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Tuesday, December 31st, 2013
- Splash Screen On System Reset
- Micro Voltmeter
- Custom Mech Warrior Online Controller
- Bluetooth Control For Pc Psu
- Oscilloscope Clock
- Fpga Pong
- Hackaday In Your Soldering Iron
- A Sculpted Room With Leds
- A Really Really Old Plotter
- Single Pcb Synth
- The Problem Of Being Very Good At Foosball
- Minecraft Zelda Arduinos And Hackaday
- Persistence Of Vision Clock
- A Dutch Word Clock
- Led Matrix Game Console
- Game Boy Printer
- Battery Capacity Tester
- A Shifter With An Easter Egg
- Vfd Clock
- Morse Code Transmitter
| Time | Event |
| 12:00a | Roving Hexapod Poops Out 3D Prints
[Jia Wu, Mary Sek, and Jeff Maeshiro], students at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, took on the task of developing a walking 3D printer. The result is Geoweaver, a hexapod robot with a glue gun extruder system. Hackaday has seen walking CNC machines before, but not a 3D printer. Geoweaver uses two servos on each of its six legs to traverse the land. The team was able to program several gaits into the robot, allowing it to traverse uneven terrain. Walking is hard enough on its own, but Geoweaver also uses a glue gun based extruder to make 3D prints. The extruder head uses two servos to swing in a hemispherical arc. The arc is mapped in software to a flat Geoweaver’s prints may not be much to look at yet, however the important thing to remember is that one of the future visions for this robot is to print on a planetary scale. Geoweaver currently uses reacTIVision to provide computer control via an “eye in the sky”. ReacTIVision tracks a fiducial marker on the robot, and applies it to a topographical map of the terrain. This allows Geoweaver to change its height and print parameters depending on the flatness of the ground it is printing on. On a scaled up Geoweaver, reacTIVision would be replaced by GPS or a similar satellite based navigation system. Most of the software used in Geoweaver is opensource, including Grasshopper and Firefly, written by the team’s professor, [Jason Kelly Johnson]. The exception is Rhino 5. We would love to see an option for a free or open source alternative to laying out ~$1000 USD in software for our own Geoweaver.
Filed under: 3d Printer hacks, robots hacks   |
| 3:00a | The Geek Group Installs Robot, Destroys CRT Monitor
The Geek Group recently documented the process of overhauling part of their workspace to accommodate Project Jeff, a massive KUKA KR-350/1 industrial robot. We don’t see many behind the scenes industrial-scale projects here at Hackaday, but we’re definitely impressed with the clever techniques employed to pull off this precision install. At around 5 inches deep, the original floor was far too thin to handle the weight and tortional loads imposed by Project Jeff, so The Geek Group carved out a 15′ square space of old concrete and dumped it piece by piece in the rubbish. They then dug a new hole to a depth of 2.5′ and filled it with a fresh pour that amounted to 67,500 pounds of concrete. Sheesh. That concrete will inevitably expand and move around, which meant installing a pool-noodle-looking slip cover to protect a buried conduit from damage, as well as placing some gaskets around the edges to prevent cracking while maintaining a seal. Around 10 minutes into the video, they tackle the challenge of embedding bolts that connect to the robot’s base; it takes some patience and creative ladder positioning to fit the template in the correct position. As an added treat, The Geek Group smashed a CRT monitor in our honor, and while they claim software limitations and a steel frame prevented Project Jeff from completely annihilating the monitor, we like to think the skull and cross-wrenches just refused to be destroyed. Because, you know, science. Videos after the break.
[Thanks Ryan and Andrew] Filed under: Hackerspaces   |
| 6:00a | POV Display with an Element of Danger
Persistence of vision displays are always cool, although we must admit this one looks like it could very well explode at high speeds… Safety concerns aside, this desk fan based display provides a great starting point for learning about making POV displays. It makes use of an old cellphone battery, an ATmega8, some LEDs, Veroboard, assorted wires and solder and of course, a high-speed desk fan. [shparvez001] also provides the full code on his blog for the project, making it very easy to replicate. Though we might also suggest you keep it small enough that the original fan cage still fits on top. From an aesthetic point of view, the display looks fine in the dark — but when the lights are on you might get some odd looks. We can see this project being greatly improved by mounting the LEDs through one of the fan blades, and the control electronics on the back side of the other blades. Maybe throw in some wireless charging for the battery while the fan is off too? Anyway, stick around after the break to see the display in action. If you want a more permanent fan POV try adding display hardware to a ceiling unit.
