Victor from Roteno Labs has built this Earthquake Sounder based on the 555 Timer called the Terremoto as a submission to the 555 Timer Contest that is running right now. The project is very interesting and yes the 555 Timer isn’t doing any of the heavy lifting in the project and isn’t the most efficient way to make sound but it is an interesting use of the device.

“The ECO is based on a 555 in astable mode with a resistor network to set the tones. NPN transistors are used as switches to switch in more or less resistance.

At first I was not sure how to query the USGS server to access the feed I needed. I immediately downloaded cURL to find out what I needed to send to the server. Turns out it was only a few short strings (very simple). “

Hack A Day had a cool contest where the goal was to build a Walking Santa. You can see the entries and winners here. There were lots of cool hacks but I like this one by Adam Outler the best. An Arduino controls the new Santa robot and some transistors are used to power the existing Santa motors. The new and improved Santa looks a bit mad but he has the guns to back up the look. You can log into the Santa using a computer terminal and get the commands available by typing help. Issuing a command makes Santa come to life!