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Items by Mike Nathan

• October 11, 2012
• 7:01

  Stare deep into this well-lit interactive infinity mirror

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [acorv] recently sent us a link to a cool, interactive infinity mirror (Translation) he built. He was originally a bit gun-shy about sending the project our way, but our recent Reddit AMA inspired [acorv] to submit it via our tip line, and we’re glad he did. Having been lucky enough to score $100 of gear from [...]

  Tags:  infinity acorv stare ama gun-shy tip-line reddit news  

• October 03, 2012
• 5:01

  Controlling your webcam with an old Guitar Hero pedal

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Hackaday reader [Tom Price] often uses Skype to communicate with family near and far, but he was getting tired of adjusting his webcam each time his kids moved out of frame. While the solution he came up with isn’t fully automated, it is hands-free, which is good enough for his purposes. [Tom] was looking around [...]

  Tags:  controlling guitar webcam tom-price tom hero guitar-hero old-guitar arduino hacks  

• September 26, 2012
• 4:01

  Machine offers cheap advice – charges more for something profound

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Nick Johnson] recently wrote in, sharing a neat project he put together in his spare time. Our readers are most likely familiar with the ubiquitous “fortune” program that ships with many *nix distros, offering cheeky comments and quotes with the press of a button. [Nick] thought it would be cool to build a fortune telling [...]

  Tags:  advice fortune machine nick nick-johnson cheap-advice neat-project news  

• September 01, 2012
• 15:19

  Turning a MIDI sequencer display into a Tetris clone

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Tetris is unquestionably a game for the ages. Despite its simplicity, someone, somewhere will always find a way to port the game (Translation) to just about any electronic device that can handle it. Earlier this year we showed you a slick MIDI sequencer project that was constructed using an Arduino Mega, which also happened to drive [...]

  Tags:  game sequencer midi tetris midi-sequencer tetris-clone game-translation arduino hacks  

• August 29, 2012
• 4:01

  Forget treating your diabetes – use your insulin syringe as a logic probe

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Hackaday reader [JumperOne] was in need of a logic probe that he could use to reliably test some tiny .5mm pitch IC pins. The probe that came with his oscilloscope was a bit too big and not near sharp enough to do the job, but he figured that a syringe might do the trick nicely. [...]

  Tags:  probe logic syringe insulin-syringe logic-probe oscilloscope medical hacks  

• August 28, 2012
• 4:01

  Turn your old Bluetooth headphones into a DIY car audio receiver

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Tim] drives a 1995 Mitsubishi TS Magna, which is equipped with a less than stellar accessory package he lovingly calls a “poverty pack”. He outfitted his ride with an aftermarket head unit that can support the Bluetooth A2DP profile, provided he buys the ridiculously overpriced kit sold by Pioneer. Reluctant to shell out more money [...]

  Tags:  bluetooth turn diy tim bluetooth-a2dp-profile ts-magna bluetooth-headphones cellphones hacks  

• August 24, 2012
• 5:25

  10bitworks shows us how to light up a synchronized swarm of LED jellyfish

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jeremy Zunker] from 10bitworks recently wrote in to share a cool build the group put together for the Luminaria 2012 festival which took place in March of this year. As you might have guessed, the fest is home to a wide array of light-themed projects, so the team at 10bitworks thought long and hard to [...]

  Tags:  jellyfish led swarm jeremy-zunker zunker arduino hacks  

• August 23, 2012
• 4:01

  Help us decide if this huge reprap array is the largest fleet to date

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Take a minute to think about what your dream job might be. Done imagining you are a ridiculously wealthy bachelor?  Good. Back here in the real world, [Caleb Cover] has come into what might be one of the coolest hacking-related jobs we’ve seen in awhile. He recently snagged a gig working for Aleph Objects as [...]

  Tags:  array reprap fleet caleb-cover dream-job caleb gig cnc hacks  

• August 22, 2012
• 8:01

  No secret knocks required at [Steve's] house – your subway pass will do

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Steve] is often host to all sorts of guests, and he was looking for an easy way to let his friends come and go as they please. After discovering that his front door came equipped with an electronic strike, he decided that an RFID reader would be a great means of controlling who was let [...]

  Tags:  pass house subway steve rfid-reader all-sorts arduino hacks  

• August 21, 2012
• 7:30

  Lite Brites fade, but LED clocks are forever

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Ahh, the Lite Brite. What could be more fun than pushing dozens of little plastic pegs through a piece of black paper in order to create a pixelated, though colorful image? Well, I can think of quite a few things more engaging than that, and luckily so can [Lonnie Honeycutt] over at MeanPC. While contemplating [...]

  Tags:  led lite ahh brites plastic-pegs led-clocks colorful-image arduino hacks  

• August 07, 2012
• 8:01

  Dual-channel, variable voltage test box is a busy console modder’s dream

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  It seems like [Chris Downing] is always up to something new. If he’s not keeping busy by creating slick portable iterations of previous-gen gaming consoles, he is dreaming up ways to make his modding life a bit easier. Recently while working on a Nintendo controller designed to control three different consoles, [Downing] found his desk buried [...]

  Tags:  dual-channel test voltage chris-downing nintendo-controller voltage-test variable-voltage nintendo hacks  

• August 02, 2012
• 7:01

  Genezap improves your video game skills using corporal punishment

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  As if getting your ass handed to you while playing video games wasn’t annoying enough, [furrtek] decided that the best way to help improve his skills was by inflicting physical pain each time his on-screen character died. While perusing the Internet looking for something to break through the doldrums of the day, he came upon [...]

  Tags:  video game genezap video-game-skills corporal-punishment playing-video-games attiny hacks  

• August 01, 2012
• 4:01

  Arduino Taipan! clone stays true to the original

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Fans of vintage Apple ][ and TRS-80 games will undoubtedly recognize the image above in short order. Taipan! was a popular game in its time, and [Simon] decided it was a great title to try recreating with an Arduino. His goal was to use a standard Arduino Duemilanove to reproduce the game, rather than opting [...]

  Tags:  taipan game arduino simon original-fans trs clone hacks  

• July 31, 2012
• 4:01

  Automated turret gives you the upper hand in office warfare

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  When your co-workers get on your nerves, the mature recourse is to be the bigger person and simply ignore the obnoxious individual. A team of engineers from TI show us a slightly alternative means of dealing with office mates which is not quite as mature, though far more entertaining. The office toy cum mechanized weapons [...]

  Tags:  turret automated office office-mates office-toy misc hacks  

• July 27, 2012
• 10:01

  Drawbot software aims to do it better than the rest

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  There are plenty of drawbot projects out there, many of which come with their own special software in tow. While some of these packages are easier to use than others, [Dan Royer] is pretty sure he can do it better. Looking for a fun and engaging way to teach STEM subjects in schools across the [...]

  Tags:  rest Software drawbot dan-royer better-than-the-rest special-software royer robots hacks  

• 9:01

  Building an artificial moon for Burning Man

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you were lucky enough to score passes to this year’s Burning Man, be sure to keep a look out for [Laurence Symonds] and crew, who are putting together an ambitious fixture for the event. In reality, we’re guessing you won’t have to look far to find their giant moon replica floating overhead – in [...]

  Tags:  burning moon man laurence-symonds moon-replica artificial-moon giant-moon arduino hacks  

• July 25, 2012
• 4:01

  Raspberry Pi keeps tabs on your solar power setup

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Brian Dorey] has been adding green power solutions to his home for some time now, and as things have progressed, he has experimented with several different iterations of data loggers. The latest system watching over his solar power setup is a Raspberry Pi armed with a custom-built I2C analog/digital converter. The Rasp Pi is responsible [...]

  Tags:  raspberry power setup brian-dorey analog-digital-converter data-loggers dorey home hacks  

• July 24, 2012
• 5:01

  Motorized camera rig makes panoramic shooting simple

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Where some people might see a pile of junk, Hackaday reader and budget-conscious photo nut [FantomFotographer] sees inspiration. He was in search of a rig that would help him take better panoramic photos and found all that he needed to build one right around him. He had an old tripod kicking around, which serves as [...]

  Tags:  rig camera motorized camera-rig photo-nut motorized-camera arduino hacks  

• July 20, 2012
• 7:01

  Cutting islands into copper-clad PCBs with a drill

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you’re looking to build some small radio circuits, or if you are simply seeking a new look for your PCBs, you might want to check out what YouTube user [AndyDaviesByTheSea] has been working on lately. He has been building RF circuits as of late and was searching for a better way to create islands [...]

  Tags:  radio drill look rf-circuits radio-circuits pcbs news  

• July 18, 2012
• 4:01

  Kegerator tallies your pints on Untappd while you sit back with a cold one

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jeff] admits that he’s pretty well addicted to Untappd, a site he describes as a Foursquare for beer. Like his fellow beer nerds, he enjoys reporting the pints he’s had, even if they happen to be from his own stash of homebrew kegs. Untappd certainly supports this level of dedication, but it seemed silly to [...]

  Tags:  kegerator untappd beer jeff homebrew-kegs cold-one pints arduino hacks  

• July 17, 2012
• 4:01

  ATX benchtop conversion retains safety features, delivers plenty of current.

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Bogin] was looking to add a benchtop power supply to his array of tools, but he didn’t really find any of the online tutorials helpful. Most of what he discovered were simple re-wiring jobs utilizing LM317 regulators and shorted PS-ON pins used to keep the PSUs happily chugging along as if nothing had been changed. [...]

  Tags:  atx benchtop conversion bogin psus safety-features classic hacks  

• July 13, 2012
• 14:01

  I got 99 volts and my anodizing’s done!

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [POTUS31] had a need for anodized titanium, but the tried and true “submersion” method was not going to work out well for what he was trying to do. In order to create the look he wanted he had to get creative with some tape, a laser cutter, Coke, and a whole lot of 9v batteries. [...]

  Tags:  potus titanium need 9v-batteries laser-cutter anodizing chemistry hacks  

• July 12, 2012
• 11:01

  Repurposing old HDD Components

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [IronJungle] had an old hard drive taking up space in his workshop, so he took it apart and wrote in to remind us how useful these old pieces of hardware can be. Aside from offering up incredibly strong magnets and donut-shaped mirrors, HDDs also come with a reliable stepper motor in tow. He pulled theold [...]

  Tags:  components hdd repurposing stepper-motor taking-up-space donut misc hacks  

• July 10, 2012
• 7:01

  Building a homebrew diesel ECU

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Over the years automobile engines have become increasingly complex, and with this added complexity comes an increased reliance on intricate computer systems to run them. These control systems are typically the fruit of many hours of research and development, carefully protected by the auto makers who create them. Instead of relying on a closed system [...]

  Tags:  homebrew ecu diesel intricate-computer added-complexity automobile-engines arduino hacks  

• 6:01

  Tearing down Disney’s Glow with the Show props

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Andy’s] boss recently returned from a trip to Disneyland with a set of light-up [Mickey Mouse] ears in tow. He said that during the event, every set of “Glow with the Show” ears in the crowd changed colors in sync with the performance. After he and some co-workers speculated on how this was pulled off, [...]

  Tags:  glow show set andy mickey-mouse mickey-mouse-ears co-workers disneyland teardown  

• July 04, 2012
• 8:01

  Wireless Bullduino belt buckle sets the stage for romance, schtick

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  As the Red Bull Creation Contest gets underway, we’re seeing a ton of great entries, including this one put together by [Team Instructables]. While we are pretty partial to our own spectacular Red Bull Cannon, it’s hard to deny that there is some stiff competition out there. Instructables’ “Romance Pants” are a creation that would [...]

  Tags:  bull instructables red romance-pants belt-buckle schtick stiff-competition arduino hacks  

• July 03, 2012
• 4:01

  Automated system hopes to make manual road patching a thing of the past

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  You don’t necessarily have to live in a cold climate to experience how roads start to deteriorate once cracks begin forming in the asphalt surface. Even more frustrating than the potholes, dips, and road erosion is the snarled traffic that results from closing lanes to repair them. Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute have [...]

  Tags:  automated road system road-erosion georgia-tech-research-institute georgia-tech-research robots hacks  

• June 23, 2012
• 10:01

  DIY microcontroller-switched power strip

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Teknynja] was looking for a way to control several discrete AC-powered devices using a microcontroller, and while he did consider the Powerswitch tail 2 from Adafruit, handling 5 devices would get pretty expensive. Rather than buying a complete off the shelf solution, he decided to build his own 5-way switched outlet. He picked up a [...]

  Tags:  power way diy shelf-solution power-strip microcontroller misc hacks  

• June 21, 2012
• 7:01

  Musical light show is far less complex than you might think

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Matt and Jason Tardy], who make up the musical performance duo known as AudioBody, were recently featured on Make: explaining how they put on one of their trademark segments. The most popular portion of their show features color changing tubes of light which the pair spin and fling around not unlike a higher-tech version of [...]

  Tags:  tardy show performance jason matt musical-performance segments tubes misc hacks  

• June 19, 2012
• 7:01

  Mini waterproof LED lanterns charge without wires

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you’re in search of a flashlight that can stand up to the elements, or simply looking for an easy way to spruce up your pool for those hot summer nights, check out these rechargeable PVC LED lights. Inspired by a post in Make: Magazine featuring Indestructible LED Lanterns, [John Duffy] decided to take the project [...]

