Dec 14

Kinect hack lets you reenact Big piano scene (video)

Posted in: hack, hacking, keyboard, kinect, Microsoft, sensor, Today's Chili, video, xbox 360, Xbox360

The only limit to the applications Kinect can be put to is imagination. The more of it you have, the more things you can use the peerless Xbox 360 peripheral to achieve. To wit, some eager chaps have put together the Keyboard Anywhere hack, which employs a little Python and the libfreenect library to offer up a piano keyboard on any flat surface of almost any size. You can practice your Mozart concertos on a desk, or, as they so ably demonstrate, imagine yourself as a young Tom Hanks skipping along on the FAO Schwarz floor piano in the movie Big. It’s all up to you.

Continue reading Kinect hack lets you reenact Big piano scene (video)

Kinect hack lets you reenact Big piano scene (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 09:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Joystiq, BoingBoing  |  sourcepetermmoz (YouTube)  | Email this | Comments

No Comments
Dec 13

Google hides mathematical puzzle in Cr-48 video, rewards its solver with a laptop

Posted in: Chrome, Google, hacking, laptop, Today's Chili, video

Watching Google destroy Cr-48 laptops for fun can’t have been easy for any of you, but it turns out that the wily geeks of Mountain View had a clandestine purpose to their malevolence after all. An equation, scribbled out in old school chalk in the background of one scene, attracted the attention of a Sylvain Zimmer, who, together with a group of like-minded geeks, set about trying to solve it and discover its meaning. A full day’s worth of cryptographic work later, Sylvain was left with a set of numbers he was able to convert into letters, which in turned spelled out “speed and destroy.” Appending goo.gl, Google’s URL shortener, to the front of those words got him to a screen congratulating him for being “first to figure out our MENSA-certified puzzle” and promising to send him a Cr-48 laptop as his prize. Kudos to Sylvain… and to Google for being such irrepressible geeks.

Continue reading Google hides mathematical puzzle in Cr-48 video, rewards its solver with a laptop

Google hides mathematical puzzle in Cr-48 video, rewards its solver with a laptop originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Dec 2010 07:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Geek.com  |  sourceSylvain Zimmer  | Email this | Comments

No Comments | Tags:
Dec 10

Kinect meets its maker with new air guitar hack (video)

Posted in: guitar, hack, hacking, kinect, Microsoft, Music, Today's Chili, video, xbox 360, Xbox360

Let’s face it, the daddy of all motion-controlled gaming is the humble art of air guitar. There’s no question about it, creationists and evolutionists all agree, the genesis of our modern craze for motion sensitivity was your uncle rocking out to Jimmy Page’s face-melting solo in Stairway to Heaven. Now that we’ve got the history lesson out of the way, someone’s gone and programmed Kinect to recognize the fine craft of your air strumming and deliver concordant chords in response. Excellent!

Continue reading Kinect meets its maker with new air guitar hack (video)

Kinect meets its maker with new air guitar hack (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 10:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceChris O’Shea  | Email this | Comments

No Comments
Dec 09

Kinect finally fulfills its Minority Report destiny (video)

Posted in: hack, hacking, kinect, Microsoft, mit, Today's Chili, university, xbox

Not to denigrate the numerous fine hacks that Kinect‘s undergone since its launch, but it’s always nice to see the professionals come in and shake things up a little. A crew from MIT‘s brain labs has put together a hand detection system on Microsoft’s ultra-versatile cam, which is sophisticated enough to recognize the position of both your palms and fingers. Just as a demonstration, they’ve tied that good stuff up to a little picture-scrolling UI, and you won’t be surprised to hear that it’s the closest thing to Minority Report‘s interactive gesture-based interface that we’ve seen yet. And it’s all achieved with a freaking console peripheral. Video after the break.

Continue reading Kinect finally fulfills its Minority Report destiny (video)

Kinect finally fulfills its Minority Report destiny (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 08:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Kotaku  |  sourceMITCSAIL (YouTube)  | Email this | Comments

No Comments
Dec 07

VCR head gets Frankenstiened into a beefy momentum scroll wheel

Posted in: diy, hacking, Hacks, mouse, Today's Chili

We’ve seen a fair share of VCR hacking in our day, but this momentum scroll wheel built from an old VCR head by Instructables community member Osgeld sets a new bar for jerry-rigging dead technology. Apparently the project arose from a desire to find a 21st century-approved use for the circular part that was gathering dust after being stripped from a spare Sony VHS player. The result is a bulky, yet useful, scroll wheel that can easily be set into motion and sustained via its own inertia to keep spinning for long periods. That feature could prove useful to anyone saddled with a mountain of video editing work, or even you lazy folk just hoping to flick less while reading the web. Unfortunately, a quick glance at Osgeld’s DIY tool and part lists indicate you’ll need to do quite a bit more than ransack a tape player to get this job done right. But then, when do the good things in life ever come easy?

