Year: 2008

Pandora Dev Unit Unboxed

November 28, 2008 by 12 Comments

pandora

[skeezix] has got his hands on one of the first Pandora dev kits to make it out the door and took a few photos. This is 1 of the 20 MK2 devboards that were produced. Although, not final it certainly is close to the version they’ll be shipping. Pandora is a Linux based portable game console. The main chip in the clamshell device is a TI OMAP3530. It has OpenGL hardware acceleration and an 800×480 touchscreen. A QWERTY keyboard is included along with analog and digital game controls. WiFi, bluetooth, USB host, TV-out, and dual SDHC card slots round out the package. The team has already presold 4000 devices.

Xbox 360 Jasper Motherboards

November 28, 2008 by 26 Comments

xbox360

The Xbox 360 has a brand new motherboard. Dubbed the Jasper, it presumably has a new 65nm process GPU. The new box has a 150W power supply instead of the former’s 175W brick. They’ve changed the plug design to prevent usage with old consoles. The most notable change is the onboard flash memory upgrade. Earlier consoles only had 16MB; new ones have 256MB. The majority of this storage will be used for the new dashboard, the NXE. The remaining space can be used for game saves. With the new storage, Arcade units are no longer including memory cards. You can see more images of the boards on Xbox-Scene.

Composite Video Through Cat5

November 28, 2008 by 48 Comments

cat5_composite

[mixadj] needed to run some video cable from one part of his house to another. He was lacking the proper amount of video cable, but had a bunch of cat5 laying around. so he built a converter to run his composite signal through the cat5. He states that he wouldn’t run it more than 70 feet without amplifying the audio somehow. Aside from that, the performance is supposedly decent.  This just adds to the multitude of other uses for that Ethernet cable. We’ve seen voice, data, composite video, VGA, and power. What else have you seen run over cat5?

Make Your Own Holiday Lights

November 28, 2008 by No comments

lights

No matter what holiday you choose to acknowledge, you probably enjoy the thought of getting to put lights up everywhere. We know we do. Here are some instructions on how to make your own string of color changing lights. Sure, you can probably just buy a string of color changing lights for cheaper, but then you couldn’t arrange them however you want on the line, and you also wouldn’t get the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

Parts: 133MHz-16.2kHz Programmable Oscillator (DS1077)

November 28, 2008 by 23 Comments

cover

The DS1077 is a 5volt, 133MHz to 16kHz programmable clock source. The internal frequency divider is configured over a simple I2C interface, and the chip requires no external parts. Not bad for under $2. We used the Bus Pirate to test this chip before using it in a project. Grab the datasheet (PDF) and follow along. Continue reading “Parts: 133MHz-16.2kHz Programmable Oscillator (DS1077)” →

ATmega Controller Wiring Upgrade

November 27, 2008 by 5 Comments

avrcontroller

[jelengar] liked the ease of use of the Arduino, but wanted a much higher pin count. He set about converting the ATmega Controller for use with Wiring, the code that the Arduino IDE is based on. The ATmega128 in the controller features 53 pins as opposed to the 11 on the Arduino’s ATmega168. You also get 128kb of memory. The process is fairly simple; you just need to add the appropriate crystal. You can also add a switch to trigger the bootloader and a status LED.