JUL24
Adding RDS decoder to 1957' vintage radio
FM radio receivers usually don't have RDS decoder, but what about tube radio from year 1957?
This project is actually RDS decoder that is realised using TDA7330B RDS demodulator and ATtiny2313 microcontroller. Received and decoded RDS text is displayed on 2x16 HD44780 based LCD display with many options: displaying RDS time, displaying TA (traffic announcements) flag and scrolling 64 characters long RDS text. Here you can see integration of this RDS receiver into vintage tube radio receiver from year 1957.
Read on to see photos, how integration is accomplished and how to find discriminator output of your tube radio receiver.
Source: Edo Lelic
JUL23
Ceiling fan POV display
Just as we think we have seen enough of these POV displays, someone gets an idea of placing one on his ceiling fan.
This display is made out of 32 LEDs for each propeller's blade (5 in total) which means that some kind of multiplexing is used to connect those 160 LEDs to microcontroller. In this case, 8-bit shift registers 74HC595 that transform serial-in data into parallel-out data were used, and microcontroller is Atmel on Arduino platform. The good thing about this POV is that ceiling fan does not produce any noise as motors in every other POV display we have seen so far.
Source: UncleBone
JUL22
Automatic safe cracker
After finding an old safe with mysterious contents somewhere in the garbage, he tried opening it by listening to clicks (probably with a stethoscope) that dials supposably make, but with no luck at all. As manual brute force cracking is out of the question since it would take forever, he decided to build a machine to do it for him.
Author of this project connected servo motor to PC via Pololu servo controller and Arduino board. This safe cracking machine is attached to safe with some strong rare earth magnets. Safe's dial rotation is controlled via PC and servo is fitted with gears to enable at least two full dial's revolutions with only 180 degrees that classic servo can accomplish.
Source: Carlitos Contraptions
JUL16
Plasma ball with nixie tube
We have already seen what nixie tubes are commonly used for and in that case all digits in nixie must be functional. In this case it is not important to have a fully working nixie tube, but the glass casing must still be in one piece. The tube will be used for pretty unusual purpose - plasma ball.
Plasma ball is nothing else than a glass sphere (or any other shaped glass container) filled with low pressure gas equipped with electrode in the middle. For operation, high voltage high frequency signal is supplied to electrode and plasma filaments extend from it to the outer glass insulator. As a power source, Tesla coil can be used or as in this project a modified neon lamp driver.
Source: David Gustafik
JUL15
Nixie tube propeller clock
Although manufactured more than 30 years ago, nixie tubes are more popular than ever. Nixie tube is an electronic device for displaying mostly numbers and for its operation some 170 V is required. In the tube itself one can find set of numbers (cathodes) that glow with bright orange color because of the gas inside the tube. These days, these tubes are mostly used to build clocks because of it's unique non-boring retro look.
In this project a single-tube clock is made, but with a twist - POV is used to show all digits of clock at the same time. This is the same idea as in rotating POV LED display but instead of LEDs nixie tubes are used. Regardless of the fact that nixie tubes are extremely old technology, we all must agree that nixie tubes are one of nicest electronic components out there!
Source: Peter Csaszar
JUL14
Hacking wireless doorbell with brute force
Wireless doorbells are very popular today because of their easy setup and pretty low price. The only flaw is that we know all about how they operate. Frequency is 433.92 MHz and they use primitive signal encoding.
Here we can see a device that consists of a 433.92 MHz transmitter module and a microcontroller that emulates pressing a button on bell's remote controller. The thing is that this "remote" is universal and it triggers every doorbell in range within a few seconds. Method used is brute-force that sends out all 2^12 or 4096 codes that original HT12-E produces. Now the only question is whether you are going to use this device to annoy all of your neighbourhood or to open their garage doors.
Source: Furrtek
JUL13
Hacking iButton vending machines
Very popular 1-wire protocol from Maxim is used for many of their products as well as for their iButton. iButton is an integrated circuit with various options such as read-only serial number device, memory device, temperature loggers and so on. The latest use is in vending machines where it stores credit or money value in it's internal memory. That's when things can get really wrong.
Here you can see an application where iButton is used to store money value for purchasing goods from vending machines. The problem for sellers here is that they used non-secure iButtons, so it is pretty easy to restore it's original credit or money value after being completely spent! All that is required is a simple 1-wire to RS232 converter and a VisualBasic application.
Source: Furrtek
JUL6
Laptop PC robot base update
This is actually an update of previous post regarding the Laptop PC robot base project. Author has updated and somewhat finished this project. The robot, or should we say laptop, is moving around as you can see in the video.
"Here you will see a 3-wheeled base for a robot who's brain is your notebook PC. With this configuration you will not end up without FLASH memory and you pretty much don't have any limitations. You can easily access: wifi, web camera, you can write your own image processing software and don't care how big it is, you can access it with your bluetooth phone and so on."
Source: psymansays
