Monitoring air quality with a $12 sensor [Chris] has allergies, asthma, and uses a wood burning stove. You can imagine why testing his air quality might be something he’d be interested in. He has a very nice $290 laser particle counter, but was really curious how the $12 sharp sensor he found would stack up. [...]
2012 Robogames this weekend in San Mateo California As you may recall, many of us here at Hackaday are big fans of any activity involving robot competitions. One of the better known events that fits that description would be the Robogames, an international event where robots can compete in 50 different events. Granted, not all [...]
Tinkering with ODB II and the CAN bus [Debrah] is taking his next project out to the garage. He built his own CAN bus reader using a dsPIC. The nice thing about working with Control Area Network is that it’s a universal standard found on every modern production line automobile. And because of this, the [...]
Mechanical CPU clock is just as confusing as its namesake [Lior Elazary] designed and built this clock to simulate the function of a CPU. The problem is that if you don’t already have a good grasp of how a CPU works we think this clock will be hopelessly confusing. But lucky for us, we get [...]
Barrel organ made from Lego plays the Star Wars theme 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 [...]
Extending the range of wireless weather stations with walkie talkies [Roel] wanted to put a wireless weather station in his greenhouse. Even though the weather station was supposed to transmit over fairly long distances, the geometry of his back yard and a few stone walls killed the radio signal even after putting a good antenna [...]
Free formed circuit protected by a brick of crystal clear resin The look of this crystal clear resin brick is pretty amazing. [Rupert Hirst] decided to encase his amplifier circuit in a block of polyester resin. We just hope he got everything in his circuit right because there’s no way to replace any of those [...]
Open sourcing everything… there’s an app for that What happens if you’re a prolific developer and decide to release all of the source code from your work? Well, you should get a huge pat on the back from all interested parties. And so we say thank you to [Hunter Davis] for releasing the source code [...]
Automated turntable photography [Muris] has a friend who is selling items on the internet. This friend wanted a simple way to make rotating images of the products and asked him to help. The result of his labors is this base unit that drives the turn table and controls the camera. The first iteration of the [...]
Water Strider robot does it with Lego parts This Lego watercraft uses drinking bottles as pontoons arranged in a pattern that make it look very much like a Water Strider, the insects that dance on the surface of a lake. After the break you can see a video of the rig gracefully navigating a local [...]
