2006

CD-ROM Radio

Need a radio? Why not build your own! The materials that are needed are probably in your house already. H. P. Friedrichs has an interesting design available on his Web site. “If you’ve studied the subject of crystal radio for any length of time, you’re already aware that these instruments appear in an endless variety. The diversity found in vintage commercial sets is intriguing enough, though I have a special

LED Throwies

Looking for an interesting LED project? Why not make an LED Throwie… LED Throwies are an inexpensive way to add color to any ferromagnetic surface in your neighborhood. An LED, a battery, some tape, a magnet and lots of fun! Total cost would be under a dollar each and they seem to gaining popularity. Check out this cool video of them in action! read more | digg story

Wireless LED Color Shifting

Nathan True constructed a neat color shifting orb project. He was inspired by a Ask Slashdot question and looked at the Ambient Orb for design ideas. His initial idea of using a Parallax Basic Stamp was discarded since color mixing needed a faster processor. The solution was to go with a Microchip PIC16F84A, the 16F84 still has a large following since there are vast resources available on the internet for

Power Glove Mouse

Want to use your Power Glove as a mouse? Look no further, this is an interesting project to do just that. “The first step in making the pMouse is, of course, taking all the goods apart. I started with the component of the powerglove on the back of the hand. Once the black plastic casing is removed you can see the circuit board inside with lots of wires going to

Creating a Battery from Pennies

The Superpositioned site has an interesting article about making a battery out of some pennies, an ice cube tray and a few paper clips. The battery is shown powering an LED. “In order to turn pennies into batteries, another electrode and an electrolyte are needed. In this case, dimes (zinc) are used as the positive electrodes and salt water is used an electrolyte. Copper wire, galvanized nails, and lemon juice

RFID Chips in Food?

Now that RFID tags are a measly .005 x .005 inches and is 7.5 micrometers thick. A host of new tagging options are available. Gone will be the day when you ask for a check at the end of a meal at the restaurant. Simply order what you want, eat and get scanned at the cash register on the way out. Mixed in with the pepper on your hot dog

The Whiskey Bottle PC

Janos Marton wanted a small, low power computer system. Most people would buy something like a Shuttle computer. Well I guess there is no fun in buying a case when you can make one! Janos took a 1.5 liter Ballantine’s whisky bottle and had a large slot and a few holes cut into it. For the guts he bought the following: Intel P3 733EB processor 256MB notebook RAM 40GB notebook