Hackaday Links: Sept 15, 2012

Very tiny keyboard

The idea behind the iControlPad2 is pretty simple – just take the slide-out keyboard from a phone, discard the phone part, add two analog sticks and a D-pad, and put Bluetooth in it. It makes for a very small keyboard perfect for controlling a Raspi, a home media server, or even a phone or tablet. I think it’s cool, anyway.

I mustache you a question. Where’s the Hawaiian Shirt?

At her local hackerspace, [Akki] heard someone pronouncing Raspberry Pi as, “Raspberry pee eye.” Of course this joke needed to be taken to its fullest absurdity, so [Akki] gave her Raspi a [Tom Selleck] mustache. Slightly better than the Googly Eyes Arduino shield.

Not giving a Flip about proprietary batteries

When powering a Flip video camera, [Dan] had two choices: regular AA batteries, or a proprietary battery rechargeable through the USB port. When the rechargeable battery is inserted, it closes a small switch telling the Flip it can recharge these batteries. Wanting to put his own rechargeable batteries in his camera, [Dan] closed the switch with a little bit of cardboard, thus allowing him to use his own NiMH rechargeable batteries.

Building operating systems from scratch

A while ago we posting something about a Cambridge professor putting up a tutorial for developing an operating system from scratch on the Raspberry Pi. [Joey] decided to follow these tutorials and has a blog dedicated to his adventures in OS development. It’s not a custom UNIX-inspired OS yet….

Put a quarter in, get a goldfish

[Yooder] over on Reddit spent a week turning a gumball machine into a fish tank. A very nice build that is now home to a few neon tetras. Check out the imgur album for a full build walkthrough.

IControlpad, IPhone Gamepad


[CraigX] has been dabbling in iPhone accessories lately by adding a gamepad. Called the iControlpad it surrounds the iPhone making it look very PSP like. As anyone who has jailbroken and installed emulators probably knows, without feedback the touch screen based buttons are less than great.

The unit is currently a prototype however there are plans to produce and sell the units. They have received support from Zodttd, an organization that has created iPhone apps like snes4iphone and genesis4iphone. The developers also state they’ll provide source and SDK support. The sparse development blog announces their success using a hacked up SNES controller over the docks serial connector, but they provide absolutely no details.

[via Engadget]