The team at czANZO, the Czech Amateur Near-Space Object group, sent up one of the best high-altitude balloons we’ve ever seen last weekend and the resulting video is remarkable. The team’s build blog (Google Translate link for everyone without Chrome) goes through the design and construction of their payload. Like every other balloon build we’ve [...]

As [Plasma2002] put it, “Those jumbo screens at concerts that display your text messages can be a lot of fun. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have the same thing for your own parties or social gatherings?” The answer to this question came in the form of this hack, a scrolling marquee sign that [...]

[Andy] stuffed some more RAM onto an Arduino Mega and his three-part walk through on the design, construction, and software is a great read and one of the more ‘hard core’ Arduino builds we’ve seen. The build is centered around a 512K × 8 SRAM module [PDF warning]. Because the RAM is divided up into about 512,000 [...]

Imagine our surprise when we learned [Bruce Simpson], who made headlines in 2003 with his $5000 DIY cruise missile, is still alive, not illegally interned in a black ops prison, and still doing what he does best: building really awesome remote-control airplanes. The first successful mass-produced pulse jet aircraft was the German V-1 flying bomb. The [...]

If you’re paying big bucks for those floor-to-ceiling windows why not make them into a canvas for your art as well. Der Kritzler is a motorized plotter that can make this into a reality. It’s a laser-cut pen holder suspended from a pair belt pulleys. Those belts have counterweights, which make it easier for the [...]

[Tom] sent in a gigantic 3-axis router that he pieced together during a 2 week-long work experience placement. Looking at this picture showing a 12-inch ruler on the work area, we realized that this may be the largest CNC router we’ve seen on Hack A Day. [Tom]‘s employer gave him some obsolete axes, so piecing [...]

Sometimes, not all our builds work out the way we hoped. That’s what happened to [Rob] and his attempt at a Delta robot that does stereo lithography. A Delta robot is capable of very fast and precise movements, so [Rob] slapped a laser module on the end of the arms. After putting some UV curing [...]

[Dan] wanted to learn a bit about solid state ignition in engines; to get started he needed a test subject, so he decided he would upgrade his old 12 horsepower lawnmower. Originally the lawnmower engine used a magneto coil ignition system, magnetos are simple and very common in lawnmowers. The magneto is designed to produce [...]

[Vinod] just finished building a voice recorder and it turned out even better than he thought it would. The video after the break shows him recording what is surely one of your favorite songs from his cellphone and then playing it back. The audio quality does sound quite good for a project with very few [...]

In case you missed them the first time, here are our most popular posts from this past week. Our most popular post was about a ‘flashlight’ build. We are using the word flashlight loosely since this monster can draw up to 500 Watts! Our next most popular post was about another [Jörg Sprave] project where [...]

Are you tired of doing things the efficient way when using your lawn equipment? Look no farther. Here are some engine hacks where regular internal combustion engines have been modified to work on steam or compressed air. Surprisingly, all it takes to do this is to remove the carburetor and replace it with a steam [...]

[Augusto] wrote in to tell us about his keychain-sized persistence of vision project. He built the original prototype on some protoboard, using a PIC 16F627 to drive eight LEDs. Synchronization is managed by a tilt sensor on the board that starts the strobing to match the direction the board is traveling. This is a similar [...]

Here’s another chance to ply your hacking skills for cash and prizes. Dangerous Prototypes has just announced the Open 7400 Logic Competition. First prize is $100 and a bunch of hacking goodies. But even better is that since it was announced, more sponsors have stepped up to increase the kitty, and the number of entries [...]

Hacker [Dino Segovis] is back with yet another installment of his Hack a Week series, and it’s looking like he isn’t too worse for wear after hunkering down to face hurricane Irene. This week, it seems that [Dino] is having some problems separating his PNP transistors from his NPNs. After Albert Einstein proves to be [...]

Random number generation is a frequent topic of discussion in projects that involve encryption and security. Intel has just announced a new feature coming to many of their processors that affect random number generation. The random number generator, which they call Bull Mountain, marks a departure from Intel’s traditional method of generating random number seeds [...]

If you didn’t land the job after your last interview, it might have been because you were not wearing this sweet Kraftwerk-inspired necktie. Although our own [Caleb Kraft] insists that this recent creation by the folks over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories is a tribute to him, [Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider] beg to differ. [...]

[Garrett] over at MaceTech was approached by a friend who needed a light-up mohawk installed on a Viking helmet, and he needed it ASAP. Now, [Garrett] does tons of work with LEDs but it’s not every day you are asked to construct a sound-responsive LED mohawk. He had all sorts of LEDs and other bits [...]

[Urpo Lankinen] has a father who is a huge movie buff, and once you care deeply about something it begins appearing everywhere you look. While driving on a back-country road one day, [Urpo]‘s dad noticed that the shadows of the trees on the road looked like an optical film soundtrack, so it was up to [...]

