Complex Hacks

Arduino Automatic Plant Grow Center

  Don’t we all want our personal green house with all of the automation that allows the plants to grow to their full potential. Tom from Invent Geek sent in their latest creation that Jared Bouck built, it can do help you automate your plant growing by using their Sprout Board which is Arduino powered. The structure is built from off the shelf parts and hand full of electronics bring

FTA Dish converted to receive KU-band

  Like so many people these days David Prutchi has a space communications array in his back yard. His modification of his FTA dish allows it to be used to receive Ku-band transmissions from geosynchronous FTA satellites as known-Az/El beacons. “The Fortec Star 120 dish is small enough to be handled by a Yaesu G5500 Az/El rotor, yet provides 21.7dB gain in the L-band, and 27.7 dB gain in the S-band. 

Heavylift Hexacopter Build

  Jacques Sperwer from Jacques Productions in the Netherlands shows us how he is building his Heavylift Hexacopter. Have a look at the video footage of the windmill below to get an idea of what these copters can do. This build is using a Wookong control system which looks to have all the bells and whistles.    “Wookong Multi-Rotor stabilization controller is a complete flight system for all multi-rotor platforms

Light Trikes at the Bay Area Maker Faire

  If you are in the Bay Area you better be checking out the Maker Faire this weekend. It is running May 19th and 20th. The Light Cycle above from Frog is sure to be a big crowd draw! This device is loosely based on the light bikes from Tron, the two players are back to back riding one their own light cycle and has a dedicated view, this is

Self Balancing Robot using the Microchip dspic33f

  The Microchip dspic33f  is used for this Self Balancing Robot that chayben from Australia put together. Bluetooth modules are used to achieve communication link between the robot and the computer running Matlab. On the computer you are able to see the many tiny changes that are needed to keep the robot upright.  The stacked round disk PCB design looks and works great in this design. “Processor: Microchip dspic33f Sensor:

Mike Senna Wall-e Build almost complete

  We have featured some Wall-e builds in the past, you can see by the video above that Mike Senna’s Wall-e Build is coming to an end. He just posted a video of the current state. It is almost complete and is looking great! He has built some cool macro modes that allows some pre-programmed movements to be done while he drives the robot around.

Wifly Mini - RC Car with an Arduino as a Brain

     Blair Kelly has designed a fun looking RC car. It has an Arduino mounted in the car, there are a number of sensors that allow Blair to drive the car around viewing the drive on a computer screen. There is even force feedback so when the car goes over a large bump or bangs into something he can feel it. With a head mounted display this thing would