Whether you’re looking for an interface for your new DIY arcade cabinet or want to build a custom keypad for an application, this detailed tutorial will show you how to frankenmod an old keyboard into a new interface.
Rupert, over at Runaway Brainz, wanted to avoid shelling out a lot of money for a custom control interface for a MAME cabinet. To that end he hacked apart an old keyboard, mapped the key signals on the keyboard matrix, and then rewired the board to use the inputs he needed for the new interface. The final product looks very little like a keyboard and very much like the expensive input modules he emulated for his no-cost DIY model.
Hack: Reverse Engineer and Repurpose an Old Keyboard “The Matrix Reloaded” [via Hack A Day]
Chrome: You have a bunch of tabs open, you want to share them with a friend, but you don’t want to cut and paste all the URLs. One-click solution Tabulate! takes the hassle out of sharing your tabs.
Once a week we round up some of the reader questions we’ve answered and share them with the greater How-To Geek audience. This week we’re looking at trouble shooting a monitor with black bars, how to retrieve a file from a system restore point, and finding duplicate photos.
Think you know the answer? Click through to see if you're right!
Android: Dropbox just rolled out an update for their Android mobile client; grab it today to enjoy a slew of new features including faster menus, bulk upload, and more.
If you’re a board game fan you’re all to familiar with how precisely the box components fit when you first unwrap it and how loosely they fit afterwards; use this clever hack to keep things tight and tidy.
Android: If you’re worried you’re not getting enough sleep but not sure how to keep a close eye on it, SleepBot is feature-packed app that analyze your sleep patterns, integrates with alarm clocks, and more.
Running Windows 8 from a USB should not be confused with installing Windows on a USB drive–in this case, instead of installing it on the drive, we’re just running it straight from the portable drive. Here’s how to do it.
Continuing our series on using Windows Server 2008 as a desktop OS, today we’ll talk about how to re-enable the sound features, which normally aren’t needed on a server, but would be useful if you are using it as a desktop.
Ubuntu’s Unity desktop environment has customizable keyboard shortcuts and animations, but its options are all hidden. We’ll show you how to get started with the CompizConfig Settings Manager and point out some of Unity’s more interesting configuration options.
Our Christmas edition of WIG is filled with news link goodness such as Facebook’s upcoming addition of sponsored story ads to your newsfeed, the breach of US Chamber of Commerce systems by Chinese hackers, the lawsuit against Sony for their no-suing rules, and more.