Dick Cappels has made a DIY LC meter. As usual he has provided full schematics and code so you can build your own.
“There must be half a dozen similar LC meters on the web. Why didn’t I just download one of them and use it? I suppose part of the answer is that I wanted to do some of it myself. As nice as these other projects are, I wanted to make an LC meter that others could copy and get working without very much trouble. That meant that “exotic” components need to be kept to a minimum, and to me, that means no relays or hard-to-find special switches. It also means that the complete design nees to be spelled out in sufficent detial to allow anybody with basic assembly skills to put it together and make it work.
This instrument requires two precision components: A precision capacitor and a […]
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Electronic Hacks, DIY Hacks, Complex Hacks |
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I have never seen this demonstration before. Water running through two small open cans into a larger metal collection container wired together to create 10,000 to 15,000 volts. Is it an accumulation of static electricity? If someone knows what is happening I would love to hear about it!
Via: Zedomax
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Electronic Hacks, Insane Equipment, DIY Hacks, Crazy Hacks |
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The Dish Maker looks like an interesting product but I think the “recycling” process might be understated. I am assuming that the dirty dishes will need to be washed before being placed back into the machine so a dish washer will still be needed.
Video after the jump.
“Hate dishes? the DishMaker is a new kind of appliance that can replace dishes altogether by making cups, bowls and plates on demand and recycling them when you’re done. the device uses up the same room and energy as a dishwasher, while it replaces all the cabinets and dishes in your kitchen. the DishMaker takes advantage of a little-known shape-memory property of acrylic so that one dish can be recycled a thousand times without consuming the energy that does into a single-use ceramic dish.”
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Electronic Hacks, Crazy Hacks |
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Check out the latest keyboard project over at uC Hobby. If you want a free LCD display from uC Hobby, read this.
“Here you see the controller board sitting in the new box with the wires soldered on. I did do some modifications to the switch box PCB. The red jumper wire provides an isolated ground for the LEDs. The two wires, orange and white in upper left get power from the USB connection to light the keys.
The other five wires are the switch common and signals for F9-F12. The unconnected blue wire is F12. I will hook it to something eventually.
I used a business card as an insulator between the two PCBs when I closed up the box. The corners of the keyboard controller PC were cut off to fit it in the box. Everything fit nicely.”
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Electronic Hacks, Computer Hacks |
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Have a look at this cool High Altitude Balloon Experiment that is unfolding. Bre Pettis (many know him from Make) is one of the people involved with this project. There is lots of construction details and specs. up and tons of construction pictures to look at. The launch date is March 4th so stay tuned…
“This project is launching a (relatively) high altitude balloon carrying a number of digital cameras and some other instrumentation. The project was conceived and is being implemented in a short time with a crowd of eager volunteers and little prior experience and a lot of optimism.
Goal: Get it ready to go this weekend so we can fine tune during the week.
The helium fill system consists of:
* 1 T-bottle of Helium, 2400 psi, 290cf
* A helium regulator with a barb fitting output output epoxyed into constructed PVC pipe adaptor […]
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Electronic Hacks, Insane Equipment |
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Sapa responded to this article with an example of his creative PCB exposure system made from an old computer scanner.
“I have build UV LED lightbox using old flatbed scanner and 40 Kingbright L-7113UVC LEDs. These LEDs have narrow ray (+-10 degrees), it helps to get sharp shadow on photoresist even if photomask is not cling to the PCB very tight. LEDs mounted on carriage moved by stepper motor (scanner’s mechanics reused with my own controller based on PIC12F629), so 40 LEDs are enough to expose up to A4/Letter PCBs. LEDs mounted close to each other, so it provide well distributed light even with small deepness of box. Exposure adjusted by changing linear speed of the carriage.”
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Electronic Hacks, Computer Hacks |
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Someone needs to make a diy version of this. I would totally drive my car using brain power. Or at least send it to this guy to add to his car.
“A monkey has a microchip in its brain which allows it to move a robotic arm as if it were its real arm.”
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What Were They Thinking, Electronic Hacks, Complex Hacks, Computer Hacks |
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This power supply meter allows you to keep you eye on your load and voltage with a nice digital display without hooking up a bunch of separate meters. How many times have you hooked up a current meter to a project being constructed to see how much juice it’s pulling? Well with this display that second meter can be put to better use! Schematics and code is provided.
