TiVo left the external SATA port on the series three disabled. [Lightrunner] bypassed this silly restriction by adding a sata to esata cable (AFAIK the only difference is the shape of the connector and shielding on the cable.) and a nice big SATA RAID array. Silly TiVo, massive recording storage is for everyone.
home entertainment hacks802 Articles
DIY Projector Redeux
My latest how-to is up over on engadget – I’m writing up my build of a HD projector – This one features DVI-D with HDCP support along with component, VGA and on board tuner. This is one of those projects where you can make all sorts of compromises, but I’ve gone all out on the hardware. Pro lenses, electronic ballast, 6500k lamp… If you’ve been considering building one of these, you should check it out. When it’s done I’ll give it a good going over – is the picture quality worth the effort? Peace of mind at using a $50 lamp instead of a $300 one?
Ipod Tube Dock
Kurtis Berry sent in his response to all the ipod speaker docks out there. Instead of buying one, he built one. It’s really a combination of several projects, and it looks great. He used a monoblock tube amp kit to provide 8 watts of excitement to a well known diy speaker design, all encased in oak. He’s hit that wall we all know – that point where we quit because it’s working so nicely as it is. Still, I’m not sure that adding a second channel would add too much to the sound experience with his speaker unless he wants to build a matched set. (I can’t give him too much grief, I’m jealous.)
Saturday Morning Extra
Storage element keychain. Allright, it’s cool, but almost criminal.
Hack a wireless doorbell into a remote relay. It’s allright, but I like the Mr. House + APRS tracking better.
[Josh and PsychoRNGD] both sent in the mindstorm NXT laser hack (Replace the LED in a light unit with a laser pointer diode)
Matt sent along his XBox 180. I dig it just because it gets rid of all those friggin wires.
[XanTium] points out that MS’s latest drive in the 360 takes things to a few extremes to block firmware hacking.
[Mike] let us know that after all the grief he got here, he built an aux to female ipod cable for his sound-dock. (He got his femal ipod connector from Ridax, but Sparkfun now carries a surface mount version)
You guys sent in some great tips this week. Keep em comin. I’ve been busy, but I’m going to hunt down the floating ads and get them taken care of.
USB Alien DAC
[blip] let us know about this nice little project. The Alien DAC Project is basically a DIY USB sound card/interface. [Pictured is one built by cook on head-fi.org] It uses a TI PCM2702 at its core with some supporting chips for power regulation and virtual ground for the analog audio signal. It’s small and should do the job. If you’re really interesting in taking it to the next level, check out the DAC-3. It’s like the big mean older brother of the Alien DAC. That thing is rack mounted, has Optical, Coax and USB inputs.
[If you run across any more floating ads, let me know. They shouldn’t on the site, and we’re trying to take care of them.]
Rotary Subwoofer
We don’t usually go for commercial products, but this one (try the Internet Archive version) caught my eye. This fan is actualy a subwoofer. The blades spin at a constant rate and the blades are servo actuated to produce sound from 0Hz(don’t look at me like that) up to 40Hz according to the spec. I don’t know if I’d want one too badly, it might be dangerous in the wrong hands.
Rebuilding Tube Amps
I’ve been searching for a particular old school hack and ran across this little gem. I don’t know why I’m so intrigued by tube amps.. the high voltage, the glow, the power – oh yeah, never-mind. One of the most expensive parts of a tube amp is the transformer. They scored a pair of mono-block amps and walk us through replacing virtually every part except the transformers. My problem? I need at least 6.
