DIY Hacks

Detailed RC Truck Build

     This RC truck build is very detailed. Most of the mechanical parts such as windows and steering are fully functional. There are many pictures that are hard to tell that the vehicle is not full scale. There is even a fully functioning winch on the front of the truck, I guess this will help you out when you crash it into a large stock of celery. Via: Hack

DIY Pick and Place Machine

  If you have ever worked with SMD parts using tweezers gets old fast. Even the small vacuum pencils are not great. Vassilis Papanikolaou sent in the details of his solution. It uses a base that is similar to a CNC machine without the electronics. With this setup it is much easier to precisely align the parts, I am thinking that a version 2 could include mounting some motors to

Doorbell with Custom Ringtones

  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

Analog Clock Voltmeter

  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

Lasershark - Laser Projector Project

  Thanks to David Powell from the Baltimore Hackerspace for sending in some details about the Lasershark which is a  Laser Projector Project. It uses a LPC1343 – 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller to run the show, make sure you watch the video below to see this thing in action! “This board is intended to be a low cost open-source USB Showcard for folks who want to make their own 1

POV Wheel Display for a Longboard

    A ATTiny24 is running the show here. This POV Wheel Display for a Longboard from ch00ftech looks like it took quite a bit of time to put together. Those tiny surface mount parts on the home made board must have taken a steady have to get right! There are more LEDs than microsontroller outputs but instead of using a serial to parallel  chip to do the work the

8x8x8 LED Cube

  If you have been listening to the latest episodes of The Amp Hour you have probably heard of Club Jameco. Chris from Pyroelectro has checkout it out, he purchased the 8X8X8 LED Cube to check it out.  It is Arduino based and looks like a well thought of design. If you decide to give it a try it looks like you will need to set aside a large amount