Replace Batteries With USB Power

August 19, 2010 by 47 Comments

[Mark Bog] thought it was a waste to use batteries for his desktop touch pad. Quite frankly we agree that if you can avoid using disposable cells you should. He ditched the dual AA batteries inside of his Magic Trackpad and built a battery-sized adapter to feed it some juice. It consists of a dowel of similar diameter with a screw in each end. He scavenged a USB cord, connecting hot and ground wires to the corresponding pole of the adapter. Now his Trackpad is USB powered and never in need of a battery replacement or even a recharge.

We’re not familiar with the inner workings of Apple’s Magic Trackpad. We assume there’s a voltage regulator inside and we hope it doesn’t have a problem working with the 5V regulated power coming in from the adapter. If you’ve got the skinny on the hardware we’d love to hear about it in the comments. One last thing: because the forum linked above requires a login to view the images in the post, we’ve embedded the rest of them after the break for your convenience.

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Modchip Hacks PS3 Via USB Port

August 19, 2010 by 74 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jOEbZEkp9A]

It’s been a long time coming, but the video above shows a modchip circumventing the PlayStation 3 security by running a game from a hard drive. The sites Ozmodchips.com which sells the modchip, and psx-scene.com which has confirmed them as working are both unstable right now due to heavy traffic. But here’s what we know. The device is called the PS Jailbreak and can be used to dump PS3 games to the hard drive of a PlayStation3 running the most current firmware (3.41). Dumped games can then be played from the hard drive by selecting them from a menu that the modchip spawns. It’ll cost you though. The current preorder price is $169.99 AUD or $147.47 US dollars with a projected delivery date of August 27th.

[Thanks Charlie via Slashdot]

Todays Arduino Moment

August 19, 2010 by 21 Comments

We have gotten a number of Arduino tips in the last couple days, and we thought we would combine them for your convenience. The first tip we received was for some hints provided by [Bill] on some digitalWrite() alternatives. Similar to some previous research we covered, this tip also includes some tips on how to make the direct register writing a little easier by using #define to simplify things. Obviously this wont be as idiot-proof as digitalWrite() is, but we think you can handle it.

Our second tip is for a set of OLED displays from 4dsystems sold as Arduino Shields. They have a couple of different sizes from .96″ to 1.7″, depending on your needs and budget. There is no official display library for them yet, but 4dsystems have been kind enough to provide a few resources to work from. Hopefully we’ll see a few great applications from this, maybe a much bigger pixel Mario? A much smaller Game of Life? Feel free to send us your projects, or leave your ideas in the comments!

Lee Hart’s “Memebership Card”

August 19, 2010 by 40 Comments

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

In an act of retro revival, [Lee Hart] has created this “Membership Card“, an altoid tin sized tribute to the 1802 CMOS chip. Made popular in the late 70s in the RCA COSMAC ELF computer, the 1802 stole many a hackers heart. There’s tons of information available if you explore the site, from history to kit building experiences.

[via Retro Thing)

7-segment Sudoku

August 19, 2010 by 4 Comments

[John Sarik] keeps cranking out new ideas for his digital Sudoku project. This time he’s using 7-segment displays for each digit. The game play works the same as the Nixie Tube version, but this makes things quite a bit easier to build. The board above is one of the nine modules that make up the game. They each use three shift registers to drive the nine 7-segment displays. With the help of five resistors all of the multiplexing is addressed via the serial input on those chips.

Make IPhone A Penetration Testing Tool

August 18, 2010 by 27 Comments

[Nicholas Petty] has posted a guide to setting up your iPhone as a penetration tester. You already carry it around with you and, although not too beefy, it does have the hardware you need to get the job done. So if you’re not interested in building a drone or carrying around a boxy access point try this out. The first step is to jailbreak your device and setup OpenSSH so that you can tunnel in for the rest of the setup. From there the rest of the setup is just acquiring build tools and compiling pentesting programs like Aircrack-ng, Ettercap, Nikto2, and the Social Engineering Toolkit. You’ll be up to no good testing your wireless security in no time.

Needs More LEDs, EMSL Biggified Conway’s Game Of Life

August 18, 2010 by 33 Comments

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has proven bigger is better with their colossal LED table running Conway’s Game of Life. At the heart of the system is 44 ATmega164Ps controlling 352 LEDs on a 32×44 inch table; and to make it interactive IR LEDs detect the presence of objects.

The display is set up as an exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art in tribute to [Leo Villareal]. To see a demo, catch a video after the divide.

Related: Colossal LED tables, and Conway’s Game of Life. Why has it taken so long to combine them?

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