[Sparky] notified us of his hack to allow interaction with the core of an Aldi GO Cruise 4300 GPS Windows CE OS. All that’s required is a few programs and registry edits to the GPS, which anyone can accomplish within a few minutes. But we suggest you go slow and double-check your work; nobody wants a bricked system. After you’re done you can run such great programs like the one [Sparky] suggest for 4WD enthusiasts, Ozi Explorer.
USB is convenient and that makes it desirable in many many projects. [Simon Inns] has the process down and is sharing it with his recent PIC based USB tutorial. Prompted by requests for help on the matter after having published a post about his Commodore 64 interface, he set out to detail the particulars when it comes to using the PIC 18F family as USB input devices. This example uses a PIC 18F4550 with the circuit built on a breadboard. There’s not much required here, an oscillator, a few passives, and a USB B connector. The magic really happens in the code. Take a look at this well-written guide and give it a try with your next project.
Don’t need USB? [Simon’s] game hack, the Ultimate Simon is always worth another look too.
A while back, we announced that we would be bringing new features to Hackaday. One in particular that garnished a lot of interest was our question answer type thingy. Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, that has not happened yet. Without divulging too much into the secret machinery that lies underneath Hackaday, I’ll just say that we(the writers) don’t necessarily have control over all aspects of the site. An example would be the copyright. Yes, we finally got it updated. Thanks for all of your emails. No, none of us had access to that part of the site, so don’t bother letting us know how simple that change should have been.
We are as eager as you to see some good ideas and good feedback flowing through this site, so we’re going to start a regular post, entitled “Ask Hackaday”. This isn’t entirely new, we’ve done it before actually. This is just to let you know that we intend to do it regularly, and to set some ground rules. “Ask Hackaday” will mostly center around you, our readers, and your ideas. We will publish a question, and possibly our thoughts, but the main content will be your responses. We have a huge collective of intelligent creative readers and it would be a shame not to tap into that pool of knowledge. When you are offering an answer, be thorough, give details, and please be kind.
Send your questions to askHAD@hackaday.com for consideration. They will be chosen based on a complicated system of random number variation involving furry woodland creatures and how we feel at the moment that we read them. Do not get offended if you question does not get published. We get tons of questions already and we don’t intend to publish them all.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UKxuVliaIA]
[XenonJon] got a lot of attention for a skateboard/segway style balancing platform he took to the Makerfaire in Newcastle. He decided to try to build it the cheapest and easiest possible way in an attempt to help others build their own. The build is documented very well, however you have to email him to request the code for the Arduino. Maybe after enough requests, he’ll just pop it online. We thought this looked familiar, so we searched the archive and found this very similar setup from back in 2005. Unfortunately, that project page appears to be gone now.
