PIC PAL TV is a PIC18 based Software Video Processor allowing you to display and overlay graphics and text onto a video source. Looks like it would be really handy for overlaying GPS information or even creating a homebrew games console…
It uses a PIC clocked at 32 Mhz with a 8 Mhz crystal to achieve the horizontal synchronization timing of the PAL system. It is able to generate a 625 line interlaced PAL video signal, with 248 vertical lines. The software is coded in Assembly and C with full sources avaliable from Bruno’s website.
It is a really lightweight design and Bruno provides full system details on his page so you can easily expand and customise it further if you needed to, go see Brunos site at http://www.micro-examples.com for this and more projects…
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The little known Texas Instruments TI-99/4A this week, starring none other than the legendary Bill Cosby. The advert dates back to 1983 and even boasts a $100 rebate!
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Alan from hackedgadgets sent us this project which looks like something I could do with making, getting up in the morning has never been one of my strongpoints!
Its a standard el cheapo alarm clock wire up to a real Fire Alarm bell, and to quote Alan….
‘Probably the world’s loudest….. maybe’
Go check out hackedgadgets for the full article with loads of construction pictures and detailed instructions
Never sleep in again!
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Obviously the original xbox is not being manufactured anymore, but for anyone who’s interested heres a glimpse inside the Hungary Flextronics factory during the original Xbox’s heyday.
Heres a quick historic overview of the original Xbox for anyone who has been living under a rock for the past 7 years….
Xbox was the first console to incorporate a hard disk drive, used primarily for storing game saves compressed in ZIP archives and content downloaded from Xbox Live. This eliminated the need for separate memory cards (although some older consoles, such as the TurboGrafx-CD, Sega CD and Sega Saturn had featured built-in battery backup memory prior to this).Most of the games also use the hard drive as a disk cache, for faster game loading times. Some games support "custom soundtracks", another unusual feature allowed by the hard drive.An Xbox owner can rip music from standard audio CDs to the hard drive and play their custom soundtrack, in addition to the original soundtrack of Xbox games that support the feature.
According to the Xbox Wiki original Xbox manufacturing stopped when Nvidia cease production of the GPU in August 2005, and in September of the same year Microsoft announced that they had lost Four Billion dollars selling the Xbox Console.
The Xbox will live on due to the huge homebrew and linux scene that allows people to use the Xbox as a powerful media center amongst other things.
All in all its got to be a hardware and software hackers wet dream, a games console that runs on PC hardware. Its worth checking out http://www.xbox-scene.com for loads of great tutorials on modding the hardware and software of the original machine, they also have a large and active forum dealing with both the Xbox and the Xbox360
Click here to go visit the full set of pictures from the wiki and loads more information
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The Rundfunker is a hand built Network Audio Player that allows you two stream audio files MP3, WMA etc…
The unit can even be controlled via the internet using a handy HTTP remote access site.
‘The Rundfunker is a tabletop mp3 player that scans the WLAN for local audio sources and is able to play shared audio-files. It has a built-in 2-way speaker system, a LC display and a very simple yet powerful user interface. The device is independent of any external peripheral equipment - all hardware components are integrated into the appealingly designed housing including an exclusive aluminium front panel. All you need is 12 V DC power supplied e.g. by a mains adapter. The Rundfunker is driven by various parts we developped from scratch - such as a customized Linux, operating software implemented in Java and a circuit board for connection of hardware (LC display and buttons)’
If you want to find out more information about this device then check out the authors homepage at http://rundfunker.berlios.de/
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Heres a really nice hack coming from 2shaneHunter from the UK. It’s an accurate DIY replica of the KITT Voicebox and LED system from Knightriders KITT car.
The system he has developed uses voice recognition which has been implemented using flash software on a connected PC. I can’t seem to find a relevant webpage for the project, if one exists at all. But in the meantime you can visit 2shaneHunter’s youtube video account for more related videos
Three detailed videos chart his progression, read more to see the other two videos……
We have managed to dig up a little gem for this week’s advert. Here’s William Shatner promoting the Commodore Vic-20 in this advert from way back in 1982.
Laptop power supplies are notoriously expensive sometimes commanding prices in excess of £50. With this in mind many people are tempted into purchasing ’suspicously’ low cost versions from ebay.
Mike from www.electricstuff.co.uk bought himself a ‘genine’ Dell AC adapter from ebay and set about ripping it apart to find out just how badly it was made. As you can see from the picture below, general build quality is less than adequate
Even more concering is the safety aspect of this unit. It is taking a direct 240V input with little or no protection. This is an accident waiting to happen, I along with everybody else likes to save a bit of money but this unit is beyond dangerous!
Mike happened to be doing some product testing at an EMC testhouse and thought he would put the unit through its paces to see just how dangerous it was
Every test was a complete failure, although it did output its stated voltage, regulation was very poor. Heat was also an issue with the unit reaching over 75 degrees in just half an hour. And that was with the case of. Whats even more concerning is the obviously fake CE logo attatched to the product.
The moral of the story - If it plugs into the mains, buy genuine!
You can check out Mikes page at www.electricstuff.co.uk/acadapter.html for more detailed information from the test results and some more pictures of the offending unit.
Some of you may be familiar with this one but for those that aren’t, here’s a quick rundown of the events of Sunday November 22nd 1987
During the sports section of the 9pm news broadcast on Americas WGN network, an unauthorised signal over powered the stations transmitters and was broadcast for over a minute. The signal had no audio, but the video was of someone in a Max Headroom mask gesturing at the camera. Some stills of this are shown below
The second of these incidents occured during the evening broadcast of Dr Who on WTTW. This time the signal had audio and viewers were witness to a unintelligble rant from the ‘fake’ Max Headroom character, a video of this interuption can be seen below
We have cleaned the audio up as much as possible in this version of the video, the original source we took ours from is www.fuzzymemories.tv if you want to compare it to the original
I have included this translation and explanation for some of what is said in the tape, any corrections or suggestions are more then welcome, just leave a comment….
This one’s been out there for quite a few years and is still up and running, it was originally created by two gents from Manitoba in Canada. It’s an LED display board that is connected to the internet allowing visitors to the site to upload their own message. This message is then captured on the display via a webcam and displayed on the web site.
"We developed a Linux device driver — based on the floppy drive device driver source code from the Linux kernel — and a Linux daemon to listen on a TCP/IP socket for images sent to the sign. The daemon accesses our custom device driver. We developed PHP-based Web interfaces to the sign that allow anyone on the Internet to display stock quotes, view the time and temperature in Brandon, Manitoba and send messages to the sign in Ian’s apartment"
The Rundfunker is a hand built Network Audio Player that allows you two stream audio files MP3, WMA etc…
‘The Rundfunker is a tabletop mp3 player that scans the WLAN for local audio sources and is able to play shared audio-files. It has a built-in 2-way speaker system, a LC display and a very simple yet powerful user interface. The device is independent of any external peripheral equipment - all hardware components are integrated into the appealingly designed housing including an exclusive aluminium front panel. All you need is 12 V DC power supplied e.g. by a mains adapter. The Rundfunker is driven by various parts we developped from scratch - such as a customized Linux, operating software implemented in Java and a circuit board for connection of hardware (LC display and buttons)’
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