What (non-PC) Hardware Do You Hack?

Lis writes "Mike Langberg at the Merc News interviewed Scott Fullam - Scott wrote the book 'Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks' which includes things like a video periscope for your car, an Internet toaster, Cubicle Intrusion Detection Systems, and talking Furbys. (Instructions for the toaster and coffeemaker are up on the O'Reilly site.) Almost any kind of consumer electronic equipment can be modified to do things it wasn't intended to do. Ok, you'll probably void your warranty in the process, but you could end up with something even better than the original. Or not. But it's just gotta be interesting. So what have you hacked, and into what?"

Re:Women

[kfg]

You just don't go out with the right sort of women.

"He's got a mistress, she's Puerto Rican, and I hear she's got a wooden leg." -- Tom Waits

KFG

Re:my coolest 'hack'

[Anonymous Coward]

absolutely not.

shame on YOU.

-JeanBaptiste

HP-41C Synthetic Programming

[G4from128k]

Back in college, I used to love synthetic programming [hpmuseum.org] in an HP-41C. When it was first discovered, one had to use various evil processes (yanking a memory modules, corrupting a magnetic card). The result was programming instructions that HP never intended. With synthetic programming, one could access hidden memory locations, display strange characters, and emit unusual sounds (just be careful with "STO c"). I spent way to much time exploring all of the tricks and documenting what did what.

My favorite little synthetic program made the machine tick ominously like a Geiger counter.

Thanks for bringing back fond memories from 20 years ago.

MEGASQUIRT!!

[Greg151]

If you are interested in EFI, ( even if you wish to keep your stock computer) check out megasquirt [bgsoflex.com]. I have learned more about how EFI works, and I plan to use megaquirt on my 65 barracuda. This type of garage/junkyard technology will keep older vehicles on the road, with better emissions and performance.

Re:Grill

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a blacksmith, we call that a forge.

TiVo

[Silicon Mike]

I've hacked the hell out of my TiVo. There's nothing like surfing the web browser on your TiVo for the first time! And, no.. XBOX doesn't count. it's PC hardware :) ---- AFK Games BNT.AFKGAMES.COM - Black Nova Traders LOTGD.AFKGAMES.COM - Legend of the Green Dragon All Free!

Good hacking tool:

[t_allardyce]

PIC processors can be insanely useful for this sort of thing and very cheap (most around $10) and easy to get, and once you've got the basics down (which can seem a bit daunting at first) they are very easy to learn and program to do pretty much whatever you want. The playstation mod chips are cheap miniture 8-pin PICs usually - just to give you an idea of what they can do, and some of the more advanced models have RS232 (i think) builtin so you can directly interface it with your PC. Add to that some cheap easy to use wireless modules (they just take a power supply and you stick the on/off binary signal in and thats all you need, takes 2 minutes) you can do some nifty remote controlled things. Basically anything from just switching something on and off or blinking some leds (which can be programmed in minutes) to full fledged computing can be done with these babys. They have loads of extras too - analog-digital converters, eeprom memory, high-current switching and more.

Remote key-loggers anyone? ;)

The PIC makers [microchip.com]
More stuff [brouhaha.com]

My remote

[RedA$$edMonkey]

There's 6 pins on the back of some remote controls called the JP1 and with a build-it-or-buy-it cable, you can hack your remote to do all sorts of cool shit it couldn't do before.

Here's a good starter:
http://www.lucindrea.com/jp1/JP1_For_Beg inners_Rev 1.1.htm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jp1/

SafeHouse

[losycompresion]

The phone both there would be alot cooler if it actually worked as a phone....and didn't tell you the damd code to enter after picking up the handset.

Re:Morning simulator

[Anonymous Coward]

Google "Sunrise simulator", choices abound.
IIRC these were first used for indoor gardening (No, not weed. Its always high noon in a cannabis grow room....or so I've heard) before someone decided to plug their bedroom light into it.

Re:Morning simulator

[Phil1]

I wish you'd been around when I was younger - I use a dawn simulator for medical purposes. I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD, and no I'm not joking - details here [mentalhealth.com]), and the most effective treatment is light therapy. This can take the form of lightboxes (intense light) or - you guessed it - a dawn simulator. AFAIK, these only became commercially available 10 years ago. I got mine in 1996 (aged 22), and haven't looked back.

