Hardware Beyond the Hype
[Via Make]
Okay, you don’t actually throw it away, you take it back to the pharmacy, but CVS’s new single-use digital video camera follows in the footsteps of single-use digital still cams. And, like those “disposable” gadgets, geeks are excited by the hacking potential of the vidcam. Currently, the camera costs US$30 ($20 w/coupon) and after you’ve shot the max 20 minutes of footage, you return it to CVS andf they burn the contents onto a DVD (for an additional $12). Hackers have already gotten to work taking this thing apart and figuring out how to interface it with a PC for downloading content (giving you a decent digital camcorder for as little as $20).
[Via Make]
One of the questions we’ve been asked a lot recently is: How can I add an audio in jack to my existing car stereo? Some car stereos just don’t allow this capability, others have AUX IN pins in the back of the unit that can be used to solder on a jack, and some — where the CD players are separate from the receiver/radio (a.k.a. the “head unit”) — can be spliced into. This hack involves the latter set up. This guy has a 2001 Toyota Corolla where the CD player is in a separate unit. All he basically did was split the wires going from CD to the head and route them to a toggle switch and AUX IN jack (so he can switch between CD and auxiliary input). Presumably, this could be done with any stereo that has separate components like this wired to the head.
Tip: If you’re interested in knowing if your car stereo has AUX IN hackability, do a search on the car or stereo/head unit model and “aux in,” and with some pokin’ around, you’ll likely find what you’re looking for.
It was inedidable (“It’s what?”) Ine – ine – inedidable. (“One more time…” ) I SAID, it was INEDIBLE!! …that someone would put an iPod Shuffle in a Juicy Fruit pack.
I love it, I just wonder how easily it could end up in the trash, or whether Johnson, that nibbly schlub from IT, will try to eat it. It’s cool how the USB cap fits right at the red score lines on the pack.
[Via Protein Feed]
The two questions we get asked the most here at Street Tech Labs (besides: “Gareth, how do you keep your skin so soft and supple?”) are: “What the hell do I do with my cast-off PC?” and “What the F*** am I s’posed to do with all these junk CD-ROMs that keep coming in the mail!?” We tried to answer that second question in my robot book, using two AOL CDs to build a small robot development platform. Here’s another idea: Make a mod-looking desklamp.
Here’s a link to a similar lamp project, with more in-depth how-to instruction.
Like a lot of other cable standards, Ethernet Cat5 has wires in it that are unused. With a little bit of DIY aptitude, you can commandeer these shiftless wires and put them to work, delivering power to devices on the other end of the cable. This technique is called Power Over Ethernet (or POE). This tutorial shows you how to do it. Be careful though. If you’re not careful, you can fry your components, or worse yet, YOU.
Make has put up the first six pages of my Mousey the Junkbot article from Make No. 2. They did a really nice job on the design and photography for the piece. Paul Spinrad took the instructions from my text and built a version of the robot, making a few of his own design tweaks. Nice work all around.
Here’s a link to the PDF file.
[BTW: That’s a drawing, in the bottom left-hand corner, of Randy Sargent’s infamous 1996 Herbie the Robot, the grandpappy of all LM386-based bots, like Mousey.]
The latest issue of O’Reilly’s Make magazine is out. And look, that’s my Mousey robot project on the cover! Papa’s so proud.
Other articles in this issue include a DIY HDTV recorder project, Podcasting 101, extreme Star Wars bot building, an Atari 2600 PC case mod, and more cool stuff. If you haven’t seen Make yet, and your idea of fun is spending the weekend cavorting through the entrails of your PC, your TiVo, or anything else that has a warranty to violate, you have to check out this mag. Every geek that comes into my house goes right to the issue on my coffeetable and starts oohing and awing.
Check out this wild modding project. These two hardware hackers, looking to collaborate on a project, decided to build an autoracing sim inside of a junked car. They’ve got a forcefeedback steering wheel, working dashboard gauges, pedals, the works. The windshield screen is a white sheet held in place by a big-ass speaker for “in your face” sound.
Unfortunately, the project got slashdotted before we got a chance to blog it (and now the vids and some of the pics don’t load).
Flickr photoset of a Shuffle with the case removed and re-cased in a clear waterproof Shuffle cover. Quick. Easy. Cool looking (in a Deconstructionist sorta way).
[Via Shufflehacks]