jetlib.sec

[Timo] didn’t want to look like every other lighted driveway but using solar path lights. Instead he decided to light it up as if it were a runway. It’s easy to look at the result as cute and move on to the next hack. But look again. If you were going to do this yourself [...]

Tags: lighting garage runway timo solar-path hack home hacks

What do you put on your pancakes? Butter and syrup but not a pair of shoes? This makes sense to us, and it’s the premise of the new CAPTCHA game PlayThru. The space that is normally filled by nearly illegible text is now taken up by a little graphic-based game where you drag the appropriate [...]

Tags: playthru game captcha pancakes premise pair-of-shoes security hacks

You can be the Sheriff around these parts, but only if you have a solder gun and holster to boot. [Mikasaurus'] latest build is certainly fun, even if it’s not so practical. We’re not giving up our Weller knock-off any time soon, but this quick-heat repackage will certainly be a conversation starter at your next [...]

Tags: solder-gun conversation-starter holster tool hacks

Ah, the days when a television was a solid piece of furniture. When it comes to moving, we can’t say we miss it. But looking at this wooden TV cabinet with storage for its 7-function remote we can’t help but think that today’s TVs seem more… trivial… when it comes to the layout of the [...]

Tags: retrotechtacular function television piece-of-furniture color-television tv-cabinet Wireless hacks

If you’re not familiar with Instagram, it’s a mobile app that takes pictures, applies low-fi ‘lomographic’ digital filters, and shares them on the Internet. For reasons we can’t comprehend, Instagram has been wildly successful as of late and was recently purchased by Facebook for a Billion dollars. [Martin Ström] figured he could do something much cooler than [...]

Tags: low-fi digital-filters facebook classic hacks

[Jeff Keyser] from mightyohm.com got a chance to show off this interesting take on ambient music. He’s using his geiger counter kit to detect beta and gamma radiation. This then sends a pulse down the line to an Arduino to turn it into a musical note. The geiger counters put out a 1.ms 3v pulse [...]

Tags: geiger radiation music jeff-keyser geiger-counters geiger-counter musical hacks

If any of you deal with older car fanatics, you’ll know that the original dash stereo is a coveted piece of equipment. If they haven’t been removed and replaced with something more modern over the years, they’re usually non functional. [Hadrien] has gone through some trouble to retain his original stereo in his 69 Volkswagen [...]

Tags: car-fanatics vw-bug hadrien cellphones hacks

This home is heated by a wood stove in the winter, which also produces hot water. But the other three seasons it’s an electric water heater that does the work. This latest hack is a solar collector meant to take over the hot water production work for the house. it uses basic building materials and [...]

Tags: collector work water electric-water-heater hot-water-system solar-collector green hacks

One of the really cool things about the Nintendo Wii when it was first introduced was the ability to play GameCube games on it. This made it a no-brainer for a lot of folks to upgrade. But as the heyday of legacy systems fades into history, Nintendo decided this was no longer a selling point and stopped [...]

Tags: wii gamecube nintendo nintendo-wii gamecube-games hacks

If you want to see what kind of abuse you’re causing your body when out on those single-track rides this system is just the thing. It’s an Arduino data logger that [Wdm006] takes along on the rides with him. When he gets back home, a Python scripts captures the data dump and graphs it. It [...]

Tags: arduino bike mountain python-scripts data-logger bike-ride transportation hacks

Give your garden lights a little bit more life by changing out the LEDs. In the process, you can also choose a different color if you like. It really is as simple as cracking it open and replacing the stock LED, but a bit of a change may also prolong the stored charge. These garden [...]

Tags: different-color battery-life leds led hacks

[Christopher] piped up in our comments on a recent post about using laptop touch pads in other things, noting that he had done this on his Ultimate Calculator Version 2. What he’s done is upgraded his TI-83+ calculator to house a number of improvements and customizations. It now has a stronger RGB backlight so he [...]

Tags: cemetech calculator post christopher ti-83-calculator ultimate-calculator calculator-version classic hacks

While it may only be [ioan]‘s first ‘real build’, we’re loving his DIY teardrop travel trailer built from the ground up. The trailer started its life as a Super Duty Harbor Freight utility trailer that [ioan] managed to put together in a day. After mounting a wooden frame on the utility trailer, [ioan] fabricated the body of the [...]

Tags: travel ioan trailer dutyharbor teardrop-travel-trailer harbor-freight utility-trailer transportation hacks

There’s a certain mystique about old home movies and 8mm film; whether it’s footage from a family gathering from 40 years ago or a stop-motion animation you made when you were 12, there’s an immediacy for film that the VHS tapes from your family’s first camcorder can’t match. [Teslas Moustache] has been getting into 8mm cameras and [...]

Tags: family projector film stop-motion-animation 8mm-cameras 8mm-projector led hacks

[Fred Murphy] has an old Fisher-Price music box/record player that has lost many of its disks over the last 40 years. It’s a very simple device – concentric grooves in a plastic disk have plastic bumps that are picked up by the tines of the record player ‘cartridge.’ Seeing as how this toy is basically [...]

Tags: fred-murphy fisher-price stairway-to-heaven musical hacks

The Vtech InnoTab is a child-sized tablet computer built for kids. Apart from being the ideal solution to keeping the grubby, sticky hands of nieces and nephews away from proper ‘adult sized’ tablets, it can also serve as a Linux tablet perfect for a few homebrew apps. [Mick] picked up an InnoTab for his son, but after [...]

Tags: vtech innotab linux mick nieces-and-nephews sticky-hands tablet-computer toy hacks

It’s not every day one of the builds on Hackaday gets picked up by a big-name publication, and it’s even rarer to see a Hackaday contributor grace the pages of an actual print magazine. Such is the case with [Adam Munich] and his home-built x-ray machine. We first saw [Adam]‘s x-ray machine at the beginning of [...]

Tags: ray-machine x-ray contributor medical hacks

It doesn’t have four rotors, but this advanced-glider is every bit as impressive as the most complicated of quadrotor offerings. It’s the first glider that can successfully perch on your arm. We can’t help but think back to the owl in the original Clash of the Titans movie. The team at the Aerospace Robotics and Control [...]

Tags: falconry robotic unit clash-of-the-titans clash-of-the-titans-movie glider robots hacks

VIA Technologies, ostensibly in an attempt to compete with the Raspberry Pi (if you can believe all those bloggers out there), is releasing a tiny single board computer called the APC Android PC. The VIA website for the APC is down, so just search Google News for all the details. The specs are somewhat similar to the Raspberry Pi [...]

Tags: raspberry apc android single-board-computer hacks

[Viktor] is working on salvaging parts from a dead laptop. In his eyes the biggest gem to be had is the touchpad, so he set out to see if he could make the touchpad a standalone device. You might be envisioning the many hells of interfacing this with a microcontroller and writing firmware to measure and translate [...]

Tags: standalone touchpad laptop standalone-device laptop-touchpad microcontroller peripherals hacks

We think in might be absurdly vain, but wouldn’t it be fun to give everyone in your family a chocolate modeled after your mug this holiday season? [Eok.gnah] has already worked out a system to make this possible. It consists of three parts: scanning your head and building a 3D model from it, using that model to [...]

Tags: model chocolate face 3d-model holiday-season cooking hacks

Virtual card games proliferate the interwebs, but this card-playing telepresence device is unique. [Patrick] calls the project Vanna, and we’d bet that’s an homage to the tile-flipping TV star [Vanna White]. Much like she flips the blank tiles to reveal letters, this device can flip the hand of cards either face up or face down. [...]

Tags: blank-tiles vanna-white interwebs robots hacks

What started off as a fun project using light bulbs picked up some sponsorship and is going on tour. This project now uses LED modules controlled on the 2.4 GHz band to turn buildings into full color displays. It’s the product of students at Wrocław University of Technology in Poland. The group is something of an [...]

Tags: light-bulbs index-window power-index led hacks

[Spork] over on the Netduino forums wanted to push the limits of what his little board could do. He put together a chronometer to measure the velocity of rifle rounds and Nerf darts using an Arduino-compatable CPLD shield. The project is built around a pair of commercial CED M2 chronograph sensors; because people have the tendency to shoot through these [...]

Tags: measuring openchronometer spork rifle-rounds chronometer arduino hacks

We think it’s a bit to late to show up for a screening of The Avengers in full costume, but an arc reactor T-shirt would be pretty cool. [4ndreas] built a chest strap that looks much like [Tony Stark's] chest-mounted power source. It has a 3D printed enclosure which hosts the ATmega8 and 22 LEDs [...]