  Tags:  led mini waterproof john-duffy hot-summer-nights flashlight hacks  

• May 28, 2012
• 6:01

  Fine tune your Morse Code skills with this mint tin practice keyer

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Hackaday reader [svofski] wrote in to share a device he built, which would be useful to any ham operators out there trying to hone their CW skills. He calls his practice keyer the Morseshnik, and it is a combination of various items [svofski] found while digging through his parts drawer. He disassembled an old hard drive, [...]

  Tags:  svofski keyer practice morse-code fine-tune hard-drive classic hacks  

• May 27, 2012
• 14:04

  Making capacitive touch sensors with pencil and paper

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  There are few things more frustrating than being in the middle of working on a project and realizing that you are missing some crucial component that ties the whole thing together. According to Murphy’s Law, this sort of thing will only happen when parts are completely impossible to procure. If you’re ever hunting for a [...]

  Tags:  thing touch pencil pencil-and-paper sensors microcontrollers  

• May 16, 2012
• 5:01

  Self-Powered USB Host mode on the HP Touchpad

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [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  

• May 15, 2012
• 4:01

  You’ll throw your back out playing this analog TV synth

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  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  

• May 14, 2012
• 4:01

  Amphi-Cycle lets you ride the trails, the waves, and back again

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Hackaday regular [Berto] is always looking for new ways to get around, and wrote in to share his most recent creation, an amphibious bicycle. He bought an off-the-shelf inflatable boat and constructed a rig that allows him to stably mount the bike on it. Once [Berto] comes across a body of water he wants to [...]

  Tags:  cycle amphi berto body-of-water new-ways news  

• May 06, 2012
• 14:59

  Automatic cat feeder made with recycled laminator parts

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  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  

• April 22, 2012
• 10:01

  Miniaturized N64 controller fits the tiniest of hands

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The controllers that came with the Nintendo 64 don’t exactly measure up to the “Duke” of Xbox fame, but they’re not the smallest in the world either. Made by Bacteria forum member [Bungle] says that his girlfriend has incredibly tiny hands, so he thought he might try trimming some of the fat from an N64 [...]

  Tags:  nintendo controller miniaturized tiny-hands nintendo-64 bungle hacks  

• April 21, 2012
• 15:07

  An easy to build cat feeder driven by a DIY linear actuator

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Will Finucane] of Revolt Labs/Mad Science Blog was looking for a way to keep his cats happily fed while away on a short vacation, so he put together a cheap and easy automatic feeder to ensure that his pets didn’t go hungry while he was away. We’ve seen different iterations of automatic pet feeders here [...]

  Tags:  feeder diy cat linear-actuator cat-feeder automatic-feeder arduino hacks  

• April 19, 2012
• 5:01

  Lego Mindstorms used to automate tedious laboratory tasks

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Modern society owes so much to medical research, though what happens behind the scenes in a laboratory is usually far less than glamorous. A group of scientists at the University of Cambridge are working to develop synthetic bone tissue, but the process to create the samples used in the study is incredibly tedious. To make [...]

  Tags:  lego laboratory mindstorms laboratory-tasks university-of-cambridge bone-tissue chemistry hacks  

• April 18, 2012
• 8:01

  Preparing sushi with the help of lasers

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  It’s not too often that we cover food here on Hackaday, but when we saw how a laser cutter was being used to help enhance the look of sushi, we decided to share. Even if you don’t enjoy sushi, it’s hard not to argue that it can often be more like edible art than simply [...]

  Tags:  laser-cutter edible-art hackaday laser hacks  

• April 17, 2012
• 15:06

  A locking chest with a musical key

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Basil Shikin] was thinking about different types of locks, and was trying to come up with a locking solution that he had yet to see. It dawned on him that he had never come across a lock triggered by music, so he set off to construct one of his own. He ordered a wooden chest [...]

  Tags:  solution chest lock basil-shikin shikin wooden-chest basil arduino hacks  

• 6:01

  Neosporin…the Retrobright for bench equipment?

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [linux-works] picked up an old power supply from eBay, and as it was built back in the 60’s or 70’s, it was in need of a little TLC. One thing that immediately caught his eye was the condition of the knobs, dials, and banana plug receptacles – they were dull and faded, showing off 40+ [...]

  Tags:  banana-plug ebay receptacles chemistry hacks  

• April 16, 2012
• 11:01

  Motorcycle lighting upgrade ensures other drivers know you’re there

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Pete Mills] recently bought himself a motorcycle, and as people are known to do, they start trying to scare him with gruesome stories of cycling accidents once they hear about his purchase. While he tries to shrug them off as people simply not minding their own business, something must have resonated with him, because he [...]

  Tags:  motorcycle lighting upgrade pete-mills motorcycle-lighting own-business accidents attiny hacks  

• 6:01

  Upgrading a Rockford Fosgate Punch 601s to an 801s with just a handful of parts

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Simon] had a Rockford Fosgate Punch 601s amplifier in his car, and while it was a great piece of equipment, he wanted a little more power behind his stereo system. It turns out that with just a handful of parts and a bit of soldering work, he was able to increase his amplifier’s output by [...]

  Tags:  handful punch fosgate simon rockford rockford-fosgate-punch stereo-system amplifier news  

• April 15, 2012
• 13:08

  Barrel organ made from Lego plays the Star Wars theme

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Whether or not you are a fan of the first installment of the Star Wars prequels, you have to see what [Lorenz Lnggrtnr] and [Renee Hoffmeister] have put together for the movie’s 3D debut. In an attempt to capture the essence of Star Wars in a new fashion, they constructed a large barrel organ from [...]

  Tags:  barrel star organ renee-hoffmeister lorenz star-wars-prequels star-wars-theme barrel-organ musical hacks  

• April 14, 2012
• 12:01

  Aquarium automation keeps the fish fed and the lights on

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Anyone who owns a fish tank knows that a good amount of care is required to keep fish happy, healthy, and most of all – alive. [Vicente Jiménez] usually has no problem keeping up on the day to day maintenance such as feeding and switching the tank light, but he wanted to automate these processes [...]

  Tags:   

• 10:01

  IR helicopter controller hacked into a Linux game pad

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Mike Kohn’s] Syma S107 helicopter wasn’t flying as well as it used to due to a broken gear, he figured he might as well find some use for the toy’s controller, since it was currently sitting around collecting dust. Having done a bunch of work with Syma IR protocols earlier this year, he decided it [...]

  Tags:  controller syma helicopter mike-kohn linux-game game-pad linux hacks  

• April 13, 2012
• 6:01

  This LED table really ties the room together

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Along with quadrotors, and portable game consoles, one of the hacks we never get tired of seeing is an LED matrix table. [Christian Enchelmaier] wrote in to share his take on the ever popular pixelated furniture, which we think came out pretty well (Translation). Instead of going for a full-sized coffee table, [Christian] decided to [...]

  Tags:  room led table christian christian-enchelmaier led-matrix matrix-table coffee-table home hacks  

• April 12, 2012
• 5:01

  Using GPS to stay aware of red light cameras

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Depending on how you view them, red light cameras are a great way to get people to drive carefully, or an utter nuisance. We agree with the latter opinion, as does [Dave], so he built a handy little device that alerts him when he’s about to approach one of these intersections. His Red Light Camera [...]

  Tags:  gps nuisance way dave red-light-cameras red-light-camera using-gps arduino hacks  

• April 11, 2012
• 17:21

  DIY “Project Glass” clone looks almost too good to be true

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  By now we’re assuming you are all familiar with Google’s “Project Glass”, an ambitious augmented reality project for which they revealed a promotional video last week. [Will Powell] saw the promo vid and was so inspired that he attempted to rig up a demo of Project Glass for himself at home. While it might seem [...]

  Tags:  reality-project google clone misc hacks  

• 7:01

  Simple tweak alerts you when you’ve left your headlights on

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Paul McGuinness] owns a Series III Land Rover, and as the vehicle as formerly used by the British military, it’s lacking some of the modern amenities he was accustomed to. Overlooking the lack of power steering and all-around drum brakes, the one item that [Paul] really missed was a buzzer that let him know when [...]

  Tags:  paul-mcguinness drum-brakes buzzer transportation hacks  

• 6:01

  Adding an electronic lock to a DIY book safe

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  DIY book safes are well and good, but if you give someone enough time to peruse your book collection, the 3-inch thick “Case study on Animal Husbandry Techniques during the 14th Century” is likely to stand out among your collection of hand-bound “Twilight” fan fiction. In an attempt to teach his friend a bit about [...]

  Tags:  collection book diy husbandry-techniques animal-husbandry electronic-lock arduino hacks  

• April 10, 2012
• 10:01

  Wooden CNC touch probe

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Gary] sent a few pictures of his latest project our way via Flickr, which we thought a few of you CNC owners might be interested in. He has been working with his CNC machine a lot lately and decided it was about time he built a touch probe for his rig. His initial goal was [...]

  Tags:  probe touch cnc gary touch-probe flickr cnc-machine hacks  

• 9:01

  Wireless door alarms protect your stuff from afar

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Webby] had a friend named [Steve], and as the story goes [Steve] had a few storage sheds on his property that were prone to break-ins. While the doors were all fitted with a lock, wooden doors are only so strong, and are easy fodder for intruders bearing crowbars and the like. [Steve] was looking for [...]

  Tags:   

• April 08, 2012
• 7:29

  CNC’d business cards will definitely get you noticed

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The guys over at North Street Labs were bored, so they figured why not go ahead and built a CNC machine just for kicks. While they haven’t put up build details on the CNC just yet, they do have some newly milled business cards to show off just how well the machine works. Part ruler, [...]

  Tags:  business machine cnc north-street cnc-machine business-cards ruler Hackerspaces  

• April 06, 2012
• 8:01

  A simple project to get you started with the Android ADK

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you just got your hands on a shiny new Android phone and are looking for a fun project to try out, you might want to check out this simple Arduino exercise that [Mike Mitchel] put together. Everyone needs a starting off point for hacking, and [Mike] thought that combining and Arduino and Android handset [...]

  Tags:  arduino android project mike mike-mitchel fun-project mitchel adk hacks  

• April 04, 2012
• 14:15

  Make your RC car drive itself with this simple brain swap

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If the kids have lost interest in that RC car or truck you bought them over the holidays, [Randy Sarafan] from Instructables has a few ideas that might help make the toys fun again, while teaching your kids a bit about electronics in the process. In his writeup, he shows how to swap out the [...]

  Tags:  brain drive car randy-sarafan sarafan instructables writeup arduino hacks  

• 8:01

  Auto-locking pet door ensures that your outdoor kitty obeys its curfew

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you’ve got a pet that roams freely in and out of your house, you may find yourself wanting to more closely regulate how they come and go. [tareker] was looking to keep his cat indoors at night when dangerous animals might be lurking in the neighborhood, but he didn’t want it to become a [...]

  Tags:  door pet auto-locking dangerous-animals curfew kitty arduino hacks  

• April 03, 2012
• 14:14

  Rabiscoscopio – Oscilloscope drawing made easy

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you own an oscilloscope, sooner or later the urge to see something other than signals on the screen will strike. Some people ignore the urge and go about their normal business while others give in, spending hours carefully crafting images, games, and more. The process is time consuming and tricky as our own [Kevin [...]

  Tags:  signals urge drawing classic hacks  

• 6:01

  DrummerBot joins the jam session when your bandmates are busy

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  It seems that more often than not, [Steffest] finds himself inspired to rock out on his guitar without a percussion section to back him up. Like any enterprising hacker/musician would be wont to do, he built a robotic drummer to join in when he got the urge to play. His DrummerBot is driven using an [...]

  Tags:  percussion-section bandmates jam-session arduino hacks  

• April 02, 2012
• 6:01

  Open source tracking system gets a Kickstarter

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Many of the hacks featured here inspire others to build on the creator’s work, and on occasion the positive feedback brings the hack to market. Last year we told you about [Wayne’s] creation, a system aimed at tracking down would-be game console thieves. He received a bunch of requests to document the tracker in full, [...]

  Tags:  source kickstarter system wayne source-tracking-system positive-feedback thieves arduino hacks  

• April 01, 2012
• 11:01

  Build an elevator controller, gain a friend for life

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Michael Ruppe] was working one day when a man named [Kevin] approached him for a bit of help with a project. It just so happened that [Kevin] was in the middle of constructing a DIY residential elevator and he needed assistance putting a control board together. [Kevin] had no problem casting a forklift ram into [...]

  Tags:  elevator-controller residential-elevator controller-gain home hacks  

• 8:01

  Updating your workspace for more organized and efficient hacking

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you’ve ever looked at one of [Todd Harrison’s] teardown or how-to videos closely, you would likely notice that his work bench looks like a standard hacker workspace. While we all try to keep our work areas clear of clutter, it’s not uncommon for components to pile up, cords to tangle, and things to get [...]

  Tags:  work-bench todd-harrison work-areas how-to  

• March 31, 2012
• 6:06

  Floppy autoloader takes the pain out of archiving 5000 Amiga disks

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Archiving data from old floppy disks can be a tedious process at best. Poorly labeled disks combined with slow transfer speeds put it high on the list of things we would rather not do, and it turns out that [Dweller] was of the same opinion. With an estimated 5,000 floppies in his collection, he finally decided [...]

