Misc Hacks

4186 Articles

Friday Night Pyro Extra

November 16, 2007 by 6 Comments


Well, not quite so much a pyro, but this setup rocks for cooking some good steaks.

[Tony] sent in this mp3 doorbell hack. I’m thinking… Star Wars theme song.

[Joey] let me know about this odd hack that adds guitar foot pedals to every button on a gameboy. (It makes sense if you remember that they’re popular for 8-bit sound production)
[Chris] sent in his wooden robot arm. It’s a simple servo based design, but it might be a good place to start if you’re leaning in that direction.

This already got plenty of attention, but [Billy] took his iPod apart and encased it in a block of resin. It’s still works, via a dock cable.

[D.G.] sent in this cheap ring-light tutorial. It’s based on a cheap LED light that’s got a set of ring mounted LEDs from the factory.

[Eliot] noted this interesting take on finding slingboxes using geographical IP addresses to set up your target search.

Finally, if you enjoyed [Eliot]’s visit to [Mr. Jalopy]’s garage, you might want to check out the video version on BoingBoingTV.

Toilet Terror Level Indicator

November 14, 2007 by 11 Comments


Normally, this wouldn’t quite make my radar, but [sprite_tm] built it, and it’s funny as hell. He created a Terror Level indicator for… his toilet. Rather than create an exotic smell detector, he simply uses a photo diode to measure the amount of time that the light has been on in the ol’ water closet. As time progresses, so does the Terror Level indicator. To make an audible indicator, he used the PWM generator in the ATTiny231to create a sort of ping sound when the level escalates. (I can definitely think of someone I need one of these things for.)

HackIt: New Life For Old Laptops?

November 11, 2007 by 161 Comments


Last time, I challenged everyone to shout out with new ideas for those old TiVo boxes. The response was fantastic. I’m not feeling too exotic tonight, so I’ll make it easy: The laptop. Years ago I found an article on using old laptop screens to make an electronically dimmed window. At tie time, LCD panels were $1000 items. Today, screens and old laptops can be picked up for a song.

Since ‘Hackit’ is a new idea, I’m still working out just how I’m going to handle it. Each week I’m going to bring up some hardware. You guys get to pick your brains and suggest new, interesting projects. Every so often, I’ll tally up some of the best ideas and put up a bounty for pulling one of them off. Maybe it’ll be cash, maybe some spiffy hardware – I’ll let you know when we get to it.

So, got a better idea? Let’s hear it.

Gyro Controlled Video Via R/C Plane

November 8, 2007 by 21 Comments


[Mark] couldn’t resist sending this in, and I can see why. It turns out that this is made from off the shelf parts, but the functionality is awesome. The pilot wears a video headset – igoggles, etc, and has a gyro/accelerometer sensor mounted on it that outputs commands to the R/C transmitter. On the plane, a servo pan tilt camera matches position based on the viewers head motions. Just about all the components are listed in the credits at the end, but you can use any RF camera and a transmitter with enough channels to run the extra servos.

RFID Guardian V3 Released

November 5, 2007 by 5 Comments


[fbz] wanted to make sure that everyone knows that RFID Guardian has released the latest version of their design. I had a hard time finding a good shot of the hardware, so I went with the Nokia phone control application. There’s a short explanation of the project here. I’d point at the use examples on the site, but it seems that their MYSQL server is running out of memory. After seeing this talk at shmoocon last year, and a bit more reinforcement at defcon, there are definitely some good uses for the guardian. (Once you get past the slow start, Major’s intro is funny as hell. – jump past the first 8 minutes or you’ll be bored.)

Happy Halloween Extra

October 31, 2007 by 6 Comments


Happy Halloween! I’m in the mood for an extra, and I’ve got some stuff that’s been turning to zombies from the tipline.
Pictured above is a nice simple LED pumpkin sent in by [John]- perfect for the hacker with less than stellar art skills.
Let’s not forget [mastershake]s Hack-A-Day pumpkin from last year. Where’s the THAD pumpkin you promised? [Wolfgang] sent in these mini pumpkin bots – they look like toys, but they’re made from XBox parts and radio control cars.
Last year Max sent in his talking Halloween basket. (I always wanted to strap that voice module to a co-workers chair…)
[Brandon] built a budget (~$150) guitar hero controller out of a Gibson Epoch guitar from target.
This scanner cam has been around for a while, but I admire how he keeps fine tuning and tweaking the design. Thanks to [Loopymind] for passing it along.
I keep getting emails telling me that Google Earth has a flight simulator. Yes. We all know about it.