[TIFI via Boing Boing]

For sale November 30 in a limited run of 200 units, the kits run around $US125 (plus the cost of buttons, as I understand). As for the final built product, it features 16 programmable buttons and LEDs that allow you to cue your MIDI samples with all the finesse of button-mashing Shredder to death.

The only possible point of improvement would be a coin slot mandating occasional quarter-purchased continues. Or, you know, the addition of even more buttons (which is technically feasible with some modification to the kit). [djtechtools via MAKE]

Here’s what Texas-based law firm AbingtonIP says to justify their new suit:

Although modification of Xbox consoles is arguably against the terms of use for Xbox/Xbox Live, Microsoft ‘conveniently’ timed the Xbox console ban to coincide with the release of the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game and less than two months after the release of the very popular Halo 3: ODST game.

I’m not sure that modding consoles is “arguably” against the terms of use; it is against the terms of use. And why wouldn’t they want to keep people from pirating their biggest game of the year?

Certainly, anyone who is banned who hasn’t modded their console has a legitimate bone to pick with Microsoft, and there’s no defending their heavy-handed banning tactics and their collateral damage. But to suggest they’re intentionally banning legit accounts in order to get people to sign up again, well, that’s pretty stupid. [TG Daily via Engadget]

Inductive charging, allowing you to charge a gadget just by placing it on a non-electrocuting surface, is a pretty neat parlour trick. But you’re still putting a gadget on a charger. This DIY mod, however, trades synthetic chargers for wood.

Using a hacked Powermat, this plank of wood becomes a full capable inductive charger. Why do I find this so superior to the original product? Most tables are built from wood, and this technique would allow a tabletop, with no special gimmicks on top, to charge your gadgets.

And it’s the potential for passive, seamless integration that makes inductive charging so attractive to me, not just the lack of plugs. [Instructables via CrunchGear]

I mean, it’s not the kind of game that should be played at a distance, and this custom-built board doesn’t even have holes along the track. Although, I have to give the designer credit for the gumball prize — that was a nice touch. Check out the project page for full details on the build. [Marble Maze via Trossen Robotics via Hacked Gadgets]

As you might have guessed, a standard front engine avoids the afterburner setting cars on fire when the Frictionator hits the streets. [Frictionator via Jalopnik]

It’s going to be a little different than just the usual crap you can buy — it’s a guide that can start you on an amazing journey of building electronics and learning new skills. If you’re really motivated, you just might invent something new.

Let’s get started! The question I get asked the most is “where to start” — lots of people see all the DIY projects here on Gizmodo and just don’t know where to begin. I’ve put together some favourite tools, resources and beginner electronics kits that will get you going and give you something fun to show your friends. You don’t need to buy many things either, since many of the kits and gadgets are “open source” — you can buy the parts, etch a circuit board, “breadboard” it or in some cases just build parts of them with what you may have at home by cannibalising a junk drawer of fail-gadgets.

The Tools
Starting out on your electronics adventure? Want to wield the mighty soldering iron? Tired of saying “I’d totally get into electronics if I only knew what tools to get…”? Working with substandard equipment is a terrible way to learn electronics: A lot of frustration with too little success. The right tool set will keep you progressing without the stressing. This toolbox contains carefully selected hand tools that will last you for many many years. Keep in mind that you don’t need to buy this tool pack — just look it over (itemised on the product page). Consider it a list of good things to have to get started. You may even have some of these tool collecting dust in the garage already! $US100 [Ladyada's Electronics Toolkit]

Make & Build Stuff
Now that you’ve got the tools, what’s next? Microcontrollers! These are basically cheap, tiny computers that you can run simple programs on, control motors and make stuff happen based on sensor data.

For the longest time BASIC Stamp/PIC was the dominant chip that hobbyists used, and still to this day PICs are very popular. However, over the last few years an open-source project from Italy called “Arduino” — named after the Italian king Arduino of Ivrea, who ruled from 1002 to 1015, of course! — it has captured the hearts and minds of many beginners. No one knows why it’s so popular (over 100k units!) but I’d say it’s because the software to program them runs on Mac, PC and Linux, there’s a huge community of artists who make amazing things and share them, and it’s pretty inexpensive. And since it’s 100 per cent open source, you can make your own versions, improve on them and sell them if you wanted to.

What do the following projects all have in common? Google Street View on a hacked stationary bike, electronic wallpaper, secret-knock door opener, Ghostbusters proton packs, Barbots, skateboard etch-a-sketch and a Twitter toilet that tweets your poo… They’re all made with Arduino!

