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USB Tutorial: USB Spinner or Jog Wheel

Sifting through the Instructables website I came along this retro looking USB spinner wheel or Jog wheel. The USB tutorial project is a bit complicated and requires some technical know-how, so if you are looking to increase your mod skill sets, this might be the project for you. So what is something like this good for anyway?  The jog wheel functions like your wheel on that mouse you have, but larger and has good momentum which is nice when searching through large bits of code, viewing long webpages or searching through numerous documents. A job wheel is also excellent for media editing like sound or video.  You can scroll around in these large files effortlessly and without stressing out your finger from the mouse scroll wheel.  With the heaviness of the VCR head you can get the motion going and it’s inertia will keep it spinning for quite some time and when you’ve found the frame you’re looking for, just hold the wheel to stop it. Enough about the sales pitch of a DIY project, jump over to Continue Reading

How To: Make Your Own USB Keylogger

USB keyloggers are always a good idea to have around. Sure you could make the argument that it’s incroaching on someone’s space, or that it’s flat out illegal to track someone without them knowing…but forget all that.  To many ups sides. What about keeping check with your kids?  Or making sure employees are keeping honest?  What about some backup or recovery and you need to know where you’ve been? Well in any case, for the DIY folks, here is a nice tutorial on taking a standard PS/2 and converting it into a USB keylogger.  What I like about it is the simple fact the average computer user wouldn’t notice.  We all see the PS/2 on the back panel, so why investigate it to see if there’s mod to it? The full tutorial can be found at Instructables.  Only tip is that you need some good soldering skills.  Other then that, not a hard task at all. Continue Reading

USB Egg-Bot CNC Art Robot

The Eggbot is an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects from the size of a ping pong ball to that of a small grapefruit. The Eggbot is super adjustable, and is designed to draw on all kinds of things that are normally “impossible” to print on. Not just eggs but ping pong balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses. The egg-bot is ideal for Easter and a fun way for kids to make elaborate designs on their eggs.  The egg-bot is recommended for ages 10 and up with parent supervision at 13 and under.  In the photos, you can see just a few of the things you can do with eggs. The Eggbot chassis is made of tough fiberglass, with integrated heat sinks for the included motors. The pen and egg motors are high-torque precision stepping motors, and the pen lift mechanism is a quiet and reliable servo motor. The Eggbot kit is easy to assemble in a couple of hours, and only requires a couple of basic tools like miniature Phillips-head and flathead screwdrivers. You’ll also need a computer with an available USB port (Mac, Windows or Linux). The EBB allows your computer to directly control the stepper and servo motors. The onboard 16X microstepping driver chips along with the 200 step/revolution stepper motors give a combined resolution of Continue Reading

How To: Make Bootable USB For Any Windows OS

GetUSB.info has reported on making a bootable USB with nt60 boot sector, and here is another post about bootable USB, but this time for making the boot device for any Windows OS…or should I say from any Windows OS.

WinToFlash is a slick little tool I came across which allows you to make a bootable USB from any source Windows installation CD or DVD.

WinToFlash will slurp out the boot sectors required to make a bootable USB from your source CD or DVD.   Simply pop in the Windows disk, get a 4GB stick [8GB is better] that can read/write faster than a promo give-away drive, and run WinToFlash.

Here is a list of items you can perform using WinToFlash for bootable USB devices:

  • Windows XP/2003/Vista/2008/7 to a USB drive transfer
  • WinPE (BartPE based on Windows XP/2003, WinPE based on Windows Vists/2008/7 and so on) to a USB drive transfer
  • USB media erasing full or quick
  • Create a USB drive with emergency bootloader for Windows XP/2003
  • MS-DOS to a USB drive transfer
  • Create a USB drive with Windows XP/2003 Recovery Console

You certainly don’t need a lot of power to run the utility, that’s for sure.   But if not sure, here are the min specs:

  • Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster
  • At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM
  • At least 20 megabytes (MB) of available space on the hard disk
  • Keyboard and a Microsoft Mouse or some other compatible pointing device
  • Video adapter and monitor with Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher resolution
  • Windows XP/2003/Vista/2008/7

WinToFlash is asking for dontations if you find the tool helpful.   Good luck! [ https://tinyurl.com/ovfetq ]

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How To: Fix MacBook Air and USB Ethernet Adapter

How To: Fix MacBook Air and USB Ethernet Adapter

If you are one of the few who rushed out to purchase the MacBook Air, you might have found yourself in a bit of a pinch.  How to get the USB Ethernet Adapter working?  If this is you, or a friend you know, here is a quick fix until a new Apple update is published.

MacBook Air USB Ethernet Adapater

First, it appears that some have luck plugging the adapter into different ports on the MacBook Air, but it’s not a universal solution. After a bit of investigative work sifting through the Apple forums, you can do the following for a sure thing fix: Continue Reading

How To: Turn Off USB Auto Run in Windows 7

How to turn off autoplay Windows 7 for USB flash drives.

