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• Using your existing hardware to automate scanning and filing
  This one must have been fun to come up with because it’s got it all. There’s hardware, firmware, networking, and server scripts all working together to create a filing, scanning document center for your business. The best part is that [Janis Jakaitis] was tasked to do this as part of his job (we’re sure there’s [...]
• USB and PS/2 key loggers and mess with your grammar
  [Irongeek] is up to his old tricks once again with this new key logger prototype. It’s in the early stages, as attested by the breadboard built circuit, but [Adrian] still gives us a demo video after the break showing where he’s at right now. It comes in two flavors, the USB pass through seen above, [...]
• Cheap OLED display for your TI Launchpad
  The guys over at the 43oh forums have been working on an OLED display booster pack for the TI Launchpad. The booster pack is now available in the 43oh store and is pretty cheap to boot. The TI Launchpad is an awesome little dev board with a ravenous fan base. We’ve seen a lot of [...]
• ChipKIT temperature shield supports a dozen sensors
  [Will] wrote in to share a useful add-on he designed for the ChipKIT UNO 32, a 12-port temperature sensor board. Constructed for one of his customers, the shield accepts any 2-wire 10k thermistor sensors, outputting the readings to a small LCD screen. The screen is supported by some code put together by his associate [crenn], [...]

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• Say hello to our little friend, the BeagleBone
  Small and more powerful… what more can you want? This is the newest BeagleBoard offering, called the BeagleBone. It’s packed with some pretty intriguing features, but let’s take a tour of the hardware first. Like its predecessors, the BeagleBone sports an ARM processor. This time around it’s a TI AM3358 ARM Cortex-A8. It will ship with [...]
• The Rube-Goldberg of car audio
  [Anthony Pray] had his car stereo stolen. When thinking about replacing it he realized the he and his wife never used it for anything other than an Auxiliary connection to play songs from their cellphones. So instead of buying a head unit he pulled an unused home audio amplifier out of a dark corner of [...]
• Amazingly realistic skeleton prop
  [Cjmekeel] spent weeks getting his Halloween display ready this year. The centerpiece of his offering is this full-sized motorized skeleton. But there’s a few other gems that he worked on to compliment it. There’s an old-fashioned radio whose dial moves mysteriously and plays a news flash warning of an escaped mental patient. He also spent [...]
• Halloween Hacks: The Headless Dogman
  Typically, when people hear that you’ve made a Halloween costume for your dog, the statement is met with the eye rolling and polite lies about how cute the outfit is. There are few exceptions to this rule, and [Dino’s] latest creation is one of them. For this week’s entry in his Hack a Week series, [...]

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• Salvaged flight stick controls A/V system, triggers “Emergency Party System”
  After seeing a writeup online that demonstrated how to build an “Emergency Party Button”, [spikec] knew that he had to have one of his own. He happened to have a USAF B-8 stick grip from an A-10A aircraft laying around, and figured it would be perfect for controlling the A/V system in his basement. The [...]
• 3G connected hotspot hangs out at your house
  [Drug123] made the most out of this inconspicuous gray box on the gable end of his father’s home. It serves up a 3G Internet connection that was otherwise unavailable.. The project idea was sparked by the absence of wired or fiber optic broadband in the community where his dad lives. He knew some neighbors were [...]
• Insanely kludgy pen plotter actually works
  This pen plotter, held together with structural epoxy, is an amazing piece of engineering, and almost as impressive as a bridge made entirely out of Bondo. [Brian] at the Rochester, NY hackerspace Interlock needed to build something for the BarCamp geek “unconference.” To lure BarCamp attendees over to the Interlock table, they needed a small [...]
• Automated CD ripper build from Lego and other parts
  [Paul Rea] decided it was finally time to get rid his CD and DVD library by ripping the data onto a hard drive. He has a rather extensive collection of discs and didn’t relish the thought of ripping them one at a time. So he set to work building his own automatic CD ripper/duplicator. Right [...]

