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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EMC2 CNC keyboard labels If you’ve got a dedicated computer running EMC2 for CNC control you may be interested in these keyboard labels. [Rich] mentions that they use the labels for their engraver at the Connecticut Hackerspace. Just print them out and glue them in the face of the keys. Dev board seminars and freebies [...]

Tags:  emc keyboard cnc rich connecticut keyboard-labels hackaday emc2 hackaday links  

HDD Grinder As [unicorn] described it, “this is no big thing.”  We would agree, but a grinder made from a hard disk drive at least deserves to be in a [HAD] links post. Here’s the original source. The No-Video Game What do you get when take [Sub Hunt] and take away the ability to see [...]

Tags:  grinder hackaday links hard-disk-drive november-22nd hackaday  

Another way to break out dual pin headers [Uwe] wrote in to share his technique for breaking out dual pin headers. He uses two single pin headers, a piece of protoboard, and a dual row pin socket to make an adapter. This is removable where the other method we saw this week was not. Web-based [...]

Tags:  hackaday pin links uwe pin-headers dual-row hackaday  

Yeah, it’s like Twitter but actually cool Thingiverse – still the best place on the Internet to find cool 3D models to print out – has gone all Web 3.0 with their new Dashboard feature. Basically, you can think of this as Thingiverse’s version of Twitter. The dashboard allows you to see the latest updates from people [...]

Tags:  twitter dashboard thingiverse 3d-models hackaday hackaday links  

Wait, you’re using a Dremel to cut PCBs? Cutting copper-clad board or – horrors – depanelizing PCBs is a pain if you don’t have the right tool. Over at Hub City Labs they’re using a small, cheap metal shear & break. Bonus: it can cut and bend sheet metal, so the Hub City folks can [...]

Tags:  hackaday metal links hub-city city-folks hackaday  

we don’t have one… yet. We’re getting inundated with campaigns on crowdfunding sites like kickstarter and indiegogo. Sometimes they’re really cool projects, sometimes they’re not. Unfortunately, they are all basically appeals for coverage on hackaday so they can get money. That immediately puts a negative taste in our mouths. Then again, if a hacker legitimately [...]

Tags:  official hackaday kickstarter mouths campaigns Ask hackaday  

LED Marquee Pumpkin Here’s an LED marquee as the mouth of a Jack-o’-lantern which [Mike Skoczen] made. This comes hot on the heels of that playable Tetris Pumpkin. [Thanks Jacob] Arduino-powered robot costume This is a sideways view of the Arduino-powered costume [Dan] and his wife made for their son. It has lights, buttons, a [...]

Tags:  led arduino-powered marquee tetris-pumpkin mike-skoczen jacob dan arduino hackaday hot-on-the-heels hackaday  

Capacitive touch plants Here’s a proof of concept for using plants as a capacitive touch sensor. The sensor is simply a hunk of double-sided copper clad board attached to a microcontroller. But it seems to be able to sense what part of the plant is being touched. [Thanks Fabien] Adding wireless charging to a Nokia [...]

Tags:  hackaday touch sensor capacitive-touch-sensor proof-of-concept hackaday links  

Upgrading a desktop with a diamond cutting wheel [Michail] needed a new graphics card. The only problem was his motherboard didn’t have any free PCI-E x16 slots available. Unable to find a PCI-E x1 card, he did what any of us would do and broke out the Dremel. Yes, he got it working, but don’t do [...]

Tags:  pci-e card hackaday michail new-graphics dremel hackaday links  

Cheap ergonomic mouse If your had keeps cramping while using the computer mouse why not grab a hunk of wood and a couple of buttons to make your own ergonomic input device? C# GUI for Arduino testing Here’s a Windows GUI for controlling Arduino. [Rohit] put it together using C#. It should make development very simple [...]

Tags:  arduino mouse gui rohit computer-mouse input-device hackaday hackaday links  

And then Obi-wan said, “you were supposed to be the chosen one!” Yesterday, a little bird told us Makerbot will be moving to a closed source model for their newest printer. This was confirmed, and now [Zach Smith] a.k.a. [Hoeken] – creator of the RepRap Research Foundation and co-founder of Makerboth Industries is weighing in with [...]

Tags:  september hackaday links zach-smith obi-wan hackaday  

Very tiny keyboard The idea behind the iControlPad2 is pretty simple – just take the slide-out keyboard from a phone, discard the phone part, add two analog sticks and a D-pad, and put Bluetooth in it. It makes for a very small keyboard perfect for controlling a Raspi, a home media server, or even a phone [...]

Tags:  hackaday phone keyboard tiny-keyboard analog-sticks hackaday links  

Xbee sensors at Lowe’s? Lowe’s, the home improvement big box store, is selling some home automation items which might be Xbee compatible. They’re being sold under the brand name Iris. There is some debate as to whether they’re Xbee, or just 802.15.4 hardware. Either way they might be worth checking out for your wireless projects. Father [...]

