[PaulJ] sent in this older, but excellent little hack to silence your mouse. Don’t like the click that your mouse makes? If your mouse has the right kind of switch inside, it can be quieted down with a quick soldering job. Just remove it, turn the upper half around and re-assemble.
Author: Will O'Brien805 Articles
Day O’ Guitar Hero Mods (with A Bonus)
I’ve already gotten a pile of tips on Guitar Hero controllers today, so here we go. The first one is already making the rounds. [Mark] replaced strummer with a touchscreen LCD and a magnetic switch. [Mark]s ultimate goal is to add some optical sensing and make the guitar self playing. For details, hit the acidmods thread or just watch the proof of concept demo.
[Johan] sent in the second controller of the day, and it’s probably my favorite for guitar bling. The original mushy switches were replaced with micro-switches and CNC milled replacement buttons. Each button is individually lit with LEDs and a cold cathode lights up translucent panel in the body. A PIC controller controls the lights and provides some input options for button tapping. The video is actually pretty entertaining to watch.
For a little bonus, check out [Mastershake916]’s cast Hack-A-Day pendant.
Reader How-To: Wiimote Horse Controller
I linked the Wiimote horse controller in yesterdays extra, but today [Mark] sent us a short and sweet How-to. Essentially, he’s using the Wiimote taped to the horse as a joystick to play Need for Speed on the laptop connected to his big screen. Hit the read link for his write up.
Friday I Want A Ball Pit Extra
[rmunroe] of the notorious xkcd made his own ball pit. I’m now completely, totally jealous.
[-] sent in this Commadore 64 Guitar Hero project.
[Jock] sent in this uh, marriage of a Wiimote and a rocking horse. It’s actually a great idea if you’ve got a kid and some duct tape handy.
[warthox] sent in this XBox 360 tilt controller project. These have been popping up a bit, but you might like this one. The board is all surface mount, and was routed to make the prototype. I kind-of like the surface pads that were used to mount the wires to avoid doing thru hole mounts.
We’ve been digging the EeePC – [Paul] wrote up his tricks to get Ubuntu working on the thing.
[Jock] sent in this huge set of music hacks. Mostly circuit bent, but they make for interesting reading.
DIY SCUBA Tank Boost Pump (for Mixing Gases)
No love for that sweet old NES controller? Fine, here’s a bonus hack for you. This home-built boost pump is designed to take in a volume of gas (like oxygen) and compress it with a hydraulic style air powered cylinder to raise the pressure. With the increased pressure, the O2 can be added to a SCUBA tank that contains high pressure air to create what’s known as NITROX. The idea is to increase the percentage of Oxygen in order to reduce Nitrogen absorbtion in the blood – increasing a divers safe time at depth underwater.
The compression cylinder is built entirely of brass with Sirvon seals. The drive cylinder and 2:1 lever produces 3,000 lbs of pressure on the pump cylinder, all from 120psi of pressure from a standard shop air compressor.
NES Inside A Controller With Cartridge Compatibility
[Tony] sent in this Nintendo hack. It’s a fully functioning NES with Composite output inside an old school controller. On the back it’s got a cartridge connector, so you can play normal games, there’s a port for a second player/light gun, and for extra bling, the Nintendo logo is backlit. To pull it off, he stuffed a Super Joy III – A.K.A. famiclone inside the controller, did a marathon of soldering for the cartridge connector, and used the now unused controller wires to carry the video and second controller signals.
Yes, this has been around for a while, but I dig it.
Mic Preamp In An IPod Touch Dock Connector
[Marian] sent in his sweet little Mic preamp that he built for his iPod touch. He built the circuit on the legs of a TLC272 OP-Amp with SMD components. The whole thing actually fits inside the cover of a standard iPod dock connector.
Bonus: [tnkgrl] added a USB bluetooth adapter to her eeePC after her circuit tracing efforts.
