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https://hackaday.com/2020/04/09/ultrasonic-sensor-helps-you-enforce-social-distancing/ | Ultrasonic Sensor Helps You Enforce Social Distancing | Erin Pinheiro | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"bubble sort",
"coronavirus",
"servo motor",
"social distancing",
"ultrasonic distance sensor",
"ultrasonic sensor"
] | If you’re going outside (only for essential grocery runs, we hope) and you’re having trouble measuring the whole six feet apart from other people deal by eye, then [Guido Bonelli] has a solution for you. With a standard old HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor, an audio module and a servo to drive a custom gauge needle he’s made
a device which can warn people around you if they’re too close for comfort
.
As simple as this project may sound like for anyone who has a bunch of these little Arduino-compatible modules lying around and has probably made something similar to this in their spare time, there’s one key component that gives it an extra bit of polish. [Guido] found out how intermittent the reliability of the ultrasonic sensor was and came up with a clever way to smooth out its output in order to get more accurate readings from it, using a bubble sort algorithm with a twist. Thirteen data points are collected from the sensor, then they are sorted in order to find a temporal middle point, and the three data points at the center of that sort get averaged into the final output. Maybe not necessarily something with scientific accuracy, but exactly the kind of workaround we expect around these parts!
Projects like these to help us enforce measures to slow the spread of the virus are probably a good bet to keep ourselves busy tinkering in our labs, like
these sunglasses which help you remember not to touch your face
. Make sure to check out this one in action after the break! | 22 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235763",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-04-09T15:50:28",
"content": "I favor a self generating ORT field…. Olefactory Repellent Technology… just put on the same sweats you’ve been lounging around in all week to go shopping in. :-D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth":... | 1,760,373,527.492839 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/09/what-does-a-dependable-open-source-ventilator-look-like/ | What Does A Dependable Open Source Ventilator Look Like? | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Interest",
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"AmbuVent",
"ARDS",
"bag valve mask",
"BVM",
"Covid-19",
"E-Vent",
"mit",
"OxVent",
"tesla",
"ventilator"
] | Ventilators are key in the treating the most dire cases of coronavirus. The exponential growth of infections, and the number of patients in respiratory distress, has outpaced the number of available ventilators. In times of crisis, everyone looks for ways they can help, and one of the ways the hardware community has responded is in work toward a ventilator design that can be rapidly manufactured to meet the need.
The difficult truth is that the complexity of ventilator features needed to treat the sickest patients makes a bootstrapped design incredibly difficult, and I believe impossible to achieve in quantity on this timeline. Still, a well-engineered and clinically approved open source ventilator might deliver many benefits beyond the current crisis. Let’s take a look at some of the efforts we’ve been seeing recently and what it would take to pull together a complete design.
Bag-Based Ventilator Designs
MIT E-Vent Design
We’ve seen a number of designs based on a bag valve mask (BVM), also known by the brand name Ambu bag. You’ve likely seen these in medical scenes on television where a large flexible bladder is squeezed by a medical worker to push air into the lungs of an unconscious patient. Many recent DIY designs work by automating the squeezing of this bag. This does the work of a BVM, but I hesitate to call them a ventilator because they lack many critical features. I’ll address those below, but it’s also worth your time to watch this fifteen-minute video detailing the topic:
The use of a BVM is most often found in short-term situations where a patient with otherwise healthy lungs needs to be kept alive until they can be transported to a proper ventilator: think of a 20-minute ambulance ride. These are not designed to be used for long periods of time and we’ve seen
anecdotal reports that COVID-19 patients are needing invasive ventilation much longer
than expected, at more than a week and in some cases multiple weeks. And then they need to be weaned back off them.
Seen here is
the AmboVent design developed in Israel by a volunteer group
that included both physicians and engineers. It’s one of the most advanced bag-based designs we’ve seen, yet it raises a couple of concerns. When providing invasive breathing support as shown by this intubated test patient, the air needs to be both heated and humidified — normally a function of the sinuses, which have been bypassed to insert a tube into the trachea. It’s unclear if designs like these can be used with an external humidifying device.
The design also lacks the granularity necessary for the sick lungs of COVID-19 patients. Both the inhale and exhale cycles need to to be carefully regulated and monitored to ensure that as much of the lungs are being used as possible and no damage is being done to the patient’s lungs. Although there is a pressure sensor and “breath profiles” in the software of this particular design, the only control is the rate at which the motor-controlled arm squeezes the bag. There is also no in-built mechanism for regulating the oxygen concentration being provided.
Other similar bag-based designs include
the E-Vent from MIT
which uses a paddle to squeeze the bag, and
the OxVent coming out of the UK
which places the bag in a chamber and uses compressed air to squeeze it. All of these designs operate on similar principles and have the same limitations. But by far the biggest limitations are the lack of sensors and the complexity of software. Patients using these machines are sedated and often partially paralyzed. Intensive care ventilators are able to sense air pressure, oxygen concentration, and breath rate and adapt quickly and accurately. Developing these features is a software nightmare for a rushed product. And the lack of sensors to alarm under many possible failure states make these designs something that would require uninterrupted human oversight.
Tesla’s Ventilator Prototype is Closer But Still Far Away
The ventilator prototype demonstrated by Tesla engineers last week is certainly a step up from the state of the bag-based designs. That said, the clever bit of using an Ambu bag is that they’re already at every hospital in the world en masse.
The major advances found in Tesla’s design are the sensing mechanisms for both oxygen concentration and inhale/exhale pressures. As demonstrated in the video, there is a mixing chamber where oxygen is added to ambient air. The system can adjust based on oxygen concentration in the exhale tubing. There is also separate pressure sensing and actuation for both inhale and exhale cycles.
Acute respiratory distress syndrome
(ARDS) is one of the major challenges in treating COVID-19 patients and granular control of these separate pressures is a key component to treatment.
The sinuses are once again bypassed by this invasive ventilation, but since this design depends on a pump and not a compressed bladder with limited volume, it can likely be used with an external humidifying device. If this system were to be deemed usable it would still need to be manufactured, raising questions of supply chain availability, and the same “software nightmare” mentioned in the previous section will be present here.
Right Now We Have a Supply Chain Problem, Not a Design Problem
If you’re serious about ventilators, you simply must go and read
Ventilators 101 by Bob Baddeley
. This masterpiece of an article lays out the challenge of designing and manufacturing these advanced machines. These machines solve really hard problems of interfacing with the human body and I think it’s unlikely there are suitable shortcuts around their complexity. The good news is that we’ve already designed, tested, and extensively used them. But we’re having trouble making a lot of them
right now
.
Components in one of
Ventec’s ventilators
So our problem right now isn’t ventilator design, it’s manufacturing supply chain. This is being worked on feverishly and by a huge number of people. This episode of
the Planet Money podcast follows the sourcing of ventilator pistons
. The ventilator manufacturer
Ventec is partnering with General Motors
who are spinning up their supply chain up to make tens of thousands of ventilators, with the first units planned to be in the field some time this month.
We have a desperate shortage right now and it is really awful. The hope is that the windfall of this supply chain effort will mean an abundance of this equipment. It’s worth mentioning that our most precious resource is not the equipment but the health care workers to operate it. Doing everything we can to support them and reduce the number of people who need care right now is, in my mind, an equally important problem to address. Thank you to these heroes who put their health at risk to heal others.
Long-Term, Does an Open Source Ventilator Design Make Sense?
What if there had been an Open Source ventilator design available in when this all began? Would it have made the difference when China was first seeing severe cases? Would it have made the difference in Italy, Spain, Europe, and the United States? Once again, the problem we’re having right now is in supply chain. It’s hard to say that we would have been able to build to the exponential need even if an open design were ready from the start, because similar supply chain issues would have presented themselves.
However, I do think that the “software nightmare” associated with new designs is something for which open source is extremely well suited. A highly scrutinized, well maintained, open source software stack would be a powerful asset when looking for solutions to a shortage such as this one.
The hardware side of things is a bit more difficult to envision as an open source project, simply because contributors to the project would need to be able to replicate the hardware — a problem faced by all open hardware projects. It’s not impossible, but maintaining a bill of materials that is widely available is extremely challenging. However, with mechanical drawings, CAD files, thorough specifications, and a superb testing regime, the task in a time of crisis becomes engineering around the specific gaps in your supply chain, rather than perfectly replicating the design.
Maintaining a design is also crucial. Will equipment manufactured today be possible to manufacture ten years from now without major redesign? Will the features still be relevant for our needs in ten years? Open source is powerful, but abandon-ware is less so. The open source community has many success stories about projects living long lives as maintainers pass the torch from one to the next.
Simply put, open source is people, if the community remains, so does the project.
Need for Ventilators Beyond COVID-19
One of the major problems we face is that ventilators are a low-volume medical product. There are a whole lot more washing machines out there than ventilators, and washers are cheap. There’s much more frequent need for washing machines, and if they don’t work right the consequence is merely a load of clothes that didn’t get clean. When you produce a lifesaving device to meet rigorous regulatory standards in small volumes the price ends up being very high. Open source projects are not free as in beer — it takes time and resources to build prototypes and have them certified. But once established the designs can be used without payment. If a design can meet the safety standards, the potential for widespread manufacture is an uplifting concept.
I’m saddened to learn that
Nigeria has something like 500 ventilators for all of its 200,000,000 in population
. Compare that to the
United States with about 160,000 for a population of 330,000,000
. In a time of crisis like this, we need a well reasoned system of sharing equipment and personnel across borders and oceans. I’ve seen some indication that this is happening
with both Oregon
and
California loaning ventilators to New York
, hopefully bridging the gap until those new ventilator supply chains mentioned earlier pay off. I hope this type of sharing will accelerate and be extended to all areas in need.
Once the crisis has passed, life-saving tools published as open designs could be one path toward greater availability. Nigeria’s number of ventilators sounds very low to me considering its population. Could countries in this situation take on their own manufacturing programs to grow their supply using dependable, tested, open source designs? That is a future I’d like see. | 61 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235729",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-04-09T14:19:12",
"content": "I could see a niche for an open source ventilator, longer term project, that would survive well in storage. All features optimized for being mothballed for decades. Maybe it features quick knockdown ... | 1,760,373,527.670742 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/09/decentralized-privacy-preserving-proximity-tracing/ | Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing | Jenny List | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"personal privacy",
"privacy"
] | As we continue through the pandemic, whether we are on lockdown or still at work, there is a chance for all of us that we could still pick up the virus from a stray contact. Mapping these infections and tracing those in proximity to patients can present a major problem to infection control authorities, and there have been a variety of proposals for smartphone apps designed to track users’ contacts via the Bluetooth identities their phones encounter. This is a particular concern to privacy advocates, because there is a chance that some governments could use this as an excuse to bring in intrusive personal surveillance by this means. A group of academics from institutions across Europe have come together with a proposal for
a decentralised proximity tracing system
that allows identification of infection risk without compromising the privacy of those using it.
