Posted Aug 19th 2008 11:31AM by Caleb Kraft
Filed under: ipod hacks, portable video hacks, daily
[jongscx] picked up a Myvu personal media viewer and promptly began scheming about improvements. He decided he wanted to be able to
watch any input on the device, not just an Ipod.
After some messing about with different inputs, he eventually calls Myvu to ask some questions. Surprisingly, he gets the engineer who designed the thing. The engineer turns out to be pretty helpful and is happy to help him hack the device. [jongscx] ends up finally getting it to work and posts the schematic for the world to see.
He says his hands are full with some other projects right now, but hopefully he'll do an official write up with pictures of the final product soon.
[DrNathan] wrote in to note that [RetroPlayer] was responsible for much of the work as well as contacting the engineer.
[thanks, DrNathan]
Posted Aug 18th 2008 2:30PM by Caleb Kraft
Filed under: misc hacks, peripherals hacks, daily
[toymotorhead] pieced together this
USB controlled power strip to help with his electrical bill. His goal was to be able to have devices turned off automatically when he shut down his computer as well as powered on when he turned his computer on. Another requirement was that the USB be isolated to protect the motherboard from spikes.
The cost of the parts in total were less than $30, and consisted of a solid state relay, some fuses, and some transient voltage surge suppressing diodes. The unit only switches power off or on depending on whether or not the computer is powered up, it doesn't control the outlets via software. He goes pretty in depth as to how everything works as well as showing nice diagrams and pictures. This should be a fairly quick and simple project, as long as you take the proper precautions for working with high voltage.
Posted Aug 16th 2008 3:01PM by Eliot Phillips
Filed under: laptops hacks, pcs hacks, daily
As promised, [tnkgrl] has published
part two of Acer Aspire One upgrade. In part one she added Bluetooth and more RAM. This time around she focuses on the storage. The subnotebook comes from the factory with an 8GB SSD. The flash based storage readily unplugs from a small ZIF connector. [tnkgrl] replaced it with a 60GB PATA Samsung drive salvaged from an iPod. It's a 1.8inch disk and is only 5mm thick, so it can be tucked under the motherboard. Knowing its previous use, it should prove fairly resilient. You can view a
video of the swap and
more photos on Flickr.
Up next is part three, where she'll add 3G support.
Posted Aug 15th 2008 10:31AM by Caleb Kraft
Filed under: home hacks, daily, security hacks
In the same vein as our recent
Defcon article on
biometric cloning, White Wolf Security has released this article about turning a
biometric door lock into a trojan. They note that there are many common ways to break into one, from harvesting fingerprints to using gummy bears to fake a finger. This hack involves having full access to the unit so you can disassemble it.
The unit has a system built-in where you can touch a 9-volt battery to some connectors on the bottom to power it in case of a building power failure. The researchers simply routed some wires from the motorized lock to the plates used for the 9-volt and then reassembled the lock. The door can then be opened at any time without verification, even if the software on the unit is reset.
[Thanks, dwight]
Posted Aug 14th 2008 11:30AM by Caleb Kraft
Filed under: laptops hacks, pcs hacks, daily
[tnkgrl], a regular around here, is at it again. This time she has modded an Acer Aspire One subnotebook to have
internal Bluetooth. She's released part 1 of a multi part tutorial on beefing up the Aspire One. In this part, she covers disassembly, adding more RAM, and adding the Bluetooth hardware. She suggests that you look at her
Bluetooth install on an Asus 701 to find more information as the process is nearly identical.
Part 2 of the tutorial is going to cover upgrading the SSD to a 1.8" PATA hard drive and putting it back together.
Posted Aug 13th 2008 12:00PM by Caleb Kraft
Filed under: peripherals hacks, daily, digital audio hacks
[Julien Bayle] has posted this great breakdown of building an
RGB monome clone. He is a musical performer using
Ableton Live. He wanted to do away with the need for a computer screen and found that the
monome would have been perfect had it been RGB. So he decided to build his own.
