Month: March 2012

Resetting The Page Count On A Laser Printer

March 5, 2012 by 101 Comments

[Brian] really liked his Samsung color laser printer right up until it was time to replace the toner cartridges. A full set of toner cartridges sell for about the same price as the printer itself, so [Brian] figured he could simply refill the toner in the cartridges he already has. The printer sends out the ‘low toner’ warning  based on page count and won’t print if the page count is too high, negating the economy of a toner refill kit. Luckily, [Brian] figured out a dead simple way to reset the page count so he can use those third-party refill kits.

All the configuration settings and page counts for the printer are stored on an I2C EEPROM. After dumping the data held on this EEPROM with an Arduino and sniffing everything going into the EEPROM with a Bus Pirate, [Brian] was nearly at his wit’s end. Thankfully, serendipity intervened. When [Brian] restarted the printer with the Bus Pirate attached, he noticed it took much longer to initialize. Printing a configuration report, he was trilled to see that all page counts have been zeroed.

The final hack that allows [Brian] to reset the page count and used refilled toner cartridges is a simple wire that ties the SDA line of the EEPROM to ground on boot. [Brian] used a momentary switch, but given this is a once-every-few-months operation, a simple wire would suffice. Check out [Brian]’s page reset demo after the break.

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Pop-up Dragonfly Robot Could Be The Future Of Business Cards

March 5, 2012 by 15 Comments

Engineers trying to be memorable at a job interview would be wise to pull one of these pop-up robots out of a wallet. This marvel of engineering uses a laminate construction technique to build a robot as a pop-up assembly. You can see the base used during the process, it’s a hexagon that serves as a scaffolding during the laminating process, and includes mechanical linkages that facilitate assembly.

The design calls for multiple layers of materials to be laser-cut to exacting specifications. Once all parts are completed, they are stacked using rods to align them, then fused together. One more trip through the laser cutter finishes the milling and the machine is ready for assembly. But with parts this small, you’ll want a solid method for putting everything together. The linkages we mentioned before allow for this when two parts of the scaffolding are separated. The only thing that makes this impossible as a business card is the need for a trip through the solder bath to cement the pieces in place. But perhaps some type of clasping mechanism could remove this need in the future.

Don’t miss the video after the break that explains the entire process. You’ll even get to see the little guy flap his wings. That’s all that it does for now, there isn’t any steering mechanism available as of yet.

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Control Your PC With A Remote

March 5, 2012 by 16 Comments

Because his computer is gradually turning into an all-inclusive media display device, [Shawn] figured a remote to control the volume and a video playlist would be a reasonable addition. TV remotes for computers have been around for years, but [Shawn] decided to go the DIY route and build his own computer remote.

For the build, [Shawn] used a Teensy dev board with an IR receiver module and the requisite infrared remote library. To translate infrared signals to keyboard commands,[Shawn] decided to base his project off a previous build that used a small program called AutoHotKey.

Right now the build can cycle through a pre-defined YouTube and Shoutcast playlist and change the volume of the currently playing track. There’s also support for moving the mouse with directional buttons on the remote, but we’re wondering if a better implementation would be using the Windows multimedia keyboard scan codes that should be supported by [Shawn]’s laptop.

Still, [Shawn] managed a very nice build that would fit into our computer battlestations quite nicely. Check out the demo of the remote in action after the break.

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USB Dongle Generates And Enters Your Passwords So You Don’t Have To

March 5, 2012 by 45 Comments

usb-password-dongle

Like many businesses out there, [Joonas Pihlajamaa’s] employer requires him to change his password every few months. Instead of coming up with a complex, yet easy to remember password again and again, he built a small USB device to do the work for him.

He dismantled an old USB memory stick, fitting it with an ATtiny85 with its required components on a small piece of perfboard. Using the knowledge he gleaned from his previous USB HID tinkering, he programmed the ATtiny to act as a USB keyboard which enters his password for him whenever he plugs it in.

The USB dongle not only types his password in for him, it can generate a new password with a few simple keystrokes whenever he desires. Obviously it merely takes someone getting their hands on his USB stick to compromise security, but it does beat a Post-It under the keyboard any day.

Continue reading to see a short video of his USB password dongle in action, and be sure to swing by his site for more details on how it was all put together.

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Antique Phone Provides A Soundtrack Perfect For Restoring Old Cars

March 5, 2012 by 8 Comments

crank-phone-music

[Simon] is in the middle of restoring/building himself an Austin 7 Special out in his garage, and like most tinkerers, found that music helps to move the process along. He happened to have an old Bakelite generator phone out in the garage as well, and figured that he might as well have it do something other than simply hang on the wall.

Playing music from the 1930 seemed like a fitting enough task, so he picked up an Adafruit Waveshield and spent some time wiring it up to the old telephone. His new radio works simply enough, piping .wav files through the handset, provided someone has cranked the phone’s generator recently.

While cranking the generator is required to play music, the Arduino is actually powered off a pair of AA batteries. The cranking is all cosmetic, but he did program the Arduino to slow the music down every once in awhile, requiring that the generator be turned to get things back up to speed.

It really is a neat way to repurpose the old phone, and we like the fact that [Simon] did not gut it to put this project together.

Continue reading to see a short video of his new music player in action.

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Dell Streak Screen Repair Yields A Few Welcome Surprises

March 4, 2012 by 23 Comments

dell-streak

[Rupert’s] friend cracked the screen on his beloved Dell Streak 5 phone and handed it off to see if [Rupert] could repair it. He says that the glass replacement was a relatively straightforward affair – a process he documented in thorough detail worthy of iFixit.

He did come across a few interesting tidbits along the way, including an Atmel Mega168P hanging out on the broken screen’s digitizer board, which now resides in his parts bin. The most intriguing thing [Rupert] discovered however was that the phone’s on-board memory chip wasn’t soldered in as he would have expected. Instead, he found a standard microSD slot with a 2GB card in tow. He didn’t happen to have a larger card on hand, but after researching a bit he did find out that swapping the card is a relatively simple process.

If you happen to have one of these phones sitting around, or come across a damaged unit at any point, it definitely seems worth it to resurrect it and change the factory card out for something along the lines of a 32GB model. We certainly wouldn’t complain if we had a rooted 32GB Streak kicking around!

Quadrotor Squadron Plays The [James Bond] Theme Song In Preparation For World Domination

March 4, 2012 by 19 Comments

quadrotor-james-bond-theme

If you weren’t already a big fan of quadrotors by this point, we’re pretty sure the video below will get you on the bandwagon in no time flat.

The video was debuted this past week at the TED2012 conference, giving [Daniel Mellinger, Alex Kushleyev, and Vijay Kumar] from the University of Pennsylvania GRASP Lab, a chance to show off their amazing robotics work. The team used a set of autonomous quadrotors to play the [James Bond] theme, complete with keyboard, drums, cymbals, guitar, and maracas.

The coordination of the robots undoubtedly took an incredible amount of time to orchestrate, but after watching the video we think it is well worth the effort. Now of course you can’t simply input a piece of sheet music into the quadrotor control system and expect them to play it, but we imagine that time will arrive before you know it!

Continue reading to see the [James Bond] theme song in full, and be sure to swing by the U Penn site to read more about the project.

Thanks to everyone who sent this one in!

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