August 2008

1100 Paintballs Shoot to instantly make a Picture

  Adam and Jamie from Mythbusters built a huge paintball gun that can shoot 1100 paintballs in an blink of an eye. When the balls crash on the canvas you can see a picture of the Mona Lisa. This was an attraction at an Nvidia event, I wonder how much the unit cost! I guess when you have a huge budget your mind can do wild. Via: Hack a Day

iPod LCD Hack

  If you need a display for your next project you could probably use one from a defective Apple iPod however after looking at the iPod LCD Hack details I think purchasing a display that has a simple interface may be the ticket in this case. "Looking for a small, cheap LCD for a possibly large-scale project, I decided that the 2.5" QVGA TFT in the Ipod Video may be

Name the Thing Contest - 58

  This contest will run for one week (Aug 30 – Sept 4, 2008) . 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

Pedal Powered Snowplow

  Winter seems to be just around the corner. This Pedal Powered Snowplow seems to be a good idea, say goodbye to the sore lower back and have fun driving the plow through the fresh powder. Only problem I can think of is the plow seems to be quite bug and may not handle anything deep. "One day while watching the show “Monster Garage” he was inspired. He immediately turned

Build a Steel Shotgun Pneumatic Cannon

  You can have some dangerous fun with some pipe supplies from your local home store. This Steel Shotgun Pneumatic Cannon is a good example of that. For more items like this have a look here. "The Steel Pneumatic shotgun is a very simple metal spud cannon, so see how to make it in this video. It is specially designed for C-cell batteries, but will work with any projectile (granted

Tachometer made from a Bicycle Computer

  A clever way to use a bicycle computer as a poor-man’s tachometer.  While I’m not sure about installing it in my car, I’m sure it’ll come in handy down the road for another project.  "Sometimes you just have to know how fast a wheel or shaft or motor is turning.  The measuring device for rotational speed is a tachometer. But they are expensive and not easy to find.  Its

Balancing Robot

  Futz’s Microcontrollers & Robotics has a few balancing robots featured, the second version was built on the non functioning first attempt. It is still a work in progress but the build log is good and it will be interesting to see the progress of this project all the way to completion. Still seems that accelerometers are quite pricey, has anyone found a good deal on these anywhere? See a