Tags: replica twofer ironman tony-stark atmega8 avengers power-source wearable hacks

Many of us have had this exact thought and wondered if it was feasible. As it turns out, you can, in fact, just buy a bunch of magnets and make a levitating bed. Those magnets need to be extremely strong, so [mememetatata] used some rather large Neodymium magnets. This frame involved some careful planning since [...]

Tags: thought build bed neodymium-magnets levitating-bed home hacks

[Jeri] built this really cool C64 bass Keytar from a commodore64 and a cheap bass guitar. She’s using an FPGA to do the string detection and the key scanning, it then sends everything to the original 8bit sound chips. The reason that she is using a bass guitar is that the commodore sound chip only [...]

Tags: keytar bass jeri sound-chips commodore64 sound-chip digital audio hacks

The T-1000 was the shape-shifting robot from T2 (the second Terminator movie). It was so amazing because it could assume the form and texture of anything; humans, piercing weapons, inanimate objects. This robot doesn’t even compare, except for one small trait. When it needs a tool, it can build it as its own appendage. This [...]

Tags: robot glue predecessor hot-glue inanimate-objects appendage robots hacks

The fan motor on [Pete's] oscillating tower fan conked out on him. It’s a shame to throw away the whole thing, but it’s near impossible to source parts for a small appliance like this one. So he set out to rebuilt the motor and get the thing working like new. The motor in question is [...]

Tags: thing fan motor pete oscillating-tower-fan fan-motor small-appliance repair hacks

There’s a good chance that you use a MEMS accelerometer every single day. It’s the small chip that let your smart phone automatically adjust its screen orientation. They’re great chips, and since they’re mass-produced you can add them to your projects for a song (if you can abide the tiny packaging). But we have no idea [...]

Tags: accelerometer mems engineer guy mems-accelerometer screen-orientation smart-phone misc hacks

So yeah, this thing exists. Well, at least some pretty interesting looking prototypes of it do. It’s the C-1 from Lit Motors (anyone else think that’s a reference which belongs in /r/trees?). The idea here is that the small form-factor of a motorcycle is very efficient and easily maneuverable. But the cage protecting the passenger from [...]

Tags: thing motorcycle gyroscopically prototypes trees transportation hacks

Here’s the smallest GameCube we’ve seen, straight from the fruitful workbench of [lyberty5] over on the ModRetro forums. Even though we’ve seen disc-less GameCubes before, [lyberty5] puts this project together so well it wouldn’t look out-of-place in the Nintendo product lineup. Unlike most of the other portable GameCubes we’ve seen, [lyberty5]‘s build doesn’t have a [...]

Tags: gamecube lyberty gamecubes nintendo-product workbench handhelds hacks

This image should look familiar to regular readers. It’s a concept that [Chris Harrison] has been working on for a while, and this hardware upgrade uses equipment which which we’re all familiar. The newest rendition, which is named the Omnitouch, uses a shoulder-mounted system for both input and output. The functionality is the same as [...]

Tags: image update concept chris-harrison omnitouch hardware-upgrade multitouch hacks

[GranTotem] is delighted by the sparks put out when a capacitor is rapidly discharged. But he’s not impressed at the relatively slow process of connecting them to a power supply for a recharge. So he built this auto-charging station for his capacitors that provides a shockingly good time almost continuously. Check out the video to see what we mean. We always like [...]

Tags: fun capacitor charger charging-station capacitors misc hacks

The thought of using a 3D printer to fabricate PCBs is tantalizing and the good news is that it’s a reality. This project shows that it’s possible to use a special printer head to apply traces to an extruded substrate. This is similar to the point-to-point 3D printer circuits with one big upgrade. Now the traces [...]

Tags: ink printer circuit printed-circuit-boards 3d-printer printer-head cnc hacks

While there was no mention of it on their blog, [Garret] from mace tech was spied wearing some pretty cool looking LED glasses at MakerFaire last weekend. This morning, we noticed a Lytro gallery of the glasses and they look pretty cool (as a toy, not a fashion accessory). For those who haven’t played with [...]

Tags: prototype led macetech garret fashion-accessory mace hacks

3D printers such as the RepRap and Makerbot turn spools of plastic filament into just about any object imaginable. There’s a problem though: this filament costs about $40 a kilogram, and raw plastic pellets cost about 1/10th of that. Obviously, there’s a lot of room for improvement. The folks at Inventables are throwing $40,000 at [...]

Tags: plastic-pellets filament inventables cnc hacks

[programing4fun] has been playing around with his Kinect-based 3D display and building a holographic WALL-E controllable with a Windows phone. It’s a ‘kid safe’ version of his Terminator personal assistant that has voice control and support for 3d anaglyph and shutter glasses. When we saw [programming4fun]‘s Kinect hologram setup last summer we were blown away. By tracking a user’s [...]

Tags: fun kinect Programming shutter-glasses anaglyph voice-control kinect hacks

[taulman] over on Instructables has been working on his own version of a 3D printer. Unlike the usual PLA or ABS filament all the RepRaps and Makerbots use, this printer uses nylon to make parts with very interesting properties. Most extrusion printers are designed to print with ABS (a very hard plastic that melts around 220-230° [...]

Tags: printer abs nylon 3d-printer interesting-properties filament cnc hacks

The Chevrolet Volt is one of the top contenders in mass-market electric vehicles. Now you can get a look at the components that make up the electrical system with this Chevy Volt teardown article. The adventure starts with a look at the 288 cell battery. It forms a T shape and takes up the space [...]

Tags: teardown volt look chevy-volt chevrolet-volt cell-battery transportation hacks

Anonymous Hacks Bureau Of Justice, Leaks 1.7GB Of Data

Tags: bureau hacks anonymous bureau-of-justice leaks

The original story is in French, and the Google translate is very rough. Please forgive us if we don’t get this completely accurate. While traveling through the desert somewhere in north west Africa in his Citroen 2CV , [Emile] is stopped, and told not to go any further due to some military conflicts in the [...]

Tags: motorcycle desert man emile west-africa citroen-2cv north-west-africa military-conflicts transportation hacks

[Jason Wright] and [Jeremy Blum] are showing off the project they developed for their Designing with Microcontrollers course at Cornell University. They call it the Heliowatcher, and if you know your Greek mythology we’d be you figured out this watches the movement of the sun and adjust a solar panel to follow it. Their design is simple [...]

Tags: efficiency heliowatcher project jeremy-blum jason-wright greek-mythology cornell-university green hacks

[David Prutchi] has an FTA (free-to-air) satellite dish. This means he can tune and watch freely available satellite television feeds. But this sounds much better than it actually is. There isn’t much that’s broadcasted unecrypted from satellites with the exception of a collection of religious channels. But he still uses the dish by using the FTA [...]

Tags: fta satellite dish david-prutchi satellite-dish free-to-air-satellite radio-david radio hacks

This is an advanced inductive charging system into which [David McIntosh] has put a lot of hard work. It uses the same coil-based concepts that we’ve seen in other DIY systems, but the game changer is a communications function that just isn’t found in home brew versions of the hardware. It lets the receiver (device [...]

Tags: charging prototyping charger david-mcintosh inductive-charger communications-function misc hacks

Here’s a very easy way to trigger your DSLR camera using an Android device. It’s a similar method used with IR triggered cameras, in that all you need to do is assemble some simple hardware to plug into the headphone jack. The app that triggers the camera simply plays back a well crafted audio file [...]

Tags: camera android dslr headphone-jack dslr-camera hacks

It becomes obvious when you listen to this player guitar that it’s not a human being playing. But the only reason for that is the unrelenting precision with which the songs are played. In addition to that accuracy, it’s interesting to note that this tune is normally played by a group of guitarists but here [...]

Tags: guitar drool player player-guitar guitarists musical hacks

While browsing on one of our regularly visited sites, RobotsDreams, we found this interesting little video. Here, [Sublime] is showing off his 3d printed mini lathe. In the video he mentions that all the files are available for download so you could make one for yourself, but there were unfortunately no links. A quick bit [...]

Tags: video mini lathe mini-lathe cnc hacks

Unfortunately, none of our writers are located in California this year. This means that we weren’t able to go to the Bay Area MakerFaire and see the cool stuff for ourselves. We have been following along on the web though and a few projects have caught our eye. The rig you see above is a physical [...]

Tags: light none life bay-area california cool-stuff rig makerfaire toy hacks

Go to any concert, show, or basement band practice, and you’ll find someone recording a bootleg. While these live recordings are sometimes fairly high quality, bootlegs recorded with a cell phone usually sound terrible. The guys over at Open Music Labs have a great solution to these poor quality recordings that only needs a few dollars worth [...]

