XMB HACKS

Arduino Documentary Is Perfect for Geek Movie Night
Arduino, the popular hardware toolkit for DIY enthusiasts, is now the topic of a documentary. Get out the popcorn!
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The 10 Best Hacks of 2010
Join us as we look back at some of the best hacks of 2010.
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Instax Hack

Image by lintmachine
This past weekend, I picked up a Fuji Instax instant film camera and had a blast taking it to parties. There were a few things I’ve seen that attracted me to this camera. One of them was the incredibly cool instax windows shots by slightlynorth (I’m still experimenting with the concept…nothing too exciting to show yet). Another was the clever hack by the good reverend ogalthorpe to enable off-camera flash.

I sat down last night to do ogalthorpe’s hack and got to the point where I needed to saw the “lens” off of the optical trigger. The saw was down in storage and I am eternally lazy, so I started thinking about other ways to hack the camera. I got the idea of trying to install an honest sync port in the thing…something I could plug a pocket wizard in to without the use of the optical trigger. I had an extra mini jack lying around from a previous project, so I started trying to take the camera apart to see if I couldn’t find some place to install the thing…why not? I mean I’ve had the thing for over 48 hours…the novelty has surely worn off by now.

Opening the Instax was a bit of a pain in the ass. I couldn’t find any instructions for taking the thing apart on the Internets, so I just had to kinda wing it. I did end up breaking a tab in the process, but nothing a little super glue (or gaffer’s tape) can’t fix.

After I got the thing open, I was able to find the flash triggering circuit and just barely enough room to accommodate my mini-jack. I soldered an optoisolater across the points to insulate the camera from any crazy sync voltages (just to be safe) and then I drilled a hole in the bottom and installed the mini-jack.

The end result is a fully working flash sync-port on the Instax.

The built-in flash still works normally and you still have to cover it with some gaffer’s tape if you don’t want to use it in the shot. This is my first test shot last night. Exposure issues aside, you can see that both the built in flash and the speedlight I’m holding in my hand are going off. The speedlight is triggered by the pocket wizard connected to the instax.

You can see a shot of the solder points here.

Hacks hotting up: Two days to Guardian Hacks SXSW
What happens when you put games developers, web designers, open data geeks, music obsessives, journalists, digital storytellers and hacking wizards in a room together for a weekend? We’re about to find out. We’ve got more than 120 of all of the above turning up at the Guardian this weekend  for Guardian Hacks SXSW , two days of collaboration, invention and mischief as we work together to devise …
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Hacks to Speed Up Firefox
Analysis: Here’s a handful of tips, add-ons and exercises to get Mozilla’s browser into top form.
Read more on PC World

The 10 Best Hacks of 2010
Join us as we look back at some of the best hacks of 2010.
Read more on PC World