Where a privacy-intrusive system might use a back-end database tracking all users and recording their locations and interactions, this one uses anonymised tokens stored at the local level rather than at the central server. When a user is infected this is entered at app level rather than at server level, and the centralised part of the system merely distributes the anonymised tokens to the clients. The computation of whether contact has been made with an infected person is thus made on the client, meaning that the operator has no opportunity to collect surveillance data. After the pandemic has passed the system will evaporate as people stop using it, rather than remaining in place harvesting details from installed apps. They are certainly
not the first academics to wrestle with this thorny issue
, but they seem to have ventured further into the mechanics of it all.
As with all new systems, it’s probably good to subject it to significant scrutiny before deploying it live. Have a read. What do you think?
We are all watching our authorities as they race to respond to the pandemic in an effective manner, and we hope that should they opt for an app that it does an effective job and they resist the temptation to make it too intrusive. Our best course of action meanwhile as the general public is to fully observe all advised public health measures such as self-isolation or the wearing of appropriate personal protective equipment. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235693",
"author": "nosugr",
"timestamp": "2020-04-09T11:49:21",
"content": "This project is awesome and gives some hope to the privacy minded like me.The main adoption barrier i see are :– This is an opt-in system– Government can easily ask telco for data, which already covers abo... | 1,760,373,527.712965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/09/adding-rgb-to-a-crt/ | Adding RGB To A CRT | Jenny List | [
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"crt",
"rgb",
"tv"
] | There was a time when all TVs came with only an antenna socket on their backs, and bringing any form of video input to them meant dicing with live-chassis power supplies. Then sets with switch-mode supplies made delving into a CRT TV much safer, and we could bodge in composite video and even RGB sockets by tapping into their circuitry. For Europeans the arrival of the SCART socket gave us ready-made connectivity, but in the rest of the world there was still a need to break out the soldering iron for an RGB input. [
Jacques Gagnon
] is in Canada, and has treated us to
a bit of old-school TV input hacking as he put an RGB socket on his JVC CRT set
.
Earlier hacks had inventive incursions into discrete analogue circuitry, but on later sets such as this one the trick was to take advantage of the on-screen-display features. The signal processing chip would usually have an RGB input with a blanking input to turn of the picture during the OSD chip’s output. These could be readily hijacked to provide an RGB input, and this is the course taken here. We see a VGA socket on the rear panel going to a resistor network on a piece of protoboard stuck in a vacant space on the PCB, from which a set of lines then go to the signal processing chip. The result is a CRT gaming monitor for retro consoles, of the highest quality.
For those of us who cut our teeth on CRT TVs it’s always good to see a bit of TV hacking.
It’s a mod we’ve seen before
, too. | 30 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235671",
"author": "qwert",
"timestamp": "2020-04-09T08:43:49",
"content": "Nice! Always good to see an old boob tube preserved and loved.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6235702",
"author": "Jac Goudsmit",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,373,527.563721 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/08/warm-up-to-cooking-with-a-recipe-randomizing-toaster/ | Warm Up To Cooking With A Recipe-Randomizing Toaster | Kristina Panos | [
"cooking hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"qr code",
"raspberry pi",
"recipe",
"thermal printer"
] | Did you get a thermal printer when they were hot stuff, but then your interest cooled when you couldn’t decide what to do with it? Something similar happened to [Sunyecz22], and the poor printer sat unused until that magical day when the perfect use for it popped up —
a random recipe receiver in the form of a toaster
.
[Sunyecz22] was tired of searching for recipes every week before going to the grocery store. Between the millions of recipe options on the internet and the 1000-word essays that precede them all, the process was like a part-time job. Now all they have to do is push the little lever down and wait for a recipe to get toasted into some thermal paper. It doesn’t print the full recipe, only the essentials, and we love that. You get the name, the prep time, a rating, and a QR code that links to the recipe page.
This toaster runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero W that fetches recipes using the Spoonacular API and sends the deets to the printer. The lever makes use of some old pen springs to activate a limit switch and start the recipe-getting process. We think it would be extra cool if it stayed down until the recipe popped up. Butter your way past the break to see a short demo video.
We must say, this toaster is way more helpful than
the talkie toaster from Red Dwarf
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235699",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-04-09T12:30:08",
"content": "All this social isolation is dangerous, someone soon is going to think a 100% functional Talkie Toaster is a good idea.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,373,528.036338 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/08/the-esa-reviews-software-defined-radios/ | The Libre Space Foundation Reviews Software Defined Radios | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"ESA",
"sdr",
"software-defined radio"
] | If you want to go to the next level with software defined radio (SDR), there are a lot of choices. The RTL-SDR dongles are fine, but if you get serious you’ll probably want something else. How do you choose? Well, your friends at the
European Space Agency
Libre Space Foundation have published a paper
comparing many common options
. True, they are mostly looking at how the receivers work with CubeSats, but it is still a good comparison.
The devices they examine are:
RTS-SDR v3
Airspy Mini
SDRPlay RSPduo
LimeSDR Mini
BladeRF 2.0 Micro
Ettus USRP B210
Pluto SDR
They looked at several bands of interest, but not the HF bands — not surprising considering that some of the devices can’t even operate on HF. They did examine VHF, UHF, L band, S band, and C band performance. Some of the SDRs have transmit capabilities, and for those devices, they tested the transmit function as well as receive.
The review isn’t just subjective. They calculate noise figures and dynamic range, along with other technical parameters. They also include GNURadio flowgraphs for their test setups, which would be a great place to start if you wanted to do these kinds of measurements yourself.
Towards the end of the 134 page report is an assessment of SDR software and how the boards are supported. We’ll let you read the paper’s conclusions but there was no clear winner or loser although they did mention how SDRPlay’s closed source limited software support in some applications.
Even if the report made a recommendation, you’d need to temper their advice with your own needs. For example, if you want to work with HF frequencies, you’d need an upconverter for many of these boards, but not all of them. Everyone’s needs are a little different.
If you are interested in GNURadio, try
our tutorial
. We’ll be talking more about PlutoSDR soon, but until then you might
enjoy this free book
.
It’s wonderful to see
the Libre Space Foundation
thriving. After
the SatNOGs project won the original Hackaday Prize way back in 2014
, they used the winnings to form the Libre Space Foundation as a non-profit with the focus of m
aking open source space technologies widely available
. This is an excellent continuation of that mission! | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235627",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-04-09T02:54:23",
"content": "You got me, implying that RTL dongles went into multiple Ghz.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6235653",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestam... | 1,760,373,527.7542 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/08/teardown-of-oddball-night-vision-shows-off-retro-futuristic-vibe/ | Teardown Of Oddball Night Vision Shows Off Retro-futuristic Vibe | Donald Papp | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"GN1",
"image intensifier",
"ir",
"night vision",
"optics",
"SIMRAD",
"teardown"
] | Night vision aficionado [Nicholas C] shared an interesting
teardown of a Norwegian SIMRAD GN1 night vision device
, and posted plenty of pictures, along with all kinds of background information about their construction, use, and mounting. [Nicholas] had been looking for a night vision device of this design for some time, and his delight in finding one is matched only by the number of pictures and detail he goes into when opening it up.
The GN1 rocks an irresistible retro-futuristic look.
What makes the SIMRAD GN1 an oddball is the fact that it doesn’t look very much like other, better known American night vision devices. Those tend to have more in common with binoculars than with the GN1’s “handheld camera” form factor. The GN1 has two eyepieces in the back and a single objective lens on the front, which is off-center and high up. The result is a seriously retrofuturistic look, which [Nicholas] can’t help but play to when showing off some photos.
[Nicholas] talks a lot about the build and tears it completely down to show off the internal optical layout necessary to pipe incoming light through the image intensifier and bend it around to both eyes. As is typical for military hardware like this, it has rugged design and every part has its function. (A tip: [Nicholas] sometimes refers to “blems”. A
blem
is short for blemish and refers to minor spots on optics that lead to visual imperfections without affecting function. Blemished optics and intensifier tubes are cheaper to obtain and more common on the secondary market.)
In wrapping up, [Nicholas] talks a bit about how a device like this is compatible with using sights on a firearm. In short, it’s difficult at best because there’s a clunky
thing
in between one’s eyeballs and the firearm’s sights, but it’s made somewhat easier by the fact that the GN1 can be mounted upside down without affecting how it works.
Night vision in general is pretty cool stuff and of course DIY projects abound, like the
OpenScope project
which leverages digital cameras and 3D printing, as well as
doing it the high-voltage image intensifier tube way
. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235578",
"author": "LightningPhil",
"timestamp": "2020-04-08T23:12:22",
"content": "That looks awesome. I want one.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6235579",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-04-08T23:12:45"... | 1,760,373,527.993068 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/08/impressive-lever-press-espresso-machine-has-finesse/ | Impressive Lever-Press Espresso Machine Has Finesse | Kristina Panos | [
"classic hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"coffee",
"espresso",
"lever espresso machine",
"portafilter"
] | Some people will do anything for a good cup of coffee, and we don’t blame them one bit — we’ve been known to pack up all our brewing equipment for road trips to avoid being stuck with whatever is waiting in the hotel room.
While
this stylish lever-based industrial coffee machine
made by [exthemius] doesn’t exactly make textbook espresso, it’s pretty darn close. Think of it like an Aeropress on steroids, or more appropriately, bulletproof coffee. As you can see in the demo after the break, the resulting coffee-spresso hybrid brew looks quite tasty.
Here’s how it works: finely-ground beans go in a pressurized portafilter basket that was scavenged from an entry-level prosumer espresso machine. Pour boiling water into the top of the cylinder, and pull the giant lever down slowly to force it through the portafilter. Presto, you’re in thin, brown flavor town.
We love the piston-esque plunger that [exthemius] made by layering washers and rubber gaskets up like a tiramisu. Although there are no plans laid out, there’s probably enough info in
the reddit thread
to recreate it.
If you ever do find yourself stuck with hotel house brand,
soak it overnight to make it much more palatable
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235549",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2020-04-08T21:11:24",
"content": "Nice, simple hack, but how do you clean it, that must be a bitch.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6235564",
"author": "Brad",
"ti... | 1,760,373,528.215943 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/08/from-the-macgyver-files-using-a-stepper-motor-as-an-encoder/ | From The MacGyver Files: Using A Stepper Motor As An Encoder | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"macgyver",
"rotary encoder",
"stepper motor"
] | It isn’t hard to imagine a scenario where you are stuck at home all day with nothing to do and certain items are in short supply. Sure, bathroom tissue gets all the press, but try buying some flour or a freezer and see how far you get. Plus online shopping has given up on next day delivery for the duration. Not hard to imagine at all. Now suppose your latest self-quarantine project needs a rotary shaft encoder. Not having one, what do you do? If you are [Tech Build] you
go all MacGyver on an old printer
and pull out a stepper motor.
