Careful! That Gas Pedal Is A Nexus One

June 16, 2010 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

Indeed, the gizmo above is meant to be used as a gas pedal. [Grant Skinner] came up with the idea to control slot cars using an Android phone as a gas pedal. He coded the software for the handset and a computer using Adobe AIR. Once connected, the computer is sent the accelerometer data from the phone, relaying the speed control to the slot car track with the aid of a Phidgets motor controller. See it ‘go’ after the break.

We’ve seen the Phidgets board used in several projects like the augmented vending machine and the plotter white board. What we haven’t seen is hacks that make use of AIR, a framework we looked at two years ago. If you’ve got hacks that make use of AIR we want to hear about them.

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Nexus One As USB Host

June 8, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-bLOc1qnMM]

[Sven Killig] Has managed to get his Nexus One into USB host mode. This allows him to plug in all kinds of peripherals such as web cams, keyboards, even a displaylink unit. This is fantastic as it really opens up the possibilities of this device. You can see that he now has an amazingly functional and portable system running. He mentions that it is pretty stable unless he runs big programs, we wonder if he has added any RAM to it. It is worth noting that the Droid can be USB host as well.

Adding RAM To The Nexus One Without Soldering

May 5, 2010 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

Want 21 megabytes more ram in your Nexus One? [Coolbho3000] worked out a way to tweak the kernel and remap memory usage to free up some resources. That means this comes as a custom kernel image requiring no hardware alteration. Try it out and share your experiences in the comments. But if you don’t need more ram you can just upgrade to the most recent kernel.

[Thanks Juan]

Chumby One Becomes A 3g Router

April 29, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

[bunnie] has taken a few moments to show us how to turn our Chumby One into a 3g router. As it turns out, there is an easter egg that allows it to communicate with certain models of 3g dongles. There’s no GUI for this trick, so you’ll be doing most of your configuration via SSH. That shouldn’t be a problem for this crowd though. The Chumby One just got a lot more appealing.

DTMF And SelCall Signal Generator

March 29, 2010 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

[Rogal] wrote a cell phone application called ToneTool that generates audio tone sequences. It can be used to output DTMF and SelCall sequences which are used by telephone systems and radio-telecommunication hardware. The software is written in J2ME so if you have a cell phone that can run Java apps it will probably work for you. This is like a digital-age Blue-box in everyone’s pocket. But we don’t think there’s too much opportunity for the mayhem seen with the original phone phreaking.

See him generating and sending DTMF commands over an Echolink network in the video after the break.

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Lava Lamp Centrifuge

March 8, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 72 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-i9iI0ZA4M]

Like many projects, this one started with a harmless question. “Will lava lamps work in a high-gravity environment such as Jupiter?”. Well, as it turns out, this harmless question was not so easily answered. The only real solution was to test and prove for sure. To do this, [Neil Fraser] built a centrifuge in his living room. At 10 feet across and roughly 50 kilograms, this is no small toy. The end with the lava lamp is set to pivot, so at a stand still, it is positioned vertically and at full speed it is positioned horizontally. The whole process is recorded on video for proof. So, does a lava lamp work in high gravity? Watch the video or read the article to find out.

[via Makezine]

Automatic Telephone Recorder

March 2, 2010 by Mike Szczys 40 Comments

[James Bond] types and those suffering from a hefty dose of paranoia can now record all telephone conversations. [Trax] built this module that monitors the phone line and starts recording when a handset is picked up. A computer does the actual recording, triggered by the microcontroller via a USB connection.

We like the use of an old PCB for a faceplate, we’ve certainly got some duds of our own sitting around. The three cords are a bit confusing though. One for the phone line, one for the USB, but what does the third do? Is it an audio-out connection?

We’ve asked [Trax] to post a schematic and source code if possible so that might clear up the mystery.

Update: [Trax] let us know that there is a red button with white lettering at the bottom labeled “download”. This contains schematic, code, pcb layout, and PC software. We just missed it the first time around.