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Mods Archive: Mods

September 22, 2009

This MP3 player is da bomb

Not since the WiFi sniffer built to look like a sniper rifle has there been a project with "Bad idea" stamped so many times over it. Matt from NYC Resistor cased a Sansa 2GB MP3 player inside of a decommissioned training hand grenade.

(There was already something of a bomb scare at NYC Resistor when a box was opened with four grenades in it. Yikes. A discovery like that'll sure starch your shorts. It was finally figured out that Matt had ordered them.)

MP3 Gr3nade! [via Hack a Day]

September 21, 2009

Wireless RGB LED light bulb

Looking to increase his atmospheric lighting options, maker Jeroen Domburg built this wirelessly controlled RGB LED light bulb using an ATTiny44, RGB LED emitter, USB-PSU, and 433MHz RF receiver. The whole thing managed to fit inside a standard CFL housing and cost slightly less than a retail version.

[via hackaday]

September 18, 2009

Wi-Fi dowsing rod

Dutch maker Mike Thompson designed and built this Wi-Fi dowsing rod by joining old and new to deliver a whimsically arcane device.

Todays technology advances at such a speed that often consumers are left in awe of it all. The high tech terminology, the ultra small, ultra portable, metallic or white devices we carry around with us are, to the vast amount of consumers, simply baffling. The Wifi Dowsing Rod aims to work against this. By basing the design for a wireless internet detector on century's old technology, the user feels immediately at home with the product, whilst feeling less intimidated by the simple shape and natural materials.

[via techchee]

September 15, 2009

Hacking thrift store bric-a-brac

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you're handed a N900 and told to connect it to another object? That's what was asked of design studio Tinker.it in preparation of a promotional contest recently launched by Nokia. Tinker.it collaborated with London agency Hyper to devise and build four example objects "inspired by the 80's".

Built using the Arduino platform, they were extremely intriguing: a Speak and Spell which was used to text a message to a member of the audience, a Rolodex which identified a contact's details after being manually spun and automatically pulled it up on the phone, an FM radio hack which identified any '80's musician texted to the phone and then connected to Last.fm to pull up the relevant cover art as you tuned the radio to a station playing the selected artist's music, and finally a View-Master which used the phone to create custom 3D photos.

Hacking 80's Gadgets with the Nokia N900: PUSH N900 London Launch

[via psfk]

September 14, 2009

Eee PC kitchen cabinet mod

Maker Sidekickx91 disassembled an Eee PC 4G 701 netbook, added a 7" USB touchscreen, some extra RAM, and mounted it in a custom-built cabinet enclosure to create this very functional and attractive case mod.

[via jkkmobile]

September 10, 2009

DIY windshield mounted dash cam

Poking a hole in his commercial iPhone window mount with a Dremel tool was all it took for Tim Cox to be the proud owner of a brand new dash cam. Goes to show that not all good hacks need to be complicated. Sometimes all it takes is finding the right spot and poking a hole to see what's on the other side.

September 4, 2009

Firefighting ingenuity that can help save lives

Central Florida firemen Jeff Ponds and Jimm Walsh have an ongoing section of their site vententersearch.com called "What's in your Pockets?" where they showcase some of the more interesting improvised tools of the trade sent in from readers.

[via Matt Billings]

August 28, 2009

Computer-assisted ice construction

A team from McGill University, Montréal are exploring the use of ice as a rapid prototyping medium. Their project, New Architecture of Phase Change: Computer-Assisted Ice Construction focuses on computer-controlled techniques for constructing objects at varying scales out of ice.

Currently, the practical applications of this project include commercial and industrial part modeling, and construction for the ice-tourism industry. For instance, small-scale ice models represent economical alternatives to intricate 3D models of architectural objects, be they scale models of buildings, site models, or building details. Presently, casting techniques are being investigated in order to produce high-quality metal copies from ice originals. In the long term, inhabitable, environmentally-friendly structures will be built at the architectural scale using computer-assisted techniques, thus increasing the level of automation in an industry that is currently very labour intensive.

August 27, 2009

Cool cars cast creatively from cans

Sandy, from Hamilton, New Zealand, has created an entire fleet of amazing cars, hot rods, and buggies, all made out of aluminum soda and beer cans.

From his website:

I have always religiously recycled but often spent time looking at the graphics on the can and looking at the shape of the bottom thinking "That could make a really cool wheel". After having an accident which left me with some time to use, I decided to put pencil to paper and try and make a racing car using the bottoms of cans as its wheels, and the graphics as the decoration for the body.

He's devoted a page to each creation, and offers photos, plans, and details on each build, including how many cans each took, and sometimes, who drank the beer ("This is my wife's favourite one. She drank the Guinness, I made the car!!")

August 20, 2009

Dinosaur iPhone dock

There's something oddly appealing about charging a mobile phone on the back of a dinosaur. Heck, even mentioning that to someone sounds absurd. Yet here we are; iPhones and dinosaurs living together in harmony. What a fun dock mod. Though, if I were building a similar dock I'd go for the plastic pineapple.

[via iPhoneSavior]

August 18, 2009

Hack your cooler: Other cooler hacks

OK, if you have your cooler but are already cold enough or don't plan to take it anywhere, here are a couple more ideas for what to do with it:

Having a party at night? Make it easy to find the right beverage by following vader119's directions and add a light to your cooler!

Trying to maintain an outdoor worm composting bin in the Texas heat? Instructables user coopdaddi shows how he added a water chiller and a fan to make his cooler a perfect place for worms!

