After calling around to a few places, it became clear that purchasing the hardware, let alone the door was going to be WAY to expensive.  A very basic “barn-door” track system, runs upwards of $500 for one similar pictured above. That doesn’t include the door and all the other items I need.

Only one thing to do, buy the metal and do it myself.  However, I lack the shop and supplies to fabricate what I needed.

I called Metal By The Foot Inc. based in Kansas, and purchased the materials (full material list and cost will be provided below).

I then ran over to Fred’s Automotive to have them bend the metal according to the dimensions I provided.  These guys were awesome, and true hardware hackers.  The shop was full of race cars, motors, fenders, and parts from about everything EVER. It  smelled like cigarettes and car wrecks.  Reminded me of high school shop class.  Including the smoke

Fred simply tack welded the piece of flat metal to a pipe, heated and bent.  Perfectly executed.

Now that I have successfully saved myself $500, its time to add wheels and mount this bad boy up.

My wife didn’t like the 2 inch pulleys that the design called for, we wanted to be able to see the pulley move with the door.   I went to the Tractor Supply Company and grabbed a couple of part 3240235.  Here is the current door hardware.

More updates coming soon, the door has been built, stained and ready to distress.  We are just a few weeks away from hanging the door.  We recently had twin girls and have a (soon to be 5) 4 year old son.  Finishing projects in a timely matter has proved to be a challenge.  :)

Stay tuned!

A couple of test gadgets; iPod touch (Gen2), G1, iPod Shuffle seemed to work just fine.  The tin does get hot, and there is a buzzing and hissing noise that emits from the tin.  Perfectly Normal.
From the F.A.Q

“How many charges/hours of use can I get out of a MintyBoost?”

I would suggest this for anyone needing a quick burst of juice on the go.   This is also a nice beginners soldiering project.

As always, comment with questions or contact me via twitter.

Our son wanted to be an Imagination Mover for Halloween.  He actually wanted to be all of them, but we chose “Mover Scott“.  To re-create mover Scott, we need his famous “Wobble Goggles”.  They are $20 from Disney, AND they don’t have lights and music.   Crazy talk.  I decided to make my own. Additionally, we needed a costume.  Finding a “decent” one was tough.  So my wife decided to make her own.

First off, run “wobble goggles” through your favorite search engine.  Pretty much zero information.

With no one to copy off of, I needed 3 things.

1. Goggles.

I bought 2 pair. This set from eBay and this pair from Amazon. I needed to get have a test set, and a good set.  Plus, I wanted to find the style that was the closest match.  The Amazon pair are the “production” pair.  Props to Tammy for picking them out.

2. Something small that would play Music.

I Decided a recordable greeting card would work. I picked up a Superman Card, but the module was just too big.  A quick google search revealed that there were many options to choose from.  Then I found it!  A recordable device from a picture frame.  It was already enclosed and made a nice “click” when the button was pushed.  Not only that, but I could just Velcro it into the band of the goggles.

3. Lights.

I picked up a set of  blue mini led Christmas lights ( I wanted the module to create the flashing effect), and wired 8 into the conveniently pre-drilled holes. I test fit the lights, to see if i could get away with surface mounting, but it looked terrible. Therefore,  I had to expand the holes to accommodate the lights, but not by much.

I created two of these setups, mashed the lights back into the holes, hot glued everything in place and added tape and other protection measures.

You may be asking yourself at this point, what kind of juice is this going to take.

A single 2032 “Coin” battery.

Time to sew Velcro into the headband to conceal the wires,  hold the battery and cradle the recording device.

Thats it, now to activate, you can re-create the movement just like Mover Scott.

Now on to the costume.

As always, contact me with any questions.

A neighbor gave us a Harley Cruiser power wheels.  The only thing wrong with it? Battery fail.  Well, technically that was the only thing wrong with it.   In my opinion it was missing a few things.  Time to mod this hog.

What are you going to do?

I decided to keep it very simple at first and just add a working headlight and tail lights. That’s right, all show and no go. This is for my Son and he DOES want to actually ride it.   Since he is the boss, I’d better get him on the road as quickly as possible. We’ll give him some power a little later on.  I headed to Walmart (urp) to look for the following.

Taillights    x2    @ 1.75″
Headlight    x1    @ 4.75″

I decided the best thing to use would be flashlights. For the headlight,  I picked up a Brinkmann 6 Volt Krypton Lantern.  It had the size and the power source I needed.  Plus it was $5.00. Score.

For the tails, I chose a 2 pack of Rayovac Brilliant Solutions LED Flashlights.  The top cover was a pretty close match to the style of the bike.

I added a small row of LED’s on the rear fender for some sweet “blue flame” action.

I wired it up,  and was able to cram both the 12V battery and the 6V battery under the seat by flipping the 12V battery so the connection was on the other side.

Is that it?

Next up? Working sounds, a paint job and maybe some sweet handlebars.  Stay tuned.

@hevnsnt from I-Hacked.com told me about http://www.modifiedpowerwheels.com… the possibilities for this are endless.(and scary). Just check out the videos.

Questions?

Please comment, or email me here.

Here is the Drawdio I built last year.

This isn’t my video, but this is what this device does and a much better representation of what this device is capable of.

Click image for super Hi-Res

Here is a “BristleBot” created for my Son.  This was about the easiest project of all time.

Here is all you need.

1. Vibrating Toothbrush
2. Watch Battery
3. DoubleStick Tape

Simply snip off the tip of the toothbrush, leaving enough space for tape.  Then dismantle the toothbush, and save the vibrator motor. Pictured above (in front of battery).

Expose the ends of the wires that are attached to the motor.

Once you have all the parts, lay down a layer of tape to mount the motor by just attaching it to the tape.  Place the battery and attach the top wire to engage the motor.  I just used a “glue dot”, but a piece of tape or anything to keep it on will suffice.

Bottom line is: I wanted to make something cool for my Sons room.  The project had to have 3 requirements.  1. It had to be interactive. 2. It had to be hackable. 3. It has to be neato. Enter: Peggy2

I won’t make this post a full blow how-to on the build process.  If you have questions, or if there are enough comments on how and why then I will create the guide.

Cute. So whats the point of this post?

I wanted to show pics during the build process, and demo videos of what it can do.  I have big plans for this device, so keep watching this post as I will update it with Ardunio sketches, videos and project plans.  With that out of the way, lets dive in.

Wow. That’s a lot of stuff.

I let all the parts sit at my house for months before finally taking the time to put it together. I chose to build this by filling up the LED bank (625 total).  I opted for clear 10mm LED’s, however, this device will accept any size.  I wanted the flexibility of leveraging giant “pixels” (RGBW) later on. This will come in handy with animations and diffusing.  Besides, I did not want a static image, and a solid color seemed so… boring.  I purchased all the LED’s from eBay, and had decent luck with quality.  Out of 625, only about 15 were unusable for various reasons. You may notice a few missing from the board.

Putting it together.

Honestly, the biggest time consumer with this project was spent bending resistors, LED wires, and clipping them all.  I spent a total of about 10 hours (rough estimate) on this project.

Enough already. Where are my Pics and Videos.

Here are various shots and videos through the build process.

TTFN.

This was a really fun and VERY easy project to make.  I am only scratching the surface, the real power of this device lies within the Ardunio platform. If I were to make one change, it would be to Swap the clear LED’s for diffused ones. Email me with any questions, or comment below.