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Over Thanksgiving, [Greg] had a little time on his hands and decided he needed an afternoon project. Having a few bits of plywood, an xacto knife, and some blue paint on hand meant a miniature TARDIS would take shape on his workbench. After finishing the model, [Greg] continued improving it with a blinky LED when [...]

Tags:  tardis time thanksgiving greg afternoon-project blue-paint xacto-knife cellphones hacks  

Whether inspired by the vaults of Fallout or the mysterious wrist device worn by [Turanga Leela], we’re just glad to see someone finally made a wrist-worn cellphone, The Ultimate Wrist Watch, as the creator [Rob] calls it, is based on his Motorola Defy smart phone, tucked inside a neatly modified iPod wrist band meant to hold a [...]

Tags:  wrist fallout pip leela pip-boy rob wrist-band smart-phone cellphones hacks  

[Shawn] wrote in to tell us about his extremely simple method he used for mounting a webcam on a tripod. His article explains it better, but the basic premise is to glue a 1/4 – 20 nut onto the bottom of it. The hack-worthiness of this could be in question, but the technique could come [...]

Tags:  method tripod webcam shawn mount-anything worthiness premise glue cellphones hacks  

Air travellers take note, [Asthmaticatom] figured out how to comfortably watch your own videos on the plane. We know you always have your phone with you, now you just need to find a barf bag. A little bit of papercraft turns the waste disposal device into a neat little hanging dock. The bag in the [...]

Tags:  barf bag plane air-travellers papercraft waste-disposal cellphones hacks  

[Tim] drives a 1995 Mitsubishi TS Magna, which is equipped with a less than stellar accessory package he lovingly calls a “poverty pack”. He outfitted his ride with an aftermarket head unit that can support the Bluetooth A2DP profile, provided he buys the ridiculously overpriced kit sold by Pioneer. Reluctant to shell out more money [...]

Tags:  bluetooth turn diy tim bluetooth-a2dp-profile ts-magna bluetooth-headphones cellphones hacks  

Instead of rock-hard bubble gum that loses its flavor after 2 minutes, this gumball machine delivers apps and games directly to your smartphone. The communications protocol used by this app-delivering gumball machine isn’t bluetooth or WiFi but near field communication. This protocol allows for a point-to-point network between the app dispenser and a phone to deliver games, [...]

Tags:  machine gumball protocol communications-protocol bubble-gum field-communication cellphones hacks  

Nope, no microcontroller here, just a full-blown cellphone used as the brains of this little robot. The secret behind how it works is in the sounds the phone makes. The touch tones, known as DTMF, are monitored by the circuit mounted on the front half of the chassis and are responsible for driving the motors. [...]

Tags:  gsm microcontroller car touch-tones dtmf cellphones hacks  

Internet blocked at your office and feel like you’re just not getting your fix of Nyan Cat? Don’t worry, you can now use the fax machine to get your fix. [Tom Scott] put together the project to our delight, which will work best if you can find one of those fax machines that uses the [...]

Tags:  fax nyan office don cat tom-scott office-internet fax-machine fax-machines cellphones hacks  

Now you can experience the excitement felt for centuries by ice fisherman thanks to this cellular-capable tip-up. For the uninitiated a little ice fishing primer may be in order. The majority of what you see above is a standard tip-up rig for ice fishing. Basically it lets you set many baited lines and just watch [...]

Tags:  fishing ice excitement fisherman rig cellphones hacks  

[Achu Wilson's] latest creation is a VGA message board which is written to via SMS text messages. This doesn’t sound too interesting at first, until you find out he’s doing this with a microcontroller rather than a PC. All of the complexity is in the code that drives the VGA. He managed to do it [...]

Tags:  board vga message pc.-all wilson sms-text-messages microcontroller cellphones hacks  

If any of you deal with older car fanatics, you’ll know that the original dash stereo is a coveted piece of equipment. If they haven’t been removed and replaced with something more modern over the years, they’re usually non functional. [Hadrien] has gone through some trouble to retain his original stereo in his 69 Volkswagen [...]

Tags:  car-fanatics vw-bug hadrien cellphones hacks  

Go to any concert, show, or basement band practice, and you’ll find someone recording a bootleg. While these live recordings are sometimes fairly high quality, bootlegs recorded with a cell phone usually sound terrible. The guys over at Open Music Labs have a great solution to these poor quality recordings that only needs a few dollars worth [...]

Tags:  quality bootlegmic concert basement-band music-labs open-music cellphones hacks  

[Gigafide] just finished building this flame-powered phone charger. The concept is not new. He grabbed a Peltier cooler and used the temperature differential between a flame and a heat sink to produce electricity used by the charger. If you search around here enough you’ll find plenty of candle-powered devices, and a few hacks that use [...]

