Hackszine.com: August 2007 Archive

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Archives: August 2007

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August 31, 2007

Google Earth has a flight simulator

The latest version of Google Earth contains a hidden feature: a full-fledged flight simulator! Press Command+Option+A in OS X or Ctrl+Alt+A on a PC or Linux box and you'll be greeted with a hidden dialog box that lets you choose an aircraft (F16 or SR22) and an airport. Once you've made you selection, you'll be placed inside the aircraft. You can then fly around the globe in a free flight simulator, viewing the scenery that is pulled from Google Earth's map files.

I wasn't able to get things to work at first, so if the key combo doesn't work for you, try zooming way into Earth and try again. It seems like you can't activate the feature when you are out in space looking down on the eath. Once you've activated the feature, it will be available from the Tools menu.

Force feedback joysticks are supposed to be supported, though I've only been able to test with a mouse and keyboard. The basic controls are PageUp/Dn for thrust, G for gear up/down, Left/Right for aileron, Up/Dn for elevator and Shift+Left/Shift+Right for rudder. You can also click the screen to enable the mouse to control the aileron and elevator controls. See the link at the bottom for the full set of controls.

Google Earth Flight Simulator - Link
Keyboard Controls - Link
Download Google Earth - Link

August 30, 2007

Scrollable iPhone Dock

Until now, you've needed to be selective about what applications are added to the iPhone's home screen. There are a lot of great 3rd party apps becoming available, but the OS doesn't have the ability to show more than 16 at a time on the home screen.

Nate True fixed this problem with Dock, an iPhone application that sits on top of the home screen and allows you to scroll through all of your installed applications. Slick.

Dock: iPhone mod to enable scrolling in the home screen - Link

August 29, 2007

iPhone accelerometer hacks

Erling Ellingsen figured out how to retrieve high sample rate measurements from the iPhone's built-in accelerometer:

As it turns out, the iPhone has a built-in LIS302DL, a tiny 3-axis accelerometer. While some have attempted to use it from within the Safari browser (the Tilt game detects changes to the width of the browser page; it is basically used as a 1-bit input device), its potential is still somewhat untapped.

He's posted the necessary source, so now you can get to work on your own motion-input applications.

iPhone accelerometer source code - Link

August 28, 2007

Soldering with a graphite pencil and car battery

Here's a weird arc-welding meets soldering hack. You can use a 12 volt car battery (or charger) and a length of graphite pencil to solder connections. The graphite is connected to one jumper cable and a length of solder to the other. Touching them both to the connection closes the circuit, heats up the connection point, and melts the solder. I'm guessing this works best if you connect the graphite and solder to either side of the component connection, which would conduct over the component lead, heating it and causing the solder to wick into the joint.

I'm not sure how well this works or how hard it is on your battery, but it looks like it might be a good way to solder small and difficult connections without overheating components.

Anyone care to chime in on the effectiveness of this or any specific precautions that should be taken?

Graphite Pencil Soldering - Link

Reader Challenge: You've got FIOS in my DVR

Rod wrote:

I have a Pioneer DVR-531H and I recently subscribed to Verizon FIOS TV, that uses a cable box (Motorola QIP2500-3). The Pioneer DVR is like Tivo in that it has a built-in TV Guide, but this doesn't work with the cable box and Pioneer doesn't make an IR blaster so that the DVR can change the cable box channel to record. I can leave the Pioneer DVR set to channel 3 and program it to manually turn on at the correct time, but I can't make the DVR turn on and select the right channel on the FIOS Cable box.

My idea/question is:

Does someone know how to create a way to automate the FIOS Cable box remote so that it can change the cable box channel when I want to record to my DVR? In other words, the set up would be:

Pioneer DVR set to channel 3
Pioneer DVR programmed manually to record at a certain time
Automated remote would turn on the FIOS cable box and select the appropriate channel prior to the DVR turning on to record

So - how to create something that could be programmed to operate the FIOS cable box remote to turn the box on and select the right channel when the DVR is programmed to record?

