Hacking A Radio Controlled Spy Device For Overly Attached Girlfriend.

February 27, 2013 by Caleb Kraft 47 Comments

This is the first in our series of videos meant to spread the hacking goodness far and wide on the net. As you can see, it is a pretty silly video, hopefully you enjoyed the humor. This wouldn’t be hackaday without an appropriate writeup though!

Initially the idea was to make this as a device that my boss could deploy from his Tesla Model S. Ultimately, we missed the release of SkyFall, so the whole 007 theme seemed a little flat. However, we did just happen to have a wonderful woman in the office that agreed to be an “overly attached girlfriend”. Here’s a link to the meme for those who are unfamiliar. Even though we made her look like a crazy person, she was a great sport about it (Thanks [Stephanie]!).

The Goal was to have a radio controlled device that would send live video and audio to someone and had the ability to plant a small GPS tracker on the undercarriage of a car.

Continue reading “Hacking A Radio Controlled Spy Device For Overly Attached Girlfriend.” →

Tickle-Me-Elmo… Frozen In Carbonite

February 23, 2013 by Jeremy Cook 18 Comments

We at [HAD] love any hack that combines children’s toys with science-fiction technology, so seeing a Tickle-Me-Elmo “frozen” in [Carbonite] is a definite win in our book. It’s also a great argument for joining your local Hackerspace, or just getting together with some like-minded friends. This idea came out of an impromptu brain-storming, or “talking about crazy ideas session” at the [Baltimore Node] hackerspace.

Fortunately [Todd] had access to all the tools necessary to make this “crazy idea” a reality. A [Shopbot] was used to cut out the box, and the side panels were 3D printed with help from these files on Thingiverse. For processing, an [ATtiny85] programmed using an Arduino was used to power this project.

There’s no mention of whether [Todd] would be willing to part with his creation, however, we would guess that there would be no bargaining with him. He’s not going to give up his favorite decoration easily.

Continue reading “Tickle-Me-Elmo… Frozen In Carbonite” →

A Beautiful Game Of Lights Out

February 18, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 9 Comments

lightsout

About a year ago, [Anthony] decided to embark on his biggest project to date. He wanted something with a ton of LEDs, so when the idea of recreating the classic electronic Lights Out game came to mind, he knew he had the makings of a killer project. The finished Lights Out arcade box is a wonderful piece of work with sixteen 17-segment displays and just as many LED illuminated arcade buttons.

By far the most impressive feature of [Anthony]’s project are the two rows of 17-segment displays. These are controlled by two MAX6954 LED display drivers on a beautiful wire wrapped board. The 16 buttons for the game are translucent arcade buttons that compliment the RGB LED strip very nicely.

A great display and a whole bunch of LEDs don’t make a game, though. [Anthony] came across this article on JSTOR that told him how to create new 4×4 games of Lights Out and solve them algorithmically to get the total number of moves required to solve the puzzle. As you can see in this video, it’s a little hard to solve the puzzle in the minimum amount of moves. Still, we have to commend [Anthony] for a great project.

if firecracker-crossbows are outlawed, only outlaws will have firecracker-crossbows!

The Firecracker Crossbow

February 12, 2013 by Jeremy Cook 40 Comments

If there are two things that we love at [HAD], giant German firecrackers, and medieval weapons would have to be close to the top of this list. This clever hack gives us both, with a toy crossbow capable of both lighting and launching firecrackers to a safe distance. We didn’t see a blooper reel, but being ready to run in case of a malfunction is probably a good idea as well.

The post has some pictures of the mechanism, but at its heart, this hack consists of ripping up a grill igniter, and placing the contacts into a shortened-stock toy crossbow. Safety is of course encouraged, as much as it can be with this type of device. It’s especially important here as apparently “firecracker” roughly translates in German to “small sticks of high-explosive,” or possibly “road flare.”

Be sure to check out this modded crossbow in action in the video after the break!

Continue reading “The Firecracker Crossbow” →

Reverse Engineering The Furby

January 28, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

Furby

Furby teardowns are a favorite of ours, and there’s nothing quite like flaying open a creepy talking deformed animatronic owl/hell beast. There’s a lot you can do with a set of screwdrivers and a pair of scissors, but it takes a real clever person to reverse engineer a Furby without any disassembly (Russian, here’s the translation).

The new Furby comes with an iOS and Android app that allows children to interact with the Furby by feeding it, giving it commands, and even translating the Furbish into English. These apps work by playing a WAV file encoded with commands that give the Furby something to eat, or tell it to dance a merry jig.

Commands are delivered with these WAV files by means of a 4-digit, 4-bit code, complete with checksums. There are ten bits the Furby actually responds on, meaning there are potentially 1024 different commands the Furby can accept.

[iafan] wrote a Perl script to listen in on the audio generated by the Android Furby app and correlated all the possible commands with actions taken by the Furby. Everything is up on a git, allowing anyone to play an audio file and control the Furby’s mood and actions.

With this it should be possible to remotely control a Furby, letting it dance whenever you receive an email, or making it angry whenever someone retweets you. It’s a lot more clever than just putting a Furby through a wood chipper, but considering how creepy these things are, we’re not going to say it’s better.

Replacement Controllers For Slot Car Racing

January 23, 2013 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

replacement-controllers-for-slot-car-racing

That blur on the right is a car racing into the frame. But look around the rest of the image and you’ll see the area is littered with extra hardware. [Matthew], [Doug], and [Barry] have been hard at work adding extra functionality and replacing the original controllers on this Scalextric slot car setup. So far it looks like their build log has not caught up with all the work they’ve done. We’re hoping to learn more details as they have time to write about them (this is coursework at University so we’re sure there’s a lot on their plates). But for now there are several videos and a gallery of images to drool over.

The cars are controlled by the voltage level in the track. The team replaced the stock controllers with a Raspberry Pi. It manages that voltage using Pulse-Width Modulation via MOSFETs. This allows the races to be automated but also makes it simple for a human operator to use just about any input device imaginable to control the cars. For good measure they also added a lap counter that uses an IR LED and detector to sense when a car passes the finish line.

After viewing several of their videos we think the goal of the project is to log the fasts times without sending the cars flying off the tracks during the turns.

Faceless Child’s Engineer Father Builds Him A Breathtaking Ride

January 22, 2013 by Mike Szczys 56 Comments

amazing-kids-car

Okay, the kid does have a face, but it looks like Dad blurred it for his protection. The real story here is the killer ride built by his engineer father. It’s far nicer than the cars driven by the Hackaday team, but then again, since it cost more than a BMW 3 series that’s no surprise.

[Lingzi] lives in China and does custom car work for a living. So to take on this project for his son was more of a stretch of the pocketbook than of his skill set. The car features a custom frame with rack and pinion steering, disc brakes, a rear differential, and a reputable suspension system. The body of the vehicle is crafted from carbon fiber. The lights all work and there’s an electric motor and transmission mounted just behind the driver’s seat. Unfortunately there’s no video of this in action (China blocks YouTube). But do take a look at the album above for pictures of the final paint job. There is also a little bit more information to be found in [Lingzi’s] Reddit discussion.