What (non-PC) Hardware Do You Hack? 696
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?"
Lately, furniture... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Lately, furniture... (Score:5, Funny)
Now if you used all of the leftover pieces that for some reason you didn't "need" in the rebuild to create pulley system that saved you some trips upstairs (or an IKEAbot to do the work for you)... now *that* would be hacking.
Darth Vader Toy (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.cityhall.com/projects/darth/darth_pe
-Monta at cityhall.com
You know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lately, furniture... (Score:4, Funny)
Hacking, for example, would be more like modifying the tractor and stable to move your fiance directly from her milking station to your bed made of hay.
Basically, modifying something(s) to do something they were not originally designed to do.
The gf? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The gf? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The gf? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The gf? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The gf? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The gf? (Score:3, Funny)
How to hack the American woman culture. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here are some ideas and suggestions for those who want to hack the U.S. woman culture. The first thing you should know is that hacking your own culture can be scary. It's definitely an E-Ticket ride, for those who want to tackle something seriously complex.
Bitching is part of the American woman culture. It cannot be disabled. For a better experience, try a different nationality. In the U.S., the word "bitch" means both "complain" and "woman". Did you know that there are no other English-speaking countries in which this is so?
This is a bit extreme, but a good exaggeration might be that if you have only known women of the U.S. culture, you have never really known a woman at all. Women in the U.S. commonly: 1) are infantile, 2) live in a fantasy world in which the rules of life don't apply to them, 3) are self-destructive, 4) want control, 5) believe that men are reponsible for all of their problems, 5) are irresponsible to an amazing degree, and 6) use anger and hostility to try to intimidate and get their way.
Want examples? Read the women's magazines on any newstand in the United States. Watch some of the episodes of the Oprah Winfrey show, in which men are seen as the objects of fantasy, or as inherently evil enemies.
If there are any readers who want to give an instant negative reaction to this, please think carefully first. I've traveled to 33 countries and talked with hundreds of women extensively from other countries about their lives. I'm serious about understanding the problems. Ask yourself, are you? Do you really care about what happens in your country?
When I lived in England, it was common to see English and European movies in which there would be a comedy episode in which an American woman did something selfish and out of touch.
That said, the American woman culture can be successfully hacked. It's a limited kind of success, like living in a cesspool and saying that you like the brown things that float past better than the black ones.
First, don't take American women seriously. That gives them responsibility and they don't like that.
Second, don't depend on them. They may want sex with you today for no good reason, and not want to talk to you tomorrow, also for no good reason. A Russian woman said, "It may take me only one minute to fall in love, but I have to be in love to want sex. American women sleep with anyone." I've heard that from people of several nationalities.
Third, don't blame everything that happens in your relationships with U.S. women on yourself. If you did something bad, accept that. But recognize that a common way for a U.S. woman to get control is to try to get you believe that you are an inferior kind of being.
Fourth, spend considerable time understanding the U.S. woman culture. It is, in many ways, not what it pretends to be. For example, women in the U.S. often project confidence, when they don't feel confident at all.
Fifth, stay with what is logical. Logic has little importance for many U.S. women, even those who are successful in the U.S. computer industry. If you stray away from what is logical, you may soon be as confused as her.
Sixth, treat women right even if they treat you badly. Everyone needs more experience in learning how to be good to themselves and others. I'm not religious, but it happens that Jesus Christ was right: Don't answer violence with more violence; don't answer bad behavior with more bad behavior. Like it said in the movie, "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure", "Be excellent to each other." Being excellent to women does NOT mean spending money on them. You should each contribute equally to your relationship. If she doesn't want to do that, she doesn't want a real relationship.
The U.S. is suffering a social breakdown. The breakdown is caused in part by the largely hidden breakdown of the U.S. woman culture. When a man cannot find a suitable woman friend, when a man and a woman cannot make a stable relationship, wh
Re:How to hack the American woman culture. (Score:5, Insightful)
But I've realized (after careful reading of this post and some perusal of your website) that this isn't flamebait or a troll, in the usual senses of the words, and that you seem in some ways to be a very thoughtful individual, if rather misguided about some issues.
