485 node control for Arduino

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Wanting to control a split flap display that was not near a computer [Tom] looked to a common solution for communicating over distances not practical for I2C or SPI. He developed his own hardware and packet format using the RS-485 protocol. This is part of a larger project he has been working on to feed [...]

  Tags:  arduino node control tom split-flap packet-format hacks  

• 5:00

  Syncing two strands of G35 Christmas lights

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  For a few years now, the set of Christmas lights most wanted by hackers and makers the world over is the GE G35 color changing set. With 50 individual RGB LEDs controlled by a microcontroller, these light strings can display any pattern of lights with the help of something as simple as an Arduino. The [...]

  Tags:  christmas syncing set light-strings christmas-lights arduino led hacks  

• 4:00

  Cute little amplifier has a tube pre

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  While you won’t catch us in an argument with an audiophile regarding the sound quality of tube vs. solid state amps, there is a general consensus that tube amplifiers sound much better than their transistorized brethren. Actually building an all-tube amplifier, though, is a bit harder than one built around common ICs – there are transformers to deal [...]

  Tags:  amplifier cute tube state-amps tube-amplifier tube-amplifiers classic hacks  

• 3:00

  Self balancing unicycle built from old scooter

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Glenn] had an old electric scooter/motorcycle in his garage that had long ago given up the ghost. Without a working battery and motor controller this scooter wasn’t beyond repair, but [Glenn] thought he could use it to build something much, much cooler. What he came up with is a self-balancing unicycle that borrows inspiration from a [...]

  Tags:  scooter unicycle glenn old-scooter electric-scooter motor-controller transportation hacks  

• December 03, 2012
• 14:01

  MSP430 bit banged USB 1.1

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Here’s a rather exciting development for those who work with MSP430 microcontrollers. [M-atthias] worked out a way to implement USB 1.1 on a MSP430G2452. He’s bit banging the communications as this hardware normally doesn’t support the Universal Serial Bus. This is much like using the V-USB stack for AVR micros. The test hardware seen above uses an [...]

  Tags:  msp usb bit universal-serial-bus test-hardware microcontrollers microcontrollers  

• 13:01

  ODROID-U2 is latest barebones board begging to be used

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Oh hey, another barebones dev board. Well, that’s what we said to ourselves when we first saw this picture, but the way this is presented is like crack for geeks. It starts with this tiny board, which has a footprint smaller than a credit card. But once you start looking at the add-ons you’ll want [...]

  Tags:   

• 12:01

  Dyson engineers’ hacks traverse robot obstacle course

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  These guys are all engineers who are employed by Dyson. They’re holding remote control creations made from Dyson parts. This time around the object of the challenge was to build a bot based on a the Dyson ball and race it through an obstacle course. This sort of thing is right up our alley, but [...]

  Tags:  obstacle dyson course obstacle-course hacks robots  

• 11:01

  Gadgeteer plant monitor wants it wet and photogenic

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Christian] is growing a tomato plant on his desk and wanted to capture some time-lapse images of its progress. To that end he built a rig that monitors moisture levels and snaps images at regular intervals. The hardware he’s using is part of the Gadgeteer family. These run a .NET micro framework and are modular [...]

  Tags:  gadgeteer monitor plant christian time-lapse-images tomato-plant moisture-levels green hacks  

• 10:01

  Christmas light controller is its own percussion section

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jason] and his father took advantage of a week off of work over Thanksgiving to design and build a Christmas light decoration that can flash fancy patterns. He calls it the Uno Christmas Tree. It’s sixteen strands of lights draped between a pole and the ground to form the shape of a tree. The main [...]

  Tags:  controller christmas tree jason christmas-light-decoration percussion-section light-controller holiday hacks  

• 8:24

  Inductive charger inside the case of this iPhone 4s

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This iPhone 4s is charging without a dock connector because [Tanv28] added inductive charging hardware inside the case. The hack is not for the faint of heart. But if you’ve got a precision soldering iron and a stead hand we bet you can pull it off. It starts with disassembly to get at the cable [...]

  Tags:  case inductive iphone faint-of-heart soldering-iron hacks  

• 5:00

  Inventing networking protocols for dozens of Arduinos

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  When you don’t want to use I2C or SPI, and MIDI and DMX are old hat, [Scott] comes along and invents a very strange networking protocol that is just daisy chaining a few Arduinos together with serial connections. Strange as it may seem, this networking protocol actually makes a whole lot of sense. [Scott] is [...]

  Tags:  protocol arduinos networking scott networking-protocol networking-protocols serial-connections arduino hacks  

• 4:00

  Teaching the Speak & Spell four (and more) letter words

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Before it became the darling of circuit benders the world over, the Speak & Spell was a marvel of modern technology. Complete with a microprocessor and voice synthesizer, the Speak & Spell was able to speak a limited vocabulary that [Furrtek] thought should include words such as, “al qaeda”, “necrosis”, and “butt”. The Speak & [...]

  Tags:  spell teaching speak voice-synthesizer modern-technology necrosis classic hacks  

• 3:00

  Turning four smaller helicopters into one larger quadcopter

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  There’s a reason we’ve seen a menagerie of quadcopters over the past few years – the key piece of any quadcopter build is an inertial measurement unit. Historically a very complicated and expensive piece of kit, these IMUs came down in price a few years back, allowing anyone with a few dollars in their pocket and [...]