Tags:  scavenging charger phone peltier-cooler phone-charger heat-sink cellphones hacks  

This little device is a prototype cellphone based on the ATmega128 microcontroller (translated). It boasts a 2.4″ touchscreen display which serves as the keypad, and uses the SIM100S module which takes care of the GSM radio communications. But the hardware isn’t the only attractive part. Judging from the screen shots a fair amount of time went into building [...]

Tags:  touchscreen cellphone avrphone atmega128 radio-communications cellphones hacks  

[Victor] popped up in the comments of yesterday’s DIy Cellphone to show off his own home made phone, the µPhone (google translated). [Victor] has put some effort into making this thing very compact. As you can see in the video after the break, he even left off the number pad to save space. Instead, you do [...]

Tags:  cellphones hacks  

Here’s an interesting concept. Lets make a kit to build your own super simple cell phone. Thats basically what a group at the MIT media lab is proposing with this prototype. Consisting of an SM5100b GSM module and a 1.8″ 160×128 pixel LCD screen on a very basic board holding some buttons, this thing is [...]

Tags:  cellphone concept diy prototype cell-phone cellphones hacks  

[Russ Cox], current Googler and formerly of Bell Labs, posted an awesome guide to putting images in a QR code. Unlike this terrible attempt I wrote last August, [Russ]‘s method does much more than simply paste an image into a QR code and hope the error correction passes. This new method generates a unique URL to [...]

Tags:  code method qart russ russ-cox qr-code googler cellphones hacks  

By now, most of us have seen have seen one of those GSM to wi-fi hotspot bridges. They’re interesting devices, and being able to carry a small wireless router with you at all times is very handy. Surprisingly, we haven’t seen many builds featuring these portable wireless hotspots, something probably due to the effort in [...]

Tags:  serial gsm modem wireless-hotspots interesting-devices wireless-router cellphones hacks  

Dig out an old cell phone, hit the dollar store for some plastic recorders, and build this sound controlled snake game for your next party. The project will be a snap for those comfortable working with microcontrollers, and a great learning experience if you’re looking to try your first Arduino project. [László] and his friend [...]

Tags:  game snake project snake-game plastic-recorders nokia-6110 cellphones hacks  

[Script] is pretty lucky. One of the engineers who designed his cellphone included over-voltage protection in the circuit. Of course you probably wouldn’t know about this if there wasn’t a service schematic available. But a bit of searching around let him resurrect the fried USB segment of his Nokia N900. Now [Script] has been experimenting [...]

Tags:  cellphone usb script nokia-n900 voltage-protection circuitry cellphones hacks  

This game of Space Invaders is played by tilting your iPhone to the left or right. It’s a demonstration of HTML5 used to link devices in-browser. The only setup that’s required is for the base device to load up a webpage, then the control device scans a QR code (or just types in a link) to [...]

Tags:  game device control game-control qr-code accelerometer cellphones hacks  

[Matt Kwan] says that coming up with a personal heads-up display wasn’t that hard. Well that’s because he made design choices that make all the difference. The goal here was to add some augmented reality to his field of vision. He went with a baseball cap because it’s a pretty easy way to strap something [...]

Tags:  heads-up-display baseball-cap design-choices cellphones hacks  

LCD displays taken from old Nokia phones have been a staple of the hardware makers for years now, so we’re very happy to see [Andy] reverse engineering a full color QVGA display so we can move our grayscale projects over to a full-color display. The screen in a Nokia 2730, 5000, and 7100 cell phone is a [...]

Tags:  lcd nokia display andy nokia-phones hardware-makers reverse-engineering cellphones hacks  

[Rupert’s] friend cracked the screen on his beloved Dell Streak 5 phone and handed it off to see if [Rupert] could repair it. He says that the glass replacement was a relatively straightforward affair – a process he documented in thorough detail worthy of iFixit. He did come across a few interesting tidbits along the [...]

Tags:  friend repair screen dell-streak rupert straightforward-affair ifixit interesting-tidbits cellphones hacks  

[Nerdindustries] had a interesting idea; “what if you could just flip a switch and call someone?”. This happens a lot, especially in companies where your trying to catch a certain someone who is always swamped in phone calls. The Phone Box is a basic Nokia cellphone that has a number stored into its speed dial. [...]

Tags:  box someone phone nokia-cellphone speed-dial nokia cellphones hacks  

[Andrzej] loves his Nokia N900, noting that it makes a great portable gaming device. Since it supports a wide array of emulators, it’s perfect for indulging his gaming nostalgia on the go. He says that the one downside to the N900 is that its keyboard doesn’t make gaming easy, nor comfortable. To make gaming a [...]

Tags:  nokia gaming control andrzej nokia-n900 gaming-device control-pad cellphones hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  goldberg rube car anthony-pray rube-goldberg home-audio-amplifier car-stereo cellphones hacks  

[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 [...]

Tags:  hotspot house drug g-internet dad-lives gable-end project-idea cellphones hacks  

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, [...]

