Monthly Archive for September, 2007

Xbox LED Ring

Published on September 17, 2007 in Electronics, Hacks and Video Games. 0 Comments

Back when I was involved with hardmods.net, “rb” and I considered opening up shop and making a few kits to sell. There were a number of factors why it never happened but we actually designed and prototyped an LED ring for the Xbox 1. At the time there weren’t any LED rings on the market really. People who had LED Rings were basically making their own by hot gluing LEDs to the inside of their case. The effect was pretty cool, I actually had one setup with 16 blue LEDs at one point and another one setup with eight red LEDs in an “X” pattern. I snapped some pictures of the two setups in use with some custom laser engraved jewels from Xport, though the pictures really speak more for the quality of the jewels than they do for the LED ring.

Halo BlueFace BlueBlack Hole Blue

Halo RedFace RedBlack Hole Red

The Hardmods LED ring was basically just a PCB that you would solder to yourself. What was interesting about our design is that you could set it up to to have anywhere from 1 to 16 LEDs mounted evenly around the ring. I’ve still got 3 prototypes sitting on the desk in my office.

Hardmods.net LED Ring Prototypes Hardmods.net LED Ring Prototypes

I don’t have the schematics though. (rb, if you’re reading this send it to me please!) When I got the prototypes I also received a poster sized print of the LED ring layout with color coded traces. It had no dimensions but it’s the only documentation I ever had for the things. I’m not sure exactly where it is but I’m sure I could find it if I looked. It’d be no more useful than if I simply scanned one of my prototypes anyway.

ProjectDeck / Xi-Fi

Published on September 16, 2007 in Electronics, Hacks and Video Games. 0 Comments

A group of Xbox case modders from Xbox-Scene set out to design and build a case that delivered on the failed promises of a high level case called “XDeck” The XDeck was a case that would house extra hard drives or DVD drive, integrate a DVD dongle and allow switching between devices. All XDeck ever delivered was a few concept images done in photoshop.

XDeck v2 XDeck v3 Pro

In January of 2003 some “team” proposed that they were going to build the ultimate Xbox modder’s accessory. A device that would manage multiple hard drives and enclose them all into a OEM looking case as well. They talked a big show for months and eventually released “concept images” which were clearly just Photoshoped pictures of an Xbox. After not delivering any solid evidence that they had actually developed what they said they had, or even had any groundwork laid out to produce said product they actually had the audacity to start collecting donations and pre-orders from people. Of course like all good scams once they had milked as many donations and pre-orders as they could they vanished off of the face of the earth.

To prove that the ingenuity of “the scene” was just as good if not better than these schmucks; in May of 2004 HSDEMONZ from Xbox-Scene decided to round up some of the best case modders in the forums to succeed where the XDeck had failed, this group was aptly named ProjectDeck.

ProjectDeck Banner

I was not originally a member of the team but shortly after things had started moving I expressed interest in the project to Palmore, the current project leader, who invited me to join the team. I’m a very opinionated person, coupled with the fact that I’m blunt verbose and slightly abrasive, as a result I often find myself getting put in leadership positions. In some cases it’s nice but a lot of times it’s a job I don’t really want. It didn’t take long before I ended up as project leader.

I don’t remember the exact sequence of events but we had devised a large questionnaire to find out what the Xbox-Scene population wanted in a case. A member by the name of DeAdGuy created a survey for us and it worked out great. Having the support of Xbox-Scene in the hay day of Xbox 1 modding produced thousands of members providing us with feedback. In addition to questions we had added a few photoshopped images of layouts that people could vote on which ones they liked the best.

We took the feedback to heart and produced some 3D concept images and started working on a prototype.

ProjectDeck Model 1

Saturn Ion Gen-Y Package

Published on September 16, 2007 in Cars and Projects. 1 Comment

Saturn Ion Gen-Y Package

During my Senior year at Rensselaer I worked on special team of students in conjunction with General Motors tasked with developing an options package for the Saturn Ion that would appeal to buyers in the “Generation Y” demographic.

We spend a good several months doing nothing but market research, then sketched and brainstormed based on then, then made photoshop and CAD concepts, then more market research to validate our ideas.

Saturn Ion Concept 1Saturn Ion Custom Wheel CAD

Once all that was done we made some prototypes. Most of the prototypes were pretty lame and really poor attempts at recreating what was in the sketches. While not the prettiest thing in the world my good friend Brandon and I spent nearly 72 hours straight recreating, in the flesh, the most popular front facia concept. I had created numerous concept facias using photoshop and the marketing guys determined that the “J1” concept was the clear winner. The “J’ stood for Japanese as the design used queues from Honda and Nissan sports models. I was pretty pleased with the outcome.

Saturn Ion Facia Prototype TopSaturn Ion Facia Prototype Front