So I'll rebut your arguments instead.
"Bitching", defined as complaining, is hardly a pursuit limited to women (american or not). I've worked in male-dominated (not purposely, just because it fell out that way) offices that held 'bitch sessions' that were called exactly that.
The use of 'bitch' to denote all women is a misogynist term, and almost certainly did not originate with women. The more or less male analog to this is 'bastard', yet not all men (american or not) are illegitimate.
> This is a bit extreme, but a good exaggeration
> might be that if you have only known women of
> the U.S. culture, you have never really known a
> woman at all.
Just for the record, my mother is Japanese, as is her mother. So I grew up with women who were not socialized predominately in the U.S. While I have not been able to leave the U.S. as an adult, I have certainly dealt with women who did not grow up here. So this argument does not apply to me.
> Women in the U.S. commonly: 1) are infantile,
> 2) live in a fantasy world in which the rules
> of life don't apply to them, 3) are self-
> destructive, 4) want control, 5) believe that
> men are reponsible for all of their problems,
> 5) are irresponsible to an amazing degree, and
> 6) use anger and hostility to try to intimidate
> and get their way.
Oprah Winfrey and Women's magazines in general are not indicative of 'women's culture' any more than esquire, playboy and sports illustrated are indicative of 'men's culture'. They are corporate entities created to make money. Nothing more, nothing less.
So, unless you would like to try to claim that men are 1. infantile, 2. live in a fantasy world in which the rules of life don't apply to them, 3. are self-destructive, 4. want control, 5. believe that women are reponsible for all of their problems, 6. are irresponsible to an amazing degree, and 7. use anger, hostility, violence and a larger body size to try to intimidate and get their way. I'd suggest you either reconsider your sources or reconsider your hypothesis
Incidently, all of these things are true for individual examples, regardless of gender. None of these things are true for the entire gender.
I fail to see a problem with some of these things ('want control' -- I want control over my life, and I fail to see why it's wrong for a woman to do so) and some of these problems (irresponsibility, blaming others unreasonably, intimidation) are problems in American culture, period, and are not particularly gender linked, though the way they manifest may be, i.e. statistically, women will be more likely to use emotional manipulation, like crying, where men will be more likely to use physical intimidation. But this is still statistical, and any individual may use either or neither, regardless of gender.
Also, these traits bear startling resemblance to the psychological profiles of a healthy woman (as in, this is what a psychologically healthy woman is like -- a woman who acts as an adult, is responsible, likes men [and therefore sex], etc is neurotic and requires treatment) from the first half of the twentieth century. If you are not aware of this you may want to do more research here. A fair chunk of women's problems in this country stem from psychological and psychiatric practices.
And yes, I really do care about what happens in my country. Which is one of the reasons I hate seeing energy wasted on misguided attacks and other strategies.
I fail to see how the satiric practices of any country accurately reflect the reality of any other country reliably enough to draw good conclusions about that cou
Re:If you don't like my hypotheses, what are yours (Score:5, Insightful)
Your complaint about women not wanting to commit is interesting, as it's one I'm more used to hearing from women about men than vice versa (though I've heard it from women about women and men about both men and women, so no one gets to completely avoid it, I suppose). I don't find that surprising. Marriage has it's pros and cons. It's not just about committing to have sex with only one person. There are a lot of practical aspects -- financial (dependant on where you are and who has what money and what income, you can lose quite a bit of money in taxes and such if you're married that you wouldn't if you were single), geographical (if one partner gets transferred at work, do both move or does that partner have to lose their job and find another?), emotional (living with someone is very difficult -- esspecially if one was an only child in a 'standard' household [parent(s) only, no extended family]) etc. And some of these fall particularly hard on women, because traditionally they've been the ones expected to make greater sacrifices for the marriage. If a woman wants to have a career or continue her education than it makes sense to delay marriage. And all of this is intensified if children are expected to be part of the package.
