Computer Hacks

Computer asks for Money

Here is a great use of some old computer hardware. We have seen hard drives playing music before but not after asking for money. 🙂 "The old PC plays music on using some old floppy and hard drive mechanisms, then opens its CD tray to beg for your spare change. If you don’t pay, he won’t play – it’s as simple as that." Link  Via

Crazy PC Case Mods

  If you are looking for some inspiration for your next PC case mod have a look at some of these Crazy PC Case Mods! I have seen a few of them before but this Microwave PC Case mod stood out. I love how stock the microwave looks.

Fly in Google Earth using the Wii Balance Board

  Matthieu Deru and Simon Bergweiler from the German Research Center have put together an impressive hack that allows you to Fly in Google Earth using the Wii Balance Board "After hours of testing and C# coding, you can now use your Wii Balance Board as a new input device."  

Twitter Home Automation

Looking for an inexpensive home automation system that can be controlled remotely? Look no further than Twitter and iLink INSTEON. "Using Twitter, a new social networking site, you can set up your laptop and connect it to your light switches (or any other electrical device) and control the device by sending text messages to your twitter account. It’s a fairly simple setup using this software which controls this hightech lightswitch"

Sunspot Google Earth Flight Simulator Bike Ride

  Using Sunspot, Mike has made a bike that can fly in Google Earth. "Sun has been very successful in spreading Java to over 6 billion devices throughout the world. Well over a billion cell phones run Java. We in Sun Labs are interested in what comes next. In order to help make sure that the next generation of gadgets is based Sun technology, we developed Sun Small Programable Object

Hard Disk Drive Drum

  Fibra from Belgrade has created an interesting drum system. It uses old hard drive read/write arms as drum hammers. The original hard drive voice coils are used to move the arms. The picture above is the new system which doesn’t seem to be documented yet, have a look at the video for a demonstration of the first version. If you need a larger hard drive project fix have a

 Cornell University ECE 4760 Designing with Microcontrollers 2008 Final Projects

Bruce Land is showing off the hard work of his students in his Cornell University ECE 4760 Designing with Microcontrollers class. I hope you have a long lunch hour since it will take you a long time to go through all 35 projects. I found this Mechanix Motorized Guitar Tuner real interesting. Nice thing about all of these projects is the great documentation. See the full list of projects  "The