Tethering The Samsung Vibrant Without Rooting

July 30, 2010 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

If you’ve got a Samsung Vibrant and want to take advantage of that unlimted 3G account you can tether without rooting the phone. This method uses a USB cable to provide internet access to Windows XP and Windows 7 computers. Samsung’s own Kies software handles the tethering, as long as you have the magic number to get connected on T-Mobile USA networks; ‘epc.tmobile.com’ for the APN name and ‘*99#’ as the phone number. [Zedomax] made the video after the break which takes you through the tethering ritual.

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Super Simple Gaming Controller For Android Or IPhone

July 29, 2010 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

If you’ve got an iPhone or Android device that you use with a Wii remote when gaming, this quick hack will give you the third hand you need to manage all of that hardware. [Syanni85] mounted his Android phone to a Wii wheel for just a few dollars in parts. He ran across the wheel itself at the dollar store, and the phone is held in place using a universal mounting bracket. A small square pad sticks onto the back of any device and mates with a base. He cut off the unnecessary parts of the base and glued it to the back of the wheel.

If you haven’t tried using a Wii remote with your phone yet, find out how to do it with iPhone or with Android.

WiFi On A Sprint Pixi

July 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpFYoT2lYU0]

The Sprint version of the Palm Pixi doesn’t have a WiFi option but the Verizon version (called the Palm Pixi Plus) does. The hardware is almost the same and [Gitit20] figured out how to do some hardware swapping to add WiFi. The radio board inside the phone is fairly easy to remove. Close inspection of the Sprint radio board shows some solder pads where a WiFi chip would go. The Verizon version has this chip, and moving that radio board into the Sprint phone will enable WiFi. This is strictly a hardware hack as the device identification (IMEA) is paired with the motherboard and not the radio board.

Now we want to see someone source that WiFi chip, solder onto the board, and enable it within the OS so that we don’t need a donor phone to make this work.

[Thanks Juan]

Inductive Cellphone Charging Without Voiding Warranty

July 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

[Derek Hughes] wanted to use inductive charging on his cellphone without voiding the warranty. He picked up a Pixi charging backplate meant for a Palm Pre and scavenged the coil and regulator circuitry from it. To make the electrical connection with his HTC HD2 he removed the mini-USB plug from a charging cable and connected it with 30 gauge wire. The whole package will fit beneath the back plate for use with a Touchstone charger (as we’ve seen with the HTC Evo) but there was one problem. The metal backplate from the HD2 interferes with the inductive charging. For now he’s using tape to hold everything together while searching for a plastic case replacement.

He walks you through the hack in the video after the break. We’re usually not worried about voiding warranties, but a phone like this takes a lot of abuse and having warranty protection or even a service agreement isn’t a bad idea. Continue reading “Inductive Cellphone Charging Without Voiding Warranty” →

Adding Mute To A Bluetooth Headset

July 24, 2010 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

[Jared] often needs to be on conference calls for work during his motorcycle commute. He’s got a bluetooth headset that cancels noise but it didn’t have a mute feature. He cracked open the speaker and microphone portion of the apparatus but there wasn’t enough room for a switch. The base unit which houses the noise cancelling hardware had plenty of room. He added a single pole double throw (SPDT) switch to the positive wire from the microphone, allowing him to disconnect it as a mute function would. He mentions the need to seal the unit with silicone after the hack in order to keep out the elements. We might have opted for a weather-proof switch as well.

This simple hack makes a nice addition to any Bluetooth projects you’re working on.

Release The Kraken: Open Source GSM Cracking Tool Released.

July 22, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 30 Comments

Open source GSM cracking software called “Kraken” has been released into the wild. You may recognize some of the information from back in December when we announced that they had cracked GSM encryption. Well, now you can participate as well. You’ll need a pretty beefy Linux machine and some patience. They say that an easier GUI and support for GPU processing is coming in the near future.

[Thanks Eliot Via Slashdot and PCWorld]

Adding Speech Recognition To Your Embedded Platform.

July 11, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 26 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEUeJb6Pwt4&feature=player_embedded]

Last week, we posted a story about how to configure speech recognition at a beginner level. Several of the commenters expressed an interest in doing speech recognition for embedded devices. [Nickolay Shmyrev] volunteered to write some directions for those people. In this article, [Nickolay] will be taking you through the basics of setting up your embedded device with CMUsphinx an open source toolkit for speech recognition. He gives programming examples in both C and python. Though we are hosting this, we haven’t set it up and tried it, so please direct any questions you have at [Nickolay] in the comments.
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