FightCube "There ARE no rules"

Circuit Bending is Fun!

Brett (FightCube) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 22:41:48 +0000

Come along on a very short but sweet adventure with me as I bend my first circuit, a toy phone.

The digitized sounds in this phone are not great, but it’s a super simple way to get exposed to circuit bending. If you are interested in this art form, watch the video to see how the story unfolds:

If you want to see some really high quality circuit bends, check out http://www.CasperElectronics.com

Growl and Scream Altoids Prank

Brett (FightCube) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 08:27:26 +0000

I had this idea for a growling and screaming altoids tin based on the 555 timer running in astable mode several days ago, and just today while reading Hackaday I see that Dino from Dinofab.com and Hackaweek.com just built it! I was like, “sonofa…” but then saw he did not implement it quite the way I had planned, so off to the lab! After some circuit simulating, and general goofing around on the breadboard, this circuit emerged. It uses a photoresistor and an interesting feedback path which helps to distort the output and actually widens the range of frequencies generated. The best part is it only draws 30mA and is loud as hell!

To be completely honest, I did NOT look at Dino’s circuit or video before I started my schematic. We both ended up with 100uF caps in series with the speaker, but that’s about the only similarity. It just goes to show the 555 is a very versatile chip to have in stock at your lab.

Download the Growl and Scream Altoids Prank Schematic here: Growl and Scream Altoids Prank - Brett (FightCube.com) (320)

Well I just want to say, thank you Dino for motivating me to complete this project! If I didn’t see your Altoids Screamer project today I might not have every taken this idea out of my head. It’s loud and annoying and so very very perfect

Don’t forget to watch the videos below:

Dumpster Dive for Treasure at ThinkGeek.com!

Brett (FightCube) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:45:43 +0000

The people over at ThinkGeek.com sell some pretty awexome stuff for the Geek in us all! Obviously, not every product works as expected and some get returned. ThinkGeek can’t resell it under good conscience, so they end up tossing it! OH NO!!! Well after you scale the fence and black out the security cameras, you can literally dive into a bin full of goodies for your next hacking project!

However, if you are not the Parkour type, you can go over to ThinkGeek and sign up to potentially receive box fulls of random garbage… haha, I mean… TREASURE!!! So cool!

My Greatest Hack Yet

Brett (FightCube) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 16:40:00 +0000

I’ve been exposing my son Malachi to electronics and building things since he was born, and figured it was time to teach him how to solder. I purchased an electronic kit from a local electronics retailer, Fry’s Electronics. They sell more electronic components than Radio Shack. The kit that was selected was the Traffic Light kit… because I thought it was interesting, not annoying, and could be used with my son’s growing Matchbox/Hotwheels car collection.

Malachi is only 5 years old, and he’s already soldering very well! I let him make various mistakes so that when I told him how to fix them, he understood why he was doing it. The Weller soldering iron is a little big for him to handle, but that didn’t stop him from completing this project in a short period of time. He knows a lot of names of components already and hopefully the things I taught him on this project will retain in his brain for next time. He located and inserted all of the components, with very little help from me. I taught him about polarity, and despite capacitors being labeled as (-) on the cap, and (+) on the PCB he did not get confused. He soldered everything! (except for 3 LEDs). I wanted him to be able to say he built the entire thing. The next kit we build will have to be a double sided board, so we don’t have the issues we were having with this one. I had to take over cutting the leads and ended up damaging some pads myself because of how bad the PCB was. I guess don’t buy kits from Fry’s Electronics… unless you can live with having to fix problems that pop up.

I guess by now you figured out what my greatest hack to date is

MicroScope Revisited – First Thoughts

Brett (FightCube) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 16:22:23 +0000

I just received my Xprotolab from Gabotronics.com and wanted to share my first thoughts with you guys. Check out the video and post any comments or questions you have. Be sure to check out the video to see how Gabriel Customized my Xprotolab just for me! So cool!!!

This oscilloscope is so cool and feature rich, I wish I had purchased two of them right away!

Cradle Swing Motor Controller Modification (Vid Added)

Jay(Gresko Industries) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 13:55:58 +0000

It’s Baaaaaaccccckk…

This swing has had a rough life. Last week the controls finally had enough, and burned up completely. This left me with a swing that doesn’t rock. On it’s way out it left me a parting gift, it shorted out my new motor…Sigh. So now i have set out to “Make it right” and make my own PWM motor controller. It only took 2 days to design, prototype, and build this little gem. I will have to say that the Rigol scope i bought was the best investment EVER! It’s so easy to use and helps you see what you need, when you need it. I got the parts home and prototyped it, perfect! Now that it works lets make it permanent. I have a few pictures but i will have to upload them later. Needless to say, the cradle is swinging again! My baby is happy once again. Brett did some exploratory surgery on his swing and also came up with how the swing originally operated. I encourage him to edit this post with his videos and information. he has some good screenshots of the output waveforms and such of his swing.