Tags:  xbee hackaday home lowe iris wireless-projects home-automation hackaday links  

Xbee sensors at Lowe’s? Lowe’s, the home improvement big box store, is selling some home automation items which might be Xbee compatible. They’re being sold under the brand name Iris. There is some debate as to whether they’re Xbee, or just 802.15.4 hardware. Either way they might be worth checking out for your wireless projects. Father [...]

Tags:  xbee hackaday home lowe iris wireless-projects home-automation hackaday links  

MakerSlide, European edition We’re all familiar with the MakerSlide, right? The linear bearing system that has been turned into everything from motorized camera mounts to 3D printers is apparently very hard to source in Europe. A few folks from the ShapeOko forum have teamed up to produce the MakerSlide in the UK. They’re running a crowdsourced project [...]

Tags:  september makerslide hackaday europe linear-bearing bearing-system camera-mounts hackaday links  

PS3 Controller Cell Phone Mount Although the details of this build are quite scarce, not much is needed considering all that this cell phone/PS3 controller “mount” is made of is 3 binder clips and a few rubber bands. A very ingenious solution. Overengineered Throwie On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve spent way too [...]

Tags:  hackaday links phone controller-cell mount-although binder-clips throwie hackaday  

An Octopart for RC equipment When [Zach] started building a quadcopter he found it very difficult to source the required parts. Thus was born CompareRC, an aggregation of several online RC retailers. There’s over 150,000 parts in the database, all searchable and sortable by lowest price. Segway iPad Skype teleconferencing robot It’ll be a while until robots completely eliminate the need for [...]

Tags:  hackaday august links zach sortable octopart hackaday  

License plate tablet rack [Hunter Davis] used an old license plate as a tablet stand. It loops around the leg of his laptop table and has a cutout for the power cord of the tablet. More power power wheels It may look stock, but this power wheels is hiding a new frame, motors, and tires. [...]

Tags:  power license tablet davis power-wheels frame-motors hackaday hackaday links  

Here’s some very, very sad news from [Charles] over at The Maker’s Workbench: on July 16th, his house was hit by lightning causing his workshop to catch fire. His family is safe, but unfortunately thousands of dollars in gear has gone up in smoke. [Charles] lost a Reprap, a ton of dev boards, a huge [...]

Tags:  backup solution hackaday charles dev-boards sad-news backup-solution Ask hackaday  

Oh cool we’re famous Last weekend, the Tech Team Radio Show over in Stoke-on-Trent interviewed our boss man [Caleb]. It’s a really wonderful interview, and I’m not saying that because [Caleb] signs my check. The entire show is up on Mixcloud and you can listen to the interview beginning at about 20 minutes. By the way, the [...]

Tags:  hackaday show interview caleb stoke-on-trent boss-man entire-show hackaday links  

Ever wonder what CPU dev boards look like? In the realm of highly confidential hardware, it doesn’t get much more secret than upcoming CPUs coming out of Intel. Somehow, a few CPU dev boards wound up on eBay, and [Leon] was cool enough to save all the pictures (Polish, Google translation, or translate in the sidebar). [...]

Tags:  cpu hackaday dev leon ebay google hackaday links  

Hey, it’s the 43rd anniversary of men first walking on the moon. Here’s some stuff we found to celebrate that. Fun trivia: for Apollo 11, [Neil] and [Buzz] didn’t go more than 200 feet from the LEM. This is so incredibly sad Remember Heathkit? A lot of cool kit-based electronics came from them. They’re out of business, [...]

Tags:  july hackaday links neil lem apollo-11 walking-on-the-moon fun-trivia hackaday  

Apollo 13 DJ controller Follow Up [Adam] had a really impressive DJ controller build featured here recently. Many of you had more questions about the internals and such, so this post should clarify a few things. He’s still got a few more updates to make, but promises to reveal all if given enough time! Noise [...]

Tags:  controller hackaday links adam dj-controller apollo-13 hackaday  

Testing LEDs Over at the Albuquerque, NM hackerspace Quelab, [Alfred] needed to test a bunch of surface mount LEDs. He ended up building a pair of 3D printed tweezers with a pair of needles attached to the end and a space for a coin cell battery. It works and Quelab got a new tool. Woo Raspberry [...]

Tags:  quelab hackaday pair alfred albuquerque mount-leds albuquerque-nm coin-cell hackaday links  

There’s nothing like the smell of black powder in the morning, along with the excitement and burnt propellant in the air that comes after launching a model rocket. All those 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s kids out there may remember the classes of model rocket engines – generally A, B, C, and D sized engines used to [...]

Tags:  hackaday rocket model model-rocket-engines sized-engines 70s-80s Ask hackaday  

[tari] sent in a tip about a MAX5214 DAC evaluation board AVNET is giving away this summer.  The MAX5214 / MAX5216 is a neat little chip providing a 14 or 16 bit DAC with a serial interface in a tiny 8-pin package. [tari] thinks this eval board could be hacked into a function generator, and we’ve [...]

Tags:  dac tari max eval-board hackaday serial-interface Ask hackaday  

Opening really old lock boxes [Barry Wels] is a locksmith. One day, he got a call from a museum that had a few 17th century strong boxes that needed to be opened. After a little probing with an endoscope, he decided they could be picked with a little bit of spring steel. So, what’s in [...]

