Design Challenge mini-extra

posted Nov 15th 2006 11:31am by Will O'Brien
filed under: misc hacks

Check out our new contest – design a business card PC board.

[Windell] sent in his tv-b-gone retro mod. [I want one that changes all the TVs to the SciFi channel.] He points out the ultra tv-b-gone as well.

[pillowcase] sent in his iTunes shower button – skip songs mid shampoo.

We heard about making a portable high power laser from a DVD burner laser yesterday, but the bandwidth was exceeded before we got there. It’s back up, for now.

[Mitch] let us know that a few days ago+ we appeared on TV in a lock bumping ad on Channel 6 WOWT News in Nebraska. Anyone else seen this?

Don’t forget that this site is driven by tips, so keep us in mind when you whip out the soldering iron.

Comments [14]

Reader Comments

That Shower button is cool but if you use an external USB number pad instead of a mouse, you could use the left and right for the next and previous buttons. just a thought. and if you were really looking for something to do you could take apart an old keyboard and do the same :D

Posted at 1:47 am on Nov 16th, 2006 by spugman

I think tuning to SciFi is worse than turning off.

Posted at 1:54 am on Nov 16th, 2006 by Eliot Phillips

No mention of the tip that I sent in about the episode of Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel where the crew member is seen wearing an HAD shirt repetitively.

In case your wondering, its the bit where they go to the monkey sanctuary in Africa. The guy is a little bit hefty, and wearing a black shirt, with a “Skull-and-Cross-Wrenches” logo on it.

Oh well… my tips go unannounced…

Posted at 1:54 am on Nov 16th, 2006 by farris

I’m originally from Nebraska so a friend pinged me to let me know about the story. I actually emailed WOWT to say I’d be happy to comment. Well, the segment aired and was really light on information. Probably because Hack-A-Day was nowhere to be found. They didn’t show us once. They just used us for their stupid ad. That, my friends, is what a #1 Google rank gets you.

Posted at 2:09 am on Nov 16th, 2006 by Eliot Phillips

I’m confused, what happened?

Posted at 9:45 am on Nov 16th, 2006 by mastershake916

farris – You mean the episode with Vexcon exterminators?? I think their logo is very similar, but isn’t Hackaday.

http://www.vexconinc.com/

Posted at 10:24 am on Nov 16th, 2006 by ed3

farris – Nevermind… Read the rest of your post… Duh (someone one to delete this and the other one??)

Posted at 10:26 am on Nov 16th, 2006 by ed3

Yup, and i shot ‘em a tip about the rats with LEDs in ‘em too.

-waddya gonna do?

Posted at 10:40 am on Nov 16th, 2006 by strider_mt2k

THe site is down again. I have some extra bandwidth on my webserver if anyone can get me the pages/images to put up the mirror. Or, if someone else has a mirror location, that would be great. Sounds like a really cool hack.

Posted at 10:48 am on Nov 16th, 2006 by brian

if you paste the link in to google and click on the ‘cached’ link below the search result, you can see the page, sans images. thanks google.

Posted at 11:07 am on Nov 16th, 2006 by phx

There is a good working mirror at: http://www.vilos.com/lasers/lasers-howto.html

Posted at 3:08 pm on Nov 16th, 2006 by Steve

Okay, so on the DVD laser, would it still pop balloons if you put a collimating lense on it and fired it from 100ft?

Posted at 5:19 pm on Nov 16th, 2006 by brian

Has anyone else here tried the laser thing? I have harvested 4 lasers from different drives and run them from 3.0v batteries (to test) and also from a pair of AA batteries. They seem to go dead after about a minute of use with either battery type. is 3v too much?

Posted at 12:14 am on Nov 19th, 2006 by Spork

^^ you need to use limited current either through a properly sized resistor or a regulator circuit or they will go runaway and suck a LOT of current and burn out rather quickly, same as an LED.

time to read up on some basic electronics!

Posted at 6:15 pm on Nov 20th, 2006 by grim factor