Filed under: led hacks, Microcontrollers   |
| 9:01a | Barbot Mixes Drinks Perfectly with Web Interface
Are you good at mixing drinks? We think this Barbot might give you a run for your money! Not only does this Barbot have room for 5 different liquors, but you can combine them any way you want with an extremely slick web interface that you can check out for yourself. During initial setup, you add your chosen liquors to the machine and then using the configure mode in the web interface, you tell Barbot what it has to work with. Once these fields are populated, Barbot will list various drinks that it is capable of mixing with the provided ingredients. It also has a cleaning mode, which allows you to prime the pumps and set administrative access for your parties. The hardware behind this build is a BeagleBone Black running Ubuntu 13.04 with Apache2, MySQL, and PHP to host the web interface — bind and DHCP are used to create the web portal using a USB WiFi dongle. The online interface directly controls the pumps using PHP via the GPIOs. To see a full demonstration stick around after the break for the included video.
Filed under: cooking hacks, robots hacks   |
| 12:01p | Case Modder Builds LCD Window; Causes LSD Flashbacks
[Chris, aka Mosquito's Mods] is well-known for some awesome PC case mods. He’s outdone himself this time with an embedded LCD panel as his case window. This use of an LCD is becoming common on arcade games and slot machines. [Chris] was inspired by an arcade game he saw at a local Dave & Buster’s. He started with an off the shelf 16″ USB LCD monitor from AOC. [Chris] then stripped off the back light, diffuser, and reflectors. Left with the bare panel and polarizers, he then created an LCD sandwich of sorts. First a layer of 2mm acrylic. Then the LCD and panel, along with 4 strips of acrylic forming a frame around the LCD. The frame strips are in blue in the image after the break.
The final layer is a thick piece of 6mm acrylic. The thick acrylic keeps the window assembly from bending, which would lead to a cracked LCD. The entire assembly is held together with 3M scotch 4010 tape. White LED strips around the LCD shine plenty of light into the case, allowing the images on the LCD to be seen. The final effect is stunning. Images on the LCD appear to be floating in space somewhere behind the window. The effect works best with back and white images, as color is understandably a bit washed out.
[Thanks Kyle!] Filed under: computer hacks   |
| 3:00p | Acoustic Wayfinder for the Visually Impaired
Ideally, technology is supposed to enhance our lives. [Shane and Eileen], two seniors at Cornell have found a great way to enhance the lives of visually impaired individuals with their acoustic wayfinding device. In brainstorming for their final project, [Shane and Eileen] were inspired by this Hackaday post about robots as viable replacements for guide dogs. They sought to provide wearable, hands-free guidance and detection of (primarily) indoor obstacles—namely chairs, benches, and other inanimate objects below eye level. The wayfinder comprises two systems working in tandem: a head-mounted navigation unit and a tactile sensor worn on the user’s finger. Both systems use Maxbotix LV-MaxSonar-EZ0 ultrasonic rangefinder modules to detect obstacles and vibrating mini-disc motors to provide haptic feedback at speeds proportionate to the user’s distance from an obstacle. The head unit uses two rangefinders and two vibrating motors. Together, the rangefinders have a field of view of about 120 degrees and are capable of detecting obstacles up to 6.45 meters away. The tactile sensor comprises one rangefinder and motor and is used in a manner similar to a Hoover cane. The user sweeps their hand to detect objects that would likely be out of the range of the head unit. Both parts are ergonomic and size-adjustable. At power up, [Shane and Eileen]‘s software performs a calibration of the tactile sensor to determine the distance threshold in conjunction with the user’s height. They’ve used an ATMega 1284 to drive the system, and handled real-time task scheduling between the two subsystems with the TinyRealTime kernel. A full demonstration video is embedded after the break.
