In clearing up the year-end mail, we noted this from Vinod sharing one of his recent hobby projects. “This is a holiday hardware hack creating WAV music player using a 512KB SPI Flash he cobbled from a damaged digital camera and the Attiny13 MCU. I implemented UART for song updating…. It is a hack with […]
Category Archives: hacks
Hacking the HP Z800 Xeon motherboard into a standard case
Andy Brown wrote an article detailing how to hack the HP Z800 Xeon motherboard into a standard case: I’m not one to give up in the face of a technical challenge and besides I’d just forked out a hundred notes on the board so the rest of this article will go through all the steps […]
Cupid Mega Remote: Killer controller
Colin Reese blogged about his MEGA controller build: Last we met, we built a prototype temperature wireless RF temperature controller. We got some good ideas and a Beer Fridge monitor out of the deal. We also realized, however, that we were flying pretty close to the sun in terms of the available memory we had to […]
Linux-based clock radio
An open-source Linux-based clock radio from SpriteMods: Ofcourse, a nice PCB with a powerful processor and a nice display only is scrap without the software: especially in this case, it pretty much defines what the device does. While developing the hardware, I already had made the decision to go with Linux and OpenWRT as an OS, as that’s […]
ESP8266 powered web server + LED control + DHT22 temperature/humidity sensor reading
Martin writes: The ESP8266 System-on-chip (SoC) has recently came out of nowhere and has been taking by storm the IoT DIY world. It is a $4.50 Wi-Fi capable chip that has remarkable specs, obsoleting overnight a number of similar products that are out there. The price factor, availability of SDK and a fast growing community […]
Simple automatic car battery charger
Dilshan Jayakody has published a new build, an automatic car battery charger: This is modified version of commonly available automatic car battery charger system. I obtain original layout of this charger from one of the commercially available Chinese car battery charger and modified some of the sections of original schematic to improve the performance and stability […]
Configure your WR703n with a switch (or two)
Martin Melchior has been experimenting with switch-selectable configurations for a TP-Link TL-WR703n router. The setup allows for quick changes in configuration dictated by changes in location or circumstances. It allows the router’s use as a Ethernet to WiFi bridge (Access point), since it’s handy to have your own WiFi at a friend’s house or hotel; […]
68 Katy – 68000 Linux on a solderless breadboard
Steve Chamberlin of Big Mess o’ Wires has written up documentation on his awesome 68 Katy project, a 68000 Linux on a solderless breadboard: Here’s a look at the final version of the hardware. It took about a week to assemble and wire up all the parts on a solderless breadboard. The heart of the system is […]
Self-Balancing Raleigh Chopper
XenonJohn posted detailed instructions of how to make this Self-Balancing Raleigh Chopper. He writes: Data from the IMU is read by the Arduino Mega 1280. I use a Mega 1280 because they are a lot cheaper online than the 2560, and about the same price as an Uno. They have several hard wired serial outputs which means […]
Viewing a VHS tape using RTL-SDR and TV Sharp software
Here’s a different and unconventional way to view a VHS tape (as if VHS tapes aren’t considered unusual enough today). DogsRNiceMineCraft posted this video on YouTube showing video received using an RTL-SDR dongle. I got a VCR today and wanted to see if I could receive the signal from the RF out using TV sharp. […]
An op-amp based Electret Condenser Microphone Preamp for microcontrollers
Davide Gironi writes: This is an op-amp Electret Condenser Microphone Preamp board design for the use with microcontrollers ADC. For the NPN version of this board, an for more information about microcontroller ADC and microphone input, please refer to this page The proposed circuit is just a revision of a pretty usually op-amp electret mic preamplifier. […]
A NPN transistor Electret condenser microphone preamp for microcontrollers
Davide Gironi writes: This is a NPN Electret Condenser Microphone Preamp board design for the use with microcontrollers ADC. In order to make an electret condenser microphone signal “readable” by a microcontroller ADC, it has to be matched the ADC specification of the microcontroller. Most of the time it means, add some gain to the […]
Adventures in Moteino: Remote temperature monitor
Colin over at CuPID Controls writes: We want to put our remote sense and control modules out into the wild and read and aggregate them as it makes sense. Our basic system layout is as below. We’ve got multiple wireless nodes that broadcast data periodically, and a controller/aggregator that will log this data, acknowledge […]
Modification of the Lexmark E260 for direct laser printing of printed circuit boards – MCU version
mlerman writes: After trying several brands and models of laser printer, the printer I have settled on is the Lexmark E260. I use it because: 1 – It has an excellent Local Printer Utility that allows almost every printing parameter to be adjusted. 2 – It is readily and reasonably available on Ebay or Craig’s […]
A programmable power lamp shield based on Slenduino
Orlando Cosimo writes: A Programmable Power Lamp shield based on Slenduino…. not only a lamp. In this project we want to solve a typical problem that everyone can get when have to switch on-off an high power led. And, at the same time, to realise our project to work with our board, Slenduino.
Back to the mc-17 remote control
Tim writes: After the Maker Faire, I went back to the Graupner mc-17 remote control. The Arduino library from tronixstuff for the KTM-S1201 LCD which is also using a mPD7225 controller was a good starting point. But to get the LCD up and running, it took quite a bit of fiddling and logic sniffing. Once […]
Classic NES played using a Kinect
Control your classic NES console with the Kinect V2 sensor by Paul DeCarlo: Ingredients: An NES console with game to test An NES controller OR some wiring skills and a CD4021BE 8-bit shift register 12 strands of wire, recommend Kynar 8 1k resistors (technically any value from 1k to 50k should suffice) 2 3.6k resistors (again […]
Hacking Android on the UDOO board (for SATA and S/PDIF)
Computer engineer Primiano Tucci has been experimenting with Android on the UDOO board. I recently came in possession of a UDOO Quad board. The hardware onboard is pretty powerful compared to many other competitor boards. Unfortunately, however, the software support for Android is lagging a bit. In particular, in the latest image shipped by UDOO […]
Optically controlled servo motor
Dilshan Jayakody writes: This is demonstration project to control servo motor movement using physical marker and normal video camera. In this project video camera capture the movements of marker and calculate rotation angle based on that. This calculated rotation angle is feed to the servo through small MCU based interfacing unit. In this project video […]
Roland SP-404 AVR custom midi control pedal
An open source midi controller user for the Roland SP-404 sampler by Davide Gironi: The Roland SP-404 is a digital sampler made by Roland Corporation. This sampler has an input midi port, and expose a set of midi commands to control the unit. With this project user can control Roland SP-404 using a Midi Pedal. The […]