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The prize this week is a solar flashlight, if you want to use this as a flashlight you better charge it during the day and not hidden in a drawer. 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 winner will be chosen at random from all of the correct entries. ———————————–———- Added September 18, 2011 Sorry for the delay in the winner announcement. The item to guess was Wireless Buddy Box System (Dual RX Controller) The winner is Gwen L. (there were 107 entries) ————————————–———- Below is a picture of the prize.
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I have changed out quite a few fans over the years, you know the ones that I’m talking about, they make your PC sound like it’s a jet engine on takeoff. A few times I blew the dust out of the fan, pried the fan blade off and dropped a few drops of oil into the fan shaft. This seemed to always fix the problem but in my case it always turned out to be a temporary fix since the squeal usually came back after a few weeks of operation and when I opened it there was a bunch of black gunk in the shaft. I think I see what my problem was after reading this PC Fan Repair post from hacklordsniper. I should have used bearing grease and perhaps cleaned the fan assembly better. Seems that he is quite a bit more invasive than I have ever been since he utilizes the bath tub to clean fans and other electronic parts. Via: EEVblog Forum “You will need it later. Remove the rubber seal, then use tweezers to remove white lock and a small rubber seal again. At this moment the fan will fall apart and you will see why it does not work. Clean all parts, apply ball bearing grease (not regular one, but the one designed for small bearings) to axle and top and bottom of fan. Reassemble and test” |
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There are lots of LED flashlights around but there is a Kickstarter for this new LED Packlight. It looks to be very versatile and could be helpful in so many ways. I am thinking my ideal application for this light would be a camping trip, it could be used in the car as a map light, stuck on the metal of the car to assemble the tent at night, hanging from the roof of the tent in a circular shape to get nice 360 light in the inside of the tent, curved in a moon shape on the picnic table at night for a snack and some coffee. Since it’s waterproof it would be great to light the path to the beach and used in the water at night for a late night swim. Thanks for sending in this Kickstarter page Joe.
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The famous Calgary Stampede is over for this year but if this Rodeo Riding Robot does some practicing I wonder if we could see a new robot rodeo emerge? I think our friend Carlos is having a bit too much fun with his Nao Robot. |
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Erica Kane has developed an Open Source DIY Automated LED Stair Lighting system. It uses an Arduino Pro Mini as the brain and a M5451 LED Display Driver to power the LEDs. She used PING sensors to detect when someone enters the stairwell. Currently the lights just turn on one at a time but that is all customizable by changing a bit of Arduino code. If you are looking for a stair lighting system kit please have a look at the one that I created, I think it was the first automatic LED stair lighting system out there. There is also the new Reactive Lighting stair lighting system which has a ton of features and lighting options to enhance any stairwell. I find it interesting how many ways you can detect a person (or animal) entering the stairwell, Erica uses ultrasound to do it, my first system stair lighting system used a laser beam, the stair lighting kit that we sell uses an IR beam and the Reactive Lighting system uses a PIR motion sensor. Other than under carpet pressure sensors I am having a hard time thinking of other detection methods but I am sure there will be a new one in a few months. Via: Make 
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If you want to leave an impression lots of people recommend you get heavy stock business cards, the next step up is to get color glossy print on the cards. About 20 steps up from that is a business card made from FR4, the PCB business card might cost a bunch more than the paper alternative but you are guaranteed it won’t find its way to the trash 5 minutes after you hand it out. We have seen some PCB business cards before but I don’t think they will every catch on due to the cost involved in producing them. Read more about the Damage Designs Circuit Board Business Card.
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If you love the look of the Philips Ambilight system but would like to build your own? Have a look at this DIY Ambilight system that Instructables user Yonsje built. The biggest limitation it has is that it is for use with your computer and not a TV. These days this might not be much of a limitation though since many of us watch most of their video content on a computer system anyway, as I type this I am watching Security Now on a computer monitor to my right. Thanks for sending this in Yonsj. “You will need:
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I am thinking that the housing could make for a very small surface mount project. Not sure if the solar cell would have enough power to energize a very low current circuit but I would think it should. This contest will run for one week (August 6 – 12, 2011). Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item pictured above.
