Month: August 2005

Hackaday Links Resurrection

August 28, 2005 by 24 Comments

Here is everything you should have gotten last night. I do use the Session Saver extension and it has saved me a lot of frustration in the past, but it didn’t save what I was typing in the web form.

If you’ve got a project that you want to show off like Seth and Doug did, feel free to drop us a line with a description. If we like it we’ll ask you to submit the story as plain text with markers where the images should go. All images should be reduced to 425px wide; we can link to larger ones if needed.

Some modchip developers have gotten their hands on an XBox 360 dev-kit and posted a ton of hardware pictures.

USAToday article on why we should have the “freedom to tinker” [via Techdirt]

Wooden laptop, far less serious than that last one [Mr. President]

[will] wrote up how to setup a secure SOCKS proxy using SSH. I am definitely doing this.

More abuse of free shipping boxes: cardboard boat. [The Sponge]

Controlling an RC Car with a computer, he describes the project in a video. [jaguarrrr]

PDF How-to remove a laptop LCD [Imanuel votteler]

[slash fury] decides to go big and cram a micro-ATX into an XBox.

I mentioned Session Saver above. I also include Spellbound and Greasemonkey on my short list of essential Firefox extensions. Anybody else have a favorite they can’t live without?

As usual, we’re looking for the hook-up.

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HOW-TO: Portable Car Pc

August 27, 2005 by 47 Comments

car pc
Today’s project comes from reader Douglas J. Hickok. A practical, portable car computer design it is intended to be easy to use in the car, but also easily removable.

A practical, portable car computer design
By Douglas J. Hickok

Introduction

What do you think of when I say “car computer”?  An expensive special piece of hardware that’s permanently mounted in a hidden spot in your car?  Probably?  For the last six months, I’ve been designing and building a portable computer.  By portable, I mean it can be plugged in as an ad-hoc server, workstation, media player, or GPS navigator just about anywhere — including my car.  Even though it was designed mostly as a car computer, who said it had to stay in my car?  And at the cost of a typical desktop system, why should it stay on my desk?  Car computers aren’t just for the rich anymore?

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HOW-TO: Laptop Resurrection And Upgrade

August 26, 2005 by 80 Comments

laptop resurrection
Follow along as reader [Seth] combines two i1400 Thinkpads. He refreshes the batteries, fixes the keyboard and trackpad, removes the floppy, adds USB ports and WiFi to end up with a ghoulish, but functional machine: The Franken-laptop!

I have been known to keep old hardware alive, long past it’s use-by date. Over the last year I acquired a couple of laptops. One of them had been smashed up (I think someone sat on it..) and the other got a drink spilled in to the keyboard. So I ended up with enough parts to make a cheap laptop.

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What The Hack!: Some Post-conference Highlights

August 26, 2005 by 6 Comments

wthmatte

My What the Hack! experience was very much a positive one due to the cute bunnies and the fun atmosphere of the BSD tent where I resided during my stay (the blue arrow points to my spot on the bench).  Hardware people were a bit few and far between, but one day when I was in severe need of resistors for a project I went wandering and found stephanie at the wireless village: thanks! My DECT phone was in a state of severe disrepair/hackage so I may have missed out on meeting a ton of people that were trying to call me using the free DECT network. All in all I managed to not stay glued to my computer/soldering iron the entire time and actually attended some talks and geeked out with friends and new peeps. I’ve chosen to highlight three talks from WTH to share with you.

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Hackaday Links

August 25, 2005 by 16 Comments

I quit my day job. How was your day today? Not really I’ve still got two more weeks.

[Phil Jern] Is working on a hack to digitize his slides, not the way you’re thinking.

Web app to recover your forgotten FTP password from Dreamweaver. [Cruz]

People have been playing around with Google Talk. Yay command line options. There is also a debug menu screenshot. [BlasterX]

[Darkprinc] Sent in this great guide to making cheap baby bottles and here I thought [www51]’s comment was going to bring on the pr0n.

Here is an NES controller midi game project… or something, it’s buried in the Flash. Look for “the res” [annie_linux]

People are still hacking away at the CVS Camcorder. How about double record time or double resolution?

[Paul b] Built something like our usb battery v2, but wasn’t able to charge his 4G iPod. After a little reverse engineering he came up with this solution.

This to That (Glue Advice), bondage done right. [via Lifehacker]

We linked to a proxy list the other day. [Janitha] pointed out that you can always set up your own.

Keep up the good work.

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Automated Chicken Feeder

August 25, 2005 by 19 Comments

chicken feeder

Tom has written up how he built his automated chicken feeder. First he constructed a large funnel inside the chicken coop. This feeds into a hardwood block where the auger is located. He had originally tried using a drill bit run by a slow moving copier motor, but it couldn’t slip so it would jam occasionally. The bit was replaced with a coil of stiff wire. It didn’t have as fast a feed rate so it needed to be run for a longer time period. The final piece is modifying an outlet timer so it will drive the motor directly using battery power. The power circuit has low enough requirements that it could eventually be driven by a solar panel.

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