We love our AVR Dragon programmer. It is a small board with a lot of functionality: in-circuit serial programming, JTAG, debug wire, and high voltage serial programming. Unfortunately, out of the box it is not quite ready for action. The Dragon ships with an unpopulated prototyping area and missing a pin header for the HVSP. For most people this means soldering on pin headers and a ZIF socket then jumpering between the various programming headers and the header for the socket. Tired of working with jumper wires, [Jussi] designed a small PCB to make the connections (original link in…

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As cigar aficionados will tell you, cigars should be stored in climate controlled humidors to keep them in best condition for smoking. Most of the time a humidor is just a simple air-tight box with a hygrometer attached, which measures the relative humidity inside the box. Feeling as though he needed more control over the environment he kept his cigars in, [Justin] created the Tweetidor, a humidor that tweets its current temperature and humidity. Yes, you guessed it; the project is built around an Arduino. It’s a simple, useful project that is well documented and would be fun to…

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[Pelaca] upgraded the RAM on his D-Link DIR-320 router from 32MB to 64MB. This hack is simple enough: swap out the existing RAM chip for another one and change the bios to make use of the upgrade. The actual execution is not that simple because of the pitch of the TSOP II package; you’ll need to bring your mad soldering skills to pull this off.
This reminds us of when upgrading original Xbox RAM to 128MB was all the rage. It involved the same type of hack, adding four memory chips to unpopulated positions on the motherboard. The forums…

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Computer crashes are quite common these days and most of us have had to experience the stress of losing important files and attempted hard drive data recovery. Of the many problems a computer can be stuck with, hard drive failure is perhaps the most destructive and once it happens, the process of retrieving data is not an easy one. Plus, the cost can run to the thousands. And no, it’s not because those who specialize in recovering data from a hard drive merely want to make things more difficult to the computer owner; it’s because the job of hard drive…

how 2 get invisible on orkutjust go 2 ur edit profile optiondelete first nd 2nd namethen on the first name text box type ALT + 0173do th same for the 2nd name box then update the pagesimplekeep the ALT key pressed while typing 0173———————————————————————————————————–how to miss call on orkut…………..just type [ i ] withought spaces nd an invisible scrap will b sent means empty scrap or [u ] [ b]————————————————————————————————————–how 2 mirror a message& # 8 2 3 8type it without spaces b4 ur msg nd submitt ur message will be inverted………………————————————————————————————————————–CRAZY SCRIPTSjust copy paste them in ur adress…

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What can you build with a ballpoint pen and some extra parts? [gzip] found himself with a bonus box of right angle switches and other miscellaneous parts and set out to build a joystick. Simple arcade joysticks use switches that are actuated by the movement of the stick and this design embraces the concept. The four tactile switches are mounted on protoboard facing each other with part of a ballpoint pen in the middle. When the pen is moved it presses against one or more switches to close, completing a circuit. For good measure he even incorporated a fire…

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The Cheap Vegetable Gardner wanted more automation than their previous PS2 controller based grow system. This time they set out to design a full featured, compact grow controller that can measure temperature and humidity as well as control a heat lamp, fan, and water pump. An Arduino provides USB connectivity and interfaces the solid state relays and sensors. The assembled project all fits in a box but we are left wondering how much heat the four SSRs generate and will it be a problem?
[Thanks shawn]

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We’ve covered sequencers before, but reader [Johan] sent in his latest project that is much more minimalistic approach. Dubbed the BBox, he based his drum generator on an Arduino and an LCD display. Rather than synthesizing sound, the Arduino just outputs MIDI which is then interpreted by his Roland Juno-D. In building the device he used a favorite trick of ours to keep the interface clean. He then found an awesome banana box to use as a case. Although, the project may not be as functional as some of the others out there, it certainly has flair. Video of it in…

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