Happy Halloween from Hacked Gadgets! This picture is courtesy of precisewitem, our New York friend in the Hacked Gadgets Forum.

LUWE SYGABU has installed a totally custom car PC into his 2006 Honda Civic. It has a microcontroller brain that controls the power on/off of the computer along with monitoring other things such as temperature.

Video and construction pictures after the jump.

“I got my shutdown controller completed and it’s pretty sweet. It displays to a 16 x 2 character display which I mounted into the dash that displays loading and shutdown sequences, temperature sensor readings, and has menu options for startup and shutdown delays, and temp F or C selection, all selectable from the dashboard.”

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I don’t think this engine is very efficient or reliable but sure looks like lots of fun to build. However I wouldn’t recommend spinning a saw blade at high RPM when it is magnetically connected to a plastic CD cake box.

“The Making of the Tesla CD Turbine Prototype is the story of how the Tesla CD Turbine came into being. It starts with the initial thought process (What if McGyver met Tesla…), then continues with the narrated assembly of the first crude prototype using recycled CD’s, cheap neodymium magnets, and dime store ice-cream scoop inlet. And this thing actually works! I’ve made a series of You-tube videos that show this same first model running on both water and air pressure, right up to catastrophic failure RPM. Will it give “free energy” from a garden hose? Will the Skilsaw Attachment threaten to cut something besides me?? Stay Tuned and look for ” Running the Tesla CD Turbine On Water” followed by the scary ” Running the Tesla CD Turbine With Skilsaw Attachment” and more!”

Here are a few cool Electronic Halloween Pumpkins to give you some ideas when you are carving yours this year. If you have some cool designs you want to share, add them to the Hacked Gadgets Forum (doesn’t have to be electronic).

Videos after the jump.

Via: Make and Hacked Gadgets Forum

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Have a look at this High School Peltier Cooling system, the bars make it look real high tech. Have a look here for more information about peltier devices.

“This little project is what really got me excited in engineering way back in High School. Two other students and I decided to build a computer cooling system that fit in 2 cd-rom slots and cooled he air entering the case. In the arrangement above the junctions are pulling heat from the center bars to the outer ones. The middle gets frosty and the outside will burn you. From there we had to design ducting to get the cold air in and the hot air out.”

A microcontroller, a computer, a single RGB LED and a handfull of supporting components is all that is required to make this very interesting LED Fan Clock!

“While I haven’t found an use for a led-fan yet, the thinking process did give me another idea: It’s possible to create a steady image of a fan using a stroboscope, which is nothing more than a device to create precisely-timed flashes of light. By adjusting the timing, one can make the image move clockwise and counterclockwise and in such a way adjust the angle it is in. Now, what would happen if we glue a paper needle to the fan? You could then in theory with some logic, put that needle in any angle you’d wish.

Thinking in that direction, I soon got the idea of creating a clock in such a way: make a red, a green and a blue ‘hand’ and by lighting up the three dies of an RGB-led, you can control exactly at what angle the image of every hand shows up. Apart from the hands, the fan itself doesn’t need to be modified: the led, in conjunction with a microcontroller, does all the work.”

Thanks Sprites Mods

Congratulation to the last contest winner.

This weeks prize would be perfect to mount your camera on and document your hacks.

This contest will run for this weekend only (October 27- 28, 2007) . Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item pictured above and give an example of what can be done with it. Please do not give the answer in the comments.

Send an email to contest @ hackedgadgets.com with “Name the Thing Contest” as the subject, and the message body consisting of:
* The name of the item in the above picture
* An example of what the item pictured above can be used for

The winner will be chosen at random from all of the correct entries.
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Added November 1, 2007

Thanks to all who entered.
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Below are some pictures of the prize.

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