Patrick writes “Low tech sensors and actuators -A cool project with details on canibalising cheap toys for sensors to use in interactive electronic projects”. MAKE’s David Pescovitz has a great article in thefeature archives with more about Usman Haque’s projects. Link.
MAKE Flickr photo pool member Jepstone is emulating an Atari floppy drive with a Linux box and a fancy serial cable he made. The two Atari floppy drives are emulated on his Linux system using AtariSIO. Link.
Josh writes “There is a jack accessible to the faceplate (under the faceplate, above the b button) that says V-5(5 volts, I assume) on the circuit board. Nintendo is also patenting ‘smart’ faceplates. Are any Make readers up to the task of building a Gameboy Micro faceplate with LEDs embedded in it? (Hopefully with a subtle effect – nothing distracting)” Link.
PhotoMann recently decided to ‘collect’ images of unique vending machines found in Japan. They are everywhere. Estimates suggest there are 5.6 million vending machines which works out to be one for every 20 people in Japan. Sales from vending machines in 2000 totaled $56 billion! All of the images in this section are taken with a Nikon Coolpix 5000. [via] Link.
The idea of this project was to create a fully-automated sentry gun, capable of picking out a human target and accurately tracking and shooting him or her in the heart. Really, the idea was to find a cool robotics project for the summer while I was working at an advertising agency, and I’d only ever seen sentry guns in movies (like Congo) and video games (Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress Classic). [via] Link.
San Francisco, Sept. 24-25 at the Webzine 2005 Independent Online Publishing Conference MAKE’s Phil Torrone will have a session about hacking many popular consumer electronic devices : High quality audio recording on old iPods, run new games, mod firmware, fun stuff. Digital camera hacks, from the reuse of the “disposable” cameras to modding digital cameras for projects. PSPs, Gameboys and more along with a trip from Maker past to Maker future in an action packed warranty voiding DRM busting session. Link.
