Gadget Factory

Hacking

  • Hacked, MIDI-Enabled Dot Matrix Printer Plays “Eye Of The Tiger”

    Woah, this is nuts. I remember my dot matrix printer from back in the day. I remember that it simply made a lot of racket, and what a pain it was to have to tear the feeder strips off of each side of the printed pages… Fast forward to 2014 (like only a week ago),…

  • Getting An Old Digital O-Scope To Output To A Computer Monitor

    Michael over at AcidBourbon recently got his mitts on an older (circa 1990) digital oscilloscope and wanted to see if he could hack a way to plot the screen from the ‘scope on his computer. The unit he’s hacking is the GOULD 4094, 200MHz digital storage oscilloscope with four input channels. With no proprietary software…

  • Salvaging Li-Ion Batteries To Power Your Projects

    We found a cool article about salvaging lithium-ion batteries that you thought were totally dead, and how to reuse them for your embedded projects. The idea comes to us by way of Embedds.com, and in their write-up, they describe some of the ways one can tap into the power that is still left in one…

  • Make Your Own Metal Solder Stencils – Here’s How

    Felix Rusu’s home-made solder paste stencils are so good you’d be forgiven for thinking they were laser-cut. He’s actually using a sheet of aluminum cut from a Dr. Pepper can and cleaning it with acetone and heat. After he sets up the stencil in a PDF file, he is using vinyl shelving paper to transfer…

  • VGA Out Hacked Into Virtual Boy Console Using FPGA

    Here’s a new one. Retro game console enthusiast and hardware hacker Furrtek created a great hack with his Nintendo Virtual Boy 3D console. He knew the Virtual Boy didn’t have a stock video output so he decided to use his Altera DE-1 FPGA board to make his own. One problem though – he wanted to…

  • Hacker Challenge #1: Win A $40 Gift Card To GF Store!

    Hackers, are you ready for the first Gadget Factory Hacker Challenge? Do you want to win a $40.00 gift card to spend on anything your heart desires at the GF Store? Here’s the deal: YOU design and implement a way to make the Ethernet module pictured above work with your Papilio board. You WIN a…

  • Using A MIDI Controller Keyboard And A Hack To Type…Words

    Hackaday’s got an interesting article up about using a MIDI controller keyboard as a typing input device.  This is a very different way to type called ASETNIOP which is a newer system of chorded typing.  ASETNIOP was originally developed for touchscreen devices, and is a system of typing where your fingers never have to leave…

  • Master’s Projects From Cornell: Gaze Tracking & FPGA Face Tracking

    Happy Friday! We’ve got some fresh Master’s projects from Cornell University’s electronics school to share with you today. We’ll get right into it: This first project is by Master’s students Anil Ram Viswanathan and Zelan Xiao, who have created a head-mounted eyeball gaze tracker, for lack of a better term. The hardware consists of two…