Instructables user echo_anomie posted a nifty howto for creating a very simple portable laser projector. With a bright enough laser, you can project an image across long outdoor distances and there’s never any need to adjust focus. When it’s all assembled, you just drop photo slides in the path of the beam and they are […]
My friend Tom Hoffman has set up a Jabber server for XO Laptop users: I’m having a feeling I’ll regret having done this, but xochat.org is now up and running. If you’ve got an XO you can point it at my Jabber server by popping open a terminal and typing this: sugar-control-panel -s jabber xochat.org […]
MakeFan: wrote in to remind us that those cute little Chumby devices are for sale now. The best thing about the little wireless touchscreen appliance is that they were designed to be open and hackable. The underlying operating system is Linux, and there are a number of lower level OS hacks, but you can also […]
Servos can work really well as drive motors for a small robot. Their motion is relatively precise and predictable, and they operate on the same voltage as most microcontroller electronics, allowing you to build a simple robot without any additional motor control circuitry. Standard servos, though, can only rotate through about 180-degrees. Although you can […]
Boarduino is a “breadboardable” Arduino clone created by Ladyada. It has a much smaller form factor and it’s designed to plug right into a solderless breadboard, making your circuit prototyping efforts a breeze. How cool is that? You use it just like a normal Arduino. You can slap the standard Arduino bootloader on it and […]
I think MIT coined the term Open Courseware, but there are several other universities that are releasing lecture videos for free online. Now, tracking down a particular subject matter is made quite a bit easier because of a project titled Lecturefox. From the about page: What is Lecturefox? It’s all about the joy of learning. […]
Paul McGuinness wrote in about a home theater PC system he is building, and tipped us off to a GPLed software package called MediaPortal. It’s a full-featured media center package for Windows users, featuring (HD)TV, DVD, photo, music and radio support. It also has a scheduled recording feature and a bunch of other niceties that […]
