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[on:]

Happy Holliduino?!

I whipped this up Friday afternoon after a costume party invite. It normally says "LANE ENDS MERGE RIGHT" and can be hacked to say "CAUTION! ZOMBIES! AHEAD!!!"

I used an RBBB arduino board from Modern Devices to control an 8x32 LED display from Sure Electronics.  When you open the access panel, the blinking green light indicates normal operation. To hack the sign you must figure out which of six bolts is the key and clamp an alligator clip to it. When the correct bolt is found, the light will flash blue quickly and then continue flashing red while the hacked message is displayed. The key bolt is randomly picked each time the hack is disengaged.

and my wife was a zombie!! yeah!

[Reply #1 on:]

Very nice. I'm a big fan of the sure LED matrices as well. I couldn't really tell from the video, but what is the enclosure made out of?

/yc/

[Reply #2 on:]

Thank you.  I was having a time trying to come up with a quick costume when I spied that display and figured I'd better go with what I know.  

The 'enclosure' is a cardboard box, painted black and lined with tinfoil.  I cut out a hole for the display and secured it with a dab of hot glue on the corners.   The front flap secures with a pair of neodymium magnets.  The ckt is built on a breadboard and ziptied inside the box.  A piece of plexiglass fit in a slot on the breadboard giving me a mount for the hacking terminals.  

My apologies for the crappy video quality; I plan to fix that this weekend.  

[Reply #3 on:]

Hate to bump my old post, but I figured you'd like to know that I made it on cnn with this!  

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2010/05/25/moos.no.tacos.hackers.cnn?hpt=C2

I'm right around the 1:10 mark

I've always been a fan Mrs. Moos.

[Reply #4 on:]

Pretty high praise!

[Reply #5 on:]

hehe... "Gay bear ahead!!"

good humour  ;D