DIY Live » Mods

Cheap LEDS

Greg Lipscomb — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 05:19:25 +0000

I was at Radio Shack the other day, and priced the LEDs, and saw that they were like a dollar a piece. That is a rip off. Every good DIY project requires LEDs, and here is an article that shows how to take the new LED Christmas lights, and get enough to last a long time. This link was found from Grynx.com

…Tis the Season…

To buy LEDs? Yup! They come disguised as â€˜Christmas Lightsâ€™ – the â€œForever Brightâ€ line is especially good. And they are the subject of this article.

Why bother? Cost. A string of 75 BLUE LED lights costs $10 on sale – and up where I am there’s a $5 rebate per string for “Energy Saver” lights. So that’s five bucks for 75 LEDs – or about 7 cents per LED for the expensive BLUE ones. Cheap…
[Link]

Extreme Macro Photography on a budget

Greg Lipscomb — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 15:12:11 +0000

[Charles] wrote:
This is such a cool article – it’s been written by a friend of mine. He builds a super-photo-macro lens out of a pringles can! How cool is that!

…So, you like the idea of doing macro photography, but you think you canâ€™t afford it? Think again – with less than Â£1 worth of equipment, a little bit of sweat and tears (and blood, if you, like me, are a bit on the clumsy side), and you can build yourself a surprisingly good macro lens. Donâ€™t believe me? Well, have a look at the article, and think again!…
[link]

This seems like a fun project. It is amazing how magnified the images are from this. I am thinking about making one of these for my self. I have a pringles can and a 50mm lens. I just hate to cut up my body cover. Anyone know of a better way to attach it to a camera?

DIY Cheap 5v power supply

Greg Lipscomb — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 17:38:47 +0000

Here is an awesome project for that worthless computer power supply you have laying around. I was doing a project the other day where I needed 5 volts, and I connected a 9 v battery to a 5 v regulator. I connected something wrong, and it made it really hot, and it burned myself. I was thinking that I needed a 5 v power supply. My friend over at zerosign.net wrote about this, and it gave me the solution.

…Computer power supplies cost around $15, but lab power supplies can run you $100 or more! By converting the cheap (free) ATX power supplies that can be found in any discarded computer, you can get a phenomenal lab power supply with huge current outputs, short circuit protection, and very tight voltage regulation…

[Link]

Hack Dakota disposable camera

Greg Lipscomb — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 13:50:02 +0000

Here is a good DIY project from a guy that took one of those disposable digital cameras for about $11, and put a USB port on it. These cameras are about a 1.3 megapixel camera. The second link has all the information you need, as well as the software you need to access the camera, and download the pictures. I am especially interested in this article. I have a Canon 10D digital camera. I used to work at the yearbook at Auburn University, as a photographer. I got to be a photographer on the sidelines of a lot of Auburn’s games. (Speaking of Auburn, did you see the AU vs Bama game on Saturday? It was incredible)

Now something on a more exciting note, which has nothing to do with this camera. I finally found my pictures, and video of my line following robot that I built. I found my schematic also, but can’t find the code. I do have some code for a simplified version of the robot. I will post it after Thanksgiving, so keep coming back, and I will do a pretty thorough walk-through of how I did it. If you can’t tell, I am pretty proud of it.

Anyway, here is a link to teamdroid.com. He made his own USB Dakota.

[Link]

This was originally hacked here, and the article can be found here as well[walkthrough]

Matchbox Thumbdrive Mod

Greg Lipscomb — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 02:50:45 +0000

This guy put his USB thumb drive inside an old matchbox car. It is definitely cool now.

read more | digg story

Nintendo Sniper Rifle

Greg Lipscomb — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 14:15:21 +0000

This article tells how to take a duck hunt gun and make it into a sniper rifle.

read more | digg story

NES Controller TV Remote

Greg Lipscomb — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 20:28:32 +0000

Ever wanted to control your TV with an old school Nintendo controller? No? Well, I have and now I do. Make your own remote control out of an NES pad – tutorial with video!

read more | digg story

Turn an old NES into a DVD player

Greg Lipscomb — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 21:27:33 +0000

This guy gutted an Old NES and put a dvd player inside it. What a waste of a good NES. It is a shame

read more | digg story

Rumble Mouse

Greg Lipscomb — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 20:10:28 +0000

Rumble Mouse 2

By Greg Lipscomb

Have you ever been playing an xbox game, and feel the rumble in your hands, and think to yourself, â€œIt sure would be cool to have a rumble pack in a mouseâ€. My friend thought this, and he proceeded to make the very first Rumble Mouse 1. An in-depth walkthrough of this project can be found at [Zerosign].

As you can see from this site, he used a large rumble pack, a nine volt battery, and a ball scroll mouse. I saw this, and remembered my days as an Electrical Engineer (I am stuck in my second year of medical school right now), and said, I could make my own rumble mouse, and make some improvements. Things I wanted to improve were; first, I had to have a LED mouse, second, I wanted to make everything fit in the mouse, and third, I wanted to power it off of the USB.

The first thing was to find a suitable mouse. I did not want to tear up any of my own mouses, so I went to Big Lots, and bought a cheap mouse for under ten dollars. I had some requirements. It had to be a large mouse, and had to have USB. I found one, and it is a pretty lame mouse, but is suitable for my project, and much else is cheap, and in my book, that is the most important thing.

