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If you're going to the trouble of messing with PCI hardware, I'm sure one of these tiny circuits, which can be hidden in a USB socket, could be used to take over a machine remotely much more easily. Adding radio remote access would be pretty easy.

I think this device might be evidence to support the article's viewpoint. Engineers sometimes like to see other people suffer untold agonies.

CNC can be had for much, much cheaper than $100,000. I built my own little CNC machine (bottom of page) from scratch for less than $250. That's not going to mill stone (very fast, anyway) but you can get a full-size Bridgeport or some Japanese mill for under $2,000 in some cases. For another $1,000 or less, and using the mill to build its own parts, you can retrofit the Bridgeport with servo or stepper drives, and use an obsolete desktop computer to control it using free software. Shops also turn over equipment like CNC machines pretty often, in order to keep up with everyone else. An expensive machine pays for itself many times over before it becomes obsolete. You may be able to find an older CNC mill, ready to run, for less than $5,000. I happen to know of one that, if I ever get the space, could be had for under $2,000. For all the information you need, try the CAD CAM EDM DRO Yahoo Group.

Useless for pretty much anything until I turned it into a pan/tilt webcam mount.

Yeah, if the matching for the law enforcement version is anywhere near the ability of this beta, we don't have much to worry about in terms of privacy.

I also got matched with a black guy, Michael Jordan. I copied their little animated GIF which is supposed to show how much we are alike: Pasty geek == Michael Jordan?

There certainly is an excuse for the three roommates to not have separate computers: space. Since they are all messing around with a Win98 computer, I highly doubt any of them has money to buy even a cheap laptop. Desktops take up a lot of space (especially monitors and keyboards), we had to build custom furniture to set up two desktop computers the last time I had a roommate in college. Maybe the other roommates don't want to give up the couch and TV, or sleep inches away from a computer fan exhaust.

At the time, I made some renderings of stuff we were considering during the summer; we went with the one with the two lofts and the square spacer table at the end of the room. The computers went underneath the table, and the intake from the air conditioner kept them nice and cool.

I actually started a website to help with this problem (can't have every skill). It's more aimed at machining stuff, but I intend to expand it to cover other things like electronic design. http://hwn.macetech.com

I haven't had time to work on it for a while, but it's something I really want to finish. I didn't know anything about PHP or MySQL when I started it, and I developed everything from scratch including a user login management system.

Ever notice how it's so difficult sometimes to wake up when it's dark outside? It seems that I'm at higher risk for getting up late when it's overcast or stormy outside. It seems that the light level triggers how awake you are. If I have to wake up early, I'll usually leave a light on in the room; it helps a lot. But it's not the best solution, and I'd love to smooth out the roughly torn edge between sleep and consciousness when the buzzer screams at you.

I'm building a clock that includes a wall socket. You plug a lamp into the socket, and half an hour before your set wakeup time, the lamp begins glowing. It increases brightness gradually over a half hour so that by the time you need to wake up, you already are. It's not really a new idea, but it's fun. It uses a realtime clock chip, a microcontroller, and a triac for power control. Maybe not so much hacking...I guess it does "hack" a desk lamp into a wakeup alarm notification device.

Most of my other hacks are computer related; for example hacking a Sandisk 6-in-1 memory card reader to work with ALL CompactFlash cards, instead of only the new ones, with a single wire. I hacked a Nintendo R.O.B. into an internet-controlled pan/tilt webcam mount in an hour or two. Also ran a small server in college which used fetchmail to check for new messages, and would flash one LED over my desk and one in the door's peephole, so I knew I had mail just by looking down the hall from a friend's room. Lots of random stuff like that. My most recent major project was a small CNC machine, the computer, power supply, and driver electronics housed inside the case of an old Yokogawa data analyzer.

The old Quickcams were actually pretty decent even by today's standards. Most of today's webcams use CMOS sensors, which really need to see a pretty bright scene before the signal-to-noise ratio becomes acceptable. The old cameras used CCD sensors. You can adjust the exposure down so far, that even very dark scenes can be viewed without all the graininess of a CMOS sensor.

My old Quickcam VC fell a long ways onto a tiled floor, which broke the ball housing. So I took out the internals and built them into a little pan/tilt platform using two RC servos and some heat-formed plexiglass: Plexicam

Much higher resolution? No. A lot of USB cameras out there have native 640x480 resolution, which is better than anything you could possibly get out of an NTSC frame.

However I do agree about the flexibility of input sources, as well as the importance of CCD versus CMOS. I have a nearly antique Connectix QuickCam VC, which was CCD until Logitech bought the line and made them CMOS. Though the resolution isn't great, it does give very clear pictures even in low light. The case broke long ago, so I built the guts into a little pan/tilt base I hacked together one afternoon.

A few weeks ago I killed my Ortek keyboard. It wasn't a great keyboard; it had the "silent" mushy-keys and plenty of useless "internet" and "media" chiclet buttons. The Enter key broke and I'd fastend it with a small screw (which surprisingly didn't interfere with typing). It died in the most cliched way possible: direct coffee spillage.

The same day I drove down to Office Max to get an emergency keyboard. Everything was pretty much worthless, even compared to my old keyboard. I finally settled on a Logitech media keyboard solely on the feel of it.

I used it for about a day, then heard someone commenting on IBM Model M and Northgate keyboards. I remembered the little worthless 486 test server I had sitting in my closet, and remembered the keyboard attached to it was a Northgate. I walked over and pressed the keys...click click. Smiled, grabbed AT-to-PS/2 adapter, and replaced the new Logitech.

I'll never go back. In fact, I surprised I used anything else, because that old keyboard used to be my main keyboard back in the day. When it dies, I'll get an Avant Stellar, which is a remake of the original Northgate using the original design documents and manufacturing processes.

Every key has a perfectly balanced snap action. It provides just the right amount of force before the key clicks in, and once you hear the click you know the key has been pressed. It might sound like someone with a clicky keyboard is really pounding on it, but ideally it allows you to flit over the keyboard without having to mash every key down to the bottom to ensure it was pressed. You learn to hear each keypress, and can often catch an accidental extra letter by ear.

And now you know why all the old laptops had a "key-click" noisemaking feature, sometimes in the BIOS.

Well, kind of inspired by telerobotics and more inspired by ripping toys apart... ;-)

Ripped a Nintendo R.O.B. apart and turned it into a robot webcam, goal being to make one in the minimum amount time and effort. Ended up grossing 12% of the school's traffic one week (this was back when robot webcams were rare). Still have it: Voila....

Since moved on to designing bigger and better versions, but the old R.O.B. was fun.

Whatever it is, it needs to be bulky enough not to get stuck in a foot-wide gully. Maybe something with sets of tri-star wheels, and a very wide wheelbase to keep from tipping over. I whipped together a rendering in POV-Ray, which explains the concept for those who don't know what "tri-star" means: robotconcept.jpg (121.95 Kb)

Ideally, the robot should be able to keep going if it does get tipped over. That was the beauty of the sphere concept...but of course, the atmosphere on Mars is pretty thin and winds wouldn't have as much of an effect.