Tags: quality bootlegmic concert basement-band music-labs open-music cellphones hacks

We’ll admit that we haven’t been following Minecraft like we used to; its been a while since we’ve seen something amazing in Minecraft, but [eloraam]‘s 6502 emulator (part of her RedPower Minecraft mod) takes the cake. The RedPower mod adds a lot of industrial technology to Minecraft. Pumps, solar panels, and pneumatic tubes to move [...]

Tags: redpower mod minecraft pneumatic-tubes industrial-technology solar-panels classic hacks

In a decision we completely agree with, these industrious young women decided that playing in the rain would only be more fun if it included an interactive light show. They wanted the rain itself to cause LEDs in their umbrella to light up. To achieve this, they put piezo sensors on each of the 8 [...]

Tags: rain show umbrella piezo-sensors playing-in-the-rain leds led hacks

[Matthew Riese] got frustrated waiting for the future to arrive so he could have his flying car. He decided to take things into his own hands and construct the closest thing he could. This turned out to be a hovercraft. Not only that, but he thought that the most fitting shape for this thing would [...]

Tags: delorean thing hovercraft matthew-riese flying-car transportation hacks

[radicade] wanted to know what real life portals would look like; not something out of a game, but actual blue and orange portals on his living room wall. Short of building a portal gun, the only option available to [radicade] was simulating a pair of portals with a Kinect and a projector. One of the [...]

Tags: radicade kinect life portals projector living-room kinect hacks

If you’re running your own recording studio, you’re going to need a lot of gear that seems excessively esoteric to the non-musically inclined. A rack full of synth gear looks just like any other cabinet of technology you would find in a server room. Electronic music is, for the most part, very utilitarian looking, but [...]

Tags: spring gear diy server-room reverb recording-studio musical hacks

Many of you will remember [Mikey Sklar] from the multitude of times he’s been on hackaday. What you may not have noticed is that he is an ubergeek, living off the grid. He has Solar PV battery bank, three electric vehicles, a shipping container loaded with battery powered tools and a small army of iRobot [...]

Tags: grid battery mikey living-off-the-grid battery-bank shipping-container tool hacks

[Richard Osgood] is back again with an interesting project. This time he has constructed a color sensor. His initial design was to use three LEDs and a photoresistor. He would shine a red, then green, then blue LED on a surface and record the reflected light with the photoresistor allowing him to determine how much [...]

Tags: richard-osgood photoresistor color-sensor led hacks

This glowing LED is proof that the experiments [Nvermeer] is doing with conductive ink are working. We’re filing this one as a chemistry hack because you need to hit the lab ahead of time in order to get the conductivity necessary for success. He reports that this technique uses a copper powder suspended in an epoxy [...]

Tags: copper-powder conductivity hack chemistry hacks

[Gigafide] just finished building this flame-powered phone charger. The concept is not new. He grabbed a Peltier cooler and used the temperature differential between a flame and a heat sink to produce electricity used by the charger. If you search around here enough you’ll find plenty of candle-powered devices, and a few hacks that use [...]

Tags: scavenging charger phone peltier-cooler phone-charger heat-sink cellphones hacks

The NRF 24L01+ radio transceiver can be found in a lot of wireless project builds. But it’s only meant to work at a range of a few meters. [Achu Wilson] found that he could greatly extend the range by as much as 2 kilometers. All he needed to do was build this high-gain antenna. He already [...]

Tags: nrf radio range wilson high-gain-antenna radio-transceiver Wireless hacks

Over on the RepRap blog, [Rhys] has been experimenting with molten metal to build circuits with the RepRap. Last June, [Rhys] found a neat alloy made of Tin, Bismuth, and a little bit of Indium that melts at around 130° C, and has just the right properties to be extruded with a standard RepRap setup. [...]

Tags: circuitry reprap printing rhys molten-metal indium bismuth cnc hacks

[Chris] hasn’t managed to get his hands on a Raspberry Pi yet, so he ordered a BeagleBone and got down to business. He was surprised to find that there isn’t much info out there about using LIDD type displays with the hardware. This protocol is used in many of the 320×240 smart LCD modules on [...]

Tags: beaglebone lidd teaching chris type-displays lcd-modules raspberry linux hacks

Ever wonder what’s under the hood with a competitive battle robot like this one? It’s usually a big secret as teams don’t care to give their competition any help. But [AlexHrn] decided not only to give us a peek, but also shows us his step-by-step build process for Phoenix, the 30 pound flipping battle robot. [...]

Tags: robot wonder battle phoenix peek robots hacks

[Chris Suprock] is interested in using technology to improve your accuracy with a firearm. To that end, he’s using an Accelerometer mounted to a gun to gather feedback about each shot. The hardware setup is pretty simple. We don’t have specific details, but it looks like he’s using a QFN accelerometer chip like you would [...]

Tags: sharpshooter accelerometer technology chris-suprock accelerometer-chip hardware-setup weapons hacks

The Sansa Clip+ is a nice little MP3 player and recorder. But it doesn’t offer an input connector, instead relying on the built-in microphone. [Simon Frank] wanted to extend its functionality so he figured out how to add a standard audio jack for analog input. This is not the first time this has been done, [...]

Tags: clip sansa input simon-frank analog-input input-connector digital audio hacks

[Kilian] sent in a link to a color version of a tiny educational computer. It’s called the Quantumite and it’s designed to be a throwback to the early 80s microcomputers we all grew up on. The Quantumite is a clone of the Maximite, the tiny single board computer / BASIC interpreter designed by [Geoff Graham]. Both [...]

Tags: single-board-computer basic-interpreter geoff-graham classic hacks

We’ve seen a few minimalist robots in our time, but very few compare to [Thomas Rinsma]‘s amazingly agile BEAM robot. It’s absolutely fascinating to watch this little robot crawl around on its circular legs. BEAM robots are extremely simple robots built without a microcontroller of any kind. The idea that extremely simple circuits built from logic chips and amplifiers came [...]

Tags: beam-robot beam-robots logic-chips robots hacks

3d printing has come huge strides in ability to construct detailed objects. Unfortunately, color is still a considerable limitation. Here, some people at the Reprap blog are having fun coming up with an extruder head that actually mixes two colors as it deposits them. Don’t confuse this with the dual head that Makerbot is touting [...]

Tags: mixing head reprap don mixing-colors 3d-printing two-colors tool hacks

[Buddhra] wanted to use a set of ear buds that also had a controller built into the wire. The headset he chose to go with is meant for use with iPod, but he figured it should be possible to make it work with Android too. He was right, and managed to alter the controller for [...]

Tags: ipod controller use ear-buds android hacks

[Parker] emailed us today to show off his latest NES portable build. This time he’s using the standard “top loader” NES instead of the typically used NES on a chip. This is pretty cool since the NES on a chip has compatibility issues with some games. For the screen, he uses a common PSone screen [...]

Tags: nes screen chip psone-screen hot-glue compatibility-issues gameboy hacks

[Kevin Osborn] is making it a bit easier for young programmers to write programs that interact with the physical world. The device he’s holding in the picture is an Arduino based accelerometer and distance sensor meant for the Scratch language. Scratch is a programming language developed at MIT. It has kids in mind, and focuses on [...]

Tags: language Programming scratch kevin-osborn kids-in-mind accelerometer android hacks

In this installement of Retrotechtacular we’re taking a look at Shakey, a robot developed between 1966 and 1972 at the Stanford Reserach Lab. This was a glorious time when students had long hair but still wore long sleeves and ties to do their research. The robot is actually communicating wirelessly with the PDP-10 computer which [...]

Tags: retrotechtacular shakey robot glorious-time wirelessly robots hacks

When [Vince] saw a coworker give a presentation with an iPad, he thought to himself what a tremendous waste of computing resources he was witnessing; an iPad is just as powerful as an early Cray supercomputer, and displaying slides isn’t a computationally intensive task. We’re assuming [Vince]‘s train of thought went off the rails at [...]

Tags: powerpoint presentation ipad vince cray-supercomputer intensive-task classic hacks

[Balline] really wanted to play with a hexapod but found the cost to be prohibitive. Being a mechanical engineer, he was able to fairly quickly come up with a stable 3 servo design that would allow him to experiment with the platform. He chose to use wood as the construction material to help reduce costs [...]

Tags: hexapod frame balline servo-design mechanical-engineer construction-material robots hacks

A lot of 3D printing and a many servo motors went into this snake-like robot, and it’s only about half of what [Toby Baumgartner] plans to accomplish. In this orientation the snake is rolled into a circle, and apparently some special movements in the segments allow it to roll around like this. He compares it [...]

