Electronics Infoline

Slide rule clock prototype

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:51:04 UTC

Mitch writes in about Greg Blonder, who made this prototype slide rule clock with LEGO Mindstorms. The positioning of the two rules makes up the hours and minutes.

Xr-B3 - Trossen Robotics Project

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:34:05 UTC

Trossen Robotics just completed their latest project contest, the Xr-B3 didnt win but it is a very cool creation! He is powered by an AVR ATMEGA324P micro controller on a custom board that I made.

HOW To - Build a digital wall harp

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:55:04 UTC

The My Home 2. 0 crew seems pretty amped about their MIDI wall harp project - implemented here as a sort of musical kids room enhancement, the design requires quite a few ingredients before enabling you to play the wall as it were.

Write Letters and Draw Pictures using a Laser

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:03:25 UTC

Setup your digital camera on a tripod, turn off the lights and get out your favorite laser pointer to make some brilliant pictures! It does take some practice to make a good image but when it works the results are great.

Dont just play Guitar Hero, build your own

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:02:06 UTC

This project shows you how to hack a standard computer keyboard to build your own Guitar Hero-Like controller for Frets on Fire, the free, open source Guitar Hero clone from Finalnd.

Arduino-based aircraft accessories

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:29:08 UTC

Paul writes in -You just blogged about aviators, EAA, and Makers. Once we finish building our airplanes, another cool thing that were very lucky to be able to do is modify and improve them as well.

Bricksmith Version 2.0

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 03:48:07 UTC

We wrote about Bricksmith before on the MAKE blog. Its a really cool open source LEGO building program for the Mac. Version 2. 0 boasts better rendering and a cool Minifigure generator.

Time lapse Radiohead LEGO video

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:18:08 UTC

What happens when you release a 3D movement dataset of Thom Yorkes head? Somebody uses it to recreate the video, frame by frame, in LEGOs (Watch the high quality vid for the best experience).

Hacking Pleo for face recognition and remote control

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:03:08 UTC

GRIP, the Group for Interdisciplinary Psychology at the University of Bamburg have put together a couple tutorials on hacking the Pleo. For those unfamiliar, the Pleo is a small robot shaped like a dinosaur.

Refreshingly straightforward robotic clock

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:30:19 UTC

(Nope, its not a glimpse of an alternate reality where LEDs never came to be. ) The Stonehenge clock-bot is more art than appliance - it uses a single robotic arm with a set of numbered cards to convey the time -Stonehenge uses a CrustCrawler Smart Arm and a Parallax Propeller chip to display the current time.

WowWee Alive Cub dissection

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:25:12 UTC

On RoboCommunity, Grandlarseny37 has done a preliminary take-apart on the new WowWee Alive Cub robo-critter. Inside the WowWee Alive Cubs: Part 1 [Thanks, Robert!].

Autonomous bot uses pencil erasers as bumpers

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:48:10 UTC

This pencil pusher autonomous sumo robot uses pencil erasers as bumpers when it hits obstacles. We think it might be more effective in robot wars if the pencils were sharpened and their orientation was reversed on this bot.

Inside-Out X-Ray Photography

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:09:01 UTC

Weve always been jealous of Supermans x-ray vision, and weve finally decided to do something about it. It doesnt involve Kryptonite, nor an alliance with Lex Luther, but rather a bit of old-fashioned x-ray photography.

Audible Train Approach Warning Circuit

7 Aug 2008

This is a circuit that will give an audible warning that a train is entering a particular section of track. The detector also has a LED that indicates when a train is entering or leaving the block.

Incline Railway Control Circuit

7 Aug 2008

The mechanism is driven by a geared slow speed motor and controlled by an electronic timer circuit. The car waits for a preset time at the top and bottom of the incline before being slowly lowered down or pulled up the track.

Regulated Power Supply Circuits

7 Aug 2008

There are power supplies with greater current capacities on the same Digi-Key catalog page as those shown above. These should be avoided as they have a negative terminal that is connected to earth through the grounded, three prong plug. This could cause isolation problems between various parts of a layout and could cause short circuits or ground loops.

