You can get started with a Arduino project with a easy to setup USB-based development board like Teensy. Other than being good at programming, you would have to tinker a couple of solders to get connections for peripherals which may not be handy for all.

Teagueduino is an open source electronic board and interface that allows you to realize creative ideas without soldering or knowing how to code, while teaching you the ropes of programming and embedded development (like arduino). Teagueduino is designed to help you discover your inner techno-geek and embrace the awesomeness of making things in realtime — even if you’ve only ever programmed your VCR.

Teagueduino can prevent all the soldering trouble, replacing intimidating code with simple drop-down menus, which you can adjust in realtime, giving you instant feedback as you make adjustments to your ‘coding’ handiwork. Teagueduino board includes snap-enabled inputs and outputs.

Teaguedino is a protoype as of the time of writing but  would be available soon for  $160 to get a fully assembled kit, and the second mode with extra I/O ports for $260. As of now they are catching up their funding goals and once done, they would be available in November.

Game example:

Related: Arduino Alternative : Android based DIY projects

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[image credit]

This new DIY Data network is low cost, low-power, easy to deploy tool developed by Berkeley professor Kurtis Heimerl. Its essentially a good alternative for regions with low or no coverage.Recently one of such prototypes has been tested here in Unitesd States and results seem to be very promising. 
The benefits of the Village Base Station:

flexible off-the grid deployment due to low power requirements that enable local generation via solar or wind; explicit support for local services within the village that can be autonomous relative to a national carrier; novel power/coverage trade-offs based on intermittency that can provide bursts of wider coverage; and a portfolio of data and voice services (not just GSM).

A similar prototype has been used in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Jalalabad’s longest link is currently 2.41 miles, between the FabLab and the water tower at the public hospital in Jalalabad, transmitting with a real throughput of 11.5Mbps (compared to 22Mbps ideal-case for a standards compliant off-the-shelf 802.11g router transitting at a distance of only a few feet). The system works consistently through heavy rain, smog and a couple of good sized trees.

Here’s how this GSM DIY equipment works, video explains the channeling & signaling concepts of GSM based on OpenBTS:

Developing countries & rural areas with limited Internet access would benefit from this project. And of course there are endless hobby activities it can get you started with.

“Buy This Satellite” is an effort to crowdfund enough money to purchase the communications satellite TerreStar-1.

Related: DIY Drone Plane: Hack Wifi, Phone calls

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Two security researchers, Mike Tassey and Richard Perkins,  have unleashed a complete DIY methodology to Launch your personal, specially equipped WASP (Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform) drone that to flys overhead and sniff Wi-Fi network, intercept cellphone calls, or launch denial-of-service attacks with jamming signals.

This drone plane runs on Arduino and would cost you $6,000. This drone is based on FMQ-117B U.S. Army target drone and equipped it with Wi-Fi and hacking tools — IMSI catcher and antenna to spoof a GSM cell tower and hack calls. What’s more? It can launch a dictionary attack on the network using its database of 340million words.

GSM Hack to break into voice calls has been floating around for a while, and that’s what inspires these security researchers. Recommended read: How to Hack GSM Nework, Phone

The device onboard tricks phones to disable encryption, and records call details and content before they’re routed to their intended receiver through VoIP or redirected to anywhere else the hacker wants to send them.

Drone plane weighs 5Kgs and is 2.5m long and is quiet enough to spy on anyone, without trouble. You know, its US military drone, designed to be quiet. It can be automated to travel through programmed GPS coordinates and Google Earth, whole thing is self-driven apart from take off and landings which need to be controlled.

While such a drone may violate a few flying laws, it doesn’t break any FCC regulations as it uses the HAM radio frequency band or a 3G connection for communication. As to the reason for building it, creators Mike Tassey and Richard Perkins just wanted to prove there is a vulnerability that can easily be taken advantage of with a UAV such as this. It can easily cover 10,000 sq. ft of area using its inboard basestation.

WASP is an open source platform called Auto Pilot using Arduino that Tassey will discuss how to build at DEFCON-19 next week. It was originally unveiled last August with the following video giving you a close up view and interview with the creators

Update: Instructions to Build this drone

Endless Possibilities

Darker side:
Its pretty much obvious that if two security researchers can collaborate to create such a destructive element for communications, wonder how strong could it be when its in terrorists hands.

