August 2011

WASP Drone Plane Sniffs Open Wifi Networks

If you thought all you needed to do was keep an eye out for a van parked outside your house who might be sniffing your Wifi, you better think again. This WASP Drone Plane Sniffs for Open Wifi Networks. Of course it is unmanned and once airborne it can fly a mission by itself hunting down unsecure Wifi networks. Via: DIY Drones “At the Black Hat and Defcon security conferences

Name the Thing Contest - 183

The prize this week is a solar flashlight, if you want to use this as a flashlight you better charge it during the day and not hidden in a drawer. ๐Ÿ™‚ I am thinking that the housing could make for a very small surface mount project. Not sure if the solar cell would have enough power to energize a very low current circuit but I would think it should. This

PC Fan Repair

I have changed out quite a few fans over the years, you know the ones that I’m talking about, they make your PC sound like it’s a jet engine on takeoff. A few times I blew the dust out of the fan, pried the fan blade off and dropped a few drops of oil into the fan shaft. This seemed to always fix the problem but in my case it

LED Packlight

There are lots of LED flashlights around but there is a Kickstarter for this new LED Packlight. It looks to be very versatile and could be helpful in so many ways. I am thinking my ideal application for this light would be a camping trip, it could be used in the car as a map light, stuck on the metal of the car to assemble the tent at night, hanging

Rodeo Riding Robot

The famous Calgary Stampede is over for this year but if this Rodeo Riding Robot does some practicing I wonder if we could see a new robot rodeo emerge? I think our friend Carlos is having a bit too much fun with his Nao Robot. ๐Ÿ™‚

Open Source DIY Automated LED Stair Lights

Erica Kane has developed an Open Source DIY Automated LED Stair Lighting system. It uses an Arduino Pro Mini as the brain and a M5451 LED Display Driver to power the LEDs. She used PING sensors to detect when someone enters the stairwell. Currently the lights just turn on one at a time but that is all customizable by changing a bit of Arduino code. If you are looking for

Damage Designs Circuit Board Business Card

If you want to leave an impression lots of people recommend you get heavy stock business cards, the next step up is to get color glossy print on the cards. About 20 steps up from that is a business card made from FR4, the PCB business card might cost a bunch more than the paper alternative but you are guaranteed it won’t find its way to the trash 5 minutes