How does a stepper motor turn into an encoder? Well, that’s the MacGyver part. We are not big fans of the physical circuit diagrams, but it looks like [Tech Build] borrowed (with credit) from
an earlier post
and that one has a proper schematic.
Looking at [Andriyf1’s] schematic, you can see each coil connects to an op-amp wired as a positive feedback comparator. The result should be a fairly clean square wave from a noisy input. The real trick is how to connect the coils, which depends on how the stepper is wired. If you have a stepper motor of unknown provenance, grab your ohmmeter and
read how to sort the wires out
.
The initial version was on a breadboard, but the final was on a prototyping board. Of course, an Arduino reads the pulses. We love using things for unintended purposes. Speakers and microphones are often interchangeable. Generators and motors, too. Then there’s the
paperclip
. | 27 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235481",
"author": "qwert",
"timestamp": "2020-04-08T18:55:17",
"content": "Has there been a version of this where you could still drive the stepper as a motor normally and also get position data, functioning as a sensor that also provides haptic feedback? Like some kind of inducta... | 1,760,373,527.812733 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/08/the-real-lessons-about-3d-printed-face-shields-effective-engineering-response-in-times-of-crisis/ | The Real Lessons About 3D Printed Face Shields: Effective Engineering Response In Times Of Crisis | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Current Events",
"Engineering",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"3D Printering",
"Covid-19",
"face shields",
"hackaday columns",
"health equipment",
"medical",
"PPE"
] | 3D printed face shields and other health equipment is big news right now. Not long ago,
Prusa Research rapidly designed and manufactured 3D printed face shields
and donated them to the Czech Ministry of Health. Their effort is ongoing, and 3D printers cranking out health equipment like
the NIH approved design
has been peppering headlines ever since.
The Important Part Isn’t 3D Printers
The implied takeaway from all the coverage is that 3D printers are a solution to critical equipment shortages, but the fact that 3D printers are involved isn’t really the important part. We all know printers can make plastic parts, so what should be the real takeaway? The biggest lessons we can learn about Prusa’s ongoing effort are related to
how
they’ve gone about it.
The situation was that health workers were short on face shields (among other things) and the usual supply couldn’t meet the demand for items that were needed
yesterday
. Prusa Research was able to create a design, and validate it with experts and end users in record time. Confirming that a design meets actual needs is an important step, but it’s not the only one.
Just as important is ensuring that a design’s execution is appropriate for the environment, and that meant conferring with experts and getting their buy-in and approval. In the case of the face shields, manufacturing them needed to go hand-in-hand with proper handling and packaging.
Josef Prusa spells it all out carefully in his original blog post
, along with making it clear that making face shields wasn’t the only solution explored, but it was identified as the one that was most appropriate at the time.
It’s one thing to run some 3D printers and drop off the resulting box of parts if all one is interested in are high fives and congratulatory selfies, maybe a triumphant social media post on the side. But if solving a problem meaningfully is the real goal, then the bar is set somewhat higher.
How to Make Sure a Solution Actually Solves Something
Prusa Research did many things besides design and 3D print face shield parts. They coordinated closely with end users and experts, validated the design with them, and delivered something that met a specific need in a very short time. It’s a brilliant story, but it’s an even better example of how to make certain that an engineering solution actually solves a real problem.
How does one make sure a problem-solving effort is appropriate? Follow these three simple (but not necessarily
easy
) steps:
Ensure the solution is addressing a problem that actually exists in the first place.
Verify that the solution meets the needs of the people who are actually involved.
Execute the solution in a way appropriate to the environment for which it is destined.
How does one judge whether a solution does in fact accomplish those things? The only judges that matter are the people and experts on the receiving end, so it ultimately must come from them. Otherwise, as our own Jenny List observed,
swooping in with an engineering solution may feel good, but probably won’t accomplish much besides a boost to one’s ego
.
The 3D Printing is Solved, But Other Problems Exist
Besides what Prusa Research is doing, there are other organizations eager to leverage 3D printing to help with equipment shortfalls and a lack of headlines. Running 3D printers is a solved problem and a workable design is out in the wild, but that still leaves other problems such as:
How best to get 3D printed devices into the hands of people who need them, and
Who picks up the bill after the news organizations have gone and everyone else at the table looks elsewhere and fidgets nervously.
Here are two different efforts that try to focus on those connected problems.
Covidstop.ca
A Canadian initiative acting as a portal to connect people who volunteer to make things with the people and organizations requesting those things. It’s being spearheaded by
Shop3D
who aims to provide pre-paid shipping labels and, as necessary, refund material costs for volunteers able to turn excess filament into face shield parts. (Volunteers need only make the 3D printed parts; other components such as clear plastic sheets are being donated by other suppliers.)
This approach is interesting because the problem being addressed is that the two groups involved — makers on one side, and medical personnel on the other — are not normally the same people. By providing a portal to allow volunteers to make and users to place orders free of charge, it removes the need for the two groups to have to know each other.
Covid-19 Manufacturing Fund
This nonprofit fundraiser by
3DHubs
also aims to cover the costs of manufacturing medical equipment (at the moment, only face shields) and provide a way for people and organizations worldwide to request them free of charge. Their approach is to use crowdfunding (and 3DHubs’ global network) so that the funding part can be completely separate. As a result, the locations of the makers, the end users, and the ones picking up the tab don’t matter very much.
How well either of these initiatives succeed will probably be clear sooner rather than later, but what’s clear right now is that they both demonstrate trying to solve problems for which the 3D printing is really only a small part, and that’s good to see.
Things Are Changing Rapidly
Every day brings change and news.
If you have read the blog post I mentioned from Prusa
in the past, it has probably been updated since you last read it. If you saved their 3D printable face shield design, it has probably been revised more than once since you downloaded it. 3D printing is agile enough to keep up with rapid change, but it’s ultimately only one piece of the problem.
Do you know of any other efforts to solve problems around this issue? Let us know in the comments. | 83 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235452",
"author": "Arthur Wolf",
"timestamp": "2020-04-08T17:03:29",
"content": "If your 3D printer controller runs out while printing covid shields, email me atwolf.arthur@gmail.comand I’ll mail you a free replacement smoothieboard, even if the broken board isn’t a smoothieboard.... | 1,760,373,528.170245 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/08/what-day-is-it/ | What Day Is It? | Danie Conradie | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"clock",
"ESP8266",
"NTP server",
"servo"
] | With much of the world staying at home at the moment, keeping track of our sanity and the day of the week is a bit of a challenge, especially without the normal daily routine to hold onto. To help with one of these problems, [phreakmonkey] has built a
Day Clock
. As the name suggests, it’s only purpose is to show what day of the week it is.
Avery simple device, the two main components are a servo and a Wemos D1 Mini, the popular ESP8266-based dev board. Using the NTPtimeESP library, it gets day of the week from the internet, and moves the servo to indicate the current day on a 3D printed face. Most readers should be able to whip one up in an hour or two, which can help keep sane in these interesting times.
For another Corona clock, check out [Elliot Williams]’ version that
helps with keeping domestic peace
. If you want to do something to combat the spread of the current epidemic, you can build a few
face shields
, make your idle computer available for
Folding@Home
or
sew a few masks
. Every bit helps. | 15 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235456",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2020-04-08T17:23:21",
"content": "Interesting. One aspect of my life as a retiree – every day is Sunday. :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6235468",
"author": "Albert P",
"times... | 1,760,373,528.26602 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/08/on-5g-and-the-fear-of-radiation/ | On 5G And The Fear Of Radiation | Maya Posch | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"5g",
"CellPhones",
"electromagnetic radiation",
"emr",
"radiation"
] | The world around us is a scary place, with a lot of visible and invisible dangers. Some of those invisible dangers are pretty obvious, such as that of an electrical shock from exposed wiring. Some are less obvious, for example the dangers of UV radiation to one’s skin and eyes commonly known, but also heavily underestimated by many until it’s too late. In the US alone,
skin cancer
ends up affecting about one in every five people.
Perhaps ironically, while the danger from something like UV radiation is often underestimated, other types of electromagnetic radiation are heavily overestimated. All too often, the distinction between what is and isn’t considered to be harmful appears to be made purely on basis of whether it is ‘natural’ radiation or not. The Sun is ‘natural’, ergo UV radiation cannot be harmful, but the EM radiation from a microwave or 5G wireless transceiver is human-made, and therefore harmful. This is, of course, backwards.
Rather than dismissing such irrational fears of radiation, let’s have a look at both the science behind radiation and the way humans classify ‘danger’, such as in the case of 5G cell towers.
Ionizing Versus Non-Ionizing
Ionizing radiation gets a warning sign, non-ionizing does not.
The first thing you should ask about radiation is whether or not it is ionizing.
Ionizing radiation
has enough energy to kick the electrons out of their orbits within atoms. Ionizing radiation is therefore by definition damaging, with our cells having repair mechanisms in place to fix the damage sustained from the background radiation which we are exposed to every day. Ionizing radiation can cause cancers, create heritable genetic diseases if it reaches reproductive cells, and cause immediate tissue damage. Ionizing radiation takes the form of either charged particles, alpha and beta radiation, or photons with sufficient energy that they can indirectly ionize atoms — gamma rays.
Non-ionizing radiation, instead, makes molecules move using the produced electromagnetic field. Consider the microwave oven, which produces non-ionizing EM radiation at roughly 2.45 GHz, a frequency that works well to affect the dipole moment of water molecules. By rapidly moving the water molecules between different orientations in an alternating EM field, the water molecules begin to dissipate their kinetic energy as heat in a process called
dielectric heating
. The important distinction is that non-ionizing radiation doesn’t chemically change the water, it just heats it up.
Ultra-violet light is an interesting exception because it straddles the boundary between non-ionizing and ionizing radiation, and even the non-ionizing forms can be dangerous for humans. Although UV light in the
UV-A through UV-C range
is not ionizing, it damages DNA and parts of the eye. This is why UV-C radiation is used for sterilizing surfaces in laboratories and hospitals: by disrupting DNA and RNA, it kills both bacteria and viruses. Extreme UV (
EUV
) overlaps slightly with UV-C and is so strongly ionizing that it can normally only be transmitted through a vacuum.
Non-ionizing Radiation is Rather Hot
The dielectric heating principle holds true for all non-ionizing radiation: the primary effect on the human body consists of affecting the dipole moment of molecules in our tissues, causing localized heating. This is why standing in the sunshine, or in front of an infrared (IR) heating lamp, or an operating radar dish makes one feel warm. What we perceive as ‘heat’ radiating off objects is mostly in the IR spectrum, which is why IR-sensitive sensors are commonly used to measure this, for example with IR cameras.
