Author: Navarre Bartz

310 Articles

A beige keyboard with blue and grey keys sits on a colorful deskmat atop a wooden desk. A small box with a round Touch ID button sits next to the keyboard.

Standalone Touch ID For Your Desktop Mac

December 26, 2022 by 1 Comment

With the proliferation of biometric access to mobile devices, entering a password on your desktop can feel so passé. [Snazzy Labs] decided to fix this problem for his Mac by liberating the Touch ID from a new Apple keyboard.

When Apple introduced its own silicon for its desktops, it also revealed desktop keyboards that included their Touch ID fingerprint reader system. Fingerprint access to your computer is handy, but not everyone is a fan of the typing experience on Apple keyboards. Wanting to avoid taping a keyboard under his desk, [Snazzy Labs] pulled the logic board from the keyboard and designed a new 3D printed enclosure for the Touch ID button and logic board so that the fingerprint reader could reside close to where the users hands actually are.

One interesting detail discovered was the significantly different logic boards between the standard and numpad-containing variants. The final enclosure designs feature both wireless and wired versions for both the standard and numpad logic boards if you should choose to build one of your own. We’re interested to see if someone can take this the next step and use the logic board to wire up a custom mechanical keyboard with Touch ID.

If [Snazzy Labs] seems familiar, you may recognize him from their Mac Mini Mini. If you’re more in the mood to take your security to the extreme, check out this Four Factor Biometric Lockbox that includes its own fingerprint reader.

Continue reading “Standalone Touch ID For Your Desktop Mac” →

A radio with a white front grate and wood edges sits on a grey surface. Next to the radio are small white disks with colorful edges reminicient of microdisc-sized records. A yellow-ringed disk sits on the radio. The handwritten title says, "Summer of 2011; Holidays in Barcelona"

Spotify Player Brings Back Physical Media

December 24, 2022 by 21 Comments

Digital music has made keeping all your tunes with you a lot more convenient, but have we lost something with dematerialization? [Jordi Parra] felt that there was something lacking with the digital music experience and designed a Spotify player with a tactile interface.

Specific playlists are selected via small RFID tags that look like a cross between a MiniDisc and a vinyl record. As this is a prototype, an Arduino reads the RFID tag, but needs a computer to actually play the Spotify playlist. Future iterations could include an integrated speaker and run libspotify to create a self-contained device.

While there is still work to do for a fully seamless experience, we love the details in the industrial design of this project. Clean simple lines and a combination of wood and more modern materials make this feel like a timeless piece of tech. Definitely check out the full photo gallery including shots of the really impressive packaging.

Want more digital music with a tactile interface? Check out this MP3 Player Shelf or a Simple Internet Radio Transplant.

Three purple OshPark boards and a white bread board all attached using a number of jumper wires on a grey cutting mat.

An (Almost) Single-Chip Apple IIe

December 23, 2022 by 10 Comments

The Apple II is one of the most iconic microcomputers, and [James Lewis] decided to use the Mega-II “Apple IIe on a chip” from an Apple IIgs to build a tiny Apple IIe.

While there was an Apple II compatibility card using the related Gemini chip, it was initially unclear whether the Mega-II could even work outside of an Apple IIgs given the lack of documentation for either Apple II SOC. [Lewis] did finally get the Mega-II to boot after a great deal of effort in debugging and design. The system is built with three boards: the Mega-II and RAM board, a CPU board with a 65C02, and a video out board.

To simplify routing, the boards are all four layer PCBs. Unfortunately, the chips needed to make this system, especially the Mega-II, aren’t available on their own and must be harvested from an existing IIgs. [Lewis] took care to make sure any desoldering or other part removal was done in a way that it could be reversed. If you want to see all the nitty gritty details, check out his GitHub for the project.

If you want another 6502-based computer in a tiny package, why not try this one built on Perf+ boards?

Continue reading “An (Almost) Single-Chip Apple IIe” →

A scan (x-ray?) of a human skull. Electrodes trace around the skull and are attached to the brain. These implants are for reducing Parkinson's tremors.

What Happens When Implants Become Abandonware?

