Peter writes “I bought a Dell monitor since they are so cheap, but personally find it ugly sitting next to my (Apple) G5. Is there any way you could find a hack or other DIY “brushed metal” case replacement for a Dell monitor? I would so love to see this and learn from it.” Any ideas for him? I think a lot of clear acrylic might be a way to go, but then again – I like the look of exposed electronics…
If you can think of a project that uses 20 Blackberries, they can be yours – Bruno writes “I’ve got two boxes of Blackberries that must be at least 5 years old. They’re not stolen, they’re surpluss from the company I work for (got lost at the back of a storage room and forgotten). If you can think of anything fun to make out of them, they’re yours, just let me know.” Post in the comments if you’d like them and what your project is. I think the batteries, LCDs, chargers and keypads could be useful for a few things…
Pastelero has a great how to on controlling WinAmp via a serial port “Nowadays, winamp has full support to keyboard shortcuts. But some time, when winamp didn’t have this feature, I was thinking in some way to make a easy way to change music by simply pressing one button, it would make things faster and would help me to change music during games. So I decided to make a external control panel, to make it easier to change musics, volume up or down, toggle shuffle and many other features by pressing just one button. I found one winamp plugin that shows how to configure a external control using the Serial Port, being able to make 4 or 15 buttons control…” [via] Link.
TreoCentral member Tem has a great step by step on making your own custom ROM for your Treo, this adds more memory and puts your own apps in ROM “I am a complete unskilled newbie but after days of reading information I was able to make a perfect ROM for my Sprint Treo 650. I gained 4 megs of RAM since I placed in ROM 4 megs of my 3rd party programs that would usually be in RAM. More importantly I got rid of the junk applications that wasted space and occasionally caused me problems, like versamail.” Link.
If you’re thinking of building a LCD picture frame from an old computer, here’s a great resource to get started “This site was inspired by a MacWorld article on turning an old mac laptop into a digital picture frame. I decided to try my hand at creating my own digital frame. While looking around for information to help me with my project, I soon realized that there are quite a number of people who have been building digital picture frames. This page is a resource for anyone who would like to create their own digital picture frames.” Link.
Here’s a cheap Skype/VoIP interface to your wired or wireless phone. “Just imagine: You can walk with your wireless phone chatting with Skype friends for free, you can make free call to your mom if she is connected to the Internet. You can make your telephone network with servises, voicemail, etc and chat there using your old phone. Skype wireless phones are expensive, VoIP adapters cost ~$60, but you can make it for free if your have details.. from old TV, Radio or other electronics.” Link.
“Here’s how to control a stepping motor via a USB interface. The PC software program was made with delphi. On the site there are schematics and you can download the source code for the PIC18F4550 USB stepping motor controller.” Link.
