Collaborate Disseminate
Most makerspaces and hackerspaces have one night per week or month where the ‘space is open to the public in order to entice new people into joining up. Whereas most …read more Continue reading Scrolling Name Badge Is Sure to Break the Ice
If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to control a few devices from your computer, a cheap USB relay board might be the ideal solution. These are fairly …read more Continue reading Custom Firmware Teaches USB Relay Board New Tricks
There are a few different ways of getting firmware onto one of AVR’s ATtiny85 microcontrollers, including bootloaders that allow for firmware to be updated without the need to plug the chip into a programmer. However, [casanovg] wasn’t satisfied with those so he sent us a tip letting us know he wrote an I2C bootloader for the ATtiny85 called Timonel. It takes into account a few particulars of the part, such as the fact that it lacks a protected memory area where a bootloader would normally reside, and it doesn’t have a native I2C interface, only the USI (Universal Serial …read more
Continue reading I2C Bootloader for ATtiny85 Lets Other Micros Push Firmware Updates
Electromechanical solenoids are pretty cool devices. Move some current through an electromagnet and you can push a load around or pull it. If you’re MIT student [Lining Yao], you can use them to dance. [Lining] built TapBot, a re-configurable set of tap-dancing robots that are both modular and modern. She even rolled her own solenoids.
The one with the eye stalk is the bridge, and it’s connected to a computer over FTDI. The other nodes attach to the bridge and each other with small magnets that are designed to flip around freely to make the connections. These links are just …read more
Continue reading Modular Tap-Dancing Robot Can Shuffle Ball Change
Electromechanical solenoids are pretty cool devices. Move some current through an electromagnet and you can push a load around or pull it. If you’re MIT student [Lining Yao], you can use them to dance. [Lining] built TapBot, a re-configurable set of tap-dancing robots that are both modular and modern. She even rolled her own solenoids.
The one with the eye stalk is the bridge, and it’s connected to a computer over FTDI. The other nodes attach to the bridge and each other with small magnets that are designed to flip around freely to make the connections. These links are just …read more
Continue reading Modular Tap-Dancing Robot Can Shuffle Ball Change
[Igor] wished to upgrade his newly acquired radio — a Baofeng UV-82 — with a larger memory for storing additional scanning channels, and came up with a very elegant solution: Replacing it’s EEPROM with a larger one and injecting the additional memory address bits into the I2C data line.
The cheap handheld radio comes with an 8192 bytes large 24c64 EEPROM, which allows it to store 128 channels along with a few other persistent settings. The radio’s firmware sends two-byte memory addresses over the I2C bus when accessing the 24c64, but since the 24c64’s largest address is B00011111 11111111, these addresses always roll in with …read more
Continue reading I2C Bit Injection Adds Memory Banks To Everything
You think you’ve seen everything that there is to see regarding blinking LEDs and then a simple little trick proves you wrong. Our friend [Zach Fredin], aka [Zakqwy], added a pander mode to his blinky board which shows the Hackaday Jolly Wrencher in a Persistence of Vision mode. We love pandering, and obviously you just need to start the mode and wave the board back and forth. But in thinking the obvious you’d be wrong.
In the video after the break [Zach] demonstrates all the features of the blinktronicator and it’s recently finalized firmware. The tiny little board is a USB …read more
Continue reading Blinktronicator’s POV Sends Our Eyebrows Rocketing Skyward
Today is a very special day for [Mandy and Sebastian], as they conclude the sacred solder joint of marriage. We send our sincerest congratulations and best wishes to the bridal couple, and can’t help but envy the guests of their ceremony, who received a very special wedding favor: A WeddingBot.
In search for a party game that was up for the task, [Mandy and Sebastian] created a little game on their own (translated). Each guest would receive a unique, little WeddingBot. Each bot is individually tailored for a certain guest and features a fitting look, a characteristic behavior and would …read more
Continue reading Interactive WeddingBots Built Into Nespresso Capsules