Hacked Gadgets Forum

July 2, 2009

Understanding and Controlling Motors

at 2:03 pm. Filed under DIY Hacks, Electronic Hacks

 

Driving motors from a microcontroller will be required for a project eventually. This video by NerdKits will go over some of the basics that are needed.

Thanks Humberto.

"Electric motors are a key way of converting electrical power (voltage and current) into mechanical power (torque and speed), and because electric motors are simple and reliable machines, they can be found all over, in many different shapes and sizes. In this video tutorial we’re just going to address the electrical side of the system. This includes some experiments you should try with a DC motor, a model of the system from an electrical perspective, building a MOSFET-based switching circuit, and finally two demos of a microcontroller-operated motor. This video and webpage specifically addresses a brushed DC motor, and although the specifics are not fully applicable to brushless (BLDC) motors, stepper motors, or AC motors, the big ideas about motor modeling and control will be useful in those areas as well."


USB Cigar Storage

at 10:52 am. Filed under DIY Hacks, Electronic Hacks, Funny Hacks

 

If you have some top secret into that needs to hide in plain sight have a look at this USB Cigar. When the cigar is together there is no sign that it has been hacked!

"Materials:

  • A thick cigar
  • An USB flash disk of small dimensions
  • Some wire, 2 x LEDs (red!), 1 x 10K resistor
  • Wood primer
  • Some tape
  • A short USB extension cable
  • Very thin paper, the size of a stamp"

June 23, 2009

Greenbox - Waste no Electricity with this Phone Charger

at 12:50 pm. Filed under Cool Gadgets, DIY Hacks, Electronic Hacks

 

This Greenbox project is a beautiful way to save energy. Not only does it dress up the charging area but it also saves you money. When the phone is removed the wall wart charger is electrically disconnected.

"As a design exercise, I have built a phone charging station that makes unplugging very easy and instinctive (with affordance playing a big role). So easy you don’t even notice it unplugs automagically. The design is made from cheap and available materials, and was a great fun to build on a rainy day. "

Thanks Alberto


June 22, 2009

Arduino based Timelapse Photography Rig

at 5:38 pm. Filed under DIY Hacks, Electronic Hacks

 

This Arduino based Timelapse Photography Rig that Aonomus built is a great idea that will let you dig out your old digital camera and get a bit more use out of it. The Arduino microcontroller monitors a potentiometer and changes the time delay between pictures based on the dialed in value. There’s a LCD screen that shows the number of pictures taken and the delay between pictures. Finally to get the work done a servo moves back and forth enough to press the capture button on any camera. When Aonomus isn’t making microcontroller based projects he is playing with fire (literally).

 

 

June 17, 2009

DIY Electronic Meat Thermometer

at 12:20 pm. Filed under Complex Hacks, DIY Hacks, Electronic Hacks

 

This DIY Electronic Meat Thermometer project will not only have you end up with a cooking thermometer in the end bit you will also learn some signal processing techniques.

"To passionate chefs, cooking is an art. Knowing exactly when a cut of meat is cooked to perfection requires knowing your meat and your grill. But with a little bit of technology, we can build a digital meat thermometer, and use digital signal processing techniques to get a much faster response. This video explains how we can use the predictably slow heat transfer inside the temperature probe to mathematically model the sensor, and ultimately get a much faster response, with a little bit microcontroller computing power!"


June 14, 2009

Arduino Oscilloscope

at 1:32 pm. Filed under Complex Hacks, Cool Gadgets, DIY Hacks, Electronic Hacks

 

This Arduino Oscilloscope project is a great idea. For people that are getting into electronics having a meter is good but having a scope is great. With this project you can take your $30 Arduino board and turn it into a oscilloscope, it won’t show you great detail or very fast circuits but often times that is not needed.

"This software allows you to get a visual representation of an analog signal using Arduino and Processing. The resolution is 10 bits so this is not like a real oscilloscope but it is still pretty useful. It works by sending values read from the Arduino board (pin 0) to Processing through serial communication."

June 11, 2009

Suzuk-E - Suzuki Electric Bike Completion

at 8:44 am. Filed under Complex Hacks, DIY Hacks, Electronic Hacks

The Workshop.ca Suzuk-E project is done! have a look at the video to see some of the work that was needed to finish the project. If it looks like there are some major new parts you would be right. As it worked out there were some failures near the end of the build which required some expensive new parts. Frank hooked up a meter that can keep track of the total charge energy that the battery needs. This will allow a simple calculation to see how much it cost to “fill up”.

“Canadian Tire offered a “Blue Planet - Electronic Energy Meter” on special for under $20 one week and I just couldn’t pass-up that sort of value. A very clever bit of code in the Blue Planet Energy Meter is the ability to log the Kwh and cumulative cost per Charge of say individual or Banks of batteries… In our part of Canada we pay a flat 5.6 cents per Kwh up to the first 1000 Kwh’s, and the rate jumps to 6.5 cents there after…”

Internal Links:


Categories:

Search:

Google
Hacked Gadgets
Web

Site Sponsors:

 

Recent Comments:

Dr. Mario on DIY UV LED Double Sided PCB Exposure Box

Edith on RoboFoot - Robot Football

Becky on U-Disp - USB Statistics Display

Mike on Name the Thing Contest - 93

jim on Human Camcorder

yon on Human Camcorder

Alan Parekh on Loo Log - Washroom Usage Monitoring

John B on Loo Log - Washroom Usage Monitoring

kevin on Name the Thing Contest - 93

joe Sixpack on USB Cigar Storage

Alan Parekh on Big Seven Segment Display

peter chamier on Big Seven Segment Display

kishan on DIY Wind Turbine Electricity

Lloyd on Dog-O-Matic - Automatic Dog Washer

London on Understanding and Controlling Motors

Site Rating:

Technology blogs

Technology Blogs - Blog Flare

Technology Blogs - Blog Top Sites

Top Technology blogs

Technology Blogs

Best blogs on Technology and Science

More RSS Feed Options

Site Sponsors:

 

Interesting Sites:

ThinkGeek
Apple TV Hacks
Technology Blog
Nintendo Wii Hacks
Laptop Adapters
Top HDTV Reviews
Shopping Comparison Site
Smarter Electronics
Free Web Hosting
Business Intelligence

 

Site Videos:

Incoming Links:

Recent Readers:

Forum Activity:

Get this widget!
Fun Articles from other Blogs