Make A Palm Pilot Robot

March 3, 2005 by 10 Comments

palm pilot robot

the old palm pilot you have could also be used as the brains for a nifty little holonomic drive robot.  the palm pilot robot kit was created several years ago by the carnegie mellon toy robots initiative.  that would be the same research group that came up with the bow powered pogo stick.

The Palm makes a handy robot controller: it packs a lot of computational power in a small size, runs on batteries, and best of all, can display graphics and an interactive user interface. Our robot empowers a Palm to move about and sense the nearby environment.

speaking of palm hacks, sean russell sent me this link after reading the palm lcd display article.  make sure to check that out as well if you are interested in dusting off your old palm device.

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Howto: Nonviolent Ipod Shuffle Disassembly

March 2, 2005 by 107 Comments

shuffle disassemble hack
while most shuffle owners don’t know it yet, in a year or two there will be a lot of folks wondering where their battery life went.  applecare’s battery replacement service for normal ipods is available for the low, low price of $99.  think they will have a cheapo shuffle battery replacement service?  think different.

we mentioned earlier that someone posted photos of an ipod shuffle disassembly.  the previous disassembly left a few key questions unanswered, namely:

  • do you need to butcher the buttons to take your shuffle apart?

  • will the average joe be able to replace the battery?

  • what else is under the hood?

  • can it be cleanly reassembled?

this howto will attempt to answer these questions while disassembling the shuffle in a non-destructive manner.

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Reuse Your Old Palm Pda As An Lcd Display

March 1, 2005 by 78 Comments

palm lcd display
if you’ve got an old palm device (palm, visor, clie, workpad), you can use it as an lcd output device for your pc or robotics project.  the open source software palmorb runs on palm os 2.0 or above and makes your old palm pilot emulate a Matrix Orbital LK204-25 LCD.

this is great.  i’ve got an old palm 3 collecting dust that can get some use now.  there are some code samples on the site, or you can use lcd4linux or lcdsmartie to communicate with your new lcd device.  thanks for the link ray.

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Hackaday Links

February 28, 2005 by 5 Comments

hackaday links

if you liked today’s spy-lamp-mic-amp for the electronics, check out the portable minty headphone amp that also uses the cmoy amp design.
if you liked it for the lamp mod, check out the linux honeypot case mod.

more info on chu moy amps

mini-maglite led conversion [grimtrekkie]
get 6 times your normal flashlight battery life.
another cool persistence of vision led toy [koft]
use 32 times the leds.

same great google flavor but without the ads [FloridaSage1]
alternate h@x0r flavor [oxcid3]

an imac fish tank conversion [kokoliso]

install a bluetooth module in a powermac g5

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Covert Desk Lamp Mic

February 28, 2005 by 6 Comments

spy mic
hackaday reader john young writes:

This is a beautiful hack.  Australian grad student Scott Mitchell turned a (pedigreed, as it turns out) sixties desk lamp into a parabolic microphone, a la Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation.”  If that movie had spy-desk-lamps, that is.

the result is a really nice looking, covert, directional mic with integrated amp.  the cmoy amp circuit that is used is described in detail and scott does a really nice job of seamlessly integrating the power led, volume control, and  headphone socket into the lamp.  awesome.

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Xbox Landing Lights Mod

February 27, 2005 by 5 Comments

xbox light mod

in response to last week’s basic stamp howto, steve ries sent in a nice looking xbox mod.

I recently made that crazy “light mod” you spoke of at the end of the article, except it was for my xbox.  Check it out and let me know what you think. I even have video links on that web page, as well as the source for the stamp if anyone wants to try it out.

the lightshow he was able to create is pretty fantastic.  someone hack this to start up every time one of the controllers is set to vibrate!

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Rfid Dartmail

February 26, 2005 by 7 Comments

dartmail

in a last ditch effort to avoid thesis work, tony tang and eric pattison hacked together dartmail, a ballistic file transfer protocol.

The head of the Dart contains an RFID tag. By waving the tag over the reader, the ‘shooter’ can attach a handle to any electronic file (located in a shared file system) to the dart. After being shot, the victim can pass the dart over his or her reader (although invariable this is a guy’s thing), and see the file on the screen.

in the video they also propose using the rfid file handle in the form of a business card.  but really, 9 out of 10 business contacts would just prefer the pleasantry of being shot with a dart.  thanks for the link b-rad.

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