[thanks Shane and Eileen] Filed under: Medical hacks, Microcontrollers, wearable hacks   |
| 6:01p | Retrotechtacular: Wax On, Wax Off: How Records Are Made
In this 1942 tour of the RCA Victor plant in Camden, NJ, we see the complete record making process from the master cut production to the shipping of multiple 78RPM shellac pressings. The film centers around a recording of Strauss’ Blue Danube waltz as performed by the 1940s equivalent of studio musicians, the Victor Salon Orchestra. The master record starts life as a thin layer of molten wax poured on to a hot circular plate in a dust-free room. Bubbles and impurities are blow torched out, and the wax is left to cool under a steel dome. This perfect disc is carefully passed to the recording studio through a special slot, where it is laid carefully beneath the cutting stylus. Unlike today’s multi-track recording sessions, the master was cut from the performance of a complete band or orchestra all playing as they would in concert. The sound engineer was responsible for making fast changes on the fly to ensure sonic and groove width consistency. After cutting, the delicate wax undergoes several phases of electrolysis that form the metal master. It is bombarded first with pure gold and then twice with copper sulfate to build a sturdy disc. The copper ionization process also ensures high fidelity in the final product. Although mighty, this master won’t last long enough to make all the necessary pressings, so a mother matrix is made. This is a negative image of the master. The mother is formed by electrolytically bathing the master in nickel, and then adding a thin film of some indeterminate substance. Another copper bath, and mother emerges. As soon as possible, the master is separated and whisked away to the storage vault. Since a positive image is needed for pressing, a stamping matrix is made. Mother gets a nickel bath for durability, and then a copper bath to form the stamping matrix. Many stampers are created so that several records can be pressed at once. These images get a chromium plating to help them last through many pressings. The stampers are soldered to a rigid backing before getting their very precisely placed spindle hole drilled. This hole is centered by machine and checked through magnification of the grooves as the disc spins. Stampers are washed one last time to remove dust and given a final brushing off and polishing. These 78RPM records were made from the finest shellac from India, resin from the East Indies, and 18 other secret herbs and spices that are all heated and combined in a 3-story Banbury mixer. The resulting dough is rolled out into a sheet and cut into biscuits, which are square pieces slightly bigger than the final record. The biscuits are reheated on steam tables right before they are pressed. Label application is part of the pressing process, and both sides are pressed simultaneously. After this, the ragged edge is smoothed, and each record is tested by human ears. Finally, it is polished, sleeved, counted, boxed, and ready to be shipped to Woolworth’s, Wanamaker’s, or wherever. A few years after this film was made, the shift to 33RPM vinyl records began. The process really hasn’t changed much over the years. The master, the mother matrix, and the stamping matrix bathe in different chemicals now, and the end result is pressed into a vinyl biscuit rather than shellac.
[Thanks Mlseim] Retrotechtacular is a weekly column featuring hacks, technology, and kitsch from ages of yore. Help keep it fresh by sending in your ideas for future installments.
Filed under: Retrotechtacular   |
| 9:01p | Fubarino Contest Winners
It is with great pleasure that I announce the winners of the Fubarino Contest (alphabetical order): Brian, Daniel, Dave, Dominic, Eric, Gerben, James, Joel, Joseph, Laurens, Luis, Mats, Mike, Nathanael, Pete, Peter, Sebastian, Taciuc, Vojtěch, and Wes. They rose to the challenge and added our URL as an Easter Egg in their microcontroller project. Their hacks were chosen for their creativity, as well as completeness of presentation. Congratulations! Links to all twenty project features are after the break in reverse order in which they were originally published. To see all the entries hit up the contest tag. We also want to take a moment to thank Microchip Technology Inc. They not only put up twenty Fubarino SD boards as prizes, they are also covering the cost of shipping to each winner. Many thanks! We thought it was interesting that the twenty winners live in 11 different countries: Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Malaysia, Romania, South Africa, Spain, The Netherlands, UK, and the USA. Hackaday really is a global community! If you are one of the winners please leave your acceptance speech in the comments section. This is also a great place to leave feedback — if you didn’t submit an entry we want to know why!
Contest Winners:Filed under: contests, Featured   |
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