Author: Eliot

1332 Articles

Lava Lamp Random Number Generator

June 5, 2005 by 10 Comments

lava lamp

That title is really misleading; this hack doesn’t require a lava lamp… anymore. I initially went googling for a 1996 project at SGI that generated random numbers by taking photos of a lava lamp. The lava lamp was chosen because of its chaotic nature. I was suprised to find that SGI had patented/trademarked the lavarandtm technology. The system required you to use IRIX, took up a lot of space, and because of patents wasn’t easy to implement. In 2000 the engineers behind the original decided to develop an open source alternative know as LavaRnd (note the capital “L” and “R” ;-). [Editor’s note 2025: The domain has been taken over by an online casino.]

This iteration doesn’t use a lava lamp. Its source of chaos is camera with the lens cap on. The gain on the CMOS sensor is cranked all the way up to create a really noisy image. The image data is then sent through an algorithm to generate the random numbers. If you want to see the original project you’re going to have to ask the Wayback Machine.

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Electric Starter Powered Kart

June 4, 2005 by 9 Comments

electric starter kart
Taking a cue from bar stool racers, Robert Lee built this kart using a Honda starter. The frame is constructed out of PVC with steel reinforcement. Notice the forced air cooling. Along with the kart details he’s got links to PDFs about building barstool racers and PVC frames on the site. Be warned: Tripod sites will make you envy the blind.

[thanks john kiniston]

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IPod Shuffle Without ITunes

June 3, 2005 by 44 Comments

shuffle gray

Martin Fielder did most of the hard work when it comes to using the iPod Shuffle without iTunes. All you have to do is copy the music over to your Shuffle like a normal mass storage device. Then run the database builder which takes care of all of the dirty work. Ohad took care of the final loose ends for Windows users by converting the Python script to an exe. Head over to his blog to pick up the zip file and start managing your own music, because… well… you’re not an idiot.

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JuiceBox Messenger Bag

June 2, 2005 by 19 Comments

juicebox boom box

Henry sent this in just in time for us to ignore Slashdot’s terrible story on JuiceBox hacking. The JuiceBox is a simple personal video player designed for people who don’t care about resolution or framerate, supposedly kids. Major retail chains have started dropping the prices of these units so you can pick one up pretty cheap. Probably the cheapest MMC based MP3 player you’ll find. To get more info on the hardware and the uClinux OS that it runs check out the JuiceBox page at the eLinux wiki. Details and pictures of Henry’s boom bag after the jump.

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Parallel LCD On OSX

June 1, 2005 by 6 Comments

mac parallel lcd

Reader EPooch needed a USB attached display for a future project. From initial research it seemed that most available solutions involved using a “usb to serial” adapter followed by a “serial to parallel” adapter and finally connecting that to the parallel interface on the lcd; Far from elegant. Eric decided to try using a USB to parallel cable intended for use with a printer. His first cable didn’t work out to well because of poor documentation. He ended up finding an adapter from Belkin that would work. Oddly, it works even though the cable was supposed to be Windows only and the Mac version of it isn’t made for OSX. Keep up the good work Eric and we hope to see more from you soon.

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Dot Matrix Synth

May 31, 2005 by 12 Comments

dot matrix synth

This project initially started as an attempt to build a Mellotron, a tape based sampling synth. Paul Slocum recorded samples using a tape recorder and then taped the segments to the printer’s feed drum. The samples were then played back by varying drum speed and read head location. Later versions of the printer synth used a hacked EPROM and generated sound using the noise of the firing print head. The site features plenty of sound samples which are slightly more pleasant than my parent’s Panasonic “quiet” series dot-matrix printer.

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