Joonas Pihlajamaa from Code and Life writes, ” I’ve previously made a GPIO benchmark of Raspberry Pi 1 and 2, and have always wanted to see how BeagleBone Black would stack against the Pis. I recently got one so the obvious thing to do was to see how fast the little thing could go. Turns […]
Category Archives: hacks
Bringing a vintage telegraph into the digital age
Kyle Gabriel writes: I recently inherited a key on board (KOB) telegraph that my late grandfather used to practice Morse code with when he was a kid (Figure 1). A little bit of curiosity of how it would work and a little bit of displeasure from seeing it sit and collect dust, I began a […]
Behringer v-tone GMX212 Hybrid tube amplifier mod
Davide Gironi wrote a post on his blog showing how he modified the Behringer v-tone GMX212 Hybrid tube amplifier: For this project I’ve used 12AX7 vacuum tube. This tube is one of the most used for the guitar preamplification. So there are many resources available on web. The first problem i faced it’s the power stage. […]
Hacking DTM0660L based multimeters
Kerry Wong writes: In my previous post, I did a review of the 6000 counts ennoLogic eM860T true RMS multimeter. This meter is based on a signal chip design using the versatile DTM0660L DMM chip. Besides the ennoLogic eM860T, several other multimeters such as UNI-T 139C, Velleman DV4100, Tekpower TP40 etc. are also based on […]
Ultimate geeky desk sockets
Here’s a geeky desk sockets project from Luke. He writes: I wanted a few more functions than just a desk USB Hub. Looking on the net i came across this youtube video . This was the type of thing i was looking for but it had far too many functions and too large. I decided […]
STM32 FM song transmitter using tricky crystal feedback modulation
Vinod writes, “This is an FM transmitter directly made from STM32F407 discovery. It transmits the wav file stored in internal flash via FM at 100MHz. The modulation over here is happening by a tricky feedback from the analog output of the same mcu to the crystal oscillator there by disturbing the crystal frequency and creating […]
mavroOBD, an open source Arduino compatible OBD/Can-Bus module
Mavromatics’ open source project designed to “hack” your vehicle, that is available on github: The goal of this project it to create an Arduino based OBD port module that can be used to enhance a vehicles capabilites. For example, if you want door locks to close when moving faster than 5mph or to invoke/emulate certain […]
MIDI to USB adapter with Teensy LC
Joonas has written up documentation on his MIDI to USB adapter with Teensy LC: Thankfully, I had a MIDI connector and a high-speed optocoupler at hand, and with these I could implement a MIDI in rather easily. After some investigation with Arduino Uno, it seemed quite simple to receive the serial MIDI bytes and dump them […]
Using a $2 DS3231 RTC & AT24C32 EEprom from eBay
From the comments on our ‘Using DS1307 and DS3231 real-time clock modules with Arduino‘ post, Edward Mallon writes: I’ve been putting the $1 DS3231 boards through their paces for quite a while now…and they have been performing well. More details at Edward Mallon’s blog. Via the comments.
Atmega16u2 virtual serial example using LUFA Library
Shane of Wattnotions has published a new build, an Atmega16u2 virtual serial LUFA board: What I wanted the LUFA library to do was pretty specific – the atmega16u2 should show up as a virtual serial port so that the computer can connect and read data from it like any other serial port. All of the other […]
ESP8266 WiFI LED controller hack
Andreas Hölldorfer of ChaozLabs wrote an article detailing how he hacked the cheap WiFi LED controller: This pictures show the PCB. As you can see there are pins labeled as RX,TX,GND,3.3V. I simply connected an USB-Serial converter to the pins. The two other pins are GND and GPIO0. If you set a jumper between this two pins, […]
Adding a USB power port to a switch for IoT
Jesus Echavarria wrote a how-to on adding a USB power port to a switch: I want to start some projects with Arduino and IoT, so the first things I need is an Arduino board, an Ethernet shield and a switch to connect it to the net. Also I need a power supply for the Arduino board, […]
Apple II ROM Dumper
Quinn Dunki created an Apple II ROM tool project and posted a great write-up on digging into the ROM of her Apple IIc Plus: You may recall way back when I started my Apple II ROM Tool project, that I had intended to fix some bugs. That was the whole point of this adventure. It […]
Sniffing BLE With The TI SensorTag CC2650
Jan Clumps over at Element14 turns his CC2650 SimpleLink SensorTag into a BLE sniffer. He writes: In a previous post I connected the Texas Instruments SensorTag talk to a Cypress CySmart USB Dongle and made the dongle sniff Bluetooth traffic. This time I’ll switch this around. We’ll turn the SensorTag into a BLE sniffer, and let […]
Continuous Autofocus laser cutter hack
Continuous Autofocus of a laser cutter using a wiimote controller from Martin Raynsford, he writes: We were inspired by the Glowforge laser cutters ability to continuously autofocus it’s z axis. A camera mounted in the head of the laser detects a laser dot being shone onto the surface of the material and from there it can […]
A hack for Hacks using AnalysIR & USB IR Toy
The crew from AnalysIR writes: One of our users from Italy, Guido, was tasked with upgrading an old in-house WRC system to allow the team of Sport’s Journalists to access the rack of satellite receivers relaying the various sports events around the building. The challenge is that all of the STB (Set Top Boxes) are […]
XinSound Fuzz FD-20 mod – Big Muff V2 Ram’s head clone
Davide Gironi writes, “The XinSound Fuzz FD-20 is a Big Muff V2 Ram’s Head guitar pedal clone. It’s schematic is next to the Electro Harmonix Big-Muff Pi 1975-15-10 original circuit. As usually, I would like to experiment on this pedal, doing some mods.” Project info at Davide Gironi’ blog. Check out the video after the break.
Software Serial Modbus Master over RS485 transceiver
Colin writes: We like cheap, well-made temperature controllers. Sure, we can make our own, but for a modest sum we can get a nice NEMA-rated package capable of reasonably complex logic with a communications interface. The Love 4C and 16C controllers can both be had for <$100 fit this description and make dependable control and higher-level […]
Just good enough 10 MHz reference
Sverre Holm writes: Some time ago I noticed that the Ublox Neo-7M GPS has a 10 MHz output which is locked to the GPS system’s accuracy. Most people kept saying how useless it was due to excessive jitter unless it was cleaned up with a phase locked loop of some sort. But at the same […]
Backdoor uPWM Hack on Photon for Infrared signals using UART
The crew from AnalysIR has written up an article on Backdoor uPWM Hack on Photon for Infrared signals: Since we received our Photon several months ago it has been difficult to find a working example of Hardware PWM on the Photon (suiteable for IR signals). Initially, we ported our softPWM approach to the Photon, which is excellent. […]