Mar 17

Student-made Xbox 360 laptop channels the Heck out of… well, you know

Posted in: diy, Games, gaming, hack, Hacks, laptop, mod, mods, Today's Chili, xbox, xbox 360, Xbox360

Few can build ’em like Benjamin Heckendorn. Fewer still bother to try. Two college kids managed to do a bang-up job anyhow building this fully loaded, Jasper-juiced Xbox 360 laptop. With a built-in 17-inch Gateway monitor, keyboard, functioning Xbox Live camera and Wireless Network Adapter, this brick hits all the right notes — yet remains remarkably stylish for a learn-as-you-go student project. If you agree, you can read a remarkably detailed account of how they built it at the source link, see a proof-of-completion video after the break, or even further their education by purchasing the mean machine on eBay for your very own.

Continue reading Student-made Xbox 360 laptop channels the Heck out of… well, you know

Student-made Xbox 360 laptop channels the Heck out of… well, you know originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Hack A Day  |  sourceMission Impossible: 360 Laptop, eBay, benheck.com Forums  | Email this | Comments

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Mar 16

Homegrown Wacom Cintiq LCD tablet comes to life through prefab DIY enclosure

Posted in: diy, hack, Hacks, mod, mods, tablet, tablet pc, TabletPc, Today's Chili

Dropped a stack of change on a premium Wacom drawing tablet, only to find yourself with Cintiq envy? Got an old laptop handy? If so, odds are good that you’ve occasionally (or persistently, for that matter) thought about hacking together an LCD tablet of your very own. Problem is, the mods we’ve seen require some serious shop time — building a custom enclosure isn’t for the lighthearted, you know? But if you’re in possession of a sizable Wacom Intuos and roughly $220 of post-tax cheddar, TabletMod.com has a purpose-built, laser-cut acrylic enclosure with your name on it. You’ll still need an LCD controller kit and CCFL extenders, and there’s still a chance you’ll be paying more for the whole kit and caboodle than if you just got a low-end $1,000 Cintiq 12WX to begin with — but if you’ve already got half the parts lying around (or you’re just dying to scratch another DIY itch), this project might be worth your while. Cheapskates like us, however, will continue to wait for the Bamboo variety, though you can certainly dabble in the source link if you’re scouting some instructional videos.

Homegrown Wacom Cintiq LCD tablet comes to life through prefab DIY enclosure originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Hack A Day  |  sourcePonoko, TabletMod.com  | Email this | Comments

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Mar 14

Wind U100 magically modded into tablet-thing, iPad UI along for the ride

Posted in: hack, Hacks, mod, modding, mods, netbook, Today's Chili

Are you desperate for an iPad-like device, short on cash, and long on the desire to completely jack up your netbook? Well you’re in luck, friend, as the proprietor of MSI Wind fansite Insanely Wind has crafted a device which may satiate your tablety desires. By taking a U100, removing the keyboard, relocating a touchscreen display to the bottom half of the unit, and doing some simple rewiring, user alexbates has fashioned a tablet which he says bests a device like the iPad or JooJoo with “10 times the storage, twice the speed, external video (VGA), webcam, USB ports, and built-in multi card reader.” Of course, as you can tell by the photos, this mod has a ways to go before it’s got the fit and finish of the aforementioned devices, and you’ll have rev up a compatible, hackintosh build of OS X to make it appropriately Apple-ish — but it can clearly be done. While this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this type of modification, it’s nice to see the love spreading to various devices (and done in a fashion that doesn’t seem overly complicated). From the sounds of things, this project hasn’t hit its zenith yet, so we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for a more complete variation of the Windlet (our name). For now, hit the read link and keep up with the unfolding saga.

[Thanks, MistaBishi]

Wind U100 magically modded into tablet-thing, iPad UI along for the ride originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceInsanely Wind  | Email this | Comments

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Mar 04

Electroshock Hack Helps You Learn to Relax — Or Else

Posted in: diy, Hacks, Hacks, Mods and DIY, mods, Today's Chili, Toys and Games

Let’s face it: Taking it easy isn’t very easy. Meditation classes, binge drinking, marijuana, movies with sexy blue alien cats — these are the things we hardworking Americans rely on to help us unwind. But what if we could eliminate stress altogether? What if we could train our brains to stay relaxed forever?

