I don’t know what it is lately, MACs have been very appealing to me lately. Maybe because the
new MACs are unix based or what… Regardless of how much money I don’t have in my pocket
to buy one, here’s a way you can make your PC look like a MAC and fool people if you have Linux
installed…

Nicely done RGB Bike POV! POV stands for Persistence of Vision, check out wikipedia definition
if you don’t know it yet.

The whole thing is based on a pic16f628A, with some SMD mosfets to power the led’s. Those are very bright RGB led’s with SMD resistors for smaller PCB size and lower weight. That’s important too when keeping in mind that a heavy weight could give a unbalanced wheel. When all the led’s are on ( 32 led’s, each 3 colors, it draws 10Watt, but normally it will use less than 1 watt. Power comes from 4 NiMh AA cells. And there lifetime before charging is very long.

Keeping the rotation synchronized with showing the text is possible by 2 reed sensors. So each rotation shows twice the image. You could do it once, but that means half the refresh rate.

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I picked up couple broken monitors at the garbage can nearby where I work last week. (Yes, I am such a el cheapo, I have to go to the dumpster for some hackable parts. Regardless, I also found some PCI serial cards which I needed badly for FREE!)
Well, I am planning on some visualizing device…and this VGA expropriator might help me…

Play the video to check out the cool effects of the VGA Expropriator. There are lots more videos and pictures in the creators site.

“Video synthesis tends to be dominated by digital technology these days however analogue video synthesis techniques can still offer a great many advantages in terms of aesthetics, performance, simplicity, and adaptability. Not to mention the non-linear surprises which can come from working in the analogue domain. This “VGA Expropriator” will be the first in a series of proprietary analogue hardware devices which seek to explore the possibilities of digital/analogue hybrid technology in video/audio performance and studio production contexts. The first offering here is essentially a new design with it’s creative process making ample use of circuit-bending methodologies.”

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Cool looking power display…

The Wattson displays how much power you’re using in your house so you can actively see how much electricity your going through… I think if I had one of these I’d be more likely to walk around the house and turn off more stuff to always keep the number as low as possible, looks handy…

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Nicely done parking job!

It has got an ultrasonic sensor that detects the length of free spaces. Then, when it detects enough space, it makes the necessary movments to park. And when you say “GO!” it returns to the road

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Wow, this is a cool HOWTO we didn’t know before… This could be useful for laptop batteries…nice!

Nicad batteries often die in such a way that they won’t take a charge and have zero voltage. This usually means they’re shorted out by crystal dendrite growth.

Here’s a method of bringing them back to life by zapping those shorted crystal dendrites away with too much current and/or voltage. We’ll use a welder as a power source. You could also use a car battery, a DC powersupply, or almost anything with some voltage. Charged-up capacitors are popular for this because you can get a very fast pulse out of them and still limit the power. it’s a lot safer that way. Speaking of which,

WARNING:
If you get killed by a poisonous explosion it means you did something wrong.
Electrocution is a real possibility also.
Ask your parents how to not electrocute yourself with a welder.

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Hahaha, kinda cute!

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It’s getting near Christmas time and I needed to prepare some Christmas gifts for my parents.
Since my Dad does not get much time on the golf course these days, I figured I could make
a training aid he could use at home to keep his swing on path.

Since I didn’t want to spend 50 bucks on the golf training aid, so I decided to make one real quick.

To see complete HOWTO, click HERE

To see more pics, click HERE

To see printable wiki version, click HERE

Also check out our other Christmas DIYs:

LED Christmas Tree

Voice Activated Christmas Controller

LED Christmas Wreath

Christmas Controller in 5 Minutes!

We were thinking that we could make another last minute DIY for that uses a Ryobi FAN from
Home Depot, high output LEDs, and an embedded computer. Although we have been spending
way too much time making DIYs and not working, we are glad we did make a cool Christmas
LED Wreath we are proud of. The video by the way did not capture the real effect because of
the frame rate of the camera but the pictures can be seen… Merry Leddy Christmas!

For HOWTO, click here. You can also check out our wiki version for printing to your printer.
For Pictures of the Christmas LED Wreath, click here.

Also check out our other Christmas DIYs:

LED Christmas Tree

Voice Activated Christmas Controller

Build Golf Club Training Aid Gift for 5 bucks!

Christmas Controller in 5 Minutes!