Misc Hacks

4030 Articles

Fab@home

December 8, 2006 by 15 Comments


I’ve received a few tips on this, and somehow it keeps slipping by. The fab@home project immediately reminds me of reprap. This is a completely open source hardware project for rapid prototyping/3d modeling. In the past, manufacturing something like a turkey baster bulb required injection molding. The project wiki has full details on building your own, including manufacturing houses to get all the acrylic laser cut. It looks like you could get your hands on one of these pretty easily if you don’t mind making a dent in your wallet. Thanks to [nickjohnson] and [peter B]. [peter B] also noted that the cornell boys have an even nicer one that they use to make zinc-air batteries and artificial muscles.

If you happen to be in Berlin on December 27th, you might want to sign up for Fabienne’s wifi detector hacking workshop at 23c3.

Late Night Mini-extra

December 7, 2006 by 9 Comments


I’ve been pulling some long days between driving everyone around in the snow and winding up the HD projector How-To. I’ve received a few more entries to the Design Challenge. You’ve got ’til Christmas!
[bruce land] pointed us to Cornel’s ECE576 final projects. The results using FPGAs are pretty impressive.

[jbauer] noted this site on hacking Insteon power controls sans the $200 SDK.

[dayne] sent along his USB xmas lights how-to. Pretty simple, but useful for cube decorating.

[pillowcase] tuned another innocent bluetooth headset into a bluetooth sound interface. (Goodwill gets these things now?)

Oh, and if you want ethernet for your xmas tree/candelabra/etc, these guys show you how.

I was pondering building a new karkomp, and was happy to find that there’s actually an open source nav program.

Wireless Video Scanner

December 6, 2006 by 11 Comments


[aboxman] brought this nice wavecom jr mod to my attention. I first ran across scanning for wireless video signals a couple years ago when the X10 version came out. People were surprised at just how many video signals were flying through the air.This little project results in a unit that can scan a wide 2.3 to 2.7Ghz range. Of course, if you’re across the pond, you might want a european version.

Guitar Hero Guitar Controller

December 5, 2006 by 24 Comments


[Chuck] sent me this How-To on building your own custom Guitar Hero controller. I love the idea – the stock controller is a bit small for me. This one was built for a Child’s Play fund-raiser, so maybe you can score it and help get some games to some kids in need.

Remember, there are just 20 more days to get your entry in for the Design Challenge!

Defcon Bot Rules Announced

December 2, 2006 by 8 Comments


The DefconBots rules have been announced for Defcon 15. The reference design is actually pretty good on it’s own – I’m curious to see what sort of improvements the teams will come up with. The RD includes a full tutorial, so teams will definitely have a fighting chance. [via Midnight Research Labs]

The only rule is speed, so I wonder how many guns will feature multiple barrels. It seems that they don’t care how much ammuntion is used. (It does say no shotguns) Hrm, maybe a mini-gun that covers the 5×5 area with fine enough resolution to hit everything? Sure it lacks finesse, but firepower-a-plenty!

Now I can’t find his page but one of the Danger founders had built something similar using a Mac as the controller and a paintball gun. Of course, we’ve seen similar guns before.