Sven writes “About a year ago, inspired by other projects like Afrotech’s Hard-disk Sound System, I built a first version of my harddisk speaker. The first one was just a very quick hack to see if it would work and was destroyed due to too much power melting the coils and cables. We hooked it up to a 50W guitar amp and pushed the volume a bit to far… Since it sounded really great, I decided to build a second one.” Link.
Astrogoth writes “Thanks to Apple, I couldn’t pair my Bluetrek G2 bluetooth headset to my PowerBook to use with Skype, so I built my own headset from an old pair of Grado SR-80 headphones and an Apple iSight web cam. I described what I did so others could do the same.” Link.
“It’s nice to have a bit of colour in your house for style reasons, so here are some neat little PCB’s that accommodate a mixture of red, green and blue LEDs giving you the option of controlling the colour they emit. They are designed to fit into standard MR16 downlighter frames for convenience of mounting. Since this page was put up the intensity of common LEDs has risen dramatically and the matching controller project now has extremely sophisticated software that really makes these lights shine.” Thanks Rick! Link.
Dylan writes “First, eMachineShop. They are an online custom machine shop. You download their program, design the part you need, send in the spec, they machine it, and then it arrives in your mailbox. How cool is that?! They do injection molding, rubber molding, milling, turning, laser cutting, waterjet cutting, wire EDM, tapping, bending, blanking, punching, plastic extrusion, thermoforming, and casting. And the list of materials you can use is just silly. Second, Pad2Pad. Same deal as eMachineShop (it’s a sister site), but this time with custom printed circuit boards. You download the software, design your PCB, send it in, they make it, and then you get your PCB in your mailbox. These sites have got to be handy sites for people doing projects like the ones you see in Make.”
David from Combots writes “The best flame-throwing, high-energy, steel-crunching robots in the world come to SF for the championship (Sat/Sun, Nov 12-13, 2005). Biohazard, Sewer Snake, Megabyte, and other famous bots weighing up to 340 pounds will spew fire, flip their opponents, and spin hundred-pound weapons faster than Bruce Lee on meth – all competing for the $10,000 grand prize.” Link.
This book is on my list to check out – “Hacking Digital Cameras, recently released at the end of September, is the first and only book on the market that is aimed for the DIY photographers. It contains numerous hacking projects for the camera, lenses, accessories, tools, and storage. Whereas other photography books aim to explain how to use camera equipment, control lighting, and framing the shot, Hacking Digital Cameras shows the reader how to build lighting tools and hacking their camera to get the desired picture.” Anyone try this out yet? Post up a review in our comments. Link.
Here’s another book on my list to pick up. “Whether you’re just discovering Tetris or you’ve been a Pong junkie since puberty, Chris Kohler’s Retro Gaming Hacks is your indispensable new guide to classic games. Kohler has compiled the how-to information that used to take weeks of web surfing to find and presents it in highly readable Hacks style. Serving up 85 hard-nosed hacks for reviving the classic games, including tips on hacking ancient hardware, home-brewing classic software, and adapting today’s equipment for retro games, Retro Gaming Hacks hands you the joystick” Link. (O’Reilly also publishes MAKE).
