UK Raid Seizes 1,800 Flash Cartridges

December 19, 2008 by Eliot 46 Comments

dscart

South Wales Police raided a store in Cardiff seizing 1,800 Nintendo DS flash carts. The devices can be used for playing pirated games or running homebrew software. In the UK, the carts are illegal under the Trademarks and Copyright Acts. The 21-year-old suspect had imported the devices and was selling them both online and in-store. He had over 1,000 devices in his home. Many of them packed and ready to ship. Official statements by the Entertainment and Leisure Publishers Association claim that the hardware irreparably damages the DS handhelds.

[via Joystiq]

DS + 50D Timelapse Examples

December 19, 2008 by Eliot 3 Comments

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

We covered [Steve Chapman]’s Nintendo DS control for his Canon DSLR in September. He’s since improved the software so that it has a timer for sunset/sunrise amongst other things. He also shot about 30GB worth of timelapse images while in Vancouver and assembled a couple test videos. He’s still working out the processing to take full advantage of the 15megapixel images. We look forward to future results since YouTube is now using a much larger player for high def content.

Nintendo DS OSC Support

December 6, 2008 by Eliot 22 Comments

dsmi

OpenSound Control protocol is an emerging standard for communication between musical programs. It’s meant to replace MIDI. The DSMI, DS Music Interface, team has just added support for OSC. You can now use your DS as generic OSC music controller over WiFi. OSC has TCP/IP support built in, so there is no need to run a host sever to talk to DSMI like you did when they only supported MIDI. We’ve seen OSC used in other projects like the monome. It’s also the basis for the multitouch communication protocol TUIO.

[via CDM]

Nintendo DSi Gets Its First Flash Cart

December 3, 2008 by Eliot 41 Comments

ak2i_power_on

A month ago, we reported that Nintendo’s new DSi portable didn’t work with any of the current crop of flash cartridges. Things didn’t look good for homebrew. Here we are a month later and looking at the release of the Acekard 2i. It’s the first DSi compatible flash cartridge. The features appear to be identical to previous versions and we expect other manufactures will be updating their product lines in short order. You can find a video of the Acekard 2i after the break.

These carts may exist because of pirates, but we happily use them for homebrew. There are a lot of great programs out there; here’s a list of 24 apps that are dedicated to music creation. You can run Linux on it too. It’s as easy as copying a file to a flash drive. If you have a DS and aren’t using homebrew, you’re wasting it. We’ll be picking up a DSi as soon as they’re in the US (they’re region locked).

Continue reading “Nintendo DSi Gets Its First Flash Cart” →

No Nintendo DSi Homebrew

November 3, 2008 by Eliot 44 Comments

The latest version of the Nintendo DS, the DSi, has officially launched in Japan. It features larger dual touchscreens, dual cameras, and an SD card slot. The members of GBAtemp.net have decided to tackle the most important question: will it run homebrew? Current DS systems just need a purpose built flash cartridge to load homebrew software (usually stored on MicroSD). Forum members have tested at least 10 different flash carts, and none of them worked. While not completely exhaustive it’s proof enough to us that current generation carts will not work. We hope this is something that can patched with a new firmware. Most carts load their firmware off the flash, so upgrades are easy. The blocking of homebrew maybe a side-effect of Nintendo’s announced region-locking on the DSi.

We hope this gets sorted out soon. Maybe we’ll see hackers figure out how to take advantage of the SD slot instead. If you’ve got a Nintendo DS, there’s no excuse not to be playing with homebrew. It’s as easy as copying files to a card. We’ve had success with the DSTT, which you can find on DealExtreme for just $10.

[via Gizmodo]

Control Your Camera Remotely With A DS

September 17, 2008 by Joey Celis 9 Comments

Using a custom built cable connected to the lower GBA slot and a copy of Canon’s SDK, [Steve Chapman] has come up with a very clever way of taking pictures remotely with a Nintendo DS Lite.

Currently the software supports bracket shooting as well as bulb mode. [Steve] points out that he is currently testing an audio based trigger system using the mic built into the DS and the software is still a work in progress.

While the weight saving benefits of using a DS instead of a notebook are obvious, there are things you do give up going this route. Traditionally, when you tether a camera to a computer the photos are saved directly to the computer where you can view the image on a much larger monitor. With the DS, it seems all you can do is remotely trigger the camera. Given the size and resolution of the screens maybe that’s all it can do.

[via Boing Boing Gadgets]