Although in an extreme situation this type of radiation can also affect cell membranes, this requires lots more energy. By the time that happens, the heat produced would be carried by the blood into the body’s core, where it would disrupt essential enzymatic and other functions. Disrupting this
core body temperature
is almost inevitably lethal, and would get you before the cellular damage even had a chance.
Additionally, the penetration depth of EM radiation (EMR) into biological tissue decreases sharply after about 10 MHz, meaning that high-frequency EMR mostly affects just the skin and the tissues directly underneath it. Before the disruption of cell membranes in that area becomes an issue, one’s core body temperature will already have risen to and beyond lethal levels, in the form of
heat stroke
.
The Psychology of Fear
Being able to quickly identify threats in one’s environment and figuring out how to react to these dangers is an essential survival trait. The emotion associated with the perception of such a threat is called fear. A fear response can be rational (a response is warranted) or irrational (a phobia). An individual may also dismiss an actual threat, either completely, or mitigate it using presumed factors. An example of the latter is the very real threat from
smoking tobacco
and the consumption of alcohol where it excused as a coping mechanism against stress and the like.
This selective approach to environmental threats often leads to a patchwork of mitigating factors, as well as perceived threats where none exist. These perceived threats can be the aforementioned phobia, but also originate from paranoia. In the case of paranoia a thought or notion is amplified by anxiety and fears, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. Often these delusions are accompanied by conspiracy elements, with a person or group being accused of being behind this perceived threat. Meanwhile,
cognitive bias
hampers comprehension of information that should change their mind.
Over the decades, there’s been an increase in fearmongering regarding the safety of wireless equipment, as well as that of ‘unnatural’ radiation, including that from alternating current mains wiring inside houses. As early as 1903 these folk have been referred to as ‘
radiophobes
‘, with some in this group claiming to be hypersensitive to EM radiation. Fear of radiation in general has effected politicians into
making disastrous decisions
, and motivated nations like Switzerland to put a moratorium on 5G over the ‘
proven harmful effects of HF-EMF
‘.
Studies presumably are showing that radiation levels far below that of the
ICNIRP
(International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection)
recommendations
(PDF) cause an increase in various types of cancers. In addition the World Health Organization
has classified
the risk from RF (radiofrequency EM) as ‘Group 2B’, meaning ‘possible human carcinogen’. Mainstream newspaper articles meanwhile promote conspiracy level thinking, suggesting that the truth about the harms from RF EMR
are being hidden from us,
like with tobacco.
Most recently,
a rumor has sprung up
that 5G is somehow responsible for, or linked to, the
SARS-CoV-2
(informally: ‘coronavirus’) pandemic, with people going so far as to literally torch down towers that contain 5G and other wireless transceivers. As [Joel Hruska] over at ExtremeTech
succinctly points out
, the millimeter-wave (20+ GHz) part of 5G that people get upset about has very low range, meaning that the overwhelming part of ‘5G radiation’ that we experience would be in roughly the same frequency range as 4G (LTE) and WiFi.
Are you feeling afraid yet?
Science of Radiation Safety
The entire point of the scientific method is to methodically examine and discover how everything around us works, whether it’s on a macroscopic, microscopic or quantum level. When a group of people claim that they can somehow ‘sense’ electromagnetic fields, to the point where it affects their physical well-being, this raises a lot of questions. The primary one being that there is no known biological mechanism that a human would be able to be affected by EMR.
Naturally, it wouldn’t be science if this didn’t deter scientists from setting up controlled tests in which involved subjects who claimed to suffer from hypersensitivity. After twenty-eight of such studies by different researchers, another group of researchers would then
write up a review article
to summarize the findings of those studies. It should come as no surprise that evidence for EM (hyper)sensitivity was completely absent.
That then leaves the question of whether non-ionizing radiation like that from cell towers and WiFi access points is harmful,
as some people claim
. It certainly could be, if it heated up tissue significantly. The amount of radiation from 4G and 5G wireless towers, as well as that from a cellphone held next to one’s head during a conversation, however, causes barely any heating due to
the low power levels involved
. So that’s that?
Perhaps the clearest evidence that can disprove the potential harm of cellphone RF radiation comes from the biggest experiment ever conducted, on over five billion cellphone users. Despite an absolutely astounding ramp-up of RF radiation exposure over the past decades, as cell phones became commonplace, there has been no corresponding increase of tumors or other harmful effects. Not from analog cellphone networks, nor from 2G, 3G or 4G or WiFi.
This fact is noted as well by the US
National Cancer Institute on their fact sheet
, along with an exhaustive list of cohort, experimental, and other studies. As they note, effects other than thermal heating have not been shown. Findings involving tumors and other harmful effects could not be replicated, and notoriously unreliable cohort studies have to be taken with a grain of sand, especially when experimental studies have failed to turn up any biological mechanisms using with exposure of low levels to RF EMR. The results are most likely attributable to other uncontrolled factors.
Cancer Research UK
and other institutions concur with the NCI. That’s the science.
Be Safe, Not Afraid
The essence of the matter thus appears to be that of fearful and paranoid people demanding that the industry proves beyond any shade of doubt that RF EMR like that used with cellphones is ‘absolutely safe’. Unfortunately, unlike in mathematics,
science doesn’t deal with proof
, only with evidence. And while evidence can easily refute a theory, it can’t prove that something is safe — all science can do is rule out potential causes of harm. And so far, that’s being done.
To the best of our knowledge
today
, we can say with confidence that there are no effects from non-ionizing radiation beyond the thermal effects, except for the edge case of UV radiation. May there be new discoveries in the future that show that e were too optimistic about the safety of RF EMR? The data and evidence regarding cellphone use since the 1980s does not support any of the propositions that their use is somehow harmful, nor do any controlled studies.
To this day, the only real demonstrable harm from smartphone use is that of walking into open manhole covers, against lighting posts, and of course causing traffic accidents. The best advice thus is to use one’s cellphone only when it’s safe to do so, and avoid using it while driving or walking. In addition, be careful about trusting random information from anyone that you haven’t verified yourself. In case of doubt, consult an actual expert in the field.
Be safe, and enjoy your wireless freedom. And please stop burning down cell towers. | 178 | 41 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235419",
"author": "Tadpole",
"timestamp": "2020-04-08T14:16:33",
"content": "Fantastically well balanced and well we’ll written article.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6418057",
"author": "theory ladeness",
... | 1,760,373,529.047286 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/08/a-hackers-guide-to-jtag/ | A Hacker’s Guide To JTAG | Tom Nardi | [
"hardware"
] | [
"debugging",
"firmware",
"jtag",
"openocd",
"reverse engineering"
] | If you’re reading Hackaday, you’ve almost certainly heard of JTAG. There’s an excellent chance you’ve even used it once or twice to reflash an unruly piece of hardware. But how well do you actually
know
JTAG? More specifically, do you know how useful it can be when reverse engineering hardware?
Whether you’re a JTAG veteran or a novice,
this phenomenal guide written by [wrongbaud]
is sure to teach you a thing or two. Starting with a low-level explanation of how the interface actually works, the guide takes you though discovering JTAG ports on unknown targets, the current state-of-the-art in open source tools to interact with the device, and finally shows a real-world example of pulling and analyzing a gadget’s firmware.
There’s no way to do his write-up justice with a breakdown or a summary, so we won’t even try. Just get comfortable, maybe grab a drink, and dive in. It’s certainly not a short read, but there isn’t a wasted word on the page. Every piece of the puzzle, from how to figure out an unlabeled pinout to determining the instruction length, is explained in exactly the amount of detail you’re looking for. This is a guide for hackers written by a hacker, and it shows.
It will probably come as no surprise to find this
isn’t the first time [wrongbaud] has done a deep dive like this
. Over the last few months we’ve been covering
his series of practical reverse engineering guides
, and
each one has been an invaluable resource
. Perfect study guides for when a global pandemic has you stuck in the house. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235398",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2020-04-08T12:09:03",
"content": "JTAGenum.sh is still using sysfs GPIOs, go-jtagenum should be way faster:https://github.com/gremwell/go-jtagenumAnd it is using libgpiod, so not dependent on using an Rpi.Plus it outputs you if it finds a ... | 1,760,373,528.571166 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/08/industrial-robot-given-new-life-and-controller/ | Industrial Robot Given New Life And Controller | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"arm",
"industrial",
"inverse kinematics",
"python",
"reverse engineer",
"robot"
] | We all think we could use a third arm from time to time, but when we actually play this thought experiment out in our heads we’ll eventually come to the same hurdle [caltadaniel] found, which is a lack of a controller. His third arm isn’t just an idea, though. It’s a Yaskawa industrial robot that he was able to source for pretty cheap,
but it was missing a few parts that he’s been slowly replacing
.
The robot arm came without a controller or software, but also without any schematics of any kind, so the first step was reverse engineering the wiring diagram to get an idea of what was going on inside the arm. From there some drivers were built for the servos, but the key to all of it is the homemade controller. The inverse kinematics math was done in Python and runs on an industrial PC. Once it was finally all put together [caltadaniel] had a functioning robotic arm for any task he could think of.
Interestingly enough, while he shows the robot brushing his teeth for him, he also set it up to flip the switch of a
useless machine that exists only to turn itself off
. There’s something surreal about a massive industrial-sized robotic arm being used to turn on a $20 device which will switch itself back off instantly, but the absurdity is worth a watch. | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235381",
"author": "yetihehe",
"timestamp": "2020-04-08T08:27:09",
"content": "More surreal would be changing the robot into a useless device. Like, you flip the switch and robot flips it back. That way it;s useless arm.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,373,528.782719 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/07/machine-vision-keeps-track-of-grubby-hands/ | Machine Vision Keeps Track Of Grubby Hands | Dan Maloney | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"ai",
"computer vision",
"depth camera",
"machine vision",
"OpenPose",
"Pi Cam",
"stereo",
"Xavier"
] | Can you remember everything you’ve touched in a given day? If you’re being honest, the answer is, “Probably not.” We humans are a tactile species, with an outsized proportion of both our motor and sensory nerves sent directly to our hands. We interact with the world through our hands, and unfortunately that may mean inadvertently spreading disease.
[Nick Bild] has a potential solution:
a machine-vision system called Deep Clean
, which monitors a scene and records anything in it that has been touched. [Nick]’s system uses Jetson Xavier and a stereo camera to detect depth in a scene; he built his camera from a pair of Raspberry Pi cams and a Pi 3B+, but other depth cameras like a Kinect could probably do the job. The idea is to watch the scene for human hands — OpenPose is the tool he chose for that job — and correlate their depth in the scene with the depth of objects. Touch a doorknob or a light switch, and a marker is left on the scene. The idea would be that a cleaning crew would be able to look at the scene to determine which areas need extra attention. We can think of plenty of applications that extend beyond the current crisis, as the ability to map areas that have been touched seems to be generally useful.
