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Hack A Day (39 unread)

iPod nano 6g closer to being cracked

Posted: December 29th, 2010, 11:00am MST by Mike Szczys

[Steven Troughton-Smith] figured out how to push signed firmware through to the iPod Nano 6g. This is accomplished by modifying iRecovery to recognize the device on the USB after forcing a recovery mode reboot. So no, this doesn’t mean that it has been cracked since it checks the firmware you push and reboots if it’s not approved. [...]
Custom Made Industrial Hookah

Posted: December 29th, 2010, 10:00am MST by James Munns

Since their invention in the 1500s, Hookahs have always been a way for craftsmen to show off skills by creating ornate, elaborate, and functional pieces of art. This still holds true today, as easily seen above. Found on the Hookah subreddit, this pipe was pieced together by recycling an old vodka bottle, as well decorating [...]
A Tricycle built for Plowing

Posted: December 29th, 2010, 9:00am MST by James Munns

What do you get when you combine two bikes, a couple levers, and a home made wooden shovel? Why, a light duty tricycle plow, of course! [Craig] of Firefly Workshop cobbled together this contraption to assist him in shoveling his 90′ driveway when a few inches fall. More convenient than a normal shovel, and much more environmentally [...]
Bringing the Shark to the Bee

Posted: December 29th, 2010, 7:20am MST by James Munns

Wireshark, a tool recognized universally as being one of the best network analyzers available, has long been used by legitimate network professionals as well as a shadier crowd (and everywhere in between). While useful for analyzing both wired and Wi-Fi traffic, monitoring 802.15.4 protocols (such as Zigbee) have not been a common use in the [...]
Jumbo Size New Years Countdown

Posted: December 28th, 2010, 2:04pm MST by James Munns

New Years celebrations tend to get bigger and bigger every year for most people, and [Brian] takes no exception. In order to top his lighted tree of a few years ago, he has concocted a 40′x40′ set of Seven-Segment displays made out of Christmas lights, hung from nearby trees. These displays would start counting down [...]
Perfect shots every time

Posted: December 28th, 2010, 11:58am MST by Caleb Kraft

A shot is a shot right? Well, not really. Usually we see a sloppy shot poured of a single type of alcohol and, depending on our current standing with the bartender, may or may not be full to the brim. The Pousse-Cafe makes an art out of your drinks by perfectly layering several liqueurs. Not [...]
Singing: With Plasma!

Posted: December 28th, 2010, 9:49am MST by James Munns

While there are many ways to produce audible sound, Plasma Speakers have to be one of the coolest. Usually very complex and expensive, we received a tip for a beginners guide to making one of these impressive novelties. Handily included are a set of schematics (one very simple schematic, the other with a few artistic illustrations). There [...]
Accidental LED fabrication

Posted: December 28th, 2010, 7:25am MST by Mike Szczys

[Grenadier] had a piece of silicon carbide sitting around that he planned to use when making a primitive diode called a Cat’sWhisker Diode. While probing he noticed that one of the crystals threw off a bit of light. He popped it off and used JB Weld to attach it to a brass plate. The peculiar [...]
MIT Inspired Impromptu SegStick

Posted: December 27th, 2010, 3:00pm MST by Greg R. Jacobs

If many of the readers out there longed for a Segway for Christmas but Santa didn’t bring you one, you are in luck. The aptly named Seg-Stick by [scolton] is a great way for cheap transportation. It uses a broomstick, along with two DeWalt cordless drills to power this bad boy on 6” wheels. Like [...]
Build a fusion reactor in your home

Posted: December 27th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Caleb Kraft

At first we were pretty skeptical of this home made fusion reactor instructable. However, we’ve seen home made fusion reactors before, so it is technically possible, we guess. The construction alone is interesting enough to warrant a few moments of looking. We’re not experts, so pardon us if we can’t tell you exactly what is [...]
Santa-Pede Challenge: Take Two

Posted: December 27th, 2010, 11:53am MST by Caleb Kraft

We are going to give the Santa-Pede Challenge another try. This time, you have till the end of January to do something (make it walk/crawl/scoot) with a dancing santa (or dancing musical holiday toy). As you can see in my example, it doesn’t have to be complicated or efficient in any way. Here are some [...]
LED lighthouse simulator

Posted: December 27th, 2010, 10:24am MST by Mike Szczys

This Christmas [Bill Porter] decided to show his parents that those college dollars were well spent. He upgraded the custom lighthouse light which he originally designed in high school for their garden fountain. He even went so far as to craft some retail-worthy packaging for the gift. We think it’s a wonderful design, on a [...]
Building a germanium fuzz face guitar pedal

Posted: December 27th, 2010, 8:00am MST by Mike Szczys

Rock in the new year with a guitar pedal you built yourself. [Doug Kovach] took the time to share his project with us in the video after the break. He starts with a bit of history of the artists that have used fuzz pedals similar to this one. It seems great guitarists have been hacking [...]
Tardis tree topper

