HDD Clock

From Harry Andreou | 88bytes
After watching an interesting article DIY of a Hard Disk Clock, i decided to make my own, HDD plate clock More...

GlowPad

From: MetkuMods Link
You gotta love LED lights!! They are so useful. Use the search feature at the
top of everypage of HacknMod.com to find more LED tutorials. Anyways, use LED
lights to light up your mousepad and make it look downright wicked at LANS and
nighttime gaming
this is the project that I started to do something about these old and outdated mouse pads, maybe to add some more "glow" to them More...

Related...

• Mouse FireWheel from MetkuMods Link...
  

Cheap Power Supply for Experimenters

From: Hotsolder - Electronics & Other Geeky Pursuits - Link.
How'd you like a high-quality regulated 5V and 12V bench supply for $8 or less? You have to build it yourself, but you won't even need a soldering iron. Sound interesting? Well, there is one small catch, but read on and you might find you have everything you need already on hand.

Many hams and electronics experimenters have PCs today. An increasing number of these are finding use on the workbench. Many hams program microcontrollers, use a PC-based oscilloscope, or just use the PC to control equipment around the shack. This is becoming even more practical as the resale value of computers keeps dropping. More and more, you'll find it hard to get rid of a PC when you upgrade. You might as well find a use it around the shack. Detail...
Related:

• ModLab PCs laboratory power source from MetkuMods Link...
• Convert an ATX Power Supply Into a Regular DC Power Supply! instructables.com Link...
  

Custom Spraypainted Keyboard

Lets see the facts. Most people dont care how their keyboard looks like. They dont even think about how it looks. But when you have a modded case, it just doenst fit to have a plain grey-black keyboard. That was the case for me…Not anymore…

Detail...

Range Booster - Wireless Keyboard/Mouse

From Volunteer Lab Rat
I bought a really cool wireless media center keyboard with an onboard trackball mouse, so I diden't need to sit at a table with a mouse, mousepad and a keyboard while enjoying my media center. The plan was that i would be able to relax in my sofa while surfing the internet by using this clever unit.

But oh no! On the cardboard box there was written that the range of the keyboard should be up to 5 meters, but it was at best 2 meters. Not long enough to be used as I intended.

Then I noticed something on the cardboard box. On a sticker there was written that the keyboard used the radiofrequency of 2.4 ghz. That's the same as wireless LAN!!! Detail...

DIY USB 5.25″ front panel

From Silent Q Blog
She wanted to reuse her old chassis, rather than buy a new one. It was a “legacy” chassis, one which doesn’t have any external expansion ports accessible from the front. If you look at some of the new cases available, they have all sorts of front-accessible ports. At this point, she had already spent a small fortune on the required components, why drop another Bennie (or more) on something that will add no performance, and little to no functionality?
In any event, the new motherboard has 10 USB ports - four directly on back panel of the motherboard, and six are just supplied as headers on the board. The manufacturer gave us one 2-port real panel connector, but she still wanted to utilize the extra USB ports, without using a hub. Her MP3 player, PDA, cameras, and a bunch of other stuff are all USB devices, and it would be really nice to have easy access to the cables. Detail...

Old scanner becomes light table

From intheworkshop.info

Our old flatbed scanner for the computer recently died and we replaced it with a new multi-function printer. Of course, I saved the old scanner in the basement for some reason.

Well, my wife recently asked me to build her a small light table for her to use to copy the paper patterns that she uses for quilting. I started to design one in my head, and then decided that if I just pull all of the guts out of the old scanner and replace them with a fluorescent light bulb (so as to not generate too much heat), I'd have light table. I also put a translucent piece of plastic under the glass top of the scanner bed to diffuse the light from the light bulb a bit. More...

Desktop Power Supply from a PC

By Andy.Batts@MurrayState.Edu
This ATX PS board has leads for +5 (RED), -5 (WHITE), +12 (YELLOW), -12 (BLUE) volts, Ground (BLACK) and switch (GREEN). Dell power supplies manufactured between 1996 and 2000 do not follow the industry standard pinout and color codes. The fan has also been unplugged for better viewing. Since this PS was converted for use in the logic and robotics labs, the selected voltages were tapped. Other users may want combinations of +3.3 V (ORANGE), +5 V and/or +12 V if they are converting one of the newer supplies. For R/C applications, the 5 volt output can also serve as a desktop source to drive receivers and servos. If used as a power source for the micro and sub-micro servos, you must be careful not to drive the servo to either endpoint to avoid stripping the smaller gears in these units. Most standard servos have sufficiently robust gear trains and will simply stall if pushed to the mechanical stops. More...

See Also...

• How PC Power Supplies Work at Howstuffworks - Link.
• PC power supply conversion and Power supply From Silent Q - Link.
• About ATX Power Supply From My Electronics Hobby - Link.
• ATX and ATX P4 Power Supplies @ bluemax.net - Link