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Earth

DIY Solar Resources? 311

Posted by kdawson from the bright-idea dept.
TihSon writes "I'm building a large shed out back and I want to power the lighting using a surplus solar panel. In searching for information on how to go about this, I have found a lot of rough DIY guides for various projects that are close to my goal. But none seem to explain the reasoning and theory behind using solar panels, so hacking their project to suit my own needs could be pretty much hit-and-miss. I don't want to do a hacked-up job, and future solar projects are not out of the question, so something a bit more in-depth is required. Do you have suggestions for books or Web sites you have used to learn the ins and outs of using solar panels? Something that starts with basic theory and ends with the ability to wire a house would be perfect."
Hardware Hacking

Via Debuts Mini-ITX 2.0 93

Posted by kdawson from the now-with-sata dept.
DeviceGuru writes "Via Technologies has launched the second generation of its signature mini-motherboard standard. Mini-ITX 2.0, an evolutionary update to the seven-year-old 170×170mm form-factor, introduces new and emerging buses and interfaces such as PCI Express, SATA, Gig-E, and HD A/V, while preserving backwards-compatibility with the original standard. Mini-ITX has been a popular form-factor for a range of space-constrained hobbyist and commercial applications."
Hardware Hacking

Wii Update 3.3 Defeats Twilight Hack, Freeloader 125

Posted by timothy from the wii-wii-wii-all-the-way-home dept.
Richter X writes "The newest update to the Nintendo Wii's Menu, version 3.3, contains code specifically designed to find and kill the popular Twilight Hack used by homebrewers to play unauthorized code on the Wii. The update also prevents the Freeloader software used to play imported games on the Wii. However, it does not seem to affect the Homebrew Channel in Wiis that already have it installed. The updated code is currently being researched in order to find what code has been changed. So far it has been confirmed that Nintendo included specific instructions to target the Twilight Hack. Work is also being done to update the Twilight Hack in order to bypass this new code."
GNU is Not Unix

Bell, SuperMicro Sued Over GPL 273

Posted by timothy from the if-it-wasn't-for-your-meddling-hippies dept.
Markus Toth writes "The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed two more copyright infringement lawsuits on behalf of the developers of the Linux-based BusyBox utility suite. The suits allege that Bell Microproducts and SuperMicro Computer each violated redistribution stipulations of the GNU General Public License (GPL).The Bell Microproducts suit pertains to the Hammer MyShare NAS (network-attached storage) appliance, which is sold by Bell's Hammer Storage division. I was the one who alerted the busybox developers about the GPL violation after providing a script for disassembling the firmware and instructions about mounting the contained initrd. As you see in my first post at the gpl-violations.org mailing lists where I posted all mails that I sent to and received from Hammer Storage, they refused to provide me the GPL sources several times. Looks like they will have to provide them soon; I will post any updates in the nas-central blog."
Hardware Hacking

BodySurf — Audiosurf Meets the Wii Balance Board 34

Posted by timothy
Chardish writes "Forget the hype about Wii Fit — the coolest thing about the Wii Balance Board is its potential as a game controller, and what better way to christen a new peripheral than by rigging it to work with games that predate the peripheral's existence? BodySurf is a (somewhat lengthy) GlovePIE script that manipulates the input of the Balance Board to work with the PC music game Audiosurf. It's fairly sophisticated, and includes Wiimote motion controls, special controls for each character, weight calibration, and a few play options."
Data Storage

What To Do With a Hundred Hard Drives? 487

Posted by Soulskill from the build-a-hard-drive-cannon dept.
Makoto916 writes "In five years with my current employer as the IT administrator, I've amassed a sizable cabinet of discarded hard drives; just shy of 100, in fact. All of the drives range in size from 20GB up to 300GB. They've all been stored in anti-stat bags, and spot checks of even the oldest ones show that most of them still work. Individually, they're mostly useless for our line of work, which is digital video production. However, the collective storage potential is quite significant. They are of varying size and speed, but the one commonality is they're all IDE. What is the best way to approach connecting all of these devices and realizing their storage potential? On a budget, of course. Now, I'd never use such an array for critical data storage, but it certainly would be useful as a massive backup array to our existing SAN that does store critical data. I have several spare and functioning PCs, but not nearly enough to utilize their internal IDE controllers; even with multiple add-in controllers, it still wouldn't be enough. Not to mention the nightmare of managing a bunch of independent PCs. I've looked into ATA Over Ethernet and there's a lot of potential there, but current 15 to 20 bay AoE cabinets are expensive, and single device enclosures are so rare that they're also expensive. Are there any hardware hackers out there who have crafted their own home-brew AoE systems? Could they scale to 100 drives? Is there a better way?"
Hardware Hacking

