Here’s a pretty fun project that turns an old Macintosh PowerBook 100 into a monochrome digital photo frame. I really like the look of the photos on the screen mixed in with the regular photo frames. If you plan on doing this the project lists the software and power on solutions needed to get it working which may save you some hassle. Link.
Probably not a good idea to try this out depending on where you live, etc.. etc.. here’s the “world’s simplest radio jammer”. The project uses a 100 MHz crystal which I haven’t seen, the page goes on to say that it was procured out of some old circuit board from the 90s. Link.
Fun Gameboy accessory project– The Game Boy Camera uses a cheap CMOS image sensor with a resolution of 128*123 and an analogue monochrome output. This page shows how to connect it to a standard non-bidirectional, non-ECP, non-EPP PC parallel port, with 5 bits per pixel, compared to the Game Boy’s 2 bits dithered. The circuit described here uses only the small PCB in the swivelling part of the camera, which contains the AR chip, lens assembly and pretty much nothing else. No Game Boy involved. Link.
Doing the dishes is really boring- but I think I have something to help pass the time. A Flickr photo frame to view photos from friends and family. It’s not too hard to find cheap old or broken Tablet PCs on eBay for under $300, and some have a swivel around screen that can be tucked up and away. For now I’m working on the best way to mount it and using VNC to set the slideshows. Also on the list- a full screen RSS viewer to read headlines.
I check the PEZ MP3 blog about once a week to see where the project is at. It’s a fascinating journal of a stay at home Dad who has a dream, the passion and persistence to bring a product to market he thought up. This week, Samsung bumps the inventor for someone bigger and some really big company seems to be courting the developer with a crazy amount of orders, but then it goes quiet. I hope Samsung comes around since their chip support OGG Vorbis.
Here’s my Flickr photo set from the April 23rd UW College of Engineering Open House. I think the most impressive project was the Self-Assembling Robots (Electrical Engineering Bldg. 359) — they demonstrated how a number of simple robots assemble themselves into larger structures. These robots were floating on an air hockey table and behave like biological organisms with a rule based system.
Simple solution for hard drive cooling, and looks like it works better than many of the commercial solutions. For over a year now I have been able to achieve a 10 – 15 degree Celsius temperature drop on my hard drives simply by using a 10 cent bracket from a local hardware store. Ingredients: 1/2″ bracket, 80mm fan, 3.5″ hard drive. More here via /.
