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 keep it hidden in a drawer. 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 (October 9 – 14, 2011). Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify what is going on in the pictured above.

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 October 23, 2011

The item to guess was Guatemala Sinkhole

The winner is Darren L. C.. (there were 193 entries)

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Below is a picture of the prize.

Check out this IBM Thinkpad that took a Zap from Huge Tesla Coil and Lives. I personally didn’t think it would last for more than a few seconds. Thanks to The Geek Group for performing the test.

Lots of you know that there are different materials in LEDs to allow them to emit the color you desire. For example Gallium is used in many blue LEDs and other electronic devices. I had never seen the property that Gallium has to weaken metals though. In the videos below Nerd Rage demonstrates how a small amount of Gallium can disrupt the strength of some metals and allow it to be manipulated as if it was wet cardboard. I am thinking that some safe crackers might have some chemistry experimentation in their future.

“Elemental gallium is not found in nature, but it is easily obtained by smelting. Very pure gallium metal has a brilliant silvery color and its solid metal fractures conchoidally like glass. Gallium metal expands by 3.1% when it solidifies, and therefore storage in either glass or metal containers is avoided, due to the possibility of container rupture with freezing. Gallium shares the higher-density liquid state with only a few materials like silicon, germanium, bismuth, antimony and water.

Gallium attacks most other metals by diffusing into their metal lattice. Gallium for example diffuses into the grain boundaries of Al/Zn alloys[1] or steel,[2] making them very brittle. Also, gallium metal easily alloys with many metals, and was used in small quantities as a plutonium-gallium alloy in the plutonium cores of the first and third nuclear bombs, to help stabilize the plutonium crystal structure.”

If you want to have more fun playing with the case of your PS3 than you do playing the games have a look at this PS3 Temperature Display and Fan Controller hack. A ton of LEDs are used to display the temperature and the speed of the fan. A bunch more LEDs are used to make a Playstation logo which can jive to the music. Nice thing about this hack is that it allows the speed of the fan to be varied automatically based on the temperature of the heatsink. These Microchip MCP23008 I/O port expanders to let his Arduino to control all of these LEDs. To see more pictures of this project take a look at the build log here. If you are interested in building one you can see his Arduino code here. This project is similar to my PWM Fan Controller but adds a huge visual element.

Thanks for the tip Silvester.

“This is my PS3 case mod, there are 4 seven segment displays on the front. The left two show the temperature of the PS3 from a LM35dt temperature sensor i have added between the two heat-sinks on the motherboard. The two displays on the right show the current fans speed as a percent. The fan speed will go up as the temperature goes up, or you can set the fan speed manually with my TV remote. The display can be turned on or off with the remote, also you can make it count down from 99 to 0 in 1 second”

The simplicity of this Timing Chain Clock is great. The large chain is slung over a sprocket, gravity pulls the chain loop downwards. A geared motor is used to slowly turn the chain to display the time using the acrylic laser cut numbers. Unfortunately Henry Stafford has sold the clock but notes that he will be building more in the future. I think having 3 of these side by side showing hours, first digit of minutes and the second digit of the minutes would be a cool upgrade to the idea.

Via: Make and Build Lounge

Most of you already know that Steve Jobs has passed away. He will be greatly missed in the technology field for the changes and innovations he has brought us. He was a maker and hacker at his core, never settling for second best. The video above is from his Stanford Commencement Speech back in 2005, you can tell that the entire audience is hanging on his every word even though he was a college drop out. To learn about his journey from the beginning to where Apple is now watch the two programs below.

RIP Steve, you will be missed.

Titans – Steve Jobs

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If you like arcade games having a Arcade Push Button Power Switch to turn your lights on and off might be just the thing you need. The buttons are used to latch and drop out the internal relay which would also add a bit of audible feedback of the on off action.