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Talk about extending the playability of Guitar Hero and Rock Band! This hack allows you to use real instruments to play the popular games instead of using the cheap plastic instruments that come with the game. Many people say that necessity is the mother of invention and I think this is the case here since it doesn’t look like this hack would have been done if Egyokeo hadn’t hurt his finger. "Since I injured my middle left finger playing Guitar Hero 2 way too much when it came out, I’ve been dying to get back to playing it. But my finger hasn’t healed. I was holding the neck too tightly on the X-plorer guitar controller and it hurts to bend it anymore. I’ve never had an injury playing the drums, so I thought "wouldn’t it be great to be able to play Guitar Hero on the drums?" So I thought about how that might be accomplished… researched, implemented, borrowed, and here I outline the finished product. Here’s the whole chain of what’s going on:
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Based on the White Screen Wiimote hack by Johnny Lee the ECC has developed a very cool way to mashup music at their shows. Thimbles with LEDs in them allow them to press virtual buttons on the huge sound control board. "It’s perfect for our Wheel Of Mashup shows, which depend on an overloaded setup of Ableton Live. Because it’s overloaded, it’s very difficult to mouse quickly and accurately enough to mash things up on the fly. The touchscreen solves that."
Thanks for the tip Stagueve. |
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Rob Miles has put together some software and complimenting hardware that lets to control some Christmas lights using software that is monitoring the internet. In this case it will turn on when a new post appears on his Web site. He uses shift registers to give the project the ability of controlling a ton of LEDs using a small number of controller pins. "If you know C# and love Visual Studio, you can now get started building hardware and controlling it with your software. Moreover, it lets developers achieve one of their most cherished dreams, to control their festive lights using programs that they have written." |
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If you ever wanted to mount a camera onto a model rocket this article makes for a good read. A custom mold was made to securely hold the camera in place. "So here is the awkward part. The camera must be TURNED ON when I install it in the rocket. It doesn’t need to be recording, that can be controlled with the poking stick. But it must be turned on when inserted because once in the rocket, there is no way to access the power button. It’s not a real big deal, but it does take a little time, and at a time when time is precious. I get the rocket all ready to go, altimeters, parachutes, ejection charges, motor, all installed. Then go check in with the RSO, get them to call in for a waiver, go to the launch pad and install the camera. That means turning it on, wedging it into the lower plug, pressing in the upper plug, positioning the nose cone section, and screwing in all those little screws. It takes 2 minutes, not counting time spent looking for dropped screws - I’ve learned to take a few extras, and a magnet. Then when the ignitor is installed, and the rocket is up on the rail, I would stand on a tippy little stool, poke the RECORD button, and strain to see if it were actually recording. My fear is that I would "bounce" the button, stopping the recording. More recently, I’ve started the camera recording with the rail horizontal, where it is much easier to work on and to see. I can even cover the camera section and my head with a towel to reduce the glare, see if it is recording or not, and get the guys at the flight line to laugh at me. Then it is raised to firing position."
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Details are slim on this very cool POV that uses a whopping 96 LEDs. The tiny LEDs are able to make a very nice image, it looks like the images may be stored in the banks of chips that can be seen on the board. Timing appears to be done using an LED, it might be a infrared LED since it would be visible to the video camera. There are a few glitches where it looks like it isn’t in scync but that might just be the camera that is recording it… Hats off to the creator, it’s very impressive! |
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If my fire alarm bell alarm clock clashes with your industrial decor have a look at this Indestructible Binary Alarm Clock. This clock will force you to get up and walk out the door before it shuts off! "When I was laying awake again I started thinking about building the ultimate alarm clock. After some tinkering I decided that it should have these features:
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We have featured DIY Induction Heaters here before. There is something about heating a big chunk of metal with no contact that is so appealing. Uzzors2k has a great write-up about his experiments with his Induction Heater, it is filled with trial and error which we can all learn from. "To test my new driver I had a large work coil and tank capacitor already built for a previous induction heater project. The tank capacitor was made up of 50x 22nF and 50x 12nF mini capacitors I purchased cheaply off ebay, giving a total of 1.7µF at 600V. So far I’ve had 3 capacitor failures, all of them with the small 12nF ones. Other than that the bank has held up well and doesn’t seem very lossy. The most difficult component to construct was the matching inductor, which dissipates surprising amounts of power due to the large current flow. After a few failed attempts I had to use 32 strands of 0.3mm magnet wire, wrapped together as litz wire. Even with just 8.6 milli-Ohms of DC resistance I still had to use a fan to keep the inductor temperature low enough."
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