Emulating ink cartridges

[Smartie_on_computer] wanted to do some experimenting with an epson printer.  After getting a somewhat disassembled one, the first step was to simply get it running. Unfortunately, one of the ink cartridges was missing and these printers refuse to do pretty much anything without all the cartridges installed.  Rather than go purchase a costly cartridge that they didn’t intend to actually use, [Smartie_on_computer], chose to emulate the cartridge using a microcontroller. After some searching for the protocol used on the cartridge, the info ended up being in the patent. [Smartie_on_computer] now has a functional printer that is destined to be a 3d printer in the near future. You can see a video breakdown after the break.
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Easy IM-ME flashing

[Travis Goodspeed] wrote a guide to firmware flashing for the IM-ME. He’s using a GoodFET open-source JTAG adapter that he designed to do the programming. This is really taking [Dave's] work on the device and running with it. The end goal being to develop an operating system for the device. If you haven’t read the past articles, once hacked this becomes a development board for the Chipcon CC1110 processor with keyboard, LCD screen, and wireless communications included.

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Steampunk Nixie clock

This single-digit Nixie clock is a thing of beauty. You might hate Steampunk or you might love it, but you have to respect projects where the design gets equal (or more) consideration compared to the function. The electronics used in the project build upon an existing single Nixie design. Instead of hiding the guts inside the clock the PCB has been laid out to augment the design. We think [Blue Metal] hit it out of the park with this one!

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Generate electricity with a candle

What you see above is a generator that converts heat to electricity. [Reukpower's] thermoelectric lamp is one of those hacks that makes you scratch your head even though you understand why it should work. The heart of the system uses a Peltier cool, just like the thermoelectric solar generator. When there is a temperature differential from one side of the Peltier to the other a small current is generated.

In this case a candle heats one side and a heat sink cools the other. The tiny voltage picked up from the Peltier’s contacts is then boosted using a joule thief. We’ve seen LEDs powered with a joule thief before, benefiting from their own low power consumption. In this case, the boost circuit is scavenged from an emergency phone charger and probably achieves higher efficiency than if he had built it himself.

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Record player display sans POV

At first glance we thought this record player had been modified to serve as a persistence of vision device. The device looks very much like an unmodified turntable but it has four tracks worth of display space in it. The messages are actually glowing and don’t depend on a POV effect. Instead, the table has been coated with phosphorescent paint that will glow after being exposed to bright light. The needle has been replaced by a small PCB with downward facing LEDs on it. A microcontroller pulses the lights to expose the paint in patterns that make up the messages. This is the same concept we saw with the Ghost Matrix but this iteration is silent, and the control circuitry is less apparent.

The video after the break is a must-watch. The 60 character long messages are beautiful to watch rotate into the display. Unlike a POV display, ambient light will greatly interfere with the effectiveness of this method. That being said, what a wonderful party decoration this would be if mounted on a wall in a rather dark room.

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NES RAM Replacement

[Spatula Tzar] Turned on her NES one day to find it no longer working. Off went the case and out came the oscilloscope. After probing around for a bit, she found that one of the RAM chips was very hot. She hot aired off the bad chip implementing an “Impenetrable Aluminum Heat Shield of Science” to protect the rest of the components. In the chip’s place she soldered a wide DIP socket for which the NES engineers had thoughtfully left a place. Then, using a 128Mbit SRAM SOIC, she soldered it to 0.100″ headers to fit in the socket. As the original chip was only 16Mbit, unused address lines are tied high or low. The console is now fully functional again. Also checkout the comments on Oldschool NES ‘repair’ how-to.

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TOBI the tool bot

[TheGrue] has put together this great writeup on how he built TOBI, the tool carrying robot. Inspired by a story he read about a robot that could follow people around, using heat sensors, he decided he wanted to do something similar. His robot would carry his tools, in this case, the tools of an IT professional. Not only would it carry his tools, but surely it would give him credit as a techno-guru to have a scratch built robot following him around.

His build process is documented quite well. He approached this in a fashion where he set several iterations. Each step would add a feature and carry the old features forward. It looks as if he’s currently working on step 3, which means that the chassis has already been built, the drive train is working, it can be remote controlled, and now has some level of autonomy thanks to a propeller controller. Up next are some range finders and an assortment of other sensors so that TOBI won’t drive off any steps, or into any walls.

