Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks

PHPee (Rob Maeder) writes "Scott Fullam's Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks is an excellent book outlining all you need to know to get started in the wonderful world of hardware hacking. With step-by-step guides to fifteen useful, amusing and off the wall projects, even a novice hacker can be up and running with some basic hacks in a few hours. The book demonstrates various ways consumer electronics can be modified to do things they were never intended to do, and shows you just how much fun voiding your warranty can be." (We mentioned this book yesterday, too.) Read on for PHPee's review. Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks author Scott Fullam pages 348 publisher O'Reilly rating 8 reviewer PHPee ISBN 0596003145 summary How to get started in exploiting the hidden capabilities in hardware you may already own.

Fullam takes the reader from the very basics of hardware hacking and quickly gets up to speed with some fun and interesting hacks. Projects start out easy and increase in complexity and cost as the book progresses. Hardware Hacking covers many popular hacks we've all seen before, such as the "Macquarium" (Mac Aquarium), a web-enabled coffee machine, and the Blinkenlights building-sized display.

The book is divided into two main parts, the first covering basic hacks, and the second covering more advanced hacks.

Part One:
Starting with the basics, Fullam takes the reader through a crash course in electronics, covering concepts like soldering, using a voltmeter, identifying various electronic components and reading schematics. This section of the book is by no means a replacement for a course in electrical engineering, but it is definitely a solid primer for those of us who weren't born with a soldering iron in our hands. If you've never played with electronics before and don't know the difference between a resistor and a capacitor, this section should get you up to speed fairly quickly.

After the brief basics lesson, the next chapter dives right in to the first project, which is a portable laptop power supply made with a pile of D-cell batteries, a battery holder and some wire. This project is very simple and requires no soldering at all, yet it gives the reader a quick and easy way to make something useful with very little investment in time or money.

Each of the projects is presented in a well-organized manner, starting out with a brief summary and some background information about where the hack originated. A list of necessary tools and materials is also given, followed by a project overview, outlining the major tasks required to get the project completed. Each project outline gives estimates for the cost range, time required and difficulty level for the hack.

After the introductory stuff is out of the way, step-by-step instructions are given on how to assemble, modify or hack the device in question. The instructions are easy to follow and are complete with images or illustrations where appropriate. Many pages contain sidebars that contain additional information related to the project, such as more photos, hints and tips, and links to relevant websites. These sidebars really help to fill in any gaps that may be present in the main text.

At the end of each chapter, Fullam has an "extensions" section, where he suggests ways the hacks can be hacked further, to improve upon the design or alter them to offer more or different functionality. This is one point where the book really shines, advocating the true spirit of hacking and encouraging creativity and experimentation whenever possible throughout the book.

At the end of each chapter is a "Bill of Materials" and schematics for the hack. The bill of materials outlines in great detail all tools and hardware required for the project, including approximate costs as well as sources where they can be purchased.

Some of the highlights in the first section of the book include the "Macquarium," a water-based PC cooling system, and the infamous Furby hack. The Macintosh mod teaches some valuable lessons on using a Dremel tool and working with Plexiglas, which are great skills any budding case modder would want to have. The water-based PC cooling project is one of the more useful hacks presented in the book, showing the reader how to create an inexpensive but effective means to cool down an overclocked CPU. And hacking the Furby to give it a new vocabulary is... well, definitely a great topic for conversation if nothing else. If you have to ask why someone would do such a thing, you wouldn't understand the answer.

Part Two:
Part Two of the book starts off with another more advanced lesson in electronics. It delves into more detail, describing different types of resistors, capacitors and connectors. It also introduces transistors, looking at integrated circuits and surface-mount components as well. One thing I found particularly useful was the section explaining how to read and interpret manufacturers' data sheets for integrated circuits.

The advanced hacks featured in Part Two of Hardware Hacking are a little more exciting than those featured in the first half of the book, but are definitely more involved. The section starts off with a chapter on building a PC-based PVR, using Mandrake Linux. Sample code is included to create shell scripts for a simple, text-based interface, although Fullam does briefly mention some of the more popular GUI-based PVR software available, such as Freevo and MythTV.

Another great hack featured in the advanced section is the "Building-Size Display" hack, reminiscent of Blinkenlights. The chapter starts off with instructions on how to build a display matrix on a much smaller scale, using a series of ultra bright LEDs, but later shows how the project can be expanded to create a 12-story display using an entire building.

Some other mentionable hacks in the advanced chapters include a cubicle intrusion-detection system, an Internet-enabled toaster and coffee maker, and a remote object tracker. These projects provide instructions on how to use more advanced components such as photodiodes, lasers, GPS receivers and microcontrollers (such as the BasicStamp2, in particular).

Two other noteworthy projects in Part Two include a MAME cabinet and a wearable computer.

