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

top
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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Hackaday Links

September 28, 2005 by 8 Comments

I don’t know what the deal is with my DNS; It really didn’t want me to see [markie]’s hand crank iPod charger. He failed to estimate before hand exactly how much cranking it would take.

The high school “confirm friend” links have started working for me on Facebook. So, you can actually add me now. I think girl count is holding at 6.

I think I first saw this in Sync magazine, but I’m not sure if we ever posted it: Pierced eyeglasses. [steve]

[Simon] made another Nano sleeve using a cleaning cloth.

Circuit-bent Casio SK-1 [jumpstart] did a great job packaging all of this up.

Grab high res album art from iTunes using [Tristan]’s script.

[BigDumbyak]’s Xbox dashboard skin

Cheap polarizing filter… really cheap [corey]

Send us some love.

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Microgram Electrobalance

September 27, 2005 by 9 Comments

scale

As with most precision equipment, microgram scales are usually very expensive. The close tolerance machining of sapphire pivots and computer control add to the cost. Not all of those components are necessary though. This article from Scientific American demonstrates how to build a simple microgram balance using a salvaged galvanometer. Once calibrated, the output voltage will have a direct linear relationship to the weight. There is a more recent version of this project that uses a microcontroller to overcome static friction and auto center.

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How-To Build A Telephone Recording Circuit From An Old Modem

September 27, 2005 by 20 Comments

modemmatte2

We’ve posted our How-To for the week over at Engadget. Do you have an old modem lying around? Have you been dying to record some of your phone conversations for those podcasts or homebrewed movies or crazy flash animations you make? Wait no longer! Build yourself a little circuit to change the analog phone’s audio to regular line audio to record with your sound card. Remember that it is illegal in many places in the world to record phone conversations without both parties’ consent.

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Hackaday Links

September 26, 2005 by 10 Comments

Did you see my links yesterday? I screwed up the timestamp and sent the post back in time. Then my Gentoo install ran out of disk space and decided to eat itself. Here’s what you can delete to make room on your Gentoo install. Now I’m doing a long needed “emerge -vuDN world”. I’ll let you know when that finishes next week.

[bEN Newham] decided our rackmounted stereo was too complex. He made his own version. Yes, that is a jar of pesto being used as a standoff.

We’ve been nominated for a “Best of the Blogs” award. In the niche category “Best Weblog”. You can’t vote yet so who cares?

I really like the dock that [Abe] made for his Nano. It was inspired by [Kevin]’s.

There have been a lot of “crammed a motherboard into an NES” projects, but this one bothered to integrate the original switches and connectors. [jon]

How-to directly download iTunes videos [h-tech]

Add Airport/Bluetooth to your Mac Mini [ian]

The more, the merrier

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Home Built Composite Bike

September 26, 2005 by 15 Comments

composite bike

[Blind tree frog] sent in two great links. The first is a full write up that resulted in the bike pictured above. It was hand built by laying carbon fiber over aluminum tubes and could be made for $600. The second is a more traditional triangular frame bike that was constructed by following the original article. Both bikes are beautiful pieces of work.

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