url stringlengths 37 208 | title stringlengths 4 148 | author stringclasses 173 values | publish_date stringclasses 1 value | categories listlengths 0 12 | tags listlengths 0 27 | featured_image stringlengths 0 272 | content stringlengths 0 56.1k | comments_count int64 0 900 | scraped_comments_count int64 0 50 | comments listlengths 0 50 | scraped_at float64 1.76B 1.76B |
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https://hackaday.com/2008/09/15/tact-switches-for-your-next-project/ | Parts: Tactile Switches For Your Next Project | Ian | [
"classic hacks",
"Misc Hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"button",
"buttons",
"choosing parts",
"components",
"electronics",
"parts",
"tact switches",
"tactile switch"
] | Electronics parts can be a pain to choose. It’s often hard to tell from manufacturers’ datasheets if a part will fit your design. We auditioned six different tactile switches to find a cheap button to use in upcoming projects. A tactile switch, also called a momentary button or
push-to-make switch
, is commonly used for input and microcontroller resets. This type of button creates a temporary electrical connection when pressed.
Footprints for most of these buttons are available in the
Cadsoft Eagle
library
switch-tac
, or in the
Sparkfun parts library
under
TAC_SWITCH
. Buttons in the image above are discussed from left to right.
Through hole push button switch (6mm):
This switch will appeal to fans of through-hole parts, but you can see that it’s actually smaller than the 6x6mm surface mount buttons.
Note that it does not have the standard 0.1″ straight mounting legs, and thus won’t fit in a breadboard. Common package name(s): DTS-3 (S1 above).
642-MJTP1250
(16 cents)
Regular SMD tactile switches (6 X 6mm):
A 6 x 6mm tactile switch is probably the most common surface mount button. Even though it’s surface mount, it’s large and easy to solder. The button has two pairs of leads (1&2, 3&4) that connect internally to the same switch — although there are four legs you only get a single switch. You only need to connect one pin from each pair to use the button, but it makes no difference if you decide to connect both. The yellow and red buttons are rated in terms of the force required for activation (gf), yellow requires the most force (520gf) and makes the loudest snap. Common package name(s): DTS-6 (S2 above).
101-0164-EV
(22 cents)
101-TS5922T5202-EV
520gf YELLOW (36 cents)
101-TS6824T2604-EV
260gf RED SMT (51 cents)
Small SMD tactile switches (4.5×4.5×0.4mm):
Unlike the previous buttons, these tiny switches require practice and skill to solder. While the mounting area is only 12% smaller than the previous buttons, the leads are tiny and hidden under the package. Like the 6 x 6mm tactile switches, these are rated in terms of actuation force (gf). We were unable to find a ready-made footprint for this part.
688-SKRMAA
160gf (30 cents)
688-SKRMAB
260gf (30 cents) | 11 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "41986",
"author": "Satiagraha",
"timestamp": "2008-09-15T21:35:46",
"content": "That’s a pretty nice summary of SPST cheap switches, now how about Cheap Toggle Switches?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "42021",
"author": "Bri... | 1,760,377,764.376173 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/09/15/led-random-blinking-mood-lighting/ | LED Random Blinking Mood Lighting | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks",
"home hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"firefly",
"led",
"random"
] | What is it about pseudo random flashing LEDs that make us go gaga? We don’t know, but there’s definitely something there. [seligtobiason] has this obsession too. After seeing several more complicated projects, he created this elegant, simple, and cheap
piece of art
. The entire thing is pretty much just some flashing LEDs, some resistors, and a power supply. It really isn’t anything groundbreaking, but the effort and cost involved are tiny compared to some other similar projects. sure, it doesn’t synchronize over time based on input like the
firefly project
. But for a quick cheap project, the results are quite nice.
We would put one in our home, right next to the
node blinky
. | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "41984",
"author": "mattm",
"timestamp": "2008-09-15T21:24:35",
"content": "i have a question for anyone more knowledgeable than i am…why would you need 48 separate resistors for this? i’m no electronics expert but couldn’t you just have one bigger resistor between the power supply a... | 1,760,377,764.463776 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/09/15/hack-a-day-t-shirt-design-contest-ending-soon/ | Hack A Day T-Shirt Design Contest Ends Today | Eliot | [
"contests",
"News"
] | [
"contest",
"dash",
"dashexpress",
"design",
"hackaday",
"prize",
"tshirt"
] | The final day for entries in our
Hack a Day T-Shirt Design Contest
is today. Get your entries in by midnight Pacific time and you could win a
Dash Express
(or non-US prize). | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "41973",
"author": "Joyce",
"timestamp": "2008-09-15T16:44:58",
"content": "Como rakeaaar orkut com apenas o email? e tranformaar essesite em portugues. =)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41976",
"author": "carloscorp",
"... | 1,760,377,764.416428 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/09/14/lockcon-coming-soon/ | LockCon Coming Soon | Eliot | [
"cons",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"barry wels",
"dutch open",
"impressioning",
"key",
"lock",
"lock picking",
"lockpicking",
"picking",
"security",
"ssdev",
"the last hope",
"toool"
] | The Open Organisation Of Lockpickers
(TOOOL) is planning a new annual gathering for lockpickers. October 9-12th they will hold the first ever
LockCon
in Sneek, Netherlands. The event was spawned from the Dutch Open lockpicking championships, but they’ve decided to expand beyond just competition into a full conference. This year the conference is limited to just 100 lockpickers, technicians, manufacturers, hackers, and law enforcement members. They’ll compete in picking competitions, safe manipulation, and key impressioning.
On a related note: Organizer [Barry Wels] just became the
first non-German to win an SSDeV competition
with his key impressioning skills. We
covered key impressioning
when we saw his talk about high security keys at
The Last Hope
. He says it’s only been about two years worth of study and 500 keys to become a master. He managed to open the lock in 5:13 filing two whole keys during that time.
[photo:
Rija 2.0
] | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "41977",
"author": "azr2nut",
"timestamp": "2008-09-15T18:40:38",
"content": "organisation (sp)Netherlands? We need one in the US.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "42240",
"author": "azr2nut",
"timestamp": "2008-09-17T12:... | 1,760,377,764.325929 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/09/14/60-watt-solar-panel-built-from-cells/ | 60 Watt Solar Panel Built From Cells | Jason Rollette | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"charge controller",
"charger",
"ebay",
"instructables",
"solar",
"solar cell",
"solar charger",
"solar panel"
] | Our love for
solar projects
continues on with this method to make your own solar panels. [Mike] built a
60 watt solar panel
from individual solar cells he purchased off eBay. Procuring parts off of eBay normally causes others hardship when they try to duplicate the project, however in this case there are so many types of cells people can use to produce their own unique solar panel. Even cells that are extremely damaged my still be used, as in this
example
. To charge a 12 volt battery the number of cells in series just needs to be 16-18 volts, and the rest in parallel will supply more current. Charging a battery without a charge controller is not recommended, but commercial ones are easily had. Those not interested in jumping all the way in with solar may want to test the waters by building their own panel and putting it to use as a
charging station
for your portable gadgets. | 19 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "41953",
"author": "ent",
"timestamp": "2008-09-15T11:08:25",
"content": "Be careful, the cells need to be isolated by diodes otherwise there is a possibility of fire. If one cell becones obscured by a shadow current will flow into that cell like a shorted battery(a 600mV battery) an... | 1,760,377,764.621442 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/09/14/uav-medical-couriers/ | UAV Medical Couriers | Eliot | [
"News",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"aerial",
"africa",
"autonomous",
"blood",
"medical sample",
"new scientist",
"south africa",
"uav",
"video",
"village"
] | We’re skeptical about most technology that’s designed to help remote villages (
yes, even that one
), but these new
UAV medical couriers
look like a great idea. The turn around time for medical sample analysis in remote South African villages can be excruciating. A team of engineers have attempted to adapt two different unmanned aerial vehicles for transport of medical samples. These could be either blood or saliva that needs testing. Test results would be relayed via phone as they are now, but the initial transport time would be much faster. The larger of the two UAVs can carry up to 500g; that’s enough to haul two units of blood for transfusion. The UAVs can be launched by hand and can survive winds up to 45kph. They fly their preprogrammed routes autonomously and don’t require any operator intervention. The team has flown two successful trials and is waiting for approval from the South African Civil Aviation Authority. For safety, they’re only transporting samples that can be sterilized before flight. New Scientist has a short video after the break.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDyN2yux_NY] | 27 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "41895",
"author": "Man On Fire",
"timestamp": "2008-09-15T01:39:34",
"content": "It’s about time UAVs got used for something other than blowing stuff up.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41903",
"author": "Dimme",
"timest... | 1,760,377,764.806928 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/09/14/pong-clock/ | Pong Clock | Eliot | [
"classic hacks",
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"digital multimeter",
"dmm",
"laptop",
"laptop pictureframe",
"pictureframe",
"pong",
"pong clock",
"thinkpad"
] | [funnypolynomial] saw
this Pong clock
years ago and had been planning on building his own version. With a move looming he decided it was finally time to finish up
his Pong clock
since completed projects take far less room than incomplete ones. The core of the system is a ThinkPad. He separated the hinge and bolted the keyboard to the back of the screen. The display ribbon was long enough, but he had to extend the wires for the backlight. The power button was also extended and the battery removed. The software is a
Windows screen saver
that uses the two mouse buttons for navigation similar to how you set a two button watch. Every minute the the left player misses the ball and the right player’s score increases. You can see a video of the clock below. In the past, he also turned a
digital multimeter into a clock
.
[flickr video=http://www.flickr.com/photos/funnypolynomial/2855095278/] | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "41891",
"author": "Kawaii",
"timestamp": "2008-09-15T00:46:12",
"content": "OS X screen saverhttp://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/posts/random/pongsaver-2005-11-28-10-00.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41926",
"author": "Time... | 1,760,377,764.668329 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/27/ubiquity-a-browser-command-line/ | Ubiquity, A Browser Command Line | Eliot | [
"downloads hacks",
"firefox hacks"
] | [
"addon",
"firefox",
"mozilla",
"mozillafirefox",
"mozillalabs",
"mozillaubiquity",
"ubiquity"
] | During the last day the web has been abuzz about
Mozilla Labs’ Ubiquity
. It’s an addon for Firefox that can help you streamline how you get things done on the web. In the example above, they show constructing an email with a map and reviews using mostly keyboard driven input. The addon is quick to install and we think you’ll find it saving you a lot of time on tasks you’d normally hit the search box for. In the popup, you can do quick Wikipedia lookups, define words, translate, perform calculations, and many other operations. You can email a page to someone by just typing three words. The best part is: anyone can write a command that will expand Ubiquity’s function.
Greasemonkey
helped fix broken websites and we think Ubiquity will help make interactions between sites much easier. We can’t wait to see what clever uses people come up with.
permalink | 19 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "41327",
"author": "winphreak",
"timestamp": "2008-08-28T04:10:20",
"content": "“abimanyu raja atul varma aza raskin blair mcbride jono dicarlo gialloporpora chris beard dan mills myk melez dietrich ayala” is a good substitute for community.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,377,764.855672 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/27/quick-avr/ | Quick AVR | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks",
"Misc Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"ATmega168",
"AVR"
] | [Kyle Stewart] sent us this
quick AVR
project. He designed it to sit vertically on his breadboard to take up less space. It doesn’t use any surface mount components, to make the assembly easier. You can download the schematic, parts list, and eagle files for the project on his blog.
permalink | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "41322",
"author": "Lupin",
"timestamp": "2008-08-28T01:22:15",
"content": "What’s the buzz about all those AVR-PCBs and Arduinio clones? It’s just a socket for AVR, few connectors and most basic components. Not exactly ingenious.I am more interested in seeing real applications done ... | 1,760,377,764.505456 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/27/high-school-students-hacking-electronic-tests/ | High School Students Hacking Electronic Tests | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"CHEATING",
"highschool",
"software",
"test"
] | [Alex Papadimoulis] wrote about ingenuity and
hacking
in high school. Immediately after the teacher’s installed a new electronic note taking and test giving software, the students began hacking. They managed to find several ways to ace their tests, none of which involved studying hard the night before. Ultimately, the teachers went back to the old system to prevent such shenanigans.
[photo:
COCOEN
]
permalink | 30 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "41304",
"author": "califrag",
"timestamp": "2008-08-27T21:54:49",
"content": "this reminds me of my high school chemistry class…The teacher put the tests online… All I had to do was save the webpage, change his email address to mine, and the cgimail would send the results to me inst... | 1,760,377,764.567105 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/27/create-your-own-playlist-hosting-service-with-opentape/ | Create Your Own Playlist Hosting Service With Opentape | Kimberly Lau | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"muxtape",
"open source",
"OpenSource",
"opentape",
"playlists"
] | While
Muxtape
takes a breather to resolve an issue with the RIAA, Lifehacker has a
step by step guide
on installing and running
Opentape
, an open source PHP web application that’s similar to Muxtape. Take matters into your own hands and create your own version of playlist hosting heaven. Since Opentape is open source, you can adapt it and make it an even better application. Maybe your creation will be even more popular than Muxtape… and will lead to the same problems with the RIAA.
permalink | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "41302",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2008-08-27T19:35:50",
"content": "So… the RIAA should just write a webcrawler to search for the ironic donotremove comment in the HTML, query whois for the contact info, then generate a form letter to them and their ISP, plus an email to the ... | 1,760,377,764.894789 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/27/testing-ir-camera-blocking/ | Testing IR Camera Blocking | Kimberly Lau | [
"LED Hacks",
"Misc Hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"infrared",
"ir",
"led",
"leds",
"security",
"securitycamera",
"securitycameras",
"surveillance"
] | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u5hAfnq2-4&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0][randy] from
F.A.T.
tested the theory that
infrared LEDs can actually hide you
from the prying eyes of surveillance cameras. We’ve previously covered
camouflage
,
IR
, and
other
suggestions for eluding the cameras, but haven’t taken to sewing stuff onto our clothes yet. [randy] lined his hoodie with high-intensity infrared LEDs, hoping to create a halo effect that would hide his head, and tested his results. Unfortunately, his efforts were unsuccessful. He tested many many different combinations and we’re confident in his conclusion that it would be very hard to make this work.
permalink | 37 | 34 | [
{
"comment_id": "41282",
"author": "piku",
"timestamp": "2008-08-27T11:07:58",
"content": "Heh, somehow I can’t imagine our local chavs sewing LEDs into their hoodies or caps. Mind you, if they did, it’d be an easy way for CCTV cameras to track them.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,377,765.342227 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/26/rc-plane-sequence-caller/ | RC Plane Sequence Caller | Eliot | [
"classic hacks",
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"airplane",
"mp3",
"mp3player",
"rc",
"rcairplane",
"rcplane",
"sequencecaller"
] | Reader [Kelly Regan] flies large scale RC planes, but would often need someone call out flight sequences while rehearsing. Not wanting to impose on fellow club members, [Kelly] built a
sequencer caller from a cheap MP3 player
. It just required extending the FWD key to a pin header. Those pins are connected to a custom switch on the back of the controller. Each maneuver is recorded with 30 seconds of padding and then added to a playlist. Once the maneuver is complete, a quick press of the button moves on to the next track. It’s always nice to see people building devices that the consumer electronics industry probably wouldn’t.
permalink | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "3047555",
"author": "corinne claeyssens",
"timestamp": "2016-06-06T21:33:08",
"content": "I’ve got several Lasers but IR and invisible by human eyes , it works pretty well on CCTV Security !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,377,764.942845 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/26/key-features-cut-out-of-android-api/ | Key Features Cut Out Of Android API | Benjamin Eckel | [
"News"
] | [
"android",
"bluetooth",
"google talk",
"GoogleTalk"
] | Google has decided that
its initial release of the Android SDK will not include formal Bluetooth support or Google Talk
. Bluetooth headsets will still work, but developers will not have access to the Bluetooth portion of the API. Google’s security researchers have announced that Google Talk was left out because of multiple security concerns. Bluetooth, on the other hand, was left out because the development team ran out of time.
