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MIDI out for a Korg CX-3 organ
[Michael] loves this old organ of his, but recently he wondered if it would be possible to add MIDI out without altering its original functionality. With a bit of research and more than a bit of hard work he accomplished his goal.
The nice thing about working on a quality piece of hardware like this is the resources you can find regarding how they work (which we bet is tailored for how to repair them when they break). [Michael] found a website with plenty of info on the circuit boards and how they work. From this he was able to locate a few chips which stream serial data regarding which keys have been pressed. Bingo!
Once he located the three signals he was after he built a board to translate them to the MIDI protocol. His circuit is based around an ATtiny2313. It is supported by a liner voltage regulator circuit as well as a buffer chip which converts the incoming signals to the 5V levels needed. His home etched board is clean and well mounted, and the success of the project can be heard in the clip after the jump.
Filed under: musical hacks
Video player built from Stellaris Launchpad
We think it’s pretty impressive to see a Stellaris Launchpad playing back Video and Audio at the same time with a respectable frame rate. It must be a popular time of year for these projects because we just saw another video playback hack yesterday. But for this project [Vinod] had a lot less horsepower to work with.
He’s using a 320×240 display which we ourselves have tried out with this board. It’s plenty fast enough to push image data in parallel, but if you’re looking for full motion video and audio we would have told you tough luck. [Vinod's] math shows that it is possible with a bit of file hacking. First off, since the source file is widescreen he gets away with only writing to a 320×140 set of pixels at 25 fps. The audio is pushed at 22,400 bytes per second. This leaves him very few cycles to actually do anything between frames. So he encoded the clip as a raw file, interlacing the video and audio information so that the file can be read as a single stream. From the demo after the break it looks and sounds fantastic!
Filed under: ARM, video hacks
Quadcopter Flying Over a Field of Yellow Mustard
There is a large field of mustard a couple miles from MAKE headquarters, and for a few weeks in spring, all the mustard blooms, and the field turns brilliant yellow. On the way home from work about a month ago, I stopped at the field, with a plan to to take some photos. As I got closer to the ideal photo spot, I came across a gentleman, documentary filmmaker Michael Heumann, flying a quadcopter. We got to chatting, and I ended up snapping some photos. Michael has a DJI Phantom Aerial UAV Drone Quadcopter with a GoPro camera mounted to it, and he showed me how he had installed some Moongel pads on the top and bottom of the camera, to absorb shock to reduce video shakiness.
Temporary Housing Units
Housing people in an emergency is never easy and designer Michel Antoun has an interesting take on providing shelter. His temporary housing unit is made from compressed wood panels and folds up into a cube for easy shipping. Once deployed at a disaster site one wall cleverly folds down, which both doubles the square footage of the shelter and exposes solar cells to provide power to the shelter.
Hand placing flash die to make USB drives
It’s a stretch to call this one a hack, but USB thumb drives are around us constantly and we always assumed that the boards inside were machine populated (like with a pick and place machine). [Bunnie] tells us otherwise. He recently had the chance to tour a factory where USB flash drives are made.
The image above shows a worker populating a set of boards with the flash memory dies. The waffle-grid to the right holds the dies. Each is a tiny glint of a component. The worker is not in a clean room, and is using a bamboo tool to pick up the pieces. [Bunnie] explains that he’s seen the tools before but doesn’t fully comprehend how they work. He figures that the hand-cut manipulator has just the right amount of grab to pick up the die, but will also release it when it touches down on the dot of glue applied to the landing zone on the board.
If you’re into this sort of thing you should check out the PCB factory tour we saw a couple of years back. The article link is dead but the embedded tour video still works.
[Thanks pl]
Filed under: misc hacks
Bugle Call: Maker Camp Needs Your Help
MAKE is kicking off another session of Maker Camp this summer. We're getting the word out and recruiting campers at Maker Faire next month with a retro looking camp installation. But we need a really cool sign and we're hoping to tap our local maker community for help
Building a Better Egg
The egg is a near perfect food. It's packed with protein, vitamins, and minerals. It tastes good and lends itself to a wide variety of foods--baked good, sauces, pasta, and of of course omelets. And it comes in a tidy, easy to transport package. But the way the vast majority of eggs are produced in this country is anything, but perfect. In fact, it's rotten. But Josh Tetrick thinks he's found a better way. 
Cloning the DARwin-OP
Kansas City programmer Michael Overstreet wanted his own high-performance humanoid robot to experiment with, but was deterred by the $12,000 pricetag of an off-the-shelf DARwin-OP. Though a significant fraction of the cost is tied up in the top-of-the-line servo actuators the design requires to perform at spec, Michael believed he could build his own "clone" of the fully open-source design, at substantial savings, by 3D printing as many pieces as he could in fused filament, on home equipment.
Choose Your Own Adventure (With a Receipt)
At Minne-Faire this year, I ran into Jerry Bjelojac who has created the Choosatron, an Arduino-powered, coin-operated choose-your-own adventure machine that prints your quest out on a thermal printer. As technology has advanced, so has the way we tell stories. The interactive fiction genre evolved so quickly from text adventures [...]
