HACK A WEEK

The 555 Slider Synth

Dino — Fri, 11 May 2012 02:09:25 +0000

Here’s a fun project to make with the 555 chip.
Here’s how it works. When it’s turned on by pressing SW1, the 555 astable oscillator is activated. It will produce a tone through the speaker that can be varied in pitch by changing the distance between the LED and the photo cell. The photo cell is mounted at one end of a 1/4″ diameter tube which shields it from 99% of the light. The LED is mounted on a piece of music wire and inserted into the tube. You change pitch by simply moving the wire in and out. Move it inwards and get a higher frequency tone. Move it outwards and the tone goes down in frequency. You can build the device as I have shown in the pictures and video, or get creative and come up with something new!

I encourage you to try building other circuits with the 555. It’s a very versatile chip with many applications.
Have fun and…

Keep On Hackin!

Parts list:
2 – 100 Ohm ohm resistors
1 – Photo Cell also call Light Dependent Resistor (LDR)
1 – 2.2 mF Electrolytic capacitor
1 – 100 mF Electrolytic capacitor
1 – Bright white LED
1 – LM555 8 pin DIP timer chip
1 – Small speaker
1 – Momentary push button switch
1 – 9 volt battery
1 – 9 volt battery clip
1 – small perf board to mount components on
Hook up wire
5″ length of music wire or large paper clip.

Rob Paisley’s 555 timer circuit page.
This has a TON of great info on the 555 including a few timing calculators to aid in component selection.
http://home.cogeco.ca/~rpaisley4/LM555.html

2007 Yamaha Virago Carburetor Repair

Dino — Sun, 06 May 2012 17:49:08 +0000

Well here we are back to the weekly projects! The down time was a good opportunity to regroup and dream up new projects ideas for the coming year.

My girlfriend Lisa has a 2007 Yamaha Virago that had a problem with its initial warm up. It just would NOT take throttle unless it sat and idled for about 20 minutes, and then it would still hesitate. It eventually just refused to start so I decided to take the carb apart and see what was going on. This was also an opportunity to shoot a how-to video. Follow along now as we get into the heart of this machine and find out why it wouldn’t run and set it straight!

Keep on hackin!

Mini Maker Faire Burlington, NC

Dino — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:49:04 +0000

Hello! After a few weeks away from the blog I’m back with a video of the Mini Maker Faire here in Burlington, NC. Bennett and Jessica Harris did an excellent job of organizing this first time event. I had a table set up showing off Hackaweek as well as representing Make Magazine with some banners and free stuff. The crowd was steady all day long and I had a great time sharing the projects with others. Big thanks to Bennett and Jassica for putting on a successful event!

Keep on hackin!

The Year In BLOOPERS!!

Dino — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 17:40:51 +0000

Here it is… the bloopers!! Lisa and I spent several hours going through all the video clips from the last year! It was no easy task but it was fun, we had some great laughs and we hope you will to…

As it turns out, the final uploaded bloopers video even has an audio blooper in it! DOH!

Enjoy the video and til next time, keep on hackin!

Laser Oscillograph

Dino — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 18:47:56 +0000

Here we are at hack #52! Can you believe it? One year ago I dedicated my self to the production of one hack per week for a year and I’ve done it! I even moved twice in that time frame and met my girlfriend Lisa, which of course made my lifestyle change a bit. She has been super supportive throughout it all and even participated in a few projects. She’s full of ideas and we work well together so, “thank you Lisa!”

Over the next month I’ll be on vacation but I’ll be producing a year in review video and of course, a bloopers video.

This weeks project is one I’ve been thinking of building for many months. I saw some documentation of an early photographic based oscilloscope with a spinning mirror and a point source of light. It would capture a single waveform at a time on photographic film but it also showed a live view of the wave form. It was called an oscillograph which is a word derived from the Latin word oscillum, to swing, and the Greek word graphein, to draw.

I figured I could build this with a speaker and a laser but then I saw a video recently in which someone used the head armature from a computer hard drive like a speaker. The armature is really just a different configuration of a speaker or electric motor. It has a coil of wire that sits between two magnets. As the voltage fed into the coil changes it’s induced magnetic field, it moves between the north and south poles of the stationary magnet. Perfect!
My plan was to stick a laser on that arm, run a sine wave audio signal into the armature coil, point it at a spinning mirror, aim the reflected beam at a projection screen and it should produce the image of the waveform.

It took a bit of trial and error, as always, but I finally arrived at a design that works great.
So sit back, relax, and watch the creation of a Laser Oscillograph on my workbench.