Out of these two features, we think users are going to be most disappointed by the omission of Google Talk. Chatting has become one of the most useful features of new smart phones. The ability to just chat instead of sending a text message is one of the main attractions to phones like the iPhone, which has support for AIM.
[photo:
dreamside
]
permalink | 10 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "41271",
"author": "ryan",
"timestamp": "2008-08-27T05:35:27",
"content": "Google talk for chatting wasn’t pulled as I understand, just the API to access it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41272",
"author": "Michael Kirkland... | 1,760,377,765.193491 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/26/ibm-sees-influx-in-zero-day-exploits/ | IBM Sees Influx In Zero-day Exploits | Benjamin Eckel | [
"firefox hacks",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"browser",
"firefox",
"ibm",
"plugin",
"x force",
"XForce",
"zero-day"
] | IBM’s X-Force security team has released a
mid-year report
(PDF) stating that
the number of zero-day exploits is growing at an alarming rate
. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a zero-day exploit is a program that is
created and implemented within 24 hours of the disclosure of a security flaw
. These exploits usually affect users before they even know the vulnerability exists and long before a patch is made available. The researchers also found that many of these exploits were targeted at browser plug-ins, which most users utilize on a daily basis.
[Kris Lamb], X-Force operations manager, is blaming the problem on a lack of a unified process for disclosing vulnerabilities. He also claims that the long-held practice of publishing example code of vulnerabilities should be frowned upon.
[via
Liquidmatrix
]
permalink | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "41264",
"author": "G",
"timestamp": "2008-08-27T01:47:21",
"content": "I thought it’d be common practice for the employees of security companies to be members of exploit rls sites? As they say, you can be whoever you want on the internet.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,377,765.23599 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/26/coyote-1-guitar-pedal-available-now/ | Coyote-1 Guitar Pedal Available Now | Eliot | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"beavisboard",
"electricguitar",
"guitar",
"guitarpedal",
"music",
"ntsc",
"parallax",
"parallaxpropeller",
"propeller",
"stompbox"
] | OpenStomp’s Coyote-1
is now available for $349. The guitar effects pedal lets users design and upload their own effects to the device. It has two stomp switches with LEDs, an LCD display, and four user assignable knobs. The back has 1/4″ in/out and one selectable 1/4″. It also features NTSC composite out, a headphone jack, mini-USB for uploading, and an RJ11 I2C bus for expansion. The processor is a
Parallax Propeller Chip
. While the OS on the pedal is open source, the hardware design and effect design software are not. You can check out the source and product manual
on their forum
. If you’re more interested in breadboarding hardware, you might like the
Beavis Board we covered earlier
.
[via
Create Digital Music
]
permalink | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "41261",
"author": "Nate",
"timestamp": "2008-08-27T01:15:59",
"content": "This is similar to Line 6’s upcoming ToneCore DSP SDK, currently priced at $200 (preorder). The ToneCore uses a Freescale DSP; not sure how it compares to the Parllax.I like ToneCore because of the modular des... | 1,760,377,765.271485 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/26/large-hadron-collider-user-manual-online/ | Large Hadron Collider User Manual Online | Kimberly Lau | [
"News"
] | [
"cern",
"large hadron collider",
"LargeHadronCollider",
"lhc",
"particle accelerator",
"ParticleAccelerator",
"physics",
"technology"
] | If you’ve got a few hours (or weeks) of spare time, you could learn how to run the
Large Hadron Collider
, located at
CERN
in Switzerland. CERN published the
full technical details
of the collider and detectors online, and anyone with some curiosity and patience can read all 1,589 pages. Tell us if you got through all of it, and if you’re planning to make your own particle accelerator.
[via
MetaFilter
]
permalink | 15 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "41246",
"author": "Joe Hall",
"timestamp": "2008-08-26T18:07:59",
"content": "When you think about it 1,589 pages, is relatively small considering what the manual is trying to explain. But, then again its probably 1,588 longer then I could take!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth":... | 1,760,377,765.389567 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/26/customers-make-voip-calls-on-american-airlines-flights/ | Customers Make VoIP Calls On American Airlines Flights | Kimberly Lau | [
"downloads hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"american airlines",
"AmericanAirlines",
"hacks",
"in-flight calling",
"in-flight internet",
"in-flightcalling",
"In-flightInternet",
"phweet",
"security",
"twitter",
"voip",
"voipphone"
] | Less than a week after American Airlines introduced in-flight internet, hackers have already figured out
how to use the system
to make
VoIP
calls in a few easy steps with
Phweet
, a Twitter application. While the network blocks most VoIP services, Phweet can connect two people using a Flash app.
Aircell
, the company responsible for the system, is aware of the oversight, but it remains to be seen whether this little loophole will be fixed in a timely manner. Meanwhile, we encourage those of you who do fly on American Airlines to avoid making those phone calls; your neighbor would probably appreciate it.
[via
Digg
]
permalink | 13 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "41234",
"author": "gm",
"timestamp": "2008-08-26T15:53:28",
"content": "this will then be blocked. then someone will find a workaround (vpn /ssh tunnel, alternate port etc etc). which will then be blocked.another workaround will be found. and so on.Oh, and AirCell’s homepage even sa... | 1,760,377,765.435645 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/25/world-of-warcraft-on-a-treadmill/ | World Of Warcraft On A Treadmill | Caleb Kraft | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"running",
"treadmil",
"worldofwarcraft"
] | [Aaron Rasmussen] and his friend [Eli] slapped together this setup to see what it would be like to
run as much as their World of Warcraft characters
. They used a couple old treadmills to spin some tires with makeshift mouse sensors on them. As their speed increased, so did their character. There was a decent amount of math done to figure the average speed of a World of Warcraft character, and ultimately they settled on 12 miles per hour. Not surprisingly, they found that too difficult due to the resistance in the rig as well as being out of shape. They ended up lowering the speed required to make their character go full sprint to 6 miles per hour.
Their final conclusion was that they could never run as much as their digital counterparts. Even if they were in really good shape. [Aaron] does say that it was fun enough to consider doing it regularly as a workout plan. He should wear the costume every time he uses it.
permalink | 17 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "41223",
"author": "sarsface",
"timestamp": "2008-08-26T00:54:14",
"content": "I had actually thought of doing this for GTA4",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41224",
"author": "winphreak",
"timestamp": "2008-08-26T05:37:12... | 1,760,377,765.487429 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/25/monster-truck-lawn-mower/ | Monster Truck Lawn Mower | Eliot | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"lawnmower",
"lawntractor",
"monstertruck",
"toolmonger",
"video"
] | It’s no secret that we’re gear heads at heart. Our
transportation hacks
category is full of unfortunate machinery like [Steven Laurie]’s
motor art
,
weed whacker bikes
, and
electric motorcycles
of all types. Even we have trouble justifying the existence of this
monster truck style lawn tractor
though. We haven’t found a project site for it and can’t help but wonder what kind of person would build such a thing? It’s obviously the type that would own a car sized American flag. We just need to realize with the popularity of
lawn mower racing
, this sort of thing was bound to happen.
[via
Toolmonger
]
permalink | 23 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "41204",
"author": "tony",
"timestamp": "2008-08-26T00:05:27",
"content": "This is what happens when red necks have too much time and money on their hands. That thing is _dangerous_. Its way too narrow, and there is absolutely no roll cage.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,377,765.62891 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/25/james-powderly-released/ | James Powderly Released | Eliot | [
"Laser Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"graffitiresearchlab",
"grl",
"jamespowderly",
"laser",
"lasertagging",
"olympic"
] | Graffiti Research Lab’s [James Powderly] along with 9 other Tibet supporters were
deported from China during the Olympic’s closing ceremonies
. Detained
on the 19th
, the activists were to serve a 10 day sentence, but the Chinese government buckled under international pressure and deported them early. This brings the total number of deported activists to 53 since the start of the games.
Graffiti Research Lab is well known for its
laser tagging research
.
permalink | 10 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "41195",
"author": "Marco",
"timestamp": "2008-08-25T23:56:27",
"content": "Welcome to politics-a-day !?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41196",
"author": "jimmys",
"timestamp": "2008-08-26T00:46:23",
"content": "make... | 1,760,377,765.529148 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/24/smd-soldering-practice-kit/ | SMD Soldering Practice Kit | Eliot | [
"classic hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"attiny",
"AVR",
"conway",
"led",
"life",
"matrix",
"reflow",
"smd",
"smdsoldering",
"soldering"
] | Here’s an interesting kit put together just to
help you work on your SMD soldering skills
. It’s got 49 SMD LEDs on the front with a programming header and switch jumper. The back has an ATtiny26L and a coin cell. At only 3V, power management is essential; all of the example programs are only addressing one LED at a time (imperceptible to the human eye). If you turn on too many LEDs at the same time, the voltage drop could cause the AVR to reset. Included example programs are a
scrolling marque
,
bouncing balls
, and
Conway’s game of life
. SparkFun has tutorials for regular
SMD soldering
and using a
reflow skillet
. The video below shows the kit builder attaching just one LED using the heat and slide method.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMqHwzvvtjk&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]
[thanks tom]
permalink | 9 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "41083",
"author": "tony",
"timestamp": "2008-08-25T08:03:01",
"content": "I prefer a pair of curved tweezers to align the surface mount part. Just tin the pads slightly, place the part on top, and heat it up.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"c... | 1,760,377,765.572961 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/24/improved-jog-wheel/ | Improved Jog Wheel | Eliot | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"bearing",
"instructables",
"jogwheel",
"mouse",
"scrollwheel",
"wheel"
] | Taking a cue from the
jog wheel we posted last week
, [42ndOddity] has
built an improved version
. The design is based around a solid state rotary encoder instead of an optical encoder. The rotary encoder is far easier to attach and position properly. The knob is milled from scrap aluminum-it was a copier foot. To make the motion smooth, it’s sitting in a bearing from the same copier.
permalink | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "41082",
"author": "Standard Mischief",
"timestamp": "2008-08-25T08:46:14",
"content": "Aren’t these called “spinners” in the arcade/MAIM/video game world?The extra mass to the wheel makes this a totally different feel from some plastic thingy.Nice build.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,377,765.793241 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/24/rebooting-the-magic-sysrq-way/ | Rebooting The Magic SysRq Way | Eliot | [
"downloads hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"corywright",
"linux",
"linuxjournal",
"magicsysrq",
"proc",
"reboot",
"remote"
] | [Cory Wright] shares a tip on how to
reboot a system with a failed hard drive remotely
. The magic SysRq key is a linux kernel feature that lets you perform a number of interesting operations. If you’re working on a remote system where the disk has failed, you won’t have access to the reboot or shutdown commands. You can issue keystrokes to the magic SysRq device in /proc though, so you can send a hard reboot directly to the kernel with no disk access required.
The Wikipedia entry includes a handy tip on how to properly
restart a otherwise frozen machine
. It should save you from having to fsck the next time around.
[photo:
Joshua Davis
]
permalink | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "41076",
"author": "hank",
"timestamp": "2008-08-25T05:43:28",
"content": "I have used this over serial and other consoles, it can be invaluable for a sysadmin. Everyone should learn about the magic of sysrq :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,377,765.754321 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/24/subway-hacker-speaks/ | Subway Hacker Speaks | Eliot | [
"cons",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"checksum",
"crypto",
"defcon",
"defcon16",
"hacker",
"interview",
"mbta",
"mifare",
"mifareclassic",
"nxp",
"popularmechanics",
"rfid",
"subway"
] | Popular Mechanics
has an interview with [Zach Anderson]
, one of the MIT hackers that was temporarily gagged by the MBTA. The interview is essentially a timeline of the events that led up to the
Defcon talk cancellation
. [Zach] pointed out a great article by The Tech that
covers the vulnerabilities
. The mag stripe cards can be easily cloned. The students we’re also able to increase the value of the card by brute forcing the checksum. There are only 64 possible checksum values, so they made a card for each one. It’s not graceful, but it works. The card values aren’t encrypted and there isn’t an auditing system to check what values should be on the card either. The RFID cards use Mifare classic, which
we know is broken
. It was NXP, Mifare’s manufacturer, that tipped off the MBTA on the actual presentation.
permalink | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "41074",
"author": "Joey Y",
"timestamp": "2008-08-25T05:05:00",
"content": "Heh. from the rss feed, I thought this article was going to be about hacking subway (pa) speakers… oh well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41075",
... | 1,760,377,765.922722 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/24/autonomous-paintball-sentry-gun/ | Autonomous Paintball Sentry Gun | Eliot | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"autonomous",
"gun",
"paintball",
"paintballgun",
"robot",
"sentrygun",
"turret"
] | [Alan] pointed out this
great commercial paintball sentry gun
. The gun has a low power motherboard running Ubuntu connected to a firewire camera. Two high torque motors control the pan and tilt of a Tippman 98 custom. The control box allows for easy setup. You can change the sensitivity, color tracking, and firing modes. It also has a remote kill switch. All around a nice looking machine, but at $3K we doubt many of you will be buying one. Beta test video embedded after the break.
Related:
Airsoft gun turret
,
robotic sentry gun
, and
Defcon bots
[via
Hacked Gadgets
]
permalink | 21 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "41056",
"author": "Ling",
"timestamp": "2008-08-25T04:22:30",
"content": "i personally like this one betterhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxBa5bQfTGcbut it doesnt seem to have color recognition, only movement. So i guess the commercial one might be better for team based games",
... | 1,760,377,766.167971 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/23/best-firefox-3-extensions/ | Best Firefox 3 Extensions | Eliot | [
"downloads hacks",
"firefox hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"firebug",
"firefox",
"flashblock",
"greasemonkey",
"lifehacker",
"mozilla"
] | We generally try to limit the number of extensions we install for security, performance, and because we use a lot of different systems. That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of interesting addons out there and Mozilla has
recently announced the winners
of their Extend Firefox 3 Contest. Lifehacker has a
full rundown of each of the winners
. Nothing really stands out in our eyes (although we might try
Last.fm’s toolbar
).
