Mike Szczys from Jumptuck created this cool circuit a to open his garage door using a small door bell. Many of us know Mike from his work at Hack a Day. I am honored that this design was inspired by my Button Code project! His project is based around an ATtiny13 microcontroller just because that is what he had laying around. Thanks Mike. “Here’s how it works: The uC waits
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
Barnaby Jack of IOActive demonstrated how to hack into an ATM machine without needing physical access to the machine. Turns out the manufacturer used their own home made encryption scheme that obviously wasn’t very secure. Once the system was comprised a new customized version of the firmware was uploaded to give the machine a jackpot mode. You might remember about 4 years ago when these same ATM manufacturers were caught
Afrotech has put together a great video that demonstrates the basics of replacing a capacitor. This is normally only important when repairing old electronics, however recently there have been many cases where faulty capacitors fail after only a few years (or less) and need to be replaced to keep the device operational. Dell is one of the computer manufacturers who had a bad issue with defective capacitors. In this case
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.
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
These days when something electronic dies the repair bill is usually so high that it doesn’t make financial sense to repair it since there is no guarantee that the repaired out of warranty item isn’t going to fail for some other reason in a week. When Sam from the Parallax forum was faced with this dilemma with a gate opener he decided to scrap the old gate controller and make
