Archive for March, 2011

Daily Digest March 31, 2011

DIY camera stabilizer keeps your video shake free on the cheap Commercial vest-based camera stabilizer systems are quite expensive, sometimes bearing price tags in the $700-$800 dollar range. Photographer [Miguel Vicente] has a pretty well-stocked workshop and decided there was no way he would shell out that much cash for a rig, so he simply [...]

Daily Digest March 30, 2011

Oscilloscope thinks it’s a video monitor There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. Where would we be if we listened to advice like that? [Eric] writes that with a fairly simple circuit, he’s able to split a composite video signal into its constituent X and Y ramp [...]

Daily Digest March 29, 2011

CFL Breakdown Reader [Jay] was inspired by one of our earlier articles and started digging around the web for some more information, and found a handy web page with tear downs and schematics of popular compact florescent lamps. Schematics are provided to 15 fairly common models including bigluz, isotronic, luxtek, maway, maxilux, polaris, brownie, Phillips, [...]

Daily Digest March 28, 2011

Your robot stand-in has arrived Meet TIPI, the Telepresence Interface by Pendulum Inversion. TIPI is something of a surrogate, giving physical presence to telecommuters by balancing an LCD screen and camera atop its six foot frame. The user has full control of the robot’s movement, with their own camera image shown on the display so [...]

Daily Digest March 27, 2011

Function generator built and mounted inside electronics bench A function generator is a handy piece of test equipment to have on-site. [Kammenos] designed and built his own function generator, using the bench itself as the enclosure. You can see above that the control panel presents a clean finished look. To achieve it, [Kammenos] designed and printed [...]

Daily Digest March 27, 2011

Music synthesized from the Game of Life [vtol] has built a very elaborate system of electronic sound machines, which can be patched together in various ways in order to create all sorts of sounds and sound effects. The modules range from simple noise synthesizers to pitch shifters, sequencers, and effects processors. The most recent addition [...]

Daily Digest March 26, 2011

Automatic trigger for lightning photography [Vicktor] has always been fascinated by photographs of lightning and decided to try his hand at capturing a few strikes on his camera. Every time he attempted it however, he didn’t have much success. Instead of trying to operate his camera manually to take the images, he decided to build [...]

Daily Digest March 25, 2011

Matchstick model rocketry [Valentin] is the MacGyver of model rocketry, building a small rocket out of three items many people have hanging around the house. Cat litter, matchsticks, and a ballpoint pen are the raw materials that he rounded up before setting to work on the build. The housing of the ballpoint pen will act [...]

Daily Digest March 24, 2011

More high voltage experimentation with a flyback inverter [Electorials] actually makes working with a flyback inverter sound rather easy. This comes hot on the heals of the huge high voltage collection we saw the other day, but slows way down in the presentation of information. This makes the project very approachable for the newbie, especially [...]

Daily Digest March 23, 2011

Vote for the Open Source Hardware logo The Open Source Hardware (OSHW) initiative is rolling right along. But now it’s time for you to share your input. The movement is choosing a logo and you get to decide which one it will be. The ten finalists shown above were narrowed down from the 129 submissions [...]