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Rich Decibels Brainwave Disruptor scrambles your head, not your eggs
Child of the '80s? Then you'll most likely remember those notorious PSAs about your brain and eggs, and the dangers of turning yourself into an omelette. Yeah, well turn off your inner Nancy Reagan for a second because we've got an Arduino hack that should have you just saying yes. New Zealand artist Rich Decibels created a homebrew brain entrainment device that uses low frequency sound and light to induce different mental states. The mod pieces together an Arduino Uno with two separate interface boards -- one for pitch and separation controls, the other for LED and volume -- to deliver a combo of binaural beats (two slightly out of sync tones) and flashing headset-mounted lights that'll slow down those cerebral hertz cycles. If you happen to live in the land made famous by Frodo's Shire, you can check out the brain-slowing goods at Thistle Hall's Project Briefcase exhibition. Not a Kiwi? Then be sure to hit the source for an audio taste of this hacked head experience.
Microsoft Research's .NET Gadgeteer steps out into the light, shoots daggers at Arduino (video)
Arduino, meet .NET Gadgeteer -- your newest homebrew hacking rival. Born from Microsoft Research engineers' desire to build prototypes quickly and easily, the two-and-a-half-years in the making ARM7-powered mainboard packs 4MB Flash, 16MB RAM, Ethernet, WiFi, an SD card interface and USB ports. Novice mods might wanna put the Netduino down because this homespun alternative also runs atop MS' .NET Micro Framework, and thanks to its IntelliSense feature, makes auto-coding a breeze for first-timers. If you're interested in what Ballmer & co. are offering, you can head to the project's site now to pre-order its GHI-made hardware: a $250 Spider Starter Kit and the $120 Spider Mainboard. Both will be available by the end of September, but if you need a preview of what this burgeoning open source community has to offer, peep the stop-motion making mod after the break.
Mindscape pulls the server plug on Nabaztag, hands source code to developers
Mindscape's ambient hare progenitors are officially headed off to that matrix briar patch in the sky. Turns out a battle with the server's host has left the company in a sticky financial situation, effectively shutting down support for the WiFi-enabled bunnies. In a recent YouTube announcement, CEO Thierry Bensoussan addressed the community's concerns, offering up source code that ensures a homebrew future for the Little Linux-Bunny Foo Foo forebears. Hobbyists hoping to snag that Nabaztag.com domain for themselves will instead have to accept a url redirect, as the site remains firmly under the software publisher's lock and key. But don't mourn your news reading, weather-forecasting buddy just yet, you can always replace it with the discounted love of lil' bro, Karotz.
Mass Effect 3 N7 replica gets real world debut for your Spacer pleasure
If you're the type to stock your walls with Lord of the Rings-style elvish daggers (or, you know, build full-scale Portal gun replicas), then you'll love this official Mass Effect 3 mockup commissioned by the folks at Bioware. Arduously crafted by self-proclaimed graphic design dork Harrison Krix, the N7 assault rifle replica made its facsimile debut at this year's San Diego Comic-Con. With only a fortnight to work with, the DIY, prop-making hobbyist took the made-for-cosplay gun from a glued wood, styrene and PVC-detailed master concept to paint weathered, final collector's edition mold. It's an impressive feat you can view in heavily photographed detail at the source, but there's still one thing we're waiting on Krix to bring to life -- that space-skipping SSV Normandy.
Wall-E meets his Canadian DJ maker, turns into a real robot toy (video)
What do you get when you cross a dj with a "Canadian roboticist?" An almost true-to-fiction Wall-E, that's what. In this rendition of garbage-bot gone cute, amateur robotics enthusiast DJ Sures (yes, he makes music) hollowed out a U-Command Wall-E toy and fixed him up with some servo guts. The voice-activated, semi-autonomous modjob has a built-in eye camera that recognizes motion, colors and faces, coming the closest we've seen to replicating the CG-romantic. The whole AA-battery powered affair runs on the EZ-B Robot Controller software shown off by Sures in the video below. And unlike other past re-creations, this little guy knows how to get down without the need for sped up video tricks. Clearly, the Pixar-bred bot's become the unofficial icon of the homebrew robotics community, so where's his official counterpart? You listening Disney? Get cracking.
Word cloud hack connects to your TV, closed captioning provided by Arduino (video)
Ever get the feeling that those TV talking heads are caught in an endless loop of mind-assaulting rhetoric? Now you can prove it with the aid of a trusty Arduino and an instantly updating word cloud. Nootropic Design rigged up a homebrew hack that connects your TV tuner's composite feed to a Video Experimenter shield that decodes the closed captioned NTSC broadcast. A Processing sketch then takes over and builds an alphabetized, dynamic metadata cloud you can view on your computer's screen. The program enlarges words according to frequency and omits those shorter than three letters. As you can see in the pic above, commerical time during NBC's Nightly News skews slightly... older. Check out the video after the break for a Big Bang Theory version of this word-building project.
