Archive of posts with category 'Hardware'
I wrote a library for connecting Pixel dice to the ESP32 mcu and published it for Arduino and PlatformIO.
Well the Pixels Dice KickStarter I supported like 3 years ago finally came in. I wanted to do something fun with them before I played my next TTRPG session, so...
A friend wanted to use a toy guitar as a prop for a halloween costume, and they asked if I could swap out the sound effects with playing some song...
A friend of mine gave me a baby toy to hack awhile back, and I finally got a chance to take a crack at it.
I added a cat door to one of our windows to give our cat a bit more freedom to make up from our lack of attention due to the baby....
I had my first circuit board printed. I made an extremely over engineered life total counter.
I added a USB cable to a doll which would be detected as a USB keyboard, and give a personality quiz through notepad. The user starts and responds to the...
I made a decorated box that opens when a magnet key is placed on both sides.
With fire season approaching in California I wanted to get a air quality monitor to see how bad the air is over time. I thought I’d do another reverse engineering...
I bought a cheap weather station with the intent of adding networked data logging. I ended up reverse engineering both the RF transmission, as well as the inter-chip communication at...
I bought a cheap software defined radio (SDR), and tracked planes in realtime with ADS-B. This was a bit of a warmup for a bigger project I wanted to use...
Since the last article was on the female side of fertility why not switch to the male? Yo produces a test kit to measure sperm count. It’s main selling point...
In starting to try to have a baby, my wife got a digital device to track her hormones. Who am I to turn down an opportunity to reverse engineer something?...
I wanted to do a quickish project over my time off for the holidays. I had a recently broken a coffee grinder, and it inspired me to automate a chair...
I had a really cool 3 position key switch that I’ve been trying to come up for a use for. I decided to make an IoT controller that could turn...
Well it’s been awhile since we’ve been able to travel, so to feel better I decided to make a memento to the big trip Maria and I went on last...
While this wasn’t a particularly novel project, I spent some time trying to better familiarize myself with how the JTAG interface works.
It’s been awhile since I used an FPGA toolchain, so I was looking for a good project to use as a refresher.
I finally had a chance to dig into the chipwhisperer. It’s a learning tool to teach about hardware security vulnerabilities like Side-channel attacks.
Another simple “home automation” project. My wife mentioned it would be nice to have a way to keep track of when the cat litter was last cleaned. This is a...
Another update to Web Based Door Control. Here I take the path of least resistance to add Google Assistant integration and uptime monitoring by integrating with Blynk, IFTTT, and UptimeRobot....
As gift for my wife’s birthday I wanted to make something to celebrate our shared time with the game Fire Emblem Three Houses. I was originally inspired by a light...
As a followup to NodeMCU Development, I decided to connect my project to the AWS IoT cloud to see what that entailed. Turns out, it’s a huge amount of headache...
I’m starting another electronic art project, and decided to use the NodeMCU for the processor. It’s cheap, easy to setup, and has WiFi. However, when I previously used the board...
During some time off, I decided to rewrite the laser_stars (http://www.robopenguins.com/laser-stars/) code using the ROS framework. During the original project I ended up creating a lot of the configuration /...
Today I decided to break out a Alesis Q45 midi keyboard that I’ve had lying around. Much to my dismay, my computer had trouble detecting it. Looking at the device...
This is a bit of a weird one. I’m not sure what drew me to this project, but I decided to do a project to use a laser to draw...
This is another old one from back in college. I stuffed a microcontroller in a rotary phone to act as a stage in a scavenger hunt puzzle. When the phone...
Here’s a bunch of other old projects I dug up while updating the site that I’m throwing together into a pile.
Maria got me a k40 laser cutter for my birthday!
This idea was based on the concept of making a “Sound Catcher” pixel display. I’ve been wanting to make this for a long time, but only recently made the time...
One more high voltage project from highschool. This is a really simple ion thruster setup called a “lifter”
Another classic, I actually modified this one over the course of a couple years making a super sketchy cordless phone controlled version.
Wow this is an old one. I’ve decided to go back and write up some of the first projects I did.
Another set of puzzle pieces I made back in the day.
I wanted to do another electrical project that focused on aesthetics. While looking at thrift stores for material for another project I saw some pieces that inspired me. I decided...
After have locked myself out of my apartment one too many times, I decided that running to make a keyless entry system. I’ve been looking for a project to use a Raspberry...
I decided to recreate a sculpture I saw while in Spain for my Optometrist to be brother. A very simple project, but I had fun making the lenticular eye.
Infinity mirrors are an optical illusion that gives the impression of a long corridor, by sandwiching some lights between two mirrored surfaces. I’ve been interested in trying to make a...
Here’s a quick hack I through together to prevent jerks from ringing my doorbell late at night.
Over the holidays I wanted to come up with a simple project that could be somewhat streamlined for “mass production”. I’ve always liked working with clay and decided to make...
My brother and I used to watch the anime Outlaw Star together as kids, so I decided to get him something based on the show as a gift this year. Being...
A project at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, in Germany, to use accelerometers to track heart motion to aid in robotic surgery.
As part of a project for the machine learning lab at Cornell, I did the hardware and some of the software to make a stock RC car autonomously drift though...
Final project for ECE 576 at Cornell, click here for the project write up
Final project for ECE 476 at Cornell, click here for the project write up
A hollowed out book that works as a keyboard controlled locking safe.
Final project for mechatronics. Ended up winning first prize in the sumo robot competition.
