Hackit: Netbook haters?

eee

Gadget blogs have been a fluster the last day about TechCrunch stating that netbooks “just aren’t good enough“. Writing a response post hasn’t proven very hard given the number of factual errors in the original. Boing Boing Gadgets points out that the low-end of the spectrum that TC post seems to cover are almost impossible to purchase because … Read the rest

MIDI drums for Guitar Hero and Rock Band

Embedded above is [egyokeo]‘s solution for using MIDI drums with Guitar Hero. He’s playing a DrumKAT MIDI kit. It connects to a PC running his MIDI Hero software, which handles timing and multinote combinations. The PC uses a USB ToolStick microcontroller to send commands to the console using an FPS adapter or soldered into the instrument. It’s a fairly good … Read the rest

Roborama 2008b

guys2

The Dallas Personal Robotics Group held their semi-annual Roborama contest on Saturday November 22nd in Garland, TX. The DPRG had a table at the recent Austin Makers Faire. Each spring and fall, they hold the Roborama contests for autonomous robots. The spring event has contests for outdoor self-navigating robots. The 2008b contests were designed to test the abilities of … Read the rest

Upgrade an electric lock keypad

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[OldGrover] bought a Weiser electronic lock. Only 6 months after installing it, the keypad stopped working. Instead of just accepting this, [OldGrover] built a better button pad for his lock.  He decided to go with big push buttons instead of a similar to stock membrane system. After tracing out where the original buttons connected, he attached his new buttons … Read the rest

PS360 controller

ps360_ds3_1

[Ben Heck] posted his PS360 controller. This is the case of an Xbox360 controller with the guts of the Dual Shock 3 from the PS3. They Dpad is from a ps2. We guess that if you can build them any way you want, you might as well make it exactly how you want it. Wasn’t there a time when … Read the rest

Harmonic keyboard controller

harmonic

[aris] is continuing work on his harmonic table keyboard midi controller. Instead of the traditional linear keyboard layout, keys are laid out in a hexagonal pattern. This is the same idea as the C-Thru AXiS, which you can find a video demo of here. Along the left edge is a row of buttons to transpose the layout up … Read the rest

Sixaxis in OSX and Vista

sixaxis

Here are a couple small programs to help you make the most of your Playstation 3 Sixaxis controllers. [netkas] heard that quite a few people were having trouble using the Sixaxis controller in Windows Vista. He solved it for himself and uploaded an exe for you to use. He then did essentially the same thing for OSX. This should … Read the rest