Mod Chips Legal In the UK 169

Posted by timothy from the mod-fish-still-under-scrutiny dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Good news out of the UK! Techdirt reports that an appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling and has now said that mod chips do not violate copyright laws. The case involved a mod chip seller, who imported mod chips for the XBox from Hong Kong and would sell the chips or mod the Xbox's himself. He was charged with copyright infringement and found guilty by a lower court. The appeals court has dismissed all charges, however."
Hardware Hacking

Multicolored Keyless Entry System 126

Posted by timothy from the simon-says-open-up dept.
mollyhackit writes "Here's a how-to guide for building a keyless entry that uses color identification instead of numbers. All eight buttons are initially blue; as you press the individual buttons they change color. Cycle the colors to your particular pattern, and you're in. This lock obviously wasn't designed for high security use since anyone in the same room would be able to see you and your amazing technicolor dream lock's pattern; it's just a fun project and will keep the youngins out of your workshop (timer prevents brute forcing). The RGB buttons are monome clones from hobby shop Sparkfun."
Cellphones

Apple Cracks Down On iPhone Unlockers 565

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-i-want-to-break-things dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like Apple and its wireless operator partners have finally figured out a way of cracking down on iPhone unlockers by making it a requirement to sign up for a contract before you can get your hands one. "It's obvious why this has happened though. This method means you're tied into a contract, or you're paying O2 and Apple a massive wad of cash for the privilege of owning a 3G iPhone. We're disappointed about this decision, but it does make business sense." Both ATT in the US and O2 in the UK are implementing the new activation system on July 11th, when the iPhone 3G goes on sale."
Hardware Hacking

A Home Lab/Shop For Kids? 291

Posted by kdawson from the treasures-from-edmund dept.
sharp-bang writes "When I was growing up, my Dad let my brother and I have the run of his wood shop, and kept up a steady stream of Lego kits, Estes model rockets, chemistry sets, Heathkit projects, and other fun science stuff from the Edmund Scientific catalog, and the rest was history. I'd like to give my kids that kind of experience. If your kids were interested in science, computers, robots, and building stuff, how would you build and outfit a lab/shop for them (and you) to play in?"
Hardware Hacking

Satellite TV Hacker Tells His Story 160

Posted by Soulskill from the spike-sent dept.
Wired is running a story about Christopher Tarnovsky, the man who was accused of working for NDS, a company owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., to sabotage a competitor's satellite TV system. Wired had a chance to speak with Tarnovsky and get his description of how the smart-card hacking war developed. Quoting: "Tarnovsky, who was known online as 'Big Gun,' says Ereiser offered him $20,000 to fix cards that were killed by ECMs, and he agreed. Each time NDS created a countermeasure, Tarnovsky would analyze the code and find a way to circumvent the countermeasure. He did it while working full-time as a software engineer for a semiconductor company in Massachusetts. 'I'd be at work and I'd check the IRC (channel) to see if they'd launched their Thursday countermeasure yet,' he says. 'It was like a chess game for me. I couldn't wait for them to do a countermeasure because I would counter it in minutes.' It wasn't long before NDS came courting. Tarnovsky had a contact at the company to whom he'd begun passing information about holes in its software, even supplying patches to fix them."
Hardware Hacking

VLC Hits the Device Market 159

Posted by timothy from the long-time-coming dept.
JoeBorn writes "VideoLAN has long been known as a mature open source project for video playback and transcoding on the PC. Now, Neuros and Texas Instruments have sponsored a port of VLC to their next generation open set-top box. The idea is to allow developers to easily create interesting plug-ins for recording and transcoding applications for the set-top box which will automate functions previously requiring a PC, like formating recordings for a portable player or streaming to another device on the LAN or the Internet, etc."
Hardware Hacking

Unofficial Homebrew Channel For the Wii 150

Posted by kdawson from the hacking-twilight dept.
marcan writes "The Homebrew Channel is a tool that can be installed on any Wii (no hardware mods required) that lets you run unsigned homebrew software from an SD card, or upload executables via WiFi or a USBGecko. We've tried to make it friendly for users with a simple GUI, and powerful for developers with direct upload features and reloading which we hope will make testing less painful. The channel can be installed using a DVD if you have a modchip, or using an exploit in Zelda: Twilight Princess which only requires an SD card (or any future hack or booting method). Once installed, it simply shows up as a Channel on the Wii Menu, just like any official channel. Hopefully, this and other recent developments (such as the upcoming devkitPPC r15 toolchain, much improved and with many bugs fixed) will help make the Wii an appealing platform for DIY software. And yes, it also runs Linux."
Hardware Hacking

