Happy Halloween Extra


[Update: pumpkin carved by Team Hack-A-Day member mastershake916]

We’ve got plenty of tricks around here, and I’ve got a treat coming up – you’ll hear about it in the next podcast.

[Ronald Schaten] sent me his USB LED fader. ATMega, PWM lit LEDs, he uses it to indicate status on his pvr.

[computerguru365] sent in his cell phone car charger turned USB cable

[steve] sent in this over the top C64DTV mod.

[Everett] sent along his button activated PSP shoulder lighting.Nice tiny soldering work for that on.

[Jorge] sent in his friends latest junk art metal lathe. Not an easy thing to build – Nice!

[gijs] sent me this crazy bent Casio SK-1. We’ve had a few of these on Hackaday before.

[seniorcheez] sent in his iPod shuffle dock with integrated power and tunecast.

Solar Backpack Ipod/usb Charger


Jason sent me his solar ipod charger how-to. The regulator may not be neccesary – but there are so many models, I don’t know if the new Nano’s hold up to the old power input standard. He put a 7805 regulator on a 6v 100ma flexible panel that he mounted on his backpack. I’ve seen this sort of thing on a shuffle before, but this one should work for most iPods. USB power management sometimes shoots itself in the foot, but iPods are willing to pull power if it’s not present. It’s nice, clean and simple. I’d consider adding some high temp hot glue (or epoxy)to keep the soldered connections from breaking.

Thursday Mini-extra

[Russ] sent in his Great Pumpkin computer case mod. (Non-biodegradable)

[Nuke] sent in his $10 ipod dock. It makes me think of doom for some reason.

[phnx] sent in this amusing case mod.

These have been around, but they’re excellent, so deal. Evilmadscientist.com has a couple of great pumpkins.
Check out the Cylon Jackolantern and the R/C Dalek Pumpkin

[Daedalus] sent in this one – adsl via sound card. 96kbs. The sound card is interfaced
with an audio transformer to the line at each end.

And this one just came in from [Eric]. Make a magsafe connector for thinkpads! Awesome.

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.

IPod Hd Adapter


Robert Brown sent in his iPod hd adapter. Sure, you could buy an Addonics 1.8″ toshiba to ide adapter for $15; but he didn’t mind soldering up the 50 wires to connect his drive to a USB IDE adapter. To finish it out, he put everything into an enclosure and added an eject button.