My mother went to four different colleges and ultimately decided to go into nursing rather than medicine, because she got married and had to follow my father around. Two years later she had me and three years after that my sister. It took her fourteen years to get her BA in Nursing, and she started before she met my father (and she was her high school valedictorian, so I don't think that was a problem with the academic work). Now, she doesn't (to my knowledge) regret any of this, and I respect the decisions she made as those that were best for her, but I certainly can understand why a woman would *not* want to do that. I don't think one can explain away difficulty finding a wife or the rising age of first time brides by claiming that women on the whole have become less willing to commit. The social and economic factors affecting marriage have changed in the last two generations, and they combine to make getting married, and esspecially getting married young, a less attractive choice than it was before, at least unless one really wants to have children.
Incidently, life expentancy stats would seem to bear this out. Married men have longer life expentancies than unmarried men, but the reverse is true for women.
On a related point, to find a wife, being popular with women is not really the best strategy. It's being appealing, as marriage material, to at least one woman (and it only has to be one, though I suppose increasing that number would increase your odds somewhat) who is interested in getting married. I know one guy who is really popular with women, but not in any way that would be useful to find a partner -- for various reasons he's very popular with..lesbians. Not very useful for getting married or getting laid, but his parties are great. Actually, I exaggerate a little -- he ended up marrying a woman who thought she was a lesbian, but decided she'd just hadn't met the right man. This is, however, a lousy strategy in general and I don't recommend it (because it wastes your time and annoys the lesbians
Modeling and the whole beauty queen business is
Re:The gf? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The gf? (Score:3, Interesting)
Jason
O'Reilly's "Girlfriend Hacks" (Score:5, Funny)
This is akin to getting her drunk to suppress those pesky frontal lobe messages that counter the "I'm horny" feelings with "He's ugly and he reads Slashdot" reasoning.
Actually, this is a bad analogy. The Pentium FPU was disabled because it was giving faulty results. The girl-frontal-lobes are functioning perfectly when they report that you're (*) an ugly geek.
Even hard drive sizes used to be "hacked" bigger by using compression software.
The girl-equivalent being the wonderbra that makes the important things appear larger where it matters (i.e. where you can see them). Unfortunately, like the compression software, you'll eventually see that neither of these methods actually give you more.
(*) No, not you (the parent poster) specifically.... why do people say "you" instead of "one" in English...?
Re:The gf? (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Not from a Pc but used with it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not from a Pc but used with it... (Score:5, Interesting)
SafeHouse (Score:4, Informative)
Aibo (Score:5, Funny)
Furby's (Score:5, Funny)
Rapid prototyping (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rapid prototyping (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Rapid prototyping (Score:3, Funny)
Why the Dremel? (Score:3, Interesting)
3D Scanner (Score:5, Interesting)
Slowed down recently due to house-hunting, but nearing completion. The hardware is ready to go, just need to write the drivers & integration software.
Tree hacking.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Tree hacking.. (Score:5, Interesting)
We built a fireplace and I wanted something cool for the kids so I took one of the kid-high rocks and drilled a hole in it then epoxied in a brass "peep hole". I put a geode behind the rock and ran some fiber optic cable to it then mortared the whole thing up.
The other ends of the fiber optic cables went to a hidden box which contains the guts of one of these fiber optic Xmas trees (including the spinning color wheel).
Push a secret rock near the peep hole rock and the whole thing turns on - cool crystally color changing happiness. The kids love it. Now on the other side of the fireplace I installed a "peep show" but that's a different story...
Re:Tree hacking.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tree hacking.. (Score:4, Funny)
Cars! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cars! (Score:4, Interesting)
Would it be hacking if you just took off the shelf (either stock or aftermarket) and installed them? Or would you have to kind of cobble together something that's rarely normally done for it to be hacking?
Re:Cars! (Score:5, Funny)
This was a waste of time. Everyone knows that a big wing is the biggest performance boost for a Civic. Also, a Type-R sticker is even cheaper and adds 20HP as well as improves handling.