  Tags:  pain autoloader floppy transfer-speeds floppies classic hacks  

• March 29, 2012
• 7:01

  Rain barrel irrigation system keeps your plants fed when you’re too busy

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Kyle Gabriel] moved into a house with a nice tract of land behind it, but due to his busy schedule he had yet to plant the garden he so desperately wanted. He worried that his hectic life and busy hours would lead to accidentally neglecting his garden, so he built a water collection and automated [...]

  Tags:  rain-barrel irrigation-system water-collection arduino hacks  

• March 27, 2012
• 8:01

  Collecting Radon data in the name of science and safety

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  When [Chris Nafis] built an addition onto his historical home he found that a Radon problem, previously mitigated with plenty of concrete, seemed to rear its ugly head yet again. He eventually resigned himself to installing a Radon fan and detector – the latter of which offered no way to store measurement data. He wanted [...]

  Tags:  radon-data measurement-data radon-problem arduino hacks  

• 6:01

  [Aaron] shows us what life would be like if [Bob Vila] started hacking headphones

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Aaron Horeth] had a pair of headphones that had seen better days, and before he tossed them out, he realized that he could use them to build a set of custom cans. He had always wanted a pair of headphones with a detachable cord to prevent damage when tripped over, and thought that his old [...]

  Tags:  set pair life aaron-horeth bob-vila aaron better-days headphones misc hacks  

• March 25, 2012
• 14:26

  Weightlifting coach will nag you about your form…at least until the batteries run dry

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We always enjoy seeing what Electrical and Computer Engineering students dream up for their final projects, and though we must have missed this back in 2010 when it was published, [Bruce Land] dropped us a line to bring our attention to this cool Haptic Exercise Coach. Designed and built by Cornell students [Michael Lyons] and [...]

  Tags:  nag weightlifting coach michael-lyons bruce-land exercise-coach cornell-students medical hacks  

• 13:26

  Re-live 1978 in all its glory with the [Roth] Scream Box

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We never imagined that [David Lee Roth] would mesh well with an Arduino, that is until Flickr user [tgtsfkncld] showed off his [Roth] Scream Box a few days ago. The unassuming box resembles sort of a nondescript “Easy Button”, but its payload is far more entertaining than whatever Staples could have possibly recorded for their [...]

  Tags:  re-live scream box roth david-lee-roth arduino david-lee hacks  

• March 22, 2012
• 15:01

  Electric poncho keeps you warm on the go

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  With the mild winter and spring we have had, it might seem strange to think about ways to keep yourself warm, but there’s no better time than the present to prepare for chilly weather down the line. In his blog [Berto] was thinking about how to keep warm when things cool off again, and decided [...]

  Tags:  electric poncho winter weather-down chilly-weather mild-winter misc hacks  

• 14:01

  Remove your Arduino’s external oscillator to gain a free pair of IO pins

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Mark] from SpikenzieLabs was wrapping up a project using an Arduino the other day and found himself in need of a few more I/O pins. He could have added extra circuitry to the project, but he decided to see if he could gain a few pins by removing a few components instead. He put together [...]

  Tags:  remove arduino project mark free-pair oscillator hacks  

• March 21, 2012
• 9:01

  The Pirate Bay aims for the clouds…literally

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  There is no shortage of government and entertainment-related agencies chomping at the bit to shut down the Pirate Bay for good. While the group has not suffered a permanent service ending raid like [Kim Dotcom] and the Megaupload crew, they are always thinking up novel ways to ensure that the site can endure whatever law [...]

  Tags:  government bit shortage kim-dotcom pirate-bay permanent-service chomping-at-the-bit news  

• 7:01

  Arduino shield includes everything but the kitchen sink

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The crew at Cooking Hacks in Zaragoza wrote in to share a new shield they developed for the Arduino platform. There are a hundred different shields out there that do this and that, but we think their 3G/GPRS shield looks pretty slick. The base shield contains a WCDMA and HSPA compatible 3G modem as well as [...]

  Tags:  shield everything arduino zaragoza wcdma shields hacks  

• March 20, 2012
• 7:01

  When console modders face off, only good things happen

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We really love when friendly competition leads to excellent hacking. Not too long ago, we showed you a nicely done Sega Genesis portable put together by console hacker [Downing] who challenged fellow hacker [EVIL NOD] to a build off. The two were hacking Sega consoles, [Downing’s] for personal use, while [EVIL NOD] was working on [...]

  Tags:  hacker downing sega nod fellow-hacker sega-consoles face-off news  

• 6:01

  Tearing down a failed LED bulb

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Todd Harrison] was thinking of replacing some incandescent light bulbs in his house with LED models, so and his wife picked up a single candelabra bulb to test before they spent the cash to swap them all out. The bulb died in about a week’s time, so [Todd] got out his trusty electronic disassembly device [...]

  Tags:  led bulb tearing todd todd-harrison incandescent-light-bulbs led-bulb home hacks  

• March 17, 2012
• 10:57

  DIY film projector fits in the palm of your hand

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  DSLRs aside, the price of digital cameras these days can make it easy to consider just tossing your old one out when it breaks. [Leonidas Tolias] had another idea, and with a few broken cameras he had on hand he constructed a slick little pocket-sized projector. The project started out as a pair of lenses [...]

  Tags:  diy hand projector film-projector palm-of-your-hand leonidas digital cameras hacks  

• March 15, 2012
• 14:19

  Kid-friendly RFID media center playlist control

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  While young children have the tiny hands and fingers that most hackers/tinkerers wish they possessed from time to time, their fine motor skills aren’t always up to par when it comes to operating complicated electronics. People are always looking for ways to make their home entertainment systems accessible to their kids, and [Humpadilly] is no [...]

  Tags:  rfid time kid-friendly home-entertainment-systems hands-and-fingers tiny-hands arduino hacks  

• 7:01

  A simple touch interface for Music Player Daemon and more

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Andrew] recently got the authorization to install Linux on his work PC, and he was looking for a way to control his music without relying on keyboard shortcuts to do so. Additionally, he wanted an unmistakable visual cue when he received messages in Pidgin, so he decided to build an external input/notification box. The control [...]

  Tags:  interface music touch andrew keyboard-shortcuts visual-cue touch-interface linux hacks  

• March 14, 2012
• 12:01

  An inside look on how reed switches are manufactured

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [York] wrote in to share a video he stumbled across while researching reed switches and relays, which documents the tightly controlled process through which they are produced. Like many other electronic components out there, we usually don’t give a lot of thought to how they are made, especially when the final cost is relatively small. [...]

  Tags:  video process look york reed-switches electronic-components relays misc hacks  

• 6:01

  USB controlled SPÖKA night light

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [wejp] picked up an IKEA SPÖKA night light, but he wasn’t entirely impressed with its functionality. Pressing the top of the ghost’s head causes it to cycle through a few colors, and pressing it a second time locks it into displaying the current color until its tapped again. Inspired by this SPÖKA hack which used [...]

  Tags:  spka night usb ikea second-time hack attiny hacks  

• March 12, 2012
• 14:20

  Portal mini golf hole will incinerate your ball…you monster

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  One of [Tom’s] friends is celebrating a birthday soon, and he was asked to make a mini golf hole for the event. While most people would expect to bring beer or guac to the shindig, he saw this as an opportunity to bring a little bit of Portal to life. Near the end of the [...]

  Tags:  mini golf portal tom monster-one golf-hole guac misc hacks  

• 8:01

  ecDB offers a simple, intuitive way to keep your electronic inventory organized

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  One of the most important tools for any hacker or maker is organization. You might consider it more of a concept rather than a physical tool, but regardless of how you like to frame it, ensuring your tools and components are (nearly) always where they should be is key. As the odds and ends add [...]

  Tags:  electronic-inventory odds-and-ends intuitive-way news  

• March 11, 2012
• 8:01

  GeneBoy is the portable Sega Genesis you’ve always wanted

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  There’s something about portable gaming systems that just doesn’t get old. Perhaps its the nostalgia, or the unique cases and form factors the modders come up with. Whatever it might be, we think they’re great. [Downing] wrote in to share a portable system he just wrapped up, called the GeneBoy. He broke down a Sega [...]

  Tags:  genesis geneboy sega sega-genesis form-factors modders handhelds hacks  

• March 10, 2012
• 11:01

  Adding a laser sight to your drill press in just a few easy steps

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Derek] was using his Dremel drill press to prep a bunch of PCBs, and found that it was getting difficult to focus on the spinning drill bit each time to line it up with the solder pads on the boards. He figured that a laser sight would help move the process along, but since no [...]

  Tags:  laser drill sight derek dremel-drill-press laser-sight drill-bit tool hacks  

• March 09, 2012
• 10:01

  A capacitive discharge welder/cutter for all your lightweight needs

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Radu Motisan] wrote in to share a cool project he has been working on lately, a pulsed microspot welder/cutter. The device is capable of spot welding thin metals such as foils and battery tabs by sending a pair of high current pulses between the two electrodes whenever [Radu] presses the trigger button. The cutting portion [...]

  Tags:  welder radu cutter thin-metals current-pulses capacitive-discharge microcontrollers  

• 9:01

  Wireless solar water heater controller ensures hot water every time

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Peter Sobey] had a solar hot water heater installed in his home, which worked great until he relocated his kitchen to a neighboring room. Now a good bit further from the tank, the hot water reaching his sink was tepid at best due to the increased distance and temperature limiting mixer valve in the new [...]

  Tags:  heater Wireless water peter-sobey solar-water-heater hot-water-heater arduino hacks  

• March 08, 2012
• 9:01

  Hard resetting your Ford Touch system the easy way

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jeff Clymer] owns a Ford Focus, and while he’s generally happy with the car, the “My Ford Touch/Sync” system can be buggy at times. He spends a lot of time in the car each day, so when the entertainment center locks up as it is frequently known to do, he has to turn off the [...]

  Tags:  sync-system ford-focus clymer transportation hacks  

• March 07, 2012
• 9:01

  Vintage VT100 terminal computing…with a Beaglebone

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  A cool little project came our way, which we thought might be of interest to some of you vintage computer buffs. [Joerg Hoppe] wrote in to share a DEC VT100 terminal he resurrected in a novel fashion. His “DECBox” system was created with a Beaglebone, which he uses to run a wide array of PDP11/VAX [...]

  Tags:  beaglebone vintage terminal dec-vt100-terminal novel-fashion computer-buffs classic hacks  

• March 06, 2012
• 14:02

  Monitoring home electricity usage via a tidy wall display

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Janne Mäntyharju] wanted to get an idea as to how much electricity he consumed in his new home, mainly to see if using his fireplace for additional heat had any effect on his bill. Luckily his power meter was mounted in the utility room of his house, making it easy to keep tabs on his [...]

  Tags:  monitoring electricity home janne-mntyharju home-electricity electricity-usage power-meter hacks  

• March 05, 2012
• 14:24

  Reverse engineering an oscilloscope circumvents vendor crippleware

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The crew over at the Hungarian Autonomous Center for Knowledge (H.A.C.K.) say they aren’t the most well-funded organization out there, so they were stoked when they found they could afford to bring a slightly used UNI-T UT2025B digital oscilloscope into the shop. As they started to tinker with it, the scope revealed one major shortcoming [...]

  Tags:  oscilloscope crippleware vendor h.a.c.k digital-oscilloscope shortcoming reverse-engineering tool hacks  

• 7:01

  USB dongle generates and enters your passwords so you don’t have to

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Like many businesses out there, [Joonas Pihlajamaa’s] employer requires him to change his password every few months. Instead of coming up with a complex, yet easy to remember password again and again, he built a small USB device to do the work for him. He dismantled an old USB memory stick, fitting it with an [...]

  Tags:  password dongle usb usb-memory-stick usb-device attiny hacks  

• 6:01

  Antique phone provides a soundtrack perfect for restoring old cars

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Simon] is in the middle of restoring/building himself an Austin 7 Special out in his garage, and like most tinkerers, found that music helps to move the process along. He happened to have an old Bakelite generator phone out in the garage as well, and figured that he might as well have it do something [...]

  Tags:  antique garage phone simon austin restoring-old-cars antique-phone bakelite arduino hacks  

• March 04, 2012
• 11:07

  Dell Streak screen repair yields a few welcome surprises

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Rupert’s] friend cracked the screen on his beloved Dell Streak 5 phone and handed it off to see if [Rupert] could repair it. He says that the glass replacement was a relatively straightforward affair – a process he documented in thorough detail worthy of iFixit. He did come across a few interesting tidbits along the [...]

  Tags:  friend repair screen dell-streak rupert straightforward-affair ifixit interesting-tidbits cellphones hacks  

• 7:07

  Quadrotor squadron plays the [James Bond] theme song in preparation for world domination

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you weren’t already a big fan of quadrotors by this point, we’re pretty sure the video below will get you on the bandwagon in no time flat. The video was debuted this past week at the TED2012 conference, giving [Daniel Mellinger, Alex Kushleyev, and Vijay Kumar] from the University of Pennsylvania GRASP Lab, a chance [...]

  Tags:  video quadrotor squadron vijay-kumar alex-kushleyev daniel-mellinger james-bond pennsylvania-grasp-lab james-bond-theme world-domination musical  

• March 03, 2012
• 8:22

  Building your own portable 3D camera

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Steven] needed to come up with a project for the Computer Vision course he was taking, so he decided to try building a portable 3D camera. His goal was to build a Kinect-like 3D scanner, though his solution is better suited for very detailed still scenes, while the Kinect performs shallow, less detailed scans of [...]

