Complex Hacks

Custom Programming a Nintendo Gameboy Cartridge

Gerry O’Brien has made a 5 video compilation of his experience of Custom Programming a Nintendo Gameboy Cartridge. I am so jealous of the quality of the very high quality close-up video capabilities Gerry has! This isn’t a hack for the faint of heart. “TOOLS REQUIRED: – Soldering Iron with Fine tip for SMT soldering – Magnifying Lamp (Recommended) – Fine Flux Core Solder – Solder Wick – Rosin Flux

Cornell's Ranger Robot Walks 23 km

Remember Big Dog? Well there is a new walking robot king in town. Cornell’s Ranger Robot has just broken the record for distance for a bipedal robot. It took over 65 thousand steps before the battery died! Thanks for the tip Paul. “It took 65,185 steps for Cornell’s 4-legged bipedal robot to walk 108.5 laps on Barton Hall’s 1/8-mile indoor track, setting a new world record for non-stop distance walked

LEGO Drum Machine

After 3 months of work Peter Cocteau has completed his LEGO Drum Machine. It is based on the LEGO NXT computer. It goes to show how much can be done with the NXT.

RGB LED VU Meter using TLC5940 LED Driver Chips

If you like to listen to music here is a way to jazz up the experience. We have all seen the boring analog VU meters on either old or high end audio equipment. Simon Inns from Waiting of Friday has rigged up a cool RGB LED VU Meter circuit that uses 3 TLC5940 LED driver chips that are bring controlled by a PIC18F2550 microcontroller. “This project creates a RGB LED

Quadcopter Prototype

Starlino is building a Quadcopter,  the design is based around the Acc_Gyro Board that he designed and is being sold by our friends over at Gadget Gangster. It uses PID along with a simplified Kalman Filter. “I did some tests on the lift force potential of this frame+motors+props, and was surprise to find out it performed better than some entry-level brushless motors. The lift force of this platform is up

Wind Turbine powers WiFi-Repeater

If you have ever been in a remote area and pulled out your laptop I bet you couldn’t find any open WiFi hotspots. Well with this Wind Turbine powers WiFi-Repeater that Dan Lampie and David Brenner from the Rochester Institute of Technology built that problem has been solved on a tiny budget. A highly directional antenna is used to send and receive the WiFi data from a location with internet

11.3 Kilojoule Capacitor Bank

Our friend Daniel Eindhoven from Megavolts found a great price on some huge used capacitors. These capacitors normally cost around $90 each, Daniel was able to pick them up for around $2 a piece! That is one hell of a huge capacitor bank on a nice budget. He also designed an interesting mechanism to tie the batteries together. Instead of using wire or busbars he designed a few laser cut