Hack a Day

You can look and look, but you won’t find a Super Nintendo inside of this retro gaming rig. [Webrow] is giving his vintage hardware a rest, and taking this all-in-one game emulator suitcase wherever he goes.

The machine at the heart of his build is of course a Raspberry Pi. You really can’t beat the ubiquitous board for cost, power, and hardware extensibility. An LCD panel from a broken laptop comes along for the ride having been mounted in the lid. For a long time there was no hope for reusing these panels, but [Webrow] found an adapter board (for nearly the same price as the RPi) which converts the DVI from the Pi to the LVDS needed by the screen. The connections and mounting scheme for the screen were where most of the project work was done. Connecting the controllers simply involved soldering some SNES controller sockets to an RPi breakout connector. We do have to compliment him on the red bezel which hides all of the power cords and other unsightly bits. The case look sturdy and ready to play!

This isn’t a hack that shows you how to start a car without the keys. It’s a way to ditch the bulky keyring for a set of fold-out keys. [Colonel Crunch] removed the blades from the pocket knife and replaced them with the two keys for his car (one is ignition and door locks, the other opens the trunk). He didn’t take pictures of the process, but he did link to this unrelated guide on how it’s done.

About one minute into the video after the break we see each step in the build process. First the plastic trim is removed from either side of the knife. The blades are basically riveted on; there’s a pin which holds them in and either side of it has been pressed to that it can no longer move through the holes in the frame. To get around this one side is ground off with a rotary tool, and the pin is then tapped out with a hammer. The removed blade/scissors/tool is used as a template to cut the body of the key down to size and shape.  The pin is then hammered back into place before putting the plastic trim back on.

[via Reddit]

Ever so slowly, we’re inching towards a world of Internet-based electronic design tools. The state of these tools, including Upverter and other cloud-based solutions, hasn’t been all that great until now; with any new piece of schematic capture and PCB layout software, the libraries will be woefully inadequate in the beginning. This is about to change, because circuits.io is now allowing Eagle libraries to be imported.

As you may well be aware, Eagle is the de facto standard for homebrew and hobbyist schematic capture and board layout software. Even though Eagle isn’t open source and is limited to rather small PCBs with the free version, somehow Eagle has retained its popularity, most likely due to the huge number of component libraries available.

By allowing users and designers to import Eagle libraries, the folks at circuits.io are capitalizing on a huge amount of work done by designers and engineers over the years in creating custom Eagle parts for just about every component imaginable. It’s a great accomplishment for the circuits.io team and a boon for anyone wanting to move their PCB design tools over to the cloud.

This pair of musical keyboard hacks both use light to detect inputs. The pair of tips came in on the same day, which sparks talk of consipiracy theory here at Hackaday. Something in the weather must influence what types of projects people take on because we frequently see trends like this one. Video of both projects is embedded after the jump.

On the left is a light-sensitive keyboard which [Kaziem] is showing off. In this image he’s rolling a marble around on the surface. As it passes over the Cadmium Sulfide sensors (which are arranged in the pattern of white and black keys from a piano keyboard) the instrument plays pitches based on the changing light levels. [Thanks Michael via Make]

To the right is [Lex's] proximity sensor keyboard. It uses a half-dozen Infrared proximity sensor which pick up reflected light. He calls it a ‘quantised theremin’ and after seeing it in action we understand why. The overclocked Raspberry Pi playing the tones reacts differently based on distance from the keyboard itself, and hand alignment with the different sensors.

This breadboarded circuit is [Sergio's] solution to controlling appliances wirelessly. Specifically he wanted a way to turn his pool pump on and off from inside the house. Since he had most of the parts on hand he decided to build a solution himself. What he ended up with is an RF base station that can learn to take commands from different remote devices.

The main components include the solid state relay at the bottom of the image. This lets the ATtiny13 switch mains voltage appliances. The microcontroller (on the copper clad square at the center of the breadboard) interfaces with the green radio frequency board to its left. On the right is a single leaf switch. This acts as the input. A quick click will toggle the relay, but a three-second press puts the device in learning mode. [Sergio] can then press a button on an RF remote and the device will store the received code in EEPROM. As you can see in the clip after the break, he even included a way to forget a remote code.

