The Stimmmopped is an electronic guitar tuner made to be used as a guitar pick. This uses two LEDs synchronized to blink at the exact frequency of the string you are tuning. Pluck the string with the corner of the PCB and then shine the light on the string you are tuning. As the vibrating string moves back and forth it will only pick up the spot of light when the frequency matches that of the blinking LED. Once in tune, both red lights will appear to be constantly illuminated and immobile on the string.

An Atmel ATmega8 is used to control the device, interfacing with two buttons and a seven-segment display to choose the pitch currently being tuned. Gibson has a robotic guitar that features an auto-tuning mode, but if you don’t want to shell that much this low cost and simple build is for you.

[via Stimmmopped]

I hope everyone enjoyed your thanksgiving weekend and for the rest of the world I hope your weekend was just as pleasurable.  Usually on holiday weekends I like visit my local movie theater and check out the latest holiday movie.  This year I had the pleasure of some idiot that just had to answer his cell phone while we are all trying to enjoy the movie.  After people told him to be quiet multiple times he finally walked out, talking the entire way out of the theater.  So I got to thinking, why doesn’t the theater block cell phone calls, hospitals do!  Probably a safety concern and since you are already at the hospital it doesn’t matter.

After doing a little research when I got home I found this little treasure.  A DIY Cell Phone Jammer that I can fit right in my pocket.  Now I can block cell phones around me and if there is an emergency I will just turn it off and no one will be none the wiser.

The Cell Phone Jammer is really just a RF jammer that can be built as a DIY project from Adafruit’s Wave Bubble. The Wave Bubble calls itself a self-tuning, wide-bandwidth portable RF jammer.

Self tuning is via dual phase lock loops which nullify the need for a spectrum analyzer. Multiple programmable frequency bands make it work across a range of RFs. Tuned antennas give it a range of 20 feet. Output power is .1W (in high bands) and .3W (in low bands). Two hours of jamming work over dual frequency bands (as used by some cell phones) with a rechargeable internal lithium-ion battery should be enough for your dirty deeds. Or you can get more hours over a single band as used by cordless phones, GPS, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. All this can be crammed in a palm sized cigarette pack. That’s about 7″ x 4″ x 3.2″.

The Wave Bubble site backs-up the project with details under Share-Alike so go ahead and make yourself one.  As the site warns, this is advanced stuff asking for lots of circuitry savvy.

Note: Using a RF Jammers to block communication by disrupting the signal is an exclusive right of the authorities. Among other things they are extensively used to prevent remote activation of explosive devices by terrorists. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules apply and they take a dim view against illegal use of RF jamming devices.

[ Cell Phone Jammer via HacknMod and Wave Bubble ]

First off, if you are the owner of one of these theaters I LOATH YOU. Honestly, it is just because of an overwhelming and uncontrollable feeling of jealousy.  Especially you mister Batcave, COME ON!  You probably have some cool bookcase that swings out of the way when you tilt the statue’s head back to reveal a fireman’s pole that leads to your homemade tumbler. But at least now I get to use the Batcave tag for this article.  F U Sir, I say good day sir…I SAID GOOD DAY!

Okay sorry about that, for those of you still reading check out these amazing home theaters below.  On a side note, I am not sure how many of these setups were say “DIY,” as much as they were “I’m rich, so I’ll just pay someone to do it for me.”  The last picture in the gallery is by far the most amazing setup, one day I will have this setup…

[via Electronic House]

Do you have a home theater that you would like to showcase or talk about?  Post about it in the comments or email us pics to tips@diynerds.com. Let us know which one of these setups cost over $25,000 to build.

I guarantee that you will have a love affair with Boxee the same way I do.  I really can’t quit you Boxee (if you start charging it will be a messy divorce) BUT FOR NOW you’re free and together we will live happily ever after together. What other free program out there allows you to access thousands of free video content from all the major networks on Hulu, play music from Pandora, connect to social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, and lets not forget Flickr. Boxee makes use of all those content providers, to your advantage, and piles all that content into one simple and clean design.  Then they take that awesome GUI (Graphic User Interface) and stream it straight to your living room television.  Boxee is an essential ingredient for any DIY Nerds out there.

