GRYNX

19th 2009f February, 2009

DIY High quality Macro lens

by @ 17:27. Filed under Camera and Webcam, Hack, Other, Projects
Canon DIY Macro
Have you ever played around with the macro mode on a camera (you know the ‘flower’ mode)? Most people have, but it’s not that impressive. Mostly because it’s not really close up. A regular macro shot will give you something like 0.5-0.7x magnification, which is… not very impressive.

So lets do something about that!
In this article we’ll show you one way to convert a Canon EF-S 18-55 standard lens to a super macro lens giving you from 1 to 4.5 times magnification! Then we’re talking an object of .2 inches (5mm) wide filling the whole picture!

This image on the side is a long time exposure of an alligator clip up close taken with the lens.

Pages 1-5 shows you the lens works and ideas behind it.
Page 6 contains some sample pictures made with the lens
Page 7 shows you the difference in different focal lengths (how much magnification)
Page 8 demonstrates the practical differences in aperture and what’s useful
Page 9 shows you in detail the different depth of fields with different apertures

Link: DIY High quality macro lens out of a Canon EF-S 18-55

18th 2007f March, 2007

Wine in laptop – is that really a good idea?

by @ 17:32. Filed under Projects
Wine in laptop
How often do you think people (maybe you?) spill beverages onto their laptops?
Apparently more often then you think. After the ‘liquid spill’ article last year I’ve been contacted numerous amount of times by people that spilled a bit of wine on their keyboard or that had their cute little three year old pour milk over the laptop.

With this in mind and a bit of time over I decided to sacrifice a laptop with a damage screen and see if it could be recovered after having a glass of wine and one of lemonade poured over it.

So, was it a sacrifice in the end? Have a look at the article which also includes a video (god, I’m a director all of a sudden) of how it was done.

Link: Wine in laptop

23rd 2007f January, 2007

Greylist – freeware Grey list for Exchange v1.3

by @ 13:51. Filed under Programming, Projects
Greylist for Exchange

First my apologies to all people who come back here day after day and wonder why there’s no action on Grynx. Well, try working 10 hours a day, studying for your MCSE every evening and then take care of your family as well. I’m simply not allowed into my garage any more :)
Hopefully this will change in the next coming months – but I make no promises.

In September 2007 I published an little application of mine called Greylist. At that stage Greylist was a bit unpolished and rough but it did evolve during the next coming months whenever I could stick a bit of time into it.

Today I published v1.3 which now is more of a grownup and handles both stress and problems in a more correct way.
Some interesting statistics about the artice: Over 8500 people has read the article in the last three months and it has been downloaded over 1500 since end November.
Not bad for me that didn’t have a clue about programming 6 months ago. Pat Pat on my own back :)

Since I have had a lot of problems with false positives with the black lists that I’m using on my Exchange 2003 server I started looking into another way of filtering spam…
The problem with this is that there doesn’t seem to be any free products out there for Exchange and as I don’t want to set up a Linux box ( yet another box in the rack ) I decided to write one myself…

Features of today includes selective blocking (sender ip and/or sender address and/or recipient address), stores data in a access db or in MS SQL, the database can be shared across the enterprise, automatic pruning. In the latest version I added functionality for different actions upon grey listing a recipient as well as custom server messages.
And in many scenarios it block up to 98% of all spam!!

If you’ve read this far and don’t have a clue about what I’m talking about then let me say this:
– Grey listing temporarily blocks an email in an attempt to filter out spam servers.
– Greylist (the program I wrote) only runs on Exchange 2000 and 2003.

If you’re an Exchange admin and you have problems with spam then be sure to check out my implementation Greylist – freeware Grey list for Exchange

23rd 2006f October, 2006

Another hard drive clock

by @ 1:36. Filed under Hack, Projects
Hard drive clock
I made one of these back in December last year (link) and then I saw another interesting version from Rick.

OK, everyone has seen the dude who made an LED POV (persistence of vision) clock out of a hard drive, and we’re all very impressed (no, seriously). But not all of us have those skills. This is a hard drive clock that requires only a power drill and some basic hand tools. No electronics knowledge is necessary. Total project time: 60-90 minutes.

