In a previous job, [sprite_tm] was responsible for wrangling many different LED text ad marquees. The hardware was fairly simple and he always figured they could be pushed much further with a little work. He recently acquired ten 32×16 LED displays a decided to see what he could do with them. By the end of the project, he had full motion video running on the display. This is a great project to read up on if you’ve ever wondered about LED matrix displays. He starts by reverse engineering the electronics on the board. He then attached an ATmega88 to drive the display module. Multiple display modules were daisy chained together over serial. The article covers PWM control and refresh timing as well. Check out one of a few demo videos below.
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When there's too much Lifehacker and too little time, switch to our trimmed-down top stories feed to skip the extras and get right to the good stuff. Don't care about Windows-only downloads or the iPhone? Customize our URLs to see only the posts you want. This week's most popular posts include:
Five Best Remote Desktop Tools "Whether you want quick access to your home computer from anywhere in the world or you're the go-to IT person for your friends and family, remote desktop applications are a godsend."
How to Burn Any Video File to a Playable Video DVD "With your BitTorrent addiction in full swing, you've filled hard drives with media but can't seem to figure out how to burn any of the videos you downloaded to a DVD."
Top 10 Things to Look Forward to in Windows 7 "While the next iteration of the ubiquitous Microsoft desktop operating system, Windows 7, isn't a dramatic overhaul of its predecessor Windows Vista, it does fix several sore spots and add a few welcome features."
Is Your Printer Wasting Your Ink and Money? "You just bought an expensive ink cartridge for your printer, you use it for a while, and then suddenly—much sooner than seems reasonable—your printer tells you that you're either low on or out of ink."
Sharepod Frees Your iPod From iTunes "You don't have administrative rights or iTunes at work, but you want to be sure you can beat box along to your favorite Kenny G album blasting from the Dell OEM speakers in your cubicle?"
Why TraceMonkey is Going to Blow Your Web Browsing Mind "Perhaps the greatest promise in Firefox 3.1 is the one most users won't see at all—a serious overhaul of the browser's JavaScript engine, newly christened as TraceMonkey."
Microwave an Instant Chocolate Cake in a Coffee Mug "Sate your afternoon sugar cravings with a dead-easy chocolate cake recipe that only requires hot chocolate mix, flour, an egg, cooking spray, and oil (all stuff you've got in your pantry anyway)."
A Few Handy, Hidden OS X Shortcuts "It's easy to consider yourself a keyboard shortcut master until one morning you hit the wrong key combination and something exciting and new happens."
Featured Desktop: The Unobtrusive, 10-Foot Tall Heads-Up Display "Reader Espiox spent a little time with the popular desktop customization tool Rainmeter to create a great HUD on his desktop displaying the date and time in the upper left and weather on the bottom right."
Windows/Mac OS X 10.5 only: Want live video streams to run in a dedicated window instead of a forgotten tab buried in your browser? StreamDesk brings a hand-picked selection of live video streams from sites like Ustream.tv, Justin.tv and Stickam directly to your desktop. For Mac, it requires OS X Leopard (version 10.5) and Flash 10. For Windows, it requires .NET 3.5 and Flash 10 — though the StreamDesk installer will helpfully download both for you. The content is currently tech-heavy, but you can request new feeds like the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam from a form on the developer's site. StreamDesk is a free download for Windows and Mac OS X 10.5.
With a hot Jacob's Ladder arcing angrily between a pair of wires, hackers Rafael and Max put a thoroughly modern spin on the traditional cheese plate by sending a few thousand volts through a grape and a piece of fromage in this video. Frankly, I'm surprised this isn't served tableside at molecular gastronomy destinations like Alinea, WD-50 and El Bulli — I'm sure Le Sanctuaire will be stocking Jacob's Ladders shortly, if they don't already. Note that the two chefs wear goggles to protect their eyes and non-conductive wooden chopsticks to hold the food. What they don't offer is a taste test. They do, however, offer a winking "Don't try this at home." From coffee warming coils to hot dog electrocutors, what are your favorite ways of cooking with juice?
If you've got a clutter of Stickies on your Mac desktop and you want to archive them all in one fell swoop, here's a kludge jury-rigged from Print to PDF:
While there's no direct "export all" feature in Stickies, there is a fairly simple workaround. First, select File -> Print All Notes. In the Print dialog, click the PDF pop-up menu, then select Save as PDF.
The PDF can then be printed if you prefer a paper record, or you can copy and paste the text from a reader into any text editor. If you've set up a Stickies tutorial, would be a good way to save what you've written for reusing it later. Looking for other ways to improve your sticky notes? Check out Stick 'Em Up for extending Stickies or download and try SketchBox. If you have a quicker way to convert your stickies to a text file, let us know in the comments.
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[Matthew] sent in this slick project where he made a Mac pro Ultra Mini. He received a MacBook that had been killed by water. He took it apart, re-soldered some connections and was able to get enough of it working to be a decent multimedia machine for his tv. To make it look nicer, he found an external drive case that looks like a tiny Mac Pro. After a little bit of grinding, cutting, and zip tying he managed to get all the pieces inside the case. We’re always happy to see hardware salvaged, and to see it transformed to a fantastic looking useful machine is a bonus. Good job [Matthew].
Scratch input allows us to use solid surfaces as an input devices by capturing the sounds they produce. Using a stethoscope and a high pass filter, they capture the unique sounds of specific gestures. Custom software then translates this to actions for applications. The video shows some really cool stuff, like turning an entire wall into an input device. It goes around corners and past doorways. They even talk about potential using your clothes to capture input.
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Windows/Mac OS X 10.5 only: Want live video streams to run in a dedicated window instead of a forgotten tab buried in your browser? StreamDesk brings a hand-picked selection of live video streams from sites like Ustream.tv, Justin.tv and Stickam directly to your desktop. For Mac, it requires OS X Leopard (version 10.5) and Flash 10. For Windows, it requires .NET 3.5 and Flash 10 — though the StreamDesk installer will helpfully download both for you. The content is currently tech-heavy, but 
While you can load Google's normal webapps in your iPhone browser, Google has iPhone-optimized versions for most of the popular ones. 
If you've got a clutter of Stickies on your Mac desktop and you want to archive them all in one fell swoop, here's a kludge jury-rigged from Print to PDF:
