With fuel prices rising, EVs are becoming more an more stylish. This bit of floor tile wrapped hardware is actually a 12 channel battery management system designed to handle Lithium Iron battery packs. It's designed to take power from a standard lead acid charger and supply the batteries with their maximum charge current. The cost and complexity of the BMS has been a major stumbling block in the past, so it's interesting to see these come around. If you need more than 12 cells, multiple boards can be used.
[Kc7fys] came up with a this simple battery level indicator. It uses a single LED to display a battery's voltage; if the voltage exceeds 12V, it glows green. If it is below 11V, the LED glows red. Anything in between generates an orange glow. The meter is built around an LM358 chip per this schematic, but his actual build looks pretty sloppy because of the dead-bug assembly (check out NASA's pretty version). Nonetheless, it works, so clean it up and build one if you want to put it (or your batteries) to the test.
[Tiller Beauchamp] gave a presentation on applied reverse engineering in OS X at this year's REcon, but he also attended many of the other talks and gives his take on the highlights of REcon 2008 in a guest post on the ZDNet blog, Zero Day.
One of the highlights for him was Neohapsis's [Chris Smith] discussing virtual machines implementing code obfuscation. The method uses custom instructions and runtime interpreter, which can help make the task of reverse engineering markedly more difficult if implemented properly.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, [Beauchamp] noted [Gerardo Richarte]'s software reverse engineering tools that decompile and recompile software in iterative portions. This allows the recompiled software to be tested piece by piece. Be sure to read his post and see what you missed.
Hardware modding can take you to some strange places: sometimes, you think of really useful improvements to your most practical devices. Other times, you turn a cup of tea into a theremin. This is true at least for [Kyle McDonald], who immersed the L/R leads of an 1/8" cable in a cup of tea, and connected it to a computer running Max/MSP with a special patch. The result is a working, miniature theremin you can drink after you're done playing. This process should work with any liquid, so feel free to use beer, cola, water, or anything you think will taste better after you've run a small charge through it.
If you asked [David Phipps] whether he prefers Monomes or traditional keyboards, he might ask you "why not have both?" We don't presume to speak for him, but that's what we think he'd say based on his Monome-keyboard combination, which puts a Monome right in the keyboard's console, giving the user the best of both worlds.
[Phipps] calls his device The Peaceblaster (also the name of his album), and it is constructed from a 5-octave Fatar keybed, MKE electronic components, and a Doepfer PKE for the faders and knobs. Everything is available via USB and MIDI out. The project is as yet unfinished, and he hopes to fit a mac mini into the works. If he succeeds, this will be one of the most elegant, powerful and fun keyboards we've seen in quite some time.
If you're anything like us, you have a closet full of old electronics, some broken, some obsolete. You can stop using those as paperweights with the help of this guide that shows you how to recycle and reuse PCB components.
The first step of the process is finding electronics you don't mind taking apart. Next place the PCB you'll be stripping in a vice, with the components facing away from you and the solder side facing towards you. Grip the component you want with a pair of pliers, and apply a hot soldering iron to the solder that is holding the component. The solder will melt and allow you to safely and cleanly remove the component.
This process can be applied to virtually any component on an PCB, and the author of the guide, [Patented], got a lot of components this way, including resistors, capacitors, switches, audio jacks, and much more. Don't forget to toss any free-floating metal or plastic parts in the recycle bin when you're done. You can feel good about the fact that nothing was wasted, you found parts for your next project, and you cleared out some space.
Fresh off the tips line, [Jake] sent in his portable NES project. We've seen quite a few portables, but we love that the entire thing is built into an old NES cartridge. It's got 99 games and some clever control placement. Three N cells nestled in the former connector slot power the system. You can see more pic over at [Ben Heck]'s forum.