That’s the idea behind Harcos Laboratories “most painful toy hack ever.” The team of kooky geeks was intrigued with Mattel’s Mindflex, a wireless headset that reads the frequency of your brainwaves to levitate a ball. LEDs on the headset light up if you’re concentrating hard; if you’re calm, no LEDs light up. Harcos Lab wondered, “How can we put that to more practical use in our everyday lives?”

Easy: Reprogram the Mindflex to shock the bejeezus out of you if you concentrate too hard. Harcos hooked up the leads of the LEDs to a transistor/resistor relay network so they’d instead activate an electric-shock kit made by QKit. The end result? Concentrate a little, and you’ll get zapped a little. Concentrate hard, and you’ll get an electrical pulse that will make you think you’ve wandered onto the set of Green Mile. What a shockingly brilliant solution to all our problems!

Actually, the hack wasn’t that easy. Harcos admits it was difficult opening up the Mindflex. A full how-to is over on Harcos’ blog. Check out the lab’s Mindflex hack in the video below.

(Thanks, Jon!)

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Jan 15

Cold Feet wedding bouquet responds to your nerves on the big day

Posted in: diy, hack, Hacks, LED, mod, mods, Today's Chili

When geeks get married, there’s always room for some nerdy insanity. This new take on the bouquet comes to us via just that route — a couple of geeks getting hitched decided to DIY themselves an LED bouquet which responds to changes in Galvanic skin response (GSR). So, when the LEDs are blue, the person holding the flowers is essentially calm, whereas white LEDs indicate excitement. Now, the bouquet cannot actually tell us if the excitement stems from being overjoyed or horrified to find out that your intended owns a fully realized and accurate Quark costume, but at least it’ll give you some clues to start with. Regardless, this awesome contraption is also capable of recording heartbeat rates for both bride and groom and makes use of a 1GB SD card to store the data, and other features like infrared proximity sensors to record how many times a day the bride and groom are near each other. Check out the video of the bouquet after the break.

[Photo credit: Jonas Eriksson]

Continue reading Cold Feet wedding bouquet responds to your nerves on the big day

Cold Feet wedding bouquet responds to your nerves on the big day originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 10:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Make  |  sourceBiometric Social Interaction  | Email this | Comments

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Jan 01

Ben Heck’s PS3 Slim laptop pops up for sale on Ebay

Posted in: hack, Hacks, mod, modding, mods, ps3, Today's Chili

You’re probably already familiar with the work of modder / hacker extraordinaire, Benjamin Heckendorn… and if you’re not, well, maybe it’s time to familiarize yourself with his work. Regardless, some of his fantastic handiwork has shown up on Ebay for sale, and while we don’t want to counsel you to foolishlessly spend loads of hard-earned cash, this is bound to be an heirloom one day. The listing here is for Ben’s PS3 Slim laptop — the one modded from a 17-inch Gateway 1775w LCD with a 1280 x 720 pixel resolution — and its currently at around $1,075.00 with 16 bids on it and roughly 3 days remaining. So if this kind of thing strikes your fancy (and we know that it does) hop to it! Check out our segment of The Engadget Show we filmed at Ben’s evil laboratory after the break.

Update: It looks like the auction has been pulled just recently, though we’re not sure why. Thanks for the heads up, Wesley H.

Update 2: And it’s back! Phew.

