Portable Wii

portablewii

Not content with Nintendo’s current portable video game offerings, fifteen year old hardware hacker [Xteaphn] (pronounced “Steven”) has come up with a series of hardware modifications to make a battery-operated Wii console. The hacked console features a folding laptop-like screen, which apparently includes the IR emitters necessary to make the Wiimote operate properly, as well as a set of tiny stereo speakers. To show how tiny the modified console is, [Xteaphn] provides size comparisons with thirteen- and fifteen-inch laptops as well as with a classic Nintendo Game Boy. The only potential hindrance to its long-term durability, as best as we can tell from the video, is that the battery pack and its associated connecting wires hang crudely off the back of the console like a sort of electric colostomy bag.

Check out [Xteaphn]’s YouTube video after the break.

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Neuros Set Top Box With Wiimote

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUT0yb04q_A]

The Neuros set top box, called Link, is a disc-less computer running Ubuntu. Neuros encourages hacking and finding new ways to use the unit, as can be seen in their latest article explaining how to get a Wiimote to work with it. The results are pretty slick, as you can see in the video above. We can’t imagine trying to use the on screen keyboard with it, but it seems to work nice for basic navigation.

Wiimote Controlled Coil Gun

iocoil1

[thecapacity] sent us his iobridge project where he controls a coil gun with a Wiimote. To make the coil gun, he took apart an office golf putter that had a ball return.  The mechanism to return the ball is a metal cylinder that is moved magnetically. He simply replaced the cylinder with a smaller diameter piece of metal to create the gun.   His computer monitors the Wiimote axis changes and sends them to the ioBridge. The unit could be located anywhere, but without a camera on it, he’ll have a hard time aiming. There’s a video of it working after the break.

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ArtFall: Pachinko For Techies

[vimeo= 2758525]

ArtFall allows you to draw on a whiteboard, then have small geometric shapes interact with your drawing like a barrier. Imagine a pachinko machine where you have to draw the pegs in. Not only can you draw barriers, but you can change the direction of gravity with either an iPhone or a Wiimote. The footage also shows some sound interaction as the pieces seem to bounce with the bass from some music. The effect is quite nice and somewhat reminiscent of the whiteboard pong we saw recently.

[thanks eric]

Game Boy Pocket Backlight

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[palmertech] and [Bibin] have both completed backlight projects for the Game Boy Pocket recently. The most difficult part of the transplant is carefully removing the reflective backing on the LCD. After a thorough cleaning, a diffuser and backlight panel were added. [palmertech] used a backlight salvaged from a DS, while [Bibin] built his own using LEDs. You can see his backlight in the video embedded below. There’s a disassembly video too.

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SNES Cartridge Wallet

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[gamemaster87] put together this SNES wallet. It isn’t just a wallet, it also has internal lighting and theme music. He harvested LEDs from Christmas lights, switches and battery compartments from an old all in one joystick, and the sounds from a holiday card. There’s a Plexiglas window to show off his ID and a belt clip, because you wouldn’t want this thing in your back pocket. Match this up with the SNES clock, NES bike tail light, and the NES security system and you’ll be the king of the nintendorks.

25C3: CTF Dominated By Iphone-dev Team, HackMii

25c3ctf

While we had been excited about 25C3’s CTF competition, we couldn’t even venture a guess as to who would win. It seems the iphone-dev team weren’t satisfied to just give an amazing talk. They teamed up with the Wii hackers from HackMii to win the competition. You can see their progress during the eight hour competition above in red. It’s impressive to see hardware hackers jumping over to network security AND completely killing at it.