[Adam] recently tipped us off to a project that he worked on recently. In this build he gutted an old candlestick-style phone and added modern technology to make it work as a cordless phone. We really liked this project because he married together new and old technology into an elegant package. There are a few [...]

[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 electric frying pans to warm the plastic sheets, but [James] wasn’t really interested in going [...]

If you’re tired of playing flash games with a mouse, perhaps you’ll draw inspiration from this project. Arthur built a multitouch interface that uses objects as part of the control scheme. In the image above you can see that the game board for a tower defense game is shown on the display. There is a [...]

[Clifford Wolf] wrote in to let us know about a project he recently completed called EmbedVM. It’s a virtual machine for AVR microcontrollers. The package has a relatively small overhead, taking up about 3kB of program memory. The VM can execute 74,000 instructions per second, and runs asynchronously from the microcontroller. As [Clifford] demonstrates in [...]

[Holzleim's] flashlight build is quite impressive. And the rise and fall of the hardware is quite a story. He designed it as a handheld light, relying on batteries to power a multitude of high-power LEDs inside.From the collection of four 5350 mAh lithium polymer cells he was able to achieve a peak power output that [...]

[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 individual logic chips. The lock [...]

[Snypercat] makes no bones about the fact that she despises rats, and does everything in her power to keep them off her farm. We can’t blame her though – they spread disease, eat other animals’ food, and can get your farm shut down if there are too many running about. While most of us might hire [...]

Reader [Xellers] sent in his newest instructable: DIY Electron Accelerator: A Cathode Ray Tube in a Wine Bottle. While not exactly what you might think of a cathode ray tube, the basics are in place. A wine bottle is used as a vacuum chamber and a 9kv neon transformer is attached to a stopped in [...]

We’re all familiar with IVRS systems that let you access information using a touch-tone telephone. [Achu Wilso] built his own version which uses a cellphone, microcontroller, and computer. The cellphone is monitored by an LM324 op-amp with an attached 555 timer chip. When a call comes in the voltage on the headphone output goes high, [...]

[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 this one. The body and [...]

[Easton] as been working with [Jeremy Blum] to come up with the newest version of his animatronic hand. You may remember seeing [Easton's] first animatronic hand, with which he won his regional science fair and made a trip to nations. Since then he’s been working on improvements, and with access to [Jeremy's] Makerbot he harnessed [...]

[KaRMaN] sent us a piece from his blog on what to do with a busted iPhone (google translate). As many iPhone owners have found out, it does not take that much of a fall to render your shiny hand-held command center into a pile of shattered glass. Replacement parts and insurance are available so life [...]

Bicycling at night can be a potentially hazardous endeavor for several reasons, but primarily because well, it’s dark. Inattentive drivers, weather, and other factors aside, the most important thing you can do to keep yourself safe is to ensure that you can see and that you are seen by others. Revolights, an invention put together [...]

[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, robert’s your mother’s brother, and you’ve got a [...]

[Thomas] wrote in to tell us about his latest project, the “AlarmTock”. Like many hacks, this was inspired by some outdated hardware, a radio alarm clock from 1992. After finally getting fed up with his old alarm clock, [Thomas'] wife purchased him a new one for around $10 from a local retail store. Although most [...]

This is a picture of the guts of a diy Segway project (translated). Everything fits into a tiny space under the platform upon which the rider stands. It’s tight, but makes for a sleek look when the diamond plate is covering up all of the internals. An ATmega644 controls the vehicle. It does so by [...]

Over the last two weeks, we’ve seen some pretty crazy and potentially dangerous stuff, like a stun glove and modern day alchemy. For our high voltage theme finale, we couldn’t pass up [Photonicinduction]‘s YouTube channel. Best known for his self-destructing washing machine (the source of this animated .gif), [Photonicinduction] is also the brainchild behind the [...]

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 of an Identity Disc to complete the look. The toy was [...]

[Youchun Zhang] and [Annie (Wei) Dai] found a way to differentiate vowel sounds using an ATmega644 as their final project for a microcontroller design class. Voice recognition is not out of the ordinary, but most of the time it uses a computer, smart phone, or specially designed hardware. This implementation uses an ATmega644, a microphone [...]

In case you missed them, here are our biggest posts from the past week. For the weapons enthusiasts in our audience, make sure to check out our most popular post this week where [Liquider] shows a project in which an airsoft pistol was converted into a coil gun. Our next most popular post was based [...]

The magnum opus of alchemy was the Philosopher’s stone, a substance that was able to turn common metals into gold. Unlike alchemists, [Carl Willis] might not be poisoning himself in a multitude of ways, but he did build a Farnsworth fusor that’s capable of turning Hydrogen into Helium. To fuse Hydrogen in his device, [Carl] [...]