Hacking Your Grill For Performance And Features

September 3, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 14 Comments

Summer is winding down, which means that sales will be beginning on grills at stores all over the place. For those that enjoy the outdoor cooking experience, a nice new grill is always tempting. If you’re anything like me though, it can be hard to justify the expense. All you need is some fire right? Well, not if you want to smoke foods, or do long controlled jobs, basically anything but quickly searing something.

[Joe Brown] over at Gizmodo found himself wanting to upgrade from simple coals/wood to something fancier, but really didn’t want to shell out the $2,000 that he found would be necessary to get the mic features he wanted. So, he set out to find a good platform to mod and added the features he wanted separately. The end result was a nicely performing out door cooking appliance that only cost him $540.

This hack is on the simpler side, but his modification really did add some great features. Many of you could build the addons from scratch, which makes me wonder, how would you improve a grill, dear Hackaday Reader?

For Vacation On Hoth: Snow Speeder Sleds

September 3, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 8 Comments

Next time you’re taking a vacation anywhere that resembles the planet Hoth, you might want to take the time to build a snow speeder sled before you go. As you can see in the video above (at around the 1:00 mark), the sled looks great, even as it “flies” down the slopes. We were fairly surprised to find it was made entirely out of cardboard. We were also fairly surprised at how large the person was that unfolded from the cockpit when it stopped!

You can see pictures of the build process over at Dvice.

Lazy Labor Day Educational Time. Watch Cornell’s Microcontroller Courses.

September 2, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

C’mon, you know you’re not really going to do much today. You might as well spend that time learning some skills instead of watching funny cats. The Cornell ECE lectures on microcontrollers (ECE 4760 and ECE5760), taught by [Bruce Land], are available online for free.

Not only do you get to enjoy these two courses, but there are videos available showing off several different categories of student projects as well.

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Tracking A Stolen Laptop Triggers A Drug Bust

September 1, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 52 Comments

When then folks from the MakerShed had a laptop and iPad stolen from their vehicle in Detroit, they found out several important things.

The Detroit police have more important things to pursue.
Tracking services are awesome.
You never know how your adventure will end.

Luckily they were using an online backup system that offered location services as well. While many may disable these prying eyes as a matter of principle when they join, this is one scenario where you’d be happy you had it.

As it turns out, the Detroit police were fairly busy with other things and left the laptop owners to their own devices tracking the stolen goods via the internet. Some fun and interesting detective work involving Google maps, craigslist, and backed up images ended up leading them to the stolen goods.

Once they had a physical address, the police were available to check things out… well, a few days later. When they went to the address with a search warrant… and a battering ram, they found the house lacking tenants, but containing several forms of ID, a stolen laptop, and some Marijuana meant for distribution.

The entire story is interesting, especially the fact that the amateur detective work was capable of providing enough information for a search warrant. This actually makes me wonder how easily one could fabricate all of this information falsely to cause trouble to an innocent person. It looks like it would only take about 15 minutes and some photoshop. Maybe that’s a conversation best left for another time.

DIY Oculus Rift VR

September 1, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 15 Comments

For those that absolultely can’t wait to get to experience the Oculus Rift, you can follow these plans to build your own.

MTBS3D forum user [Rfurlan] pledged in the oculus rift kickstarter (which concluded last night), but simply couldn’t wait till November/December to get his developer kit. That, and he’s probably only getting one, and who can live with only one? Since [Palmer], the creator of the oculus rift has been very open about parts, [Rfurlan] was able to compile build instructions for your very own Oculus Rift! Keep in mind though, this is only the immersive display, not the tracking component. It is also, possibly not exactly the same as the oculus, but rather the same as a recent prototype.

At one point he was having issues finding the correct lenses and [Palmer] jumped in to make some suggestions to keep things going. That’s the kind of enthusiasm that we love to see from an innovator, even when he’s in the middle of a kickstarted for the very item that [Rfurlan] is creating. This is a testament to the VR community.

Lets take a look at what makes this thing tick, and why it is such a big deal.

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The Simulacrum, An Innovative Solution To Walking In Virtual Reality

August 31, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

If you’ve been following along with immersive gaming, even casually, you’ve probably considered the difficulty in trying to do a comfortable and believable “walk” in a game. The first thing that usually pops into peoples minds are Omni Directional Treadmills, or ODTs. There are many problems with these, one of the biggest simply being cost. They’re very expensive.

[Zalo] at the MTBS3d forums has been working on his own very cost effective solution called the “Simulacrum”. He has built this for under $100 and it allows for a walking motion to be translated into the game. As you can see in the video below it works fairly well, even when one is out of commission for repairs (hence the limp).

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What Does The Government Think About That Drone In Your Home?

August 29, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 86 Comments

The world is buzzing about drones right now. Even we’re joining in the fun with some antics of our own. Right now, it is basically a legal free-for all since no one is enforcing regulation, but is that about to change? Should it?

Lets start off by establishing the definition of a “drone”. For this article, we’ll settle for any “unmanned aerial vehicle”, though we can all agree that that limiting this to airspace is fairly restrictive. This is the specific type that are making the news right now and quite possibly catching the eye of people who make the rules.

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