Sometimes your project needs a lot of non-volatile ROM, right on cue [Matthew] let us know how to not only connect, interface, read, and write to SD cards with a PIC over serial, but also how to do the above mentioned with an old PATA HDD. For those without a PIC/serial connection don’t fret, [nada] let us know about his Bus Pirate SD card hack, of which our personal favorite part is the creative use of an old 5.25″ floppy connector as the SD card socket.
[Adam] wanted a stereo that could stand up to rain and keep sand out. He ended up building this beach stereo out of a cooler. The cooler’s already made to be water tight. He cut holes in the front and back for marine speakers and added a water-tight bezel and cover for the controls on the deck. Inside you’ll find a marine battery to power the unit. Now he and his friends can rock-out even in poor weather thanks to this portable and rugged unit.
[Travis Goodspeed] wrote a guide to firmware flashing for the IM-ME. He’s using a GoodFET open-source JTAG adapter that he designed to do the programming. This is really taking [Dave's] work on the device and running with it. The end goal being to develop an operating system for the device. If you haven’t read the past articles, once hacked this becomes a development board for the Chipcon CC1110 processor with keyboard, LCD screen, and wireless communications included.
This steam-powered tank is really something of a steam-electric hybrid. Steam provides the locomotion, but an electrical system provides the remote control and steering. A full boiler will provide 10-15 minutes of operation which you can see in the video after the break. Before you leave a nasty comment: Yes, we realize this project is from several years ago. It’s new to us and the completion date doesn’t diminish the novelty of this well-executed build. This is the quality and uniqueness we’re used to seeing from [Crabfu].
[Aaron] calls this project “Stochasticity”. It uses two sponges as a musical interface. The performer wears a wrist strap and then draws on the table with water from the sponge to play different notes. You really need to watch the video to fully understand what’s going on here.
We’re guessing that this is Arduino based since some of his other projects are as well. You can try out another quick project of his, an Arduino electromagnetic field detector. Check out video of that after the break.
There’s something viscerally pleasing about simple solutions. [Kip] came up with one in the form of a scratch controller. The spindle from an optical drive is used to hold a CD in place, which acts as the LP for scratching. The sensor from an optical mouse is mounted upside down below the CD and detects the rotation of the disc. From there it’s just a matter of setting up your software to get the reading from that mouse. He’s had some trouble finding disc surfaces that the mouse sensor will read reliably. We’d recommend trying some of those stick-on inkjet CD labels.
This is similar to a scratch controller we saw in 2008. That one was actually repurposing the IR encoding from inside of a mouse. We’re not sure which method would work better, but either controller will make a nice addition to a Flexi Knob setup.
All of the juicy details needed to control a camera from your Nintendo DS are now available at the Open Camera Control project. This is the descendant of [Steve Chapman's] setup from a few years ago. The system has been polished up and has seen many feature additions. It’s been used in movie production and works with a wide range of cameras.
This device can jailbreak an iPhone. It doesn’t require a computer and it can either reboot a phone that was one-time-boot jailbroken using the blackra1n exploit, or jailbreak a factory fresh unit. We wouldn’t say this solves the tethering problem caused by blackra1n (needing to return to a computer to reboot the phone), but it certainly does ease the pain. We saw some info about the board layout but no parts list or firmware. See the demo after the break and leave a comment if you have more information on the parts or code.
