The prize this week is a multi tool, perfect for opening things that were not designed to be opened. This contest will run for one week (October 9 – October 15, 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. Send an
A bench power supply is a must for any hardware tinkerer, this DIY Digital Bench Power Supply by Microsyl is a bit high end and much more than you need but in the end you will have a great system to enhance your bench. If you would like to make one from parts you probably have laying around you can make a cheap bench power supply from a spare ATX
The guys over at Nerd Kits have made a cool Human Theremin project that uses Infrared Light. IR light from an infrared LED is bounced off someones hand and some of the light is reflected back onto an infrared transistor. The closer the hands are the more IR light is reflected back onto the IR transistor. The output of the IR circuit is fed into a Nerd Kit microcontroller and
iFixit has cracked open the Apple TV version 2. It is much smaller than the version 1 of the device. Looks to be a nice hackable box. We will soon see what cool applications that can run on this new platform. There is sure to be some additional non-hacked capabilities on the future since there is a large amount of memory which is certainly not all needed for the current
I love looking at old tech. Year after year the technology around us increases in power and shrinks, could you imagine if this happened in other areas of our life? If engine technology followed the same evolution we would have a 1000 HP power plant in all of our cars and it would be filled up with a cup of fuel. It’s hard to believe that within our lifetime computer
Ming-Zher Poh who is a MIT student studying Electrical and Medical Engineering has created a Medical Mirror using a cheap camera as the medical sensor. The camera doesn’t have to be anything special, the cheap webcam in your laptop would do just fine. It is looking for a person and tracks their face. Once it is locked onto the face it monitors the slight changes caused by blood flow. “Public-domain
If you are making a Hard Drive Wind Generator you will need to wire up a bunch of coils. This tutorial video from The Geek Group goes over some 3 Phase Rectifier Basics. See this page for more details. “For three-phase AC, six diodes are used. Typically there are three pairs of diodes, each pair, though, is not the same kind of double diode that would be used for a
