Hackaday Links

Links

hello fellow readers. it’s pouring outside so i can’t cook any links! thankfully, i have my george forman grill here so i’ll be preparing some right away.

kid who 0wned microsoft confesses all. he’s my age. beautiful. [h1dro]
homemade pool heater. very nice, but i personally wouldn’t do it. [sean]
make your own self-flying..airplane….i apologize in advance. [theo]

this is the real wooden ipod. beyond impressive…belongs in a bmw. [geoff]
pc world previewed longhorn. sucks of course.
pretty awesome console conversions from this dude. [noname]

Play your CDs on an old PC CD-ROM drive. mucop. check it. [camzmac]

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Mobile Wi-fi Hotspot

junxion box

Our buddy Mike Outmesguine over at the wireless weblog has just posted his Popular Science article on building a backpack based wireless access point.  The backpack is solar powered and uses a JunxionBox to bridge a wireless access point to the EVDO network. The JunxionBox is a commercial solution that parallels the StompBox we covered earlier. This isn’t Mike’s first outing with the box; Feel free to check out his other adventure.

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Hackaday Monday Sipping And Contest

monday sipping

OH my! What a busy and great weekend! As you may or may not know, I was with Jason, Brian, and Karina over at Live8 behind the scenes blogging about Live8 with them. It was a wonderful time and experience. Then I had the balls to go and see War of the Worlds after such a long day, and I reccomend you rush out and see it. Twice. It’s wonderful.

But back to hacks. We’ve made a final decision. Hackaday meetups will officially be once a month and on a thursday. The last thursday of every month to be exact. If you’re in Philadelphia, the meetings here will be insanely awesome. We’ll be renting out hotel conference rooms or something like that, having contests, giveaways, prizes, and discussions. Almost like a mini-defcon each month!

The shirts will also be ordered this week which rocks, so be on the lookout on how to score those aside from Defcon.

Oh! Podcast 03 will be out this week as well! We’re getting our RSS feed up and running soon but if it’s not ready by Friday, we’ll still post the podcast on here and iTunes.

MIT’s infamous disco LED-ridden floor is available for purchase now. Wicked.

And it looks like Brazil is finally getting around to building those $100 laptops. My question to YOU guys is

Half Rack Effect Stand

half rackhalf rack

Reader David Kristian was annoyed with having to use a full table or other object to support his half-rack effect when playing gigs. Laying the box flat made it impossible to read or tweak the device. He ended up with this mini-tripod. Replacing the pan lock screw and adding a suction cup foot created a really elegant solution. It gives a good viewing angle and it’s easy to pick up and take with you.

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DIY Nitrous Oxide Injection

nos

Well, it seems like our last two Saturdays of automotive hacks have been keeping you interested, so we’re going to keep it up. By popular demand: Here is a guide to building your own nitrous oxide injection system.  The nitrous oxide molecule has a better oxygen/nitrogen ratio than normal air so it is more useful for the combustion process. The site describes all of the components you will have to gather to build a fully functional system and has instructions for modifying stock parts for better performance. Nitrous is really hard to use properly and I can’t imagine someone putting one of these together without some experience with a commercial unit first. Nitrous can lead to really high cylinder pressures and temperatures; so, be careful or you’ll just end up with an aluminum foundry.

[thanks XyTec]

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Commodity Telepresence Rover

telepresence

Scott Metoyer built this awesome telepresence rover using really cheap parts. He started with a Pentium II laptop that wasn’t being used. Then he picked up a relay board to connect to the parallel port. A servo board was connected to the serial port and a webcam was attached to the USB port. The drive wheels are powered by two windshield wiper motors. The rover runs a server application that talks to a wireless client computer for control. He says the control lag is minimal and you get 15fps from the webcam with pan and tilt. This is a great start and really shows how cheaply you can build a telepresence robot. Scott still has a lot of sensor connections he can use so I’m sure will see more interesting applications in the future.

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