June 2013

Unicorn Buster - Workstation Auto Lock Project

  If you are tired of your co-workers messing around with your computer when you get up to grab a glass of water this Unicorn Buster, Workstation Auto Lock Project is just the thing you need. As soon as you walk away from your computer with your locking fob in your pocket your computer locks automatically. Via: Dangerous Prototypes

UV LED Drawing Parallax Robot

  Check out the cool UV LED Drawing Parallax Robot that Gareth built from a S2 scribbler robot. “I have replaced the pen slot with a bar of downward pointing UltraViolet LEDs one placed central to the hole and the others fanning out….. This arrangement means that i can send the Propellers internal character-set (no costly data tables) to the UV array and plot to a Phosphorescent screen.”

Energy Harvesting Roads and Sidewalks

    Are sidewalks and roads of the future going to be generating energy to power things around them? Some embedded Piezo Generators might be just the thing we need. This is an interesting concept. Only thing is that laying a sidewalk or road with this technology is sure to be expensive. Will the energy savings outweigh the cost of installation and maintenance? Nice thing about this technology is that it

Autonomous Car Build

     Jason Dorweiler has built an Autonomous Car that is based on a simply off the shelf $100 RC car. The car is loaded up with a bunch of sensors and visual technology. An Arduino is being used to tie everything together. The video below demonstrates a parking lot test that seems to have worked very well. Thanks for the email Paul. “For the localization of the car I’ll

Skot 9000 DigitGrid

  Check out the Skot 9000 DigitGrid. It is a huge grid of 7 segment displays that can be used to display a picture or even a video in a crude way. The result is beautiful! Thanks for the tip Stan. “The DigitGrid is an array of seven-segment displays. There are 4096 LEDs, forming 512 7-segment digits (they are actually 8 leds each if you count the decimal point). Every

DIY Vacuum Fluorescent Display Driver using a 555 Timer

    This DIY Vacuum Fluorescent Display Driver uses a 555 Timer to drive it. Most of us have used a 7 segment display before and they are very simply to power since they are just LEDs and it is very simply to power LEDs. Kerry Wong had a VFD but no driver, he built one using a 555 timer, a hand wound transformer and a hand full of other

Arduino based Indoor Environmental Quality Station

    There are a ton of sensors available for the Arduino. These days indoor air quality is on the mind of many people wanting to improve the quality of life and health. What could be better than a home made system that uses and Arduino and a bunch of sensors to monitor everything around you. This project also interfaces with Thing Speak to allow the data to be viewed