Video Card Used As A Digital TV Modulator

January 10, 2006 by Eliot 17 Comments

lena

DVB-T is a standard for broadcasting digital television over the air and is found in many countries outside of North America. This hack involves using a video card to generate the DVB-T signal. This project was inspired by Tempest for Eliza, which we covered recently. To pull this off you have to add some custom settings for an additional screen in your X server configuration. When you start up the server and switch to the new screen it will generate the proper signal. The signal strength is pretty weak though and the card has to be wired directly to the DVB-T set-top box. The box will display two different channels, each with a test image. The signal isn’t actually generated directly, but is a product of the VGA card’s DAC’s harmonics.

[thanks james]

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Gumbrix: Gumstix LEGO Controller

January 9, 2006 by Eliot 3 Comments

gumbrix

Derek Anderson enjoys building robot prototypes using the LEGO Mindstorms kit, but he found his progress hampered by the RCX’s minimal processing power and connections. He decided to build a custom LEGO style housing for a Gumstix waysmall computer. He has experience milling custom LEGO parts so this was an easy first step; he does wish he would have used a material more rigid than Delrin though. Derek has several future articles planned to cover how to integrate and interact with the system. I’d prefer to wait for the new Mindstorms NXT coming out in August or March if I’m lucky.

[thanks William Cox of GoRobotics.net]

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Scanner Music

January 8, 2006 by Eliot 37 Comments

scanjet

Continuing our trend of peripherals modified to perform functions that aren’t actually useful: here’s how to play music on your scanner. The HP ScanJet 3c/4c have a variable speed scan head that is driven by a stepper motor. The Play Tune command can be used to move the head at different frequencies. Here’s a video of a scanner playing F?Elise. The site we’re linking to has the source code to do this, but newer HP scanners may have hardware activation built-in, according to these two Easter eggs.

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Optical Mouse Based Scanner

January 7, 2006 by Eliot 41 Comments

Ever wonder what your desk surface looks like up close? No. No one has. Not even [Sprite_tm], but upon disassembling his optical mouse and discovering its 18×18 CCD he decided to put it to use (well, a different use). The optical chip outputs serial information to the USB chip in the mouse. [Sprite_tm] wired the optical chip to a parallel port and wrote a simple program to interpret the data. Not really useful, but it does generate some interesting pictures. Program provided, natch.

5 Foot Long PATA Cable From Cat5e

January 6, 2006 by Eliot 22 Comments

pata

Not one to be constrained by specifications, Montac decided to construct an ATA cable that was well over the 18 inch maximum length. PATA cables use 80 conductor wire, even though they only have 40 pin connectors. The extra 40 lines are all tied to ground. The cable was constructed from 10 pieces of Cat5e with one line from each twisted pair going to ground. The construction is as tedious as it sounds and at each end there are a few signal lines that also need to be pulled to ground. Once the cable was finished with heat-shrink tubing it was tested. The cable performed as well as, if not slightly better than the standard cables.

[thanks Luke Skaff]

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Xbox 360 ATX Power Supply

January 5, 2006 by Eliot 144 Comments

power supply

Reader Ran Mokady took a pretty big gamble with this project, but didn’t really have any other choice: his power supply was broken and he couldn’t get a replacement. He ended up replacing it with a standard ATX power supply. Follow along for all of the details.

For anyone who is having problems with their Xbox 360 power supply, or who (like me) have managed to end up with a burnt out PSU and can’t get a replacement, here’s how I managed to run the console off a standard ATX computer power supply.

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Stirling Engine From Aluminum Cans

January 4, 2006 by Eliot 14 Comments

The Stirling engine seems like an odd-ball design when you’ve only encountered gas and Diesel engines. Even though the Stirling engine is piston based it doesn’t use valves. It has a sealed working fluid and no exhaust gas. Stirling engines aren’t very common, but are being produced commercially as cryocoolers and for use in solar farms. Here are some thorough plans for constructing a model Stirling engine from aluminum cans.

[thanks haq]

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