Cool headphones that use a repurposed SNES controller via Hackaday:
Here’s a build that just exudes nerd cred. It’s an SNES controller modified into a pair of headphones, straight from the workshop of [lyberty5].
The build began by stealing a controller from a PAL SNES and carefully dremeling the buttons and d-pad loose from their plastic frame. The PCB was cut in half, and the remaining plastic was carefully crafted into round speaker enclosures with the help of some epoxy. hot glue, and possibly a few pieces of styrene.
The set up consists of 12 LED poles, 3 LED boxes, and 8 DMX colorblast fixtures. LEDs are mounted behind frosted acrylic to diffuse the light evenly.
Each unit is operating from it’s own dedicated Arduino. At the helm of the Arduinos is an Adafruit FTDI Friend that communicates one way to all 16 at once. Each Arduino has its own internal address and receives 14 byte packets of data telling it what to do (rate, pattern, color, brightness).
All patterns are baked into the Arduino code- that way if there’s ever a serial disconnect, the lights will continue to run. In addition to the pattern data, the computer sends a heartbeat 10 times a second, insuring they stay in sync for patterns like color fading and strobing.
A processing sketch running on the computer controls everything, and is extended further to use an iPad for wireless control via touchOSC and oscP5. We are working on an update for a Lemur sketch to offer even more control.
Parallax Partners with the U.S. Army and Carnegie Mellon University to host the 2013 National microMedic Contest to Encourage Medical Innovation
Uncle Sam Wants You! Now’s your chance to change the way our country does medical simulation and battlefield care. The 2013 microMedic National Contest is calling the best and brightest, that’s you, to help invent new medical applications using microcontrollers. With over $25,000 in cash and prizes awarded to the winners, what are you waiting for? Contestants may use any microcontroller they desire in their application. Parallax is offering two flavors of the microMedic Application Idea Kit full of tons of sensors and cool parts; one kit has the multi-core Propeller chip, the other includes the Board of Education Shield (for Arduino).
In order to help you in your quest we’ve created a special discussion forum for the microMedic contest, provided a list of project ideas and created a bunch of mini-tutorials to help you get started with the kit sensors. We’re even giving away 100 free kits to the first qualified entries. This contest is open to participants of all ages with special prizes for educational and public division winners.
Hurry, contest ends July 31st, 2013! For all the info on the contest check out http://learn.parallax.com/micromedic. Be sure to visit the Official Rules page for all the details on contest entry, including how to apply for a free kit.
Good luck from Parallax, the U.S. Army and Carnegie Mellon University!
Before the world comes to an abrupt end, I thought it would be pertinent to look back on the last year, and highlight some of my favorite Tech Instructables. Initially, I was going to make this a top 20 list, but with over 5,600 Technology projects to choose from, had trouble narrowing it down. After much mental gymnastics, I managed to narrow it down to a respectably-sized list of 30 great projects. I present to you now – in no particular order – my list of highlights for 2012.
I wanted to thank you for the work you do to provide tutorials and libraries for your items. It allowed me, someone with minimal programming and electronics knowledge, to setup a full featured data logger for my recent weather balloon project. Checkout the youtube video below (data from my logger charted at the end of the video). Thanks again, keep up the great work and I’ll keep telling my friends! -Dustin
I like to build small electronics projects and like many others I have found the small Altoids tins to be excellent enclosures.
These tins are inexpensive, well shielded, easy to work with, and least but not least they enable you to make experimental circuits that are sturdy enough that they can be reused later.
Pictured here is a collection of projects I have built over the years with the hope that they may inspire others.
Here’s a handy guild on how to build your own DIY Resistor Substitution Decade Box. I had seen several people online building their own, but instructions weren’t very clear. Hopefully these 50 or so pictures will help. First step – hop onto ebay, and pick up some switches. You can find them by searching for “decimal thumbwheel switch” – I think I only paid $5 for 10 of them including shipping (from china). Order up some extras – they can be used for all sorts of things – and a fun part to keep around.
We hacked a motorized fader found in audio mixing consoles to create the force feedback. If you are interested, you can read the paper. Basically, the way we achieved this is by drawing a force curve and storing the values in a table, then we send the current position of the slider through the table and extract the value to send to the motor that applies an opposing force. You can check this in action in the “How it Works” part of the video.
We programmed in Max/MSP and Arduino. For controlling the hardware, we used an Arduino-based microcontroller called Music & Motors… developed by CIID.
This project was made by Hideaki Matsui and I (Andrew Spitz) in a class on Haptics at CIID run by Bill Verplank and David Gauthier.
I just finished my writeup for my Music Synthesizer kit project. The kit was made for a soldering workshop for the Boston University Artemis Project (http://www.bu.edu/lernet/artemis/), which is a Women In Technology Summer Program for rising high school freshmen. I work for the BU EDF (edf.bu.edu), which normally makes electronics for physics experiments, but we also do outreach electronics programs.
Normally the workshop would have contained a POV light toy, but we wanted a change of pace and I took lead to develop a music synthesizer with an 8 button keyboard, which can also act as a sequencer. There is a phototransistor which can pick up a light based message generated by this page, which my coworker Sam Damask made
(http://edf.bu.edu/~swd/javascript/sine_wave_audio_jq2.html), to program in sequences and new waveforms.
Much of the hardware design for the DAC to Amplifier Interface was referenced from the Wave Shield; however, I made a bunch of changes to suit my particular situation and goals!
Getting the big question right out of the way: no, we won’t be selling these. Legally, we can’t, for trademark reasons. But it’s generally okay for anyone to create replica props for their own personal use, so we hope this writeup will inspire some cool projects among our readers…
Good afternoon all. I wanted to show you guys my project and possibly get some feedback. I home brew beer and, during the (Texas) summer, I have a problem keeping my house at a temperature that is within the ideal conditions required for the yeast to thrive during the fermentation process. So a common solution to this is to create a fermentation chamber to allow your beer to ferment in a controlled environment. Many people use a chest freezer with an additional thermostat for this. There are a couple non-programmable thermostats available that work very well.
However, when brewing a lager-type beer, a more complex temperature profile is required for ideal fermenting conditions. For instance, a typical lager fermentation could be: Lower the temperature from 76 to 52 degrees over a period of 24 hours, hold temp at 52 for 10 days. Slowly raise temperature to 68 degrees over a period of 24-48 hours, then lower the temp to 34 degrees over a period of 48 hours and then keep it at 34 for 6 weeks.
This sequence of temperature is a lot of work and dedication (especially for someone with as short of an attention span as myself) for a manual thermostat. So I have created a programmable thermostat to control my fermentation chamber. I created it with a PIC18F microcontroller, a TMP36 temperature reading IC, and a relay. I created a user interface with the help of a 16×2 character LCD and an up/down/select keypad arrangement.
I have a ‘Default Lager’ program built into the thermostat (not surprisingly, very similar to the one described above), but I also added a function to be able to create your own temperature profile or edit a currently saved one.
I have added functionality for the user to navigate through the program to any stage/time the user wants.
I’ve just finished up with this, I am currently testing it out and working out a few little bugs here and there, but I hope to be able to put this to work very soon. Being able to brew lager-type beers opens up a whole new set of beer recipes to brew (and drink! )
This is my Maker Faire Bay Area 2012 project, the Arduino GRANDE. It is a fully functional Arduino that is about six times larger than real life. Come hear all about it at the Maker Faire this coming weekend, May 19th and 20th. I’ll be doing talks and demos on Saturday. http://makerfaire.com/pub/e/8185
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