Here’s a great video explaining the works behind hacking a smart card.

Continue reading ‘Hacking a Smart Card with Acetone and Nitric Acid…’

Goohack was just launched!  It’s a search engine that uses Google API to search DIYs, HowTos, Hacks, and other technology stuff from hand-selected sites by me.

It’s pretty useful as it filters out a lot of sites you don’t consider DIY and HowTo related.

For example, type “how to run car on water” and you will get a LOT of focused DIYs and HOWTOs on that subject only.

For now, I have it up on the top right corner so next time you need to find a hack, you can try Goohack.

Here’s a list of sites included in Goohack searches right now:

zedomax.com | makezine.com | engadget.com | gizmodo.com | lifehacker.com | techeblog.com | wonderhowto.com | hackedgadgets.com | metacafe.com | youtube.com | videojug.com | boingboing.net | wikihow.com | instructables.com | evilmadscientist.com | hackaday.com | hackszine.com | craftzine.com | diylive.net | techdigest.tv | ubergizmo.com | getusb.info | youritronics.com | hardocp.com

If you have a similar niche site and would like to be added, let us know here.

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Here’s the video if you can’t see it.  (some kinda YouTube bug…yes blame it on the big company)

Cool, check out this awesome 3-Axis servo motor drawing “HackADay”. You can get the board for really cheap from this guy.

The preprogrammed AVR microcontroller must be purchased directly from Uli Huber. We do not carry the chips.

Please include $5 shipping and handling for destinations within the continental United States. For all other areas, please include $7 for shipping charges.

For those only interested in purchasing a single bare pcb board, shipping and handling can be avoided by sending us the cost of the pcb and include a self addressed stamped envelope with your order. Please attach three first class stamps to the envelope with your legible return address. We suggest using cardboard floppy disks envelopes that can be purchased at office supply stores. US only.

via HackADay

Yes, I lied, this isn’t a Ferrari but a car built by one human being! Check out the cool pictures and helpful notes on building your own car!

This guy’s even selling these hot little cars.

Now taking orders for Bodywork kits, Chassis build plans and La Bala-Track crate kits!

Show Schedule Coming Soon! See La Bala at a number of Arizona region Track and Show Car Events this fall and winter.

 

Winner of the 2007 Editors Choice Award at the 2007 Knotts Berry National Kit Car Show.

via HACKaDay

Here’s a cool DIY on making your very own Jacobs Ladder. I always goto Fry’s with my friend Eric and find that they have this giant Jacobs Ladder that’d go off as soon as you were about to touch motherboards and whatnot. But this is great that now I know how it’s made.

The basic construction and principle of a Jacobs ladder is that a metal vee is formed from two bits of wire and a high voltage is applied across them. The electricity arcs across at the bottom of the vee where the electrodes are closest together. The air that the spark is passing through is ionised making it a preffered route for the arc, so when it heats up and begins to rise it drags the arc up the metal vee pulling it wider as it goes. In a correctly set up ladder the arc will travel all the way to the top where the wires have a sharp outward bend in them to pull the arc apart to the point that it extinguishes and the whole process starts again at the bottom of the vee. Here’s a picture of the base of my own Jacobs ladder showing the mounting of the wires.

via Hackaday

If you use Linux, you know Xeyes is a simple program that follows your mouse movements. You can check out some web examples of Xeyes. You can even paste this javascript code on your website for Xeyes on the web.

Anyway, Hunz created physical Xeyes that stands on his window and follow people’s walking movements. Tight! We want one.

The eyes are made from large pizza boxes cardboard and rolled by RC-servos that are controlled by an ATTiny2313 that’s connected to the PC using the low-speed software usb stack. The camera is connected using USB as well. Since I disassembled my webcam and hooked it up to an FPGA for some experiments, I used an analog one and a USB video digitizer.

The video processing is done using mplayer. It’s cropped first to get only the street and no neighbour estates. Then a tiny & quick&dirty video filter plugin looks for the column with the strongest Y-component difference between the last & current frame and if the difference exceeds a certain threshold, that column is passed to the microcontroller using libusb.

[via]

Wow, check out this awesome window shade that also acts as a solar powered light!

This is a continuation of a project from Design for the 5 Senses that I worked on with Michael Jefferson and Jae In Lee. It’s a window shade that doubles as a light. One set of strings would be to control the level of sunlight by adjusting the height of the shade. The other set of strings controls the light level. I didn’t have time to add a solar component to it for that class, so I decided to work on this for Advanced Tech. There is some general “design” info here and a list of resources, but this page is mainly tech documentation of the solar component. Please see links on the left for more background & project info and images.

via

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Holy S*#t, these guys can make some coffee with lasers! Well, we should be getting our dragon laser soon thanks to Frank!  Tight!  We will see if green lasers have a better effect on the taste of coffee…

[Mr Beam] sent this in yesterday, but I didn’t have a chance to get it up til now. These guys are using a 2Kw laser to heat up their instant coffee and tea. Sure, it’s not a hack, but [Eliot] wanted it up, and who doesn’t want their own 2Kw Laser?

via