Sentry robots like WowWee’s Rovio are all well and good – wandering around your house while you’re away, and allowing you to log-in remotely and make sure nothing amiss is taking place – but they generally fall short when it comes to actually dealing with a problem. That was the starting point for RoboCommunity member Colt45, who hacked his Rovio into a remote fire extinguisher.
In the days before the iPod touch, an iPod was for music and maybe video, but certainly not GPS or internet access. That hasn’t stopped some owners of earlier iPods looking to get such functionality onto their media players, and while Ben Kokes’ hack won’t have you surfing the web, it does give him basic GPS functionality on his first-gen iPod nano.
ASUS have been gradually transitioning to chiclet-style keyboards on their Eee PC netbooks, with the latest model to get the new style being the Eee PC 1000HA. If you’re an existing owner looking longingly at the new layout, meanwhile, and specifically have an ASUS Eee PC 1000H, you can fudge your own update with the keyboard from the Eee PC 1000HE.
Pleo’s fate may be decided by a bankruptcy sale, but the robot dinosaurs already out in the wild are too busy being hacked to worry about IP. Modder Andrey has developed a system which allows him to remotely-control his Pleo via a Wii Nunchuck, with the head, tail and basic movements all mapped to the Nintendo controller’s buttons and motion-sensors.
Video demo after the cut
It’s not pretty but it’s certainly clever: tired of trying to play Virtual On on the Xbox 360’s standard controller, one nifty modder crafted his own dual-joystick interface out of candy packaging. Of course, there’s more to the controls than just upright ’sticks, so a spot of wiring moved the control buttons too.
Google have never been shy when it comes to their plans with Android, and consumers should prepare to see it on more than just cellphone screens. The next big market for the open-source platform looks to be the netbook; over at NetbookNews they’ve been playing with an i-Buddie Atom N270-based netbook running the latest build of Android.
Video demo after the cut
The iPhone Dev Team have released a beta version of redsn0w, their free tool to jailbreak an iPod touch 2G. Currently it requires running from the command line, but the team are working on including it in their GUI applications.
All eyes may be on Dell’s newer Inspiron Mini 10 netbook right now, but that doesn’t stop loyal tinkerers wanting to add some extra oomph to their Dell Inspiron Mini 9 machines. Arch-modder JKK has flipped out the standard SSD that Dell supply with the 8.9-inch budget ultraportable and replaced it with an 128GB RunCore SSD.
Video after the cut
If you’re a Fallout 3 gamer then you’ll likely know that the Pip-Boy 3000 is the wrist-mounted computer used to deliver game stats. A collectible clock version of the computer was included as part of the Fallout 3 Survival Edition set, and that’s just what one enterprising modder chose to gut and stuff his iPod touch inside.
Video demo after the cut
The Tweet-a-Watt project was good – in fact good enough to win a competition – but there are a few obvious flaws in the first iteration of the design. Not least is the requirement to have a computer turned on to receive power-use stats and tweet about them; now Adafruit Industries are back with their solution, a hacked $40 ASUS router with XBee wireless capabilities.
Video overview after the cut
JP
