If you are an audiophile this Moving Magnet Phono Preamplifier Build may be of interest to you, the schematic is provided so that you can simply build your own if you desire. The circuit board looks like it has great separation to keep the audio quality high.

"While looking through the local (Jaycar) electronics store catalogue I came across a Magnetic Cartridge Preamp Kit (Cat. No. KC5433). It uses two LM833 Operational Amplifiers (op-amps) and cost $AU39.95. Naturally, the op-amps can be upgraded with higher performance versions. While I was satisfied with the Pro-Ject Phono Box SE I wanted to build my own phono preamp. I guess being an avid DIYer draws one to anything you can build yourself even if you already have a commercial unit. "

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:

1. Me banging on my drumKat MIDI drum pads
2. drumKat MIDI Out to MIDI/USB adapter to PC
3. PC running my own custom MIDI Hero software
4. MIDI Hero calls into XIM which sends input to the Xbox 360 console"

Via: Make and HackaDay

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.

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."

If you are looking for GPS project ideas here is one that interfaces a serial GPS module to a PIC microcontroller and saves the data directly to a SD memory card. Schematics and code are available.

"The data from the GPS is logged every second with the raw NMEA sentences being written to the SD card. The data written to the card is the GSA, GGA, RMC and GSV sentences which by excluding the carriage returns this should never exceed 512 bytes per second. The data contains:

• GGA - 78 bytes - time, fix, lat, long, altitude, horizontal dilution of precision.
• GSA - 69 bytes - fix (none, 2D, 3D), satellites used, dilution of precision.
• RMC - 78 bytes - time, lat, long, speed, course, date.
• GSV - 74 bytes - satellite information (4 messages).

The total active power consumption is about 40mA to 45mA when active which in theory should give 48 hours on rechargeable batteries with 2000mAh capacity. In practice I have measured a time of 40 hours."

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.
Project page.

"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."

The prize this week will steady you camera when you are taking pictures of your next project.  This contest will run for one week (Nov 29 - Dec 4, 2008) . Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item pictured above including make and model and give an example of what can be done with it.

Please do not give the answer in the comments below. 

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.

Below is a picture of the prize.

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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!

I can’t wait to see some video of this electric bike conversion in action. TheWorkshop.ca has taken an old Suzuki dirt bike and hacked in a powerful electric motor. This isn’t a simple rip and bolt project that we have seen others perform, there was lots of machining and fabrication needed to get it to this stage. An open source motor controller was used which earns it a big bonus as far as DIY goes. :)  I think it will prove to be quite a fast machine.

Added video that is now available (thanks Frank).

Project page.

"The battery, controller, motor and PC are finally all wired properly and I can slam the juice to the motor and rip through all 6 gears up & down without a clutch by just easing the throttle between transitions. There are some concerns about the over-all slop in the total drive-train (motor shaft to rear wheel), and the horrendous volume of the sound screaming off this set-up that will hopefully be addressed in the next installment. Similarly the next steps are to install a speedometer onto the rear wheel, a tach onto the motor shaft and see how close the spread sheet above is to the measured No-Load reality."

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Looks like there is another gas to play around with, we have seen that breathing helium and sulfur hexafluoride has some crazy vocal effects. But now we have an example of breathing xenon gas to change your voice! This was done by the guys over at the Benwl’s Channel who look to be having way too much fun. 

"Xenon’s anesthetic effect is 1.5 times more potent than N2O. Please do not breath Xenon without proper medical supervision and supplemental oxygen.

The anesthetic effect of inert gas xenon (Xe) was discovered more than 50 years ago. The main causes limiting its clinical application are high price, low availability (in nature the gas is present in scarce amounts), and absence of preclinical trials sufficient for norm-setting documents and further solutions allowing clinical trials of Xe."