Hackaday Links

February 9, 2005 by 8 Comments

hackaday links test 2

weather balloons for sale on ebay
360 degree views of the apollo missions
google maps!
beautiful and unique snowflakes
lock picking championship of the world
the definitive mit lockpicking guide
or, heck, safe cracking for computer scientists
hacking the no-fly list
disabling gps network to foil terrorists and probably aid workers
why couldn’t i instant message all day? answer: we ain’t tellin’
meatbops: britain licencing human cloning
searching for bobby phisher
robo scratch dj
mac mini recording studio howto
whoah, another monocycle.  kaneda must be so jealous.  well, maybe not.
mac mini server
looking forward to seeing this
google 302 pagejacking

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High Altitude Linux Weather Balloon

February 9, 2005 by 15 Comments

weather balloon

“i found it in my cow pasture, buried in the snow. i was riding my 4 wheeler.”  that’s what the postcard said when it returned to me after i sent it up with a helium balloon a couple weeks ago.  it traveled roughly 100 miles.

but i digress.

james meehan’s story began quite similarly, but he decided to take his balloon fascination to a much more fascinating and hackerly level.  follow the link to read about how he designed and constructed his linux powered weather balloon, complete with gps, packet radio uplink, and video camera.  he says it’s the coolest thing he’s ever done.  i can’t really vouch for what else he’s done, but this project is pretty darn cool.

when you’ve finished marvelling at this hack, make sure to also check out the home brew, high altitude glider we wrote about a while back.  i love this high altitude mischief.  if you know of similar projects, send ’em in!

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Shuffle Array

February 8, 2005 by 19 Comments

shuffle raid array

i saw this just moments after posting yestrday’s article, so i’ve been itching to get this one up before everyone has read it already (apologies to those that have).  here’s a quick howto that shows you how to make a raid 0 array out of 4 ipod shuffles.  is it just me, or does this one look an awful lot like that weird boomerang from krull?

the basic setup is applicable to normal usb flash drives as well.  it’s not super fast, but it does allow you to use several devices as a one single, larger drive.  there’s really nothing stopping you from making a software raid array out of anything.  take the floppy disk array as an extreme example.

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Diy Dual Conversion Ups

February 7, 2005 by 29 Comments

diy ups

for a while now, i’ve been grabbing cheap used ups boxes to run my home servers off of.  problem is, they are just about useless.  i can run an old p2 (no monitor!) off of one for about 5 minutes before it fails.  even if i were to chain a few of them together, the puny sla batteries in them typically go dead a month or two after i buy them anyway.  consequently, i’ve been going through them like candy.

searching for a solution, i came across this article for building a diy ups.  with an inverter, a power supply or charger, and a car battery you can have yourself a pretty solid dual conversion ups that is expandable to meet your downtime needs.  it’s worth a read even if you just want to know how a proper ups works.

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Do It Yourself Lcd Projector

February 6, 2005 by 37 Comments

diy lcd projector

do your friends really want to watch the game on that puny tv of yours?  wouldn’t they rather spend the afternoon helping you make a 6 foot xga projection system?  i figured so, and so did sine~language, who sent us this link last night to a tom’s hardware article on building a sweet video system out of an lcd monitor and an overhead projector.

more recently, tom’s posted a follow-up with recommendations on flat panel monitors to use for such a project.  also worth checking out is an alternative lcd projector design we talked about earlier.

these projectors seemed really large to me at first glance, but they take up much less space than a normal 32 inch tube.  that, and you can’t easily roll a tv of reasonable size into a closet and reclaim your room.  i guess you know what i’ll be doing instead of watching the super bowl.

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Underwater Video Camera

February 5, 2005 by 8 Comments

underwater camera housing
in this article, paul hart details the third revision of his underwater camera housing.  by using a few reed switches that interface with the camera remote (for zoom control) and a small solenoid (to depress the record button), he is able to control the camera from the outside of the housing with a magnet.  don’t miss the page that describes the electronics.  it works well, it looks good, and you can watch some cool videos that he’s made with it.  two thumbs up.  thanks for the tip, paul!

now, i’m sort of an ‘above sea level’ kind of person, but i guess one of the things that hackaday is all about is finding out what’s going on under the surface of things.  if you didn’t read it already, check out the article on making a timer activated camera.  we should combine some ideas between these projects and make a tethered still/video (or both) system that you just toss off the side of a boat.  got a better idea?  let’s hear it!

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