This weekend I am attending the European hacker conference Hacking at Random. HAR takes place every four years at a former socialist youth-camp about an hour away from Amsterdam in the beautiful Netherlands.
Rather than fly directly to HAR, my wife and I decided to make a larger vacation out of our trip, and we have been busy touring Europe for over a week now. We still have over a week left, so expect slow updates until I return and have a chance to catch up!
A little over a year ago, I became an Uncle.
This is my nephew, Harrison.
For his first birthday, Harrison’s Mom wanted to give him something really special. Not just an ordinary toy for a one year old, but something strange and wonderful, tactile, interactive, unique. Thus was born the idea of an “electric box”, an electronic contraption full of switches, lights, buttons, knobs, levers, and sounds.
An elite task force was assembled to create this special gift, codenamed “Harrison’s Box”. The team consisted of Grandpa, the Woodworker, Jeff (alias mightyohm) the Engineer, and Kylie, the Project Manager.
Upon defining the project, we immediately jumped into phase one, Procrastination. Deliverables were met, and as the birthday loomed closer, we eased into phase two, Git ‘er’ Done.
Supplies and materials were ordered, wood chips started flying, and soldering irons blazed. A short time later, the front panel was realized:
Harrison’s box consists of (clockwise from the upper left):
Almost all of the electronic components, including the arcade buttons and joystick, were sourced from All Electronics. A few odds and ends came from my junkbox.
The wiring is point to point – zipties and hot glue keep all of the individual wires in place. Here’s a shot of the wiring for the pushbuttons and the joystick.
The buzzer consists of the guts of a cheap bicycle buzzer and a single C cell battery to power it. Some creative wiring allows a pushbutton elsewhere on the panel to control the buzzer.
I salvaged a few high brightness red LEDs from a surplus automotive taillight assembly I picked up at Weird Stuff a few years ago. A 5 Watt power resistor I had in my junkbox limits the current to the LEDs to a bright but not blinding level.
The whole box (with the exception of the buzzer, as noted above) is powered by a pair of AA batteries.
Finally, the big day arrived, and it was time to present Harrison (and Mom) with his gift:
Initially the Box was met with some skepticism. Perhaps Harrison was dwelling on the simple question: Toy or thermonuclear device? Understandably, there were very cautious button pushes at first.
Moments later, knobs were being turned, switches switched, buttons pushed, and Harrison had learned how to use the joystick. Look out Steve Wiebe!
The front panel mounts to a small stand that conceals and protects the wiring while also giving Harrison something to hold onto while operating the Box.
I’m happy to report that Harrison’s Box was a success.
Check out more pictures of the box on flickr.
David Nichols made this awesome wireless twitter display by combining a hacked Asus WL-520gU wireless router with a Sparkfun serial-enabled LCD display. The router is running the same OpenWrt distribution I used for my Wifi Radio project, plus a USB thumbdrive that provides some additional flash storage space. I really like the custom laser cut base that holds the LCD display and the router!
For more pics and info, check out David’s flickr set for the project.
via Make: Online – Tweetster – Wireless tweets display
Wow! I can’t believe it’s been a year!
Based on the date of my first post, last Wednesday marked the one year anniversary of my blog.
While I pour a toast, here are a few highlights of the past year:
The first project I documented on the site, my solder paste fridge was the end result of a weekend effort to turn an old beer chest into a PID-controlled Peltier cooler for storing tubes of solder paste. A year later, the cooler has a permanent home under my workbench and is still going strong, keeping its contents at a chilly 36 degrees F. Besides solder paste, I keep my POR-15 rust proofing epoxy paint
I needed an excuse to learn assembly language programming on the PIC, and this project fit the bill perfectly. Instead of slogging through yet another PIC tutorial I decided to “just do it” and the video above shows the result. One of my favorite projects of last year, I have plans to build more of these and make some electronic artwork for the lab.
One aging bluetooth headset plus one obsolete telephone handset equals one retro-fabulous hack that I still use today. The best part: Look for this one in Make: volume 20!
I’m a big fan of the hotplate (aka reflow skillet) method of surface mount soldering. Over the course of a few months I designed, machined, and assembled this PID-controlled soldering hotplate to help build the first few prototypes of my AVR HV Rescue Shield kit. Hacking around in the garage is always fun, but creating a new tool is one of the most rewarding things I have can think of.
Here’s a video of the hotplate in action, reflowing the step-up converter on the Rescue Shield:
What started as a simple hack to save a crippled AVR microcontroller eventually became a kit that I’ve sold to AVR enthusiasts around the world. The AVR HV Rescue Shield includes a cool custom PCB, integrated 5V-12V step-up power supply, and is completely open source. I only made one batch of these, and when they’re gone, they’re gone, so head over to the AVR HV Rescue Shield product page to order one today!
Certainly the most famous project on the site, my Wifi Radio project has inspired many readers to start playing with cheap wireless routers and embedded Linux. If you haven’t seen it before, the finished project sounds something like this:
I brought the Wifi Radio to the Maker Faire in San Mateo in May. Everyone loved it, including some of the Make: staff, which got me a blue ribbon for the project. Awesome!
Well, that’s it for year one… If I missed one of your favorite posts from the past year, leave a comment! If you’re new to the blog, happy reading, you have some catching up to do. 🙂
Here’s to another fantastic year of hacks, projects, kits, tools, and resources at mightyohm.com!
Did my Wifi Radio project inspire you to buy a wireless router and start hacking? If so, I’d like to hear from you!
Leave a comment below and let me know how your project is coming along. Even if you’re not building a Wifi Radio but used my firmware or tutorials as a starting point (a great example is the Tweet-a-Watt), I’d love to hear from you.
If you have photos of your project, you can share them with the world by adding them to the Asus Wireless Router Hacks photo pool on flickr.
