This Arduino Oscilloscope project is a great idea. For people that are getting into electronics having a meter is good but having a scope is great. With this project you can take your $30 Arduino board and turn it into a oscilloscope, it won’t show you great detail or very fast circuits but often times that is not needed.

"This software allows you to get a visual representation of an analog signal using Arduino and Processing. The resolution is 10 bits so this is not like a real oscilloscope but it is still pretty useful. It works by sending values read from the Arduino board (pin 0) to Processing through serial communication."

From what I hear the Toyota Prius is a fantastic hybrid car however the car does not come with a plug to charge it from an electrical outlet. Nikki has changed that by installing some extra batteries and a charging system so that she can plug the car in at night and top up the batteries.
Via: Make

"Batteries: 28, 7.20 Volt, Nickel-Metal Hydride. Three OEM Panasonic Prius (2004-2009) packs in parallel to give a total of 19.5 Ah at 201V.

Vehicle: 2004 Toyota Prius (Plus) Converted in 2009 using two additional OEM Toyota Prius battery modules."

The prize this week will provide you lots of rubber band fun. It is a mini version of some of the cool rubber band guns we have seen here in the past. I am interested to see how many people guess the item this week, I think it’s a bit more obscure than usual. This contest will run for one week (June 13 – 18, 2009) . 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 June 24, 2009

The item to guess was a Zenith Wave Magnet.

The winner is Steve F. (There were 39 entries)

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Below is a picture of the the prize product.

There is something about a tube amp that is very cool. Even though you can buy a small transistor based amplifier on a chip for a few dollars the old tube method of creating sound has some magical draw. I don’t own a tube amp but this Stereo Tube Amp Project is now available as a kit so I guess now there is no excuse.

“Ever wanted to build a highly dangerous, inefficient, yet awesomely retro piece of electronics? Well, I have. That’s pretty much what a tube amp is. Vacuum tubes are old electronic components that act like transistors, controlling a lot of current with a little current. You usually hear about tubes being used in guitar amplifiers, because they distort in a way that suits guitar playing. However, tubes can also be used to amplify a stereo signal from another audio source such as a CD or MP3 player. Tube amps, unfortunately, aren’t the most practical things in the world; they consume a great deal of power, get very hot, and are big. That being said, they look damn cool, and some people seem to think they sound pretty nice too.”

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It is nice to see all of the ways we can reduce our energy consumption. For example the hacked Kill a Watt (now called the Tweet-a-Watt) can help you monitor your power consumption. Intel is making processors that are will use less energy by changing the way some fundamental things are done, this equates to a $2 billion dollar saving in energy fees. Google been growing at an amazing rate and this means that their data centers also need to grow, you can read about their attempts to offset their impact on the planet here. HP has made some cool videos and started a Power to Change campaign that get the point across in a simple way. I must say that I am often guilty of keeping many computers running all night just to save a few minutes in the morning. I think I might have to reevaluate how I use energy.

“HP estimates that if 100,000 users shut down their work computers at the end of each day, energy savings could total more than 2,680 kilowatt-hours and carbon emissions reductions could total more than 3,500 pounds per day. This is the equivalent of eliminating more than 105 cars from the road each day.”

The Suzuk-E project is done! have a look at the video to see some of the work that was needed to finish the project. If it looks like there are some major new parts you would be right. As it worked out there were some failures near the end of the build which required some expensive new parts. Frank hooked up a meter that can keep track of the total charge energy that the battery needs. This will allow a simple calculation to see how much it cost to “fill up”.

“Canadian Tire offered a “Blue Planet – Electronic Energy Meter” on special for under $20 one week and I just couldn’t pass-up that sort of value. A very clever bit of code in the Blue Planet Energy Meter is the ability to log the Kwh and cumulative cost per Charge of say individual or Banks of batteries… In our part of Canada we pay a flat 5.6 cents per Kwh up to the first 1000 Kwh’s, and the rate jumps to 6.5 cents there after…”

Remember the 64 RGB-LED Color Table that was featured last week? Well believe it or not there has been a tremendous amount of work completed on the project since then. Now you are able to connect the table to a computer and turn it into a low resolution TV or play a game of Tetris! It will be interesting to see what the final project that Edo is working on will be capable of.