How many times has this one happened to you? Just coming home from work, you walk in from the garage, settle down, and pick up the newspaper. But wait, did you remember to shut the garage door?
Presenting the open garage door indicator. [xjc2010] chose the simplest circuit possible, using only a switch to turn on and off the setup, an LED acting as the signal, and a transformer/resistor combo to drop the voltage to an acceptable LED friendly 2.8 volts. We don’t like how he strung wire all over his house to place the beacon, and would have…

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The amount of detail [Doug] put into his Dr. Frankenstein MAME cabinet is outrageous! Usually we’re more interested in the guts, but in this case the real story is the cabinet itself. Painted to resemble weathered metal, the effect of dripping water is visible on every rivet. There are illuminated portals on either side: one shows the monster, the other shows the bride and the good doctor. Sprinkled throughout the case are analog dials, lamps, and other laboratory bits. [Doug] tops off the design by concealing the power switch inside a book of Frankenstein’s lab notes which is tucked…

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[woody1189] put together some automatic lighting for his closet. Nine LEDs are grouped into three lamps and controlled by a hall effect sensor. He prototyped this on an Arduino and then migrated over to an ATtiny85. Although the current implementation could be accomplished without a microcontroller, we’d love to see some firmware improvements such as an auto shutoff for when you forget to close the closet door. The hall effect sensor seems to pop up in a lot of projects so make sure you get a few of them with your next parts order. Video of this in action…

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Earlier this week, Swiss programmer Ruben Unteregger who has been reportedly working for a Swiss company ERA IT Solutions responsible for coding government sponsored spyware, has released the source code of a trojan horse that injects code into the Skype process in order to convert the incoming and outgoing voice data into an encrypted MP3 available at the disposal of the attacker.
When the trojan, currently detected as Trojan.Peskyspy, executed, it injects a thread into the Skype process and hooks a number of API calls, allowing it to intercept all PCM audio data going between the Skype process and underlying…

Reader [Jani] always wanted to throw a PC into an old school cell phone. He based this around the extremely small Commell LS-371 motherboard which measures just 146×101 mm (~5.9×4 in). He found room behind an existing access door for a DVI connector and audio in/out.  He even incorporated an OLED screen, secondary sound card for “speakerphone”, and a WiFi connector into the handset. Things start to get interesting when he decided the SSD was too large and needed to be removed from its case. The one thing that seems to be missing here is an IR receiver for…

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Facebook is getting aggressive with a few developers who have been abusing the platform. Today the company alerted us to a “substantial” policy enforcement against the developers behind My Calendar, one of the largest Facebook applications. MyCalendar has been temporarily disabled and hundreds of other applications have been permanently shut down. According to Facebook, the developers have been engaging in misleading and spammy tactics in order to get more users rather than building valuable experiences.

The My Calendar developers have been making aggressive applications for a long time now. Back in May I questioned how the developers’ applications were growing…

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has put together this interesting project involving aluminium can recycling (translated, sortof). They’re using an arduino to tally up how much aluminium they have accumulated. That information is then passed on and displayed on a google map. There are families that go around collecting the cans as a means of income, and this system could be very helpful to them. They state that their goal is to eventually have restaraunts and more families included. We’re a bit curious about how helpful this really is. How is that information actually changing the actions of the collectors? Would a simple flag…

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Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.Nothing can replace hard work.Luck is something that happens when opportunity to meet readiness.—–Thomas A. Edison, Inventor and founder of Edison Electric Light Company———-When one door closed, another door opens. But sometimes we see and regret the dooris closed too long until we do not see another door that was open.—–Alexander Graham Bell, The discoverer and Former President National Geographic Society–searchsearch

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