Fresh hacks every day
It seems that there's a whole range of Toshiba Satellite laptop computers that suffer from a power jack design that is prone to breaking. We see some good and some bad in this. The jack is not mounted to the circuit board, so if it gets jammed into the body like the one above it doesn't hose the electronics. But what has happened here is the plastic brackets inside the case responsible for keeping … [Read more...]
The guys over at brainwagon just finished up ANGST, the Arduino n' Gameduinio Satellite Tracker, a build that displays 160 different satellites in Earth orbit on any SVGA monitor. The build is of course based off an Arduino and Gameduino shield. A real-time clock is always needed for a satellite tracker, so a DS1307 RTC is thrown into the mix. The satellite data is stored on a 128KB EEPROM that … [Read more...]
Can you believe that [hpux735] pulled this satellite weather image down from one of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's weather satellites using home equipment? It turns out that they've got three weather satellites in low earth orbit that pass overhead a few times a day. If you've got some homebrew hardware and post processing chops you can grab your own images from these … [Read more...]
There's a new Kickstarter campaign that promises to launch a personalized satellite into orbit for 300 bones. The KickSat project is headed by [Zac Manchester], [Mason Peck], [Justin Atchison] and a few more contributors hailing from Cornell University. Their goal is to launch a CubeSat filled with hundreds of postage stamp-sized satellites and release these 'Sprites' into low Earth … [Read more...]
For less than $100 you can buy a little tracking module that will upload your location to a satellite. But you'll only get latitude and longitude information. [Natrium42] spent some time reverse engineering the hardware, and the communications protocol, to allow custom data to be transferred using a SPOT module. The flat fee for the hardware includes a one-year service plan allowing you to tack … [Read more...]
Early last year, [Edward] started work on an aircraft tracking system using components from old electronics he had sitting around the house. As you may or may not know, most modern aircraft continuously broadcast their current position over the 1090MHz band using the ADS-B protocol. [Edward] found that his old satellite receiver module was able to pick up the signals without too much trouble, and … [Read more...]
This miniature "spy satellite" may not gain the ire of the Chinese People's Army, but it will certainly look rad on your desk. Besides looking cool, this "satellite" is able to transmit video up to 300 feet away and has sun tracking solar panels for battery recharging. Additionally, it has a LED "thruster" and speakers. One cool thing about this build is that the body was made out of a lamp … [Read more...]
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