Misc Hacks

4030 Articles

Semi-duplicate Post Extra

March 22, 2008 by 10 Comments


[bgugi] was the first to notice that yesterday’s post had been seen before, tucked away in an extra last year. (I do check for these things, but it slipped through.) I honor of my little lapse, here’s a fully loaded extra.

[Matt] scored some interesting hardware next to one of the local dumpsters. He also just put up part one of his coil gun based on ten $1 disposable cameras.

[Darren] sent in this USB webcam that was mounted in a Canon FX SLR body. Now the cam can be fitted with old (inexpensive) lenses for better performance.

[Brandon] really likes his XBox live – enough to set up access via Sprint EVDO and install everything in his Mini Cooper with a set of VR glasses and controller in the glovebox for instant access.

These were all over the place this week, but I wanted to put them out there. [Pablos] showed BoingBoing how completely lame RFID enabled credit cards are. And it’s way to much fun to watch this dog play with his own robotic ball tosser.

[Jason] sent in his altoid tin guitar – he slapped a piezo inside the tin to get signal out of it.

[David] sent in his older, but still awesome Segbot. It’s a balance bot that’s controlled via wireless modem with camera feedback.

Last and definitely not least, [Basil] sent in his Midistrip guitar mod. He added a capacitive touch strip to the body of a guitar and uses it to create midi output. Check out the demo vids here, here and here.

USB Gaming Arm Band O’ Pain

March 21, 2008 by 15 Comments


[Nuri] sent in his rather interesting gaming feedback device. The TrakonyaMutatorUSB is a USB based armband that’s designed to shock you when you get shot or killed in your game. I can’t comment on the safety of this thing, but I guess it could be a good gift for your enemy gamer.

Update: Just to clarify a bit, This is built by [Nuri]. He offers them for sale (via paypal I see), but it is his work. It would be nice to see the design, but I can see some reasons why he might not want to release it to the public.

Spectrum ZX Laptop

March 19, 2008 by 13 Comments


[Jim] sent in this interesting laptop modding project. He started with a Spectrum ZX and a Toshiba Libretto 110. The libretto kept its brains, but the lower case and keyboard was replaced with the ZX hardware. Since both machines use matrix style keyboards (but different matrix layouts) he was able to create a passive adapter circuit to match things up.

Low Voltage Coil Gun

March 18, 2008 by 20 Comments


[Andrew] sent in his low voltage coil gun. He used some control hardware that most hardware hackers probably don’t have on their shelf, bit it’s still a good proof of concept. Each coil is driven by a dedicated relay, and a PC power supply feeds the system juice, while a programmable logic controller does the work. Since it’s just a matter of triggering the coils in order, the PLC could be easily replaced by a micro controller.

AVR LED Game Project

March 17, 2008 by 4 Comments


[David]’s been building his own game platform based on an ATMega chip and an eight by eight LED matrix. Looks like he’s used the project as an excuse to get familiar with eagle and doing his own PC board design. Even if the game doesn’t really interest you, future project designs can probably benefit from his roadmap.

Plumb In Your Espresso Machine (cheap)

March 16, 2008 by 3 Comments


A while back, I wrote up a how-to on some mods I made to my ECM Giotto espresso machine. After giving it some break-in time, I finally wrote up my cheap plumbed in espresso trick. Plumbing kits use a $50 solenoid that requires special plumbing. My version uses a $12 fridge solenoid, easily adds on to my previous mods, and only requires some tubing size adaptation.

Li-ion For Your Roomba

March 15, 2008 by 10 Comments


[gim] gutted some li-ion laptop batteries to replace his roomba’s battery pack. He had to pick up a li-ion charger and add a protection circuit to deal with the li-ion cells, but ended up with a new lighter pack for his roomba. If you head this way, the protection circuit is a vital component to prevent fires/explisions/etc. Looks like a great resource for robot power or even R/C projects.