Hacking the Myvu personal video player


[jongscx] picked up a Myvu personal media viewer and promptly began scheming about improvements. He decided he wanted to be able to watch any input on the device, not just an Ipod.

After some messing about with different inputs, he eventually calls Myvu to ask some questions. Surprisingly, he gets the engineer who designed the thing. The engineer turns out to be pretty helpful and is happy to help him hack the device. [jongscx] ends up finally getting it to work and posts the schematic for the world to see.

He says his hands are full with some other projects right now, but hopefully he'll do an official write up with pictures of the final product soon.

[DrNathan] wrote in to note that [RetroPlayer] was responsible for much of the work as well as contacting the engineer.

[thanks, DrNathan]

Cheap ARM color LCD platform


Today, [sprite_tm] let us in on one of his pet projects. This is an inexpensive portable game platform runs about $50 and happens to use an ARM CPU and a 320x240 color LCD. Because it's so cheap, he's been working on reverse engineering the thing and there's already a proof of concept homebrew version of Pong out for it.
Update: Yeah, yeah - title's fixed.

Sound input for cheap video cams


I've been trying to find an excuse to pick up one of the HD Aiptek cams for a while now. [windowlikker] posted his simple pre-amp + external audio input mod for his Aiptek AHD videocam. Unfortunately, the mod is limited to mono input unless there's an un-used stereo input on the encoder board.

PSP Internal Hard drive mod


[Robin] over at acidmods sent in this interesting PSP mod. [PvP] added an internal hard drive (with the exception of a mini-usb cable sticking out the top) to his PSP. The advantage? Laptop hard drives are dirt cheap while sony memory sticks are still pretty pricy. More details should be along soon, but [Robin] assures me that this means up to 200GB of storage is possible for the PSP.

Automatic projector calibration


[Johny Lee] sent in his(pdf) awesome projector calibration project. By adding embedding some optical fiber that feed into a set of USB connected light sensors, his groups software can determine the exact pixel position of each sensor. Once the positions are determined, the projected image can be dynamically adjusted to fix the screen. The technique can be used to stitch together multiple projectors, and even calibrate an image to project onto a three dimensional model. I know some home theater nuts that would love to have this system for calibrating their CRT projectors.

This is such an excellent project, that I want to give credit where it's due - it was developed by [Johnny C. Lee], [Paul H. Dietz], [Dan Maynes-Aminzade], [Ramesh Raskar] and [Scott E. Hudson].

Be sure to check out the video demo after the break!

Continue reading Automatic projector calibration

Simple VGA test box


Sometimes it may seem like I suffer from goldfish memory. [Chris] sent this in a while back and I'd almost forgotten about it. He built a simple VGA test box using a PIC 18F452. I'd probably be more interested in using it to add simple VGA output to another project than use a test box, but it can definitely be handy if you need a small portable video test signal.

Gyro controlled video via R/C plane


[Mark] couldn't resist sending this in, and I can see why. It turns out that this is made from off the shelf parts, but the functionality is awesome. The pilot wears a video headset - igoggles, etc, and has a gyro/accelerometer sensor mounted on it that outputs commands to the R/C transmitter. On the plane, a servo pan tilt camera matches position based on the viewers head motions. Just about all the components are listed in the credits at the end, but you can use any RF camera and a transmitter with enough channels to run the extra servos.

$25 head mounted display


[Jake] sent in his source for a cheap head mounted display. In his writeup he notes that the spy video car comes with quite a pile of handy electronics - video tx/rx, camera and this simple black and white monocle head mounted display. (Which happens to be available as a replacement unit for a mere $20) The screen is a Kopin 300M (Black and white, 300x240 pixels) The display is actually somewhat usable out of the box, but he takes the time to note some simple mods that'll improve the displays performance.

If you ever bought a virtual boy just to gut the display, then you know you want one. In fact, I've got a perfect project in mind for this particular toy.

Go international with your Zune


In a fit of apparent oddity, the Zune doesn't support non-US characters. [Mike] sent in this how-to on modding the Zune software to speak other languages. We haven't seen much on the Zunes, so it's about time for something to come out.

DIY Camcorder


[Jonas] sent in a surprisingly retro concept given the number of small cheap funky video recorders on the market. He built his own. At the heart is a sony Digital8 recorder, combined with a security camera and a SLR lens. It's finished out with an LCD viewfinder and a handful of AA batteries to power the security camera.

Ben Heck's Wii laptop on Engadget


[Ben Heckendorn] put together this little beauty on engadget. It's not quite as over the top as the XBox 360 laptop, but there's a reason for that. He'll be putting up a How-To series covering the construction. If you've been pondering building a portable yourself, it'll be a nice jump start for your hardware hacking skill-base.

OpenTom - roll your own TomTom distro


TomTom already runs Linux. The OpenTom project has documented the TomTom hardware and software to allow custom software builds to run. The Wiki covers everything from build tools to hardware connections. So far, a mp3 player has been released using the build tools. Hmm, I might have to pick one up to develop on myself. Thanks to [kniVes788] for the tip.

http://www.opentom.org/Main_Page

Ben Heck's Atari 800 Laptop


Ben's been working on this one forever. This new version 2 Atari 800 laptop features a CF drive, a RS lcd, original Atari hardware and lots and lots of friggin soldering. That keyboard is hand wired, along with the CF adapter. Unlike the xbox 360 laptop, this one's got Ni-MH batteries that are good for about an hour of play.

Wireless video scanner


[aboxman] brought this nice wavecom jr mod to my attention. I first ran across scanning for wireless video signals a couple years ago when the X10 version came out. People were surprised at just how many video signals were flying through the air.This little project results in a unit that can scan a wide 2.3 to 2.7Ghz range. Of course, if you're across the pond, you might want a european version.

Glasses heads-up display


[Ozan] sent in his first attempt at making his own heads up display. The optics are very simple in design, and he gutted a commercial heads up display (ICUITI) for the LCD panel and interface electronics. I haven't played with many head mounted displays since the Nintendo virtual boy. I'm not up on my field of view calculations, so it's difficult to equate this to a commercial headset.

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