The most important feature that Boxee offers me is the ability to not have to pay for cable television each month.  “Boxee has allowed me to replace cable with no remorse.  Most people my age would like to just pay for the channels they want, but cable refuses to give up that option.  Services like Boxee, that allow users choice, are the future of television,” said Jef Holbrook (Stone, Brad. “Boxee, Used to View Web on TV, Generates Buzz.” New York Times 16 January 2009)

Quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.

Boxee is a free download available at www.boxee.tv.  Boxee works on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers, and on Apple’s set-top box, Apple TV.  With Boxee you are given a central access point to your entire catalog of photos, videos, and music on your local network plus access to a wide range of television shows, movies and songs from sites like Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and much more.

Boxee has recently announced a new box-top the Boxee Box.  Boxee’s post on the box has nothing in the way of details yet, so we will all have to stay tuned to the coming weeks.

Check out some of these screenshots

DOWNLOAD BOXEE

How to install Boxee?

Boxee is currently available for Ubuntu Linux (Intrepid and Jaunty), Mac OS X (Intel-based Leopard and Tiger), Apple TV and Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista and 7). Check out the minimum requirements for Boxee.

To download the Boxee application you will need to register at the Boxee website and download the relevant version during the registration process. If you have already registered to Boxee in the past, just login to the website using your username and password, and click on the Download option in the menu to go to the download page.

Installing Boxee on Windows and Mac is quite a straightforward process, accompanied by instructions on screen. Just follow each and every step as requested, and the installation should complete just fine.

Installing Boxee on AppleTV

In order to install Boxee on the AppleTV you need to do the following:

1. Download the ATVUSB-Creator from http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/
2. Download the disk image of AppleTV 2.4 from http://mesu.apple.com/data/OS/061-6242.20090624.Aq20P/2Z694-5660-02…
3. Insert a “bootable” USB drive into your Pc/Mac
4. Run the ATVUSB-Creator
5. Click on Choose a DMG and point it to the downloaded disk image
   
6. Click on Create Patchstick
   
7. Remove the USB drive and plug it into your Apple TV
8. Power on your Apple TV and the patchstick will run the ATV bootloader
9. After the bootloader finishes, remove it and restart your Apple TV
10. It now has options for Boxee / XBMC on the main menu
11. Click on Boxee, then select update launcher and  then update Boxee alpha
12. Once boxee is done installing, restart your Apple TV
13. Click “Boxee”

Installing Boxee on Ubuntu Linux

1. Go to System > Administration > Software Sources.
2. In Sources Software dialogue, select Third-Party Software tab, click Add, and enter:
   for Intrepid: deb http://apt.boxee.tv intrepid main
   for Jaunty: deb http://apt.boxee.tv jaunty main
3. After closing this dialogue you can either use Synaptics and select Boxee for download, or use a terminal window, and enter sudo apt-get install boxee.

Program Features (via Wikipedia)

Audio/Video playback and handling

Boxee can play multimedia files from CD/DVD media using the system’s DVD-ROM drive, local hard disk drive, or stream them over SMB/SAMBA/CIFS shares (Windows File-Sharing), or eventually UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) shares (not available in v0.9.14). Boxee is designed to take advantage of the system’s network port if a broadband Internet connection is available, using the IMDb to obtain metadata information, thumbnails, and reviews on movies, TheTVDB for TV show thumbnails and metadata, CDDB (via Freedb) for Audio-CD track-listings, and album-cover thumbnails via AMG. Boxee can stream Internet-video-streams, and play Internet-radio-stations (such as SHOUTcast). Boxee also includes the option to submit music usage statistics to Last.fm and a weather-forecast (via weather.com). It also has music/video-playlist features, picture/image-slideshow functions, an MP3+CDG karaoke function and many audio-visualizations and screensavers. Boxee can in addition upscale/upconvert all 480p/576p standard-resolution videos and output them to 720p, 1080i, or 1080p HDTV-resolutions.

