When the Chevy Volt is finally available, you’ll be able to start your car via your cell phone (if you have a spare $40K).  However, you can easily make your own car starter from a $10 disposable cell phone and a few bits and bobs for around $10.  If you’re super lazy, you could use it to start your car in the morning so it’s all warmed up when you leave the house.

This is the same technique used to launch fireworks with your cell phone. Instead of turning on the vibrate motor when someone calls, your car will start instead.  The phone can be kept charged by hooking it up to the cigarette lighter of your car (you can do this from behind the dashboard if you want it to be discreet).  You can also set alarms via your phone’s calendar.

Popular Automotive Projects:

• Top 5 DIY Custom Car Body Mods
• RFID Hack: Automatic Keyless Mazda Entry
• Remotely Drive a Car with an iPhone

Previously, we’ve shown you how to setup your own projection bombing system allowing you to “tag” and monument or building with your own, custom messages.  Typically, a green laser was used to draw a design on a building, but now you can use your finger and an iPhone to accomplish the same thing.  Enjoy!

Related iPhone Projects:

• 10 Outstanding DIY iPhone Hacks
• iPhone Controlled Tank using Arduino
• POV iPhone App Writes Messages in Midair

Related iPhone and Arduino Projects:

• 10 Outstanding DIY iPhone Hacks
• Top 40 Arduino Projects of the Web
• iPhone Controlled USB Missile Launcher

• See all of our Case Mods and Mac Projects

The specs on the finished machine:

• 2.93Ghz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550S processor
• NVIDIA Geforce 9800 GT graphics card
• 8GB of RAM
• 16GB solid state drive
• Four traditional hard drives – (Windows 7, Snow Leopard, and two 500GB 7,200 RPM drives for video editing)

Again, the video speaks for itself: A superb project with a fantastic result.  Check out more Mac hacks, iPhone hacks, and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, this took 35-40 hours and 2 months to complete.

Should driving a car with an iPhone deserve a ticket? Nah, it should be rewarded.  It might look dangerous but this iPhone hack is just another example of what can be done with an iPhone and uncommon ingenuity. The 10 Outstanding DIY iPhone Hacks we covered a while back show more superb ways modders have exploited the iPhone.

Follow along the Waterloo Engineering team as they show us a video how-to on how to remote control a full sized automobile.  Controlling the car with an iPhone is not just a case of an iPhone app and Wi-Fi. It’s also a lot of ‘behind the wheels’ engineering as the gas, the brake and the steering are rigged up with three separate controlling motors. The motors are interfaced to a Wi-Fi enabled Compact RIO controller.

The car can be remotely steered using a laptop with LabView software as the brains.  A custom app lets you control the pedal and gas with touch sliders on the phone. The steering is taken care of by the iPhone’s accelerometer.

Three instructional videos take us through the project. The first gives an overview, the second focuses on the components and the third is all about the code for the iPhone app. All three end with glimpses of car-surfing with a driverless car. You can also check out the text description on how they did it.

Get yourself a salvaged car, some scavenged motor parts and the other hardware mentioned. Try this one out far away from the cops.

iPhone hacks never cease to amaze. Check out a few more:

• Car Hacking: iPhone Controlled Mazda
• 10 Outstanding DIY iPhone Hacks
• DIY Home Automation: iPhone Controlled TV Lift

1. DIY Multi-Room Wireless Music Remote

   
   With the help of some external hardware and a handheld wireless device such as an iPhone or iPod touch, you can build your own wireless music remote. It’s a bit spendy if you don’t already have an Iphone/iTouch and a router, but there’s a step by step tutorial to guide you through the setup build.

2. DIY iPhone Controlled Car (Complete Control)

   These guys took an iPhone and using a special app, the onboard GPS and Wifi along with some serious modding they managed to make a life size R/C car. I bet it was difficult to drive using the six-axis in the iPhone but it’s still a great mod. Learn how it was done in an upcoming post. Subscribe so you don’t miss it.

3. iPhone Controlled Mazda (without gas and break)

   By tapping into his car’s onboard wifi and diagnostic systems, this hacker can control his car from anywhere in the world.  He’s able to start the engine, pop the trunk, lock/unlock, and view all vehicle diagnostics from his iPhone. As seen in the video, electronic controls are housed in the trunk along with an Arduino to help process commands.

4. How to View your Webcam on your iTouch or iPhone

   

   In this tutorial, we’ll be showing you how to watch a live feed from your webcam on your iPhone or iPod touch from anywhere in the world. Setup is pretty simple, basically just download and install a windows program and the necessary app and you’re ready to stream live.

