Hackaday Links: August 25, 2013

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[Adrian] came across a treasure trove of 507 mechanical device designs. It didn’t seem quite right for a Retrotechtacular post, but we wanted to share it as it’s a great place to come up with ideas for your next Rube Goldberg machine.

Biking with headphones is dangerous. That’s why [J.R.] built a handlebar enclosure for his Jambox Bluetooth speaker.

While dumpster diving [Mike] found a Macbook pro. It was missing a few things, like a keyboard, touchpad, battery, ram, and storage. He borrowed a power supply to test it out but without the keyboard there’s no power button. He figured out the traces on the motherboard which turn it on when shorted.

[Mateusz] want to let us know about the Hercules LaunchPad. Like the other TI Launchpad offerings it’s an all-in-one dev board. The Hercules line features a couple of flavors of dual-core ARM chips. Can you believe the dev boards you can get for under $20 these days?

After seeing the ammo can sound system about a month ago [Ilpo] was inspired to share his ammo can PC case with us.

And finally, here’s a way to display your Bitcoin mining rig for all to see. This system was laid out in an antique frame and hung on the wall.

MacBook Pro Retina Display With A Normal Computer

If you’ve seen one of the fancy, expensive MacBook Pro laptops with a Retina display, you’ll know how awesome having that much resolution actually is. This incredible resolution comes with a price, though: the MBP with a Retina display is about $500 more expensive than the normal resolution MPB model, and it’s very difficult to find a laptop of comparable resolution without cries of fanboyism being heard.

[Daniel] over at Rozsnyo came up with a neat solution that connects one of these fancy 15-inch Retina displays to just about any computer. The build is the beginning of a product that works just like the previous DisplayPort adapter for the iPad retina display, but with the possibility of a few added features such as HDMI input and use of the internal webcam and WiFi antennas.

This build isn’t really a finished product anyone can buy and plug into a replacement Retina display just yet. Even if it were, it’s extraordinarily difficult to find a replacement display for the high-end MacBook for under the price of a really good monitor, anyway. In a few years, though, when the old, busted Retina laptops are traded up for a new, shiny model, though, we’ll be the first to try out this mod and get some serious desktop space.