October 2010

Custom Men of War Game Console

You probably remember PCB Heaven for the PC Failure Alarm from earlier this year. Giorgos Lazaridis of PCB Heaven has just completed his next project, it is a Custom Men of War Game Console! I am not much of a gamer but I can see how this custom controller would make game play a piece of cake. All of the controls that you need for rapid game play are right

Nathan Seidle from Sparkfun talks about the Beginning of the Company

I am sure most of you have heard about Sparkfun. They were the ones that had the huge giveaway earlier this year. Nathan Seidle created this 10 million per year company from some humble beginnings. It was funny to hear about the the process Nathan went through to get his merchant account. After he applied to get a merchant account and the company sent him a disposable camera as part

Name the Thing Contest - 154

The prize this week is a loupe magnifier, this will let you get a close look at whatever you are working on. This contest will run for one week (October 23 – October 29, 2010). 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.

LED Flare project based on the PIC 16F627A

This LED Flare project by Moon Taj is an interesting PIC microcontroller based LED project. You could make this yourself since the schematic and firmware has been posted for us to enjoy. Thanks Kevin. “Presented here is a novelty LED “flare”. It’s loosely fashioned from automotive LED safety flares but with a eye toward fun.The combination of display patterns is limited only by your imagination. Our source code provides a

Luxeon RGB LED Light Saber

If you are looking for a new project that could be worked into part of a Halloween costume have a look at this Luxeon RGB LED Light Saber that George Hadley from Nbitwonder put together. The PIC18F2221 based Light Saber is open source and has gone through lots of variations, you can see some of the project build details here. There is lots of custom features that are built into

Jet Engine Cooling Technology used in new LED Bulb

Take a look at this neat prototype GE Light Bulb which uses Jet Engine Cooling Technology. Sometimes we see the use of some obscure technology just for the sake of adding some buzz words to the packaging. I don’t think that is the case here, this LED bulb can put out a serious amount of light but with the new cooling method it can dissipate the heat generated efficiently. “How

Take on the Machine - Crash Space builds a Sidewalk Instrument

VIMBY – Take On the Machine: Crashspace 1 This is the next hackerspace challenge. In this episode Crash Space builds a Sidewalk Instrument which uses ultrasound elements to determine how far people are in various places on the sidewalk in front of their space. The distances are then converted into musical notes by using solenoids to bang on things like clay pots and bottles. Via: The Transistor VIMBY – Take