Battery Engineering

• Another military battery: the Brentronics BB-390A/U, a general purpose Nickle Metal Hydrid battery, often used in radios.
• I took apart a Harris radio CR123 battery case on a whim, and discovered a manufacturing mystery.
• My 1320 lumen bike light project, made from old laptop batteries and spare parts.

Projects

• A desktop power supply for the Apple Newton eMate 300 educational "laptop".
• Needed a quick NAS, slapped a WD Black drive on a Beagleboard X15.
• A friend of mine needed to keep track of the water level in a rural water tank. Several years later, they needed a replacement.
• Sub-$10 sensor network node - Microcontroller, Lithium Ion cell charger, 915 MHz ISM band FSK/ASK radio. The 915MHz-BCON.
• Thirty-two digit, 7+1 Segment LED display panel. Suitable for DRO applications.
• Salvage an RF module from an Xbox 360 and use it with a desktop computer: a how-to.
• DIY bench-top power supply, made from salvaged and surplus parts.
• A basic 65C02 microprocessor computer on a 4"x3" PCB. Bonus: It fits on top of a Parallax BoE-bot frame.
• 'Low cost' two axis multipurpose desktop CNC table; Parallax Propeller, Allegro A4988 stepper motor drivers, and a whole bunch of aluminum.

Teardown and Tinker

• An in-depth look of the Light L16 camera, one of the stranger consumer devices I've seen.
• Looking to add exactly two Ethernet ports to your computer via USB? You have choices.
• Waited nine months for Starlink, took apart the router on day two.
• After Hewlett-Packard, probably Texas Instruments makes the most well-known graphing calculators. Watch as I crack into a TI-92 Plus, one of their flagship devices from the 1990's.
• Ever wondered what was on the inside of a Mitsubishi OmniQuest ST251 Mobile Satellite Terminal?
• Took a look into the microcontroller of the Nintendo Wiimote with an eye twoard running arbitrary code on it.
• Hey, look what I found! A Kodak Theatre HD Player for five bucks! Let's take it apart and make it do tricks.
• Documenting my shenanigans with a HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1/Google G1 phone

Deep Dives

• A short note on getting an Apple iSight Firewire camera working on Linux. Spoiler: No longer supported. Update #2: OR IS IT?!?!?!

News

2026-08-19 - It's been a minute, hasn't it? I bring a teardown of a Bren-Tronics BB-390A/U military battery, and a rather fun power supply project for the Apple Newton series of PDA devices.

2024-11-30 - Teardown of a Harris military battery, and of the Light 16 camera battery!

2023-03-27 - Trying to get an Apple iSight Firewire/IEEE 1394 camera working on Linux? Me too!

2022-05-16 - Teardowns! Check out the new Starlink Router, and a couple of odd USB-Ethernet adapters!

2021-11-27 - Two updates in one year? I'm right on schedule. I've posted the final update to the VCFW2021 page, and I've put together a overview of a home NAS project based on a Beagelboard X15.

2021-08-12 - I bought a couple of Ti-92 Pluses because I needed a desk calculator. Curiosity got the better of me and I pulled one apart.

2020-10-11 - eBay is a wonderful place to find odd hardware. Check out this teardown of a General Dynamics military headset/USB audio interface box, for example.

2020-01-11 - It's been a while; I've put together a bunch of updates for ya'll: Wiimote, water tank level monitors V1 and V2, and teardown of a Mitsubishi satellite terminal.

2015-08-03 - I put together a parts kit (unofficially) for DEFCON 23 Hardware Hacking Village. Check out the documentation here.

2015-04-09 - After several years (!) of on-again-off-again development my 32 digit LED displays are up for sale!

2015-03-31 - Recycling old game console hardware for fun and profit. Check out how to attach an Xbox 360 RF module to a desktop computer.

2014-09-27 - Interested in inadvisable, high speed/zero visibility applications of high capacity power storage products? Take a look at my 1320 lumen bike light.

2014-07-31 - Been working like crazy on my 6502sbc project; I had hoped to have it ready for DEFCON 22 but no such luck. Might bring it anyway. Made a new landing page for it and it's newly developed prehiprials: a two channel servo controller and an eight channel ADC. Also posted some notes I've been making regarding the HTC Dream I picked up recently.

2014-05-14 - Spent the last couple of months working on a simple bench-top power supply. Somehow didn't burn the house down.

2014-01-11 - Progress!

A test board has been built up, the CPLD works, and I'm diving into the firmware.

2013-10-08 - 65C02 SBC boards are off to the printer.

2013-08-29 - I start my investigations into building a 'low cost' two axis multipurpose desktop CNC table.