Mrsuperpants made a nice chair for his home, from an ejector seat – “Ejector seat from a Jaguar aircraft bought off ebay about 18 months ago as a shell. Cleaned it up and laquered it to preserve the used look. Welded up a frame from scrap square tube to hang it on so it can be used as an occasional seat. Seat pad and back are made from canvas out of an old sofa, scrap ply and a bit of packing foam rescued before it made it to the skip! No sewing- stapled and glued. Suprisingly comfortable to sit on! “ – Link.
Here’s an improved Atmel ATtiny13V solar charger, source and schematic included, Dick writes – “Batwatch is a simple monitor for a solar panel battery charger, using an Atmel ATtiny13V. It periodically measures the charge current and battery voltage, and shows them by blinking two LEDs. I built this circuit into the plug of a VW solar charger panel that is used to prevent a discharge of the battery when a car is not used for some time. A modern car contains a large amount of electronics, and a quiescent current of 40-50mA (about 1Ah per day!) is considered “normal”.
Because I wanted to keep an eye on the battery condition and charge current without opening the car, I devised a circuit that shows the voltage and current visually, by blinking a red and green LED. The charge current is determined by measuring the voltage drop over a 10 ohm series resistor. Two A/D inputs are used to measure the voltage before and after the resistor, which is the battery voltage.” [via] – Link.
John has a pretty advance pinhole camera system, he writes – “I have been taking Pinhole Images with a Zero 2000 Pinhole Camera for about 7 years. To improve the exposure accuracy of my images I have created a prototype specialist Light Meter especially for my Pinhole cameras. One of its more unusual features, and the main one I wanted, is that it integrates or sums incident light over the exposure time. Thus a creating perfect exposures in variable lighting conditions (sunsets, clouds, multiple flashes, etc.) . The f/stops I use are f/45, f/48, f/55, f/128, f/138, f/158, f/176, f/216, f/235 but they are just programmed into the microcontroller. Film ISO/ASA rating (ISO 3 to 8000 in 1/3 stop increments). I user Fuji Provia F100 which appears to have negligible reprocity but that could easily be programmed in.
It also functions as a Timer, Normal Light Meter and via its TTL output and a battery powered prototype Shutter Driver I created it can control shutters like the ILEX No 3. Synchro Electronic Shutter (which you can buy off eBay for US $20) or Melles Griot 04 IES 213. I currently use it with a heavily customized Zero 2000 Pinhole Camera and “UltraThin” Melles Griot 04 UTS 203 Electronic Shutter. Here are some pictures of the functioning prototype… I’m kind of wondering if it’s worth taking this project further, would anyone else want to use such a device?” – Link.
Simon @ Scitoys shows you how to build a computer controlled wireless transmitter – “How would you like to send text messages to your friends without wires, and without an Internet connection, and without paying monthly fees? In this project we will build a very simple radio transmitter that you attach to a serial port on your computer. The computer then runs a free program that converts words you type into radio signals that are decoded by another computer, using a cheap radio receiver, and a sound card. “ – Link.
The gang over at Hacked Gadgets took apart a “spy video” car, if you need parts or want to base a project off a (somewhat) cheap set of components like RC control, video transmitter + video goggle, this might be the way to go. Plus you know in a few months this will be on clearance for 50% off somewhere… – [via] – Link.
Finally, at last! You can build a low-cost, fully professional ASCII keyboard and encoder “Popular Electronics April 1974″ – Link – but wait, there’s more, this keyboard showed up on the Apple 1 Computer – Link.
A MAKE reader writes in with a DIY RFID reader/cloner – “A public release of code & schematics for Jonathan Westhues’ Proxmark 3 RFID test device is now available. The device allows you to read, capture, and replay/clone transmissions from an RFID tag.” – Link & video of the device in action – Link.
This clever Maker swapped out the LCD screen in a 15″ Powerbook with a higher resolution (1920 x 1200 display) – it should work in a new Macbook pro, and doesn’t require soldering, just assembly. Interesting, you’d get the same resolution as a 23″ Cinema display… [via] – Link.
