Hacks

NoKES – Nintendo keyless entry system

Instructables user action_owl created this fun keyless entry system using a classic NES, an Arduino, Processing, and a spare CD-ROM. Once activated NoKES (NintendO Keyless Entry System) will be blinking letting you know that it is alert and keeping guard. Once the Start button is pressed on the controller, the arduino starts recording what buttons […]

iPhone projector graffiti

The Zeptotools blog posted this demo of an iPhone application they are hoping to release. I haven’t used the application or seen it outside of this video, but I like the idea of adding whiteboard features to the iPhone by sending screen data to a nearby laptop with an attached projector. What would really be […]

Quake’s fast inverse square root

The inverse square root function (1/sqrt(x)) is used heavily during a game engine’s draw loop to normalize vectors into “unit” vectors with a length of 1. Normalized vectors are important because when you take the dot product of two of them (Ax*Bx + Ay*By + Az*Bz), the result is the cosine of the angle between […]

Wii Drum High

HE Zhao wrote in to tell us about an open source Wii peripheral drum-kit project he’s been working on: I have recently developed Wii Drum High, a software integrates Wiimote, Nunchuk and Wii Balance Board to stimulate a complete drum set. Different gestures and joystick buttons result in correspondent drum sounds. I recorded some videos […]

Reware – hack your old PDA

The problem with bleeding edge devices is that they quickly become old and irrelevant. Replaced with the latest gizmo, old smart phones and PDAs tend to find their way to a drawer or a landfill after about 2 or 3 years. It’s not that most of us want a throwaway society. It’s that most of […]