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• Making oscilloscopes from ARM development boards
  If you’ve got an ARM development board gathering dust in the corner of your shop, perhaps you could repurpose it as an oscilloscope. [Arend-Paul Spijkerman] was able to use an mbed and LPCXpresso as the hardware end of an oscilloscope. He didn’t use a standalone screen as a display, instead opting to push the scope [...]
• Installing OpenSSH on the HP TouchPad
  [Russ] was lucky enough to get his hands on a deeply discounted HP TouchPad, and after hearing about the huge bounty being offered for getting Android up and running on the device, he decided to poke around and see if he could make some headway. He started off by making a full backup copy of [...]
• A beginner’s guide to burning Arduino bootloaders
  When it comes to learning about microcontrollers, everyone has to start somewhere. [Lady Ada] recently posted a tutorial on burning the Arduino bootloader to standalone chips for those just getting started with the micro. The tutorial cites a common situation, where someone is working on a project using an Arduino chip but they don’t want [...]
• Milling curves into mirrors and glass
  [Ben Krasnow] is working on  a project that uses an extremely expensive specialty mirror. He needed to cut curves into it, taking care not to chip or shatter the material. He’s found a reliable way of doing this with a CNC mill and is sharing his methods. The material he’s working with is a cold [...]

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• Paddle controller for GPU overclocking
  [Fred] likes to squeeze every cycle possible out of his graphics card. But sometimes pushing the clock speed too high causes corruption. He figured out a way to turn a knob to adjust the clock speed while your applications are still running. The actuator seen above is a Griffin Powermate 3.0. It’s a USB peripheral which [...]
• How not to build a robotic lawnmower
  [shadeydave] wanted to build his own Lawnbot, but he had no idea where to start. He purchased some DIY plans online which looked like they would get the job done, but then he strayed from the path in a big way and spent gobs of money in the process. In his Instructable writeup, he details [...]
• Evalbot OS Set Free
  [Theo] tipped us off about something that every TI Evalbot owner may be interested in, the The manual and source code for the uC/OS-III kernel is now available for download. UC/OS-III is what came with the evalbot, and it is a realtime operating system for that and many other chips. The problem with it for [...]
• Burning Man: Pirate Ship Sports Arduino Powered Flame Sails
  The 2011 Burning Man festival starts in just a few short days, and with that we have an excellent mutant vehicle accessory that no insane desert dweller should be without. An Arduino powered fire cannon sequencer! [Paul] was asked by Lostmachine’s [Andy] to spice up the flame effects on their Priate Ship mutant vehicle and [...]

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• Paddle controller for GPU overclocking
  [Fred] likes to squeeze every cycle possible out of his graphics card. But sometimes pushing the clock speed too high causes corruption. He figured out a way to turn a knob to adjust the clock speed while your applications are still running. The actuator seen above is a Griffin Powermate 3.0. It’s a USB peripheral which [...]
• How not to build a robotic lawnmower
  [shadeydave] wanted to build his own Lawnbot, but he had no idea where to start. He purchased some DIY plans online which looked like they would get the job done, but then he strayed from the path in a big way and spent gobs of money in the process. In his Instructable writeup, he details [...]
• Evalbot OS Set Free
  [Theo] tipped us off about something that every TI Evalbot owner may be interested in, the The manual and source code for the uC/OS-III kernel is now available for download. UC/OS-III is what came with the evalbot, and it is a realtime operating system for that and many other chips. The problem with it for [...]
• Burning Man: Pirate Ship Sports Arduino Powered Flame Sails
  The 2011 Burning Man festival starts in just a few short days, and with that we have an excellent mutant vehicle accessory that no insane desert dweller should be without. An Arduino powered fire cannon sequencer! [Paul] was asked by Lostmachine’s [Andy] to spice up the flame effects on their Priate Ship mutant vehicle and [...]