Tags: robot snake-like ring toby-baumgartner baumgartner snake robots hacks

We’re used to [Sprite_TM] rolling out his own hacks hot on the heels of new concepts. Now we’re glad to see that [Jeff Ledger] is doing the same thing here. He was inspired by a Kickstarter project which vows to let you use fruit, clay, and a number of other common (but weird for this [...]

Tags: sprite bananaphone fruit jeff-ledger hot-on-the-heels hacks microcontrollers

[Craig's] color clock really came together quite nicely. The majority of the body is acrylic, with two large clear squares and a pair of colored discs. All are held in place by a ring of hardware with spacers in them, and the RGB LED strip that is used to display time and date wraps around [...]

Tags: date clock time craig led-strip time-and-date spacers hacks

The Ranque-Hilsch vortex tube is an interesting piece of equipment. It can, without any moving parts or chemicals, separate hot and cold compressed gasses that are passed through it. Interestingly enough, you can cobble one together with very few parts for fairly cheap. [Otto Belden] tossed one together in a weekend back in 2009 just [...]

Tags: hilsch tube vortex otto-belden vortex-tube gasses moving-parts tool hacks

If you’re tired of drinking mere water, like from the toilet, then you should definitely install a Brawndo drinking fountain. Apparently, in addition to being what plants crave, geeks also enjoy this futuristic beverage. As with many hacks, this fountain started out with a broken piece of equipment – a water fountain. After searching unsuccessfully for [...]

Tags: brawndo fountain drinking drinking-fountain water-fountain hacks news

We’ve seen our fair share of Tron costumes and props, but much like [Sean-h] points out, they are usually pretty bulky and baggy. He’s gone a slightly different route by starting with a wetsuit instead of bulkier items like leather jackets. The lighting is done in the same manner we’ve seen before, copious amounts of [...]

Tags: tron snug share sean copious-amounts wetsuit fair-share misc hacks

3D printers are very popular right now. We’ve seen them go from an interesting project to multiple commercial entities. Makerbot seems to be the poster child for the commercial side of things, at least they were. Their former COO [Samuel Cervantes] is now in charge of a new company called Solidoodle. Their main product is [...]

Tags: printer solidoodle project samuel-cervantes commercial-entities 3d-printer poster-child cnc hacks

[Robert Mibus] took on a project which his kids could present to Mom on Mother’s Day. It’s an LED heart built into a ring or necklace box. The series of white LEDs are animated in a chase pattern. The project let [Robert] push his comfort boundaries by moving past a stock Arduino board. Inside you’ll [...]

Tags: day mother heart robert-mibus robert white-leds mibus chaser arduino hacks

Ooooh, nice enclosure! This is a little motion sensing lamp which [Krazatchu] built a few years back as a Mother’s Day gift. The PIR sensor is easy enough to see as the white dome on the front of the case. But look closely below that and you’ll see the LDR which it uses to keep [...]

Tags: pir-sensor white-dome ldr led hacks

Here are the contronl modules for a sous-vide project over at Nerdkits. [Humberto] and crew continue doing a great job of focusing a project on one goal, then explaining the steps needed to get there. In this case they wanted to build their own sous-vide appliance that was cheap, and didn’t really require the user [...]

Tags: contronl nerdkits project humberto hack sous-vide job cooking hacks

[Rob Morris] has been hard at working improving his guitar augmentation techniques. Here he’s demonstrating the use of an iPhone to control the effects while he plays. This builds on the work he shared a few years ago where he strapped a Wii remote to the body of his ax. Just like the Wii remote, [...]

Tags: wii guitar iphone rob-morris wii-remote instrument-control musical hacks

[Bryan] got his hands on a solar panel and decided to take it on the road rather than throwing it on the roof of the house. On sunny days it will top off the car battery, letting him use his stereo in the middle of nowhere without needing to keep the engine running. Instead of [...]

Tags: truck prototyping charger bryan solar-charger solar-panel car-battery green hacks

That awful buzzing/beeping beside the bed in the morning might not seem so bad if it were a cascade of bubbles instead. At least that’s what [Will] is hoping for. He took a child’s toy and turned it into a bubble blowing alarm clock. We’re guessing you’re not going to be too happy with the [...]

Tags: alarm beeping clock lawrence-welk alarm-clock bubbles hacks

Sooner or later, you’re going to need a logic analyzer. If you don’t have a Bus Pirate or Logic Sniffer lying around, [Joonas] has a great MacGyverism that turns an oscilloscope into the simplest logic analyzer ever. The basic premise of the build is tying four digital lines to the analog input of an oscope. This [...]

Tags: logic analyzer oscilloscope macgyverism logic-analyzer oscope tool hacks

Nearly everything at [HAD] is at least based on science in some way or another. If, however, you would like to do some actual scientific experiments with stuff around the house, [Observationsblog] might be for you. The particular posts that [Ken] wrote in to tell us about were all about acids, bases, and natural indicators. [...]

Tags: natural-indicators acids-bases scientific-experiments chemistry hacks

[ften] was having plenty of fun running Android on his HP Touchpad, but he soon discovered that the tablet’s micro USB port didn’t provide enough juice to his peripherals when running in host mode. He started digging around and found the perfect means of providing the extra power while maintaining the device’s stock appearance. He [...]

Tags: mode host usb stock-appearance host-mode extra-power android hacks

Inspired by a design he saw on the EEVblog, [George Graves] put together this constant current dummy load. You might need on of these if you’re testing power supplies or batteries. They pull a constant current regardless of the voltage of the supply. [George's] version extends the range of the original a little bit by [...]

Tags: design eevblog load george george-graves dummy-load little-bit classic hacks

So you’ve got a really cool project that requires a wireless controller and a ton of different channels. What are you going to do? Are you going to go pick up an expensive RC controller? Nah, you’re going to build your own. This project makes a generic 20 channel controller for your projects by stuffing [...]

Tags: channel controller project project-controller channel-controller cool-project playstation hacks

[DJ Sures], mastermind behind the EZ-B Bluetooth Robot controller, sent in a really interesting build where he controls a robot with a 1983 TRS-80 computer. The robot in question is [DJ Sures]‘ adorable WALL-E we’ve seen before. WALL-E is controlled through a Bluetooth connection to a desktop PC with the EZ-Builder hardware and software package. To get the [...]

Tags: sures bluetooth robot robot-controller builder-hardware classic hacks

These cool looking little bots are part of a fleet of floating water sensors built by The Lagrangian Sensor Systems Laboratory (LSSL) at UC Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (LBNL) and the California Department of Water Resources. In an emergency such as a levee break, flood, or spill, they can be deployed to gather information [...]

Tags: cool water sensor berkeley california-department-of-water-resources water-sensors uc-berkeley robots hacks

When [GG] was 12 years old, he was introduced to BugBooks, the wonderful ‘introduction to digital design’ books from the early 1970s. It has always been a dream of [GG] to build the TTL computer featured in the BugBooks, and now that he has the necessary time and money available to him, the Apollo181 has [...]

Tags: necessary-time time-and-money 1970s classic hacks

[Bill] is back with another fantastic video explaining a piece of intriguing hardware. This time, he’s explaining how a CCD works. For many of us, these things are part of our daily life, but aside from the fact that they capture an image, we don’t put much thought into them. [Bill] breaks things down in [...]

Tags: video ccd engineerguy bill ccd-works classic hacks

After hanging around festivals and burners for a bit I decided that it was finally time to show my stuff and actually build one of these crazy fire cannons everyone is always talking about. The easiest way to go about this would have been to just follow plans from any given website: replace the valve [...]

Tags: fire stuff cannon fire-cannon festivals misc hacks

Several of us here at Hackaday have discussed how much we’d like to have some tools, like a 3d printer, but just can’t justify the cost. What would we make? Why do we really need one? Why don’t we just bother [Brian Benchoff] who already has one to make us parts instead. That’s usually how [...]

Tags: photography day printing brian-benchoff time-lapse-photography 3d-printer digital cameras hacks

[Jean] wrote in eager to share his latest project, a standalone temperature logger with USB connectivity. Back in November, [Jean] found himself wanting a temperature logger that was roughly the size of a USB memory stick. What he found on the market was not quite adequate in terms of price or size, so he decided [...]

Tags: temperature logger usb jean temperature-logger usb-memory connectivity peripherals hacks

While CRT televisions fall to the wayside as more people adopt flat-panel TVs, the abundance of unused sets gives hacker/artist [Kyle Evans] an unlimited number of analog canvases on which to project his vision. He recently wrote in to share his latest creation which he dubs “de/Rastra”. The “CRT Performance Interface” as he calls it, [...]

