Silly string as a tool for urban combat? You bet! Turns out the stuff is great for revealing trip wires. Read more…
[via BoingBoing]
Category: Hacked
Micro NES Project
Now this in a cool hack. He crammed a Famicon (Nintendo) into a hand held unit that he built from the ground up.
MAKE 04
The latest issue of the tech DIY magazine is soon to be hitting my mail box, if you don’t have a subscription already you can buy from Amazon (and a nice discount I might add). The editor, Mark Frauenfelder has this to say about the latest issue:
The fourth volume of Make magazine, which I edit, is now available on Amazon.
The major projects include an electric cigar box guitar, a kit to take high speed strobe photos (so you can capture a balloon or light bulb in mid-pop), and how to turn kids’ electronic toys into musical instruments. There’s also a guide to a bunch of different kinds of kits (electronic, beer making, robots, etc) and a how-to by Mr. Jalopy on converting a vintage hi-fi cabinet into an LP and CD ripper, burner, and player.
David Pescovitz started a new column for the magazine called Proto, which profiles cool makers in corporate labs around the world, and Cory Doctorow weighs in on the Supreme Court’s unfortunate Grokster decision.
I’m especially excited about the do-it-yourself section with ways to hack your coffee and espresso makers.
I can’t wait to read this!
Buy MAKE 04 from Amazon here
MAKE site
[spotted over at BoingBoing]
CD Sextant
This is by far one one the more impressive DIY projects that I have seen of late. Normaly a sextant is an expencive and very precice instrument but with a CD case, some LEGO bricks and a few mirrors you can build one. I don’t think you wan’t to use it to sail around the world but you could ( by the way you had better be an ace at celestrial navigation before you start Mister!)
Anyway, the project is simple enough that you could build it in a weekend. It would be fun to take out on trips and ‘shoot the sun’ and try to figure out where you are on this big ‘ol sphere we call home.
[via hack a day]
CD sextant
The High Altitude Slug Project
No, this isn’t some banana slug snuff project, the slug this uses is the Linksys NSLU2 wireless USB storage device. After a little firmware hacking you can convert your ‘Slug’ into a web server, streaming MP3 server, or eve a VoIP PBX!
Not to be outdone by others, these guys are planning on sending theirs up in a tiny R/C airplane attached to a weather balloon. The plan is to release it at 100,000 feet and have it fly home. On it’s way down the craft will take photos and make temperature and barometric readings. All this will be run by the 266MHz XScale computer in the NSLU2. Pretty darn impressive for a simple wireless USB port!
PDA Robots
I was looking at my old Palm III PDA and thinking just how handy it was in it’s day. I still think the handwriting recognition on it was the best.
I was thinking that something so useful shouldn’t be stuck in a box somewhere to be forgotten, it should be hacked and mangled until it can do something else! 🙂
I found this book, “The Ultimate Palm Robot“. Looks like to might have some useful info on how to interface hardware on to the Palm platform. Looks like it uses the Palm Pilot Robot Kit as the base for the projects. The holonomic drive system will turn just about any head. You can read a nice review of it here at the Gadgeteer. If your up for spending $300US on your little ‘bot your doing better than me!
For $85US there is the SVX 203C Robotic development system, but it looks like they might not be sold any more.
Finally, there is this clever little paper manipulating robot that uses a Palm III as it’s brain.
So it looks like if you do have an old Palm PDA you can still get some action out of it in the form of a robot.