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Ask Slashdot: What Is Your Most Awesome Hardware Hack?
An anonymous reader writes: Another Slashdotter once asked what kind of things someone can power with an external USB battery. I have a followup along those lines: what kind of modifications have you made to your gadgets to do things that they were never meant to do? Consider old routers, cell phones, monitors, etc. that have absolutely no use or value anymore in their intended form. What can you do with them? Have you ever done something stupid and damaged your electronics?
Stranded on Mars, I salvaged the old Pathfinder probe to reestablish communications with NASA.
Mark Watney
I either used Newegg.com or pricewatch.com. I ordered all my parts custom to save a couple bucks and it was good to run the latest 3d games. Everything came in the mail and I was happy... Until I realized I forgot to order a case. And not to be defeated, I took the UPS box it was shipped in, and carved out port holes. It worked well as a case. The only downside is I couldn't leave my computer on overnight to automatically play video games for me because I worried about it catching fire.
God spoke to me
The best hack I've ever performed involved sending out a vague and remotely nerdy request to the users of website so I could turn around and write a "5 lifehacks real nerds do" Buzzfeed article.
Only having a 300 baud acoustic modem and a Tandy Color computer 2, I still wanted to run my own home written BBS. Wound up running the phone line through the cassette relay control on the Coco2.
All night long, Click, see if someone hit return at least one, click - hang up. Click - pick up, watch for return. Click - hang up.
Must have driven Thunder Bay Tel completely nuts trying to find out why someone would keep picking up and hanging up every 5 seconds or so for weeks on end. This was back in 1984. The BBS lasted about 2 years and did have a fair number of people connect in to it.
I built an electric bike powered by old laptop batteries I collect dead laptop batteries from my employer, many of them contain lithium cells that look similar to AA's called 18650's and it's usually just a single bad cell and the rest are good. I put enough in series to give me 48v and enough in parallel to give me 50 miles of range (about 160 cells). I connected the cells together using nickle strips and a tab welder I built from an old microwave transformer. The microwave was covered in stainless steel so I cut that up and used it to build a battery box that fits perfectly in the front triangle of the bike (yes, it's insulated).
My favorite hack of this sort didn't involve electronics at all. The building management that the company I worked rented office space from, installed motion sensors in all the offices, with a system that turned all the office lights off unless someone was actually moving in the office. I was there after 6pm almost every day, sitting quietly in front of a computer (the motion sensors didn't pick this up) so the lights kept going out. I'd have to get up from my chair, walk over to the motion sensor (installed next to the light switch at the entrance of the room), gesture in front of it so the lights would come back on for 1/2 hour or so.
I finally got a dippy bird (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_bird) and set it up with a cup of water next to the motion sensor so it fooled the thing. I had to put the bird on top of a stack of books to get it to the right height etc. I'd ask visitors why they thought I had put the bird there, and they usually didn't figure it out, but would burst out laughing when I told them what it was for. Still a fond memory.
No, really.
First, the pictures - http://i.imgur.com/moKxZEU.jpg and http://i.imgur.com/XCtxuqg.jpg
Old, cheap $3 pair of Cube headphones found at Big Lots. Had them for years, cabling finally gave out. Came across a broken Polaroid PBT598 bluetooth speaker set, literally the only thing intact was the gumstick amp/bluetooth board, and even then it had damage, it having fried a couple of SMT capacitors, the battery and speaker trace pads were missing.
So, first order of business, get the SMT caps replaced. Easily done - just salvage components from various boards I've got around the house. Slightly trickier was exposing traces and fresh metal to solder to for battery and speaker connections. Making it fit required Dremel and hot glue work due to the shape of the headphones, and as a result the thing does look like a total hack job on the case itself.
But if I want to drown the world out in its entirety, 2x3w strapped to my head certainly does it. I can't hear my garbage disposal, vacuum cleaner, or even the neighbor's loud rap music. Volume has to be kept at pretty much 25% as anything higher, while clear (up to about 60%, then the poor speakers begin to distort) simply hurts.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Here are a couple of bodges from when I was back in school (i.e., over 25 years ago). Sadly, these projects would be more difficult for me today.
TV remote: Before TVs came with a remote control, I wired a long cable to my computer's joystick. Feedback came through speech synthesis (the TV was busy), and when I pressed the button, a servo would select the channel I wanted.
