If you are into modded consoles have a look at this WiiCube that Hugo Dorison build and sent in.

“It is a heavily modded gamecube, trimmed to fit in a much smaller case than the original, with controls and a screen. It also is equiped with a wiikey fusion, a chip normally made for the wii, that has been adapted. Enabling the portable to play games off of SD cards, and remove the disk drive which takes a lot of space.  As for the case, I built it from scratch using Vaccum forming on sheets of plastic and implementing various pieces of official Nintendo gamecube controllers.”

 Blair Kelly has designed a fun looking RC car. It has an Arduino mounted in the car, there are a number of sensors that allow Blair to drive the car around viewing the drive on a computer screen. There is even force feedback so when the car goes over a large bump or bangs into something he can feel it. With a head mounted display this thing would be very immersive. The camera is mounted so that it can be moved from right to left. I can just imagine what it would feel like if this right and left camera movement was linked to head movements when wearing a head mount display!

Via: Make

If you know Minecraft you will get a kick out of this Virtual Weather Station for Minecraft Game. This is actually a weather station named “Minestation” which gets the weather data for Minecraft game using a shield to connect to an Arduino which is connected to a PC via USB while you are playing the game. The video is a must watch to review the details of this amazing weather station. 

Translated page.

“ As the project progressed Minestation decided that would be a shield for Arduino. In this way, based on a widely used platform among us like to tinker with electronics. Thanks to Arduino code we communicate with the “watcher” that analyzes the conditions and real-time data from the game and every 100 milliseconds, we updated data on the screen. After the first tests with prototypes fruitful shield that worked without problems it was decided to make a small run of boards manufactured in series”.

Shawn McCombs from thief dark has modified his Xbox 360 controller for rapid fire mode by making it fully adjustable. The video shows how the system works. It has a pot that mounts on the side which is used to make the adjustments to how the rapid fire works.

“Now I will have to explain this one to you. You must desolder the three trigger pins shown in the picture below and remove the trigger assembly. Then shorten and bend the middle pin to the outside of the controller and solder a wire to it. Run the wire through the hole displayed below. Then solder the trigger assembly back in, ignoring the middle pin. Then solder a wire to the middle pin pad on the circuit board”.

Thanks to Andrew for sending in his DIY Remote Control Ping Pong Ball Machine Gun. The mechanism he used reminds me of the type that is normally used to launch baseballs and tennis balls. Even Nerf Gun Darts are fired using a similar method, I guess if the method works there is no need to make a better mouse trap. This system is controlled using an Arduino microcontroller and is fired by sending remote commands to it. 

“The electronics for this project are simple.  They consist of an Arduino, a stepper motor, a ULN2003 driver chip and a couple of LEDs.  I based the circuit off of my previous project “Easy CNC Controller“.  I chose to use this method as it was very easy, and requires no additional parts.  I got the motor from an old scanner.”

There is something special about playing a real stand up video game compared to playing one with a handheld controller. Aaron (x2Jiggy) has made a controller that interfaces buttons to a handheld controller to bring that special feeling to the home.

 ”The method involves soldering wires to the button contacts on the XBox controllers circuit board, using these connections we can activate the controllers inputs using our arcade hardware. We need to build a housing, install the arcade components, convert the controller to allow for external inputs and wire the whole thing up.”

Thanks to Robert Milius for sending in his PS3 Slim hacked into a Mini WOPR Computer from the film WARGAMES.

“This case mod was inspired by the WOPR computer in the movie “WarGames.” I call it the WOPR Mk.II. I basically used the XCM cyberchrome ps3 case and some simple flashing LED kits. The small monitor is a Haier 7 inch LCD. “