How to build a vacuum form table that gets it right every time [James] builds all sorts of robots and superhero costume replicas at home, so he is always searching for a better way to get consistent results when using his vacuum table. A lot of people use their oven or exposed heating coils from [...]
Knock lock with logic chips [Eric] needed a project for his digital logic design class, and decided on a lock that open in response to a specific pattern of knocks. This is a fairly common project that we’ve seen a few builds with ‘knock locks,’ but this one doesn’t use a microcontroller. Instead, it uses [...]
Chumby controlled mechanum wheel robot [Madox] gutted an Insignia Infocast to use with this robot. Insignia is Best Buy’s house brand and they partnered with Chumby to make their Infocast line. If you can find a used or clearance model it’s a great way to get yourself and embedded Linux board for a project like [...]
Build a clock using dials instead of hands [Doug Paradis] found a simple way to use dials instead of hands on a clock. Actually, that’s pretty much the entire hack… use dials instead of hands. He grabbed a battery-operated clock movement from the hobby store, then printed out one dial for hours, another for minutes, [...]
Converting a lame Tron toy into a cool Halloween costume prop Instructable user [cubeberg’s] daughter saw Tron:Legacy earlier this year and decided right then and there that she wanted to dress up as Quorra for Halloween. Being the awesome dad he is, he decided to make her costume himself, and hit the stores in search [...]
Making oscilloscopes from ARM development boards If you’ve got an ARM development board gathering dust in the corner of your shop, perhaps you could repurpose it as an oscilloscope. [Arend-Paul Spijkerman] was able to use an mbed and LPCXpresso as the hardware end of an oscilloscope. He didn’t use a standalone screen as a display, [...]
Paddle controller for GPU overclocking [Fred] likes to squeeze every cycle possible out of his graphics card. But sometimes pushing the clock speed too high causes corruption. He figured out a way to turn a knob to adjust the clock speed while your applications are still running. The actuator seen above is a Griffin Powermate 3.0. [...]
Paddle controller for GPU overclocking [Fred] likes to squeeze every cycle possible out of his graphics card. But sometimes pushing the clock speed too high causes corruption. He figured out a way to turn a knob to adjust the clock speed while your applications are still running. The actuator seen above is a Griffin Powermate 3.0. [...]
Zigbee home automation gives us another reason not to get up [Russell] sent in a neat home automation project he’s been working on. Even though the project only has two devices so far, we can already see the potential of his project. Instead of the X10 standard that has been a staple of home automation [...]
Home tanning lamps become organ donors for a PCB exposure bed Some projects benefit greatly from the parts a builder is able to find. Take this UV exposure bed for photo-resist copper clad boards (translated). It looks like a commercial product, but was actually built by [TabascoEye] and his fellow hackers. The main sources for parts [...]
