BuffaloFeeds » Hack A Day » April 17, 2010

Hack A Day (4 unread)

Beginner concepts: Using an accelerometer

Posted: April 17th, 2010, 3:50pm MDT by Mike Szczys

Accelerometers make for nice user interaction, that’s why every Apple product seems to have one included and the Nintendo Wii is still alive despite its underpowered graphics capabilities. Adding one to your project is pretty simple, just a matter of reading in analog data and interpreting it according to the datasheet. If you’re just starting [...]
Improving a motorized toy

Posted: April 17th, 2010, 2:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

[Dan Fruzzetti's] daughter was delighted to get a motorized vehicle from her Grandparents, but [Dan] was unimpressed with the stock features. The lead-acid battery supplied remarkable life between charges, but the vehicle only had one feature: a go button that routed juice to the bipolar motor. After the break we’ll look at his improvements to [...]
Four channel logic analyzer

Posted: April 17th, 2010, 1:30pm MDT by Mike Szczys

If you’ve got a graphic LCD lying around you can build this four-channel logic analyzer with a couple handfuls of cheap components. [Ronald de Bruijn's] design uses a PIC18F4580 to sample up to four logic inputs at a maximum resolution of 2 MHz. He’s included the PCB artwork so that you can etch your own [...]
Zune gets hacked, OpenZDK

Posted: April 17th, 2010, 1:03pm MDT by Jakob Griffith

Here is one that really got some of us at the HAD offices excited (yes, we own Zunes). The introduction of the Open Zune Development Kit. Sure, there was XNA, and we even toyed around with it. But anyone will quickly realize just how limited XNA is, especially with older hardware. OpenZDK is in its infancy, [...]