We have all seen the McDonalds Kids Meal Toys, they usually last about a day and a half before they find their way into the trash. David Cook from the Robot Room decided to take an Avatar McDonalds Toys apart to see what made it tick. Turns out there isn’t much for electronics since it uses an ASIC to get the work done. One neat feature is that the piezo
Are you tired of the standard mouse that came with your computer? Why not spice it up a bit like Filimon did with this Steampunk Computer Mouse creation. When you see the mouse alone it isn’t obvious what it is! This would be great in an office environment, you would have the cubicle that no one would slip into to look something up.
X-mini sent in a few speakers for review. I have been kicking the X-mini II and X-mini MAX II Capsule Speakers around for a few weeks now. The X-mini II is shown above, it’s a single speaker mono device, the X-mini MAX II is the one shown below and is a stereo speaker set. Both speakers come with a USB charging cable, audio input jacks and a carrying bag. The
You may have seen the circuit board that is built into the headphones of the Apple iPod Shuffle. David Carne did a great job of reverse engineering what the iPod Shuffle Headphone circuit actually does. He also went as far as to emulate the circuit using a microcontroller on a bread board. There is an interesting frequency that is used at startup so that the iPod can determine what type
I have taken a few speakers apart over the years to see what makes them tick but I have never rebuilt one. Keith Neufeld goes over the details of how to perform a DIY Speaker Rebuild Kit Installation on his Keith’s Electronics Blog. The process doesn’t look all that bad but it isn’t something you can knock off in an afternoon. There is some serious glue drying periods that drag
Thanks to Screwpop for sponsoring the contest this week. They will be providing 8 of their cool Screwpop Tools to some lucky winners (2 winners will each get 4 tools). They sent me a few to try out and they work quite well, it isn’t going to replace my conventional screw drivers but it does a good job when all you need to do is tighten a screw a bit.
The team over at Noisebridge just launched a Near Space Balloon with some gear on board. They got some very nice pictures along the way! It sure seems that this type of project is totally within reach these days. I think my next challenge will be to round up a team of people in Winnipeg who want to attempt this up here. Might have to wait till the snow goes