Organize Miscellaneous Cables with Toilet Paper Tubes
You may be tidy enough to keep your snake pit of miscellaneous cords, cables, and wires all in a single box, but if you want to take your organization to the next level, neatly coil and stow each cord individually inside a toilet paper tube. Then pack all the tubes up in a box, and you'll never have to rummage through tangled cords again.
Old LED marquee turned embedded video player
[Sprite_TM] is was sent an old LED Marquee by an anonymous fan of his hacking projects. The display isn’t full color, but it’s large — 224 by 48 pixels — and he figured he could render some okay images with the bi-color diodes. In the end, he replaced the controller and turned it into a video player.
The original system work well enough, but the 100 MHz 486 industrial style PC that drove the display seems a little comical these days. After giving it a spin and testing out how it drives the display [Sprite] hooked up an FTDI chip and managed to get it playing video from his computer. Above you can see part of the opening sequence of The Simpsons.
Now that he had learned its secrets he set out to give it an embedded controller. His first attempt was with a Carambola board which he’s worked with before. That proved to be a little slow for all the pixel data he was pushing so he upgraded to a Raspberry Pi and never looked back. You can see the demo video after the jump.
Filed under: led hacks, Raspberry Pi
Speaker Lineup for Maker Faire UK
The 4th annual Maker Faire UK is coming right up this weekend, April 27 and 28, at the Centre for Life in Newcastle. They have a robust array of makers who will be exhibiting their projects as well as a solid lineup of speakers and performers sure to inspire. Our [...]
The Simplest DC Motor in the World?
Announcing the Winners of the Raspberry Pi Design Contest
Congratulations to Intonarumori, the Lobbyist Meter, the Raspberry Pi-based State Poster, Walnut Raspberry Pi Enclosure, and the Raspberry Pi Powered Cat Feeder, who are all winners in the first ever Raspberry Pi Design Contest!
Cube 3D printer hack lets you use bulk filament
[Chris Nafis] crunched the numbers and found out he could get filament for his 3D printer in bulk for about one-fifth the cost of the cartridges the company sells. This led him to print a feeder for his Cube 3D printer.
We’re skeptical about the Cube 3D printer’s cartridges. They contain a spool of filament, but also include a chip which reports back the filament color and length remaining. We’re sure this provides some nice functionality for those looking to press a button and walk away. But we see it as an annoyance like the laser toner cartridges that stop working based on page count rather than remaining toner.
The solution [Chris] went with still uses the cartridges to ‘trick’ the machine into printing. Basically the interface will tell you that you don’t have enough filament left, but as long as there’s a cartridge in place you can tell it to print anyway. The green adapter he printed has a pass-through for the stock cartridge as well as the bulk spool you see to the left.
Filed under: 3d Printer hacks
Maker Scouts: Light it Up
As the Los Angeles host for the Maker Education Initiative's Maker Corp program, The Exploratory has had the honor of seeing 18+ adults using the same materials that we use with 4+ Maker Scouts and noticing the differences and similarities. It occurred to me today, that children are more apt to have a story - a narrative that is connected to their making projects. Sometimes, its a story that comes from the project - a way for them to establish a sense of place. Other times, we find that a provocation is helpful as a starting point. I've done e-textile projects before and without a provocation, I have noticed that the young makers tend to make copies of other people's design. So, for this introduction to e-textiles, I thought that I would ask " What kind of superhero would you be and where would your power come from?" I also asked " What do you LOVE so much that you feel a strong need to protect it?" We had the best answers - " Cats, Dogs, Eagles, my family, and best of all - MILK."
Maker Pro Newsletter #10
"Complexity is free." From the editors of MAKE magazine, The Maker Pro Newsletter is about the impact of makers on business and technology. Our coverage includes hardware startups, new products, incubators, innovators, along with technology and market trends.
A Foot-Powered Lathe
Youtube user QueticoChris uses an old cast-iron flywheel and vintage building techniques to design and make an efficient foot-powered wood lathe. 
The Six Bottle Test
Marco Robustini wanted to test the accuracy of the ArduCopter code and show the accuracy of the IMU, so he decided to suspend bottles from his multi-copter to find out how it would cope with huge variations in weight and trim
Foot-powered lathe is a tour de force of joinery techniques
Meet [Quetico Chris]. He’s a master woodworker who likes to find his own alternatives to using power tools. Most recently, he was inspired by a fly-wheel from an old factory. He used it to build this foot powered wood lathe.
It works something like a foot powered sewing machine. There’s a lever for your foot which converts the downward force from your foot into a rotating force which drives the work piece. The mechanics of the lathe are pretty common, but we think the build techniques he uses are anything but. The video after the break shows each step [Chris] went through when crafting the human-power tool. His approach was to use wood as often as possible which includes foregoing modern fasteners for older joinery. He uses mortise and tenon, wood pinning, doweling, and a lot of puzzle-like tricks to get the job done.
We lack the skill and tools to replicate this kind of craftsmanship. We’re going to stick to letting a laser cutter form our wood connections.
[Thanks Aurel]
Filed under: tool hacks
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