Homebrew MagSafe

[Freeload] sent us his custom MagSafe adapter build for laptops. MagSafe for those unaware is Apples (patented) power adapters that prevent damage to laptops when the cord is accidentally yanked from the socket. While we’ve seen some custom versions before of MagSafes they were usually bulky, ugly, and used a ton of unremovable glue. We really like [Freeload's] because its … Read the rest

Tiniest bot, sort of. CNC controlled

tinybot

Here’s an interesting concept, the bot pictured above has no internal control mechanisms.  His claims to have built the smallest bot are dubious, considering it requires a much larger control platform to function, so lets just set that aside and look at how it works. The bot itself is basically a hollow box with a hinged manipulator mounted on … Read the rest

Magnetic stripe card spoofer


After building a USB magnetic stripe reader, [David Cranor] has found a way to fool a magnetic stripe reader using a hand-wound electromagnet and an iPod. The data on a card is read and stored on a computer, then encoded as a WAV file using a C++ program. The iPod plays the WAV file with the data through a … Read the rest