Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Here’s another really “spooky” Halloween DIY that shows you how to make glowing eyes that will look scary at night.

Halloween Eyes is the first project using my LMDriver platform (which I’ve been working on, on and off, for about 4 years (real life can be very inconvenient)). The concept is simple; a pair of TERRIFYING disembodied eyes rendered on a 4 5×7 dot matrix displays which look about and blink every so often. Even though I was going for “terrifying”, the most common reaction was “cute”. Yeah, cute like a GHOST.

via make, DIY Page

You know when it comes to New Years and Independence Day, you always get to see some really exotic, beautiful fireworks.  Well, all those fireworks are nowdays controlled by an ignition control system but here’s how to make one for yourself.

At the heart of my firework ignition system is an SX48 running at 50 MHz. I was able to make full use of the SX’s 36 IO pins. Thirty lines are dedicated to the 30 channels. Two lines connect to a MAX233 chip for serial port control. Another line is connected to a 7805 (TO-92) which monitors the state of the arming key. The remaining 3 lines are used to communicate with the PIC A/D converter via an SPI interface. The system was built with cost as an important factor. At $10 the SX48 Proto board was an easy choice with its incorporated 5V regulator, led and all the difficult surface mount soldering already done for me. I also designed 2 pc boards using the freeware version of Cadsoft’s Eagle. The interface board connects the SX48 Proto board and contains the MAX233 chip, A/D converter and 30 LEDs to represent the state of each of the 30 channels.

via hackedgadgets, DIY Page

Here’s a cool DIY showing you how to make a force sensitive resistor for about $6-$20.

It’s a great way to build something that needs to sense “force” of something such as your hand strength, leg strength, etc…etc…  In other words, you could build a soccer game machine with it.

via instructables

Here’s an interesting solar tree that collects energy during the day and emits pulses of lights at night.

Collects and stores solar energy during the day, emits controlled pulses of light at night. Pulse frequency: 0.2Hz

via make - ladyada

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Here’s an interesting AVR tri-color LED controller.

Continue reading ‘DIY AVR tri-color LED controller’

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

This is a great project for your school final project.

Continue reading ‘DIY - How to Make a Wireless Accelerometer Mouse Pointer!’

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

One of our long-time readers and a winner of a free Green Laser, Brian Gaut from Schwippy, has made a new website explaining how to make the Emergency Party Button and transform your livingroom into an automated “Jame Bond style” party room.

As seen in the video, this is a great way to transform your livingroom into a party dance club.

Once Brian presses on the emergency party button, the curtain closes automatically, light dim out, then all the party lights, music, laser, steam, and strobe lights start coming out.

Really neat, great job Brian for finally documenting your party invention!

Basically, it is exactly what it sounds like; a button that instantly launches a party. When pressed, the blinds to my apartment close, the kitchen, hallway, dining room, and living room lights dim, the stereo starts blasting Haddaway - What Is Love, black lights turn on, laser lights start moving to the music, a strobe light goes on, and the fog machine starts up.

With another press of the button, the party is gone as easily as it started.

It may not be the most hi-tech thing in the world, but people sure as hell love it when they come over.

(The Emergency Party Button)

(Strobe Light)

(Fog Machine)

The parts are pretty discrete so if you live with your parents, you might even use this method to “hide” your weekend parties while your parents are gone.

via plasma2002

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Remember I did a G-Force Meter couple years ago? Here’s another cool DIY G-Force meter. The only difference it that it uses 7-segment display and a PIC18F series microcontroller.

After seeing so many applications using acceleromters making a simple project of my own with this cool sensor just seemed natural.
The main application of the accelerometer is either for sensing tilt or sensing acceleration. For this application A G-Force meter for my car will be made to see how many “G’s” I pull while driving.

via HackedGadgets

Related:

How to make a G-force meter in 1 minute!

Wow, this has to be one of the cooler DIY robots I’ve seen in a long time. Basically, it plays drums. Not real drums, but it plays your household stuff like vases as drums. Beautifully done, we give it an A+ for the creators. (Btw, we are not selling the blog for $1000, our readers say it’s too cheap! How much should we sell it for? j/k April FOOLS!)

Notice how the robot first plays on the object it finds (or is forced to find by the angry cameraman), plays a small beat, and records the beat it plays on it. Then this recorded beat is played again, and it starts to play on the object (an belt tracks and everything else it has),and also playing this sampled beat

[via] letsmakerobots

Click to enjoy the video

Continue reading ‘DIY - Robotic Yellow Drum Machine plays Drums!’