A few years back, [Floyd, K8AC] built a high frequency autotuner as an addition to his Ham radio setup. Based off a design he saw in QST magazine back in the early ’90s, he has been using the tuner almost daily for the last few years, on both the 3.5 MHz and 7 MHz bands. …
Circuit building with a hammer and nails
[Collin Cunningham] over at Make recently wrapped up another edition of “Collin’s Lab” - this time around, the subject is breadboards. He starts off by discussing a common solderless breadboard, something you are no doubt familiar with. What you might not know however is how breadboards got their name. Way back when, before there was a …
Building an augmented reality display using obsolete technology
Augmented reality might be all the rage these days, but when you take a closer look at the technology, you will find that these sorts of optical illusions are not new at all. Artist [Sebastian Schmieg] was pondering augmented reality for a bit and decided he could replicate the effect using old and obsolete technology. …
Baking pan tube amp sounds better than you’d expect
A few years back, [Gio] decided to try his hand at building a couple of tube amplifiers. The first amp was more of an experiment to see how well a DIY single-ended tube amp would sound. The amp is based off the 6T9 design created by Spare Time Gizmos, and incorporates a pair of 6T9 …
Bluetooth headset battery swap keeps going and going…
[Reginaldo] purchased a cheap Bluetooth headset adapter, and while it worked well with all of his devices, he was disappointed to find that the battery life didn’t quite live up to the manufacturer’s claims. Advertised as capable of operating for 10 hours, he discovered that the device would typically die after only 7. He wanted …
Reverse Engineering LED vodka bottle displays
When [Tyler] heard about the LED matrix display that Medea Vodka was building into their bottles, he immediately wanted to get his hands on one. Who could blame him? Someone had finally combined two things we love dearly: booze and LEDs. He struggled to find a bottle at any of his local stores for the …
Xbox 360 briefcase is ready to go wherever you do
Hackaday forum member [azazelcrey] recently wrote in to share his portable Xbox 360 build. This is not his first attempt at constructing one of these, as he completed his first portable console a few years back. This time, he has taken what he learned from the first go round, making his newest creation a bit …
Hacking automated hand sanitizers with Ben Heck
If you have visited a hospital any time recently, you probably noticed quite a few automated hand sanitizer dispensers scattered throughout the hallways and in each patient’s room. Since hospital-acquired infections are a growing problem, there has been a push for all personnel to use these hand sanitizers regularly to lessen the likelihood of spreading …
Retrofitting LCD projectors with high-powered LEDs
[Devon] recently repaired a handful of Phillips LCD projectors which he was quite excited to use. The only problem is that he didn’t want to mess with replacing the bulbs after every 2000 hours of use at $100 apiece. He was pretty confident that he could find a better way to drive the projectors, so …
Class up your next party with the Drink Making Unit 2.0
The crew over at [Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories] has been hard at work preparing for the Barbot 2011 cocktail robotic exhibition. This year, they are packing some serious drinking fun with the Drink Making Unit 2.0. The predictably named follow-up to last year’s wildly popular Drink Making Unit doubles the mixing capability with six, rather …
