HTPC Inside A Cellular Phone

August 25, 2009 by 13 Comments

htpc_carphone

Reader [Jani] always wanted to throw a PC into an old school cell phone. He based this around the extremely small Commell LS-371 motherboard which measures just 146×101 mm (~5.9×4 in). He found room behind an existing access door for a DVI connector and audio in/out.  He even incorporated an OLED screen, secondary sound card for “speakerphone”, and a WiFi connector into the handset. Things start to get interesting when he decided the SSD was too large and needed to be removed from its case. The one thing that seems to be missing here is an IR receiver for a remote but since he plans on running XBMC, he may already be setup to use another option such as an iPhone to act as a remote interface.

Turn Your Playstation 3 Into Linux-based Lab Equipment

September 11, 2008 by 10 Comments

In a two-part series called “PS3 Fab-to-lab” on IBM’s awesome developerWorks website, [Lewin] explains how to use the Cell Broadband Engine in a PS3 to create an audio-bandwidth spectrum analyzer and function generator. The set up consists of Yellow Dog Linux, an NTSC television, and an external USB sound card to provide the inputs of the spectrum analyzer and the outputs of the function generator. The sound card driver is written to simply capture or send the info in question (audio range only) and the NTSC television as the graphical interface. This hack involves a lot of coding with hardly any example code provided. The article is more of a guide than anything. If anyone gets this working, let us know!

[via Digg]

[photo: Malcom Tredinnick]

Brute Forcing VM Pin Codes

April 22, 2007 by 9 Comments


er, [-] sent in this little project. War-dialing is classic. The Scanit is designed for VM wardialing from a cell phone. The interface is a simple sound card to cell phone device made from a cheap car kit.. A laptop does the rest of the work. Apparently the nokia they used responds to sound based send/end commands. (DTMF is easy) I’d like to see a schematic and some source code, but nothing in the project is too terribly difficult.

Thursday Mini-extra

October 26, 2006 by 11 Comments

[Russ] sent in his Great Pumpkin computer case mod. (Non-biodegradable)

[Nuke] sent in his $10 ipod dock. It makes me think of doom for some reason.

[phnx] sent in this amusing case mod.

These have been around, but they’re excellent, so deal. Evilmadscientist.com has a couple of great pumpkins.
Check out the Cylon Jackolantern and the R/C Dalek Pumpkin

[Daedalus] sent in this one – adsl via sound card. 96kbs. The sound card is interfaced
with an audio transformer to the line at each end.

And this one just came in from [Eric]. Make a magsafe connector for thinkpads! Awesome.

USB Alien DAC

October 5, 2006 by 20 Comments


[blip] let us know about this nice little project. The Alien DAC Project is basically a DIY USB sound card/interface. [Pictured is one built by cook on head-fi.org] It uses a TI PCM2702 at its core with some supporting chips for power regulation and virtual ground for the analog audio signal. It’s small and should do the job. If you’re really interesting in taking it to the next level, check out the DAC-3. It’s like the big mean older brother of the Alien DAC. That thing is rack mounted, has Optical, Coax and USB inputs.
[If you run across any more floating ads, let me know. They shouldn’t on the site, and we’re trying to take care of them.]

Weather Satellite Station

October 9, 2005 by 18 Comments

sat image

This page describes one group’s experience setting up a receiving station for NOAA weather satellites. To receive the images you first need to track the satellite you want to receive from. After tuning your receiver to the satellite’s frequency you can record the audible data stream using your sound card. You can decode this data either real-time or later. They went through several system iterations using both free and commercial tools.

Continue reading “Weather Satellite Station” →

How-To Build A Telephone Recording Circuit From An Old Modem

September 27, 2005 by 20 Comments

modemmatte2

We’ve posted our How-To for the week over at Engadget. Do you have an old modem lying around? Have you been dying to record some of your phone conversations for those podcasts or homebrewed movies or crazy flash animations you make? Wait no longer! Build yourself a little circuit to change the analog phone’s audio to regular line audio to record with your sound card. Remember that it is illegal in many places in the world to record phone conversations without both parties’ consent.

Continue reading “How-To Build A Telephone Recording Circuit From An Old Modem” →