Category: DIY

[It’s apparently DIY Monday here at Street Tech.] This enterprising fellow, Simple Simon, hacked up the Universal Dock adapter that comes with the iPod Nano to create his own built-in docker for his desk.

BTW: While you’re looking at this project on Flickr, check out some of Simple Simon’s other projects, especially his clever little USB Switch. It uses the power provided by the USB port to switch on a relay (on system start-up) which turns on a 120v circuit to power other devices (think: a big-boned transistor).

Via Hack-a-Day comes this link to a fairly simple and cheap way of adding a wireless remote to your PC. This guy used a US$20 Xbox DVD Kit (basically a remote and an IR receiver), a space USB cable, and the free AutoHotKey program to create a remote for his PC that can execute all sorts of control commands. The receiver can even still be used on your Xbox for movie control. Nifty!

I’ve been wanting to run Ethernet from my home media center in the living room to my office in the back of the house for a while now, but doing this means running Cat5 cable through the floor, above a drop ceiling in the basement, and up through the office floor. It also means buying a spool of Cat5 cable, the special Crimping Tool, the connectors and boots, plus the special silver lame’ jumpsuit, the goggles, and the propeller beanie (or maybe that’s just me).

This can all get expensive and… fussy. The easier and cheaper way to do this is to get a small spool (or bought per foot length) of Cat5 at your Home Despot, or similar, for the length you need for your run, and then just cut up a short Ethernet cable you already have, splicing the connectors to the two ends of your new cable. It’s not particularly pretty, but it works, and it’s cheap. My run would need to be about 35 feet (that’d cost me less than US$15 in per-foot Cat5 (and I have plenty of spare cables to sacrifice for connectors).

See this simple tutorial on Of Zen and Computing for more details.

You may have seen vids of the Mentos and Coke rockets and waterworks before, but this is a particularly spectacular one, with well choreographed geysers, soda bottles on swings, cool music, the works. These two backyard Bill Nyes burn through 200 liters of Coke and 500 Mentos in under 3 minutes! Crazy.

Thanks, Mikki!

The amazing LadyAda, hardware hacker extraordinaire, has posted an extremely detailed Instructables on her new, improved take on the ubiquitous Altoids tin USB device charger. She’s improved the circuit to make far more efficient use of the juice in two AA batts. The Instructables is far more than a how-to. She goes through the entire process of tackling an electronics problem, designing a solution, specing the parts, designing a PCB and getting it mass produced, assembling the project, testing, etc. Reading through this is quite a learning experience. She’s also making a kit available in her store. You can also just buy just the PCB, if you already have the other components. Nice job!

Hack247, a UK hacks site, has posted a how-to on building a wireless media extender for an Xbox running XBMC. The portable media center as an LCD pinched from a Sony PSOne and it can transmit remote commands back to the Xbox for full media control.

[Via hackAday]

You may have seen some of the how-tos online for using a toaster oven to bake-solder components on PCBs that use the BGA (Ball Grid Array) arrangement. But what do you do if you want to solder a fingernail-size chip onto a board and it’s not BGA? This Instructable shows you how. It’s definitely the kind of work that’ll grow hairs on your chest and your alpha geek cred will be uncontestable if you can do it. I wish I had the stones (and the soldering chops) to pull it off as I have a dead modem on a Series 1 TiVo I’d love to replace, but the components are just too damn tiny (and I don’t have the required microscope either).

[Via Make]

Did you know that the battery packs in many of your home tools and gadgets are just a bunch of rechargeable batteries inside of a plastic pack — and that the batteries that are used are usually on the cheap side (leading to less than spectacular batt life)? And, did you know that you can open that plastic case and replace the existing batteries with better ones? This Instructables project shows you how (on a cordless drill batt pack).

We’ve covered some commercially available geek watches here in the past. But how about homebrewing one of your own?

Hardware hacker extraordinaire (and fellow Make advisory board member) Joe Grand has created a cool POV Watch (as in “persistence of vision”). An array of LEDs on the watch band will show the time when you shake your arm. Not sure if Joe’s going to release this one as a kit, like he did with his Electronic Game Kit.

While we’re giving Todd Bailey all of this free publicity (he of the PCB bizney card), we might as well show off his bitchin’ binary bling-bling, a homemade LED watch that uses a PIC16F872 microcontroller and has a ribbon cable for a wrist band.

Instructions for making a similar LED watch can be found via this Make link.

You’ve caught us with the Mac unpacking pr0n in the past. Now we’re in the mood for some good old fashioned strippin.’ DJ, cue the bump n’ grind, while this brand new MacBook takes it ALL off. Is it getting hot in here, or has my heatsink become misaligned?

[Via TUAW]