Plans for the MAME cabinet are very well done, taking the reader through cutting MDF, building the cabinet, installing the software and interfacing the controls to his PC. This chapter goes into great detail, even covering things like creating a monitor bezel and a backlit marquee, and using T-molding for that authentic arcade machine look.

The wearable computer hack is very interesting, covering a wide range of concepts I would never have considered. Fullam gives ideas on what to use for a head-mounted display (HMD), what types of motherboards and CPUs work best, and looks at various power sources, including batteries, solar panels and different generators. The chapter also presents ideas for input devices, such as keyboards and mice, but also speech recognition systems, cameras and GPS receivers. At the end of the chapter, there is an extensive list of websites related to wearable computer projects, offering much more reading to the interested hacker.

The appendixes, while quite brief, do offer more information on topics like creating and editing schematics, using microcontrollers and using different power sources. There is also a list of resources for further reading and a short list of parts suppliers.

Hardware Hacking also has an accompanying website, where readers can download all of the images, illustrations and schematics from the book. The files are available in EPS, PDF and TIFF formats, although they are all gzipped, and are not readily viewable without downloading and extracting first. The website supposedly has code downloads as well, but the links are broken as of this writing, so you'll be stuck typing in code from the book until the site is fixed.

Overall Thoughts
Overall, I was very impressed with this book. Fullam has given the geek community a valuable resource that will provide inspiration for aspiring and veteran hackers alike. It covers many projects that I have personally wanted to build or learn more about, and presents concepts that would be of interest to many fellow Slashdotters.

The only things preventing me from giving this book a 10 are the aforementioned issues with the accompanying website (which I'm sure will be fixed soon) and the quality of some of the photos. Most of the photographs in the book are crisp and clear, but some are rather grainy or pixelated, as if they were enlarged from a website image. Fullam does make mention of the image quality, stating that many photos actually were taken from the original Web sources, and "the clarity of the photograph suffers in print." It's a small point, but definitely noticeable in certain sections of the book. However, as mentioned, the images are available online, and often do look better on a monitor in full color, as opposed to the black and white images in the book.

I highly recommend Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks to anyone with an interest in those fun projects that only nerds can understand.

You can purchase Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Re:Just curious...

[Neil Blender]

some people think so

Re:Just curious...

[FePe]

If you look at the definition at Wikipedia, you'll notice this:

"Originally, a hack [...] meant a quick fix to a computer program problem." And so you can't really say that creativity has to be involved, but the term is normally used that way:

"The surface implication was [...] a casual attempt to fix the problem, but the deeper meaning was, often, something more clever and thus impressive."

UPS modding

[zerocool^]

I'm going to go ahead and point out my UPS modding thread from yesterday, complete now with additional instructions, a few pictures, and a hand-drawn diagram of how to do an APC SmartUPS.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=98025&cid=8374 299.

Pictures here:
elvis.netmar.com/~will/ups/

I'm going to write this up more formally, and at least put it in my /. journal, and mabey make a decent little webpage with instructions and pics and stuff. Mabey I'll submit it to /..

Anyway, this is a great geek hardware hacking project. If you have any questions on how to do it, let me know. I always read replies.

~Will

Re:UPS modding

[zerocool^]

Absolutely.

It is dangerous any time that you are using 24 volts at 5 amps. Plus, there are capacitors inside of UPS's and, if you're not careful, there are wires that you may think are dead that are live.

As a general rule when ever doing something like this, there are some ideas that I try to follow:
1.) Use fuses. On a setup like a 5U APC UPS, you're going to have a 20 amp wall circuit and 48-52 volts on the batteries. I always put a 100A fuse in the middle of the batteries. It may not prevent catastrophies, but it might, and it just feels safer.
2.) This is a reason that I really like the plugs that come with the APC UPS's. They are able to be plugged in without sparking and without touching wires, etc. Very solid. So use connectors that are shielded (like shielded spade connectors on the Tripplites or specific plugs on the APC's), and use electrical tape anytime you do anything like connect two wires. Doing a google image search, I came up with this as an example of the connectors that are in the APC's: it's the yellow thing, although this isn't quite it, but it's close. The connectors are made by Anderson Power Products, and they're rated for 600V at 50A.
3.) Wear gloves, work on carpet (not on concrete), don't ground yourself, wear rubber-soled tennis shoes, etc. Obvious stuff.
4.) Use wire designed for the amperage you need. For 5 amps, you don't need a HUGE wire, but for the rackmount stuff where it's possible that you'd be pulling 15-16 amps, you need big wire. Stranded copper works best, because (i think, this could be wrong) amperage travels along the outside of wire. Figure out what size wire you need, and go one bigger for safety. We use 10AWG for the rackmounts, cause that's what they use on the inside. It might be 8AWG, i'm not sure. I know they use 10AWG in the APC SmartUPS rackmounts.

