Here's a cheap hardware hack that will make you the coolest kid on the block: Turn old 3D video game glasses into battery powered cyborg sunglasses with adjustable brightness!
----- Warning! Half assed technical instructions below this line ------
These glasses which you can buy on ebay are made with a 2.5cm square LCD panel. They were originally intended to flicker in sync with the video game so that only one eye was clear at a time, thus creating the 3D effect. To turn them into sunglasses, we need to connect both LCDs together and make a circuit to drive them with alternating current (driving an LCD with DC will cause streaks to appear over time).
Start by cutting the cord on the glasses. Each LCD has two wires: ground and positive. Connect the like wires together so they can be controlled by one output.
You can make whatever oscillating circuit you want, but I used the tried and true 555-timer in astable mode. Get the CMOS version so you can feed 9v through it, because that is enough voltage to turn the LCD nice and dark. Use a calculator like this to figure out resistor/capacitor values that will get you around 400hz. My guess is that anything between 100-2000hz will work fine. Hook the positive of the glasses to the output pin of the 555 timer (pin 3).
Now power it up and the LCDs should turn dark. But wait! Want to adjust the brightness of your sunglasses like a real cyborg? Of course you do! Create a voltage divider by wiring a potentiometer between the oscillator output and ground, with the sunglasses' positive wire connected to the middle pin. Turn the knob and your sunglasses get darker! Now you can experience what it's like to be a robot!
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]