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• Zigbee home automation gives us another reason not to get up
  [Russell] sent in a neat home automation project he’s been working on. Even though the project only has two devices so far, we can already see the potential of his project. Instead of the X10 standard that has been a staple of home automation for more than 30 years, [Russell] went with ZigBee modules. Aside [...]
• More FrankenKindle progress
  [Glenn] sent us an update on his FrankenKindle project. You might remember this hack from back in July. [Glenn] is modding the device to make it easier for his sister, who has Cerebral Palsy, to use. The latest revision adds a case for the hardware. The silver button pad is what remains of the V.Reader (a children’s [...]
• Cellphone controlled retro-radio stores and plays your digital library
  [Autuin] was worried about having desirable electronics stolen while on the road with his band. He didn’t want to take a laptop along on tour, but he didn’t want to be without his music either. To solve this problem, he built a music player inside of a cheap-looking radio. His write-up covers two different portable MP3 solutions, [...]
• Water-powered multi-channel audio
  [Niklas Roy] is rolling out some water-powered music for Berlin’s Museum night. It seems that this water-wheel is attached to the side of the Museum. It’s got a stream flowing past it and the wheel is constantly turning. The thing is, that work isn’t being used for anything. Now we’ve already seen [Niklas] making electricity [...]

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• Home tanning lamps become organ donors for a PCB exposure bed
  Some projects benefit greatly from the parts a builder is able to find. Take this UV exposure bed for photo-resist copper clad boards (translated). It looks like a commercial product, but was actually built by [TabascoEye] and his fellow hackers. The main sources for parts were a flatbed scanner (which acts as the case) and two [...]
• Tree Climbing Bot Climbs Tree
  To test his new skills with his Arduino, [Ben] decided that he would build a robot. With no particular need to fill other than the need to build something cool he chose to build himself a tree climbing robot. He designed the body of the robot in Google Sketchup before beginning the build. The body [...]
• We don’t need to brainstorm projects; xkcd does that for us
  [Randall Munroe], the guy behind our favorite web comic xkcd, gave us yet another great project idea that falls on the heels of securing our valuables and silencing loud car stereos. The xkcd forum has been talking about how to implement this, and we’d like to hear what Hack A Day readers think about this [...]
• Winterizing: keeping the drafts out of double-hung windows
  [Rumplestiltskin] has had work done on his double-hung windows to help prevent drafts and keep them in good working order. But there are still a few that rattle, and let in the cold of winter. Not this year; he’s added a small feature to the jamb that will keep out the cold weather. A pair [...]

So there are a lot of people who recently took the plunge and decided to buy a new 16GB HP TouchPad 9.7″ WiFi Tablet and 32GB model. Why? Because there was a HUGE price drop that lets you get these normally expensive TouchPads for around $100! HP is no longer going to be supporting them (for the most part) and so the price drop occurred. The stats on these bad boys:

Qualcomm Snapdragon Dual-Core APQ8060 1.2GHz CPU
1GB DDR2
16 or 32GB Internal Storage
9.7″ IPS LCD (1024×768) w/ 1.3MP Camera
WiFi N + Bluetooth
Battery: 6300 Mah
Operating System: WebOS 3.0
Inputs: USB 2.0
3.5mm Audio Jack

As you can see, hardware-wise they’re pretty nice for what they are. Now that everyone has one, people are wondering how they can put the Google Android operating system on it to replace WebOS, which people generally like less. No guide is yet available for this, but many places are actually offering a bounty or reward for those who figure out how to do it. You can read more about this here: Add Android OS to HP TouchPad Android Hack. Maybe one day Linux such as Ubuntu will make its way on there even!

There are still some hacks and mods available right now though. For example, you can increase the speed of your tablet to make it faster if you have any lag by Overclocking and Speeding Up the HP TouchPad. Alternatively, there is a jailbreaking (like for iPods) program out there called Preware that lets you install homebrew apps and so forth. Seeing as how HP won’t be providing support for these, it seems like it may be a legitimate choice. It’s similar to a piece of software called Cydia. Check out Install Preware on HP Touchpad

Possibly one of the games I looked forward to the most this year was this game! And now that it’s finally out I can say it’s all that I hoped it to be plus more. It’s available for Windows PC, Playstation 3 (PS3), and also Xbox 360 (X360). The graphics are great, the gameplay is awesome, and the voice acting is pretty well done. There are some game fixes you may need to apply though in order to get it running smoothly and free of lag. No worries though, there’s a nice Deus Ex Human Revolution Guide you can use to help fix and troubleshoot all game problems, errors, glitches, or bugs you may encounter. Well, for the most part anyway! Such as:

