Matt Denton of Micromagic Systems built this Mantis hexapod robot powered by hydraulics: After four years intensive R&D, inspiration, design and build, Micromagic Systems is proud to unveil Mantis — the biggest, all-terrain operational hexapod robot in the world. This 2.2-litre Turbo Diesel-powered, British-designed and -built walking machine can be piloted or remote WiFi-controlled, stands 2.8 […]
Category Archives: hacks
DIY ethernet temperature and humidity logger
Kerry Wong built an Ethernet temperature and humidity logger: I used an ENC28J60 Ethernet module along with an ATmega328p microcontroller to log the temperature and humidity readings and then process the data on my web server for display. To plot the data points, I used Google Annotated Timeline so that you can easily zoom into the […]
Car cassette player converted for MP3 play
Ivan Creations wanted to use his old car cassette player (that sounds descent) to somehow play MP3 files. He devised this hack using PIC16F877A to control CECL08D MP3 player and Grundig WKC 1704 RDS Infomat Cassette player with remote control via Blaupunkt RC10 remote. “The MP3 player output signal is hooked up to the cassette […]
Minecraft cube
Ryandiver shared his minecraft cube project in the forum: After my flowers went down a treat on Valentines Day I decided that I needed another project. A friends birthday is in April, so I figured that would be enough time to build something. While reading my usual news stuff I came across this and thought it […]
NAND gate computer
Kevtris presents this post explaining the process for designing and building this awesome NANDputer: What is a NANDputer? it’s a computer made out of nothing but NAND gates of course! I dunno why, but I thought it’d be fun to make this. I first had to work out how various parts of a CPU would […]
DS1077 + Arduino
Wardy has documented his DS1077 configurable oscillator with the Arduino: I’ve finally had a chance to get around to playing with the DS1077 configurable oscillator! The circuit to get it working is very simple, just hook up the Ardiono as the I2C master, I used a 10K pullup resistor on both the SCL and SDA lines. […]
ChronIC RF hacking tool for TI Chronos watch
Adam Laurie (a/k/a/ Major Malfunction) is a white hat hacker from London, UK, who has presented at a number of conferences worldwide. He’s also the Director at Aperature Labs, Ltd. His latest explorations involve the world of RF remote control systems operating in the unlicensed ISM bands. He used the FunCube dongle to monitor the […]
Data from Arduino sent to the Net using an Android phone
This video by Kerimil demonstrates his method for sending data to the internet with an Arduino and Android phone. Via Hacked Gadgets.
Futaba 10C radio hacked to accept a Spektrum DSM module
Futaba 10C radio hacked to accept a Spektrum DSM module: Tom from Damage Designs has Hacked his Futaba 10C Radio to accept a Spektrum DSM Module. Turns out these were not designed to function together but with a bit of effort Tom got them to work just fine. The actual protocol seems to be the […]
Better BBQ with Flyport and Cosm
Here’s a video demonstrating how to keep your BBQ under control using COSM and Flyport Wi-Fi: Michael Posavec, a strong supporter of openPicus, decided to hack his Maverick wireless BBQ thermometer adding Flyport Wi-Fi to make it Internet connected.
SpiroGraph 3D laser project with Arduino
Here’s an SpiroGraph 3D laser projector controlled via an Arduino: Reflect a laser beam off mirrors mounted on three fans to display a ‘wild’ 3D spirograph type pattern on any surface. Provide fan speed control (manual or automatic) to adjust the displayed patterns. Full electrical schematic and source code follows. Via Hacked Gadgets.
HexBugs dissected and modded
HexBugs are a product of Innovation Labs First, Inc. which retail for about $11 pretty much everywhere electronic gadgets are sold. They are a tiny robotic crawling device with a minimal ability to sense sound and proximity and react in a simplistic preprogrammed manner to avoid obstructions. As purchased, they have no provision for modding […]
How to use Nokia F-bus to send an SMS message
If you have an old Nokia phone and want to hack it to send SMS messages, this tutorial by Alex at InsideGadgets should prove interesting. He’s produced a detailed tutorial showing the hardware and code needed to interface a Nokia 6110-series with an Arduino Duemilanove to send SMS messages. The Arduino connects to the phones […]
29C3: Hacking CISCO phones
At the recent 29C3 hacker conference in Hamburg, Germany, speakers Ang Cui and Michael Costello drew attention to kernel vulnerabilities in CNU (Cisco Native Unix), the operating system that powers all Cisco TNP IP phones.
Email controlled Raspberry Pi dog treat machine
Give Judd (Visla breed K9) treats through emails, and get back a picture of him eating it. This is the idea behind the Raspberry Pi powered Judd treat machine. The Judd Treat Machine, as shown in the youtube video below, is a Raspberry Pi based dog-treat-dispensing machine! A combination of various skillsets (CAD, machining, fabrication, […]
Cheap laptop GPS module hacked to work with microcontrollers
Emeryth discovered that these cheap laptop PCI GPS modules can easily be interfaced with microcontrollers. On the back of the board there are testpoints which he identified as UART and USB. The USB is recognized as a CDC-ACM standard virtual COM port.
Hacked footprint on a USB flash drive
A few weeks ago Mats used a hacked footprint, where he removed the unused pins to help him route a board. Here’s a commercial USB flash drive that uses the same method. Few of the pins on the memory chip were removed, and traces are run under them. Via the forum.
RFID Multipass spoof using ATTiny85
Hudson from NYC Resistor was inspired by Beth’s avrfid.S project to try to build a replacement for the multiple HID Prox card he carried for work. Hudson notes that “Beth’s design is simultaneously a technical tour-de-force and an example of how badly we can abuse the Atmel chips.” The entire schematic consists of an ATTiny85 […]
29C3: Travis Goodspeed – writing a thumbdrive from scratch
In this presentation from the recent 29C3 conference, Travis Goodspeed provides an interesting explanation of his from scratch implementation of a USB Mass Storage disk in user-land Python for the Facedancer board. . He also covers aspects of antiforensics are they relate to thumbdrives. His demo show how a thumbdrive’s own firmware can recognize and […]
Nottingham Hackspace “days accident free” counter
Fowkc tweeted a picture of his somewhat late open 7400 competition entry. It’s a giant 3 digit 7 segment display used to count the number of day’s there hasn’t been an accident in his local hackerspace. You can read about it’s development on his blog. Back in September 2011, Dangerous Prototypes started a competition for […]