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• Hacking for feline enjoyment
  [Dino] is staying true to his goal of hacking one project every week. This time around, he’s working on a toy that will amuse and delight his cats. The project centers around a mouse house that has two holes where mice can stick their heads out. When they do, a little LED lamp illuminates their [...]
• Shoehorning RS-232 into a Minitel terminal
  In the early 80s, millions of terminals were handed out to French telephone subscribers. Nearly 9 million of these Minitel dumb terminals were in use at one time, and with that degree of ubiquity, we’re surprised we haven’t heard of them before. These boxes were usually connected to the outside world through their internal 1200bps [...]
• We know “Mario’s Early Years” was a let down, but this takes it a bit too far.
  [JJ Hendricks] wrote in to tell us about his SNES cartridge urinal. The fully functional urinal is constructed with 40 SNES cartridges and sealed up with polyurethane. The base of the whole operation is actually not a puddle of festering urine, but instead poured polyurethane that ensures proper flow through the drain. You heard right, [...]
• BAMF2011: Keyboards built from scratch
  As the most direct interface between computer and programmer, keyboards can be a deeply personal, sometimes almost religious thing. Some find solace in their vintage IBM Model M, or luxurious leather keyboard, but maker [Carol Chen] took things into her own hands, quite literally. [Carol]’s Maker Faire exhibit has a half dozen specimens of interesting commercial tactile and ergonomic [...]

Fable 3 is out for PC! No longer are you forced to play it on the Xbox 360 now that the port has finally been released. Cool, huh? There are some issues with the game that you’ll want to troubleshoot to help solve them!

Game is Laggy / Stuttering
Fable III Low Performance
Game is Stuck on Preload / Locked
Steam Stuck Decrypting Game
Save File Corrupted
CRC Game Error
How to Disable / Remove or Lower the Blur Effect
Mouse Doesn’t Work
Crashes to Desktop (CTD / C2D)
Fable III xlive.dll crash (xlive dll)
“Fable III Main Executable Has Stopped Working”
Game Runtime Error
Fail (Failure) to Launch
Black Screen on Launch
Cannot Redeem Game Code
System Hardware Requirements (i.e. ATI / NVIDIA Graphics Cards, etc)
“Can’t retrieve information from LIVE. Please try again later. Status Code: 800700e8″
“You cannot join join this game because you do not have the same downloadable content as the host”

View the guide on Fable III game fixes to solve your problems! Some driver hotfix or hotfixes may be released soon to help more video card issues that may be experienced.

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• Making a 3D printer work wirelessly
  Looking for more ways to enhance his 3D printer, [JJ] decided to make it wireless. He got his hands on some $10 Bluetooth modules and figured this would be just the thing to make the link with his laptop. They came as surface mount modules, so the first thing he had to do was develop [...]
• Class-D audio amplifier makes it from breadboard to PCB
  [Ben Laskowski's] been working on a Class-D audio amplifier for several months. What you see above is the most recent version of the amp. A class-D amplifier uses transistor switching (or in this case MOSFET switching) to generate the pulse-width-modulated signal that drives the speaker. This is different from common amplifiers as it doesn’t generate [...]
• Xoscillo turns Arduino in an oscilloscope
  If you don’t have an oscilloscope you’d be surprised how many times you find yourself needing one. But if you have an Arduino on hand, the next time you might be able to get by with this software suite that can use a development board as oscilloscope inputs. The project is called xoscillo, and it [...]
• PCB Milling with a Makerbot
  [Keith] wanted to use his makerbot for some PCB milling, but he ran into a pretty big problem. The platform that his PCB would sit on was mounted with a layer of double sided foam tape and was not perfectly aligned to the head. Not only that, but it would tilt when pressure was applied. This made [...]

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• Bay Area Maker Faire: Hackaday has arrived!
  It’s a madhouse already at the 2011 Bay Area Maker Faire. Though the show doesn’t officially start until tomorrow, Friday is “Education Day”, a special preview for local schools. As makers scramble to set up their displays, a thousand impressionable young minds seek the most cacophonous mixture of taiko drumming, ArcAttack’s musical Tesla coils, and the beeping [...]
• Send email, receive surveilance picture
  This deathstar like ball is actually an autonomous surveillance camera. [Basil] wrote in to tell us about it. The body is custom designed for the project, then 3d printed.  It can be dropped anywhere, as it is battery powered for up to a month,  and communicates via cellar networks.  It checks an email folder once [...]
• Introduction to the H-bridge motor controller
  [Chris] sent us this fantastic tutorial, introducing beginners to H-bridge motor drivers. While many of you will consider this stuff basic, those who are trying to expand from building only things the arduino board can handle to bigger more expansive (and powerful) projects will find this quite helpful.  [Chris's] tutorial is very in depth, not [...]
• Using an AVR as an RFID tag
  A few years ago, [Beth] came up with the idea of using an AVR as an RFID tag. She’s gotten sidetracked with a few other projects in the meantime but her idea has surfaced again, this time as a duct tape RFID tag. The build is just four components: 0.1 µF and 1 nF capacitors, [...]

