Are you a vacuum tube audiophile? Some audio nuts claim that there is nothing better than the sound of a vacuum tube amplifier. With all of the latest break-through semi-conductor technology, why would anyone want to use 30 year old, or older technology??? Check out Tube Cad Journal for the answer. John Broskie’s Guide to Tube Circuit Analysis & Design web site is packed full of data, software and audio
Will O’Brien over at Hack a Day posted this cool iPhone Hack. The guys over at The Part Foundry have made a device that allows you to use GPS with your iPhone. “The iphone GPS module allows jail broken iphones to finally have GPS functionality. This module is in development and will be shipping in February. All software is open source and more applications are being written every day. This
Evil Mad Scientists have put together a nice Darkness Sensing LED Circuit that senses darkness using a phototransistor to detect light. “When light falls on the phototransistor, it begins to conduct up to about 1.5 mA, which pulls down the voltage at the lower side of the resistor by 1.5 V, turning off the transistor, which turns off the LED. When it’s dark, the transistor is able to conduct about
There is something about spinning displays that is mesmerizing. Not a big fan of the music, but the audio effects are well done! “Mechanical scanned display rotating in a 160mm diameter plastic ball. This is the monichrom version with realtime data transferring over a rotating transformer.”
Apparently Toyota omitted placing a EV push button switch on North American Prius 2004+ models. This push button, is normally pre-installed at the factory for Japan and European versions. Here is a well documented hack that shows Prius users how to install their own EV push button. It appears that placing the Prius in EV mode could, possibly, improve fuel efficiency. But the owner’s manuals of the European and Japanese
Trossen Robotics puts together some cool contests! This Automatic Deadbolt System was the second prize winner in the latest contest. I could just imagine how it could be used, hold on I will unlock the door for you, darn I don’t have a good signal with my cell phone, hold on I will walk over to the door and manually turn the knob to let you in. 🙂 Thanks
Alfred73 has made some interesting projects. This one is the Six Channel IR Remote Control System which uses a customized remote control to take control of some normal appliances. It is based on the older 16F84 PIC but should be simple to convert to work with the 16F628A. Code and the schematic are provided on the site. “This project is a remote control system based on a pic and an
