Posted Jul 24th 2008 7:00AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: laptops hacks, daily
[Mark] sent in this nice trick for
breathing new life into an old laptop. [Sarc] had a tibook with a broken LCD. It was still usable with an external monitor, so he simply removed the broken LCD. The tibook (and MacBook) uses a magnetic sensor to monitor the LCD position. To put the machine in the right mode, he taped a magnet in place to make the machine think that the display was in the closed position. To really clean things up, he mounted all the hardware under the desk and used a wireless keyboard and mouse with the machine.
Posted Jul 23rd 2008 7:47AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: daily, digital audio hacks
There's an
interesting thread discussing mods to improve the inexpensive Oppo 980 DVD player for better performance. The power supply, capacitors and opamps can benefit from some higher end components. [Occam] suggests several replacement opamps options for upgrading the audio output. The realatively low cost of Oppo gear makes it a better risk than modding a multi-thousand dollar DVD player.
Posted Jul 22nd 2008 7:46AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: misc hacks, daily
[David] put together this rather nice
1-wire barometer. An MPX4115 measures the pressure while an SMD DS2438 mounted to an 8 pin DIP socket provides the 1-wire interface. The writeup includes a nice description of the board layout and wiring, making this project accessible to just about anyone with a decent tip on their soldering iron.
Posted Jul 21st 2008 8:52AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: misc hacks, home hacks, daily
We're used to central A/C, so we were surprised by
this PIC controller based heater controller. It's based around a pump controlled boiler/radiator system. A PIC 16F84 is used to input the set point and control a pump to circulate the heated water as needed. You can grab full schematics on the
project page.
Update: We added a screen capture of the schematic after the break since the site keeled over.
Continue reading PIC based boiler controller
Posted Jul 20th 2008 7:28AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: home hacks, daily
[BahaTanju] sent in this oh so simple
fish feeder. It's a mechanical light timer with a simple dispensing bottle mounted to the rotating time wheel. As the timer rotates, food is dispensed and the aquarium light is activated. If you have bigger fish, you could adapt this to work on a solenoid and use a timer with multiple on/off settings.
Posted Jul 19th 2008 7:46AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: home entertainment hacks, daily
USB NES controllers are old school these days, but [Jay] put together a
nice new take on the project. He shoehorned a USB interface adapter, USB hub and a USB memory stick to store his collection of NES roms and emulators right on the controller. He even dug up a black USB cable to keep the original look of the controller. Now he can just plug in and load his game selection directly from the controller.
Posted Jul 18th 2008 7:36AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: handhelds hacks, home entertainment hacks, portable video hacks, daily
Today, [sprite_tm] let us in on one of his
pet projects. This is an inexpensive portable game platform runs about $50 and happens to use an ARM CPU and a 320x240 color LCD. Because it's so cheap, he's been working on reverse engineering the thing and there's already a proof of concept
homebrew version of Pong out for it.
Update: Yeah, yeah - title's fixed.
Posted Jul 17th 2008 5:45AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: pcs hacks, peripherals hacks, daily
[sprite_tm]'s back with one of his excellent Atmel projects.
This time he decided to turn an original XBox controller (cause he likes 'em) into a standard USB HID device. He gutted the custom USB chip that Microsoft installed and replaced it with an Atmel ATMega88. The ATMega required a few changes to the board, but nothing too off the wall.
Posted Jul 16th 2008 7:18AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: misc hacks, daily
[Zach] just let us know about a
new board that's available from the
RepRap project. It uses an AS5040 magnetic rotary encoder to measure the absolute position of the rotor of whatever motor you're using. This is actually pretty damn exciting. Powerful servo motors are expensive, but with one of these, you can use whatever motor you can get your hands on. Big DC motors are cheap, but even used DC servo motors expensive. Best of all, the encoder is
open source and you can score a kit version for a
paltry $20. Now we can make that 8 horse power servo...
Posted Jul 15th 2008 7:08AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: misc hacks, robots hacks, daily
[Bruce] and [Jesse] put together an
ice carving robot a while back. For the most part, it's a CNC machine that is placed on top of the ice. In order to handle the actual ice cutting, they opted for a weed eater turned super rotary tool.
Posted Jul 14th 2008 7:01AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: misc hacks, daily
[Adam] sent in his robot:
Ard-e. It's build on a cheap remote control bull dozer kit along with a pile of cheap parts. He managed to keep the cost under $100. You might be getting sick of the Arduino love, but we love how the platform makes it possible for the micro controller novice to get results without taking advanced assembly language.
Posted Jul 13th 2008 7:58AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: misc hacks, daily
[Lou]'s been working on his own 3d printer:
fabr. We find it appealing because the entry cost is quit a bit lower than something like the reprap. 80/20 isn't that cheap, but you don't need a large commercial laser cutter to build the chassis. The steppers he used appear to be inexpensive ones that can be salvaged from dot matrix printer. To drive it, he's working on a custom microstepping board and hopes to eventually develop an Arduino shield to control the stepper drivers. That's right, it'll get an Arudino to act as the CNC control interface.
Posted Jul 12th 2008 8:00AM by Caleb Kraft
Filed under: peripherals hacks, daily
[Christopher Mitchell] (
previously on Hack a Day) has come up with a rather interesting input device.
The Clove 2 glove is a Bluetooth data input interface. The goal is to be able to "type" without the use of a traditional keyboard. Key strokes are achieved through finger movements. Your computer simply sees this as a Bluetooth HID device and some software translates it for you.
While it may seem confusing, he's designed it to be very similar to typing on a keyboard. Each finger movement or combination is a key stroke. Just like typing on a regular keyboard, there are modifying strokes such as ALT or shift that effect others. Most common used keys require the least combinations of finger movements.
Continue reading Clove 2 glove for one handed input
Posted Jul 11th 2008 7:51AM by Will O'Brien
Filed under: peripherals hacks, daily
[sophia] sent in this interesting little video of a USB popcorn popper. It might just work too - we've burned our digits a time or two on a hot flashlight. The bottom is a jar lid, fitted with a pair of high intensity flashlight bulbs. These are wired directly to a USB cable (maybe a bit unwise). When plugged in, the bulbs are on and heat the metal container. Just add oil and popcorn... As usual, you can catch the video after the break.
Continue reading USB popcorn popper
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