“This multimeter was designed to measure output voltage and current in a PSU, where the current sense shunt resistor is connected in series with load at the negative voltage rail. It needs only one supply voltage that can be acquired from main PSU. An additional function of the multimeter is that it can control (switch on and off) an electric fan used to cool the main heatsink. The power threshold at which the fan switches on can be adjusted using One Touch Button […]
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Electronic Hacks, DIY Hacks |
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With some free samples from Maxim/Dallas you could build this on the cheap.
“I had a little bit of free time to work with the MAX3222 chips that Dallas Semi sent me. These have all of the features of the MAX232 (two TX and two RX channels) as well as shutdown and output enable. The best feature is that the chip can operate from 3.0V to 5.5V so it can be quite versatile in connecting both TTL and LVTTL devices via serial port. I ended up making a small board that has a female db9 connector and has the RX, TX and power leads for easy access.”
Thanks Nick.
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Electronic Hacks, DIY Hacks |
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With some free samples from Maxim/Dallas you could build this on the cheap.
“I had a little bit of free time to work with the MAX3222 chips that Dallas Semi sent me. These have all of the features of the MAX232 (two TX and two RX channels) as well as shutdown and output enable. The best feature is that the chip can operate from 3.0V to 5.5V so it can be quite versatile in connecting both TTL and LVTTL devices via serial port. I ended up making a small board that has a female db9 connector and has the RX, TX and power leads for easy access.”
Thanks Nick.
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Electronic Hacks, DIY Hacks |
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The EggLight is a high tech light. Inside that tiny egg like housing is a microcontroller that powers an LED. A simple code based touch sensor was designed to turn the light on. To see more projects by Proteus have a look at his site.
Video after the jump.
“This is a Bedside Night Light I’ve built for my girlfriend according to her valentine’s specifications (hahaha I’m NOT kidding):
+It had to be small
+Portable soft lighting for “stealth home navigation” at night
+It had to be COOL !
The Design:
ping-pong ball + generic_product_cap + capacitive_sensor_made_with_a_pic = EggLight !
The Capacitive touch sensor itself is nothing more than… CODE =D (and some resistors)
You see, each Pin (well most of them anyway) in the PIC microcontroller can be programmed during runtime to be INPUT, OUTPUT(HIGH or LOW) or just to be FLOATING on a tri-state condition…
What you need to do is (look at the schematics so you’ll understand)
+Put […]
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Electronic Hacks, DIY Hacks |
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You will have to put aside 5 or 6 hours to understand this project! Good thing is that it comes with a 115 page manual! I would bet that David is the first to publish plans for a DIY Laser Beam Analyzer.
“The laser beam spot is the tool in laser welding cutting. Industrial lasers are really great, but there’s a huge problem when it comes to knowing the state of your tool. I mean, in a normal milling machine the mill bit can visually be examined to see if a part of the edge is chipped off. But how does your beam spot look? How is your beam quality? You might have pretty good idea of how good the beam quality is but the truth is: You don’t know. You can’t just look at the laser beam an tell. First of all trying to look at a laser beam without […]
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Electronic Hacks, Insane Equipment, DIY Hacks, Complex Hacks |
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Chris sent in his Radio Controlled Tank that is controlled by a SparkFun BlueSmirf module. Anyone interested in the plans to build your own?
“I made the chassis completely out of a sheet of brushed alu. It uses the Tamiya twin motor gearbox, a PCB of my own design, a BlueSmirf radio from SparkFun and has two servos to pan/tilt a video camera sitting on top. I wrote software so the whole thing can be controlled with a web interface that the video doesn’t demonstrate. If there is interest I may document but there is none as yet. ”
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Electronic Hacks, Computer Hacks |
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Keith Wakeham, an engineering student replaced the backlight of a LCD monitor to operate using LED lighting.
“My very wonderful cousin gave me an old 17″ LCD made by the company GEM (I don’t know who they are) which was making a big racket with squealing. I knew it was the backlight so I said I’d take it knowing that to get it repaired by a pro would cost 30-60 for the inverter and a few hours of labour. Being A poor student that wasn’t going to happen but I knew it was a decent panel and wanted a second monitor for my laptop.
So I decided to see if I could drive the existing CCFL’s with a Computer UV CCFL kit and barring that would try LED’s (Which are salvaged from Princess Auto Head Lamps).”
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Electronic Hacks, DIY Hacks, Computer Hacks |
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