Hacking cars - from a Car Nut (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other end of the spectrum. I knew a guy with a Civic that put a 12v computer P/S fan in his air intake ducting to "increase" airflow into the engine.
The power supply fan would do very little, since it drives so little air. Most throttle bodies and carburetors are rated in the hundreds of CFM, most small fans like that are rated in the dozens of CFM. If anything, it would reduce the engine's peak power.
At partial throttle, the fan will drive a small amount of extra air into the engine meaning that the throttle won't have to be open as far for a given amount of power.
At wide open throttle, the engine's vacuum would massively outstrip the fan's flow, and the engine would end up dragging the fan. The energy required to spin the fan would be coming from the fast-moving air trying to enter the engine. The restriction and turbulence caused by the fan would reduce the volumne of air drawn into the motor, and therefore reduce the peak wide-open-throttle power.
People who do stuff like this - and, in fact, try to "tune" a Honda or other silly front wheel drive car - almost universally know nothing about cars, then try to take on Mustangs and Camaros which are, by virtue of large displacement V8 engines and rear wheel drive, far more suited to the task of stoplight confrontations.
If the guy were serious, he'd install a very high volume fan. Vacuum cleaner fans have been used as "electric superchargers" but require 120V in your car. Turbochargers and superchargers are far more reliable.
If he were really serious, he'd yank out that cute little 4 cylinder engine and transaxle and sell them. Then he'd cut out the rear suspension, weld perches onto his roll cage to attach the leaf springs or ladder bars. He'd stuff in a nice differential and rear axle (probably a Ford 9"), and stick a big V8 and automatic transmission driving the rear wheels. Personally, I'd stuff a big block Mopar V8 in there, but an early 1980s Buick 3.8L V6 would keep a Civic street drivable, getting over 25MPG and turning reliable low 12-second 1/4 mile times.
If he did that, then he would have a serious car for stoplight confrontations.
Hacking cars? Check this out, it's my buddy's 1986 Chevette [glowingplate.com]. He cut off the back end of the car and welded on the tailfins of a 1956 Dodge Custom Royal. Together, we built a Chevette Targa [glowingplate.com]... it had started out to be a hard-top convertible, but we never finished it.
Me? I do engine swaps [glowingplate.com]. Then I go drag racing [glowingplate.com].
Re:Cars! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cars! (Score:5, Funny)
Now, depending on the situation, I display the appropriate message on the sign. It's fun to see the looks on people's faces! Good to know that if you are a geek, you don't have to take road-abuse.
phones (Score:4, Interesting)
but phones are simple, and don't hold a big charge... although, there's nothing like a good 9 volt zap in the morning to wake you up.
Re:phones (Score:5, Funny)
Re:phones (Score:5, Funny)
I once bought an original Pole Position II arcade off ebay (about 120). After a few months the screen went a bit screwy, so i found a newsgroup concerning acade repair.
The people on the group were really helpful and were talking me through fixing the problem... however I kept the arcade plugged in so I could see the results. FZZZZZZPT! I get knocked about 5 foot, manage to crawl to my laptop and type very slowly "brb, ambulance"
my gf was first shocked, then scared, then calling me "pathetic"
Re:phones (Score:5, Funny)
Re:phones (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's just say ... (Score:5, Funny)
Is it staring at me?
my coolest 'hack' (Score:5, Funny)
When i was in high school there was a particular big dumb jock that would pick on me. It was a catholic high school. So I stole some official letterhead paper from the guidance counselor's office and an official envelope with the school info on it.
I proceeded to type up an expulsion letter on the letterhead paper, saying he had been caught masturbating on campus, and as a good catholic school we could not allow that. I made it sound much more official. Had my friend forge the dean's signature, and that if they (his parents) had any questions about it, feel free to call (phone number included).
Then I mailed it.
he never found out it was me that did that, and he did still pick on me... but i'd say I got even.
