Gameboy Case Lives On With A Pi Zero

April 10, 2016 by James Hobson 25 Comments

After scoring a non-functioning Gameboy in mint condition for $10, [Chad] decided it was time for a fun electronics project, so he ordered an LCD and bought a Pi Zero.

He started with a 3.5″ LCD off eBay for about $25, and got it running with the Pi Zero. It’s only 320×240 resolution, but hey, we’re recreating a Gameboy — not a smartphone. The next step was rather finicky: cutting up the case to fit the new components in.

Using a collection of files he whittled down the screen opening in the case to make room for the LCD, a few hours later and it looked surprisingly good.

From there he started laying out the components inside of the case, trying to figure out the best layout for everything to fit nicely. To power the unit he’s using a lithium ion battery from a Samsung Note which should give him some serious play-time. It fits right in where the game card is suppose to go.

To add some extra control functionality he’s added the game-pad buttons from a SNES onto the back where the battery door is, he’s also got a USB port on the side, a MicroSD card slot, and even a new audio pre-amp with potentiometer for controlling the speaker volume.

In case you can’t find a mint condition Gameboy case like [Chad] did, you could just print one from scratch

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Why Buy Your Children A Game Console When You Can Build Them One?

April 5, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 45 Comments

[buildxyz] had no opposition to his kids playing video games, but wanted something that offered a bit more parental control, a larger game selection, and was maybe a little more contained than a modern game console.

So, in his multi-part build log, he goes through all the steps of making a Raspberry Pi into a kid friendly wall-mounted game console. The frame is made from Baltic Birch plywood, and the edges look cool when stained. The display is an old HP monitor, and the speakers are simple beige bricks from the thrift store. The controllers hook into a USB hub on the front. It’s not a complicated build, but it’s very well done.

The coolest feature, from the parent’s point of view, is the combination lock on the front. A rotary encoder surrounded by NeoPixels provides the input and feedback. Depending on the code [buildxyz] inputs his children can receive different periods of dopamine hits, and if he enters a special code for occasions like birthdays, unlimited play time becomes available.

We hope he’s prepared to have the only four year olds who can crack safes on the block. The build looks awesome, and there’s not really a commercial product out there to match it. Watch the video.

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Make Your Mailman Nervous With A Wifi Enabled Mailbox

April 5, 2016 by Gerrit Coetzee 43 Comments

“It’s not a bomb,” the mailman whispered to himself as he reached for [atxguitarist]’s mailbox, giving a nervous glance at the small black box stuck to the side. “This is THAT house, it’s not a bomb. I’m sure it’s not a bomb,” he muttered as a cold bead of sweat ran down his neck. His hand approached slowly, shakily. The mailman gathered courage, then, in a single quick movement, opened the box. He sighed relief as nothing happened. Somewhere in [atxguitarist]’s house a recording wailed “You’ve got mail!”

The mailbox enhancement in question is a hacked Amazon Dash Button in a project box. When the door of the mailbox is opened, a magnetic reed switch simulates a button press on the Dash. The Dash transmodulates the signal into WiFi pixies which are received by a Raspberry Pi. The Pi’s sole purpose in life is to run a 24-line Python script that plays the famous sound from AOL’s mail software and sends a notification to his phone.

Aside from unnerving the mailman, it’s a cool hack and keeps you from slugging it out there in the cold or rain to witness an empty box.

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DVB-S From A Raspberry Pi With No Extra Hardware

April 3, 2016 by Jenny List 19 Comments

An exciting aspect of the trend in single board computers towards ever faster processors has been the clever use of their digital I/O with DSP software to synthesize complex signals in the analogue and RF domains that would previously have required specialist hardware. When we use a Raspberry Pi to poll a sensor or flash an LED it’s easy to forget just how much raw processing power we have at our fingertips.

One of the more recent seemingly impossible feats of signal synthesis on a Raspberry Pi comes from [Evariste Courjaud, F5OEO]. He’s created a DVB-S digital TV transmitter that produces a usable output direct from a GPIO pin, with none of the external modulators that were a feature of previous efforts required. (It is worth pointing out though that for legal transmission a filter would be necessary.)

