Keeping our cat’s water dish topped up is my daughter’s job but it would be something that would be nice to automate. Only thing I would always be scared about is if a sensor went bad or there was some bad code that caused the thing to run for 5 or 6 hours when I was out… I guess having a limited reservoir size would be one way to limit
There are some builds that just look like they are too fun. This Fan Scooter is definitely one of those. A ducted fan is bolted to two razor scooters some battery packs provides the jam to get the fan spinning and producing some serious power. Via: Adafruit “Assembled in just under 5 hours, Fanscooter is an attempt to put the latest iteration of the HFF onto something more interesting than
There will come a time when you want to secure something in your project. You could use a keyswitch but what happens when your key is lost though? Using a keypad allows you to have as many codes programmed as you want and change them at any time. If you are thinking of adding a keypad to an Arduino project have a look at this Arduino Keypad project for some
If you had an Atari computer years ago you might remember the 810 floppy drive. Rossum decided to have some fun and make a 8 GB version which is just a bit smaller than the original. The heart of the hack is a microSDdrive with a microcontroller which handles the interface. Via: Make, HackaDay “The hardware is pretty simple: a LPC1114 microcontroller, a microSD slot, a 3v3 regulator, a led
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 (May 7 – 13, 2011). Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item pictured above. Please do not give the answer in the comments. Send an email to contest @ hackedgadgets.com with “Name the Thing Contest”
Getting our projects to display results usually means connecting them to a computer via RS232 or using an LCD but with a bit of work you can use VGA. Have a look at this FPGA VGA Project for some pointers. “VGA is a very friendly protocol to use with FPGA’s and CPLD’s and because of this we can easily build video controllers with basic PLDs. The VGA protocol itsself is
There are some projects that just take your breath away, this 555 Decimal Adding Machine by Alan Yates is definitely one of those. Via: EMSL “The quiescent device pulls 450 mA from its 9 volt supply. Yep, 4 watts! You can feel the warmth coming from the back of it. I could not find ICM7555s in quantity, so was forced to use LM555CNs, making it a rather power hungry device.
