April 2006

Hard Drive Generator

So you have already build a hard drive clock. What else could an old hard drive be good for? How about a hard drive generator? The guys at The Workshop were thinking outside of the box when they came up with this one. “Here’s an excelent way to recycle your old hard drives and have them create energy for you! This site shows how to use a bunch of old

LED Touch Sensor

What can you do with an LED? They only provide light right? Wrong! JustDIY has done some extensive testing and documentation of a phenomenon that is not very well known. LEDs can be used as an input device! “This is a collection of the work I’ve done with using the bi-directional properties of LEDs. I have also included links to information I’ve found on the subject and the project by

NES Controller to Xbox Hack

So I am sure you have thought about playing your Xbox with a NES controller right? Well now you have! Where could you possible find documentation to do such a wild thing? Simple, altHack have everything you need. They have a parts list, tool list, schematic diagrams, well labeled pictures of the process and more. So what are you waiting for? Get hacking! The project is broken into three sections,

Fred Niell's Nixie Tube Clock

Fred Niell has made a functional nixie clock using a PIC microcontroller. Fred provides schematics and code so that you can build your own. But be careful since this clock operates at 175 Volts! “I decided to use point-to-point wiring for this prototype. That was difficult. I wouldn’t suggest it for a relatively complex digital design, such as this. I also fit the clock into a wooden shadow-box. I think

What to do with Blue Balls

Blue Bawls Automatic Light Ok get your mind out of the gutter. I am talking about the beautiful blue glass bottle that the Bawls soft drink comes in. I tried one the other day and thought the glass bottle could be used for something interesting. At first I was just going to stick an LED into it, but I wanted something a bit more interesting. So I threw together a

DIY Enigma Machine

Want your own piece of history? Why not build an Enigma machine. This Enigma kit is not a true reproduction since it uses modern components. For example LEDs replace the original lamps, but the operation is the same! “During WWII the German army used Enigma coding machines to encipher most of their radio messages. At the time the Germans were convinced that this machine was unbreakable, but recent history has

Mil 24 Hind Model

Not sure if I would have the effort to build a model like this! But the 15 years of work shows, the details are amazing. Many of the hand crafted parts were made under a microscope. “Fully scratch built, this model took just over 15 years (8000-10,000 hours) to complete. Begun in Kiev (Ukraine), in 1986 this masterpiece was profoundly difficult to construct due to the extreme scarcity of information