Gadgets
Cool manual from 70’s spotted on Retro Thing! “Here’s a link to a classic 16-page design manual for model rockets. It covers how solid rockets work along with basic design, and construction. Includes a couple of pages about multi-stage and large scale designs, too.” [HOW TO – Simple DC Motor Controller
Handy how to for getting started with DC motor control – “This article explains the basics of how to get your motor to give feedback to a microcontroller and then control the speed of the motor with a good deal of precision (well… good enough for our robots). You can select any speed you want the ‘bot to go and it will try to go that speed – even if it runs into difficult terrain. It will apply more power when it senses a slow down and the power will continue to be increased until the wheels turn at the selected speed (or until you run out of battery juice). In fact, it is quite interesting to command the robot to turn at a low rpm and then watch it crawl very slowly across the carpet. If you put your hand on it to stop it, it ‘hunkers’ down and starts pushing harder until you let it go. It then quickly settles into its slow and straight crawl.” Link.
HOW TO – Fix your old NES
DIY live has some good tips on fixing that old NES “I took apart my nintendo, and found the 72 pin connector. I took my smallest flat head screw-driver and pried every pin up a little. Over time, they had lost their springiness (I don’t know if that is a word, but it describes what I am talking about). This is a pretty good fix. It may not be the best, but it works. Another thing to help out is to clean the pins of your old cartridge. You can take a wooden pencil with the red eraser, and rub it on the pins of the cartridge. Make sure you get all of the eraser off of the cartridge.” Thanks Star! Link.
Quick camera / MP3 accessory case
Sej writes – “My new digital camera came with more accessories than would fit in the included case. I built my own handy container for the rest of the gear. The body is a hard plastic VHS tape case. I used a “dollar store” dog collar and leash to make a closure strap and shoulder strap.” Link.
DJVU Reader version 0.1 for the Sony Librie
Alejandro in the Sony Librie Yahoo group released a new reader app – “I am “shipping early” a version of the DJVU reader for Librie lbhooked devices. As the previous demo, it is a .tar.gz file at Installation is the typical lbhook; copy the whole structure to a memory stick and try. I have problems with the keyboard controller, so I have introduced some delays. Any insider information is welcome. Besides, there are a “prefetch next page” mechanism which precludes fast advancing. If you press a key and nothing happens, count slowly to ten and press again.” Link. See our previous how tos on the Sony e-Ink reader (Japanese version).
Run an Apache web server on your phone…
“For quite some time it has been possible to access the Internet using mobile phones, although the role of the phone has strictly been that of a client. Considering that the modern phones have processing power and memory on par with and even exceeding that of webservers when the web was young, there really is no reason anymore why webservers could not reside on mobile phones and why people could not create and maintain their own personal mobile websites.” [via] Thanks Brian! Link.
Weird stuff from Government Liquidation
Harvey writes “Where US Taxpayer’s have already bought the best equipment (Like $2,000 hammers) and you can pick up it up for a faraction of its original cost. Get electronics and test equipment, pumps and motors, battaries and computer equipment by the pallet! Buy entire pallets of parts at a time and make the impractical dream a reality! NOTE: Read the fine print and watch out for shipping costs!” Link. I’m bookmarking this for the occasional requests we get for surplus or bizarre decommissioned gear.