[Nick] has been getting some mileage out of that Xavier lately — he’s used it to build
an AI umpire
and
shades that help you find lost stuff
. Who knows what else he’ll find to do with them during this time of confinement? | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235372",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2020-04-08T05:03:17",
"content": "or you could just feed your kids peanut butter sandwich and look for the thin coating of pb on all of your posessions",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,373,528.660712 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/07/learn-pdp-11-assembly-for-fun-but-probably-no-profit/ | Learn PDP-11 Assembly For Fun But Probably No Profit | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"assembly language",
"digital equipment",
"pdp-11"
] | Learning a new skill is fun, especially one that could land you a new job. We don’t think you’ll find too much demand for PDP-11 assembly language programmers, but if it still interests you, check out [ChibiAkumas’s] video that
starts a series on that subject
for “absolute beginners.”
The PDP-11 is a venerable computer, but you can still find simulators ranging from SIMH to
browser-based
virtual devices with front panels. If you want real hardware, there is a PDP-11 on a chip that is still around (or you can score
the real chips
, sometimes) and there are some
nice hardware simulations
, too.
Like a lot of machines in its day, the PDP-11 was most comfortable with octal or base 8. That’s a bit odd these days, but it is easy enough to figure out to express for example 377 instead of FF.
The text part of the tutorial is a little — um — colorful. A “reading view” like the one you get from Mercury reader or in some browsers can help if it bothers you. You might also try
PrintFriendly
.
If you are into specs, a 1970-era PDP-11/20 ran with a cycle time of 1.5 µs and 56KB of magnetic core. All for the low, low price of $20,000 (although that probably didn’t include the TeleType machine or any fancy I/O such as tape drives).
Given the limited amount of memory and the simple instructions, it is amazing how much these old computers can do. Even today there is at least one nuclear power plant that uses a PDP-11 to control some robotics. In Soviet Russia, several home computers used clones of the LSI-11 which was a PDP-11 on a chip. The Heathkit H11 used the same CPU.
We still occasionally see practical PDP-11 projects like this
weather station
. If you are really lucky, you can restore an
actual machine
. | 43 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235351",
"author": "localroger",
"timestamp": "2020-04-08T02:05:47",
"content": "The 8080 instruction set was also pretty octal based. The Z80 kind of lost that thread of its origin.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6235353",
... | 1,760,373,528.739944 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/07/pcb-mill-turns-out-stylish-necklace/ | PCB Mill Turns Out Stylish Necklace | Lewin Day | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"led jewelry",
"necklace",
"wearable electronics"
] | When needing a custom PCB, most of us will whip up design files and send them off to a board house. Prices are low and turnaround times are bearable, with quality that’s difficult to replicate at home. The old methods still have some value however, as
[Bantam Tools] demonstrate with this attractive glowing hummingbird necklace.
The back side of the pendant neatly hides a button cell battery and a small SMD switch.
The necklace is made of copper-clad board, the type typically used by those who would etch their own PCBs at home. In this case, the board is placed on a [Bantam Tools] mill, which removes copper strategically and cuts out the final shape. This creates a series of traces on the back for a battery, LEDs and a small swtich, while creating areas on the other side of the board for light to shine through.
With a battery installed, the LEDs on the back side of the necklace glow through the fiberglass for a beautiful effect. With a PCB mill and a reflow oven, it’s remarkably easy to make, too. Of course, if you like your parts density a little higher,
these FPGA earrings might be more your speed! | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235335",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2020-04-07T23:44:21",
"content": "Should the caption of the second photo read “back side” or “bat side”?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6235341",
"author": "Morgi",
"timest... | 1,760,373,528.617459 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/07/simon-says-but-with-servos/ | Simon Says, But With Servos | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Arduino Uno",
"choreography for servos",
"potentiometer",
"servo",
"simon says"
] | How much easier would life be if you could just grab hold of whatever mechanism you wanted to manipulate, move it like you want, and then have it imitate your movements exactly? What if you could give a servo MIDI-like commands that tell it to move to a certain location for a specific duration?
Wonder no more, because [peterbiglab] has big-brained the idea into fruition
.
With just one wire, an Arduino, and some really neat code, [peter] can get this servo to do whatever he wants. First he tells the Arduino the desired duration in frames per second. Then he grabs the horn and moves it around however he wants — it can even handle different speeds. The servo records and then mimics the movements just as they were made.
The whole operation is way simpler than you might think. As [peterbiglab] demonstrates in the video after the break, the servo knows its position thanks to an internal potentiometer on the motor’s rotor. If you locate the pot output pin on the control board and run a wire from there into an Arduino, you can use that information to calibrate and control the servo’s position pretty easily. There are a ton of possibilities for this kind of control. What would you do with it? Let us know in the comments.
If you want to try this with a bunch of servos at once, might as well
build yourself a little testing console
.
Via
r/Arduino | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235298",
"author": "X",
"timestamp": "2020-04-07T20:39:13",
"content": "This already exists.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6235301",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-04-07T20:55:51",
"con... | 1,760,373,528.829575 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/07/bina-view-a-fascinating-mechanical-interference-display/ | BINA-VIEW: A Fascinating Mechanical Interference Display | Gerrit Coetzee | [
"hardware"
] | [
"1960s",
"bina",
"binaview",
"display",
"history",
"nixie",
"old",
"old hardware"
] | [Fran Blanche] tears down this fascinating display in a
video teardown
, embedded below.
These displays can support up to 64 characters of the buyer’s choosing which is controlled by 6 bits, surprisingly only requiring 128 mW per bit to control; pretty power-light for its day and age. Aside from alphanumeric combinations the display also supported “color plates” which we found quite fascinating. The fully decked model would only cost you $1,206 US dollars per unit in today’s money or five rolls of toilet paper at latest street price. And that’s just one digit.
If you dig through the documents linked
here
, and watch her video you can get an idea of how this display works. There are six solenoids attached to rods at the rear of the device. A lamp shines through a lens onto the back of a plate assembly. Each plate is a strategically perforated grid. When the solenoids activate the selected plates tilt interfering with a stationary grid. This causes the light to be blocked in some regions only.
It seems clear why this never took off. Aligning these seems like a production nightmare compared to things like flip displays and
Nixie
tubes. Still, the characters have quite a lot of charm to them. We wouldn’t mind seeing a 3D printable/laser cut version of this display type. Get working! | 24 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235282",
"author": "DKE",
"timestamp": "2020-04-07T19:39:42",
"content": "There’s a second video where she repairs it and displays all the characters.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6235397",
"author": "Alphatek",
... | 1,760,373,529.245726 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/07/linux-fu-tracing-system-calls/ | Linux Fu: Tracing System Calls | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Linux Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"debugging",
"linux",
"reverse engineering",
"strace",
"syscalls",
"system calls"
] | One of the nice things about Linux and similar operating systems is that you can investigate something to any level you wish. If a program has a problem you can decompile it, debug it, trace it, and — if necessary — even dig into the source code for the kernel and most of the libraries the program is probably using. However, the tools to do this aren’t ones you use every day. One very interesting tool is
strace
. Using it you can see what system calls any program makes and that can sometimes give you important clues about how the program works or, probably more often, why it doesn’t work.
Let’s consider the least complex use of the command. Suppose you want to make symlink from
testxmit.grc
to the
/tmp
directory. That command is simple:
ln -sf testxmit.grc /tmp
But if you tell
strace
to run it, the command becomes:
strace ln -sf testxmit.grc /tmp
You might want to redirect the output to a file using the shell or the
-o
option, though. Some commands generate a lot and often the first page or two of output isn’t really what you care about anyway.
Let’s Look
Let’s look at the output:
execve("/bin/ln", ["ln", "-sf", "testxmit.grc", "/tmp"], 0x7fff51ddf6f8 /* 91 vars */) = 0
brk(NULL) = 0x562301ce6000
...
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=3004096, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 3004096, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x7f7c45298000
close(3) = 0
stat("/tmp", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|S_ISVTX|0777, st_size=1360, ...}) = 0
lstat("/tmp/testxmit.grc", 0x7fff7ae555d0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
symlinkat("testxmit.grc", AT_FDCWD, "/tmp/testxmit.grc") = 0
lseek(0, 0, SEEK_CUR) = -1 ESPIPE (Illegal seek)
close(0) = 0
close(1) = 0
close(2) = 0
exit_group(0) = ?
+++ exited with 0 +++
At the top, shortened here, are 25 lines dealing with loading shared libraries into the memory space and four lines dealing with locales. I put the first “real” line in bold, where the program calls stat on
/tmp
and then makes sure the file doesn’t already exist. Finally, you get to the real system call (
symlinkat
) followed by a few things to close the program out. A lot of work to get to one system call.
You can probably figure out that the part on the right of the equal sign is the return value of the call. Usually, zero is success and other numbers mean different things. However, the
openat
call, for example, returns a file descriptor (3) and you can see it sent to
fstat
in the next line.
In Practice
Of course, the ln command works, but humor me and say we were wanting to understand what arguments passed to
symlinkat
. You could use the
-e
option to cut the output down to size:
strace -e symlinkat ln -sf testxmit.grc /tmp
You’ll notice something strange if you did the examples in order. The second time you run the command you get two calls to
symlinkat
. The first one fails because the file already exists. The second one is to some random file name. Taking off the
-e
lets you see everything (I’m only showing the interesting part):
symlinkat("testxmit.grc", AT_FDCWD, "/tmp/testxmit.grc") = -1 EEXIST (File exists)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/dev/urandom", O_RDONLY) = 3
read(3, "\337\336\10\324\254\233", 6) = 6
close(3) = 0
getpid() = 29340
getppid() = 29338
getuid() = 1000
getgid() = 1000
symlinkat("testxmit.grc", AT_FDCWD, "/tmp/CuzoNWnv") = 0
renameat(AT_FDCWD, "/tmp/CuzoNWnv", AT_FDCWD, "/tmp/testxmit.grc") = 0
Notice that the random part comes from reading some data from /dev/urandom. If you don’t want all that output, try:
strace -e synlinkat,renameat ln -sf testxmit.grc /tmp
Other Options
The
-p
option lets you supply a PID of a running program. Sending the output to a file and then monitoring the file with a
tail -f
is a good trick. By default, you only see 32 bytes of the call data and that might not be enough. You can adjust that size with the
-s
option.
So far we’ve only looked at simple programs. But if you want to trace multiple threads, check out the
-f
and
-ff
options.
If you want a survey of what the program is calling, the
-c
option will give you a summary.
% time seconds usecs/call calls errors syscall
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
0.00 0.000000 0 2 read
0.00 0.000000 0 7 close
0.00 0.000000 0 2 stat
0.00 0.000000 0 3 fstat
0.00 0.000000 0 1 lstat
0.00 0.000000 0 1 1 lseek
0.00 0.000000 0 6 mmap
...