It takes a bit to make a battery explode. It's not that common. But ALWAYS, caution is in order.

Also, as long as we're disclaimering, obviously this is dangerous / voids your warranty / should be only done by trained professionals etc. The guy who taught me how to do this was my boss (the guy that owns Netmar, Cengiz Akinli), who has taken numerous electrical engineering classes at Virginia Tech (he's mostly done with a triple aerospace engineering / math / physics degree). So, while yes this sounds risky, it can be done safely, and we've worked all this stuff out mathematically, too, as well as having put it into use in real situations for several years.

~Will

Re:a carbon microphone, a speaker, and a battery

[Anonymous Coward]

and here i thought an LC oscillator was the simplest type :)

and isnt it really the speaker thats doing the amplifying?

Re:I hate that word.

[Judg3]

I hope you are upset with the 'hacks' presented before us, and not hardware hacking as a whole. Some of us just don't like working with software - I'm one of them. I'm much more at home with a soldering iron and dremel then I am with a function array and boolean operators.
I consider the hacks I do as being as 'real' and meaningful as the software hackers - I just choose a diffrent medium to play on.

future hackers have to get started somewhere..

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that books like these help to get a lot more people into hacking things...we live in a world where 100% of people buy their PC's, TV's and "snap things together (for PCs anyway)"...it's good to see the true hardware hacking culture promoted...after all, the PC industry pluse lots of other items would not be here as fast if it were not for the early hackers who modified and created new stuff....you can't expect things like Linux and open hardware/software to come from business/lawyer/CEO land.

Re:components not included

[madpierre]

I get 99.99% of my electronic components and hardware from junked electronic/mechanical equipment. There are several benefits to this apart from the obvious one of cost.

You get pretty good at de-soldering.

You pick up design concepts from the way the stuff was built.

Fun finding out just *what* that unknown IC does.

Satisfaction in knowing that you are helping the environment by recycling potentially toxic materials and using them in your insane creations. Weather they're useful or not. :)

etc etc ...

Re:Electric motor from junk drawer stuff hack

[cmpalmer]

Great, this is a copy of my original page of instructions located here. Probably at some time I may have given them permission to copy or link to the site, but I did ask that they reference the original page (which they do not seem to have done).

BTW, this was the first public web page I ever created -- way back in the dark ages of the web. I need to fix the broken links, counter, and my (really) old e-mail link :-(

Re:I hate that word.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you check the facts, you'll see that Newton made that statement as an insult.

Another scientist, of decidedly short stature, was claiming credit for some of Newton's work.

"Standing on the shoulders of giants" was what we in the biz call 'sarcasm'.

Re:last night's hack -- does it count?

[wass]

or you could have physically opened the CD player, to retrieve the CD, which is fun in it's own right to see "what it's insides look like.".

It's funny, 6 years ago my friend was having trouble with has new car stereo/radio/CD player that he just installed. It wasn't working at all, so he called me over to track down the problem.

Turns out the fuse was blown, a new fuse blew instantly, I tracked the problem to the unit. We took it out, took the whole thing apart ot see if anything was shorting inside. It all looked okay. Then I asked him how he hooked up the power lines, and he had the 12V/ground reversed on the unit! I showed him how you can almost always find which line is ground by the big swathing ground planes on the circuitboards. THat fixed the problem instantly, although he could have save the trouble by telling me he blindly guessed which way the power lines should go.

The interesting thing was how different the CD electronics were from the radio. Ie, the radio board looked like something right out of the 70's, slapped onto a more modern high trace-density PCB for the CD player. It was kind of funny, I guess the stereo groups have circuits that 'just work', and don't waste engineer time to change them at all or make them more modern.

And on another note, I highly recommend The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill, to anybody wanting to learn electronics without doing a 4-year EE program. It will teach you how to effectively USE transistors, op-amps, logic, etc without involving you in obscure mathematical details.

Re:Just curious...

[Short Circuit]

Well, the phrase "free exchange of ideas" probably originally stemmed from limitations on speech, not limitations on available cash. That's why IEEE is such a good idea, even if you have to pay to see any of the standards.

Re:Why not? think about [color] boxes.

[Anonymous Coward]

The supreme court ruled (in 1987, IIRC) that posession of a red box was not a crime.

Chapter 2 in the book is my aquariums!

[jlower]

I was contacted by the author of this book last year and gave him permission to use my plans for building a Macquarium. So, I am chapter 2 of the "Hardware Hacking Projects For Geeks" book.

Woo Hoo!

Anyway, my aquariums are Here.

The plans Scott used for his book are here. The plans are kind of old and busted (there's no link to them any more on my site) and I think the author did a great job.

The one thing in the book I'd like to build now is the MAMA game cabinet. I've got an old arcade Ms Pac-Man and it gets lots of use but I'd love to have a bunch of the old games in one stand-up cabinet.