The three extensions we always end up installing are
Firebug
,
Greasemonkey
, and
Flashblock
. What are yours?
permalink | 43 | 43 | [
{
"comment_id": "41019",
"author": "nahtical",
"timestamp": "2008-08-24T00:44:54",
"content": "I almost always get URL fixer. I’ve typed .con so many times its not funny.https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2871",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comme... | 1,760,377,766.003429 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/23/waterproof-ipod-touch-video-boombox/ | Waterproof IPod Touch Video Boombox | Eliot | [
"classic hacks",
"Portable Video Hacks"
] | [
"apple",
"appleipod",
"ipod",
"ipodtouch",
"portable",
"rugged",
"ruggedized",
"touch",
"video",
"water",
"waterproof"
] | Popular Mechanics contributor [Anthony Veducci] wanted a
virtually indestructible video player
that he could use anywhere. Not finding a commercial solution, he decided to build his own. He already had a large waterproof case and another for the
iPod Touch
. The 8″ display came from an iPod accessory. Unfortunately it was developed before Apple implemented their stupid accessory locking, so he had to use an Apple approved video cable through several adapters to get it to work. The speakers were also salvaged parts. The case was assembled using a jigsaw and a whole lot of epoxy. The speaker openings are covered with latex from a pair of gloves and everything is sealed with silicone. We’re usually trying to escape technology when we head outside, but we’ll be looking back at this the next time we need to ruggedize something.
[via
Gizmodo
]
permalink | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "41018",
"author": "joel",
"timestamp": "2008-08-28T20:34:12",
"content": "Latex gloves don’t last very long. He should’ve considered using butyl rubber or some such.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,377,766.20179 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/25/dan-kaminskys-dns-black-hat-video/ | Dan Kaminsky’s DNS Black Hat Video | Eliot | [
"downloads hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"blackhat",
"blackhat2008",
"dankaminsky",
"dns",
"slides",
"video",
"whitepaper"
] | Black Hat
has published the media from Dan Kaminsky’s
infamous
DNS vulnerability talk. You can get the
full video
(101MB) or just the
audio
.
The
full archive of slides and white papers
from this year has been posted too.
permalink | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "41193",
"author": "m@!",
"timestamp": "2008-08-26T06:58:40",
"content": "jeez. the most over-hyped bug of the year. he deserves an oscar for sure!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41194",
"author": "kikkoman",
"timestam... | 1,760,377,766.244309 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/25/wiimote-head-tracking-in-processing/ | Wiimote Head Tracking In Processing | Eliot | [
"downloads hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Nintendo Wii Hacks"
] | [
"cdm",
"headtracking",
"ir",
"johnnylee",
"nintendo",
"nintendowii",
"processing",
"wii",
"wiimote"
] | [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
]
permalink | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "41191",
"author": "Will",
"timestamp": "2008-08-25T22:39:57",
"content": "There’s also someone who’s putting together a VR system with OSS:http://joelclemens.colinr.ca/thesis/index.htmlunder “How this was done” he has a few videos…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,377,766.279861 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/25/sparkfun-arduino-pro/ | SparkFun Arduino Pro | Eliot | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduinopro",
"ftdi",
"lilypad",
"make",
"skinny",
"sparkfun"
] | SparkFun’s new
Arduino Pro
is an updated version of their
Skinny
. The board comes populated with the running gear of an Arduino, but without all of the connectors in place. It’s targeted at people building integrated systems around the Arduino and not just prototyping. The board is 3.3V with an 8MHz bootloader just like the LilyPads and is fully certified by Arduino. It has a small side mounted power switch, but you have to supply your own DC jack (if you need it). There is no
USB hardware
on board and you’re expected to program it via an FTDI breakout board or cable. We definitely like the stripped down approach, but it would have been nice if the price had dropped more.
[via
Make
]
permalink | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "41187",
"author": "fartface",
"timestamp": "2008-08-25T21:41:40",
"content": "Sparkfun used to rock with low prices and even did 1 off doublesided boards for you for $2.5 a square inch.Now they are a “trendy” experimenters house and everything is spendy. I prefer to buy from smal... | 1,760,377,766.322075 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/25/tongue-drive-system-turns-mouth-into-virtual-keyboard/ | Tongue Drive System Turns Mouth Into Virtual Keyboard | Kimberly Lau | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"computers",
"disability",
"disabled",
"hacking",
"tongue",
"tongue drive system",
"TongueDriveSystem"
] | Researchers at Georgia Tech are
working on a Tongue Drive System
, which transforms the tongue into a tool that can manipulate computers and manage appliances and wheelchairs. This project has huge implications for the disabled, especially for those with few motor skills and limited movement. Many disabled Americans are paralyzed from the neck down, and this system could be a literal lifesaver, providing them with a method of communication and control over their own lives. Scientists have been attracted to the tongue’s potential for a long time. It provides several advantages over using other organs or appendages. It’s very sensitive, tactile, is not connected to the spinal cord, and does not usually end up being harmed in accidents. By placing a tiny magnet underneath the tongue, it’s transformed into a virtual keyboard. Sensors placed in the cheek track the magnet’s movement and processes the commands into directions for electronics, be it a wheelchair or a home appliance. We’re excited to see where this will go.
permalink | 11 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "41155",
"author": "eggnog",
"timestamp": "2008-08-25T20:01:01",
"content": "with enough work this will probably used by the military at some point in the future also.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41156",
"author": "andre"... | 1,760,377,766.371851 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/25/ruckingenur-ii-reverse-engineering-video-game/ | Ruckingenur II: Reverse Engineering Video Game | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks",
"Misc Hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"game",
"reverse engineering",
"ReverseEngineering",
"ruckingenur"
] | [Zach Barth] has released
Ruckingenur II
, the game of reverse engineering. The latest in his Games for Engineers series, it is a full game with multiple levels and live action cut scenes. Set with a military theme, the goal is to reverse engineer enemy items. Pictured above is a lock to a weapons cache.
The pixelized style is consistent throughout. Even the cut scenes have the effect. The reverse engineering is fun enough to keep you interested while you learn. There is an in game help system that keeps you on track as well. Our only suggestion is that he get some better costumes next time!
permalink | 31 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "41129",
"author": "Louis II",
"timestamp": "2008-08-25T19:23:59",
"content": "That’s really freaking awesome… a great bunch of games to teach people about component hacking. Sweet!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41130",
"a... | 1,760,377,766.436714 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/25/hacking-the-elefun/ | Hacking The Elefun | Caleb Kraft | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"elefun",
"toy hack",
"ToyHack"
] | In a move reminiscent of many episodes of
Home Improvement
, [Xenon] decided to
soup up one of his children’s toys
. The Elefun is a toy the shape of an elephant that uses a built in fan to blow little butterflies into the air. They are notoriously weak and eat batteries like crazy. They don’t even have a plug for a wall adapter for power.
[Xenon] dug out a 7.5 V wall adapter from an old DSL modem. Since the Elefun normally ran on 6V, he figured this would give the toy a much needed boost. He began to open things up and prepare the soldering iron when he realized that he could just jam the wires into the terminals. The battery compartment screws shut, providing nice safety against electric shock.
He ended up with a much more pleasant experience for his little boy. The Elefun now jumps to life, spewing the butterflies out with ease. It actually shoots them out so quickly, he had to make some more just so the game would last longer.
This may not be the most complex hack or the most impressive execution. [Xenon] deserves some credit though, He recognized the design problems and made his own fixes for them. There’s at least one Elefun in the households of the Hack A Day staff that will be getting this treatment.
[thanks Chris]
permalink | 21 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "41112",
"author": "Josh",
"timestamp": "2008-08-25T18:25:47",
"content": "This is one thing I’ll have to (tell my wife to) find at a garage sale.There was one thing that the project pages are missing. There’s no strain relief shown where the power wires go into the battery compartm... | 1,760,377,766.492432 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/25/hack-a-day-t-shirt-design-contest-update/ | Hack A Day T-shirt Design Contest Update | Eliot | [
"contests"
] | [
"contest",
"hackaday",
"shirt",
"tshirt"
] | We announced the Hack a Day t-shirt design contest last week and entries have been rolling in. Check out the
updated contest post
for logo images and the font. Here are couple of the entries we’ve received:
[by John]
[by evolve]
I think [Joel]’s entry was in case we were handing out the prize at random.
Keep those entries coming and let your friends know about the contest too!
permalink | 27 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "41090",
"author": "diy audio projects",
"timestamp": "2008-08-25T08:28:10",
"content": "I like the design by evolve. I can’t put my finger on it, but the black and green looks vaguely familiar. ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,377,766.558413 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/09/05/the-phone-phreaking-files/ | The Phone Phreaking Files | Kimberly Lau | [
"Misc Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"fbi",
"hacking",
"jason scott",
"phil lapsley",
"phone phreaking",
"phreak",
"phreaking",
"telephone",
"thehistoryofphonephreaking"
] | [Jason Scott] curated a nice
collection of links
related to [Phil Lapsley]’s work on phone phreaking. [Lapsley]’s book,
The History of Phone Phreaking
, will be released in 2009. Meanwhile phone phreak enthusiasts can peruse his site and bone up on some interesting material, including documents that revealed the
inner workings of the telephone switchboard
(PDF), and the
Youth International Party Line (YIPL)/Technological American Party (TAP) FBI files
(PDF), which is really intriguing for the various doodles and conversations that were documented. If you have some spare time, we definitely recommend sifting through it.
[via
Waxy
] | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,377,766.637537 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/09/05/welcome-to-the-petacenter/ | Welcome To The Petacentre | Kimberly Lau | [
"News"
] | [
"cern",
"computers",
"cory doctorow",
"data",
"data centers",
"petabyte",
"petacenter",
"storage"
] | [Cory Doctorow] obtained access to a few
data centers that deal in petabyte storage
. The demand for data storage and processing doesn’t show any sign of stopping. It’s especially relevant when people need the resources to manage not only things like Google searches, but also email, customer transactions, and in the case of CERN, physics calculations. [Doctorow] drew an interesting conclusion from his experiences with the data centers; any innovation that the petabyte centers work on will eventually drift on down to the ordinary user, in laptop or desktop innovation. The petabyte center is easily duplicated with materials that are available for purchase to the average computer user; the only obstacles are price and space.
[via
Boing Boing
] | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,377,766.764639 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/09/05/fail-contest-ends-tonight/ | Fail Contest Ends Tonight | Eliot | [
"contests",
"News"
] | [] | The
Hack a Day Fail Whale Contest
ends at midnight. It’s an easy way to win $100 in
No Starch Press
merch. Check out some of the entries in the
Hack a Day Flickr pool
. You can get logos and fonts from the
Hack a Day t-shirt contest
, which is also still running.
[photo:
Xeracy
] | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "41632",
"author": "Zavati Vladimir",
"timestamp": "2008-09-07T17:41:40",
"content": "I wanted to ask why my image does not appear in Flickrgroup pool only if I’m logged in to Flickr?Thanks",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41705",... | 1,760,377,766.80209 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/09/05/miopocket-20-release-27/ | MioPocket 2.0 Release 27 | Adam Harris | [
"gps hacks",
"handhelds hacks",
"News"
] | [
"CE",
"gps",
"mio",
"miopocket",
"mobile",
"navigon",
"sd card",
"simple",
"unlock",
"windows"
] | GpsPasSion forum
member [Ospray] has released a new version of
MioPocket
. For those of you that don’t know, MioPocket is a great unlock kit for GPS units. It basically unlocks the hidden potential of your
GPS
so you can access the built-in functionality of a
PDA
as well as retaining the GPS software. This means you can play music, watch video, play games, read and write office documents, and many other things with the once single-purpose device.
Originally written for
Mio brand devices
, it has been successfully used on a couple other brands. We’ve seen it on a Navigon 2100 using a
modified install
. This software can run directly off the SD card, so it can easily be updated or removed.
The fun part is fiddling with the scripts to get the newest releases to work on the Navigon and Magellan devices. | 19 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "41630",
"author": "strider_mt2k",
"timestamp": "2008-09-06T02:17:16",
"content": "Great stuff!I currently use Ameridan’s unlock v3.6 for my mio c230 that turned itinto an awesome little multimedia machine as well.(different way to do the same stuff)When I recently bought a Nokia n81... | 1,760,377,767.079788 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/09/05/aurora-mixer-no-longer-available/ | Aurora Mixer No Longer Available | Joey Celis | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"aurora",
"mixer",
"music"
] | A few days ago
we wrote about the aurora open source mixer
being available and that orders for the DIY or completed kit needed to be in by September 1, 2008. Well that day has since past and if you were on the fence about it and didn’t get your order in don’t worry about it. Turns out no one will be getting a mixer.
Aurora informs us that they needed to secure a minimum of 50 orders to cover cost, but in reality they were only able to secure less than 20 orders. Because of this, they will not be able to meet the initial production numbers and have postponed the sale of the mixer indefinitely.
All is not lost as they will keep the site up, along with the
instructions on how to build
your own mixer from scratch. | 11 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "41622",
"author": "winpherak",
"timestamp": "2008-09-05T18:49:11",
"content": "Less than 20 orders?If they had a slight bit of advertising, I know there would be a lot more interested. Sadly, that’s not the case.I was going to save up and order one, too =\\",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,377,766.933003 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/09/05/dot-matrix-business-card/ | Dot Matrix Business Card | Joey Celis | [
"LED Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"business card",
"businesscard",
"led"
] | In most settings business cards are given out without much thought. But what if you could make your card stand out from the rest? By using a 5×15 LED matrix screen, a single micro controller, a number of resistors, switches, and other parts, [tomward] has put together
one very slick business card
that’s sure to draw attention.
The included instructions go into great detail on the construction, but [tomward]admits that you will need some knowledge in electronics in order to build one yourself. After reading the instructions ourselves we would have to agree with him.
If you’re into programing micro controllers and are handy with a soldering iron you may want to give this a shot. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "41617",
"author": "pip",
"timestamp": "2008-09-05T18:38:00",
"content": "Me thinks you have much to learn about the obviously not broken comments.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41618",
"author": "stfu",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,377,766.88714 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/09/05/humanizing-microsoft/ | Humanizing Microsoft | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"bill gates",
"commercial",
"jerry sienfeld",
"microsoft",
"windows"
] | Ok, you’ve probably already seen it. If not, go watch the
new Microsoft commercial
right now. The commercial itself is nothing amazing. Its an obvious attempt to humanize [Bill Gates] and Microsoft. [Bill] is almost endearing in his clunky delivery of the lines. We could even get to like him. Imagine him stumbling through the world as a normal guy dealing with software as the rest of us do. Would he change things? Could we get a sitcom with [Bill Gates] and [
John Hodgman
]? Would you watch it? We would. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "41616",
"author": "diy audio projects",
"timestamp": "2008-09-07T17:11:39",
"content": "I think most people will walk away from that saying that it does not make any sense.Gio",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "42182",
"author"... | 1,760,377,767.018081 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/23/mysqlgame-playing-with-database-queries/ | MySQLgame, Playing With Database Queries | Eliot | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"appengine",
"database",
"forumwarz",
"google",
"metagame",
"mysql",
"mysqlgame",
"videogame",
"waxy"
] | mySQLgame
is a quirky
App Engine
game that has decided to forgo flashy UIs and just stick with the core of the system: a database. You start the game by creating your own row in the shared game database. Game time increments your fuel and money resources every ten seconds. Fuel is spent on scanning other rows and for attacking. Money is used for upgrades and building units. Build up resources and attack your neighbors using database queries, just like any other game. Like a bit more gloss on your internet metagames? Have a look at trolling simulator
Forumwarz
.
