mollyhackit writes "The Open Graphics Project, which we've been following since it first started looking for experts four years ago, has just announced that the OGD1 is available for preorder now. The design features 2 DVI, 256MB RAM, PCI-X, and a Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA along with a nonvolatile FPGA for programming on boot. FPGAs are reprogrammable hardware which means the graphics card can be optimized for specific tasks and execute them faster than a general purpose CPU. The card could be programmed for certain codecs to speed up encoding or decoding. An open hardware design means potential for better driver support. Of course you could always use the FPGA for something else... say crypto cracking."

Attacked-by-gremlins writes "I have a larger family and various items in the house (some tools, some pieces of clothing) 'travel' unexpectedly. We joke about gremlins doing that, but it's tiring never to be sure that I'll find an object where I left it two days ago. For the sheer hacking fun of it, I'm thinking of sticking RFID tags on some and trying to triangulate a position with several tranceivers placed in the house. Has anyone have any suggestions for this amateur 'Google Home'? Thanks."

LWATCDR writes "A company out of the UK is selling an Intel Atom-based Mini-ITX motherboard. It has a riser for two PCI cards, two SATA ports, and an IDE ports so it could make a great little NAS, firewall, MAME box, or low-power workstation. To add to the fun it has a real parallel port 'perfect for hardware hacking,' a real RS-232 port 'perfect for data acquisition,' and two USB ports. The price is around $100, give or take, and hopefully it will come down over time. All in all a nice system to run Linux, WindowsXP, BSD, or maybe even OpenSolaris on."

stoolpigeon writes "IHT is running a David Pogue review of the Chumby. The Chumby is a small computer embedded in a soft case. The Chumby hardware and OS are open, and the review mentions that the device already has a large developer following, cranking out new widgets for owners. Pogue is obviously quite taken with the Chumby and gives a good introduction to a device that may be the inspiration for a new generation of hackers."

AnInkle writes "A blogger on The Tech Report details his research and testing of wireless voice communication options for remote mountainous villages in rural undeveloped areas. The home-built project involves open-source software, low-cost wireless routers, solar power, mesh networking, unlicensed radio frequencies and VoIP technology. Although his research began several months ago, he has concluded the first stage of testing and is preparing to move near one of the sites where he hopes to eventually install the final functional network. Anyone with experience or ideas on the subject is invited to offer input and advice."

Fields writes "It's well known that failed hard drives can be recovered, but few people actually use a recovery service because they're expensive and not always successful. Even fewer people ever get any insights into the process, as recovery companies are secretive about their methods and rarely reveal any more information that is necessary for billing. Geek.com has an article walking through a drive recovery handled by DriveSavers. The recovery team did not give away many secrets, but they did reveal a number of insights into the process. From the article, "'[M]y drive failed in about every way you can imagine. It had electro-mechanical failure resulting in severe media damage. Seagate considered it dead, but I didn't give up. It's actually pretty amazing that they were able to recover nearly all of the data. Of course, they had to do some rebuilding, but that's what you expect when you send it to the ER for hard drives.'" Be sure to visit the Museum of Disk-asters, too.

Das Capitolin sends us to Benchmark Reviews for an in-depth feature on DDR3 memory that begins: "These are uncertain financial times we live in today, and the rise and fall of our economy has had [a] direct [effect] on consumer spending. It has already been one full year now that DDR3 has been patiently waiting for the enthusiast community to give it proper consideration, yet [its] success is still undermined by misconceptions and high price. Benchmark Reviews has been testing DDR3 more actively than anyone. ... Sadly, it might take an article like this to open the eyes of my fellow hardware enthusiast[s] and overclocker[s], because it seems like DDR3 is the technology nobody wants [badly] enough to learn about. Pity, because overclocking is what it's all about."

An anonymous reader writes "The folks over at Thought Lab have produced an extremely high-density mobile computing platform in a scooter and have been kind enough to teach us all how to make our own! The end result was a rolling system capable of long-distance war driving, GPS navigation, Skype calls on the road, serving as an Internet hot spot or a low-power pir8 radio station, as well as recording your favorite TV program so you don't miss Lost because you are lost. If that's not over the top enough, you can actually drive your scooter to, say, the Grand Canyon, plug in your electric guitar and perform live over the Web at a whim!"

WmHBlair writes "Data recovered from a 400MB Seagate hard drive carried on the Space Shuttle Columbia has been used to complete a physics experiment performed on the mission in space. The Johnson Space Center sent the recovered drive to Kroll Ontrack in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Considering the shape the drive was in (see picture in the linked article), it could indeed qualify for the 'most amazing disk data recovery ever.'" Update: 05/08 12:51 GMT by T : Reader lucas123 points out a piece at Computerworld with a series of photos of the recovered drive.

leoboiko writes "I'm a computer scientist and programmer with no training whatsoever in hardware or electronics. Sure, we designed a simple CPU (at a purely logical level) and learned about binary math and whatnot, and I can build a PC and stuff, but lately I've been wanting to, you know, solder something. Make my own cables, understand multimeters, perhaps assemble a simple robot or two. Play with hobbyist-level electronics. How does one go about educating oneself in this topic? I've been browsing Lessons in Electric Circuits online and it's been helpful, together with Misconceptions About 'Electricity' which went a long way in helping me finally to grok what electric charge and power actually are. I've reached the point where I want an actual dead-tree book, though. Any recommendations?"

Pig Hogger writes "If you're stuck with a cheap Canon point-and-shoot camera and have feature envy over the neighbor's sophisticated latest model, fret not! According to this LifeHacker article, the CHDK project allows nearly complete programmatic control of cheap Canon point-and-shoot cameras, enabling users to add features, up to and including games and BASIC scripting."

