2015

Name the Thing Contest – 274

  The prize this week is a ESP8266 Serial WIFI Wireless Transceiver Module so you can add WIFI to your next project. This contest will run for one week (Mar 22 – Mar 27, 2015). 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

Raspberry Pi Minecraft Blocks with NFC

  If you are into minecraft you will soon be able to use some technology to interact with the game using physical objects. Adafruit is making this possible with an NFC reader that they will be releasing soon.   “Coming soon to the Adafruit Learning System, a project to make paper Minecraft blocks that interact with the game on a Raspberry Pi using NFC (near field communication)! Swiping a block

Eagle Films Flight From World’s Tallest Building

  Birds are amazing. We have recently seen quadcopters that are allowing us to take virtual flight but nothing can compare to what birds do naturally. Check out the world record flight of this eagle from the tallest building in the world. The short video is above and the full length one is below. When the eagle sees the handler and starts the dive he sure gets up some impressive

DIY LED Display using WS2811 LED Strips

  If you are looking to build a large low resolution screen stringing a bunch of WS2811 LED Strips together might be just the thing. ejunky66 shows us how you can make a cool flexible DIY LED Display using WS2811 LED Strips. The strips are stuck onto a plastic sheet, they are linked together in small grids that are then connected to the computer controlled interface. This panel won’t be

Custom DIY RFID Smart Lock

  RFID technology has rapidly been getting cheaper and simpler for the DIY enthusiast to get into over the years. The video above uses a Raspberry Pi and doesn’t have build instructions but that doesn’t matter much. Any microcontroller can easily connect to the heart of the access system which is the actual RFID reader. An Arduino could be used instead, it could be made stand alone instead of network connected

Name the Thing Contest – 273

  The prize this week is a ESP8266 Serial WIFI Wireless Transceiver Module so you can add WIFI to your next project. This contest will run for one week (Mar 14 – Mar 20, 2015). 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 @

3D Scanning Using an xBox Kinect

  Hoffman Engineering shows us how to do some DIY 3D Scanning Using an xBox Kinect. The output of the process can then be used to print on a 3D printer. He is using the first generation xBox Kinect which can be found quite cheap used since the new version is now out. He is using the free version of Skanect to get the data in. The software uses all of the Kinect