Blancer.com Tutorials and projects – Page 66825 – Freelance Projects, Design and Programming Tutorials

Fuel Cell Charger

We have all heard about how fuel cell technology will revolutionize the world of power since they are instantly recharged with a small shot of methanol. Toshiba finally releases a practical fuel cell charger for real world geek use; a gadget charger.

Toshiab’s Dynario charger uses as little as 50 ml of methanol to recharge itself in about 20 seconds. This really is the first stab for them at consumer commercial fuel cell chargers and they have only created 3000 units that they plan to sell for $328, plus another $34 for 5 cartridges.

This is still a far cry from being affordable for common use, but it is a first step in easing power issues for all of us geeks.

[Link to Toshiba’s Dynario]

Fuel Cell Charger originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/11/04.

10.6.2 Kills Off Atom CPU Support

Hackintosh

Looks like Apple is taking another step to put a nail in the coffin of the hackintosh community. Looks like the developer build of Mac OS 10.6.2 lacks support for Intel’s Atom processor which every netbook around uses and is very popular in the hackintosh community.

If this is a conscious move on Apple’s part and they let the build go live we might be looking at another cat an mouse game between Apple and the legions of hackers in the hackintosh world.

For the longest time Apple hasn’t really anything heavy at stopping people from installing their OS on non Apple hardware. With a move like this, which really doesn’t streamline the OS and looks like a blatant attack on the hackintosh world, I wonder how long it will take set community to find a work around. You can never keep the power of the people down (I just had to throw that one in there).

10.6.2 Kills Off Atom CPU Support originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/11/04.

Build A Real Working Tricorder, Sort Of

Working Tricorder

No self respecting trekkie would ever be caught dead without his or her tricorder. So if your that much a trekkie or have no friends and find that people of the opposite sex are repulsed by your presence, why not kill sometime and build yourself a real working tricorder?

The words “Real” and “Working” are someone deceiving. See, if you really want this thing to “Sort of work” then you’ll need to sacrifice an iPhone. Also, the term “Working” only refers to what the iPhone can do, like send email or surf the web. If you cool with giving up your iPhone to make it look like you have a working tricorder then go nuts, but might I suggest getting some fresh air or professional help from a doctor as well!

[Link to Building A Real Working Tricorder]

Build A Real Working Tricorder, Sort Of originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/11/03.

Videogame Alarm Clocks

SNES Alarm Clock

Every hardcore gammer should alway emerge him or herself with gaming at all times. Games on your phone, games on your PDA, games on your computer, games on your tv and even gaming to wake you up. The guys over at the TechEBlog have put together a pretty cool collection of “Alarm Clocks Made From Video Game Consoles”.

My personal favorite is the Xbox 360 with built in space for your kleenex. I sure hope whoever made that one picked up a dead system to build it with. If not, that can easily be classified as the most expensive alarm clock anyone person should own.

If you know of any other cool things made from video game consoles, let us know in the comments or in the tech.nocr.at forums

[Link to Alarm Clocks Made From Video Game Consoles]

Videogame Alarm Clocks originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/11/03.

iPhone Safari Bug Could Cost You Cash

tech.nocr.at on an iPhone

Here’s one thing you don’t hear of too often, a serious bug in Apple’s iPhone version of Safari that could end up cost you, the user, some serious cash.

Although it’s not a very common bug but thanks to someone who probably spend countless hours trying to poke a hole in Apple’s mobile device, all iPhone users might avoid being hit with extra operator costs.

Estonian Apple site AppleSpot discovered the bug in question. If an iPhone user visits a site which uses Motion-JPEG (usually found on websites that show live feeds of web cams) in Safari, Safari will continue to use up bandwidth even after it’s closed. Safari is one of the few apps on the iPhone that is allowed to run in the background. So let’s say you have a web page up that uses Motion-JPEG streams and even if that site is in another tab or worse yet, Safari has been closed, the stream will continue and if your on a mobile carriers network then bandwidth will continue to rack up.