Tags: analog synth crt performance-interface kyle-evans flat-panel-tvs classic hacks

Writing for Hackaday isn’t all fun and games; occasionally I need to actually write posts and reply to emails from builders around the globe. Usually, though, I’m knee-deep in a personal project, or just hanging out playing a few video games. Recently I’ve gone off the deep end with Kerbal Space Program, an awesome little [...]

Tags: video mapping surface personal-project space-program fun-and-games cnc hacks

[Jim's] pretty serious about his Etch a Sketch. He’s gone to the trouble of building a rig that will automatically render a photograph as Etch a Sketch art. Do you recognize the US political figure being plotted in this image? He actually cracks these open and removes all of the internals to preserve the artwork [...]

Tags: etch sketch mug jim etch-a-sketch sketch-art internals toy hacks

[Andy] is getting his garden up and running. This year it’s been pretty cold so he decided to get small plastic domed tunnel which acts as a mini greenhouse. To help monitor that environment he built this sensor array which displays temperature and soil moisture readings. Temperature is quite simple. He’s using a TMP36 sensor [...]

Tags: soil temperature garden andy measure-soil-moisture mini-greenhouse sensor-array arduino hacks

[Joseph] wrote in to share this home automation system he’s working on as a college project. He calls it the Room Engine and the house-side of the hardware is built on top of the circuit you see here. This is the most basic part of the REBoard, which is meant to connect to a computer [...]

Tags: arduino automation home joseph home-automation-system voice-control smart-phone hacks

Cool picture, huh? Wait until you see the video footage of this LED-adorned RC helicopter flying on a dark night. But this isn’t an art project. Analyzing the long-exposure photography turns out to be a great way of clearing up some of the physics of flight which otherwise are not at all intuitive. The helicopter [...]

Tags: helicopter painting physics long-exposure-photography light-painting physics-lesson led hacks

This isn’t a brightest flashlight in the world type of hack (but it does manage to push about 1000 lumens). [Stephen Webb] is finding a use for leftover parts by building his own simple LED flashlights. As you can see, he uses PVC parts available at any hardware or home store. These are a good [...]

Tags: custom recycle lithium stephen-webb brightest-flashlight-in-the-world lithium-cells led-flashlights green hacks

For his senior design project at Swarthmore College, [Julian] decided to build a metalworking equivalent to the RepRap. [Julian]‘s final project is a self-replicating milling machine, and hopefully giving some serious metalworking power to all the makers with CNC routers and RepRaps out there. At first glance, [Julian]‘s mill doesn’t look like something you would find [...]

Tags: machine milling project julian milling-machine swarthmore-college first-glance tool hacks

Impressed by the recent advances in the software defined radio scene, [Jason] picked up a $20 USB TV tuner dongle to check out his local airwaves. Unfortunately, the antenna included with the little USB dongle is terrible at receiving any signal other than broadcast TV. [Jason] wanted to improve his reception, so he got some [...]

Tags: radio usb Software jason usb-tv-tuner radio-scene software-defined-radio hacks

[Bruce] sent us another fantastic final project from the ECE4760 class at Cornell. What you see above is an array of 36 near infra red LEDs shining into this young man’s brain for the purpose of spectroscopy. Light bounces back differently based on brain activity (blood flow). For this project, they are mapping their motor [...]

Tags: brain motor project bruce motor-cortex brain-activity blood-flow classic hacks

[Vinod] sent in a very cool build he says is somewhat of a ‘mad project’: he mounted an MMC and SD card under Linux using the parallel port on his computer. Even though parallel ports are getting rarer these days, we absolutely love [Vinod]‘s dedication and willingness to dig around the Linux kernel. The hardware portion of the [...]

Tags: card linux port vinod linux-kernel hardware-portion parallel-ports hacks

Not long after [CulinarilySpeaking] got into the Arduino game, he began to want more IO pins and a larger program space for more ambitious projects. This, of course, led him down the path towards the Sanguino, the ATMega644-based dev board with many more IO pins than Arduino boards based on the ATMega328. Instead of buying new, [CulinarilySpeaking] [...]

Tags: sanguino arduino atmega dev-board ambitious-projects program-space hacks

[Dave] loved his iPod nano so much that he implanted 4 magnets in his arm to hold it. Ok, go ahead and shout “fanboy” at your screen and say something snide about apples products or lament the poor working conditions at foxconn. Got it out of your system? Cool. Actually, if we had to guess, [...]

Tags: skin ipod hacking dave snide working-conditions lament misc hacks

Here’s an oldie but a goodie: [Eiki], [Mark], and [Sheraz] built a pipe crawling robot for their senior engineering project at Florida Atlantic University way back in 2004. Despite being a rather old build, its aged well and still demonstrates the clever ways the guys overcame some engineering obstacles. The original plan for the pipe [...]

Tags: robot pipe project sheraz mark snake-robot florida-atlantic-university robots hacks

We’ve all worked with DC motors at some point. Even if you aren’t a big hardware person, you’ve probably at least picked up a motor as a kid and touched a battery to the leads causing it to whir to life. These are usually standard DC motors and not their brushless relatives. Brushless motors require [...]

Tags: aren time point brushless-dc-motors hardware-person whir home hacks

After seeing some heart rate monitor apps for Android which use the camera and flashlight features of the phones, [Tyson] took on the challenge of coding this for himself. But he’s not using a smart phone, instead he grabbed a headlamp and webcam for his heat rate monitor. To start out he recorded a test video with [...]

Tags: heart-rate-monitor heat-rate headlamp medical hacks

It’s somewhat amazing how these rather inexpensive electronics can augment the functionality of a common stethoscope. This digital stethoscope is using audio processing to add the features. A standard chest piece feeds a condenser microphone which is fed through a pretty standard OpAmp circuit which supplies the ADC of an ATmega644. After being digitized, the heart sound [...]

Tags: digital stethoscope heart digital-stethoscope condenser-microphone heart-sound medical hacks

[Roy] is getting to the end of his second CNC mill project and finally seeing some results. Here you can see a bear he milled in some floural foam. The project started out as an Arduino-based pen plotter. It move the pen along one axis, and the drawing surface along another, with the third axis [...]

Tags: mill project cnc roy pen-plotter pleasing-results cnc-mill hacks

[Marchelo] wanted to build his own chicken coop. He started researching different designs and ended up basing his build on the golden spiral. In addition to the interesting shape, a ton of clever design choice made it into the build. For instance, [Marchello] took the time to dramatically round over the lumber used as the skids of [...]

Tags: spiral coop chicken golden-spiral chicken-coop marchelo home hacks

Using FTDI chips as a USB to Serial solution is nothing new, but this MicroFTX board takes the footprint to a new low. If you’re space limited this should have no problem fitting into your project. But if you plan to use it for prototyping we predict it’ll be lost in the parts bin forever [...]

Tags: connectivity usb ftdi parts-bin footprint tool hacks

After reading The Five Fists of Science, a retelling of ‘war of the currents’ between [Tesla] and [Edison], [Rob] knew he needed a Tesla gun, the sidearm of the story’s protagonist. Since nothing as stupidly awesome and dangerous as a portable Tesla coil has ever been made, [Rob] needed to make his own. [Rob] started his build [...]

Tags: gun something tesla rob tesla-coil protagonist fists weapons hacks

Whoops… Looks like we covered this already. My mistake. In case the name didn’t tip you off, this fun little kart was inspired by MarioKart. The goal was to build a functional go kart that could be controlled via the Nintendo Wiimote. They did a pretty good job and kept it fairly simple too. They [...]

Tags: nintendo-wiimote good-job mistake transportation hacks

[sjm4306] had a small Magic 8-Ball key chain as a kid. The fluid in this key chain eventually dried up, and if [sjm] is anything like us the 20-sided die is now lost to the sands of time or at the very least hidden in a box in the basement. After remembering the old Magic [...]

Tags: magic-8-ball digital-magic old-magic toy hacks

[Guelherme Pena Costa] came up with an idea to light up a swing set using the motion of the people swinging on it to generate electricity. The goal was to get people to enjoy the playground at night and we think, this might actually be a pretty good way to achieve that. People love blink [...]

Tags: generating-electricity swing-sets playground green hacks

You know who thinks building a robotic octopus is an awesome idea? EVERYONE. Apparently the idea is a solid enough idea that the European Commision has funded this project. The goal is to mimic the capabilities of the squishiest of the cephalopods in order to advance soft robotics. Or possibly to take over the world. [...]

Tags: project idea octopus project-octopus awesome-idea cephalopods robots hacks

[Andy] is taking the complexity of a smartphone-controlled garage door down a notch with this project. He’s not interested in checking on the state of the door (open or closed) using a video feed, or in controlling the thing from anywhere in the world. He just wants to use his Android as the remote control and [...]

