May 2013

DIY Laser Engraver

    If you have some old donated scanners and printers chances are you have most of the stuff needed to make your own DIY Laser Engraver. The main thing that all laser engravers have in common is a method of moving a laser or set of mirrors in an X Y pattern. Scanners and printers have motors and rails that can allow for accurate motion so all that is

Red Bull Creation Finalists including a Huge Tic Tac Toe Game

  Red Bull has selected their finalists in their latest competition. Have a look at the cool entry above by North Street Labs, it is a huge tic tac toe game. You stomp on large buttons in the center of the game board to register your space selection. The buttons are great, they are made from plumbing parts and some old bed springs. The use of RGB LED strips really

Sennheiser EW122PG3 Wireless Mic Review

  Our friend Max from Zedomax has introduced a new wireless mic to his video recording setup. If you make videos and need some distance from the camera his review of his new mic is sure to be of interest. He picked up a Sennheiser EW122PG3 which isn’t cheap but check out his video at the 10:20 mark where he demonstrates the range and clarity during a tarp board demo.

Magic Wand Project for Kids

  This Magic Wand project can be used to get someone young interested in electronics since instead of simply doing something practical this project appears to be magic. The project uses a magnetic reed switch and a magnet embedded into a magic wand to turn things on just by bringing the wand close to them. There are a ton of possibilities here such as hiding the magnet between your fingers

Name the Thing Contest – 229

  The prize this week is a breadboard power supply. This contest will run for one week (May 11 – 17, 2013). Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item above and what it can be used for. Please do not give the answer in the comments. Send an email to contest @ hackedgadgets.com with “Name the Thing Contest” as the subject, and the message

Hand Tracking Pong

    For this Cornell ECE 5760 Hand Tracking Pong project Hanting Lu and Kedari Elety have connected a camera to an FPGA, the image is down sampled so that it is only looking at a 40 X 30 image to determine how the players are moving. “The NTSC video signal from the camera is stored in the SDRAM at the rate of the TV Decoder Line clock (TD_CLK). Data