Hackers would use them to fly above corporations to steal data like confidential IP (intellectual property) or may be launch a DoS attack or jam the cellphone signals of a corporation, without letting anyone know.

You can stop a car, a person from coming into your facility, but what about things that fly overhead? These drones can not just broadcast jamming signal, they can laser focus specific users in crowd.

Positives:
If you think about positive aspects of such drones, they can prove out to be quiet helpful during natural disasters when other communications break. They can be bagged with more sensors, cameras and help army in critical missions, possibilities are endless.

Related: DIY GSM Cellular Data Network

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When your LCD screen backlight burn out, you might have to get them replaced or do something even better: DIY Replace LCD with LED backlight. Not only is this solution cheaper, but also easier to find in the market. A sub $10 LED strip could replace the CFL backlight without any trouble.

How to Replace LCD backlight with LED – Transform LCD Display to LED

Warning: If you have no background on opening displays, seekout expert help on this before you unscrew your display.

HowTo: Carefully take apart the screen with clean hands making sure that the LCD, filters, and Fresnel lenses stay clean, untouched. If you happen to touch them, make sure you clean them well afterwards. You might have to use a mild cleaner, don’t use any toxic and/or heavy duty cleaners can destroy the plastic. Use a damp clean paper towel to do the initial wet wipe then use a dry but slightly damp paper towel to dry streaks immediately (using the wax on, wax off technique).

If you do it nicely, the brightness should be close to your existing LCD CCFL display, but only whiter. The only drawback you would get with a LED strip is the bright spots where LED is present and minor darker gaps. But this difference is not all that noticeable as light is diffused nicely on the screen.

credits filear

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IOIO (pronounced yoyo) is capable of doing almost everything that a Arduino could, including a retro-style alarm clock that can ring when you get messages.

And there’s a Wall Printer which uses seven Sharpie-style market pens hooked up to servos for an old-school printer effect controlled by an Android phone.

These are just some early samples, the potential is huge.

Why Android instead of regular Arduino?

• High cost.
• Complicated. Especially so for complete beginners.
• High latency.
• Low bandwidth.
• Required replacement of the Android device OS.
• Large physical size.

Definitely worth considering if you’re into Android and electronics; you can pre-order the IOIO for Android here, for $49.95.

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Ben Heck’s has made a clever hand-crank mobile charger, which can be of a great help when your smartphones is not easy on battery.

If you have the basic know how of electronics and hardware, its pretty easy and straight forward. A USB port provides five volts of power which is why the crank worked with the HTC EVO and should work with practically any smartphone.

And if you are not geek enough, you can always buy a crank charger, works with all USB phones/devices.

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Developed by PS3 game console hacker-modder Mathieu Hervais, and PS3 Hacking community folks, PSGroove open source code requires purchasing a a small silicon chip to jailbreak the PlayStation 3 gaming console. Its is totally a DIY project for the Electronics Hardware geeks.

Note: If you’re looking for “Easy jailbreak”, then this method is not meant for you.

PSGroove aims on jailbreaking PS3 game console is to run unsigned (non Sony approved) applications and  Games on PS3 console.

PSGroove’s source code is available at Github Repository which requires the hardware – Teensy++ USB Development Board with Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) microcontroller built along with AT90USB key.

And with that code compiled one could even flash it to a Teensy++ USB Development Board ($24) or anAT90USBKEY($31).
Teensy++ is geek’s favorite USB Development Board chip and micro-controller key (ATB90USB and others) that executes the open-source PSGroove code. Teensy++ can do lots of custom USB hacks n Mods including Hacking a PC without touching it. If you plan on working with it, here is some basic stuff from Readme:

This is the PSGroove, an open-source reimplementation of the psjailbreak exploit for AT90USB and related microcontrollers.

It should work on:

AT90USB162
AT90USB646
AT90USB647
AT90USB1286
AT90USB1287
ATMEGA32U4
…and maybe more.

Although, the first thing that comes to the  mind is piracy, this software is not intended to enable it, PS JailBreak isn’t just about backups and to show the strong emotions associated with the cause, such features have been disabled. Only execution of unsigned third-party apps and games is allowed, which is an attempt to make the system “More Open”.

