computer hacks
[Jared] over at inventgeek.com remembers to think of us whenever he finishes up one of his projects. His latest is an USB Airsoft gun turret based on one of those USB nerf dart turrets. Hrm, this could make a decent base for a defconbots entry. It sounds like he’ll be building an even deadlier expensive version later on.
Don’t forget, December 25th is the deadline for your Design Challenge entries!
I’ve received a few tips on this, and somehow it keeps slipping by. The fab@home project immediately reminds me of reprap. This is a completely open source hardware project for rapid prototyping/3d modeling. In the past, manufacturing something like a turkey baster bulb required injection molding. The project wiki has full details on building your own, including manufacturing houses to get all the acrylic laser cut. It looks like you could get your hands on one of these pretty easily if you don’t mind making a dent in your wallet. Thanks to [nickjohnson] and [peter B]. [peter B] also noted that the cornell boys have an even nicer one that they use to make zinc-air batteries and artificial muscles.
If you happen to be in Berlin on December 27th, you might want to sign up for Fabienne’s wifi detector hacking workshop at 23c3.
[lgtngstk] was tired of driving his cold Honda Civic to work. He built an instant on electric heater for his car from a toaster and an ATX power supply. The toaster elements were mounted to one half of the case, while the fan was left in it’s stock location.To get the fan blowing hard enough, he whipped up a DC voltage doubling circuit. To finish it out, he added relay control and plenty of new holes in the case.
Thank [J. Peterson] for this one. Kits don’t usually end up as the daily post on Hackaday, but the altair was one of the first ‘personal computers’ – and this guy’s put together a new kit version. Wow. [The latest kit went on ebay for $1750…]
Part 5 of my DIY HD projector How-To is up over on Engadget. I’m still finishing it up, but I should wrap it up in part 6. I’ll probably make a better reflector mount, but the rest of it is coming along nicely.
This is another power control hack along the lines of the serial controlled power outlet. Instead of only managing a printer, [Brent] uses the IO lines of the parallel port to drive some SSRs in order to turn off all of his peripheral devices – think lamps, speakers, scanners, etc. He posted the whole thing over on instructables.
[Want to show off your skills? Send us a tip with your latest – or enter the Hackaday design challenge. I should have some more prizes to announce later this week. I’m just waiting for them to arrive.]
HD-DVD drives are getting closer, but aren’t terribly easy to come buy – yet. [Dan] over at uneasy silence let us know that he cracked open an XBox 360 HD DVD Drive and plugged it into a windows box and a mac. With a light application of some drivers, they got the drive working pretty easily – the snag? You’ll need a mini-ata adapter if you want to mount it internally. (And there’s apparently no HD-DVD software support for mac… yet.)
[you can just use it as a USB drive.]
