Author: Eliot

1332 Articles

Adaptive Ambient Light For Movies

July 10, 2006 by 24 Comments


[RafkeP] from Divxstation has created this clever hack to clone the Philips Electronics Ambilight technology used in their flat-panels. Ambilight is an RGB backlight that changes color based on the on-screen image. It’s supposed to make the viewing experience more comfortable. The MoMoLight uses a directshow filter to calculate the average color on the top, left and right border of the screen. It sends this information to a microcontroller that does PWM control of three separate banks of red, green and blue cold-cathodes. LEDs could be used instead. Monitoring the top, left and right would be called Ambilight 3 according to Philips’s naming scheme, which doesn’t actually exist yet.

[thanks mathias vdb]

Game Port Photogate

July 9, 2006 by 25 Comments

photogate

Hack-A-Day regular [Andrew] has posted an incredibly simple game port based photogate. He uses a pair of light dependent resistors. Each one is placed inside of a ballpoint pen tube to limit ambient light on the sensor. He’s got a simple QBasic program to calculate the velocity of an object passing the sensors. You’ll have to run it inside a DOS emulator to get access to the game port under XP.

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T-Mobile SDA Unlocking, Overclocking And Skype

July 8, 2006 by 20 Comments

t-mobile sda

[Ken Keiter] has written up a guide to unlocking your T-Mobile SDA, overclocking it, and then adding Skype for use over WiFi. The unlock procedure is pretty simple and only needs some free software. The overclocking is just as simple. The OMAP processor needs to be overclocked to 240MHz otherwise Skype will have a lot of lag. The Skype install is straightforward except for one hitch: the phone doesn’t have a touch screen so you can’t click Sign-In. You can get around this using a piece of software called Pocket Controller which lets you click the button with your mouse. After that you can set Skype to auto sign-in so you’ll never need to use the mouse again. Ken’s final tip is how to change the T-Zones button so that it launches Skype.

Optically Isolated Parallel Port I2C Adapter

July 7, 2006 by 20 Comments

parport i2c

I2C is a simple communications bus similar to 1-wire, which we’ve talked about earlier. [hnch] has built a really simple I2C parallel port interface. It’s optically isolated so you don’t have to worry about a mistake frying your computer. I2C modules already come with the Linux kernel. It will even treat temperature sensors you attach exactly like the ones you have on your motherboard so you can monitor them using ordinary software like gkrellm. There are lots of other devices that use I2C as well. [hnch] has a nerdity gallery and will gladly write up any other project you’d like information on.

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DIY Powder Coating Gun

July 5, 2006 by 26 Comments

powdercoat gun

Master modder ZapWizard has completed work on version 3 of his home built powder coating gun. Powder coat is applied using air pressure to blow negatively charged thermoplastic particles onto a grounded metal surface. The metal part is then baked to make a hard finish. ZapWizard’s gun uses an air pistol with regulator at the bottom operating at 15 PSI. The powder is held in an acrylic kitchen canister with a reinforced seal. The final element is an ionizer element placed in front of the discharge nozzle. Version 2 had a trigger operated switch for the ionizer, but that was replaced with just a simple toggle.

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MacBook Pro Biometrics

July 4, 2006 by 25 Comments

biometrics

I’m amazed at how many people are willing to chop up their brand new toys. Take [edahc]’s brand new MacBook Pro. He decided to mount a Sony Puppy FIU-600 fingerprint scanner in the case. The device is powered directly from the DC board. I think the MacBook Pro may actually lend itself more to these types of modifications than most laptops because of the large flat metal surfaces on the case. More so than say your standard lumpy plastic Dell.

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