Schematic: Cradle Swing Motor Controller (293)

Cradle Swing Reverse Engineering:

10,000+ Views!!! Thank you all!!!

Brett (FightCube) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 02:00:55 +0000

Wow! We just passed 10,000 views on FightCube!

Thanks for tuning in everyone.. we will continue to bring you fresh hacks in the coming weeks.

555 Contest Entry – Brett (FightCube)

Brett (FightCube) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 04:53:45 +0000

Here’s my 555 Contest Entry! A Nixie Tube Keychain!

Check out the schematics here:
555 Nixie Tube Keychain - Brett (FightCube.com) (757)

Check out the video here (QUICK VERSION):

Here’s the super extended video (LONG VERSION):

I originally created the first video to get entered in the contest JUST BEFORE THE DEADLINE. Had to cut out most of the details to get this cut and uploaded to the 555contest with 6 minutes to spare!!!

Picture gallery here:

As soon as I heard about the 555 timer contest, I knew I had to come up with something inspiring! My buddy Jay recently introduced me to Nixie Tubes, and I thought… hmm, how can I use a tube and the 555 timer? I noodled on it for a while, and ultimately came up with the notion of a KEYCHAIN! Simple really, take the smallest Nixie Tube that displays digits, and make it display a ’5′ in the smallest package possible and put it on a keychain. That was the idea… and it took quite a journey to complete.

I started with LTSpiceIV, a circuit simulation software package. I put together a few simple 555 configurations and shared them with the world for everyone to get cracking on 555 timer projects. Little did I know then, but I was already way behind. Once I got a 555 circuit driving a transformer, I played around with all kinds of feedback methods and transformer ratios. I used voltage doubler circuits on the secondary of a smaller transformer, and also tried a simple boost converter topology. The problem initially was that I was trying to step up a 3V battery to 140V+ with at least 1.5mA of current. This is a tough feat with the 555. Sure it will run down to 2V… ish, but you need to drive something with that 2-3V and multiply your voltage by at least 70X. Also trying to get enough current from a super tiny battery is tough! I researched just about every little coin cell and lithium camera battery out there, and almost at the last minute I went with the 12V A23 battery, which interestingly enough fits in a 1.5V N cell battery holder perfectly!

Once I got something up and running in LTspiceIV, I breadboarded the step-up part of the circuit. At this point I really wasn’t considering anything else besides just displaying a ’5′… but then that grew into a huge mess. I thought, no… I need MOAR!!! so I decided to build a LOCK and KEY. The keychain was going to be the Key obviously, and I was going to build a frequency decoder out of a crap load of 555′s. I had schemed up a plan to build a Phase Locked Loop and Lock Detector out of 555′s, something that hasn’t been done as far as I could tell. To make a long story WAY shorter.. I scrubbed the whole idea after I had it DONE.. really it wasn’t enough 555′s and was more transistor logic than anything. It just wasn’t SHOWCASING the 555 for what it is. A simple and really useful little timer chip… so I decided to keep things simple and just display the ’5′. My buddy Jay and I have coined this simplification process, “Get Dumb”. When you just need to GET IT DONE… in the simplest and most effective way, stop thinking about it and Get Dumb.

Dumb I got, and the creative juices started flowing. Before I knew it I was laying out the schematic in OrCad Capture, and doing a PCB layout in one night. I had a single sided board that would power a digit, but that was too easy. I needed a little bit more… So I added some solder jumpers to be able to easy “wick” off of solder from one jumper, and solder in a new digit. This was good, real good. It was clean, elegant, and … oh crap I need to mount this Nixie Tube some how… and what about an enclosure and push button???

Well I hadn’t gotten that far in my thought process… maybe I was dumbing it down too much? Sitting up straight in my chair I decided… the PCB would BE the enclosure… because you can’t enclose ART. And that’s what this IS, a work of art. I quickly measured the IN-17′s lead spacing and found it would fit on a 0.1″ spaced SMT edge connector… custom of course… but fairly standard spacing. Once I did this though, I had crept into the double sided realm! Oh nos! Thoughts of etching a double sided PCB and all of the alignment issues I was about to have scared me straight to bed.

I tossed and turned that night… gee this was like a week ago… and mulled it over as I tried to sleep. I thought I could put a TQFP 32 pin microcontroller on the bottom and partially wire it up for a rainy day… but then, that would kill the simplicity of the 555. Then a brilliant idea struck… what if I modulated the constant current driver that was originally just being pulled up to the supply rail? I quickly concluded that it WOULD be done in the morning, as I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning it was back to LTSpiceIV, and I quickly whipped up two Astable oscillators and played with various resistor and capacitor values I had, and varied the power supply voltage to check if everything was working across the discharge range. It was close enough, and a second page was born on my schematic. Within a very short period of time I had added the components to the bottom of the layout (including a surface mount slide switch that I had to create a symbol and footprint for), routed everything and went back for my 3rd cup of coffee

It was looking sweet, but I needed some components QUICKLY… and I ordered a bunch of stuff from Digikey.com on Thursday night, Feb 24th. Naturally I HAD to make the shipment an OVERNIGHT delivery because well, I DIDN’T HAVE MUCH TIME LEFT!!!!!!!!! Wouldn’t you know it though… they didn’t ship the parts out until Friday for Monday delivery. A few curse words later and I decided I WOULD get this done… hell or high water. I went down into my LAB and started working on the PCB.

