Author: Caleb Kraft

1567 Articles

Tethering The Kindle 2

March 4, 2009 by 34 Comments

kindle

This is not an article on how to use your Kindle’s internet connection with your computer. We’ll let [Jesse] explain why:

This is not a tutorial about how to use the Kindle 2’s Sprint connection from your computer. I don’t know that it’s possible to do so without making changes to the Linux installation on the Kindle. I do know that abusing the Kindle’s Sprint modem like that would upset Amazon a great deal.  Bear in mind also that Amazon know where you live. They know your Kindle’s serial number and thanks to the built in GPS, they know where you are right now.

What this is, however, is a nice tutorial on how to connect your Kindle to your computer so that it can use your computer’s internet connection. The instructions assume you are using a Mac, so you may have to adapt it if you aren’t. Basically you put the Kindle in Debug mode and tell it to use the USB tether for it’s network connection. This should allow not only a faster connection, but possibly a chance to see what exactly they are transferring back and forth.

Putting A Digital Picture Frame To Work

March 3, 2009 by 29 Comments

picture-frame

[Tobe] shares living accomodations with a few other people, so he built this tool to help them all communicate. using a Samsung SPF-83v wifi enabled picture frame, he’s made a central location for things like shopping lists and messages. He uses PHP for the database accessing and writes it all to an image using gd. Every 15 minutes a cron job runs that pushes the updated image to the picture frame.

Remote Thermometer Using Arduino

March 3, 2009 by 24 Comments

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[Peter] sent in this writeup on how to build a remotely accessible thermometer. The hardware side is pretty easy on this one, all you need is an Arduino, a resistor and an thermistor. The software is where the main focus is.  You can check the temperature via command line, but also via email. It can also tell you the temperature using the host computers sound hardware. You can see a video of it in action after the break. We have to wonder why he didn’t make it twitter.

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Breath Controlled Guitar Hero Kick Pedal

March 2, 2009 by 24 Comments

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[Ben Heck] the uber modder has posted a new project. He has made a breath controlled kick pedal for all of the Guitar Hero style games. Though the tutorial focuses on Guitar Hero World Tour, he does explain how it could be done for Rock Band at the end. This is intended for someone in a wheelchair who couldn’t actually use the kick pedal and needed their hands free to play the rest of the drums. He took apart the kick pedal that came with it to get the piezoelectric switch out of it. Then, he made a little chamber and placed the switch on a diaphragm at one end. When you blow, the diaphragm moves and triggers the switch. Pretty simple really. There is a video available of [Ben] trying it out as well.

Hexapod Helicopter

March 2, 2009 by 24 Comments

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

[Kiethrobot] built this six legged little helicopter. You can see that it is fairly mobile. You can also see that it doesn’t really make it off the ground really well.  He must have gotten more power out of it though because he destroyed it in a crash the day after filming this. It is surprising how much character those six little legs add to the RC helicopter. This thing is almost as cute as something from crabfu.

[via BotJunkie]

Nerf Sniper

March 1, 2009 by 29 Comments

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a true hacker knows that you just can’t blow away the competition with a stock piece of equipment. Nerf warfare is no different. These guys did what they had to do to become the dominant force in their offices Nerf wars. They built their own high power Nerf rifle. Using some PVC, a sprinkler valve, and a bicycle pump, they made a Nerf gun that can fire roughly 300 feet. You can see a video of it in action after the break.

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