Memcached and high performance MySQL

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:37:07 UTC

Memcached is a distributed object caching system that was originally developed to improve the performance of LiveJournal and has subsequently been used as a scaling strategy for a number of high-load sites.

Black Hat 2008: FasTrak toll system completely broken

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:32:02 UTC

FasTrak is the electronic toll collection system used by the state of California. Motorists can purchase a toll transponder for ~$26 and link the serial number with a debit account to have their tolls deducted automatically.

Remote controlled pill-bot

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:28:13 UTC

The NanoRobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University has come up with a medical robot that can be swallowed, and is then able to be controlled from outside the body.

Fun with POV and Lissajous figures

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:15:25 UTC

This week, EMS Labs has a nifty piece on Lissajous figures which Windell was able to generate using an LED display on one of the EMS Labs breakout board business cards suspended from an oscillation rig built from a file folder frame, wooden dowels, and BBQ skewers.

Black swallowtail caterpillars

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:58:13 UTC

Sharon Stiteler blogs as Birdchick - shes an avid birder and beekeeper, and is raising black swallowtail butterflies. She has some great videos of caterpillar activity - the top video is a caterpillar shedding its skin, the next one is a caterpillar sticking out its stink horns, a defense mechanism.

Build: An Electrified Zoetrope from recycled parts

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:52:04 UTC

This time we are going to be making a Zoetrope from a bunch of junk. What is a Zoetrope? Here is what I found on Wikipedia: The earliest elementary zoetrope was created in China around 180 AD by the prolific inventor Ting Huan.

iPhone SDK tutorial - simple RSS reader

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:59:03 UTC

The Apple Blog recently posted a simple SDK tutorial for the iPhone that walks you through the steps for creating a little RSS reader. Its pretty cool in that its one step above a Hello World app - it performs a real world function, but doesnt get too bogged down in features and details that would detract from its usefulness as a beginner howto.

DIY dialysis machine saves babys life

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:07:11 UTC

Apparently even kidney dialysis machines designed for children were too big for Millie Kellys 6-pound newborn body, so Dr. Malcom Coulthard (UK) made her a miniature dialysis machine - in his garage.

Vista on a PS3

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:54:18 UTC

Apparently you can run pretty much anything on a PS3. [mopx0] has managed to get Vista running on his PS3. He used Qemu 9. 0. 1 to install Vista on a PC.

Lensless micro-microscope on a chip

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:16:22 UTC

Fig. 1 (a) Architecture of the optofluidic microscope (OFM); set of three arrows: illumination; single arrow: flow direction. (b) Photograph of the OFM prototype compared with a U.

NES DVD player mod

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:56:05 UTC

This maker decided to put an old $20 DVD player into the body of an NES in order to give his movie watching some gamer street cred. We especially like the explosed buttons on the circuit board glued to the top of this hack.

Modify a webcam into a space telescope

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 06:05:06 UTC

Heres a pretty cool tutorial on how to mod a Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 to use as a mini telescope to monitor the stars and take pictures (aka astro imaging) of the view.

Photos of the Large Hadron Collider

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 01:32:03 UTC

View of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment Tracker Outer Barrel (TOB) in the cleaning room. The CMS is one of two general-purpose LHC experiments designed to explore the physics of the Terascale, the energy region where physicists believe they will find answers to the central questions at the heart of 21st-century particle physics.

Shield your files with Reed-Solomon codes

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:48:03 UTC

Thanassis Tsiodras wrote in about a utility for adding additional error correction redundancy to your backup data: The way storage quality has been nose-diving in the last years, youll inevitably end up losing data because of bad sectors.

iMac transport bag

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:11:12 UTC

This is just dying for a remake: German company Reinda is selling this bag designed specifically for toting your iMac around. It fits around the base, leaving it exposed, and has spaces for keyboard and mouse.

Handheld Arduino game console

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:57:10 UTC

Bricogeeks Ardugame is and Arduino based handheld gameboy-look-alike that looks like a lot of fun. The machines equipped with an OLED display, speaker, accelerometer, and even a DB9 port for multiplayer expansion.

