Blog Posts

Haven King is a fan of the Wii classic controller, but didn’t really like having to keep the wireless controller charged up for occasional bouts of nostalgia, so he hacked his controller to be used and powered over USB.

 

Haven opened up hi controller, removed the accessory port mechanism, and found there was just enough space to fit a Teensy-LC.  He then hacked up an old USB phone cable that matched the controller and wired it up to the Teensy.  Then he connected the controller to the Teensy along with a couple of 4.7k pull-up resistors for the I2C pins.  The code for the project can be found on GitHub.

Giovanni Carrera build a LCD serial terminal.  This compact terminal us useful for quick viewing of serial communication and can be connected with to many different systems.

This photo shows viewing a GPS receiver output.

You can read a more detailed write of the project on Giovanni’s blog.  It also includes a schematic as well as the code.

 

Marco de Vivo built a MIDI adapter for the Neo Ventilator.  He says the Neo Ventilator is a great leslie simulator, but it lacks MIDI, so he built his own MIDI adapter for it.

The UPS powered adapter includes a stereo output jack for Neo Ventilator connection and foot pedals to control slow/fast velocity and stop rotor.

This video shows the Ventilator and the adapter in action.

 

 

 

 

Cine-Lights made a beautiful fire lamp using WS2812 LEDs.

The lamp has over 20 different animations including a static night lamp, particle torch, fire effect, and a lava lamp.  Links to the code can be found here, on the YouTube page.  The code is an edited version of a torch lamp by Jason Coon of Evil Genius Labs.

 

Forum user sevEnil2 (Severin N), together with his brother, built an LED table with bubble wall.  Not only does this table feature LEDs wtih and infinity mirror, it also has aquarium tanks on all 4 sides.  The use of the CD drive to house the controls is one of the many cool features of this project.

The pair undertook the project to learn about micro controller programming, woodworking, and custom tank making.  They found a lot of help with their projects from on-line communities.  You can follow the discussions about the development on this forum thread and this one  well.  There is also this Google + conversation to check out.

 

Elmue made his own RFID door lock with battery back up.  He was inspired after reading some articles about home burglars.

After searching for an electronic door lock, and not being satisfied by what he found, Elmue decided to build his own.  The design features a powerful battery back up, an easy to use interface, the ability to store up to 64 users, and it mounts inside the door so it’s not visible from outside or exposed to the elements.

There is an excellent, detailed write up on the project that include a schematic, parts list, and code.

 

 

 

 

Floris van Manen helped create DONKER LICHT, a beautiful LED art installation at the Meerrijk in Eindhoven.

 

There are 60 RGB led armatures with 16bit resolution per color controlled over DMX using a Teensy.  The lamps change color individually continuously, day and night.

Michele Perla put together a DIY USB MIDI Controller.  The MPC (Music Production Controller).

This video shows the controller in action at the Rome MakerFaire.

Mick needed a simple and effective instrument to create drum beats without having to manually write them note by note.  He wanted something more than most of the DIY MIDI controllers out there that use simple on/off buttons.  The answer was to build his own using force sensitive resistors (FSRs).

 

The controller has 16 buttons using FSRs arranged in a 4×4 matrix.  The FSRs can sense the amount of pressure applied to a button and use that information for things such as a velocity of a note, control change value, etc.

There is a pretty good write up on his HackADay.IO project page that includes schematics of the project.