Jeri shares some interesting build details of the C64 Bass Guitar. The brains of the system is a Spartan FPGA, I was surprized to see that the pickups were made using round disk piezo elements that were cut into rectangles. I didn’t think that a piezo element would work properly if it were cut like that. I guess they are much more robust that I had thought! If you
 This Remote Control PVC Pipe is one of the strangest remote control projects I have ever seen. This RC vehicle is using drill motors to provide the get us an go. We have seen drill motors used in an RC project before but it was more of a motor replacement situation. “Smooth start required something to push the speed control of the drills. I used one of the
Ever forget a load of clothes in the washing machine? Most washing machines have a setting that buzzes loudly when the cycle is done but what if your model doesn’t have that feature? Our friend Viktor had that exact problem so he built a simple electronic Washing Machine Cycle End Signal Project as the solution. He didn’t want to hack the actual machine to include this functionality since it
The guys over at the Harford Hackerspace made this great Telepresence Zen Garden using a Bullduino. The machine is very creative but the video of the project is equally as creative! The project was made with the help of laser cut parts, 3D printed parts and a bunch of common off the shelf parts. This is a great example of a build that would have been very difficult to
If your first remote control car was like mine it has a single button on it. The car would drive straight forward and reverse and turn when the button was pressed. It was a simple and effective design. This Dynamo Robot uses a similar method of steering. Best of all no batteries are needed! The power to drive the toy forward and in reverse comes from a hacked servo
Happy Canada Day! Here is a cool LED Fireworks project by Instructables user vahid_you2004. The circuit is sort of like a bunch of LED Throwies except the LEDs are being powered from capacitors instead of coin cell batteries. “I decided to simulate fireworks with LEDs and made a machine that makes LED fireworks. It works simple, there are a lot of LEDs that everyone is connected to a capacitor with a resistor,
Thanks to Bill Alessi for sending in the details of the NeuroDreamer Sleep Mask that he and Mitch Altman are working on. It is an open hardware project that currently has almost $15K of the $66K of funding needed. The mask has RGB LEDs inside that are controlled by a microcontroller to give you a pleasant sleep experience. If you are wanting to make your own or a variation