The PS3 hacking community celebrates its brave attempt to release an open-source version of PS3 jailbreak. However, this might not be up for mass adoption and application since it’s a DIY method. No matter where this project heads, guys back at Sony might be already looking to fix the vulnerability.

Read the full README.

In case you need any assistance, Follow Mathieulh and RichDevX on twitter, the masterminds behind the hack.

Update: These BlackcatUSB boards work too.

Source: ps3wiki.lan.st | psgroove (source code @ github)

DIY iPhone Video Stabilizer

With few parts from the local hardware store, you can create your own stabilizer under $30.

The video below provides step by step instructions:

Demo:

It may not be perfect, but the improvement is huge.

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This concept has already taken flight and is being used in commercial applications TED Talks and also in a Sony prototype. Imagine the world where all the wires just go off, all the clutter will be cleared. If you have no idea of this, watch this video first.

How it works:

Basically, power is fed to a ring made of magnet wire. When electricity is passed from this loop, it creates Electro magnetic field. Inductive Coupling uses magnetic fields to transfer power. There is a primary coil, which generates a magnetic field. Then there is another secondary coil which is composed of a capacitor and a coil, the capacitor creates a resonant circuit with the primary and secondary coils. A smaller loop is attached to the system that you want to power and picked up from the base unit. The concept can be tailored for your purposes such as an inductive charging pad. We’d like to see a hack that incorporates the base into a mouse pad (or the desk itself) and the receiver into the body of a wireless mouse.

You can Read the DIY Tutorial here.

The unlocker community in U.S. as well as gadget freeks worldwide are questioning if its possible to use Standard SIM with iPhone 4 or even with iPad? To be honest, nothing has changed from SIM to Micro SIM except for truncating the redundant area, which makes it possible to use your standard SIM in place of MicroSim with some basic tricks of the scissor.

As it turns out traditional SIMs measure 15 x 25mm and have that angled corner. The new micro-SIM is officially 12 x 15mm. That’s effectively the size of just the normal SIM contact area. Apple was just wanting to be clever or it just wanted everyone to be forced to buy new SIMs, either way it’s a touch annoying, but with our mighty scissors we can cut them down to size and so can you.

PDF guide

Video Turotial: How To Make Micro SIM for iPhone 4, iPad from SIM

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Andrew Davidson is one of those hobbyists modders who couldn’t wait on Apple “to release the killer app for e-readers”. So what he did was started working on building a Tablet that does everything a Macbook does. To keep the project cost effective, he took off an old iBook with 500Mhz processor and built a Tablet over it.

It was dissembled and fabricated into a new enclosure. Though the choice was smart but it has limitations of poor hardware config.

You can Follow the step-by-step guide here. The guide is pretty detailed and divided into 4 parts.

Looks great isn’t it? But would have been of more utility if he have had taken a good config Notebook PC. I would recommend taking a Core 2 duo notebook and ripping it apart and then Hackintosh it using our guides. This would be a smarter way as you get to run Snow Leopard on the Tablet.

Last year when I first built my Hackintosh Laptop, I seriously missed one thing: The Bright White Glowing Apple Logo on the back of my HP Notebook. I looked around for a proper DIY guide to do it, there was one but it eventually went down.

Luckily, I took an offline copy of it, while I was trying to build it. So here I present the exclusive tutorial of Creating Glowing Apple Logo Mod for your Notebook/Netbook.

Original work by EdsJunk from the MSI Wind Forums (link seems to be down)

So if you have Installed Snow Leopard on PC with our Hackintosh guides, this thing would add to the grace.

What you need

1. A Crystal clear Apple logo possibly made of crystal (you can find it off an old iBook, or even sol seperately on eBay in some countries. If it ain’t available in your country, try getting a plastic-glass cut in the exact shape.
2. A diffusion type material (Most Apple logos already have this at their back)
3. Dremel tool and or files to smoothen-out surfaces.
4. Masking tape.
5. Spray paint ( of the color of your Notebook) (optional)
6. 800-1000 grit WetsandPaper (optional)
7. A good Adhesive: superglue, elfy, quickfix etc.
8. Misc: Tools to remove lid
9. That’s it, no LEDs or Wiring required, we would light it from the LCD’s back-light source.

First thing first, here is the Apple glass Logo we talked about in 1.

