Pictures from space for $150

prelaunch

Ever wanted to be able to launch a balloon into space, track its location via GPS, take some photographs of the curvature of the earth, and recover the balloon, all for the low low cost of $150? [Oliver Yeh] sent in his teams project, Icarus, which does just that. The group of MIT students found that they could use a weather balloon filled with helium to reach heights of around 20 miles above the … [Read more...]

Cellphone-controlled home

[Tixlegeek] used a Motorola 68HC705J1 development board to remotely control his home through his cellphone. The video above, as well as [Tixlegeek]'s website, is in French, though the video has been captioned. The development board (called the ERMES125) is controlled by a PIC externally. It has an array of LEDs, and apperantly a few high voltage relays. The PIC is connected to a laptop through … [Read more...]

Mobile RFID scanning

[Chris Paget] is going to be presenting at ShmooCon 2009 in Washington D.C. this week. He gave a preview of his RFID talk to The Register. The video above demos reading and logging unique IDs of random tags and Passport Cards while cruising around San Francisco. He's using a Symbol XR400 RFID reader and a Motorola AN400 patch antenna mounted inside of his car. This is industrial gear usually used … [Read more...]

USB wall charger

[rbhays] did this sweet little hack back in 2006. He took a Motorola cellphone wall charger and modified it into a USB wall charger. He needed to charge his iPod, but misplaced the original charger. A replacement would have cost him $30. So he did what any respectable hacker would do, he cut up something else to make it work for him.He had one sitting around that was equipped with a mini USB end. … [Read more...]

DIY CD changer

[nophead] put this creation down to its final resting place, but it still deserves some attention. A Motorola MC6809 ran the show while a stepper driven robotic arm tipped with a suction cup fetched the selected disc. [nophead] has an interesting blog covering his work on building a 3d prototyping machine. The goal is to use it to produce a reprap, but he does a nice job of covering design … [Read more...]