 Happy holidays! The prize this week is an ultrasonic sensor, a breadboard and a breadboard power supply. This contest will run for one week (December 22 – 28, 2012). Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item above and what it can be used for. Hint, this board is popular at this time of the year. Please do not give the answer in
If you want to play with line voltage you need to be a lot more careful compared to working with 5 or 12 volts. Viktor has built a nice compact system for easily interfacing line voltage powered items to his DIY projects. Instead of trying to breadboard the line voltages or make a temporary rig to switch line power he gutted an old power brick and mounted a large
We all know a bunch of people who shake presents to try to guess what is inside them, I might also be guilty of that sometimes. Jason Smith from DIY Hacks and How-Tos sent in this cool Christmas Present Shake Prank that uses a Radio Shack recording module to record a sound that you would like to be played when the box is shaken. Some thin magnet wire is
 Olivier St-Martin Cormier got into the Christmas spirit this year by bringing his tree to life with LEDs that can dance to the music. He is using a stm32 microcontroller to get the job done. You can see a video of it in action below. “Olivier St-Martin Cormier wrote: This is my Christmas tree, it has over 400 lights (exactly 404) that are all individually controlled by an
Have a look at this Free Energy Generator Head Scratcher. It is obviously a hoax but how was it done? My bet is there is a battery in the meter and a battery in the motor. This way when the leads are shorted out the meter reads the internal battery voltage and when the motor leads are shorted it connects the small battery to the motor. I was thinking
Jewi from Germany built this Jingle Bells playing Christmas Tree that will actually teach you how to play Jingle Bells. It uses an ATmega to play the song on a speaker and at the same time it lights appropriate LEDs on a keyboard display. You can see on the project page that Jewi used a bunch of SMD parts in the project where some large parts with some large
 Most of you have probably seen server rooms with blade servers, it is basically a rack where you can slide in some servers. Paul Ruby Jr. sent in his Dual Computer Custom Desk build where he has two slide in computers except they are drawer size. This desk as everything you need for your personal computing needs including a hidden UPS. The only thing I can think that
