Author Archives: the machinegeek

Enough Already: an Arduino based audio-b-gone for TV

Matt Richardson over at MAKE presents this cool solution to listening to the audio portion of the garbage overload known as entertainment news. He has design this project known as Enough Already which mutes the audio portion of a TV program when certain words are mentioned. The hardware consists of an Arduino and the Video […]

Novel technology allows LCDs to recycle energy

The idea that LEDs can act as light detectors as well as emitters is well known. Now researchers at UCLA are looking at LCDs with an eye toward using them to produce electric energy in addition to functioning as your smartphone display. The UCLA engineers have created a novel concept for harvesting and recycling energy […]

WIMM One – anywhere Android device

Wimm Labs has announced their development of the WIMM One platform, a go anywhere user programmable Android device. While their website doesn’t reveal the processor, they state the device will include a bi-modal display, capacitive touch screen, WiFi and Bluetooth, an accelerometer, magnetometer up to 32 GB memory and be housed in a water resistent […]

Simple Sunday circuit: variable voltage regulator

From time to time we’ll be posting shortcuts and hacks we use around the workshop that make a task easier and less expensive. Here’s one example: a variable voltage regulator. We wanted to adjust the output from a 12 Volt solar cell to power projects needing lower voltages. The solution: construct a variable voltage regulator […]

TI launches new TIDeals site

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player Texas Instruments has a launched a new microsite known as TIDeals.com. They promise to deliver “the latest MSP430 MCU products at hugh discounts every two weeks!” At this writing they appear to be compiling an email list prior to the launch of their first “deal” in about two days.

Hacking home automation X10 devices over power lines

X10 home automation devices control household systems over AC power lines. In the past their online pop-up ads were pervasive and hard to avoid and these devices are fairly common today. Researchers Dave Kennedy, aka Rel1k, and Rob Simon, aka Kc57, revealed two X10 hacking devices at the recent Defcon 19 conference in Las Vegas. […]

Electronic circuit in a tattoo

UPI is reporting that researchers at Northwestern University have developed skin mounted electronic circuits. These devices which can either be attached with adhesive or temporarily tattooed could have applications in biomedical monitoring. Of course, we imagine “big brother” types of applications for this tech will be just around the corner… Thanks Chuckt! Via the Comments.

Arduino mindreading library

Chris from LVL1 Louisville’s Hackerspace has been working on hacking brainwave sensors using the Arduino. Both the Force Trainer and Mattel MindFlex use a daughterboard from NeuroSky that outputs serial data for values of ‘Wireless link’, ‘Attention’ and Meditation. Both of these devices have the same NeuroSky board, so the *easy* hacking instructions work for […]

Free webcast: OSCON 2011

OReilly is sponsoring a free webcast entitled, “OSCON 2011: Take-aways, Trends, and Highlights” on Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 10 AM PT. Presenters will discuss their observations from the recently concluded OSCON 2011 event in Portland, OR. In this event wrap-up, OSCON co-chairs Edd Dumbill, Sarah Novotny, and Laurel Ruma will identify and discuss the […]

OsmocomBB: open source GSM software

Osmocom stands for Open Source MObile COMmunications. The crew developing the OsmocomBB (baseband) software project presented the above talk at the DeepSec conference last November in Vienna, Austria. As they describe their efforts: OsmocomBB is an Free Software / Open Source GSM Baseband software implementation. It intends to completely replace the need for a proprietary […]

tinyDino – smallest Arduino board

Jaanus has been working on a subminiature Arduino clone which be believes is THE smallest. Everybody are making Arduino clones. So I thought I should make THE smallest. I took smallest package atmega88 – qnf28 (5mm x 5mm). Routed smallest possible resonator and as much pads as i could fit on in. His design provides […]

Square credit card reader hack: the sound of money

At the recent Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, hacker Adam Laurie revealed a flaw in the Square credit card reader hardware/software that allows the injected emulation of credit card data to fraudulently obtain funds. This discovery highlights the importance of robust financial security. He inserted a different wire into the iPad’s headphone jack, […]

Big DIY: The Year the Maker Movement Broke

Wired magazine has published an online article summarizing the progress of the Maker movement in the last year. Tim Carmody observes that the Maker movement mirrors that of the growth of PCs and punk rock. Culturally, it’s mostly already happened — just like Hüsker Dü and The Pixies figured out Nirvana’s basic hard-rock punk-pop template […]

Build an LED display board that Tweets

Robert Diamond is with Alpha One Labs in Brooklyn. When they acquired a discarded LED sign sans control circuitry that they wanted to repurpose, they knew their work was cut out for them. He writes: After hooking it up and enabling it to display incoming tweets, a prototype was born. In this guide, I’ll walk […]