Tag Archives: hacks

Inside A Hallmark Musical Greeting Card

Found on Flickr user Tableauvivant’s page, this above photo shows the musical components of a Hallmark musical greeting card. I must say, this is quite surprising. I was sent a few musical cards back in May and when I took them apart, I found a tiny PCB with a piezo speaker and some other circuitry. This appears to be a ...

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The Little Robot Cockroach That Could

Check out Guilherme Martin’s first attempt at making a robot. He uses an Arduino and motor shield with one servo for steering and a standard DC motor for movement. It’s dubbed “baratinha” meaning “little cockroach” in Portuguese. Using two micro-switches as if they were antennae, baratinha is able to detect obstacles in its way.� It’s just like a real cockroach ...

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You Want The Toaster Strudel or SMB 3?

It seems like the cool thing to do nowadays is mod a Nintendo Entertainment System into another object. Whether it’s a coffee table or a lunchbox, the NES has gone down as one of the most modded systems in history. This time around, some motherfucker put it in a toaster. Yeah, a toaster. Pop in your Pillsbury Toaster Strudel and ...

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Esquire’s E-Ink Cover Dissected

With Esquire‘s 75th anniversary taking place this year, the magazine released its latest issue with an E-Ink cover that comes with plenty of bits and pieces for DIYers to take apart and mess with. Phillip Torrone of MAKE points out the minor potential the E-ink cover has in regards to hacking but approves of its design with much enthusiasm. He ...

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Celebrity Money

I can’t read French but I’m sure our publisher Steve Rufer would be more than happy to translate. All I can gather is that someone took pictures of movie stars and merged them with money. This is a pretty sweet but where’s the Mel Gibson photo with the $1 bill?

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Leather and Snakeskin MIDI Controllers

Looks like NYC-based artist Rucyl Mills and I have a lot in common. We both love music and hacked M-Audio equipment for MIDI purposes. It’s wearable, it’s ugly and it’s ready to rock. I built the elektro-07 so I could control the sonic and visual parameters of my live performances without having to look deep into the eye of my ...

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Time Tracking of Yesteryear Finds New Light

Apparently, NXT STEP blog reader DTAAX’s watch must have broke, which would explain why he designed this LEGO sundial. This DIY finds a new way to tell time the old way. It was built using the LEGO NTX platform (plus a PDA for trigonometric functions) using a slew of light and touch sensors, allowing the sundial to perform like any ...

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Kill The iTunes Arrows

Know those arrows in iTunes that appear when you select a song? Yeah, the ones that take you to the iTunes Music Store when you’re trying to change tracks. Kill Apple’s dirty little secret and use this tip from TUAW to get your arrows to redirect to your iTunes Library. Instead of making impulse purchases on DRM-ridden tracks, you’ll end ...

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Spinning LEGOs Produce 3-D Blobs

Three-dimensional printing is tough. That is, if you don’t make one out of LEGOs. Gene Hacker posted his creation on Instructables: a 3-D printer made out of LEGO bricks. It’s still in its infancy of development but is more than capable of rendering 3-D blobs of frosting. Unlike regular Cartesian system printers, the one Gene built operates in polar coordinates, ...

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Swarovski Contact Lenses Scream Classiness

A new technology has emerged that’s bound to change the way we view trashy women forever. Designed for only the most aristocratic tramps around, the Swarovski contact lens is the most absurd invention of the 21st Century. Imagine a pair of contact lenses with tacky Swarovski crystals embedded in them. Seems like an invention right out of Long Island, right? ...

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