Re:my coolest 'hack' (Score:5, Funny)
I hack into his Windows machine and kill the WinLogon process. Then I jump up and go make coffee - looking all innocent! It takes 5-10 seconds before the machine just reboots. He's reinstalled Windows 4 times so far and changed most of his hardware. I let it go for a week or two between reboots to give him the impression that a rebuild actually helps things.
I try and time these events with his lunchtime game playing or when he's lecturing a junior on how good his software is. (During his good programming lectures I selectively kill OLE processes, causing his app to fail with access violations.)
Pathetic I know, but boy it cracks us all up.
Re:my coolest 'hack' (Score:3, Funny)
This allows the user to log in, but he'll be logged off immediately since userinit.exe is the program responsible for launching the Windows Explorer desktop. The only way to repair it is with a boot disk or by editing the afflicted machine's registry remotely.
Re:my coolest 'hack' (Score:5, Funny)
My old standby is "NET SEND * ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!" or a "WILDCAT IS ON TEH SPOKE" or a "CRAMAK GONNA FIX IT!" or other such geek in-joke nonsense.
Noone knows where the messages came from (I change my computers ident to something like "CPU-CORE" to make it look official).
The best use of it was when a kid who worked here for about a month was fired, I changed my PC's name to his login ID, and started NET SENDing messages like "FIRE ME, WILL YA? YOU'll BE SORRY MOTHERFUCKERS!!!"..
They pulled plugs out of the T1 demarq spot, unplugged all the modem lines, disabled the WiFi module we use to test our mobile apps, but the messages persisted!
I could hardly keep a straight face as people were bursting into my office, panic stricken, saying "He's in our computers!! He's going to delete all our files! How's he getting in! How do we stop him?"
Re:my coolest 'hack' (Score:5, Funny)
BTW, our Sun systems have the flush.au installed by default in
Re:my coolest 'hack' (Score:3, Funny)
He screamed very loudly.
My latest hack. (Score:5, Funny)
If you don't think this is a good hack, you have no imagination.
Re:My latest hack. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My latest hack. (Score:5, Funny)
Routers (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this count? (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, maybe not, but it was fun to have bottle rocket launchers in the front of the car.
Once in a while, they actually went where you wanted them to (the rockets, not the car).
Possibilities (Score:5, Funny)
*eyes electric massagers*
You don't saaaay....
Re:Possibilities (Score:5, Funny)
I once hacked a sybian [sybian.com] into a sanding machine.
Wall mounted alarm clock... (Score:5, Funny)
1) Hold clock up by power cord, against wall
2) Position IC over power cord
3) Apply hammer to IC, driving pins 1-16 into wall.
4) Connect ground, Vcc, and inputs as desired.
Laminate flooring and electrical system (Score:3, Insightful)
How about... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How about... (Score:5, Insightful)
I find that unlikely. Among other quirks, the Apple Lisa has a home-grown MMU, developed in house by engineers who empirically determined what 68000 instructions could be restarted after a page fault, and how. The 68000 was not designed for virtual memory, you see, so the Apple folks had to experiment and create their own software and hardware to make it happen.
I would be surprised if anyone put that much that effort into a class. If you built a 68k computer with a bitmap display, then you have something there, but it's not a Lisa. Don't think that just because the Lisa came out before the first Mac that it's a more primitive system--in fact it's quite the opposite.
Please substantiate your claim!
--Tom
That periscope wigs me out. (Score:3, Interesting)
And it's nice to know that my dreams of Internet toast have been fulfilled.
Anyone with a little skill/determination (yeah, that's a slash, not an "and") can hack anything; I think a more interesting article would be about maverick hacks that actually turned out to be useful. Like, say someone turned a toaster into a door-to-door salesman irradiation device. That would be amazingly useful.
you mean like... (Score:5, Funny)
Cheap oscilloscope using sound card (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cheap oscilloscope using sound card (Score:4, Interesting)
EFI (Score:5, Interesting)
Plus on 80/90's GM EFI cars, there's a cruise fuel saving routine that's not enabled from the factory. 29 MPG highway from a 350 CI V8 baybee.
