Author Archive
Converting transparency sheets to an LCD monitor Apparently, there’s some sort of sporting event being televised this weekend that has been historically used as an excuse to buy a big-screen TV. [Joel] wanted a huge-screen TV on the cheap, so he converted an overhead projector to something he can use with his XBox. Using a bare [...]
February 4th, 2012 | Posted in News | No Comments
Office game show buzzer keeps things fair and square 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 [...]
February 3rd, 2012 | Posted in News | No Comments
Measure radiation with military surplus It’s really amazing what you can find at military surplus shops. [David] just built a radiation detector out of a DT-590A scintillation probe originally made to test if Air Force bases were contaminated with Plutonium. Who says nothing good came out of massive nuclear arsenals? DT-590A / PDR-56 Gamma ray probes were made [...]
February 2nd, 2012 | Posted in News | No Comments
Earning a merit badge with a pinewood derby photo finish As a boy scout properly acculturated into the DIY philosophy, [Adam] really wanted to get his hands on the new Inventing merit badge. The merit badge required solving a problem, so of course a pinewood derby instant replay system was the obvious solution. After thinking through a few [...]
February 1st, 2012 | Posted in News | No Comments
Reverse Engineering a 1.5 inch Photoframe Little, no name, 1.5 inch LCD photo key-chains are all over the place for practically nothing. Not too surprisingly these things do not vary much in the parts that they use, some flash ram, a little lipo battery and a 16 bit color LCD. Wanting to find a way [...]
January 31st, 2012 | Posted in News | No Comments
A SOPA we still can’t get behind [Brad] had an extremely productive January 18th. Considering how many websites went dark to protest SOPA, we can’t blame him. While considering what he could get done if popular Internet time sinks went dark on command, [Brad] thought of the Stop Online Productivity Avoidance box. This build will redirect [...]
January 30th, 2012 | Posted in News | No Comments
Simulated dashboard for a simulated race Simulators might have lost their cool for a lot of gamers, but [Fergo] is trying for a comeback. He built an electronic dashboard for a car racing simulator. [Fergo] spends most of his track time on iRacing, an MMO racing simulator. Possibly due to a little bit of influence from [...]
January 29th, 2012 | Posted in News | No Comments
The Fukushima Robot Diaries After the terrible tragedy in Fukushima, the cleanup and damage assessment has begun. A robot operator, known only as [S.H.] has decided to write a blog about their efforts. As pictured above, they are using [iRobot] models, including the [510 Packbot], and the [710 Warrior]. Since cleanup efforts started, [S.H.] was [...]
January 28th, 2012 | Posted in News | No Comments
DSLR performance measured with audio editing software [Jaroslav's] camera didn’t have a feature to measure the speed of its response in different modes so he figured out his own method. Using the microphone on his webcam he recorded the sound made by the mirror and shutter movements, then used Audacity to analyze the camera’s performance. [...]
January 27th, 2012 | Posted in News | No Comments
Analog Joypad for your Retro PC Part of the fun with old computers is playing some old school games, and while you could play them with a keyboard it is much more fun with a joystick. You can get old joysticks all day long on auction sites, but you have to watch out. Some are [...]
January 26th, 2012 | Posted in News | No Comments