Jason Striegel's suggestion is to set up a Linux box sending infrared commands using LIRC at the specified times; use it to send commands to the DVR as well as the FIOS box. Let us know in the comments if you have any ideas of your own!

August 27, 2007

Apollo IM: AIM on the iPhone

The first version of a native AIM client for the iPhone was released today under the GPL2 license! It's based on the libFiretalk IM library, and it currently provides basic chat functionality. This snippet from their project page is interesting, though:

The overall direction of the project is to get libPurple compiled for the iPhone and move to it asap in order to provide more than AIM. Firetalk's old and unmaintained, while Purple has a community devoted to it.
The idea is to provide an "Adium" for the iPhone, and we're moving towards it.

Real IM is the killer app for this device, and it's stilla wonder to me that iChat wasn't included in the standard OS build. Perhaps this project will put some pressure on Apple to release an iPhone-based iChat in a future update.

Download Apollo IM (Zip) - Link
Apollo IM Project Page - Link

August 26, 2007

iPhone Apper

Jon Maddox made a nifty tool that let's you easily create web application bookmarks that dock on your iPhone's home screen.

Tired of going all the way to MobileSafari on your iPhone to use web apps that were built with the "sweet" iPhone SDK?
Provide iPhone Apper with a URL, name, and icon... and iPhone Apper will provide you with an application to install* onto your iPhone. A quick reboot, and your favorite and most visited web application is available from the home screen.

You provide the url, title and a png icon file and it will create the little application for copying to your iPhone's Applications folder. You can really only squeeze 16 icons on the home screen, so choose your web apps wisely.

iPhone Apper - Link

August 25, 2007

Bloggable Google Maps

Google Maps added a quick embed feature which lets you quickly add any map to your web site. Prior to this, you needed to have a Google Maps API key, which is fine if you are developing a larger application, but a pain if you just want to make a blog post with embedded directions.

To use the feature, you just click the "Link to this page" link at the top right of any map in the Google Maps interface. There's a quick snippet of 425x350 iframe embed code that you can then copy, or you can choose to customize the layout. The latter lets you select the target size and additionally allows you to tweak the map view to zoom or center on the area of interest.

Embeddable Google Maps - Link

August 24, 2007

iPhone unlock howto posted

George Hotz spent his summer hacking the iPhone, blew a hole through the Apple/AT&T carrier restriction and has single-handedly put the positive form of the word "hacker" in more popular media channels than I've ever before seen. Excellent!

The hack is brilliant:

Here how the bootrom check works; it reads from 0xA0000030 0xA000A5A0 0xA0015C58 0xA0017370 and all these addresses must read as blank, or 0xFFFFFFFF. When you erase flash, it becoms 0xFFFFFFFF. But you can't erase those locations, because they are in the bootloader. So thats where the testpoint comes in. Pulling A17 high hardware OR's the address bus with 0x00040000(offset one because data bus is 16 bit) So the bootrom instead checks locations 0xA0040030 0xA004A5A0 0xA0045C58 0xA0047370, which are in the main firmware and can be erased.

You'll need to do a little tight soldering and get familiar with a hex editor. Engadget is reporting that there's a working, though not released, all-software tool that will accomplish the same, but George's hack can executed done today, and there's a full set of instructions on his blog.

Links:
New Jersey teen cracks iPhone network lock - [via Chris Hartgraves] Link
George Hotz' iPhone unlocking HOWTO - Link
Engadget verifies iPhone software unlock utility - Link
iPhone unlocked using SIM cloning - Link

Installer.app Beta for iPhone

Foo 1
Foo 0
It's never been easier to run all the hackey apps and games on your iPhone, just get Installer.app Beta and you're all set... - Link.

Related:
How To: Install Nintendo Games and Play With Tactile Feedback in Your iPhone - Link.

August 23, 2007

Satellite Alignment Calculator

Hackszine reader Alan writes:

Anyone who ever installed a satellite dish knows how frustrating it is to point the dish at the satellite somewhere in the sky. I've created a unique tool which calculates the dish angle based on user location and then draws a line on the Google Maps satellite image. You can actually see your house, mark the dish position and then see where to aim the satellite dish.
I've tested it on many installations and the accuracy is amazing, it gets it spot on.

