I have changed out quite a few fans over the years, you know the ones that I’m talking about, they make your PC sound like it’s a jet engine on takeoff. A few times I blew the dust out of the fan, pried the fan blade off and dropped a few drops of oil into the fan shaft. This seemed to always fix the problem but in my case it
Erica Kane has developed an Open Source DIY Automated LED Stair Lighting system. It uses an Arduino Pro Mini as the brain and a M5451 LED Display Driver to power the LEDs. She used PING sensors to detect when someone enters the stairwell. Currently the lights just turn on one at a time but that is all customizable by changing a bit of Arduino code. If you are looking for
If you love the look of the Philips Ambilight system but would like to build your own? Have a look at this DIY Ambilight system that Instructables user Yonsje built. The biggest limitation it has is that it is for use with your computer and not a TV. These days this might not be much of a limitation though since many of us watch most of their video content on
Check out this LEGO CNC Machine which is built around a LEGO Mindstorms NXT system. The creator is 16 year old Youtube user Kabeltomten, all I can say is way to go and I can’t wait to see what this guy is building 10 years from now. The Z axis has some great height, looks to be something like 10 inches, the X, Y table can move around with some
RobotGrrl (Erin Kennedy) has been working on RoboBrrd for a long time, she has now made an iPad app which lets you feed the bird various fruits, the app communicates with the bird via a Redpark serial cable. The on-board Arduino deciphers the commands to perform the appropriate actions such as flapping its wings or chewing on the fruit. The Redpark cable comes with an iOS SDK which allows the
Metalfusion from Finland has developed an interesting method of creating CNC routed halftone images using a single v-bit router bit. Just like a news paper prints images using dots of ink this process produces dots of different sizes by plunging the v-bit to varying depths. He has developed the software which allows normal images to be converted into files that are ready to be cut on a CNC machine. It
Greg from Electronicsnerd will be building some RF projects over the next few days. Today he presents an AM Broadcast Band Rejection Filter for Shortwave Reception which is based on the work of Joseph J. Carr. You can find the circuit in this article (PDF). With only 7 components it’s a simple circuit that could be built in a short time. “With an eye toward proper RF construction techniques, I