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• Two DJ Hero controllers turned into a giant Etch A Sketch
  [Ryan] sent in a little project he’s been working on. After he got his hands on a pair of DJ Hero controllers, he figured he needed to pull controller data off them. After plugging in his two DJ Hero controllers to a breakout board, [Ryan] discovered the turntables communicate on an I2C bus. A Teensy [...]
• PocketStation as two-factor authentication
  [DarkFader] sent in his build that implements two-factor authentication on a Sony PocketStation. The PocketStation was a PS1 accessory intended to be a competitor to the Dreamcast VMU. [DarkFader] wrote an app for his PocketStation using a fabulous PocketStation emulator and uploaded it with the PS3 memory card adapter and MCRWwin. The PocketStation app (available [...]

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• Ball of dub has lots of wub
  [Lizzie] from LustLab sent in her Ball of Dub that turns a few accelerometer and a digital audio workstation and turns everything into an aural experience of wubs and dubs. The Ball of Dub can turn just about anything into dubstep, and does so with a fairly interesting user interface. There isn’t a build log [...]
• Halloween Hacks: Larger than life costume made from an inflatable lawn ornament
  [Brian] was trying to decide on a Halloween costume this year, and while looking through his lawn decorations, inspiration struck. In his collection he had a 9 foot tall inflatable Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and being a guy who likes to go big or go home, he knew he had to find a way to [...]
• Cellphone battery booster built at the checkout counter
  When you’re away from home and your cellphone runs out of juice it can be a real downer. Sure, you could find a store and buy a wall charger, but wouldn’t it be more fun to build your own battery booster without using tools? [Spiritplumber] did just that, popping into a Radio Shack for the parts, [...]
• Bluetooth for Android open accessories
  [Ytai], the lead developer for the IOIO breakout board for the Android Open Accessory kit, figured out how to control just about anything from an Android phone wirelessly over Bluetooth. When [Ytai] first announced the IOIO breakout board for Android devices, one of the commentors on his post said a standard Bluetooth dongle could stand [...]

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• Halloween Hacks: Arc reactor costume
  Halloween is the time of year where you can dress up as a pirate, muppet, or superhero and no one will bat an eye. During this holiday of expanded social permissiveness, [Nbitwonder] decided that building an Arc Reactor from Iron Man would be appreciated by his engineering cohort. The ‘body’ of the reactor was manufactured [...]
• Motor drivers: half h-bridge with brake and more
  Here’s a nice little circuit that will drive a motor and allow you to stop its rotation, giving your robot a set of brakes. It’s part of [JM's] post about the in’s and out’s of building microcontroller friendly motor controllers (translated). This particular setup is a half H-bridge. It allows you to drive the motor in [...]
• The basics of reading data from resistive touchscreens
  [Chris] just posted his latest tutorial which shows you how to read position data from a resistive touchscreen. These devices are fairly simple, and since they’re used in a lot of consumer electronics you can pick one up for a few bucks. This looks like it is overstock for an old Palm device. The interface [...]
• Detailed tutorial shows how to unleash your inner [Michael Knight]
  Our own [Mike Szczys] recently sat down and put together a great tutorial on building a Larson Scanner. The ubiquitous circuit is usually one of the first few projects on a budding hackers list of things to build, since they are just so darn fun. Simple versions of the scanner sweep back and forth lighting [...]

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• 3D printed electromechanical computer
  A few nights ago, [Chris Fenton] was hanging out at NYC Resistor putting in some time on his electromechanical computer project. You might remember [Chris] from his tiny Cray that he’s putting an OS on. It seems [Chris] is going back in time about 150 years and has set his sights on a 3D printed [...]
• [Vigo's] stare follows you wherever you go
  To decorate the office for Halloween [Eric] decided to make [Vigo the Carpathian] stare at passersby. We hope that readers recognize this image, but for those younger hackers who don’t, this painting of [Vigo] played an important part in the classic film Ghostbusters II. In the movie, his eyes appeared to be following anyone looking at [...]
• Hacked parking disc can be controlled remotely
  If you have ever traveled around Europe, you are likely familiar with parking discs. Required in many countries that would rather not deal with parking meters, these devices are placed in the front of a car’s window, and indicate when the vehicle was parked. When parking enforcement officers come through the area, it makes quick [...]
• Recreating the Commodore PET with an FPGA
  [Thomas’] love affair with Commodore computers spans well over 30 years, and not too long ago he decided to recreate one of his favorite Commodore offerings, the PET. As we have seen with similar undertakings, this sort of project is no easy task, but [Thomas] seems to be making his way along nicely. Using a [...]

