The guys at BuildLounge wrote us to share a giant LED sign they came across in the submission pile for their “Win a Laser Cutter” contest that’s currently under way. [Stephen Shaffer] helps run a huge party called Fantastic Planet, for which the group typically outsources the lighting arrangements. They got tired of hiring light …
Custom Massive LED panel lights up the party
Building a computer around a 6502 processor
When it came time to try out some old-school computing [Quinn Dunki] grabbed a 6502 processor and got to work. For those that are unfamiliar, this is the first chip that was both powerful, affordable, and available to the hobby computing market back in the 1970′s. They were used in Apple computers, Commodore 64, and …
UK minister may have had computers hacked
A small number of journalists have disgraced Britain’s press, Tony Blair’s former communications chief told a media ethics inquiry, as a former government minister said detectives were investigating whether his computers had been hacked by a tabloid ne…
Siri as a lippy and sometimes profane television remote
If the addition of Siri to your iPhone has given you a somewhat-real life companion (and hope that you might not be forever alone) this hack is right up your alley. [Todd Treece] built a hardware fixiture for the living room which bridges the gap between Apple’s new digital assitant and your television. The box itself …
Arduino weather-station to Internet bridge
Here’s a project that looks to eliminate the PC necessary for pushing weather station data to the Internet. When you think about it, getting data from your own weather sensing hardware to a site like Weather Underground doesn’t require very much processing at all. The largest chunk of the puzzle is a window to the …
5 Ways to Prime the Social Pump
Posted by Dr. Pete
You’ve finally finished that epic blog post [infographic, LOLCat, Thundercats remix…] and tomorrow morning you’ll unleash it on the world. So, what should you do between now and then? You could take a nap, sure, o…
Engineer, criminologist join forces to CRUSH black hats
Research project will uncover cybercriminals’ secrets….
An engineer and a criminologist are teaming up in a research project that aims to get a better idea of how cybercriminals operate and how to best thwart their mendacious activities.…
Graphical programming with the Arduino IDE
The Arduino is an excellent first embedded development kit, provides a great introduction to electronics, and has the potential to get children into programming. [David] thinks throwing C at non-programmers isn’t the best way to learn programming, so he developed ArduBlock , a graphical programming language for the Arduino. We’ve seen a number of graphical, block-based programming …
Funtendo connects all your Nintendo controllers to a PC
For those of us who can’t be bothered to dig out or N64 whenever we want to play Ocarina of Time or our NES whenever we get the urge to play Battletoads, emulators are a godsend. There is a problem, though. A keyboard doesn’t provide the right experience as a the classic NES ‘brick’ or the …
