Contest: win Push Showcase tickets

nokia push logo

Who is ready to win some tickets to the PUSH N900 Showcase? The showcase is an event where all 5 teams from the Push N900 competition are going meet up in London and present their N900 hacks. Including N900s that fly, skate, Etch a Sketch(TM), and more. We also hear there is going to be a poll-dancing robot thanks to [Giles Walker]. We were given tickets to the event, and decided to pass them … [Read more...]

Happy meal toy scavenging

avatar-salvaging

We're sometimes shocked at the electronics included in 'disposable' items. For some reason (our tech inclinations?) we've been getting those audio greeting cards from relatives and it kind of kills us to see the PCB, batteries, and speaker in what would have otherwise been a fully recyclable card. Now we've got several sets of those guts waiting around for our next project. [David Cook] cracked … [Read more...]

Drill-powered go cart

drill-powered-go-kart

Here we have a toy car modified to use a drill as the powertrain. [Hans] has thrown a 12v 4.5 amp battery in to power the motor and it tops out around 9 miles per hour. This is similar in concept to the trash-based go cart from last week but this time there's video. He's built a couple of these and there's footage of both after the break. Our favorite part is from the first video when dad chuckles … [Read more...]

Adding a netbook keyboard light

vostra-A90-keyboard-light

[Vikash] was having trouble using his netbook in the dark so he added a keyboard light. He's got a Dell Vostro A90 which is the same hardware as the popular Dell Mini 9. We agree that the condensed keyboard layout makes it hard to type without looking; just try to find the quotation mark, brackets, and tilde keys! He added an LED to the bezel around the LCD screen in order to shed light on the … [Read more...]

10,000 watt fluorescent array

This is an array of flourescent tubes that form a display. The video above is just two modules of a ten module installation that [Valentin] and his team are showing at an exhibition in Berlin tomorrow. The connected modules form something of a scrolling 16-segment display (similar to the 17 segment display modules of the ninja party badges but much larger). They're using triacs, optocouplers, DMX, … [Read more...]

5 legged locomotion

When designing legged robots, we generally see an even number of legs. Mainly, we think, it is due to us modelling things after nature. But with robotics, you're free to do whatever you want. [Iketomu-san] has built this unsettling 5 legged robot out of parts he had lying around. The gait is fairly interesting. He mentions that it could be used for robot fighting, where the odd leg would serve as … [Read more...]

NES lovers grew up and now they’re coding for Palm

palm-pre-konami-code

In case you missed it back in June, the Palm Pre was rooted by extracting the Root ROM from a Palm tool used to reset a device with damaged software. A lot has been learned from examining the code inside that ROM but we're most amused by one thing in particular. If you grew up in the 80's there's a pretty good chance you know the Konami Code by heart. So did the developers of WebOS, the firmware … [Read more...]