Now just imagine you were traveling outside your home country where you would be nailed with international data roaming charges and you decided to visit that ~~sexy nurse pay live stream~~ nature wildlife live cam, you could easily rack up some serious charges. The guys at AppleSpot have claimed to rack up over 740 MB in silently streamed bandwidth in one hour of testing. That would cost something like $3,000 in international roaming charges. Yikes!

[Link to AppleSpot]

iPhone Safari Bug Could Cost You Cash originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/11/03.

Batteries For The Web 2.0 Generation

Volta Batteries

Seriously, why has no other company come up with the idea of creating sexy looking batteries? We have gradients on every web 2.0 website out there, why not some colour on our batteries too?

Well first off, most devices that use batteries keep them hidden so nobody will ever see the flashy looking skin to your powercell and secondly, does it really matter? DC power is DC power. It’s doesn’t matter if it comes from a black and copper Duracell or a Volta.

[Link to Volta Battery Packaging]

Batteries For The Web 2.0 Generation originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/11/03.

Build An Annoying Beeping Thing

Annoying Beeping Thing

I’m always up for a good practical joke, especially the kind that involves electronics and can drive people mad. Get your soldering guns out kids, this is a good one.

The Annoying Beeping Thing is a simple circuit board that is powered by a single 9-volt battery and outputs a high-pitched whining sound through a tiny speaker or piezo buzzer.

As you can see from the pictures above it’s hidden inside of a transformed but this thing is so tiny that you can practically hide it anywhere. Make sure you don’t let the joke run on too long as it might really get on someone’s nerve who might not think it’s all that funny. Check out the video after the break of it’s construction and to hear it in action.

[Via Make]

Build An Annoying Beeping Thing originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/11/02.

In Case You Missed It: Week 43 Round Up

Week 43 Round Up

In case you missed anything last week; we have everything from Metallica on your iPhone right through to a $1200 Mouse. Enjoy

Gadgets

Remote Controlled Tissue Box
Electronic Guitar Shirt
Sucker Alert: $1200 Mouse
Sucker Alert: Wattgate 381 “Audio Grade” Socket

Gaming

Nokia Kills The N-Gage – Are You Shocked?
Nintendo DSi Get’s Bigger
Quickdev16: SNES Developers Cart
Soccer Hero

Hacking and Security

Use Your iPhone To Control Your Car
Mr. Wake – The Uncatchable Alarm Clock
Crush Your Cans With Electricity
3D Video With One Camera
DIY: Tesla “Spooky Spirit” Radio
Phaser Boasts 300mW Laser
iPhone App To Crack Combination Locks

Mac

Tap Tap Revenge Metallica For The iPhone

Tech News

XBMC on ARM
Install 59 Apps Quickly And Easily
Water Drops At 2000 FPS

In Case You Missed It: Week 43 Round Up originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/11/01.

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Use Your iPhone To Control Your Car

iPhone Remote Control

You knew it was bound to happen. With the iPhone already having apps to control everything from your iTunes to a remote computer you knew that someone would come up with an app to control a car.

The Spirit of Berlin team have developed an iPhone app that remotely controls a minivan. They developed the app for the 2007 Darpa Urban Challenge, so the likelihood of you getting the app from the app store is slim to none.

The iPhone connects with the driving circuitry via WiFi and offers a button for gas and brake as well as a wheel to turn the vehicle. The camera mounted on the front of the minivan transmits video to the iPhone in real-time.

In the video below you can see the operator in the camera’s view on the iPhone. It seems that the top speed of the van is limited (thank God!). This is every big kids dream, a real live RC of an actual car, problem is that this can be extremely dangerous. Plus, WiFi? I hope that their is some sort of kill switch if the van goes out of range or else there can be some serious consequences. Check out the video after the break.

[Link to iPhone RC]

Use Your iPhone To Control Your Car originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/10/31.

XBMC on ARM

Beagle Board

The most awesome guys over at the XBMC project have posted a teaser showing how far along the have come on the ARM port of their media player (Check the video after the break). You can clearly see the package boot up and even play back HD video. There looks like there is still some tweaking to be done on image rendering, but it looks like it’s almost there.

