We have all seen the ATM scams where a card skimmer is placed in front of the ATM card slot so that some crooks can capture your card magnetic stripe data. Once they have the electronic data they are now able to duplicate your card. The only other thing that they need is your PIN, this is easy to get from someone looking over your shoulder or a covert camera. Have a look at how this old style hack works, make sure you hang onto your card at all times and protect your PIN by covering it with your hand! Watch the video below to see the old style of ATM scam.

This new scam took the ATM hack to the next level. A hacker actually got into the WorldPay system and was able to get enough information to clone cards and increase withdrawal limits. He then had people around the world use them in many machines. The entire hack was done in only half an hour. This is obviously totally illegal but I am thinking that the hacker should have been on the payroll of Worldpay to close the hole. Only problem would have been the slightly lower salary since right now he is used to making about $18 million per hour.

We have seen lots of self balancing robots ever since the Segway was released but this is the first robot that builds on the self balancing principle. This robot is still a work in progress but what they have so far is amazing. Check out the iLean development page for more info about this cool robot from the team over at UCSD Coordinated Robotics Lab.

"iLean pops up and then cants her wheels inward when she’s ready to climb. In this way, as the wheels leave the ground, she stays upright by sacrificing the orientation of the wheels as she tips side-to-side. Utilizing the wheels in this fashion eliminates the need for an “ankle” on each end of her pole (plus it looks wickedly cool!) Note that iLean v.2 is completely wireless!"

Via: Botjunkie

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If you are building a system that needs to dynamically make decisions about items around it have a look at this Vision Object Detection and Ranging project. I think making this would be an excellent start to building your own Sentry gun!

"This particular setup consists of 2 X 3Com Homeconnect Webcams I bought off of Ebay about 4 years ago. They are fairly good cameras for the price ($12 to $15) and more importantly they have Linux drivers readily available. The computer is a donated Intel Celeron with a 2.60GHz CPU. The OS is Fedora Core 8 with a variety of other fun free software packages. Everything is shifted red in the images because I had to remove an internal cloudy blue filter from inside the cameras. Previously the cameras were extremely blurry. The software should be able to handle any webcam as long as it has a Linux driver."

Thanks to FixTunes for providing the prize this week. FixTunes is an easy and powerful program that will fix any missing or misspelled song details, add album artwork, remove duplicates songs and organize your music.  This contest will run for one week (Feb 14 – 19, 2009) . Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item pictured above and give an example of what can be done with it.

Please do not give the answer in the comments. 

Send an email to contest @ hackedgadgets.com with "Name the Thing Contest" as the subject, and the message body consisting of:

• The name of the item in the above picture
• An example of what the item pictured above can be used for

The winner will be chosen at random from all of the correct entries.

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Added February 28, 2009

The item to guess was a Dot Matrix Print Head

The winners are e11, Brad, glasheen, Mike, Eric. (There were 243 entries)

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Below is a picture of the software prize.

David Merrill demos some very interesting Interactive Computerized Blocks called Siftables. The above video is from the latest TED conference.

"Imagine overturning a container of nuts and bolts, then looking through the resulting pile for a particular item. Or spreading photographs out on a tabletop and then beginning to sort them into piles. During these activities we interact with large numbers of small objects at the same time, and they utilize all of our fingers and both hands together. We humans are skilled at using our hands in these ways, and can effortlessly sift and sort – focusing on our higher level goals rather than the items themselves. Siftables aims to enable people to interact with information and media in physical, natural ways that approach interactions with physical objects in our everyday lives. As an interaction platform, Siftables applies technology and methodology from wireless sensor networks to tangible user interfaces. Siftables are independent, compact devices with sensing, graphical display, and wireless communication capabilities. They can be physically manipulated as a group to interact with digital information and media. Siftables can be used to implement any number of gestural interaction languages and HCI applications. "

"MIT grad student David Merrill demos Siftables — cookie-sized, computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands. These future-toys can do math, play music, and talk to their friends, too. Is this the next thing in hands-on learning?"

When you see an amp of this size your mind is automatically filled with the thoughts of huge power. This is not necessarily true though, in this case the amp is a modest 30 watt per channel system. None of the standard consumer amps operate class A since they are not very efficient. The attention to detail and final look is quite amazing. Schematics are provided so that you could make your very own if you desired.

"My version of the Jean Hiraga Super Class-A Amplifier is running at a bias of about 1.65A @ 35V resulting in about 58W of continuous dissipation per transistor in the output stage (just over 1/3 their rating of 150W). As you can imagine, the heat sink runs quite hot, approximately 40 Celsius (100F) above room temperature. "

If you are still looking for the perfect valentines gift for your special someone look no further. This project is one of the Popular Mechanics 10 DIY Gifts for your Sweetheart this Valentine’s Day. It uses a PIC microcontroller and some RF receiver and transmitters from Spark Fun to detect when the portable unit is close to the base unit.

"This project uses an RF receiver module to trigger a pulsing LED Heart when the transmitter comes within range. I made this for my fiance for Valentine’s Day this year.
In my circuit the data pin on the transmitter is being driven by an output on the PIC. I intend to work more on the PIC program to provide an actual data protocol, but in order to actually get this done this weekend, the transmitter PIC currently just sends a high signal for 500ms, then goes low for 500ms, and repeats as long as it’s switched on. There is an LED attached to the output pin to give a visual feedback of the pulse so you know the circuit is working.
The receiver is equally simple at present. The data pin goes to an input on the PIC. The PIC waits for a high signal, then pulses the LED as long as the signal is high. When the input signal is low, the PIC waits for 500ms, then polls the input again."

Thanks to Tyghe for sending this in.