  Tags:  building camera project steven computer-vision-course 3d-scanner 3d-camera digital cameras hacks  

• 6:23

  Tutorial series shows you everything you need to salvage transformers from microwaves

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Transformers certainly have a tendency to increase the cost of any project, especially if you need a large transformer to get the job done. Microwave ovens are great sources of free transformers, though they are not always in the shape required for your next build. [Matt] put together three great tutorial videos covering the basics [...]

  Tags:  everything series tutorial matt microwave-ovens microwaves transformers repair hacks  

• March 02, 2012
• 7:24

  Build your own line laser for 3D scanning

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Valentin] wanted to experiment with 3D scanning some objects he had around the house, but says he didn’t want to buy a line laser for the project since they are pretty expensive. Fortunately, he had some random components sitting in his parts bin, and he was able to build his own line laser without spending [...]

  Tags:  laser line build valentin random-components line-laser parts-bin hacks  

• March 01, 2012
• 16:01

  Monitoring and controlling your garage door from afar with an IP camera

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Last year, [Mark Simonelli’s] wife asked him if he could design something that would allow her to remotely check if their garage door had been left open. [Mark] jumped at the chance to tinker with electronics and designed a system around an old TrendNet IP camera. When remotely connected to the camera using IP Cam [...]

  Tags:  door garage camera mark-simonelli mark ip-cam simonelli ip-camera android hacks  

• 15:01

  BB313 breadboard platform makes ATtiny prototyping painless

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [John De Cristofaro aka Johngineer] uses various ATmega microcontrollers in his electronics projects, but he finds himself reaching for an ATtiny2313 or ATtiny4313 more often than not. He got tired of having to wire up pin headers, capacitors, and the like each time he started a project, so he spent some time designing an easy [...]

  Tags:  breadboard attiny time john-de-cristofaro de-cristofaro pin-headers electronics-projects attiny hacks  

• 14:01

  Minestation – An external weather display for your Minecraft world

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you’re a big Minecraft fan, the folks at [radikaldesign] have something that might be of interest to you. (Translation) Inspired by some of their Minecraft-loving friends, they have developed Minestation – a weather station for your Minecraft game. The concept is simple. Here in the real world we have the ability to look out the [...]

  Tags:  weather minecraft minestation weather-display loving-friends weather-station arduino hacks  

• February 29, 2012
• 13:16

  Semaphore signal replica perfect for the train buff in your life

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [John Philip’s] brother has a sizable room set aside for his model railroad setup, and he was looking for something interesting to add to his brother’s collection. Rather than construct something for the railroad itself, he decided that an early 1900’s-style semaphore railroad signal would make a great novelty item for the room. The project [...]

  Tags:  train-buff railroad-signal john-philip arduino hacks  

• 9:01

  Projector calibration on uneven surfaces made easy

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you are thinking of building your own flight/racing sim setup at home, you might want to check this out. [Alex] from the Garoa Hackerspace in Säo Paulo, Brazil put together a slick setup that makes projector image calibration a breeze. When building a wraparound screen for such a simulator, you are likely to run [...]

  Tags:  image-calibration slick-setup uneven-surfaces arduino hacks  

• February 28, 2012
• 11:01

  Reprogramming promotional USB dongles to launch custom URLs

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The teachers at [Jjshortcut's] school were each given a Webkey by the administration as a promotional item of sorts, but most of the staff saw them as useless, so they pitched them. [Jjshortcut] got his hands on a few of them and decided to take one apart to see what made them tick. He found [...]

  Tags:  custom reprogramming usb wouter wouter-van-der custom-urls webkey dongles misc hacks  

• February 25, 2012
• 12:03

  Giving old appliances a second life with simple tweaks

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Cruising estate sales can be a total crapshoot – sometimes you find a goldmine, other times nothing but junk. [John Ownby] recently found a sleek-looking old blender at such a sale and decided to take it home. The chrome plated base and fluted glass immediately caught his eye, but he didn’t buy the blender so [...]

  Tags:  blender life cruising john-ownby crapshoot second-life classic hacks  

• 9:01

  Hacking Hack a Day with Greasemonkey

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Ever since Hack a Day first emerged on the scene in 2004, the site’s design has been pretty consistent. The black background with its green and white text, while a bit dubious looking at work, is fine by me. For others however, the site’s design is a constant eyesore both figuratively and literally. [James Litton] [...]

  Tags:  day hack site james-litton hacking-hack greasemonkey firefox hacks  

• February 24, 2012
• 6:01

  DIY Conductive ink lets you freehand circuits on the cheap

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jordan] likes the flexibility that conductive inks offer when putting together electronic circuits, but says that they are often too expensive to purchase in decent quantities, and that they usually require substrate-damaging temperatures to cure. After reading a UIUC Materials Research Lab article about making conductive ink that anneals at relatively low temperatures, he decided [...]

  Tags:  ink conductive diy jordan materials-research-lab conductive-inks conductive-ink chemistry hacks  

• February 23, 2012
• 14:02

  Autonomous metal detector lets you sit back, get rich

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  As a kid, metal detectors seemed like great fun. Every commercial I saw beckoned with tales of buried treasure “right in my own back yard” – a bounty hard for any kid to pass up. In reality, the process was both time consuming and tedious, with little reward to be had. [Gareth] liked the idea [...]

  Tags:  kid metal autonomous gareth metal-detector metal-detectors back-yard arduino hacks  

• 13:02

  A TV-B-Gone with a PIC twist

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Kayvon] thought that the TV-B-Gone was a fun little device and wanted to build one, but he didn’t have an AVR programmer handy. Rather than picking up some AVR kit and simply building a replica, he decided to give his PIC skills a workout and build a Microchip derivative of his own. The PIC-based TV-B-Gone [...]

  Tags:  avr pic tv-b-gone avr-kit avr-programmer microchip microcontrollers  

• February 14, 2012
• 15:01

  Improving your flight sim experience with Hall effect sensors

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Gene Buckle] built himself a nice custom cockpit for playing Flight Simulator, but during use he found that the gimbal he constructed for the pitch and roll controls was nearly unusable. He narrowed the problem down to the potentiometers he used to read the angle of the controls, so he set off to find a [...]

  Tags:  experience sim flight gene-buckle flight-sim-experience hall-effect-sensors custom-cockpit misc hacks  

• February 12, 2012
• 11:25

  Puncher tracks your freelancing hours, time spent in TSA patdowns

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Raphael Abrams] does a lot of freelance work, but he has trouble accurately keeping track of the hours he has put in for his clients. After trying various applications and methods of logging his time, he finally decided to build a device that worked just the way he liked. He calls his device the “Freelance [...]

  Tags:  freelance device time raphael-abrams puncher raphael microcontrollers  

• February 11, 2012
• 9:01

  Create PCBs in just minutes with this awesome spray etching machine

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you have ever produced your own PCBs at home, you know that it can be somewhat of a time consuming process. Spending 20 or so minutes manually agitating a board is a drag, and while aquarium bubbler setups improve the process, they are far from ideal. [Christian Reed] knew that if he really wanted [...]

  Tags:  machine spray process christian-reed bubbler pcbs aquarium chemistry hacks  

• February 09, 2012
• 14:39

  The Ultimate Breadboard – a prototyping station that has it all

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Claudio] was working on a homebrew oscilloscope project when he started thinking about how unsuitable a standard breadboard is for a large-scale project. Rather than adding components on top of components until they became what he lovingly calls a “fragile, unforgiving crapstack”, he decided to build himself the Ultimate Breadboard. He packed so much into [...]

  Tags:  breadboard ultimate project claudio oscilloscope-project homebrew Hardware  

• February 07, 2012
• 9:01

  Circuit Playground – An electronics reference app from Adafruit

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  It’s not everyday that we review software around here, but the folks at Adafruit recently put together an iOS app that I figured might be of interest. Their iPad/iPhone compatible application is called “Circuit Playground”, and it includes all sorts of handy electronics reference tools. For the context of this review, it should be noted [...]

  Tags:  reference playground circuit compatible-application ipad iphone hacks  

• February 03, 2012
• 13:25

  Office game show buzzer keeps things fair and square

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The sales team in [Chuck’s] office is a pretty competitive bunch as you might expect, and they decided that they wanted a system which would allow them to challenge one another during their weekly meetings. The competition involves answering questions posed by their manager, but hand raising only works for so long – they needed [...]

  Tags:  game-show-buzzer answering-questions arduino hacks  

• February 02, 2012
• 13:01

  Rapid fire, remote controlled ping pong ball turret

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Andrew] and his brother had some time (and a lot of ping pong balls) on their hands, so they decided to have some fun and built a remote-controlled ping pong ball turret. Arduino aside, the turret is cheap and easy to build as [Andrew’s] writeup explains. The firing mechanism was constructed using a pair of [...]

  Tags:  turret ball pong andrew ping-pong-balls ping-pong-ball ball-turret arduino hacks  

• January 31, 2012
• 16:01

  WiFi garage door opener makes forgotten keys a thing of the past

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Tod’s] daughter has a habit of forgetting to take a house key along with her, so he was looking for a way to make accessing the house easier in a pinch. He had tried wireless garage door keypads in the past, but their performance was so-so at best. After scouring the market for commercial solutions [...]

  Tags:  house door garage tod garage-door-keypads garage-door-opener commercial-solutions home hacks  

• January 25, 2012
• 5:01

  Stop light converted to control office foot traffic

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  When [Paul Rea] started work with his current employer, he was intrigued by a traffic light that sat unused near the entrance of the “Engineering Loft” where he was stationed. He promised himself that he would get it working one day, but several years passed before he had the chance to take a closer look [...]

  Tags:  stop traffic office paul-rea foot-traffic traffic-light closer-look arduino hacks  

• January 24, 2012
• 5:01

  A simple, self-contained 7-segment display

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  It’s no secret that seven-segment displays are an easy and useful way to relay data, so [Kelvyn Panici] decided to put together a minimalst, self-contained display for use around the house. The display itself is a 16-digit model he picked up from DealExtreme for under $10. He wanted to find a microcontroller small enough to fit [...]

  Tags:  display secret segment seven-segment-displays panici simple-self arduino hacks  

• January 19, 2012
• 9:01

  Adding digital game indicators to a Neo Geo arcade cabinet

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [George] is a Neo Geo aficionado, and among his collection of paraphernalia, he has a MVS-Mini game console. His mini “Multi Video System” is a 2-slot model, meaning that it can hold two game cartridges at a time, which are indicated by plastic cards inserted in the cabinet’s face plate. Instead of swapping those cards [...]

  Tags:  neo geo game george neo-geo-arcade slot-model arcade-cabinet classic hacks  

• 4:01

  Reusing an old pacemaker as a flash timer

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Most people use pacemakers to, you know, keep their heart pumping at a steady rhythm. [David Prutchi] on the other hand has found a pretty novel use for some of the old pacemakers he has in his collection. We really had no idea that pacemakers had uses outside the world of medicine, but [David] has [...]

  Tags:  reusing pacemaker flash david-prutchi david flash-timer steady-rhythm world-of-medicine digital cameras hacks  

• January 15, 2012
• 10:26

  Sound-reactive EL wire box makes gift giving awesome

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jonathan Thomson] was ruminating on EL wire displays and decided that most he has seen are boring, static fixtures or installations that simply flash EL wire on and off at a fixed rate. He thought that EL wire has far more potential than that, and set off to build something more exciting. Using a graphic [...]

  Tags:  box sound-reactive wire jonathan-thomson wire-displays fixed-rate thomson musical hacks  

• January 13, 2012
• 9:19

  Tool box light dimmer helps out a friend, offers up design tips

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [miceuz] has a friend that works as a theatre technician, and in the course of his job he often needs to jigger with various stage components while shows are in progress. As you can imagine, the lighting situation is far from ideal, so he asked [miceuz] to build him an adjustable lighting solution for his [...]

  Tags:  friend miceuz lighting adjustable-lighting lighting-situation lighting-solution led hacks  

• January 12, 2012
• 15:56

  Automating the shutdown of APC UPS devices

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Ishan Karve] works in some bizarro world where the building management demands that all servers and Uninterruptible Power Supplies be shut down at the end of each evening. While inconceivable to most systems admins, he has no recourse but to comply. This means that his employees need to turn things off before they leave for [...]

  Tags:  apc shutdown automating apc-ups uninterruptible-power-supplies management-demands arduino hacks  

• January 11, 2012
• 14:32

  Power Wheels Jeep makes an awesome R/C car

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Will] from RevoltLab wrote in to share part one of a cool project he is working on right now, a remote-controlled mobile rocket launcher. Before you run off and call the Department of Homeland Security, he says that the launcher will be used for personal hobby rockets, which are typically considered mostly harmless. The first [...]

  Tags:  wheels power launcher hobby-rockets rocket-launcher department-of-homeland-security toy hacks  

• January 09, 2012
• 14:25

  Rainbow Machine livens up any photograph

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Shameel Arafin, Sean McIntyre, and Reid Bingham] really dig rainbows. Going by the moniker the “RainBroz”, the trio built a portable display that can be used to add cool light painting effects to pictures. The group brings their Rainbow Machine all over the place, including parties, gatherings, and random spots on the street. Anyone is [...]

