[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfmNrci7uqE]
[unusualelectronics] posted this animated LED snowflake. It has 61 LEDs, is controlled by a PIC microcontroller, and can perform about 30 different effects. The instructions are quite thorough, including diagrams for soldering and source code for the microcontroller.
[vimeo 2380513]
The Amazon MP3 Store may have the lowest prices on DRM free music, but for some people 79 cents for a song is just too much, especially when [john] and the folks at pirates-of-the-amazon.com can help you get that song for free. Pirates of the Amazon is a slick Firefox addon that inserts a “download 4 free” button next to the “add to cart” button in the Amazon MP3 Store. After clicking on the button, the addon refers users to a thepiratebay.org search page with bittorrent download links for the song or album. While there is no question that this makes getting your music easier, by using this addon you do run the risk of violating copyright laws, depending on which country you live in.
There isn’t much here that hasn’t been thrown into Greasemonkey scripts in the past and we wonder if they’re marketing this to anyone at all. People who absolutely love using Amazon but hate buying stuff perhaps? They cite a couple interesting projects in their about section: Amazon Noir robotically abused the “Search Inside” feature to reconstruct entire books. OU Library searches your local library to see if it has the Amazon book you’re looking for.
A month ago, we reported that Nintendo’s new DSi portable didn’t work with any of the current crop of flash cartridges. Things didn’t look good for homebrew. Here we are a month later and looking at the release of the Acekard 2i. It’s the first DSi compatible flash cartridge. The features appear to be identical to previous versions and we expect other manufactures will be updating their product lines in short order. You can find a video of the Acekard 2i after the break.
These carts may exist because of pirates, but we happily use them for homebrew. There are a lot of great programs out there; here’s a list of 24 apps that are dedicated to music creation. You can run Linux on it too. It’s as easy as copying a file to a flash drive. If you have a DS and aren’t using homebrew, you’re wasting it. We’ll be picking up a DSi as soon as they’re in the US (they’re region locked).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7uLuYG62sY&fmt=18]
The Evolution Control Committee has been doing live mashup performances for many years and recently upgraded their hardware. Inspired by [Johnny Lee]’s Wiimote whiteboard, they built a rear projection display they could use during performances. It displays a dense collection of samples in Ableton Live. On each of the performer’s hands is an IR LED mounted to a thimble. By touching the thumb to the forefinger, the LED turns on. Two Wiimotes watch for these IR flashes to trigger mouse clicks. [TradeMark G] found the Ableton display too complex to navigate quickly and accurately with a mouse; this new display make things much easier and enjoyable.
[via Laughing Squid]
Since we last reported about The Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronic Junk, several of these boxes have begun circulating in different areas of the world. Team Hack-a-Day launched three themselves. Robots.net decided that there was a need for a specialized box just for those who hack robots, and have launched their own.
Christmas is coming up pretty quickly. [tinkernut] shows us how to do a quick and dirty music activated Christmas light setup. Simply crack open a pair of old computer speakers and wire the speaker leads to a relay. Use that to power an outlet and you have music controlled lights. The section at the beginning of the video is a bit misleading as that kind of choreography would be rather difficult with this setup. This may look familiar as we mentioned an almost identical project back in 2006.
