Miceuz blogged about his DIY driver for EQ2 equatorial mount motor: We wanted to give a telescope as a Christmas present to one kid. Luckily enough we have happened to find one standing under the autumn rain in a second hand junk yard in Berlin. The telescope itself was dusty and wet, but the mount was […]
Category Archives: DIY
Magic Mote thermostat and wireless temperature sensor
Tom’s another cool project the Magic Mote thermostat and wireless temperature sensor: A homemade thermostat up in the basement rafters controls the heating in my home. The smart bit is the radio frequency communication that connects it to a remote temperature sensor. So, I’m planning a home automation system based around wireless nodes (the Magic Mote […]
Black Hat 2013 video – build of an Android SpyPhone app
Ever wonder what it would take to code up an Android based spyphone app? In this presentation from the BlackHat 2013 conference, Kevin McNamee outlines his build of an Android SpyPhone service that can be injected into any application. “The presentation includes a live demonstration of how phones can be tracked and operated from a […]
DIY 3W constant current LED driver
Dilshan Jayakody wrote a post on his blog about his 3W constant current LED driver: This is quick post about 3W constant current LED driver which I was design to combine with some homemade furniture piece. The main components of this system is LM311 voltage comparator and IRF9640 P-Channel MOSFET. This module is design to drive maximum of […]
OpenWRT based video recording system
Sean Kelly has written this tutorial describing the process used to build an OpenWRT based video recording system: An OpenWRT router can be used to capture video with a usb webcam in order to record movements in a room. The internal flash storage for the MR3020 is only 4 Mb which isn’t sufficient for storing video. So […]
Home built bench power supply
Ian Johnston wrote a post on his blog detailing his bench power supply build: My workshop has a couple of bench power supply’s, one is an old Farnell TOPS 3D 3-rail tracking job, and the other is a 3-rail CSI CSI3005XIII with Constant Current functions. The farnell is all analogue but has no constant current control, it has […]
DIY custom LCD
This video by Ben Krasnow discusses how to make your own custom LCD.
Ultrasonic range finder with haptic feedback called The Bat Hat
An ultrasonic range-finder with haptic feedback called The Bat Hat by Jeff Buswell, Clifford Chou and Andrew Knauss from Cornell University, built as a final project: For our ECE 4760 final project, we designed and implemented an ultrasonic range-finding hat that uses haptic feedback to alert its wearer about obstacles in his or her path. The hat is […]
An AVR Atmega based PID magnetic levitator
In this video Davide Gironi demonstrates his AVR Atmega based magnetic levitator: This is a magnetic levitator implemented using Atmega8 microcontroller. Magnetic levitation is a method by which an object is suspended with no support other than magnetic fields.
DIY Pick and Place v2 project complete
Brian Dorey has written an article detailing the build of his DIY Pick and Place v2 project: The DIY pick and place machine project is now finally running and is able to place the components for our Raspberry Pi expansion boards. This project started in July 2013 when we began to order the various components, bearings, motors, […]
Reflow toaster oven using an Arduino
Ray Wang writes, “Hi, I recently built a reflow toaster oven using an Arduino. I know it’s pretty standard stuff, but my version has an automatic oven door opener (using a servo) and circulation fan to speed up the cooling time, and remote notification using an RF transmitter.” You can find the project details on […]
Battery pack load
Paul over at Dorkbotpdx writes: I purchased a cheap USB power pack, thinking it would be ideal for powering small projects. But it automatically shuts off if the device isn’t drawing a lot of power, since it’s meant for charging cell phones. Here’s a 2 transistor circuit I built this morning that keeps it on […]
Design and construction of a 24 GHz low noise amplifier
Jeff of MightyOhm writes: Tony Long and I designed and built a 24 GHz low noise amplifier for our ECE192 undergraduate independent study project at UCSD. The amplifier was designed with an early version of Agilent ADS, PCBs were fabricated on Rogers 5880 (Duroid), and we hand built several prototypes on K-connector fixtures that Tony designed. Measured […]
Building a constant current/constant power electronic load
Kerry Wong built a DIY constant current/constant power electronic load. It can sink more than 200W of power: A while back I built a simple constant current electronic load using an aluminum HDD cooler case as the heatsink. While it was sufficient for a few amps’ load under low voltages, it could not handle load much higher than a […]
Power inductor checker
Drone refers us to this article from ELM-chaN: Power inductor checker Here is a nice write-up on a home-brew power inductor checker for use with an oscilloscope. This device is useful for characterizing inductors from the junk-box, or pulls from dead PSU’s. The Author says he’s switching the tester at 50Hz. I suggest that switching at the […]
Accurate-ish Pneumatic cylinder positioning with flow meter, ATX breakout and MSP430 LaunchPad
arduinoversusevil writes: We’re using the 43oh to control 12V solenoids supplied from a Dangerous Prototypes ATX breakout, and the Adafruit flow meter is feeding back position data to the 43oh. Surprisingly IT WORKS! For more build deets visit the blog Check out the video after the break.
Racal-Dana 199x DIY high stability timebase hack for under $25
In this video Gerry Sweeney demonstrates his Racal-Dana 199x DIY high stability timebase hack: Having played with a number of OCXO’s and a Rubidium standard I tried (after repairing it) to calibrate the standard timebase in my Racal-Dana 1999 counter which is actually a simple TCXO. I could get pretty close but it was touchy and not easy to […]
Making your own test leads
Viktor wrote a post on his blog detailing his DIY test leads: The result is that now I have proper test leads with resistance of less than 0.1 ohm per meter. This is a measurement of one of my new test leads Also, with this method now I can have as many test leads of any length as […]
OpenMV camera module
mux blogged about his open source camera project: This a quick update on my camera project (OpenMV)… I’ve finally received the long overdue PCBs today and assembled one. I haven’t written any code yet, but I’ve managed to get it into DFU mode and upload a blinky, it seems to be working fine so far, no […]
DIY BatBox project
Bill Porter has written an article detailing the build of his BatBox project: I had some high energy density batteries lying around and a recent string of power outages have been leaving me in the dark more often than I care for. So in true hacker fashion, I built something: BatBox, just like in Minecraft. My real life version […]