August 2011

Counterfeit Chinese USB Hard Drive

The picture above looks like a Samsung USB Hard Drive case right? Looks can be deceiving, the case actually contains come large nuts to make it feel like there is actually something inside and a USB thumb drive to provide some convincing operation. The USB drive has been made to simulate the large hard drive by showing up with a 500GB capacity even though the capacity of the drive is

DIY Vacuum Forming Machine

Thanks to James Bruton from xrobots.co.uk for sending in this DIY Vacuum Forming Machine project that he made. He is creating some props from plastic and a vacuum form is one way to get consistent plastic forms of the wooden objects he has already created. If you want to jump right to the fun and see the machine in action skip to 7:55 in the video. Of course as James

Microsoft Kinect controlled Delta Robot

Malte Ahlers from Germany sent in this great Microsoft Kinect controlled Delta Robot (translated to English). We have seen quite a few Kinect hacks recently but this one represents something that interfaces very well with an external device like we have seen in the past with quite a few Wiimote Hacks. “I built a delta robot and tried to control it with the Microsoft Kinect sensor. My aim was to

LCD Thermometer using a LM35

The LM35 Temperature Sensor is a versatile and inexpensive sensor that could be useful in many projects such as a PWM Fan Controller or this LCD Thermometer project. In this case a ATMega8 reads the analog value and updates the LCD to show the current temperature. The code is provided so you can build from this example. “In the circuit the LM35 is connected to the ADC port of the

Vowel Voice Decoder System

Annie (Wei) Dai from Cornell University sent in this Vowel Voice Decoder System she did for the ECE 4760 Class. “The audio input is sampled through a microphone/amplifier circuit and analyzed in real time using the Mega644 MCU. The user can record and analyze his/her speech using both hardware buttons and custom commands through PuTTY. In addition, the final product also supports a simple voice password system where the user

Robodance 5 - Telepresence Robotics for the Disabled

Our friend Robert Oschler is running a Kickstarter for his new Robodance 5 – Telepresence Robotics for the Disabled project. Check it out and support it if you can. “What you are funding is the Pro version, which has additional exciting features and also has benefits for the physically challenged.  For the first time in history an affordable consumer EEG headset is being sold called the EPOC, an Emotiv Systems,