You gotta check out CMUcam if you haven’t yet. It can be controlled via a serial communications
to processors such as PIC, CUBLOC, Basic Stamp, Make Controller, and etc…

It’s a camera that was designed by Carnegie Mellon and has been around for awhile so it might be
a good solution to go with instead of starting all over from scratch.

The website explains as follows:

CMUcam is a new low-cost, low-power sensor for mobile robots. You can use CMUcam vision system to do many different kinds of on-board, real-time vision processing. Because CMUcam uses a serial port, it can be directly interfaced to other low-power processors such as PIC chips.

At 17 frames per second, CMUcam can do the following:

• track the position and size of a colorful or bright object
• measure the RGB or YUV statistics of an image region
• automatically acquire and track the first object it sees
• physically track using a directly connected servo
• dump a complete image over the serial port
• dump a bitmap showing the shape of the tracked object

Using CMUcam, it is easy to make a robot head that swivels around to track an object. You can also build a wheeled robot that chases a ball around, or even chases you around. In the Gallery, you can see pictures and videos of some of the robots we and others have built with CMUcam.

Huh, here’s a cool solar powered wifi that you can take with you to Starbucks instead of paying
T-mobile. Interesting to note the design looks like a super-soaker. Talking about super-soakers,
check this out this ultimate water gun DIY too.

via

Well, online videos ARE eating up TV time. At least, I’ve stopped watching TV personally about 2 months ago.
Personally, TV is so whacked with commercials and I don’t want to end up
as another biased TV couch-potato. Well, I didn’t understand this concept
that TV is bad for you when my high school English teacher told me over 10
years ago, but now I do.

Anyways, it is great that now you can simply type
some words and get the show you want on youtube, google, revver, spikedhumor,
revver, metacafe, msn, yahoo, and so many other sites that are popping up everyday.

You can check out javimoya, which allows you to save movies from youtube, google, and alike
to your PC or ipod.

A new survey conducted for the BBC suggests that the phenomenal rise in popularity of online video is eroding the amount of time people spend watching tradition TV. Of 2,070 people surveyed by ICM, 43% of those who watch online video on a PC or mobile device at least once a week say they watch less TV as a result. However, only 9% of the population currently watch online video regularly.

via techdigest

Yipee, more wii hacks for this crazy wii week:
This one allows you to hack wii shop, you don’t need a wii for this one.
View the wii shop in firefox:

Hats off to this guy. I wanted to do the exact same thing but still have not been able to get my hands on a wii yet.

The wii uses a browser to communicate. By emulating this browser with firefox, you can surf the wii shop.

1. Open Firefox
2. Install the User Agent Switcher

The previous tech-recipes on the use of this tool is also killer.

3. Click Tools
4. Click User Agent Switcher
5. Click Options -> Options
6. Click User Agents
7. Click Add
8. Description: wii
9. User Agent: Opera/9.00 (Nintendo Wii; U; ; 1038-58; Wii Shop Channel/1.0; en)
10. Click OK X 2
11. Click Tools again
12. Select User Agent Switcher
13. Select wii

14. Copy and paste one of these links into firefox and visit it:

Main Channel:

http://oss.shop.wii.com/oss/common/vc/W_01.jsp?language=en®ion=USA&country=US

Surf the Manual!

http://209.67.106.203/en_US/html/manual/USA/startup.html

My Nintendo Membership Link:

http://oss.shop.wii.com/oss/common/vc/S_02.jsp?language=en®ion=USA&country=US&&state=init

Sonic The Hedgehog Page:

http://oss.shop.wii.com/oss/common/vc/B_05.jsp?titleId=000100014D414845

Not enough? Visit the source for more information…

via techrecipes

Cool little LED control using PWM of PIC.

If you want to play around with some LEDs, why not hook them up to some brains (a PIC chip) and have some fun. Pete provides all the details you will need to create your own Serial Controlled RGB LED PWM Driver. The provided firmware will run on the following PIC chips: 12F629, 12F675 and 12F683.

via

Zune hacking revealed on .

• Inside the Zune/USB Protocol: Part 1 - Link.
• Inside the Zune/USB Protocol: Part 2 - Link.
• Inside the Zune/USB Protocol: Part 3 - Link.
• Inside the Zune/USB Protocol: Part 4 - Link.
• Inside the Zune/USB Protocol: Part 5 - Link.

Yes, we rather hack an ipod but if you got a Zune, maybe you can load some
linux on Zune.

You can now easily make a touch application similar to the touch interface on the
LG Chocolate. Check out touch-sensor chip you can use for your next embedded
application or even maybe wii hacking or ps3 hacking…

QT113 family QTouchT ICs create sense fields through dielectric surfaces such as plastic or glass up to 100mm (4″) thick, and can even turn small objects into sensors. These sense fields can work easily through gloved hands.

There are way to hack the PS3 via Linux:

You can now dump your BlueRay images into ISO format using Linux on your Playstation 3. All that is required to drop the images onto your 60GB hard drive is to run the following command “dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/imagename.img”. So far there is no way to play your backed up games, but this is a good start.

Well if you get further into hacking the PS3, you can always create a dual boot system.

Linux seems to prove itself as a good hacking tool for any system although we are still really “hacking” and there is no retail Linux solutions.
Hurray, thumbs up for Linux and Linux hackers!

Cool video on interview with Digg CEO Jay Adelson, interesting that 70% of digg users
use Firefox. Yes, switch to firefox and stop Windows monopoly.
Getting back to the news, Digg supposedly gets about 20 million unique users in a month.
Anyway, interesting how the internet is really changing the world these days.