MEGASQUIRT!! (Score:5, Informative)
you can get premade boxes to do that (Score:4, Informative)
Several things, really. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've also interfaced a "radio controlled clock" to a PC to automagically set the exact time.
Turned an old CD-ROM drive into a hand-powered LED toy [fieldlines.com] for my son.
Latest interesting project was to convert a box fan motor into a permanent magnet for use in a wind generator... that hasn't worked out too well so far. [fieldlines.com]
Music Gear (Score:4, Interesting)
There are several reasons why this is cool. The components of a passive pickup system are real simple, allowing you to get started easily. As you build up your base of knowledge you can get involved in much more complex projects, like modifying amplifiers, building your own stomp boxes, etc.
Another reason this is a cool field is that you can approach it from different angles. If you're good with calculus you can design and calculate the frequency response of your filters before you build them and know exactly what you're doing. You can design a whole effect if you want and model it in circuit modelling software. In fact, with some programs I believe you can do that and use a wav file for input to get an idea of how the circuit will sound, although I haven't tried that myself.
If you're a physical experimenter kind of a person you can take existing circuits and see, for example, how a tone knob sounds different when the pot is connected to different values of capacitors. Plus, if your favorite part is building, not designing then there is a huge amount of free schematics for things on the web, kits you can order, etc.
It's loads of fun (pun intended?) and you can really individualize your sound (for better or for worse).
Grill (Score:4, Interesting)
a camera (Score:4, Interesting)
When the Hasselblad Xpan (makes 24mm x 60 mm panoramic frames on 35mm film) was first marketed, I drooled over the ads, but didnt have the budget for it.
But I did have a medium format Rolleicord TLR (which makes 60mm x 60mm frames on 120 film), and I knew that a 35mm film adapter existed for it, so I shopped around used camera store until I found one that had kits.
Now the full kit prevents you from not using the 35mm mask (to make 24mm x 36mm frames).
Luckily, the store manager had an incomplete kit, which I got at a substantial discount from a complete (collectible priced) kit.
So I used the two parts that serve to hold the 35mm film canister, and used some medical duct tape wound on either end of a 120 film spool to narrow the space for the 35mm film and voila!
Cheap "real panoramic" 35mm photos.
The only downside is that I have to rewind the film in a changebag or in a darkroom.
HP-41C Synthetic Programming (Score:4, Informative)
My favorite little synthetic program made the machine tick ominously like a Geiger counter.
Thanks for bringing back fond memories from 20 years ago.
Kinder, Gentler Children's Toys (Score:5, Interesting)
Happy Trails!
Erick
Re:Kinder, Gentler Children's Toys (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, that's a lot more work than putting a piece of tape over the speaker grille.
Kiddie synths, toys, etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
See Reed Ghazala [anti-theory.com], father of circuit bending.
Programmable thermostats (Score:5, Insightful)
Xbox, the most efficient device to hack (Score:4, Interesting)
You can turn it into a baby Linux box - Thank God Linux doesn't need much hardware to run well.
You can turn it into a media center - Home brew applications allow for a/v playback of any codec you can think of. Now it even supports HD.
You can turn it into a portable Xbox (Instead of lugging around your games, just put 'em on a HDD)
You can turn it into a homebrew gaming system, with support for stuff like Stepmania (DDR simulator)
You can turn it into an arcade with emulation support for any gaming system that isn't current generation (sans maybe the Sega Saturn).
Well, you get the point. $200 Xbox + $50 mod chip + $100 HDD = $5,000 worth of entertainment equipment
G.I. Joe centrifuge (Score:5, Funny)
I believe the motor was originally driven by two 1.5 V AA batteries, and I was using a 9V. (Hey, it's easier to connect!) My plan was to use it as a climbing winch, enabling Snake Eyes (tm) to sneak up on the evil Destro(tm)'s clifftop lair. I tied one end of a 3 foot piece of sewing thread to the motor shaft, and the other to Snake Eyes' left hand. I wedged the motor under a book and connected the battery to winch him to the top!
