Misc Hacks

4116 Articles

Arduino Controlled Espresso Machine

December 26, 2007 by 5 Comments


The arduino is really starting to become prevalent for hardware hacking. [Nash] used one to take control of his Gaggia espresso machine. (They’re really decent little machines) He popped in a LCD display, some solid state relays to control the pump and the heating element, and an AD595 to interface a K type thermocouple. It looks like an excellent hack, but for the love of god man – get a better grinder!

He describes the original mod here, and added a small gallery of internal shots here. From the latest comments, it looks like the guys are RepRap project are even interested in the thermocouple PID control that [Nash] implemented.

Holiday Hackit: Automated Hard Drive Destruction

December 25, 2007 by 163 Comments


One of our recent posts took an interesting tangent: physical hard drive destruction. First, [wolf] wanted to use a 20ga shotgun shell on his hard drive. [brk] suggests an electromagnet applied to the drive while it’s still spinning. Everyone thought thermite might be interesting… Finally, [wolf] noted this commercial auto destruction drive that floods itself with an acid mist. I’ll suggest a few ideas and let you guys take it from there.

I’d suggest pneumatic injection of two part epoxy into the drive mechanism. Remove the top of the casing using the diy clean room method, add a port for the epoxy and use a cheap CO2 bike injector to force the liquid into the drive on demand.

So, got a better idea? Let’s hear it.

Silent X10 Mod (cheap SSR)

December 19, 2007 by 21 Comments


I’m feeling a bit retro for the holidays, so here’s another classic: If you’ve got a non-dimming X10 switch, you’ve experienced the incredibly loud, obnoxious sound that it makes when you switch it on or off. (Mine’s in my stairwell) There’s a simple mod to silence the thing: remove the triac relay and replace it with a solid state relay. SSRs are a bit expensive, running at least $10 each last time I checked. [Willis Dair] realized that he could build his own, inexpensive SSR with an optoisolator and an alternistor(AKA Triac). The resulting circuit runs about $3 in parts.

Autonomous Foosball! (plus)

December 12, 2007 by 15 Comments


[Shane ] sent in GATech’s senior design final projects, but his Autonomous single player foosball table is awesome. A Java app tracks player and ball via webcam. Then it acts as the opposite player by controlling servo actuated paddles. He’s copied his project to his personal server, just in case the class files get pulled next semester.
The course page is pretty ugly, but the project pages aren’t. It’s worth some time to check out the rest of the projects. The 2d iRobot based mapping system looks interesting, but lets be honest, the hand washing detector should be mandatory federal equipment at every fast food restaurant.

Open An AXA Bike Lock With A Blank Key (Doh)

December 7, 2007 by 18 Comments


[Barry] sent in his writeup and video about a serious vulnerability in the AXA bike lock. (One of the most popular locks in the Netherlands.) It turns out that quite a few of them can be opened with a blank key. [Barry] demo’s the hack, and has some comments about the lame efforts of the manufacturer. If you enjoy interesting reading, check out his blog covering lock picking and physical security.

Cornell Final Projects 2007

December 5, 2007 by 11 Comments


The latest crop of final projects from Cornell Universities ECE576 course went up a while ago. This round focuses on FPGAs. They’re all fairly impressive projects. My favorite is this real time spectrograph. With the decreasing cost of FPGAs, this Digital Oscilloscope could become a popular one. Putting this UDP network stack on a capture the flag network would probably freak out some people. Lately I’ve noticed a trend of replacing ASIC chips with FPGAs – these projects could be just the thing to get some people started with them.

Day O’ Guitar Hero Mods (with A Bonus)

December 3, 2007 by 20 Comments


I’ve already gotten a pile of tips on Guitar Hero controllers today, so here we go. The first one is already making the rounds. [Mark] replaced strummer with a touchscreen LCD and a magnetic switch. [Mark]s ultimate goal is to add some optical sensing and make the guitar self playing. For details, hit the acidmods thread or just watch the proof of concept demo.

[Johan] sent in the second controller of the day, and it’s probably my favorite for guitar bling. The original mushy switches were replaced with micro-switches and CNC milled replacement buttons. Each button is individually lit with LEDs and a cold cathode lights up translucent panel in the body. A PIC controller controls the lights and provides some input options for button tapping. The video is actually pretty entertaining to watch.

For a little bonus, check out [Mastershake916]’s cast Hack-A-Day pendant.