Build a better lock and someone will make a tool to open it without the key. Or in this case they’ve made a tool to discover the key using a trip to through the deep freeze. The Forensic Recovery of Scrambled Telephones — or FROST — uses cold temperatures and a custom recovery image to crack Android encryption keys.

Cold boot hacks go way back. They leverage use of low temperatures to slow down the RAM in a device. In this case, the target phone must already be powered on. Booting a phone that uses the encryption offered by Android 4.0 and newer requires the owner’s pass code to decrypt the user partition. But it then remains usable until the next power cycle. By freezing the phone, then very quickly disconnecting and reconnecting the battery, researchers were able to flash their own recovery image without having the encryption key cleared from RAM. As you can see above, that recovery package can snoop for the key in several different ways.

[Thanks Rob]

For a few years now, [Michael] has wanted to put the guts of a Game Boy Advance – the small clamshell version with a backlit LCD – into the classic and comfortable DMG-01 ‘brick’ Game Boy. He’s finally finished with his project, and we’ve got to say it’s looking pretty good.

The build began by excising the backlit LCD from an old clamshell Game Boy Advance and hot gluing it to the screen bezel of an old DMG-01. The cartridge slot from the original ‘brick’ Game Boy remained, but this design decision did require a fair bit of soldering and a length of ribbon cable.

Since [Michael] is using the original cartridge slot found in the original Game Boy, he can’t play any games in the smaller Game Boy Advance cartridge format. Still, it should be possible to build an adapter to fit those smaller cartridges inside the larger Game Boy, and he can always play Tetris and Little Sound DJ, so nothing of value is lost.

We’ve seen Arduino-powered Twitter machines, and even some that can send text messages, but how about one that’s a video phone? That’s what the guys over at Cooking Hacks put together with their very impressive 3G Arduino shield.

On board the shield is an internal GPS receiver, microphone, speaker, 3G module, and a camera sensor with VGA resolution. The 3G module is able to act as a 3G modem via a USB connection, allowing any computer to take advantage of wireless Internet with a SIM card.

While in their tutorial the guys use a terminal running on their computer to send AT commands to place a call, it’s possible to simply put all that info in a sketch making for a small, battery-powered video link straight to your cell phone. Seems like the perfect piece of hardware for a wireless, 3G-enabled video feed for a robot. You can check out the video from their tutorial after the break.

[Steve] has wanted a stereo microscope in his lab for years now. Since his eyesight is becoming progressively worse, he figured it was time to look around on ebay and see what he could dig up. He ended up buying a very cheap microscope without a stand, figuring he could build one rather easily. Well, the articulated stand was rather easy to put together, but it did take a whole lot of time to build.

The main goal of [Steve]‘s project was to have his microscope at the end of an articulated arm. With this setup, he could easily tuck the ‘scope against the back of his workbench when not in use and easily bring it out when necessary. This meant building a custom arm, though, and in the building process [Steve] used just about every machine tool he had at his disposal.

The end result is a fully articulated arm that can be moved to just about any point on his workbench and adjusted up and down for those really weird project. [Steve] says this may be a great introduction to home powder coating, and he really should build a small LED light source, but we’re loving the project so far.

Here’s something that’s making its way to the top of our, “why didn’t we think of that” list. It’s called 3Doodler, a device based on the plastic extrusion technology found in 3D printers stuffed into a pen that fits in the palm of your hand.

If you’re familiar with 3D printers, the design of the 3Doodler should come as second nature to you. Inside this electronic plastic-melting pen is a small motor that forces 3mm ABS or PLA filament through a heated nozzle. With the 3Doodler, you can draw in three dimensions by simply lifting the tip of the 3Doodler into the air.

While 3Doodler is obviously aimed at creating plastic objects by hand, we’re wondering if this device could be successfully adapted to work with 3D printers. The 3Doodler team put a very, very small and inexpensive extruder and hot end inside the 3Doodler, and they’ve got something on their hands we’d love to tear apart just to see how it ticks.

You can see the 3Doodler introduction video after the break.

