[Robin] over at acidmods sent in this interesting PSP mod. [PvP] added an internal hard drive (with the exception of a mini-usb cable sticking out the top) to his PSP. The advantage? Laptop hard drives are dirt cheap while sony memory sticks are still pretty pricy. More details should be along soon, but [Robin] assures me that this means up to 200GB of storage is possible for the PSP.
Portable Video Hacks72 Articles
Automatic Projector Calibration
[Johny Lee] sent in his(pdf) awesome projector calibration project. By adding embedding some optical fiber that feed into a set of USB connected light sensors, his groups software can determine the exact pixel position of each sensor. Once the positions are determined, the projected image can be dynamically adjusted to fix the screen. The technique can be used to stitch together multiple projectors, and even calibrate an image to project onto a three dimensional model. I know some home theater nuts that would love to have this system for calibrating their CRT projectors.
This is such an excellent project, that I want to give credit where it’s due – it was developed by [Johnny C. Lee], [Paul H. Dietz], [Dan Maynes-Aminzade], [Ramesh Raskar] and [Scott E. Hudson].
Be sure to check out the video demo after the break!
Simple VGA Test Box
Sometimes it may seem like I suffer from goldfish memory. [Chris] sent this in a while back and I’d almost forgotten about it. He built a simple VGA test box using a PIC 18F452. I’d probably be more interested in using it to add simple VGA output to another project than use a test box, but it can definitely be handy if you need a small portable video test signal.
Gyro Controlled Video Via R/C Plane
[Mark] couldn’t resist sending this in, and I can see why. It turns out that this is made from off the shelf parts, but the functionality is awesome. The pilot wears a video headset – igoggles, etc, and has a gyro/accelerometer sensor mounted on it that outputs commands to the R/C transmitter. On the plane, a servo pan tilt camera matches position based on the viewers head motions. Just about all the components are listed in the credits at the end, but you can use any RF camera and a transmitter with enough channels to run the extra servos.
$25 Head Mounted Display
[Jake] sent in his source for a cheap head mounted display. In his writeup he notes that the spy video car comes with quite a pile of handy electronics – video tx/rx, camera and this simple black and white monocle head mounted display. (Which happens to be available as a replacement unit for a mere $20) The screen is a Kopin 300M (Black and white, 300×240 pixels) The display is actually somewhat usable out of the box, but he takes the time to note some simple mods that’ll improve the displays performance.
If you ever bought a virtual boy just to gut the display, then you know you want one. In fact, I’ve got a perfect project in mind for this particular toy.
Go International With Your Zune
In a fit of apparent oddity, the Zune doesn’t support non-US characters. [Mike] sent in this how-to on modding the Zune software to speak other languages. We haven’t seen much on the Zunes, so it’s about time for something to come out.
DIY Camcorder
[Jonas] sent in a surprisingly retro concept given the number of small cheap funky video recorders on the market. He built his own. At the heart is a sony Digital8 recorder, combined with a security camera and a SLR lens. It’s finished out with an LCD viewfinder and a handful of AA batteries to power the security camera.
