Peripherals Hacks

1563 Articles

The $1 Infrared Solution For Your Pc

April 9, 2005 by 46 Comments

IR Transmitter

infrared comes on a lot of cool devices, but not everyone has a transmitter/reciever to take advantage of it. well now you can and for about a buck. just make sure your pc has room for an IR port. if it does, you’ll need to pick up the following to get going:
+An infrared LED, an infrared photo-diode
+Two BC548 transistors
+A 10 nF capacitor
+A 4K7 resistor, a 47 K resistor, a 15K resistor, a 22 ohm resistor and a 1 K resistor (all of them 1/8 W)

That’s it aside from your trusty soldering gun and a lil’ solder. Wire it up, connect it, and start waving your cellphone, palmone, or whatever it is with IR around to have windows recognize it!

thanks [captain]

Continue reading “The $1 Infrared Solution For Your Pc” →

Make A Turntable Out Of An Old Mouse

April 8, 2005 by 10 Comments

Turntable Mouse

Ever wanted to get your DJ on but you just couldn’t bring yourself to get away from your pc for more than 5 minutes? Of course you have. That’s why a guy named Alex went and took apart an old school mouse and a turntable and made them into a very interesting combination. Along with some special software, you can use the axis’ of your mouse-turntable combination to actually scratch in realtime. Kind of like the poor man’s Final Scratch. It’s definetly a very unique concept that would be really interesting to try.

Oh yeah. And the turntable is Windows 95 compatible (thanks anigan!)

Continue reading “Make A Turntable Out Of An Old Mouse” →

Homebrew Helicopter Flight Sim Controls

March 20, 2005 by 6 Comments

heli controls

whirlyman sent us a link to instructions for turning a usb flight stick into a realistic helicopter flight control system for use with your favorite flight sim.

steve, the project’s creator, did something really interesting here because his control system externally manipulates the stock ms flightstick.  the stick wasn’t disassembled or altered to connect the realistic controls for the pedals, cyclic and collective.

update: ugh — geocities bandwidth limit exceeded.  for those of you who just want to take a quick look, i’ve added a couple pictures and a link to google’s cache after the break.  let me know if a better mirror exists and i’ll post it.

Continue reading “Homebrew Helicopter Flight Sim Controls” →

Pocket Pc Phone Remote

March 11, 2005 by 10 Comments

pocket pc phone remote

griffen tech sells a program called total remote that lets you use your pda as a infrared remote.  for pdas without an ir port, it also comes with an audio-to-ir adapter that plugs into the headphone jack.

scotty-o’s pocket pc phone had an ir adapter, but he wanted less pathetic range and he didn’t want a silly ir adapter hanging out the side of his phone.  so he did what any self-respecting hacker would do: he took his phone apart, hard-wired the adapter circuitry to the phone’s audio output, and reassembled it all back into the original phone casing. nice!

Continue reading “Pocket Pc Phone Remote” →

Better Usb Wireless Security

January 1, 2005 by 17 Comments

usb security

there’s a pretty slick device called the “thanko usb pc lock” that will unlock and lock your pc based on how close your are to it (physically).

the only downside is the software that comes with seems a bit wonky, but–bryan batchelder rolled up a better version which to address all the complaints we had, the future features look pretty sweet too.

Continue reading “Better Usb Wireless Security” →