Music Library

The Music Library is one of the Boxee metadata databases and another key feature of Boxee. It automatically organizes your music collection by information stored in your music files ID meta tags, such as title, artist, album, genre and popularity.

Digital picture/image display in detail

Boxee handles all common digital picture/image formats with the options of panning/zooming and slideshow with “Ken Burns Effect”, with the use of CxImage open source library code. Boxee can also handle CBZ (ZIP) and CBR (RAR) comic book archive files; this feature lets you view/read, browse and zoom the pictures of comics pages these contain without uncompressing them first.

Add-on plugins (widgets/gadgets) python scripts

Boxee features a Python Scripts Engine and WindowXML application framework (a XML-based widget toolkit for creating a GUI for widgets) in a similar fashion to Apple Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets and Microsoft Gadgets in Windows Sidebar. Python widget scripts allow non-developers to themselves create new add-ons functionality to Boxee, (using the easy to learn Python programming language), without knowledge of the complex C/C++ programming language that the rest of the Boxee software is written in. Current plugin scripts add-ons include functions like Internet-TV and movie-trailer browsers, cinema guides, Internet-radio-station browsers (example SHOUTcast), and much more.

BitTorrent client, interface, and torrent trackers

Boxee also includes a built-in BitTorrent client, with a frontend for it integrated into the Boxee interface, and there are also Torrent links to legal BitTorrent trackers download sites available incorporated by default. Through Boxee’s Python plugin system it is also possible for the end-users to make themselves or add unofficial plugins made by third-party persons for other BitTorrent trackers.

Skins, skinning, and the skinning-engine

Boxee GUI source code is based on XBMC Media Center which is noted for having a very flexible GUI toolkit and robust framework for its GUI, using a standard XML base, making theme-skinning and personal customization very accessible. Users can create their own skin (or simply modify an existing skin) and share it with others via public websites dedicated for XBMC (and Xbox) skins trading.

This gift guide is going to be a little different than just the usual crap you can buy—it’s a guide that can start you on an amazing journey of building electronics, learning new skills. If you’re really motivated and innovative, you just might invent something new.  Composed from a couple different sources, this gift guide will definitely win the heart of the nerd in your life.

When you see all the DIY Nerd projects here on diynerds.com you might not know where to begin. Through the combination of Gizmodo, Make, and Adafruit Industries here are some favorite tools, resources and beginner electronics kits that will get you going and give you something fun to show your friends. Many kits and gadgets are open source—you can buy the parts, etch a circuit board, build a “breadboard” or in some cases just build parts of them by frankensteining  a junk pile of fail-gadgets which to sum it up means do you don’t have to spend a lot.  Here are some the tips and tools Phil Torrone, senior editor at MAKE magazine and creative director for Adafruit Industries, suggests for all DIY Nerds…

THE TOOLS

Put down the xbox controller and start out on your electronics adventure. Have you always wanted to wield the mighty soldering iron? Tired of saying “I’d totally get into electronics if I only knew what tools to get…”? Working with substandard equipment is a terrible way to learn electronics: A lot of frustration with too little success. The right tool set will keep you progressing without the stressing. This toolbox contains carefully selected hand tools that will last you for many many years. Keep in mind that you don’t need to buy this tool pack—just look it over (itemized on the product page). Consider it a list of good things to have to get started. You may even have some of these tool collecting dust in the garage already! $100 [
MAKE & BUILD STUFF

Microcontrollers! These are basically cheap, tiny computers that you can run simple programs, control motors and basically just make stuff happen in an awesome DIY Nerd way.

For the longest time BASIC Stamp/PIC was the dominant chip that hobbyists used, and still to this day PICs are very popular. However, over the last few years an open-source project from Italy called “Arduino“—named after the Italian king Arduino of Ivrea, who ruled from 1002 to 1015, of course!—it has captured the hearts and minds of many beginners. No one knows why it’s so popular (over 100k units!) but I’d say it’s because the software to program them runs on Mac, PC and Linux, there’s a huge community of artists who make amazing things and share them, and it’s pretty inexpensive. And since it’s 100% open source, you can make your own versions, improve on them and sell them if you wanted to.
You don’t need to buy an Arduino, you can “make” one using a breadboard and a lot of parts—but let’s say you want to dive in and pick up an Arduino with enough projects to teach you how things work, and help you explore microcontroller basics. Covers LEDs, transistors, motors, integrated circuits, pushbuttons, variable resistors, photo resistors, temperature sensors & relays. I suggest the Arduino ARDX experimentation pack for $85. If that breaks the bank, choose from less expensive packs: a $65 starter pack, a $50 budget pack or just a straight-up $30 Arduino.

