Collaborate Disseminate
Don’t bother denying it, we know your workbench is a mess. A tangled pile of wires, tools, and half-completed projects is standard decor for any hardware hacker. In fact, if you’ve got a spotless work area, we might even be a bit skeptical about your credentials in this field. But …read more
Continue reading The Open Makers Cube: Have Hack, Will Travel
If civilization goes sideways and you need to survive, what are the bare essentials that should go in your bunker? Food and fresh water, sure. Maybe something to barter with in case things go full on The Postman. That’s all sensible enough, but how’s that stuff going to help …read more
A single board computer on a desk is fine for quick demos but for taking it into the wild (or even the rest of the house) you’re going to want a little more safety from debris, ESD, and drops. As SBCs get more useful this becomes an increasingly relevant problem …read more
William Gibson might have come up with the idea for the cyberdeck in 1984, but it’s only recently that technology like desktop 3D printing and powerful single board computers have enabled hackers and makers to assemble their own functional versions of these classic cyberpunk devices. Often the final product is …read more
Continue reading 3D Printed VirtuScope is a Raspberry Pi 4 Cyberdeck with a Purpose
In the last year or so we’ve been seeing an array of portable game system builds based around “trimmed” Wii motherboards which have literally been cut down to a fraction of their original size. It turns out that most of the board is dedicated to non-essential functions, with the core …read more
Continue reading Trimmed Dreamcast Board Makes For Perfect Portable
Our laptops, tablets and smartphones serve us well when we’re away from home or the office, but sometimes we want more. More speed, more storage and much more screen. We can already buy portable screens, but few tick as many boxes as the mini… Continue reading BladeX gives laptop, phone or console users an ultra-slim second screen
Positioned as an answer to the environmental toll associated with toilet-paper and flushable wipes, a startup from Santa Monica in California has launched a portable, rechargeable bidet, which looks more like a powerbank for your laptop. Some… Continue reading Portable, rechargeable bidet takes a swipe at the wipe
It may be hard to believe, but thanks to the expert work of Nintendo aficionado [Bill Paxton], the Game Boy Advance SP and GameCube lovechild that you see before you started its life as a Wii. That means not only can it play commercial GameCube and Wii games, but also …read more
Continue reading A Wii Playing The GameCube, Disguised As A Game Boy SP
Did you ever see a thin metal tab bonded to a battery terminal with little pock marks? That’s the work of a spot welder. Spot welding is one of those processes that doesn’t offer much in the way of alternatives; either one uses a spot welder to do the job …read more
A few months ago, [Shank] built what will almost certainly go down in history as the world’s smallest portable Nintendo Wii. As it turns out, the Wii motherboard is home to a lot of unnecessary hardware, and with a careful hand and an eye for detail, it’s possible to physically cut it down to a much smaller unit; allowing this particularly tenacious hacker to put an actual Wii, along with everything else required to make it portable, into an Altoids tin.
As you might expect, between the cramped controls, comically short battery life, and the fact that the whole thing …read more
Continue reading A Practical Portable Wii Emerges from the Memes