Heyrocker writes “This is a coffee table built from the playfield of a pinball machine. It is pretty easy to build and best of all, it lights up! It was inspired by a bar in Seattle called Shorty’s, which has tables similar to these in its booths.” Complete how-to on Instructables! Link.
Carpespasm writes “Here’s a tiny crt monitor harvested from a dead camcorder and hooked to a dvd player”. There are a dozen or so photos on the Flickr photo set to give you an idea of what’s involved – the procured CRT is powered from the DVD player’s battery. To watch the movie you look through a sight, it reminds me of the weird science computer Spock used. Link.
Dan writes “The idea for Project Rogue Server A.K.A. Project Silver was started after an interesting conversation I had with a friend of mine. I had this dead ups lying around and didn’t know what to do with it. So we threw some ideas back and forth and the one that stuck was a hidden rogue server. This could be used for both good and awesome. Just think of the possibilities. A hidden file archive, hook it up to your hacked tivo, mess with the RIAA when the come search your house….. (#$))_%$)*@&^( )%^@ (NO CARRIER)” Link.
Not bad for $44 – lots of project to make with this – “We have found many different uses for this little kit! Applications ranging from the traditional ECG/EKG monitor to the ‘Newly-Wed’ Love Synchronizer! One of the main reasons we designed the ECG1 was to answer a long running debate here at the shop. We wired up the ‘Boss’ and finally confirmed he does not have a heart! Use the ECG1 to astound your physician with your knowledge of ECG/EKG systems. Enjoy learning about the inner workings of the heart while at the same time covering the stage-by-stage electronic circuit theory used in the kit to monitor it.” Link.
Excellent guide on replacing capacitors in old radios “Second only to power cords, capacitors are the most failure-prone components in old radios. In a professional overhaul, it is common to replace all of a radio’s large electrolytic capacitors and small paper capacitors. This article explains how to do just that. In many cases, this “recapping” is all that the radio needs to be restored to health.” Link.
Here’s the first test of a 3D RSS reader “idea” I’m working on – I shot this last week before I left for Macworld so it doesn’t really show what’s possible, or how it works now, but I think it’s easy to get the idea – in the current version you point it toward a real geographic location and using a “lens” (a tablet pc with x,y,z axis tracking) as you point it at something you get the feeds, so let’s say you point it towards Redmond, WA you’d get news about Microsoft or something. For now I need to manually let it know where it is, but I think there’s a way to feed in more real world data. Ok, here’s the video – Link (MOV) and photos. I’ll have a new video and some more about this later.
Paul from Dotmatrixsynth makes musical instruments out of printers, here writes – “I’ve got an ongoing project, reprogramming the firmware in these 1985 Epson LQ-500 printers to turn them into musical instruments. I originally just wanted to make a sort of homemade mellotron, but it’s evolved into a much deeper project. These printers (like all printers) have a computer inside that operates all the motors and handles the parallel port, etc. The software that drives that computer is all on an EPROM (a reprogrammable ROM chip.) I remove the EPROM, erase it, and reprogram it with my own software that I’ve developed by reverse engineering the printer and its computer.” Link.
