A couple of my friends and I took the mechatronics class at our university last year. For our final project we built an autonomous sentry turret capable of picking out people in a room and shooting them down. We called it the Digital Assignation & Violence Entity, or D.A.V.E. for short. We think this is the latest in proactive autonomous personal defense, if you happen to be on a shoe string budget that is.
Some of D.A.V.E.’s features:
Finds people up to 20 feet away
150° scan range
Holds 20 foam darts at a time
Since this was a class project we were expected to purchase our own supplies for anything we wanted to build. Which meant we where going to build this turret out of whatever supplies we had on hand. We made the frame out of scrapes of wood we had around. The toy gun we purchased at a 60% discount from a KB toys that was going out of business. The fabric covering the base used to be a pair of pants…
It’s really easy to make. All you need is a handful of items.
Label: Get the label from this site: http://www.weeklygeekshow.com/2009/07/fallout_cosplay_accoutrements.php Scroll down a little until you reach the template for buffout (it’s going to be a link to a jpg file). Once you download it you’re going to have to print it out to scale. It should come out exactly 6 inches long and 2.5 inches tall. An easy way to do this is to toss the picture into microsoft word, where it should automatically get scaled to the correct size.
Bottle: Next you need the bottle. I got mine from here, http://www.containerandpackaging.com/item.asp?item=B633 The bottle costs 70 cents but the site charges a surcharge of $10 if your order is under $50. To get around the surcharge I requested the bottle as a free sample. The store allows you to order a single free sample of any product. The only downside is that you still have to pay the $7 shipping cost. Don’t forget to get a matching lid for the bottle: http://www.containerandpackaging.com/item.asp?item=L207PS
Now you wait. The bottle and lid should arrive at your door steps in 3 to 5 business days. This is a good opportunity to go out and buy a pack of Altoids. You’ll need them for later.
Once you have the bottle all that’s left to do is stick the label on. I printed my label on regular paper and used permanent double sided scotch tape to adhere it to the bottle. A strip of tape at the start and end of the label will hold it on forever.
After you get the label on, fill the bottle with Altoids and screw the lid on, tightly. The lid you purchased has an inner liner that is going to fuse with the rim, and seal the bottle air tight; giving your Buffout that straight-from-the-factory look. Like this:
Brand new, factory sealed Buffout
Opened bottle of Buffout
Enjoy! These upgraded Altoids should now give you an instant +60HP, +3END and +2STR !*
* Note: Altoids might not actually give real life character bonuses, other than fresh breath.
Have you ever wanted a computer that you can leave on 24/7 and not even notice that it is on when you walk into the room? I know I have. Now I finally built one that is so quiet you can’t hear if it’s on or not even if you stand next to it.
As a bonus, it is only the size of a large book, has a 1.6Ghz dual core atom processor, and idles at 19C (or whatever the room temperature happens to be).
Here is a video to give you an idea of how small the computer is.
Notice how it makes almost no noise when it’s on. If you walked into the room you wouldn’t be able to tell that there is a computer there too.
Cooling
The dual core Atom motherboard used to have a small fan on it that cooled the graphics processor. That was removed and a 140mm Scythe fan was placed on top of the entire motherboard. Why such a ridiculously large fan? Because it’s quiet. Rate at 10dB, it is the quietest fan that I have found for sale and it happened to be 140mm big. So I worked with it, and it turned out to do an amazing job at cooling the whole computer.
I was worried at first. While this big fan does move a lot of air, it moves it over a large area. The original 10mm fan sat directly on the chipset heat sink, providing localized cooling, which I was afraid the big fan might not match. I’m glad it worked out well in the end when I finally assembled everything and tried it out.
The front of the computer has the power button. No USB ports or sd card readers. I was satisfied with just having 4 USB ports in the back. I used this computer as a media PC. I have a projector connected to it as well as a wireless mouse and keyboard.
Today we take a look at re-purposing computer power supplies.
If you’re anything like me you probably have a small stash of computer power supplies lying around in the corner of your room. You saved them just in case your computer’s supply dies but now they are turning into clutter and a magnet for dust bunnies. Now I’ve finally found a use for at least one of them: to use as a bench power supply.
Here is the end result. A small box that sits on top of my desk. It has 4 posts: Ground, 3.3volts, 5volts and 12volts. Hit the jump for more details.
Here is the power box again. It has a toggle switch to turn it on and off and a LED light that glows when it’s turned on.
If we follow the cable we see that it leads to the original computer power supply. Only it has been slightly modified. The cables have been cut off and instead the chassis has been fitted with a plug. The plug has 7 pins, which are used for 12v, 5v, 3.3v, Switch, and 3 pins for Ground. Each wire of the power supply has a specific voltage. Here are the wires I soldered to the plug:
RED wire – 12 volts
ORANGE wire – 5 volts
YELLOW wire - 3.3 volts
GREEN wire - Switch
BLACK wire - Ground
Some more pictures. Inside the box are just wires soldered to the binding posts, LED, and the Switch.
Close up on the connector. It was bought from Futurelec.com. The power supply wires used to come out of that hole, now there is a plug mounted there. The hole turned out to be just the right size, I got really lucky.
Here is what you’d find inside of the breakout box. The switch on the black box turns the main power supply on and off. The power supply has this feature built in already. All that was needed to be done was to wire the green wire to the Switch along with Ground. When the Green wire is connected to Ground, the power supply turns on. When the Green wire is left disconnected, the power supply turns off. Normally the motherboard does this, but by connecting the wire to the Switch I can turn the power supply on from the black breakout box without having to bend down and turn on the Switch on the power supply itself.
If you’re thinking about building your own power supply out of a computer supply I recommended this tutorial.