The hardware they used is a Beagleboard which runs a 600 MHz ARM processor, puts out HD via a DVI port, has OpenGL acceleration and best of all, sells for about $150. You can easily connect the 3″ x 3″ (wow, that’s insanely small for an HD media device) to a network by using a USB WiFi dongle.

The port is still a ways away from being stable, but from all of the work they have been doing there shouldn’t be too much more of a wait.

[Link to XBMC on ARM]

XBMC on ARM originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/10/31.

Nokia Kills The N-Gage – Are You Shocked?

N-Gage

You might want to sit down before you read this. Nokia has announced that they will be stopping all support for it’s plagued portable gaming platform, the N-Gage. Yes, I know, you might be saying “Dude, didn’t Nokia stop supporting this thing like years ago?”.

The move really isn’t a huge shock, the platform has been begging to be put out of it’s misery for a few years now. Although Nokia has officially announced that no further games will be published for the unit, it also said that it will continue to sell currently available games in the Ovi Store until September 2010.

Although purchased games will alway continue to work on the unit, any of the connected community features will also cease in 2010.

On a side note, anyone wanna buy a slightly used N-Gage? Cheap.

Nokia Kills The N-Gage – Are You Shocked? originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/10/31.

Install 59 Apps Quickly And Easily

With the recent release of Windows 7, many people have to slug their way through installing their applications. This can easily be a tedious and time consuming adventure. Thankfully Ninite does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Ninite allows you to install up to 59 different pieces of software for you, with little or no interaction from you. All you have to do is head on over to the Ninite website, select which programs you want and download the installer. It’ll start the process of loading your machine up with the software. Best of all, it will automatically say “No” to installing any extra toolbars or annoying add-on programs.

[Link to Ninite]

Install 59 Apps Quickly And Easily originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/10/30.

Mr. Wake – The Uncatchable Alarm Clock

Mr. Wake

The snooze button on my alarm clock has to be the most worn out button by far. I admit it, I am an alarm clock abuser. I tend to beat the crap out of the time telling device every time that annoying buzzer goes off. Now if I had me Mr. Wake which was designed by Vadim Ryazanov of Let’s Make Robots, I would actually have to get my ass out of bed to silence it.

Mr. Wake’s job is to protect the snooze button from abusers like me. By using a homebrew IR sensor to detect anything near it, the robot takes off if you try to even get close to it. Plus, what can be cooler than having a robot that not only wakes your ass up, but has it’s frame made out of heat formed pens. Awesome. Check out the video after the break of it in action.

Mr. Wake – The Uncatchable Alarm Clock originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/10/30.

Nintendo DSi Get’s Bigger

Nintendo DSi XL

The Nintendo DSi just got a whole lot bigger. The DSi XL was officially unveiled yesterday by Nintendo. The new handheld is a lot bigger, which is one of the things that fans have been asking for. Instead of dual 3.25-inch displays the bigger brother will now come with 4.2-inch displays. It might not sound like a lot, but if you do the math that’s close to 30% bigger. The unit weighs 314g which is 100g more than the DSi and the overall size is 161 x 91.4 x 21.2 mm.

Besides the size and the new battery that claims to offer 13-17 hours of game play when minimum brightness is used, everything else stays the same. The DSi XL will cost about $220 in Japan where it will be available November 21st. The rest of us shmucks will hopefully see the unit sometime in 2010. It would have been nice to have this unit in time for the holiday season, but like most decisions that Nintendo makes wil releases, North America is always last.

Nintendo DSi Get’s Bigger originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/10/30.

Remote Controlled Tissue Box

Yes, you read it right, a remote controlled tissue box. You never know when you might need to blow your nose and feel way to lazy to get up and get the tissue box that’s like 2 feet away. Actually, now that I come to think of it, how many people actually keep their tissue boxes on the floor? I mean wouldn’t this thing need to be rugged if you say, keep your tissue box on a end table or on the coffee table? I’m just asking here.

If you do keep your tissue box on the floor and are interested in purchasing this remote controlled unit it costs $25, it has a maximum range of 8m and it’s 250×65x123mm so make sure your kleenex box fits inside. Oh yeah, and it’s only available in Japan.

Remote Controlled Tissue Box originally appeared on tech.nocr.at on 2009/10/30.