Make & Build Stuff
You don’t need to buy an Arduino, you can “make” one using a breadboard and a lot of parts — but let’s say you want to dive in and pick up an Arduino with enough projects to teach you how things work, and help you explore microcontroller basics. Covers LEDs, transistors, motors, integrated circuits, pushbuttons, variable resistors, photo resistors, temperature sensors and relays. I suggest the Arduino ARDX experimentation pack for $US85. If that breaks the bank, choose from less expensive packs: a $US65 starter pack, a $US50 budget pack or just a straight-up $US30 Arduino.

If you can scrounge up the parts on your own you can always download and print up the free booklet which includes all the lessons. If you’re the book-learnin’ type, there’s a great little one called Getting Started With Arduino, $US13, written by Massimo Banzi, co-founder of the Arduino Project.

Make & Build Stuff
The Arduino is great and there are a lot of “shields” to expand its functionality (music, GPS, internet), but what if you want to get your hands dirty and make something more complicated? Here are three of my favourite beginner electronics kits to get you started — as always, they are open source so you could make these on your own too.

The first lets you juice up all the gadgets — MP3 player, camera, mobile phone, etc — that you plug into a USB port to charge. The Minty Boost is small and simple but very powerful. If you have a new or old phone that always runs down, make one of these to get a lot of extra talk time. Be sure to check the project page for the latest compatibility notes for many devices. $US20 [Minty Boost kit]

Make & Build Stuff
Relive the fun of CES 2008 everyday with TV-B-Gone. People are still polarised about the whole CES thing. Everyone was complaining that CES sucked because it was just about “giant TVs” and when someone turned them off for a few seconds the interweb world freaked out. I don’t have any opinion on it, other than that CES should be more exciting than a TV-turn-off freak out. That said, the TV-B-Gone is a wonderful device to learn the ins-and-outs of IR signalling, and it’s fun to turn off TVs in store windows that are closed at night to save power. (That’s what I like to do.) The new Universal TV-B-Gone kit is an ultra-high-power version of the TV-B-Gone (assembled), able to reach 45m and can be used anywhere in the world. Plus, you make it yourself. $US20 [TV-B-Gone (kit or assembled)]

Make & Build Stuff
Spell words in the air with your bicycle wheels using SpokePOV, an easy-to-make electronic kit toy. The project includes a free schematic design and open software for uploading and editing stored bitmap images. Perfect for those late-night Critical Mass rides or your Burning Man transport. $US100 for triple; $US38 for one [SpokePOV]

Hackable Electronics and 3D Printing
Next up, I put together some of my favourite “gadgets” that aren’t necessarily kits but are hackable. Many companies are inviting their customers to hack and mod their devices, the folks are the pioneers!

The Chumby does so many things it’s hard to actually tell someone what it is. I usually say it’s an internet alarm clock that runs widgets. Most people seem to get that, or they’ll get curious enough to check out the site. The latest version, the cool retro-looking Chumby One is out. The product is open source, so you can hack it, mod it, get the source and schematics and best of all make widgets for it. (Chumby trivia: The engineer behind it, Bunnie Huang, is one of the best engineers in the world. If you’re old school, you’ll remember him as the first person to hack the original Xbox, and as author of Hacking the Xbox: An Introduction to Reverse Engineering.) $US99 [Chumby; Gizmodo]

Hackable Electronics and 3D Printing
Bug is the Lego of computers. Make a GPS camera MP3 player? You can! It’s a modular, open-source system for building whatever comes to mind, by plugging little modules into each other ’til you get the desired functionality. If you want to program them, you need to know Java, but there are also a lot of apps you can just download. BUGbase core $US450; assorted modules from $US70; monster kit $US750 [Bug Labs]

Hackable Electronics and 3D Printing
MakerBot is a new entry in the world of 3D printing. Based on the open-source RepRap project, Brooklyn-based MakerBot is becoming the default install for any self-respecting hacker space. (Well, that and a laser cutter.) The MakerBot can print 3D objects you make or download — Thingiverse is a great source. The coolest thing I’ve seen lately is a print out of Thom Yorke’s head. $US700 [MakerBot]

My Fantasy Gadget
The Giz gang asked me to name a “dream gadget”, and of course for me it’s something that makes things: A “pick-and-place” machine, namely the MDC 7722fv from Japan. You could use it to make iPhones in your living room if you really wanted to. I have one now, so at least for me, the fantasy has became a reality. I’m currently making accelerometers and Drawdios (musical pencils) but next year expect to see an open-source watch and who knows? Maybe you’ll see me selling cloned iPhones on Canal Street in NYC, next to the counterfeit DVD and purse dudes. Over $US30,000 [MDC; US distributor]

Phil Torrone is the senior editor at MAKE magazine and creative director for Adafruit Industries, an open-source hardware manufacturer in NYC. In the interest of disclosure, please note that many of the products you see above are sold though Adafruit and Make, but it just so happens, the source for the best info is also the source for many of the goods.

