Sony has earned itself quite a reputation as the freedom hating corporation for locking horns with the hacking community on more than one occasion. Inspite of Jack Tretton, SCEA's CEO, admitting that "We embrace independent game development; if you call that hacking, then we embrace that. We give people tools that let them create new experiences. What I don’t think we are in support of is someone trying to hack our device to pirate software and possibly collapse the platform," there is bad blood between them and the hacking community.
Here are five awesome hacks that don't involve piracy, but show some really cool things you can do with your PS3.
#5 Street Fighter with a Guitar
The OpenChord.org guitar controller is a great open source platform which is used to play guitar games, but who says you can limit your Strumming skills to a Guitar Hero game? Alan Chatham the guy who created the OpenChord software which lets you use your regular electric guitar as a PS3 controller patched the firmware(OpenChord) so instead of showing up as a Guitar controller to the PS3, it shows up as a Dual Shock.
#4 Internal 7-segment PS3 display
This is probably one of the coolest mods I've ever seen, although only possible on the fat PS3 it shows off the temperatures and the fan speed of the system. Now, this does make your PS3 very loud to minimize the dreaded YLOD percentages. The mod uses an Arduino Pro Mini board to read thermal sensors at four locations. Killerbug has all the information on his website on how to build one yourself.
#3 PS Move detects Earth's rotation
Now this is one of those things which you might not be able to pull off unless you want to prove Earth's Diurnal rotation with a Move controller which has the highest dynamic range compared to other products(Wii Motion Plus). Just in case you do, you'll need an old vinyl turntable and some fancy equipment which I'm not familiar with. Well, if you still have your doubts…you conspiracy theorists can head over to their website and find out how to pull off this badass physics experiment.
#2 Fully Remappable PS3 Controller
The project was started to allow Chuck Bittner, a quadriplegic stand-up comedian, to remap the buttons on a standard controller. Although this involves some serious skill and runs its own USB port on the opposite side of the controller, so if you don't know what you're doing, don't try this. The complete instructions on how to modify a standard controller are available on the acidmods forums.
#1 Custom PS3 Wireless Namco Gun Controller Call of Duty Style Mod
Here's another cool mod of a PS3 Controller using a PS3 wired Namco controller and a PS3 wireless controller. You have to appreciate the build quality of this one as the finished product looks so well done. The video includes the whole process of him putting together this hybrid beast of a controller.
