Nintendo DS Linux Keyboard

ds keyboard

Development of DSLinux continues to progress. The work of developer Pepsiman has really helped move things along. They’ve got a working Sash shell and framebuffer support. Just yesterday a touchscreen keyboard was added to ease use. It’s still in early development; The shift, alt, and ctrl keys don’t work and the repeat rate is a little quick. I’m sure they’ll get the bugs ironed out soon enough. I look forward to seeing some unique homebrew user interfaces that take full advantage of the dual screens.

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PSP ITrip

dpsp itrip

The iTrip is an FM transmitter designed for the iPod. This little hack nestles the transmitter into the PSP case so you can listen to your music through a car stereo. The broadcast frequency is set by playing special audio files, so you don’t need any external adjustments. The transmitter is turned on by plugging in a dummy headphone plug. I’m amazed they were able to cram this into the PSP case.

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Manual Boost Controller

turbo

Building a boost controller is a “slippery slope” sort of mod. Once you complete this you’re just going to want/need to modify something else in the system. A turbo-charger improves the performance of an engine by cramming as much air and fuel into the engine as possible. The engine exhaust drives an impeller in the turbo which drives the compress wheel in the intake path. Engines can’t handle extreme pressures so once the intake pressure reaches a factory set point a “waste-gate” opens to let the exhaust gas bypass the drive impeller so the turbo won’t produce any more boost. Factory boost settings a usually very conservative (otherwise, they’d be doing a lot of repairs) so there is a lot of potential for improvement.

A manual boost controller is placed in the path of the waste-gate’s sensor. The controller bleeds off some of the pressure in the line so that the pressure measured at the waste gate is lower than actual. This tricks the waste gate into staying closed longer than usual so a higher level of boost is reached. They’re really cheap to build, but the most important expense in this project is to getting accurate boost gauge. A little bit of bleed goes a long way and there is no way to tell where you are at without a proper gauge. DSMtuners has quite a few articles on how to build these devices and should work on almost all turbo cars.

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Hackaday Links

Links

ahh, finally back to some good old links. fresh off the grill of course. i’m working on new meeting space for philadelphia, and keep sending other meeting locations in so I can post them!

as for the guy who demands a t-shirt and wants to buy one: they are not for sale. these will be prizes. but maybe we can arrange something with a charity. then i’d see no harm in you paying an outrageous price ;)

breakout on a dot-matrix display sounds pretty good to me. [barbobot]
sigh

Build Your Own Tornado Machine

tornado machine

This looks like a pretty cool toy to build. At the top of the cylinder is a fan that removes air from the center column of the device creating a low pressure zone. This air is then blown back into the cylinder to feed the rotation. Besides the regular construction supplies you’ll need a squirrel cage fan and speed control. The most expensive part of this project is the mist generator. The nice thing is, you can construct the entire device and make sure it’s functioning before you dump money into the mister. I saw a really large one of these last year at NCAR in Boulder, CO. It was pretty cool, but naturally I was there to see the Cray-1A [via]. Lately we’ve been creating our own path of destruction so we’re hosting the pdf which was originally found at weather-photography.com.

[thanks seesoe]

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Hackaday Lazy Afternoons

Lazy Afternoons

wow. i’ll get some links in today dont worry, but the one thing I wanna talk about is the meetups that took place yesterday. philadelphia’s turnout was outstanding. about 30 people came altogether. i’m really glad you all came! we had 4 camcorders going, all kinds of gadgetry, we had lengthy discussions on all subjects and the meeting lasted until 10:45pm! we took it over to Qdoba for some grub around 9pm so it was a great time. troy, juan, and others, be sure to e-mail me about the video you guys got. and if you got pics, e-mail me about it.

