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[F00] wrote in to show us his Eeepc that has been modded with almost every upgrade you can cram in one. He has an external cantenna for his wifi, an iPod hard drive, touch screen, added bluetooth with indicator lights, and an internal USB drive for booting linux. While the details are somewhat lacking on his site, you can find an article here for every piece you need to recreate his work. We’ve covered adding the touch screen, mounting external antennas, doing it all without solder, even changing the form factor. Not to mention the other Eeepc we’ve seen that was extremely well endowed.
Looking to spice up his living room with some modular plastic pieces, [Quentin] came up with a way to take digital pixels and convert them to LEGO building plans. The end result is a coffee table top that uses a font complete with anti-aliasing.
The first thing he did was figure out physical dimension and color palettes available from the popular building blocks. His search yielded all of the answers after he spent some time on Brickipedia. Armed with that knowledge he started bargain hunting, settling on a brick size that yielded adequate resolution without breaking the bank (he budgeted 87 Euros or about $125 for materials). From there he used Photoshop, along with a custom color palate that matches the LEGO colors, to generate the design. Image in hand, he finished the planning stage by writing a program to count the pixels, convert them into LEGO bricks, and spit out an order list and build instructions. He’s saving others the trouble of doing the same by releasing his source code.
Of course the project wouldn’t be nearly as fun if he hadn’t made a fast-time build video. We’ve embedded it after the break.
[Hugo] went all out when sharing his findings while reverse engineering this small LED marquee. He purchased the 29×7 LED matrix for under $12 but was surprised to find that the USB connector wasn’t a standard type and didn’t come with a cable. He first soldered a standard connector in place and then set out to make the device do his bidding (translated).
What he accomplished can be seen in the video after the break. He can now connect to the device via a USB cable, sending it new messages and adjusting the speed at which it scrolls. He can also adjust the spacing between letters, reverse the scrolling direction, read the on-board buttons, and write the settings to the device’s EEPROM. This is all thanks to some alternative firmware that [Hugo] wrote for the ATmega88. You can download a copy of that code from the wiki page he put together (translated). We really appreciate the time he spent putting that page together. The wealth of information he gathered during the hacking process serves as an example of the best way to share your projects with the world.
Unhappy with commercial fan controllers Jos van Eijndhoven decided to build his own. The circuit supports three LM60 temperature sensors with pots to adjust the turn on temp. A PIC 16F676 microcontroller reads the temps and controls three groups of fans. A potentiometer is also supplied to control the minimum fan speed. To prevent oscillation the fan speed is reduced slowly in response to temperature drop.
[thanks Alan]
As you may recall, many of us here at Hackaday are big fans of any activity involving robot competitions. One of the better known events that fits that description would be the Robogames, an international event where robots can compete in 50 different events. Granted, not all of them are as visually exciting as the ball of fire and twisted steel shown above, but they are interesting nonetheless. The event is happening this weekend, April 20th, in San Mateo California. Unfortunately, none of the Hackaday staff will be able to make it this year, but we’re really looking forward to seeing all the cool pictures that seem to flow out of the event.
If you happen to make it to the event, we’d love to see your pictures and videos.
Join us after the break for a short video that gives a taste of what the games are like.