Misc Hacks

4130 Articles

My Motors Finally Came Extra

April 25, 2007 by 4 Comments


I’ll be hiding out in my workshop tonight, so I figured I’d give you guys a little extra today.

[Ashish] added a servo to his laserpointer/webcam range finder to give his microbric robot the ability to navigate before moving.
[Fredrick] got really motivated, built his own apple I clone and programmed it to play life.

[natetrue] built a sweet wireless motion sensor. [via hacknmod]

[sprite_tm] made a mechanical web page hit counter.

Some people, like [Nuri], really enjoy pain.

Finally, [chad]’s got a different idea on alternative uses for the Wiimote.

Brute Forcing VM Pin Codes

April 22, 2007 by 9 Comments


er, [-] sent in this little project. War-dialing is classic. The Scanit is designed for VM wardialing from a cell phone. The interface is a simple sound card to cell phone device made from a cheap car kit.. A laptop does the rest of the work. Apparently the nokia they used responds to sound based send/end commands. (DTMF is easy) I’d like to see a schematic and some source code, but nothing in the project is too terribly difficult.

Adding USB To A Cheap Linux Router

April 21, 2007 by 8 Comments


[sprite_tm] usually sends this stuff in, but I discovered that he took some time to hack on a Sweex router. The CPU happens to have an on-board usb host controller, so he added a few components. Now the router can support memory sticks, or possibly become a USB print server. (I can’t say for sure since I haven’t checked out the software myself)
Update: the project was linked in a comment a while back, but we never gave it the attention it deserved. Enjoy.

How-To: Make Your Own Xbox 360 Laptop (part 1)

April 18, 2007 by 4 Comments


Sure, maybe you’re sick of hearing about [Ben]’s work, but he’s finally giving up the goods on building that Xbox 360 laptop. It’s not your average slap it in a case and splinch on a screen project, so you’ll just have to deal with a few more posts as he pumps out this series.

To console you people who can’t stand the major pc board redecorating that’s [Ben]’s trademark, [kiwisaft] sent along this unique use for the ol’ laser toner transfer trick.

The ball point pin dot matrix printer reminded [Tesladownunder] was reminded of this funky servo based plotteroriginally built for the dearly departed vic20.

Everybody Needs One

April 18, 2007 by 12 Comments


Not the hack o’ the day, but you guys might have noticed that I’ve been pretty quiet on the engadget How-To front. I’ve been spending all my spare time in my garage working on a CNC conversion for the mini mill I bought a few months ago. It features pic based microstepping controllers that handle up to 54 volts and 3amps. I settled for a modified PC power supply for now. I’ve got plans for this thing, including some stuff just for Hack-A-Day. All the mechanical and electronic work is completed; now I’m taking a breather while I wait for the actual beefy stepper motor for the Z-axis pictured above. I celebrated with a coffee stout.

Postal Hacking

April 12, 2007 by 24 Comments


Apparently our Russian brethren have some issues ordering things online. Their shipping solution? A bit of remote social engineering. Thanks to the nature of Russian addresses – that is, the language is pretty easy to recognize – they’ve found that putting down their address in Russia along with a Canadian zip code will usually result in the package being forwarded along thanks to the thoughtful Canadian postal workers. Thanks [Jock]

Social engineering not your thing? OK, well here’s a few extra hacks to chew on. [Sam] thinks you should wrap your electronics in a condom to keep em dry. If you’re in NY, you might want to check out the circuit bending festival. Oh, and if you’ve had your head in the sand, you might have missed the steam powered R2D2.