NES Controller Connectors For Sale

September 30, 2008 by Jason Rollette 11 Comments

If you weren’t looking forward to trying to find a NES Four Score just to rip connectors out of it or were reluctant to cut the ends off your NES controllers and use different connectors for your NES hack, you’re in luck. Parallax has released an NES controller connector (7-pin, male) that is compatible with the Nintendo controller. They also provide the socket pinout. It’s interesting to see a product like this come out so long after the original console, a testament to the popularity.

[via Make]

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]

Wii Backup ISO Loader

September 15, 2008 by Eliot 15 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtu0kQHaIhI]

The video above shows a new Wii backup loader that’s in development. It works via the easy to use Homebrew Channel we covered previously. From the news post it seems you have to rip the original game disc and then patch it before burning the copy. No release date has been set. As Nintendo Wii Fanboy put it, there’s much more interesting things to do with homebrew than wait for this to be released.

A Console For Retro Games

September 12, 2008 by Kimberly Lau 4 Comments

Like many nerds, we have our share of retro video games and nonworking consoles lying around. Every so often we feel like dragging one out and hoping it works.. Luckily for us, the Super Genintari is available to fulfill our fantasies of beating Ghosts ‘N Goblins. The Super Genintari is an Atari 2600, NES, SNES and Sega Genesis all rolled into one; you can even put in four cartridges at once and hook it up to your television with a simple AV cable.

[via DVICE]

Wiimote Head Tracking In Processing

August 25, 2008 by Eliot 3 Comments

[Manuel] has been playing around with [Johnny Lee]’s Wiimote head tracking code. He’s posted a preliminary port outlining the code in the Processing environment. It relies on darwiinremoteOSC so you won’t see this outside of OSX, but it should help you out if you’re trying to do this is in Processing on another platform.

[via Create Digital Motion]

[photo: nicolasnova]

Wiimote Missile Launcher

August 15, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 1 Comment

[toelle] has shown yet another use for the Wiimote by having it auto aim his USB missle launcher. The bill of materials is pretty simple: a Wiimote, a motorized USB missile launcher, some duct tape and glovepie.

Simply tape the Wiimote to the missile launcher, install glove pie and follow his instructions for some custom code and off you go. He goes in depth on how to connect the Wiimote to the PC, as well as details on how the custom code works. It only tracks IR targets right now, which is a bit of a bummer, but that would see TV remotes right?

Is there any way this could be combined with the sonar controlled missle launcher that we covered in July?

[via Hack N Mod]

Watching DVDs On Your Wii

August 14, 2008 by Benjamin Eckel 9 Comments

Nintendo Wii Fanboy explains how to watch DVDs on your Wii using the new MPlayer application. Although the reviews are mixed, some claim it works and others claim it doesn’t, most are excited about this new feature which has been missing since the Wii’s launch. To get this working, you need to run the Twilight Hack and get the Homebrew Channel. Then you download the MPlayer software onto your SD card and install that using the Homebrew Channel. From there, you can launch the application and play your DVDs with ease using the minimalistic DVD player interface.

Although this seems like a lot of work just to watch a DVD, especially considering this might not work for you, it is interesting to see people trying to push for media center software on the Wii. Now they only need to find ways to get past the Nintendo’s attempts to stop this Homebrew movement.