Tags:  booster battery cellphone battery-booster checkout-counter radio-shack cellphones hacks  

Why not that is, if you have a prosthetic arm. Although it’s hard to believe we haven’t seen this before, [Trevor Prideaux], according to [The Telegraph's] article, “has become the world’s first ever patient to have a smartphone docking system built into his prosthetic arm.” [Trevor] was born without a forearm, and, as he puts [...]

Tags:  smartphone ARM dock trevor-prideaux trevor prosthetic-arm docking-system prideaux cellphones hacks  

Legalities of doing something like this aside, this concept by [MadSci labs] gives some insight into how one would go about recording a 3D movie in 3D.  Probably many of you have wondered if this could be done, but they took it one step further and actually made a device capable of doing just that. [...]

Tags:  something record concept d.-probably d-video legalities insight cellphones hacks  

Medical-grade microscope photography for $20 might be a game changer in areas where medical services are unavailable. This particular hack uses an iPhone’s 2 megapixel camera, as well as a tiny glass marble, to magnify a sample to about 350 times its actual size. The two images seen on the left are red blood cells photographed [...]

Tags:  microscope cellphone medical-grade red-blood-cells microscope-photography glass-marble cellphones hacks  

Love them or hate them, plenty of people around the world use QR codes on a daily basis. Since he thinks they’re pretty great, Hackaday reader [falldeaf] thought it would be cool to put together an automatic QR code generator to be used on web sites. Inspired by the custom QR logo embedding work done [...]

Tags:  easy code generator qr-code-generator daily-basis love cellphones hacks  

Cable management can really be an eyesore, but a little creative camouflage and you can have a cellphone charging station that also serves as decoration. [Kitesurfer] wanted to use one of the cubbyholes in his new Ikea book shelf for charging but wasn’t keen on the rat’s nest of wires that would go along with [...]

Tags:  polish setup cellphone charging-station cubbyholes book-shelf cellphones hacks  

Apparently Verizon customers are expected to pay for a second data plan if they want to be allowed to use a cellphone as a mobile hotspot. This means one data plan for the phone, and a second for the tethering. [DroidBionicRoot] thinks this is a little silly since there is already a data cap on [...]

Tags:  droid use hotspot mobile-hotspot verizon-customers bionic cellphones hacks  

[Adam Outler] and [Rebellos] have been working feverishly to advance the world of mobile device hacking. They’re attacking on two fronts, making it easier for the common hacker to monkey with the phone’s firmware and OS with impunity, and by finding ways to make regular handsets into dev-hardware for low-level hacking. The Hummingbird Interceptor Bootloader (HIBL) circumvents [...]

Tags:  smartphone rebellos risk adam-outler interceptor impunity mobile-device cellphones hacks  

As [Plasma2002] put it, “Those jumbo screens at concerts that display your text messages can be a lot of fun. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have the same thing for your own parties or social gatherings?” The answer to this question came in the form of this hack, a scrolling marquee sign that [...]

Tags:  led display partyscroller jumbo-screens social-gatherings scrolling-marquee cellphones hacks  

[Adam Ben-Dror] recently tipped us off to a project that he worked on recently. In this build he gutted an old candlestick-style phone and added modern technology to make it work as a cordless phone. We really liked this project because he married together new and old technology into an elegant package. There are a [...]

Tags:  technology phone project adam candlestick-phone elegant-package old-technology cellphones hacks  

This bluetooth headset hack, although simple, may provide some hacking inspiration. Turning a Bluetooth headset into a wireless input for one’s stereo is definitely something that makes one think “why didn’t I think of that?” It’s also good if you’ve got a tight hacking budget as there’s not a lot of stuff to buy. In [...]

Tags:  headset Wireless bluetooth wireless-input wireless-music bluetooth-headset cellphones hacks  

We’re all familiar with IVRS systems that let you access information using a touch-tone telephone. [Achu Wilso] built his own version which uses a cellphone, microcontroller, and computer. The cellphone is monitored by an LM324 op-amp with an attached 555 timer chip. When a call comes in the voltage on the headphone output goes high, [...]

Tags:  voice cellphone interactive interactive-voice-response-system voice-response-system touch-tone-telephone cellphones hacks  

[Roofus] had an older car, and unfortunately his stereo’s cassette player just wasn’t doing it for him. He always wanted to simply get into his car, pull out his cell phone, and have his music ready to play without any fuss. After messing around with all sorts of different tape adapters, he got fed up [...]

Tags:  stereo hacking car roofus cassette-player car-stereo cellphones hacks  

While he was organizing a party, [Mike Seese] hit upon the idea of chatroom that would operate over SMS. Not being content with the ‘reply all’ function, [Mike] built a Group Messaging Service that runs on his home server. The chat room is initiated by sending a text to a server. Your friends then reply, [...]

Tags:  sms server chatroom mike mike-seese home-server organizing-a-party cellphones hacks  

QR codes are everywhere these days, from being printed onto receipts to chiseled into granite tombstones. [Will] came up with a way to modify existing QR codes, and his hack has the potential to cause quite a bit of harmless mischief. [Will]‘s hack involves a little photo editing, transparency film, and some white-out/Liquid Paper/Tippex. After the ‘target’ [...]