[via
Waxy
]
permalink | 12 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "41008",
"author": "trekeyus",
"timestamp": "2008-08-24T02:07:23",
"content": "this is more fun then it sounds",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41009",
"author": "Louis II",
"timestamp": "2008-08-24T06:52:55",
"content... | 1,760,377,766.975053 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/23/red-hat-confirms-security-breach/ | Red Hat Confirms Security Breach | Eliot | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"fedora",
"key",
"linux",
"openssh",
"package",
"redhat",
"rhel",
"security",
"signing",
"zeroday"
] | After a week of wondering,
Red Hat has confirmed
that someone broke in and compromised their security. Although It doesn’t appear the attacker was able to retrieve the passphrase used to sign Fedora packages, the team is switching to new keys. In a separate intrusion the attacker tampered with and
signed OpenSSH packages
for RHEL. While it’s good to get the full story, no one is happy how long it took Red Hat to release these details.
[via
Zero Day
]
[photo:
afsilva
]
permalink | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "41007",
"author": "J. Peterson",
"timestamp": "2008-08-23T23:39:15",
"content": "If you want to understand just how scary a break-in like this could be, check out Ken Thompson’s classic Turing award paper, “Reflections on Trusting Trust”http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.htmlIt’l... | 1,760,377,767.114804 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/23/furbies-transformed-into-a-furby-gurdy/ | Furbies Transformed Into A Furby Gurdy | Kimberly Lau | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"circuitbending",
"david crammer",
"DavidCrammer",
"furbies",
"furby",
"hurdy gurdy",
"HurdyGurdy",
"instrument"
] | [David Crammer] must really like nightmares. The
hurdy gurdy
is a stringed musical instrument, dating as far back as the eleventh century A.D., where the strings are sounded via a rosined wheel that is turned with a crank. [Crammer] took this unique instrument, applied his circuit-bending and Furby-scalping skills to generate a
Furby Gurdy
that sound like Kraftwerk on acid.
[via
Gizmodo
]
permalink | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "41000",
"author": "blizzarddemon",
"timestamp": "2008-08-24T01:45:23",
"content": "Why does this reminds me of the hampsterdance meme?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "41001",
"author": "jimmys",
"timestamp": "2008-08-24T... | 1,760,377,767.298831 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/23/vias-epia-pico-itx-based-robots/ | VIA’s EPIA Pico-ITX Based Robots | Kimberly Lau | [
"News",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"mini-itx",
"picoitx",
"robots",
"via",
"via epia p700",
"ViaEpiaP700"
] | VIA
, the Taiwan-based supplier of chipsets and low power processors, showed off its
latest creations
at the Taipei International Robot Show. The
Lynxmotion Johnny 5 kit
, based on the robot from the animated film
Short Circuit
, is powered by the compact
VIA EPIA P700 board
, and aimed at beginner robotic hobbyists. VIA claimed that its use of the latest board allows for much easier software development. VIA also showcased the
Mini-ITX
powered Vecna Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (or
BEAR
), a cuddly-looking robot with potential uses in military and rescue operations.
[via
Engadget
]
permalink | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "40995",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2008-08-23T22:24:05",
"content": "“Animated”? Whippersnapper!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40996",
"author": "MechaD",
"timestamp": "2008-08-23T23:33:22",
"content": "Short... | 1,760,377,767.154289 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/22/kindle-screen-transplant/ | Kindle Screen Transplant | Eliot | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"amazonkindle",
"blakebevin",
"dremel",
"instructables",
"kindle",
"sony",
"sonyreader"
] | [blakebevin]’s sister shattered the screen on his
Amazon Kindle
, so he decided to try
replacing it with the screen from a Sony Reader
. He disassembled the Sony Reader and used a Dremel to mill down most of the aluminum tabs on the E Ink screen. The screen plugs into the same harness as the original Kindle screen the only problem is fit. The new screen interferes with some of the button movement and without trimming the case will bulge a little. Performance wise the screen ghosts on page turn and [blakebevin] assumes this is due to older technology. We’d hope to never have to do this, but it’s good to know the transplant option is there and not very difficult.
permalink | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "40991",
"author": "Colin Bodell",
"timestamp": "2008-08-23T00:34:16",
"content": "Way cool and very inventive.Good news now is that Amazon is offering $100 off a Kindle if you sign up for a Chase Credit card. Brings the price down to $250 — A kindle with wirelesss access in perpetui... | 1,760,377,767.334729 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/22/syncmaster-home-made-modular-midi-controller/ | SyncMaster, Home Made Modular Midi Controller. | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks",
"digital audio hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"dj",
"midi",
"midibox",
"modular",
"soundboard"
] | [D.St-Amand] is designing the
SyncMaster
, a compact modular midi controller, from scratch. The design focuses on a modular build where you can swap out pieces like the one pictured above to achieve different layouts. Not only is it modular, but its very compact. Shown next to some common competitors, it looks very sleek.
Development seems to be moving forward, the pictures have been updated frequently. Lets hope to see a fully functional demo some time soon. Some more detailed information on the build might be nice as well. This may remind you of our story on
MachineCollective
. While there are similarities in that they’re modular, SyncMaster appears to be a much more polished and portable product. Keep us updated [D.St-Amand].
permalink | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "40988",
"author": "sarsface",
"timestamp": "2008-08-23T11:45:35",
"content": "Something like this I could mount on my midi guitar would be awesome.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40989",
"author": "ToS",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,377,767.374148 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/22/cutting-pizza-with-a-laser/ | Cutting Pizza With A Laser | Caleb Kraft | [
"Misc Hacks",
"News",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"laser",
"Pizza"
] | In an act of delicious over kill, these guys threw a
pizza into an industrial laser cutter
. The result? Exactly what you would expect. Smoke, giggles and perfectly cut pizza. It looks like the cheese stuck together a bit after the laser cut, but that happens with normal pizza cutters too.
[via
DVICE
]
permalink | 14 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "40983",
"author": "yon",
"timestamp": "2008-08-22T20:08:17",
"content": "OMG! I thought “could you cut a pizza using a laser” like 10 minutes ago!!freaky…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40977",
"author": "Stephen Kuhl",
... | 1,760,377,767.429583 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/19/electric-mannequin-leg-maraca/ | Electric Mannequin Leg Maraca | Kimberly Lau | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"art",
"getlofi",
"instruments",
"maraca",
"maracas",
"music",
"piezo"
] | [Richie Brown] created an
electric mannequin leg maraca
. The leg is filled with little bits of plastic, metal, and wood. Hook it up to a looping pedal, add a piezo disc mic, and you’ve got an unusual instrument with a lot of potential. [Brown] has other projects that encourage interaction and invite curiosity, from disembodied mannequin parts to repurposed piano keyboards. The creations come attached with contact mics that pick up noises as people touch, poke, and play around with them.
permalink | 14 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "40787",
"author": "frenki",
"timestamp": "2008-08-19T22:44:43",
"content": "what?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40788",
"author": "mike",
"timestamp": "2008-08-19T22:49:54",
"content": "This is just one of those th... | 1,760,377,767.650224 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/19/io9s-build-a-lifeform-contest/ | Io9’s Build A Lifeform Contest | Kimberly Lau | [
"contests",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"biobricks",
"contest",
"io9",
"lifeforms",
"synthetic biology",
"SyntheticBiology"
] | There’s still time to enter
io9’s Build a Lifeform contest
.
Synthetic biologists
, get cracking on the design of that synthetic lifeform or
BioBricks
lifeform! The rules are pretty straightforward; you need to propose a lifeform design that would be scientifically viable. The BioBricks lifeform part of the contest requires that your design needs to not only be scientifically viable, you have to explain how you would create it in a lab, and you get extra points if you already have an organism. The deadline is August 25, 2008. You could win the opportunity to attend an all-expenses-paid trip to the
Synthetic Biology Conference
in Hong Kong or $1000 and a chance to get your creature drawn by a cool comic book artist.
permalink | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,377,769.323992 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/19/hacking-the-myvu-personal-video-player/ | Hacking The Myvu Personal Video Player | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks",
"ipod hacks",
"Portable Video Hacks"
] | [
"headmounteddisplay",
"headsupdisplay",
"hmd",
"hud",
"ipod",
"myvu",
"personalvideoplayer"
] | [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]
permalink | 17 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "40775",
"author": "blizzarddemon",
"timestamp": "2008-08-19T21:39:25",
"content": "Impressive, its rare for a company to have people in there engineering department that actually are willing to advance there products through hackery. Too bad Mac’s engineers are held behind a thick l... | 1,760,377,769.411951 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/18/blip-festival-reformat-the-planet/ | Blip Festival: Reformat The Planet | Eliot | [
"cons",
"digital audio hacks",
"PSP Hacks"
] | [
"bentfestival",
"blipfestival",
"chiptune",
"gameboy",
"lsdj",
"nullsleep",
"pitchfork",
"psp",
"theloudobjects",
"versatile",
"videogame"
] | Pitchfork.tv is showing the documentary
Blip Festival: Reformat the Planet
for one week only. The
Blip Festival
is an annual chiptune event in New York City featuring musicians who use video game consoles as part of their production. The documentary has a ton of artist interviews and music from all across the spectrum. Most of the initial featured artists are using the Game Boy
LSDJ
tracker cartridge. [Nullsleep] has put together a
tutorial for the device
. You’ll see a lot of other old hardware and hear discussions of coveted mods like adding backlights as well. [
Mark Denardo
] is shown using a PSP as part of his performance. Other people are using software like
Fruity Loops
to build tracks with Nintendo samples. Honestly, our favorite part was a clip of
the loud objects
doing a live soldering circuit bending performance on top of an overhead projector at the
Bent Festival
. Although not musical, Element Labs’
Versa TILE
makes a fairly mesmerizing backdrop throughout the film too. You can find links to all the featured artists on
last year’s festival page
.
Blip Festival 2008
happens December 4-6 in Brooklyn, NY.
[via
Waxy
]
[photo:
ziggy fresh
]
permalink | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "40769",
"author": "trekeyus",
"timestamp": "2008-08-19T09:06:10",
"content": "I love chiptunes",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40770",
"author": "Vulpyra",
"timestamp": "2008-08-19T16:41:50",
"content": "One chapter,... | 1,760,377,769.455395 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/18/hack-a-day-t-shirt-design-contest/ | Hack A Day T-Shirt Design Contest | Eliot | [
"contests",
"News"
] | [
"contest",
"dash",
"dashexpress",
"designcontest",
"tshirt"
] | We need a new t-shirt. The current design is entering its third year. Help us out by designing a new shirt to give away at conferences. Dash has donated a
Dash Express
for first prize.
Some ground rules:
You must incorporate the skull and wrenches logo in your design. You’ll find a larger version below.
You can enter as many designs as you like to
hackaday.shirt@gmail.com
(JPG, GIF, or PNG mockups only please)
The design can’t violate any copyright laws or trademarks.
The design should be one color and the shirt doesn’t have to be black.
By submitting your design you give us non-exclusive rights to use the image in the design of a Hack a Day t-shirt as well as for other Hack A Day promotional materials.
We reserve the right to choose no design at all if we don’t like any of the submissions.
The contest ends September 15th.
UPDATE
:
[
loopymind
] has provided some files to help you out. [
EPS
|
PDF
|
DXF
]
[Phesarnion] found the long lost
Hack a Day font
.
Yes, the contest is open to residents outside the US; we’ll come up with an appropriate prize. | 29 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "40744",
"author": "SamAdam",
"timestamp": "2008-08-19T02:51:31",
"content": "Can we get a vector image for the logo?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40745",
"author": "ghos7man",
"timestamp": "2008-08-19T03:47:00",
"... | 1,760,377,769.560298 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/18/british-bots-compete-for-attention/ | British Bots Compete For Attention | Caleb Kraft | [
"News",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"drone",
"militaryrobots",
"robot",
"surveillance",
"telemetry",
"telepresence"
] | The British military held a competition to
find the newest batch of robotic surveillance drones
. The article mentions that they compete in a mockup village, but sadly we don’t get to see any of the action. We strongly recommend watching the video so you can see some of the robots. There is an interesting helicopter concept that has angled props for better stability and lateral motion, but more importantly you get to see the little guy pictured above. He very well could be Wall-E’s great grandfather. Though his constant buzzing around during the interviews is slightly annoying, his little camera mount looking all around is instantly endearing. If he doesn’t win this contest, he may have a shot at
the [crabfu] challenge
.
[via
Engadget
]
permalink | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "40743",
"author": "Nathan",
"timestamp": "2008-08-19T02:32:32",
"content": "The Truck in the picture is infact a Traxxas Revo with a custom rollcage and camera mounted on the top with some extra servos…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,377,769.292246 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/18/1920s-navigation-system-and-more/ | 1920s Navigation System And More | Strom Carlson | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"1900s",
"1910s",
"1920s",
"20th Century",
"20thCentury",
"inventions",
"steampunk",
"weird"
] | And now, for your amusement, we present to you a navigation system from the 1920s. It’s not so much a satellite navigation system as it is a tiny map mounted in a wristwatch, but for the available technology of the era, this was a pretty ingenious invention, Other (and somewhat more bizarre) entries on this list of
over a dozen other inventions from the early part of the 20th century
include a finger stretcher, an eyeball massager, and mustache guards. Although most of these inventions seem laughable today, they are an interesting study in finding creative solutions to real problems. After all, what these inventors did a hundred years ago with gears and paper is pretty much what we do today with transistors and LEDs.
[via
The Presurfer
]
permalink | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "40740",
"author": "Ryan",
"timestamp": "2008-08-18T22:57:35",
"content": "Interestingly, scroll-based navigation is still used today… competitors in RallyMoto (like stage rally, but with motorcycles instead of safe, comfortable, co-driver-equipped cars) use them for navigation on tr... | 1,760,377,769.253615 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/21/in-the-lab-sim-reader/ | In The Lab: SIM Reader | Eliot | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"adafruit",
"ladyada",
"n95",
"pysimreader",
"sim",
"simcloning",
"simreader",
"simscan",
"woronscan"
] | Adafruit Industries sent us one of their
SIM Reader kits
a few weeks ago to test. Assembly was a breeze thanks to the through hole components and
good documentation
. We plugged it into our USB -> RS232 converter and tried out the provided
pySimReader software
. It worked fine, but our modern SIM card out of an
N95
didn’t prove very interesting. It was too new to attempt cloning and being a smart phone it doesn’t rely on the SIM for storing anything unless you specifically tell it to. The story was the same for a SIM we pulled out of a Treo. We tried the device with [Dejan]’s
SimScan
and a copy of Woron Scan. Both worked without any issue. Conclusion: the device works great despite us lacking anything interesting to do with it.
permalink | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "40970",
"author": "ladyada",
"timestamp": "2008-08-22T05:25:25",
"content": "if you’re lacking anything interesting to do with a sim reader try deleting/wiping the phone dialing history and see if you can still look up the last dialed numbers via the sim. iphones, for example, act t... | 1,760,377,769.493384 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/21/the-underhanded-hardware-challenge/ | The Underhanded Hardware Challenge | Eliot | [
"contests",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"crypto",
"cryptography",
"fpga",
"nyu",
"pinyu",
"security",
"trojan"
] | The Polytechnic Institute of NYU is hosting an
interesting embedded systems contest
. They’ve constructed a solid state cryptographic device that uses a 128-bit private key. Contestants will be tasked with designing and implementing several trojans into the system that will undermine the security. The system is built on a
Digilent BASYS Spartan-3 FPGA board
. The trojans could do a wide variety of things: transmitting unencrypted, storing and transmitting previously entered plain text, or just shutting down the system entirely. The modified devices still need to pass the factory testing procedure though, which will measure power consumption, code size, and function. After a qualification round, participants will be given the necessary hardware to compete.
