Check out this howto on doubling your battery life by replacing a linear voltage regulator (the thing that converts DC voltage, e.g. from 12V to 5V) to a switching regulator. Switching regulators are way more efficient than your typical off-the-shelve crappy regulators such as 7805 which get too hot too fast. Get the Dimension Engineering regulators here. This howto could easily be applied to any other device, not just radio stuff…

I first got the idea for this over on the thread for the DX6/7 on RCGRoups.com forums. I run nitro cars, so I bought a DX3. I used the radio for a while, and my battery life was on the better side of most radios–but the DX7 owners were getting like 5-6 hours of runtime after the mod. Now that’s what I’m talking about! I figured that the DX3 and the DX6/7 might be using the same regulator chip, due to the fact that the chip design and internal circuitry shoulden’t have changed that much. Less PCB tooling and all that.

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Here’s a really cool project using RFID to simulate a door lock or identification system of some sort.

The design is fairly straight forward, a custom circuit board links the BASIC Stamp to the RFID reader, and is powered by 12v. When a valid card is recognised, it provides 12v output to a door strike, and buzzer for 3 seconds. When an invalid card is recognised, it pulses 12v to a buzzer only for 250 milliseconds 3 times in a row (see below for video demo). It also features a trigger input which when connected to ground will simulate a valid tag bring presented to the reader (this is used to “buzz” open the door from a remote location).

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Wow, check out this awesome window shade that also acts as a solar powered light!

This is a continuation of a project from Design for the 5 Senses that I worked on with Michael Jefferson and Jae In Lee. It’s a window shade that doubles as a light. One set of strings would be to control the level of sunlight by adjusting the height of the shade. The other set of strings controls the light level. I didn’t have time to add a solar component to it for that class, so I decided to work on this for Advanced Tech. There is some general “design” info here and a list of resources, but this page is mainly tech documentation of the solar component. Please see links on the left for more background & project info and images.

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Here’s a cool little DIY on how to run an AVR MCU on battery made out of lime!

Some of the fruit and vegetables we eat can be used to make electricity. The electrolytes in many fruit and vegetables, together with electrodes made of various metals can be used to make primary cells. One of the most easily available vegetable, the ubiquitous lemon can be used to make a fruit cell together with copper and zinc electrodes. The terminal voltage produced by such a cell is about 0.9V. The amount of current produced by such a cell depends on the surface area of the electrodes in contact with the electrolyte as well as the quality/type of electrolyte.

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Here’s a video demonstrating analog meter control with a Cubloc microcontroller. It’s really easy to do, and adds a retro look to any project. It’s kind of a long video because I’m taking the time to explain everything I’m doing, but it’s a very simple concept and works perfectly. Now you can make an analog hit-meter for your website, or something else cool! Also, I got cut off a little at the end, but don’t worry, I was just about say goodbye.

Check out this cool Wii mod chip that allows you to play backup DVD games on the Wii! At $51, not too shabby for a hack mod.

Unlock your Nintendo Wii. The Wiinja Nintendo Wii Mod Chip is the worlds very first Mod Chip for the Nintendo Wii console. Allowing you to run all Nintendo Wii and Gamecube DVD-R / DVD+R backup and import backup games. Full Support for Gamecube Homebrew software. Play any Wii or GC backup just like you would play an original game. Simply insert the disc, and start playing! Built in Stealth Mode means that this mod chip will NEVER be detected by the Wii Console. It even has a built in audio fix for games using streaming, and no patching is required.

This is freakin’ awesome!

We started experimenting with “row/column scanning”. This term refers to how the columns of shared anodes(+) and rows of shared cathodes(-) in an LED matrix can be quickly turned on and off to control a single LED within the matrix. Because the number of LEDs with in a matrix will always be fewer than the total number of rows and columns, it is more efficient to quickly address the columns and rows than each individual LED.
We first soldered a 4×4 matrix of LEDs by hand.
By sharing the cathodes of LED in a row and the anodes of each LED in a column we were able to address the 16 LEDs by connecting only the 4 rows and 4 columns to my microcontroller. By quickly changing the states of the pins on the microcontroller from high(+) to low(-) we could create animations and motion across the LED matrix. An individual LED could be lit and its neighbors darkened by quickly turning that LED’s anode(+) column pin high and its cathode(-) row low, then grounding the surrounding anode(+) columns by bringing them low and shunting the surrounding cathode(-) rows by bringing them high.

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