Just in case you needed another way to pretend that you’re in Minority Report, [Johnny Lee] sent in this video showing how to track your hands using the Wiimote’s IR camera,an infrared LED array and a bit of reflective tape to improve the gain.
Month: November 2007
How-To: Replace A Mini USB Port (on Your Cellphone)
At some point, just about everyone manages to mess up their precious electronics. In this case, someone (not me) somehow managed to totally demolish the mini USB port in their new Motorola cell phone. Surface mount repairs can be challenging without some serious tools, but it’s possible to replace parts without a re-work station. (Guess what I’m getting for Christmas this year.) Today I’ll show you that’s it’s possible to repair a surface mount part with some fairly inexpensive tools.
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Gyro Controlled Video Via R/C Plane
[Mark] couldn’t resist sending this in, and I can see why. It turns out that this is made from off the shelf parts, but the functionality is awesome. The pilot wears a video headset – igoggles, etc, and has a gyro/accelerometer sensor mounted on it that outputs commands to the R/C transmitter. On the plane, a servo pan tilt camera matches position based on the viewers head motions. Just about all the components are listed in the credits at the end, but you can use any RF camera and a transmitter with enough channels to run the extra servos.
Inexpensive PIC Based OBD-2 Interface
OBD-II became the mandatory I/O diagnostic port on cars starting around 1996 in the US. Considering that the interface consists of a couple of I/O lines, serial/usb adapters have been ridiculously expensive for quite a while – especially newer USB versions. [Renan] sent in this PIC18F2450 OBD-II interface. The designer says he can provide boards for just over $6 and programmed PICs if there’s interest. The chip is a few dollars, and everything else is pretty cheap too. Need to work on your car? This thing will cost $15 or so. I think I just might have to burn out a board on my mill later.
GVIF (Prius) Display Hacking
This is almost a lack of hack, but it bugs me. In 2006, Toyota changed the video interface on the Prius LCD display. The new system uses GVIF (Gigabit Video InterFace) rather than RGBs as before. So far success has been limited to some early commercial devices. Considering the number of guys that like to hack their cars, I’m hoping to see some diy solutions developed. The industry seems to be pushing GVIF in the same manner as HDMI for home theater – it even supports HDCP. Unfortunately, it seems that multiple displays are still the best option for now.
RFID Guardian V3 Released
[fbz] wanted to make sure that everyone knows that RFID Guardian has released the latest version of their design. I had a hard time finding a good shot of the hardware, so I went with the Nokia phone control application. There’s a short explanation of the project here. I’d point at the use examples on the site, but it seems that their MYSQL server is running out of memory. After seeing this talk at shmoocon last year, and a bit more reinforcement at defcon, there are definitely some good uses for the guardian. (Once you get past the slow start, Major’s intro is funny as hell. – jump past the first 8 minutes or you’ll be bored.)
Presenting Hackit – Got A Better Idea?
I came back from a quick road trip with a trunk full of hackable hardware. After grabbing a little caffeine this morning, I thought we’d try something different for those slow Sundays. I’m going to come up some interesting hacking kit, point out a few classic hacks for it, and challenge you guys to come up with something better. Every so often, we’ll be sending some of said hardware to the most worthy of commenters. Read on to check out our first ‘Hackit’ challenge.
