Month: March 2005

Lifehacker has a nice little link-list of hacks related to iPod, cellphone, and laptop batteries. We’d like to add a few hacks for AA and AAA-size batteries used in low-power devices such as remote controls:

Roll Your Own – If the batteries in your infrared (IR) remote control appear to have died, before replacing them, open the battery door and roll the batteries in place. Try the remote again and you may be surprised by the results. I just finally tossed away the batts in my TV remote after rolling them every week or so (whenever it stopped talking to my TV) for the past six months (or more!).

Save Half-Used Batts – Devices that draw a lot of power, such as anything with a DC motor, will require new batteries before the existing batteries are actually spent, in other words, they’ll still have enough juice in ’em for devices with lower power needs, such as IR remotes. If you have a multimeter, you can even find out how much juice is left, write it on a Post-It, and store it in a Ziplock along with the batteries (that’s what I do).

Reverse Polarity, Mr. Sulu! – If your remote control starts acting strange, or stops working altogether, and new batteries don’t fix the problem, before you throw it away, try putting in fresh batts, but put them in opposite to the correct polarity marked on the remote — leave them this way for about a minute. Then, put the batteries back as normal. This effectively acts as a reset which will (allegedly) work on some remotes.

Got any other battery tips? Add ’em to the comments.

The Mod Gods have a nifty little how-to on doing iPod-to-iPod file transferring.

Okay, THIS might be the geekiest project ever. Some guy has built a kitty security door on his home that uses facial recognition software to identify, and admit, his cat Flo, while locking out all other animal undesirables.

The first issue of MAKE had a much easier, more lo-tek, approach. A crafty pet owner built a little touchplate platform inside the kitty door which was rigged with a big capacitor and buzzer. If a cat lingered on the platform (as a reluctantly entereing non-resident cat would), it would discharge the capacitor and set off the alarm. The home owner, apparently permamently fixed to his easy chair nearby in the den, could then blast the intruding feline with a squirt gun.

[Say that title too many times and you could get yourself in trouble] Since Pringles cans may be feeling a bit devalued after the recent posting of the parabolic reflector antenna hack (which is easier to cobble together than the common Pringles can WiFi antenna), we thought we’d boost its hackability esteem again by posting this link to a cool pinhole camera made from the popular clone-chips container.