Tags: door garage android andy garage-door-opener video-feed notch arduino hacks

Like many parents, [Mike Tsao] is plagued by his kids’ urge to rise like the dead long before he’s ready to wake up. In an effort to preserve sanity, he built this clock to let the young ones know when it’s okay to get out of bed. Fittingly, he calls it the OK-Wake. You may [...]

Tags: fuzzy bed time mike-tsao tsao young-ones sanity clock hacks

Take a gander at the Giant LED bar graph which [Chunky Hampton] recently completed (from this image we don’t think the nick name suits him). It’s simple both mechanically and electrically, but we love the look and think it would be a nice addition to your home, hackerspace, or as a children’s museum exhibit (we’re [...]

Tags: bar builing graph hampton bar-graph led-bar museum-exhibit led hacks

Flux generally makes our lives easier. It’s the best bet when trying to prevent solder bridges with fine-pitch components like you see here. But it is also indispensable when it comes to desoldering components from a board (we’re talking just one component without disturbing all of the others). But have you ever looked at what it costs [...]

Tags: solder bet flux best-bet bridges pitch chemistry hacks

Despite the obvious use of a lot of wire, this project is actually a wireless charging system. [Jared] built it as a way to explore the concepts behind transferring power inductively. Alternating current on one of the white coils induces current on the other. This is then rectified, and regulated for use as a 5V charger. In this [...]

Tags: use Wireless charger charging-system ipod-charger coils misc hacks

In the quest to add some mood lighting in his basement, [Mohonri] found an infrared wireless remote that is able to control several RGB LED strips. The only problem with this remote is the inability to control it via a wall-mount panel or even a computer. Obviously this would not stand for such a swank basement, [...]

Tags: led rgb basement mood-lighting reverse-engineering hacks

If you’ve ever thought about getting down to bare metal and building a homebrew computer from scratch [Garth Wilson] put up a great primer to the 6502, the same CPU found in Apple ][ computers, BBC Micros, Vic-20s, and the venerable Commodore 64 (a 6510 in the C64, but it's close enough). In his guide [...]

Tags: homebrew computer guide vic garth-wilson homebrew-computer commodore-64 great-primer classic hacks

Building a circuit on a bread board makes life much easier, but eventually you’re going to want a PCB for one of your circuits. Luckily, [Will] from Revolt Lab put up a trio of posts that will take you idea and turn it into a schematic and PCB. First up is an awesome tutorial on [...]

Tags: awesome-tutorial bread-board pcb tool hacks

It looks like 2012 is shaping up to be the year of the resin-based 3D printer. The latest comes from [Michael Joyce] and is called the B9Creator. Like other resin printers, [Michael] used a DLP projector to cure the print one layer at a time. The layer height is on the order of 100 microns [...]

Tags: dlp-projector michael-joyce microns cnc hacks

We’ve seen Arduino-based game controllers before, but the UnoJoy project wants to make it easy for you to plug them into a gaming console. The project is targeted at the Arduino UNO. Why only that hardware… isn’t Arduino universal? Well yes, but in this case the bootloader needs to be overwritten so that the Arduino [...]

Tags: game-controllers bootloader xbox-360 arduino hacks

This flying microscope is a tool which [Darrell Taylor] can be very proud of. He wanted to have an inspection microscope for working with surface mount projects. He got his hands on a binocular version for a song and dance because it came without a stand. Initially he built a simple rig but if it [...]

Tags: microscope way flying darrell-taylor inspection-microscope song-and-dance tool hacks

We see a pretty steady stream of projects that use Xbee modules. They’re one of the more reliable and popular ways to add a wireless aspect to your project. But we don’t often see them used to their full potential. Since there’s a microcontroller onboard, many simple tasks can be accomplished without the need for [...]

Tags: xbee directly joystick microcontroller steady-stream peripherals hacks

Fresh from the Arduino subreddit comes [dataplex]‘s 26 string electromagnetic harp. It’s a very cool, ambient instrument that sounds simply phenomenal through the Space Echo and Fender Twin rig [dataplex] has. There’s not much in the way of build details, but judging from this post [dataplex] made several months ago the instrument works on the [...]

Tags: dataplex electromagnetic instrument fender echo fender-twin space-echo harp musical hacks

For the last few months, [Ben] has been building a 3D light painting robot. Instead of a couple Arduino-controlled LEDs that a person moves around the Lightplot, as [Ben] calls it, uses a robotic arm to move a LED in 3D space. The build started with [Ben] testing his idea by putting a laser pointer [...]

Tags: light-painting laser-pointer robotic-arm led hacks

Homecut – CNC Cutting Directory So you have a CNC machine that you use as a hobby, but would like to do some actual work on the side? Or maybe you have an idea you’d like made. Homecut is a map directory where you can maybe hook up with the right person. The Curta Mechanical [...]

Tags: directory cnc homecut cnc-machine map classic hacks

Gaming has infiltrated everything around us. It seems that any time a control interface is needed, the first thought to many current hacker’s minds are the familiar controls from the video games we grew up with. In this example, [eljaywasi] needed a way to control the wavelength of light coming out of a laser. We [...]

Tags: wavelength-of-light control-interface gamepad peripherals hacks

[Eiki] found himself in need of a project for his “simple machines” class. Another project had brought him in contact with some relatively cheap MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes. He had the idea to create a simple tilt sensor based circuit that would light whatever LED was at the bottom. He’s using an Analog Devices ADXL202E accelerometer [...]

Tags: tilt-sensor gyroscopes accelerometers classic hacks

[Bertho] sent in a great tutorial on terminating transmission lines. If you’ve ever tried to send a high frequency signal a long way down a wire, you know the problems that can crop up due to electronic strangeness. Luckily [Bertho]‘s tutorial explains just about everything, from where and when to terminate a cable and why [...]

Tags: transmission-lines strangeness high-frequency classic hacks

+ So at first glance we were thinking there wasn’t much special about this clock. It’s based on an Arduino and displays the time using a character LCD screen. But then we realized that there’s no battery-backed RTC and no buttons. How the heck do you set the time on this thing? [Mossblaser] is using [...]

Tags: light clock time light-programming character-lcd arduino hacks

This is a robot that any Transformers enthusiast will love. Sure, the car looks just a bit boxy, but you’ll forget all about that when you see it unfold into a bipedal robot (translated). [Zak Sawa] is responsible for the creation. He pull off the build using 22 servo motors which let the car transform, and [...]

Tags: eye robot car zak-sawa bipedal-robot robot-car sawa robots hacks

This radio controlled car controller replacement is a great project to try some new things with that fancy hardware you’ve got sitting around. The hack comes in two parts, the receiver and the transmitter. They’re communicating via Bluetooth so if you only want to build one side of the hardware you should be able to make most [...]

Tags: fancy-hardware radio-controlled-car hack arduino hacks

This wristwatch is hiding a lot of features in its hardware and its software. It’s called the TicTocTrac and it’s a Senior project for a pair of students at Cornell University. Judging from the sheer volume and quality of the project documentation we wonder if someone has a science writing career ahead of them? Be [...]

Tags: cornell-university wristwatch sheer-volume clock hacks

[Sprite_tm], a name many of you will recognize from these pages, has wasted no time in replicating the latest cool thing in a much simpler fashion. En Garde is a touch sensor that can detect up to 32 different points of contact on… whatever you use as the surface. He couldn’t sit idly by and [...]

Tags: fancy-touch touch-sensor cool-thing classic hacks

Most of us have seen the [Useless Machine] where a switch is flipped and a finger comes out to turn it off, retreating into it’s box again. Most of those are electrical, but why not a [Useless Machine] made only of mechanical clockwork? Apparently this has been done before, but why not one more? After [...]

Tags: mechanical-clockwork s-box prototype misc hacks

This is the 2nd and final part of this project. If you haven’t seen part 1 yet, jump back and check it out. Now that we have the controller box made and ready to go, we just have to build some simple stomp sensors. As I said before, I doubt this will hold anyones attention [...]

Tags: part stomp pinball sensors classic hacks

Here’s a way to program an Arduino wirelessly while still using the stock IDE. It uses an alternative bootloader called SuperDuplex along with an IR receiver like the ones used for TV remotes. As you can see, this does take two parts. There is the target device which has the IR receiver, as well as [...]

Tags: program ide arduino target-device tv-remotes hacks

[Haris Andrianakis] just finished building this very clean-looking vacuum fluorescent display clock. It shows six digits using IV-11 tubes, and also has a half-dozen RGB LEDs to spice things up (check out the video after the break for an example). An ATmega168 drives the device, controlling the display and serving as a battery-backed real-time clock. As with [...]