Tags:  fun hacking profit harmless-mischief transparency-film target cellphones hacks  

Yes, that’s an SMS text messaging device. [Mdziewie] decided that texting on a regular cellphone was too boring and decided to build himself an old-school SMS gateway. Here’s a translated link but the formatting of the forum post gets screwed up with the machine translation. The device he’s using is an ASR-33 Teletype machine, which [...]

Tags:  sms teletype text teletype-machine machine-translation sms-text cellphones hacks  

If you had the pleasure of attending last year’s DEFCON conference, you are no doubt familiar with [Mike Tassey] and [Richard Perkins]. There, the pair showed off a work in progress DIY aerial drone named WASP. Short for Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, WASP was impressive when we brought it to your attention last year, but [...]

Tags:  wasp year uav mike-tassey richard-perkins aerial-surveillance aerial-drone cellphones hacks  

As phone systems have evolved over time, the desire to break them and exploit their usage continues to flourish. Just recently, [The Hacker’s Choice (THC)] announced that they had accessed secure data from Vodafone’s mobile phone network last year, via their femtocell product. The purpose of the femtocell is to extend mobiile network coverage to [...]

Tags:  mobile-phone-network network-coverage thc cellphones hacks  

While many mobile phone manufacturers are moving towards the micro-USB interface as a standard, others such as Apple and HTC are still bucking the trend. Part of [arto’s] job includes repairing mobile phones, and last month he found himself faced with a pair of broken HTC handsets that needed their charging ports replaced. Replacements for [...]

Tags:  htc usb phone mobile-phone-manufacturers standard-usb usb-interface cellphones hacks  

[Adam Outler] has been pretty heavy into mobile device hacking lately. The biggest problem with that field is recovering from back flashes or development firmware glitches. In many cases you can use a JTAG programmer to reflash stock firmware to resurrect a handset. Unfortunately you’ll be hard pressed to find a phone that comes with [...]

Tags:  one-click unbrick firmware adam-outler samsung-phones jtag-programmer mobile-device cellphones hacks  

We’ve all heard of solar cells that charge your devices, or the odd flashlight that charges when you shake it, but this style charger should be new to almost everyone. This “pan charger” is reportedly capable of charging a cell phone or other mobile device using a USB connection in 3 to 5 hours.  It [...]

Tags:  alternative charger phone other-mobile-device solar-cells usb-connection cellphones hacks  

[J8g8j] has been playing around with an old cellphone. He wanted to control it using a microcontroller but since there’s 24 buttons he wasn’t thrilled about hooking up a couple dozen relays to do the switching. Instead, he managed to control all 24-buttons using just 6-pins of a microcontroller. The proof-of-concept video that he posted [...]

Tags:  cellphone microcontroller wasn proof-of-concept couple-dozen cellphones hacks  

[Richard] has been working on the concept of “incorporating more feeling into our digital objects”. His design is still just a concept but hopefully someone will take up the idea because we think the results would be amazing. The attention to detail in the design is impressive, the Rotary Mechanical Smartphone as he is calling [...]

Tags:  design smartphone concept richard steampunk attention-to-detail cellphones hacks  

As an amateur radio enthusiast, [Andrew] sometimes has to set up impromptu antennas up to 160 meters in length. The easiest way to get these antennas off the ground is to drape them over trees, a feat normally accomplished by lofting fishing line into the air with a slingshot or bow and arrow. [Andrew] thought [...]

Tags:  cannon radio antenna andrew amateur-radio-enthusiast bow-and-arrow fishing-line cellphones hacks  

We have seen smartphone garage door openers in the past, but [Lou's] Hack is beautiful in its simplicity. His door opener tackles the problem without using computers, Arduinos, wireless modules or even any smartphone based applications. For this project all that is needed is a Bluetooth headset and a single transistor. The door opener uses [...]

Tags:  smartphone door opener lou garage-door-openers garage-door-opener wireless-modules cellphones hacks  

Want to improve the finished look of your projects? There’s a lot you can learn by looking at the choices made in consumer electronics. [Bill Hammack] explores what is perhaps the most refined electronic device out there, the cell phone. Specifically, he discusses the seven design constraints that face every cellphone maker. They are: compactness [...]

Tags:  design celebrating want bill-hammack design-constraints electronic-device cellphones hacks  

Open Electronics just released a neat little board that can place you on a map without using GPS. The board works on the basic principles of a cellphone network – the ‘cell’ network is a series of towers that are placed more or less equidistant to each other. Save for the most desolate parts of [...]

Tags:  network board gps cellphone-network map cellphones hacks  

The polished quality of this hack isn’t quite there, but we love the ingenuity and exploration exhibited. [Paulie1982] shows us how to make an old cellphone work with the rays of the sun. You can see above that he’s added photovoltaic solar cells to the back case of what looks like an old smart phone. [...]

