Crazy Hacks

Twittering Teddy Bear using Arduino Microcontroller

  This creative hack allows you to modify a teddy bear to read all of your tweets coming from Twitter. "Guru Alison and I performed some, uh, innovative 2.0 surgery on an old childhood friend. The result: a real-time Twittering, talking, live-streaming social media phenomenon. I worked with my team at the Drexel Music and Entertainment Technology Lab to develop Teddy’s text-to-speech software. MATERIALS: * Animatronic Teddy Bear * USB

Computer cooled using a Mineral Oil filled Fish Tank

  Puget Systems built a few versions of a Computer cooled using a Mineral Oil filled Fish Tank. They have run it in various forms for about a year and a half so far! I would have thought that this system would have lasted long enough to marvel at the feat but die a short time later. This project proves my prediction wrong. I don’t think I would recommend it

Waldflöte Project - MIDI Pipe Organ

  Some of the music that this creation can produce is wonderful! I love the clack clack of the solenoids working in rhythm. Have a look at the build details here. "The Waldflöte project is a MIDI retrofit to a 1890s Gray and Davison pipe organ located in the Forest Cafe in Edinburgh. It converts MIDI input into solenoid drive to directly press the keys on one of the manuals

 iPhone Controlled RC Car using an Arduino

  Here is another cool iPhone projects that controls a RC car. Is the iPhone the new Swiss Army knife of portable electronics? "Controlling is very easy with the iPhone 3G. It has five buttons, four of them you can use for traditional „driving“ and when you press the last one, it unlocks the accelerometer control in the same way as in many driving games available on AppStore. Realization of

Optical Mouse made into a Camera

  With inspiration from this Sprites Mods hack, Bidouille.org has done a cool new version of the hack. Using an Arduino Microcontroller and some custom code the data from the Agilent technologies chip is retrieved. Have a look at this document (PDF) for some more details on what makes the technology work. "Relationship to Object Motion The relationship between the optical flow in the image plane and the velocities of

Crazy Zoetrope like Creations

  These three creations are not exactly Zoetrope creations. But they take the idea to the next level. The first example uses a record player to turn the work at a known rate, then by viewing the piece at a particular frame rate the background of the image appears to be static and the objects seem to interact! The videos below are Burning Man creations by Peter Hudson that use

Image Tracking - Discovery Channel Prototype This Show

  Keep October 15th open, the first episode of a new Discovery Channel show called Prototype This will air. This looks to be a great show that will show us the inner workings of some very cool projects. Doesn’t look like any of the ideas will be simplistic. I think the show will spark creativity in many of us as they delve into their inner thoughts. This video seems to