UK Raid Seizes 1,800 Flash Cartridges

December 19, 2008 by Eliot 46 Comments

dscart

South Wales Police raided a store in Cardiff seizing 1,800 Nintendo DS flash carts. The devices can be used for playing pirated games or running homebrew software. In the UK, the carts are illegal under the Trademarks and Copyright Acts. The 21-year-old suspect had imported the devices and was selling them both online and in-store. He had over 1,000 devices in his home. Many of them packed and ready to ship. Official statements by the Entertainment and Leisure Publishers Association claim that the hardware irreparably damages the DS handhelds.

[via Joystiq]

DS + 50D Timelapse Examples

December 19, 2008 by Eliot 3 Comments

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

We covered [Steve Chapman]’s Nintendo DS control for his Canon DSLR in September. He’s since improved the software so that it has a timer for sunset/sunrise amongst other things. He also shot about 30GB worth of timelapse images while in Vancouver and assembled a couple test videos. He’s still working out the processing to take full advantage of the 15megapixel images. We look forward to future results since YouTube is now using a much larger player for high def content.

Nintendo DS OSC Support

December 6, 2008 by Eliot 22 Comments

dsmi

OpenSound Control protocol is an emerging standard for communication between musical programs. It’s meant to replace MIDI. The DSMI, DS Music Interface, team has just added support for OSC. You can now use your DS as generic OSC music controller over WiFi. OSC has TCP/IP support built in, so there is no need to run a host sever to talk to DSMI like you did when they only supported MIDI. We’ve seen OSC used in other projects like the monome. It’s also the basis for the multitouch communication protocol TUIO.

[via CDM]

Nintendo DSi Gets Its First Flash Cart

December 3, 2008 by Eliot 41 Comments

ak2i_power_on

A month ago, we reported that Nintendo’s new DSi portable didn’t work with any of the current crop of flash cartridges. Things didn’t look good for homebrew. Here we are a month later and looking at the release of the Acekard 2i. It’s the first DSi compatible flash cartridge. The features appear to be identical to previous versions and we expect other manufactures will be updating their product lines in short order. You can find a video of the Acekard 2i after the break.

These carts may exist because of pirates, but we happily use them for homebrew. There are a lot of great programs out there; here’s a list of 24 apps that are dedicated to music creation. You can run Linux on it too. It’s as easy as copying a file to a flash drive. If you have a DS and aren’t using homebrew, you’re wasting it. We’ll be picking up a DSi as soon as they’re in the US (they’re region locked).

Continue reading “Nintendo DSi Gets Its First Flash Cart” →

Gameboy Color On An LED Matrix

November 29, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 23 Comments

[youtube=http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=-n-iORmV3Qk]

Here is a video of a GameBoy Color being played on an LED matrix. He has built it up to 140×140 LEDs so far and it seems to be going well. He needs to add the final 20 LEDs to get the 160×140 resolution of the GameBoy. He notes in the comments that he had some problems with dead LEDs in the boards he got from eBay. Trying to remove the dead LED with a hot air rework station resulted in massive damage to the board. At one point he says that the power consumption is 1KW when showing all white. Wow, that’s a drain.

[Kevtris] gave us some more info in the comments with a link to the build pictures in his blog.

[thanks tReg]

GameBoy Color In A TI-83

November 18, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

gb_ti

[Mark] had a broken TI-83 graphing calculator and an overwhelming urge to play Pokemon in math class. The solution to his predicament, obviously, is to hack a GameBoy color into the body of his TI-83. He gutted the calculator and connected the front buttons to the contacts on the GameBoy. After some cramming and taping bits together, he got it all working. Now he just needs to find a way to make the cartridge a little bit less conspicuous.

[via Make]

LED Crazy DS

November 17, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

[blip.tv ?posts_id=1482920&dest=-1]

Adding LEDs makes everything better. Watch this video as a regular old DS gets turned into one of the most awesome things on the planet. A ton of LEDs were added, some to the body, some to an extra cartridge, some behind buttons. Parts are wired into the speakers, so you get nice effects to your music. We’ll bet the battery life suffers, but who cares. This thing is worth it. This was originally taken from Nico Nico Douga, which overlays the comments on the video.

[via Boing Boing Gadgets]