Hacks

xochat.org: make new friends

My friend Tom Hoffman has set up a Jabber server for XO Laptop users: I’m having a feeling I’ll regret having done this, but xochat.org is now up and running. If you’ve got an XO you can point it at my Jabber server by popping open a terminal and typing this: sugar-control-panel -s jabber xochat.org […]

Chumby software development

MakeFan: wrote in to remind us that those cute little Chumby devices are for sale now. The best thing about the little wireless touchscreen appliance is that they were designed to be open and hackable. The underlying operating system is Linux, and there are a number of lower level OS hacks, but you can also […]

Servo hack: make a 360-degree robot drive motor

Servos can work really well as drive motors for a small robot. Their motion is relatively precise and predictable, and they operate on the same voltage as most microcontroller electronics, allowing you to build a simple robot without any additional motor control circuitry. Standard servos, though, can only rotate through about 180-degrees. Although you can […]

Lecturefox: free university lectures

I think MIT coined the term Open Courseware, but there are several other universities that are releasing lecture videos for free online. Now, tracking down a particular subject matter is made quite a bit easier because of a project titled Lecturefox. From the about page: What is Lecturefox? It’s all about the joy of learning. […]

Johnny Chung Lee’s Wiimote hacks

Johnny Chung Lee, who you may recall from $14 steadicam fame (read about it in Make:01), is also a very proficient Wiimote hacker. His latest, demonstrated in the video above, is a prototype VR system that uses the Wiimote and a head-mounted IR LED as a head tracking device. The software transforms a standard monitor […]