I have been not posting daily because I want to make sure all posts are quality posts. I have been a little busy recently and haven’t had time to dig up good hacks.

If you have any hacks/projects that you think are good for this site, please send in them in on the contact page. I am looking for things that have not been posted on the other big hacking sites. We all read them and do not want to see the same posts everywhere. Here are a few guidelines:

1. The hack is at least 90% complete.
2. It has not been featured on the big sites like HAD, engadget, Make, etc.
3. It is not the newest post on Instructables. Those get picked up by sites in #2.

Some people like living out in the woods but still want to use electricity. If the nearest power pole is more than 10 miles away, you need make your own power. The small company Forcefield in Colorado is made up of a group of individuals that live “off-the-grid.” They also share their knowledge on a website full of wind turbine designs, hand made generators and the like.

Our Feature for today is a steam powered generator. This was a one off project that they made for fun. The boiler itself was made in 1940 while the engine was made in 1903. They made an alternator using the Neodymium-Iron-Boron (NdFeB) magnets as featured on their commercial site. They are able to output a steady 2.5KW with this thing!

Time to go old school with some discrete integrated circuits and the 555 timer. No AVR’s or PIC’s on this one. This simple looking circuit uses the 555 timer and some 74LSxx chips to create 20 sequential outputs. This may seem trivial but uses some fundamental concepts in electronics. It uses the 555 timer, some TTL logic, and basic circuit assembly. The project is very well documented with several variations. <via Cool Circuit>

Did you like electonic art? Have you ever been playing your DS and thought “I wish I could draw something right now.” Well here is your answer. Colors! is a homebrew app for the Nintendo DS (and soon for the iPhone). Wired did a quick write up of the install. You can find many great examples in the Colors! gallery along with a good FAQ.

Marcin and Krzyszto of Poland built a music sequencer that uses the position of beer caps on a table as the input. They call it BeatMachine - Amateur. The only hardware required is an opaque table and a USB webcam. The software handles the rest. Be sure to watch the video on the main page.