Kansas City Tech Guide

We were beginning to wonder if the Roomba hacking community had been sucked dry of ideas, but leave it to longjie0723 to give us hope yet. This Roomba hacker (yeah, he also rigged his up for Wiimote control) managed to solder 448 yellow LEDs onto a board and program said devices to move in such a way that a Pac-Man-type image is seen. C’mon, who hasn’t dreamed of having that ghost-inhaler work his magic on those forsaken floors? Check the video after the jump.

[Via Hack N Mod]

The homebrew scene hasn’t gotten a whole lot accomplished with this latest round of home consoles — which isn’t surprising given the difficulty of the task and lack of incentives to succeed. Especially with the PS3 shipping with Linux compatibility, the Wii boasting VLC, and the 360 being such a chore to hack and keep hacked, there’s really not much of a point. The Wii was compromised pretty early on to be able to play burned discs and GameCube homebrew such as Linux, but until now Nintendo has managed to isolate Wii hardware such as the extra horsepower of the console and wireless connectivity from hackers. But the walls are coming down. Some hackers from Germany have just showed off their fully hacked Wii at the 24th Annual Chaos Communication Congress. Nothing fancy is running yet, all they’ve achieved so far is a proof of concept that they’ve bypassed the Wii’s protection with some encryption codes they swiped from the Wii’s memory. Apparently a bootable Linux DVD is on the way, and we can’t wait to see what homebrew coders manage to pull off with that Wiimote pointed where it belongs.

[Via WiiNintendo]

This one’s definitely not for anyone concerned with warranties and whatnot, but those looking to expand their Eee PC’s wireless capabilities without resorting any unsightly adapters may want to check out the latest how-to from jkmobile, which gives you the rundown on adding internal 3G HSDPA to the diminutive laptop. That, as you might have guessed, involves a fair bit of slicing and soldering, not to mention disassembling a standard 3G HSDPA modem (a ZadaCOM 3G+ HSDPA, in this case). The process is apparently further eased if you have just the right Eee PC model, as the 8G’s 8GB SSD drive takes up too much room, and the earlier 4G models require some additional cutting to squeeze the modem in. Hit up the read link below for pics of the whole process and a video of the hack in action.

[Thanks, C.K. Sample]