[via
NYC Resistor
(Happy Birthday!)]
permalink | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "40963",
"author": "...",
"timestamp": "2008-08-22T04:24:48",
"content": "This does seem interisting, and should be a lot of fun for your FPGA guys (personally I am not very fond of them after having to do some work with with at work….). Seems like the fact that they don’t md5 the b... | 1,760,377,769.364985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/21/das-uber-airsoft-gun-turret/ | Das Uber Airsoft Gun Turret | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"airsoft",
"dasuberturret",
"lasers",
"sentry",
"turret"
] | Hot on the heels of the
Wii missile launcher
,
Das Uber Airsoft Gun Turret
is here to put our past
airsoft
turrets
to shame. Made by [Miltron_B],
this autonomous beast not only has gorgeous LED indicators, it has lasers. Three of them. Three freaking lasers.
Take a moment to wipe the drool from your chin.
We’ve seen plenty of turrets before, but this one really excels in design. It features two webcams for more precision detection and tracking and when set to manual mode, it can be controlled with an XBox 360 controller. He’s posted great pictures of the process with a step by step break down. Tons of useful links are included to help you out.
Someone should construct a
Portal sentry gun
case for this thing and add voice clips.
permalink | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "40958",
"author": "supernova_hq",
"timestamp": "2008-08-21T23:13:46",
"content": "XBox 360 controller? What a shame to implement the only next-gen system lacking a tilt sensor…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40959",
"author... | 1,760,377,769.213167 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/21/fema-phone-system-hacked/ | FEMA Phone System Hacked | Kimberly Lau | [
"News"
] | [
"fema",
"hacking",
"homeland security",
"HomelandSecurity",
"phone",
"security",
"voicemail"
] | Over the weekend, a
hacker broke into FEMA’s new PBX voicemail system
, made over 400 overseas phone calls to Asia and the Middle East, and ran up a $12,000 bill. The
low tech hack
took advantage of a “hole” that was not covered when a contractor upgraded the voicemail system.
FEMA
is currently conducting its own internal investigation, but FEMA spokesman [Tom Olshanski] did not have any information about the contractor responsible or what specific hole was the cause of the breach. Ironically, Homeland Security, of which FEMA is a part, had issued a warning in 2003 about the very same vulnerability.
[photo:
silas216
]
permalink | 15 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "40943",
"author": "dandin1",
"timestamp": "2008-08-21T20:08:55",
"content": "Phreakers in the modern age!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40944",
"author": "rivetgeek",
"timestamp": "2008-08-21T20:36:12",
"content": ... | 1,760,377,769.608457 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/21/microsofts-data-centers-growing-by-the-truckload/ | Microsoft’s Data Centers Growing By The Truckload | Kimberly Lau | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"data center",
"DataCenter",
"microsoft",
"server maintenance",
"ServerMaintenance",
"servers"
] | The growing demands of Microsoft’s core customers necessitate
dramatic alterations
in the way Microsoft’s data centers are set up. Before their server racks were replaced one at a time, Microsoft’s new solution to server management is to truck in servers in sealed shipping containers and set them up without even taking them out. If a core number of servers start to fail within the shipping container it is removed, returned to the manufacturer, and replaced. This strategy helps Microsoft manage the desires of its consumer base for search, video, photo services and other services provided under the Microsoft Online umbrella. Although Microsoft’s method of server management makes the process of running data centers more efficient, thereby saving costs and power, Microsoft still has to contend with old networking protocols. It’s counting on the industry to innovate in these areas.
[via
Boing Boing
]
permalink | 9 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "40934",
"author": "Jason!",
"timestamp": "2008-08-21T20:27:48",
"content": "Hasn’t Sun been doing this for… oh… FIVE YEARS NOW?http://www.sun.com/products/sunmd/s20/index.jsp",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40935",
"author":... | 1,760,377,769.806328 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/21/bbs-on-a-commodore-64/ | BBS On A Commodore 64 | Caleb Kraft | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"bbs",
"Commodore64",
"documentary"
] | [Lief Bloomquist] was in need of some geeky nostalgia. He thought making a
BBS server on a Commodore 64
would fill that need perfectly. He used a PC running some routing software to make the BBS server available over the net, without any long distance charges. Anyone with an Internet connection can telnet to the BBS and join the fun.
[Jason Scott] made
BBS: the Documentary
. He has interviewed [Lief] and taken some pictures of the set up. You can view them, as well as download a PowerPoint about the project
here
.
[thanks HighNoon]
permalink | 32 | 30 | [
{
"comment_id": "40916",
"author": "LWATCDR",
"timestamp": "2008-08-21T18:57:37",
"content": "This is very cool but I have seen this before. What I wonder is if it might be possible to hack VICE or MESS to directly support telnet in place of the modem?That way you could just run it on any Linux box ... | 1,760,377,769.883368 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/20/hackit-modern-arcade-cabinets/ | Hackit: Modern Arcade Cabinets? | Eliot | [
"HackIt",
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"arcade",
"arcadecabinet",
"arcadegame",
"emulate",
"emulator",
"mame",
"retrothing",
"xmame"
] | We’ve been contemplating getting into
MAME
arcade cabinet building. It was sparked by someone dropping off a Street Fighter II machine at our office. Many people have been seeking to build the perfect arcade cabinet clone, but looking over this old dusty cabinet we realized that retro isn’t really what we want. We want an arcade cabinet with a modern aesthetic.
Retro Thing
recently posted
[Martijn Koch]’s
Retro Space
. The cabinet takes design cues from old cabinets, but uses modern technology like a 24″ LCD. It does feature classic controls though. Wandering through arcades today, most of the machines appear to be DDR style or vehicle sims. No one is building modern gaming machines.
We’re still in the planning stages of this build. We’d definitely use classic controls and combine it with an LCD 24″ or larger. The brain would probably be a
Playstation 3
. We could run any
emulator
we want on the
Linux
side and also play modern PS3 games. How it will look is still up in the air. We’re leaning towards building a standup 4 player brawler machine for playing games like
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
,
X-Men
, and
The Simpsons
.
Have any of you built a MAME machine before? How would you build an arcade machine with a modern aesthetic? | 39 | 39 | [
{
"comment_id": "40882",
"author": "byteflip",
"timestamp": "2008-08-21T06:23:46",
"content": "i think a slim case is the way to go. 24 lcd and a p4 you’re ready to go",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40883",
"author": "theTick",
"timest... | 1,760,377,770.13946 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/20/micro-battery-assembled-by-virus/ | Micro Battery Assembled By Virus | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"battery",
"mit",
"virus"
] | MIT researchers have used a viral assembly method to
create a battery
at half the size of a human cell. They’ve successfully developed the anode and electrolyte, leaving only the cathode unfinished. each electrode is only 4 micrometers in diameter.
The construction process involves taking a rubbery base and creating a pattern of tiny posts through lithography. Then they add different layers of polymers that act as an electrolyte. Finally the virus preferentially self-assembles on top of the polymer creating the anode. Pictured above is a test plate. The battery itself is too small to be seen.
[via
BoingBoing
]
permalink | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "40877",
"author": "M4CGYV3R",
"timestamp": "2008-08-21T03:38:42",
"content": "That’s freakin’ cool, but let’s be honest – how much energy is a tiny little battery like that going to store? How useful can it possibly be? It stands to reason that it will take far more energy than this... | 1,760,377,769.984641 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/20/parents-beware-of-digital-drugs/ | Parents Beware Of “digital Drugs” | Nick Caiello | [
"News"
] | [
"binaural",
"binauralbeats",
"digital drugs",
"DigitalDrugs",
"drug",
"drugs",
"i-doser",
"idoser",
"sensational",
"sensationalism",
"usatoday"
] | In what some might call a
sensationalist article
, USA Today reporter [Kim Komando] warns parents of a new danger to their kids: digital drugs. Throughout the article, [Kim] tries to explain how
binaural beats
(idosers) can effect the brain in many different ways, claiming that some even emulate the effects of illegal drugs. Furthermore, she claims that the “digital drugs” can act as a gateway to trying real drugs. While it seems unapparent to [Kim] that
I-Doser
has been around for years, it’s not surprising that this article is only being published now. While I understand her argument, parts of it just seem illogical. If anything, wouldn’t binaural sounds provide kids an alternative to illegal drugs? If these sounds really provide the same effects as drugs, wouldn’t they act as a safer option to kids? While this story seems to be one of many sensational stories warning parents to protect their kids, it seems as though parents should really be warned about these sensational stories that are concocted solely to sell newspapers.
[via
Woot
]
[photo:
BrittneyBush
]
permalink | 46 | 46 | [
{
"comment_id": "40838",
"author": "sir jorge",
"timestamp": "2008-08-20T20:55:51",
"content": "this is hilarious!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40839",
"author": "dax",
"timestamp": "2008-08-20T21:04:12",
"content": "ahhh the stre... | 1,760,377,770.448799 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/20/hack-guitar-hero-ds-into-a-guitar-controller/ | Hack Guitar Hero DS Into A Guitar Controller | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks",
"handhelds hacks",
"Nintendo DS Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Playstation Hacks"
] | [
"ds",
"dslite",
"guitarhero",
"guitarheroworldtour",
"ps2controller",
"wirelesscontroller"
] | [Eric Ruckman] sent us this awesome
Guitar Hero hack
. He wanted to get a more “true to the series” game play out of his DS when playing Guitar Hero: On Tour. If you’ve seen the adapter that
comes with it
, you’ll understand his desires. He found a wireless PS2 Guitar Hero controller on EBay to hack.
He’s cut a hole in the controller and removed all the guts.
In the picture above the DS fits in the hole to allow strumming in the correct position.
The controller buttons are connected to the DS by wiring into the adapter. He’s added an FM transmitter to the controller so he can play the sound through his home sound system.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aukO0ZoG0E&hl=en&fs=1]
[Eric] Really put some care into this. You can see that he wanted this to be something he could actually use and show off. The integration of the FM transmitter into the unit was very well done. The transmitter is controlled through the controller’s start and select buttons and powered from the controller’s battery compartment. He mounted the transmitter’s display into the controller as well.
This modification fits nicely in the Guitar Hero hacking tradition. We’ve seen several before like the
real guitar controller
and the
home made wireless one
. Don’t forget the
touch screen and better switches mods
. Of coarse, for many of us hacking it is actually more fun that playing it so we’ll leave the rocking out to
deep note
.
permalink | 11 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "40833",
"author": "BacklitVillain",
"timestamp": "2008-08-20T19:44:35",
"content": "Brilliant!!!Gonna try that for myself.Nice one Eric…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40834",
"author": "M4CGYV3R",
"timestamp": "2008-08... | 1,760,377,769.943174 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/20/siggraph-2008-the-quest-for-more-pixels/ | SIGGRAPH 2008: The Quest For More Pixels | Eliot | [
"cons",
"News"
] | [
"3d",
"computergraphics",
"con",
"convention",
"dankaminsky",
"kaminsky",
"siggraph",
"siggraph2008",
"video"
] | Long before we started reporting on [
Dan Kaminsky
]’s
DNS chicanery
, he
contributed a guest post
about one of our favorite sources of new technology:
SIGGRAPH
. The stars have aligned again and we’re happy to bring you his analysis of this year’s convention. [photo:
Phong Nguyen
]
So, last week, I had the pleasure of being stabbed, scanned, physically simulated, and synthetically defocused. Clearly, I must have been at SIGGRAPH 2008, the world’s biggest computer graphics conference. While it usually conflicts with Black Hat, this year I actually got to stop by, though a bit of a cold kept me from enjoying as much of it as I’d have liked. Still, I did get to walk the exhibition floor, and
the papers (and videos) are all online
, so I do get to write this (blissfully DNS and security unrelated) report.
SIGGRAPH brings in tech demos from around the world every year, and this year was no exception. Various forms of haptic simulation (remember force feedback?) were on display. Thus far, the best haptic simulation I’d experienced was a robot arm that could “feel” like it was actually 3 pounds or 30 pounds. This year had a couple of really awesome entrants. By far the best was
Butterfly Haptics’
Maglev system, which somehow managed to create a small vertical “puck” inside a bowl that would react, instantaneously, to arbitrary magnetic forces and barriers. They actually had two of these puck-bowls side by side, hooked up to an OpenGL physics simulation. The two pucks, in your hand, became rigid platforms in something of a polygon playground. Anything you bumped into, you could feel, anything you lifted, would have weight. Believe it or not, it actually
worked
, far better than it had any right to. Most impressively, if you pushed your in-world platforms against eachother, you directly felt the force from each hand on the other, as if there was a real-world rod connecting the two. Lighten up a bit on the right hand, and the left wouldn’t get pushed quite so hard. Everything else was impressive but this was the first haptic simulation I’ve ever seen that tricked my senses into perceiving a physical relationship in the real world. Cool!
Also fun:
This hack with ultrasonic transmitters
by Takayuki Iwamoto et al, which was actually able to create free-standing regions of turbulence in air via ultrasonic interference. It really just feels like a bit of vibrating wind (just?), but it’s one step closer to that holy grail of display technology, Princess Leia.
Best cheap trick award goes to the
Superimposing Dynamic Range
guys. There’s just an absurd amount of work going into High Dynamic Range image capture and display, which can handle the full range of light intensities the human eye is able to process. People have also been having lots of fun projecting images, using a camera to see what was projected, and then altering the projection based on that. These guys went ahead and, instead of mixing a projector with a camera, they mixed it with a printer. Paper is very reflective, but printer toner is very much not, so they created a shared display out of a laser printout and its actively displayed image. I saw the effects on an X-Ray – pretty convincing, I have to say. Don’t expect animation anytime soon though
(Side note: I did ask them about e-paper. They tried it – said it was OK, but not that much contrast.)
Always cool: Seeing your favorite talks productized. One of my favorite talks in previous years was out of Stanford –
Synthetic Aperture Confocal Imaging
. Unifying the output of dozens of cheap little Quickcams, these guys actually pulled together everything from Matrix-style bullet time to the ability to refocus images – to the point of being able to see “around” occluding objects. So of course Point Grey Research, makers of all sorts of awesome camera equipment,
had to put together a 5×5 array of cameras and hook ’em up over PCI express
. Oh, and implement the Synthetic Aperture refocusing code, in realtime, demo’d at their booth, controlled with a Wii controller. Completely awesome.