Tags:  solar quality cellphone paulie photovoltaic-solar-cells rays-of-the-sun smart-phone cellphones hacks  

Here’s the scenario: you’re going to be traveling somewhere and you’ll be charged roaming fees if you use your cellphone. But there is free WiFi available in this place. You can save yourself money by leaving your SIM card at home and using a GSM-to-Skype bridge to take calls on your phone via WiFi. [Trax] [...]

Tags:  bridge gsm-to-skype wifi sim sim-card trax cellphone cellphones hacks  

[Kyle] was digging through a box of junk he had lying around when he came across an old USB Bluetooth dongle. He stopped using it ages ago because he was unsatisfied with the limited range of Bluetooth communications. He was going to toss it back into the box when an idea struck him – he [...]

Tags:  box bluetooth long-range bluetooth-communications bluetooth-dongle rig cellphones hacks  

Hackaday forum member [Dan Fruzzetti] wrote in to share a simple, yet useful hack he built just the other day. He and his wife both have Evo 4G smartphones and they were pretty disappointed in the lack of portable charging solutions available. Instead of buying something and modifying it to his needs, [Dan] decided to [...]

Tags:  quick dirty usb dan-fruzzetti dan usb-phone-charger smartphones forum-member cellphones hacks  

Can we do away with a keypad and just squeeze our phones to check messages and dial contacts? [Sidhant Gupta] has been researching the idea of an electronically adjustable spring mechanism that might just make this possible. He calls the prototype above the SqueezeBlock. If you pick it up and give it a squeeze you [...]

Tags:  dial keypad feedback spring-mechanism gupta prototype cellphones hacks  

The first specs we look at when choosing a cellphone are the battery life numbers. We know that eventually we’re going to see performance loss, and [Dr. West] wanted to see if there’s a way to delay the inevitable. What he found is that ambient temperature affects the battery throughout its life. He set out to [...]

Tags:  chill battery life dr.-west performance-loss dr-west battery-life cellphones hacks  

Remember the early days of cellphones and carphones when they were super-bulky and all the rage? Those early handsets used analog technology for communications in a protocol called Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS). As more customers flocked to wireless providers, networks were transitioned over to digital phones in order to save bandwidth. Some places still [...]

Tags:  mobile phone advanced advanced-mobile-phone-service mobile-phone-service carphones cellphones hacks  

[GuySoft] threw together a cellphone-based SMS gateway that allows him to push text messages to Twitter. Once up and running, it can be used by multiple people, either with shared or individual Twitter accounts. At its core, this setup uses the cellphone as a tethered modem on a Linux box. The open source software package, [...]

Tags:  twitter sms gateway open-source-software linux-box software-package cellphones hacks  

We still can’t figure out why a standard charging scheme hasn’t been developed for handheld devices (other than greed). Certainly we understand that many devices have different electrical needs as far as voltage and current are concerned, but we still long for the ability to use one charger for many different doodads. [Rupin] is trying [...]

Tags:  cellphone usb charger rupin doodads handheld-devices cellphones hacks  

If you use the Google Maps Mobile function then the big G knows where you are even if your phone doesn’t have a GPS module in it. So the next time you want geolocation capabilities in a project consider building around GSM functionality which can also be used for Internet connectivity. That’s exactly what this module does [...]

Tags:  gps gsm module google-maps gps-module internet-connectivity cellphones hacks  

[Rachel's] Bluetooth glove is proving that you don’t have to be missing fingers to talk to the hand. You can see in the video after the break that, like us, she wears fingerless gloves while typing to keep the cold from causing pain in her hands (it’s so cold in here it’s like we’re [Bob [...]

Tags:  bluetooth handset headset rachel bob missing-fingers fingerless-gloves cellphones hacks  

If you have a reasonable home theater setup in your living room, odds are you have up to half a dozen remotes sitting around. Short of trying to get your cable receiver’s remote to control everything or laying down some cash for a Harmony remote, what’s a hacker to do? [Andrey] decided he wanted to [...]

Tags:  theater setup home harmony universal-ir iphone half-a-dozen cellphones hacks  

Hack-a-Day reader [Bobbie] sent us a hack that is an adaptation of the automatic cell phone button pushing machine we featured earlier this week. Inspired by that project, he challenged himself to construct a more efficient way to tackle the problem. He started out in much the same fashion, pointing a camera at the phone [...]

Tags:  remote phone control bobbie phone-button video-stream cellphones hacks  

[Mok Young Bacq] works on the weekends for mobile game monitoring service. He has three cellphones that he uses for work, and although you would think this means he could work from anywhere in the world, the roaming charges are a killer. His solution was to build an incredibly intricate machine that can use three [...]

