computer hacks

1421 Articles

computer hacks

Printer Networked Light Control

February 21, 2007 by 9 Comments


[Andy] sent in his ‘Network Something‘ hack. For his proof of concept, he used a parallel port printer network adapter to create a set of network controllable LEDs. The virtual printer was implemented with a set of shift registers and a set of nand gates. (and a power regulator). Old print servers can be had pretty cheap – my HP $8 on ebay. Definitely an interesting way to get inexpensive network control of your projects.

Note: We’ll be making some server changes today and tomorrow, so comments will be offline for a bit. They’ll be back.

Keybot – Serial Controllable Keyboard Interface

February 18, 2007 by 13 Comments


[john] sent in his uncles Keybot project. The device accepts input (a parallel port in this case) and generates standard keyboard output. It allows a computer to create its keyboard input for itself or another machine. Personally, I go for serial consoles, but it’s a good study of our old friend the keyboard. (If legos are more your thing, you could do something like this.)

Reactable: Visual, Interactive Synth

February 6, 2007 by 21 Comments


[imajes] brought this sweet project to my attention. The table is reactive thanks to the combination of a projector and a video camera below the surface. The position and unique pattern of each block on the table is used to manipulate the operations of the synth. The software is open source – so you can build your own. (And it’ll run on linux, mac and windows) Check out the videos for a good demonstration. I’m thinking that one of these could be built on a budget using lumenlab/overhead LCD technology.

Optical Recognition LED Control

February 5, 2007 by 18 Comments


I probably shouldn’t find this as worthy as I do. It’s the optical recognition equivalent of wiring up a LED to a switch,, but it just appeals to me. [Ashish], one of our favorite optical recognition hackers of late, sent along this product of his boredom. If only he’d give us some source and a wiring diagram…

Got something interesting to share? Visit the tips line.

Magnetic Strip Resistor MIDI Controller

January 21, 2007 by 12 Comments


[Joel] sent me a tip where I discovered this fun hack. It reminds me of the old pencil lead resistor trick. It looks like Ableton Live has been inspiring quite a few original controllers.

From the post: (Myspace doesn’t seem to have individual post linking)
“If you REALLY want to do this, the code is here. It is sloppily written in PASM for the Ubicom SX microcontroller running at 50Mhz addressing an ADC0808 (datasheet) 8 bit parallel ADC, because it’s the year 1993.”