  Tags:  rainbow machine photograph sean-mcintyre reid-bingham shameel-arafin rainbow-machine arafin painting-effects digital cameras  

• January 08, 2012
• 10:00

  [Alex] shows us what happens when Dance Dance Revolution meets Simon

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Alex] was digging through his closet and came upon an old PS2 game pad for Dance Dance Revolution. He hated the idea of throwing it out just slightly more than the idea of playing DDR again, so he decided to find a way to reuse it. He was a big fan of the game Simon [...]

  Tags:  revolution idea dance alex simon dance-dance-revolution game-simon ps2-game arduino hacks  

• 8:00

  DIY shade finder tool takes the tedium out of solar surveys

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Steven Dufresne] does a lot of tinkering with solar-powered applications, a hobby which can be very time consuming if done right. One process he carries out whenever building a solar installation is creating a sun chart to determine how much (or little) sun the target area will get. The process requires [Steven] to take elevation [...]

  Tags:  sun diy process steven-dufresne steven target-area sun-chart solar hacks  

• January 07, 2012
• 13:01

  Using 555 timers to add “free play” functionality to classic arcade machines

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [John Zitterkopf] is in the middle of restoring a vintage Sega Star Trek Captain’s Chair arcade game for the upcoming 2012 Texas Pinball festival, though one prerequisite for the show is that the game supports some sort of free play mode. At this point he doesn’t have the option of tracking down a freeplay ROM [...]

  Tags:  arcade game play john-zitterkopf texas classic-arcade-machines 555-timers star-trek-captain classic hacks  

• 12:01

  Minimalist RGB LED cube has a very short BoM

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Asher Glick] wrote in to share a project he has been working on with his friend [Kevin Baker], a 4x4x4 RGB LED cube. The pair are students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and also members of the newly-formed Embedded Hardware Club on campus. As their first collaborative project, they decided to take on the ubiquitous LED [...]

  Tags:  led rgb cube kevin-baker asher-glick rensselaer-polytechnic-institute friend-kevin arduino hacks  

• January 06, 2012
• 9:01

  GSM remote control with the TiDiGino

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you’re looking to remotely control things around the house, but can’t do it over the Internet or via WiFi, the TiDiGino just might have what you’re looking for. [Boris Landoni] from Open Electronics sent some information on the TiDiGino our way, and it certainly looks like a useful device if you’re in need of [...]

  Tags:  tidigino gsm control boris-landoni boris remote-control arduino hacks  

• 6:01

  OK, you might not be paranoid – perhaps that priority mail box IS spying on you

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Thomas Renck] recently picked up a 1000mW wireless video transmitter that he ultimately planned to mount in an RC plane. Before he strapped it on a plane to potentially kiss it goodbye for good, he wanted to play with it a while to see what it was capable of. After a friend helped him determine [...]

  Tags:  priority plane mail thomas-renck wireless-video-transmitter priority-mail mail-box news  

• January 05, 2012
• 15:33

  Giving the Hexbug Spider freedom to explore on its own

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Eric Gregori] recently spent some time messing around with a Hexbug Spider, and wrote in to share some modifications he made to the toy. In its unaltered form the robot can be controlled remotely, and while it’s fun to play with, the excitement is short lived. Using a TI MSP430 along with a small motor [...]

  Tags:  ti-msp430 gregori excitement microcontrollers  

• 9:01

  Bang-banging your way to a perfect cake

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Rob Spanton’s] house is equipped with a rather cheap oven, which was discovered while his roommate tried using it to bake part of a wedding cake. If someone took a shower during the baking process, a large portion of unit’s gas pressure was diverted to the boiler, causing the oven to shut off completely. This [...]

  Tags:  bang-banging oven cake rob-spanton large-portion wedding-cake boiler cooking hacks  

• January 04, 2012
• 6:20

  Securing your Keurig with RFID

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Andrew Robinson] and his co-workers are lucky enough to have a Keurig coffee maker in their office, though they have a hard time keeping track of who owes what to the community coffee fund. Since K-Cups are more expensive than bulk coffee, [Andrew] decided that they needed a better way to log everyone’s drinking habits [...]

  Tags:  securing keurig coffee andrew andrew-robinson keurig-coffee-maker community-coffee arduino hacks  

• January 03, 2012
• 9:01

  Portable electronic drum kit made from plastic bowls

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Ian Cole’s] son is learning to play the drums on an electronic drum set, and he wanted a way to continue practicing during his frequent visits to his grandparents’ house. [Ian] had picked up a Spikenzielabs “Drum Kit Kit All-Inclusive” (DKKAI) earlier this summer, and set out to build an easily transportable drum set. The [...]

  Tags:  kit portable plastic ian ian-cole electronic-drum-kit electronic-drum-set learning-to-play-the-drums musical hacks  

• January 02, 2012
• 7:42

  Give yourself a sixth sense on the cheap

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Hackaday regular [Mikey Sklar] is no stranger to body modifications. He enjoys tweaking his body in ways that help him with day to day tasks, including a ruler tattoo on his arm and an RFID chip embedded in the web of his hand. Lately, he has been toying around with a less invasive means of [...]

  Tags:  sense day body body-modifications day-tasks sklar misc hacks  

• January 01, 2012
• 12:05

  Hackerspace light wall plays video at 30 fps

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The folks at The Quad Cities Collaboration and Hackerspace (QC Co-Lab) were trying to find something to build for their first big project, and had to look no further than the wall for inspiration. The north end of their facility is home to a huge 15×17 glass block wall that happens to face a well-traveled [...]

  Tags:  video wall hackerspace glass-block-wall quad-cities fps arduino hacks  

• 10:07

  A very detailed reflow oven build

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you do a lot of SMD soldering, a reflow oven is the fastest and most efficient way to get all those tiny components attached to your PCB. [Frank Zhao] saw the reflow ovens we featured here over the last few weeks and figured he might as well show off his rig as well. We’re [...]

  Tags:  lot oven reflow frank-zhao reflow-ovens tiny-components smd tool hacks  

• December 30, 2011
• 14:01

  Doomsday Keg of Radness helps ring in the New Year

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Lots of people buy noise makers for New Year’s eve, others opt to sing Auld Lang Syne – then there’s these guys. The crew at Stone Brewing Company throw an annual bash at their brewery in celebration of New Years, and while [Dino’s] countdown timer is great for intimate settings, they needed something bigger to [...]

  Tags:  new doomsday year dino auld-lang-syne countdown-timer radness holiday hacks  

• 7:11

  Build your own mini ball drop for New Year’s Eve

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Dino] wanted to make this New Year’s celebration a bit more interesting, but he can’t make it to New York for the ball drop. Instead, he decided to make his own mini display in his workshop. Obviously he’s working with a slightly smaller budget than the folks at Times Square, but we think his display [...]

  Tags:  mini drop ball eve dino new-york times-square ball-drop mini-ball arduino hacks  

• December 29, 2011
• 11:01

  Knockoff game controller makes a fine remote shutter release

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Duncan Murdock] received a Canon DSLR camera for Christmas and wanted a remote shutter release to go along with it. Since nary a store was open on Christmas, he was pretty much out of luck. Scrounging around in his parts drawer, he found all sorts of goodies waiting to be reused, including a knockoff Wii [...]

  Tags:  Release shutter knockoff duncan-murdock canon-dslr-camera shutter-release game-controller digital cameras hacks  

• 9:01

  [Bob] shows us how to make DIY calendars for vintage computer geeks

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Bob Alexander] wrote in to share a hobby of his that we thought was pretty timely considering the new year is quickly approaching. For several years now he has put together a custom calendar for himself, including both dates he finds important along with sweet pictures of vintage computer equipment. Friends and family found his [...]

  Tags:  vintage diy computer bob bob-alexander equipment-friends computer-geeks classic hacks  

• December 28, 2011
• 8:14

  Phone-controlled light display is simple and fun

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Ytai Ben-Tsvi] wrote in to share a little holiday project that he and friend [Al Linke] put together, a dynamic light display that takes its cues from his Android-powered smartphone. The display fits in a vase that sits in [Ytai’s] family room, and while it wasn’t exactly cheap to build, it sure looks nice. The [...]

  Tags:  phone-controlled ytai display al-linke ben-tsvi holiday-project dynamic-light android hacks  

• 6:15

  Video series shows how to build your own solar-charged R/C lawnmower

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  As winter is officially upon us, we’re pretty sure that the last thing most of you are thinking about is mowing your lawn. We would argue that it’s actually the ideal time to do so – that is, if you are interested in automating the process a bit. [Robert Smith] has spent a lot of [...]

  Tags:  video lawnmower series robert-smith video-series home hacks  

• December 24, 2011
• 7:00

  DIY solution does PoE on the cheap

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Depending on the scope of your requirements, Power over Ethernet (PoE) components can get pretty pricey. [Fire] wrote in to share a 4-port PoE solution he put together for under 20 euros (Ignore any SSL errors – we’ve checked it out, it’s safe). The most expensive part of the build was the 8-port patch panel he [...]

  Tags:  solution port poe port-patch-panel power-over-ethernet misc hacks  

• December 23, 2011
• 10:30

  Snap together boombox great for taking your music on the go

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Matt Keeter] wanted to take his music on the go, and wrote in to share a great looking boombox he built for under $100. His goal was to put something together that could be made in pretty much any hackerspace/fab lab, so his boombox was made using simple materials. He first modeled the boombox using [...]

  Tags:  boombox snap music matt-keeter fab-lab keeter digital audio hacks  

• December 22, 2011
• 10:01

  Keeping Christmas present hunters guessing with QR code gift tags

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Thadd Brooks] is a geeky dad of the highest degree. His kids are constantly trying to figure out what mom and dad bought them for Christmas, while he continues to think up ways to stymie their progress. He certainly could have put a few prank presents under the tree, but he opted to go a [...]

  Tags:  code christmas dad keeping-christmas mom-and-dad thadd holiday hacks  

• 6:01

  How to grow your own EL wire DNA helix lamp

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [LucidMovement] was looking for some crystal-based artwork and just couldn’t seem to find anything that fit the bill, so he decided to build something himself. The inspiration for his desk lamp came from something we’re all familiar with, a DNA double-helix. To grow the crystals he built a helix-shaped growing substrate out of nichrome and [...]

  Tags:  something lamp dna dna-double-helix dna-helix desk-lamp chemistry hacks  

• December 21, 2011
• 15:59

  Arduino notebook cover makes it easy to tinker anywhere

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Erv] was putting his holiday shopping list together and decided that instead of buying his friends something from the store, he would give them something a bit more useful. A former Electrical Engineer by trade, [Erv] typically prefers PIC microcontrollers, but he says that Arduinos are just so convenient to use for prototyping that he [...]

  Tags:  erv something arduino pic-microcontrollers electrical-engineer holiday-shopping hacks  

• December 20, 2011
• 14:53

  [Ben Krasnow] sticks LEDs in his contacts just for kicks

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Ben Krasnow] wrote in, saying that every so often a news story appears covering a project in which researchers embed a single pixel LED display inside a contact lens. The most recent article he saw featured a contact-wearing rabbit, and not being one to shy away from damaging his own body in the name of [...]

  Tags:  news leds story ben-krasnow krasnow recent-article contact-lens led hacks  

• 5:01

  DIY clapper is the ideal gift for the laziest person in your life

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you haven’t yet wrapped up your Christmas shopping, you may want to consider building [AlanFromJapan’s] implementation of the ever-classic “Clapper”. With its theme song burned into the brain of anyone old enough to remember the 80s, the clapper was a wonderful device that certainly put the “L” in laziness. Looking for an excuse to play [...]

  Tags:  clapper gift diy christmas-shopping laziness home hacks  

• December 19, 2011
• 15:01

  Prank gift keeps curious hands at bay

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  You all know that person. The one who picks up every present with their name on it, shaking it before busting into their best Carnac the Magnificent impression. Heck, you might even be that person. [Jason] was thinking about how to combat the gift shaker in his life and put together a simple prank that’s [...]

  Tags:  prank person gift jason carnac holiday hacks  

• 5:01

  This CheerLights display has a mind of its own

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Axel] wanted to participate in the CheerLights project this holiday season, but not one to always follow the rules he decided to make his display a bit different than most others out there. While the lights at his house are synchronized with the CheerLights project, he programmed his Cheeriobot with a little added personality. Normally, [...]

  Tags:  display cheerlights project axel holiday-season personality arduino hacks  

• December 18, 2011
• 15:01

  Head-mounted light display takes holiday cheer on the go

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Most holiday light displays we see this time of year are stationary, or at least confined to somebody’s home. [Marco Guardigli] wanted to take his lights on the go, and thought that a light up winter hat would be perfect for showing off his holiday spirit. In the winter he sports a sturdy wool felt [...]

  Tags:  head-mounted winter holiday marco-guardigli holiday-light-displays holiday-cheer holiday-spirit arduino hacks  

• 9:15

  Controlling your Christmas lights without ever getting off the couch

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  14 year-old [Connor Smith] has been busy this holiday season, thinking up ways to improve the lighting situation at home. A few weeks ago he put together this 3-channel light controller to toggle his parents’ external lights, incorporating an Arduino for control. The Arduino was used to switch the channels on and off at specified [...]

  Tags:  christmas controlling arduino connor-smith lighting-situation hacks  

• 7:13

  SMS remote start gives new life to your old smartphone

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Hack a Day alum [Will O’Brien] recently upgraded his phone, and was trying to find a use for his old one. He always wanted a remote starter for his Subaru Outback, but wasn’t interested in paying for an off the shelf kit. Since he had this old smartphone kicking around, he thought that it would [...]

