After seeing many projects that use microcontrollers to switch mains voltages [Rob Miles] decided to share his preferred method. The shots you see above are an enclosed relay, part number RIBTU1C manufactured by Functional Devices Inc. This in itself is not the full control scheme that he uses, but it takes care of the bulk …
High Voltage: Using enclosed relays for HV switching
Two-axis panning time lapse rig built from Lego
[Jochem] wrote in to share a neat time lapse camera dolly he constructed out of Lego bricks. He is a big fan of the two-axis panning time lapse effect where the camera moves while recording images. He figured it would be easy enough to construct one of his own, so he dug out his pail …
Persistence of vision helicopter blades with RGB LEDs
A user named [BOcnc] on the rcgroups forums just posted his RGB POV helicopter blades. The two blades are attached to the heli just as any other whirlygig. The electronics, though, are mounted underneath the blade with a battery pack. We covered a build last year that demonstrated weight added to a spinning blade won’t …
Smartphone images can hijack BlackBerry servers
RIM squashes high-severity bug
Research in Motion has squashed a nasty bug in its BlackBerry server software that allowed it to be commandeered when handset users received messages containing booby-trapped images.…
Syrian hackers strike back at Anonymous
Not all hackers are united. That could not be more evident based on the latest hacking attempt, this time on Anonymous rather than by its own members.
Of course, Anonymous did do something to incite the attack. The worldwide network recently took credi…
Summit sues over hacked "Twilight Saga" images and video
After a multi-continent investigation, Summit Entertainment is suing the person it believes leaked pictures and video from the unreleased “Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn,” the company announced Monday.
Creating halftone pictures with a CNC machine
[Metalfusion], built himself a nice looking CNC machine and has been experimenting with some out of the box uses for his new tool. One novel use he is particularly fond of is creating pictures with his machine (Google Translation). While you might imagine that he is simply using the CNC as an engraver, literally drawing images …
Smile, your face is on the Internet
[Kyle McDonald] is up to a bit of no-good with a little piece of software he wrote. He’s been installing it on public computers all over New York City. It uses the webcam found in pretty much every new computer out there to detect when a face is in frame, then takes a picture and …
Giant POV tube for light painting
When you really want your feelings known, we always say that bigger is better. [Gavin Smith, aka The Mechatronics Guy] must come from the same school of thought, because there’s absolutely no mistaking what he is trying to say with his latest project. Inspired by this WiFi signal painter we featured a while back, the …
Tweeting bird feeder keeps a picture record of all visitors
If you weren’t aware, Adafruit Industries is sponsoring the “Make it Tweet” contest over at Instructables, and this Twitter-enabled bird feeder is [quasiben’s] entry into the competition. His bird feeder not only sends messages to Twitter, it also sends a picture of each bird to Twitpic. The feeder itself is a standard off the shelf …