If you can scrounge up the parts on your own you can always download and print up the free booklet which includes all the lessons. If you’re the book-learnin’ type, there’s a great little one called Getting Started With Arduino, $13, written by Massimo Banzi, co-founder of the Arduino Project.

The Arduino is great and there are a lot of “shields” to expand its functionality (music, GPS, internet), but what if you want to get your hands dirty and make something more complicated? Here are three of my favorite beginner electronics kits to get you started—as always, they are open source so you could make these on your own too.

The first lets you juice up all the gadgets—MP3 player, camera, cell phone, etc.—that you plug into a USB port to charge. The Minty Boost is small and simple but very powerful. If you have a new or old phone that always runs down, make one of these to get a lot of extra talk time. Be sure to check the project page for the latest compatibility notes for many devices. $20 [Minty Boost kit]

Relive the fun of CES 2008 everyday with TV-B-Gone. People are still polarized about the whole CES thing. Everyone was complaining that CES sucked because it was just about “giant TVs” and when someone turned them off for a few seconds the intarwebs world freaked out. I don’t have any opinion on it, other than that CES should be more exciting than a TV-turn-off freak out. That said, the TV-B-Gone is a wonderful device to learn the ins-and-outs of IR signaling, and it’s fun to turn off TVs in store windows that are closed at night to save power. (That’s what I like to do.) The new Universal TV-B-Gone kit is an ultra-high-power version of the TV-B-Gone (assembled), able to reach 150 feet and can be used anywhere in the world. Plus, you make it yourself. $20 [TV-B-Gone (kit or assembled)]

Spell words in the air with your bicycle wheels using SpokePOV, an easy-to-make electronic kit toy. The project includes a free schematic design and open software for uploading and editing stored bitmap images. Perfect for those late-night Critical Mass rides or your Burning Man transport. $100 for triple; $38 for one [SpokePOV]

HACKABLE ELECTRONICS AND 3D PRINTING
Next up, I put together some of my favorite “gadgets” that aren’t necessarily kits but are hackable. Many companies are inviting their customers to hack and mod their devices, the folks are the pioneers!

The Chumby does so many things it’s hard to actually tell someone what it is. I usually say it’s an internet alarm clock that runs widgets. Most people seem to get that, or they’ll get curious enough to check out the site. The latest version, the cool retro-looking Chumby One is out. The product is open source, so you can hack it, mod it, get the source and schematics and best of all make widgets for it. (Chumby trivia: The engineer behind it, Bunnie Huang, is one of the best engineers in the world. If you’re old school, you’ll remember him as the first person to hack the original Xbox, and as author of Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering.) $99 [Chumby; Review]

Bug is the Lego of computers. Make a GPS camera MP3 player? You can! It’s a modular, open-source system for building whatever comes to mind, by plugging little modules into each other till you get the desired functionality. If you want to program them, you need to know Java, but there are also a lot of apps you can just download. BUGbase core $450; assorted modules from $70; monster kit $750 [Bug Labs]

MakerBot is a new entry in the world of 3D printing. Based on the open-source RepRap project, Brooklyn-based MakerBot is becoming the default install for any self-respecting hacker space. (Well, that and a laser cutter.) The MakerBot can print 3D objects you make or download—Thingiverse is a great source. The coolest thing I’ve seen lately is a print out of Thom Yorke’s head. $700 [MakerBot]

MY FANTASY GADGET

The Giz gang asked me to name a “dream gadget,” and of course for me it’s something that makes things: A “pick-and-place” machine, namely the MDC 7722fv from Japan. You could use it to make iPhones in your living room if you really wanted to. I have one now, so at least for me, the fantasy has became a reality. I’m currently making accelerometers and Drawdios (musical pencils) but next year expect to see an open-source watch and who knows? Maybe you’ll see me selling cloned iPhones on Canal Street in NYC, next to the counterfeit DVD and purse dudes. Over $30,000 [MDC; US distributor]

Got questions or comments? Post ‘em up below. I’ll try to answer all of them that I can!

