About a PS3

So my mother bought a PS3 in 2006 or 2007 because it was the cheapest Blu-Ray player on the market. Of course if there is a way to run code on it I'm in!

The chosen path was a PSGroove based around the PIC18F2550 (My first microcontroller with native USB!) and here you can see how simple is is (and what a waste of a PIC!).

So why even post about a 2007 PS3 hack? Well, I only have 3 games for it and only one of them gets played (Trinity Universe). Now, I really dislike loading times, so I have a copy and play it from the internal hard drive. All is great up until now as the PS3 was upgraded from 3.41 to 3.70 (most likely a Blu-ray movie) so the solution is invasive surgery (direct NAND manipulation)!!

After poking around the net I found it is possible to reflash the internal memory of the PS3 so that is something I would like to do (plus it's an exscuse to delve into the console) but I do not want to buy a special flash tool.

It can be done with a cheap Teensy++ 2.0 so that got me thinking a bit. After looking around on many forums there don't seem to be many options for DIY tools. Either the Teensy++ 2.0 or Progskeet or other more expensive tools or kits. Of course I could buy a teensy but I don't like the idea of spending money on a relativly low end and slow board. I already have an Arduino Uno and various PIC boards.

I am assuming that the lack of other DIY tools is due to the programming involved with the microcontroller. Therefore after looking into some of the code used and chip timmings I believe it would be a great experience to "port" or write new code for a developing board that interest me.

Something nice and fast with plenty of I/O and a host of features yet cheap and easy to use in projects. 30€, 48IO, USB host, 70Mhz and up... Well... thats for another time. I have other projects to get done first and learning how to properly handle flash memory, USB connections and data managment.

In the meantime I'll just have to deal with the loading times and search for a nice development board!

Here is a photo of my previous P16PRO programmer before getting a wonderful pickit2 :)

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Detolf Lighting

Here is a small guide to my still incomplete Detolf RGB LED lighting!


This is my nearly complete lighting setup. It consists of Ikea Dioder RGB LED lighting strips controlled by a micro controller that sets the RGB color.
So not only do I get lights off and lights on;




I can get Red, Green and Blue!



And I can also combine RGB to produce lots of other colors;


Also, the colors can be programed to follow certain patterns and effects thanks to the MoMoLight hardware/software and the BobLight software.
My version has slightly different hardware, firmware and a software color controller.
It's not pretty, but it works for what I need;

The whole setup can work as an ambient mood light, gently fading from one color to the next, or pulse violently at the rhythm of music.
Installing the Dioders into the cabinets is simple, but the wiring is a bit tricky, here are a few pictures of how I put mine together, its not permanent and is held together with tie wraps!




My goal is to get each Detolf shelf LED strip to be controllable individually as right now it only has 3 channels. Although I'm using a programable micro controller you can still have multicolored goodness with the standard Dioder controller.
If you have any questions please ask away!

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Some may find this shocking!

Picking up on my electronics again, about time too. Check out Felicia balancing ready to attack my mouse! :D

Finally secured the wire on my Micro Pic programmer, feels a lot safer to move around without worrying about it ripping off.
Basically I'm just trying to program some more PIC's such as the 16F84A, 16F628, 12F629 and 16c73A. Playing around with logic gates and drivers, nothing serious really.

List o' stuff:

• Programmer in the background near the plugs.
• Breadboards and power supply with a bunch of IC's.
• Component draw, full of IC's, LED's, resistors, capacitors, transistors, displays etc. I have another draw with more "industrial" stuff like transformers, heat sinks, connectors and switches.
• Block of paper, but its actually a Data Sheet in disguise!
  

Believe it or not, Felicia actually falls backwards, and she's balancing on her feet, an odd sight in-deed.

BTW, I got offered a job to program machines (one of my dreams) but they wanted full time D: Boo! I'm a student still!

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