PlayStation 3 Analog Audio Out Hack

August 30, 2013 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

ps3-analog-audio-out

Here’s the scenario: You’ve got the rage to play som CoD (we’re more GTA fans but whatever) but the monitor you’re going to play on has no speakers. You can get a crystal clear image using HDMI, but getting sound is a different matter. What’s the fix? Crack open your PS3 and solder on some audio connectors.

[Paul] knew there is a special cable that breaks out analog audio. Like original Xbox hacking of ages past, there is now plenty of information online about the internals of these machines. He grabbed a copy of the A/V pinout and found the analog audio pins. After soldering on this pair of RCA cables he ~~cut~~ savaged a hole in the case and put the console back together. The machine he’s working with is a salvaged unit with no Blu-ray drive — he links to his past posts on the repair process. You may be thinking what good is it without an optical drive? Remember, this is the beginning of the Internet age… everything is downloadable.

RCA Capacitive Electronic Disk

May 1, 2012 by Jeremy Cook 25 Comments

Although not a hack in the sense that it was made by a large corporation, check out this capacitive electronic disk that [danielbpm] wrote in about. Here’s a Wikipedia article about it, as well as a video (which didn’t embed correctly) about how it was made. The disks look like a typical audio record, and it was conceived of in 1964. A prototype was manufactured in 1972.

Unlike the more well-known Laserdisk format, the [Capacitive Electronic disk], or [CED] used an actual stylus to read the disks. Because of this, the [Wikipedia] article astutely points out that both systems were mutually incompatible. Somewhere there might have been a scratched Laserdisk next to the VCR with a sandwich stuffed in it. The computer with a broken coffee holder wouldn’t come for another few years.

Although it may have been a good format in it’s own right, like Betamax or HD-DVD, this system wasn’t destined to become the Blu-Ray player of it’s time.

Composite Video With MSP430 Chip

December 4, 2010 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

[NatureTM] used part of the Thanksgiving holiday to get composite video output working with an MSP430 microcontroller. He’s using one of the chips that came with the TI Launchpad, which is a big hardware limitation because of the relatively small code memory and RAM. The chip displays one still image at a resolution of 192×40 pixels. Still, this is a great way to learn about composite video signals, as a lot of other projects use a TVout library to save you the headaches. All you’ll need is a TI Launchpad, a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, two resistors, and an RCA jack. Dig through the code and see what a great job [NatureTM] did of offloading as much work onto the chip’s peripherals as possible.

Surveillance As Art

July 25, 2008 by Benjamin Eckel 8 Comments

The Target Project is a graduate project from the Royal College of Arts in London. It is designed to make us question our relationship with surveillance technology and CCTV. This is a particularly meaningful demonstration for a country like Britain which is said to contain up to 4.2 million CCTV cameras or roughly 1 for every 14 people.

This project has two demonstrations on their site. The first is dubbed the RTS-2 (Racial Targeting System). This system is essentially a camera which follows faces and is able to analyze and interpret the person’s race. The second is SOLA. This system is able to quickly scan someone and calculate their body mass index then publish this information to the web. Both systems achieve their goal by blatantly pointing out a line in which more surveillance does not equate to more security. They also show the wealth of personal data that can be obtained about a person by a simple camera.

[via we make money not art]