If you have a laser machine collecting dust because you have nothing inspirational to cut you are in luck. This Laser Cut Hand Crank Marble Machine by Martin Raynsford is the final version after a ton of experimentation. It looks like it is lots of fun and would be simple to stick a motor on the shaft that is normally turned by hand. “The main feature of this marble
You have probably used some Lithium Polymer batteries in some of your projects or toys. They pack a bunch of power in a small package (they can also be a bit dangerous if not handled correctly). Our friend Csaba has built a Lithium Polymer Internal Resistance Meter that will let you measure the resistance of the battery which is a good way to determine how good the battery is.
Mohamed Abdellatif and Michael Ross just completed a fun looking game for their Cornell University ECE 4760 Final Project. The game is Virtual Archery. The player has a bow that uses a stretch sensor to detect when the string is pulled and an accelerometer to determine how the bow is being held as the virtual arrow is released. The user even needs to take virtual gravity into consideration and aim slightly
Shanshan Zhou, Adam Ben-Dror, Joss Doggett from Victoria University used Processing, Open CV, a web cam, an Arduino and a bunch of servo motors to make a Face Tracking Lamp! It is quite freaky how well it seems to work. I can see this being quite a cool thing to put in a store front display to attract a crowd of curious people. Via: Make and Embedds.com  “Pinokio comes in the
Have a look at this fun project called the Shy Light. The light doesn’t like to be seen in public and uses a basket to hide in. X10 and two microcontrollers are being used to get the job done. “Why TWO Microcontrollers? The Dual-Microcontroller Circuit: Master (right) Slave (left) The Master Control microcontroller handles the foot-switch input, orchestrates the timing of the opening/closing of the basket (using commands to
I bet you thought your cell phone was the only thing with custom ringtones. Jason Poel Smith wrote in with his Doorbell with Custom Ringtones that he built using a Radio Shack Recording Module. “Most doorbells just make a simple generic tone. But I thought that it would be fun to modify a door bell so that it has a customizable ringtone. That way you can set it to play music
What is the voltage on a AA battery? It would be around 1:30PM if you were using this voltmeter! A PICAXE 18M2 microcontroller is used to read an analog value, calculate what time it represents and then uses a stepper motor to spin the adjustment knob to have the clock show the voltage using the hour and minute hands. 🙂 Read more about the Analog Clock Voltmeter “The max