All Giz Wants is our annual round-up of favourite gift ideas, including amazing attainable objects and a few far-out fantasies. We’ll be popping guides catered to different interests several times per day for the next week, so keep checking back.

The system was built by Bill “Overkill” Owen from mnpctech, based on a winning render by “Cheapskate”. The worklogs of all the finalist mods are fun to flick through, and the hundreds of hours of work that went into the Cube’s CNC milled sheets of aluminium and laser cut pieces of acrylic look worth it to me. [Modders-Inc and Mnpctech]

Full specs:

ION ITX-A-U Specifications
Processor 1.6 GHz Intel Atom 330
533 MHz FSB
Chipset NVIDIA MCP7A-ION
System Memory, Dual channel DDR2 667 DIMM slots
Up to 4 GB of memory
VGA Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Graphics
Supported Resolution 1920 x 1440 (VGA)
Expansion Slots PCI Express Mini Card (wireless card pre-installed)
Onboard IDE None
Onboard Serial ATA 3 SATA (3 Gb/sec.) connectors (RAID 0, 1, 0+1)
Onboard USB 10 USB 2.0
Onboard LAN Realtek RTL8211C GbE 10/100/1000
Onboard Audio Realtek ALC662 5.1 channel HD codec
Back Panel I/O 6 USB 2.0 ports
1 VGA port
1 DVI-I port
1 HDMI port
1 eSATA port
1 LAN port
1 PS2 keyboard port
2 S/PDIF-out ports (coaxial/optical)
3 Audio jacks: line-out, line-in, mic-in
1 DC jack
Onboard I/O Connectors 3 SATA connectors
4 USB 2.0 via 2 pin headers
1 RS-232 COM pin header
1 Front panel audio pin header
1 Front panel pin header
2 Fan pin headers
4-pin Molex connector (for peripheral power)
BIOS AMI BIOS 8 Mb flash memory
System Monitoring & Management: System power management, RTC timer
Operating Temperature 0ºC ~ 50ºC
Power DC 19 V @ 4.74 A
Form Factor: Mini-ITX (17 x 17 cm)
Includes Driver CD
Backplate
CPU fan
90 W AC adaptor & cord
Wireless antenna
3 SATA cables
1 SATA power cable

Our first mod is a relatively recent one. The modder took a nice, fully functioning Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combo cartridge, gutted it and turned it into an admittedly clean and portable NES emulator. Sure, the gutting made most of my 1986 memories fade into a terrifying pit of blackness, but at least this wasn’t a golden Legend of Zelda cartridge or anything.

Christ! That’s ugly. But pimpin’ ain’t easy, so we’ll give it a break. Unfortunately for me, my psyche receives no such break, and I am reduced to but two hearts, and my Master Sword no longer shoots laser beams.

The greatest platformer ever created by human hands, now a lowly 160GB USB drive. When will the insanity end?

Never, apparently. A mere month before the Super Mario Bros. 3 USB “creation” came to light, someone took a classic Game Boy, removed everything in it that made it a timeless piece of video game lore and replaced it with a hard drive. Half a heart left, and there’s this incessant beeping in my ears. Jack needs food, badly.

When I grip an NES control pad in my hands, its hard edges digging unforgivably into the soft flesh, I go to my happy place. When modder Taylor Merrill does the same, he hears the theme song from Sanford and Son. He also hears friends and relatives because he managed to get a Samsung Eternity phone into the controller that defined a generation of early console gamers. Good for you all. My childhood just ran into a goomba, jumped straight up into the air and fell off the screen.

First you’ll need to get iXtreme LT, which’ll attempt to return your console to a playable state. The catch is that you need to know your CPU code and that the instructions rely on a lot of different (free) tools.

Has anyone used this or another workaround to get their Xbox playing again? [DailyTech via Crunchgear]