Pushing a CPU to Heat Death, Intentionally 291

Posted by timothy from the or-maybe-it-will-loaf-along dept.
sdougal writes "This site is showing a Pico-ITX board running Ubuntu with no cooling whatsoever. They even let the public guess how long it would last: 'Last week thousands of you placed bets on how long the new Pico-ITX board from VIA, the VIA EPIA PX5000EG, can last without any cooling whatsoever. An ARTiGO Builder Kit was offered as the grand prize. Yesterday afternoon the voting stopped and the Naked Pico Challenge started in earnest. We simply loaded up Ubuntu 8.04, set it to work playing an mpeg-4 video and then removed the heatsink, leaving the CPU and VX700 chipset bare to the world. We recorded the event here in this video and set up a live video stream so you punters can keep a watchful eye on the PX5000EG as it works away.'"
Graphics

Open Source Graphics Card Available For Advance Orders 262

Posted by timothy from the one-blast-from-both-the-past-and-future dept.
mollyhackit writes "The Open Graphics Project, which we've been following since it first started looking for experts four years ago, has just announced that the OGD1 is available for preorder now. The design features 2 DVI, 256MB RAM, PCI-X, and a Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA along with a nonvolatile FPGA for programming on boot. FPGAs are reprogrammable hardware which means the graphics card can be optimized for specific tasks and execute them faster than a general purpose CPU. The card could be programmed for certain codecs to speed up encoding or decoding. An open hardware design means potential for better driver support. Of course you could always use the FPGA for something else... say crypto cracking."
Hardware Hacking

Using RFID Tags Around the House? 254

Posted by timothy from the who-moved-all-my-rfid-tags dept.
Attacked-by-gremlins writes "I have a larger family and various items in the house (some tools, some pieces of clothing) 'travel' unexpectedly. We joke about gremlins doing that, but it's tiring never to be sure that I'll find an object where I left it two days ago. For the sheer hacking fun of it, I'm thinking of sticking RFID tags on some and trying to triangulate a position with several tranceivers placed in the house. Has anyone have any suggestions for this amateur 'Google Home'? Thanks."
Hardware Hacking

Atom-Based Mini-ITX Motherboard Available 240

Posted by kdawson from the small-is-beautiful dept.
LWATCDR writes "A company out of the UK is selling an Intel Atom-based Mini-ITX motherboard. It has a riser for two PCI cards, two SATA ports, and an IDE ports so it could make a great little NAS, firewall, MAME box, or low-power workstation. To add to the fun it has a real parallel port 'perfect for hardware hacking,' a real RS-232 port 'perfect for data acquisition,' and two USB ports. The price is around $100, give or take, and hopefully it will come down over time. All in all a nice system to run Linux, WindowsXP, BSD, or maybe even OpenSolaris on."
Hardware Hacking

David Pogue Gushes Over the Chumby 134

Posted by timothy from the don't-mistake-it-for-charmin dept.
stoolpigeon writes "IHT is running a David Pogue review of the Chumby. The Chumby is a small computer embedded in a soft case. The Chumby hardware and OS are open, and the review mentions that the device already has a large developer following, cranking out new widgets for owners. Pogue is obviously quite taken with the Chumby and gives a good introduction to a device that may be the inspiration for a new generation of hackers."
Communications

Homemade VoIP Network Over Wi-Fi Routers 71

Posted by timothy from the warms-the-cochleas-of-the-heart dept.
AnInkle writes "A blogger on The Tech Report details his research and testing of wireless voice communication options for remote mountainous villages in rural undeveloped areas. The home-built project involves open-source software, low-cost wireless routers, solar power, mesh networking, unlicensed radio frequencies and VoIP technology. Although his research began several months ago, he has concluded the first stage of testing and is preparing to move near one of the sites where he hopes to eventually install the final functional network. Anyone with experience or ideas on the subject is invited to offer input and advice."
Data Storage

A Walk Through the Hard Drive Recovery Process 238

Posted by kdawson from the it's-dead-jim dept.
Fields writes "It's well known that failed hard drives can be recovered, but few people actually use a recovery service because they're expensive and not always successful. Even fewer people ever get any insights into the process, as recovery companies are secretive about their methods and rarely reveal any more information that is necessary for billing. Geek.com has an article walking through a drive recovery handled by DriveSavers. The recovery team did not give away many secrets, but they did reveal a number of insights into the process. From the article, "'[M]y drive failed in about every way you can imagine. It had electro-mechanical failure resulting in severe media damage. Seagate considered it dead, but I didn't give up. It's actually pretty amazing that they were able to recover nearly all of the data. Of course, they had to do some rebuilding, but that's what you expect when you send it to the ER for hard drives.'" Be sure to visit the Museum of Disk-asters, too.

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