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• NES multi-cartridge
  Here’s a mutlicartridge hack for the original NES that [Callan Brown] put together. He spent some time snooping around the signals on the circuit board seen above until he found the trace that maps the reset signal from the game console. This will be used to cycle through the various games stored on the cart’s [...]
• Reverse engineering a cheap LED message marquee
  [Hugo] went all out when sharing his findings while reverse engineering this small LED marquee. He purchased the 29×7 LED matrix for under $12 but was surprised to find that the USB connector wasn’t a standard type and didn’t come with a cable. He first soldered a standard connector in place and then set out [...]
• A computer-controlled shutter for Polaroid packfilm cameras
  [Georg] wanted to modify his old Polaroid land camera so he could have control over the exposure time. The resulting project is a neat hack, if we say so ourselves. The stock electronics in Polaroid 100-series Packfilm cameras were a simple analog computer that integrates current through a light-sensitive resistor. This is a simple, low [...]
• An alarm for every day of the week
  If you don’t have a 9-to-5 type of job you might find yourself constantly resetting your alarm clock as your calendar commitments change. [Lucas] finally got fed up with the nightly ritual and decided to build his own alarm clock which has unique settings for each day of the week (translated). The display itself is an [...]

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings has just come out for PC so everyone open Steam and download it! It’s a fantastic game and if you’ve played the first one, then I hope you’ve kept your saved data handy after beating it, as you can use it in this number two! You’ll want to fix some The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings errors though.

Some common issues:

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Lagging
Download Suspended / Stuck at 67%
Cannot Load / Import Previously Saved Game From The Witcher 1
Connection Error / Downloadable Content (DLC) Option Grayed / Blacked Out
Black Screen on Launch
The Witcher 2 Fails to Launch / Freezes on Launch
CRC Error When Installing Game
ATI / NVIDIA Hotfix for the Witcher 2
The Witcher 2 Game Crashes to Desktop (C2D / CTD)
No Audio / Sound Doesn’t Work for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
Mouse is Too Sensitive / Fast
How to Remap the Keyboard Keys

So if you have any of these game problems, then check out the recently published The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Game Fixes guide for steps on troubleshooting and solving these annoying bugs, glitches, or general problems. It really is an excellent game after all and people shouldn’t be put off of it just because of these annoyances!

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• Arduino Arcade Rom Dumper
  [Vincenzo] wanted to read some 82S129 bipolar proms, and why not, they were very common in the 1980′s arcade scene. The problem is that its kind of an odd ball part now, and typically only (even) more expensive EPROM programmers can read them. An Arduino, breadboard and some quick scripting quickly takes care of that [...]
• Aux-in Hacking an ’04 Subaru Radio
  [Jordan] writes in to show us his hacked up car stereo. [Jordan]‘s 2004 Subaru, like many of our cars, does not offer any kind of auxiliary input, and aux-in/mp3 adapters tend to run on the not so cheap side of the price scale. Even a replacement head unit was too rich for his blood. So [...]
• Quick project: Hard drive system meter
  [Ginge] sent in this fun little project. He gave himself 3 hours to complete a hack (not including research time) and managed to come up with this cool activity meter. He handles the entire project like it is some kind of contest. Ground rules are laid out, requiring practicality of the final product, minimum investment, [...]
• Lego Technic Super 8 movie projector
  It always blows our mind to see the things that people dream up when playing with Lego. Given enough time, you could likely replicate almost any mechanical device with the right amount and type of blocks. [Friedemann Wachsmuth] recently wrapped up construction on a very impressive Super-8 movie projector with the help of his friend [...]

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• Bluetooth Super Nintendo controller for Android gaming
  [Rich] needed to come up with a senior design project and decided to combine two things he loved: his Android phone and Super Nintendo. While touchscreen phones are great, he felt that nothing beats the tactile feedback of a physical controller when it comes to gaming. He figured out how the controller’s signaling works, then [...]
• RFID smart card reader
  [Navic] wrote in to show us his latest project. This is a portable smart card reader with a nice LCD display. he just happened to have a Basic Stamp 2px, smart card reader, and smart card reader/writer sitting around waiting to be used. What better use than a hand held smart card reader?  Tossing the [...]
• Electro-static see-saw
  Many of you may have seen these fun little toys in museums or possibly even in school. Instructibles user [brazilero2008] takes us through the process of constructing one on our own. Most of this toy are constructed from fairly household materials like foil, paper, straws etc. The fun part comes when you find the power [...]
• Last mile WiFi over TV white space
  What do you do when you can’t afford broadband and no-cost WiFi is just out of reach? That was the problem Rice University grad student [Ryan Guerra] was tasked with solving. A local Houston resident could barely tap into the free service offered in her area, so [Ryan] set out to extend the signal’s range [...]

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• Adding Ethernet control for a 5.1 speaker set
  [HuB's] set of 5.1 surround sound speakers was gobbling up a bunch of electricity when in standby as evidenced by the 50 Hz hum coming from the sub-woofer and the burning hot heat sink on the power supply. He wanted to add a way to automatically control the systems and offer the new feature of disconnecting the [...]
• Ollie the socially awkward autonomous blimp
  [Pritika] is a user experience design student who just finished up an autonomous blimp project designed to react to voices and communicate, “his friendliness and eagerness to be noticed.” The instructable [Pritika] posted goes through the build – a 850mAh LiPo battery powers an Arduino Pro Mini, which controls two 3.6 gram servos. While not [...]
• Making the case for cool project enclosures
  Quite often, we see project boxes that seem to be constructed more as an afterthought than anything else. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with stuffing your latest creation into a nondescript black box, or even cardboard if it happens to fit your needs. Sometimes however, an enclosure embodies the spirit of a [...]
• Chemical wood burning
  Make: Projects has posted an interesting way to burn designs into wood. Instead of doing the traditional method of using a hot iron to hand draw or trace patterns on the wood, they show us how to use a chemical process to make things easier. They are using a solution of Ammonium Chloride, applied with [...]

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• Home made BlinkM units
  [Stephen] wrote in to show us this fun LED wall he constructed in his house. He says he was inspired by this project, but found the cost of the BlinkM units from sparkfun to be out of his price range. He really liked how they worked though, so he downloaded the schematic and firmware and [...]