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Crashes to Desktop
Steam Decrypting Freezes
Steam Download Stuck (i.e. 64% or 65%)
Mouse Feels Slow, Sluggish, Jumpy, or Too Sensitive
Deus Ex: No Sound
Deus Ex Game Freezes or Black Screen on Launch

And a whole lot more. The game is pretty new so the solutions list will only grow from here on. Regardless of what Deus Ex Human Revolution Errors you experience, it should help solve at least some of them. Overall, for me at least, the game ran smoothly after installation. Fiddling with the game options from within the game itself did a good bit too, but that just doesn’t work for everyone. That’s why graphics cards come with special drivers and software for forceful tweaks after all! Enjoy the game!

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• Building a contact mic using homemade piezo crystals
  [Leafcutter] is big in to making music and has put together all sorts of musical instruments and tools over the years. Recently, he was inspired to make his own piezo crystals, and wrote in to share the results of his experiments with us. [Leafcutter] is no stranger to messing around with piezo elements, and after [...]
• Setting it straight about science fair solar energy breakthrough
  There’s been a lot of stories about arranging solar panels to mimic leaves on a tree, thereby boosting their efficiency. But before reading that story you might want to check out this blog post correcting some flaws in that breakthrough (page is down, here’s a cached version). Before we go any further, we’d like to point [...]
• [Dino] tells us about transistor-based on/off switches
  You know them, you love them, you take them for granted – they are single push button on/off switches. As [Dino] explains in the most recent episode of his Hack a Week series, they are typically implemented in the form of IC logic switches nowadays, but it wasn’t always that way. When they first came on [...]
• Jack’s video has been fixed.
  Earlier today, [Jack] posted his latest video. He then promptly ran off to the secret Hackaday headquarters to begin work on the next one. Unfortunately there was a weird problem with Youtube which left the video un-viewable. We’ve fixed it now and wanted to let everyone know. We’ve also been getting lots of questions about [...]

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• One-man SMD assembly line shares a lot of tips about doing it right
  Need to use that antiquated hardware that can only be connected via a parallel port? It might take you some time to find a computer that still has one of those, or you could try out this USB to Parallel port converter. It’s not limited to working with printers, as the driver builds a virtual [...]
• Resurrecting an electric razor
  [Salvatore Ventura] likes a close shave from an electric razor, and nothing shaves closer than a new set of blades. After shelling out for some sharp ones, the rechargeable batteries died so he set out to replace them with a couple of double A’s (not the ones pictured above as those are alkaline). This fix [...]
• This GLaDOS potato is a lie
  Why settle for virtual reality when you can make the digital world into reality? [Josh] wanted to have a GLaDOS potato accompany him through life when not playing Portal 2. He set to work to see what kind of replica prop he could come up with. Judging from the image above, and demo video after the [...]
• Basic Animatronics Continued: Servo Actuated Mouth
  [Chris] is at it again and this time he has put together a tutorial rounding off his animatronic face by actuating the mouth. His tutorial covers two different styles of robot mouth: an LCD mouth which dims to imply actuation and a servo articulated flap. [Chris] covers all the aspects of each mouth type, from [...]

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• What would you put in a shipping container makerspace?
  Imagine that you have been asked to construct a portable shipping container workshop that will be sent to the other side of the globe, where the power grid is sketchy and the resources tight. If you had $20,000 to outfit this 20’ container, what components and tools would you include? This was the question recently [...]
• LEGO mill produces sculpted models with fantastic resolution
  [Arthur Sacek] has really got something with the 3D Mill he built entirely from LEGO pieces. As you can see, it uses NXT parts to control the cutter head along three axes. The drill bit that acts as the mill’s cutting head is not a LEGO part, but that’s [Arthur's] only transgression. The demo sculpture [...]
• Glowing eyes project keeps it simple this Halloween
  Halloween’s on its way and we want to remind you to get started early so you can show us what you’ve got in store for the little ones this year. [Pete] already finished a simple project to spice up the bushes in front of his house. His trio of glowing and blinking eyes will make [...]
• Weekly Roundup 8/20/2011
  In case you missed them, here are our biggest posts from the past week. The post that drew the most attention this week was our own [Kevin Dady]‘s post about how to install Linux on a 386. In this post, he talks about the process that he used to put a functional copy of Linux [...]