Step 1. Removing the Lid

Method of removing the lid could differ from manufacturer to manufacturer, but here is something very generic.

Remove the 4 rubber pieces on the screen bezel, beneath them are screws, remove them. Carefully pry up the bezel. Next, remove the final two screws that hold the screen to the hinges. When done, the LCD and lid will be separated. Go ahead and remove the LCD connection, unplug it and put your LCD to the side. If your laptop has a camera, mic, carefully remove them. Also what needs to be removed is the antenna wires that are used with the inbuilt wifi. Carefully remove them and keep them aside.

Step 2. Cutting the lid

Now that the lid is nice and lonely, you need to cut a hole through the foil/black padding. Normally, it depends on the size of the Apple Logo you are embedding, a 3″ x 3″ square is enough for most cases.

Next we trace the apple logo on the lid using masking tape. Keep it upright and centred. Msot important thing is that your trace should be mirrored, since it will look 90degrees apart from the outside.

Next up we do the toughest task, cutting it to the trace. Best practce would be to drill out of center and then use files to match the trace’s shape. Spend alot of time on this, if you do this wrong, it would look ugly with grooves visible from outside and there’s no way back. Try to keep a small margin from the traces so that you can push hard and stick the glass log in.

Keep putting the clear logo up to it to make sure your filing out the right parts. And when you are satisfied, stick it in with a glue. Don’t worry if leave minor grooves, those can be fixed by painting the glass-back black (or the color of your notebook) with sharpie markers (or any others).

Step 3. Wetsanding, Painting (optional)

At this point, you can wetsand the outside surface, and paint it again, but I didn’t really feel the need for it.

Step 4. Diffusion Material at back (optional, good to have)

Next, apply the diffusion material over the back of the clear logo. This will cause you not to see shadows or the LCD wiring. You can even threw colored plastic in there to get a different color apple!

Step 5. Getting the Light source

The backlight for the logo can messup the illumination of your LCD screen, so we need to isolate it. Cutting away the plastic and foil that keeps the back light from shinning threw the back of the LCD.

So grab that LCD screen, lookout, there is going to be some tape foil towards the bottom covering up the circuitry. Cut away all that you dont need, just leave enough to cover the circuit board. Go ahead and tape off any openings and the connection because you dont want any dust getting in there. Now you gotta cut out a good portion of that white plastic cover(dremel with cut off disk would do). Towards the top of the LCD the white palstic cover kinda clips onto the metal frame. Carefully unclip the two, you will notice you dont get much play room. I got enough room just to lift the white plastic cover up a little bit so i wouldnt cut threw my screen. Now carefully cut about a 3″ x 3″ square (same as what you did previously) out of the plastic. You will get a alot of dust if you are using a dremel. As long as you mask everything off, it’s all good.

Block it using a silver foil.  You gotta remove a square of foil and you will get light. IMPOTANT: You need to be careful. This foil is directly adhered to the material used to distribute and even amount of light to your screen! It comes off easily but, it will take some time. Cutting through the white material under the foil would leave very dark spots on the screen. It can be fixed back, the hard way. Simply stating, just take enough time and carefully peel away enough foil. (removing just the foil does NOT affect your screen at all, just make sure you don’t remove White area). After the foil is removed, the light is all yours Apple! Bright and attractive.

Step 6. Putting things back

Now go ahead and put all of the stuff you removed back into the LCD lid. The antennas, camera and mic back on the bezel, route the wires nicely and screw it all back together. For almost all screens, screen goes onto the lid then the hinges ontop of that. And while stuffing things back, make sure hinges don’t hurt your wires. Reinstall the bezel and then clip the hinge covers back on. Now the glory is yours, and the Apple shines.

Before:

After:

And now thinking of modding my Sony VAIO

Only trouble is the logo is way too huge to be altered.

But wait a minute.. Why cutting the screen Baklight area, why Not use LEDs instead?

If you happen to use LEDs, chance s are (like 99%) that you would get un-even distribution of light over the logo giving you bright and dark spots, spoiling the fun. Secondly, it would need extra power source that will eat apart of your battery. When its fed from LCD screen, there’s almsot no effect on luminance of screen and you end up consuming the same battery that you did earlier. And the thirdly, the best part: It will turn OFF and ON whenever your screen is ON or OFF — just like an Apple MacBook would do. And lastly, no wiring mess. I feel it’s worth the extra mile.

