Only time it hasn’t worked out for me: Nerf’s automatic chain gun, hacked to up the fire rate. Turns out, that thing generates a lot of friction, and the plastic it’s made of has a low resistance to friction. It locked up and busted the motor, but at least I won the Nerf war first. It was the fastest win we ever had.
no. not smart enough…i have lots of living things to take care of… i don’t have the hours to learn, all of the ever changing technology… anyways, because i can’t keep up… it, just makes me feel stupid and obsolete…
@jmoor783 Rockbox is great! I put it on my Rio Karma. I also replaced the hard drive with a bigger one. I kinda miss that little guy, it was a good design.
My list of hacks is long, and includes many failures as well as successes. Many of them were failures on the first (several) tries, but eventually became successes.
One of my very favorites was recently helping my 10 year old nephew work up a design and implementation of wired remote control to raise and lower a reading lamp he was building for his bedroom. It was his idea from the start. He had hand grip with a thumbswitch (the kind used on hoists) and wanted to use that to control the lamp.
It was a fairly simple thing that I could have knocked out quickly. But we worked through it step by step together, having several failures on paper before we came up with something that worked. Once we had the design, we ordered the parts I didn’t have in my junk pile, and built it up on the lid of a busted plastic storage box. Not pretty at all, but it worked, and he could legitimately call it HIS project.
The real success though, was when my brother sent me a video of the completed project installed in my nephew’s bedroom: the lamp itself had completely changed from the original that we were working with. He’d come up with the new design all on his own. It was now a reel of LED tape lights that unreeled to lower the light closer to his bed.
Jailbroke my iPod touch after I got an iPhone back in 2009
It ended badly. The damn thing just kept crashing and eventually hung on the Apple logo. Thankfully, I was able to restore it through DFU mode, but it soured me on Jailbreaking permanently.
My favorite (and most frivolous) hack to date was the installation of the guts of one of those musical greeting cards into an Xbox controller (this was a while back, obviously). Imagine my friends’ faces when, one point away from winning a Halo deathmatch, my gamepad started playing “The Final Countdown.” Good times, good times.
Hacked a Claritin Bionaire True HEPA Tower Air Purifier from meh with some 4" ductwork and foil tape to build a redneck soldering station fume extractor. It actually ended up looking decent and works well.
/giphy mr. robot elliot
what is the definition of hacked, and what is the definition of electronic?
@Yoda_Daenerys Is that from the linux mint terminal?
@JoetatoChip It might be available there as a program, but it’s a forum feature here- check this thread for details on how it works: https://meh.com/forum/topics/vmp-sneak-peek-slash-commands-part-3
I am teh 1337 h4ck0rz.
@PocketBrain No, actual hackers don’t use script kidde leet speek.
@blaineg I don’t actually use leetspeek, but occasionally I will mod some hardware and declared it to be fully compliant to the IEEE-1337(b) standard.
Only time it hasn’t worked out for me: Nerf’s automatic chain gun, hacked to up the fire rate. Turns out, that thing generates a lot of friction, and the plastic it’s made of has a low resistance to friction. It locked up and busted the motor, but at least I won the Nerf war first. It was the fastest win we ever had.
Sure, like that time I used an iPad as a cutting board.
@awk That’s using the work “hack” a bit too literally.
no. not smart enough…i have lots of living things to take care of… i don’t have the hours to learn, all of the ever changing technology… anyways, because i can’t keep up… it, just makes me feel stupid and obsolete…
@mick me too
Not sure if you guys remember the Sansas which old woot used to sell (and included in many BoCs), but I installed Rockbox on all 6 of mine
@jmoor783 Rockbox is great! I put it on my Rio Karma. I also replaced the hard drive with a bigger one. I kinda miss that little guy, it was a good design.
@jmoor783 I did that, too. Using a bigger capacity memory card was nice.
Why, no. Why do you ask? I assure you, it was someone else. I
worewould have worn gloves if I intended to hack that thing, so what’s your evidence?“If you can’t open it, you don’t own it!”
My list of hacks is long, and includes many failures as well as successes. Many of them were failures on the first (several) tries, but eventually became successes.
One of my very favorites was recently helping my 10 year old nephew work up a design and implementation of wired remote control to raise and lower a reading lamp he was building for his bedroom. It was his idea from the start. He had hand grip with a thumbswitch (the kind used on hoists) and wanted to use that to control the lamp.
It was a fairly simple thing that I could have knocked out quickly. But we worked through it step by step together, having several failures on paper before we came up with something that worked. Once we had the design, we ordered the parts I didn’t have in my junk pile, and built it up on the lid of a busted plastic storage box. Not pretty at all, but it worked, and he could legitimately call it HIS project.
The real success though, was when my brother sent me a video of the completed project installed in my nephew’s bedroom: the lamp itself had completely changed from the original that we were working with. He’d come up with the new design all on his own. It was now a reel of LED tape lights that unreeled to lower the light closer to his bed.
Look out world, we’ve turned lose another hacker!
High school math, playing Dr. Mario and Legend of Zelda on a TI-85
/image TI-85
@chr wow, you just brought back memories of tetris and doom on my hp 48gx!
@djslack Yours is better, because
RPNRPL…Jailbroke my iPod touch after I got an iPhone back in 2009
It ended badly. The damn thing just kept crashing and eventually hung on the Apple logo. Thankfully, I was able to restore it through DFU mode, but it soured me on Jailbreaking permanently.
Did the rockbox thing with my Sansa and the android ice cream sammich thing with my Touchpad.
@lisaviolet wooo
im still using my hp touchpad with ice cream sandwich
4 years and its still going strong(the battery is getting worse every year though)
My favorite (and most frivolous) hack to date was the installation of the guts of one of those musical greeting cards into an Xbox controller (this was a while back, obviously). Imagine my friends’ faces when, one point away from winning a Halo deathmatch, my gamepad started playing “The Final Countdown.” Good times, good times.
Hacked a Claritin Bionaire True HEPA Tower Air Purifier from meh with some 4" ductwork and foil tape to build a redneck soldering station fume extractor. It actually ended up looking decent and works well.
@uwacn Great idea. Pics?
I once took a old toaster and rewired it to take over the NSA’s systems… ALMOST worked… ALMOST
@bugger