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Ben Heck's Pokemon Go Survival Kit Sep 15, 2016

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In this special episode of The Ben Heck Show, the team gets to work building a Pokemon Go survival kit! Felix makes an auxillery battery pack that plugs into your phone, Ben works on colored LED's to indicate what team you're on and Karen gets to work on the sleeve that ties all of the components together. Let's get started!

Ben Heck's Intel Edison Laser Harp Part 2: Assembly Sep 07, 2016

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Inspired by Music Tech Fest in Berlin, The Ben Heck team finishes work on the Intel Edison Laser Harp. Ben and Karen handle all the electromechanical work while Felix finishes the coding. Have you ever made an electronic music instrument?

Ben Heck's Intel Edison Laser Harp Part 1: Design Sep 01, 2016

Show notes

Inspired by Music Tech Fest in Berlin, Ben and Felix create a Laser Harp using an Intel Edison single board computer and VST: virtual studio technology. The Intel Edison is a new single board computer from Intel that includes a dual core atom processor x86 with built in RAM, Flash, WIFI, and Bluetooth. Ben does tests for the laser harp using a breadboard, a bench power supply and an individual laser pointer element. The laser element has a current limiting resistor built in so he just attaches a voltage rail. The photoresistor is analog, the more light you give it or take from it, there will be a different rating however if that voltage level goes past a certain amount in an integrated circuit it will either go high or low which will allow them to use it as a digital switch. He uses a photoresistor because it works well with individual light. After he gets a laser he hooks it up to NOT logic gate. The NOT gate has a voltage at which it will switch from 0 to 1. Knowing this value allows them to dial in their photoresistor circuit. The input and output are at different voltages allowing a 5V signal to be converted to a 1.8 V signal. Felix lays out everything on a protoboard and sets up a VST MIDI music driver on the Edison to allow it to play music. He takes the GPIO signal and maps it to a virtual MIDI device. He reconfigures the kernel and adds the virtual MIDI device to enable it. 12 notes per octave, chromatic scale (includes sharps and flats). The different lengths of harp strings create different notes. The top of the harp has 24 lasers for 24 notes which is two octaves. Ben builds the top half of the harp with all the emitters and lines them up.

Ben Heck's Xbox Slim Teardown Aug 24, 2016

Show notes

There are few things that Ben Heck loves more than to teardown the newest gaming console release, watch how he unboxes the XBox One S and takes apart each component as he goes, including the controller. We learn how cost savings have been made with design alterations to the chassis and the printed circuit boards. Ben also compares the XBox One S side by side with the original XBox One and discovers that a connector is missing, which one could it be? The power supply is one major change with the new XBox console, compared to the early days where it was practically a huge brick! Ben also highlights the changes in the CPU/GPU heatsink and the limitations of hacking the HDMI ports on the board while considering if it can be turned into a laptop. Do you think there's something else we can do with it? Let us know on the element14 Community, where you can learn about upcoming episodes and join The Ben Heck Show team.

Ben Heck's Hackbot Wars Part 3: Final Fight Aug 17, 2016

Show notes

In this episode of The Ben Heck Show Karen, Felix and Ben engage in heated competition. Each competitor must build a robot that will have 3 balloons attached to it.The goal will be to pop the opposing robots balloons using weapons that are either built within the competition timeframe or created from scrap found at a local thrift store. Only one robot's balloons will survive!

Ben Heck's Hackbot Wars Part 2: Weapons Aug 11, 2016

Show notes

In this episode of The Ben Heck Show Karen, Felix and Ben engage in heated competition. Each competitor must build a robot that will have 3 balloons attached to it. The goal will be to pop the opposing robots balloons using weapons that are either built within the competition timeframe or created from scrap found at a local thrift store. Only one robot's balloons will survive!

Ben Heck's Magic Smoke Preventor Aug 04, 2016

Show notes

Ben and Felix produce a laser guided infra-red grid array sensor, connected via i2c to a micro controller with mechanical relays to disconnect the power to a device that causes fire! They integrate a Hitatchi HDD44790 based LCD display to create a menu and interface for calibration with an enclosure designed with Autodesk Fusion 360. If advanced technology is almost distinguishable from magic then an electronics component that sets itself on fire has “let the magic blue smoke out” and killed the magic.

Ben Heck's Hackbot Wars Part 1: Assembly Jul 27, 2016

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Ben Heck's Nintendo-Playstation Prototype Part 2 Repair Jul 21, 2016

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In this special episode of 'The Ben Heck Show' Terry and Dan Diebold have brought us the Nintendo PlayStation Prototype. This rare console is thought to be the only one left in existence so we have handled it with extreme care. In this episode our goal is to get it working again. Let's get started!

Ben Heck's Nintendo-Playstation Prototype Pt 1 Teardown Jul 14, 2016

Show notes

In this special episode of 'The Ben Heck Show' Terry and Dan Diebold have brought us the Nintendo PlayStation Prototype. This rare console is thought to be the only one left in existence so we have handled it with extreme care. Our goal is to take it apart, find out how it works and in a future episode get it working again. Let's get started!

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