[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBH6vQhKaiY]
This cool mod brings force feedback to the Nintendo DS. There’s a motor with an offset weight mounted inside the DS for vibration and some nice SMD LEDs plopped in there for good measure. The force feedback is being controlled via a picaxe mocrocontroller and triggered from the analog audio signal. While using the analog audio may not be the most precise method, he says that the results are pretty decent.
[Thanks Dan, via HacknMod]
As we posted about [Atarity]’s XBMC hiding in an SNES controller, we were finishing work on a tutorial for [Adafruit]. The tutorial combines a Teensy USB development board with a 3D accelerometer inside of an SNES controller. The Teensy is programmed to poll the SNES controller buttons and read the accelerometer values. The buttons are set to keystrokes and mouse buttons, and the accelerometer values are processed into mouse movement. Programmed to play Portal, we created a video showing how to use the device. You can see it after the break.
It was not quite as easy or quick as the typical PC gamer left hand: WASD, right hand: mouse stance. However, we can think of a number of other games that could be improved with the use of a device that, with a bit of hacking, could time keystrokes as the user needed. With a bit more hacking, the device could be made to brute-force passwords. What else would you do with this?
Here’s another home console made into a portable. [Techknott] built this shiny GameCube handheld. You may remember him from his work on a portable Dreamcast and the wireless Xbox 360 interface. This time around he’s mirrored the finish; a good idea in concept but even his demo images are already plagued by smudges. But if you can keep your digits on the plastic buttons this makes for an eye-catching design. One part that we love is the flip-top screen that hides the optical drive. This is a much better solution than the exposed lens we saw on [Hailrazer’s] GC portable. As always, video after the break.
[Hounjini] was poking around at the Game Boy Advanced bus of his Nintendo DS lite and figured out how to use it to connect an Arduino to the DS. For testing he’s soldered an IDC plug to the cartridge cover pin interface but this only requires four connections. The Arduino can both send and receive data from the DS lite as shown in the example videos after the break. The data access is made possible by making the Arduino look like a controller that the DS is happy to talk to.
There’s a warm place in our hearts for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. It’s too bad we don’t have that hardware sitting around anymore. But if you do there’s a chance it needs some TLC and there’s always room for a blue LED mod. [Raph] has a wonderful collection of NES hardware repairs and hacks that you should take a look at. These include replacing the power supply, fixing the cartridge connector, monkeying with the CIC chip, adding a reset button on the controller, converting the audio from mono to stereo, and yes, swapping in a blue LED. Oh, and as a side note, [Raph] gets a bit of extra hacker ‘cred for including “coded manually using VIM” at the bottom of his page. Classic.
[Hailrazer] is at it again with a new portable N64 build. He’s done the impossible by improving upon his last design. The LCD screen is now mounted flush for a cleaner and smaller case. The controls draw from a lot of different sources; a gamecube stick for durability, a 3rd party N64 controller for buttons, and a PlayStation controller for the shoulder buttons that serve as L, R, and Z (either hand). There is a breakout box that allows two controllers to be plugged in. Combine this with the TV out feature and it acts as a console or a handheld. His in depth demonstration is embedded after the break.
The build log (linked above) details every part of the hack so that you can try to do this yourself. The relocation of the expansion slot requires patience and solid soldering skills. The case work is an art in itself. We speculate that this commission comes somewhere close to $1000 but it’s hard to put a price on quality craftsmanship. We’ve seen smaller, but these features and finished look can’t be beat.
[Segher] has reverse engineered the hardware and command set for the NES CIC chips. These chips make up the security hardware that validates a cartridge to make sure it has been licensed by Nintendo. Only after authentication will the console’s CIC chip stop reseting the hardware at 1 Hz. The was no hardware information available for these chips (go figure) so [Segher] had to do some sleuthing with the tools at hand which include some rom dumps from the chip pairs. He was nice enough to share his findings with us. We’re betting they’re not of much use to you but we found it an interesting read.
[Thank ppcasm]
[Photo credit: Breaking Eggs and Making Omelets]