What’s next? Try DIY Keyboard Backlit Illumination

P.S. Similar hack can be applied for iPhone glowing apple logo. but its much harder to implement.

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So why Build your own RFID reader? Well you can use it for 1,000 reasons. Say you want to track the stuff you often forget like your keychain, your gadgets (say iPod) or TV remote, tracking all of them could be snap with RFID.

Whatever is your case, here is a quick DIY tutorial to get you started:

This reader works with the low frequency (125Khz) tags but I have a half working version for MiFARE Hi-Frequency as well. To kickstart this porject you need some basic stuff like iPhone USB Cable, jailbroken iPhone, an ID-12 RFID Reader, ID-12 Breakout Board, Logic Level Converter and few other stuff to get them right.

DIY Tutorial

Perhaps, this project is just for the passive-RFIDs which is short-ranged. You cna use active ones to extend the distance upto 40 feets.

Method 2: Apart from this another developer had presented a cool demonstration of RFID on iPhone, check it out below:

Method 3: And in case you are no DIY biggie, there’s one that you can buy online and just plug and play: iCarte. iCarte connects to the dock connector port of an iPhone/iPod and enables it to to read and write RFID tags.

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Let’s begin with different methods you can employ yourself to achieve a dark-proof fully illuminated keyboard.

Method 1: A simple LED (ThinkPad style)

This is the easiest mod you can do for your keyboard. All you need is some basic tools to drill a hole near your screen’s top and connect it to a stripped power source from within and the result is worth.

Tutorial

Method 2: Standing/Hanging LEDs for your Desktop PC Keyboard

Another cheap and easy one. All you need is some LEDs and solder iron to do the neat trick: Tutorial

Method 3: Optical Fibre LED illuminated Keyboard

This is the cleanest and hence the toughest one. You need some basic Optical fibres cut along right places and placed inside your keyboard so as to illuminate the keyboard from inside.

Apart from that few resistors, adhesive, soldering kit.

Tutorial

Method 4: Keyboard BackLight Layer

This would be the cleanest of all the methods yet cost-effective. You can get it done under $15. To get started you need EL Backlight 3- x 5-inch ($5), Flash EL Wire, Velcro Hook & Loop Fastener, Double-sided tape.

In fact the tutorial is dedicated to Netbooks, check it out.

Tutorial

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But what about your Home? Ever wished that you could index your home and find stuff you misplaced within seconds?

The unofficial project called “Google Bot” or “Gåågle Bot“ to the rescue. The Swedish author claims that it is a “home crawler” which is nothing but a vacuum roomba hacked to have on-board tiny webserver and a camera. Vauum Roomba crawls around doing it’s basic job of vacuuming the floor, while doing so it takes a large number of photos of various location s inside house. It then uses an OCR (Optical character recognition) Engine to change it into indexable Text. This text is later put in a database on the roomba and is “fully searchable” through a web interface.

To give you an idea of what you can do with it: It can index your bookshelf, boxes, magazines, sign labels, almost everything that is observable from the floor. So the next time you lost your book ask Google Bot.

You can checkout the search here.

GåågleEye is fully automated, does it’s job quiet well, and even can be overriden to do the task you ask it to. It  can remote controlled  in realtime using AJAX based webapplication which shows you roomba’s eye view through camera.  Awesome stuff, while you are away from home and some guests are expected to showup, clean it up all before anyone else sees it. Apart fromt hat, good for survellience of Home while you are away, or to have an eye on babysitter, other stuff. Author himself used it when his son was born.

So what all is it built on?

• Roomba Vacuum cleaner
• Mini Computer: gumstix (a very small Linux computer) with a wifi (802.11b) card
• Camera: a C328 digital camera
• Interface: a simple homebrewn circuit that lets the Camera, Gumstix and Roomba communicate (TTL/Serial level conversion)
• OCR: Transym OCR

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You can use a cheap Web Cam as a good Security camera that does almost everything that professional equipment does. I’ve been trying few softwares that would serve the purpose by securing my roof and the main door. Here is the softwares I’ve finally shortlisted and thought you would be interested in.

