Apparently, there’s some sort of sporting event being televised this weekend that has been historically used as an excuse to buy a big-screen TV. [Joel] wanted a huge-screen TV on the cheap, so he converted an overhead projector to something he can use with his XBox. Using a bare LCD panel with an overhead projector is [...]

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In the interests of interface archaeology, [Martin] sent in the Tworse Key, a telegraph key that posts to Twitter using Morse code. It’s a fantastic build that nearly looks like something out of the 1900s. We’ve seen a ton of Morse keyboards over the years, but never one so well-engineered for a single purpose. The guts [...]

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If you’ve been thinking of adding some tactile controls and readouts for your flight simulators this guide should give you the motivation to get started with the project. [Paul] explains how to build controls and connect them to the simulator data. He makes it look easy, and thanks the interface examples in his code it [...]

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Part of the fun with old computers is playing some old school games, and while you could play them with a keyboard it is much more fun with a joystick. You can get old joysticks all day long on auction sites, but you have to watch out. Some are digital, which wont work for many [...]

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Let’s get this straight, [Alex] is going to show us how to make controllers like this one? Where do we sign up? Even without seeing it in action we want one, but the urge to build is even greater after he shows it off (check the clip after the break). He’s a design student who [...]

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As masters of technology, our desks are often cluttered with odds and ends. We have cables spewing out of every nook, and our computer ports full. The last thing we really want is more stuff getting in the way or buried under piles of technical documentation when adding something like a USB hub. That is [...]

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[Shawn] wrote in to share his post outlining the addition of rapid fire to an Xbox 360 controller. He’s going all out with this mod by including a pretty beefy microcontroller. But you get a lot of functionality for that. You can just make out the trimpot below and to the right of the green [...]

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As a life long lover of his venerable Commodore 64, [Frank] was looking for a way to speed up the development time when writing C64 demos. His solution is a universal C64 cartridge that will connect to a PC over a USB port. The board is powered by a CLPD and a microcontroller loaded with code [...]

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If you’re looking for a custom controller for a MAME cabinet build, CNC machine, or just want to control a robot build, you’re going to need to wire up some buttons. You could wire up a bunch of buttons to a microcontroller, but if you use an old computer keyboard the work is already done [...]

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No matter how good the intentions or how strong your hack-fu may be, sometimes you just can’t cross the finish line with every project. Here’s one that we hate to see go unfinished, but it’s obvious that a ton of work already went into reclaiming these smart white-board projectors and it’s time to cut the [...]

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Many companies today try to simplify life by over complicating the keyboard. Microsoft has been doing it since 2001. If you love your ergonomic keyboard, but hate that “function lock” key, there are plenty of options out there for you to try. The least complicated way is to either modify some XML or just set [...]

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[Aaron's] arcade controller really makes us want to put in a button order. There aren’t any secrets hidden in his design or fabrication, but he did a remarkably clean job of putting it together. The housing is a writing box he bought at the hardware store (but he also shows off an emtpy Xbox 360 [...]

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[David] sent in a nice project to demonstrate augmented reality with ARtoolkit and discuss the deep philosophical underpinnings of the meaning of nothingness. The good news is he was able to create a volume control button on a sheet of paper with a marker. The bad news is the philosophical treatment is a bit weak; [...]

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[Victor] likes to watch movies on his laptop, but the tiny speakers in his machine don’t do [John Williams] and other perfectly fine soundtracks justice. To pump up the jams a little bit, [Victor] got a pair of Trust Mila 2.0 speakers for Sinterklaas. Unfortunately, these speakers were terrible – noise everywhere, tinny output and [...]

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We all need an excuse to play Half-Life 2 sometimes. [Jeri Ellsworth] put together a My First Crowbar controller to throw a few headcrabs across the room. It’s pretty much Half-Life 2 for the Wii. The build is very simple – just a tilt switch hot glued to the underside of a childs-size crowbar. Two [...]