Of course, some of the coolest stuff at SIGGRAPH is reserved for full conference attendees, in the papers section. One nice thing they do at SIGGRAPH however is ask everyone to create five minute videos of their research. This makes a lot of sense when what everyone’s researching is, almost by definition, visually compelling. So, every year, I make my way to
Ke-Sen Huang’s collection of SIGGRAPH papers
and take a look at the latest coming out of SIGGRAPH. Now, I have my own biases: I’ve never been much of a 3D modeler, but I started out doing a decent amount of work in Photoshop. So I’ve got a real thing for image based rendering, or graphics technologies that process pixels rather than triangles. Luckily, SIGGRAPH had a lot for me this year.
First off, the
approach from Photosynth continues to yield Awesome
. Dubbed “Photo Tourism” by Noah Snavely et al, this is the concept that we can take individual images from many,
many
different cameras, unify them into a single three dimensional space, and allow seamless exploration. After having far too much fun with a simple search for “Notre Dame” in Flickr last year, this year they add full support for panning and rotating around an object of interest. Beautiful work – I can’t wait to see this UI applied to the various street-level photo datasets captured via spherical cameras.
Speaking of cameras, now that the high end of photography is almost universally digital, people are starting to do some really strange things to camera equipment. Chia-Kai Liang et al’s
Programmable Aperture Photography
allows for complex apertures to be synthesized above and beyond just an open and shut circle, and Ramesh Raskar et al’s
Glare Aware Photography
evaded the megapixel race by filtering light by incident angle – a useful thing to do if you’re looking to filter glare that’s coming from inside your lens.
Another approach is also doing well: Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir’s work on
Seam Carving
. Most people probably don’t remember, but when movies first started getting converted for home use, there was a fairly huge debate over what to do about the fact that movies are much wider (85% wider) than they are tall. None of the three solutions – Letterboxing (black bars on the top and bottom, to make everything fit), Pan and Scan (picking the “most interesting” square of video from the rectangular frame), or “Anamorphic” (just stretch everything) – made everyone happy, but Letterboxing eventually won. I wonder what would have happened if this approach was around. Basically, Avidan and Shamir find the “least energetic” line of pixels to either add or remove.
Last year, they did this to photos
. This year, they come out with
Improved Seam Carving for Video Retargeting
.
The results are spookily awesome.
Speaking of spooky:
Data-Driven Enhancement of Facial Attractiveness
. Sure, everything you see is photoshopped, but it’s pretty astonishing to see this automated. I wonder if this is going to follow the same path as Seam Carving, i.e. photo today, video tomorrow.
Indeed, there’s something of a theme going on here, with video becoming inexorably easier and easier to manipulate in a photorealistic manner. One of my favorite new tricks out of SIGGRAPH this year goes by the name of
Unwrap Mosaics
. The work of Microsoft’s Pushmeet Kohli, this is nothing less than the beginning of Photoshop’s applicability to video – and not just simple scenes, but real, dynamic, even three dimensional motion. Stunning work here.
It’s not
all
about pixels though. A really fun paper called
Automated Generation of Interactive 3D Exploded View Diagrams
showed up this year, and it’s all about allowing complex models of real world objects to be comprehended in their full context. It’s almost more UI than graphics – but whatever it is, it’s quite cool. I especially liked the moment they’re like – heh, lets see if this works on a medical model! Yup, works there too.
As mentioned earlier, the SIGGRAPH floor was full of various devices that could assemble a 3D model (or at least a point cloud) of any small object they might get pointed at. (For the record, my left hand looks great in silver triangles.) Invariably, these devices work like a sort of hyperactive barcode scanner, monitoring how long it takes for the red beam to return to a photodiode. But here’s an interesting question: How do you scan something that’s semi-transparent? Suddenly you can’t really trust all those reflections, can you? Clearly,
the answer is to submerge your object in fluorescent liquid and scan it with a laser tuned to a frequency that’ll make its surroundings glow
. Clearly. Flurorescent Immersion Range Scanning, by Matthias Hullin and crew from UBC, is quite a stunt.
So you might have heard that
video cards can do more than just push pretty pictures
. Now that Moore’s Law is dead (
how
long have we been stuck with 2Ghz processors?), improvements in computational performance have had to come from fundamentally redesigning how we process data. GPU’s have been one of a couple of players (along with massive multicore x86 and FPGA’s) in this redesign. Achieving greater than 50x speed improvements over traditional CPU’s on non-graphics tasks like, say,
cracking MD5 passwords
, they’re doing OK in this particular race. Right now, the great limiter remains the difficulty programming the GPU’s – and, every month, something new comes to make this easier. This year, we get Qiming Hiu et al’s
BSGP: Bulk-Synchronous GPU Programming
. Note the pride they have with their X3D parser – it’s not just about trivial algorithms anymore. (Of course, now I wonder when hacking GPU parsers will be a Black Hat talk. Short answer: Probably not very long.)
Finally, for sheer brainmelt,
Towards Passive 6D Reflectance Field Displays
by Martin Fuchs et al is just
weird
. They’ve made a display that’s view dependent – OK, well, lenticular displays will show you different things from different angles. Yeah, but this display is also illumination dependent – meaning, it shows you different things based on lighting. There’s no electronics in this material, but it’ll always show you the right image with the right lighting to match the environment.
Weird.
All in all, a wonderfully inspiring SIGGRAPH. After being so immersed in breaking things, it’s always fun to play with awesome things being built. | 8 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "40825",
"author": "hawkeye18",
"timestamp": "2008-08-20T15:19:41",
"content": "Great article! One massive, glaring error, though, and it’s one that no tech writer should ever make. It’s regarding your statement about Moore’s law, which I get the distinct impression that you’ve never... | 1,760,377,770.24825 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/19/iphone-ssh-client-roundup/ | IPhone SSH Client Roundup | Strom Carlson | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"iphone hacks",
"News",
"Roundup"
] | [
"apple",
"iphone",
"iphone3g",
"iSSH",
"pTerm",
"ssh",
"TouchTerm"
] | Considering an
iPhone
but not sure if you can live without SSH in your pocket? Have no fear! Hot off the press is this
review of four SSH clients for the iPhone
: iSSH, pTerm, TouchTerm, and SSH. All four clients have their strengths and weaknesses, and iSSH seems to be the best option so far. Although each of these is an early release, and therefore has its own idiosyncrasies, they’ve got improved features being planned for the next major release. Furthermore, they’re surprisingly inexpensive (none of them are more than five dollars), and so you should give them a shot if you see the need to SSH without being bound to your terminal.
iSSH
is the best of the reviewed clients, giving you a good balance of usability and features. It has is share of problems, though, primarily related to the way it handles scrolling,
pTerm
comes in second, and is almost perfect. Its two rather glaring weaknesses are a too-large font that requires plenty of scrolling, and a lack of Ctrl, ESC, and Tab keys.
TouchTerm
, which comes in third, is the most configurable of the reviewed SSH clients,but is otherwise irrationally quirky.
SSH
is even quirkier than TouchTerm, and is a waste of your time and money.
Between the idiosyncrasies of iSSH, pTerm, and TouchTerm, you’re bound to find one that you like. Furthermore, these are initial releases; all three have exciting features on the roadmap (like implementing the ESC key) which should improve their usability.
Should you give one of them a try? For five bucks, it wouldn’t hurt.
[photo:
edans
]
[via
Waxy
]
permalink | 17 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "40815",
"author": "mklebel",
"timestamp": "2008-08-20T06:53:28",
"content": "I can’t kill a command with ctrl c or x. I have yet to find a ash client for the iPhone that can do this. Is there another keystroke that can kill the command?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,377,770.351304 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/19/how-to-hack-a-thingamakit/ | How-To: Hack A ThingamaKIT | loganwilliams | [
"digital audio hacks",
"home entertainment hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"audio",
"bleeplabs",
"circuitbending",
"circuitbent",
"howto",
"photoresistor",
"review",
"thingamagoop",
"thingamakit"
] | The
ThingamaKIT
is an anthropomorphic analog synthesizer kit from
Bleep Labs
. Using “LEDacles”, photoresistors, knobs, and switches, it generates interesting high pitched vocalizations. Bleep Labs sent us a review unit and this article shares our experiences building and using the kit. We’ve also included a tutorial on making some hacks, modifications, and circuit bends to it. Skip to the end to see a video of our hacked kit in action.
Using the ThingamaKIT
While it may not be that useful for serious musical composition, the ThingamaKIT makes some nice bleeps and blips, even without modification.The LED to photoresistor input/feedback method is enjoyable to play with, by repointing the LEDacles and waving hands around the photoresistor. The ThingamaKIT is very easy to start using; just twiddle knobs, and it starts making its characteristic ridiculous sounds.
The ThingamaKIT is an simple but fun circuit, and
schematics
are provided. Three Schmitt trigger oscillators, like the ones used in the
previous Hack a Day synth article
are used to control the first LEDacle. Because they have different frequencies, the LEDacle blinks in an interesting manner. A Schmitt trigger and op amp generate a triangle wave for the other LEDacle, with controllable waveshape and speed. Another Schmitt trigger generates the modulating wave, with a frequency based on either Photocell 2 or a potentiometer. The main oscillator, the XR2206, has a pitch controlled by Photocell 1, except when the output from the modulation is high, then it switches to a different pitch.
Embedded above is Bleep Labs official demo video.
Building the ThingamaKIT
The instructions for building the ThingamaKIT are printed well and easy to follow. [Surachai]’s build time lapse, shown above, gives a nice overview of the process. We had no problem finding components and soldering them to the board. Though troubleshooting instructions are provided in the manual, our device worked fine, and we did not need them.
If you are assembling the ThingamaKIT with the intent to hack it as shown in the rest of this article, there are a couple things you should do differently than shown in the instructions.
Cut the 4” wires a little longer, closer to 6”. You’ll need the extra length when fitting components.
Do not install the waveshape switch, unless you want to test the default ThingamaKIT unit without modifications.
Do not proceed to the casing steps until you have made modifications.
Hacking the ThingamaKIT
Bleep Labs has designed the ThingamaKIT to be easily
circuit bendable
, and there are many fun hacks that can be done with this unit. A few are briefly presented in the extra information given with the kit. While playing around with it and assembling it, we also discovered several more. We’ll show you a few different hacks and circuit bends that you can do with an assembled ThingamaKIT.
Adding an audio input
Our favorite hack for the ThingamaKIT is to add an audio input. The ThingamaKIT will completely warp any audio input, crushing it to lo-fi fuzz and crunches. Here is its emotional rendition of The Police’s “Every Breath You Take”:
To do this, you’ll need a 3.5mm audio jack, like the kind used in the
previous synthesizer how-to article
and a SPDT (three way) switch. Solder a wire to the signal lug and a wire to the ground lug on the jack. Then, solder the signal wire (the blue wire) to the left hand pad of the .01 uF capacitor, which is outlined above in red. Our solder joints look like a warzone, but it all works. We swear.
There are two places the ground wire can be soldered, and each has a different sound; we installed a switch so that both could be used. Solder the ground wire to the center lug on the SPDT switch. Solder one of the outside lugs to the board’s ground, and another to the other pin of the .01 uF capacitor, as outlined in red above.
To use the audio input, flip the SPDT switch to either outside position, then patch some audio to the input. Music, drum machines, other synthesizers and more all work to make an interesting sound.
Adding a waveshaper knob
In its default configuration, the ThingamaKIT only has a switch to select between triangle and square wave main oscillators. By replacing this knob with a potentiometer, you can transition smoothly between the two waveforms. However, there will be a significant attenuation (decrease in volume) when the potentiometer is near its center, as both outputs will have increased impedance. This is not easily corrected, except with active amplification, or a dual potentiometer with two different tapers, which we have been unable to find.
To do this mod, you first need to remove the waveshape switch if you have already attached it. The easiest way to remove it is with a
desoldering iron
. Simply squeeze the bulb, place the hot iron over each pad (pads to remove are outlined in red on the image above), and release the bulb. Do this for each pad until all solder is removed, then remove the switch. Keep the switch, as it will be useful if you want to do the sine wave hack.
Next, solder three wires to a 10K potentiometer, such as the one pictured above. The red wire goes to the middle lug, and the other two go to either end on the board.
The waveshaper knob is complete, and you can now easily fade between square and triangle waves.
Adding a sine wave switch
While reading the
datasheet
(PDF) for the XR2206, the signal generator that the ThingamaKIT uses, we noticed a very easy way to change the triangle wave output into a sine wave, which has a softer sound.
If you are doing this with the waveshaper hack above, start by taking the old switch, and removing one lug from its side. Then bend the other two down slightly, as shown. This will allow the switch to fit where the old one did on the panel, without being in contact with the board. Solder two short wires to the remaining lugs. Then, stick a piece of electrical tape over the top of the pads on the board where the potentiometer is now wired, and put the switch there, using a bit of hot glue to hold it in place.
To one wire, solder a 220 ohm resistor inline; an extra is helpfully provided in the kit. Wrap the resistor in electrical tape to cover the exposed leads, then solder the two wire ends to pins 13 and 14 of the XR2206 as outlined in red above. The sine wave mod is complete!
Adding a spike wave switch
Another bend we found while poking around in the unit caused the main oscillator to create a “spike” waveform. It produces a nice lo-fi, glitchy sound. To add this bend, take any normal SPST (two way on-off switch) and solder a wire to each lug.
Then, connect it to pins 8 and 6 on the XR2206, as outlined in red. The spike wave mod is done.
Packaging it all up
To finish up our ThingamaKIT, we followed the instructions provided with the kit, but with a few modifications. A couple of extra holes had to be drilled for the new potentiometer (5/16”), the spike wave switch (5/16”), and the audio input (1/4”).
We had some difficulty getting all of the new components fitted into the case, but with some rearranging we managed. Be sure not to push the photoresistors up higher on the face then is shown on the drill jig, or you will have trouble fitting them around the LEDacles. The volume potentiometer was also mounted a little low, and we had to put the speaker toward the controls side rather then the LEDacle side of the case to fit it in.
Check out the demo video below to see our glorious leader in action.
Further hacks
To hack your ThingamaKIT further, Dr. Bleep has some
recommendations
in the manual: using the extra oscillators on the board to add effects, replacing the variable photocells with resistors and buttons to make a keyboard, making a patchbay, and getting complete control over LEDacle 1 with potentiometers.
That concludes our ThingamaKIT hacking. Have any of you built one? To see other custom ThingamaKITs, check out the
Flickr group
. | 21 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "40802",
"author": "Jack Ward",
"timestamp": "2008-08-20T02:16:54",
"content": "wow this thing is so bad ass",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40803",
"author": "sam",
"timestamp": "2008-08-20T03:00:52",
"content": "ser... | 1,760,377,770.198326 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/19/defcon-16-list-of-tools-compiled/ | Defcon 16: List Of Tools Compiled | Kimberly Lau | [
"cons",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"applications",
"defcon",
"defcon16",
"defcon2008",
"hacking",
"tools",
"zeroday"
] | Zero Day posted a
list of tools and applications that were released
at
Defcon 16
. The applications run the gamut, from
Beholder
, an open source wireless IDS tool, to
CollabREate
, a reverse-engineering plugin that allows multiple people to share a single project. The list covers a lot of ground, and there’s a lot for hackers to play around with and explore. It’s nice to see someone bothering to maintain a list since the majority of conference tools just get lost in the shuffle and are never seen again.
permalink | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "40801",
"author": "Marco",
"timestamp": "2008-08-20T00:14:42",
"content": "The kiosk hack presentation was awesome. “Any internet kiosk owned in 2 minutes or less”. It also serves as a nice repository of common exploits for systems running IE.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,377,770.28847 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/18/usb-switched-power-strip/ | USB Switched Power Strip | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks",
"Misc Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"highvoltage",
"powerstrip",
"usb"
] | [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.
permalink | 12 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "40729",
"author": "AndrewNeo",
"timestamp": "2008-08-18T22:19:20",
"content": "Does anyone know how much these cost to buy ‘retail’? My friend had one, to turn on his RAID power supply when the computer came on. Was just a USB cable, with male A at one end, and a male and female ele... | 1,760,377,770.497972 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/17/upcoming-events/ | Upcoming Events | Eliot | [
"cons",
"News"
] | [
"25c3",
"arseelektronika",
"ccc",
"event",
"hackercon",
"hackers",
"makerfaire",
"roboexotica",
"toorcon"
] | It looks like it’s time to update our
event list
. Here are some hacking related events happening through the rest of the year.