Posted: December 27th, 2010, 7:01am MST by Mike Szczys

If your holiday tradition means waiting until Christmas to decorate the tree, it’s not too late. Build yourself Dr. Who’s Tardis as a tree topper. [Hybrid Blue] just finished the project, with includes illumination which you can see in the video after the break. The structure is made from balsa wood, painted, then filled with [...]
Hackaday links: December 26, 2010

Posted: December 26th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Obligatory tech tree It’s hard to let a Christmas go by without looking in on a geeky Christmas tree project. Luckily, [Peter Davenport] decided to share his Arduino and LCD shield tree. Blinking USB dude If you’ve got a 555 timer and some commonly salvageable components give this blinking LED man a try. The version above is [...]
External RAM for an ATmega128

Posted: December 16th, 2010, 2:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

Those who are familiar with Atmel’s line of 8-bit AVR microcontrollers should already know that some of them have support for external RAM. But have you ever actually used this feature? We haven’t. Now you can learn how it’s done by reading through this guide. It touches on all of the hardware, but doesn’t dwell [...]
DIY Breathalyzer may be the hit of the party

Posted: December 16th, 2010, 12:52pm MST by Mike Szczys

Okay, this may not be saving any lives, but it makes for a fun novelty at your next rager. Most Breathalyzers aim to keep you from driving when you’ve had too many. The Squidalyzer encourages party-goers to drink more and more by treating a high blood-alcohol-content with great fanfare. An Arduino, a gas sensor, and [...]
Peer network using graphing calculators

Posted: December 16th, 2010, 10:30am MST by Mike Szczys

These calculators are networked together, able to pass information and play games on a multi-screen playing field. All of this is thanks to [Christopher Mitchell's] work on a package called CalcNet. This networking software takes advantage of [Christopher's] shell and GUI for TI calculators called Doors CS. To demonstrate the high reliability and throughput of [...]
Chat list indicator uses hacked xmas lights

Posted: December 16th, 2010, 9:11am MST by Mike Szczys

Here’s a way to display which friends are logged into chat. This uses the same G-35 hacked Christmas lights we saw earlier in the month. [Andrejk's] company uses Microsoft Lync as their chat protocol when working in teams. The service has an SDK that allowed him to write some .NET code to check status and [...]
Reading a digital caliper with a microcontroller

Posted: December 15th, 2010, 12:34pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Maris] wanted a way to read measurements from a digital caliper electronically. He ended up using the TI Launchpad to accomplish this, but not all of the necessary hardware is seen above. The calipers cost him about $7 on eBay, and they have four interface pins which made this hack quite a bit easier. After [...]
Falling sand game on an FPGA

Posted: December 15th, 2010, 11:33am MST by Mike Szczys

This falling sand game runs on a field-programmable gate array. The Altera Cyclone II resides at the heart of that development board, running the game which was written in Verilog. [Skyler Schneider] modeled his project after a Java version of the game called Pyro Sand Game. He treats each pixel of the 640×480 VGA screen [...]
Developing a Sega Game Gear flash cartridge

Posted: December 15th, 2010, 9:46am MST by Mike Szczys

[Gerry O'Brien] tackled his most recent project, designing a flash ROM cartridge for the Sega Game Gear, with great success. Above you can see the test rig he used to reverse engineer the communications between an original ROM chip and the circuit board that it came on. He removed the chip, soldered a ZIF socket [...]
RepRapped Transistors

Posted: December 15th, 2010, 7:30am MST by Devlin Thyne

[Mr. Kim] and [John Sarik] made a presentation(pdf) at last weekend’s Botacon conference on how they made organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). A wooden RepRap, the fancifully named Unicorn from Makerbot (or printed from Thingiverse), hacked felt pen, a handful of chemicals, and a couple of pieces of lab equipment were needed to print (plot) out [...]
Update: 6809 computing

Posted: December 15th, 2010, 6:00am MST by Chris Nelson

[Matt Sarnoff] is designing his own 8-bit computer from scratch. This means not only designing the hardware but also writing his own kernel and custom libraries. Since we last saw this 8-bit machine hes added both video and sound output which has allowed him to start developing some software for his computer (see it play Conways game [...]
Garage Monitor Has an Extra Arduino

Posted: December 14th, 2010, 2:57pm MST by Devlin Thyne

[Jody] wanted to know when his garage door was open. He details his setup which uses a temperature sensor read by an Arduino to send over XBee radio to a computer running a Windows Service. We have seen this twice before, and is noteworthy as a lesson. The XBee radios have the ability to read [...]
Inventing robot athletes

Posted: December 14th, 2010, 1:39pm MST by Mike Szczys

The human body is an amazing instrument from an engineering standpoint. Replicating just one part of it proves extremely difficult but these athletic legs show a lot of promise. This is the work of a Japanese researcher named [Ryuma Niiyama]. He’s been working on the design for years, and is now using pneumatic actuators to mimic [...]
Make your own minimalist AVR ISP

