Last year’s big hack was software-defined radio; a small USB TV tuner that could listen in on radio broadcasts anywhere between 64 and 1200 MHz. This year, it’s all about the Raspberry Pi, so it’s surprising we’re only just now seeing a mashup of these two pieces of hardware. [Corq] is using a Raspi and RTLSDR TV tuner to listen … Read the rest
Once every 17 years, a population of cicadas ranging from Connecticut to the Appalachian highlands of North Carolina emerges to annoy everyone within earshot. The last time east coasters saw this brood was in 1996, making 2013 yet another year of annoying insect pests. The only question is, when will we start to see this year’s cicada brood?
Radiolab, the … Read the rest
Yesterday Microsoft announced their new cable box, the Xbox One. Included in the announcement is a vastly improved Kinect sensor. It won’t be available until next Christmas, but now the question is what are we going to do with it?
From what initial specs that can be found, the new version of the Kinect will output RGB 1080p video over … Read the rest
A lot of awesome stuff happened up in [Bruce Land]‘s lab at Cornell this last semester. Three students – [Pat], [Ed], and [Hanna] put in hours of work to come up with a few algorithms that are able to simulate stereo audio with monophonic sound. It’s enough work for three semesters of [Dr. Land]‘s ECE 5030 class, and while … Read the rest
The LayerOne security conference is fast approaching and [charliex] is doing his best to put the finishing touches on this year’s conference badge.
Around the perimeter of the badge is 48 LEDs driven by two LED drivers. This allows for some crazy hardware hacking to create anything from a TV-B-GONE to a bulbdial clock. There’s also a … Read the rest
We’ve seen a fair share of carputer builds involving a Raspberry Pi in the last few months, but even the power of a Raspi can’t compete with the awesomeness of this Arduino-powered scooterputer.
Like all awesome projects, this build is the product of a massive case of feature creep. Initially, [Kurt] only wanted a voltage monitor for his battery. … Read the rest
We’ve seen automated food dispensers for pets, but none that go so far as to build large plastic screws for dispensing kibble.
This isn’t [Mathieu]‘s first automatic cat feeder; an earlier version used a wheel to dispense cat food in excessively large version. To improve upon his first build, [Mathiu] decided to use an Archimedean screw to dispense food … Read the rest
[Kees] wanted a remote for an XBMC audio system. He had a classic T65 Dutch telephone in one of his project boxes and thought this phone with the addition of a Raspberry Pi he could have a functional media remote with classic lines and 70s styling.
Each of the digits on the phone were wired up to a small solderless … Read the rest
Once upon a time, a nerd met a girl. Things happen as they do, and eventually [Ben] wanted to create the be-all, end-all engagement ring. (here’s a cache) It’s a simple titanium affair with 23 stones around the perimeter. What makes this ring so cool, though, is that it lights up whenever [Ben] and his girl … Read the rest
Sending data from a microcontroller to a PC usually requires some sort of serial connection, either through fiddly on-chip USB, FTDI chips, or expensive radio ICs. [Scott] didn’t want to deal with this when creating a network of wireless temperature sensors, so he hacked up a few cheap 433 MHz radio transmitters and receivers to transmit data to a PC … Read the rest