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[Andrew] was getting ready to print out an assignment when his Samsung printer suddenly started blinking a red error light at him. Unable to find any documentation explaining the issue, he called Samsung directly and found that it was indicating the toner cartridge was nearly empty. He held down the button that prints a test [...]

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[Richard] wanted to create a color profile for his computer monitor, but he wasn’t thrilled with the existing color calibration offerings he found for sale. Color calibration tools can be somewhat costly, but even more troubling to [Richard] was the fact that they are all closed source. Closed hardware and closed software can be a [...]

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[Oliver] had an old NES controller laying around, and without any other use for it, he decided to repurpose it as a portable storage device. He gutted most of the controller, removing the plastic standoffs, leaving the D-pad and remaining buttons intact. He crammed a 32 GB flash drive inside, along with the guts from [...]

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This one must have been fun to come up with because it’s got it all. There’s hardware, firmware, networking, and server scripts all working together to create a filing, scanning document center for your business. The best part is that [Janis Jakaitis] was tasked to do this as part of his job (we’re sure there’s [...]

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[Ryan] sent in a little project he’s been working on. After he got his hands on a pair of DJ Hero controllers, he figured he needed to pull controller data off them. After plugging in his two DJ Hero controllers to a breakout board, [Ryan] discovered the turntables communicate on an I2C bus. A Teensy [...]

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[Joel] dug up this hack that he pulled off over ten years ago. It’s inspired by the Nintendo PowerGlove, and uses flex sensors to react to movements of your fingers. The interesting thing is, he built these optical flex sensors himself. He likes to say that this is a ghetto fiber-optic setup. The inlaid diagram [...]

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[Marcus Gritsch] wanted to do his retro gaming using retro hardware… or at least using some retro hardware. Although he was playing his Commodore 64 games in an emulator, he figured that using an original controller would boost the nostalgia quite a bit. This is a vintage Competition Pro joystick that has buttons and a [...]

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[Nav] wanted to change his keyboard mapping for one particular keyboard, rather than on each operating system. He used an AT90USBKey as a replacement PCB by soldering to all of the contacts on the key matrix. This allows him to remap the keys by following onscreen prompts. The board enumerates as an HID device, and [...]

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[Jamie] built his own USB connected arcade controller. We’ve been seeing a lot of these lately, and they usually involve soldering buttons to a keyboard PCB. But [Jamie] decided to go a different route and use his own microcontroller. This method always gets a bit hairy when it comes to deciding how to connect it [...]

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Although many have made some sort of music with improvised electronics, few sound as cool as this Imperial March from Star Wars played by two floppy drives. According to [Pawel], “It’s nothing new” and quite simple. This may be true as we’ve featured an Imperial March-playing floppy drive here before, but it was only one [...]

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For those of you that have a wireless keyboard laying around, you might be tempted to turn it into something else, like a wireless MAME controller. For those not familiar with it, MAME stands for “Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator” and is generally used to run older arcade games on a computer. Encoders are available for [...]

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[Kekszumquadrat] wanted to use a classic controller to play emulator games on his Android tablet so he set out to convert an SNES gamepad to connect via USB. He found an old USB keyboard at a yard sale for about 3 Euros. He knew that the emulator he prefers has the option of remapping all [...]

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Anyone reading this post has undoubtedly used a keyboard. How they work, however, is a bit more complicated than “one button, one input.”  [PyroElectro] has a great tutorial about building a PS/2 keyboard interface with a 7-segment LED display (video after the break). The tutorial also includes quite a bit of theory behind it. The [...]

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[Alex] wanted to play video games with an arcade stick and buttons, but got sticker shock after seeing the price of commercially available controllers that connect to a computer via USB. He set out to build his own and ended up with the controller-in-a box that you see above. At first he tried using an [...]

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[Fred] likes to squeeze every cycle possible out of his graphics card. But sometimes pushing the clock speed too high causes corruption. He figured out a way to turn a knob to adjust the clock speed while your applications are still running. The actuator seen above is a Griffin Powermate 3.0. It’s a USB peripheral which [...]

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