Coin relief map: I wanted to digitize the relief (imprint) on the surface of a coin. I used a pin in a capillary tube with two coils of fine wire to make a variable core transformer to measure z-height. The x-y stage was Lego Technics, with PWM controlled motors (running on an ARM2 in interrupt space). It worked far better than it ought to have.
if it was an ebook of matches, then I might be impressed.
rewriting history since 2109
This was a long time ago, but I wired up a photometer (counts photons) to an Apple 2 joystick port, then wrote a tight 6502 assembler timed loop that would count pulses on the joystick button input. It would accurately read over 50,000 button presses per second, which was good enough to do variable star photometry. I also wrote an applesoft basic program that assisted in the process of variable star photometry and used the assembler routine to read values from the photometer. By connecting the photometer to a telescope and following directions of where to aim the telescope given by the software, it could be used to observe and graph brightness of variable stars over time. Also could be used to calculate the angular velocity of asteroids. This was is the days before extrasolar planets were found, but similar in principle to how that is done. Though the objects we were looking at were orders of magnitude brighter than the brightness fluctuations observed to find planets.
I did the same thing at a Halloween party at church. I was using 2 force feedback driving wheels playing Daytona USA networked on the Nebula2 emulator. My daughter plugged the wrong power supply into the driving wheel and tons of thick white smoke came out of it. It didn't work at all. We laid hands on it and prayed and it worked for the entire night and still works to this day!
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I used to buy single sided floppy disks and then use a hole punch to create the track index hole and the write tab. This turned it into a double-sided floppy. I'd this with good quality Verbatim disks. You could then take the disk out of the single sided drive and flip it over -- by hand -- to get double the capacity. But that was way before most of you young punks were even born. Now... get off my lawn.
Actually, my best hardware hack was an Arduino device that I turned into a product which has since sold thousands of units. 32kB flash, 2.5kB SRAM. Can send messages via the international space station.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
I once turned a $15,000 laser into a massive paperweight by turning a simple water valve from the "on" position to the "off" position.
Oh, wait, you mean a hack that did something useful? Well, I made an iPad stand out of a pile of dirty laundry, but I don't really like to brag about it.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
So, to encourage us sales associates to familiarize ourselves with the kits, they gave each store in the Ottawa region an extra write-off allowance, and told us to use it opening some of the kits and playing with them, and that there would be a race among all the stores at the regional Christmas party in late November.
I was determined to win, so I asked Artie, the store manager, if adding more batteries was a violation of the "stock parts only" rule, and he said he didn't give a fuck. The motor in the kits was driven by a single 9V battery, so I opened four kits and tore the 9V leads/housings off three of them. I then added them to the remaining car, wiring all the leads in parallel, and gluing the housings to the top of the frame, where I was "supposed" to attach some sort of molded-plastic carapace that looked like an exotic street car.
We tested it on the carpet in the store and it was very fast, despite getting bogged down in the fibers. We kept it at low speeds because we didn't want to blow the engine out.
When the big night came, I put in 4 of the expensive lithium 9Vs from the top shelf. I put it down on the hard wood of the race track, next to seven other cars, each with just the stock design, despite their varied appearances. One of the visiting executives called a simple "Ready, set go!" and pandemonium ensued. You see, nobody had realized that all the sets being used were still configured with the default radio frequency settings. So the start of the race was just a burst of cross-talk, and the cars when zipping off in all directions. Our car lost three tires, as its axles spun so fast that the double-sided tape securing the tires to the rims completely delaminated.
Anyway, we eventually realized that there were not enough frequencies available to race the cars all at once, so the decided to judge the winner with a small device that simply measured the rotational velocity of the wheels and reported back an actual speed (as opposed to scale speed) in kilometers per hour. I replaced the tires on our car, and brought it to the tester. After the performance with the tires, they let me get tested last. The record car among the other seven was capable of a respectable 11 km/H. I put the car in the test bed, and gently pulled the throttle trigger up to maxim. The tester stared at it a moment, as the wheels whined away with a high-pitched scream. "Sixty six." he finally said, slowly, as if not really believing the number on the display. "Sixty..." and then motor burst into flames.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Just hardware. I was about 7; we took the tubing from an old TV antenna and fashioned a hang-glider frame. I'm guessing it was about a meter wide. We painted it and while it was wet, draped a dry-cleaning bag on it using the paint as adhesive. Coat hanger wire for the crossbar and a G.I Joe and it looked awesome. At first it flew badly but we slipped a skateboard wheel bearing on to the back of one of the tubes for a balance - nearly perfect. There was a big construction project on the hill behind us. From about 75m high it made slow circles for about 5 minutes before getting stuck on the school rooftop below. Super basic, but incredibly satisfying as a 7yo.
