Reverse Engineering a 1.5 inch Photoframe
Whilst browsing around a local electronics store I noticed they were selling little key-ring photo frames. These little devices had a 1.5 inch 128×128 colour TFT as well as USB, batteries and 16 Mbytes of storage for around 140 pictures. Best of all they were very cheap, so I purchased a few to see if […]
Building a Robot Arm
This article shows how to build your own robot arm constructed mainly from 2mm aluminium. Although it is possible to buy ready-made robot arm kits they tend to be expensive and quite small; I wanted to see if it was possible to make a good quality 6 DOF (Degrees Of Freedom) arm from aluminium bars […]
Raspberry Pi Plexiglass Case
I recently got my hands on the new Raspberry Pi single-board Linux computer, however it comes as a bare board with no case. I wanted to make a case for it which was both simple to construct and attractive to look at. Obviously you can jump over to ebay and buy one of the many […]
Mini xum1541
The mini xum1541 is a USB to Commodore IEC serial adaptor which allows you to connect a Commodore 1541 floppy to a modern PC. The design is based on the ZoomFloppy board and the xum1541 firmware provided by Nate Lawson which he has kindly made available under a GNU General Public License. The mini xum1541 is […]
Stylophone Studio 5
The Stylophone Studio 5 is a project to recreate the original 1968 Dubreq Stylophone which sounds and reacts just like the original (and even contains a replica of the original circuitry) however it also fully supports both MIDI in and MIDI out over USB and can be controlled by studio software such as Cubase. There […]
USB Generic HID Open Source Framework for Atmel AVR and Windows
The Atmel AVR range of USB capable devices provides a wide-range of functionality and peripherals to the professional and hobbyist; however the additional complexity of both microcontroller firmware and host PC drivers is a tall barrier to anyone wishing to get started with USB development. Although the firmware is greatly simplified by freely available open-source […]
AVR ATmega32U4 USB Development Board
Recently I’ve started working with the Atmel AVR range of microcontrollers. The relatively new range of USB capable ATmega chips are an excellent choice for USB device development, however they are only available in surface-mount packages which represents a barrier to a lot of hobbyists since you cannot simply plug the chip into a breadboard […]
Vetinari’s Clock
In the excellent Discworld series the character Lord Vetinari has a clock in his waiting room which is designed to tick irregularly in order to make his visitor feel ill at ease. Inspired by a post featured on Hackaday I decided to build my own version of this clock with a simple and easy to make […]
RC Servo Processor
On a continuing mission to build an autonomous sailing robot we needed a way to more rapidly prototype boat designs and wanted to use a standard remote control model control system to save time by using off-the-shelf parts. When controlling servos with microcontroller based electronics you can use the full 180 degrees of rotation; however […]
RC Servo Switcher
Some fellow members of The Abbenay Hackspace (an open hacker space based in Stockholm, Sweden) are embarked on an ambitious project with the aim of being the first to build an autonomous sailing robot which is capable of circumnavigating the Earth. The project is currently in the early prototyping stages and this RC Servo Switcher […]