External News Archives - Page 43 of 211

Jakobnator’s Old Dell XP13 Laptop Gets a USB Power Delivery Upgrade Thanks to a New Type-C Port

February 14, 2021 by CrackedConsole

Looking to drop the proprietary power supply, jakobnator’s upgrade means the laptop now charges from a common Type-C adapter.

Pseudonymous YouTuber “jakobnator” has published a video showing how he upgraded an older Dell laptop to charge using a USB Type-C port, via USB Power Delivery (PD) — doing away with its proprietary power brick in the process.

“So I’ve had this laptop for about six years now,” jakobnator explains. “[It] got me through college, and I really like this line-up of XPS13s. It’s a good size MacBook alternative, but as I’ve been travelling more I’ve been trying to shrink down things so that I’m only carrying one charger.”

Retron Jr Is The Gameboy TV Dock You Always Wanted

February 12, 2021 by CrackedConsole

The Retron Jr is yet another new piece of retro tech to come out of CES this year. Created by Hyperkin it was originally an April’s fool joke last year, but now, they’ve decided to reveal it as a real, upcoming product. Much like the Super Retro Champ, it uses your original cartridges. Most of us retro collectors out there have a fair few Gameboy games lying around the flat, now it’s time to put them on the big screen.

Arduino Color Sensors – TCS230 & ISL29125

February 12, 2021 by CrackedConsole

Today we will be working with two different color sensors.
I’ll show you how they work, how to hook them up, how to calibrate them, and how to extract RGB values from them.

The TCS230 (also known as the TCS3200) is a popular and inexpensive color sensor that operates on a wide voltage range. It outputs a square wave whose frequency reflects the color intensity.

The Sparkfun ISL29125 is a more capable sensor that provides a 16-bit digital output using the I2C bus. It also has a programmable interrupt feature that you can set to trigger in response to a specific color.

“Snap Instabilities,” Which Make Popper Toys Pop, Could Let Future Robots Propel Themselves

February 12, 2021 by CrackedConsole

Having watched a gel strip dry, researchers have found a way to harness snap-buckling without the need for a manual reset phase.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Delft University of Technology, in partnership with the US Army, have published a paper detailing a way of giving materials the ability to propel themselves using only environmental energy flow — something the military is looking into for future robotics applications.

Keep private conversations private by simultaneously pressing volume up and down on this modified Echo Dot.

February 11, 2021 by CrackedConsole

If you want to start an argument between technophiles, just bring up smart speakers. An outpouring of strong opinions is all but guaranteed to follow. Some will point to the conveniences of interacting with devices by voice command. Others will focus on the privacy concerns associated with having an Internet-connected speaker in your home, sending who knows what, to who knows where, to do who knows what.

First Visit to Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan (Spoilers) | Mario Kart & Food

February 11, 2021 by CrackedConsole

Join me through Super Nintendo World inside Universal Studios Japan to experience Mario Kart: Koopa’s Challenge, meet Princess Peach, Toad, Mario & Luigi, eat the cute food, and COLLECT COINS with the Power Up Band!

The grand opening has been delayed from February 4, 2021, to an unknown date. We were fortunate enough to visit during the Annual Passholder previews in December and January.

PasswordPump v2.0 Can Manage Credentials for Up to 250 Accounts

February 10, 2021 by CrackedConsole

The USB device is outfitted with a pair of removable EEPROM chips that store credentials using AES-256 encryption.

It’s not uncommon for most PC users to have multiple accounts and passwords for a host of different sites and applications. Trying to remember all of those credentials can be a pain or a downright disaster if passwords are forgotten, not to mention hackers could steal any sensitive information. To that end, the safest and easiest way to manage website passwords and other credentials are to store that information offsite, rather than locally or in the cloud.

Luke Wren’s Surface-Mount Pico DVI Sock Brings Video Output Capabilities to the RaspberryPi Pico

February 10, 2021 by CrackedConsole

Compact surface-mount add-on offers a fully-functional DVI video output without sacrificing breadboard compatibility.

Engineer Luke Wren has released design files for a handy Raspberry Pi Pico upgrade, giving the low-cost microcontroller a DVI video output with a minimal increase in footprint: the Pico DVI Sock.

“[I] called it a Sock because it’s like a HAT [Hardware Attached on Top, a standard for add-ons which fit on the Raspberry Pi single-board computer family’s 40-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header] but small and on the bottom,” Wren explains of the board, which adds little more than the size of an HDMI socket to the end of the host Raspberry Pi Pico.

HDD Persistence of Vision Clock!!

February 9, 2021 by CrackedConsole

This is a quick project video on my Hard Disk Drive Persistence of Vision Clock V2.0 or HDD PoV Clock V2.0 for short.

I created this clock out of a 2.5″ Server HDD, 2 custom designed PCBs and a lot of patience. The processor used in this clock is an STM32F411RET 32bit ARM microcontroller. I’m using WS2812B LEDs (all LEDs have their data lines connected in parallel), a DS1307 RTC for time keeping and an ESP8266 WIFI module for future features.

The Ohmmeter 2.0 displays resistor band colors

February 9, 2021 by CrackedConsole

Bands on through-hole resistors conveniently indicate their value at a glance. On the other hand, you have to actually know the code to interpret this meaning. Alternatively, you could use the Ohmmeter 2.0 — developed by Miguel Alejandro Ramírez Anaya and José Miguel Galeas Merchán from the University of Málaga in Spain.