DIY film projector fits in the palm of your hand

March 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

altoids-pocket-projector

DSLRs aside, the price of digital cameras these days can make it easy to consider just tossing your old one out when it breaks. [Leonidas Tolias] had another idea, and with a few broken cameras he had on hand he constructed a slick little pocket-sized projector.

The project started out as a pair of lenses from busted cameras and an Altoids tin in which he mounted them. The larger lens from a video camera was installed on the exterior of the tin, while the smaller of the two was mounted inside. Bits from disposable cameras were used to create a set of film reels, which he supports with some hand cut scrap aluminum. He made some test photo slides by printing some images on transparency paper, which he can cycle through using a film advancement rig he built out of string and a couple of gears.

While you won’t be using this projector for your next boring PowerPoint presentation, it does work pretty well as you can see in pictures on [Leonidas’] site.

[Thanks, Taylor]

Filed Under: digital cameras hacks, news Tagged With: , , ,

The Gauntlet: A 1 Watt Laser Module

March 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This is the gauntlet; a place where things are tortured in ways that only an engineer could appreciate.

Today’s victim is a 1.0W green laser module, manufactured by Suzhou Daheng under the brand name “DHOM”.

As far as Chinese laser manufacturers go, Suzhou Daheng is about one rung lower than CNI in terms of quality. Although US companies like Coherent blow these guys out of the water, both are still reputable nonetheless.  As far as Chinese lasers themselves go, this one seems a bit conservatively rated; a nice change from the “1000MW 532nm laser cat toy burning module” that’s not too uncommon on dealextreme and the like.

More after the break…
[Read more…]

Filed Under: laser hacks, reviews, teardown Tagged With:

Self-balancing transport is Arduino-controlled

March 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Nick Thatcher] has built several iterations of a homebrew Segway, and the latest version is very impressive. When developing the project he figured there was just no way the thing would ever work, which led to its name, the No-way.

After the break you can catch a video of [Nick’s] test-ride. Looks like the two-wheeler is ready for daily use. You can just make out a red kill-switch on the right side of the polycarbonate body. This lets you disconnect the power if things get out of hand, or just when you’re done riding it. But there is also a dead-man’s switch which we believe uses two sensors where your feet go on the enclosure’s top surface. The handle has some indicator lights built into it, as well as buttons under each thumb which are used for steering. Control circuitry includes an Arduino UNO which reads a gyroscope/accelerometer sensor board from SparkFun. Two 7.2 Ah batteries provide 24V for the pair of electric scooter motors that turn the wheel-barrow wheels.

We love looking at these Segway clone project. So if you’re working on one of your own don’t forget to document your progress!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: transportation hacks Tagged With: , , , ,

Automated sky tracking to catch UFOs

March 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

If you were to try to take a picture of a UFO, how would you do it? Sit by the side of a road in Nevada near Area 51? Pie tin on a string? A French team of UFO enthusiasts put together an automated UFO detection device (Google translate) out of a disco light and CCTV camera so long nights of watching the skies can be automated.

The build uses a disco light with an altitude and azimuth mount to constantly scan the skies on the lookout for strange, unexplained lights. Attached to this swiveling mount is a camcorder and a CCTV camera that streams video to the command and control laptops for image analysis.

In addition to object tracking, there’s also a diffraction grating in front of the CCTV camera. The team behind this project previously used this for some very low tech spectroscopy (translation) to identify emission lines in a light source. Light that have a signature including Oxygen and Nitrogen will probably be ionized air, while less common elements may be the signature of “advanced propulsion.”

While this build is going to detect a lot of satellites and meteors, there’s a definite possibility of capturing an unexplained phenomenon on video.

Filed Under: digital cameras hacks Tagged With: , , ,

Fashion leads to mind-controlled skirt-lifting contraption

March 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This must be an example of when worlds collide. Who would have thought the geekery of Mindflex and Arduino could make its way into high fashion? But sure enough, this dress transforms based on the mental concentration of the model (must resist urge to crack joke here).

Details are a bit sparse, but you can get a look at the prototype in the video after the break. There’s no nudity; a larger skirt covers a more plain version. That over-skirt is connected to some type of motor system which is driven by an Arduino. When the EEG sensor in the hat detects a certain level of brain wave activity, the outer skirt is lifted and pulled to the back of the outfit, exposing the tighter version beneath.

[Lorenzo] wrote in to share the link to this garment hack. He mentions that a Lilypad and Mindflex are at work here. Looking more into the artist’s website we find this isn’t the only tech-wear produced. There’s a maternity outfit which can sense the baby’s beating heart, and harvest other data about both mother and baby, as well as a few others.

We can’t think this has much future as an everyday outfit, but more utilitarian versions are out there so we think the sky’s the limit on wearable tech.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: wearable hacks Tagged With: , , ,

Hackday Links: March 16, 2012

March 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Shamrock hat

[Josh] whipped up a shamrock themed hat by adding an outline of green LEDs to this bowler. Just remember, don’t drink and solder. Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!

Battery-powered Xmas lights can be more useful

[Karl] took a string of mostly useless battery-powered Christmas lights and found a good use for them. He replaced the stock board with a boost convert and uses the two AA batteries as a 5V power supply when mains power isn’t handy.

3D printed appliance repair

The broken plastic piece seen here keeps a dishwasher closed while running. The part couldn’t be sourced by a repairman but the best solution turned out to be printing a perfect replacement part.

Generating labels for resistor storage

[Darrell] picked up a surplus test-tube rack to use as resistor storage. It’s a great system, but his Ruby script that uses LaTeX to generate color-coded labels is a really nice touch as well.

DeLorean quadcopter build log

No, it’s not a dupe. [Alp_X] found the link to a build log for the DeLorean quadcopter that headlined our last Links post. It’s in Russian but the machine translation should help a bit.

Filed Under: Hackaday links Tagged With: , , , ,
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