[via hackedgadgets]

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BT phone is much more than retrofit

[Santiago] turned his Ericfon into a Bluetooth phone. This is completely different from the handset retrofits we looked at last month. This is because he didn’t simply crack open a BT headset and cram it into his phone. He developed his own hardware for full functionality.

This is an open source project with available hardware details that he intends to turn into a kit. [Santiago] has purposed a PIC microcontroller to connect with a WT32 bluetooth module. The PIC allows for a dial tone, dialing with the original rotary dial, and produces the original sound when the phone rings. What he now has is a way to have a home phone without a landline. As seen the video after the break, the Ericfon works the same as it did when it was new, except the connection is made through Bluetooth and not via a copper phone line. Read the rest of this entry »

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FPGA keyboard synthesizer

This synthesizer relies solely on an FPGA for key detection and sound synthesis. [Chris] and [Joe] built it for their final project at Cornell. The hardware implementation includes velocity sensing for the keys. While at rest, each key contacts a strip of copper foil. A matching strip of foil contacts the key when it is depressed. The velocity data is extrapolated by detecting when a key leaves the rest state and arrives at the depressed state. Sound synthesis is handled in hardware using the Karplus-Strong string synthesis method. If you want to hear what it sounds like, they’ve posted a video (MP4) that shows off the creation. It sounds like an electric piano to us, so mission accomplished.

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Pinball build throws down the gauntlet

[Jeri Ellsworth] is building her own pinball machine. Her build log is delivered in the form of daily videos that walk through the progress. In addition to seeing the intricate ramps, traps, and controllers she outlines her build techniques. These include reproducing parts based on old pinball machines and bending acrylic with a custom tool or a toaster oven.

The driver she’s planning to use is an Altera FPGA with a bunch of FETs to control the heavy-load components. There’s not a ton of info on the actual electronics but we had a heck of a fun time looking at the creative field components. Our favorite by far is the television from Day 7. The screen is translucent with a rear projected image. When the ramp in front of it is raised the pinball can be jumped right through the screen!

We couldn’t find a project page for this but we’ve embedded [Jeri's] videos after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

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UAV reigns down vengeance upon thee

An unemployed electrical engineer can be a very dangerous thing. [Cybrown] has turned his skills toward darker, more awesome applications by building an armed unmanned aerial vehicle. This is a remote control airplane that has a movable camera mounted in the cockpit. Video and GPS data are sent back to the pilot who views the picture via a wearable display. We’re betting this doesn’t have the range that the 100km UAV did, but that’s good because this one brings doom from the skies. Check the wings in the picture above, this RC is fireworks-enable. We’ve embedded flight footage and attack video after the break.

Update: Here is a forum post covering this nugget of awesome. There are just a few details but the entire thread is interesting. Someone pointed this out in the comments but they don’t get credit because they didn’t leave a link.

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PS3 wireless visual interface ( Free Play Games Online)

[Technott's] at it again, this time extending the Playstation 3 with a wireless interface. This handheld isn’t actually a PS3. It provides a wireless connection to your PS3 to receive audio and video, as well as to manage controller data. Think of it as a wirelessly tethered handheld that allows you to play Playstation when your wife is watching the Real Housewives. This is similar in size to his Xbox 360 WVI but the case shape and appearance are a big step up (not that we disliked that one). We’ve embedded a video tour of the device after the break.

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Zilog in a matchbox

Now you can have a Zilog computer in the form factor of a matchbox. The RamBlade is a tiny PCB that uses a Parallax Propeller IC to implement the CP/M language. The OS is stored on a microSD card, with a four-pin serial interface (3V3, GND, SO, SI) that allows operation via a terminal program.

Smaller and more resilient than building your own from ancient logic chips, we see this a way to get a whole new set of people interested in this old technology.

[Thanks Oldbitcollector]

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Reverse engineering off-brand media players

[Marcan] picked up this device on the cheap and is working to reverse engineer the controller. This media player is an off-brand Chinese model that can be had for the low-low price of $33.97 with free shipping. That’s worth it just to scavenge the parts for other projects, but the challenge here is to hack the controller because a datasheet was never produced for it. Warm up your logic analyzer, check out the wiki, and you can be pounding away at this ARM926EJ-S based system in no time.

