BuffaloFeeds » Hack A Day » September 18, 2009

Hack A Day (8 unread)

Timelapse dolly

Posted: September 18th, 2009, 2:00pm MDT by Caleb Kraft

[Andrew Curtis] does fantastic timelapse photography. He found that he wanted to be able to move the camera while taking the shots to give motion to the final product. While this isn’t exactly a new idea, not too many people mess with it. The dolly to do it with can be quite expensive as it [...]
Are you human? Then type out this book

Posted: September 18th, 2009, 1:00pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Google has acquired reCAPTCHA and plans to use the system for digitizing books. Wait… what? CAPTCHA is the method of requiring a user to type in a visually obscured word to prove they are human. How can this digitize books? The answer is a bit obscure and takes some time to discover, but you’ll have [...]
Super Game Boy boot ROM dumped

Posted: September 18th, 2009, 11:45am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Costis] managed to dump a copy of the boot ROM for the Nintendo Super Game Boy. This small piece of code (256 bytes) writes a graphic to the display at boot time as it loads the ROM on the game cartridge. He was able to dump the code by finding the exact point at which [...]
How to write udev rules

Posted: September 18th, 2009, 11:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

Since the adoption of Kernel 2.6, Linux has used the udev system to handle devices such as USB connected peripherals. If you want to change the behavior when you plug something into a USB port, this section is for you. As an example, we will use a USB thumb drive but these methods should translate [...]
Touch sensitive keypad

Posted: September 18th, 2009, 10:00am MDT by Mike Szczys

[Viacheslav] built a keypad that uses human capacitance to detect key presses. Unlike normal keys which close a physical connection, his project detects touch through the PCB substrate. He uses the analog comparator of an AVR ATmega8 to detect the moment of zero crossing and then measures the time it takes to discharge in order [...]
Tech leaders enlisted to help the newspaper industry

Posted: September 18th, 2009, 9:00am MDT by Chris Gilmer

It is pretty obvious to everyone that the newspaper industry is in a tiny bit of trouble. They have thus far failed to reach the rapidly changing landscape of news, online news at that. They must do something to keep our interests up, or end up flailing on the ground. Microsoft and Google among others [...]
USB Isolation

Posted: September 18th, 2009, 8:00am MDT by Devlin Thyne

[Oleg] over at Circuits@Home has made a USB isolator for his hacking needs. This isolator separates the signal, ground, and power lines of a USB host device, such as a PC, from a USB device like a USB oscilloscope or logic analyzer. This might be useful for Keyboard sniffing, ECG, EEG or diagnosing the control [...]
Vintage Video: Computing Across America

Posted: September 18th, 2009, 7:32am MDT by Phil Burgess

in 1983, [Steve Roberts] packed up a Tandy 100 laptop and a 5-watt solar panel, fleeing suburbia on his recumbent bicycle on what would become a 17,000 mile journey that forever cemented his place in the geek pantheon…not just as a technology hacker, but as one of the preeminent “life hackers,” pursuing his own dreams [...]