ToorCon
September 26-28 San Diego, CA – In its tenth year, ToorCon has always been
one of our favorites
. The conference is fairly small, but features great content like last year’s
fuzzing talk
.
Arse Elektronika
(NSFW) September 25-28 San Francisco, CA – Happening the same time as ToorCon, this conference covers the sexual side of human and machine interaction. The
device list
has gems like The Seismic Dildo, which only turns on if there is seismic activity in the world.
Maker Faire
October 18-19 Austin, TX – It’s Maker Faire! In Texas!
Roboexotica
December 4-7 Vienna, Austria – The premier
festival for cocktail robotics
is also back for the tenth time. They’re always looking for more exhibitors. Check out
our Hackit for ideas
.
25C3
December 27-30 Berlin, Germany I think we pretty much
covered all the bases
on this incredible conference yesterday.
Did we miss anything? | 9 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "40720",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2008-08-18T06:21:26",
"content": "It might not be as big as the other cons, but Phreaknic 12 is scheduled to take place October 24-25 in Nashville, TN.http://phreaknic.info/pn12/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}... | 1,760,377,770.538935 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/17/scratch-built-jog-wheel/ | Scratch Built Jog Wheel | Eliot | [
"computer hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"bittech",
"griffin",
"griffinpowermate",
"instructables",
"mouse",
"powermate",
"salvage",
"scavenge",
"scrollwheel",
"vcr",
"vcrhead",
"video",
"volumouse"
] | [whatsisface] sent in his
scratch built clone of a Griffin PowerMate
. The
PowerMate
… is just a big knob, so it’s easy to see why more than one person has attempted this. [whatsisface] was inspired by a bit-tech post that did
nearly the same thing
, only they used the head out of a VCR for the knob. All the other components, like the optical encoder, are salvaged from a mouse, which we talked about in
our scavenging How-To
. He used a RC car tire for the actual knob. While we’re sure it works great in dirt, we’d probably go with the weight and inertia of the VCR head instead. Have a look at the video below to see the knob being used with the
Volumouse software
.
permalink | 10 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "40710",
"author": "pip",
"timestamp": "2008-08-18T04:54:00",
"content": "“[whatsisface] sent in his scratch built clone of a Griffin PowerMate. The PowerMate… is just a big knob, so it’s easy to why more than one person has attempted this. “Rephrase asap.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,377,770.584898 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/16/ps3-hacked-for-backups/ | PS3 Hacked For Backups? | Eliot | [
"Playstation Hacks"
] | [
"backup",
"bluray",
"piracy",
"playstation",
"playstation3",
"ps3",
"video"
] | The video above supposedly shows a
Playstation 3 booting a game from the hard drive
by booting a legitimate game from disc. There aren’t many other details besides a comment that backing up Blu-ray discs takes a lot of space. So, if this does actually work, it’s doubtful we’ll see much piracy because of it.
[via
PS3Scene
]
permalink | 27 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "40691",
"author": "blizzarddemon",
"timestamp": "2008-08-17T06:53:54",
"content": "Reminds me of when I used to use HDloader to boot games and get around the region protection. I could see this as potentially useful for those who used Winhiip to switch ISOs in and out of the hard dr... | 1,760,377,770.939554 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/16/25c3-nothing-to-hide-announced/ | 25C3: Nothing To Hide Announced | Eliot | [
"cons",
"News"
] | [
"24c3",
"25c3",
"biohacking",
"ccc",
"chaoscommunicationcongress",
"chaoscomputerclub",
"congress",
"drewendy",
"fullsteamahead",
"mifare",
"nothingtohide"
] | Germany’s
Chaos Computer Club
has announced the theme for their annual Chaos Communication Congress: “
Nothing to hide
“. Like last year’s “
Full steam ahead!
“, it’s open to many interpretations. People striking down privacy laws often say citizens shouldn’t mind since they have “Nothing to hide”. The phrase is also connected to the inability to hide data, as the CCC demonstrated this year by
publishing the German Home Secretary’s fingerprint
. On a more positive side, “Nothing to hide” is also about the free exchange of information that happens at hacker conventions. The Congress is in its 25th year and promises to be as good as ever. At
last year’s 24C3
, we saw great talks like [Drew Endy]’s
biohacking talk
and the
original MiFare crypto presentation
. 25C3 will be held in Berlin December 27th to 30th. The wiki is already up and they’ve published a
call for participation
, if you’re interested.
permalink | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "40684",
"author": "laptopleon",
"timestamp": "2008-08-17T15:29:46",
"content": "I agree on their motto, only I mean it. People who are honest really have nothing to hide. I don’t see how they can break the law by publicating fingerprints, like they say, it’s like publicating photogr... | 1,760,377,770.673832 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/16/acer-aspire-one-hard-drive-upgrade/ | Acer Aspire One Hard Drive Upgrade | Eliot | [
"classic hacks",
"computer hacks",
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"acer",
"aceraspire",
"aceraspireone",
"ipod",
"pata",
"ssd",
"subnotebook",
"tnkgrl",
"upgrade",
"zif"
] | 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.
permalink | 9 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "40682",
"author": "strider_mt2k",
"timestamp": "2008-08-17T18:23:28",
"content": "I love reading stuff just like this on hackaday.tnkgrl does some really nice work.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "43639",
"author": "Saheb",
... | 1,760,377,770.979469 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/15/making-packaging-part-of-the-product/ | Making Packaging Part Of The Product | Strom Carlson | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"furniture",
"packaging",
"waste",
"waste reduction",
"WasteReduction"
] | Discouraged at the mounds of packaging you’re throwing away every time you buy new stuff? Artist [David Gardener] may have just the solution for you:
design products where the packaging is an integral part of the product itself
. We can envision a whole line of IKEA furniture, for example, that turns inside-out and uses the cardboard box as part of its internal support structure. On the whole, this may be just a touch less tacky than making furniture out of packaging not intended to be used as furniture at all (i.e.
FedEx boxes
).
[via
DVICE
]
permalink | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "40677",
"author": "chris",
"timestamp": "2008-08-16T07:44:29",
"content": "Good idea but a sure way to burn your house down. The electronics onthose CF bulbs can get very hot!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40678",
"author"... | 1,760,377,770.878688 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/15/how-to-hotwire-your-own-car/ | How To Hotwire Your Own Car | Strom Carlson | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Security Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"cars",
"hotwire",
"ignition"
] | Picture this scenario: it’s 2 AM, you’re stuck somewhere you’d rather not be, and you’ve lost your car keys. If you can’t call the Auto Club, what do you do? Hotwire your own car, of course.
Wired.com has a wiki article
detailing all the things you need to do to get that car running: how to identify which wires to connect, potential pitfalls of newer cars that require an RFID chip in the key, and so on. Of course, hotwiring a car that doesn’t belong to you is illegal, but this is one of those skills-like lockpicking-which just might come in handy in an emergency.
[Photo:
D.B. Blas
]
permalink | 74 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "40655",
"author": "TJHooker",
"timestamp": "2008-08-16T00:22:53",
"content": "I was once obsessed with this subject.Since the mid nineties even cars like Honda preludes started getting RFID keys. The 2000 integra didn’t have it though. It’s always been like this. Some cars didn’t ge... | 1,760,377,771.137602 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/15/hack-your-customer-service-rep/ | Hack Your Customer Service Rep | Strom Carlson | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"customer service",
"CustomerService",
"psychology",
"social engineering",
"SocialEngineering"
] | Hacks come in all forms, and psychological hacks are no different. [Noah Goldstein], a behavioral scientist at the
University of Chicago
, has written
a book
in which he details scientifically proven methods of persuading others.
One of these methods
stands out as being particularly useful at alleviating one of the most aggravating aspects of modern life: dealing with customer service representatives over the telephone.
The trick? Be nice, compliment the rep on doing a good job, and offer to write a letter of recommendation. Since it stands to reason that the customer service rep is probably having a crappier day than you (imagine having to talk to a hundred annoyed people five days a week and you’ll get the idea), making the rep feel appreciated is likely to make them want to do more for you in return.
[photo:
brycej
]
[via
BoingBoing
]
permalink | 21 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "40636",
"author": "BruceJ",
"timestamp": "2008-08-16T00:33:03",
"content": "Wow.. I seem to remember my mommy teaching me this “hack”:“Be nice to people and they’re more likely to be nice to you back.”But then, she wasn’t some sociology academic, so his version is far more authorita... | 1,760,377,771.038409 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/15/antivirus-products-still-fail-on-fresh-viruses/ | Antivirus Products Still Fail On Fresh Viruses | Kimberly Lau | [
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"antivirus",
"malware",
"security",
"spam",
"waxy"
] | Many computer users rely on
antivirus
software from McAfee and Symantec to protect their computers from
malware
, worms, and viruses. Since the creation of viruses outpaces the protection abilities of the software, antivirus protection lags behind and may not be as secure as you think. [Gary Warner] provides some examples of current malware making the rounds that
continue to be unaddressed by anti-virus vendors
, including the recent “CNN Alerts: Breaking News” spam, which
morphed into MSNBC alert spoofs
. Our advice? Keep your antivirus software updated, but don’t believe that it will catch everything for you. Only open files from sources you know and trust.
[via
Waxy
]
permalink | 10 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "40627",
"author": "BigBalls",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T23:56:32",
"content": "This is a hack?WOW!I must say did you guys really think that your readers (who I imagine are here for actual hacks) are prepubescent girls? We are here to learn about hacks not be told for the 892173846987... | 1,760,377,771.258454 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/15/criminals-steal-credit-card-data-just-by-wardriving/ | Criminals Steal Credit Card Data Just By Wardriving | Strom Carlson | [
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"credit",
"credit card fraud",
"creditcard",
"CreditCardFraud",
"debitcard",
"fraud",
"news",
"wardriving",
"wep",
"wifi"
] | A federal grand jury in Boston has
charged eleven people
with the theft of more than 41 million credit and debit card numbers from retail stores. What makes this case interesting is that, although the defendants stole the data from retail establishments, they did so without ever having to leave their cars; they stole the numbers while wardriving. While the report doesn’t make it clear whether the targeted networks used weak encryption or were simply unsecured, it’s obvious that the security of your data is still not a top priority for many companies.
[photo:
Mujitra
]
permalink | 24 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "40618",
"author": "BigD145",
"timestamp": "2008-08-16T00:06:35",
"content": "Impressive. 41 million is quite a large number even considering that the average number of cards per person in the US is 10.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_... | 1,760,377,771.318936 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/15/wiimote-missile-launcher/ | Wiimote Missile Launcher | Caleb Kraft | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Nintendo Wii Hacks"
] | [
"autoaim",
"missile",
"misslelauncher",
"nintendo",
"wiimote"
] | [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
]
permalink | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "40617",
"author": "Karl Ostmo",
"timestamp": "2008-08-18T20:48:24",
"content": "For those interested, I’ve developed a controller for this rocket launcher (and also for the Dream Cheeky launchers) for Linux. You can get an installer or the source athttp://pyrocket.googlecode.comHack... | 1,760,377,771.400777 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/15/plotter-made-entirely-from-lego/ | Plotter Made Entirely From Lego | Strom Carlson | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"lego",
"nxt",
"pinplotter",
"plotter"
] | Check out this awesome tool that [Alfonso Martone] built and wrote in to tell us about: a
pin plotter made entirely from Lego
(except for the addition of a pin in one brick). [Alfonso] has managed to get 33dpi resolution with a “printable” area of 90x70mm. The NXT device reads 1bit bitmapped images in PBM format and outputs onto a sheet of paper, which is held in place by Lego pneumatics pushing against rubber Lego bricks. Output is not what you might call speedy, though: it takes 35-40 minutes to output a drawing with 1,500 holes.
[Alfonso] has managed to capture our hearts with this awesome piece of work, which we’d love to backlight and put in a frame on our wall.
[Thanks, Alfonso Martone]
permalink | 14 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "40607",
"author": "Franz",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T21:41:17",
"content": "Good!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40608",
"author": "Joe",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T22:41:03",
"content": "You should make the frame out ... | 1,760,377,771.365102 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/15/iphone-with-a-light-up-apple-logo/ | IPhone With A Light-up Apple Logo | Strom Carlson | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"iphone hacks"
] | [
"apple",
"applelogo",
"hardware hack",
"HardwareHack",
"iphone",
"iphone3g"
] | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgfyUsjwGwM&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]
If you feel that your
iPhone
alone no longer carries the cachet it once did, what with the price dropping and all, this may be just the modification that you need to stand out among the crowd.
iPhones.ru
has a teaser glimpse of an iPhone hack that causes the
Apple logo on the back of the device to light up
when the screen is turned on. Details are sketchy, but it appears that the hack involves replacing the metal insert on the back of the phone with an LED-equipped plastic one; custom software allows the user to select the brightness of the glowing effect independently of screen brightness… or maybe they’re just using the backlight.
permalink | 10 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "40597",
"author": "YoYo-Pete",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T19:33:16",
"content": "That’s sweet… especially if you have battery life. (It does looks sweet. Might be cooler to have it software controllable… mini flahslight or whatever)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,377,771.508083 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/15/biometric-locks-turned-trojan/ | Biometric Locks Turned Trojan | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks",
"home hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"biometric",
"defcon",
"fingerprint",
"lock",
"lockpicking"
] | 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]
permalink | 9 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "40590",
"author": "Jason",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T22:12:01",
"content": "Not news, not a hack, and not in any way impressive, useful, or interesting at all. WTF is so special about making a motor work when you apply power to it?This site has really gone to hell.",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,377,771.463345 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/15/robot-that-runs-on-rat-brain-cells/ | Robot That Runs On Rat Brain Cells | Strom Carlson | [
"Misc Hacks",
"News",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"fetus",
"newscientist",
"rat",
"ratfetus",
"reading",
"robot",
"video"
] | Scientists at the
University of Reading
have created a robot that runs not on microprocessors, but on
brain cells extracted from a rat fetus
. The robot is equipped with several sensors which stimulate the rat neurons whenever the robot approaches a wall; the response of the neurons then determines whether the robot avoids the wall or crashes into it. The truly fascinating bit is that the rat brain cells don’t automatically know how to respond to the stimuli from the sensors, but instead learn to respond appropriately through repeated stimuli.
