Friday Night Double Cap Extra


[scott] sent along his lego ipod dock.

The letter [M] brings us the oscilloscope terminal (AVR based text displayed via oscope).

[Max] sent in his funky alarm clock mod.

[Chad] sent in a question, but I dig his custom camera housings.

[sprite_tm] sent in his new use for a cheap photo display.

UPDATE: Torrents for all the talks at the Chaos Communication Congress have been posted.

USB Transferer (AKA USB Gameboy Card Interface)


[Jose] sent in his efforts to build his USB Transferer. I’m pretty sure it’s a gameboy flash cartridge interface based on the Atmel AT90USB647 AVR microcontroller. Once the prototype board came in, he soldered the controller, gutted an old gameboy for the cartridge connector and had the device showing up on his PC by the end of the day. Oddly, the card he’s interfacing with is a USB device on it’s own. Until a few more details are published, I’d assume that the interface would be useful for connecting to more than just that particular card.

Great Intro To Surface Mount Soldering


[Scott] sent in his video how-to on surface mount soldering. The macro video quality is excellent, and the demo is great even if you’re already into SMD work. Everything can be done with fine solder, a decent soldering station, tweezers, a 10x loupe and a good selection of flux. I’ve managed quite a bit of SMD work without external flux, but this sort of demo shows just how effective it is.

How To Make A Vacuum Tube


[marco] sent in this video (scroll down) showing how to make a vacuum tube by hand. The page and captions are in french, but it’s pretty interesting to watch. A small spot welder, some fairly basic glass working tools and a vacuum generator are required, but the technology is definitely within reach for the dedicated hardware hacker.