0.00 0.000000 0 4 openat
0.00 0.000000 0 1 renameat
0.00 0.000000 0 2 1 symlinkat
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
100.00 0.000000 46 5 total
Of Course, There’s More…
This is just one of many tools you can use to examine Linux programs. Debuggers are often useful, especially if you have the source. There are other tools to examine symbol tables and dump executables. But those are topics for another time.
What’s your favorite Linux reverse engineering tool? Let us know in the comments. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235246",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2020-04-07T17:12:46",
"content": "If you like strace for syscalls, be sure to check out ltrace for library calls as well. It’s often forgotten, but can be usefull. Unfortunately there is no tool to trace both, so i often have to run the... | 1,760,373,529.093219 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/07/nixie-clock-turns-boombox/ | Nixie Clock Turns Boombox | Moritz v. Sivers | [
"clock hacks",
"Portable Audio Hacks"
] | [
"audio streaming",
"boombox",
"nixie clock"
] | With all the Nixie Clock projects out there, it is truly difficult to come up with something new and unique. Nevertheless, [TheJBW] managed to do so with his
Ultimate Nixie Internet Alarm Clock (UNIAC)
which definitely does not skimp on cool features.
Although the device does tell time, it is actually a portable boombox that streams music from Spotify using a Raspberry Pi Zero running Mopidy. The housing made from smoked acrylic, together with the IN-12A Nixie Tubes, an IN-13 VU meter, and illuminated pushbuttons give this boombox kind of a 70s/90s mashup retro look. The acrylic housing is special since it consists of only two plates which were bent into shape, resulting in smooth edges in contrast to the often used finger or T-slot design.
For his project [TheJBW] designed a general-purpose Nixie display that can not only show time and date but also the elapsed or remaining track time. He also came up with a Python generated artificial voice that reads you the current playlist. The only problem [TheJBW] has run into was when trying to design a suitable battery system for the device, as the high current draw during start-up can easily cause brownouts. Due to time constraints, he ended up with a MacGyver-style solution by taping a 12 V battery pack from Amazon to the back of the unit.
Among the large variety of Nixie projects we don’t think we have ever seen them in an audio player before except for some attempts of
using them as an amplifier.
However, it is known that
IN-13 tubes make a great VU meter
. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235225",
"author": "mjrippe",
"timestamp": "2020-04-07T16:02:48",
"content": "Now this…I like! No f*&%ing blue LEDs, original idea and design, well thought out and executed. Props to [TheJBW] (And I hope that stands for J-B Weld!)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,373,529.290982 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/07/3d-printering-when-resin-printing-gets-smelly/ | 3D Printering: When Resin Printing Gets Smelly | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"3D Printering",
"hackaday columns",
"odor control",
"resin",
"sla",
"smells"
] | Nowadays, resin printers are highly accessible and can do some great stuff. But between isopropyl alcohol for part rinsing and the fact that some resins have a definite smell to them, ventilation can get important fast. The manufacturers don’t talk much about this part of the resin printing experience, but it’s there nevertheless. So what can be done when smells become a problem?
I recently had to deal with this when I printed several liters of resin worth of parts. That’s a lot of resin, and a lot of alcohol for part washing. Smells — which had never been much of a problem in my work area — suddenly became an issue.
Where Odors Come From
Smells come from two sources: the resin itself, and the isopropyl alcohol used for cleanup and part washing.
Most Resins Have a Smell
It’s an odor I describe as “raw plastic, with solvent undertones” and some are worse than others.
The variety of resins in my workshop doesn’t even come close to representing everything on the market, but I have given the sniff test to the ones I have on hand. The
Elegoo
brand resins (White, Translucent, and Grey) all have a distinct odor, with their Black resin smelling strongest overall.
Monocure Flex100
resin definitely smells, and
ApplyLabwork Modeling
resin (advertised as being compatible with Formlabs printers) also clearly smells.
In my experience
Formlabs
standard resins (white, grey, and clear in particular) are standouts in that they have no particular odor to them, but Formlabs
Durable
does, and [Bunnie Huang] also noted that the Formlabs
Draft
resin had a very strong smell to it
during his Form 3 teardown
. There are many more out there.
Alcohol Loves Evaporation
Isopropyl alcohol is the usual choice for rinsing uncured resin from finished prints during post-processing, and alcohol also happens to rapidly evaporate at normal room temperature. This makes it easy to dry off finished prints, but it also means alcohol jumps at the chance to fill a work area with fumes.
Quantity Can Tip the Scales
What isn’t a problem as a small job may cross the line once quantities go up. Opening and pouring smelly resins, having them sit in an build tank, and the print process itself (which agitates the resin) all contribute to smelling up the immediate area. A small print job might be dealt with by taking a break and airing out the work area, but extended printing means those smells just keep coming.
With alcohol, the more drying and pouring and agitating is going on, the more evaporation and therefore the more smelly the area becomes. For larger jobs, automatic part washing starts to look attractive but there is a side effect. Machines like Formlabs’
Form Wash
, Prusa’s
CW1
, and Anycubic’s upcoming
Wash & Cure Machine
all aim to make part washing more controlled and convenient, but they do not eliminate odors. Not only are these units not airtight while in use, but the agitation and part drying involves more evaporation than doing small jobs by hand, which is more easily done with sealed containers.
Ways to Deal With Odors
A typical inline fan, duct, and filter combo from Amazon.
When I started a large and extended print job, frequent part washing combined with extended print times led to resin and alcohol smells dominating my work area. Odors were never an issue before, but It was clear I had to make some changes. Here are some options for doing smell control:
Crack a window, or banish printing related stuff to somewhere like a garage.
A simple and obvious solution, but not always an option.
Add a fan and ducting to send the exhaust somewhere inoffensive.
There is also the option to add an activated carbon filter into the mix. Amazon has plenty of combos and options for inline fans for this kind of ventilation, usually aimed at hydroponics or other indoor plant growers. If you go this route I suggest getting a speed control for the fan, otherwise you’ll be stuck at full speed (and full volume.)
Dollar Store frosted plastic table covers are effective at closing off an area.
Cover a part washer in a plastic bag when not in active use.
If a part washing machine isn’t sealed, it’s always allowing some amount of alcohol to evaporate unless it’s empty. If the part washer is on standby (not being actively used but also not ready for storage) I found that covering it with a small plastic garbage bag between uses reduced the amount of alcohol smell that it gave off.
Hang plastic sheets to close off the printing area.
I found that sectioning off a part of the room with plastic sheeting was remarkably effective at containing smells. It doesn’t eliminate them, but it makes them much more controllable. Cardboard, a staple gun, Dollar Store frosted plastic table covers, and an unfinished ceiling are friends in this venture. Cut the plastic just above floor level, and overlap the seams to provide a curtained way in and out.
Filter the enclosed area with an air purifier.
This will recirculate the air, filtering it to remove smells in the process. I found this to be extremely effective when combined with curtaining the print area off with plastic sheets. Make sure the filter has an activated carbon (also called activated charcoal) component to it. A term that may show up when shopping for filters is whether it handles VOCs, or volatile organic compounds. The air purifier I bought also had a timer function, which came in unexpectedly handy for intermittent use. Kijiji or craigslist is a good source for second hand air purifiers.
Air purifier inside print area.
Wear a mask with VOC filter when working directly with smelly materials
, such as filling or emptying an automatic part washer. All that alcohol pouring puts a lot of fumes into the air, and while a mask won’t change that, it will make the hands-on part of the job a more pleasant one. The mask I use is an inexpensive 3M half-face mask, for which the VOC filters are standardized and don’t cost much. If possible it’s best to just do this job outside, but If pouring around a bunch of alcohol
must
be done indoors in the work area, wear the mask while doing it and let the air filter or fan take care of the rest.
If smells are a problem for you, one or more of these should help get you back in control over your work area.
Keeping Your Nose Happy
Getting surprised by smells can happen, and if it does, there are tools that can be used to mitigate it and keep the work area livable. Are there better options for extracting or otherwise handling smells or fumes? What have you done to handle them yourself? Know of any particularly nasty (or friendly) resins? Chime in with the comment section to let us know.
As a final note, there are now some newer resins advertised as water-washable, which sounds promising. Do you have experience with them? Do they smell less, or not at all? We’d love to hear from you in the comments. | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235200",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-04-07T14:15:33",
"content": "Firstly, I think a lot of people would like to know of an alternative to IPA as it may be in short supply for months.Secondly, where weed has been legalised, grow tents with VOC filtering blowers are... | 1,760,373,529.352891 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/07/real-engineering-behind-ventilators/ | Real Engineering Behind Ventilators | Al Williams | [
"Medical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"medtronics",
"ventilator"
] | Experts on cognition tell us that most people think they know more than they really do. One particular indicator for that is if someone is an expert in one field and they feel like all other fields relate to theirs (everything boils down to math or chemistry or physics, for example). This causes them to be overconfident on things they don’t actually know about. When it became clear that the current virus crisis might lead to a shortage of ventilators, many electronic experts set about to design low-cost easy to replicate ventilators. How hard is it, after all, to squeeze a bag once every few seconds? But it turns out, there are a lot of details you need to know to do it right. [Real Engineering] and [Real Science] joined to create
an excellent video
that covers a lot of what you need to know. You can see the video below. The video shows a few designs that — while motivated by altruism — would probably do more harm than good if used on real patients.
The video’s creator is a biomedical engineer who worked in the past for Medtronic — a maker of ventilators who, by the way, recently
open-sourced one of their designs
. They also had [Dr. Rohin Francis], who has a
medical YouTube channel
, fact check the video. and provide some on-screen background We learned a few new medical terms and found that a high-end ventilator made in one factory gets built at about 225 per week. They think they can increase to 500.
There are actually two different issues. First, the medical capabilities of the ventilator are important, of course. The bag that is at the heart of nearly all the recent “emergency designed” ventilators use, in some cases, can actually work against the body’s breathing mechanism. Too much pressure can cause barotrauma — injury to delicate lung cells due to overpressure.
The other concern is reliability. If my Arduino clock needs to reboot once or twice a day, that’s not ideal, but it won’t bother anyone. If the machine breathing for me hangs up ever, that’s a very serious problem.
[Real Engineering] thinks many of the commercial entities using ventilator designs to grab publicity are appropriating work from MIT that has been around for a few years. There are subtle features in the design that are not always obvious to people who might be copying or trying to simplify the design.
If you want to try your hand and making a simplified emergency ventilator, you really should watch this video. It mostly focuses on the medical side of things. For more on the safety-critical problems, we’ve talked about
others raising awareness of that topic
, as well.
