Using some Arduinos and a few other electronic bits this HP Scanjet 4C is made into a musical device by “playing” the stepper motor. The result is one of the best stepper motor musical items I have seen.

“You may of heard of a popular flat bed scanner named the HP Scanjet. This scanner had a hidden command set within the Scanner Control Language which allows you to send musical notes directly to the stepper motor. This is a tedious method where you have to enter the notes and durations manually into a text file (similar to G-Code on a CNC Machine). I have always used and will always use this method for my Old School music videos however I wanted to try and build a MIDI controlled stepper motor.”

 
At 18 years of age he has already been collecting for years. Most of his collection are things like Commodore and Apple computers. These can sit on a shelf and be moved around with ease. When he saw an IBM z890 Mainframe up for grabs he jumped on it. With a bit of excavation he was able to get it into his parents basement.

When it comes to converting something drawn to a laser etched image there are often quite a few steps needed. Martin Raynsford has built this Drawing To Laser Engraving System to allow him to easily go from drawing to laser etched images by using a bit of hardware and some custom software. Of course you can do this type of thing manually like was done in the Halloween Hanging Mobile Project many moons ago but there is something great when the process is automated.

“The third and final project from this years maker faire was a webcam capture program that would easily digitize children’s drawings and then send them down to the laser cutter for engraving. The webcam holder with led lighting to illuminate the drawing. I used a c# wrapper for the open CV library to capture images from the webcam, a little bit of filtering to remove pixels that weren’t black enough. The image was then converted to G Code, and transferred to a GRBL controller that was wired into the Greyfin laser cutter. The G Code simply drives the laser to the next black pixel and burns a single dot for each pixel, repeat for each black pixel in the image.”

If you enjoy table tennis this trainer might be a great next project. Thomas Mayer created this as his bachelor thesis project. Two Playstation CL-eye cameras are used to view the play area and track the ball. A project is then used to display game elements that the players can interact with to play many game scenarios. The game was created using VVVV which is a visual/textual live-programming environment for easy prototyping and development.

Via: Technabob and Gizmodo

“The basic idea of my bachelor thesis was to track the ping pong ball in realtime to create data visualisations for trainers and players. After a few weeks of working I started developing a projected mapped interface for the ping pong table to show the collected data. By projecting game obstacles on the surface I figured out that I can change the game play totally.”

If you are tired of reaching for your tiny volume control knob to adjust your music when using your computer look no further than these projects by Engineering Nonsense and DIY Perks. The top one uses a DIGISpark board and a rotary encoder to adjust the volume via USB and the one below uses a potentiometer to adjust the analog output of your signal feeding your amplifier.

Louis Rossmann operates a Apple device repair business called Rossmann Repair Group in New York. His videos show a no bull view on what he thinks of Apple, Customers and running a Small Business. Even though Louis specializes in fixing Apple devices he doesn’t give them any slack in their business practices. He troubleshoots and fixes boards which allows him to install a few pieces of jumper wires and a few dollars of components instead of swapping hundreds of dollars of boards. I love the space that he works in, it is tiny and cramped since he is in a high rent area. But the amount of work that he can crank out of this space is amazing and inspiring to everyone with a home lab. He specializes in Apple devices since he can stock just a few components to fix most of their popular devices. And we know that there are lots of Apple devices out there since Apple is the most valuable company in the world.

If you are into retro gaming The 8-Bit Guy goes over some of your best options. He gives some valid reasons that make MS-DOS gaming the best option if you are looking to get into playing some retro games. Nice thing is the old laptops that are needed are old clunkers that are not useful for anything modern making them super cheap. You might need to look around for a while for the optimal system though based on some of the criteria that the 8 bit guy goes over.