Happy Halloween Extra


[Update: pumpkin carved by Team Hack-A-Day member mastershake916]

We’ve got plenty of tricks around here, and I’ve got a treat coming up – you’ll hear about it in the next podcast.

[Ronald Schaten] sent me his USB LED fader. ATMega, PWM lit LEDs, he uses it to indicate status on his pvr.

[computerguru365] sent in his cell phone car charger turned USB cable

[steve] sent in this over the top C64DTV mod.

[Everett] sent along his button activated PSP shoulder lighting.Nice tiny soldering work for that on.

[Jorge] sent in his friends latest junk art metal lathe. Not an easy thing to build – Nice!

[gijs] sent me this crazy bent Casio SK-1. We’ve had a few of these on Hackaday before.

[seniorcheez] sent in his iPod shuffle dock with integrated power and tunecast.

Thinkpad Style Keyboard Light


[Sprite_tm] keeps coming up with nice work. This time he sent in his thinkpad style keyboard LED lighting solution for his toughbook. I know, you’re thinking… ‘it’s a LED…’ He used an ATtiny13 to monitor the caps lock LED. If it’s operated two times in succession, the LED is turned on and off. Nice, clean and effective.

[By the way, Part 2 of my diy projector how-to is up on engadget. Look for part 3 later Tuesday.]

Wireless Card = ARM Development Platform


[Archantos] sent us this one. The mustumbler project is actually trying to use some external hardware to make a miniature wireless stumbler. [Archantos] points out that it’s could be a cheap way to get your hands on an ARM development platform. He’s right. Just a few connections gets access to the I2C bus, a GPIO expander for I2C runs the LCD and an EEPROM is there for program storage. The software is still being sorted out, but the hardware itself is functional. If they can manage to reverse engineer the Conexant chipset, they should have a very promising platform.

Ask Ben Heck

If you missed it, I put up a new podcast yesterday. You can subscribe via the iTunes store or just use the RSS podcast feed. You guys asked for interviews, so here we go. Ben Heckendorn is going to be our first one. He and I are going to put it together later this week, so submit your question in the comments if you want me to ask him. [I’ll pick and choose, so make it good]
Ben built the Xbox 360 laptop, the colecovision portable, the PSP analog joystick, and plenty of others.

Hackaday Podcast 4


I’ve been thinking of resurrecting the podcast for a while. Now that my new mic and preamp finally showed up, it’s here, That’s right, podcast 4 is up. It’s an experiment, so let me know what you think. If it goes over well, I’ll try to make it a weekly feature. In the meantime, you can get it here – I’ll let you know when it’s published via iTunes. Meanwhile, here’s the rss feed if you want to subscribe. If you want to know about the hardware, you can check it out here.

[Yes, there will be a new hack later today.]
Oh yes, I forgot to add the music credits. Today’s podcast featured Captured by Ronka R and Discoshit by Voxter

Solar Backpack Ipod/usb Charger


Jason sent me his solar ipod charger how-to. The regulator may not be neccesary – but there are so many models, I don’t know if the new Nano’s hold up to the old power input standard. He put a 7805 regulator on a 6v 100ma flexible panel that he mounted on his backpack. I’ve seen this sort of thing on a shuffle before, but this one should work for most iPods. USB power management sometimes shoots itself in the foot, but iPods are willing to pull power if it’s not present. It’s nice, clean and simple. I’d consider adding some high temp hot glue (or epoxy)to keep the soldered connections from breaking.