The parts list for the entire project is as follows:
- 1x Arduino board
- 4x Sparkfun breakout PCB
- 4x Sparkfun buttons pads (like our door lock)
- 4x Sparkfun buttons bezel
- 64x RGB LEDs common cathode
- 64x Diodes Small Signal (1N4148)
- 1x MAX7221 (LED Driver)
- 1x 74HC164 (8-Bit Serial-In, Parallel-Out Shift Register)
- 1x 74HC165 (8-Bit Parallel-In, Serial-Out Shift Register)
He also has files for the schematics and source code as well as information on how to assemble and test it.
The RGB aspect is still under development. He is using the
LEDMatrix-Serial Interface-RGB from Sparkfun Electronics to run it. It is expensive, but is exactly what he was looking for.
There aren't very many pictures of the project, and none of the working RGB unit. He makes up for it in sheer information. Many parts have links to manufacturers or support forums. Hopefully he'll post some pictures and video of the final product soon.
Posted Aug 12th 2008 10:58AM by Caleb Kraft
Filed under: robots hacks, daily
BP Australia has commissioned an
online game where you get to drive robots around an obstacle course. Make no mistake, these are real robots. Actually they are modified versions of the
Surveyor SRV-1 vehicles that are popular with research labs, and schools everywhere.
Go to the website, get in queue and pray for no clouds. These babies are solar powered, so you'll have to try to get in while its day time in Australia. The entire set is built in miniature, so you feel like you're driving a tank around a city.
[via
Robots Dreams]
Posted Aug 10th 2008 3:00PM by Jason Rollette
Filed under: misc hacks, transportation hacks, daily
This hack is an interesting twist that will allow you to
get in or out of some parking garages when the attendant isn't looking. Using something metal to trip the parking lot's proximity sensor that is meant to let cars out automatically you can get into the garage or vice-versa without opening your wallet. A magnet from a hard drive might work a bit better because it is able to trip multiple types of sensors, but for this hack any kind of metal will work. This proximity sensor is a high–frequency oscillation type, so anything that attenuates, varies the frequency or stops the oscillation trips the sensor. When you can't find a place to park, this hack will certainly impress your friends more than this
method, but your street credibility could quickly turn into never lived down stories, if you end up driving over tire strips and ruining your tires, get a huge parking or trespassing ticket, or worse yet get your vehicle towed!
Posted Aug 9th 2008 8:50PM by Patrick Lokken
Filed under: misc hacks, cons, daily
[Peter Edwards] at
Casper Electronics built a
modular synth and integrated it with the Barbie karaoke machines
we saw at
Notacon last April. The complete unit consists of 25 modules which are wired together using banana cables. He's using
this homebrew step sequencer to control the bent karaoke machines which then feed into the rest of the synthesizer. If you'd like to bend your own barbie karaoke machine, [Peter] was kind enough to post
schematics and instructions for his bends.
Posted Aug 8th 2008 4:30PM by Caleb Kraft
Filed under: cellphones hacks, misc hacks, daily
[rbhays] did this sweet little hack back in 2006. He took a Motorola cellphone wall charger and modified it into a
USB wall charger. He needed to charge his iPod, but misplaced the original charger. A replacement would have cost him $30. So he did what any respectable hacker would do, he cut up something else to make it work for him.
He had one sitting around that was equipped with a mini USB end. He checked it out and it was the perfect voltage. Some commenters below the project noted that their motorola charger had a higher voltage rating than his. Those would still work, but would require some extra steps to bring the voltage down.
After some careful soldering, and a bit of super glue, he's left with a perfectly good wall charger. He can charge most things that only use the juice from the wall. Some things refuse to charge though, such as Zunes. There was another project by [Cvesey] that claims to
charge Zunes as well. While wall chargers may be available fairly cheaply now, many of us have some of these cellphone chargers just sitting around. Now we have a use for them.
