Home Brew USB Lego Printer

Matt Laboff June 2, 2010 USB Hacks

At one time in most guy’s life, they are nuts for lego’s. It’s usually the 4-8 year range, but for some it continues on. Here is a great example of how this guy never let go of the dream. “Squirrelfantasy” created a felt-tip pen printer out of Legos, motors, a USB print driver and a pile of creativity. The “Lego Felt-Tip 110” was designed and coded from scratch. Unlike your typical ink-jet printer, when the ink goes dry or begins to fade, just replace with a new felt-tip pen. Granted it’s only one color, but we all print blank anyway. Not the most accurate printer, but an extremely accurate Lego printer. Check out the video. Very entertaining.

Source: PCWorld. Continue Reading

USB Flashrods

Matt Laboff May 3, 2010 USB Hacks

What do you get when you cross a Hot Wheels car and USB stick?Â Flashrods. We’ve seen plenty of mods for USBs and hot rods, but we found one guy making a part time job of it. Sure you can do your own, but getting the masterpiece on the first try is hard, buy a Flashrod of $25 and have it done right. There are 20+ styles to select and available in different GB capacities.

USB flashrod

Source:Â DigitalDrops. Continue Reading

Printer Cartridge USB Storage Drive – Great Hidding Spot

Matt Laboff March 8, 2010 USB Hacks

GetUSB.info reports on all many differentÂ USB hacks which take ordinary items around your house or office and turn them into something different.Â Today we bring you the USB printer cartridge.

usb inkcartridge

This is a low tech project easy for just about anyone to do.Â I wasn’t going to report on this because of it’s simplicity, but then I got to thinking.Â This is a great way to have a USB drive with content you don’t want anyone else to find, hidden nicely in your inkjet printer.Â At least for me, the color inkjet printer we use only prints black because we really didn’t need color and the cartridges are too expensive. The full USB hack is laid out really well at Instructables website, but it boils down to 5 basic steps:

Step 1 = Gather up your tools Step 2 = Break into the USB stick and disassemble the inkjet cartridge [messy] Step 3 = Clean everything out Step 4 = Position the USB stick inside the case [ink cart full of silicon] Step 5 = Button it up and use.

Considering the simplicity of this project, you also have a low budget, about zero cents. Continue Reading

USB Hot Plate From Old CPU

Matt Laboff February 28, 2010 USB Hacks, USB Tutorials

Here is a simple and incredibly fun USB hack where you turn an old CPU into a hot plate for your coffee, tea or some liquid fragrance [in a dish].

USB hot plate

This very useful USB hack can be done in 4 steps.

Step 1) Tools and Materials

1. A dead CPU. (Ofcourse you can use a working one but it wonâ€™t be feasible.) 2. A USB cable 3. A Fan grill with screws. 4. Any box (I used a wooden tie box cover) 5. A rotary Tool (the best tool ever invented) 6. Epoxy 7. A creative artistic mind…[continute]

Step 2) The Idea

A CPU will still have some working electronic circuits even if it stopped functioning probably. And this project will use the heat generated by running some Volts in the CPU through a USB cable.Â First things first. Be Very Careful. Connecting a malfunctioning CPU to your computer may and will damage your computerâ€™s ports or even worse. If you donâ€™t have enough…[continue]

Step 3) The Steps

First, prepare the base. You have to find a thin box or a box cover to use as the base of the plate. I used a tie box cover made of wood because it has the same thickness as my laptop. Now put the CPU over the base you picked and mark a square to drill with your rotary device. The square must be a little bit bigger than the CPU. The reason behind the bigger hole…[continue]

Step 4) Preparing the hot plate

locate the ground pins in your CPU and that can be done by reviewing the CPU data sheet or simply by the devastating trial and error. Cut the USB wire and pass it through the hole you made previously in the base. Strip the USB cable and locate the black and red weirs (black wire = ground, Red wire = +5V). You can cut out the white and green data weirs for more space…[continue] Clearly this tutorial is from Instructables…Thanks Eric! Continue Reading

USB Hack: Motorola Android With USB Connectivity

Matt Laboff February 11, 2010 USB Hacks

I was given a tip today on how someone hacked the Motorola Android and now has USB connectivity. It’s a great little hack so now just about any USB device could potentially be connected to the Android.Â The question becomes what kind of drivers will the Android support so that printers, controllers, USB sticks etc can be used. The hack is fairly simply.Â With a little amount of effort, it is possible to enable the B port of the Android as a host interface, meaning the cable USB hack supplies power and acts as the bus controller for connectivity.

android hack

Youâ€™ll need to make two things, a micro-dongle to enable the port (you plug it in during boot time) and a cable with the right connectors on each end (for connecting your peripheral). To do this youâ€™ll need three cables:

A car charging cable (off-the-shelf at the Verizon store)
A Micro-USB cable (as above)
A USB extender cable (the teeny ones that sometimes come free with USB keys work great)

The full write up and USB hack can be found here. Continue Reading

Old Tech For New Gadgets — USB Fan

Matt Laboff February 10, 2010 USB Hacks, USB Tutorials

MSN did a nice article today about 9 new tech gadgets you can make with the stash of old stuff you probably have laying around.Â One which fits into the USB category, is this USB fan. Retro and cool looking, you can put together a nice desk fan with just an old tower or power supply fan along with solder and USB connector.

