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The Cramp – MSP430 Powered Desktop Crane Lamp

Posted March 2, 2014 by Chris

"The Cramp uses an old HDD as its base, with the crane spinning around the main bearing that previously supported the platter. A system of spools and pulleys provides a reasonable range of motion to the rest of the build. Relocating the entire assembly, however, is evidently an unpleasant task."

FPGA Based UNIX Crypt Hardware Password Cracker

Posted March 1, 2014 by Chris

"The goal is to get a ~100 Euro unit to do 10 million key guesses per second. This device is built for the fun of building it and to see what’s possible with current hardware."

Pour Master Pro

Posted February 26, 2014 by Chris

"As a result of building something for Red Bull’s Creation contest a team consisting of Jeff Waeglin, Chris Horne, Justin Griggs and Greg Needel (me) Built the ‘Pour Master Pro.’ The intention of this robot is to pour a perfect beer in any size glass automatically."

Using Sensors To Navigate A Marble Labyrinth

Posted February 25, 2014 by Chris

"Lately, I’ve been working with different sensors as part of my day job at TI. TI happens to have recently released a booster pack for the Stellaris and Tiva launchpads that contains (among other things) an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a magnetometer. I figured I’d use my recent experience to do something fun with sensors in my free time :)."

Magic 8-Ball Pumpkin

Posted February 24, 2014 by Chris

"The Magic 8-Ball Pumpkin was my 2012 entry in the Rosenwinkel pumpkin carving competition….My entry this year was a working Magic 8-Ball, powered by an Arduino Mega and a set of sensors to detect motion. A gyroscope and an accelerometer are used to detect when the 8-Ball has been picked up and/or shaken, while an IR receiver is used to power on or off in response to a remote control. "

Raspberry Pi + DE0-Nano FPGA = BitCoin Miner

Posted February 17, 2014 by Chris

"In the mining rig described here an FPGA does all the hard work (SHA-256 hashing) and communicates over a serial link with a Raspberry Pi. The latter requesting new work from, and submitting proof of work done to, a Bitcoin mining pool."

Alarm Clock Project – Playing WAV Files With A PIC Microcontroller

Posted February 10, 2014 by Chris

"An interesting project has come up as a fund-raiser for BuildBrighton members – to ‘hack’ some alarm clocks and modify their behavior so that instead of playing a single sample when the alarm sounds, one of up to seven different sounds can be played."

Polar Plotter on Arduino

Posted February 6, 2014 by Chris

"A polar plotter is a plotter with a rotating, extendable arm. Its characteristics differ greatly from those of a traditional plotter, which in most areas have a superior design. You could say the polar plotter is more portable or something, but mainly I made this one because it was more of a challenge."

RGB LED Pixel Cubes

Posted February 5, 2014 by Chris

"So I had an idea…’3D RGB LED Pixel Cubes…’ *sweeping hand wave for effect*… I think that combination of words pretty much sums it, yeah? The basic idea is to take a traditional 2D pixel and turn it into a 3D form. I haven’t really seen this very basic concept… but haven’t Googled it to death…"

USB Stepper Motor Driver

Posted January 31, 2014 by Chris

"In this project we are going to drive a single unipolar Stepper motor M35SP-8 (5 wire) using USB interface from a PC Computer. This project is an application of the USB Interface circuit PIC18F4550 which was published here in the past."