[Computer Guru]’s LCD power supply went out, making it a useless pile of plastic. He used an old computer PSU to replace the defective one. After he identified the outputs on the built-in supply (The one’s I’ve pulled apart were labelled) he stripped down the replacement PSU to provide the necessary voltages.
Author: Will O'Brien805 Articles
RGB PIC Color Changer
[Ian] put up his RGB LED color changer project over at diylife. It’s a pretty simple project, but well designed and flexible for combining with other projects. He used a PIC18F2550 to drive everything, and some FETs to drive the LEDs. When you connect a USB cable, the color cycling project stops and the PIC responds to simple hex based color commands.
Cesar: Geek Out Your Powerwheels
[Zack Anderson] built this computer controlled autonomous robot (back in 2003) out of an old, ugly powerwheels Jeep. It’s got a full onboard computer with wifi, video camera, SONAR sensors, a robotic arm and it can self-navigate. He’s provided server and client code (I haven’t tried it yet), and The project shouldn’t be a surprise, since he’s been working on entries for the DARPA challenge for a while.
Make Your Own Roll Up Keyboard
[Auger] sent in this nice little hack. The instructable says to get a USB keyboard (it looks like a Dell USB keyboard to me), gut it and label the flexible membranes inside after you join them together. If you’ve got a supply of this style of keyboard, it could be a cheap source… or better yet, maybe you can use the guts to produce high quality custom keybads.
Vexplorer Computer Control
[kernsy] sent in this nice little PICAXE based hack to provide computer control of a VExpolorer kit robot. The PICAXE takes serial commands and outputs the pulse commands normally generated by the controls directly to the RF chipset in the remote.
Another High Altitude Project
[Jock] sent in HALO, a nice diy high altitude recon project. Taking a page from the Kite Arial Photography guys, they mounted the camera on a servo tilt mechanism, had radio modem control and SMS gps position updates. I’m waiting for someone to put together a similar package that glides back to home base after the balloon is released.
By the way, if you’ve got a newer CRT RPTV, you might be interested how I fixed mine.
Embedding Apps In Wifi Finders
[Matt] sent in this excellent wifi finder reverse engineering project. The goal is to enable custom embedded apps that take advantage of the independent operating mode of the wireless adapter. One of the chips lacked any useful manufacturer markings, so he got some guys at a lab to etch the top of the chip off and get a partial chip id. So far he’s got boot-loader access, so now it’s just a matter of some development.
