If you missed it, I put up a new podcast yesterday. You can subscribe via the iTunes store or just use the RSS podcast feed. You guys asked for interviews, so here we go. Ben Heckendorn is going to be our first one. He and I are going to put it together later this week, so submit your question in the comments if you want me to ask him. [I’ll pick and choose, so make it good]
Ben built the Xbox 360 laptop, the colecovision portable, the PSP analog joystick, and plenty of others.
Hackaday Podcast 4
I’ve been thinking of resurrecting the podcast for a while. Now that my new mic and preamp finally showed up, it’s here, That’s right, podcast 4 is up. It’s an experiment, so let me know what you think. If it goes over well, I’ll try to make it a weekly feature. In the meantime, you can get it here – I’ll let you know when it’s published via iTunes. Meanwhile, here’s the rss feed if you want to subscribe. If you want to know about the hardware, you can check it out here.
[Yes, there will be a new hack later today.]
Oh yes, I forgot to add the music credits. Today’s podcast featured Captured by Ronka R and Discoshit by Voxter
Solar Backpack Ipod/usb Charger
Jason sent me his solar ipod charger how-to. The regulator may not be neccesary – but there are so many models, I don’t know if the new Nano’s hold up to the old power input standard. He put a 7805 regulator on a 6v 100ma flexible panel that he mounted on his backpack. I’ve seen this sort of thing on a shuffle before, but this one should work for most iPods. USB power management sometimes shoots itself in the foot, but iPods are willing to pull power if it’s not present. It’s nice, clean and simple. I’d consider adding some high temp hot glue (or epoxy)to keep the soldered connections from breaking.
PCMCIA Modem Serial Port
[nickjohnson] sent in today’s hack. Mike removed the extraneous hardware, just leaving the UART on this IBM PCMCIA modem and replaced it with a SMD MAX241 ttl-rs232 converter. He added a new end to the original cable and ended up with a nice, finished PCMCIA serial port. That fine SMD soldering is hard to do. Impressive work.
Dan Kaminsky’s Cryptomnemonics
Our buddy Dan Kaminsky gave an interesting talk at Toorcon. This is just one part where he talks about a novel way to help the user remember SSH keys by converting them to couples names. You can get it in high quality here. 17 minutes long. Thanks to Fabienne for shooting the video.
Thursday Mini-extra
[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.
PSP Analog Stick Part 2
I’ve been getting some help with How-To’s over at engadget. One of our favorite hardware hackers Ben Heckendorn put up part two of his analog joystick PSP mod. When he showed me the original I was surprised at just how simple this mod is. Part one showed off the wiring, while part two puts it in a clip on enclosure. Who else would strap a jerky tin to his PSP?
