[ErikH] sent in this sweet little device that he and a studymate put together from some spare parts to measure and cut strips of SMD resistors for one of their student organizations. The stepper motor and LCD were salvaged from a printer, an ATMega8 drives it, and a servo drives the cutting mechanism. The video’s not very exciting, but it shows a decent demo of the device.

After reading the latest hackit post, [Ben] sent in this older, but simple logic analyzer. The software was written in windows, but the circuit is simple enough, and most hackers I know have more computers than immediate family members. The circuit uses a HC245 octal bus transceiver to feed the 8 data lines on the parallel port. (You can use a variety of chips for this application, most CMOS buffers will probably be fine.)

[Ian] put up his RGB LED color changer project over at diylife. It’s a pretty simple project, but well designed and flexible for combining with other projects. He used a PIC18F2550 to drive everything, and some FETs to drive the LEDs. When you connect a USB cable, the color cycling project stops and the PIC responds to simple hex based color commands.

[Matt] sent in this excellent wifi finder reverse engineering project. The goal is to enable custom embedded apps that take advantage of the independent operating mode of the wireless adapter. One of the chips lacked any useful manufacturer markings, so he got some guys at a lab to etch the top of the chip off and get a partial chip id. So far he’s got boot-loader access, so now it’s just a matter of some development.

[Artur] sent in this instructable showing how to make your own back-lighting for LCD displays. It’s a simple process, but I thought it deserved some attention given the cost difference for back-lit LCDs. It’s also a good exercise if you’re building your own projector and considering removing the polarizing film.