We are all for
hacking ventilators
. However, we need to be sure we understand the problem isn’t just an electromechanical one. | 40 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235164",
"author": "Tweepy",
"timestamp": "2020-04-07T11:42:08",
"content": "Very nice video (3 days late, adafruit nailed it)Because hardware don’t seem to be such an issue, why not joining forces on the software algorithm for such devices? As just few pressure sensors might be en... | 1,760,373,529.48301 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/07/reliability-check-consumer-and-research-grade-wrist-worn-heart-rate-monitors/ | Reliability Check: Consumer And Research-Grade Wrist-Worn Heart Rate Monitors | Orlando Hoilett | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"fitbit",
"fitness tracker",
"heart monitor",
"heart rate",
"wearable"
] | Wearables are ubiquitous in today’s society. Such devices have evolved in their capabilities from step counters to devices that measure calories burnt, sleep, and heart rate. It’s pretty common to meet people using a wearable or two to track their fitness goals. However, a big question remains unanswered. How accurate are these wearable devices? Researchers from the Big Ideas Lab
evaluated a group of wearables to assess their accuracy in measuring heart rate
.
Unlike other studies with similar intentions, the Big Ideas Lab specifically wanted to address whether skin color had an effect on the accuracy of the heart rate measurements, and an FDA-cleared Bittium Faros 180 electrocardiogram was used as the benchmark. Overall, the researchers found that there was no difference in accuracy across skin tones, meaning that the same wearable will measure heart rate on a darker skin-toned individual the same as it would on a lighter skin-toned. Phew!
However, that may be the only good news for those wanting to use their wearable to accurately monitor their heart rate. The researchers found the overall accuracy of the devices relative to ECG was a bit variable with average errors of 7.2 beats per minute (BPM) in the consumer-grade wearables and 13.9 BPM in the research-grade wearables at rest. During activity, errors in the consumer-grade wearables climbed to an average of 10.2 BPM and 15.9 in the research-grade wearables. It’s interesting to see that the research-grade devices actually performed worse than the consumer devices.
And there’s a silver lining if you’re an Apple user. The Apple Watch performed consistently better than all other devices with mean errors between 4-5 BPM during rest and during activity, unless you’re breathing deeply, which threw the Apple for a loop.
So, it seems as if wrist-worn heart rate monitors still have some work to do where accuracy is concerned. Although skin tone isn’t a worry, they all become less accurate when the subject is moving around.
If you’d like to try your own hand with fitness trackers, have a look at
this completely open project
, or go for the gold standard with
a wearable DIY ECG
. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235155",
"author": "makomk",
"timestamp": "2020-04-07T09:48:54",
"content": "This isn’t too surprising. The only evidence for the claim that wrist-worn optical heart rate sensors don’t work properly in people with darker skin was a non-statistically-significant difference in one re... | 1,760,373,529.410225 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/help-save-the-national-videogame-museum/ | Help Save The National Videogame Museum | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"crowdfunding",
"museums",
"NVM"
] | The National Videogame Museum in Sheffield, UK, houses a unique collection celebrating all decades of video games and their culture, and as the lockdown has brought with it a crisis threatening its very existence,
has launched a crowdfunding campaign
with a video we’ve placed below the break. As a relatively young organisation, they have yet to build up the financial buffer that a more established one would have. It’s important that this and other heritage sites live to open again another day, so we’d urge you to take a look.
On their website they’re providing a page of
activities for the bored youngster in your life
, but to whet your appetite should you wish to visit them in the future they also have a selection of pages about the rest of their exhibition.
One of the sad features of living through a pandemic comes in knowing that some of the businesses and organisations we hold dear might not make it through the crisis. We’ve put in a few orders to smaller suppliers over the last week or two to shove a bit of extra business their way, and no doubt you have too. What is not so easy however, is when the threatened organisation is a visitor attraction; we can’t make the trip during a lockdown. The NVM is unlikely to be the only such attraction facing the pinch, so we’d urge you to look out for those that are close to you as well.
Thanks [Tom] for the tip. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235128",
"author": "Magster",
"timestamp": "2020-04-07T05:17:40",
"content": "YES SAVE IT!!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6235180",
"author": "Trumpy",
"timestamp": "2020-04-07T13:00:27",
"content"... | 1,760,373,529.569918 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/compiling-c-to-powerpoint/ | Compiling C To PowerPoint | Al Williams | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"c compiler",
"Powerpoint",
"x86"
] | If you have worked for a large company — or even a small one — it might seem that you spend more time writing PowerPoint charts than programming. [Tom Widenhain’s] video asks the question:
Can we compile C into PowerPoint
? Watch the video below to find out the answer. Would it surprise you to know that [Tom] wanted to simulate the x86? It surprised us, too, and we had to note the video appeared on April 1. It does look workable, though, other than it is a bit unwieldy.
Instead of a Turing machine, this builds a set of clever logic gates. Unsurprisingly, [Tom] is the guy who put together a Turing machine in Excel. Surprisingly, he isn’t the first one to attempt a C to PPT compiler. The University of Chicago had
a similar idea
over a year ago, based on [Tom’s] earlier work and executed program using inefficient Turing machines.
Ironically, the code on
GitHub
uses Python to pull off the feat, even though the implementation is incomplete. Using the adder wasn’t very obvious to us, so here’s how it works. First, you have to be in slide show mode, of course. The top two rows of the adder (the first slide in the PowerPoint file) are the inputs. Click on the 1s or 0s. This fills in the middle section. Orange blocks are outputs and red blocks are those you have to click on in that middle section to populate the answer at the bottom. Kind of reminds of the
paperclip computer
.
So while the effort isn’t complete, we were impressed with the ingenuity of the logic gates. The use of the mouse position for data transfer made us nervous. As [Tom] points out, though, you are welcome to fork his repository and continue the project. We have to admit that we are more likely to
abuse spreadsheets than
presentation slides. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235110",
"author": "NorthernDIY",
"timestamp": "2020-04-07T03:12:44",
"content": "Too busy thinking about if he could, to stop and think about if he should.What a hack! Well done!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6235130",
"... | 1,760,373,529.522677 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/flexible-build-platforms-work-for-fdm-how-about-sla/ | Flexible Build Platforms Work For FDM, How About SLA? | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"3d printing",
"flexible build platform",
"proof of concept",
"prototype",
"resin",
"sla"
] | Flexible steel sheets as the foundation for build platforms are used to great advantage in FDM 3D printers. These coated sheets are held flat by magnets during printing, and after printing is done the sheet (with print attached) can be removed and flexed to pop the prints free. This got [Jan Mrázek] thinking. He was pretty sure the concept could extend to the build platform on his Elegoo Mars resin printer. With a flexible build platform, troublesome prints could be more easily removed, so
he non-destructively modified his printer to have a similar system
. [Jan] is clear that this is only a proof of concept, but the test results were good! He printed several jobs that were known to be trouble, and they were all a piece of cake to remove.
[Jan]’s mod consists of a 3D printed, two-piece unit that encapsulates the normal build platform and contains a few strong magnets. A thin sheet of steel sticks flat to this new piece, held in place by the magnets within, and becomes the new build platform. After a print is done, the sheet is removed and [Jan] reports that its flexibility is a big help in removing otherwise troublesome prints, such as
the 3D printed solder stencil we covered recently
.
[Jan] provides his CAD model but doesn’t really recommend using it for anything other than development work. Results were promising, but there are a number of drawbacks to the prototype. For one thing, it makes the build platform thicker and the Z-axis limit switch needs to be physically lowered in order to zero the unit. Also, the thicker build platform means the volume of resin the build tank can hold is reduced. Still, the idea clearly has merit and shows there absolutely is value in hardware having a hackable design. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235105",
"author": "carpespasm",
"timestamp": "2020-04-07T02:03:12",
"content": "Are there sla printers with a resin level sensor and resin tank that keeps the level topped up? Seems like that would be an easy fix for the reduced resin volume.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,373,529.614819 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/subwoofer-gets-arduino-brain-transplant/ | Subwoofer Gets Arduino Brain Transplant | Tom Nardi | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"arduino pro mini",
"home theater",
"reverse engineering",
"S3P70F4",
"spi",
"subwoofer",
"surround sound"
] | The Samsung PS-WTX500 subwoofer is designed to be used as part of a 5.1 channel home theater system, but not just
any
system. It contains the amplifiers for all the channels, but they’ll only function when the subwoofer is connected to the matching receiver. [Alejandro Zarate] figured there must be some way to unlock the system’s full functionality without being limited to the original receiver,
he just needed to reverse engineer how the subwoofer worked
.
All the wires tuck underneath the Arduino
The result is a fantastically well documented write-up that covers the whole process, starting with how [Alejandro] identified and researched the Pulsus PS9829B Digital Audio Processor (DAP). Documentation for this particular chip seems hard to come by, but he was able to find a similar chip from the same manufacturer that was close enough to put him on the right track. From there, he started studying the SPI communications between the DAP and the subwoofer’s S3P70F4 microcontroller.
After analyzing the communication between the two chips, [Alejandro] pulled the S3P70F4 off the board and wired an Arduino Pro Mini 328 in its place. The Arduino was quite a bit larger than the original microcontroller, but with some careful wiring, he manged a very professional looking installation. Short of coming up with a custom PCB adapter, we don’t think it could look much better.
With some relatively straightforward code and a listing of the captured byte sequences, the Arduino was able to power up the PS-WTX500’s amplifiers and handle the incoming audio signal as a stand-alone device.
In the past
we’ve seen a similar trick done with the ESP8266
, which had the added benefit of enabling WiFi control of the speakers. We’re all for adding modern functionality to older hardware,
even if you’ve got to hang it off the back as an external module
. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235075",
"author": "Morusa",
"timestamp": "2020-04-06T22:02:49",
"content": "keeping the mind busy and distracted also helps to overcome this health contingency",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6235086",
"author": "Mic... | 1,760,373,530.009954 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/offline-dinosaur-jumping-becomes-a-real-workout/ | Offline Dinosaur-Jumping Becomes A Real Workout | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"google hacks"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"arduino",
"Arduino Uno",
"google dinosaur game",
"nRF24L01+"
] | It’s great to see people are out there trying to find fun ways to exercise amid the current crisis. Although jumping up and down isn’t great for the knees, it does give decent cardio. But if you don’t have a rope or a puddle, we admit that jumping can lose its bounce pretty fast.
Quarantine has been a game-filled time for [fridaay]. Somewhere between a handful of FPS games,
he decided to try to play Google’s offline dinosaur-based side scroller game by making the dinosaur spring over the saguaros whenever he physically jumps in the air
. (Video, embedded below.)
Here’s how it works: [fridaay] holds a transmit circuit that consists of an Arduino UNO, an accelerometer module, and an nRF24L01 transceiver, all running on a 9 V battery. Whenever [fridaay] jumps, the accelerometer reads the change in Z and sends it to the receiving circuit, which is just another UNO and nRF. The receiving UNO is connected to a laptop and configured to press the space bar so the dinosaur canters over the cacti.