Tags:  june hackaday links barry-wels lock-boxes spring-steel endoscope hackaday  

For when you want something huge machined Turn your volume down for this video. It’s the HSM-Modal CNC mill carving a full-sized car out of styrofoam, applying clay to the foam core, and machining the clay at 50 meters per minute. Yes, we’ve seen this machine before, but never in action. It only took a little [...]

Tags:  hackaday links clay sized-car cnc-mill hackaday  

Portal gag-video These guys make your own video editing chops look just plain sad. They put together a video demonstrating the portal gun in real life. Unleashing the beast We have this problem all the time. The noise regulations were preventing [Massimiliano Rivetti] from letting the true voice of his Ferrari be heard. He hacked into the [...]

Tags:  video hackaday portal unleashing-the-beast noise-regulations hackaday links  

[Michael] sent in a question regarding the latest advances in software defined radios available for $20 on eBay: I’ve been looking in to SDR lately, mainly for the possibility of using it for incredibly cheap radio astronomy. So far all I’ve found are whispers. I’m 18 and have very little experience, but I figured you [...]

Tags:  radio hackaday anyone michael radio-telescope radio-astronomy cheap-radio Ask hackaday  

Amazing 3D rendering in real-time Ah, the 90s. A much simpler time when the presenters on Bad Influence! were amazed by the 3D rendering capabilities of the SGI Onyx RealityEngine2. This giant machine cost £250,000 back in the day, an amazing sum but then again we’re getting nostalgic for old SGI hardware. Well, Mega is taken… let’s call it Grande [...]

Tags:  hackaday sgi links sgi-onyx giant-machine sgi-hardware hackaday  

Amazing 3D rendering in real-time Ah, the 90s. A much simpler time when the presenters on Bad Influence! were amazed by the 3D rendering capabilities of the SGI Onyx RealityEngine2. This giant machine cost £250,000 back in the day, an amazing sum but then again we’re getting nostalgic for old SGI hardware. Well, Mega is taken… let’s call it Grande [...]

Tags:  hackaday sgi links sgi-onyx giant-machine sgi-hardware hackaday  

When pigs fly…. close enough. There are too many jokes to be made about this one. It’s a quadcopter made out of a dead cat. [Bert Jansen], the artist behind this, calls him Orville. He died from natural causes, and what better way to remember a feline friend that liked chasing birds? Refurbishing an Apple ][ That [...]

Tags:  june hackaday links bert-jansen orville feline-friend dead-cat hackaday  

Here’s a brain bender for you: YouTube user [Fredzislaw100] put up a video of six LEDs and six switches wired up in series. After soldering a resistor and 9V battery connector, the first switch turns on the first LED, the second switch turns on the second LED, and so on for the rest of the [...]

Tags:  led switch hackaday battery-connector super-deluxe resistor Ask hackaday  

Amazing ass… for a robot Yep, Japan still has the creepy robotics market cornered. Case in point is this robotic posterior. Don’t worry, they’ve included a dissection so you can see how the insides work too. [via Gizmodo] Time-lapse camera module results As promised, [Quinn Dunki] sent in a link to the photo album from [...]

Tags:  may hackaday links don japan quinn-dunki time-lapse-camera camera-module hackaday  

Three days of work in 5 minutes [Celso] bought himself a Ultimaker kit and put together a time-lapse video of him putting it together. There’s a lot of work that goes into these machines, but being able to print a nearly perfect cube on the first run is nearly magical. How about a CNC mill, [...]

Tags:  hackaday links work perfect-cube cnc-mill hackaday  

More old computers on FPGAs! [Andy] loves his Memotech MTX computer. It’s an oldie with a Z80 running at 4MHz; the perfect target for an FPGA port. The ReMemotech has everything the old one has – cassette interface and all – and can run up to six times faster than the original. Also found in [...]

Tags:  memotech-mtx cassette-interface hackaday hackaday links  

Introducing Hackaday: how it’s made edition Ever wonder how the make the forms for marine propellers? Now you have. It turns out they use a bunch of plywood, Bondo, and sandpaper. Awesome viewing for a coffee break. Finally a new way to hurt yourself! [Darrell]‘s solder flux pen was filled and capped at sea level. When [...]

Tags:  hackaday links april darrell bondo sandpaper hackaday  

Sandcasting at the beach [mkb] sent in a video he found of [Max Lamb] sandcasting a stool at a beach in England. The material is pewter, or >90% tin with a little bit copper and antimony thrown in for good measure. While we’re sure there will be a few complaints from environmentalists, it’s still a cool [...]

Tags:  beach hackaday links max-lamb england sandcasting antimony hackaday  

This hurts our head You know you can ‘freeze’ drops of water in mid-air by flashing a LED at the right time, right? Well, according to this video you don’t even need a strobing light; just use the frame rate of the camera. Much cooler if you don’t know how it works, in our humble opinion. [...]

