Rocket Altimeter Project

October 1, 2005 by 7 Comments

rocket

This project is a really simple accelerometer based altimeter. The assembled board only weighs 10grams; the power supply is an additional 6grams. The data collection is done by a Basic Stamp II. It records 1 second before and 11 seconds after it detects the initial launch thrust. On their first launch they got some legitimate looking data (it would have been nice if they had an inclinometer to compare it to). The second launch resulted in a catastrophic engine failure on the pad. It’s a shame they couldn’t do more testing, but at least they’ve got video. Schematics and source code natch.

The photo above is from a recent BoingBoing post on high power rocketry.

Hackaday Links

October 1, 2005 by 12 Comments

The folks over at Remote-Exploit were recently dropped from Google Adsense and need funding. Why should you be concerned? They’ve recently rolled the excellent Auditor and WHAX live cds into a new distro called Backtrack. Why am I concerned? The were dropped for “Hacking/cracking content”. [thanks Michael Schade]

Luminosity Monstrosity You too can create blindingly bright light fixtures. [henny]

[doctordubb]’s experience building an LCD projector from a slide projector.

Add access LEDs for each of your hard drives. [carpespasm]

Atomic clock wristwatch [h-tech]

[Bucky] built a laptop tray for his PT Cruiser.

Put an icon on your desktop for really quick suspends using [Chris]’s instructions.

[Joe Pestro]’s CSS/Javascript desktop demo

[strider_mt2k] has been having some trouble holding onto his Micro, so he added a safety tether.

Explore Hack-A-Day [via]

The tip form

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Hackaday Links

September 30, 2005 by 8 Comments

The comments on PSP downgrading keep growing. If you had trouble before, you might want to check back to see if some light has been shed.

Make a Nano lanyard from a firewire cable. [sentinel]

Restore your Nano’s original shine. [Mrgreen]

[DarkJimmy] made some Hack-A-Day buttons.

Check out [JunkToArt]’s models built from PCMCIA cards and hard drives.

PS2, GameCube, XBox all in one box Looks like two optical drives too many. [via]

Extensive list of wardriving tools [via]

We love your links. We can’t post everything, but feel free to complain if we don’t post your link that goes nowhere, [Andrew] (did you mean the first link you sent in?)

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Thursday Nano Hacks: Making Black IPod Headphones

September 29, 2005 by 49 Comments

headphones13

We are starting a new feature for Thursdays here at Hack A Day: Thursday Nano Hacks. Our “hack” for the day is more of a mod out of necessity: Those ugly white headphones with a black iPod nano? Ew! Please come back next Thursday for a real iPod nano hack alrighty?

Scroll on for our little stroll through recoloring cables, and please read the conclusion. (Let’s just say that this hack is not exactly the stuff dreams are made of.)

What you will need:
– iPod headphones. They only come in white.
– PlastiDip in black (we used the dipping kind, but we recommend the spray aerosol kind in black)
– a tiny paintbrush you can throw out when you’re finished
– toothpicks
– stick or chopstick to stir the PlastiDip
– coathangers
– masking tape
– lots of time to waste

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HOW-TO: PSP 2.00 To 1.50 Downgrade

September 28, 2005 by 644 Comments

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UPDATE: Since this how-to was first written things have changed. Sony has released firmware 2.01 which makes this downgrade impossible. A PSP bricker trojan was released because of this antivirus software will classify both the good and bad downgrade files as harmful. You should do more research into the current state of the downgrade before attempting. As far as we know our firmware links are still good, we are not hosting them so we can not vouch for their safety.

C.K. Sample, III, TUAW / WIN Blogger and author of the forthcoming book, PSP Hacks, got his hands on the version 2.0 downgrader and wrote up a thorough how- to complete with pics for us. He even takes the extra steps to upgrade and downgrade yet again, just to make sure such a thing is possible.

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