No word yet on whether the scientists will teach the robot to sing “Despite all my rage / I am still just a brain in a vat”.
permalink | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "40584",
"author": "JanezD",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T18:44:26",
"content": "One word: awsome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40585",
"author": "maltorax",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T19:00:17",
"content": "Speechless…"... | 1,760,377,771.788946 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/15/make-a-stretchy-fabric-usb-cable/ | Make A Stretchy Fabric USB Cable | Strom Carlson | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"cable",
"fabric",
"instructables",
"stretch",
"usb",
"wearable"
] | If you’ve been puzzled over a discreet, durable way to sew wiring into your clothing, then puzzle no more: [Plusea] has put together a writeup detailing how to make a
USB cable partly out of stretchy cotton fabric
. Although the design as detailed doesn’t give much practical use for the invention, we can think of several very effective ways of exploiting this toy. Imagine, for example, placing a
USB battery pack
into one pocket of a jacket, a
portable digital audio recorder
in the other, and a
lavalier microphone
in the lining, thus enabling dozens of hours of covert audio surveillance.
permalink | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "40580",
"author": "William Kinirons",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T19:20:47",
"content": "Or make stun-clothing…combine it with your standard, run of the mill “USB Shock Therapy device” (http://asia.cnet.com/crave/2006/01/03/taiyo-buzztrainer-usb-shock-therapy-device/) and maybe a remo... | 1,760,377,771.544093 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/14/defcon-16-biometric-cloning/ | Defcon 16: Biometric Cloning | Eliot | [
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"biometric",
"biometrics",
"defcon",
"defcon16",
"geometry",
"hand",
"handgeometry",
"handmold",
"handscanner",
"mold",
"security"
] | One of the more novel talks we saw at
Defcon
was [Zac Franken]
presenting on access control systems
. He covered several different types, but the real fun was his live demo of bypassing a hand geometry scanners like the one pictured above. With the help of two assistants, 4 pounds of chromatic dental alginate, and 5 liters of water, he made a mold of his hand. The box he placed his hand in had markings to show where the pegs on the scanner are located. After 2 minutes he could remove his hand from the cavity. They then filled the mold with vinylpolysiloxane, making sure to remove all bubbles. 20 minutes later the hand was solid and passed the scanner’s test. This may not be a completely practical attack, but it does defeat the overall idea of biometrics; biometrics are built on the assumption that every person is unique and can’t have their features reproduced.
[Zac] also showed an interesting magnetic card spoofer that emulated all three tracks using coils of magnet wire. We hope to see more about that in the future.
[photo:
morgan.davis
] | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "40575",
"author": "rivetgeek",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T05:35:08",
"content": "How is this worthy of defcon? i mean for christ’s sake the mythbusters did this like two seasons ago and hey did it better from a lifted fingerprint on a glass.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,377,771.866545 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/14/riaa-pays-out-108000-to-p2p-lawsuit-defendant/ | RIAA Pays Out $108,000 To P2P Lawsuit Defendant | rossfairgrieve | [
"News"
] | [
"filesharing",
"filesharinglawsuit",
"lawsuit",
"music",
"p2p",
"riaa",
"riaa lawsuit",
"RiaaLawsuit"
] | [
Tanya Andersen
], the defendant in
Atlantic v. Andersen
, has
finally been paid $107,951
for reimbursement of legal fees.
RIAA
lawyers had appealed to get the amount reduced and originally offered $30,000 then $60,000, but [Andersen]’s lawyers convinced the judge to uphold the six-figure sum.
This is a significant setback for industry lawyers who often use
illegal discovery techniques
and have been criticized for using overly-litigious legal strategies to force defendants to settle. Sadly though, the payout only covers [Andersen]’s legal fees and doesn’t offer any compensation for damages, but a counter-suit filed in Portland, Oregon seeks exactly that. Here’s hoping her lawyers [Lory Lybeck] and [Ben Justus] continue to set favorable legal precedents for defendants of these lawsuits.
As far as the technical side of the discovery methods go, there are many ways to keep the RIAA off your back. The simplest is to disable your P2P client’s available file listing or turning off outbound traffic altogether. Other ways are to
use encryption
(although this is usually to get around ISP blocks) or
download to an offsite machine
. Hopefully, though, this judgment and eventual payout will make the recording companies reconsider the amount of lawsuits they file and to use less aggressive legal tactics.
permalink | 13 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "40563",
"author": "miles",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T04:41:29",
"content": "Portland 0regon?Portland or seeks exactly that?Come on, this is ridiculous, oregon are we to assume that you don’t use this font when you copy and paste news articles into hackaday.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,377,771.746161 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/14/creepy-robot-eye-follows-you-and-winks-in-response/ | Creepy Robot Eye Follows You And Winks In Response | rossfairgrieve | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"art",
"artwork",
"creepy",
"eye",
"interaction",
"interactive",
"robot",
"robotics",
"robots"
] | Opto-Isolator
is an interesting art installation that was
on display at the Bitforms Gallery in NYC
. This single movement-tracking eye creates a statement about how we view art and is a response to the question “what if art could view us?”. The somewhat creepy display not only follows the person viewing it, but mimics blinks a second later and averts its gaze if eye contact is kept up for too long. Its creators [Golan Levin] and [Greg Baltus] have done a great job mimicking human behavior with such a simple element and the social implications of it are truly fascinating.
If they wanted to, [Levin] and [Baltus] could possibly crank up the spook factor by adding
facial recognition
and programming it to remember how certain people interact with it, then tailor its behavior to wink at different rates or become more shy or bold, depending on the personality of the person watching it. Of course, that would require that someone goes back to it more than once…
[via
Glass Tumbler
]
permalink | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "40560",
"author": "Ross Snider",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T02:55:29",
"content": "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oxusxckjey",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40561",
"author": "Pavlo",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T03:44:16",
... | 1,760,377,772.157331 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/14/watching-dvds-on-your-wii/ | Watching DVDs On Your Wii | Benjamin Eckel | [
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Nintendo Wii Hacks"
] | [
"dvd",
"hombrew",
"homebrewchannel",
"mplayer",
"nintendo",
"twilighthack",
"wii"
] | 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
.
permalink | 9 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "40555",
"author": "0xtob",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T01:16:28",
"content": "Original announcement of the hack:http://hackmii.com/2008/08/libdi-and-the-dvdx-installer/If you have a modchip you need to install patchmii first (link in the announcement), otherwise it will not work.",
... | 1,760,377,771.994379 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/14/new-discovery-channel-show-starring-hackers/ | New Discovery Channel Show Starring Hackers | Kimberly Lau | [
"Misc Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"discovery channel",
"DiscoveryChannel",
"gadgets",
"hacker",
"joe grand",
"JoeGrand",
"mike north",
"MikeNorth",
"prototype this",
"PrototypeThis",
"robots",
"terry sandin",
"TerrySandin",
"tv",
"zoz brooks",
"ZozBrooks"
] | A new
Discovery Channel show titled Prototype This!
will debut on October 15, 2008. Hoping to capture the same demographic as
Mythbusters
‘ audience, the show is about designing and creating robots, gadgets, and other things that nerds will love.
Prototype This!
is hosted by four wide-ranging experts: [Zoz Brooks], who’s got a PhD in robotics, [Mike North], who also has a PhD, in material sciences, [Terry Sandin], a special effects veteran of the Hollywood film industry, and [Joe Grand], who we’ve covered recently for his
Defcon badge work
. [Daniel Terdiman]’s glimpse behind the scenes reveals some interesting projects, from a stair-climbing robot to the creation of a pyro pack. We’ll be sure to set our DVRs to record.
[via
Zero Day
]
permalink | 15 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "40540",
"author": "Fate",
"timestamp": "2008-08-14T20:44:38",
"content": "This looks like it might be good. I hope that it bumps Smash Lab off the air as that show is absolutely horrible.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40541",
... | 1,760,377,771.930273 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/14/led-floor-captures-digital-footprints/ | LED Floor Captures Digital Footprints | Kimberly Lau | [
"LED Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"floor",
"flooring",
"footprints",
"led",
"leds",
"sensacell"
] | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpRE6CM3oOY&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]
Sensacell
created a unique interactive flooring system for the
2008 World Expo in Zaragoza, Spain
. Comprised of 1000 LED panels, the 250 foot installation is covered in architectural glass and lights up in response to pressure. We like what different people are doing in this clip; from walking in a line to dragging a mop over the floor, the results are undeniably captivating and ultimately irresistible.
[via
Gizmodo
]
permalink | 7 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "40535",
"author": "strider_mt2k",
"timestamp": "2008-08-14T19:20:45",
"content": "They cut away when the most potentially interesting thing was about to happen: when the stroller wheels rolled over it.The mop made up for it, but not by much.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,377,772.200977 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/14/modding-the-acer-aspire-one-with-bluetooth/ | Modding The Acer Aspire One With Bluetooth | Caleb Kraft | [
"classic hacks",
"computer hacks",
"laptops hacks",
"Netbook Hacks"
] | [
"acer",
"ApireOne",
"asus701",
"Asuseeepc",
"bluetooth",
"tnkgrl"
] | [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.
permalink | 9 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "40532",
"author": "Keaton reckard",
"timestamp": "2008-08-14T21:20:57",
"content": "nothing new",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40533",
"author": "strider_mt2k",
"timestamp": "2008-08-15T17:08:39",
"content": "Nothin... | 1,760,377,772.03925 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/14/poiplay-led-poi/ | PoiPlay – LED Poi | Caleb Kraft | [
"LED Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"led",
"poi",
"poiplay"
] | PoiPlay
is an elegant mix of new technology and traditional medium.
Poi
, Maori for ball, is a traditional form of juggling originating in New Zealand. In poi, a ball at the end of a rope or chain is swung in circular motion to develop visual patterns. Often augmented by flame, and more recently LEDs and glow sticks.
The PoiPlay device has 28 RGB LEDs in a 1 foot long enclosure at the end of a rope. They have a 1mbit per second bidirectional wireless interface, three Atmel processors, a lithium ion battery, and a charger. The base station controls not only the PoiPlay but the music as well. All the control software that resides on the PC was written in Perl and communicates via USB port under Cygwin.
They have built the devices to be individually addressable with the capability of being grouped by subnet. This feature isn’t supported by the software yet, but they say it should be done by the next show in 2009.
The site, while pretty offers very little information. Some construction shots would be fantastic. Go check it out though, the pictures are mesmerizing.
[thanks Jm]
permalink | 8 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "40524",
"author": "dnafrequency",
"timestamp": "2008-08-14T18:50:09",
"content": "I think I just creamed my pants a little",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40525",
"author": "MattTC",
"timestamp": "2008-08-14T19:01:51",
... | 1,760,377,772.122031 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/13/homemade-tube-screamer-clone/ | Homemade Tube Screamer Clone | Benjamin Eckel | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"guitar",
"guitarpedal",
"instructables",
"pedal",
"tonepad",
"ts808",
"ts9",
"tube screamer",
"TubeScreamer"
] | [jonboytang] documented his construction of a
clone of the famous Tube Screamer overdrive pedal
from a set of
plans found at tonepad
. The tonepad site says you can use the plans to build either a TS-9 or a TS-808, both of which have been classic staples in every guitar player’s setup since the 70s. Although the old parts are no longer available, these new variants still have a really nice sound.
This project is really just a look into [jonboytang]’s etching and enclosure building process, but it may be useful for someone. The build and the circuit look really simple so this would be a great project for guitar players looking to learn how to etch their own PCBs. If you need more information on etching, we would suggest starting out by reading
our How-To on etching single sided PCBs
. If you are lazy and would rather spend a little money, check out
tonepad’s online store
. They have a board for this project and many others.
permalink | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "40519",
"author": "Toshibi",
"timestamp": "2008-08-14T02:15:28",
"content": "I think I may make the Big Muff Pi my first real electronics project (the other ones have been ugly kludges). My band used it back in the 90’s in the studio and it had a nice distortion/fuzz sound.",
"p... | 1,760,377,772.076192 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/13/burning-in-the-siftables/ | Burning In The Siftables | Caleb Kraft | [
"News",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"interface",
"modular",
"physicalinterfacce",
"siftables",
"tangibleinterface",
"wireless"
] | [Curiouslee] put up some pictures of his
Siftables burn in
. He got them in the mail with all their accessories and decided to make a special box to carry it all. He started with an ArtBin parts box and cut out dividers where necessary to make everything fit nice and tidy.
The
Siftables
are quite interesting. They are an information interface that is supposed to be more physical and natural. The analogy they use is a container of nuts and bolts can be sifted through quite easily using your hands. They envision us being able to sift through data similarly. They also mention that it could be used as a gestural interface as well.
Each unit is a small device with a screen, wireless communication, and IR sensors. There are some pictures of the units in action as well as a video on their site.
[via
Make Flickr Pool
]
permalink | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "40515",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2008-08-14T02:49:39",
"content": "i want some!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40516",
"author": "isforinsects",
"timestamp": "2008-08-14T05:31:59",
"content": "Mike/Curiousl... | 1,760,377,772.279418 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/13/rgb-monome-clone/ | RGB Monome Clone | Caleb Kraft | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"classic hacks",
"digital audio hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"monome",
"rgb",
"rgbLED",
"rgbmonome",
"sparkfun"
] | [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.
permalink | 9 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "40508",
"author": "emilio",
"timestamp": "2008-08-13T19:25:22",
"content": "sweet, man! those monomes are hilariously overpriced, so kudos for sidestepping them and building an even better one! granted, those sparkfun button pads aren’t cheap, but this probably all came out under ... | 1,760,377,772.367523 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/12/google-releases-keyczar/ | Google Releases KeyCzar | Caleb Kraft | [
"News"
] | [
"cryptography",
"encryption",
"google",
"keyczar"
] | Google has
released keyCzar
, a cryptographic toolkit that supports encryption and authentication for both symmetric and public-key algorithms.
Cryptography is a common problem area for web programmers. keyCzar aims to help alleviate some of the issues by supplying safe defaults, tagging versions, and a simple interface.
[via
Zero Day
]
permalink | 9 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "40418",
"author": "William Kinirons",
"timestamp": "2008-08-12T18:23:40",
"content": "Let Google keep the keys to the castle, direct traffic to the castle, AND charge to send it there?Im in!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "40419... | 1,760,377,772.581474 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2008/08/11/defcon-16-glimpses-of-the-network-operations-center/ | Defcon 16: Glimpses Of The Network Operations Center | Kimberly Lau | [
"cons",
"News"
] | [
"defcon",
"defcon16",
"hardware",
"noc",
"security"
] | Wired’s Threat Level takes us on a
photo tour of the Defcon Network Operations Center
, giving a unique behind-the-scenes perspective of one of the largest computer security conventions. The Defcon Network Operations Center is run by a volunteer group named the “Goons”. They keep operations running smoothly and securely with both high and low-tech resources, like a
Cisco
fiber switch and an armed guard, to protect the router and firewall.
permalink | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "40414",
"author": "jose lope",
"timestamp": "2008-08-12T05:25:59",
"content": "Best PSA message ever…“We’d like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors for this year’s network security … Cisco… and Smith and Wesson…”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,377,772.478398 |
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