VCR head gets Frankenstiened into a beefy momentum scroll wheel originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 01:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Lifehacker  |  sourceInstrutables  | Email this | Comments

No Comments | Tags: ,
Dec 07

Gingerbread ROMs start cooking for HTC EVO 4G et al; keyboard ported for rooted Androids

Posted in: Android, AndroidOs, developers, gingerbread, hacking, HTC, rom, Today's Chili

You can have your doubts about when your phone maker will finally get around to delivering an Android 2.3 update (March if you’re with HTC, June if Samsung, 2017 if you’re unfortunate enough to own a Sony Ericsson), but the smartphone dev community doesn’t work that slowly. The guys who build custom ROMs just for the sheer pride of it have already begun work on delivering Gingerbread to owners of HTC’s EVO 4G, Droid Eris, and Wildfire. It’s all in the very nascent stages and warnings abound that you should only install these ROMs if you intend to contribute to the development process, but it does give us hope for a consumable new OS in the not so distant future. One thing that does look ready to be gobbled up, however, is Gingerbread’s new software keyboard — you’ll find the download and installation instructions at the Droid-Life link below, just remember to bring your rooted Android phone along.

[Thanks, Jacob]

Gingerbread ROMs start cooking for HTC EVO 4G et al; keyboard ported for rooted Androids originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 02:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink BriefMobile  |  sourcexda-developers (EVO 4G), (Droid Eris), (Wildfire), Droid-Life  | Email this | Comments

No Comments | Tags: , , , , , , ,
Dec 05

Kinect turned into a quadrocopter radar (video)

Posted in: hack, hacking, kinect, Microsoft, mod, modding, sensor, Today's Chili, video

Every night we go to bed thinking that we’ve finally seen the best Kinect hack done and every morning we wake up to see something even crazier concocted with Microsoft’s motion controller. Today, it’s been mounted atop a quadrocopter — yes, man’s future worst enemy — and utilized essentially as a 3D radar, facilitating the bot’s autonomous maneuvering around a predetermined track. The random introduction of obstacles is also handled in stride, leaving us equal parts impressed, apprehensive, and eager for more. See the video after the break.

[Thanks, Glen]

Continue reading Kinect turned into a quadrocopter radar (video)

Kinect turned into a quadrocopter radar (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Dec 2010 01:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourcepbouf77 (YouTube)  | Email this | Comments

No Comments
Dec 02

Kinect now offers a stealth mode, courtesy of optical camouflage hack (video)

Posted in: camera, hack, hacking, kinect, Microsoft, modding, sensor, Today's Chili, video

You’ve seen so many Kinect hacks by now that you probably think you know them all — but wait, have you seen one that makes you look like Predator when he’s busy predatorizing the populace? Or one that lets you reenact your favorite Metal Gear Solid scenes with Snake’s camo turned on? Yup, a Japanese coder by the name of Takayuki Fukatsu has exploited the versatile openFrameworks to give Kinect a mode where it tracks your movement and position, but turns the dull details of your visage into an almost perfectly transparent outline. Of course, you’re not actually transparent, it looks to be just the system skinning an image of the background onto the contours of your body in real time, but man, it sure is cool to look at. You can do so for yourself with the video after the break.

Continue reading Kinect now offers a stealth mode, courtesy of optical camouflage hack (video)

Kinect now offers a stealth mode, courtesy of optical camouflage hack (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 18:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Geek.com, Neowin, PopSci  |  sourceTakayukiFukatsu (YouTube)  | Email this | Comments

No Comments | Tags:
Dec 02

Tutorial guides Kinect hackers into iRobot territory

Posted in: hack, hacking, kinect, Microsoft, Today's Chili
Impressed by some of the Kinect hacks using a Roomba or iRobot Create but don’t know where to start? Well, the folks at ROS have now provided just that in the form of a tutorial that guides you through the process of combining two of the most hackable devices of recent years. Of course, that’s hardly just a plug-and-play process (hence the need for a lengthy tutorial), but ROS does give it a “beginner” rating, and it should be relatively straightforward for anyone with some basic hardware hacking skills. As for what you do once you get the two connected, well, you’re on your own there — but we’re sure there will be plenty more tutorials where this one came from before too long.

Tutorial guides Kinect hackers into iRobot territory originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 15:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceROS  | Email this | Comments

No Comments
Dec 01

ChevronWP7 unlocking tool pulled in hopes Microsoft decides to play along

Posted in: hack, hacking, homebrew, Microsoft, Today's Chili, windows phone, windows phone 7, WindowsPhone, WindowsPhone7, Wp7
Could Microsoft actually embrace Windows Phone 7 hacking much like it’s sort of done with Kinect hacking? Not very likely, but it seems like the folks behind the ChevronWP7 unlocking tool are at least holding out some hope for that possibility. They’ve apparently had some “good faith” discussions with Microsoft’s Director of Developer Experience for Windows Phone 7, Brandon Watson, and have decided to take the rather drastic step of pulling and ceasing all development on the tool in order to “fast-track” discussions about Microsoft officially embracing homebrew development. Obviously, that may just be wishful thinking, but one thing is clear at least for the moment: it just got a bit harder to hack a Windows Phone 7 device.

ChevronWP7 unlocking tool pulled in hopes Microsoft decides to play along originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Download Squad  |  sourceChevronWP7  | Email this | Comments

No Comments