ChevronWP7 Labs to unlock your Windows Phone 7 handset for $9, hackers not welcome
Need a little extra unlocked WP7 incentive to keep you from buying those oh-so-distracting iOS and Android devices? Well, that official homebrew love is going to cost you -- $9 to be exact. We already knew the Microsoft-sanctioned ChevronWP7 Labs would be open for business soon, but recent tweets from the jailbreaking outfit's Chris Walsh have shed a little more light on the process. In addition to the nominal fee users will have to fork over for the official unlock, Walsh also points out that software updates to Mango and Nodo will close any security holes in the platform. So, if you were planning on getting your pirate-y hands dirty hacking away at WP7, think again -- Microsoft's still got the keys to its mobile OS' house.
Make's Redpark Breakout Pack lets you build iOS apps with Arduino assistance
In the mood for some homebrew iOS app-building fun? Well, Make's got a kit just for you that bundles the Redpark Serial Cable for iOS with an RS232-to-TTL board and the 60 plus component Minitronics Survival pack for $80. Hailing it as "the first general-purpose serial cable that Apple has approved," this limited supply pack will let you get your Arduino-tinkering hands all sorts of iPhone dirty -- jailbreak not required. And if you're the uninitiated type, the DIY magazine's also put together a helpful, hand-holding guide to walk you through some basic first-timer projects. Hit the source to order your own Jobs-certified cable. [Thanks, Marc]
CyanogenMod 7 hits 500,000 installs, eclipses previous milestone
Looks like another round of roman candles are in order. After already setting off the celebratory fireworks for its previous user install milestone, CyanogenMod 7's done it again -- this time reaching past the half a million mark. The highly customizable Android homebrew is arguably the biggest aftermarket OS in the ROM-flashing campus, and it has the numbers to back it up. According to the site's stats, the official release of 7.0.3 saw the biggest spike in handset installations -- at 76,897 -- with unofficial nightly builds almost doubling that figure. Sure, it sometimes seems like the rooting community is a vast, silent majority, but it's actually a wafer-thin slice of Google's mobile pie. Still, congratulations are in order for this open-source hackdom triumph. [Thanks, Chris]
Modder builds homebrew version of Minecraft on DS
We've long held the opinion that the only thing standing between our world and its inevitable ruin is the creation of a portable version of Mojang's remarkably addictive Minecraft. We're still waiting on the Xperia Play to bring about said apocalypse, but it seems a Nintendo DS modder by the name of Smelaum has beaten Sony to the punch, releasing a demo of a homebrew application aptly titled Minecraft DS. The software, which is demonstrated in the video above, is fairly basic: Players can only add or remove blocks, and cannot save their towering megastructures. Smelaum hopes to bolster the homebrew with saving and terrain generation -- hopefully those features will be implemented before Smelaum is incapacitated by Notch's shadowy cabal of trademark lawyers. (We're kidding, of course; those clearly don't exist.)
TouchPad homebrew patches surface in Preware, devs keep on giving
Earlier this month, we told you about the free TouchPads being custom wrapped for the devs at WebOS Internals. It seems that those fortuitous webOS junkies have upheld their end of the deal, as the first delectable homebrew patches have begun to show up in Preware. As we've seen, this tech is offered at no cost -- and HP continues to reach out to devs of unofficial apps, making the situation a win for everyone. Check out a shot of the first patch officially completed for webOS 3.0 below (Glass Effects Squite), and hit the source to keep an eye on what's brewing next.
Modder outfits Nexus One with an Arduino-powered, pager-style display -- of course
Not satisfied with a Sony Ericsson LiveView as a secondary display for your Android phone, or a dual-screen device like the Kyocera Echo? Then you might want to consider something like this decidedly more homebrew approach from modder "follower," which uses the Android Open Accessory protocol to connect the Frankenpager-type contraption you see above to an otherwise ordinary Nexus One. Of course, that two-line display does limit things somewhat, but it will at least let you see the time and any incoming text messages without forcing you to leave your game. Hit the source link below for all the details and software you need to build your own.
Jack Eisenmann's DUO Adept: a homebrew 8-bit computer built by a high-schooler (video)
We've seen some impressive case mods and some wildly inventive DIY projects, but rarely have we seen a homemade, 8-bit computer housed in what looks like a Tupperware container. Meet the DUO Adept: a project begun last summer by programmer, hardware hacker, and recent high-school graduate Jack Eisenmann. Lovingly crafted from a television, an old keyboard, 100 chips (not a single one more), and lots of wire, the system has 64K of memory and outputs a 240 × 208 black and white image. Eisenmann designed his own operating system and even wrote several games, including the Donkey Kong-esque "Get Muffin." Hit the source link for a gallery (including circuit diagrams!) and see the video below for a demonstration, complete with 8-bit era music.
