Paging System For Your TV Remote

October 13, 2010 by 16 Comments

[Matt] brought together a TV remote and cordless phone to add a locator system to the remote control. One of the best features of a cordless phone is the pager button on the base. When you press it the handset beeps until found. Matt gutted one and got rid of the unnecessary parts. He then cracked open his TV remote housing and inserted the telephone handset’s circuit board, speaker, and battery. The base station is used just like normal to locate the phone/remote combo, and has been modified with a charging cable to top-off the telephone battery which powers everything in the newly hacked unit. [Matt’s] demonstration video is embedded after the break.

It’s too bad that he got rid of the microphone. It would be interesting to take calls on this thing.

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The New Apple TV

September 30, 2010 by 38 Comments

You’ve probably already heard about the Apple TV 2. It retails for $99 and packs a punch with HD video, optical audio, and WiFi in that tiny package. But as always, we like it for its hackability. Even though it’s just starting to ship, the hacks are already rolling in. The firmware is available from Apple’s servers and has already been unlocked with the yet-to-be-release SHAtter exploit. [Das_coach] even sent us a link to a video of the new Frontrow ported for the iPod touch (embedded after the break).

But the holy grail has to be XBMC. We’ve seen it on the first generation Apple TV and it was good. The second generation switches to the A4 processor which is an ARM Cortex-A8. Not quite as easy to port for as the Intel chip on the first generation was. But there is hope, one of the 2010 Google Summer of Code projects worked to port XBMC to another ARM device, it’s just a matter of inspiring some developers to take on the quest to make it happen. We can’t wait for the day that we can just velcro one of these to the back of our TV and be done with it, that first generation Xbox isn’t going to last forever.

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Ben Heckendorn Gets His Own TV Show

September 17, 2010 by 15 Comments

That’s right, Benjamin J. Heckendorn (aka Ben Heck) has started churning out episodes of his own Internet TV show. We finally got around to watching the first episode and enjoyed it greatly. You’ll see him alter an Xbox 360 controller for a disabled gamer, making custom foot interfaces to take over the traditional role of your right hand. Also in the episode is part of a big build; making an Xbox 360 laptop out of the new slim model. We’re very interested in that overall build, but in this episode you only see him removing the components from the factory case. But we guess the promise of seeing the rest of the project is the hook to get you to watch the next episode.

Think that you haven’t heard of Ben Heck before? If you’ve been following Hackaday for a while you have. We’ve looked in on quite a few of his builds over the years, including his pinball machine, Xbox 360 portable, and his access controller.

Controlling The Power Of A Flash With A Tv Remote

September 3, 2010 by 8 Comments

For those who do fancy photography, setting up the lighting ends up being one of the larger tasks of each session. There are flashes out there that can be controlled via a remote control to help ease the process, but they can cost a considerable amount more. [Dsvilko] shares with us a fairly simple circuit that allows you to use a tv remote to control your flash. He’s using a picaxe 08m and he states that before this project, he had never messed with microcontrollers. We say great job on your first microcontroller project. You can catch a video of it in action after the break.

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Control A TV With GLCD Commands

July 8, 2010 by 7 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3gMjuVdQnA]

This hack lets you use a TV in place of a graphic LCD screen. But we like to think of this less as a replacement for a GLCD and more of a simple way to get your information onto a television. A PIC 18F452 acts as a translator between the GLCD parallel inputs and a composite video output. There are some malformed image links on the page which we’ve fixed and linked to after to the break so that you can take a look at the schematic, component layout, and PCB artwork. The assembler code and hex file are available for download but you’ll need to register to get access to them.

Working image links:

[Thanks Flacoclau]

Mind Controlled TV

April 11, 2010 by 31 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mVxY2IJXBg]

Finally, a good use for those EEG headsets. [Andrew] has set up a system that will turn his TV on and off if he focuses hard enough. He’s got the software set to trigger an IR LED when the “strength” gets high enough.  When the action starts, around 4:30 in the video, you can see that when he raises his arm the meter on the screen begins to raise and the TV turns on. Though not immediately useful, we can’t help but get a little excited seeing him literally turn his TV on with a thought.

Update: Samsung TV Firmware Hacking

March 24, 2010 by 31 Comments

[Erdem] sent us an update on his work with the SamyGO project. You may remember this Samsung TV firmware hacking initiative from our post back in October. Since then many more TV models have been added to the compatible list. They have also worked out a way to defeat the AES encryption and RSA signature checking on the CI+ devices. Want to lend a hand? Take a look at the compatibility table on the main page and see if you have one of the TV models they need testers for. Otherwise, read the wiki, hit the downloads page, and unlock the hidden abilities of your boob tube.