This was a lot like my "magic cat vanisher" when I was in grade school.
It was a simple device, requiring only a 9V battery and a flash cube from a camera.
Walk in room, see cat. Short terminals of flash cube while looking at cat. *FLASH*. When vision returns, cat has vanished.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
It was probably either "jerk" or "asshole" and I'm guilty of both. A fool, on the other hand, I am not (usually). I tend to believe that one of the biggest reasons that my business was successful was because I was smart enough to know when to shut the hell up and listen to those who knew better than I.
I've never understood why people would hire experts and then not listen to them. There are many things that I do not know or do not know well enough. I'm comfortable enough admitting that I'm wrong but I prefer to admit that I am not sure and would like to ask somebody who knows more than I.
Can I configure, secure, and manage servers? Absolutely. Can I program in a few different languages? Certainly. I'm probably 'pretty good' at it. However, my degree is in applied mathematics. I'm neither a programmer nor an admin. I did both because that was what the job required and I ended up learning a lot by doing both. When it came to doing it at a greater level, I was simply out of my league.
Sure, I learned a lot and was able to do a lot but nowhere near as well or as quickly as the professionals could. Being able to shut the hell up and listen (as well as, hopefully, knowing when to do so) is important. If I'd tried to help then I'd have slowed them down and reduced the quality of their work. That's not a good business model yet I see it is fairly common. I'm not sure how those businesses remain open - I can only assume it is momentum. I didn't have momentum (the market was fairly young - traffic modeling "on a computer") so I'm pretty convinced we'd have never had the success we did have if I'd been much different.
I didn't hire people to work for me. I hired people to work with me. I may be mistaken but, to me at least, there's a huge difference between the two and there's also a huge difference in the quality of the end product and culture. If I didn't need their help then I'd have not hired them. I hired them so it would be really stupid of me to not allow them to do the work they were hired to do.
Sometimes it helps to just shut the hell up and learn something.
I got lucky. I wasn't quite 50 when I sold my business for a rather high sum (it was about eight years ago) and retired. We'd accumulated a great value on paper and had great future business lined up so I ended up quite happy with the results. The company that is the parent company does almost nothing but fill a variety of government contracts (from information management to food services to even security services) and has left much of the culture in place so there are still some of the same views even though I am gone.
Sometimes I miss the place. Then, well, I realize I can do almost anything I want (within reason) and find something to distract me. Currently I'm stopped in Buffalo, New York as I'm out engaging in wanderlust. I do expect to stop in down at the old office and see a few friends on my trip but it's actually a little hard to do so as it's sometimes tough to leave.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Hurricane Sandy in 2012--
a foot of water in the basement and climbing.
Not a pump to be had-- hours of phone calls revealed that I was last in line at the sump pump store; even if I could have gotten a pump there was no electricity.
Realized that we lived on a hill; set up a gravity siphon using 200' of garden hose.
Woke up the next morning to a dry basement, power came back a few hours later.
1. I was told that Unix couldn't dual boot with MS-DOS... so I patched the boot sector to load an alternative version of itself into RAM before system start if an unused bit was set (thus enabling DOS to boot)... so I could reboot back and forth... sometime around 1985.
2. Built a box with a Z80, 2764 EPROM, A/D converter, speech chip and a hacked together telephone interface... had 4 inputs and read the voltages of each to the caller on the phone, twice... then hung up.
3. Wrote a Forth for OS/2 in assembler... because I was told you couldn't write assembler programs in OS/2.
4. Built a system out of solar cells behind a filter, to detect infrared laser, and help align laser CATV links, with a companion box to generate a tone to feed into the transmitting laser.
