This Dongle Makes Any Screen An Android Device

November 26, 2011 by Mike Szczys 37 Comments

Want that 70″ LCD television in your living room to be an Android device? This little guy can make it happen. With an HDMI port on one end, and a USB plug on the other for power, just plug in FXI Technologies’ Cotton Candy dongle to create a 1080p Android television.

The price isn’t set for the device, but it’s expected to be available at less than $200. Considering what’s inside that’s pretty reasonable. There’s a dual-core 1.2 GHz ARM processor, 1 gig of RAM, 64 gigs of storage, Bluetooth, WiFi, and a microSD card slot. Wow!

So is it hackable? Absolutely. Well, kind of? The company doesn’t intend to bring Cotton Candy to the retail market. Instead, they will sell the device to developers who may do what they wish. From there, said developers have the option to license the technology for their own products. This begs the question, will the development kit come in under $200? Hard to say.

Check out the video after the break to hear an interview with the company’s CEO. It certainly sounds fascinating, and like the Chumby NeTV, we can’t wait to see what comes of this. Continue reading “This Dongle Makes Any Screen An Android Device” →

Full Featured Security Lock Demonstration

November 26, 2011 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Arshad Pathan] let us know about his latest project, a modular code lock that can be adapted to many different situations.

The user interface is made up of a character LCD screen and a 3×4 keypad. For this example [Arshad] is using a stepper motor as the locking mechanism. When the board is first powered up it runs the stepper in one direction until receiving input from a limiting switch. In this way, the microcontroller calibrates itself to ensure the lock is in a known position. From there it waits for user input. An unlocked door can be locked at any time by pressing the * key. Unlocking requires entry of the correct password. And a password can be changed by entering 9999 (followed by the old password when prompted).

In the video after the break [Arshad] does a great job of demonstrating the various modes which he has programmed. This stands on its own, but we always love to have more details so we’ve asked if [Arshad] is willing to share a schematic and the source code. We’ll update this post if we hear back from him.

Update: [Arshad] sent in a couple of schematics which can be found after the break.

Continue reading “Full Featured Security Lock Demonstration” →

Rebuilding A Mac SE As A Server Again

November 26, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 12 Comments

Around this time last year, [Sprite_TM] took a 1980’s-era Macintosh SE and rebuilt it as a home file server. He used a Seagate Dockstar as the new motherboard, but over the past year he’s been annoyed with the fact that the Dockstar doesn’t have real SATA ports. Using USB to SATA converters on a server is a slow way of doing things, so [Sprite_TM] rebuilt his SE using an HP thin client. To do this, he had to break out the onboard SATA and PCIE; not an easy task, but that’s why [Sprite_TM] is around.

The first order of business was installing a pair of SATA ports. The stock thin client had two NAND-flash chips serving as the drive, both connected to a SATA controller. All [Sprite_tm] had to do was desolder the flash chips and wire up the new SATA connections. Easy enough.

Because the HP thin client only had 100Mbps Ethernet, [Sprite_tm] wasn’t looking forward to the order of magnitude difference between his expected rsync speeds and what he would get with a 1Gbps connection. The only problem is the thin client didn’t have a spare PCIE connection for an Ethernet card. That’s really no problem for [Sprite_tm], though: just desolder the GPU and run a few wires.

Just like last year’s work on his SE, [Sprite_tm] ended up with a functional and very cool home server. The old-school System 7 is still there, and of course he can still play Beyond Dark Castle. Awesome work, in our humble opinion.

Weekly Roundup 11/26/11

November 26, 2011 by Jack Buffington No comments

In case you missed them the first time, here are our most popular posts from the past week:

In first place is a post about [Yves Rossy’s] flight suit that he built that literally allows him to jump out of an airplane and really fly instead of falling with style.

Coming in at second place is one that brings our plans of blowing up the Death Star just a little closer. It is a true 3D display that uses lasers to ionize the air at just the right places to produce 3D images.

In third place is one that we might build ourselves one day. [dimovi] figured out that he could take apart a computer monitor and remove its polarization filter to make a display that looks like just a white screen to everyone who isn’t wearing polarizing sunglasses.

Next up is a post about a LED wall that was hand built by [Martin].

Finally we have a teardown of a Verifone payment module that [Jerzmacow] kindly put online. This device has all sorts of useful parts inside.

Etching Your Own PCBs

November 25, 2011 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

When [Adr1an] wrote in to share a link to his PCB etching tutorial he mentioned that he knew we had already covered a ton of these guides. He’s absolutely right, not only have we featured a great number of them, but we also wrote our own quite a while ago. But that doesn’t mean we ignore them when they come in on the tips line. In fact, we read all of them that have something to offer and are pleased to feature the ones that are well presented… like this one!

[Adr1an] went all out with his writeup. He not only covers all of the elements that go into this, but discusses where to purchase them and his thoughts on how he arrived at the choice. He’s using the toner transfer method and prefers Brother branded toner for its coverage and resistance to over-etching. He prints on HP Everday Photopaper, then uses a laminator to transfer to the copper clad board. For this guide he used 2oz copper but prefers 1oz copper as it etches faster. His etchant of choice is Ferric Chloride, which can be ordered as a dry powder. He uses the direct etch method of loading etchant into a sponge an applying that to the board.

The board he makes in the guide looks great, and it only took him 28 minutes!

Beer Dispenser Talks To Customers, Announces Office Parties Via Twitter

November 25, 2011 by Mike Nathan 15 Comments

arnie-intelligent-beer-dispenser

Just about the only thing better than beer is free beer.

Staff at the Arnold Worldwide ad agency are free to imbibe in the office’s lounge area, but a few employees thought that it would be pretty awesome to have their beer stash offered up by a vending machine. Using a grant that the company sets aside for “creative projects”, they built [Arnie], the interactive beer dispensing machine.

The machine was stocked with company-branded brews, and each employee carries an RFID key fob pre-loaded with beer credits. When the urge hits, staff members swipe their fob in front of the machine and select their preferred drink from the large, front-mounted touch screen. [Arnie] speaks with his customers and also uses Twitter to announce parties in the making, when a handful of bottles have been vended over a short period of time.

The project was a great use of money if you ask us, and we think that every office should have one of these babies in-house.

Continue reading to see a short video of how [Arnie] came to be.

Continue reading “Beer Dispenser Talks To Customers, Announces Office Parties Via Twitter” →

A Trojan Horse Full Of Music

November 25, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 1 Comment

With a Sound + Vision exhibition coming up, the folks over at Seaweed Factory decided they needed something big. Somehow they landed on building a giant pinata that responds to being walloped with a stick by playing MIDI notes. The end result is called the Trojan Chorus. Instead of Greek soldiers, though, the pinata is filled with electronics and candy.

The pinata was constructed out of cardboard and more colored tissue paper than we care to imagine. The horse stands seven feet tall and was built with a little more structural integrity than a normal pinata. Check out the ‘making of’ video for the pinata here.

From what we can tell, the electronics are 24 contact microphones implanted all over the inside of the pinata. Impacts on these contact mics are recorded by a small dev board, transcribed to serial data, and sent to a computer. You can check out the electronics in action right here. A horse neighing MIDI notes may sound fairly weird, but similar setup could be added to make the Trojan Chorus cry out in pain.

Continue reading “A Trojan Horse Full Of Music” →