Tags: six-digit display clock real-time-clock vacuum-fluorescent-display alarm-clock hacks

Here’s another virtual sandbox meets real sandbox project. A team at UC Davis is behind this depth-mapped and digitally projected sandbox environment. The physical sandbox uses fine-grained sand which serves nicely as a projection surface as well as a building medium. It includes a Kinect depth camera over head, and an offset digital projector to [...]

Tags: sandbox resolution play davis virtual-sandbox digital-projector grained-sand kinect hacks

Most of the quadcopter projects that we’ve seen use a joystick-based control system. This lets you fly the thing around like any RC vehicle. But [Saulius] is augmenting his control system by pulling and displaying telemetry data. It doesn’t really change the way the vehicle is controller, but it lets the craft roam much further [...]

Tags: telemetry quadcopter control telemetry-data fly Wireless hacks

After building a few portable gaming systems, [Parker] wanted to try something a little different than the usual sleek plastic builds. He decided to go with a nice wooden classic NES. He started by gutting a NOAC or Nintendo On A Chip. The NOAC has already done most of the miniaturization for him, so he [...]

Tags: beautiful noac nes parker chip classic-nes wooden-case nintendo hacks

Very rarely do we see an Instructable so complete, and so informative, that it’s a paragon of tutorials that all Instructables should aspire to. [8 Bit Spaghetti]‘s How to Build an 8-bit computer is one of those tutorials. [8 Bit Spaghetti]‘s build began on his blog. He originally planned to build a 4-bit computer but decided a [...]

Tags: build bit computer instructable bit-computer instructables classic hacks

When [Antoine] and his family leave home for a few days, they usually have to find a neighbor who is willing to care for their cats while they are away. Instead of bothering the people who live next door, he decided it would be best to build an automatic cat feeder (Translation) instead. [Antoine] originally tried [...]

Tags: feeder laminator cat antoine automatic-cat-feeder neighbor few-days arduino hacks

Since the Arduino was launched years ago, many ‘shields’ or add-on boards providing additional functionality have been released. There are hundreds of different shields, from video capture shields to touch screen shields. Now that the Raspberry Pi is out in the wild, it was only a matter of time before a RasPi to Arduino shield [...]

Tags: video-capture raspberry shields arduino hacks

Years ago, someone at [Chuck]‘s job came up with the brilliant solution of an indicator to display if the unisex bathroom is currently vacant, a men’s bathroom, or a women’s bathroom. The old system worked well, but [Chuck] thought it would be a great idea to display the current status of the bathroom on the [...]

Tags: bathroom unisex status chuck unisex-bathroom brilliant-solution current-status Wireless hacks

[Mesoiam] managed to pick up a Viscount hammer weighted keyboard for pretty cheap. For those who are unfamiliar, Viscount makes keyboards that feel like you’re playing a piano, hammers and all. The only problem with this, as [Mesoiam] discovered, is that even when he’s jamming with headphones in, his friends down stairs can still hear [...]

Tags: mesoiam viscount simple piano-hammers downstairs-neighbors weighted-keyboard digital audio hacks

[Guy] wrote in to share this motorized camera lens project he recently finished. He really loved the zoom lens, but since both zoom and focus are manually controlled, he sometimes had trouble getting both set to the right place in time to take the shot. With modern DSLR cameras which allow video capture, he also [...]

Tags: manual-camera place-in-time camera-lens digital cameras hacks

[Radek] from Poland sent in a neat video of a bionic prosthetic leg he made for one of his patients. Even though [Radek] says it’s a ‘prototype of a prototype,’ we’d have to agree with him that it’s a very neat build that could provide inexpensive motorized prosthetic legs to amputees in the future. [Radek] has been [...]

Tags: prototype leg scratch radek poland prosthetic-legs prosthetic-leg medical hacks

If you’re learning how to play a musical instrument, shoot hoops, or even learning exactly how hard making a golf ball fly really is, here’s one for you. It’s a projected visualization for hand movement guidance. [Rajinder], [Hrvoje], and [Andrew] at UIUC and Microsoft Research figured out a great way to improve the fine motor skills [...]

Tags: hrvoje microsoft-research musical-instrument kinect hacks

[Scott] put together a system where he can use pinball score reels as a wireless display. As you can see in the video below, the result is really neat. The sound alone makes this shoot pretty high on our “things that are cool” radar. The display required 24V AC to operate the solenoids that actually [...]

Tags: display score pinball scott v-ac score-reels solenoids classic hacks

Warning, this may be a duplicate post. We all agree we’ve seen this before, but can’t find it in our archive. If it is, sorry. If it isn’t enjoy one of the most awesome projects we’ve seen in a long time. Meet [Jaimie Mantzel] an eccentric, and very hyper, individual. He’s done many projects, but [...]

Tags: hexapod-project awesome-projects jaimie robots hacks

[Rajendra] tipped us off to this really slick hack he’s done to allow his multimeter to tell the ambient temperature. He’s basically measuring the output of an LM35 temp sensor that he has mounted in the case. The circuit is extremely simple and only requires the sensor, a couple resistors, and a switch so that [...]

Tags: temperature multimeter sensor digital-multimeter temp-sensor ambient-temperature tool hacks

We’ve seen the Arduino used to flash BIOS chips several times now. But these hacks are almost always the result of a bad flash. This time around [GNUtoo] is interested in putting a tool in your hands which can be used to flash Coreboot to your motherboard. His offering uses the Arduino Uno, but there [...]

Tags: bios uno arduino bios-chips hacks

This wire covered glove is capable of turning your hand gestures to speech, and it does so wirelessly. The wide range of sensors include nine flex sensors, four contact sensors, and an accelerometer. The flex sensors do most of the work, monitoring the alignment of the wearer’s finger joints. The contact sensors augment the flex sensor data, [...]

Tags: contact glove sign flex-sensors flex-sensor finger-joints wearable hacks

Chocolate has got to be one of the worst choices as a printing medium. It’s extremely fussy when it comes to melting point, and even in the right state the flow of the material is not going to play nicely with high-resolution designs. With this in mind, we applaud the progress the student team from [...]

Tags: printer extrusion chocolate printing-medium melting-point mores cnc hacks

This is the senior design project for a group at the University of Vermont. It’s a wet, bubbly, blinky, interactive thing. Each column is a clear tube filled with water, with a string of fully addressable RGB LEDs suspended in the center. In idle mode, the lights scroll through a series of interesting patterns while [...]

Tags: university-of-vermont senior-design-project led hacks

[G. Eric Rogers] is a radar-systems engineer who just happens to live within sight of the aircraft approach path for the local airport. We wonder if that was one of the criteria when looking for a home? Naturally, he wanted his own home-based system for tracking the airplanes. He ended up repurposing a motorized telescope [...]

Tags: radar-systems-engineer eric-rogers approach-path video hacks

The people over at Pensa posted an awesome CNC wire bender on their blog. Robotic wire benders are common industrial machine that are very fun to watch. These machines can turn out custom wire-bent parts or sculptures in a matter of seconds. The Pensa team’s “DIWire Bender” might not be as fast as the big boys, [...]

Tags: pensa bender diwire wire-benders wire-bender cnc-wire cnc hacks

We love capacitive touch screens. They’re much more robust than resistive touch screens and if the UI is programmed well they produce a great user experience. But getting your electronics project to interact with one is a bit tough. [RobB] has been experimenting in that area, and managed to build a simple touchscreen actuator for microcontroller [...]

Tags: resistive-touch-screens microcontroller actuator multitouch hacks

We normally try to be descriptive with our titles. But when that statement pops out of the narration with notable excitement it made us chuckle. This installment of Retrotechtacular is a promotional video for the Blit. It’s a graphics-based hardware terminal for Unix systems. It’s biggest boast is the ability to run (and display on [...]

Tags: hardware-terminal blit multiprogramming misc hacks

[CarryTheWhat] put up an Instructable on his endeavours in printing circuit boards for solder free electronics. He managed to print a flashlight where the only non-printed parts are a pair of batteries and a couple of LEDs. The circuit is a weird mix of point to point and Manhattan style circuit construction; after modeling a printed plastic plate, [CarryTheWhat] added [...]

Tags: carrythewhat circuit printing manhattan instructable manhattan-style circuit-construction cnc hacks

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering if there’s any possible way to let those with deficient olfactory senses know just how flatulent you are, wonder no more. The Gas Cap is here to fulfill that very need. A bar graph of sorts, located on the front of a hat that will light up to reflect [...]