DVB is a collection of digital TV standards used in most of the world except China and the Americas. DVB-S is the satellite version of DVB, and differs from its terrestrial counterpart in the modulation scheme it employs. [Evariste] is using it because it has found favor as a digital mode in amateur radio.

This isn’t the first piece of [F5OEO] software creating useful radio modes from a GPIO pin. He’s also generated SSB, AM, and SSTV from his Pi, something which a lot of us in the amateur radio community have found very useful indeed.

We’ve covered digital TV creation quite a few times in the past on these pages, from the first achievement using a PC VGA card almost a decade ago to more recent Raspberry Pi transmitters using a USB dongle and a home-built modulator on the GPIO pins. Clever signal trickery from digital I/O doesn’t stop there though, we recently featured an astoundingly clever wired Ethernet hack on an ESP8266, and we’ve seen several VHF NTSC transmitters on platforms ranging from the ESP to even an ATtiny85.

Thanks [SopaXorzTaker] for the nudge to finally feature this one.

Raspberry Pi As Speed Camera

April 3, 2016 by Jenny List 110 Comments

Wherever you stand on the topics of road safety and vehicle speed limits it’s probably fair to say that speed cameras are not a universally popular sight on our roads. If you want a heated argument in the pub, throw that one into the mix.

But what if you live in a suburban street used as a so-called “rat run” through route, with drivers regularly flouting the speed limit by a significant margin. Suddenly the issue becomes one of personal safety, and all those arguments from the pub mean very little.

[Gregtinkers]’ brother-in-law posted a message on Facebook outlining just that problem, and sadly the local police department lacked the resources to enforce the limit. This set [Gregtinkers] on a path to document the scale of the problem and lend justification to police action, which led him to use OpenCV and the Raspberry Pi camera to make his own speed camera.

The theory of operation is straightforward, the software tracks moving objects along the road in the camera’s field of view, times their traversal, and calculates the resulting speed. The area of the image containing the road is defined by a bounding box, to stop spurious readings from birds or neighbours straying into view.

He provides installation and dependency instructions and a run-down of the software’s operation in his blog post, and the software itself is available on his GitHub account.

We’ve had a lot of OpenCV-based projects but haven’t featured a speed camera before here on Hackaday. But we have had a couple of dubious countermeasures, like that humorous attempt at an SQL injection attack, or a flash-based countermeasure.

Bare Metal Media Centre

March 29, 2016 by Anool Mahidharia 8 Comments

Sometimes, along comes a build that is simple and bare, and yet exemplifies “hacking” – an art form that uses something in a way in which it was not originally intended. We’ve featured a few Raspberry Pi builds, but this one is less about the Pi and more about putting the rest of the hardware nicely together. [Garage Tech] built this Raspberry-Pi Stand and the end result is brilliant.

It is nothing more than a metal book holder – the kind you are likely to pick up a pair for a few bucks at a charity shop or flea market. He was lucky to also snag a JBL On Stage IIIP Speaker Dock for cheap. Quickly spotting an opportunity, he decided to put together an OpenELEC based media centre using his bounty. Having made up his mind, he needed a couple of other parts to make sure this build looked, and sounded, good. An iQuadio Pi DAC+ , the Pi-DAC+ case from ModMyPi which comes with all the necessary hardware, and the official DSI touch screen.

With all of the stuff on hand, the rest of the build involved a short time at the workbench drilling some holes and slots in the aluminium book holder plate to mount the Pi-DAC case and the display. He drilled the holes and slots such that he can fix the display on either side. Along the way, he discovered an interesting issue regarding the display orientation – check it out. The final result is a nice looking media centre that sits proudly on top of his audio rig.

Raspberry Pi Art Frame Using OpenFrame

March 28, 2016 by Al Williams 12 Comments

Digital picture frames were a fad awhile back, and you can still pick them up at the local big box store. [Ishac Bertran] and [Jonathan Wohl] decided to go open source with digital frames and create the openframe project. The open-source project uses a Raspberry Pi with WiFi and either an HDMI monitor or a monitor that the Pi can drive (e.g., a VGA with an HDMI adapter).

You are probably thinking: Why not just let the Pi display images? The benefit of openframe is you can remotely manage your frames at the openframe.io site. You can push images, websites (like Hackaday.com) or shaders out to any of your frames. You can also draw on public streams of artwork posted by other users.

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