Year: 2010

Marvelous Magnetic Machines

July 5, 2010 by 15 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNp-ICvvM1o]

[HP Friedrichs] wrote in to tell us about an upcoming book titled Marvelous Magnetic Machines. Ordinarily, we skip over promotional hype. After watching his promo video though, we couldn’t help but share. We want a copy of this book. In this book you’ll find details on how to build a number of different motors from scrap. You can see several variations in the promo video. He also notes that the music was created by himself and some friends a few years ago. If [H.P. Friedrichs] sounds familiar, it is because he’s been sending us fantastic projects since at least 2006.

Wireless Presenters Easily Cracked

July 4, 2010 by 18 Comments

While hacking a wireless presenter doesn’t sound like something worthwhile or interesting, [Niels Teusink] demonstrates that these little devices often are a lot more powerful than we give them credit.

With an Arduino, plenty of research, and some heavy sniffing of a wireless presenter’s SPI and then wireless interface [Niels] is able to emulate an entire keyboard. Sending commands as harmless as “next slide” to the devastating “[Win+R] Format C:”. Hopefully anyone planning such a project at the next Apple or Microsoft keynote just intends some gentle fun.

Related: Wireless keyboards easily cracked.

[Thanks Dan Ransom]

RobotsEverywhere

July 4, 2010 by 10 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWh6MFUCZ-U]

[Spiritplumber] has been sending us updates on a promising project he’s working on called RobotsEverywhere. We’re not completely sure if that name covers the project itself, or just the name of his group that is selling robots (and giving us schematics and source code). Either way, they have some really cool stuff. The really cool part about many of the bots is that they are using Android phones as their brains and they use the same system on land, air, and water. There’s tons of information sprinkled around the site and the Wiki, take a few minutes and look around.

Hard Drive Destruction Plan

July 4, 2010 by 56 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhfF2Et77aw]

[Wolf] emailed us to show us his Self destructing Hard Drive tutorial. He’s using thermite, like we did, but he’s put a little more effort into the delivery system. In the video, you can see a huge spray molten iron. This is because his “jet”, the block of wood hollowed out to focus the thermite on to the hard drive didn’t hold a seal at the top. Not too bad for try #1. He could probably build this to be more contained, but even then it will most likely turn into “entire self destructing office” if it were to actually be used. A little common sense goes a long way here folks, this is molten metal and is extremely hot and dangerous.

Free Laundry Redux

July 3, 2010 by 53 Comments

[Koala] was worried his pseudo smart card trick wouldn’t be considered a HackaDay worthy. We’re more worried the internet police will find this article and have us all tarred and feathered.

Jokes aside, it seems Laundromat owners sure aren’t learning. Long story short, using a Bus Pirate and a few techniques we’ve seen before for smart card hacking [Koala] is able to write whatever amount he needs onto his pseudo smart card; thus giving him a free load of laundry.

No Touch LED Lamp

July 3, 2010 by 10 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wV2UIOV1Fk]

This elegant looking lamp uses capacitance sensing to turn on and off. [Mikey77] takes us through the process of making the curved circuits and putting it all together. The circuit is built to be modular, so he could use it elsewhere. That’s a pretty good idea for someone who is always tossing projects together. As usual, schematics are available in the instructable. We love this design and would proudly use this at our office desk.