Tags:  hackaday links april drops-of-water frame-rate hackaday  

Need some gears? Got a timing belt? [filespace] sent in a neat build he stumbled upon: making gears with plywood and a timing belt. Just cut out a plywood disk and glue on a section of timing belt. There’s some math involved in getting all the teeth evenly placed around the perimeter, but nothing too bad. [...]

Tags:  timing belt plywood timing-belt hackaday hackaday links  

A Remote Sphero-Control Trackball Sphero is a cool little ball that can roll around under the control of a smartphone.  Although super-cool by itself, in this application it’s been hacked into a sort of trackball to drive a remote control car! Arduino Voice Control [Sebastian] Wrote in to tell us about this article about using [...]

Tags:  control trackball sphero sebastian remote-control-car voice-control hackaday hackaday links  

Don’t get your dirty fingers on the glass [Poke] sent in a video of him using Android devices with a wiimote and PS3 controller. The build uses the Joystick2Touch and the USB Joystick Center app. Root is required, but this will be very useful when tv-sized Android devices start showing up. Wonderful restoration work [John] sent in [...]

Tags:  hackaday joystick android john don dirty-fingers usb-joystick hackaday links  

Wii Nunchuk controlled Monotron Adding a bit of motion control to your music synthesizer turns out to be pretty easy. Here’s an example of a Wii Nunchuk used to control a Monotron. [Thanks John] Hackers on the Moon and other space related goals Yep apparently a non-government backed expedition to the moon is in the [...]

Tags:  wii monotron nunchuk john music-synthesizer hackaday hackaday links  

Industrial control robot band Remember Animusic, a series of videos featuring computer-generated, highly  implausible instruments? Intel made their own to demo their industrial control tech. From the looks of things, we’re putting money on a bunch of MIDI triggers bolted onto plastic panels; now it’s slightly less impressive and the reason we’re looking at xylophones on eBay right now. [...]

Tags:  hackaday links control xylophones ebay hackaday  

This is why digital picture frames were invented [Petros] sent in this video of his visualization of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. He did this with openFrameworks and also made a version that reacts to sound. Is anyone else reminded of that one scene in Vincent and the Doctor? A boat’s a boat, but a mystery box [...]

Tags:  boat hackaday links van-gogh petros vincent digital-picture-frames mystery-box hackaday  

Most useless machine We love ‘em, and we hope you do too. Here’s [Phase2plus'] take on the most useless machine. Scratching like it’s 1989 [Nick] spent three bucks at the thrift store and ended up buying days worth of fun with this cassette player. He hacked it to scratch like vinyl. 3D printed jawbone This [...]

Tags:  machine hackaday links nick jawbone thrift-store hackaday  

The only thing he needs now is a micro and RTC For [Dino]‘s 44th Hack A Week extravaganza, he made powered window blinds in five minutes. It’s a simple build with a small gear motor and a bit of tubing to adapt the shaft to the control rod of the blinds. Good job [Dino]. BecauseCamelCaseWillKillYourPinkieFinger The [...]

Tags:  window-blinds hackaday rtc hackaday links  

Open source engraving [Scott] wanted to do some v-carving with a CNC router, but couldn’t find software to generate GCode that didn’t cost hundreds of dollars. He ended up doing the sensible thing and wrote his own that will generate tool paths from CXF fonts. We’ll be bookmarking this for when our router project is done. Improving [...]

Tags:  hackaday router links scott cnc-router router-project tool-paths hackaday  

Finally the 13-year-old on Battlefield 3 will get their comeuppance [Shawn] sent in his fully adjustable auto-fire mod for an XBox360 controller. It’s pretty simple – just an ATtiny85 soldered to a button with a pot to adjust the rate and switch to turn it on and off. It could have been done with a 555, [...]

Tags:  hackaday links january shawn auto-fire comeuppance hackaday  

Finally the 13-year-old on Battlefield 3 will get their comeuppance [Shawn] sent in his fully adjustable auto-fire mod for an XBox360 controller. It’s pretty simple – just an ATtiny85 soldered to a button with a pot to adjust the rate and switch to turn it on and off. It could have been done with a 555, [...]

Tags:  hackaday links january shawn auto-fire comeuppance hackaday  

They can put a man on the moon, but they can’t put a man in LEO Yeah, we’re enraged by that headline. Anyway, NASA put up a whole bunch of projects and made them open source. From the looks of it, there’s plenty of cool stuff: genetic algorithm libs, toolkits for astrodynamics simulations (on the Goddard site), [...]

Tags:  man hackaday links leo-yeah genetic-algorithm man-on-the-moon hackaday  

Now make it life size Here’s a scale model of the classic Playstation game Wipeout. It uses quantum levitation, superconductors, liquid nitrogen, and incredibly detailed models of the cars in Wipeout. They’re able control the speed and direction of the cars electronically. Somebody get on making one of these I can drive. Never mind, it’s totally [...]

Tags:  wipeout hackaday links game-wipeout liquid-nitrogen playstation-game hackaday  

Ah, Christmas. That wonderful time of year when you can roll out of bed to the screams and wails of children, grab a hot cocoa, and spend several hours arguing with an 8-year-old about which LEGO set to build first. Simply magical. While you’re waiting for the Doctor Who Christmas special to come on, settle [...]