5. Build a Solar-powered iPhone Charger

   

   How many times has your cell phone died in the middle of the day because of its lousy battery life? You have several options: you could recharge via wall socket, via USB, through an external battery or the green way, with a DIY solar iPhone charger. Don’t forget to pick up any needed supplies for this build (including solar panels) at our store!

6. Make a Laser Matrix Projector for the iPhone

   
   The idea is to add some kind of projector capability to mobile phone (e.g. iPhone) that isn’t too complex or expensive. Instead of using an expensive mini projector, I decided to use lasers instead to any bitmap font using a matrix of laser points, which is controlled by iPhone.

7. How to: iPhone as a Wireless Router for your Laptop

   Transform your iPhone into a wireless router, allowing you to connect your wifi deprived laptop to the internet anywhere phone service is available. It’s also perfect when you’re browsing the web but the small screen is too cramped. Now you can easily switch over to your laptop for a larger viewing window.

8. RC Car Controlled Via the Web

   

   Strap on a standard Linksys router to an RC car and you can wirelessly control it through the web from up to 1640 feet away. It’s also equipt with a webcam and operates through a brain comprised of PIC microcontrollers or the Arduino’s ATmega168. The in depth tutorial will guide you through the build.

9. Home Automation Using the iPhone and X10

   Like most people, we’re huge fans of home automation. We’ve even covered quite a few ways people have used Twitter to automate your home. This time, however, we’ll be automating our homes by managing SmartHome’s X10 home automation modules using the iPhone.

10. The Rockband Robot iPhone.

    This guy obviously wanted to break a world record in Rockband because he built a robot to attach to his iPhone that plays it perfectly for him. It works by light sensors telling the prosthetic fingers when a note is coming up and driving a motor to press the screen and thus play the note.

Honorable Mention: How to disassemble the iPhone and unleash your hardware hacking skill.

More iPhone Projects:

• Jailbreak and Unlock iPhone 3.1.2
• iPhone Controlled USB Missile Launcher
• How to Build a Simple iPhone Tripod Mount

Since Apple’s newest upgrade, not even the iPhone dev team (the group who is famous for jailbreaking the iPhone) has been able to crack it…Until now.  Now you can crack the newest version of the iPhone OS 3.1.2 and you can jailbreak previous versions as well, allowing you to use the iPhone with Verizon, Sprint, T-mobile, or any network of your choice.  If all else fails, you can actually unlock the iPhone by hacking the hardware, but that’s quite a bit more complicated.

*Update* Correction: You can jailbreak it and not unlock it quite yet.

You may also enjoy:

• Build a Solar-powered iPhone Charger
• How to: iPhone as a Wireless Router for your Laptop
• How to View your Webcam on your iTouch or iPhone

1. Ripped DVD Videos on your iPhone
2. iPhone Controlled RC Car
3. All of our iPhone projects

Stay tuned and subscribe to HacknMod for more exceptional hacks, mods, and DIY projects.

Super Nintendo (SNES) still has fans worldwide – Who doesn’t love the retro consoles? Thanks to SNES emulators, the Super Nintendo is still alive and kicking in some corners of the game world.

Emulation of the SNES is now available for a number of console platforms. Snes9x for example is a portable, freeware SNES emulator. Snes9x is coded in C++ for Linux and Windows. Many ports of Snes9x are easily available. SNES 9xGX specially, is a Super Nintendo emulator for the Wii based on the SNES9x.

But this hack could be the very first homebrew emulation for the Xbox360. The innovative project used the SNES9X GX emulator ported to the Xbox360. OS dependence was bypassed by using Libxenon (which is a library for writing programs for the Xbox 360). The end result, as the video shows is a success. The GUI may not be eye pleasing but you sure can get those old games back into action on your Xbox360.

Go back in time with some of our retro-hacking emulation projects –

• How to Build a DIY Nintendo Arcade
• How to Hack and Customize a Retro Atari Game
• NES Emulator on the iPhone

While iPhone’s have just about any feature you could possibly want, they may not always produce crisp photos.  By using a few parts from an old Nikon camera mount, this modder created their own tripod for their iPhone 3GS.  Full build details are available for you to follow and we have plenty of other camera and photography projects for you to enjoy:

• Incredible LED and Laser Photography
• DIY Heltmet Cam Inside Ski Goggles
• EyeBorg: False Eye Camera Implant