Little did Snake Eyes know what kind of evil Destro had in store for him. Little also did I know - it happened so fast that I am still fuzzy on some details. At some point, Snake Eyes stopped standing on the ground at the base of my dresser and entered into a state where he was spinning at insane velocities about the motor, attached by a tangled 6 inch piece of thread. I have no memory of a transition between these two states.
The moral of the story - if an evil overlord leaves an electric motor conveniently located for you to winch your way up the cliff face to his mountain fortress, don't use it!
My best "hack" (Score:5, Funny)
Answers: $1.00
Answers w/thought: $2.00
Correct Answers: $4.00
Dumb Answers still free
Visa/MC Accepted...
Sold it on ebay a few months later for like $80.00.
How about the Italian Army rulebook? (Score:5, Interesting)
Within weeks he had his unit all wearing beards.
He arrested a senior member of the army who came back to the base too late after a night out.
And the best bit: In the army one's transport to and from home each weekend is paid for. He lives the other side of Europe from Italy, so they offered to fly him. But no - the rules state that it had to be by train (which takes what, a day? a day and a half?) so he ended up spending just a couple of days a week in Italy...
They sent him home soon afterwards. Nicely. Permanently.
Give this guy a system (of whatever kind) and he'll do scary scary things...
squirt gun (Score:5, Funny)
Morning simulator (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm building a clock that includes a wall socket. You plug a lamp into the socket, and half an hour before your set wakeup time, the lamp begins glowing. It increases brightness gradually over a half hour so that by the time you need to wake up, you already are. It's not really a new idea, but it's fun. It uses a realtime clock chip, a microcontroller, and a triac for power control. Maybe not so much hacking...I guess it does "hack" a desk lamp into a wakeup alarm notification device.
Most of my other hacks are computer related; for example hacking a Sandisk 6-in-1 memory card reader to work with ALL CompactFlash cards, instead of only the new ones, with a single wire. I hacked a Nintendo R.O.B. into an internet-controlled pan/tilt webcam mount [macetech.com] in an hour or two. Also ran a small server in college which used fetchmail to check for new messages, and would flash one LED over my desk and one in the door's peephole, so I knew I had mail just by looking down the hall from a friend's room. Lots of random stuff like that. My most recent major project was a small CNC machine, the computer, power supply, and driver electronics housed inside the case of an old Yokogawa data analyzer.
Good hacking tool: (Score:5, Informative)
Remote key-loggers anyone?
The PIC makers [microchip.com]
More stuff [brouhaha.com]
R/C cars (Score:5, Interesting)
Holy shit that thing was fast. It didn't last very long, was not wired to go backwards, and couldn't turn without flipping over, and took 3 battery packs, but it was fast!
Foreign hardware (Score:5, Interesting)
This was a fairly sensitive unit, so I wanted to be careful about the voltage. A decent step-up transformer for 110-220V is around $70 here. It's also not as easy as one things to find a decent priced 5V/600mA adaptor (most are about 300mA, and not all that "stable").
I eventually came to the bright conclusion that computer power leads have a 5V connector, so I made an adaptor for the front of my PC. I then removed the original 200V adaptor and simply connected the power lead to a plug that fits in the PC. Viola, my MP3 player now charges nicely and plays tunes while I'm on the go.
I hack my building's elevator (Score:5, Interesting)
After hours, the desk attendant is replaced by a rent-a-cop. These rent-a-cops, to make things convinient for themselves, are in the practice of comandering one of the elevators so that it only moves when they put their key in.
Similarly, the cleaning people, when moving from floor to floor, leave their wheeled carts on the elevator and disable the movement of the elevator to save them the trouble of waiting on an elevator and moving their carts out of the elevator.
This has, at times, annoyed me. So I figured out that if I enter the elevator and [b]hold down[/b] the floor button, the elevator door will close and I will move to my floor.
This mischief of mine is mostly directed at the rent-a-cops because when I enter the building it is easist for me to just grab their elevator and ride it up, leaving them thinking that they didn't set it right.