Vitamin D: This is an exceptional product that has an exceptionally intelligent motion-detection algorithms. This software does it all right by differentiating between different kinds of motions.

It lets you customize “the size” of the objects that would trigger events and even let you set up detection windows to only monitor activity in specified areas of the video frame. like wanting a door to be monitored for people leaving, or a parking lot to be monitored for vehicles arriving.

Apart from what is said, here some additional features:

• Email and cellphone notifications
• Define the Trigger area intelligently
• “Highlights reel” function to allow you to Replay all  the activity triggers from the day.
• Available for free for Windows and Mac.

Perhaps, there’s another good one for the Mac OS:

Periscope: Apart from how Vitamin D triggers, you can trigger camera with Periscope in several ways: motion detection, noise detection, via Apple Remote, or even with a timer.

It doesn’t do videos, but rather capture images and videos that can be uploaded to  Flickr, e-mail, FTP, iPhoto. It can also embed time-stamp or other watermarks to those pics.
By time-stamping images throughout the day you can have a complete record of events throught the day at your desk, or at your door.

The only downside is it’s hefty price. I don’t want to scare you, you can check on your own.

Older related Post: Build Motion Sensor Security using Laptop

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Eye controlled input has been around for a while, but it was never possible to DIY for cheap.

EyeWriter, a project that aims to help people suffering from ALS with creative technology, has come up with a innovative eye-tracker product that will make your computer dance with your eyeballs.

Watch it for yourself the proof of Concept:

It’s not hard to build this ground up if you have your basics right.  The complete step-by-step DIY guide is available. You can build it at fairly low price (around $50) bundled with a Open source software. Here’s what you need:

The complete guide can be found here [PDF].

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Well what you are about to read could be HARMFUL to us, again.

WARNING: Do not proceed if you intend to exploit this. The sole purpose of the original author of the hack is for educational purposes only.

Magnetic spoofers have been around for a while. The one you see in movies,  a kid hacks CCs with a piece of hardware, is very much possible.

We’re getting close to that kind of magic with card spoofer that is button-programmable.

Jarek, the author of the Hack, accomplished this by interfacing a 16-button keyboard and a LCD with an AVR ATmega168 microcontroller. Card codes can be entered with the buttons and verified on the LCD. Of course this is still dependent on you knowing the code in the first place.

As you know, credit cards use this technology. It’s literally not possible to use this over shops, stores coz this thing doesn’t looks like credit card at all. But there is another potential area where it raises concern :The same technoloy is also used for building access in Offices, Universities, and hotels.

The basic concept is pretty simple. It has a electromagnet which is adjusted by the voltage controlled the microcontroller. It sends out just right voltage to get the right magnetic pattern on the end of the plate, pretending it to be a card.

You can read the complete guide here.

The scope is pretty much unlimited, and the purpose of this post is to raise awareness among the authorities to move away from this technology.

We will use a free software accompanying your cam that will together make a Fool Proof motion detection system.

Highlight cam is a free software you can register online and start monitoring immediately and make your PC a security system and act as a silent security guard for your office, Home or any other space.

Features:

* Motion alert notifications sent via Email
* Off-site backup in case the intruder takes the computer

How to Setup:

It’s damn easy. Follow the link and Register and plugin your camera and then you’ll be asked to take a still recording of your workspace/environment you intend to monitor with no movement. It tries to adapt and learn the environment.

Then you can set the software to begin recording when motion is detected. There you go, you not only detect motion, you capture it too.

It has a premium service too. Checkout the plans here.

- If Highlight cam doesn’t work out, Motion Detection , Yawcam , Digi Watcher, are other good options you may consider.

- In Yawcam,  you can set automatic FTP uploading, emailing, or just saving captured images to your hard drive. You can even set a schedule for when Yawcam is enabled to capture images so your security camera isn’t constantly snapping pics while you’re sitting in front of your computer.

- Another good one is Digi Watcher. This one has large number of features, yet, free.

- Also, You can try Motion Detector. It’s limited on features though.

Some people like Yawcam better than others, try your flavor

The Bad thing about buying a full HD projector is the cost. A decent one can cost you more than a grand, in fact good ones will cost in multiples. So how do we fulfill the HD Projector dream? Yes, Build it yourself.

