OK, everyone has seen the dude who made an LED POV (persistence of vision) clock out of a hard drive, and we’re all very impressed (no, seriously). But not all of us have those skills. This is a hard drive clock that requires only a power drill and some basic hand tools. No electronics knowledge is necessary. Total project time: 60-90 minutes.

I think this one is interesting as you can actually see that it’s a hard drive. The one I made had a different goal though - to only have hard drive parts visible.
Anyway - I like’em both.

Link: Harddrive clock
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With the addition of one capacitor, one relay, and a small piece of wire we can convert an inexpensive wireless doorbell into a remotely controlled relay useful for a wide range of applications. These include remote PC starting, lighting control, Halloween effects control, or virtually anything that can be controlled by a pair of relay contacts.

And here’s some food for thought for you DIY’ers. How about taking one of those cute small radio controll cars and turn it into a dimmer control? The benefit of using these small cars as a build base would be that the rf reciever cards are very very small.

Link: Turning a wireless doorbell into a remote control relay

The page is in Spanish so I also give you the option to read it through Google’s translation engine.

Link: DIY Microscope webcam (Spanish)
Link: DIY Microscope webcam (English)

Trick Vodafone to upgrade your prepay phone again and again when travelling abroad

Amsterdam A Dutch anonymous reader contacted us with this scoop regarding a flaw in Vodafone’s ‘Pay as you talk’ system. He has a Dutch Vodafone prepay card, known as Pay as you talk in the UK, and went to Sweden after Christmas. As he arrived he realized that his account was empty and went to a gas station to buy some more credits.

“I bought the equivalent of €20 and called the local number for activating it. That didn’t work as I didn’t have any credits left, but after a minute I got an sms telling me to call 1200 for the Dutch menus and I got connected. I then entered the 16 digit code that was on the receipt and the lady told me that it would take up to an hour to activate the credits and that I would get an sms when it was.
Patiently I waited over two hours and nothing happened, so I called the number again and entered the 16 digit code and the lady ensured me the same thing that it could take up to and hour and that I would receive an sms when the transaction was completed. Nothing happened.
After another hour I called the same number again and wondered if I had done something wrong so I listened extra good at the options given and after hanging up it stroked me that it actually said on the receipt that the code was the first 12 and the last 4 was the control number. That would explain why it didn’t work, so I decided to call 1200 again and choose the option to talk to customer service to correct this problem. Do you know what happened? I called 1200 and got the automated reply that ‘You’ve called this number to many times today. You will now be disconnected.’”

Read about how he did it in Adding internal Bluetooth to a Dell Latitude

And when you have the box ready then you can use it anywhere your imagination takes you. In the car, by the stereo at home or at a friends house, or you can connect it to a high quality headphone!

You will definetly loose your warranty on the headset on this one!

Link: Bluetooth stereo in the car

Read the further in Silent mouse - The second encounter

Step 1: Get a Universal Remote. These are everywhere, so this shouldn’t be a problem. Buy one for 10 bucks if you have to.
Step 2: Program the remote to “000″…this should work in most cases. If it doesn’t, mess around with it until you get the right code.
Step 3: Press “Menu” to go to the TV’s administration.
Step 4: Use the Channel and/or Volume keys to navigate to the “Channel List” option.
Step 5: Use the Left/Right buttons to change to Channel List B. We want to use Channel List B because Channel List A is where we’ll restore the defaults so no one notices later.
Step 6: Go down to “Channel Memory” and here you can use the up and down arrows to tune any and all channels. When the PPV channels come up, tune them.
Step 7: Enjoy free pay-per-view!!!

In addition to getting free pay per view, you can do a lot of things with this “hack.” For example, changing the name of the channels is possible. Instead of “FOX News” it could be “Breast Milk BreakDance.” That would be good.

Source: theDamnblog.com