Hackaday Links May 9th 2012

May 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Homecut – CNC Cutting Directory

homecut

So you have a CNC machine that you use as a hobby, but would like to do some actual work on the side? Or maybe you have an idea you’d like made. Homecut is a map directory where you can maybe hook up with the right person.

The Curta Mechanical Calculator

curta calculator

As [leehart] mentioned in our comments section, the Curta mechanical calculator is a truly ingenious piece of engineering. A quick Google search should find all kinds of information on it, but this article could be a good place to start for some mechanical hacking inspiration!

Luxman Amplifier DAC Upgrade

nand-dac

[R. Barrios] wasn’t happy with using the sound card for his HTPC setup, so decided to add a DAC module onto his reciever. The resulting audio quality was very good, and the build came out quite clean.  Check it out if you’re thinking of a hack-upgrade to your stereo equipment.

3D Printable Tilt-Shift Adapter

tilt-shift-lens

A tilt-shift lens a neat piece of equipment that is used to make a large scene look like they were miniatures. It’s a cool effect, but professional lenses to do this can cost thousands of dollars. This Instructable tells you how to go about printing your own. For more info on the technique itself, check out this Wikipedia article.

New 3D Printer on the Block

3d-printer

If you would like to take the plunge into 3D printing, but are looking for somewhere to get a parts kit, the [ORD Bot Hadron 3D Printer] may be worth a look.  The build quality looks great, and the price for the mechanical components is quite reasonable at $399. You’ll need to provide the electronics and extruder. Thanks [comptechgeek]!

Filed Under: classic hacks, cnc hacks, digital audio hacks, digital cameras hacks, Hackaday links Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Converting a manual camera lens to use motorized zoom and focus

May 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Guy] wrote in to share this motorized camera lens project he recently finished. He really loved the zoom lens, but since both zoom and focus are manually controlled, he sometimes had trouble getting both set to the right place in time to take the shot. With modern DSLR cameras which allow video capture, he also wants to have the option of a smooth zoom that is always in focus. The solution was to add motors to the rings and control them with a Wii classic controller.

This hack really shines when it comes to the add-on hardware. He has some beautifully made rings which wrap around the focus and zoom rings on the lens. They are then held in place by a timing belt. These belts have teeth which key into the gears on a pair of servo motors. From there it’s a snap to drive the motors with an Arduino, connecting to the Wii controller with a breakout connector. You can see [Guy] showing off the build in the clip after the break.

[Read more…]

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6 camera face scanning rig

April 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Ajeromin] was asked to build something cool for a museum exhibit. He took the challenge, and with his facial capture device, we feel he delivered. The writeup is very short, most of the story is in the annotated images. After deciding he was going to do facial capture and convert it to 3d, he had to start planning. There are many ways to do this, but usually the person having their face captured isn’t an excited child at a museum. The presented some unique challenges in that he knew he would have to capture all the images at once, and quickly too. To do this, he lit the entire rig very well to reduce the amount of noise in the pictures and wired all 6 cameras up to snap at the same moment. He even encapsulated the circuit in a glass jar just so the kids could see more of the parts.

The next logical step would be to attach this to a 3d printer and let people buy 3d printed models of their face. The quality is certainly good enough as he shows in one of the final images.

Great job [Ajeromin]

 

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Quick and easy wildlife camera

April 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This wildlife camera is really easy to put together. You should keep it in mind if you’re ever tying to figure out what’s eating the heads off of all of your tulips. [Revoltlab] put it together, and although there’s one fatal flaw in this particular system, the concept is quite sound.

The build uses a camera, paired with an ultrasonic range finder. When something passes within the pre-set distance for the sensor, a servo motor clicks the shutter button on the camera. It’s all driven by an Arduino and powered from a 9V battery.

If you watch the video after the break you’ll discover the flaw we mentioned. This is a disposable film camera and requires winding between pictures. That hasn’t been implemented yet. But we’ve got an old digital camera with a broken LCD screen which would be perfect for the job. We’d have to do a bit more work to turn the camera on before taking the picture though.

There are a couple of possible upgrades to the idea. [Revoltlab] mentions removing the IR filter from the camera and adding an infrared flash for night-vision shots. But we would also recommend ditching the servo motor for a simple remote shutter solution as a way to avoid scaring the wildlife with the motor noise.

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Adding a remote shutter to a cheap digital camera

April 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Luo] sent in a very easy way to add a remote shutter to just about any Canon Powershot. Even though it’s just a button, battery, and USB cable, we’re sure this would be a great project to teach the younglings about the power of soldering.

Some Canon Powershot digicams are impressive beasts with the ability to take time-lapse, long exposure, and high-speed photos. These cameras are generally crippled by their firmware, but by installing CHDK these features can be enabled.

[Luo] read the CHDK wiki and found the firmware has the ability to snap a picture whenever a button is pressed. All he had to do is send 5V down a USB cable. After whipping up shutter button housed in a tin of Eclipse gum and attaching a cable, [Luo] had a functional shutter.

With the CHDK firmware, you can do a lot of really interesting stuff with the old Canon camera sitting on your shelf: we’ve seen a lot of intervalometers and even a few book scanners that use a similar setup. Nice work, [Luo].

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Scanning turntable digitizes objects as 3D models

April 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This turntable can automatically digitize objects for use in 3D rendering software like Blender3D. [James Dalby] built it using a high-quality DSLR, and some bits and pieces out of his junk box. The turntable itself is a Lazy Susan turned on its head. The base for the spinning model is normally what sits on the table, but this way it gives him an area to rest the model, and the larger portion acts as a mounting surface for the drive mechanism.

He used the stepper motor from a scanner, as well as the belt and tension hardware from a printer to motorize the platform. This is driven by a transistor array (a ULN2003 chip) connected to an Arduino. The microcontroller also controls the shutter of the camera. We’ve included his code after the break; you’ll find his demo video embedded there as well.

The concept is the same as other turntable builds we’ve seen, But [James] takes the post-processing one step further. Rather than just make a rotating gif he is using Autodesk 123D to create a digital model from the set of images.

[Read more…]

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