It had been a little while since my last homemade PCB, but I remembered the steps… and found some new ones too. I really like the PCB toner transfer method, and it’s super easy with the converted PCB Toner Laminator… which is way easier and more consistent than an iron. The green foil is another step that adds a little more protection to the toner resist, and allows you to etch super fine tracks. Most of the process went way better than expected, until I got to the silkscreen. I was rushing towards the end, considering it was 2am on Sunday at this point… and added the Silkscreen via toner too hastily. It mostly transferred though, so I can’t complain much. The end result is rather bitchin’ if I do say so myself.

I hope this inspires some of you to play around with Nixie Tubes! They are wonderful little devices, and I’ve tried to capture some of the awe and wonder of them in my pictures.

Cradle Swing Repair

Jay(Gresko Industries) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 00:48:03 +0000

UPDATE 2:

With the FightCube Store open, we are offering the motor for sale (add to cart here).
As an added bonus enter the promo code “HAD” and receive 2 dollars off your order!
This coupon is good until march 15th.

Also available on eBay (7 sold already!) – Replacement motor for cradle swing:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280642547047#ht_483wt_1158

UPDATE 1:

Because of all the posts on hack a day i have decided to clear a few thing up. The rocking motor DID NOT die because of what i did in my other hack, making the lights and mobile spin continuously. My Fiancé plugged in my laptop power supply thinking it was the supply for the swing. 10 seconds later, no more motor. She really believed the adapter she plugged in was the right one. For some reason I forgot to plug in the correct one. I wrote this fix up BEFORE i knew why the motor died. She wanted it fixed so I fixed it quick. Anyone with children will know that some times rocking can help with gas, and my daughter gets it frequently. She does NOT want to be held when she is like this. So before all the trolls come out of the woodwork and accuse me of child neglect and call protective services, my child DOES NOT spend ALL day in the swing. I have a talent to fix broken stuff. This broke so I fixed it. It happend so close to me modding the swing because i was messing with the swing. If i never modded it the plug would have stayed in it, so in a way, IT’S MY FAULT. I challenge anyone to have something break, find a way to fix it, get parts, and repair it in one day. I learned from MacGyver that ANYTHING can be used to repair something, not just Duct tape.

Jason

So i just modded the cradle swing, and as luck would have it, the motor just burned up. This swing is almost 7 years old, and the first kid didn’t use it that much. Nevertheless, the new baby is in this thing almost all day. I’m not surprised it burnt up. Looking back on it now i can tell that the motor was real weak. you had to have it set to 4 or 5 to rock decent. So i did some searching for a replacement motor, hoping that ebay might have one. No such luck. I came across some sites that pointed back to fisher price, but most people said the motor was going to cost between 40 and 70 dollars from them. Another few sites pointed to some distributors who wanted a minimum of 100 dollars per order. None of these options were acceptable to me. Then as luck would have it, i ran across a thread where someone mentioned that the EXACT same motor were in air wick automatic air fresheners. I figured what the hell, i’ll pick one up at walmart. They had a “Gadget Only” version that has no spray for $4.50. I took it home and ripped it apart. See the pics above to see the motor. I disassembled the swing and cracked open the gearbox. HOLY S*%T, it IS exactly the same motor! At this point all i did was pull everything apart and move the capacitor and diode over to the new motor. I soldered the wires on and tested it. This motor has MORE POWER! I could already tell that it had more torque than the old motor. I reassembled everything and tested it again. This thing is now turbo-charged, the knob only has to be on 2 and it really rocks! I would recommend that if your swing’s motor has died, replace it with ease. It only took about 30 minutes to tear it down and repair it. If anyone needs parts let me know and i can yank out the motors and ship ‘em out.

MicrOscope!

Brett (FightCube) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 03:28:06 +0000

If you haven’t seen it yet and you have a geeky pulse, you are going to flip out when you lay eyes on this! The new XMEGA Xprotolab from Gabotronics is an amazingly tiny breadboard style mixed signal oscilloscope, packing in 2 analog channels, 8 digital logic inputs, an arbitrary waveform generator and a super high contrast OLED display. Tons of attention has been put into the code that drives the XMEGA32A4 processor that turns this device into a SUPER DEBUGGING TOOL! Go make your head explode and read the feature list, containing a Spectrum Analyzer mode, On Screen Cursors, Voltmeter Mode, OPEN SOURCE DESIGN, all for $35! Are you kidding me?? Jay and I just bought one, and if you are thinking of getting one too you better hurry because they are selling like hotcakes! 16 left as I write this. SOLD OUT!