ChevronWP7 Labs will jailbreak your Windows Phone with Microsoft's approval
Microsoft just earned itself a boatload of geek-cred and made Apple and Sony look pretty bad in the process. We knew the Windows Phone team was playing nice with the jailbreakers from ChevronWP7, but we didn't realize just how cozy the two were going to get. Today the devs announced that ChevronWP7 Labs would open up soon, with the approval of Redmond, allowing users to load homebrew apps on their handsets. Unlike tools from the iPhone Dev Team, this service won't be free. Instead, customers will have to cough up a small fee via PayPal -- but we're sure many of you are more than willing to pay a reasonable price to avoid the sort of cat and mouse game Apple has been playing with hackers since 2007.
HP ships free TouchPads to homebrew devs, may want something in return
Like an anxious admirer, HP continues to lavish gifts on the lucky devs over at WebOS Internals. This time it's sending them pre-release TouchPads as an enticement to get busy and boost the 9.7-inch slate's app count before it launches next month. HP recently promised that "thousands" of TouchPad apps are on their way and, in addition to attracting big names like Skype and Amazon Kindle, it's also ensured that legacy apps continue to be supported on WebOS 3.0. With nearly 600 unofficial goodies sitting pretty at PreCentral's homebrew app gallery, HP clearly feels it makes sense to reach out in that direction too. And who said love was just a trick?
Homebrew utility lets you backup Windows Phone on your terms
Are you itching to find a manual backup solution for your Windows Phone? That's a tough one to scratch. Currently, the only way to fully protect your handset's data is to wait for Microsoft to issue new updates -- where backups are automatically created within Zune during install. Now, xda-developers member "hx4700 Killer" is eliminating those long waits with a homebrew solution that works directly with Zune by spoofing an update -- thereby triggering a backup. We're told everything on your phone gets saved, and you can even roll back to your prior software version. To do this you'll need a few things: Zune itself, Windows Phone Support Tools, an update package from any Windows Phone, and this killer utility. So, if you feel like doing the time warp again, hit the source article for the required downloads and some helpful instructions.
CyanogenMod 7 tops 200,000 downloads, celebrations erupt as development goes forward
Congratulations to the fine developers of CyanogenMod, whose latest aftermarket Android OS, CyanogenMod 7, has surpassed 200,000 downloads -- a huge milestone for this homebrew community. Now supported on 26 devices, the hallmark of this custom ROM comes from its flexible user interface, greater customization options, bonus features and worthwhile performance improvements. While the project gained early notoriety from its dispute with Google, it's become an increasingly popular solution for those wanting to command their phone (or tablet) as they see fit. The latest revision, 7.0.3, includes numerous fixes and refinements since its 7.0 release, so there's never been a better time to check it out -- in fact, we're pretty sure the group would love to bring you aboard. Well done everyone, and keep up the good work.
DIYer builds his own CNC mill, fabricates a Weighted Companion Cube to show off
So you've built your own homebrew CNC mill and want to test out some recent modifications? That's a question few ever have to ask themselves, but DIYer Jamie Nasiatka recently did, and came up with the bright idea of making his very own Weighted Companion Cube. As you can see above, things turned up pretty well, and you can check out the complete build process at the source link below -- yes, it lights up, and changes colors. Let's just hope no one tries to throw this cube through a Portal t-shirt.
Arduino geiger counter brings open source radiation detection to the geeky masses (video)
Need to detect radiation? We sure hope not -- but if you're looking for a straight-forward, altogether geeky geiger counter, the Libelium gang has your back. En route to the Tokyo Hackerspace as we speak (and believe us, they need it), the Radiation Sensor Board for Arduino is a low-cost alternative to existing devices. It's available now either with a compatible geiger tube for €95 ($135) or without for €65 ($50). Hit up the source link to get started, but not before peeping the thing in action after the break. Is there anything you can't do with Arduino?
KR1 DIY guitar / synth makes its debut at Castle Frightenstein
We've seen a few Zoybar-based behemoths since we were hepped to the modular guitar platform way back in '08, but few have caught our fancy like Kevin Rupp's KR1. Featuring a Korg Kaossilator synth, both the Pocket Pod and a wireless transmitter from Line 6, and the beloved Sanyo Pedal Juice battery pack, this bad boy can do double duty as both your ax and your backing band. But enough of our jabber jaw -- you want to see it in action, right? Check it out after the break. [Thanks, TK]
