We’ve seen automated grow boxes of all shapes and sizes, but all were for growing plants. [Jared] over at Inventgeek wanted to do something similar for his algae. He started off with an Arduino-based solution that allows the controlled pulse of LEDs connected to his standard bioreactor as a prototype. Once he determined his proof of concept worked, he began work on a design based on the Arduino Pro Mini that has more advanced features such as temperature monitoring and algae culture density monitoring via some fancy IR voodoo. The code is open source and the hardware is easily obtainable, all that remains is the desire to grow algae.

A lot of us skip breakfast in the morning, be it because we don’t have time to make something, don’t have the patience, or for some other reason. Yuri Suzuki and Masa Kimura are aiming to make your breakfast a little easier, a little quicker, and a lot more interesting. Their latest project is a Rube Goldberg-like machine that does everything from fry your eggs to brew your coffee. The coolest part about this project is it was built with the help of the public. The two designers put out an open invitation for people to come help in constructing the device at Platform21, a publicly accessible design forum in Amsterdam. Now if someone would tie this into an alarm clock, we could all wake up to the smell of toast and coffee instead of the super loud 140db alarm clock or the confusing (albeit effective) wake up machine.

As cigar aficionados will tell you, cigars should be stored in climate controlled humidors to keep them in best condition for smoking. Most of the time a humidor is just a simple air-tight box with a hygrometer attached, which measures the relative humidity inside the box. Feeling as though he needed more control over the environment he kept his cigars in, [Justin] created the Tweetidor, a humidor that tweets its current temperature and humidity. Yes, you guessed it; the project is built around an Arduino. It’s a simple, useful project that is well documented and would be fun to recreate if you’re into cigars (and not tired of Twitter or Arduinos yet.) Combine this with the laser lighter and you’ve got a pretty nice setup.

A lot of people like fancy GUIs and nice graphics, but some of us just feel more at home in a command prompt. [nevdull] is one of those people. Instead of just using the Arduino dev tools that are available for download, he wanted the ability to shell into his Arduino, so he created AVR Shell. AVR Shell is a UNIX-like shell that allows you to “log in” to your Arduino/AVR and see what’s really going on; letting you read registers, scale the CPU speed, create/edit/delete variables, and even set up timers. The shell is even user-customizable! Those of you interested in Arduino shells might also check out bitlash, another open source CLI. Someone ought to hook this up to the Internet enabled Furby and get Flite compiled on there, letting us shell into a Furby from miles away to make it talk.

[Thanks Leesam]

Hard drive speakers aren’t anything new, but they have yet to be done very professionally. Most hard drive speaker hacks are awesome, but aren’t meant to be a showpiece. [Oliver] took the opportunity to put together a set of 20GB drives and a custom-built acrylic case with a horizontal VU meter up front. The project is well-photographed and documented and can be recreated without the use of laser cutters or other expensive tools. The only thing it’s missing is an iPod dock!

Related: Giant bulb VU meter

It’s great in this day and age that browsers can remember our passwords for us, allowing us cross-site security without the hassle of memorizing a million different random passwords. It’s great, that is, until we forget our master password. Fret not, though; there is a solution. The folks over at Lifehacker show us how to use FireMaster to recover forgotten or misplaced Firefox master passwords. Perhaps a better solution is to just store those tricky passwords where nobody will find them.

[Matthias] from Intuity Media Lab put together a nice bit on controlling office lights with XMPP from his Android phone. In the article, he explains the components involved in the project, why he chose XMPP, and lists everything you need to replicate it. The project makes use of a wide variety of tools and libraries, weaving together code from multiple languages to achieve its goal. Overall, his project is a welcome change in a world full of Twitter-based solutions.

The folks over at Arbor Networks were browsing Twitter and discovered something very strange: a Twitter account seemingly posting gibberish. At least, that’s how it appeared at first. Upon closer investigation, they discovered that the profile was posting base64 encoded links to PKZIP archives. When they extracted the contents and unpacked the contained DLL and EXE files, they discovered that the account was posing links to malware that would post user information back to certain URLs. The article was also updated to show that the scheme wasn’t limited to Twitter, but also affected users on Jaiku and Tumblr. It’s a bit scary to see that all malware isn’t as blatantly obvious as we usually would think it to be.

Photos of the BlackBerry Storm 2, both inside and out, have been leaked. Engadget provides us with the specifics, going into detail about the four large piezoelectric pressure sensors that sit underneath the screen. It looks as though the screen will still function as a button, just without the physical movement of the previous model that received mixed reviews. For a better explanation of the technology behind the phone’s innovative screen, here’s a video describing it in more detail and a writeup over at the CrackBerry forums.

Traffic monitoring has been available on Google Maps for some time, but has been limited to highways and major roads. According to the Google LatLong blog, traffic tracking support is now available for smaller surface roads in select cities. The data is gathered through mobile phones running My Location. Anybody wishing to help out can sign up their phone and opt into My Location to participate in the anonymous data collection. Now you won’t have to gamble on whether or not your back road alternative route is congested when there’s construction on the freeway. Dash tried something similar with their two-way traffic reporting, but we’re guessing that Google’s version will have even better performance thanks to a rapidly increasing install base.

Western Digital recently released a media player that attaches to your TV and allows you to play HD media straight from an external USB drive to the television. With a price point of about $100, it’s strange that the device hasn’t made more of a stir in the consumer electronics market. Of course, if it exists, someone will hack it, though. Clever hardware and software hackers have already managed to get an alternative firmware running on the device, allowing for packages like a web server, RSS reader, Apple trailer viewer, and other linux-based packages. It’s good to see a device with so many software mods so early into production.

Related: OpenPogo, an alternative to Pogoplug software

Google has opened up a new Android Developer Challenge for submissions. About $2,000,000 in prize money is available, with $250,000 going to the best overall app. Submissions are due by August 31, leaving about a week to get apps in for judging. Time is short, but the prizes are big. Hopefully we’ll see some exciting things come from the contestants now that the community has grown since the previous ADC in 2008.

[via Phandroid]

Routers aren’t just for routing network traffic any more. With the help of alternative operating systems such as DD-WRT, Tomato, and OpenWrt, routers are now extremely customizable and can be utilized to suit a number of needs. The main issue with projects built around routers is the need to telnet or SSH into them to get to a console. [Sven Killig] came up with a useful solution that utilizes the USB ports available on an Asus router to display video on a DisplayLink device, allowing a user to sit down and use the device as though it were a physical terminal. This would be a good DIY alternative to commercially available routers that display network graphs, system information, incoming email, and other data.

Every electronics workbench could benefit from having a bench power supply. Converting a PC power supply works, but often, it involves splicing wires and limits the supply to only bench use, and building one from scratch is definitely an undertaking. To counter this, [silic0re] and his father came up with a detachable adapter that simply plugs into the existing connectors. The adapter provides posts for four different voltages and can be built in no time. It’s nice to see a solution that will let you use any power supply laying around without having to worry about the dangers of opening it or cutting it up.

[Thanks silic0re]

Twitter has been used for lots of experiments, both useful and just for fun. [FIRESTORM_v1] sent in his project that falls under the useful category. When he wanted a way to monitor his server’s power statistics, Twitter was a logical choice. Similar to the Tweet-a-Watt, he wrote a script that posts messages from APCUPSd to a Twitter account that he follows, and gets the updates on his phone. [FIRESTORM_v1] documents all of the scripts he used and the steps to get your server up and tweeting.