ToorCon Seattle Beta

May 13, 2007 by 5 Comments


I’m attending ToorCon Seattle Beta this weekend. Today was a single track made up of 20 minute talks. ToorCon is really best in breed when it comes to hacker conferences. Highlights follow:

Beetle, from the Shmoo, opened the conference with WiFight Club. Of course, by me mentioning that, you’re officially in WiFight Club. This will eventually become a competition that is summarized best with the phrase: “Faraday Cage Match”. He mentioned interesting projects like GNU Radio and others. I really want to see where this goes. It looks like a lot of fun.

Rodney Thayer’s talk on credit cards boiled down to this: everyone worries about internet security when doing online transactions, but that doesn’t really matter since the credit card company security policies are garbage.

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Keyless Entry For Your Apartment

May 12, 2007 by 14 Comments


[Ryan] sent in his simple but effective keyless entry hack for his apartment. Many shared apartment buildings have doors that allow residents to buzz visitors inside. He interfaced a keyless entry remote with the entry button on his intercom system. Press the button and voila – open sesame. It’s almost a head slapper because it’s such a simple hack, but sometimes those are the best.

Computer Controlled Coffee Roasting

May 11, 2007 by 15 Comments


I knew about this when it came out, but it never made it’s way to Hack-A-Day. We’ve mentioned a computer controlled roaster before, but this one is far and away the best I’ve seen. [Jeffrey Pawlan] has been selling individual units to the coffee industry (and extreme coffee geeks) – with good reason. He modified an already sweet Hottop coffee roaster (~$500 US) to be completely computer controlled. He wrote a complete software interface that accounts for room temperature to create complex, repeatable roast profiles. More than anyone, I’ve lamented the lack of details on the system. It’s a safe bet that he’s using more than a few thermocouples with a multi-line A/D converter. Anyone feel like writing some open source coffee roaster software? Modifying my current setup wouldn’t be that difficult.

Dive Computer Interface Hacking

May 10, 2007 by 11 Comments


Dive computers help divers keep an eye on bottom time and calculate nitrogen saturation during dives. Many of them, like the Suunto above have a built in provision for downloading dive data post dive. [CIBDiving] figured out a way to enable this missing feature on one of Suunto’s cheaper computers. The Gekko has the same pins as the more expensive units, but Suunto’s download manager won’t allow you to download the data. By using a simple software patch, [CIBDiving] tricked the software into pulling down the data.

You can buy a cable to pull down the data, or you can build your own serial or USB level shifting interface.

Automatic Color Detection

May 8, 2007 by 15 Comments


[KLOZ] submitted his final project from college. Rather than an expensive CCD camera, he used a set of colored resistors LEDs and a light dependent resistor (I’m assuming he means a photo resistor) to determine the color of a product (m&ms). He used the carriage from an old HP inkjet, a custom cnc cut wheel to separate and deliver the m&ms and a Parallax propeller micro controller board to tie it all together. Now he can hog all the green ones for himself.

Update: Yes, I’m an idiot. I did mean colored LEDs. People who caught me will get an email – I’ve got something for ya.

Check out the sorting demo video after the break

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Electric (motor)cycle Extra

May 7, 2007 by 12 Comments


[Zach Norman] built this electric bike on a Harley frame. I couldn’t dig up much in the way of details, but the flickr photo set looks good.

[Micheal Raines] built a great looking electric chopper.

In the lightweight category, this hybrid (pedal/electric) bike uses li-poly batteries and a simple motor-tire drive to keep going. via [hacknmod]

Early this morning [tnkgrl] sent in her HSDPA mod for the OQO Model 2. Engadget beat me to it, but it’s a great mod for anyone who visits outside of those handy EVDO areas but want the speed for their UMPC. Living in the middle of nowhere means that I’m stuck with RxTT.

[andrew] built a handy parallel port A/D converter – so far he’s got it logging temps. The parts count is pretty low, depending on an ADC, a 555 and some OP amps.