FPS Controller Hacks Getting Easier

May 10, 2010 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

It used to be a major production to build a gun-form-factor FPS controller but commercial tech has adopted many of those traditional hacks over the years. Now, [Nirav Patel] is playing Cube with a Wii zapper and a SpacePoint. All that was really required to make this happen is a patch to Cube, the open source FPS.

[Nirav] has plans to make this controller wireless using a BeagleBoard. We’re wondering if there’s support for using the Wii motion plus? We’ve seen motion plus Arduino connectivity, as well as direct PC connectivity. The Wii remote already connects to Linux, what about pulling that data down from the Bluetooth connection? If you’ve done this, send us a tip about it.

Making A Bluetooth SNES Controller

May 10, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP8JgqmVES8&]

[MODDEDbyBACTERIA] has posted this instructible on how to make a bluetooth SNES controller. The bulk of the parts come from a bluetooth MSI game pad, so this isn’t a scratch build, but the amount of modifications required definitely qualify this as a hack. We were quite surprised that he managed to stuff all of that back into the case as well as he did. Great job.

Reuse That PDA As A WRT Terminal

May 7, 2010 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

[Michu] used his old Palm IIIc to make a serial interface for his OpenWRT router. It’s a matter of cracking open both the router and the Palm device, then connecting the TTL lines from the router to the MAX 3386e level converter chip inside the Palm. From there, Pocketterm can connect to the router’s serial terminal.

A lot of us have old electronics lying around that work perfectly well. It’s nice to find hacks that make them useful again.

[Thanks Isama]

Custom Headphones Solve Wire Tangles

May 1, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 27 Comments

One complaint we hear about often is ear-bud’s cables getting tangled within backpacks. [Andrew] was having this “spaghetti” wire problem, and also wanted to listen to his music with ear protection on – where ear-buds are usually uncomfortable. The latter problem is fixed by placing speakers inside of folding ear protectors, and the cable is managed with a 3.5mm disconnect.

For those who can’t make disconnect-able headphones but still suffer from tangled headphone wire, we recommend proper wrapping technique for your wire, and a small carrying pouch. With the combination of the two, we’ve never had a tangled cable.

USB VU-meter

April 22, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 14 Comments

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsg24MGNpRc&feature=player_embedded%5D

WaitingForFriday’s [Simon Inns] is quite possibly the USB interface and PIC master. This week he let us know about his VU-meter repurposed as a computer performance monitor using a PIC18F2550 and his open source USB Generic HID communication class. With PWM the meter’s needles and RGB LED can be accurately set and even dampened for CPU usage, network usage, HDD utilization, and even memory usage. Oddly enough, in his software we didn’t find the ability to use the device as a VU-meter – go figure.

Racing Sim With Real Car Parts

April 18, 2010 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

[Alex Rosiu] picked up this instrument cluster from a 1992 BMW. After some trial and error he’s hooked it up for use with a racing simulator. You can see how amazingly well it works in the video after the break. An Arduino Mega takes incoming data from the PC and actuates the appropriate indicators on the module. [Alex] didn’t stop there. He got his hands on a full dashboard and is working on fitting a joystick in as an H shifter. Keep an eye on this one, we think it may one day become a full-blown motion simulator.

Continue reading “Racing Sim With Real Car Parts” →

Zune Gets Hacked, OpenZDK

April 17, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 21 Comments

Here is one that really got some of us at the HAD offices excited (yes, we own Zunes). The introduction of the Open Zune Development Kit (Internet Archive). Sure, there was XNA, and we even toyed around with it. But anyone will quickly realize just how limited XNA is, especially with older hardware.

OpenZDK is in its infancy, with only one application thus far (don’t worry, you can still use XNA apps too). But we wanted to give it a shout out and let the hacker community make this potential into a reality.

[Thanks Galen]