More info on the one I have is here [outsidein.co.uk],

Also, I have found that moving from London to Sydney has helped....no need for a dawn simulator here!!

you can get premade boxes to do that

[caveat]

they aren't cheap, but a MoTeC ECU [motec.com] will let you play with your injection maps to your little hearts content, along with pretty much everything else that you can electronically control in your engine (uhh...injection mapping, ignition...what else is there?). truly a hacker's dream toy.

Opel Display

[Visser]

Hello, I hacked the Opel display. Normally it shows the RDS information of the carradio. Now it shows the revolutions per minute of the engine. I used a PIC processor to measure the rpm and talk to the display. www.eelkevisser.nl/display.htm [eelkevisser.nl]

Re:Hacking cars - from a Car Nut

[BigBlockMopar]

You described this guy perfectly..

Lemme guess... 3" diameter sounds-like-a-chainsaw exhaust tip and resonator, connected to the factory's 1" or so diameter stock exhaust system, 300lbs of stereo equipment with lots of tacky flashing lights in his "race car", and a big "Powered by Honda" sticker somewhere?

He claimed the mods to his Civic was giving him roughly 300+ HP.

I could get 300+ horses out of that motor, easily. In fact, I'd do it for him pro bono. 'Course, the only problem is that the engine wouldn't last more than about 10 minutes with the stuff I'd be dumping into the air filter. (Diesel engine starting fluid and NOS...)

Of course, it still wouldn't make a front wheel drive car fast, the weight transfer during heavy acceleration is to the rear of the car (and onto the rear wheels), so his traction would become worse and worse as the power was increased... :) (That's for any Slashdot reader who doesn't know why FWD sucks.)

He told me stories about blowing Mustangs off the road etc..

Heheh... What he didn't tell you is that the Mustangs he blew off the road all had that wheezy little 2.3L four-cylinder engine, over 200,000 miles, and behind the wheel are middle-aged secretaries who didn't even know that they were racing him!

Oddly enough, I actually did see him at the track. The tree went green and he drove down the track like the many other Civics and squeek out something in the high 17's. He knows I was there and he knows I saw him run and I know he saw me running my 91 Mustang (mid 14's/~96mph 100% pure stock with 2.73 rear and 125k miles).

2.73 and you did that? Impressive, you've taken good care of your motor!

Ya know, if you have the AOD transmission, you could get pretty radical on your rear gears and not lose much gas mileage unless you're always on the freeways. A set of 3.51 or so gears would really bring that thing to life and probably shave off more than a second on your 1/4 mile.

The next day at work he said he would have done so much better and got times close to mine if he wasn't spinning so much at the line. Well there was no spinning and his trap speed supported his time perfectly

Heh... You know, I've done mid 17s with a perfectly stock stickshift Chevette; 16.6 when I replaced the Holley carb with the larger one off a 1982 Dodge Aries. You should tell him that.

Of course, there's always excuses that he can blame for his poor times, but when it comes right down to it, it's either car or driver. You were there the same day and did downright good times on your car, so the track and weather were good. We already know the car is faulty (half the engine is missing, and what is there is pointing the wrong way), and I suspect the driver driver isn't much better (half the brain is missing, and what is there is located in his ass).

but I was not about to argue with him. This guy was in some serious denial. I am not a FF guy myself but I have seen many sport compacts with some great times, of course for every one that is truely impressive, there are 100's that are really confused.

Most of them are really confused. By the time you've spent the money to get respectable times out of any FWD car, you could have bought a real car, with a real engine, and been turning real (not just "well, that's pretty good for a Civic") times.

Super-sticky tires and suspension mods are expensive and still don't compensate for the inescapable laws of inertial weight transfer which give RWD cars a benefit and FWD cars a disadvantage. The small motor may achieve massive volumetric efficiency, but there's still not enough volume to provide the raw power of a less-efficient big V8.

The guy is delusional, and unless you have some very special reason to love the car's engine and transmission, there's simply no intelligent reason to build it up. It's a tool, you don't spend hours filing down a pair of linesman's pliers to make them into (poor) needlenoses, when you can simply go out and buy