Tags:  christmas hackaday links doctor-who hot-cocoa wails hackaday  

[Martin] sent in two videos he found while cruising the tubes. The first video is a simple circuit with a resistor, three switches, and three LEDs. All the components are soldered together right in front of the camera. When a battery is connected, turning the first switch on makes the first LED light up. Turning [...]

Tags:  hackaday physics troll martin led-light resistor tubes Ask hackaday  

Free-form Christmas ornament Here’s [Rob]‘s free form circuit that’s a Christmas ornament for geeks. It looks great, but sadly isn’t powered through a Christmas light strand. It’s just as cool as the skeletal Arduino we saw. Prototyping with flowers Well this is interesting: protoboard that’s specifically made to make SMD soldering easier. The guys at elecfreaks [...]

Tags:  christmas hackaday ornament rob light-strand christmas-ornament christmas-light hackaday links  

[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  

Drilling square holes We’re still a bit baffled by the physics of this, but apparently it’s possible to drill a square hole with a round bit. This video shows square holes being milled using a cutter which is offset from the center of the bit. [Thanks Jordan] LED Motorcycle headlight driven by mains [William] found a [...]

Tags:  hackaday links bit william jordan motorcycle-headlight square-holes hackaday  

LED Neurons [Alexandra Olivier] put up an art installation at Wellesley College that looks like a bunch of neurons built out of LEDs. The neurons are connected to a couple PIR sensors and ‘fire’ whenever movement is detected. The result is a lot like being inside a brain. Fitting, then, that the installation is called [...]

Tags:  pir-sensors wellesley-college hackaday hackaday links  

Honey, would you like some cheese? WHIRRRRRRRRR [The Timmy] broke his manual cheese grater. It would be a waste to throw away a perfectly functional tool that’s only missing a handle, so he kicked it up a notch with a cordless drill. Now [Tim], “can grate with incredible speed and power for even the toughest of cheeses.” Anyone [...]

Tags:  cheese hackaday links tim timmy cheese-grater functional-tool hackaday  

Finally an Arduino shield that does nothing The folks at Evil Mad Scientist labs have finally created the Googly Eye Shield for Arduinos. With it’s pass-through .100 headers, it adds googly eyes to your Arduino projects. Of course, instead of in addition to the googly eyes you could add a breadboard, making it somewhat useful. A million fake [...]

Tags:  shield hackaday arduino googly-eyes mad-scientist eye-shield hackaday links  

Experimentations with haptics [Chris] sent in two videos (1, 2) documenting his experiments with haptic feedback. He’s recording the position of a DC motor and can either play it back or send it to another motor. It’s very similar to the kissing robot we saw earlier this year, but we’re not making any judgments. Mobile Emergency [...]

Tags:  hackaday motor links chris haptics dc-motor hackaday  

Build details for Raspberry Pi prototype With the launch of Raspberry Pi approaching the development team released the details about the prototypes from about five years ago. The board was originally based on an ATmega644 and built on some perfboard. ‘Zero Energy Device’ challenge We call BS on the title of this one, but the [...]

Tags:  raspberry hackaday links perfboard energy-device hackaday  

An accidental radial engine Hack A Day’s very own [Jeremy Cook] was trying to figure out how to push four ‘arms’ out one at a time. What he came up with is a very nice model of a radial engine. Everything was cut on a CNC router and a motor from an air freshener provides [...]

Tags:  hackaday engine radial jeremy-cook cnc-router radial-engine hackaday links  

Playing Snake on a MIDI controller While you’re waiting for your bandmates to finish arguing/making out/their beer, you can play Snake on your MIDI controller. Luis wrote a Snake game for an Akai APC40 controller. Everything is built with Processing and should provide a great distraction from (for?) your 14-year-old groupies. Cheap & simple PCB [...]

Tags:  controller midi snake luis snake-game midi-controller hackaday hackaday links  

Open-source Mars rover [Seth King] wasn’t satisfied with current robotics platforms that don’t work well outdoors. He started the Open Rover Kickstarter with the end goal of having a 6-wheel robot with a rocker-bogie suspension just like the Mars landers. We’re sure it’ll be an interesting platform. Adding a Flash to a key fob video [...]

Tags:  mars hackaday rover seth-king wheel-robot hackaday links  

Indestructible earbuds We’re still waiting for our [Lt. Uhura] style earbuds. But until then, can we interest anyone in a set that will stand up to some abuse? Solder Pot Scavenger [Felicitus] says we should get a solder pot and use it to scavenge for parts. His method looks pretty easy and it’s cheaper than buying a [...]

Tags:  solder hackaday pot lt.-uhura lt-uhura solder-pot hackaday links  

Plasma speakers Apparently if you run AC and DC currents through a welding torch flame you can use the resulting plasma as a loudspeaker. [Thanks Cody] Power metering The Google Power Meter API is no longer in development but that didn’t stop [Pyrofer] from finishing his metering hardware. It uses a reflectance sensor to read [...]

