Chris Tarnovsky, the owner of Flylogic Engineering spoke to Wired about some of his Smart Card Hacking techniques. It involves lots of dangerous acids to burn off some of the protective layers so it isn’t a DIY project. He is able to probe a data bus on the chip and read or inject information! Below is an image from his blog that shows another chip that has been modified
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
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
This Robotic Exoskeleton by Sarcos has been in development for many years, it still requires a tether but when it will be completely stand alone when it is released. I think the most interesting aspect will be the ability to step out of the exoskeleton and have it continue to perform some duties until you return.
Looks like there is a new movement of people making music using the Apple iPhone. These people made if famous but not there are tons of people using the same and similar application having fun. After you watch the second video have a look at this parody, it is very well done!
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
Finding landmines is not an easy task. This Mongoose and Robot Landmine Detector combines electronic, mechanical and animal to help make detection a bit easier. Thrishantha Nanayakkara from the University of Moratuwa. Read more about the Mongoose and Robot Landmine Detector. (PDF) "To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first time a human-robot-animal integrated system is tested for antipersonnel landmine detection. The proposed system tries to