  Tags:  piece turning quadcopter inertial-measurement-unit imus menagerie drone hacks  

• December 02, 2012
• 12:01

  Making 3D printing easy at the Staples copy center

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Mcor Technologies and Staples are teaming up to provide 3D printing services via the online Staples Office Center service. This announcement comes from Mcor, the company behind the Iris 3D printer. Unlike just about every other 3D printer, the Iris doesn’t squirt plastic onto a bed or glue powder together – it makes its models [...]

  Tags:  printing staples center iris printer hacks  

• 11:01

  Man tracks children using a quadcopter

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Instead of walking his kid to the bus stop like he used to, [Paul Wallich] lets this quadcopter watch his son so he doesn’t have to. It is quite literally an automated system for tracking children — how wild is that? The idea came to him when wishing there was a way to stay inside the [...]

  Tags:  kid quadcopter man paul-wallich man-tracks automated-system bus-stop gps hacks  

• 10:36

  Raspberry Pi Model A coming soon

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Liz] over at the Raspberry Pi foundation took a trip over to the manufacturing facility in Wales and found some of the very first Model A Raspi samples. They’re just samples, but this means we should be seeing a few Model A Raspberry Pis pop up on Element 14 sometime very soon. As the lower-cost [...]

  Tags:  raspberry foundation model liz wales pi-foundation first-model raspberry  

• 9:01

  Hiding an inductive charging station inside furniture

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Tony] wanted to clean up his bedside table by getting rid of the cables used for charging his devices. He accomplished his goal by integrating an inductive charging station inside his furniture. He chose to go with a product called Powermat. The base station for the device includes two inductive charging areas. [Tony] started by [...]

  Tags:  furniture charging station tony charging-station inductive bedside-table home hacks  

• 7:01

  Retrotechtacular: Similarities of Wave Behavior

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This installment of Retrotechtacular looks at a video lecture that is much more substantive than the usual fare. [Dr. J.N. Shive] was a researcher at Bell Labs at a time when just about every technological breakthrough was coming from that singular collection of minds. This video, called Similarities of Wave Behavior, was made to help [...]

  Tags:  retrotechtacular similarities wave dr.-j.n.-shive singular-collection wave-behavior technological-breakthrough misc hacks  

• 5:01

  Pixar-style lamp project is a huge animatronics win

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Even with the added hardware that lamp still looks relatively normal. But its behavior is more than remarkable. The lamp interacts with people in an incredibly lifelike way. This is of course inspired by the lamp from Pixar’s Luxo Jr. short film. But there’s a little bit of most useless machine added just for fun. [...]

  Tags:  pixar-style lamp project luxo-jr lamp-project added-hardware robots hacks  

• December 01, 2012
• 16:26

  Recording audio with Chrome using HTML5

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The Dubjoy project was stopped dead in its tracks when the newest version of the Google Chrome browser stopped using Adobe’s flash plugin and transitioned to their own called Pepper Flash. The aim of development was to produce a browser-based editor for translating the audio track of a video clip. After a bit of head scratching and [...]

  Tags:  recording chrome html pepper-flash transitioned flash-plugin google Software hacks  

• 11:00

  Plan 9 on the Raspberry Pi

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Yet another operating system has been ported to the Raspberry Pi. No, it’s not Haiku, sadly, but it is something just as weird and interesting. This time it’s Plan 9 from Bell Labs, an 80′s era OS from the same company that brought you C and Unix. As a research operating system, Plan 9 has [...]

  Tags:  raspberry plan system plan-9 bell-labs raspberry  

• 8:55

  Raspberry Pi Quadcopter

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  It was bound to happen sooner or later, but that doesn’t diminish the awesomeness of [Matthew]‘s Raspberry Pi-powered quadcopter. [Matthew]‘s quadcopter is similar to all the other flying drones we’ve seen before with one important difference – all the processing, from reading the gyroscopes to computing exactly how much power to give each motor – [...]

  Tags:  raspberry quadcopter doesn matthew gyroscopes awesomeness drones drone hacks  

• 7:43

  Getting rid of a tangled web of phone chargers

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Every night, [Roberto]‘s kitchen counter is cluttered with three cell phones, three different cell phone chargers and a mess of wires until morning comes and the chargers are moved to a drawer for the following night. For [Roberto] this is a bit of a pain – a much easier solution would be to have a [...]

  Tags:  night cell phone roberto cell-phone-chargers kitchen-counter tangled-web home hacks  

• November 30, 2012
• 12:01

  St. Optimus of Prime

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We’re pretty sure they’re not canonizing alien robots, but this Optimus Prime stained glass sure looks good enough for a place at the local cathedral. It is [Kobachi's] very first glass project, but we’d say he’s got a bright future ahead of him. Especially since it’s about ten times more complex than the assignment called for. The [...]

  Tags:  optimus glass prime glass-project first-glass misc hacks  

• 11:01

  Minecraft clock radio puts a creeper head next to your bed

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  This clock radio plays tunes from Minecraft and it’s decorated to look just like a creeper head. In the game mob heads are available as decoration and [Young_Maker] liked to spice up his virtual bedside table with a creeper head. But we think it looks just as good in its physical form. The main part of [...]

  Tags:  head creeper minecraft clock-radio bedside-table clock hacks