Tags:  hackaday power plasma torch-flame dc-currents welding-torch hackaday links  

Here’s another “useless machine” variant.  The trick to this one is that it has dual “fingers” and can work either way. Which way it turns off is selectable via a switch on the side, and the fingers can both be turned on to “fight” each other. Check out the video here. This video depicts the [...]

Tags:  video way hackaday selectable fingers hackaday links  

Tripod CNC Machining Setup:   Here’s a strange “tripod” device using the EMC software package generally used for CNC machining.  In this case it looks like something that (when scaled up) might control a sky-cam-like device that one would see at football games. The Off-Grid Container House:   Project to make an off-grid container house.  [...]

Tags:  tripod machining cnc emc-software sky-cam hackaday hackaday links  

Tim wrote in to tell us about this simple hack where he replaced the stock button lights with some really cool Blue LEDS on an ’87 BMW. He uses some capacitors, to achieve the effect that it takes a bit for the charge to drain out so the lights stay on for a bit after [...]

Tags:  hackaday links bit tim blue-leds capacitors hackaday  

Huge, fully functional NES game pad replica Students at Dutch TU Delft university recently built a huge replica of the original NES controller (Google Translation), which is fully functional and can be used to play games on a large display screen they also installed. How big is it, you ask? It’s about 6 meters wide [...]

Tags:  replica hackaday nes tu-delft-university nes-game game-pad hackaday links  

Custom EBike with a 200+ km range [Doctorbass] constructed an awesome electrical bike back in 2008 from a Mongoose bicycle. The bike boasts a top speed of 76km/h and a total range of 210 km on a single charge. Some car company needs to hire this guy STAT. [via Make] Build to order Xbox 360 [...]

Tags:  hackaday range bike mongoose-bicycle electrical-bike hackaday links  

iPad2 combination case [Jasn] wasn’t happy with Apple’s version of the iPad2 case, but an InCase Magazine Jacket didn’t meet his needs either. He broke the two apart and combined pieces of each to achieve his perfect tablet enclosure. MIDI power tools Enjoy the sounds of working in the shop thanks to [ArcAttack's] MIDI controlled [...]

Tags:  case midi ipad hackaday power-tools hackaday links  

Induction cook top provides power too We’re familiar with induction cook tops but we never thought to power a microcontroller with one. [Thanks Hadez] Ping-Pong Uranium We’ve been big fans of the chain reaction demonstration using ping-pong balls and mouse traps ever since we saw [Mr. Wizard] do it back in the day. If you [...]

Tags:  induction hackaday cook mr.-wizard ping-pong-balls induction-cook-top using-ping-pong-balls hackaday links  

Oven parts scrounging In response to last week’s post about parts scrounging with a heat gun, Hackaday forum member [BiOzZ] decided to try doing the same thing in his oven. It seems to work quite well, but we’re wondering if there should be any concerns over the lead content of the solder. Anyone care to [...]

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Sunlit LCD screen [A.J.] did some experiments and managed to replace his LCD backlight using fiber optics and the sun. Game Boy LCD Repair [Alan] found that he could fix dead columns on his Game Boy LCD screen with a little reflow work on the connector. 3DS Design Flaw? Anyone having problems with the way [...]

Tags:  lcd game screen a.j alan fiber-optics lcd-backlight hackaday hackaday links  

Magnified glasses A late hacking session, and parts-on-hand came together as the inspiration for [BadWolf's] magnified glasses with LED lighting. Pendulum Printer This orb, when swung like a pendulum, prints images by dropping ink out the bottom. A processing sketch works in conjuction with a Wii Remote and an IR LED in the orb to [...]

Tags:  led pendulum orb wii-remote badwolf hackaday hackaday links  

3D holographic fog display Some researchers in Japan are hard at work building a 3D volumetric fog display that would allow you to live out some of your Leia-related Star Wars fantasies. Using a column of fog and three projectors, they were able to create a display that looks three-dimensional from any angle. It might [...]

Tags:  display hackaday fog japan volumetric-fog fantasies hackaday links  

Omnidirectional personal transport [Dan] sent us a link to this Honda U3-X personal transport device. It’s kind of like a Segway that can move in any direction but our head already hurts from the thought of going over backward on one of these. How light bulb filaments were developed Now that incandescent light bulbs are about [...]

Tags:  march hackaday transport dan incandescent-light-bulbs transport-device personal-transport hackaday links  

Odd project materials [Juliansr] wrote in to tell us about a site that sells bendable, moldable, stretchable, and other ‘able’ materials you might want to use in your next project. (2 * 9V) = Flashlight [Lasse] built a flashlight with two 9V batteries. One is a normal battery, the other has been gutted and is [...]

Tags:  hackaday flashlight project 9v-batteries odd-project hackaday links  

PCB Stand Part PCB, part old IC, and held together with hot glue. It doesn’t take much to make this electronics stand, but it’ll certainly add to the geek level of your desk. Decorate with light This busy living room is actually decorated all in white. The patterns that give it life are on lend [...]