USB fan

Other new tech gear from old gadgets include a stone age cell phone tricked into a portable safe.Â Scanner table where you can display items under the glass cover of the scanner and a USB mouse turned up-side-down and carved out for a plant holder. Not the most impressive conversion, but a fun article to read on your break or lunch hour. MSN 9 Uses for Dead Tech Gear… Continue Reading

Zap And Kill USB Sticks With Rfiddler Modified Nerf Gun

Matt Laboff December 24, 2009 USB Hacks

Some guy in Germany had a bit too much time on his hands and modified a Nerf gun into a electromagnetic USB stick stun gun.

rfiddler usb stun gun

This gun is by no means subtle and was modified from an old Nerf N-Strike Recon CS-6. Added to the mod was an MP3 player and amp for sound effects, a flash unit and 50-turn copper spool. The completed gun, including accupack, chips, LEDs, paint, and primer, cost around $75 to construct and still works as the original N-Strike gun. The video shows several RFID products killed so the signal no longer works, and the author also claims it will destroy USB sticks, and I would assume, many other electronic gadgets.

Clearly a fun and interesting product for the hobbiest, but very little particle use. Source:Â Pocket-Lint.com Continue Reading

How To: Turn Off Autoplay XP Home For USB Sticks

Matt Laboff December 3, 2009 USB Hacks, USB News, USB Tutorials

How to turn off autoplay XP home edition for USB flash drives.

Windows XP Home edition requires a different method to turn off the USB autoplay function than XP Professional [which we reported on earlier].

It’s not difficult to turn off the USB autoplay, just a couple easy steps.

Note:Â We are going into the Registry so be careful not to do anything other than what we suggest.

Got to>Â START > RUN > type “regedit“

Navegate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER
+ software
+ Microsoft
+ Windows
+ CurrentVersion
+ Policies
+ Explorer

**The “+” are the registry hives you must expand.

Now click the + Explorer directory just once so it is blue.Â On the right side you will see “NoDriveTrypeAutoRun“

Right click that and Select “Modify“

turn off usb autoplay xp home

Here you most likely have b5 listed in the “Value data” field.Â Simply replace that value with 95.

Click OK.

turn off autoplay usb

Close out of the Registry and reboot your machine.Â Done!

Windows 7 Direct Download Gone For Now

Matt Laboff November 10, 2009 USB Hacks, USB News, USB Tutorials

Last week we posted an article for Windows 7 users to download a utility to make a bootable USB recovery stick.Â Well, looks like that feature is [temporarily] gone. So what gives? It appears Microsoft lifted some GPL code to make their ImageMaster tool for bootable USBs.Â Interesting. We posted how you could make your own nt60 USB recovery stick.Â Check it out.

From eWeek here is a bit of detail: Continue Reading

USB Harmonica is 2GBs Of Sweet Soul

Matt Laboff November 3, 2009 Hand Crafted USB, USB Hacks

Backyard Brand is looking to coin a new phrase with their FlashHarp USB drive.Â I’m classifying this under hand crafted USB because it’s a relatively simple mod of a harmonica to include a USB drive. Granted, Backyard came up with the idea, so props to them.

usb harmonica

They do a good job of selling the concept with: “Even if you never master the art of blowing the harp, you’ll never have to throw this harmonica in the back of a drawer. Sweet gift for anybody, young or old, who really likes music.”

USB harmonica

If this stick gains any kind of traction we can expect china to knock off a plastic version of this in about 3 months or less.Â Granted, it’s not your typical custom USB drive, but for those looking to get the original mod, head over to Etsy and grab yourself a 2GBer of sweet soul for $44USD. USB Harmonica FlashHarp product page [they should spell it FlasHarp] Continue Reading

USB Hack: Upgrade Your Prius With USB Port

Matt Laboff October 7, 2009 USB Hacks

In most cases, the cigarette lighter inside a car is used for nothing more than a charger outlet.Â This is why Rosenberger31 updated his outlet with a USB connector.Â It’s a nice USB hack. There is no data connection here, just a regulated port to provide a nice stream of 5v to your USB Powered Gadgets.

car usb port

He removed the access door on the console where the 12v lighter was located. A Dynex 12-volt to USB adapter was piggy-backed onto the power lines and the USB connector was then fit into the blank accessory plate next to it.Â What he didn’t mention was a much needed switch to insure juice wasn’t flowing to your USB device while the power is off. I think Rosenberger31 did a nice job on the dashboard mod.Â What do you think? Continue Reading

USB Silent Keystroke Recorder

Matt Laboff September 17, 2009 Security, Software, USB Hacks

Here at GetUSB.info we are a fan of the USB key logger technology.Â After all, what better way to find out what employees, girlfriends and such are doing with their spare time.Â Especially with all the social network, it’s important to know what is, or is not, being said about you. We have reported about USB key loggers before, but this one is especially nice with the old school PS/2 connector.Â Great for the older machines. The device comes with 2MB of internal memory, but check it often as that amount of space will be filled quickly. Pricing is a bit different depending on the connection type you need.Â $60-$75. Here is the USB key logger product page. Reminder from UberGizmo. Continue Reading