Misc Hacks

4085 Articles

Post-thx Giving Extra

November 24, 2006 by 8 Comments

I’m hanging out with relatives, enjoying the holiday, but I can’t forget you guys. I’ve finally got a chance to announce some more prizes for the Design Challenge.

In addition to fbz’s hackaday ipod nano, MAKE put up one of their MAKE controllers and one of their Daisy MP3 player kits. The controller looks pretty sweet, servo interfaces, USB, etc, good stuff. I’ve got one of the daisy’s to play with, so I’ll be putting up more on that later. They also put together a nice open source gift guide. Plenty of it is from make, but there are a few good things on the list.

[John] sent in his Atari lynx C64 dtv mod. No details, but it looks like a decent portable mod.

[kedge] notes that the Wii apparently has opera pre-installed.

[Adam] pointed at that someone already has XP running on a friggin PS3. [via emulation under linux] I had issues reviewing the video, but it may have been my machine.

I’m going back to my poker game. Enjoy the holidays!

Wii Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Sensor Bar

November 22, 2006 by 51 Comments


[duff] found this and sent it in. The video demonstrates that the Wii ‘sensor bar’ is just an array of IR leds. The actual sensor is in the remote control – which probably sends data to the Wii via RF. These guys faked the ir signal using a pair of standard remotes. This’ll probably open the door to some controller cheats as things progress. [Better than using a belt sander on a trackball.]

[Hey – If you want to get on the podcast, email some questions or comments as mp3s to podcast at hackaday.]

Tuesday Mini-extra

November 21, 2006 by 10 Comments

[Jon] noted that this guy is using his Prius as backup UPS for his house. [It’s been around, but’s it’s worthy.]

If you’re having issues with Eagle for the contest, [weirdguy] suggests this tutorial.

[Lain Sharp] sent in his three blind mice project. This is his version of the 3D mouse. with an AVR to send the data to windows via serial port.

[Michael] added an aux ‘input’ to his car stereo in a unique fashion – he wired it directly to the car speakers and drives them from his iPod. [I’m not recommending this, but it’s certainly a different approach.]

Finally, [oliverjenks] sent in this table saw finger jig hack – using some random power transistors, light bulbs and a laptop to drive a stepper motor.

If you haven’t already, check out our Design Challenge contest. I finally got some fedex shipping notifications today, so I should be able to officially announce more prizes very soon.

Homemade Cathode Ray Tubes

November 20, 2006 by 5 Comments


[dylan] tipped us to [Nyle Steiner] who’s been making his own cathode ray tubes Not satisified with that, he made an even smaller one[youtube] and he built an oscilloscope[youtube].

Once I noticed that he’s an amateur radio operator, I started digging around his site. His propane lawnmower is a great idea, his diy photocell makes me think of mr. wizard. If you dig tube amps, you’ll definitely be interested in his vaccum tube building experiments.

[Got a cool circuit? Lay it out on a PCB and enter the Design Challenge.]

Paintball Minigun

November 17, 2006 by 25 Comments


Every so I often I Google “paintball minigun“. This time it actually turned up something good. Special effects builder Rick Galinson has been working on a… wait for it… paintball minigun (cache). There is a video of a dry fire run on his site. He’s apparently having trouble with the triggers; I just want to know how he plans on loading it.

Rick has a lot of other cool projects. He’s got a cool two arm minigun prop (cache) (looks like Monev the Gale), A remote controlled submarine (cache), and a really cool telemetry suit (cache) for collecting upper body movement data.

For completeness’ sake you can check out Monty’s Miniguns for information on other paintball miniguns and miniguns in general.