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If you have 3 servo motors, some scary eyes, a few Popsicle sticks and an Arduino you can also make a some crazy eyes! Just add a white sheet and stick these Servo controlled Eyes under it and you will have the scariest ghost on the block. "It consists of the following components: |
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Kizomox has been working on some great high voltage experiments lately. You may remember the Potato that he Exploded with Defibrillator Capacitor that we featured before. Looks like he has moved way up in power since then! There aren’t very many people who have their personal pole transformer in their back yard. Via Article comments. |
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Sparkfun received a Cease and Desist letter from SPARC International. It’s a sad day when a good organization like SPARC have a bunch of lawyers that do nothing but send out this type of garbage. This just causes unnecessary havoc for a great company like Sparkfun who has a name that has a section which sounds similar. What’s next SparkPlug International will no longer be able to sell their electronic spark plug tester? This reminds me of the careless actions of Monster Cable! Click here to send an email to sparcinfo@sparc.org to let them know how you feel. Thanks CY Brown and IraqiGeek for the info. |
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Thanks to the LAlarm for sponsoring the contest this week. They will be providing $200 worth of business licenses of their Laptop Alarm software. It is still free for personal use but this means that you will be able to turn a USB key into a security device and use it in the office. Their LAlarm software was featured here at Hacked Gadgets last month . "LAlarm™ is free laptop alarm security software. LAlarm sounds an alarm when a laptop is in danger of being stolen or losing data, and it can recover and destroy data if the laptop is stolen. LAlarm consists of five alarms and other security functions designed to protect laptops and sensitive data." You won’t be able to look around for the pictures this week, I took them about 10 minutes ago from a surplus product that I bought a few weeks ago. I cracked the case open and removed this circuit board, there more to the system. The rest of it is interfaced to using the two spring terminals shown above the largest black rectangular item in the picture. I am not looking for anything very detailed, just try to determine what the unit is that this circuit board came from. I look forward to reading the replies since I was very surprised to see this much circuitry inside! There are lots of additional pictures on page 2 and if you want to see the full size images they are available here on flickr. This contest will run for one week (October 24- 30, 2009) . Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item pictured above and give an example of what can be done with it. Please do not give the answer in the comments.
Send an email to contest @ hackedgadgets.com with "Name the Thing Contest" as the subject, and the message body consisting of:
The winner will be chosen at random from all of the correct entries. ———————————–———- Added November 6, 2009 The item to guess was the Sunroof Motor Controller By FoMoCo (complete pictures added) The winners are Craig F., Michael A., John G. and Josh G.. (There were 14 entries, this was a hard one!) ————————————–———- Below is a screen shot of the the prize.
See page 2 for lots more pictures
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I remember playing with my Lite Brite when I was young. What looks better than sticking solid plastic pegs into fixed holes in a grid of plastic? The answer is the beautiful glow of individual LEDs soldered into a perf board! There is of course some added complexity that comes with that choice. These days I am answering lots of questions on LED applications from our LED customers, what resistance should be used, what voltage should be used, what is the ideal current for a certain application, what series parallel combination should be used, etc. A LED resistor calculator helps but is still not super simple for all end users. That’s what makes these Hi-Tec Sketch Art products shine! All you do is pick up an LED with the desired color and stick it in the special pad. Keep sticking LEDs in the pad until your design is done. The model pictured above is the Hi-Tec Sketch Art model. 
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Ever wonder how those cheap devices at Walmart sense you walking by so they can play the cricket sound or meow like a cat? Have a look at the circuit for these Spooky Halloween Eyes for some details. A slight change in ambient light is all it takes for the small device to "see" that someone is close. "The schematic is quite simple, each of the devices (LED’s, phototransistor, sounder) are simply connected to the appropriate uC pin. The phototransistor is biased by a single 499kohm resistor. This seemed to give a nice range of resulting voltages in the low light levels expected during operation. Triggering is done using by detecting a change in illumination, not an absolute threshold, thus this should provide nice performance." |
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Hans Scharler has been busy making a DIY Steampunk Pumpkin that is sure to please anyone who sees it. He squished tons of parts in there from some of the best DIY providers. His own ioBridge, some sensors from Adafruit, some ThingM (designed by Tod Kurt) parts from Sparkfun. "Using the ioBridge IO-204, I rigged up the fog machine to trigger when someone walked in front of the pumpkin. I used a passive infrared sensor from Adafruit to detect motion. The IO-204 has an upcoming feature that allows for on board logic, meaning you can break off of the Internet and have local controls take over. To integrate it with the fog machine, I tapped into the wireless remote control that came with the fog machine. This made it easy to control using a single relay. To light the pumpkin, I bought a BlinkM RGB LED Blaster from Sparkfun. The LEDs are high intensity lights that you can mix colors together." |
