Month: January 2006

Full Motion Video On An 8088

January 23, 2006 by 27 Comments

8088

Trixter pulled off this awesome hack, proving that the demoscene is alive and well. It started as a silly joke “well, I can display video on my XT!” , but Trixter thought about it and came up with a way to do it on his Model 5150. The production needs 10MB of disk space, a Soundblaster Pro, a CGA card and monitor. Trixter notes at the end of the page that he’s had to use text mode to get 16 colors out of the CGA instead of the standard 4. Check out the video of the XT being pushed to its limits at his site. (video on Google Video)

[thanks ex-parrot]

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Bluetooth Playstation Controller For Axim PDA

January 22, 2006 by 14 Comments

axim

Reader [Jakeh] wanted a Bluetooth based game controller for his Axim. Unfortunately, the only commercial option didn’t fit very well. He decided to chop up the Bluetooth controller and wire it into an original Playstation controller. Wiring was slightly annoying because half the buttons in the Bluetooth controller don’t have a common ground. The final touch was modifying two mechanical pencils to provide clamping pressure on the outside of the PDA. Here’s [Jakeh]’s original post about the project and his Flickr photo set.

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Motorized Projector Screen

January 21, 2006 by 22 Comments

projector

[Brad O’Connor] has completed his motorized projector screen that we mentioned last month while covering his Lumenlab projector build. The screen is driven by a windshield washer motor using the low speed connection. The 126″ screen is supported by a copper pipe and is attached using Velcro. Brad says the wrinkles aren’t visible during playback, but he plans on adding more weight to remove them. He’s also planning on wireless control in the future.

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E-Reader For Nintendo DS

January 20, 2006 by 16 Comments

7ds

The e-Reader is an add-on product for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance. It has a simple optical card swipe for loading programs off of specially encoded cards. The location of the link port adapter keeps the device from being used with the Nintendo DS. Reader [Caitsith2] has posted instructions for modifying the reader for use with the DS. If you don’t plan on using it with your GBA you can pull the entire board. Once you’ve got the e-Reader switched you can do fun stuff like printing out your own homebrew e-Reader cards.

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Walk Your Robot Dog With LEGO

January 19, 2006 by 4 Comments

robot walker

Since he spends way too much time programming robots, Pavel Petrovic, felt he should delegate the task of walking his robot dog… to his other robot. No, that isn’t the real story, but there isn’t a lot of justification for the project besides it being a neat trick. LEGO IR tower support for WowWee bots had already been developed, but Pavel decided to try controlling the bots using the LEGO RCX. BrickOS provides direct control of the RCX’s IR port. Pavel’s program lets the simple LEGO bot issues commands to the RoboPet to lead it around the room. It works, but isn’t too reliable because there is no way for the RCX to determine the absolute position of the dog. Have a look at Pavel’s site to see videos of it in action.

[thanks Robert Oschler]

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IPod Integration For Factory Radios

January 18, 2006 by 14 Comments

saab

Most factory radios in cars don’t include a line in. alfaGato decided he wanted to integrate an iPod into his system, but wanted to maintain the factory functions. His Saab 9-3 came with GM’s OnStar system (not activated) which he thought would make a decent in road into the radio. His instructions should work for most radios with a factory cellphone integration option. He opened the radio and cut the traces for the phone input to get separate left and right channels. These were wired to the external CD changer input. He didn’t have the factory changer and the phone input also had amplification on the line that would interfere with the iPod. He designed a circuit with two possible inputs: iPod connector or AUX. The circuit is designed to mute the inputs if OnStar is activated. The circuitry is contained within a Saab factory phone mount with an iPod holder attached to it. Check out alfaGato’s blog dedicated to the project and our previous auxiliary input projects.

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Cellphone Controlled Door Opener

January 17, 2006 by 16 Comments

door opener

Looking for a way to demonstrate his AutoIt script that allows Windows control using a cellphone, zerocool60544 put together this automatic door opener/closer. It uses two water bottles as counterweights and two LEGO motors to drive the door. The motor control is a parallel port connected relay board. It’s a pretty simple demo, but I’ll definitely be looking into AutoIt in the future.

[thanks emdy]

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