RC bristlebot shifts weight for steering

bristlebot-with-steering

This large bristlebot has no prolem steering itself by shifting its weight. It's easy enough to watch the video after the break and see how this works. But there's still the same air of "I can't believe that actually works" which we experienced with the original bristlebot. This is not the first attempt to calm a bristlebots movements, but we don't remember seeing one you could drive around … [Read more...]

Patching into Android music control

android-phone-control-cable-hack

Here's a look at the TRRS cable that Android phones use. [Rich Kappmeier] want to control the music player on his Nexus One while driving. It's not necessarily a safe endeavor if you're staring at the screen and poking away with one hand while trying to stay in your lane. A little bit of research helped him figure out how the hardware in a headphone controller worked and he decided to incorporate … [Read more...]

RGB stroboscopic guitar tuning

defon-badge-strobe-tuner

This is [Michael Ossmann's] RGB LED stroboscopic guitar tuner. If his name is familiar that's because we mentioned he'd be giving a talk with [Travis Goodspeed] at ToorCon. But he went to DefCon as well and spent the weekend in his hotel room trying to win the badge hacking contest. Despite adversity he did get his tuner working. It's built into a toy guitar that he takes on road trips with … [Read more...]

Normal connectors for Apple Studio Display

studio-display-hack

[Sherry Wu] sent in a link to her Apple Studio Display hack. She got her hands on the 17" display which has a proprietary Apple Display Connector that rolls signals for DVI, USB, and 25V power into one plug. Convenient right? Not if you want to use it on a machine that has standard video connections. No problem, she got out her meter and figured out which wires belong to each signal. After some … [Read more...]

How-to: Program PICs using Linux

tux+Microchip

Arguably, Microchip's PIC microcontrollers do not get enough posts here. One of the drawbacks for some of us is that Linux support for PICs is not very well known. The information is out there, but no one has laid out the process of going from writing C code to programming a chip. Written for Linux users that are familiar with microcontrollers, basic circuits, the C programming language, and can … [Read more...]