  Tags:  sms smartphone start subaru-outback shelf-kit remote-starter arduino hacks  

• December 17, 2011
• 7:01

  CheerLights: Synchronizing Christmas lights around the globe

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  They say that the holidays are a time to gather with others, which usually translates into spending time with friends and family. The folks at ioBridge Labs thought that while friends and family certainly are a big part of the holidays, it would be pretty cool to gather together flocks of strangers by using the [...]

  Tags:  cheerlights family time christmas-lights flocks synchronizing arduino hacks  

• December 16, 2011
• 6:01

  Electronic ornament will definitely put [Dave] on Santa’s “naughty” list

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Dave Vandenbout] says that his sister has gotten big on Christmas traditions, and decided that the whole family should start making ornaments for the tree each year. Not one to let a chance to tinker with electronics pass him by, [Dave] started brainstorming the perfect electronic ornament for their tree. He settled on the Christmas [...]

  Tags:  christmas ornament tree dave dave-vandenbout christmas-traditions ornaments holiday hacks  

• December 15, 2011
• 14:30

  Build your own miniature self parking car

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Achu Wilson] was watching TV when he saw an ad for Volkswagen’s latest Passat, which happens to come equipped with a park assist mode. This essentially allows the car to park itself with little to no user interaction. While these systems come as a pricey add-on option, he figured he could build something similar in [...]

  Tags:  self build car wilson achu watching-tv passat microcontrollers  

• 6:01

  Twitter-enabled candy machine dispenses treats on command

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Michael Nilsson] and [Markus Olsson] were contemplating how to motivate members of their dev team when they came up with the idea of a candy machine that automatically dispenses treats when someone has earned it. They picked up a candy machine, a continuous rotation servo and a controller, then got busy automating the dispenser. The [...]

  Tags:  machine twitter-enabled candy markus-olsson michael-nilsson candy-machine continuous-rotation misc hacks  

• December 14, 2011
• 10:01

  Rudolph toy hacked to announce incoming email

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Tis the season for hacking, and [Nick McClanahan] at the GadgetGangster is certainly showing off his Christmas spirit with his most recent creation. He had an animatronic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer toy sitting around and thought it would be fun to convert him into an email reading machine. He tore open the toy, removing [...]

  Tags:  tis email toy nick-mcclanahan rudolph christmas-spirit incoming-email reading-machine misc hacks  

• December 13, 2011
• 12:33

  Troubleshooting household light timers

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  When [Todd Harrison’s] Christmas lights stayed on well past the pre-defined shut off time, he knew there was something wrong with the timer. He took the device into his workshop and spent some time diagnosing and repairing the device, a process he recorded for all to see. After busting the screw-less timer open with a [...]

  Tags:  light-timers todd-harrison christmas-lights repair hacks  

• 10:01

  Simple IR sensor simplifies laptop audio control

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Owen] has a fairly big project in the works, where he’ll need to use infrared light to send data wirelessly between two nodes. The only problem with his grand plan is that he has never built anything of the sort. As a learning exercise, he decided to try his hand at building a wireless control [...]

  Tags:  simple control sensor owen ir-sensor infrared-light exercise misc hacks  

• 9:01

  Ask Hackaday: Organizing a growing collection of electronic odds and ends

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Tim] wrote in, lamenting a problem that many of us can likely echo. Over the years, he has acquired all sorts of small electronic parts and components, along with tools and accessories – all of which are starting to crowd his workspace. He says that most of his stockpile is being stored in a tackle [...]

  Tags:  organizing collection hackaday tim odds-and-ends stockpile workspace Ask hackaday  

• December 12, 2011
• 9:01

  GE Color Effects hacking for the nautically inclined

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jim] wrote in to share some work he did with GE Color Effects LED lights in an effort to create a light display for his boat. He saw our coverage of the Color Effects G-35 hacking efforts by DeepDarc last year, and knew that they would be prefect for the boat. He did some careful [...]

  Tags:  color boat work jim holiday hacks  

• 8:01

  Nokia N900 control pad is perfect for gaming on the go

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Andrzej] loves his Nokia N900, noting that it makes a great portable gaming device. Since it supports a wide array of emulators, it’s perfect for indulging his gaming nostalgia on the go. He says that the one downside to the N900 is that its keyboard doesn’t make gaming easy, nor comfortable. To make gaming a [...]

  Tags:  nokia gaming control andrzej nokia-n900 gaming-device control-pad cellphones hacks  

• December 11, 2011
• 10:29

  Chrono-tomic shield helps your Arduino keep perfect time

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Josh] and his lab partner [Eric] needed a final project for their Embedded Systems Design class, and thought that designing an Arduino shield would be a cool idea. They noticed that there are plenty of ways to get an Arduino to keep time, though none that they knew of utilized WWVB (Atomic Time) signals directly. [...]

  Tags:  shield arduino time josh eric partner-eric lab-partner hacks  

• 8:29

  Detecting seismic waves with a piezo element

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  While we normally see piezo elements being used to output audio, [Veedo] thought that they could be used in a more useful manner. He bought way too many piezo film tabs and decided to use them to build a makeshift seismic sensor. The piezo tabs came with weights attached at one end, though while testing [...]

  Tags:  piezo detecting element piezo-elements piezo-element seismic-waves arduino hacks  

• December 09, 2011
• 10:01

  Lighted fan pull saves you from flailing around in the dark

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Like many people, [yardleydobon] had a hard time locating his ceiling fan’s pull chain at night when his room is completely dark. Rather than continue to flail around blindly grasping for the chain, he decided to find a way to illuminate it instead. He started off by disassembling a solar garden light, retaining the solar [...]

  Tags:  fan lighted chain solar-garden-light flail ceiling-fan home hacks  

• 8:01

  Tiny audio switcher eliminates repetitive plug swapping

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Phil] uses both his computer’s speakers and a set of headphones while working at his desk, but he was growing tired of constantly having to remove the headset from his sound card in order to insert the speaker plug. He’s been meaning to rig something up to make it easier to switch outputs, but never [...]

  Tags:  plug switcher tiny phil audio-switcher sound-card headphones microcontrollers  

• 7:01

  Follow up: Star Wars tree gets an upgrade

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We asked, and [Zach] listened. Earlier this week, we featured a circuit he built which allowed his tiny Star Wars Christmas tree to visually replicate the series’ theme song. Several of you, along with myself, thought it would be far cooler if the tree also played the music to accompany the light show, so [Zach] [...]

  Tags:  star tree upgrade zach star-wars-christmas tiny-star christmas-tree holiday hacks  

• December 08, 2011
• 7:01

  [DJ Sures] digs up another 80s robot toy, makes it awesome

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [DJ Sures] just can’t help himself from tinkering with robot toys built in the 80s. This time, he got his hands on an Omnibot-2000 (not to be confused with his other Omnibot hack), and updated it for the 21st century. After its obligatory run through the dishwasher, the robot was fitted with two heavy duty [...]

  Tags:  sures robot omnibot omnibot-2000 robot-toy robot-toys robots hacks  

• 5:01

  Hand made carbon fiber violin is a stunning work of craftsmanship

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Building a violin by hand is no easy task, but constructing one out of carbon fiber is an amazing feat! Carpenter [Ken] had never made a violin before, nor built anything substantial out of carbon fiber, and he figured the best way to learn was by doing. He spent a good bit of time measuring [...]

  Tags:  fiber carbon violin ken stunning-work carbon-fiber musical hacks  

• December 07, 2011
• 15:01

  Scam-o-Matic determines if you bought fake SD cards

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Andrew] recently got scammed on an SD card purchase and put together a small tool that can help you determine if you’ve had the wool pulled over your eyes as well. You see, he purchased a set of MicroSD cards, all of which had an advertised capacity of 4GiB. When he tried to use them, [...]

  Tags:  card scam-o matic andrew o-matic sd-cards microsd-cards misc hacks  

• 11:01

  Periodic Table of Swearing would even make a sailor blush

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you often find yourself at a loss for words in the heat of an argument, perhaps this Periodic Table of Swearing is something you might be interested in. Built as a marketing tool for the British comic “Modern Toss”, the table features over 100 fruit machine (slot machine) buttons, each of which triggers an [...]

  Tags:  swearing table periodic sailor-blush modern-toss table-features misc hacks  

• 10:01

  Christmas tree water sensor gets an upgrade and a fancy new box

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Eric Ayars] has a nice cast iron Christmas tree stand at home, but the only drawback is that the stand makes it hard to see just how much water is available to the tree. Last year we covered a small gadget he created to help keep tabs on the water level, but as several of [...]

  Tags:  christmas tree water eric-ayars christmas-tree-stand water-sensor ayars arduino hacks  

• December 06, 2011
• 7:01

  Playing classic 60s tunes with an all electronic band

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you are considering repurposing some old computer equipment to create music, be aware that the bar has been raised just a tad. YouTube user [BD594] spent some time sifting through his bin of used electronics and put together a 5-piece band that plays a pretty awesome rendition of The Animals’ “House of the Rising [...]

  Tags:  equipment band computer electronic-band old-computer sifting-through classic hacks  

• 6:01

  This toy intercom system is way better than a pair of tin cans and some string

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  On his blog, [Kenneth Finnegan] recently showed off a replica of a fun toy he used to play with as a kid, a telephone intercom system. The setup is pretty simple, requiring little more than a pair of analog phones, a battery, and a resistor. The phones are connected to one another using a standard [...]

  Tags:  intercom toy system kenneth-finnegan telephone-intercom-system tin-cans analog-phones classic hacks  

• December 05, 2011
• 6:01

  The force is strong with this Christmas tree light show

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Zach] is a huge Star Wars fan, and in addition to the array holiday decorations that adorn his house, he says that his wife is nice enough to let him put up a Christmas tree full of Star Wars ornaments. For the past few years, the tree sat in the corner of the room unlit, [...]

  Tags:  christmas star tree zach christmas-tree-light star-wars-fan holiday-decorations holiday hacks  

• 5:01

  Dash-mounted Nook Color is a perfect head unit replacement

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  XDA forum member [craigbru] wanted to beef up the audio setup in his Jeep, and thought that his Nook Color would make a suitable replacement. Since he jailbroke the e-reader, the head unit upgrade lets him do just about anything you can imagine, all from the comfort of the driver’s seat. Seeing that he would [...]

  Tags:  color nook head perfect-head e-reader suitable-replacement tablet pcs hacks  

• December 03, 2011
• 12:01

  10 Meter long moving light show is mesmerizing

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Marcus] was recently commissioned to put together the electronics for a slick 10 meter long LED installation at the Hsinchu Biomedical Science Park Exhibition Center in Taiwan. While you might assume that he was asked to construct a large LED matrix, this project is a little bit different from what you probably expected. The display [...]

  Tags:  led moving meter marcus taiwan led-matrix exhibition-center biomedical-science hacks  

• 8:01

  RCA DSB772WE teardown shows that this cheap streaming box might have potential

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [David Anders] wrote in to share some details of a cheap little gadget he picked up at his local Wal-Mart. He scored the RCA DSB772WE media streaming box for $48, and so far it looks like it could be a promising addition to his living room. He started a project page for the box, detailing [...]

  Tags:  box rca dsb david-anders promising-addition wal-mart video hacks  

• December 02, 2011
• 6:01

  Cheap DIY tilt switches are great in a pinch

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [fjordcarver] was looking for some mercury-free tilt switches that wouldn’t break the bank and that were easy to build. He also wanted something cheap, so instead of buying some tilt switches he devised his own that fit all of the criteria he set out. Now, these switches are not your typical fare, and they’re not [...]

  Tags:  tilt diy pinch tilt-switches mercury misc hacks  

• 5:01

  Children’s light up toy is an easy hand-made gift

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  While this year’s Christmas lists are dominated by electronic gadgets and other mass-produced toys, it wasn’t always like that. We’re not trying to sound like the old man yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn, but many of today’s gifts lack the personal touch found in old, hand-made toys. [henlij’s] son is [...]

  Tags:  children toy gift electronic-gadgets neighborhood-kids personal-touch hacks  

• December 01, 2011
• 14:01

  Cheap DIY laser scanner is quite impressive

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  With the introduction of the Kinect, obtaining a 3D representation of a room or object became a much easier task than it had been in the past. If you lack the necessary cash for one however, you have to get creative. Both the techniques and technologies behind 3D scanning are somewhat complicated, though certainly still [...]

  Tags:  scanner laser diy laser-scanner 3d-representation hacks  

• 6:01

  Making sweet floppy drive music with a calculator

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Chris] says that he’s been pretty busy lately, leaving little opportunity for hacking. However he did manage to find a little time to put together a small project that has occupied his to-do list for a while – a floppy drive music controller. We have seen hacks that use microcontrollers to actuate floppy drive motors [...]

  Tags:  calculator drive music chris music-controller drive-music floppy-drive misc hacks  

• November 30, 2011
• 16:01

  HDCP falls to FPGA-based man-in-the-middle attack

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  It’s been a little while since we talked about HDCP around here, but recent developments in the area of digital content protection are proving very interesting. You might remember that the Master Key for HDCP encryption was leaked last year, just a short while after Intel said that the protection had been cracked. While Intel [...]

  Tags:  intel protection hdcp digital-content-protection man-in-the-middle-attack master-key news  

• 15:01

  Custom Massive LED panel lights up the party

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The guys at BuildLounge wrote us to share a giant LED sign they came across in the submission pile for their “Win a Laser Cutter” contest that’s currently under way. [Stephen Shaffer] helps run a huge party called Fantastic Planet, for which the group typically outsources the lighting arrangements. They got tired of hiring light [...]