Have the opposite problem, and need a way to keep your resin/RTV project warm while it cures? Why not convert your cooler into a low-temperature curing oven by following idmains instructions? Bonus points for adding a mechanism to control the inside temperature.

So, that's just about everything I can think of to do with a cooler. Have any last-minute ideas? Be sure to share them in the Comments for a chance at a prize!

More:

Elephant fitted with prosthetic leg

(Photo by AP)

A 48-year-old elephant who lost part of her front left leg a decade ago was fitted with a prosthetic last week and is reported to be doing great. The artificial leg was made by the Prostheses Foundation, which also makes artificial limbs for human amputees.

Let the witty naming begin -- Robo Dumbo has been used, and I'm thinking someone more creative than me can come up with a nifty Steampunk version of Elephunk.

More:

Report on Treehugger
Report by Associated Press with more photos
Nice chronology here

August 17, 2009

Hack your cooler: Mobilize it!

One really annoying thing about coolers is having to drag them around. It would be really nice, maybe, if they could follow you around. How about ...

Mounting it on your bike? Instructables user jofish demonstrates how.

Teach it to follow you around? A good starting point would be this Instructable by PSdp!

However, neither of these would help if you are stationary, so how about a remake of the infamous RC cooler?

What if you want to take your cooler someplace more exotic? How about building in some floats for that next rafting trip? Add ropes to hoist it into you tree house? Build a heliport on top and construct a drink delivering UAV? Share your ideas in the Comments!

More:

August 15, 2009

Make ice cream with your bike

This would be a fun way to make a snack for your next picnic or party. I'm always forgetting to make something to bring to a friend's house, and would love to be able to just load this up and head out! I might try mounting it over the back wheel though, it seems like it might be more stable there.

Some tasty ice cream recipes you could try: Oatmeal Stout and Heath Bar and Salted Butter Caramel.

Posted by Matt Mets | Aug 15, 2009 02:00 PM
Bicycles, Gadgets, Mods | Permalink | Email Entry | Suggest a Site

August 14, 2009

Spying on the biggest iPod ever (Jalopy style)

With iPod rumor season upon us (videocams? microphones for VoIP calls!), it's time to gaze back fondly on those quaint iPods of yestermonth. And the quaintest has got to be Mister Jalopy's World's Biggest iPod hack, as seen in MAKE, Volume 04.

Who doesn't love MJ's fat little iPod (is that a 3rd Gen?) grafted into a lovely 1940s radio cabinet, complete with a Panasonic turntable and Mac mini to rip old vinyl to MP3s, and the original working radio buttons hacked to control the iPod. Journalist and author Kurt Andersen, the host of public radio's Studio 360 (and former editor of Spy magazine), recently visited Mister Jalopy's Garage for an interview and grabbed this video of the World's Biggest iPod in action.

More at Hooptyrides.com.

Nokia N97 GPS antenna hack

Some N97 owners find the integrated GPS doesn't perform as well as they'd like, so they've taken it upon themselves to render a proper fix. Using a copper wire attached to the existing antenna, Symbian Freak contributors Bruno and Teo have greatly improved their signal strength and can go about geocaching with fewer dropped signals.

[via Symbian Freak]

August 13, 2009

Cree emitter LED flash/video light for iPhone 3GS

This quick and dirty improvised iPhone flash/video light from Andreas Ødegård consists of a 3V battery and a high intensity Cree emitter. Sure, it's just an LED flashlight with a doc connector mount, but then again it was built in under 10 minutes with electrical tape, spare parts, and a hot glue gun. The result seems to knock the socks off your run-of-the-mill super bright LED mini-array.

A similar hack that pulls power from the iPhone dock connector can be found in the book iPhone Hacks.

In the Maker Shed:

iPhone Hacks

August 6, 2009

Laptop stand modded for coolness

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Flickr member Jeremy Pavleck modded a Belkin CushTop Notebook Stand by adding 2 LED PC fans + DC jack & switch - more pics in the project's photo set.

August 3, 2009

DIY Eee keyboard mod

Russian modder mike_ap has crammed an Asus Eee PC 900 into a Sven Multimedia EL 4002 keyboard, and despite it being a little on the bulky side it's still a sleek mod. Pure modern retro!

[EEE-PC.ru via Liliputing]

Kingpin's Defcon 17 badge

Every year, Joe Grand, aka Kingpin, aka The Sultan of Solder, and hardware hacker extraordinaire, designs the badges for Defcon, the annual hacker convention in Vegas. The badges are more than just conference ID badges, they have electronics on-board that do something, and conferees have to figure out what that something is. There's also a Badge Hacking contest, to come up with some cool, outrageous, ingenious hack of the badge. Winner gets an Uber badge, which gets them into Defcons for life.

This year's badge uses the Freescale MC56f8006 DSC (Digital Signal Controller), has an on-board mic, and an RGB LED. Apparently the LED pulses out the morse code of a web address. At that address is a few goodies, like a sketchbook of designs for a badge (a page is seen above), an MP3 song, and most importantly, all of the badge tools, source code, CAD files, etc. According to the discussion on Hack a Day, it appears to do some pretty ingenious stuff (like physically network with other badges).

Previous year's badges:
Defcon 14
Defcon 15
Defcon 16

[Photos via Wired's coverage of the badge.]

More:
DEFCON Badge hacking
DEFCON badge hacking contest (pictures)