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Things To Hack: Sub 100$ Toy Night Vision, Projector, And Tv Game

June 22, 2009 by 14 Comments

projector

Ars Technica writes about three new toys coming out this year: a sub 100$ projector, tv game, and night vision goggles. The projector runs at standard TV resolution, takes standard composite in, and outputs an okay picture. The night vision goggles are monocular but focus both eyes on a single RGB LCD. The goggles uses an array of IR LEDs instead of amplifying ambient light to see in the dark. Lastly, they have a standalone implementation of the arcade game Big Game Hunters. The rifle uses a sensor bar to do the motion tracking and features a 32MB rom to hold the game files.

Arduino Nixie Shield

June 22, 2009 by 8 Comments

AN_Board_FirstBuild2

Reader [Bradley] sent in his ArduiNIX project, an Arduino shield designed for driving nixie tubes. The shield allows the Arduino to drive and multiplex nixie tubes without any additional hardware. These antique-looking displays are commonly hacked into clocks. It takes 9 volts from a wall wart and steps it up to over 200V in order to drive the displays. The shield is capable of multiplexing up to 80 individual elements. He has example code for driving a 6-digit display and a clock on his site. He is selling kits and completed shields too.

Related: Victorian nixie tube clock

[thanks Bradley!]

Adafruit Introduces The Sensor Pack 900

June 22, 2009 by 9 Comments

adafruit

Our friends over [adafruit] recently released the Sensor Pack 900, a collection of parts for anyone who is interested in using analog sensors with their projects. The pack includes 9 sensors. They range from simple thermistors and hall effect sensors to sharp distance sensors. Also included in the pack are 3 unidentified components that can be used to interface with the analog sensors in the pack. At only $30, the Sensor Pack 900 seems to offer a great set of introductory components for anyone prototyping a new device.

USB Reader For SNES Game Carts

June 19, 2009 by 82 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwq6vRM8U7k]

Reader, [Matthias_H], sent in a video about his USB adapter for SNES game carts. All you have to do is plug in the SNES game cartridge and USB cable, then a ROM file of the game shows up as an external storage device on your computer. After that, you can play the ROM with your choice of emulator. We emailed [Matthias] asking for more information, and he quickly replied with a very nice writeup about the hack that is pasted below.

Update: [Matthias] launched a site for the “snega2usb” with updates on the development of the board and a FAQ.

Continue reading “USB Reader For SNES Game Carts” →

IPhone 3G S Teardown

June 19, 2009 by 9 Comments

iphone

Already, both Rapid repair and ifixit have torn down the new iPhone 3G S, and phonewreck has provided some analysis. The new CPU runs twice as fast at 600 MHz and supports 720p video. They also found that the new 3 megapixel camera took better photos. Surprisingly, despite apple’s claims that the new phone has significantly better battery life, the battery itself has only 6% more capacity. Overall, not much has changed.

[Related iPhone 3G under the hood]

Arduino Experimentation Kit

June 16, 2009 by 8 Comments

ARDX

[Oomlout] has created an Arduino Experimentation Kit that uses basic sensors, buttons, and LEDs to teach electronics and programming. Printed overlays are secured on a breadboard, indicating components and connections. The Arduino is then used to drive the circuit. Examples include driving motors, using shift registers, and making beeps with a piezo element. These are backed up by explanations and code. The breadboarding kit is very similar to the classic 300-in-1 project kits marketed to beginners. In addition, all of the materials are released as open source. Kits are also available that include everything needed to create the circuits.

Related: Opensource Robotic Arm

[via Hack a Day flickr pool]