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• Macetech takes on its own Ambilight clone hack
  [Garrett Mace] decided to beef up his 58 inches of plasma with 60 Watts of LED lighting. After seeing a ton of Ambilight clones using his LED modules, he’s built his own powerful system. Not surprisingly, it’s nothing short of professional-grade work. Kudos to [Garrett] for showing the entire process in the video after the [...]
• Halloween time machine simulator built into an outhouse
  [Sam] is an avid Halloween builder and has been hard at work on a time-machine simulator for this year’s festivities (alternate link). He recently assembled the enclosure which is seen above. It’s got room for two riders who will be strapped in place, with plenty of interior items to keep them occupied. There will be three [...]
• Custom flat cables to suit your needs
  [Cosimo Orlando] has a Motorola Xoom tablet. It’s an Android device that works great as a tablet, but can double as a Laptop when you need it to by adding a keyboard. The problem he was having is that the USB On-The-Go cables that he tried were never the right size or orientation. So he [...]
• Halloween Hacks: Terrifying mask follows you everywhere
  It’s less than 5 days away from Halloween and the projects to scare small children are pouring in. [Noel] sent in his robotic Halloween mask he’s been working on, and the only way his build could be any better is by placing it underneath a child’s bed. [Noel] took the mask he used last year [...]

HEADSHOT! Battlefield 3 (or written as BF3 by the cooler people of the world) is now out! Those who had access to the early beta have a heads up already on what the game has to offer, but now it’s available to all for Windows PC computers, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 / PS3 consoles.

EA / DICE rock. They really know how to deliver some high quality games. Their support is usually pretty good too, especially for the Battlefield series in particular. There’s some problems with this game, as there are with any new releases.

Battlefield 3 Stuttering / BF3 Lag
Game Fails to Launch
BF3 Crashes
Error — “Outdated” Web Browser
Punkbuster Errors (You were kicked from the server by an administrator)
Keybindings Don’t Work
Game Cannot Connect to Server / Join Room

And more. There will be patches for this of course, but just follow the guide to fix what’s there as of now. There’s some fun maps for this game and the campaign is pretty good so far.

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• Singing house lights up Halloween again this year
  [KJ92508] is flooding the neighborhood with light again this year. Everyone knows of that one house in town that really goes all out, but few put on a show anything like this one. The four Jack-o’-lantern faces lead the way with the opening sequence from A Nightmare Before Christmas. Each has at least four different [...]
• Tactile computer interface with electromagnets
  It’s not that touchscreen keyboards are horrible, but it’s nearly impossible to touch type on an iPad or other tablet keyboard. A team at the Media Computing Group at Aachen University figured out how to put a series of electromagnets underneath a display to provide haptic feedback for touchscreens. They showed off their tech at [...]
• Recovering a corrupted EEE PC BIOS
  [Jeremy] had an ASUS EEE PC 1000HE netbook on his hands which had succumbed to a corrupted BIOS. In most situations, people replace a motherboard when the BIOS is damaged beyond repair, but considering the price of motherboards, especially those built for portable devices, he simply refused to go that route. Instead, he took it [...]
• Wicked use of HTML5 to display sensor data
  This project shows you one possible way to use HTML5 to fully integrate sensor data from a microcontroller into our technological lives. Now, when we saw this tip come through our inbox we thought it would be an interesting example to learn from but we weren’t ready for how truly cool the setup is. Take [...]