However, the bigger impact is on the cleaning people, for when I take their elevator, I'm also taking their wheeled carts, and it must be a pain in the butt to try get back that elevator (one of three). I mean, they push a return elevator button, and it's 1:3 chance that it will be the right one.... every time! Because of this, I'm much less likely to hax0rz their elevator.
silly putty timers (Score:5, Interesting)
Answering machine (Score:5, Interesting)
Until the night when I got someone who just kept redialing the phone to hear all the outgoing messages. (Back in the day when telemarketers did their own dialing, would note interesting answering machines, and then call them up again outside work hours and share them with friends.)
Speak like the Devil (Score:5, Funny)
I had one of the original Speak & Spells with the raised-button letters (unlike the later models that were completely flat). On all Speak & Spells there is a "Code" mode where up to 8 letters can by typed and transposed into a code that only people with other Speak & Spells could decipher (ROT13, or something else very weak). One day I grew bored with this mode and leaned on all of the buttons at once. This caused the multi-directional character LEDs to all light up like 8 little boxes. I then started pressing the apostrophe key. Each box would turn into an apostrophe. Boop... Boop... Boop... Boop... Boop... Boop... Boop...
As I pressed the apostrophe key one more time to erase the last malformed chaacter, I awakened the demon within the Speak & Spell. All of a sudden the Speak & Spell went into the "Say It" mode where it would teach particular words. Normally, it would show a word like "OCEAN" and the speaker would state, "Say it... OCEAN." But in this crazy mode I had put it into, the speaker would shout incoherently. "Say it...HUGAXCKHUAAAHRETA!!!" It would keep on doing this, screaming incoherently until the enter key was pressed, at which time it would pick a random word and shout it out. "MOTHER!"
It definitely made my parents laugh, and the same Speak & Spell works to this day with the same bug. Keep in mind that the Voyager space probe also had less memory than a Speak & Spell, too...
Car LED clock module becomes coffee maker (Score:5, Interesting)
My most recent hack was to make up a short lead that runs from a universal (90-250v) multi-voltage 2A DC power supply. On the 'output' side of the lead is a 12V car 'cigar lighter' socket into which I can plug a Belkin 12V 'car' to 5V USB socket adaptor - now with the relevant leads I can charge my phone or PDA or use anything else that normally takes power from a USB port - this means I only have to take one power unit with me on holiday or on business rather than one PSU for phone, another for PDA, another for digital camera, NiMh battery charger etc.
Microwave Oven (Score:5, Interesting)
So one night, with more free time than is strictly healthy, my friend Steve Roche and I were sitting around microwaving things, when one of us decided to set the time on the clock to "6:66", just to see what would happen.
Fortunately for us, the programmers of the firmware didn't include any validation code, because it let us set the time to 6:66. We sat there for a minute, debating what would happen next. Would it change to 7:07? 6:67? 6:07? 6:67 it was. What would happen, then, after 6:69? Again we debated -- would it go to 6:70? By that time we sort of assumed it would.
Well, it fooled us but good -- after 6:69, it invented a new number . The display read "6:6^", or something like that. We watched with fascination as it made up five more brand new digits, before changing to 6:70.
Damned if it wasn't using hexadecimal.
Then we microwaved some wormy flour, which stunk up the house in some awful, indescribable way, and ended the microwave experiments for the evening.
More of a practical joke, but could be hacking (Score:4, Funny)
Opel Display (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Animal... (Score:3, Funny)
No - I'm not joking either.
Re:xbox (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you improve upon the methodology or end result.
Re:xbox (Score:4, Funny)
I hacked a Dakota digital camera.
10 bucks for a blurry 1.3 mp camera, how could I not hack it?
Re:xbox (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't afford an Xbox, you Insensitive Clod!
Besides doesn't the posting specify "non-pc" hacking? An Xbox is really just a neutered PC. Now if you made the Xbox actually DO something cool, other than just boot/run unsigned code, that might be worth mentioning.
My other Xbox is a Long-Range ballistic missile guidance system
Re:The ultimate hack.... (Score:3, Funny)