Tags:  pcb hackaday february hot-glue living-room hackaday links  

New Project Hosting site [Paul] wrote in to tell us about his brand new hack hosting service, HackHut. Based on WordPress with some modifications, it is definitely worth keeping an eye on as new features emerge. Instructabliss Speaking of project hosting, Instructables are a common source of projects as well as complaints. Instructabliss by [Daid] [...]

Tags:  project hackaday instructabliss paul new-hack instructables hackaday links  

DIY driving controller It looks like this steering wheel, shifter, and foot pedal were all made from string and garbage. That being said, you can see it works quite well. The setup just pushed keys on the keyboard,  which reminds us of the junky plastic add-ons for the Wii remote. [Thanks Toumal] Taping PCI express [...]

Tags:  hackaday diy january wii-remote wii steering-wheel hackaday links  

Obligatory tech tree It’s hard to let a Christmas go by without looking in on a geeky Christmas tree project. Luckily, [Peter Davenport] decided to share his Arduino and LCD shield tree. Blinking USB dude If you’ve got a 555 timer and some commonly salvageable components give this blinking LED man a try. The version above is [...]

Tags:  christmas hackaday tree peter-davenport arduino hackaday links  

Ok, you’ve finished your project, you’ve taken great notes along the way and photographed every step. Now you want to share. Where will you post it? There are a lot of options out there, private hosting, Hackaday,  instructables, and tons of others. How can you decide? Here are some handy break downs to help you [...]

Tags:  question project way hackaday instructibles Ask hackaday  

The Clock Clock This digital display is made from several analog clocks with thick hands. Together they make something of a 7-segment display, which can be used to display the time. It reminds us of the “Shared Time” installation we covered previously. [Thanks Drum365 via Anonimiss Files] Quickly desolder lots of parts [Rhys Goodwin] is [...]

Tags:  display clock time rhys-goodwin analog-clocks hackaday segment-display hackaday links  

Happy Halloween to one and all. Let’s celebrate the holiday with some related links. [Brandon] carved the Hackaday logo into his Jack-’o-Lantern. But that’s not all, inspired by EMSL’s Jack-’o-Lantern, as well as our own offering, he added LEDs. Three of them occupy the flesh behind the eyes and nose, fading in and out thanks [...]

Tags:  lantern hackaday october brandon jack happy-halloween leds hackaday links  

Square Gears This video demonstrates square gears and other oddly shaped cogs. We can’t think of a use but it’s interesting none-the-less. [via Tinkernology] Cooking with Lasers It’s late and you’ve been at the workbench for quite some time. But why go to the kitchen for a snack? Grab a couple of 1 watt lasers, [...]

Tags:  hackaday square october watt-lasers quite-some-time hackaday links  

Cards you should crank These greeting cards must be the product of a mechanical engineer run amok. They come with a crank and are designed to entertain with their simple, yet elegant movements. [Thanks Phil] Magnetic card stripe reader [JP] built an Arduino based magnetic card reader. It uses off-the-shelf parts but if you don’t [...]

Tags:  card hackaday reader phil magnetic-card-reader mechanical-engineer stripe-reader hackaday links  

Old timey pics with a new timey camera Update: We’ve already looked at this one… see the full article for all the details. One way to get old-looking photographs is to use a vintage camera. Then again you can just connect a 1908 lens to a modern dslr with great results. [Thanks MS3FGX] Cheap iPad mounting [...]

Tags:  timey way camera ipad vintage-camera hackaday hackaday links  

Sugar rocket We’re told that this rocket is sugar powered. It’s quite a bit bigger than the homemade sugar motors we saw last week and it makes for quite a show. [Thanks Estqwerty] Wooden PC construction The finished look of this wooden PC case seems very familiar to us but we’re not sure we’ve seen [...]

Tags:  hackaday rocket sugar pc-construction pc-case hackaday links  

6502 Gate Simulator Ever wondered what’s going on inside that chip as the program executes? Now you can take a look at the die itself with this visual gate simulator for the 6502 processor. [Thanks Puli and Svofski] Copper corrosion [Moogle] cracked open his DockStar to find corroded copper. It seems that Seagate left a [...]

Tags:  gate simulator copper copper-corrosion hackaday puli hackaday links  

Hotel room door lock picking Here’s further proof that you should never leave anything of value in your hotel room. We’re not worried about someone getting in while the room is occupied. But these methods of defeating the chain lock and opening the door without a keycard (YouTube login required) do show how easy it is [...]

Tags:  room hotel door keycard hackaday hotel-room hackaday links  

EL back-lit keyboard A couple bucks worth of EL wire gives a nice green glow to [Mark Shasha's] T400 Elite. Hopefully [Jeri Ellsworth] has some time to pull those how-to videos together so that we can make our own EL wire to replicate this hack. Mini kaboom This tiny cannon is right out of Night at the [...]

Tags:  hackaday august wire mark-shasha jeri-ellsworth hackaday links  

Creepy or not? Do you find these faces creepy or cute? They can display a huge range of facial gestures and the German engineers who designed them were trying to avoid the uncanny valley. That’s the point at which human features on a robot seem quite real, but are off in just the right way as [...]

