Amps, iPod chargers and mice made of Altoid tins, Atari 2600 cartridge getting a new life as flash drives- just about anything can be used a great project case. Even an empty pack of cigarettes. Here’s a neat example of an under $30 DIY pocket amp on an Archos 20 Gb mp3 player with open sourced Roxbox firmware, and Etymotic ER-6 headphones. The surgeon general has determined that this project is smokin’.
Smash’s World points out that the PSP will change colors based on what month it is. 12 colors in all, January = Grey, February = Dull-Yellow, March = Lime-Green, April = Pink, May = Dark-Green, June = Light-Purple, July = Tealish-Blue, August = Blue, September = Purple, October = Gold, November = Brown, December = Red. Here’s a quick video I shot of this (save this file to your local system and/or PSP in MP_Root/100MNV01 folder to view). Ideally we could add more parameters like changing color based on battery life, connection, time of day and full/empty status of the memory stick…
If you have your copy of MAKE, be sure to enter the MakeShift challenge (page 170). After a relaxing night of camping in the deep woods, you return to your car to find that it will not start. The battery is dead. “Someone” left the parking lights on overnight. You are 50 miles from the nearest road and have limited food and water. You try to call for help, but your cellphone is out of power and out of range. Snowy weather is scheduled to set in by late evening. The situation is serious. Makeshift winners will get a SWISSMEMORY
USB Victorinox 512MB device, as well as a Make T-shirt and 1-year subscription, if you win. This is your last chance to get in some last-minute entries before the deadline 3/31!
Make Flickr pool member drewish of Bicycle POV fame posted up a couple images of a minty cool mouse he made. Ingredients: One Altoids tin and one Logitech USB optical mouse. Not shown: Dremel, mini-hack saw, two-part epoxy, random plastic bits, 4 hours of my life.
There are few ways you can get eBooks on your PSP. One way- you can turn the PSP in to a web browser and hit a HTML page that has an eBook, but an easier way is to use a print utility called PaperLess printer to make images of any printable file or PSPPhoto which makes photos that are properly sized for the PSP. Here’s how to make eBooks using PaperlessPrinter from GameFries, here’s where to get PSPPhoto and here are a ton of great digitized Manga for the PSP. Last up HowToons on my PSP!
Altoids and old Atari 2600 cartridges make great project cases. Earlier Brendan Dawes’s made a USB drive out of an old Atari cartridge and now here’s a great step-by-step from Teach42 that shows you how to make a battery pack for an iPod using Combat.
OMG! LOL! I can’t wait add Flipper to my buddy list…Seadragon allows you to emit underwater whistles and to acquire underwater whistles. You can now try to communicate with many species of whales and dolphins. Seadragon could be described as Instant Messaging for dolphins and humans. It does not translate whistles. It tries to recognize them, it gives a name to unrecognized ones, and it is up to you to figure out their meaning, if any. It allows you to emit whistles underwater and to see the text names of whistles emitted by cetaceans in response to yours. Download it here.
