How-to: Make An E-paper Clock From Esquire Magazine

October 14, 2008 by Ian 30 Comments

If you’ve never heard about electronic paper, crawl out from under that rock and read up on the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle. E-paper is a flexible display made of color-changing beads that mimic ink-on-paper for easy daylight reading. The revolutionary thing about e-paper is that after it’s set, it stays that way without additional power.

This sounds great in theory, but Esquire’s cover is the first time everybody can afford to hack an e-paper display. We took the cover into the Hack a Day lab to document, test, and hack. In the end, we recycled it into something useful that anyone can build. We’ve got all the details on how the display works and what it takes to use it in your own projects. Read about our e-paper clock hack below. Continue reading “How-to: Make An E-paper Clock From Esquire Magazine” →

Wiimote Guitar Effects Control

October 14, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 17 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmuggHx_H5Y]

[Rob Morris] sent us this video of his Wiimote based guitar effects. Similar to our post yesterday about using the Wiimote to control a synth, he is using changes in orientation to effect the sound. He starts off with simple pitch modulation, but later in the video he’s doing, uh, we’re not sure but its kind of cool.

FM Stereo Transmitter

October 14, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 20 Comments

Reader [Mike Y] responded to our “What are you working on?” post with his stereo FM transmitter project. If you’ve ever used an FM transmitter for your portable audio, you know that even the best consumer level ones can be difficult to make sound decent.

He obtained an NS73M FM Transmitter module from Niigata Seimitsu Company, but it required a controller to handle pre-emphasis, modulation level, frequency, and power level. He decided on an Arduino which would also control his LCD.

His results were quite good, with decent range and superb audio quality. His total cost thus far is $35, but he still needs to put it in an enclosure. You can find complete schematics as well as source code and helpful tips on his site. You may also want to check out the regulations on broadcasting(pdf) as well.

Maker Faire Austin Is This Weekend

October 13, 2008 by Eliot 8 Comments

Maker Faire Austin is happening this weekend, October 18 & 19, 2008 at the Travis County Expo Center in Austin, TX. Maker Faire is a showcase of all things DIY. You’ll see robots, sculptures, live performances, and other wonders including many of the projects we cover here every day. We enjoyed our time in San Mateo earlier this year and the show keeps getting better and better. You can see photos from previous events on Flickr. If you’ve got a chance to go, take it.

Columbus Day: What Are You Working On?

October 13, 2008 by Eliot 50 Comments

Wow, Caribbean Conquest Day is such a dull holiday. If it’s a holiday at all: we’re at work today and you probably are too. We decided to post what we’re working on in hopes of breaking out of our holiday slump. Pictured above are two IR illuminator boards we assembled this weekend. We bought the kits from BG Micro. We’re planning on testing their camera blocking ability once we come up with a ~13V portable power source.

That’s what we’re doing. What have you been working on lately?

(If anyone can find a source for the welding goggles in the picture, we’d love to hear it.)

Default Password Network Scanning

October 13, 2008 by Eliot 15 Comments

Midnight Research Labs has just published a new tool. Depant will scan your network and check to see if services are using default passwords. It starts by performing an Nmap scan to discover available services on the network. It organizes these services by speed of response. Using Hydra it does brute force password checking of these services with a default password list. The user can supply an alternate list for the first phase or an additional list to be used in a followup check. Depant has many different options for configuring your scan and will certainly help you find that rogue piece of hardware on your network that someone failed to set up securely.

Controlling A Doepfer Modular Synth With A Wiimote

October 13, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 4 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHOS2zg-0nI]

The Wiimote has turned out to be very versatile indeed. This video shows someone using it to control his modular synth. There is not a lot of artistic jamming going on, but explains in fair detail how to set it up. If you want to see Isadore getting down, check this out.

[thanks Louis]