Tags:  hackaday august creepy facial-gestures german-engineers uncanny-valley hackaday links  

PCB Group Orders [Phil] wrote in to let us know about the DorkbotPDX group orders. The site makes group PCB orders until a cutoff date or the panel is full. You get three copies of your design with no setup fee for just $5/square inch including domestic postage. Not a bad price. We aren’t affiliated [...]

Tags:  pcb group hackaday phil group-orders august-1 hackaday links  

Radio Receiver If you never got the chance to build one as a kid [JoOngle] takes you through the steps to build your own radio receiver. Details are a bit scarce but it’s nothing your friend Google can’t help you out with. Fixing a Blackberry trackball If your Blackberry trackball stops working well you can [...]

Tags:  blackberry radio receiver radio-receiver hackaday trackball hackaday links  

Precision CRT manufacture Here’s a great video from Tektronix about building a precision cathode ray tube. The tube manufacture method was developed to use in oscilloscopes and we’d guess it dates back to the early 1960′s. [Thanks Bill] Snake on an LED matrix We would have done a full post o this beautifully built LED matrix but [...]

Tags:  led precision tube bill cathode-ray-tube led-matrix hackaday hackaday links  

Painting with light [Jo0ngle] wanted a fun toy and an easy conversation piece. He painted a square on the back of his door with some glow-in-the-dark paint. Now he can draw on it using a blu-ray laser or a UV flashlight. Either way, the effect is quite pleasing. [Thanks Justin] Resistor decoder rings This resistor [...]

Tags:  resistor june hackaday justin glow-in-the-dark-paint uv-flashlight painting-with-light hackaday links  

Quick, go to answers.hackaday.com and sign up for an account. Ages ago, we announced that we would be bringing a community driven question and answer system to Hackaday. We eventually got tired of waiting for the feature to be provided and improvised. Well, the wait is over. You can now post your own questions and [...]

Tags:  hackaday live com answer-system question-and-answer Ask hackaday  

Remote motion control This project walks though a method of controlling motors with an accelerometer when the two are physically separated. Two Arduinos are used, with the user interface and the motor control connected via Ethernet. This must be useful for something; maybe it should be the next step once you get your accelerometer up and [...]

Tags:  accelerometer hackaday control motion-control hackaday links  

Several people have been asking a similar question to, “How do you at Hackaday keep track of and organize all your equipment?” -[Jeff Allen] and others. We have a variety of resources to help you keep track of your tools, equipment, parts, and supplies! Follow us after the jump for some tips for keeping your workspace clean and [...]

Tags:  hackaday equipment track jeff-allen tools-equipment Ask hackaday  

Cardboard record player [Yen] tipped us off about this cardboard record player. It’s a marketing tool that you receive in the mail. Inside the cardboard packaging is a record and the packaging itself can be folded into a player. Hackable handheld The NanoNote is a tiny handheld housing a lot of power for a small price. It ships [...]

Tags:  player cardboard record yen cardboard-packaging record-player hackaday hackaday links  

A while back, we announced that we would be bringing new features to Hackaday. One in particular that garnished a lot of interest was our question answer type thingy. Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, that has not happened yet. Without divulging too much into the secret machinery that lies underneath Hackaday, I’ll just say [...]

Tags:  lot occurrence hackaday new-features Ask hackaday  

Powerplant control room panoramas: There are two power plants presented in 360 degree panoramas here. All those dials and switches just get us giddy. The one pictured above was built in 1918 and is still in operation. Not only are the control rooms here, but several other locations around the facility too. Energy recycling prosthetic foot: At first, [...]

Tags:  hackaday february control degree-panoramas power-plants hackaday links  

$30,000? Is it art or is it a puzzle? Well, it functions as a game but it’s certainly a work of art and priced accordingly. The Superplexus was featured in Make Mazine and Hammacher Schlemmer sells it for thirty grand (you can’t just click to add it to your cart though). Think of the work that [...]

Tags:  hackaday art work hammacher-schlemmer mazine superplexus hackaday links  

Bot gives head to passersby This free range robot was spotted at this year’s Kinetica Art Fair. You can place your hand above it and it will stop and pour you a beer. That’s if you consider 7/8 of a glass of head ‘a beer’. Photo booth adds fun – consumes floor space Face it, photo booths are [...]

Tags:  photo head beer art-fair photo-booths space-face hackaday hackaday links  

Marble Junker Here’s a quick and dirty kinetic sculpture. It’s a track for a steel marble to roll around in with a magnet on a rotating wheel to pick it up and start it over again. Not every hack has to be a beautiful masterpiece, they just need to be fun. Of course, if this were [...]

Tags:  marble hackaday january kinetic-sculpture junker hackaday links  

Everyone Remembers Free day right? [The Ideanator's] Bus Pirate came in such a nice red box – he decided to make it his permanent case. [Chico] is in the middle of making a CNC, but decided to make some music with the steppers in the mean time. What looks like an old wooden box is actually [Ludvig's] [...]

Tags:  sunday box hackaday ludvig chico steppers mean-time hackaday links