Continue reading Ben Heck’s PS3 Slim laptop pops up for sale on Ebay

Ben Heck’s PS3 Slim laptop pops up for sale on Ebay originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Technabob  |  sourceEbay  | Email this | Comments

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Dec 22

Modder mods new fangled wireless keyboard to look like old timey one

Posted in: hack, Hacks, keyboard, mod, mods, peripheral, Peripherals, Today's Chili, wii
Before you laugh awkwardly at the weird sense of nostalgia this keyboard dredges up in your mind, let us introduce you to its wonders. Apparently modded by a Dutch man or woman courageous enough to admit that (like us) they prefer the pretty much extinct, giant, tactile-as-all-get out keyboards to newer, more streamlined models, this mod takes away the only gripe we ever had with such peripherals — namely, their wiredness. The enterprising DIYer’s taken a Logitech wireless Wii keyboard apart, mapping all the key codes along the way, thrown in a little basic soldering, wedged everything into the old keyboard and voila! Pretty magical, right? Well, okay — not really, but still — we sort of dig it. There’s a before shot after the break, and hit the source link for the poorly machine translated how-to.

Continue reading Modder mods new fangled wireless keyboard to look like old timey one

Modder mods new fangled wireless keyboard to look like old timey one originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceTweakers  | Email this | Comments

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Dec 03

DIY arduino Christmas lights spectacular turns bad taste into… art

Posted in: diy, hack, Hacks, mod, mods, Today's Chili

We’ll freely admit to having a love / hate relationship with Christmas lights and decorations. The sheer gaudiness of it all often turns our “bah humbug” nature inside out, revealing the awe struck “inner child” we hear so much about from people like Martha Stewart and Oprah. Regardless, an artful DIYer’s taken the outdoor Christmas lighting game to the next level. Making use of an ioBridge IO-204 module, an Arduino Wave Kit, an Arduino Duemilanove board, solid state relays, and the Oracle Application Express for connectivity, he was able to get his internet controlled light and music show on the road. Check out the final results — which feature 3,300 mini lights, 3 spotlights, an LED Rope, 4 LEDs, and one magical reindeer — in the video after the break. Hit the source link for full instructions if you want to get in on the holiday action yourself.

Continue reading DIY arduino Christmas lights spectacular turns bad taste into… art

DIY arduino Christmas lights spectacular turns bad taste into… art originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 02:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceMy Electronics Notepad, Instructables  | Email this | Comments

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Nov 30

Xbox 360 controller ingeniously hacked for NES use

Posted in: controller, hack, mod, modding, mods, Today's Chili, xbox 360, Xbox360

Hey, it’s just what you’ve always wanted: to use your Xbox 360 controller on your old NES. Using a Cortex M3 processor left over from a school robotics project, Francois Gervais managed to rig his wireless pad to control something decidedly less advanced than a game of Modern Warfare 2. There’s a video of the controller in action after the break, and you can grab some of the code being used in the Google link below — perhaps one of you brainiacs will finally hack the Wiimote to control a Jaguar. A tech writer can dream…

Continue reading Xbox 360 controller ingeniously hacked for NES use

Xbox 360 controller ingeniously hacked for NES use originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Hack A Day  |  sourceYouTube, Google Code  | Email this | Comments

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Nov 24

Sony VAIO X ultraportable gets the Hackintosh treatment

Posted in: hack, Hacks, mod, mods, netbook, sony, Today's Chili, vaio

The Vaio X, aside from being thin and light, is notoriously difficult to mod — simply put, there’s not much room in there to play around! Besides, when you’ve spent well over a grand for a machine, you’re not necessarily going to be gung-ho about digging in with your soldering gun. Still, when InsanelyMac forum member Asama was struck by inspiration (in the form of a Vaio P OS X image) he followed his heart — and, much to the world’s amusement, it installed on the Vaio X with few complications. Sure, it wasn’t a flawless operation: the WiFi card is unsupported (as you probably guessed) but, that said, this is definitely an item of note for all the Hackintosh freaks in attendance. Indeed we’re looking forward to seeing Psystar get sued over a similar hack at some future junction. Get a closer look after the break.

Continue reading Sony VAIO X ultraportable gets the Hackintosh treatment

Sony VAIO X ultraportable gets the Hackintosh treatment originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink GadgetMix  |  sourceInsanelyMac  | Email this | Comments

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