Red Wine audio offers the iMod – a service that modifies the DAC in 4th, 5th and 5.5th generation iPods. Despite requiring some fine work, the mod isn’t that difficult. [joneeboi] sent in his DIY DAC mod how-to, and even better, it’s suitable for 3rd gen and 1st gen Nanos. The audio signal is tapped directly after the DAC, and the SMD capacitors in the iPod are replaced with high end Black Gate capacitors. This is just the mod feed the best possible signal to your headphone amp
The JediPad AKA Uber-gyro-mouse
[Samu] sent in his freaking awesome JediPad mouse creation. It’s got seven touch-point style mouse buttions, as well as a pair of gryroscope sensors. Each touch-point has it’s own micro-controller and the signals are input to the computer via USB. He’s looking for help, so shoot him an email if you’re interested.
Check out his demo video after the break.
Virtual Raid 5 Internet Storage
[wonder] sent in an interesting proof of concept how-to on setting up a virtual raid 5 drive that uses free ftp servers to store data. The technique is a bit round-about, but he says it works pretty decently. The shares are mounted under windows with netdrive, then raided by FreeNAS under VMware. I haven’t tried it myself, but I’d probably try to do the same thing, but use LUFS and do everything under one operating system.
Wiimote Head Tracking Desktop VR Display
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw&rel=1]
If you thought [Johnny Lee] was done making us all buy Wiimotes, you were wrong. Now he’s back showing off a simple, but incredibly effective VR head tracker. He swapped out the LED’s on a pair of LED light safety glasses with a set of IR LEDs and used his PC/Wiimote combo to do the work. The demo is just fantastic. As usual, you can download the software from his project page.
Talcum Powder Print Bot
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a new print bot idea. [Kyle] sent in his groups final project at Georgia Tech. An ever so handy iRobot chassis, a dot matrix printer carriage and motorized drill bit in a funnel strategically dispenses talcum powder to print messages or images on the floor. Just think, one robot can write all over the floor and the other one can clean up afterward. How long until some sports geeks build a bigger one to deface a football before a big game?
Silent X10 Mod (cheap SSR)
I’m feeling a bit retro for the holidays, so here’s another classic: If you’ve got a non-dimming X10 switch, you’ve experienced the incredibly loud, obnoxious sound that it makes when you switch it on or off. (Mine’s in my stairwell) There’s a simple mod to silence the thing: remove the triac relay and replace it with a solid state relay. SSRs are a bit expensive, running at least $10 each last time I checked. [Willis Dair] realized that he could build his own, inexpensive SSR with an optoisolator and an alternistor(AKA Triac). The resulting circuit runs about $3 in parts.
PID Controlled Popcorn Popper Coffee Roaster
In honor of my espresso machine being fully plumbed in (water supply and drain line!) it’s time for another coffee hack. When I wrote my basic coffee roaster how-to, I seriously thought that I’d never see anyone do this, but [] installed a programmable PID controller on his popper coffee roaster setup. This particular PID can be programmed to ramp the temperature over time to create an actual roasting profile, rather than manually adjusting the set points. The original page was here, but I had to pull it out of the internet archive.
