Hubert’s Laser Page has lots of cool laser projects documented. One section that caught my eye was one where he covers many ways of making an inexpensive XY laser scanner. Go and have a look at his article for details on using a CD player actuator, Piezo buzzer, Hard disk head actuator and Loudspeaker to get the task done. Unlike my hard drive oscilloscope, Hubert uses a computer to control
You probably remember the Tranax ATM problems. The with the Tranax machines was due to a poor password system. This latest issue is with the security of ATM PIN number for the entire ATM network worldwide! Here are some papers that have some detailed information about the exploit. Decimalisation Table Attacks for PIN Cracking (PDF) API-Level Attacks on Embedded Systems (PDF) “Researchers who work for an Israeli computer security company
Here is a cool collection of computer aquariums, most of them are what is known as a Macquarium (made from a Macintosh). Links 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,9 ,10, 11 “A Macquarium is an aquarium made from the shell of an Apple Macintosh computer. The term was coined by computer writer Andy Ihnatko as a joke (a jibe at the outdatedness of the Macintosh 512K) but Macquaria
PC Pit Stop has made a standard laptop battery catch on fire. The fire is quite a bit larger than I would have expected. “We intentionally created conditions in which the Li-ON battery pack would explode inside a generic portable. The results are dramatic. There are numerous conditions where these fires can occur in real life. Faulty battery packs (driving the recalls), faulty protection circuits inside the PC, exposure
Sitting in a 19″ rack the temperature monitoring unit that Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers built looks like it is worth several thousand dollars. When you have a look inside, the lack of components reflects on the power of the 1-wire communication technology. “I needed several sensors. The DS18S20 was perfect for this, as this device is designed for the 1-Wire® bus system. Actually this means that you need two wires, but these
You might remember the article where uC Hobby demonstrated how to power projects using a computer power supply. One of the issues was that there was a possibility of causing permanent damage if something accidentally got shorted out. Dave has fixed that designing a simple current limiting circuit. With the circuit installed you can now short out the power tap and know that worst case is a 200mA draw. Have
This is a series of 9 videos that show an amazing HBO documentary about how non-secure the Diebold voting system is and how easy it is to hack. Click on the “more” link if you only see the first video on this page. HBO may take this content off YouTube but I think if their intent is to share their message with the world they will allow for it