Tags:  world cellphone machine intricate-machine roaming-charges monitoring-service cellphones hacks  

While e-paper is common among e-readers, there are very few, if any phones other than the MOTOFONE that exclusively use an e-paper display. [Steve] had one of these phones sitting around and thought it could be used to build a low-power clock. Since the bistable e-paper display can retain the currently active content even when [...]

Tags:  motofone display phone steve bistable reverse-engineering mobile-phone cellphones hacks  

[Jani] over at MetkuMods was commissioned to build a prize for an on-air contest held by MTV3 in Finland. Well known for some of his previous work, he was a natural choice for this project. The only stipulation for the build was that it contain three specific items: a Mobira mobile phone, an Apple iPhone, [...]

Tags:  franken-phone refrigerated italkman apple-iphone finland air-contest iphone cellphones hacks  

[Charlie X-Ray] is having some modern fun with the phone system by pulling dialed numbers from the audio track of YouTube videos (translated). The first step was to find a video where a telephone is being dialed and the sounds of the keypresses are audible. You can’t tell those tones apart, but a computer can. [...]

Tags:  youtube modern phone charlie-x-ray charlie-x keypresses x-ray cellphones hacks  

[Mhkabir] built an irrigation system that communicates by text message. The concept is simple, sending a text message to the system will cause it to switch on the water pump. Many times we see text message manipulation via the Internet, or using a GSM module. But in this case an inexpensive cellphone is used as [...]

Tags:  irrigation text message sending-a-text-message irrigation-system gsm-module cellphones hacks  

Apparently some of the traffic lights in Johannesburg, South Africa have SIM cards in them to help maintain the network without a physical connection. Now that’s some and not all, but apparently thieves have learned that the SIMs can be used in cell phones to make anonymous and unlimited calls. Officials are convinced that the [...]

Tags:  network card traffic sim johannesburg south-africa johannesburg-south-africa sim-cards sim-card cellphones hacks  

[Maurizio] was having some reception issues with his wireless internet and set out to add an external antenna to the USB dongle (translated). He had previously poked around inside of the Nokia internet key to find that the internal antenna was a flexible circuit substrate wrapped around a plastic box that made contact with main [...]

Tags:  antenna internet nokia maurizio external-antenna nokia-internet internal-antenna cellphones hacks  

We have decided that C.E.S. just really isn’t as much of a hacker mecca as we would have wished. Sure there were brilliantly shining walls of new 3d televisions and cellphones and camcorders as far as the eye could see, but there was mainly just tons of marketing for very little innovation, and much less [...]

Tags:  hackaday isn sort c.e.s c.e.s. cellphones mecca camcorders news  

Gone are the days when a phone would last you a lifetime and enter the days of glass covered mobile phones built to be sexy and sophisticated. With these new phones come new testing methods. Companies like Nokia are still dedicated to making the best phones possible and making them durable through vigorous testing. The [...]

Tags:  endurance-tests mobile-phones cell-phone cellphones hacks  

Want to listen in on cellphone calls or intercept test messages? Well that’s a violation of someone else’s privacy so shame on you! But there are black-hats who want to do just that and it may not be quite as difficult as you think. This article sums up a method of using prepaid cellphones and [...]

Tags:  cellphone gsm want intercept-test prepaid-cellphones black-hats cellphones hacks  

We see a lot of comments on shaky video asking why that person didn’t use a tripod. [Aatif Sumar] wants to use one when taking pictures and video with his phone but the threaded mounting hole you’d find in most cameras doesn’t come as a feature on smart phones. That didn’t deter him, he used [...]

Tags:  video didn tripod cassette-case smart-phones cellphones hacks  

[Scott Nietfeld] built a charger from a Dyna-flex wrist exerciser. We hadn’t heard of a these gyroscopic devices before but once we saw the promo video (embedded after the break) we realized that this is the kind of thing that infomercials were made to sell. [Scott] knew the internals spun to fairly high RPM and [...]

Tags:  ridiculous exerciser charger scott scott-nietfeld gyroscopic-devices wrist-exerciser internals cellphones hacks  

We get a lot of email challenging us to hack things. Sometimes we ignore them, other times we send some words of encouragement. But this time around we thought [Tait] had really come up with a great hack; to build a Bluetooth handset into his prosthetic finger. He hasn’t done much hacking in the past [...]

Tags:  pinky lot excuse tait prosthetic-finger words-of-encouragement bluetooth-handset cellphones hacks  

[Neil] is driving this Siemens A60 LCD using a parallel port on his Linux box. He likes this module because it has an integrated LED back-light, controller IC, and the pads are large enough for a human to solder. He notes that the screen runs on 2.9V, which matches the forward voltage of the LEDs used [...]

Tags:  lcd cellphone linux neil siemens-a60 light-controller forward-voltage cellphones hacks  

When you start to think about the cellphone waste our society produces it can be quite daunting. How many cell phones have you had in recent years? Now multiply that by five billion cellphone subscribers. [Anthony Goh] and [Neil Mendoza] found something to do with a very minuscule portion of those left-overs; building interactive birds out of [...]

