 Stephen Cass from ieee Spectrum demonstrates the new Lego Mindstorms EV3 which was just unveiled at CES 2013. Looks like this platform will allow for some great project building. The EV3 runs on Linux and can interface with smartphones through blootooth. It also has a wifi dongle to connect to other wireless devices. Of course they have a gambling demo setup in Las Vegas to show us some
 Ben shows us how he starts one of his hacks. He is talking a midi controller and making it fit into a Guitar sized unit. Lots of work went into moving some sliders and buttons around so that it will work in the new form factor. Ben uses a neat trick to make the new front face fit all of the existing buttons. He takes a scan of the
Our friend Bob Davis has been working with some Signature Electronic Signs. He didn’t like the complex controller that came with the device so he made a controller based on the arduino to control the sign. You can see the code that makes the system work here. These displays are available on Ebay at some reasonable prices, Bob describes some of technical details of the display here where he
Dane from Transistor Man had a Macbook Pro with a GPU that wasn’t working. The system would boot but the display output was dead. Similar to the Xbox 360 BGA problems there are some Macbook Pro computers that have experienced BGA solder issues. The big issue here is that BGA devices have the solder connections under the device itself. Dane used a heat gun and a variac to blow
The prize this week is a breadboard power supply. This contest will run for one week (January 6 2013 – January 11, 2013). Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item above and what it can be used for. Please do not give the answer in the comments. Send an email to contest @ hackedgadgets.com with “Name the Thing Contest” as the subject, and
  If you follow the instructions on this site you will end up with a Stun Baton which takes a 4 volt battery and converts it to 10,000 volts of sparking fun. Of course be very careful if you decide to take on this project since the voltages created can do some serious harm. Thanks for the tip Isaac R. “The Royer Oscillator magically turns the ~13 volts at
Matt Meerian from Home Brew Electronics has an issue with his basement waterproofing tar seeping into his sum pump pit. As you can imagine cold tar seeping into the pit would cause havoc with the pump and water level detection. He has designed a DIY Internet Sump Pump Monitor to alert him if there is a problem such as the pump running too long or the water level getting
