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On the Medallia blog, Erling Ellingsen has been monkeying around with the accelerometer on the iPhone, some applications of which he demos in the above video. He writes:

As it turns out, the iPhone has a built-in LIS302DL, a tiny 3-axis accelerometer. While some have attempted to use it from within the Safari browser (the Tilt game detects changes to the width of the browser page; it is basically used as a 1-bit input device), its potential is still somewhat untapped. After a rather lengthy bout of reverse-engineering (I had barely touched ARM assembly before this), I finally figured out how to access the raw data from the accelerometer itself, as can be seen in the video above. Source code is posted here. (update: yes, it is possible to access the accelerometer directly through UIKit without this hack — however, you’ll be locked to the default sample rate, which is too slow for some of the fun stuff)

Fun with the iPhone accelerometer - [via] Link

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on August 30, 2007, 3:00pm

Filed under: transportation hacks

[Justin N] sent in one of his projects. It’s a digital dashboard gauge for his Subaru. It’s built around an arduino board with a text LCD and standard automotive senders. He’s using it to monitor oil temp, turbo pressure, temperature, acceleration and provide a lap timing. The details are buried in this forum thread, but its worth a look if you’ve spent time geeking out on your car.

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Originally by Will O’Brien from Hack a Day on August 29, 2007, 4:00pm

Filed under: handhelds hacks, playstation hacks

[krazywhiteguy310] let me know about the announcement of Pandora’s battery. It’ll cost you a Sony PSP battery to pull off the hack, but once you’re done, you can use it to jump start your bricked PSP to load up a memory imaged designed to unbrick the PSP. (I haven’t tested it, so I’m taking this on faith) Excellent news if you’ve bricked your PSP.

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Originally by Will O’Brien from Hack a Day on August 23, 2007, 4:40pm

Filed under: misc hacks

[Reza] sent in a project that he’s obviously put loads of work into. His Pervasive Health Monitor is basically a bluetooth enabled health telemetry recorder/transmitter. I think it’s an absolutely excellent piece of work. He’s offered to post more technical details if we have enough interest - It’s got my vote.

The video (after the break) starts off a bit dry, but trust me - it’s worth checking out. The monitor sports a TI MCU, bluetooth chipset, flash socket, multiple signal amps and onboard audio amplification. The PocketPC is showing the real time data stream being delivered via bluetooth.

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Originally by Will O’Brien from Hack a Day on August 22, 2007, 4:05pm

Filed under: misc hacks

My new house is taking far more time to get into shape than I ever imagined. I’ve finally gotten most of the network and coax drops in place, and I wanted to show off my new mini-rack. Behind the door up top, my home theater gear is hiding. Below, my switch, patch panel, firewall and cable modem are happily humming along.

[Benjamin] send in a quick post on messing with DoorKings.

Another [Ben] sent in this cheap-o multi-touch interface. It’s just a webcam, a glass desk and some software.

[Tarun] sent in this interesting low cost laser range finder project. It’s webcam based, but uses a laser line (laser level style/simple beam splitter) to measure distances.

Oh, I’m freaking house poor this month, so I’m selling off some of my toys. (If you do buy something, let me know and I’ll put some stickers in the shipping box, but only on request - As a rule, we don’t sell our swag!)

Yes, we’re going to do something to get more stickers out there, so stay tuned.

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Originally by Will O’Brien from Hack a Day on August 21, 2007, 3:27pm

Filed under: portable audio hacks

[Jesse] sent in this headphone amp. It’s really just a board with a dedicated smd headphone amp chip(MAX9725) and a pair of smd caps recycled from an old hard drive, but it does job. I think the goal is to boost low signals rather than the usual audiophile quest for cleaner tunes.

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Originally by Will O’Brien from Hack a Day on August 20, 2007, 4:53pm

Filed under: pcs hacks

I like the idea of keeping my data private, so I thought you guys might like this how-to that [mark] put together. He mentions some decent dedicated distributions like FreeNAS and Cyrptobox, but he used OpenBSD for his.

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Originally by Will O’Brien from Hack a Day on August 19, 2007, 4:01pm

Filed under: gps hacks, misc hacks

[Nick] caught [Alex]s GPS enabled AVR, so he sent in his project using the same Telit GM862 module. Rather than depend on an external AVR, he wanted to use the on-board python interpreter. Apparently, documentation is a bit sparse, so he put together a good write-up on developing python for the device. Since the GPS unit takes up the com port previously used for debugging info, he added a hardware python debugging board to speed development.

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Originally by Will O’Brien from Hack a Day on August 18, 2007, 4:36pm

Filed under: misc hacks

I guess we’re on a UAV kick - I ran across this one when I was looking for interesting propeller projects. [Glenn]’s building this one based on a R/C helicopter he picked up. Both the controller and the heli recieved a propeller chip, along with a pretty standard array of navigation sensors for the heli. It’s a work in progress, but sometimes those are the most inspiring.

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Originally by Will O’Brien from Hack a Day on August 17, 2007, 4:16pm

Filed under: misc hacks, pcs hacks

This hack isn’t really all that, but I’m giving it points for creativity. [Christopher] pulled some blue led case fans and used them to make a giant VU meter. Each I/O line has a transistor to drive a TIP120 FET. Personally, I’ll like to see even more of them stacked end to end and pulling fog from a conduit placed behind the stack.

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Originally by Will O’Brien from Hack a Day on August 16, 2007, 3:56pm