Xbox Crammed Into Inch-thick Package

August 19, 2009 by 24 Comments

Xbox Micro

Reminiscent of [Ben Heck]’s portable and laptop console mods, [Bandit5317] over at Xbox-Scene managed to fit the guts of an original Xbox into a custom-built slim case that measures just 2.5 centimeters thick. In his post, he describes some of the difficulties of cutting down a behemoth Xbox to a third of its original size, such as rewiring a custom IDE cable to avoid the extra 1/16-inch it would take to fold a standard one. The case is hand-crafted, (no laser cutter!) no-frills box made of painted polycarbonate, and man is it sexy. It is built off of a v1.4 motherboard running a third-party BIOS and with a 320GB laptop hard drive. Load up XBMC Media Center and you’ve got the slimmest home theater PC on the block.

[thanks FranklyCrafty]

Rename Files En Masse In Windows

August 19, 2009 by 55 Comments

Bulk Rename Utility

Everybody hates it when they have to rename a fileset to fit a new naming scheme. Instead of doing it the hard way and writing a one-time script to go through and rename everything, check out Bulk Rename Utility from [Jim Willsher]. It provides you with a multitude of methods to take care of business and allows you do pick your favorite method, be it regular expressions, simple finding and replacing, prefix/suffix modification, or a combination of many more.

However, if the sheer amount of options available overwhelms you or if you just want an easier way to do things, check out A.F.5 from [Alex Fauland]. A.F.5 offers features like adding a counter to your filenames, change file attributes, and save your rename settings out to a file for repeat use.

Quick And Dirty Magnetic Card Reader

August 19, 2009 by 13 Comments

card

[nevdull] found himself in possession of a magnetic card reader. What else was he to do but show us all how to read from it using an AVR? He goes through the basics of how the card reader works, as well as how to detect the different card states such as entering, reading, leaving. There is source code to download to try for yourself, but unless you have the same reader, you’ll have to do some modifications. While this doesn’t get you all the way to reading the complete content off of the card, its a great start. Maybe you guys can help him finish up the last bits.

Moon Phase Light Modification

August 19, 2009 by 13 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0yKRRh9LF0]

In this project, a moon phase light is modified to show the actual moon phase based off of your computer’s internal clock. From the factory, these moon lights are updated via an infra red remote control. He pulled the brains from the clock and replaced them with an Arduino. He then runs a program that updates the Arduino based off of the system clock. He has also added an internal clock to maintain the settings so constant updates are not required. It would have been nice to retain manual functions via the remote so you could press a button for a full moon without having to change your system time.

[via littlebirdceo]

Cheap SD Card Cradle

August 18, 2009 by 30 Comments

SD (Custom)

When utilizing an SD card in your projects, you would generally buy an SD card slot to wire in. Sometimes, you just don’t plan that far ahead, or maybe you just want to play with an SD a little bit to see what you think. [Kroden] shows us how to make a fairly simple and cheap SD card dock. The result is actually pretty impressive looking. He has simply bent some header pins and soldered them together to make a simple SD slot. It can even be adapted to a horizontal layout for more permanent use.

Teardown Of The Barista

August 18, 2009 by 15 Comments

main

iFixit has done a tear down on the symbolic do-it-yourself Espresso machine, the Starbucks Barista. Believe it or not, there is not a single circuit board in the works. There doesn’t seem to be much to the Barista; A few switches, some solenoids, a heater, and one way spring valve among other things. The assembly of the device is very simple. It is noted that in a pinch it may be torn down with a pair of pliers and washer; in place of a flat head screw driver. We have pondered the possibilities of this machine numerous times, while enjoying a cup of cappuccino. Though most conversations end at the bottom of the cup, many survive such as this Silvia PID looped expresso machine. The very name “Mecha turbo crazy coffee roaster” seems to encapsulate the effects of caffeine quite adequately.