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Designing a Portable Mac Mini

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When Apple first launched the Macintosh, it created a new sort of ā€œLunchboxā€ form factor that was relatively portable and very, very cool. Reminiscent of that is this neat portable Macintosh Mini, created by [Scott Yu-Jan]. [Scott] has created something along these lines beforeā€”putting an iPad dock on top of a Macintosh Studio to create a look vaguely reminiscent of the very first Macintosh computers. However, that build wasnā€™t portableā€”it wasnā€™t practical to build such a thing around the Macintosh Studio. In contrast, the Mac Mini is a lithe, lightweight thing that barely sups powerā€”itā€™s much more suitable for a ā€œluggableā€ computer. The build relies on a 3D printed enclosure that wraps around the Mac Mini like a glove. Inside, thereā€™s a chunky 20,800 mAh power bank with enough juice to run the computer for over three hours. Just like the original Mac, thereā€™s a handle on top, too. The buildā€™s main screen is actually an iPad Mini, hooked up to the Mac Mini. If you want to use it sep...
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Physical Key Copying Starts With a Flipper Zero

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A momentā€™s inattention is all it takes to gather the information needed to make a physical copy of a key. Itā€™s not necessarily an easy process, though, so if pen testing is your game, something like this Flipper Zero key copying toolchain can make the process quicker and easier when the opportunity presents itself. Of course, weā€™re not advocating for any illegal here; this is just another tool for your lock-sports bag of tricks. And yes, there are plenty of other ways to accomplish this, but using a Flipper Zero to attack a strictly mechanical lock is kind of neat. The toolchain posted by [No-Lock216] starts with an app called KeyCopier , which draws a virtual key blank on the Flipper Zero screen. The app allows you to move the baseline for each pin to the proper depth, quickly recording the bitting for the key. Later, the bitting can be entered into an online app called keygen which, along with information on the brand of lock and its warding, can produce an STL file suitable for ...
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Brazilian Modders Upgrade NVidia Geforce GTX 970 to 8 GB of VRAM

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Although NVidiaā€™s current disastrous RTX 50-series is getting all the attention right now, this wasnā€™t the first misstep by NVidia. Back in 2014 when NVidia released the GTX 970 users were quickly dismayed to find that their ā€˜4 GB VRAMā€™ GPU had actually just 3.5 GB, with the remaining 512 MB being used in a much slower way at just 1/7th of the normal speed. Back then NVidia was subject to a $30/card settlement with disgruntled customers, but thereā€™s a way to at least partially fix these GPUs, as demonstrated by a group of Brazilian modders ( original video with horrid English auto-dub). The mod itself is quite straightforward, with the original 512 MB, 7 Gbps GDDR5 memory modules replaced with 1 GB, 8 Gbps chips and adding a resistor on the PCB to make the GPU recognize the higher density VRAM ICs. Although this doesnā€™t fix the fundamental split VRAM issue of the ASIC, it does give it access to 7 GB of faster, higher-density VRAM. In benchmarks performance was massively increased, ...
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LED Filaments Become Attractive Time Piece

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There are a million ways to use LEDs to make a clock. [sjm4306] chose to go a relatively conventional route, making something that approximates a traditional analog timepiece. However, he did it using LED filaments to create a striking and unique design . Thus the nameā€”FilamenTIME! LED filaments are still relatively new on the scene. Theyā€™re basically a bunch of tiny LCDs mounted in a single package to create a single ā€œfilamentā€ of light that appears continuous. Itā€™s great if you want to create a bar of light without messing around with populating tons of parts and having to figure out diffusion on your own. [sjm4306] used them to create glowing bar elements in a clock for telling the time. The outer ring contains 60 filaments for the 60 minutes in an hour, while the inner ring contains 12 filaments to denote the hours themselves. To handle so many LEDs, there are 9 shift registers on board. Theyā€™re driven by an ATmega328P which runs the show, with a DS3232MZ real-time clock onboar...
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Handheld Console Plays Original Pong With Modern E-Waste

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[Simon] wrote in to let us know about DingPong , his handheld portable Pong console. Thereā€™s a bit more to it than meets the eye, however. Consider for a moment that back in the 1970s playing Pong required a considerable amount of equipment, not least of which was dedicated electronics and a CRT monitor. What was huge (in more than one way) in the 70s has been shrunk down to handheld, and implemented almost entirely on modern e-waste in the process. The 1970s would be blown away by a handheld version of Pong, made almost entirely from salvaged components. DingPong is housed in an old video doorbell unit (hence the name) and the screen is a Sony Video Watchman, a portable TV from 1982 with an amazing 4-inch CRT whose guts [Simon] embeds into the enclosure. Nearly everything in the build is either salvaged, or scrounged from the junk bin. Components are in close-enough values, and power comes from nameless lithium-ion batteries that are past their prime but still good enough to p...
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Glow In The Dark PCBs Are Pretty Cool

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What if circuit boards could glow in the dark? Itā€™s a fun question, and one [Botmatrix] sought to answer when approached by manufacturer PCBWay to run a project together. It turns out that itā€™s quite possible to make glowing PCBs, with attractive results. (Video after the break.) Specifically, PCBWay has developed a workable glow-in-the-dark silkscreen material that can be applied to printed circuit boards. As a commercial board house, PCBWay hasnā€™t rushed to explain how precisely they pulled off this feat, but we donā€™t imagine that it involved anything more than adding some glow-in-the-dark powder to their usual silkscreen ink, but we can only speculate. On [Botmatrix]ā€™s end, his video steps through some neat testing of the performance of the boards. Theyā€™re tested using sensors to determine how well they glow over time. It might seem like a visual gimmick, and to an extent, itā€™s just a bit of fun. But still, [Botmatrix] notes that it could have some practical applications too. F...
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PPS Is The Hottest USB-C Feature You Didnā€™t Know About

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USB Power Delivery is widely considered to be a  good thing . Itā€™s become relatively standard, and is a popular way for makers to easily power their projects at a number of specific, useful voltages. However, what you may not know is that itā€™s possible to get much more variable voltages out of some USB chargers out there. As [GreatScott!] explains , youā€™ll want to meet USB-C PPS. PPS stands for Programmable Power Supply. Itā€™s a method by which a USB-C device can request variable voltage and current delivery on demand. Unlike the Power Delivery standard, youā€™re not limited to set voltages at tiers of 5V, 9V, 15V and 20V. You can have your device request the exact voltage it wants, right from the charger.  Commercially, itā€™s most typically used to allow smartphones to charge as fast as possible by getting the optimum voltage to plumb into the battery. However, with the right techniques, you can use PPS to get a charger to output whatever voltage  you want, from 3.3 V to...
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