I knew this was coming out, but [mike] was kind enough to remind me. [Ben Heckendorn]’s latest How-To is up on engadget. He provides a method of building your own A/V switch with as many inputs as you want, cheap. Each input uses a $.50 bus switch – literally, you could build one with 20 inputs if you really wanted to. (add some shielding if you do) If you’ve got too many game consoles, this might be your ticket. You can probably use the same trick to build a component video switch if HD’s your thing.
home entertainment hacks770 Articles
Robotic Beer Launching Fridge
This robotic beer launching fridge is one of those ultimate projects that you are guaranteed to see posted all over the internet today. Robots, beer, the possibility of maiming innocent bystanders… what’s not to love? I’d be lying if I said my mechanical engineering friends and I weren’t contemplating this at many points during college. Kudos to John W. Cornwell of Duke for actually pulling it off. The mini-fridge has three servos: one to elevate beer from the 10 can magazine, one to rotate the turntable, and one for cocking. Spring power is used to catapult the beer across the room. The brains of the system is an ATMega8535 and 3 intelligent H-bridges. It’s controlled by an adapted key-less entry system. It looks like they’ve wisely placed it pointing away from the tv, but I don’t know if referring to your apartment as the “man-pit” is nearly as smart. Check out some of John’s other projects: the Mentos booby-trap and the touch activated paintball gun.
[via Dirk]
DIY Wireless NES Controllers For Wii/Gamecube
[Mark] sent in his wireless classic nintendo controller project. He built a wireless NES and SNES controller to use with his Wii via the Gamecube port. He used off the shelf TX/RX hardware and used some PIC controllers to glue everything together. iPod batteries keep em powered and keep the weight down. He provides all the schematics and a walk through on constructing the SNES controller. The circuits are pretty simple, so it’s definitely repeatable. This is almost enough to get me to buy a Wii.
— video after the break.
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Wii Laptop How-To (Part 3)
The final part of Ben Heckendorn’s Wii Laptop How-To is up. Somehow, Ben managed to get access to a laser cutter and a CNC machine (in friggin Iowa) and used em to create the new case for the Wii Laptop. Add dash of soldering, a few simple circuits and some clever case construction. Voila.
DIY HD Antenna
It’s been a while since I’ve seen any new antenna hacks. On the lumenlab forums, [pitman2] started with a measurements from a commercial antenna and drew up a set of plans for making a decent antenna for OTA HDTV signals. Pictured is an antenna built by [squeeto] – it’s made from copper wire, synthetic building wood and cheap cooling racks. Thanks to [Protcron] for the tip.
Wii Laptop How-To (Part 1)
Part one of Ben’s Wii Laptop How-To series is up. Ben spends it discussing gutting the Wii, starting up his CAD process for designing the enclosure and makes the thing even smaller than it was before. Because the Wii is so small to begin with, I think alot of people assumed that he just slapped it into a case and added the display.
Picodore – C64 DTV Palmtop
[Jason] sent in this nice palmtop C64 (cache) project based on a PSone screen. Notable hacks: PIC 16F88 to encode rs-232 to PS/2 keyboard output, Atari keychain joystick and a SD card slot (not functioning yet). The case was made of wood and laminated over with contact paper.
