Make Your Own TSA “Naked” Scanner

Have you ever wanted to ability to see through objects? Perhaps you have been looking for something special for your own personal TSA role playing adventures? Well, [Jeri Ellsworth] has your back. She has managed to cobble together her own millimeter centimeter wave scanner using a hacked set of Feed Horns (like from a satellite dish) to create the image. By reversing the power transistor on one of the Feed Horns, one of the horns is made into a transmitter, while one of the other horns stays as a receiver. This data is then fed into a FPGA by way of an A2D converter, where an image is assembled when the scanner is moved over a surface. X and Y axis tracking is handled by an optical mouse also controlled by the FPGA, and the whole setup is output to a monitor.

Right now there is no text write up, or any specific details as the hack will vary by whatever Feed Horn is available. However, the video does a great job of explaining some of the electrical concepts, as well as some very useful schematics. Be sure to watch the whole video after the break, and don’t blame us for any health complications, whether the radiation is ionizing or not.

Continue reading “Make Your Own TSA “Naked” Scanner”

Funkytown Performed By Old Hardware


Inspired by [James Houston]’s remix of Radiohead’s Nude on obsolete hardware, [bd594] put together this mix of Lipps Inc.’s Funkytown. No sampling was used, but he had to loop the footage of the Avaya dot matrix printer’s drum part because it shook the table too much. The guitar and bass line are performed by a Commodore 64. An Intel 14.4 external modem uses DTMF tones for the first part of of the lead and a TI-99/4A beeps out the rest. The TI is also used as a speech synthesizer and a Maxtor harddrive plays the the vocal track.

[via Matrixsynth]