December 16, 2022 by 32 Comments

You’ve probably had a company not support one of your devices as long as you’d like, whether it was a smart speaker or a phone, but what happens if you have a medical implant that is no longer supported? [Liam Drew] did a deep dive on what the failure of several neurotechnology startups means for the patients using their devices.

Recent advances in electronics and neurology have led to new treatments for neurological problems with implantable devices like the Autonomic Technologies (ATI) implant for managing cluster headaches. Now that the company has gone out of business, users are left on their own trying to hack the device to increase its lifespan or turning back to pharmaceuticals that don’t do the job as well as tapping directly into the nervous system. Since removing defunct implants is expensive (up to $40k!) and includes the usual list of risks for surgery, many patients have opted to keep their nonfunctional implants. Continue reading “What Happens When Implants Become Abandonware?” →

A walnut ukulele with an aluminum piece routing strings at it's base which is facing the camera. The neck of the instrument extends away from the viewer and is held at an angle by a hand with striped sheets in the background.

Travel Uke From A Fallen Tree

December 12, 2022 by 6 Comments

When faced with what to build from the trimmings of the walnut tree in her yard, [Amy Qian] decided to build a headless travel ukulele. [via MAKE:]

Headless instruments relocate the tuners to the body of the instrument, and [Qian] had to do a fair bit of trimming and whittling on the body to make the tuners fit just right and still be operable via four scoops cut into the sides. After some initial troubles with the amount of friction on the strings produced by the mandrel, she replaced it with a set of ball bearings and a holder she machined out of aluminum.

We love how [Qian]’s extensive build log goes through the entire process of making this diminutive instrument from trimming dead walnut branches to building a playable instrument. Little details like the maple strip in the neck and the cocobolo accents really take this far beyond the cigar box instruments that start many down the path of luthiery.

Looking for more musical hacks? How about this set of Commodore 64s turned into an accordion or this Baguette Theremin?

An art deco style computer made of several grey/blue boxes with silver grates on top of a maple platform.

Clean Slate Is A Vintage Amplifier-Inspired PC

December 9, 2022 by 9 Comments

Hacks that bring a vintage flair to modern electronics never get old, and [Jeffrey Stephenson] delivers with his Project Clean Slate inspired by vintage tube amps.

Thinking outside the traditional single box PC, [Jeffrey] built his computer into a series of component-specific boxes all attached to a platform housing the Micro ATX motherboard. The base is made of plywood with a birds-eye maple veneer and each of the component boxes features two different sizes of wire mesh to manipulate the viewer’s perception of the dimensions. Even the I/O and graphics card plates are custom made from aluminum for this build.

If you really want to dig into how this PC came to life, there’s a very detailed build log including every step of the process from bare board to finished product. We love when we get an inside look at the thought process behind each design decision in a build.

We’ve featured [Jeffrey] before with his Humidor Cluster, and you may also like this PC inside a vintage radio.

Continue reading “Clean Slate Is A Vintage Amplifier-Inspired PC” →

A grey keyboard with orange and dark grey accents is angled away from the camera. The keys nearby are clearly distinguishable in the foreground but blurry toward the back/right. The keyboard is quite thick as it also contains a computer motherboard.

Mechanical Keyboard With A Framework Inside

November 30, 2022 by 31 Comments

Like the Commodore 64 and other keyboard computers of yore, the [Elevated Systems]’s CJ64 fits all of its processing and I/O into a single keyboard-shaped package.

This iteration of the project takes it to the next level with an enclosure milled out of aluminum instead of the mere 3D printed enclosure of the previous versions. With a Framework mainboard, the ports are configurable via the Framework expansion card system giving you even more options to customize this build. To round it out, this keyboard PC doesn’t scrimp on the keyboard part either with mechanical switches and MT3 profile keycaps.

If you’d like to build one of these for yourself, [Elevated Systems] has uploaded the 3D printed enclosure files to his GitHub repository. The files for machining are available as well, but only to patrons.

For some more Framework-based mods, check out this Framework Tablet, the Framedeck, or this other retro-inspired Framework build. If you want an all-in-keyboard slabtop, then maybe check out Are Slabtops the Future of Computing?

Continue reading “Mechanical Keyboard With A Framework Inside” →