If you are done with university and are looking for a new use for your TI-83+ Calculator then look no further than this project. The guys over at Cemetech are Playing Floppy Drive Music using a TI-83+ Calculator. To make your own you will need to download mobileTunes and build the small circuit.

“Inspired by other projects such as the Star Wars Imperial March played on two floppy drives and Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565 on four floppy drives, I hoped to implement this concept on a much more limited control device: a TI-83+ graphing calculator. While microcontrollers such as those used in the projects above have dozens of GPIO pins for interfacing with external hardware, the TI-83+ graphing calculator has only two I/O lines, both bidirectional. I did a bit of research on controlling floppy drives, and discovered that if I held pin 16 (Motor Enable) and pin 12 (Drive Select) of the floppy drive low, I need only pulse the Direction In and Step pins (18 and 20) to control the floppy drive’s read/write head stepper motor.“

Watches aren’t just used to tell the time, they can also be used to show off your tech love. The creator of this watch concept is a Hacked Gadgets reader and wanted to share his design with us. Yoann Lechopier from France designed this for a Tokyo Flash watch concept contest. We have featured Tokyo Flash before and they also sponsored a Hacked Gadgets contest in the past.

If you want to see this watch become a reality vote for the YAL Electronic Circuit Watch Design here. Look for the vote button under the last image.

I asked Yohan to share how he came up with the cool looking design.

Yohan – Well, I used to make some design creations on during my free time and I rediscovered tokyoflash.com. Then, seeing all there original watches I decided to try to make my own watch concept and maybe be chosen in order to make my watch reality. I always put my little logo and “YAL” as a signature on my creation and i thought it was a good idea to make a watch concept with this. So i turned on the tron music and began to draw

“The symbol is divided into several parts :

* The middle circle indicate hours (one led for one hour)
* The outer branches indicate minutes (one led for 5 minutes)
* The 2 leds on each side indicate the single minutes (on led for 1 minute)
* And the two leds on the middle is a PM indicator.

To tell the time, you have just to count the number of lighted led on each part and add them.”

It is quite amazing how much energy is in the sun. Using the energy that strikes a satellite dish the guys at Green Power Science can boil 20 ounces of water in 90 seconds. In the video Dan holds up a piece of wood into the focal point and it immediately begins to smoke! That is some serious energy being focused there.

“The starting temperature was 80f (27 C) and a full boil was obtained in 90 seconds (+-10 seconds). The dish is a 10 feet (3 Meters) diameter with a large acrylic mirror for the center. Focal length is 5 feet (1.5 Meters) from the base. The focal point is 1″ diameter from the acrylic mirror and 4″-8″ diameter from the satellite dish. The vacuum tube holds 20 ounces and it was full.”

Students from the Florida International University have completed their Arduino based Bartender project. A computer has the menu of drink items, there are 6 solenoids that are controlled by the arduino. The 6 solenoids are able to dump certain drink options. There is a sensor that makes sure a cup is in place before the drink is poured. The system is able to mix a large variety of drinks with the 6 ingredients that it has available. You can see the final version above and the video of the prototype below. It looks like quite a few things have changed from concept to completion.