Year: 2007

Design Challenge: Hung Jury

February 12, 2007 by 26 Comments


We’re not really hung, but it is taking a while for us to decide just who get the title. While we decide, here’s a couple more entries remind you what it’s all about.

[Razvan] sent in this excellent entry. (I’m hosting it on my personal server since he didn’t have one)
The writeup could be a bit clearer, but the design is pretty sweet. It features a mega avr brain and a microchip ethernet controller with a software based USB interface. It’s a pretty intriguing design – lots of possibilities for ethernet controllable projects.

[Tom D] sent in this rolling codes garage door opener. This will step through all the garage door opener codes for garage doors made before 2003.

Remote Control Lawn Mower

February 11, 2007 by 28 Comments


[Terry] sent in the first of his projects that he’s posted on his site. Having grown up in the midwestern US, I can’t even express how badly I wanted to build one of these puppies when I was a kid. His remote control lawnmower is essentially the bastard child of a three way between a R/C car, a wheelchair and the lawnmower. The radio is interfaced with the control box from a wheelchair, otherwise it’s a good welding project.

Nice work. I’ve one suggestion – a safety circuit that disables the mower if radio control is lost. There are a few devices designed just for R/C projects that’ll do the trick. (Update: ok, there’s a failsafe in the design but I wouldn’t call it optional!)

Modded TI-83 Calculator

February 10, 2007 by 19 Comments


[Christopher] sent in his modded TI-83 calculator. (Hit the read link, a bug is broke the one I tried to embed) Besides the uh, racing stripes, he added a PS/2 port (though I see drivers for this mod are up on ticalc.org) and an integrated (cpu controlled) RGB backlight. The backlight is controlled with a programmable AND array that’s slaved off a pair of the CPU I/O lines. Just to top everything off, I poked around and found that you can overclock these puppies, as well as expand their memory. I’m hopeful that wetsanding and varnishing the thing 10 times smoothed out the paintbrush lines, but an inexpensive airbrush would yield much smoother results.

Zune Antenna Extension

February 8, 2007 by 7 Comments


[Dyer13] sent in his Zune antenna mod. It’s a simple one, but we haven’t seen too many Zune mods yet. It’s really just a matter of adding more surface area to the transmitter. I’d suggest adding a wire that’s actually tuned to an appropriate wavelength. If you want something with a bit more power, check out this Belkin Tunecase power upgrade.

IPod Dock Extension Cable

February 7, 2007 by 22 Comments


I’ve lost count of the number of emails from people looking for these things, so here it is. The hardest part of [Mike’s] little hack is the soldering. The pins on those iPod connectors are just evil to solder. You’ll need the patience of a saint.

I’ve worked with these same connectors and I came up with an easier, if bulkier method of soldering those things in my iPod super dock How-To.

Quickie: Hack-A-Day On G4TV

February 7, 2007 by 11 Comments

Thanks to [Ryan Bucshon] for letting me know that Hack-A-Day is up on Attack of the Show tonight. Looks like they’re talking about the Wii Laptop by Ben. Hit it right now.

Update: Excellent, I got mentioned, Hack-A-Day got direct coverage, then they hit Ben’s site, and mentioned Ben’s How-To series on Engadget.