Inductive Charging Going Mainstream

November 3, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 31 Comments

The recent announcement of Psyclone’s TouchCharge kit has us moderately excited. Though inductive charging has been used in electric toothbrushes for ages, we have yet to see it infiltrate the rest of our lives. The kit is a bit pricey at the moment, but it is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, you have to have an adapter for your specific product and their selection is pretty limited right now. Why not make your own to power your devices? Warning: it is written from the perspective of [Arnold Schwarzanegger].

Update: Is the TouchCharge kit inductive? It appears to require contacts to touch the base.

Rapidfire Wii Mod

November 3, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

AcidMods is at it again. They just can’t bare having to push the fire button over and over on their own. They’ve made a rapid fire mod for the wii. They said the mod wasn’t too difficult as Nintendo labeled everything nicely on the PCB. We like that they have added the back light on the button to tell you that you’re in rapid fire mode.

[Thanks Mark]

Propeller Halloween Contest Winners

November 3, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 6 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkUSjf0U-GU]

Meet Skelly, the propeller powered singing skeleton, winning entry to the Unofficial Propeller Halloween Contest. Sick of the massive amounts of Arduino projects floating around the web, [Oldbitcollector] offered a halloween challenge. Make something spooky using a propeller and other parallax stuff, win a prize. Skelly, made by [Chuck Rice] was the star of the show, so [Chuck] will be getting some USB development boards in the mail.

No Nintendo DSi Homebrew

November 3, 2008 by Eliot 44 Comments

The latest version of the Nintendo DS, the DSi, has officially launched in Japan. It features larger dual touchscreens, dual cameras, and an SD card slot. The members of GBAtemp.net have decided to tackle the most important question: will it run homebrew? Current DS systems just need a purpose built flash cartridge to load homebrew software (usually stored on MicroSD). Forum members have tested at least 10 different flash carts, and none of them worked. While not completely exhaustive it’s proof enough to us that current generation carts will not work. We hope this is something that can patched with a new firmware. Most carts load their firmware off the flash, so upgrades are easy. The blocking of homebrew maybe a side-effect of Nintendo’s announced region-locking on the DSi.

We hope this gets sorted out soon. Maybe we’ll see hackers figure out how to take advantage of the SD slot instead. If you’ve got a Nintendo DS, there’s no excuse not to be playing with homebrew. It’s as easy as copying files to a card. We’ve had success with the DSTT, which you can find on DealExtreme for just $10.

[via Gizmodo]

Hack-o’-lantern

November 2, 2008 by Jason Rollette 6 Comments

[Todd] sent in his Hack-o’-lantern just a bit late for Halloween. He did a good job of working with the logo considering the difficulty it poses for pumpkin carving. We would have been proud to have that on our porch for the kids to steal and smash in the road. Since others in the past have also done Hack a Day pumpkins, maybe this will spawn a Hack a Day pumpkin carving contest next year. If he had enough time to get the green LED working, it would have been that much sweeter; everything is better with electronics.

ShmooCon Registration Opens

November 1, 2008 by Eliot No comments

November 1st means that registration for ShmooCon 2009 has opened. The DC hacker convention is entering the fifth year. They’re releasing the tickets in blocks; after today’s are gone the next won’t be available till December 1st. Today is also the closing of first round consideration for their call for papers, but you still have another month before the final deadline.

We’ve always enjoyed our time at ShmooCon. In 2008 we saw talks on cracking GSM encryption and recovering data from SSDs.

Exersize For A Good Cause, Cold Beer

October 31, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 17 Comments

It can sometimes be difficult to decide what items we want to fill space in our homes. Our health is valued highly, as is our ability to consume cold beer. Someone out there must have been thinking of us when they designed this exersize bike that chills your beer. Admittedly, it won’t chill it as fast as some other methods we’ve tried. We also may end up forcing our friends and loved ones to do the actual chilling, but beer tastes better when cooled by slave labor anyway.