Thanks to the tutorial presented by techzilla, it’s cheap to build. watch the video.

Take 8 PS 3 consoles, Yellow Dog Linux, a Gigabit Ethernet switch and your favorite protein folding or gravitational wave modeling codes and you’re doing real science. On a Playstation!

Try playing Ratchet & Clank on a Cray
Most scientific computing is done on cluster computers. Blue Gene/L, the world’s fastest supercomputer, uses 130,000 processors. Plus a lot of money, power and cooling.

At about $4 per billion of floating point operations (GFlops) the PS3 is the cheapest supercomputer building block available today.

Look under the hood
The PS3’s Cell Broadband Engine processor, or Cell, is a heterogenous multiprocessor. Instead of identical cores – like the Intel and AMD multi-core processors – the Cell consists of a 64bit PowerPC core and 8 “synergistic co-processor elements” (SPEs).

Each SPE has 256 KB local store, a memory controller and a “synergistic processing unit” (SPU) with a Single Instruction, Multiple Data processing unit and 128 registers of 128 bits each. They’re connected by a bus with an internal bandwidth of more than 300 GB/s that transfers data between the SPEs.

The bottom line: you can go to Toys-R-Us and toss 200 GFlops into your shopping cart.

Sony, your friendly supercomputer vendor
Sony generously donated 8 PS3 consoles to Professor Gaurav Khanna of the University of Massachusetts for his research on black holes and quantum cosmology.
Doing a run on a conventional supercomputer cost him about $5,000 in grant money. For less than that he could have built the PS3 cluster and run anything he wanted. But Sony saved him even that trouble by donating the equipment.

This is serious stuff, right? So it has to be rack mounted. But the PS3 is so tiny:

[photo courtesy of Prof. Khanna]

Do real work on a Playstation cluster
Go to Terrasoft to get PowerPC Linux that runs on the PS3’s . Go to IBM for version 3.0 of the developers kit.

Pick up a SCOP3, A Rough Guide to Scientific Computing On the PlayStation 3 by a team from the University of Tennessee that includes Jack Dongarra, longtime publisher of the Top 500 supercomputer list.

Get the MIT lecture notes from the Cell programming course.

Interested in ray tracing? Check out Ray Tracing on the Cell Processor (pdf) by Carsten Benthin, Ingo Wald, Michael Scherbaum andHeiko Friedrich. Note: if you don’t already understand the math behind ray tracing you’ll be lost in this highly technical paper.

Protein folding
Your standalone PS3 can be part of a supercomputer project even if you don’t build it yourself. Stanford’s Folding@home protein-folding research can use your PS3’s cycles to help understand the causes of Alzheimer’s and many other diseases. Help save the *real* world.

The Storage Bits take
A single Cell processor is roughly equivalent to 25 nodes on Blue Gene/L. While there are a number of architectural limitations to the Cell and the PS3 that limit its general applicability, it enables researchers to apply an incredible number of cycles to certain classes of problem. And Sony, IBM and Toshiba are hard at work on the next generation of the Cell.

On StorageMojo I’ve often addressed the consumerization of IT. The PS3 represents the consumerization of supercomputing. That will benefit us all.

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Then this guide is for you. REad on a findout how can you stripe your grass like demonstrated on left.

Instructables posts an interesting article. All you will need to get started is:

1. pvc pipe 3″ thick and the width of the back wheels or slightly smaller.(see picture)

2. 3/4″ thick plywood

3. 2 “eye” hooks big enough for 2 plastic ties to go through.

4. Several long plastic ties

5. drill

6. screwdriver

7. 3″ hole saw (optional)

8. Gravel or sand.

Available at Instructables

Earlier, I had posted a solar panel DIY Solar powered charging your iPhone, bicycle powered usb charger and several other Green initiative tips. And now, I found a tutorial which lets you setup complete powerhouse (ofcourse for household use only) by which you can power your Home theater, refrigerator, PCS and what not. So free electricity is not just a dream, with decrease in prices of solar panels, its now more affordable than ever.

Although, it may seem a little tough, the setup is fairly simple and straightforward.  If you endup generating enough energy to power your home, the local city power administration is actually obligated to purchase any extra power from you!

Here is the guide by Instructables: Step by Step guide.

Enjoy Go Green, keep the nature Clean!