A few days ago, Dan Rutter (the Dan in "Dan's Data") published an interesting idea for extending the sort of philanthropic technical pranksterism that spawned throwies by applying the same approach to Wi-Fi. That means, looking what he hopes is not too far down the road, creating Wi-Fi repeaters that are cheap enough to deploy on the sly and frugal enough with power to run on solar power or cheaply replaceable batteries. But as he says, "If you've got a lot of spare money, a ladder and no respect for private property, though, you could already be stealthily deploying Open-Mesh or other such gadgets all over your neighbourhood." In some cities at least, you'd be hard pressed to ever avoid at least one available wireless access point, but that's not the experience for most people, most places -- which bears correction.

profdc9 writes "For the past six months or so I have been working on the MiniOn, a network enabled microcontroller programming system, similar in idea to the Basic Stamp and Arduino hobbyists are fond of, but it is programmable and accessible through a Web browser and TELNET, requiring no installed development software. It uses the cheap, readily available LPC2000 ARM7TDMI micrcontrollers, and the easy to interface Microchip ENC28J60 for ethernet. The MiniOn firmware is written using only the free WinARM development tools (Linux tools work also) for those who wish to improve the MiniOn. I have already implemented an MP3 streaming server and a web-based graphical oscilloscope in MiniOnBasic. The MiniOn should hopefully lower the barriers and costs to getting started learning about embedded systems, and provide a non-proprietary method of data acquisition."

babyshiori writes "Now, that must sound pretty inane. After all, overclockers employ all kinds of power-guzzling methods to improve their CPUs' overclockability. However, there are many good reasons to do so. In this guide, we will not just look at theoretical tips on reducing power consumption in overclocked PCs, we will also look at how well they work in real-life situations. Best of all, we are shown why they will improve our PCs' power efficiency without any real loss in performance. Start doing your part in saving the planet now!"

vossman77 writes "I was looking into renewable energy from a hobbyist perspective, maybe generating a few watts of solar or wind power, just to reduce my electric bill. But upon further review, I found out that I need a special grid-tied AC inverter that shuts off when the grid turns off (for worker safety reasons) and makes the current in-phase with the grid. These two additional features, over the cheap inverters sold at department store, make the cost upwards of $2000, but support more watts than I need. While this is fine for large-scale projects, it is out of range for a small scale hobbyist. A Google search came with some home-brew hacks at best. So, are there any Slashdotters out there doing small-scale renewable energy projects with grid-tied systems? What are other options for the hobbyist to play around with renewable energy, other than charging a cell phone?"

Sastira writes "Jordan Bunnell has successfully modded his Macbook Air to use an internal EVDO Broadband card. In order to make everything fit, he had to sacrifice the WiFi and bluetooth cards, but considering the portable nature of the laptop, it is a small price to pay for being truly wireless." (You'll need to scroll down past the sketchy-looking top section of that page.) Sastira also links to this InsanelyMac forum thread on the mod.

TechRadar writes "A hacker has turned his OQO ultraportable into the world's smallest Mac running Leopard. 'I will warn you this project is not for the plug and play crowd but definitely do-able,' the hacker, 'TRF' says. Interesting, given the OQO was designed by ex-Apple employees." It might run Mac OS X, but one thing this OQO is not is a Mac.

timholman writes "After a series of burglaries and auto break-ins in my neighborhood, I'm thinking about adding some video security cameras to my home. To me, the object isn't just deterrence — if someone tries to break into my house or my car (parked on the street in front of my house), I'd like to provide a high-quality image of the perpetrator to the police. Inexpensive video surveillance systems, with their atrocious image quality, are nearly useless. The problem is being able to get good image quality at an affordable price. After some research, I've decided that using network cameras to FTP images to a central server over a HomePlug network is the best solution. However, good megapixel network cameras (e.g. Stardot or Axis cameras) can easily cost more than $1,000 each. Has any of you dealt with a similar situation? Is there any way to get reasonable quality (preferably open source) daytime and nighttime video surveillance equipment for home use without paying an arm and a leg? Is it better to go with a couple of expensive cameras, or a multitude of inexpensive cameras? Is paying two to three thousand dollars simply unavoidable if I want to monitor my front and back yards?"

rafaelmizrahi writes "WiiMan the Super Hero is a full action figure costume of a super hero that functions as a Nintendo WiiMote remote. Having trouble playing Wii? WiiMan to the rescue. This GarageGeeks project combines Gaming, Technology and Useless Activity to the extreme. Rafael Mizrahi, an artificial vision and experience explorer at Feng-GUI and a GarageGeeks member along with Yael Hertzog built this custom costume that acts as a fully functional Nintendo WiiMote remote with buttons, bluetooth, accelerometers, and an IR cam. BTW, last year, they built another hero, The Guitar Hero Noid, a robot built with Tal Chalozin that plays the PlayStation game Guitar Hero." (You might have better luck reaching the GarageGeeks site's Google cache.)

jeronimo989 writes "A customer of mine has a small shop and asked me to look for an electronic cash register. One of the requirements is to retrieve the sales data from the cash register in some accessible format so he can import it in the software of his choice (which happens to be OpenOffice), either by downloading the data on a Flash card, connecting a laptop via USB, or even via a direct modem connection. As far as the cash register itself is concerned, he doesn't need anything too fancy; any 'entry level' machine for small businesses is probably OK (as long as it keeps an electronic journal, of course). Which options do we have? Are there cash register manufacturers out there that allow accessing the sales data directly in an open format? Does anyone here have experience with setting up a link between a cash register and PC, preferably using free/open source solutions?"