This solar clock was built using a lot of salvaged parts. We find it interesting that [Nereus] combined a ring of storage capacitors with a power cell (translated) to create a hybrid energy storage setup.

The machine translation makes it a bit rough to understand how this works, but the schematic helps quite a bit. The pair of solar cells, which were pulled from some cheap solar cellphone chargers, feed the bank of capacitors encircling the clock face. If placed in a room that gets plenty of sunlight the cells will top off the capacitors which then feed an ICL7663 regulator. We’d love to hear comments on this part choice, as it’s our experience that linear regulators are rather inefficient. But anyway, the regulated power feeds both the energy cell as well as the clock motor. When output from the regulator dips the battery picks up the slack. The project also includes a voltometer and thermometer which can be displayed on the tiny LCD screen just about the six o’clock tick mark.

Now if you want something completely battery-free you’ll have to check out [Jack Buffington's] take on solar clock.

[Thanks Manekinen]

We’re not sure if [Apachem25] is just lucky, or if installing Auxiliary ports on most car stereos is this easy. The dealership wanted $95 to put one in, but he managed to add a 3.5″ audio-in port to his car stereo for just a couple of bucks.

The connector on the back of his head unit is a 2×4 set of pins recessed in a protective plastic ring. It turns out that the audio connector cable for a PC CD-ROM drive has a 1×4 socket that is perfect for this. [Apachem25] simply clipped one of those cables in half and used both ends to interface with the Aux port. He found the pin-out for his particular model on the Internet. He needed a specific resistance value between two of the pins to get the deck to let him use the input. All that he needed was a quick bit of soldering. The left, right, and ground are brought around the side and soldered to an audio jack he added in the face plate of the unit.

If you’re still rockin’ the cassette deck our favorite automotive Bluetooth solution is still this one for a classic Beatle.

[via Reddit]

We were surprised to see all of the Christmas gifts that revolved around Minecraft. Seems like there’s a lot of stuff for sale, but we still like the DIY spirit that comes with making your own. [Thacrudd] recently finished this project. It’s a wall lamp that looks like Minecraft’s diamond ore.

The enclosure is a wood box that used to contain chocolates. After studying the pixel art texture for the game’s diamond ore blocks he marked out the pattern and headed over to the scroll to rough them out before finishing with files and a rasp. Next came paint, which was sourced as a sample from the home store. This left him with one shade of gray, but the variations were easy to add by mixing it with white or black.

A strip of white LEDs gives the lamp its inner glow. The openings have been covered with blue acrylic which keep the dust out while providing the appropriate hue.

[via Reddit]

Okay, first of all: holy crap! Even if you didn’t know this started as a rusty table saw, the workstation that came out of this project is just phenomenal. It really makes us wish we had looked around for a used model with a cast iron top instead of going for the cheap stamped metal one that was ready to use.

[Simon Leblanc] started with a Delta contractor’s saw that was rusty inside and out. The refurbishment began by removing the table and everything from the inside. The rods and gears were all cleaned up before he began to sand away the rust on the table itself. But obviously he didn’t stop with getting the saw to be functional again. He built a small set of cabinets to serve as the base for the saw. They went inside of this larger assembly that combines an MDF table top with an Accusquare rip fence to greatly increase the working surface of the tool.

Now he needs to start in on an extra fancy CNC jig for the thing.

[via Reddit]

This grid of letters is a puzzle game for tablet devices called Ruzzle. The contraption attached is an automated solver which uses LEGO Mindstorm parts to input the solutions on the screen. [Alberto Sarullo] is the mastermind behind the project. As you can seen in his demo video after the break he has a flair for the cinematic. But he makes you work a little bit to discover the details of his project.

His post gives a general overview of how this works. A Linux box takes a screenshot of the Ruzzle board. After processing the graphics with Imagemagick he uses Tesseract — an Optical Character Recognition program — to figure out which letter is on each square of the playing area. From there NodeJS is used to discover all possible words with the help of a dictionary file. The final solutions are pushed to the LEGO parts to be traced out on the touch screen with a stylus. The nice thing is that he published all of his code, so you can drill much deeper into the project by pawing through his repository.

