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Posted on 09.14.07 by John @ 6:56 pm
If you have a point-and-click digital camera made by Canon, you may be able to turn on all sorts of features usually reserved for more expensive SLRs. That includes live histograms, depth-of-field calculation, under and overexposure highlighting, and — best of all — shooting your pictures in RAW. The secret is CHDK, an enhanced, free software replacement firmware. I’m going to have to disagree that the best part of this is being able to shoot in RAW mode. Don’t get me wrong, I love using RAW (or NEF as it’s called on my Nikon) but the best part of this enhancement is that fact that you can do scripting in a BASIC like language in the camera. Wow… This is like getting a computer that has predefined programs on it and then discovering the programming tools for it. With these scripts you can do such amazing things as automatically create a series of photos for HDR stacking that can later be run through software to extend the dynamic range of the images. You can run an interactive interval timer to take X number of photos ever X seconds, minutes, or even hours so you could do a time laps study of ice melting or a building being built. Those are just two examples of what can be done with the powerful feature. [via MAKE] Filed under: DIY and Hacked and Mods and Photography and Technology Comments: None |
One of the greatest things about technology isn’t what it does, but it’s what it can do. This is a shining example of this very concept:
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Posted on 09.06.07 by John @ 10:40 pm
Bicycle Electric-Motor-Assist Project (BEMAP) Filed under: Cool and DIY and Hacked and Mods Comments: None |
An old friend of mine is undertaking a project to add an electric motor to his bike. He has been asking me a bunch of questions about motors and such because I have a bit of a background in building robots. I tried my hand at the old combat robotics thing a while back, had my own robot and even started a real competition. However, the sport turned out to be a great way to burn through money so I had to give it up. Anyway, I gained quite a bit of skill at scrounging for parts and how things like that work. I’ll be more than happy to help out even if is just as a sounding board for ideas.The BEMAP project looks to be pretty cool. So far he has a supply of DC motors from a disused car and some battery packs. Mike is a born scrounger so I’m sure his solution will be very unique.|
Posted on 07.13.07 by John @ 7:47 pm
Filed under: Artistic and Cool and DIY and Design and Historic and Mad Science and Mods Comments: None |
If your looking for decorating ideas that are a little out of the norm…|
Posted on 07.04.07 by John @ 6:01 pm
Not that I’d ever want to lose a finger myself but if I did I’d want something at least as good as one of these. Filed under: Cool and Mad Science and Mods and Science and Technology Comments: None |
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Posted on 06.18.07 by John @ 9:40 pm
What a cool application of steam power. The perfect super retro project! Armatron was my favorite toy as a kid, it was made by Tandy, and sold through Radio Shack in the 80’s. It was made with ONE electric motor, with gears and clutches throughout the entire base and arm, controlled by 2 joysticks that engages and disengages gears for 6 degrees of movement (the joy stick each move in 2 axis, plus they twist for closing/opening of the jaw, and rotating of the hand). This complex machine is a marvel of engineering, the amazing control and ease to operation made this toy amazingly fun to play. Filed under: Cool and DIY and Hacked and Mad Science and Mods Comments: None |
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Posted on 06.05.07 by John @ 6:07 am
Don’t you wish you had a full Holga outfit with wide and long lenses? I did! So I made a holga with a portrait lens. This is a single-element, plastic, 110mm lens. It is all the things that make Holgas great: Non-anachromatic, non-aspheric, non-astigmatic, and even more pincushioning than the Holga 60mm. HOLGA 110mm portrait lens on Flickr - Photo Sharing! Filed under: Hacked and Mods and Photography Comments: 1 Comment |
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Posted on 05.20.07 by John @ 9:19 pm
This is a one-of-a-kind "film-look" digital camcorder custom-built specifically to shoot the independent feature film, Cold Day in Hell. The camera module is based on a Hitachi HV-C20A/E, 1/2" format, 3 CCD industrial PAL camera with 700 lines of resolution. I love the fact that they used a mechanical shutter in the camera. I bet the camera operator even got to yell ’speed!’ when there were doing a take. [via retrothing] Filed under: Cool and Hacked and Mad Science and Mods and Technology Comments: None |
I like the idea of building something that fits your needs as opposed to going out and buying it. Building your own video camera is a little exteem but hey, I like that even more.|
Posted on 05.17.07 by John @ 4:33 pm
Alan over at Hacked Gadgets just told me about his latest project: I wanted a simple remote that could be used to easily control the volume and mute the TV when the phone rings. I have replaced all of my remotes with a single Harmony 880 control which works great, but I wanted something a bit more cool to compliment it. Building the retro remote was fun and simple since the mini remote that I used was very easy to hack. It looks pretty slick, and he even used a modern Atari Flashback case so no vintage 2600 controllers were harmed in the making of this project. Atari 2600 Joystick TV Remote Control Filed under: DIY and Hacked and Mods and Technology Comments: None |
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Posted on 05.07.07 by John @ 8:06 pm
Filed under: Cool and Hacked and Mods Comments: 1 Comment |
There looks to be a sudden influx of |
Posted on 03.06.07 by John @ 5:44 am
Londoners Squirm as Public Toilets Grow Scarce; New Loo Is $10 Filed under: Dumb and Mods Comments: None |
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Posted on 02.18.07 by John @ 6:25 pm
[via DIY Live] Filed under: DIY and Hacked and Mods and Technology Comments: None |
This is a great example of what you can do with the right parts a bit of know how.|
Posted on 02.16.07 by John @ 5:55 pm
Nikon D70 IR cut filter removal Filed under: DIY and Hacked and Mad Science and Mods and Photography Comments: None |
Ah, there is nothing quite like the thrill of hacking up an expensive digital camera and undoing what engineers spent countless hours fixing. I’m referring to the filter that cuts down the infrared wavelength light that strikes the image sensor. You see, if you don’t filter out the IR your images tend ot be washed out. Now this is fine if you just want to take the same old boring pictures that everyone else does. If you don’t, then this hack is for you. Once you have done this you can make some very cool looking photos by shooting through what to the naked eye looks to be a solid sheet of plastic. That plastic is a filter that only passes infrared light. Grass and leaves look white, dark clothing looks gray, the sky is black… The effect is stunning.|
Posted on 02.14.07 by John @ 7:40 am
[via MAKE] Filed under: Cool and DIY and Hacked and Mods and Photography Comments: None |
Now here is something you don’t see every day, a camera made out of a flatbed scanner. Even more cool than that is that it takes a 360 degree panoramic scan. This project write up had loads of photos and is sure to inspire more people to make cameras such as this.|
Posted on 02.06.07 by John @ 9:52 pm
[via neat-o-rama] Filed under: Computers and Cool and Design and Mods and Technology Comments: 1 Comment |
Woooow! This is sooooo cool! Ok, I feel better now. I was scanning Neat-o-ramma tonight and saw this. This is the best DIY flight sim I have ever seen, even has multi axis movement simulation.|
Posted on 01.31.07 by John @ 6:19 pm
Filed under: Cool and DIY and Historic and Mods and Technology and To be used for Evil Comments: None |
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