Phil Torrone is the senior editor at MAKE magazine and creative director for Adafruit Industries, an open source hardware manufacturer in NYC. In the interest of disclosure, please note that many of the products you see above are sold though Adafruit and Make, but it just so happens, the source for the best info is also the source for many of the goods.

Raise your hand if you have always wanted to draw a picture using the extension cord to your lamp…really I am the only one!?  Artist Maisie Maud Broadhead has found a way to incorporate the cable of a lamp into the decor of a space in most impressive fashion that actually adds to aesthetics! Cable Drawings by Maisie Maud Broadhead is a series of installations created with wire flex and cable fixings. A fantastic idea…we’re now looking at our CAT-5 cables in a whole new light.

[Cable Art via Unplggd]

It’s time to get down to basics.  See there are birds and then there are bees…sorry let me skip ahead.  You have built your kick ass HTPC.  You got your Mame machine hooked up in the garage and the KitchenPC is good to go.  Wiring your house with Cat-5e cable could make transfer times disappear.

You are probably saying to yourself, I’ll go wireless.  You could most definitely do that, but you are not going to get the same speeds and you are definitely not going to get the same security as a hardwired network.  So give up a weekend and upgrade your house with Instructables user Rogue Agent .  Rogue Agent gets into the nuts, bolts, studs, and boxes needed to wire a house with omni-present cable in a fairly professional manner. The tutorial is based on setting up an actual cable switching box on a server-type rack. For those who just need to run cable from one room to another, the tips on finding, mounting, and securing cable through the walls, without your home looking like the scene of a sledgehammer party, are just as helpful.

Have you taken the dive into home cable networking? What guides, tutorials, or tips do you wish you’d known from the start? Tell us, and share the links, in the comments.

[How to Wire Your House With Cat-5 for Networking via Instructables]

The nice thing about IKEA furniture is that it is cheap and easy to hack. In other words, lets say that you were to buy two cheap $30 Gorm shelving units and assembled them to discover them that one was crooked. Well then, it would be really easy to spend an afternoon converting the crooked one into a solid, stylish and symmetric bookshelf bench. As you probably just guessed, this Instructable will show you how to convert a Gorm shelving unit into a bookshelf bench. With a few extra peices of hardware and a couple of basic power tools, you could be on your way to relaxation and organization all at the same time.

[Ikea Hack Bookshelf Bench via Make]

Living in a one-bedroom apartment with your wife that is not happy when you are yelling at the 8–year old kid that just pwned you at Modern Warfare 2 leaves you with few options.  Doesn’t she understand this is WAR!  Story of my life.  In order to keep the peace and avoid a divorce Jared Brown developed the NerdCart.  The NerdCart is a modified tool cart that he transformed into a mobile workstation and media center. This allows him to keep his computer and gaming equipment organized and mobile enough to wheel to the best spot to keep down the trash talking.  Now you can too create a NerdCart and teabag all the noobs and trash talk all you want without disturbing those around you.

I came up with the idea for this project because I needed a fairly mobile station for my game consoles.

I have a weekly game night and my wife, understandably, doesn’t want to hear me playing fake war with my friends. We live in a one-bedroom apartment, so I need to be able to cart my hobby out of whichever room it isn’t welcome in at any given time.

I decided later that I would add the desk functionality to serve as a computer workstation.

The entire project was about $175, including the tool cart – Jared Brown aka RobotsOnCandy.

Jared drilled large holes in the cart to route the cables through and cleaned them up with rubber grommets, the power strip is mounted to a piece of plywood glued to the underside of one of the shelves and the tool drawer was converted into a keyboard tray with hidden storage underneath.

[NerdCart via NerdCart.com]