Want to build a stun gun? You would be surprised how simple the electronic circuit is. The basic concept is to take a small voltage source and convert this into a much higher voltage. This is done by pulsing a high gain transformer and storing the high voltage in a capacitor. Click on the schematic below for a detailed look at a nice simple design from Electronics Lab. How Stuff
Big Clive has taken a dollar store fiber optic display and converted it to run off of LEDs. He has built an interesting circuit that allows the low voltage LEDs to operate from 220VAC (yes Clive is not from North America). He demonstrates his circuit board fabrication process and provides a schematic drawing so you can build your own.
Mac Cody wanted to use the optical sensor of a standard optical mouse. He basically removed the built in processor from the system allowing him to interface directly to the Agilent (Avago) HDNS-2200 Solid State Optical Mouse LED Assembly Chip. He has plans to interface this in his robot designs. “The animated GIF image to the right shows a sequence of three images taken with the mouse sensor sitting on
Air powered engines are not new, but they sure are interesting. Take a look at this French engine. Mike Smyth has made a number of interesting small air engines. On his site he even has detailed instructions to build your own. This is what Mike says about his radial cylinder air engine “The radial cylinder configuration has the advantage that at least one cylinder is on a power stroke at
This guy got his wireless router to use his cell phone for Internet, so he has a cheap Internet hot spot everywhere! Total cost $40 for the phone, $30 for the router, and $9 for the data cable. This would be great for nerds driving in a pack. Best part is most people already have phones and routers capable of this. read more
Surprisingly, after seeing this, I realized there isn’t much activity in the iPod case modding world. Probably because the iPod is small and sleek enough as it is and does not require any further case modification. Well Mr. JavaMoose on Flickr has created a case mod for his iPod by modding an old Geiger counter that will house the iPod and remote unit. It looks cool, but any transportation practicality
Trevor Blackwell who had built a few (ver 1, ver 2) segway clones but felt that 2 wheels was 1 too many. So he built a one wheeled electric unicycle! His site has full parts list and instructions on how to build your own. “The unicycle balances itself using a simple feedback loop between a solid-state gyroscope and the wheel motor. When it detects itself tilting forward, it runs the