Tags:  cellphone society waste anthony-goh neil-mendoza crowd-pleasers five-billion cellphones hacks  

[Rossum's] taking a look at the Nokia LCD screens that are both plentiful and begging to be bent to your will. For quite some time the Nokia 6100 screens have been used in a lot hacks, but he wanted to see what else is out there. He digs into his junk box of cell phones [...]

Tags:  lcd nokia touring lcd-screens junk-box nokia-6100 cellphones hacks  

[Thomas] tipped us off about a macro lens attachment for his Nexus One. As you’d expect, adding the lens helps the phone’s camera bring tiny details into focus. He re-purposed a lens from a pair of mini binoculars, using epoxy putty to make a mounting bracket. Now the last time we saw this putty used with a [...]

Tags:  macro nexus lens thomas epoxy-putty macro-lens tiny-details cellphones hacks  

This is a custom back plate with induction charging circuitry that [Derek Hughes] build for his HTC HD2 cellphone. When we checked in with him last week he showed us how to add an inductive charger without voiding the warranty but it wasn’t very pretty because the stock back plate blocked the inductive field and [...]

Tags:  custom induction cellphone derek-hughes inductive-charger circuitry cellphones hacks  

If you’ve got a Samsung Vibrant and want to take advantage of that unlimted 3G account you can tether without rooting the phone. This method uses a USB cable to provide internet access to Windows XP and Windows 7 computers. Samsung’s own Kies software handles the tethering, as long as you have the magic number [...]

Tags:  samsung vibrant windows magic-number usb-cable cellphones hacks  

If you’ve got an iPhone or Android device that you use with a Wii remote when gaming, this quick hack will give you the third hand you need to manage all of that hardware. [Syanni85] mounted his Android phone to a Wii wheel for just a few dollars in parts. He ran across the wheel [...]

Tags:  gaming android iphone wii-remote wii cellphones hacks  

The Sprint version of the Palm Pixi doesn’t have a WiFi option but the Verizon version (called the Palm Pixi Plus) does. The hardware is almost the same and [Gitit20] figured out how to do some hardware swapping to add WiFi. The radio board inside the phone is fairly easy to remove. Close inspection of [...]

Tags:  sprint pixi wifi sprint-version radio-board cellphones hacks  

[Derek Hughes] wanted to use inductive charging on his cellphone without voiding the warranty. He picked up a Pixi charging backplate meant for a Palm Pre and scavenged the coil and regulator circuitry from it. To make the electrical connection with his HTC HD2 he removed the mini-USB plug from a charging cable and connected it [...]

Tags:  warranty inductive cellphone derek-hughes backplate electrical-connection cellphones hacks  

[Jared] often needs to be on conference calls for work during his motorcycle commute. He’s got a bluetooth headset that cancels noise but it didn’t have a mute feature. He cracked open the speaker and microphone portion of the apparatus but there wasn’t enough room for a switch. The base unit which houses the noise [...]

Tags:  noise bluetooth headset bluetooth-headset jared microphone cellphones hacks  

Open source GSM cracking software called “Kraken” has been released into the wild. You may recognize some of the information from back in December when we announced that they had cracked GSM encryption. Well, now you can participate as well. You’ll need a pretty beefy Linux machine and some patience. They say that an easier [...]

Tags:  kraken gsm source cracking-software linux-machine patience cellphones hacks  

Last week, we posted a story about how to configure speech recognition at a beginner level. Several of the commenters expressed an interest in doing speech recognition for embedded devices. [Nickolay Shmyrev] volunteered to write some directions for those people. In this article, [Nickolay] will be taking you through the basics of setting up your [...]

Tags:  recognition nickolay speech beginner-level commenters speech-recognition cellphones hacks  

We first wrote about the MintyBoost back in 2006. Today, Adafruit has created a tutorial for making a solar powered MintyBoost. Using a MintyBoost, a solar panel, LiPo battery and a charger, they built on their Solar LiPoly tutorial. They fed the power tap output of the LiPoly charger into the battery input of the [...]

Tags:  solar mintyboost tutorial lipoly solar-panel adafruit cellphones hacks  

[Danny] added wireless charging to his HTC Evo. The hard work was already done for him by Palm, it was just a matter of adding that hardware to his phone. A Touchstone induction charging kit for the Palm Pre will cost you just over $40 for the base station and a replacement back cover. [Danny's] [...]

Tags:  htc palm evo danny touchstone induction cellphones hacks  

[Sven Killig] Has managed to get his Nexus One into USB host mode. This allows him to plug in all kinds of peripherals such as web cams, keyboards, even a displaylink unit. This is fantastic as it really opens up the possibilities of this device. You can see that he now has an amazingly functional [...]

Tags:  nexus usb host sven-killig host-mode web-cams cellphones hacks  

[bunnie] has taken a few moments to show us how to turn our Chumby One into a 3g router. As it turns out, there is an easter egg that allows it to communicate with certain models of 3g dongles. There’s no GUI for this trick, so you’ll be doing most of your configuration via SSH. [...]