The next step was to find a suitable motor for my mouse. I didnâ€™t have a rumble pack to tear up, and thought the motor was too big anyway, as well as would draw too much current for my USB. (Note: I was afraid of frying my USB port, and almost did. I have a laptop, and that is scary.) I have kind of a bad habit of buying cell phones all of the time. Actually, my cell phones always die, and I have to buy new ones. This was the answer (actually, it was my wonderful fiancee that thought of it). Most cell phones run on 3.6 volts, and a USB is capable of supporting 5 volts. I tore apart my cell phone, and found the vibrator. It is incredible how small the thing is. I thought it was perfect.

You can see the tiny motor at the top right of the mouse. It looks like a watch battery, but it puts out a significant amount of vibration, for such a small unit. Note: You may want a vibration with a lower frequency, so if so, you would want a larger motor. I like the smaller motor with the higher frequency. It gives a good vibration, without shaking you to pieces. Now if you want to build your own rumble mouse, you may not have access to a cell phone, so I searched the internet and found them for only $1.25. You can find them here

http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?item=VB-1.

The next step was to tear apart my mouse. It was tricky to find the screw to pull it apart. It was hidden under a warranty sticker, so I pulled it off, and took the cover off of the mouse. Here is a picture of the inside of the mouse.

This looks perfect. I have plenty of room at the bottom of the mouse to work with, and it is a simple controller. You can see the switch at the top left of the circuit board.
Now if using USB power, it is important to find ground, as well as +5v. I had to research a pin-out of a USB port to find how it is set up. This is what I found at http://www.networktechinc.com/technote.html.

USB TYPE A
and B

Mating face of USB
type A female

Mating face of USB
type B female

PIN#

SIGNAL

PIN#

SIGNAL

+Data

-Data

GND

On a standard USB cable, if you look at it like you see in this diagram, the +5v is on the left, and the GND is on the far right. Now that is great and all, but I have to find these pins on the circuit board. I used a continuity checker on my digital multimeter, and found that Ground on my mouse is the green wire, and +5v on mine is the blue wire next to it.

You can look at this next picture at the underside of my circuit board. I found a common ground, which I have my green alligator clip on, and found my +5v which I have my yellow alligator clip on. I need these two points to run my vibrator motor. I can plug my mouse into usb, and connect my vibrator to these two points, and it will run. The only problem with that is that my motor is rated at 3v, so I need a resistor in. I will cover more on this in a minute.

If you look at the top two pins on the right, that are side by side, you will see that these are the two pins for my left mouse click switch. Using my multimeter, I found that the pin on the right is ground, and the one on the left is floating, with a higher voltage. The way this switch works, is when the left mouse button is clicked, it will bring my floating pin to low, or ground, and that low tells the mouse processor that the left mouse button has been pressed.

The question that remains is, how do I make my motor run when the left mouse button is clicked? You canâ€™t just hook the motor to the switch, because I already said that both pins become grounded when the button is clicked. I need another switch that recognizes a low voltage as a signal to turn my motor on.
A transistor is just that.

Now there are two main types of transistors. One, a npn transistor, turns on when a high voltage is connected to the base. The other type is a pnp transistor, which will connect the collector and emitter when the base goes low. Here is a small schematic of a pnp transistor found at http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/components/tran.htm.

You can see from this picture that the arrows are pointed in different directions. This tells the direction of the current flowing. Current flows High voltage to low voltage, or in other words from the â€œ+â€ node to the â€œ-â€œ node. I Connected my +5v from my USB to the E on my PNP, and connected the C to the â€œ+â€ pole of my motor. The B, I connected to my floating pin on my left mouse button. I Connected the â€œ-â€œ pole of my motor to the common ground. (Now I mentioned earlier needing a resistor, I put a 10K variable potentiometer between my C and the motor.)

This is confusing, but I will add a schematic, that you can follow. What this does for me, is when I click my button, the base goes low, and the motor vibrates. I can use my potentiometer to vary the resistance so that the voltage across the motor is 3v or less. I donâ€™t want to burn the motor out during a fast game of Soldiers of Fortune. So here is a picture of how I tested my circuit.

If you look at the red wire connected to the circuit board. I could connect it to my floater pin, and push the button and it would run my motor which was still in the phone. Donâ€™t follow the wires in this picture to wire up your transistor, but follow the schematic. This is just an idea of how I wired it up. It actually worked. Be careful on finding the correct common ground. I connected my ground at first to the grounded side of my LED, and my mouse died. I thought I killed it, or worse that I killed my USB. Luckily I rebooted the computer, and it worked again. That was a sigh of relief. So my advice is to stay away from the LED circuits.

After getting my circuit to work, I soldered everything together, and packed it into the mouse. Here is a picture of the final mouse.

In this picture, you can see the variable potentiometer that is going to the motor. I hope you all enjoyed this walkthrough of my Rumble Mouse 2. It works pretty well, and is a blast to play a first person shooter game. Now a necessary thing, which I did not do, but might do, is to connect a switch in the circuit. There will definitely be times that you do not want to use your rumble mouse. If you want to do this, it is easy. Just place it inline between your variable potentiometer, and your motor. It is probably best to have a slide switch, and you can cut a hole on the bottom of the mouse, so you can switch it on from the underside. This way, you donâ€™t have any unsightly switches visible from your mouse. Leave comments if you enjoyed this How-to project.

Parts list
1 PNP transistor – 2N3906 (Radioshack #276-1604)
1 10K micropot – (271-282) – though, it is a little too bigâ€¦ maybe a 5k or 1k
1 PC board – ICB90 (276-0148)
1 Sanko Electric vibrating motor ( Sanko Electric # 1E120). Follow the link in the article. I doubt radioshack carries motors of this size