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 Read the rest

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, … Read the rest

Dan Kaminsky’s SSL Hell

Here is another segment from Dan Kaminsky’s talk at Toorcon 8. You can download the high quality version here. He discovered approximately 1 in 3 deployed SSL boxes share a private key. This means that you can buy a box off of eBay and read encrypted SSL traffic from any identical box. He has also got a trick for … Read the rest

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 … Read the rest

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 … Read the rest

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 – … Read the rest

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 … Read the rest