  Tags:  led custom party stephen-shaffer lighting-arrangements laser-cutter arduino hacks  

• 9:01

  Researchers claim that HP laser printers can be hijacked to steal data and catch fire

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The news was abuzz yesterday with coverage of a study released by Columbia University researchers warning consumers that HP laser printers are wide open to remote tampering and hacking. The researchers claim that the vast majority of printers from HP’s LaserJet line accept firmware updates without checking for any sort of digital authentication, allowing malicious [...]

  Tags:  fire laser news hp-laser-printers digital-authentication firmware-updates peripherals hacks  

• 8:01

  OpenPnP working to create an affordable and completely open Pick and Place machine

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you happen to do a lot of SMD work, a pick and place machine is an incredible time saver. The problem is that most automated pick and place solutions are well outside of the “small outfit” price range, let alone the budget of a hobbyist. We have seen some great DIY pick and place [...]

  Tags:  machine lot openpnp pick-and-place-machine time-saver hobbyist cnc hacks  

• 6:08

  Network monitoring panel built from the IT Department junk heap

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  One of the benefits of working in IT is that there is typically a healthy supply of miscellaneous, half-functioning equipment to mess around with. [Vittore] had an old laptop with a busted LCD sitting around (Google Translation), so he figured he might as well get it to do something useful. With a spare desktop LCD [...]

  Tags:  lcd network panel junk-heap old-laptop desktop-lcd laptops hacks  

• November 29, 2011
• 10:59

  Desktop coilgun lets you play Scorched Earth in your living room

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  A few years ago when [Dr. West] was wrapping up his collegiate studies, he put together a pretty cool coilgun for his senior project. The gun was built to simulate the Scorched Earth computer game in real life, but due to time constraints he was only able to build one turret instead of two. The [...]

  Tags:  coilgun scorched earth dr.-west collegiate-studies time-constraints weapons hacks  

• November 28, 2011
• 15:01

  DIY car lighting illuminates areas the designers overlooked

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Dave] just can’t seem to get enough of modifying his new car. Where he lives, it’s typically dark on his ride home from work and he finds himself dropping things on the floor of his car all too often. Nissan decided not to include lighting in the Juke’s foot well or glove box, so [Dave] decided [...]

  Tags:  lighting diy car dave car-lighting glove-box juke led hacks  

• 14:01

  New Siri hack controls your car

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Siri can make appointments, tell you the weather, but now she can start your car as well! After we showed you how Siri could be hacked to use a custom proxy and execute custom commands, we knew it wouldn’t be long before additional hacks would start rolling in. [Brandon Fiquett] thought it would be great [...]

  Tags:  custom new car siri brandon-fiquett hacks proxy iphone  

• November 25, 2011
• 10:11

  Beer dispenser talks to customers, announces office parties via Twitter

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Just about the only thing better than beer is free beer. Staff at the Arnold Worldwide ad agency are free to imbibe in the office’s lounge area, but a few employees thought that it would be pretty awesome to have their beer stash offered up by a vending machine. Using a grant that the company [...]

  Tags:  dispenser office beer arnold-worldwide vending-machine beer-dispenser twitter hacks  

• 6:57

  Making a privacy monitor from an old LCD

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [dimovi] had a spare LCD monitor sitting around and thought it would be great to convert it into a “privacy” monitor. The process is simple enough for anyone comfortable with disassembling electronics. He took apart the monitor’s plastic frame, cutting out the polarized film with a utility knife. Once the film was removed, he spent [...]

  Tags:  lcd privacy monitor plastic-frame utility-knife misc hacks  

• November 24, 2011
• 12:35

  UberFridge helps keep beer production going through the dog days of summer

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Elco Jacobs] used to let his beer ferment in the kitchen, but when things got too hot over the summer, he had to suspend his ale making for a few months. Not wanting to have to put production on hiatus again, he modified an old refrigerator into an awesome fermentation unit he calls the UberFridge. [...]

  Tags:  production uberfridge beer old-refrigerator beer-production elco arduino hacks  

• November 23, 2011
• 8:01

  Adventures in resurrecting a no-name IP webcam

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  As many of us do, [Steaky] serves as a kind of on-call help desk for his family. His father in law recently contacted him because his pan and tilt webcam died, and he wanted to see if it could be fixed. Never turning down a challenge, [Steaky] decided to give it a shot. He ended [...]

  Tags:  pan-and-tilt desk father-in-law news  

• November 22, 2011
• 11:17

  Simple low toner workaround squeezes out a few extra pages when your printer refuses

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Andrew] was getting ready to print out an assignment when his Samsung printer suddenly started blinking a red error light at him. Unable to find any documentation explaining the issue, he called Samsung directly and found that it was indicating the toner cartridge was nearly empty. He held down the button that prints a test [...]

  Tags:  samsung printer toner andrew samsung-printer error-light workaround linux hacks  

• 9:01

  A doorbell pleasing to both the ears and eyes

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  When [David] moved into his new house, one of the things he noticed was that his doorbell was pretty lame. Coming from a home equipped with a solenoid and chime bell, his new wireless solid state doorbell sounded terrible to him. Crummy sound aside, the doorbell hardly ever worked properly, but alas, other projects cropped [...]

  Tags:  pleasing house doorbell david ears-and-eyes solenoid home hacks  

• November 21, 2011
• 12:01

  Think you can take Kinect to the next level? Check out Kinect Accelerator

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you’ve got a crazy ingenious idea for Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral, but don’t have the means to make your dream a reality, the Kinect Accelerator just might be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Microsoft, having performed a complete 180-degree turnaround from their initial stance on Kinect hacking, is embracing developers more than ever with [...]

  Tags:  microsoft accelerator kinect ingenious-idea next-level kinect hacks  

• 11:01

  Power strip hack reduces standby electricity consumption

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  For years, [Rasmus] has left his computer connected directly to the mains power so that he can turn it on via Wake on Lan. While powered down, it would still continuously consume about 6W of electricity, but now that he didn’t need it to be on standby so often, he wanted to make it more [...]

  Tags:  strip electricity power lan rasmus electricity-consumption mains-power wake-on-lan home hacks  

• 9:01

  Siri proxy adds tons of functionality, doesn’t require a jailbreak

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Pete] has an iPhone 4s and loves Siri, but he wishes she had some more baked-in capabilities. While the application is technically still in beta and will likely be updated in the near future, [Pete] wanted more functionality now. Since Apple isn’t known for their open architecture, he had to get creative. Knowing how Siri’s [...]

  Tags:  proxy doesn functionality siri pete open-architecture iphone jailbreak hacks  

• November 20, 2011
• 12:30

  An exercise in servo voice control with Android

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Shazin] had some free time on his hands, so he settled in to do something he had been meaning to for a while – learn Android programming. He went an indirect route, and ended up using the Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A), which gave him a head start on the process. Sitting in between the [...]

  Tags:  exercise servo android sl4a indirect-route voice-control hacks  

• 11:30

  This giant hand made LED matrix must be ours!

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Martin] wrote in to share a project his company has been working on for some time, a gigantic 1470 pixel LED wall. The group provides lighting for clubs, parties, etc, and their hand-built LED matrix is always certain to be the hit of the show. The amazing matrix was designed from the ground up and [...]

  Tags:  led matrix hand martin giant-hand pixel hacks  

• November 19, 2011
• 12:27

  Getting useful data from a dirt cheap RFID reader

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Aaron] was looking for a cheap RFID reader that had some easy to follow documentation and a standardized interface. Most everything he saw was pretty expensive, so he decided to buy a cheap $10 reader from eBay to see how easy it would be to work with. The reader came with very little documentation, but [...]

  Tags:  documentation reader rfid aaron rfid-reader ebay dirt misc hacks  

• 8:24

  Python powered sprinkler system wastes no water

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  One thing that annoyed [Jashua] to no end was hearing his automated sprinkler system kick on in the middle of the night, when it had rained earlier in the day. He wished that his sprinklers were a bit smarter, so he decided to give the system an upgrade. Rather than pay hundreds of dollars for [...]

  Tags:  python sprinkler system sprinkler-system sprinklers home hacks  

• November 18, 2011
• 8:01

  A DIY audio player for when all that matters is the music

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Grissini] hasn’t had the best of luck when it comes to personal audio players. He estimates that he’s gone through about half a dozen iProducts/iKnockoffs over the years, which ultimately adds up to a lot of money poured right down the drain. Rather than lay down his cold hard cash for yet another music player [...]

  Tags:  player diy music personal-audio-players cold-hard-cash music-player arduino hacks  

• 7:01

  Lighting LEDs with raindrops

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Steven] had one of those musical gift cards laying around, and thought he might as well reuse the piezo speaker inside it. Without a particular project in mind, he soldered an LED to the piezo and tapped on it, which caused the LED to illuminate as expected. He started to wonder what quantity of force [...]

  Tags:  led piezo lighting steven raindrops gift-cards leds hacks  

• 6:01

  A head-mounted Tesla coil – what could possibly go wrong?

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We can hear the commercial now… “Reeeeeeal men of geniuuuuuuus! Here’s to you Mr. no-fear, singing Tesla coil on your hat wearing guy…” Call him a genius or call him crazy – all we know is that [Tyler’s] Tesla coil hat is awesome! Even though it’s the middle of November, we couldn’t pass up this [...]

  Tags:  hat tesla coil tyler singing-tesla-coil genius fear misc hacks  

• 5:01

  Monitoring batch jobs the Cylon way with Python and a parallel port

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you happen to do a lot of video encoding, you know that your computer can really drag while the process is carried out. Our own [Mike Szczys] transcodes videos at home fairly often, and because the process is automated, he doesn’t always know if a conversion is taking place in the background. He has [...]

  Tags:  monitoring batch process mike-szczys batch-jobs video-encoding parallel-port led hacks  

• November 17, 2011
• 7:01

  This animatronic Horus Guard mask is so good, even Anubis would be fooled

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jerome Kelty] is a big fan of the movie Stargate, and when he saw it for the first time, he wanted one of the awesome helmets worn by the Horus Guards. This isn’t the kind of thing you would normally find at your local costume shop, so he knew that he would have to build [...]

  Tags:  guard mask horus jerome-kelty animatronic costume-shop kelty arduino hacks  

• November 15, 2011
• 13:01

  DIY LED photography lights

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Markus] had been drooling over some LED panels to use as a soft light source for photography, but being a hobbyist, he didn’t want to spend a ton of money to buy them. He figured that he had enough electronics know-how to build his own panels, while saving a boatload of cash in the process. [...]

  Tags:  photography led diy markus soft-light-source boatload hobbyist digital cameras hacks  

• 7:08

  ColorHug: A reasonably-priced, completely open color calibration tool

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Richard] wanted to create a color profile for his computer monitor, but he wasn’t thrilled with the existing color calibration offerings he found for sale. Color calibration tools can be somewhat costly, but even more troubling to [Richard] was the fact that they are all closed source. Closed hardware and closed software can be a [...]

  Tags:  calibration color colorhug richard color-calibration calibration-tool calibration-tools pcs hacks  

• November 13, 2011
• 13:01

  NES controller is a slick way to carry around your portable OS

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Oliver] had an old NES controller laying around, and without any other use for it, he decided to repurpose it as a portable storage device. He gutted most of the controller, removing the plastic standoffs, leaving the D-pad and remaining buttons intact. He crammed a 32 GB flash drive inside, along with the guts from [...]

  Tags:  controller way nes oliver portable-storage-device flash-drive plastic-standoffs news  

• 11:01

  ColorNode: A drop-in GE Color Effects LED controller

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Paul] was looking to spice up his holiday decorations this year, so he picked up some GE Color Effects lights and started hacking away. We’ve already seen how hacker-friendly these LED bulbs are, which is why [Paul] decided to give them a try. His ultimate goal was to synchronize several sets of lights from one [...]

  Tags:  color colornode led paul led-bulbs holiday-decorations hacker arduino hacks  

• November 12, 2011
• 12:01

  Lego NXT creations are even cooler with WiFi on board

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The folks at Dexter Industries have just wrapped up a week of Lego NXT projects, most of which centered on the use of their NXT WiFi sensor. Developed over the last few months, the group has been hard at work refining their design and getting some of the kinks worked out, so now you too [...]

  Tags:  lego nxt wifi lego-nxt kinks dexter news  

• November 11, 2011
• 16:01

  You’ll shoot your eye out with this laser-filled tennis ball

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We love lasers, you love lasers…who doesn’t love them? [Matt Leone] recently took his passion for lasers over the top and built a little something called the Laser Ball. Fed up with the deluge of of LED cubes floating around online, he says that the Laser Ball is the new sheriff in town – and [...]

  Tags:  laser shoot ball matt-leone new-sheriff-in-town laser-ball hacks  

• 5:01

  $150 CNC mill is a tad slow but very solid

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Like just about everyone else out there, [Adam] thinks that CNC machines are pretty cool – so cool that he decided to build one of his own from scratch. The CNC machine was constructed mostly out of MDF and scrap wood, with drawer slides used for smooth gantry movement. An off-brand rotary tool was used [...]