The site is a UK site but the tool works world wide for any satellite and any location. This is a genuinely useful tool for a lot of people.

This is pretty neat. In addition to just drawing a line on the map, you can see how far the satellite is from your location and what the proper elevation angle should be on the dish. This could be useful for determining the nearest or least obstructed satellite for your home.

Google Maps Satellite Alignment Calculator - Link

August 22, 2007

WiiCade Wii Remote API

This nice folks over at WiiCade Labs have put all the necessary Javascript and Flash glue together and released a complete Flash API for the Wiimote. It supports 4 simultaneous remotes, cursor position and rotation data, and there's even rudimentary support for the buttons on the nunchuck.

WiiCade Labs Wii Remote API - Link

August 21, 2007

Seam carving: content-aware image resizing

Ariel Shamir and Shai Avidan have presented the coolest digital image effect I have ever seen. "Seam carving" allows an image to be resized non-uniformly, so you can change the height to width ratio in the image without cropping, but also without distorting important features in the image (such as faces).

If I understood the demonstration correctly, the algorithm detects horizontal and vertical paths which span the whole image and have the least gradient magnitude along the span. When resizing an image, the pixels along these seams are stretched or removed, leaving the rest of the image untouched. Areas of an image that absolutely need to be preserved can be manually excluded, and the seam generating function will negotiate paths around those pixels.

You need to watch the video to really see this in action, but the technique can also be used to remove whole portions of an image without perceptible artifacts. Essentially, you could cut an Ex out of your old vacation photos and the rest of the image would distort itself, unnoticeably, to fill in the gap.

Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing - [via] Video: Link PDF: Link
High-res copy of the above video @ Dr. Ariel Shamir's site - Link

iPhone update

There's a new update for iPhones, it says "bug fixes"... it seems louder to me, but otherwise I'm not sure what changed.

August 20, 2007

HOWTO - iPod and PSP movies on Windows Mobile

Last week I mentioned that you can use TCPMP on Windows Mobile Smartphones and Pocket PCs to view H.264 encoded MP4s. I glossed over a few details, so here's a quick guide for getting everything running.

What You Need:

TCPMP: download the latest version for Pocket PC or Smartphone (currently 0.72RC1)- Link
H.264 ffmpeg plugin: under "additional plugins" - Link
AAC plugin: grab the Windows Mobile download under the "BetaPlayer AAC plugin" heading - Link

You'll also need your Smartphone or Pocket PC, a PC with ActiveSync, and enough space on the device (or SDCard) for storing the video you want to watch.

Install the Files:
The TCPMP download is a CAB file. You can either drop this on an SDCard in the device or copy it to the device with ActiveSync. Once it's there, use the file explorer on the device to find the CAB and execute it to begin the install.

After you've installed TCPMP, you'll need to also install the H.264 and AAC codecs so that you can view and hear videos encoded for the iPod. Both of these plugins are downloaded as a ZIP file. Inside you'll find EXE and CAB installers for the Smartphone and Pocket PC Windows Mobile platforms. You can install the CAB files just like you did with TCPMP, or you can execute the EXE installer on your synced PC and ActiveSync will take care of moving it to the device for you.

Transfer and Play Videos on the Device
The fastest way to get large video files to your device is just to drop them on a large SD or MiniSD card and insert it into your device. I did this with a few MP4s I had lying around from MAKE podcasts and Google Video downloads.

You'll find the TCPMP/Core icon in your Start Menu. After executing, you can choose "File->Open" to browse and select an MP4 file to play. There are some settings under options to adjust the video buffer and playback settings. You'll have to experiment to see what works best for your device.

On my test Smartphone, the MP4 video playback is pretty poor, but it does work. The audio doesn't skip, but there are a bunch of dropped video frames during playback. From what I can tell, the device just doesn't have the CPU muscle to decode the video fast enough without hardware acceleration. I have a feeling the Pocket PC hardware might be more up to the task. Please leave a comment if you can confirm this.

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