I think this one is interesting as you can actually see that it’s a hard drive. The one I made had a different goal though – to only have hard drive parts visible.
Anyway – I like’em both.

Link: Harddrive clock
[via]

18th 2006f October, 2006

Wireless remote control out of a Ding-Dong

by @ 11:38. Filed under Hack, Projects, Wireless
Wireless remote
John Schuch did what I’ve been thinking about for quiet some time. To take a existing RF device and turn it into a power (AC) control.

With the addition of one capacitor, one relay, and a small piece of wire we can convert an inexpensive wireless doorbell into a remotely controlled relay useful for a wide range of applications. These include remote PC starting, lighting control, Halloween effects control, or virtually anything that can be controlled by a pair of relay contacts.

And here’s some food for thought for you DIY’ers. How about taking one of those cute small radio controll cars and turn it into a dimmer control? The benefit of using these small cars as a build base would be that the rf reciever cards are very very small.

Link: Turning a wireless doorbell into a remote control relay

17th 2006f October, 2006

DIY Microscope Webcam

by @ 11:36. Filed under Camera and Webcam, Hack, Projects
Microscope webcam
Jose Luis Garrido slaughtered an old cdrom reader… and put the lens for the laser in front of his webcam.
What did he get? A DIY microscope webcam – kind of cool actually!

The page is in Spanish so I also give you the option to read it through Google’s translation engine.

Link: DIY Microscope webcam (Spanish)
Link: DIY Microscope webcam (English)

16th 2006f October, 2006

RBG Mood Lamp

by @ 21:02. Filed under LED and IR, Projects
Mood lamp
Toon Beerten sent us this wonderful DIY mood lamp.

On this page i will explain how i created my own colour changing lamp with red, green and blue leds that fades between all colours of the rainbow. It really comes out well at night when other light are dimmed. In daylight conditions the colors aren’t noticed well. Although it’s low budget i must say the result is nice.

Link: RGB Mood Lamp

15th 2006f September, 2006

Greylist – a free grey list for Exchange.

by @ 3:29. Filed under Programming, Projects
Greylist
I know – I know – I know. Programs don’t really fit into Grynx’s profile – but hey – I make’ed something and now I’m sharing it with you. It might not interest you that much if you’re not an Exchange admin or have an Exchange server, but that’s just the way things are.

Greylist is simply a greylist program for Exchange 2003 ( should work on 2000 ) which will delay incoming mail for a couple of minutes. In my environment it blocks 98% of all spam and so far it hasn’t blocked a single ‘good’ email.
And as I like the whole idea of open source, I’m publishing it just like that – for free. Or rather freeware.

I wrote this as I couldn’t find any free grey list programs out there. Lots and lots for free for Linux, but only commercial products for Exchange.

Link: Greylist v1.0 for Exchange

2nd 2006f July, 2006

Binder clips and cables

by @ 14:56. Filed under Non electric hacks, Other
How about making without making??

This is such a thing which actually isn’t a project in itself – but if it will give you a tenth as much help as its given me in the past years then it’s something I just have to share with you.

In short – attach your cables in a smart way with an ordinary office supply and keep them movable/slidable.

Link: Binder clips and cables

18th 2006f April, 2006

How to build a versatile and compact 9v LED lamp

by @ 12:47. Filed under LED and IR, Projects
9v LED lamp
P.O. got so excited by all the responses from the TicTac flashlight project that he sent us another of his creations.
This time it’s a LED lamp created from the scraps of an old 9v battery and three LED’s. No need to use a resistor here as he’s used three 3.5v LED’s which adds up to a required voltage of 10.5v… which the battery can’t supply.
The benefit of this is that you don’t have any losses in a resistor and the battery will end up lasting longer – but the LED’s will not operate on 100%.

Take it or leave it, this is a great project that involves few components and has a compact and robust design.

Link: Versatile compact 9v LED lamp

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