Posted: December 14th, 2010, 11:46am MST by Chris Nelson

Giving a programmer is a great way to get people started in microcontrollers so If you want a cheap simple AVR programmer this might just be what you’re looking for. It combines the V-USB firmware, USBtiny software, a few resistors, and some zener diodes. An interesting trick using this programmer is if your trying to program another 8 pin ATtiny you [...]
My RepRap is bigger than yours

Posted: December 14th, 2010, 10:30am MST by Mike Szczys

This 3D printer build is a thing of beauty. It prints in ABS plastic on quite a large base. The platform provides all of the X and Y movement, making the gantry stationary except for the Z axis. it is possible to print parts up to about 15″x15″ by 13″ high. The gray hose snaking [...]
AVR HV Rescue Shield 2

Posted: December 14th, 2010, 8:49am MST by Mike Szczys

[Jeff Keyzer] has a new version of the HV Rescue Shield available. This tool allows you to use an Arduino to reset the fuse bits on AVR microcontrollers. This is necessary if you make a mistake and disable the reset pin, or choose the incorrect clock settings (this will probably happen to you at some [...]
MP3 player barely larger than an SD card

Posted: December 13th, 2010, 3:26pm MST by Mike Szczys

If your board fabrication and soldering skills are up to it, you can make your own tiny MP3 player. This rendition is just about half again as large as a standard SD card, whose slot is on the bottom of the board seen above. The heavy lifting is taken care of by a VS1011 MP3 [...]
Shooting fireballs from your wrists – Hadouken!

Posted: December 13th, 2010, 1:00pm MST by Mike Szczys

[Glass Giant's] wrist-mounted fireball launcher adds a little stage magic to his life. This method of fire production is several orders of magnitude less dangerous than other arm-attached flamethrowers or instrument-mounted torches. The module, which is strapped to the underside of his wrist, stores and lights a combination of flash cotton and flash paper. The [...]
Building a spectrophotometer

Posted: December 13th, 2010, 12:05pm MST by Mike Szczys

What can you make with a toilet paper roll, duct tape, and a graphing calculator? A stand for your homemade spectrometer. This is neither as pretty nor as accurate as a precision scientific instrument, but that doesn’t mean it’s useless. In fact, it works perfectly well for rudimentary observations. Light is shined through a sample [...]
DIY clamp helps with surface mount soldering

Posted: December 13th, 2010, 10:47am MST by Mike Szczys

Hackaday writer [Gerrit Coetzee] built a simple clamp to aid in surface mount component soldering. This cheap, easily made device uses gravity to hold tiny components in place. The tip of the bolt is pointed, but gently like a ballpoint pen so as not to harm the components with a sharp tip. Roughly position your [...]
Putting too many horses in a golf cart

Posted: December 13th, 2010, 5:19am MST by Mike Szczys

Want to put 100 horses into your golf cart and then take it to the Dragstrip? Why not? [Mac McAlpine] did just that by dropping a 2007 GSXR 600 EFI into a 1987 gas-powered Yamaha golf cart. After the break you can see a video of the test run, as well as an overview of the [...]
Game Boy VGA using an FPGA

Posted: December 12th, 2010, 3:34pm MST by Mike Szczys

[ViDAR] was looking for a project to keep him occupied and settled on creating a VGA converter for his Game Boy. He had some difficulty finding pinouts for the LCD and CPU but working with what was known, and an oscilloscope, he found the necessary signal. Tap into just a few lines using those thin [...]
Make your own cookie cutters this year

Posted: December 12th, 2010, 2:33pm MST by Mike Szczys

In case you needed another reason to build, borrow, or buy a 3D printer, here’s one way to design and print your own cookie cutters. [Nikolaus Gradwohl] put together a processing app that aims to make the design process a bit easier. So if you’ve never designed a printable object before, but can get your [...]
Nook color rooted: Hands on

Posted: December 12th, 2010, 10:44am MST by Caleb Kraft

Nookdevs have released information on how to root your nook color. So naturally, I had to run out and get one. Who doesn’t want a multitouch android tablet for $250? The instructions for rooting are extremely simple. You really only need microSD card and a Linux/Windows/Mac computer to connect to. After rooting, your nook will work [...]
Jacob’s Ladder using EL wire

Posted: December 12th, 2010, 8:29am MST by Mike Szczys

For Halloween [Paul] wanted to build a Jacob’s Ladder without the peril that working with high voltage might bring. He was inspired by a sequencer board for electroluminescent wire and decided to build a Jacob’s Ladder simulator using the glowing material. What he ended up with is quite convincing. Eight segments of EL wire have been mounted [...]
Kids type with their eyes, robot arm prints their words

Posted: December 11th, 2010, 2:07pm MST by Mike Szczys

F.A.T. took it to the next level, combining a couple of their projects for the Cinekid festival. This contraption lets kids write their names with their eyes for printing by a robot arm. The first part is a glasses-free version of the EyeWriter, originally developed as an assistive technology. The system uses some IR LEDs [...]