seriously though. I was blown away. mad props to byron for coming down 6 hours from boston. yes. boston. that’s dedication. to all philly people: we’ll be moving the meetings to an indoor place though so we can have access to the net, electricity, and no 30mph winds hampering our voices. all and all i’m happy to declare the first hackaday meetings a total success. they will continue to be weekly on thursday nights. this way it doesnt interfere with people’s fridays or weekends. plus, if you have school or whatever, who cares. just come! some people only stayed about 30 minutes and we’re glad they came! so you should too.

we’re also proud to announce a few other things meeting related! we’re getting stickers made to give out to you guys (yes, we’ll be shipping them out to other meeting members in other areas). i’ll also be whipping up some limited edition t-shirts to give out. not a lot at all. they’ll most likely be given out for special reasons. maybe best hack of the month sent in or something. we’ll also be implementing meetup.com to help us organize better and get more people to come. awesome huh? the last great bit of news right now is that eliot and I will be going to las vegas, nv for defcon 13
this year! 3 unrelentless days of hackaday journalism in your face! so that should be really awesome. we’re totally hyped about it and you already know we’ll have the best coverage around.

Hackaday Philadelphia 01
(this is only SOME of the people that came!)

the meetings also opened up tons of new ideas, sharing, and hacks for everyone. it went exactly as planned. it was a very social event. people talked and shared ideas about things and taught us some cool things as well. a lot of us made new friends too i’m sure. special thanks to cary for coming up with idea after idea after idea (and this scary link)! they were all thought out very well. we’ll be sure to start posting all meetings every thursday morning for the hackaday meetups thread. so be sure to get meetings organized and information ready for me to post. send your info in through the tips section if you have a meeting setup so i get it for sure. even if its 5 people, its 5 people who are there to talk and discuss about hacks and what not. eventually i might even try some conference calls and what not. it should be really fun and i can assure you the next podcast will rock so hard. here’s some unedited video from juan (thanks!) in WMV format. Only 20mb.

and props of course for the ride home brandon.

Now, before I keep going on and on, let’s get some fresh grilled links inside you:
DIYParts – A free marketplace for computer parts! The best idea yet! [xytec]
i thought everyone knew about this, but i was wrong. be sure to check out systm! the new online show with kevin rose from techtv/g4tv. it’s really cool and well done!
kevin’s reference tool. a great circuitry tool. [nerd256]
my absolute favorite hack so far (maybe). atari 2600 web server!!! [yuppicide]
great widget hack for wikipedia and mac fans. wikipedia rocks. [grep]
how-to install a modchip in a gamecube! you have a right to backups! (thought i dunno where you’re getting those small discs or how you’re burning them.) [crumpster]
laptops are passe. the walltop however… [chris]
area 51 via google maps. i love how you cant zoom in all the way. really creepy. [jet]
remember people! get your meeting spots in. we only ask that you allow anyone to come and join in and participate and that it be on thursday so they all link up (thursdays EST, kenya has an exception!). Plus, if the meetings in Chile and Denmark go down, we’ll have hackaday meetings in over 5 countries! Wow! Keep being the best readers ever!

note: if you’re having a meeting, send it to me via e-mail or the TIPS form. this way, every thursday I can post it and everyone will be able to see it instead of digging through comments, this includes updates too (I’m looking at you roanoke, va)

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Steel Battalion Controller Mod

steel battalion

Steel Battalion is an odd beast. For those of you that haven’t run into it before: Steel Battalion was released in the fall of 2003. It is an Xbox game that aims to be a mech simulator (even deleting your save game if you failed to eject). To make the game more immersive it came with a specialized controller with around 40 buttons on it. That piece of hardware drove the cost of the game to $200. At that price you’d figure they could get the controllers to rumble. Well one mech jockey decided to hack in the missing feedback by scavenging the rumblers from another controller. The control for these comes off of the com lights which flash every time you’re hit. There are some additional tweaks on the site too. If I had spent $200 on one game I wouldn’t be getting anywhere near it with a soldering iron, but I do hope this project turns into a full fledge cockpit someday.

[thanks AlphA]

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