Daily DIY

2010/02/04 | General - Wireless | Trackback | No Comments »

Turn Your USB Printer Wireless with a Print Server

Your home may be set up for wireless internet, streaming, and file sharing, but try telling your printer that. If you’re stuck lugging your laptop to a USB connection, a wireless print server may be a worthy purchase.

The ever-helpful Digital Inspiration blog lines up three of the most likely suspects available for purchase, costing between $60-$80. You can often find them cheaper, and slightly used, and some models, like the Netgear WGPS606, can also serve as a wired router for other non-wireless devices.

Why would you plunk down more than three Andrew Jacksons on a print server, when printers with built-in wireless will probably be $50 in a year or two? Digital Inspiration has a few suggestions:

If your current printer is relatively new and you paid more than $100 for it, then it may be more economical for you to simply purchase a wireless print server instead of purchasing an entirely new printer with the same features.

If a wireless printer [is] not available in your area, you can buy a regular USB based wired printer and get someone to ship you a wireless print server. This would incur less shipping costs than ordering a wireless printer.

Some wireless print servers can be used as wireless routers. If you do not have a wireless router at your place, you can opt for a wireless print server as it will not only turn your printer wireless but you also get to setup a wireless home network.

Now here’s the real question. Have you found a wireless print server with more features or better functionality than what’s posted at the link? Found another, cheaper solution to the last wire-required device in your house? Tell us all about it in the comments.

2010/02/04 | General - Printer - Printers - Wireless - buying guide - home network - printing - top - wi-fi - wireless network | Trackback | No Comments »

16-year-old’s cave radio wins the 2009 International Science Fair

Alexander Kendrick’s project consists of a low-frequency radio allowing a person to send text messages from almost 1,000 feet underground. Read his fascinating story on NPR.com. [via Slashdot]

2010/02/01 | General - Wireless | Trackback | No Comments »

Wi-Fi Detecting Bumper Sticker Helps Out the Wardriver Behind You

Here’s a neat Instructable for significantly increasing the geek factor in your car’s rear windshield, showing how to modify a Wi-Fi-detecting t-shirt into a Wi-Fi-detecting window decal. At some point in some traffic jam, you’ll make a fellow nerd’s day.

Starting with a novelty t-shirt that displays the strength of Wi-Fi signals in the area, an Instructable user lived up to his matching user name and license plate of “MacGeek” by hacking together this Wi-Fi detecting window decal.

While it may not be entirely useful for finding access points, except maybe to a laptop-wielding driver behind you in a serious bumper to bumper, it will definitely be useful for announcing your geek pride to your fellow drivers. [Instructables]

2010/01/30 | Accesspoints - BumperStickers - General - Hot Spots - Wireless - automobiles - cars - diy - wifi | Trackback | No Comments »

Wireless door access using the TI hackable watch

The release of the TI Chronos development kit is exciting not only because it is a cool piece of hardware, but I expect to see many great projects that cleverly exploit the resources of the Chronos. This nifty hack wirelessly unlocks a door using the built-in accelerometer to detect coded taps on the watch.

[via Hack a Day]

More:

Alt.CES: Ti eZ430 – Chronos Development kit unboxing

2010/01/23 | General - Wireless | Trackback | No Comments »

DIY diamond chop saw

Need to cut tiny parts, and don’t have access to a commercial wafer dicing machine? So did amateur radio enthusiast Tony, who needed to cut small pieces of 50 ohm microstrip lines for a 47 GHz radio he is constructing. His solution was to build a homebrew diamond wafer saw, using a diamond wheel from ebay, the bearings from a hard drive, and some custom electronics.

We covered Tony’s saw back in July, when he put out the first part of his tutorial. Flash forward six months, and he completed a four part (1 2 3 4) tutorial documenting the project. Well done, and excellent writeup!