  Tags:  tad mill cnc adam cnc-mill cnc-machines cnc-machine hacks  

• November 10, 2011
• 11:01

  Toilet Buddy helps cover up bathroom noises

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  When it comes to bathroom etiquette, [Nick] and the crew at Gadget Gangster are nothing less than proper gentlemen. Inspired by a Japanese toilet that automatically plays a “courtesy flush” noise in an effort to conserve water while masking sounds, they created the Toilet Buddy. While the Toilet Buddy does nothing to cover up any [...]

  Tags:  bathroom toilet buddy nick japanese-toilet bathroom-etiquette gangster home hacks  

• 8:01

  Bullhorn mod lets you disperse angry crowds to the dulcet tones of [Kenny G]

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Randy] had a cheap megaphone, and like most models in this price range, it didn’t have an audio input jack on board. He wanted the ability to pipe both music and audio from an external mic through the megaphone, and in a brief tutorial, he shows how he modified his bullhorn to do just that. [...]

  Tags:  megaphone mod bullhorn randy kenny angry-crowds external-mic dulcet-tones misc hacks  

• November 09, 2011
• 11:41

  Reverse engineering MyKeepon

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [qDot] recently got his hands on a MyKeepon toy and after messing with it a bit, decided to tear it down to see what was inside. He had hopes of easily modding the toy, but like most adventures in hacking, things might take a while longer than he first imagined. In his teardown you can [...]

  Tags:  engineering mykeepon toy qdot teardown reverse-engineering news  

• 7:01

  Big Head costume would make Max Headroom jealous

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Dan Rosenfeld] does a lot of thinking in his spare time, and one thing he returns to pretty often is videoconferencing. He’s often wondered why it hasn’t caught on enough to become a ubiquitous piece of technology, and his examination of the topic in regards to eye contact and spatial awareness inspired him to create [...]

  Tags:  costume big head dan-rosenfeld max-headroom spatial-awareness rosenfeld video hacks  

• 6:01

  Talking digital calipers make engineering more accessible

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The team over at NerdKits recently put together a device aimed to help make the process of measuring things more accessible to those with disabilities. [Terry Garrett] is a Mechanical Engineering student, and as anyone who is in the field knows, it’s a discipline which requires taking tons of measurements. Since [Terry] cannot see he [...]

  Tags:  team device nerdkits terry terry-garrett digital-calipers engineering-student mechanical-engineering tool hacks  

• November 08, 2011
• 11:51

  Making an RF controlled light switch work with IR

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Gary] had an RF triggered light switch kicking around, and wanted to find a way to control his lights using a home theater remote. The switch, which he bought from RadioShack years ago, came with a simple remote that uses two buttons to toggle the lights on and off. While you might think that switching [...]

  Tags:  light-switch radioshack home hacks  

• 6:01

  A Tesla coil that delivers shocking candy

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Even though Halloween was a week ago, we are still seeing plenty of cool stuff coming our way. Take for instance this Tesla coil that [JJ] sent us. He got the idea to build a coil for his Halloween display about a week before the event, but he figured it would be easy enough to [...]

  Tags:  tesla-coil cool-stuff candy misc hacks  

• November 07, 2011
• 13:30

  This Panavise Jr. Speed Winder should be in every maker’s toolbox

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Like many makers, [Chris] has a Panavise Jr. on his workbench that he uses for just about everything. The tiny vise is great for all sorts of tasks, and is often considered an indispensable tool. The only problem with the vise is the amount of time it takes to open and close the thing. [Chris] [...]

  Tags:  panavise winder vise chris indispensable-tool workbench cnc hacks  

• 5:10

  Hacking a “magic wand” to remotely control light displays

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Hackaday reader [Kieran] volunteers at an outdoor haunted house attraction called the “Disenchanted Forest”. Attendees are lead through the haunted forest by a volunteer, who helps keep everyone on the predetermined trail. The trail is usually lit by small LED fixtures that the group constructed, but the organizers wanted to make the lights more interactive [...]

  Tags:  hacking trail forest kieran magic-wand disenchanted-forest haunted-forest arduino hacks  

• November 06, 2011
• 9:30

  DIY spot welder can join anything together, even copper

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Hackaday reader [David] was looking for a cheap and easy way to spot weld copper tabs together. As he notes in his writeup, the properties of copper which are most enticing, such as high thermal capacity, make welding it all that more difficult. His home-brew method of spot welding is admittedly quick and dirty, but [...]

  Tags:  spot copper welding david spot-welder properties-of-copper spot-welding tool hacks  

• 7:30

  4Track robot gets around with ease

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Jon] has been developing a slick little RC robot in bits and pieces over the last year or so, which can constructed by anyone with access to a 3D printer. Servos and electronics aside, the entire thing can be put together in short order using the plans he posted on Thingiverse. The robot makes use [...]

  Tags:  track robot ease jon 3d-printer anyone-with-access servos cnc hacks  

• November 05, 2011
• 12:01

  Halloween Hacks: An evil R/C clown car for terrorizing the neighborhood

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you had a few too many trick or treaters hitting up your house this year, [phwillys] has a solution guaranteed to keep them from coming back. He was looking for a way to scare the crap out of the trick or treaters this past Halloween, so he constructed a remote-controlled evil jeep to terrorize [...]

  Tags:  clown-car hacks jeep holiday hacks  

• November 04, 2011
• 13:00

  Halloween Hacks: Motion sensing fog machine

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [monkeysinacan] wanted to add a fog machine to his Halloween display, but he says that the cheaper consumer-grade models are pretty unruly beasts. He cites short duty cycles and tricky fog control as his two biggest gripes with these sorts of foggers. He decided make the fogging process a little more manageable, and modified his [...]

  Tags:  machine fog halloween unruly-beasts fog-control fog-machine arduino hacks  

• 6:01

  DIY binary alarm clock small enough to fit in your pocket

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [linux-dude] always wanted to have a binary clock, but he didn’t want to pay someone else to make it for him. Additionally, he was looking for a compact alarm clock he could take on the road, rather than relying on the one in his hotel room. Inspired by other binary clock projects he has seen [...]

  Tags:  clock diy alarm binary-clock pocket-linux alarm-clock arduino hacks  

• November 03, 2011
• 15:01

  Beer security system keeps freeloaders out of your stash

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  The crew at the Milwaukee Hackerspace are pretty serious about their beer. They used to have a fridge filled with cans, available to all at the hackerspace, but they decided to beef things up and create a secured beer dispensing system. Like many others we have seen, their kegerator is built into an old refrigerator, [...]

  Tags:  hackerspace system beer milwaukee old-refrigerator kegerator dispensing-system arduino hacks  

• 8:01

  Halloween Hacks: A Jacob’s Lantern sure to win the carving contest

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Matt] entered himself in a pumpkin carving contest this year, even despite the fact that his artistic skills were a bit…lacking. He knew that he had very little chance of winning the contest unless he had a great gimmick to make his creation stand out, so he started brainstorming. [Matt] figured that since his design [...]

  Tags:  contest hacks halloween matt jacob artistic-skills pumpkin-carving-contest little-chance classic  

• 6:01

  Interactive digital fireplace is great for those chilly winter evenings

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  We’ve all seen them – those fireplace DVDs that seem to pop up on grocery store endcaps and get traded in white elephant gift exchanges. If you don’t happen to have a fireplace in your home they might make a reasonable solution, but [Nick] from the Gadget Gangster thought it would be far better if [...]

  Tags:  white-elephant-gift winter-evenings gift-exchanges microcontrollers  

• November 02, 2011
• 11:27

  ChipKIT temperature shield supports a dozen sensors

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Will] wrote in to share a useful add-on he designed for the ChipKIT UNO 32, a 12-port temperature sensor board. Constructed for one of his customers, the shield accepts any 2-wire 10k thermistor sensors, outputting the readings to a small LCD screen. The screen is supported by some code put together by his associate [crenn], [...]

  Tags:  temperature shield chipkit thermistor-sensors sensor-board temperature-sensor microcontrollers  

• November 01, 2011
• 15:00

  Simple earphone repair saves a big chunk of cash

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Spode] has been rocking out with a pair of Shure E4C earphones for about six years now, and he has no intentions of buying another set any time soon. The earphones cost him £200, so when the right channel started acting up, he decided to fix them rather than toss them in the trash bin. [...]

  Tags:  earphone repair simple shure-e4c-earphones trash-bin shure-e4c hacks  

• 11:01

  Halloween Hacks: The Headless Dogman

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Typically, when people hear that you’ve made a Halloween costume for your dog, the statement is met with the eye rolling and polite lies about how cute the outfit is. There are few exceptions to this rule, and [Dino’s] latest creation is one of them. For this week’s entry in his Hack a Week series, [...]

  Tags:  hacks halloween week dino halloween-costume dogman holiday hacks  

• 8:01

  Halloween Hacks: A radioactive display with more trick than treat

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Shawn] was looking for a way to shake up his decorations this Halloween and decided to build a new prop for his front yard. He had a pair of old oil barrels in his garage and thought they would look great with a little bit of work. He bolted the pair of barrels together, then [...]

  Tags:  hacks pair halloween shawn oil-barrels front-yard arduino  

• October 31, 2011
• 16:01

  Wine-o-Meter quantifies your bachelor party bad behavior

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Phil] had a bunch of Shiftbrite modules set aside for an LED table project, but before he could get around to it, he decided to use them to build a prop for his friend’s bachelor party. Expecting plenty of drunken revelry, he constructed the Arduino Wine-o-Meter – a carnival “Test your strength” style breathalyzer. The [...]

  Tags:  party bachelor meter phil drunken-revelry bachelor-party bad-behavior arduino hacks  

• 14:01

  Salvaged flight stick controls A/V system, triggers “Emergency Party System”

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  After seeing a writeup online that demonstrated how to build an “Emergency Party Button”, [spikec] knew that he had to have one of his own. He happened to have a USAF B-8 stick grip from an A-10A aircraft laying around, and figured it would be perfect for controlling the A/V system in his basement. The [...]

  Tags:  party emergency system usaf arduino hacks  

• October 29, 2011
• 12:00

  Halloween Hacks: Larger than life costume made from an inflatable lawn ornament

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Brian] was trying to decide on a Halloween costume this year, and while looking through his lawn decorations, inspiration struck. In his collection he had a 9 foot tall inflatable Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and being a guy who likes to go big or go home, he knew he had to find a way to [...]

  Tags:  hacks lawn halloween brian marshmallow-man lawn-decorations halloween-costume holiday hacks  

• October 28, 2011
• 15:01

  Upgrading a solar lamp to charge an iPad

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Phillip] and the crew at Voltaic Systems took a look at the Sunnan solar powered desk lamp from IKEA a while back, and while they thought it was pretty useful, there were definitely some things they wanted to change. First on their list of revisions was to increase the capacity of the stock battery pack. [...]

  Tags:  lamp upgrading ipad phillip stock-battery solar-lamp desk-lamp solar hacks  

• 10:01

  Detailed tutorial shows how to unleash your inner [Michael Knight]

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  Our own [Mike Szczys] recently sat down and put together a great tutorial on building a Larson Scanner. The ubiquitous circuit is usually one of the first few projects on a budding hackers list of things to build, since they are just so darn fun. Simple versions of the scanner sweep back and forth lighting [...]

  Tags:  circuit tutorial detailed michael-knight larson-scanner mike-szczys larson scanner led hacks  

• 9:01

  Halloween Hacks: A light and music show fit for [Jack Skellington]

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Greg] was looking for something to build using his recently acquired Arduino, and with Halloween approaching, he thought a cool light display would make a great project. He browsed around online and found this tutorial that shows how to build a chorus of singing pumpkins controlled by a computer’s parallel port. Since he didn’t have [...]

  Tags:  light hacks halloween jack-skellington greg cool-light parallel-port arduino  

• October 27, 2011
• 15:01

  DIY thermostat keeps the harsh winter cold at bay

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Phil’s] parents grow their own organic food, but the harsh Ukraine winters make storing it a difficult proposition. Since it can drop to -30°C on occasion, they asked him to find a way to keep their storeroom at around 5-7°C above zero. He decided to construct his own programmable thermostat to keep things in check, [...]

  Tags:  winter diy thermostat phil ukraine programmable-thermostat harsh-winter winter-cold attiny hacks  

• 12:01

  Hacked parking disc can be controlled remotely

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you have ever traveled around Europe, you are likely familiar with parking discs. Required in many countries that would rather not deal with parking meters, these devices are placed in the front of a car’s window, and indicate when the vehicle was parked. When parking enforcement officers come through the area, it makes quick [...]

  Tags:  disc hacked parking parking-enforcement-officers parking-meters europe microcontrollers  

• 11:01

  Recreating the Commodore PET with an FPGA

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  [Thomas’] love affair with Commodore computers spans well over 30 years, and not too long ago he decided to recreate one of his favorite Commodore offerings, the PET. As we have seen with similar undertakings, this sort of project is no easy task, but [Thomas] seems to be making his way along nicely. Using a [...]

  Tags:  fpga recreating love commodore-pet thomas commodore-computers love-affair classic hacks  

• 6:01

  Halloween Hacks: Simple robotic skull is a perfect last minute decoration

   » ‎ Hack a Day
  If you haven’t taken the time to put your decorations together it’s time to get a move on. With Halloween just around the corner big elaborate displays are pretty much out of the question, but [Boris] and the team over at Open Electronics have a simple project that’s sure to be a hit with the [...]

  Tags:  hacks halloween time boris skull arduino