Some may want to turn off the USB auto play so that when a USB device is connected the auto pop-up window doesn’t appear.  I don’t mind the pop-up window as it usually defaults to the area or program I’m trying to get into anyway, but for some, I could see the frustration.  So on that note, here is a quick USB tutorial on how to turn off the USB auto run function. First, click START > RUN and type in gpedit.msc  then click RUN.

USB autorun Win7 - 1

Next you’ll want to navigate to the location shown below.  That would be: Computer Configuration > Admin Templates > Windows Components  Once there you would double click Windows Components

USB autorun Win7 - 2

That will take you to the following area where we can select the menu to edit the USB autorun functions.  Double click the AutoPlay Policies

USB autorun Win7 - 3

Next select the Turn Off Autoplay by double clicking it. Continue Reading

How To: Run LED Solo From PCless USB Connector

Do you see something odd about this picture?  Maybe the fact an LED is illuminating from a USB connector with no PC in site?  Ya that’s it.  Good job Sherlock.

USB LED

So what we have here is a How To or USB Hack on running an LED from a Super-capacitor.  If you are non-technical, then we basically mean a very short lived battery to run the LED.  A super-capacitor has the ability to store energy for longer periods of time over traditional capacitors – yet still not long enough as with batteries.The concept of this tutorial is to wire a super-capacitor to a USB socket whereby your computer can charge up the capacitor and when disconnected you’ll get about 10 minutes of LED illumination.

USB LED

Granted there isn’t much day-to-day use with this USB hack, but just a fun little project if you have the time. Over on the Instructables website there is an updated USB tutorial which includes Continue Reading

DIY: How To Get Power From USB For Any USB Gadget Project

Here is a 7 minute video on how to wire up any USB port and suck the power right out for that USB gadget you dreamed up at 3am.  For DIY projects, USB hacking is one of the most popular forms of taking something ordinary and making something unique.  So if you’ve never tried a hack or USB tutorial, this is a great building block for yourself.  Enjoy! Source: YouTube. Continue Reading

USB Laser Duck Solves Lack of Laser Ducks

I think we can all agree there are not enough USB laser ducks out there.  To help solve this problem we came across a nice USB laser duck tutorial to take any rubber ducky and turn it into a zombie, creepy laser duck. I don’t think Ernie will be to pleased to hear the news.

USB duck

The USB hack is fairly simple and the ideal project for a young kid looking to do something cool for the first time.  All you need is a USB cable, rubber duck and some diodes. You’ll need to solder the diodes to the USB cable, then mount the laser eyes correctly and securely into the rubber ducky.  If the concept doesn’t make sense, you can jump over to Instructables and get the play-by-play. I think one way to increase the coolness would be stuffing the entire USB cable into the duck body.  Either that, or take another Instructable where you can increase the laser intensity to pop balloons, burn paper and more… but do it with a bit of caution and common sense. Video. Continue Reading

DIY: iPad Cork Sleeve

Don’t dismiss this post because you think a cork sleeve would be cheezy for your $700 iPad.  It’s not.  This tutorial helps you create a well designed, cool looking, durable cork case. Sure, cork isn’t very strong, but with added cloth and fleece the end result creates a strong sleeve and something which will protect your iPad and last for quit some time.

cork ipad sleeve

The materials are not difficult to find and should run you about $20 at most. Bobber does an excellent job of point out the details and making sure you don’t miss the important steps for making a quality DIY iPad sleeve.  He includes a ton of well documented pictures, after all, nothing is better than a picture for projects you’ve never tried. Full tutorial here. Continue Reading

How To: Duct Tape USB Holder / Wallet

I’ve seen some USB holders at Staples and Office Max for over $20 dollars and that’s just for a fancy pouch to place your USB sticks while on-the-go.  What about a DIY duct tape USB holder?  You get the satisfaction of making it yourself, save yourself some cash and a hint of coolness to your storage devices.

usb duct tape holder wallet

Granted the duct tape approach is more in tune with kids, but lets give this a quick review. In four simple steps you can do this exact project. Step 1 – Grab some materials, that being a ruler, knife, duct tape, thumb drives and creativity. Step 2 – Make the back plane duct tape which is very similar to making a duct tape wallet. Step 3 – Add the pockets.  In the picture you can see the USBs are parallel with each other, I would recommend staggering them so the thickness is reduced when folding. Step 4 – Put the finishing touches on there with some clean lines of duct tape, patterns and custom designs. For the full tutorial and loads more pictures visit Instructables. Continue Reading

How To: Use Physical Lock To Enable / Disable USB Ports

I came across this very interesting USB hack from TechOat the other day.  The concept of this modification is taking the key of a power box in your computer and turning that into the physical on/off switch for USB communication. The premise is disassembling the wires of the USB cable and port and weaving that into the circuit of a locking switch on your PC.  I think this illustration shows it best:

USB lock on off

What I particularly like about this USB hack, is the physical requirement to have the key in order to work the USB port.  This type of security [more fun then practical] for USB devices in general is much better than a Truecrypt type solution as that only protects the device, not the system. So what you need includes: Small USB thumb drive USB extension cable or USB socket and plug with cable Locking switch DPST Plastic box The rest is just elbow grease to get it working, for the specific details and tutorial, jump here.

USB lock enable disable

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