5. Used a bi-color LED as light and sensor to detect a beam break to a reflector. (Green light can be detected by the red LED, but not vice-versa)
(in the jolly days before digital switching)
Friend was diagnosed with cancer and was recovering from chemo in New Jersey some 1500 miles away. She ran a local ballet company for 30 years and it was to be the first time she had ever been away for their Spring performance. I was sound technician at the theater and we cooked up a scheme to telecast the performance to her. There were a several payphones outside, and I grabbed my butt-set and discovered their pairs appeared in the basement. I put a temporary jumper from one across to an unused pair of the theater's Bell 1A2 key system so it would appear up in the sound booth, put a single line phone on it with a simple phone patch (just a 600 ohm transformer, resistor and capacitor) to an output from the mixing board. A co-conspirator drove 30 miles to the house in New Jersey in which she was staying to install another phone patch into a good Hi-Fi amp and speakers. That night just before the performance I hung an 'out of order' sign on the payphone and we dialed an 800 number in the payphone line from the booth and Blue Box 2600/MF'd the call over to the New Jersey house, and patched in. During the performance one of the dance instructors sat in the house whispering into a microphone with commentary on what the dancers were doing, which went into the private mix. Cost of call: $0. It was all in place and ready minutes before the performance began, a real high-five moment because we came up with the idea to do it three hours before.
Also lots of explore sessions which I'd do from an empty conference room at the University because there were two phones there and dial-9 local toll restriction was so easy to bypass (it was 'supervised', inject quick local digits before telco dial tone). One call I made in stages: into New Jersey (Atlantic path) -> France -> Tokyo -> Hawaii -> local number (knowing it would return via Pacific path), then finally ringing the extension of the phone next to it. Literally a call manually routed around the world. Quality was awful, my 'Hello' was audible bit it sounded like 'helawk' some 2+ seconds later.
Also various random numbers to confused persons in Moscow, in Cold War days before USSR direct dial was permitted from the USA. So you bounce through France. Bouncing between UK/France a couple times then back home was loud, echo-y and strange sounding, the Brits liked their trunks piping hot.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
I once soldered two safety pins on my Remco crystal radio science kit and poked them in to the phone wire leading down my parent's house. Found what I was getting for Christmas. Felt guilty and never did it again.
Then there's the intercom feature I added to my 5 tube superheterodyne radio. Speaker also acted as a microphone.
I won't get in to that.
At the first pc repair shop I ever worked at, I came into work a little too baked one day. Spent over an hour trying to find a hardware issue, then fumbled my screwdriver and dropped it on the live motherboard. One tiny spark, and that mb was done. Replacing it solved the original problem, so no harm no foul.
- A hardware boot selector knob wired to joystick port (the four buttons input pins) with a diode mesh to encode the 12 knob positions into binary combinations of grounded pins. Along with view bytes of assembly in MBR to boot the right partition and a .com file for DOS to chose wither to start the GUI (Win95/ W3.11) and a shell script under linux reading /dev/port to choose wither start X11 or not. That was a nice hack that allowed me to position the knob to the configuration I wanted at startup and reboot the box without the need to wait for the boot manager menu to popup so I could do something else.
- Rewiring a pin on an ISA modem card to use the IRQ6 (floppy) instead of IRQ3 or 4, this allowed me to serve one more line with my fax server
- The most epic one: I was handing around with older folks who were trying to debug a DOS program protected by a sentinel dongle connected to a parallel port the problem was that the software was using interrupt vector bytes to store the variable so as soon as it started, it was overwriting the adders of the IRQ handler used by the debugger. What I suggested was to to take a pin from the parallel port and connect it to an IRQ pin of the ISA bus. Thus when the software tried to communicate with the dongle (well, actually a couple of hundreds of cycles later), they could trigger a memory dump and analyze the code that was encrypted in memory the rest of the time.
Back in the mid '90s playing Doom and Quake using mouse look, I had a problem that my left hand would cramp up horribly from trying to handle all of the keyboard buttons.
So I took a few old mice, a copping saw, hot glue gun, and soldering iron, and made my own left hand controller.
It resembled two mice going at it. The upper mouse my hand rested on and the first segment of my pointer and middle fingers controlled the top mouse buttons, and my finger tips controlled the bottom mouse buttons. Thumb and pink controlled side buttons.
I ran the mice wires into an AT keyboard (this was either pre-USB or really early in the rollout) and solder them in as a secondary path for assorted keys.
It was the greatest thing since sliced bread IMO. These days you can get quality made left handed controllers like the Nostromo 52 and other ergonomically designed devices, so I haven't been hacking up mice any more ;)
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Religious type here. Every Sunday I'm in church! And no, not [just] to meet women. Faith in a higher power is not precluded by the study of the world around us.
I'm a software guy who tried getting into electronics once or twice as a hobby. I appear to be pretty good at doing something stupid and damaging electronics. That's why I usually stick to software.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes