Things To Hack: Sub 100$ Toy Night Vision, Projector, And Tv Game

June 22, 2009 by Gerrit Coetzee 14 Comments

projector

Ars Technica writes about three new toys coming out this year: a sub 100$ projector, tv game, and night vision goggles. The projector runs at standard TV resolution, takes standard composite in, and outputs an okay picture. The night vision goggles are monocular but focus both eyes on a single RGB LCD. The goggles uses an array of IR LEDs instead of amplifying ambient light to see in the dark. Lastly, they have a standalone implementation of the arcade game Big Game Hunters. The rifle uses a sensor bar to do the motion tracking and features a 32MB rom to hold the game files.

Arduino Camera Laser Trigger

June 19, 2009 by Zach Banks 7 Comments

pict0005

[Adam] made a remote camera trigger that uses a laser. He had to install CHDK on his camera, which we’ve featured in a how-to, in order for it to work. CHDK allowed for a remote shutter trigger through the USB port. The laser bounces off a mirror and onto the photoresisitor hooked up to an Arduino. When the beam is broken, the Arduino sets off the trigger. He also plans to use the trigger to tweet over ethernet. Embedded is a video demonstrating its functionality.

Continue reading “Arduino Camera Laser Trigger” →

IPhone 3G S Teardown

June 19, 2009 by Zach Banks 9 Comments

iphone

Already, both Rapid repair and ifixit have torn down the new iPhone 3G S, and phonewreck has provided some analysis. The new CPU runs twice as fast at 600 MHz and supports 720p video. They also found that the new 3 megapixel camera took better photos. Surprisingly, despite apple’s claims that the new phone has significantly better battery life, the battery itself has only 6% more capacity. Overall, not much has changed.

[Related iPhone 3G under the hood]

130 Megapixel Scanner Camera

June 9, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 34 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn9ZoaPIHQc]

Made from a 1200 dpi epson scanner and a manual focus canon lens, this camera captures 130 Megapixel images. With a resolution of 13,068 x 10,173, these pictures are very detialed. You can see some examples in his flickr set. It doesn’t look like they’re the full size originals though. If you want to build your own, here’s a good start. Keep in mind that it’s from 2004 though.

CrossCanada: A Biking Documentary

June 9, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

bike_arm

[Mike] was going to be biking across Canada. He really wanted to document the trip, so he began planning ways to get still images taken at intervals along the way. After a bit of brainstorming, he ended up setting his goals a bit higher. He was going to film the entire trip. He really didn’t want a simple helmet cam, he wanted himself and the entire bike in the frame. To do this he had to build a long arm on which he mounted a bullet cam. On his handlebars, he has a simple control where he can turn the system on and off as well as initiate recording.

No single piece of this project was too complicated, but taken all together, the final result is quite nice. You can watch the video for yourself after the break.

Continue reading “CrossCanada: A Biking Documentary” →

Goggle Camera Mod

May 19, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 21 Comments

finished-goggles (Custom)

[Will] submitted his ski goggle mod. He has mounted an Oregon Scientific ATC3K digicam in his goggles. This should make recording ski trips a lot easier. Most of the electronics fit just fine in the mask, though he did need to use an IDE cable to extend parts of it to the custom pack mounted on the strap. We’re also curious how much wind noise he’s going to get on that microphone.

Quick Cheap Ring Flash

April 24, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

flash1

Here’s a great example of a cheap mod that gets professional results. This ring flash cost roughly $14 all together, and they got to eat some fruit salad in the process. The parts list is pretty easy and can almost be figured out just by looking at the picture. A plastic bowl, an aluminum can, some foil, and a lens adapter. This is very nice and much easier than our last ring light post.