[Andrew] sent in something we’ve been considering for our 17 inch Dell. He squeezed a 100GB PATA notebook drive into the spare space in his Compaq laptop. He used a USB interface to provide the connection and added a toggle switch to conserve power when he doesn’t need the drive spun up. The mod would be even nicer if you added a keyboard activation switch like [sprite_tm]’s keyboard light.
Month: June 2008
Non-destructive Breakdown Voltage Tester
This applies more to older vacuum technology than your average solid state hardware, but [Richard] put together an interesting project. It’s designed to test a component for its breakdown voltage without destroying it. The general idea of the ‘BVT’ is to increase the voltage applied to a device until some current leakage is detected. Of course, any device that includes notes on probable arc length in relation to kilovolts is awesome by definition.
More Wiimote Hacking From Johnny Lee
Our friend [Johnny Lee] has been quite busy traveling and moving to a new city. He hasn’t had time to put together any new videos because of this. He’s been doing more Wiimote research though and has put together an extensive post about what he’s working on and thinking about.
Right before the move, he put together a demo for throwable displays. The square pieces of foamcore have retro-reflective tape added to each of the corners. The Wiimote sees the orientation of the square and adjusts the projected image to fit perfectly; even when you pick it up and throw it. He used it to add a trail to an airhockey puck. Embedded above is an earlier project where he used the Wiimote to track a foldable display and project accordingly.
[Johnny] has also been working on 3D tracking with two or more Wiimotes. Since the Wiimote is camera based, stereo triangulation is simple. Check out the video below from the University of Cambridge that uses two Wiimotes for motion capture.
Have a look at [Johnny Lee]’s full post for even more Wiimote ideas.
Eee PC 1000H Dissected
The people at TweakTown completely disassembled a new Eee PC 1000H and documented the entire process. Aside from showing you the side effects of too much tech fetish and not enough regular fetish, the article reveals all the parts of the new Eee, with a few surprises inside. Although it’s an Eee PC, it’s very different from all of its predecessors.
One of the things the teardown shows is that several parts are far more modular than previous Eee PC models. The hard drive, for example, is a standard Seagate Momentus which is made for desktop systems; it can easily be swapped out. Another easily swapped component is the 1GB SIMM from ASint.
Although their (ahem) stripping process was a bit unconventional, a lot of interesting information was yielded from this teardown. Keep ’em coming, TweakTown, just be sure to clean off your tool when you’re done.
[via Gizmodo]
Consumer Reports Releases Vintage Photos
Consumer Reports has just released this photoset of vintage photos of consumer product tests. It includes photos of conventional products like the one above (a portable hair dryer), but also some interesting tech that never took off, like a motorized scour pad and a record player for cars. The products depicted in the set are all from before the 1970s (and remember, a few machines from back then were able to do some pretty impressive things), so whether you’re into old tech for its own sake or you’re just looking for photography of really old tv consoles, get a look.
[via Laughing Squid]
MIT Mobile Cloud
The MIT Mobile Experience lab has just developed this ambitious interactive installation called The Cloud. Located in Firenze, Italy, The Cloud is a sort of sculpture with over 15,000 LEDs and several miles of fiber optics. The tips of the fibers glow, but they also change colors in response to human interaction, including touching it or standing near it. The Cloud uses a combination of proximity and touch sensors to achieve this. It also has two cameras and a microphone, which allows it draw input from various sources and output a much richer, more organic response.
[via Cool Hunting]
Midify Now Available
The people at Division 6 have begun selling Midify, a board that add a MIDI port to an DS and many other Nintendo handhelds. The board has 12 outputs, plus two for power and two for the MIDI port. Configuration and mapping are also very simple. This is the same board that was used to add MIDI control to a microwave.
[via Matrixsynth]
