Month: August 2006

Defcon Badges

August 4, 2006 by 77 Comments

defcon badge

Defcon is off to an incredibly slow start; It’s already 2 hours behind because of safety inspections (not surprising). I wouldn’t be too annoyed, but the first talk of the day is Joe Grand explaining the LED badges. They apparently made 6,055 of these LED badges. There is a PIC10F202 on the back and a switch to change between different flash modes. He even included solder pads to reprogram it. They’re encouraging people to hack the badges and come up with something new. More pictures after the break.

Joe Grand’s operates Grand Idea Studios and has quite a few projects on his site. He also talked at Maker Faire about his Simon game.

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Defcon, Free Shirts

August 3, 2006 by 59 Comments

shirtsfree shirt

I’m at Defcon in Vegas and I’ve already managed to give away 1 of 5 boxes of shirts in the space of 3 minutes. I guess writing “FREE” on the box worked. If you’re here and want to get a shirt either look for me or drop your contact info on the tip line and I’ll work something out (if you’re at Defcon). If you got a free t-shirt today, hopefully you’ll contribute to the tip line as well. We will have more shirts in the future (seriously don’t worry if you don’t or can’t get one of these), but if you’re here you might as well jump on the opportunity. There is a picture of me after the jump to help you identify me in the wild.

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Casio SK-1 Hacking

August 3, 2006 by 11 Comments

casio sk-1

The Casio SK-1 was one of the cheapest sampling synths on the market when it was released. It has since become a popular target for circuit benders. Check out this awesome SK-1 mod with custom case and panel. You may remember reader [jumpstart]’s bent SK-1 as well. Make even had a article on the SK-5. If you don’t want to chop up your keyboard too much, [mike] pointed out that you can add your own MIDI-in port with minimal work. Highly Liquid even offers the parts as a kit.

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Nintendo DS MIDI Port

August 2, 2006 by 22 Comments

nintendo DS midi

[therain] has added a MIDI port to his Nintendo DS. It’s just a two wire connection so it’s pretty easy if you’ve got an extra cart laying around. As a demo, he wrote a program that uses the touchpad to act as two Control Change devices. One is the X value and the other the Y so it behaves similar to the Korg Kaoss pad. He’s working on a sequencer as well.

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Palm Morse Code Keyboard

August 1, 2006 by 33 Comments

palm morse keyboard

[Tom] was looking for a standard USB interface for a Palm folding keyboard when he stumbled across this Morse code adapter (cache) from 2004. Palm keyboards use a serial connection to talk to the PDA. Since they are low-power and compact, they’re a good choice for ham radio applications. The site has pictures, schematics and PIC code to make the Morse code keyboard.

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