Author: Will O'Brien

805 Articles

Pentium Powered Extra With Friggin’ Lasers

December 14, 2006 by 20 Comments


[Neil] sent along this one and I found this one highly amusing. The latest use for recycling those old cpus: overvolt them a bit with a USB cable and keep your coffee cup warm. Use them as dressing for heat generating resistors.

[nik] came up with a non-destructive way to mount an external wi-fi antenna to his thinkpad. I like it, but I think you need a double height PCMCIA slot to fit it – Maybe a slimmer version could be built for a powerbook/macbook.

[Hybrid] found some interesting diy LASER projects. Including a $10 air laser. Sweet.

[joek1010] noted some interesting webcam laser hacks. The laser tracing webcam has definite possibilities.

[dualbandit] found a similar twist, but this time a laser pointer is used to remote control a mediacenter.

In case you’ve been following it, my DIY HD projector build on Engadget is finished up with the final review. I’m pleased with the image quality, but I’ll probably be tweaking the lamp/reflector assembly a bit.

Oh, and if you were into exploiting vending machines and getting free coke, it looks like they’ve pushed out a firmware patch.

Remember, only 11 more days to get your entry in for the Design Challenge. Just check out the prizes if you need motivation.

Self Parking Lego Mindstorms

December 13, 2006 by 8 Comments


[Korvost] er, [Hybrid] sent along this video of a lego mindstorm self parking car. I don’t think I’d want it parking next to my ride considering how much damage it did to the blocks. Man, I need to upgrade my legos. Sadly, this video just re-iterates one of the my problems with Youtube videos. Video posters tend to fail to provide links with more information about their projects/hacks. Via [techblog]
Update: [ralphn] found the car. It uses an ultrasonic sensor to find a space big enough to park in – when it does, it automatically parks.

Don’t forget, Prizes and glory await the winner of the Design Challenge. Just 12 days left to get em in.

Just a quick bonus hack: The giant altoids tin battery pack w/voltmeter. [Via Make]

DIY TOSLINK To SP/DIF Converter

December 12, 2006 by 16 Comments


Given the variety of… uh, non-traditional hardware that’s connected to my home theater, I’ve found the ground isolation provided by optical TOSLINK connections pretty handy. After poking around a bit, I found a stand alone coax to optical converter. It uses a hex inverter to convert the signals to TTL levels, and a Sharp (or toshiba with some extra components) optical transmitter.

DIY Russian EL Display

December 11, 2006 by 22 Comments


Well, I’m pretty sure this is a hand made radioactive (as in Radium) electroluminescent display. The original post was in Russian, and it’s translated version doesn’t read very coherently. It appears they they borrowed a street sign, melted the radium paint down and painted their own display. In the end, they wired it up to a Sinclair Z80. Funky. Thanks [Viktos]

USB Airsoft Turret

December 10, 2006 by 21 Comments


[Jared] over at inventgeek.com remembers to think of us whenever he finishes up one of his projects. His latest is an USB Airsoft gun turret based on one of those USB nerf dart turrets. Hrm, this could make a decent base for a defconbots entry. It sounds like he’ll be building an even deadlier expensive version later on.

Don’t forget, December 25th is the deadline for your Design Challenge entries!

Easy DIY USB Interface

December 9, 2006 by 16 Comments


[Hybrid] tipped me to the ‘CREATE USB’ interface project. In truth it’s nothing more or less than a nice, (fairly) simple project to provide hardware hackers with a handy USB interface. It’s based on the PIC 18F4550 processor. If you check out the project, you’ll note that not only do they have a nice board to put a SMD PIC onto, they provide everything you need to build a diy version using perfboard. The most expensive component is of course the $10 PIC, but if you’re on a budget, that can be mitigated with a request for samples. (don’t abuse it – I think they’ve already cut back on sample amounts due to over-use.)

Hey, don’t forget, the Design Challenge deadline is the 25th. (This wouldn’t make a bad entry with some adaptation…)

Fab@home

December 8, 2006 by 15 Comments


I’ve received a few tips on this, and somehow it keeps slipping by. The fab@home project immediately reminds me of reprap. This is a completely open source hardware project for rapid prototyping/3d modeling. In the past, manufacturing something like a turkey baster bulb required injection molding. The project wiki has full details on building your own, including manufacturing houses to get all the acrylic laser cut. It looks like you could get your hands on one of these pretty easily if you don’t mind making a dent in your wallet. Thanks to [nickjohnson] and [peter B]. [peter B] also noted that the cornell boys have an even nicer one that they use to make zinc-air batteries and artificial muscles.

If you happen to be in Berlin on December 27th, you might want to sign up for Fabienne’s wifi detector hacking workshop at 23c3.