Author: Caleb Kraft

1567 Articles

Solar Cells From Donuts And Tea

March 19, 2009 by 41 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVwzJEhMmD8]

It sounds unbelievable, but it is true. You can harvest most of what you need for a simple solar cell from powdered donuts and tea. Powdered donuts have nanoparticles of titanium dioxide which is a “high band gap semi conductor”.  This means that it can be used to make solar cells. The tea is simply used to dye the material so it can pick up the visible spectrum. The process is a bit too involved to be something you would just toss together in the field, but it’s cute nonetheless.

USB Sniffing In Linux

March 19, 2009 by 16 Comments

sniffer

[Robert] sent in this tutorial on how to set up USB sniffing in linux. Useful for seeing exactly what is being communicated to and from your USB devices, this ability is built into linux. [Bert], the author, shows us the steps involved and how to filter it to get the data we desire. You can specify exactly which device to capture data from. His example, shown above, is a session with an Arduino.

Wii Nunchuck And Classic USB Mod

March 18, 2009 by 8 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLWAWtpcelM]

[kero905] sent in this project he’s working on. It is an open source hardware converter to connect Wii controllers via USB. It uses an Arduino for its brains. It is still in development, the only controllers that work are the nunchuck and the classic. He notes that there are enough extra pins left to adapt to an arcade controller fairly easily. The code is available on the site, as well as a rough parts list.

Hacking The MagSafe

March 18, 2009 by 27 Comments

magsafe
This is a simple hack that could come in handy one day. [Mooner] wanted to use a Kensington universal power supply with his Macbook Pro, but found the adapters and peripherals involved “hideous”. His solution was to wire directly to the Kensington power supply. It’s pretty simple really, only a couple resistors are needed. It’s nice to have someone else do the research for you sometimes. While his final picture does look neat and tidy, we just don’t know how much of an improvement he’s made to the aesthetics. What do you think?

GPS Cradle Upgrade To Bluetooth

March 18, 2009 by 6 Comments

ipaq_gps

[emuboy] sent in this neat hack where he converted a GPS dock to bluetooth (google translated). He has an ipaq rz1710 and a Kirrio GPS cradle. Apparently there were annoying problems when inserting the ipaq into the cradle. He decided that he would much rather just connect via Bluetooth. After tearing apart the cradle, he found the documentation for the GPS chip online. He ordered a bluesmirf bluetooth modem and got to work. The end result is something that could be concealed in his car and just connected to when he gets close enough.

Amiga Joystick Camera Cable Release

March 17, 2009 by 9 Comments

amiga_release

[betaj] shares this cool mod with us. They used an Amiga joystick to create the shutter release for their camera. The circuit is pretty simple, consisting of a battery and a switch. It interfaces with the camera via a USB type A connector. Its fairly simple, but will definitely get some comments from onlookers when it is used. Still, the best mod we’ve seen for a camera by far is the chdk software for Canon digital cameras. I’ll bet we see an NES controller version soon, despite the ergonomic nonsense of it.