OpenPogo, An Alternative To Pogoplug Software

pogoplug

Many of us heard the news of Marvell’s SheevaPlug plug-in PC being released alongside its consumer solution counterparts. One of the prominent products based on the SheevaPlug hardware is the Pogoplug. The Pogoplug is essentially a no-configuration media server that allows you to plug in a hard drive and network cable to make data readily available anywhere you have Internet access. It’s a great idea, but the underlying software is closed source, limiting the demographic of the device to consumers who are happy with an out-of-the-box solution. Enter OpenPogo, a solution for people who want a bit more control over their device. OpenPogo gives users more say over what their Pogoplug does; from running a torrent client to a web server to a Ruby on Rails server. The possibilities for the device are limitless, and OpenPogo makes turning our ideas into reality it just that much easier.

Xbox Crammed Into Inch-thick Package

Xbox Micro

Reminiscent of [Ben Heck]’s portable and laptop console mods, [Bandit5317] over at Xbox-Scene managed to fit the guts of an original Xbox into a custom-built slim case that measures just 2.5 centimeters thick. In his post, he describes some of the difficulties of cutting down a behemoth Xbox to a third of its original size, such as rewiring a custom IDE cable to avoid the extra 1/16-inch it would take to fold a standard one. The case is hand-crafted, (no laser cutter!) no-frills box made of painted polycarbonate, and man is it sexy. It is built off of a v1.4 motherboard running a third-party BIOS and with a 320GB laptop hard drive. Load up XBMC Media Center and you’ve got the slimmest home theater PC on the block.

[thanks FranklyCrafty]

Colored Pyrotechnics

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCDVypW_zB0&feature=player_embedded]

Regular submitter [Jared Bouck] from Inventgeek.com has sent us this cool project. He wanted to make a fireball cannon, but didn’t want to settle for plain old fireballs.Instead of using a common  propane system, he built an alcohol based one so he had a “blank slate” to start with. He then applied some copper chloride to get the desired greens and blues. With all of the fire displays we see, how come we don’t see more colored flames? Check out the overview video after the break.

Continue reading “Colored Pyrotechnics”

Solid State Tesla Coil

pano

While researching solid state Tesla coils we stumbled across this old project. As you have probably guessed from the pictures, this coil is meant to actually play music. Knowing how to add eye catching flare, the coiler uses a Plexiglas frame turned light pipe; only to be complimented by an audio amplifier complete with graphic equalizer. There is a video of the coil in action on YouTube. We have covered singing tesla coils in the past. Other twists on the classics include the tesla coil guitar amp and a hand held plasm gun.

Tome GS And Tome MP

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0e6oujZOwY&feature=player_embedded]

[Dennis] tipped us off to his Tome project. It looks like two projects using very similar hardware. The first is the Tome GS; a tiny game system that looks like it could hang from a keychain. This is apparently the second revision of this system, based off of some of his comments. He’s done a pretty good job, it looks solid and functional. It even includes a zigbee wireless module for communication with others. He states that the graphics should be roughly the same as a gameboy advance.  The second is the Tome MP, a portable media player roughly the same size as a first gen iPod nano. It is equipped with bluetooth, though he’ll be removing that in the next iteration in favor of a zigbee. We would really love to see more information on the design behind these projects.

AVGA: The AVR Based Video Game Platform

avrvideogame

We’ve seen our fair share of AVR projects, but this one’s pretty cool. AVGA is a color video game development platform based on the Atmel AVR family of microcontrollers. As seen in the picture above, one of the AVRs that the project uses is the popular ATMega168. There were several technical hurdles to using the AVRs to run color video games; one of the most difficult problems was figuring out a way to display detailed graphics from AVRs limited onboard RAM. Eventually, the developers figured out a way to display detailed graphics using a TILE-based driver. The TILE driver works by dividing the screen into X and Y coordinates, dividing the graphics into tiles. Then, when a graphic is needed it’s addressed from a reference table that’s stored in the AVR’s onboard RAM, allowing the bitmap graphic to be loaded from a game’s ROM. Currently, the only games available for the platform are a Super Mario clone, a Pacman clone, and a Snake clone. While there are only a few games available, the platform definitely looks promising. If anything, this project serves as a great example for what off the shelf microcontrollers are capable of.

Dry Ice Cannon

[vimeo= http://vimeo.com/6034556%5D

[Alexander] sent in his entry into a “creativity contest” at his university. He and some friends put together this dry ice cannon.  Take note of the creative mechanism they used to mix the water with the dry ice. A large amount of gas is expelled as soon as the two begin to meet. If the gas is supposed to escape through the same opening, it is difficult to get all the material through. They have added a second opening just for the exhaust during mixing. Great job guys. How about some downloadable plans.