Author Archives: James Hobson

Mitosis: Anatomy of a Custom Keyboard

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Ergonomic. Wireless. Low-latency. Minimalist. Efficient. How far do you go when you design your own open-source keyboard? Checking off these boxes and providing the means for others to do so, Redditor [reverse_bias] presents the Mitosis keyboard, and this thing is cool.

The custom, split– as the namesake implies — mechanical keyboard has 23 keys on each 10 cm x 10 cm half, and, naturally, a custom keymapping for optimal personal use.

Upper and lower PCBs host the keys and electronic circuits respectively, contributing to the sleek finished look. Key caps and mechanical switches were ripped from sacrificial boards: two Waveshare …read more

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A Mobile Bar In A Trailer!

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Ok, there are some worthy laws in place regulating the sale and distribution of alcohol — and for good reason. For many a bootlegger, however, the dream of renovating an old trailer from 1946 into a mobile bar is a dream that must– wait, what? That already exists?

It’s no mobile workshop, but the bar was initially built to accommodate guests at their wedding. [HelloPennyBar] has shared the reconstruction process with the world. Inside, there’s everything you’d need to serve beverages, including a (double) kitchen sink. In addition to a water tank, a pair of car batteries serve as the …read more

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Hackerspace Jukebox!

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Depending on whom you talk to, music can be an integral part of getting work done. At the Hackheim hackerspace in Trondheim, Norway, [Nikolai Ovesen] thought that the previous system of playing music over Bluetooth took away from the collaborative, interactive spirit of the space. Solution: a weekend build of a Raspberry Pi-powered jukebox.

The jukebox is simply laser-cut from plywood and bolted together. Inside, the touchscreen is mounted using double-sided tape, with the Raspberry Pi 3 and buck converter mounted on its rear with motherboard spacers. An IBM ThinkPad power cable was re-purposed and modified so it supplies the …read more

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Go Portable with GameCube Advance SP

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Off the hop, we love portable consoles. To be clear, we don’t just mean handhelds like the 3DS, or RetroPie builds, but when a maker takes a home console from generations past and hacks a childhood fantasy into reality — that’s amore. So, it’s only natural that [Bill Paxton]’s GameCube re-imagined as a Game Boy Advance SP has us enthralled.

Originally inspired by an early 2000’s imagined mockup of a ‘next-gen’ Game Boy Advance, [Paxton] first tried to wedge a Wii disk drive into this build. Finding it a bit too unwieldy, he opted for running games off of SD …read more

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Go Portable with GameCube Advance SP

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Off the hop, we love portable consoles. To be clear, we don’t just mean handhelds like the 3DS, or RetroPie builds, but when a maker takes a home console from generations past and hacks a childhood fantasy into reality — that’s amore. So, it’s only natural that [Bill Paxton]’s GameCube re-imagined as a Game Boy Advance SP has us enthralled.

Originally inspired by an early 2000’s imagined mockup of a ‘next-gen’ Game Boy Advance, [Paxton] first tried to wedge a Wii disk drive into this build. Finding it a bit too unwieldy, he opted for running games off of SD …read more

Continue reading Go Portable with GameCube Advance SP→

Sudo Google Assistant

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A Raspberry Pi kicking around one’s workbench is a project waiting to happen — if they remain unused long enough to be considered a ‘spare.’ If you find you’ve been pining after an Alexa or your own personal J.A.R.V.I.S., [Novaspirit Tech] might be able to help you out — provided you have a USB mic and speaker handy — with an accessible tutorial for setting up Google Assistant on your Pi.

A quick run-through on enabling a fresh API client on Google’s cloud platform, [Novaspirit] jumps over to the Raspbian console to start updating Python and a few other dependencies. …read more

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Folding Mass Effect Pistol!

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Video game props require a dedicated maker with a repertoire of skills to create. When those props are pulled from the Mass-Effect universe, a little more technological mastery is needed. Bringing those talents to bear,  [Optimistic Geometry] has built a motorized, folding M-3 Predator Pistol!

The gun was modeled in Fusion 360 and 3D printed on an Ultimaker 2 at the  MAKLab Glasgow. [Optimistic Geometry] felt constrained by the laws of our reality, so opted for the smaller firearm thinking it would be an appropriate entry-level challenge. I’m sure you can guess how that went.

There wound up being three …read more

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Digitize Your Room With LIDAR

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What’s the best way to image a room? A picture? Hah — don’t be so old-fashioned! You want a LIDAR rig to scan the space and reconstruct it as a 3D point map in your computer.

Hot on the heels of [Saulius Lukse]’s scanning thermometer, he’s replaced the thermal camera on their pan/tilt setup with a time-of-flight (TOF) camera — a Garmin LIDAR — capable of 500 samples per second and end up scanning their room in a mere fifteen minutes. Position data is combined with the ranging information to produce a point cloud using Python. Open that file in …read more

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VR and Back Again: An XRobots Tale

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Our friend [James Burton] from XRobots has engaged in another bit of mixed-reality magic by showing how one can seamlessly step from the virtual world into the real world, and back again. Begone, green screens and cumbersome lighting!

Now, most of what you’re seeing is really happening in post-production — for now — but the test footage is the precursor for a more integrated system down the road. As it works now, a GoPro is attached to the front of a HTC Vive headset, allowing [Burton] to record in both realities at the same time. In the VR test area …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Modular Rail Lighting

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When operating any kind of hydroponic farming, there are a number of lighting solutions — few of them inexpensive. Originally looking for an alternative to the lighting of IKEA’s expensive hydroponics system, [Professor Fartsparkle] and their colleague prototyped a rail system that allows clip-on LED boards for variable lighting options.

Taking inspiration from wire and track lighting systems, the key was the 5mm fuse holders mounted on the bottom of the LED boards. Snipping off their stopping clip makes them easy to install and remove from the mounting rails. The rails themselves double as power conduits for the LED boards, …read more

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