July 2011

Drill Battery Charger Repair

Before you toss your broken tools in the trash it’s worth a bit of time to see if it’s repairable. In a day when even the manufacturer just replaces boards and doesn’t actually troubleshoot and repair their own equipment it can be a bit tricky though. In the not so distant past you could find lots of schematics inside the back cover of user manuals that came with electronics, those

PIC 16F877 based G-Force Monitor

Igor Lovric sent in this PIC 16F877 based G-Force Monitor project which was inspired by a project over at Mikro Elektronika. The microcontroller reads in the values from the accelerometer and sends them via a serial connection to the computer. The computer is running a custom program that Igor wrote in Delphi 7. One thing that Igor notes is that the power supply that it is running on makes a

Name the Thing Contest - 180

The prize this week is a mini tripod to help you get some great pictures of your next project. This contest will run for one week (July 16 – 22, 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” as the subject,

DIY Pentax DSLR IR Interval Timer

JustDIY shows us how he reverse engineered a Pentax DSLR IR remote to make a DIY Pentax DSLR IR Interval Timer. By allowing the microcontroller to send the take picture command this project is now able to command the camera to take time lapse movies like the one after the jump. With a digital storage scope it is simple to capture this type of short waveform and duplicate it in

Automatic Chicken Breast Deboning Robot

I enjoy chicken meat but it is sad to see this type of machine which just treats the animal like an object. It might as well be making car tires. It is a marvelous feat of engineering any way you look at it though. Via: TechEBlog “The fastest human butchers can fully debone about 150 chickens per hour. That’s a lot of chickens! But the new Mayekawa Automatic Chicken Deboner

JFET Phono Preamplifier Kit Build

Gio from DIY Audio Projects just completed a new audio kit build. This one is for the Boozhound Laboratories partial JFET phono preamp kit. If you are into the classic audio then this kit might be for you. I unfortunately don’t even have a record player anymore and have completely converted to the dark side of music represented by ones and zeros… If you are looking for some other interesting

High Voltage London Toilet

There are some crazy washrooms in the UK, they seem to like to automate everything. Is it just me or does that large high voltage symbol on the outside of the washroom make you a bit uneasy to use the facilities? Not sure why we need washroom doors that open and close automatically, but since most washrooms cost money I guess we can see what the money is paying for.