Tags:  bunnie router chumby easter-egg dongles cellphones hacks  

[Rogal] wrote a cell phone application called ToneTool that generates audio tone sequences. It can be used to output DTMF and SelCall sequences which are used by telephone systems and radio-telecommunication hardware. The software is written in J2ME so if you have a cell phone that can run Java apps it will probably work for [...]

Tags:  cell dtmf selcall tone-sequences radio-telecommunication telecommunication-hardware cellphones hacks  

Like many projects, this one started with a harmless question. “Will lava lamps work in a high-gravity environment such as Jupiter?”. Well, as it turns out, this harmless question was not so easily answered. The only real solution was to test and prove for sure. To do this, [Neil Fraser] built a centrifuge in his [...]

Tags:  centrifuge lava question neil-fraser lava-lamps gravity-environment lava-lamp cellphones hacks  

[James Bond] types and those suffering from a hefty dose of paranoia can now record all telephone conversations. [Trax] built this module that monitors the phone line and starts recording when a handset is picked up. A computer does the actual recording, triggered by the microcontroller via a USB connection. We like the use of an [...]

Tags:  telephone recorder recording james-bond bond-types telephone-conversations hefty-dose cellphones hacks  

That title’s not really fair to [Evan], but he did write a cellphone tetris game that causes your handset to automatically telephone him if you win. He’s using two applications that we’re not very familiar with, Twilio and Tornado. The former handles control input from the cellphone via their simple API. The latter is a [...]

Tags:  webapp cellphone phone evan tetris-game control-input ploy cellphones hacks  

[Tom Lee] and his colleagues just moved to a new office. The doors are setup like a security checkpoint with electronic strikes and buttons on the inside to allow entry. The button simply completes a low-voltage circuit, activating the strike which made it quite easy to patch into. They build an interface board with a [...]

Tags:  door cellphone nicko security-checkpoint interface-board voltage-circuit cellphones hacks  

Hackaday alum [Will O'Brien] has been doing some cellphone integration work. He recently picked up some Motorola c168i cellphones from eBay. It turns out there is a serial port that uses TTL communication with a standard head-phone jack as an interface. [Will] soldered up a connector and used a USB to FTDI cable to interface [...]

Tags:  interface cell communication integration-work motorola-c168i serial-communication cellphones hacks  

Just when you think you’ve heard all you can about the N900 PUSH competition, we have some more news for you. The original PUSH competition was only for UK members, but now Nokia has introduced the ‘Mod in the USA‘ N900 PUSH competition. Similar to the original, anyone (within region) can submit a cool mod, hack, [...]

Tags:  competition push mod usa uk-members hack nokia cellphones hacks  

Not too long ago we asked our readers what they would like to hear about from the PUSH N900 winners and their hacks. We got some silly questions, and some serious, we asked both and now the PUSH teams have answered. The day has passed, the party is gone, and all that’s left is the final [...]

Tags:  push day winner silly-questions hacks cellphones  

Like all great things, they must come to an end. As such, at 10am PST, this morning – our N900 Push competition came to a close. We had some really awesome answers, some really round about, and of course the obligatory – really bad ones. For those that are just on the EDGE of your [...]

Tags:  end push showcase cellphones hacks  

Not too long ago we asked our readers what they would like to hear about from the PUSH N900 winners and their hacks. We got some silly questions, and some serious, we asked both and now the PUSH teams have answered. Solderin Skaters are really making progress. They’ve gotten their printed circuit boards and mounting equipment [...]

Tags:  push day winner printed-circuit-boards silly-questions hacks cellphones  

Not too long ago we asked our readers what they would like to hear about from the PUSH N900 winners and their hacks. We got some silly questions, and some serious, we asked both and now the PUSH teams have answered. The days are getting closer and closer to the N900 PUSH Showcase, and as such [...]

Tags:  push day winner silly-questions hacks showcase cellphones  

Not too long ago we asked our readers what they would like to hear about from the PUSH N900 winners and their hacks. We got some silly questions, and some serious, we asked both and now the PUSH teams have answered. The Haptic Guide team took a moment of their time for us today. Their N900 [...]

Tags:  push day winner silly-questions hacks guide-team cellphones  

Not too long ago we asked our readers what they would like to hear about from the PUSH N900 winners and their hacks. We got some silly questions, and some serious, we asked both and now the PUSH teams have answered. Todays team interview is KAPing with the N900. They’re N900 hack is the high flying [...]

Tags:  push winner todays silly-questions hacks hack cellphones  

[Dave] Had been working on a cell phone activated remote start for his car for a while when we posted the GSM car starter. While both do carry out the same job, we feel that there is enough good information here to share. He’s gone a pretty simple way, by connecting the vibrator motor leads [...]

Tags:  cell phone car dave car-starter remote-start cell-phone cellphones hacks