These RGB Pixels look like they are fun to work with since they are so versatile. Tobias Floery is having some fun building an RGB Pixel Clock using a string of them. You can see the 3 parts of the project linked to below. Tobias is using a real time clock connected to an Arduino to keep accurate time, he found a good library for controlling the LED Pixels and to mount it he had a custom laser cut mounting plate made. Everything is available on his site if you are interested in making your own version.

Part 1 of RGB Pixel Clock Build

Part 2 of RGB Pixel Clock Build

Part 3 of RGB Pixel Clock Build

You may have seen shrunk coins before but you may not have seen the technology that goes behind making them. Thanks to Aud1073cH for sending in the video above that The Geek Group made showing how they make the coins that they sell as a fund raiser item. If you are interested in purchasing other coins such as the Canadian Toonie (pictured below) have a look at this site here.

“After many months of designing, engineering, prototype-building and planning, we are finally shrinking quarters with Project Stomper! The quarters are shrunk with impressive power behind them: 6,000 volts and 100,000 amperes. After the process- which happens in less than 1/100th of a second – the quarters are now about the width of a dime, although significantly thicker.”

Not that burning tracks into wood is anything new but this video shows the process and results very nicely. Makes me want to get a few MOTs connected to a large variac and have fun. I think this would be a great seller at a farmers market type setting where people can see the creative art being made in front of their eyes. Melanie Hoff is using a 15,000 power supply and uses nails and large clips to get the voltage to the wood. You can see that water was used to enhance the conductivity of the wood. You can see that when the path was completed a very controlled burn would occur along the path between the cables.

Via: Laughing Squid

This Wind Tunnel Computer looks like a piece of high tech hardware from a testing laboratory but under the black paint is MDF and a window box fan! This configuration was designed for optimal cooling of the computer components that you can see in the center of the two outer angled boxes.

“I used an anemometer (velocity/airspeed meter) for testing, as well as different fans and basic shapes made out of cardboard. I was able to conclude that I could increase air velocity through a scale wind tunnel. There are two types of wind tunnels; the one I’ve built is a subsonic wind tunnel. This type of design involves a contraction section which is used to increase velocity (airspeed) through the test section. This increase in airspeed was what I looking for, a way to increase airspeed over the computer components.”

If you are one of the people that think tube audio is superior to modern audio amplifiers you might want to have a look at this Valve Headphone Amplifier based on the ECC88. The ECC88 looks to be an inexpensive tube that can be used for a variety of purposes. One thing to note with this design is that there is high voltages present in the circuit so please be careful if you take on the build.

“The amplifier will deliver over 100 mW of output into pretty much anything from about 32 ohms to 300 ohms. With the Edcor XSM10K/150 audio output transformers the optimum match is at 75 and 150 ohms. Using headphones with an impedance below 32 ohms will result in decreased performance as the load on the tubes will be below the best range.”

Tom from Damage Designs has Hacked his Futaba 10C Radio to accept a Spektrum DSM Module. Turns out these were not designed to function together but with a bit of effort Tom got them to work just fine. The actual protocol seems to be the same between the Futaba Transmitter and the Spektrum DSM2 Module but the sequence of commands is not consistent. 

This Hershey Kisses Dispensing Robot that duboisvb built will let you catch James Woods! This cute robot uses a Picaxe microcontroller project board and is programmed to drive in a heart pattern and drop kisses along the way.  A few gear motors are used to let the robot drive the pattern and a small servo is used to control the candy drop. A simple coaster wheel is used to allow the robot to be able to turn without steering.