Tags: gas flatulence cap bar-graph olfactory-senses gas-cap home hacks

[Kirill] wrote in to share his Arduino-based PIC programmer. It is capable of writing to the 18F family of chips, including 18F2XXX and 18F4XXX. We think that’s pretty exciting because this line of chips has USB functionality and there are bootloaders out there that let you program them via USB. So if you wanted to build [...]

Tags: pic-programmer arduino kirill hacks

[Luigi Auriemma] almost rendered his brother’s TV useless attempting to play a simple practical joke. In the process, he uncovered a bug that could potentially upset a lot of people. His idea was to connect a computer to the system via WiFi, masquerading as a remote control. [Luigi] found that by altering the packet being [...]

Tags: samsung-tvs practical-joke s-tv security hacks

When the time comes to go to the store and pick up those chocolates you always get your mother for valentines mother’s day, why not spice them up a little with some LEDs? [Dmitry] shows how you can easily add some flashing lights to the packaging without really modifying it. He’s using an ATtiny13 which [...]

Tags: may mother attiny flashing-lights chocolates attiny13 holiday hacks

[Alan] posted a video tour of his electronics shop, but you’ll be viewing it through the green screen of an oscilloscope. The image above is a video camera filming a scope screen which displays the image of…. an oscilloscope (insert your own Yo Dawg meme here). But first he shares the technique he uses to [...]

Tags: oscilloscope shop screen alan electronics-shop video-tour tool hacks

[Jeff] from Gadget Gangster sent in a great tutorial on connecting a cheap Bluetooth module to a Parallax microcontroller. In addition to getting a terminal to the Propeller up and running from his computer, [Jeff] was able to toggle IO pins and even control servos and Android devices – perfect for your next wireless robot. [...]

Tags: bluetooth-module microcontroller wirelessly Wireless hacks

Because reaching over a few feet to turn off a switch is too much to bear for [Bruce], he connected his desk lamp to the Internet. It’s a pretty cool build that’s the perfect tutorial for connecting just about anything to the internet. For his build, [Bruce] used an Arduino with a relay attached to [...]

Tags: internet switch turning bruce desk-lamp arduino hacks

In case you weren’t already depressed about not starting a summer project already, a couple of guys are building a gigantic rideable hexapod they call Stompy. The project leaders, [Gui Cavalcanti], [Dan Cody], and [James Whong] have worked on a few crazy robotics projects before like PETMAN and BigDog. Stompy won’t be a military-backed project like the [...]

Tags: robotics-projects rideable bigdog robots hacks

As a retired industrial designer, [Dave] has a lot of time to do what we’d all like to do: sit around in a workshop and make stuff. His latest project, an acrylic light display of an Indian motorcycle looks fantastic and betrays his designer heritage. The base of the light display is made up of a [...]

Tags: display lot designer dave indian-motorcycle heritage misc hacks

Instructibles user [Danjovic] managed to get his hands on an Atari 2600, but all the joysticks were damaged beyond repair. Instead of building an atari joystick from scratch, he looked to a slightly newer generation of gaming and decided to us an NES controller instead. This was done fairly easily with the aide of an [...]

Tags: controller atari nes atari-joystick atari-2600 joysticks arduino hacks

This is a wiring diagram that [Soranne] put together when developing a method of programming PIC microcontrollers using an Arduino board. You can see that he takes care of the 12V issue by connecting the Master Clear (MCLR) pin to an external source. This comes with one warning that the Arduino should always be reset [...]

Tags: arduino program pic pic-microcontrollers programming-pic external-source hacks

After seeing a cool fiberoptic chandelier on Ebay for over $1,000, [Apex Logic] figured he could build one himself that would not only be cheaper, but have more features. Some of the features he was after were for it to be wirelessly controlled, have the ability for full RGB control, and of course to have [...]

Tags: fiber ebay chandelier rgb-control home hacks

Check out this solar-powered Stirling engine (translated). The build is part of a high school class and they packed in some really nice features. The first is the parabolic mirror which focuses the sun’s rays on the chamber of the engine. The heat is what makes it go, and the video after the breaks shows it [...]

Tags: engine tracking sun-powered stirling parabolic-mirror s-rays stirling-engine green hacks

[Neoxy] always wanted surround sound for his computer, and one day he managed to get a hold of a dead 5.1 system. Why buy one when you can repair someone’s rubbish, right? That turned out to be easier said than done, but after several false-starts he managed to resurrect the audio system by replacing the microcontroller. We [...]

Tags: surround sound system home-automation system-controller microcontroller digital audio hacks

[Adr990] wants to make sure his Game Boy game saves aren’t lost to aging batteries. They’re stored in SRAM with a small coin cell inside the cartridge to keep the memory energized when the game is not being played. But if you pull out the battery in order to replace it the data will be [...]

Tags: boy game simple game-boy-game coin-cell sram gameboy hacks

Get ready to be swept off your feet by this Acorn Risc Machine promotional video from the Mid-1980′s (also embedded after the jump). We’re sure most have put it together by now, but for those slower readers, this is the introduction of ARM processors. The video has a bit of everything. There’s a deadpan narration [...]

Tags: acorn risc machine acorn-risc-machine arm-processors narration misc hacks

We see a lot of LED matrix projects. They’re fun, and you can learn a lot of basic lessons during the build. But this one is out of the ordinary. [Rtty21] built an oddly sized, and sound controlled matrix shield for his Arduino. That’s it right there, the shield is the large chunk of protoboard [...]

Tags: led shield matrix arduino chunk hacks

[Dick], like most of us, likes some pretty strong light in his workshop. He’s using CFL flood lamps to save a little energy. Unfortunately, he found that they gradually become brighter instead of that instant light he was accustomed to with his previous incandescent bulbs. Not wanting to wait around for the lights to reach [...]

Tags: flood-lamps incandescent-bulbs dick classic hacks

Check out this giant pink hexacopter. We see tons of quad copters here, but their bigger brothers/sisters the hexacopters don’t visit very often. When they do though, they get all dressed up as you can see in the picture above. This prototype frame is meant to protect both the props, and the innocent bystanders as [...]

Tags: rest giant hexacopter innocent-bystanders copters props toy hacks

[Paul] is at it again with some kinect controlled fire poofers. You may remember [Paul's] previous shenanigans with the gigantic hand made hydraulic flame-sailed pirate ship. This time he is building a small flame poofer (possibly a series of poofers) for SOAK, a regional (unaffiliated) Burning Man style festival in Oregon. Any one who remembers [...]

Tags: fire atiny kinect paul oregon dance-fx pirate-ship man-style kinect hacks

What do you have to do to win best of show at an R/C event in Toledo? Build a 7 foot long fire breathing radio controlled dragon of course! [Rick Hamel] stuffed his electronics, a turbine engine, a kerosene tank, and a stun gun into a home built body shaped like a dragon. You can [...]

Tags: flying-dragon turbine-engine fire-breathing toy hacks

We’ve covered plenty of light painting projects here. People are always finding new ways to create interesting things in this fairly new medium. This project covers a method of creating orbs or spheres in your light paintings. The author points out that many people do this currently by putting the light source at the end [...]

Tags: rig plenty build light-paintings light-painting author-points led hacks

This Arduino BASIC interpreter will make a really fun one-day project if you’ve already got the parts on hand. [Usmar A. Padow] put together an Arduino Uno, SD card, four line character LCD, and PS/2 keyboard. but he’s also included alternative options to go without an LCD screen by using a computer terminal, or without [...]

Tags: lcd basic arduino a.-padow basic-interpreter padow line-character hacks

Dust off that old GPIB hardware and hook it up to your modern computing platform using either of these two solutions. If you haven’t a clue what we’re talking about you probably don’t own any fifty-year-old test equipment. But the General Purpose Interface Bus (aka IEEE-488) was fairly common on 1960′s era test equipment like multimeters and [...]

Tags: equipment gpib test general-purpose-interface-bus gpib-hardware purpose-interface tool hacks

A lot of Linux users include system monitor information in their status panel so that they can see when the CPU is grinding away. [Kevin] is taking the concept one step further by changing his case lights based on CPU usage. Above you can see green, orange, and magenta, but [Kevin's] implementation uses the full [...]

Tags: cpu-usage linux-users system-monitor pcs hacks

There’s no rooster to wake them up, and [Steve] and his wife are fine with that. What they’re not fine with is having to get up early anyway in order to let the chickens out of the coop. Like many small-scale egg farmers they sought out an automatic solution for opening the coup in the [...]

Tags: egg-farmers chicken-coup automatic-solution home hacks

There are awesome projects, and then there are things that make us drool on the keyboard. We just got done wiping up our mess after seeing this go-kart which uses four hub-motors as direct drive wheels. We’ll admit, this is more artwork than a hack as these guys are mechanical engineers and know what they’re [...]

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