Aplumb writes in with some handy information regarding using a mouse as a scanner we posted earlier:“A lot of cheap off-the-shelf optical mice use this chip. See this photospy I did of a Logitech I did a while back. Note: This chip is designed by the division of Agilent that was spun out and renamed Avago Technologies. See their Optical Mouse Sensors page for more up-to-date info, like the newer ADNS-2610 references.” Link.
Dethe writes “When I was a kid, I had the foam swords called Boffers, that my step-father and I could take our aggressions out on one another without hurting each other. Now my kids are 5 and 9 and they want to play with my bamboo shinai (practice swords), but they could definitely get hurt with those. I was intending to look around to find a source to buy the old boffers and instead found this site with instructions for making boffer swords, daggers, axes, and more from PVC, pool noodles, and duct tape. Also rules for boffer fighting, maintenance, and more. We’re going to build a whole boffer arsenal and turn the neighborhood kids loose with it.” Link.
Mike Smyth makes these incredible compressed air engines. On his site, he has photos and information on the V-twin and radial air engines he designed and constructed. The videos give you a good idea of how they work. His homepage also has his walking robots project to check out. Thanks B45man! Link.
Turn your optical mouse in to a scanner! Erik writes: “A Maker posted his project on a very large Dutch forum, after he read some datasheets of the sensor in his optical mouse. He wrote a application in VB for reading the sensors outputs, so he can use the sensor like a hand scanner. The software is available on the site and works on mice which use an ADNS-2610 optical sensor, recognisable by the eight pins, the sun-like mark and the text ‘A2610’.” Link.
Paul writes “If you’re anything like me, you just spent your last bit of cash on a wicked gaming mouse and didn’t leave any money for a mouse pad. Typically you would just game without one, but over time those teflon feet on your mouse will fill with gunk, get scratched up and your mouse won’t glide as smoothly as it did in its infancy. Enter the waxpaper mouse pad. For the cost of pretty much nothing, you can have the smoothest gliding mouse/mouse pad combo known to man. Let’s begin the fabrication…” Link.
Snowmobile fuel gauges are hard to read in the dark. Glen adds a green LED to his Arctic Cat Firecat to illuminate the mechanical gauge at night. “The Arctic Cat Firecats have a simple mechanical fuel level gauge mounting in the top of the fuel tank. The problem is that when you are driving around at night, there is no illumination on the gauge so it can’t be seen. After nearly running out of fuel one night, I decided I needed to come up with something better than carrying a flashlight in my pocket to check the fuel level.” Thanks Glen! Link.
Here’s a fairly old how to, but a good one that could be handy for new projects. If you have a Cisco Aironet card, or want to score a cheap one on eBay to hack up to add an external antenna here’s how. Link.
