Tamagotchi Hacking, In Depth

December 31, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 26 Comments

In this strangely fascinating talk, you can follow along as [Natalie Silvanovich] reverse engineers some Tamagotchi. Even if you have no interest whatsoever in digital pets, you’ll probably pick up a trick or two by listening to how she went about taking over the toy. She can now push her own images to the screen, and evolve her Tamagotchi at will.

Listening to her story you might be able to pick up a few tricks as she takes almost every angle possible. She uncovers the black blobs, she attempts to socially engineer her way into datasheets, decaps chips, she dumps and breaks down code. It is also worth noting that, in the beginning, internet electronics enthusiasts were adamant that it just had a PIC processor inside and they were wrong. Having an internet full of experts is a wonderful thing, except when it isn’t.

Then again, having that internet full of experts might be her savior in the end, she’s missing a piece of software and asking if anyone has it available.

Continue reading “Tamagotchi Hacking, In Depth” →

Engadget Trying Out Some Crowd-funding

December 29, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

Engadget has decided to give this whole crowd-funding thing a try with a competition called Insert Coin. This is part of an upcoming event called Expand that is supposed to let us get inside information on gadget construction and conception. This actually sounds refreshing compared to the giant commercial that other tech conferences can be (This is why Hackaday has never returned to CES).

Insert Coin is a contest that has hardware at the forefront. If you qualify, you could win $25,000 for your device as well as $1,000 to come show it off at their event.

Continue reading “Engadget Trying Out Some Crowd-funding” →

[Staci Elaan]’s Awesome Portable Tesla Coils.

December 8, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 45 Comments

We stumbled onto [Staci’s] videos a while ago when we posted this big tesla gun. While it wasn’t the first portable coil we had seen, it was certainly an impressive implementation. In the comments we found [Staci] had already been making these for a while. Hers were big and small, had awesome modulation, and looked freaking cool too.

It also should be pointed out that [Staci] donates her coils to people when she’s done! Let me say that again, she gives them away to groups of people that could use them. That deserves some respect.

Unfortunately, [Staci] didn’t document her builds in great detail at the time. She has added some information recently though. You can read about her first working prototype from 2006, or a slightly more modern one here.

Of course, the real fun is in seeing them work.

Continue reading “[Staci Elaan]’s Awesome Portable Tesla Coils.” →

MechBass: A Robotic Bass Guitar That Sounds Fantastic

November 22, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 43 Comments

[James] wrote in to show us his honors project for his fourth year at Victoria University of Wellington. He designed and built this robotic bass guitar. You can hear it performing “mass hysteria” by the band Muse after the break. It sounds great, but we’d love to hear it without the full accompaniment.

[James] doesn’t have a site up for the MechBass, so we’ve included details below.

Continue reading “MechBass: A Robotic Bass Guitar That Sounds Fantastic” →

Let The 3d Printing Patent Wars Begin!

November 21, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 62 Comments

If you and your friends were gathering a pool of bets together as to when the first patent case would happen in 3d printing, someone just won the pot. 3D systems has filed suit against formlabs for possible patent infringement.

In a press release by 3D systems, they state that not only are they going after form labs, but also Kickstarter for selling the device.

Although Formlabs has publicly stated that certain patents have expired, 3D Systems believes the Form 1 3D printer infringes at least one of our patents, and we intend to enforce our patent rights

It is worth noting that the “cube” printer that Make magazine recently named the most reliable and easiest to use, happens to be made by 3D systems. Note that this one appears to be a typical rep-rap derivative.

[via Adafruit]

The New Template Has Arrived!

November 16, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 277 Comments

When we decided that our template needed a remake several years ago, we knew it was going to be a long and difficult process. We offered you a chance to give us some input in a recent post and now we are releasing the first iteration of the new template.

For those that saw the mockups and gave us your opinion, you will be happy to see we actually listened to many thoughts and incorporated them in our final design. We worked with some people at Google to determine what features should be tossed and what to keep, and what we have ended up with, is what you see. We also acknowledge that not everyone will love the change, but we feel it is a move in the right direction. We’re really happy how it has ended up.

I want to offer a special thanks to [Stephanie Froehner] who put tons of time into making this template pretty, even if it has been hacked and slashed a bit since then.

Join me after the break for an explanation of some of the new features and upcoming features.

Continue reading “The New Template Has Arrived!” →

Beginner Project: Color Sensing With RGB LEDs And A Photocell

November 5, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

I’ve seen the concept art for “real world eyedroppers” several times. I haven’t noticed any of the products come to market though. It isn’t the technology stoping them, color sampling can be done a million ways. I picked one of the easiest ways and tossed something together pretty quickly.

Continue reading “Beginner Project: Color Sensing With RGB LEDs And A Photocell” →