Bleep Labs' Thingamagoop is a small synthesizer packed with wacky controls for generating unique sounds; you can now build an expanded version yourself with the ThingamaKit. Made "because there are not nearly enough beeping, zapping, bixxerfouping, anthropomorphic synthesizer monsters in the world," it generates sounds of different pitches depending on the type and intensity of light hitting a photocell on the front panel. It's most unique feature, is its LEDacle, which is something like a tentacle with an LED on the end. This can be pointed towards the photocell to modulate the sound. Output is through a 1/4" audio jack.
Bleep Labs sells fully assembled Thingamagoops for $100, but the new DIY kit is available for half price. The kit version of the Thingamagoop has more controls, two photosensors, and two LEDacles. You can buy it with or without the case, and it doesn't require any complex wiring. Look after the break for video of some Thingamagoops in action.
A short while back, [Chris Anderson] released an Arduino based autopilot. It rings in fairly cheap and being open source, you can tweak away. To add more functionality, he's releasing a dual core version. Thanks to the second processor, it no longer requires an external hardware co-pilot. It uses an on-board GPS and features an ATtiny based fail safe. It's still under development, but he's made the design files available.
The Netflix Player continues to gain in popularity. Roku has finally released the GPL code for their Netflix Player. Just today Forbes published that Roku would roll out a software update allowing it to stream from other online services. The diminutive device has no internal storage and just enough RAM to buffer the stream. Many have wondered how a Linux box is handling the DRM; this is purely a feature of the NXP PNX8935 processor being used. While waiting for the code, hackers have already popped the box open to see what's inside. We found [hokiokie7]'s photos of the internals on Roku's forum. The only really interesting thing we've seen so far is that the WiFi is on a daughter card that plugs into the USB. That should make it much easier to support other devices, if users ever manage to get into the system.
UPDATE: [mbailey] points out in the comments that he was able to telnet to the device.
We love beer and we love robots, so guessing how we feel about this robotic bartender should be a no-brainer. Known as Mr. Asahi, the robot opens bottles and pours beer while taking your orders with aplomb and a jovial British accent. It also has a customized lazy susan with slots for bottles and notches for the robot's hand to grasp.
Amazingly, this is not Asahi's first beer pouring robot. That one requires you to do most of the leg work, though, so this one is a marked improvement. Best of all, it won't ignore you when a person more attractive than you comes into the bar, and it won't snub you for leaving a lousy tip. We now fear alcohol fueled robot rampages... they get more human every day. Video after the break.
Jkkmobile has just posted their touchscreen hack for an Eee PC 900, and it looks great. Installation of this kit is pretty easy, just fit the panel to the screen, connect the controller to the USB lines, close it up, calibrate it, and you're done. The controller board is placed on top of the WiFi card. Jkkmobile has informed us of touchscreens for older Eee PCs before, but this is one of the first we've seen for a 900+ model. The post lists a few sources for touchscreen kits, but no word on which one they used.
So here's the situation: you have an audio device, maybe a boombox, perhaps one you built yourself, but it has no VU meter. No problem; building a VU meter is easy with these instructions from [Joe].
You'll need either an LM3915 or LM3916 chip, a couple of bread boards, two audio jacks, ten LEDs, and a few other components. Wire them all together per the schematic, then plug an audio source into the input jack. You can plug your speakers or output device into the output jack, and you're done. Keep in mind that LM3916s switch negative, so positive to positive wiring from LEDs to the bread board will be necessary. The wiring on [Joe]'s version is a bit convoluted, but it can be cleaned up on yours if you take the time. Video embedded below.
We have news for those of you dismissing the new Wii Version of Rock Band. Sure, the lack of DLC is a huge factor, but if you're looking to use the instruments with MIDI software, [Jordan Balagot] has found what may be the easiest way. Since the Wii instruments are connected via USB, they are easy to connect to a computer. [Balagot] used a program called junXion that is a data routing app for OS X. JunXion can take any USB human interface device and remap the buttons, making it easy to set up the drums as a MIDI input device in an intuitive way. Install junXion, plug in the drums, map the pads, and rock out.
