Solar Charging Your DS

February 12, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 38 Comments

solar_ds

[dark sponge] decided to make his DS lite, solar powered. Or, at least charged via solar panels. He was able to find solar cells that were 60×60 mm, which means he could fit 4 of them on the outside of the DS. This gives him a total of 6V at 80 mA output. These panels charge the battery between uses. The DS has to be open and laying on its face for all 4 panels to be exposed, but this way of mounting them didn’t alter the pocket-ability of the unit. He says he’s been using it for a while and hasn’t had to plug it in yet, but we have concerns about wiring the panels directly to the battery. As [cyrozap] points out in the comments on the instructable, this is a Lithium Ion battery, shouldn’t there be some charging circuitry involved?

Augmented FPS Gaming

February 6, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 14 Comments

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[MikeFez] sent in this info about his augmented FPS set ups. He started this project back with an original XBox in 2006. He wanted a more immersive way of interacting with his games. Pointing out that gaming visuals and interactivity have come leaps and bounds while the controllers themselves have basically just added a few buttons, he explains his goals. He wanted to have to move his body to move his character and possibly physically aim. The original project, for the XBox, was successful in that he used a floor pad to control his character. Since then, the Wii has come out and he has moved to the PC as his main platform. As expected, he is now using the Wiimote as the aiming device.

Rock Band Kick Pedal

February 3, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

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[Raphael] sent us this nice kick pedal mod for Guitar Hero: World Tour. After breaking his kick pedal repeatedly, he decided to build something a bit more robust. He went to the music store intending to pick up a cheap kick pedal to start with and happened to start a conversation with an employee who had a practice pad to get rid of. [Raphael] relieved him of his practice pad and promptly made a base to hold it in position. After attaching his piezo sensor to the back of it, he had a very robust kick pedal. we can’t imagine him breaking this one any time soon.

FiSSION 3D Game Engine For Wii Homebrew

January 31, 2009 by Eliot 36 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd1DrN2PDt4]

[PunMaster] wrote in to tell us that he has just released the first public demo of FiSSION Project. It’s a homebrew 3D game engine for the Wii. He’s hoping it will make development easier for other people that want to get into the Wii hacking scene. The project was originally spun out of similar work he was doing targeted at XNA for the 360. This is just a demo to generate interest in the project and hopefully get some feedback as to what’s needed to make a full release possible.

Portable Wii

January 27, 2009 by Strom Carlson 32 Comments

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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

January 22, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

[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

January 14, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 24 Comments

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[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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