DIY Blog

This simple project shows you how to drive a RGB LED with a PIC. Interesting, colorful, and expandable. With a little work, you can replicate the Ford Focus’ best feature with this: its configurable interior lighting.

How to drive a RGB LED with a PIC [link][via]

Yet another project that turns the ubiquitous Altoids Tin box into something useful. In this case, a solar powered cell phone charger. Great idea, and it’s made from old, recycled parts: the solar cell comes from those solar-powered landscaping LED lights that illuminate tree shrubs in front of suburban bungalows at night. Here’s a thought: steal one to make this project. You’ll contribute to reducing light pollution and restoring night to what it should be: darkness.

Maybe you shouldn’t steal a LED landscaping light, but then again, you are ultimately responsible of your actions.
Altoids Tin Solar Cell Phone Charger [link]

A very interesting project from KipKay (you might have heard of him through Metacafe): recycle a broken or obsolete camcorder and make a night vision camera out of its viewfinder. You’ll also need a few other components for this build but all the parts are reasonably inexpensive, considering the result. Best of all, you can output the video to record on a camcorder.

DIY Nightvision Headset [link]

How to mod your G5 PowerMac Case to display a the time. No alteration to the case is needed - the LEDs are arranged to match the G5 tower’s mesh grill pattern -  which makes this hack even better!

Build a Clock into your PowerMac tower [link] [via]

TVs are everywhere, in public place, streaming mind-numbing contents to whatever eyeballs they might capture. The TV-B-Gone is basically a universal remote that shuts off virtually any model of TV ever produced. There’s one catch: if you go to your favorite electronics store and shut down their wall of TVs, you might get in trouble. Until now. Here’s a perfect disguise for the TV-B-Gone: an old iPod! You’ll be able to walk around and do everyone a favor without risking getting cought!

Note that it’s not always a good idea to turn off every TV you encounter: Airports, Train Stations and Sports Bars (especially during the big game) aren’t good targets. Please use them liberally around the holiday period!

The TV-B-Gone iPod Project [link] [via]

Wanting to take full control of his Christmas tree, Brian from Hackszine used the open-source Arduino microcontroller to drive a homemade grid array of 64 LEDs. Pretty nice. Again, a nice project that can be decontextualized, rehashed and reinterpreted in the true hacker/xmas spirit.

Arduino-Powered Holiday Lights [link] [via]