Posted Aug 7th 2008 1:44PM by Caleb Kraft
Filed under: robots hacks, daily
GRIP, the Group for Interdisciplinary Psychology at the University of Bamberg have put together a couple tutorials on
hacking the Pleo. For those unfamiliar, the
Pleo is a small robot shaped like a dinosaur. Their goal was to make it cute and simulate emotion at a higher level than previously attained by consumer robots.
Ugobe, the makers of Pleo encourage hacking of the unit and the controlling software. Look at the "developers" area of their site to download all kinds of tools to work on your Pleo.
The two tutorials released by GRIP cover adding wireless communication with a PC and adding a higher resolution camera to the unit. The goal was to make the platform capable of doing facial recognition.
Continue reading Hacking Pleo for face recognition and remote control
Posted Aug 6th 2008 3:50PM by Caleb Kraft
Filed under: home entertainment hacks, daily
[Rogers Gomez] has posted up this
hybrid tube based headphone amplifier over at DIY Audio. Being a fan of tube amplifiers, but wanting something with lower voltage and lower cost, he put together this little system out of spare parts he had lying around. He wanted it to have as few parts as possible and be able to power his 32 ohm
Grado headphones.
He states that he'd built several
YAHA amps, and a
Szekeres Mosfet follower and was curious how they'd sound together. He was pleasantly surprised with the resulting quality.
There are less than 30 individual components involved in the project. The complete parts list and schematics are available from the site. He notes at the very end, to unplug your headphones when powering up as there is a surge that could damage them. That might be good to know at the beginning just in case you get eager to test it out.
[Thanks, Gio]
Posted Aug 5th 2008 4:40PM by Caleb Kraft
Filed under: home entertainment hacks, daily
Deogen is a small, self contained device for testing monitors. It was designed back in 2000 to reduce the amount of space and effort required to test monitors in a computer shop. The initial design used an AT90S1200 microcontroller to generate test patterns for the monitors. Being about the size of a portable CD player, it was much easier to take to any monitor and plug in for testing.
Version two of the device, pictured above, is much smaller, being about the width and height of a credit card. The depth is slightly larger than a 9 volt battery. Compared to the
last vga test project we ran, this one is tiny. The unit boasts a decent set of features, such as; eight test patterns at four different resolutions, battery or DC power, and small form factor.
The processor of version two is an ATtiny2313 at 20MHz, and controls the H sync and V sync signals directly. The RGB is converted to analog using a resister network. The power circuit is custom made for low power consumption, though they note that a 78L05 equivalent unit could be used in its place.
The plans for the PCB and the software are available from their site. Head on over and check out some pictures of it in action.
[Thanks, Philip Fitzgerald]
Posted Aug 5th 2008 5:20AM by Adam Harris
Filed under: how-to, daily
A good soldering station and fume extractor is a must for anyone interested in hacking and modding, but not everyone can afford the
expensive professional models on the market. This How-To and the tips within it will guide you through the process of building an inexpensive homebrew fume hood complete with built-in time and temperature controlled soldering station and all the soldering tools you need.
Continue reading How-To: The Hacker's Soldering Station
Posted Aug 4th 2008 5:30PM by Caleb Kraft
Filed under: misc hacks, daily
[Tony Messina] had been fascinated with bat's
echolocation since he was a kid. After he retired, he decided to act on this fascination and built a
simple bat detector.
The simple bat detector uses frequency division to lower the bat's chirping to a frequency we can hear. For example, if a bat is calling at 91kHz the system will divide it by 16 and put out 5.7kHz. The system is digital, so all amplitude is lost. You'll just hear clicks like a Geiger counter. Being digital has its advantages though. Unlike similar analog devices that have to be tuned to a small frequency range, the simple bat detector can detect a much wider window.
Continue reading Build a simple bat detector
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