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How-To: Automatically back up your computer

by Will O'Brien, posted Mar 21st 2007 at 5:51PMFeatured Story

We've seen plenty of crazy ways to keep your precious data safe. Some people burn a few tons of DVDs, others make a montly habit of swapping hard drives into a safe location. In today's How-To we'll show you how to automatically keep your data backed up from your computer with ssh and rsync. Feel that? That's our warm comfy safe-data blankie. Check it out.

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How-To: Make your own MP3 player

by Will O'Brien, posted Dec 19th 2006 at 6:43PMFeatured Story


We got a whiff of MAKE's Daisy a while back, but now we've finally managed to get our hands on one of these open source MP3 player kits. Today we'll whip out our soldering iron and show you how things shake out. The kit isn't dirt cheap at $115 each, but it's completely open source and flexible - making it ideal for a SunDIY afternoon (har), or for that soldering-iron-weilding open source fanatic in your life. Read on!

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How-To: HD projector wrap up and review (aka Part 7)

by Will O'Brien, posted Dec 13th 2006 at 6:34PMFeatured Story


In our latest series of How-Tos(see: parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6), we built our own HD LCD Projector. Once the saw dust settled, we set it up in our home theater, cabled things up and hit the couch for a while. Now that we've spent some quality time breaking it in, it's time for us to wrap it up and give you guys the low-down on how well it actually works.

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How-To: Build your own HD projector (Part 6)

by Will O'Brien, posted Dec 6th 2006 at 10:13AMFeatured Story

Smell that? Is it the insulation burning off those wires? Nope, it's the sweet smell of success. Today we're wrapping up our series on building your own HD projector. We've got to wind up a few construction details, some electronics hacking and then we'll fire up our new photon cannon and check out the results. Better dig in, this is gonna take a while. See also:

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How-To: Build your own HD projector (Part 5)

by Will O'Brien, posted Nov 21st 2006 at 8:13PMFeatured Story

The neverending How-Tooo... This time we're back with friggin laser beams. We're still building our HD projector. Today we'll nearly finish up mounting all the components. We're almost done, soon we'll have our HD projector running, plenty of screen shots, and some sweet tweaks of our own. Oh, and if you need to catch up, check out:
Now, on to the show.

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How-To: Build your own HD projector (Part 4)

by Will O'Brien, posted Nov 13th 2006 at 3:11PMFeatured Story

The buzz of powertools and the smell of sawdust is rising as we get to work on making our own HD projector. We went shopping in part 1, LCD gutting in part 2, and discussed design considerations in part 3. In today's How-To we're finally building the housing for our projector, also known as the fun part.

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How-To: Build your own HD projector (Part 3)

by Will O'Brien, posted Nov 1st 2006 at 5:03PMFeatured Story

So, in case you haven't noticed, we're building our own LCD projector! In part one we specced out what we needed and got together some optics. In part two we really tore into our 19-inch Samsung monitor. Today we take a dive into the most difficult part of the projector: designing it to be built. It's easy to talk about something when you're just putting it down on paper. But now it's time to put it together and build it. It's crunch time. Jump into today's how-to; we'll show you how we're going to pull it off and the details that have to be considered.

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How-To: Build your own HD projector (Part 2)

by Will O'Brien, posted Oct 30th 2006 at 6:30PMFeatured Story

Pssst. Yeah, you. Wanna learn how to build your own digital projector? Last time we started building our own DIY HD projector. Today we're voiding the warranty and stripping down our 19-inch Samsung display. Next time we'll start preparing the LCD's new living quarters -- that is if we don't end up with a $340 door stop after today.

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How-To: Build your own HD projector (Part 1)

by Will O'Brien, posted Oct 17th 2006 at 4:05PMFeatured Story

Been eyeballing those sweet new high definition projectors? So have we. We're not going to feel guilty for it either, we know what we like. But if your wallet is a little light from your last Engadget inspired shopping session you might dig our how-to latest project. In Today's how-to, we'll start taking a look at building your own HD projector... from an LCD Monitor. This isn't one to be missed.

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How-To: Make a simple sound mixer

by Will O'Brien, posted Sep 20th 2006 at 2:24AMFeatured Story

We like using a few computers at the same time -- big surprise, right? Ubuntu box here, Vista box there, Leopard box, well, somewhere; but unless the speakers have multiple audio inputs, it's a bit difficult to get audio from our everything in our stack of machines hooked up. Today's How-To involved a late night parts run, some Bawls, and some true and proper self humiliation.

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How-To: Serve video to your TiVo

by Will O'Brien, posted Sep 12th 2006 at 4:57PMFeatured Story

TiVos have been hacked on and modified by dedicated hardware enthusiasts ever since they first showed up on the scene in the late 90s. Video streams can be pulled off of them and re-inserted by hand, but previously that was a rather painful process -- and playing non-TiVo video was even more painful. In today's How-To, we'll show you how to serve up your archived video to your TiVo with a click of your remote.

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How-To: Make a component video switch

by Will O'Brien, posted Sep 5th 2006 at 7:15PMFeatured Story

Maybe you've got a few HD devices around and only one component video input on your HDTV. We've even got component out on our dear old laserdisc player. So we were rooting around in our box of parts and realized that we could make our own component video switch. HDTV switches are ungodly expensive, but KVM have gotten dirt cheap; in today's How-to we'll show you how to turn one into a component video switch.

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How-To: Make a custom projector screen

by Will O'Brien, posted Aug 29th 2006 at 7:09PMFeatured Story

The quest to build a great home theater is one of our recurring themes for Engadget's How-To Tuesdays. And as anyone home theater buff will tell you, any HDTV worth its weight in salt will present its viewer with a 16:9 (1.78:1) aspect ratio display, or in some cases, project a 1.8:1 ratio. For todays How-To, though, we're building one of the holy grails of the home theater: a 2.35:1 widescreen. Yep, that's movie theater widescreen, alright.

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How-To: Run your own network wiring

by Will O'Brien, posted Aug 22nd 2006 at 9:44PMFeatured Story

Wherever you call home, it probably didn't come wired up for that most precious of home utilities: internet access. Sometimes wireless networking can only take you so far. Guerrilla network wiring might sound a little strong, but sometimes it ends up feeling like an episode of MacGyver, without the bombs. (Unless you count flaming laptops.) In today's How-To, we'll show you how to make your own cables and teach you a few tricks for getting them where you need 'em most around the house.

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How-To: Revive your TiVo

by Will O'Brien, posted Aug 15th 2006 at 2:39PMFeatured Story


It's no secret: we love our DirecTiVo. But last week a power outage mysteriously took out one of our poor, beloved time shifting friends. After the carnage, the poor critter powered up and displayed the Green Screen of Death. In today's How-To we'll grab some junk out of the closet and rebuild our TiVo -- maybe, just maybe this could help if you too have a dead or dying TiVo in your home.

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