Hackit: Xbox 360 Hardware Failures On The Rise?

March 19, 2009 by Eliot 51 Comments

e74xbox

Joystiq has been tracking the new starlet of Xbox 360 failures: the E74 error. It appears as the lower right light on the console turning red and an on-screen message telling the user to contact support with the error E74. The number of reported E74 errors seems to have risen since August 2008 and people are wondering if the more recent increase in errors are related to the release of the New Xbox Experience (NXE) Dashboard update. Did Microsoft reclass Red Ring of Death (RROD) failures as E74 to avoid warranty replacements? Continue reading “Hackit: Xbox 360 Hardware Failures On The Rise?” →

Status Icon For Your Office

March 19, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 21 Comments

[flickr video= 3187384682]

[Furan] wanted a way to let people know his status at the office. Maybe he didn’t want to be bothered, or wanted to let them know he was on break. His solution is to set up an OLED display outside his office to display his status. He’s using a 4d systems OLED display. He has a windows application that updates the status, with plans of making it synchronize with his messenger status. Its a fairly cool idea, but just watching the video, we have no idea what some of the icons are supposed to mean. We would possibly choose something a little more obvious and generic, like text stating our status. What would you use?

Solar Cells From Donuts And Tea

March 19, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 41 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVwzJEhMmD8]

It sounds unbelievable, but it is true. You can harvest most of what you need for a simple solar cell from powdered donuts and tea. Powdered donuts have nanoparticles of titanium dioxide which is a “high band gap semi conductor”. This means that it can be used to make solar cells. The tea is simply used to dye the material so it can pick up the visible spectrum. The process is a bit too involved to be something you would just toss together in the field, but it’s cute nonetheless.

USB Sniffing In Linux

March 19, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

sniffer

[Robert] sent in this tutorial on how to set up USB sniffing in linux. Useful for seeing exactly what is being communicated to and from your USB devices, this ability is built into linux. [Bert], the author, shows us the steps involved and how to filter it to get the data we desire. You can specify exactly which device to capture data from. His example, shown above, is a session with an Arduino.