Controlling Cheap, Awesome Christmas Lights

[James] was wandering around Walgreens after Christmas and found something very interesting – RGB LED Christmas lights that were individually addressable. At $6.50 for a strand of 15 lights, he just had to buy a few and figure out the control protocol. After all, who can turn down a big, cheap, controllable...

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Add Internet To Your Arduino (For Half The Price!)

Imagine being able to control your Arduino projects from anywhere… Yes, this is possible by simply adding an ethernet shield to your Arduino, but you’d have to sacrifice the programming board.  Instead of sacrificing the entire Arduino, just transfer your Atmel chip to this ethernet enabled board and...

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Retro Chaser Sign Lights Up Your Life

[Gnsart] builds props often used in the film industry. He’s created an amazing retro Vegas style light chaser sign. The sign was started as a job a few years ago. While [Gnsart] could handle the physical assembly, the cost of a mechanical light chaser pushed the project over budget. The sign project was cancelled...

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Myst(ery) Box

Anyone remember the game Myst? Well, [Michael] and his girlfriend have been playing quite a bit of it lately, so for her birthday, he decided to make her something inspired from it. For those unaware of the classic that is the Myst series, it is a set of games that started back in 1993 where you assume...

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A Low Cost Dual Discriminator Module for the Easy-phi Project

A few months ago I presented you the Easy-phi project, which aims at building a simple, cheap but intelligent rack-based open hardware/software platform for hobbyists. With easy-phi, you simply have a rack to which you add cards (like the one shown above) that perform the functions you want.Recently...

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Vibe Mirror

We love a good art-related project here at Hackaday, and [Wolfgang's] vibrating mirror prototype is worth a look: into its distorting, reflective surface, of course. [Wolfgang] began by laser cutting nine 1″ circles from an 8″ square mirror, then super glued a 1/4″ neoprene sheet to the back of the square,...

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Cryophone: A Dry Ice-Powered Musical Installation

[Dmitry] is a bit of an industrial artist / hacker, and he’s recently finished this interesting and interactive audio exhibit called the Cryophone. As you know, dry ice is terribly fun.When placed in water, it sublimates from its solid to gaseous phase rapidly, releasing carbon dioxide gas and causing a drastic...

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DIY Hearing Aid

Hearing aids are expensive little devices, typically costing a few thousand dollars each. They need to be highly integrated to fit in the ear, while still providing signal processing to ensure good audio quality. This DIY hearing aid does some intelligent signal processing. It uses an electret to...

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DIY Sonar for the Blind

This is one of those simple concepts which makes you think “Why didn’t I think of that?”  The entire sonar unit is attached to a wearable glove and as the user sweeps their arm back and forth, the device can detect anything from one inch to 10 feet in size.Two servomotors apply pressure to the top of...

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Cast a Shadow, Play a Note

Looking for a way to entertain friends and family this holiday season? Look no further than the Arduino-powered Photocell Piano. [Asahillis] has posted this Instructable for building a 6-note musical command center.The piano uses photoresistors to turn each note on when the player runs their hand over it. Notes...

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Portable Musical Stairs

[Amir] recently finished a pretty cool project — Portable Musical Stairs! He designed and built it so it could be temporarily installed in schools for musical therapy sessions with autistic children — a fun activity for all ages!The system utilizes lasers and photo sensors that come with a built in digital...

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Flying Spaghetti Monster Display

[Anthony Liekens], one of our favorite hackers from Belgium, recently completed this large (and awesome!) Flying Spaghetti Monster LED display!With so many different holidays in December, [Anthony] decided he wanted his family to celebrate a slightly less traditional deity. The body is a massive 4′ by 8′ wooden...

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Arduino Controlled Beer Brewing Machine!

the_meatloaf] just put the final touches on his fully automated beer brewing machine using an Arduino.The project was part of his computer engineering degree, and it took [the_meatloaf] and two mechanical engineer friends a year to design and build the entire system from scratch. An Arduino Mega with a 4-button...

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Hacking A Reader For Medical Test Strips

[Rahul] works at a startup that produces cutting edge diagnostic test cards. These simple cards can test for enzymes, antibodies, and diseases quickly and easily. For one test, this greatly speeds up the process of testing and diagnosis, but since these tests can now be administered en masse, health services...

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Finally, An Animated GIF Light Painter

Light painting, or taking a picture of a moving RGB LED strip with a very long exposure, is the application du jour of Arduinos, photography, and bright, glowey, colorful things. Hackaday alumnus [Phil Burgess] has come up with the best tutorial for light painting we’ve seen. It’s such a good setup,...

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The $40 x86 Arduino

Every week the Hackaday tip line receives an email about a new dev board. The current trend is towards ARM devices, and only once have we seen an x86-based device. Today that count went up to two. It’s called the 86Duino and stuffs an old Pentium II-class machine capable of running DOS, Windows, and...

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Will Dance For Bitcoin

It seems that Bitcoin is all over the news nowadays, but the Bitcoin Bot is probably the first robot that will dance for Bitcoins. [Ryan] at HeatSync Labs in Mesa, AZ, is a fan of the cryptocurrency, and decided to build something to accept it. He discovered that Coinbase, a popular hosted Bitcoin wallet...

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A Speaking Ultrasonic Distance Sensor

[Klaus] wanted some sort of aid for parking his car, and after running across a $4 ultrasonic sensor, decided to build his own speaking distance sensor (.de, Google Translation). Inside [Klaus]‘ device is an Arduino Uno, an HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensor, and an Adafruit Wave Shield. Originally, this...

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Arduino-Powered Steampunk Steam Gauge

[Murphy's_Lawyer] had some empty space on the wall in his kitchen, so he decided to fill it with a whirring Steampunk gizmo: an Arduino-driven steam gauge. The build began as an old 10″ Ashcroft pressure gauge sourced from eBay, which [Murphy's_Lawyer] dissected to determine the state of its guts. Finding the...

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Arduino Christmas Lights

Here’s a cool hack to get you in the December holiday mood! Arduino controlled Christmas lights!It all started because [Anx2k] had some leftover LED’s from one of his other projects, so he decided to make use of them as permanently mounted Christmas lights. He’s installed them underneath his tiled roof,...

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