While surfing one of our favorite websites, we came upon this little jewel. We can’t really tell if this is hack-worthy, or just a deathtrap, so to help decide…

Mechanics crawler + 80cc motor – safety concerns = deathtrap

It’s really that final “Brakes? Why would I need to stop?” that puts this project over the edge. Regardless, check out a video after the break. And please, do not try this at home.

This method of book digitization allows you to scan an entire book by fanning through the pages. It uses a high-speed camera that captures 500 frames per second to get a good look at each page. Processing software isolates each pages, analyzes any curve in the paper due to the flipping, and smooths out the image for better optical character recognition results. The greatly reduces the time it takes to digitize a book, even compared to setups that automatically flip pages.

[Thanks Erico]

[Ben's] father was a metalworker and the combination of being around metal fabrication for most of his life and getting a couple of art degrees brought together a satisfying combination of hacking skills. Above you can see a Graffiti Machine that he built, which we’ll look at in-depth after the break.. This isn’t the first CNC machine he’s worked on. [Ben] became interested in rapid prototyping but was put off by the cost of commercial cutters, which led him to build his own CNC plasma cutter.

[Ben's] creation consists of a vertical gantry that houses the motors as well as a carriage for the spray paint ‘rattle can’. He’s using stepper motors and belts to move the carriage and gantry with a controller that he picked up from HobbyCNC. Let’s look at how he put it all together.

This is the can carriage. On the right, above the can, you can see the motor used to start and stop the flow of paint. To the left you can see the timing belt used to move the carriage up and down. Its ends are secured with C-clamps.

[Ben] uses the head of a machine screw to depress the valve of the rattle can.

The top of the gantry houses motors to move the gantry itself as well as the can carriage.

The full gantry is one piece with the can carriage traveling along its length. You can see the timing belt that the gears use to move the can.

The two images above show the belts used to move the gantry along the top and bottom horizontal tracks. A rod travels the length of the gantry, driven by a stepper motor on one end to move the gears of both the top and bottom belts.

This image shows the angle-bracket that is used as a track. This gives the machine horizontal scalability.

This closeup shows a skateboard wheel with a slot cut in it. This keeps the gantry firmly seated in the track as it moves.

[Ben] ties the system together with a Linux box running the Enhanced Machine Controller. He’s hoping to pit man against machine some day in a graffiti showdown. This is a great build [Ben], thanks for sharing the details with us.

Do you have access to a laser cutter? If so, you can use [Riley Porter's] method to cut your own solder stencils. He starts with the Eagle files and exports the Dimension and tCream layers to a PDF. That file is then processed using Ghostwriter, Gview, and finally, Corel draw. The result is a 1200dpi file to feed to your Epilog laser. Now you’re ready to stencil on the solder paste and populate the PCB.

[Thanks Travis Goodspeed]

Researchers at the University of Liege have developed an algorithm to separate movement from background. They call it ViBe and this patented piece of code comes in at under 100 lines of C. Above you can see the proof of concept shown by hacking the code into CHDK, a Canon PowerShot alternative firmware. The package is available for non-commercial use and might be just the thing you need to get your project to recognize where it needs to serve the beer.

[Thanks Juan via Slashdot]

[Steve] wanted to do some ARM development and set his sights on the Game Boy Advance as a development package. In order to get his code onto the device he build an Arduino-based communications cable. It is necessary to have a microcontroller involved because the GBA uses a peculiar 16-bit serial communications protocol. This cable is an adaptation from the 8051-based cable developed by [Matt Evans] several years ago. [Steve's] got it working by porting the 8051 assembler over for the Arduino, but we’d recommend adding a level converter to his hardware setup to step down from the Arduino’s 5v logic to the 3.3v logic the GBA expects.

He didn’t make up a wiring diagram, but in the code comments [Steve's] laid out the connections as follows:

Arduino 8 to GBA SO
Arduino 9 to GBA SI
Arduino 10 to GBA SD
Arduino 11 to GBA SC

That’s it, follow the README in his source code package and you’re on your way to some ARM development.

Find yourself an old record player, a laser level, and a digital scanner and you can build a 3D scanner. That’s what [Rob] did. The camera and laser level are mounted on the turntable for steady rotation. The camera captures the vertical laser line traveling around the room by recording 30 fps at a resolution of 640×480. This data is then translated into a Blender 3D file via a Python script and the Python Image Library. You can scan a whole room or just a small object. The face above is the result of this image capture after a bit of processing. [Rob] found this worked best in the dark and when scanning surfaces that are not reflective.

Make sure you also check out the camera-and-projector scanning method.

Today’s the day the Google announces this year’s participant organizations in the Google Summer of Code. If you’re not tied down to a job this summer we hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity to learn by doing and contribute code to a great open source project all at the same time. Note: We’re still waiting for the list to be published but we assure you, today’s the day. Perhaps there was too much of St. Patty’s influence last night resulting in a late arrival this morning.

A lot of our favorite software has benefited from GSoC in the past. XBMC has participated before, as well as WordPress, Asterisk, MySQL, Bluez, Natural User Interface Group, and many more.

Student applications are accepted between March 29th and April 9th. If you’re accepted in the program and excel at your work with passing grades at mid-term and final project dates, you’ll see your pockets grow by $5000. Get out there and put your mad coding skills to good use while you have the chance.

[Joel] has a very specific color temperature of lighting he wants in his home. So specific, he’s decided to build his own LED lighting to get it. Actually, he’s still searching for that perfect shade of white, but doing so has learned a lot.  He initially made some very pretty PCBs, but then found that hand soldering them made quite a mess. What better time to delve into reflowing? He shares his positive initiation to the skillet method in his latest update. The search still continues for that nice warm glow he’s desiring. We’ve actually seen [Joel] before, he likes smoked meat.