It seems there are a lot of people who have the same complaint about the STM32 Discovery boards; it can be difficult to add external hardware to them. Don’t get us wrong, we appreciate all of the pins being broken out (as opposed to the Stellaris Launchpad which we think has too few available). Here’s [Scot Kornak's] solution to the problem. He created three different baseboards which the STM32 Discovery plugs into. Each is for a different model of dev board: the VL, F3, and F4. But he also thinks the baseboard we saw in this other project is a good choice for an F4 solution.

These large PCB add-ons bring functionality in two different ways. The first is by using expandable ports for drop in modules like serial communications connectors or Analog/SPI/I2C modules. For us, the second method is the most desirable. He routes each GPIO port to a 2×8 header and uses IDC cables (rainbow cable in these images) to connect them to a breadboard. Seeing this makes us wish STM had used discreet clusters of 16 pins instead of those super long dual pin headers.

Here’s an enclosure which was designed with OpenSCAD and cut out on a CNC router. [Matthew Venn] wrote about the project because he sees tons of 3D printing hacks that use the software, but almost never hears about it as a tool for laser cutting or CNC router/mill work. When we read that we thought we must have seen a lot of 2D hacks but a search of Hackaday’s previous offerings proved us wrong. Just this week we heard about the software in use with the Makerbot. Or you could go back about a year and read about creating 3D molds. But nothing on 2D work.

His post is a quick read and shows off the bare bones of the case designs he’s been working with for a few years. By referencing the code itself, and playing with how it changes the render in OpenSCAD he makes a strong case for quick and easy enclosure design. If you use this technique make sure to document your experience because we want to hear about it!

The image to the left doesn’t make this look like much, but inside of the cardboard vending machine lives a clever Rube-Goldberg device. The video after the break gives a look at the inner workings to show how a quarter manages to dispense a full can of Coke. But that’s about all the detail we get on the project.

There are two sets of counterweights used in the design. Some marbles, and what look like giant pinballs. The coin chute, located on the left side of the venting machine, funnels the money into the waiting marble. When the marble rolls off it lands on a spoon. The weight rotates the spoon-filled disk and causes one of the waiting pinballs to drop from their rack. As that metal ball falls it operates a ratcheting system to dispense just one can. It looks like the capacity of the machine is limited to two refreshing cans of sugary liquid, but that could be scaled up if more room were made for cans and counterweights alike.

[via Reddit]

[Jay] was looking for a way to make his own vias on homemade double-sided PCBs when he stumbled across this post from about five years ago. The technique shown here makes mechanical vias and was developed by [Retromaster]. There’s no soldering involved, instead he uses some solid core copper wire and a press to crush it tightly against the board.

The press is made from aluminum stock, with a couple of plates of stainless steel which come in contact with the board. The aluminum stock is easy to work with, but it’s relatively soft which is the reason for the addition of steel. He uses copper wire which already fits tightly in the hole through the substrate. After clipping off the excess as near to the board as possible a trip through the press leaves each side flat as shown in the inset image.

We looked through some of the other projects we’ve seen from [Retromaster] like the Atari 2600 in an FPGA and this emulated Amiga floppy drive. But we didn’t see any diy boards where he used this crushing technique.

There’s two really useful parts to this hack which involves sniffing the HDMI protocol’s HDCP security keys. The first is just getting at the signals without disrupting communications between two HDCP capable devices. To do so [Adam Laurie] started by building an HDMI breakout cable that also serves as a pass-through. The board seen above is known as an HDMI screw terminal board. The image shows one cable connecting to itself during the fabrication process. What he did was cut one end off of an HDMI cable, then used a continuity tester to figure out which screw terminal connects with which bare wire. After all the wires are accounted for the end with the plug goes to his TV, with a second cable connecting between the board’s socket and his DVD player.

The rest of his post is dedicated to sniffing the security keys. His weapon of choice on this adventure turns out to be a Bus Pirate but it runs a little slow to capture all of the data. He switches to a tool of his own design, which runs on a 60MHz PIC32 demo board. With it he’s able to get the keys which make decrypting the protected data possible.