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World Smallest TV-B-Gone

July 4, 2009 by 41 Comments

uTVBG

The TV-B-Gone has proven to be a dangerous and versatile gadget. At Interactive Matter, they created an even smaller version with more sneaking potential. Called the µTVBG, it packs an entire TV-B-Gone in a 1.4 x 2.5 cm footprint and even has room for a programming header. He found some high-powered surface-mount IR LEDs that would match the original TV-B-Gone’s power. To drive the board, they used a CR1220 button battery on the bottom of the board. The whole thing is smaller than your thumb and should be easier to hide next time you wreak havoc.

Lego Modded Antenna Tuner

July 3, 2009 by 15 Comments

legomoddedtunner

This antenna tuner is controlled remotely using geared motors and legos. The tuner needed to be closer to the antenna for performance reasons. This created a problem; most of the radio gear is inside while the tuner is outside. The gear motors and Legos combine to form a closed loop servo, operating two air core caps and an inductor switch. A control box placed near the radio is hard wired to the modded tuner outside. We would like to see something like this under gesture control using the Wii MotionPlus + Arduino.

Hackit: Boxee Now On Windows

June 24, 2009 by 27 Comments

Boxee, the free media center management and streaming application, is now available for Windows platforms. We’ve been following the developments of Boxee since we first announced its alpha this time last year. At that time, it was only available for OSX with promised Ubuntu support. We were a bit skeptical about the interface noting, “Unfortunately all the dynamic resizing, animated, sliding, floating info boxes make it behave like the zooming user interface’s retarded cousin”. Our interest in Boxee was almost entirely based on it being a fork of XBMC, the media center project developed for initially for hacked Xboxes. It was interesting to see Boxee become the interface of choice for hacked Apple TVs and then go mainstream with a big push at CES.

Have you been using Boxee as your media center? What do you love/hate? What about alternatives like XBMC, Plex, or MythTV?

TwypeWriter

June 22, 2009 by 14 Comments

3651494046_ccd4f5e99a

in the oomlout offices, everyone loves twitter. They love it so very much, they decided to find new and fun ways to participate. This one is the TwypeWriter. It searches for a keyword and then physically types out the results for everyone to peruse. There are a couple videos of it in action on their site, as well as the source code to make one for your self.

[via the Hack a Day flickr pool]

Atari 2600 Slim

June 22, 2009 by 6 Comments

chriskoopa_2222 (Custom)

[Chris-Koopa] sent in this sweet little throwback to the good ol days of Atari 2600. He had been playing his old unit, lamenting the poor visual quality on his new TV when he had an idea. He picked up an Atari flashback2 and began modding. He added a cartridge slot and made some case modifications to make it look more like the 2600. The final result is that he can switch between the built in games, or play strait off of the cartridges with crisp clean video. There are other methods of doing this, like modding the Atari itself or building a whole new console, but this is pretty sweet too.

VR Game Gun

June 21, 2009 by 49 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ym0tZSWGMc]

Many of you have probably experimented with alternative gaming interfaces. Here’s a well done little hack where they created a gun with a display mounted on it, for video gaming.  At a glance you can probably figure out exactly what they’ve done. They’ve attached a gyration mouse to the gun for tracking and gutted a keyboard for the buttons.  We have to give them some credit, they seem to have packaged it all nicely. Since it’s a standard mouse and keyboard, it just plugs in and works with any game.  As you can see in their version, the screen works very well in this configuration, almost seeming like a giant scope. You can see the wireless version and hear their aspirations for projector based models after the break.

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USB Reader For SNES Game Carts

June 19, 2009 by 82 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwq6vRM8U7k]

Reader, [Matthias_H], sent in a video about his USB adapter for SNES game carts. All you have to do is plug in the SNES game cartridge and USB cable, then a ROM file of the game shows up as an external storage device on your computer. After that, you can play the ROM with your choice of emulator. We emailed [Matthias] asking for more information, and he quickly replied with a very nice writeup about the hack that is pasted below.

Update: [Matthias] launched a site for the “snega2usb” with updates on the development of the board and a FAQ.

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