The call to arms comes from [Marcan's] blog. You may remember him as the guy who is working to solidify iPhone sync in Linux or… what else did he do? Oh yeah, he had this little project called the Wii Homebrew Channel a while ago. Get involved and you can learn from some folks who really know what they’re doing.

[Thanks Mr. Seeker]

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Accessing BGA pins

[Philip] developed a method of tracking down the pins of a Ball Grid Array. He wanted to do so in order to add USB host functionality to his HP Jordan 720. The method doesn’t directly connect to the BGA but instead finds a via or other access point to serve as a solder point. He first looks up the pin in the BGA datasheet. Once located, he uses the bristle of a toothbrush (teal) to act as a backstop and feeds in some enameled wire (brown) to the appropriate ball. A multimeter is used to check connectivity between the wire and the vias around the chip.

Patience young grasshopper, this should work but it might take a while.

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2600 game jukebox

[Yuppicide] sent us a link to a photo album of an Atari 2600 modified to play ROMs stored inside. We did some digging around and have an idea of what’s going on. It seems that the creator, [Victor] has taken his Atari 2600 cartridge emulator one step further.

Previously, he had replaced the chip in an Atari cartridge with an EEPROM that he could reprogram via a ribbon cable. This new iteration places that EEPROM inside the case of the gaming console along with a PIC development board. The PIC board interfaces an SD card with somewhere around 1200 ROMs on it. Three switches added to the front of the Atari allow the user to cycle through available games and flash the desired title to the EEPROM. As you can see, a 2×16 LCD display now resides in the cartridge opening.

This seems a little more eloquent (and less legal) than the Super Genintari.

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Automotive current monitor

If you’ve ever had a car with an electrical system problem you know how hard it can be to pin-point the source of your woes. Here’s a hackery solution that uses a diy PCB to monitor the current being drawn off of the alternator.The sensing is provided by an Allegro ACS758 integrated circuit. This chip measures current up to 150A and outputs an analog signal that can be measured by a microcontroller. In this case an AVR ATmega8 measures the signal and spits the info back to a PC via the serial port. This data can be graphed to help locate when too much current is being drawn for the battery to remain charged.

Check out that CNC milled PCB, what a beauty!

[Thanks Joshua via Elektronika]

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Melloman tape-looping keyboard

[Michael] tipped us off about an incredible build from back in 2005. The Melloman is a keyboard that uses a different tape loop for each key. The instrument is generally known as a Mellotron, and consists of a different looping tape for each key. When a key is depressed, the head comes into contact with the key and plays the sound sample.

This particular implementation uses 14 Walkmans to supply the tape loops. The Walkman units are constantly playing but the audio output is not enabled until a key is depressed. The main description of the instrument is on the final project page linked above but there are many construction photos available in the build log.

Update: After the break we’ve embedded a video that will take you on a tour of the components of the Melloman. To clear up the looping issue: a Mellotron uses tape loops, but the Melloman uses tapes that are 30 minutes on each side instead of loops.

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Simple liquid dispenser for auto-cocktails

[Qdot] came up with a simple way to dosing out liquids to use in his Bartris project. As you can see above, flexible tubing is connected to some inverted bottles that house the liquid. A chopstick is attached to a board on one end, and via string to a servo on the other. When the servo turns it pulls the chopstick tight against the board, cutting off the flow of liquid through the tubing. This isn’t as elegant as the system the Bar2D2 uses but it’s a heck of a lot less expensive.

You can check out some of the build pictures in his Flickr pool. He’s included this concept in a project he calls Adult Mario. Watch the video after the break but the quick and dirty is that the more coins you score in Super Mario Brothers, the more beverage is rationed out into your cup. Ah, human lab rats, is there nothing they won’t do for booze?

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Ionocraft aka Lifters

It’s hard to believe that in five years we haven’t covered lifters before. This realization was sparked when [Tyler] tipped us off about a lifter project demonstrated at the Kansas City hackerspace called CCCKC.

Lifters, the casual name for ionocraft, fly without combustion or moving parts. We’re not going to tackle the particulars of what makes flight possible, but high voltage is required to feed the phenomenon that provides the lift. One of the first comments when we asked what to do with old CRT monitors was to use them for lifters. The flyback transformer puts out plenty of voltage if you can tap into it without killing yourself (no, seriously, that’s an issue).

This is the method that the CCCKC folks used. Take a peek at the video after the break. If you’re thirsting for more fun with lifters, stop by the Lifter Project.

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