[Hack a Day] 5 New Entries: ATmega Controller wiring upgrade

ATmega Controller wiring upgrade


avrcontroller

[jelengar] liked the ease of use of the Arduino, but wanted a much higher pin count. He set about converting the ATmega Controller for use with Wiring, the code that the Arduino IDE is based on. The ATmega128 in the controller features 53 pins as opposed to the 11 on the Arduino’s ATmega168. You also get 128kb of memory. The process is fairly simple; you just need to add the appropriate crystal. You can also add a switch to trigger the bootloader and a status LED.

      

DIY cardboard iPhone dock


While the iPhone 3G included several new features that its predecessor lacked, one thing it did not include was a dock. Instead of shelling out $30 to buy Apple’s iPhone 3G dock, [Roland] and the folks at Geeky-Gadgets.com decided to design their own cardboard iPhone dock. While this doesn’t include any fancy features like dock connectors or audio line-outs, it looks like a quick and budget friendly way to give your iPhone 3G a place to charge and sync.

      

WEEE Man


weee

WEEE Man is an art display that has been roving around England. No, he doesn’t walk or talk. He is here to remind us of how wasteful we can be. Hackers rejoice, we’re part of the solution. It also doesn’t hurt that he is Seven Meters tall and over three tons. WEEE Man looks awesome, but are we the only ones that spotted stuff and thought “ooh, I could have used that for a cool project.”?

[via The Presurfer]

      

Zap new life into Ni-Cads


nicad_zap

Apparently you can revive dead Ni-Cad batteries by zapping them with high voltage. Some people have used welders in the past, but many of us just don’t have access to one. This project shows you how to hack a disposable camera into a battery revival device. This could be very cost effective. A single regular AA battery could revive many Ni-Cads. Remember, this doesn’t charge them, just makes them able to be charged again.

      

Rocket camera


[Jordan] sent us his Rocket Camera project. It really isn’t much that we haven’t seen before, but we thought many of you would be feeling the effects of gravity a little harder today. So when your belly is stretched to its limits with Turbaconducken and you don’t think you can stand, take a little flight with [jordan]. Careful you don’t lose your lunch on the way back down though.

      

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[Download Squad] 4 New Entries: FileAlyzer shows you detailed info for any Windows file

FileAlyzer shows you detailed info for any Windows file

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FileAlyzer is a Windows utility from the makers of Spybot Search & Destroy, which provides you with all sorts of information about any file on your computer. Once you install FileAlyzer, just right click on any file and click the Analyze with FileAlyzer button to see detailed information that goes far beyond the usual size and last modified date.

The utility can display the contents of archived files, display audio tag information, and a whole bunch of other information that I'm not smart enough to understand.

The latest beta version of FileAlyzer adds the ability to analyze multiple files in one window.

[via Life Rocks 2.0]

FileAlyzer shows you detailed info for any Windows file originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 28 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Frengly does translation, but does it beat Babelfish?

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The biggest players in the online translation game are Yahoo! Babelfish and Google Translate. They both have their unique charms, but a site called Frengly might offer a little competition. Its selection of languages isn't quite as extensive as Google's -- you won't find Hindi, Latvian or Catalan, for example -- but it does offer more languages and more combinations than Babelfish. Frengly's killer feature is auto-detection, though.

Frengly's language detection is even cooler than Google's, for a couple of reasons. First, you don't have to select auto-detection from a language list, like you do in Google Translate. If it's automatic, why should it take an extra step?
Second, you don't have to select a target language from a menu. You can just click it, and the original text remains on screen. If you want another language, just click again.

Frengly doesn't do webpages, and doesn't have a bookmarklet. If that's the bulk of what you want to do, stick with Google for now. On the other hand, it does save a list of your translations. If you're looking for a translator to help you do homework or understand a few words in a book you're reading, look no further.

Frengly does translation, but does it beat Babelfish? originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Soundflavor gives you a ridiculous number of ways to find music

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SoundflavorThere are plenty of ways to find music that meets your tastes on the internet. Last.fm, Pandora, and similar music discovery services will recommend new music for you based on the songs you like. YouTube is filled with music videos from popular and not so popular artists. And music search engines like SeeqPod make it easy to find songs and videos.

Now if you take all of those music discovery methods and roll them into a ball and add about half a dozen other ways to search for, browse, and find music, you'll have Soundflavor.

We first looked at Soundflavor two years ago, but the service has come a long way since then. Here are just a few of the things you can do with the web-based music discovery service:
  • Find and play YouTube videos from artists by searching.
  • Browse for music by genre, decade, mood, or subject matter of the lyrics.
  • Enter an artist or song name to generate a playlist of YouTube videos of similar songs.
  • Embed the Soundflavor Video Jukebox widget on your social networking profile or blog.
Because the music comes from YouTube you will occassionally get a clip of some kid sitting in his or her bedroom with an acoustic guitar, but for the most part the music recommendation engine is pretty good. And hey, some of those kids with guitars are halfway decent.

Soundflavor gives you a ridiculous number of ways to find music originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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16 (or so) apps I'm thankful for

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It's Thanksgiving day for those of you in the United States, time to reflect upon the things for which you're truly thankful. While I'm sure there are many more noble things to list, this is Downloadsquad, after all, and what would be more fitting than a list of programs I appreciate?

16. Cabos. I rarely use a Gnutella client any more. When there is the odd song stuck in my head that necessitates a one-off download, Cabos is what I use. It's got a clean, simple interface, and it works - and that's really all I'm after.

15. Flash Player. Damn you, Adobe. Now that v10 has taken care of some of the CPU and memory issues, it's hard to begrudge Flash. There are just way, way too many addictive little games and excellent web applications that have been built using it.

14. FastCopy. My boss also runs a DJ business, and transferring his multi-hundred gig library from drive to drive was starting to drive me insane. After stupidly giving Windows a crack at the job once, I quickly hunted down a better tool for the job. FastCopy with the buffer cranked up made (relatively) short work of the task.

13. Find and Run Robot. It's not quite a flashy as the more popular Launchy, but it's much lighter on resources and gets the job done just as well. There are also tons of great extensions for it. For those who swear by the power of the keyboard, FARR is a must have.

Continue reading 16 (or so) apps I'm thankful for

16 (or so) apps I'm thankful for originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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