Your best gadget hack?

Ugha

I've come up with a lot of ideas to hack various cheap electronics around my home... keychain cameras,
cheap mp3 players, old phone ringers, ect. with BS2s or SX chips.

What's the coolest hack you've done with a retail gadget and a Parallax product?

Brian218

This didn't use Parallax parts, but the coolest hacks I've done to date involved a Radio shack pro-2006 radio scanner, about 15 years ago.

At the time, the Pro-2006 was Radio shack's top-o-the-line police scanner, with 400 memory channels, that covered most Radio frequencies above 25 MHz, less cell phone frequencies.

Hack#1
I Clipped a couple of diodes which added the cellular frequencies, (technically listening to the cell phone bands is illegal)


Hack#2
Replaced the clock crystal with a higher speed crystal. This increased the scanning speed, by 30%-40%.

Hack#3
Removed the memory chip, and replaced it with a higher capacity chip.
This gave me 16 banks of 400 memory channels each bank for a total of 6,400 channels. Switching between banks was done with a DIP switch.

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This post is a work of art. Variations in spelling and grammar are intentional, artistic endeavors that add value to all of mankind.

Post Edited (Brian218) : 10/13/2008 12:02:20 PM GMT

MSDTech

While building the schools weather station, I was looking for an inexpensive gage to measere the water in both Rain and Snow. Several commercial variants are available, but in the $800 - $1500 range. The simplest just weigh the precipitation and convert the value to an inches of water equivalent.
I bought a cheap electronic kitchen scale at Wal-mart. Added an AD7705 ADC and bingo - a Rain/Snow gage for less than $40 (not counting the kitchen bowl used as the collection bucket). After several calibration runs it's now consistantly matching the NWS gage that sits beside it. Its controlled by a BS2 and a uM-FPU V2 does the voltage to rainfall calculation.

uxorious

While not my best, my latest and most admired is my Staples Easy button that sits on my desk. I ripped it open, modified some of the parts, installed a recordable sound board, and put it all back together. Now when you push the button, you hear my 2 year old saying "love you daddy, good job daddy!". The recording switch and mic are accessible from the bottom so I can update it now and then, but otherwise, looks like the original. Got the idea from instructables.com. My next one will house an RF keyfob that will launch a surprise nerf attack on the button pusher from across my cube.

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~~ dRu ~~

SRLM

Buttons:

Hack? maybe not, but it was fun. I modified an old BS2 board that I had to have a button, piezo and LED. I mounted it with batteries on the dormitory hall notice board, with a big sign that says

Button
·· |
··\ /

Then, attached to the board was a tag that read "Danger: Do not Start this Machine" in big, bold sans-serif letters. With these conflicting messages, it's no wonder that curiousity has won out and got 200 presses in about 48 hours. Nobody ever did figure out what the beep/light combo meant. All it did was use a modulus (%) to send out a audio/visual DEC type of push count.

GICU812

dRudRudRu said...
While not my best, my latest and most admired is my Staples Easy button that sits on my desk. I ripped it open, modified some of the parts, installed a recordable sound board, and put it all back together. Now when you push the button, you hear my 2 year old saying "love you daddy, good job daddy!". The recording switch and mic are accessible from the bottom so I can update it now and then, but otherwise, looks like the original. Got the idea from instructables.com. My next one will house an RF keyfob that will launch a surprise nerf attack on the button pusher from across my cube.

I did the exact same thing last winter. Radioshack sells a nice recording kit for like $10.

Ours said "shut the hell up" It synched up with what people were saying when they pressed it more often than youd think.
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Beau Schwabe

This was a Radio Shack remote control car hack I did several years ago just for fun. The original RC "car" was a Monster truck part number (60-4195A). I believe the remote had been stepped on and broken beyond repair. Basically the only thing that was original was the rear chassis and steering mechanism. I stripped out all of the electronics and redesigned it from scratch using a BS2 as the "brain" to talk to a 4-Channel Futaba receiver. Of course I wasn't satisfied with the original 6-cell design, so I modified it to a 20-cell design that normally ran a pair of 10-cells in parallel, but kicked into high gear (20-cells in series) when the car reached a certain speed. It was very fast and the algorithm worked quite well.


Pulse Width algorithm truth table:
2000 to 1825 - Forward - HIGH Gear (100% PWM)
1825 to 1525 - Forward - LOW Gear (0% to 100% PWM)
1525 to 1500 - Deadband / Forward - LOW Gear
1500 to 1475 - Deadband / Reverse - LOW Gear
1475 to 1000 - Reverse - LOW Gear (0% to 30% PWM)

Note:
HIGH Gear - 20 cells in series
LOW Gear - 10 cells in series in parallel with another 10 cells in series
Reverse is limited to 30% PWM
Deadband - center joystick position no action in this zone




Some links to the original RC car ( I couldn't find much, it's an old car )
support.radioshack.com/productinfo/DocumentResults.asp?sku_id=60-4195A&Name=RadioShack%20RC%20Toys&Reuse=N
santabarbara.craigslist.org/ele/864980112.html

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Beau Schwabe

IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.

Post Edited (Beau Schwabe (Parallax)) : 10/15/2008 4:02:35 AM GMT

SRLM

Beau

You hang your electronics from the roof? You must live in paradise [noparse]:)[/noparse]

So how did you control it without a transmitter? Did you just drive it in a preset pattern?

Beau Schwabe

SRLM,

"You hang your electronics from the roof?" - no, lol ... this model has been retired and it hangs in my office

"So how did you control it without a transmitter?" - no, I gutted the electronics and redesigned it around a 4-Channel Futaba transmitter/receiver.

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Beau Schwabe

IC Layout Engineer
Parallax, Inc.

Zoot

@Beau/SLRM -- I've got that same RS truck sitting in pieces on my bench right now -- putting an SX in it so it's a full-on 'bot (dispensing with r/c control altogether), IR sensors, bumper sensors, IR TX/RX with my other 'bots, LED light show, etc. I bought it on sale at RS three days ago for $19.

Also hacking a "Morphibian" -- these sell for about $25 and are 4-wheel drive, differentially-steered, pseudo water-proof little vehicles that are perfect for an SX and L293D for a full on 'bot. Plus lot's of room for electronics inside and out, e.g.: www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3206709

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- HST

1uffakind.com/robots/povBitMapBuilder.php
1uffakind.com/robots/resistorLadder.php