Britain seen from above

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:14:06 UTC

Stunning GPS visualizations from the BBC series Britain from Above, the first episode will be broadcast on Sunday 10 August at 2100 on BBC One.

Wash your clothes with the dirt blocking power of Windows OS

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:05:09 UTC

The Windows Washing Machine is a kinetic sculpture constructed out of a standard personal computer, an electronic can-opener, an aluminum frame and two large road bricks.

Storm Chasing for Photographers: High-Speed, High-Risk, High-Fun!

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 06:12:07 UTC

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Associations Weather Service predicts 1787 tornadoes this year. Thats almost 5 tornadoes per day. Dorothy would shiver in her ruby slippers, all right.

Magnetic stripe card spoofer

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:15:05 UTC

We posted David Cranors Arduino card reader the other day, and today he wrote in with an even better magstripe hack: a way to simulate a card swipe using an iPod an electromagnet.

Film canister flash diffuser

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 23:41:01 UTC

When you take pictures with the built-in flash on your digital camera, its common to get a washed-out, deer-in-headlights result from your subject.

iphone-dev team progress update

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:39:03 UTC

The iphone-dev team hasnt been resting on their laurels since releasing the iPhone Pwnage Tool 2. 0 nearly two weeks ago and decided to update everyone on their progress.

Decoding magstrip cards with Arduino

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 01:05:12 UTC

Instructables user powerpants created a quick and dirty card reader interface with an Arduino. The Arduino decodes the data from the swiped card and transfers it to a PC over a USB serial connection.

Killing that GSM buzz

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:58:06 UTC

On Hackszine, Jason wrtites: Every GSM cellphone user is familiar with the annoying Bzzzhtzttt noises that tend to emanate from random electronics anywhere you take your device.

MSI Wind extended battery

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:54:03 UTC

[The Tech Guy] shows us how he added cells to an MSI Winds battery. This hack is extremely simple but it may be difficult to get the battery back into your laptop.

Essential Bluetooth hacking tools

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:20:04 UTC

Security-Hacks has a great roundup of essential Bluetooth hacking tools. As they point out, Bluetooth technology is very useful for communication with mobile devices.

Buzz Kill - stopping iPhone GSM speaker noise

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:29:04 UTC

Every GSM cellphone user is familiar with the annoying Bzzzhtzttt noises that tend to emanate from random electronics anywhere you take your device.

Lantern with box of chewing gum

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:23:19 UTC

Lantern with box of chewing gum .

How to: DIY Modded Computer Case

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:51:07 UTC

I was bored and decided to make a modded computer case. I did all of this by myself with the help from a few people for cutting the case and plexiglass.

led tester/flaslight

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:39:20 UTC

This took about five minutes to make this. It is also recycled from old computer parts. this is my 1st Instructable. please leave any comments! materials: LEDS (or else this is pointless!),battery source, old power supply for a computer (you should find some other useful stuff in it.

Class D audio-power amplifiers

29 Jul 2008

Class D amplifiers are much more efficient than other classical amplifiers, but their high efficiency comes at the expense of increased noise and distortion. You can assess the frequency- and time-domain characteristics of a Class D amplifier, including the output filter, using online simulations.

Listening to Class D

29 Jul 2008

You needn\'t look further than Class D audio amplifiers to find a technology whose proponents tend toward exuberant advocacy at best and bald-faced hype at worst. Although these ICs are not yet the be all and end all of audio amplification that their makers would have you believe, they are remarkably good-certainly more listenable than the clamor about them.

Removing the DC Thump from Audio Circuits

29 Jul 2008

Most audio outputs have some standing DC voltage which is separated by a capacitor. The capacitor will block this DC voltage while allowing the AC or audio to pass. Audio components using transformer coupling are not affected.

Technicolor Dreamboat (Free Yacht Chapter 9)

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:36:09 UTC

In this episode, we transform the Free Boat 2 into the first LED Art boat in the San Francisco bay. Free Boat 2 is a 32-foot sailing Piver trimeran. It was originally acquired from the harbormasters impound lot by master reuser tim and has undergone many previous instructables projects and adventures.