We’ve never been able to stay alive long enough in the game to see this happen, but apparently you need to crouch at some point in the game. [fridaay] has yet to implement a control for that, but we’re sure he’ll think of something. Jump past the break to see the video, and hit him up if you need the code.
If you have a lot of parts at your disposal,
why not make a physical version?
Via
r/duino | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235023",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-04-06T18:39:17",
"content": "If the dinosaur gets too boring, give geometry dash a bash, it’s nothing to do with geometry really, graphic theme is sort of based on it, but jumping is sort of synched to the music, which is EDM-y ... | 1,760,373,529.85118 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/getting-to-space-is-even-harder-during-a-pandemic/ | Getting To Space Is Even Harder During A Pandemic | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"ESA",
"international space station",
"james webb space telescope",
"mars rover",
"nasa",
"roscosmos",
"sls"
] | At this point, most of us are painfully aware of the restrictions that COVID-19 social distancing protocols have put on our daily lives. Anyone who can is working from home, major events are canceled, non-essential businesses are closed, and travel is either strongly discouraged or prohibited outright. In particularly hard hit areas, life and commerce has nearly ground to a halt with no clear end date in sight.
Naturally, there are far reaching consequences for this shutdown beyond what’s happening on the individual level. Large scale projects are also being slowed or halted entirely, as there’s only so much you can do remotely. That’s especially true when the assembly of hardware is concerned, which has put some industries in a particularly tight spot. One sector that’s really feeling the strain is aerospace. Around the world, space agencies are finding that their best laid plans are suddenly falling apart in the face of COVID-19.
In some cases it’s a minor annoyance, requiring nothing more than some tweaks to procedures. But when the movements of the planets are concerned, a delay of weeks or months changes everything. While things are still changing too rapidly to make an exhaustive list, we already know of a few missions that are being impacted in these uncertain times.
Mars Rover Misses its Flight
Certainly the mission hit hardest at this point is the
Rosalind Franklin
rover, a joint mission from the European Space Agency (ESA) and Roscosmos. Europe’s first Mars rover, the six-wheeled vehicle was scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet in March 2021 to search for signs of past life. It might seem like that gives teams plenty of time to address any issues, but the orbital mechanics of interplanetary flight make the departure time absolutely critical.
Rosalind Franklin
undergoing tests.
Put simply, Mars makes its closest approach to Earth every two years. While you could technically send a craft to Mars at any time, launches made during this biennial window are the most efficient by far. When Mars is farther away, it obviously takes more energy to put the spacecraft on an intercept trajectory. Depending on the mass of the spacecraft and the launch vehicles available, that may or may not be possible. In any event, the
Rosalind Franklin
and its launcher were designed to leave Earth during this window, and any deviation outside of it simply can’t be tolerated.
The ESA and Roscosmos teams were reportedly very close to having
Rosalind Franklin
completed before this window opens in July 2020, but concerns over the parachute deployment system required more testing. Under normal circumstances they likely could have got the issue addressed on time, but due to international travel limitations,
it was determined that performing the tests was simply too burdensome
. Rather than let the rover launch with a potentially defective parachute, the team has decided to delay until the next available launch window in 2022.
While a push to 2022 is certainly disappointing for everyone involved, it should be said that this isn’t the first time the mission has missed its window. It was originally slated to launch in 2018, but was held back due to issues with the rover’s scientific payloads.
James Webb Testing Put On Hold
NASA’s response to COVID-19 means that work on Hubble’s eventual successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JSWT), is being stopped indefinitely. This infrared observatory’s 6.5 meter (21.3 feet) diameter gold and beryllium primary mirror promises to give humanity the best look yet at objects that are too old and too distant for traditional optical telescopes to observe.
JWST at Northrop Grumman
The technical complexity of packing such a massive mirror into the payload fairing of the launch vehicle, among a myriad of other issues, has caused development of the JWST to go significantly over budget and behind schedule. NASA started development of the telescope in 1996 and hoped to have it launched by 2007, but a redesign of the spacecraft in 2005 set the program back over a decade.
At this point, primary construction of the JWST is actually complete. But given the massive investment of time and money put into the observatory, it’s currently being put through a grueling test program in California by prime contractor Northrop Grumman. This labor intensive process simply can’t be done remotely, and given the severity of the outbreak in the state,
NASA has decided there’s no way to proceed without putting staff at risk
.
The James Webb Space Telescope will remain in its cavernous environmentally controlled clean room on the Northrop Grumman campus, with round-the-clock security in place to prevent any possible tampering with the 10+ billion dollar spacecraft. It’s unclear how this stoppage will impact the overall mission timeline, but it’s safe to assume that the planned March 2021 launch date will end up being pushed back again.
SLS Production Shutdown
Another large NASA project being put on hold for the time being is the Space Launch System (SLS). The space agency claims this Space-Shuttle-derived rocket is essential for their plans beyond low Earth orbit, but critics say the single-use booster is too expensive in an era of reusable rockets. The SLS is an key element NASA’s Artemis lunar program, but beyond that, it’s currently unclear what missions would require the “super heavy-lift” rated booster.
SLS stands ready for launch in this artist’s rendition.
Production of the first flight-ready SLS has been shut down since March 20th, when NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine moved both the Michoud Assembly Facility and Stennis Space Center
to their maximum emergency response levels
. This means all work is suspended, and personnel are only allowed on-site if their presence is necessary to protect critical infrastructure or human life.
Like with the JWST, it’s difficult to say how this will impact the already behind schedule project. Officially no delay has been announced for the first Artemis mission, but it’s difficult to imagine the booster and Orion spacecraft will be ready if teams aren’t able to work on the hardware for several weeks or more.
Commercial Space Woes
Agencies like NASA, the ESA, and Roscosmos have the backing of their respective governments to rely on, so ultimately delays and stop work orders are little more than an inconvenience. It’s not as if NASA is worried about turning a profit, or in danger of running out of money before the pandemic clears up. When the situation improves, personnel will come back and work can continue again.
Bigelow developed a module for the ISS in 2016.
But the same can’t be said for some of the “New Space” companies. OneWeb, a start-up based out of London that was building its own
satellite mega-constellation to challenge SpaceX’s Starlink program
, has already declared bankruptcy.
While it was no secret that the company was in trouble financially before this,
a statement released by the company
claims they were unable to secure additional funding due to “the financial impact and market turbulence related to the spread of COVID-19”. The company had just launched another 34 satellites less than a week before the bankruptcy announcement and subsequent layoffs, bringing their total up to 74.
In the United States, expandable space habitat developer
Bigelow Aerospace laid off their entire workforce on March 23rd
. The official line is that this was done voluntarily in response to an order from Nevada’s Governor that all non-essential businesses must close, and that the plan is to rehire workers once the crisis has passed. But rumor has it the company may be using the shutdown order as an excuse to shutter permanently.
2020 Rover and ISS Unaffected
It’s not all bad news, though. NASA’s next Mars rover, the recently dubbed
Perseverance
, is still on schedule to launch this summer. As with the
Rosalind Franklin
, any delay in the launch would push the mission back by two years, but at this point there are no issues being worked that would prevent the launch from continuing as scheduled. In fact, the mission is of a high enough priority that NASA says it will go ahead even if the emergency response level isn’t lowered.
Perseverance
undergoing final testing.
The only thing that has a higher priority than
Perseverance
right now is the International Space Station and the astronauts aboard it. No matter what happens on the ground, it’s life as usual for those living in low Earth orbit. Ground Control will continue to be available 24 hours a day, and regular resupply missions and crew rotation flights are not to be impacted. Though even if flights to the Station are put on hold, the crew have ample supplies to remain onboard for the foreseeable future.
Even under normal conditions, astronauts are held in quarantine for weeks before their flight to the Station and all materials are carefully sterilized prior to launch. Unsurprisingly, illness in space is something that NASA and its international partners have always been careful to avoid. Even if NASA wasn’t already running at a heightened emergency preparedness level, COVID-19 would have never made it to orbit.
All Dates Subject to Change
Of course, everything goes according to plan…until the moment it doesn’t. Outside of the International Space Station and the human lives aboard it, pretty much everything is expendable. NASA isn’t going to risk the lives of their personnel just to avoid waiting two more years to launch
Perseverance
, so if the local situation gets markedly worse in Florida, even a high priority mission could get put on the back burner. Local news is already reporting that
at least one staff member at Kennedy Space Center has tested positive for COVID-19
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6235046",
"author": "james",
"timestamp": "2020-04-06T19:57:10",
"content": "NASA: “Let’s launch some satellites”2020: “You will not go to space today”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6235050",
"author": "Hirudinea",
... | 1,760,373,529.894831 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/brainstorming-covid-19-hack-chat/ | Brainstorming COVID-19 Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"brainstorm",
"coronavirus",
"Covid-19",
"personal protective equipment",
"PPE",
"quarantine",
"SARS-CoV-2",
"social distancing",
"The Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, April 8 at noon Pacific for the
Brainstorming COVID-19 Hack Chat
!
The COVID-19 pandemic has been sweeping across the globe now for three months. In that time it has encountered little resistance in its advances, being a novel virus with just the right mix of transmissibility and virulence that our human immune systems have never encountered. The virus is racking up win after win across the world, crippling public health and medical systems, shutting down entire economies, and forcing billions of people into isolation for the foreseeable future.
While social distancing is certainly an effective way to limit the spread of the disease, it feels more like hiding than fighting. Bored and stuck at home, millions of fertile minds are looking for an outlet for this frustration, a more affirmative way to fight the good fight and build solutions that the world sorely needs. And thus we’ve seen the outpouring of designs, ideas, and prototypes of everything from
social distancing helpers
to
personal protective equipment (PPE) hacks
.
In this Hack Chat, we’ll try to provide a framework around which hackers can start to turn their ideas into COVID-19 solutions. There are a ton of problems right now, but the most acute and most approachable seem to revolve around making sure healthcare providers have the PPE they need to do their job safely. Hacking at the edges of managing social distancing seems doable, too, both in terms of helping people keep a healthy distance from each other and in managing the isolation that causes. And let’s not forget about managing boredom; idle hands lead to idle minds, and staying healthy mentally is just as important as good handwashing and nutrition.
Join us on Wednesday for this group-led Hack Chat and bring your best ideas for attacking COVID-19 head-on.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, April 8 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have
a handy time zone converter
.
Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234994",
"author": "CRImier",
"timestamp": "2020-04-06T16:13:34",
"content": "Given the amount of discussion this topic seems to generate online, you might want to organize this hackchat a little bit better – maybe split it into topics and give them timeslots, maybe just make the H... | 1,760,373,529.954365 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/put-an-open-source-demon-in-your-pocket/ | Put An Open Source Demon In Your Pocket | Tom Nardi | [
"Toy Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"FreeRTOS",
"oled",
"tamagotchi",
"virtual pet"
] | Back in 1996, the Tamagotchi was a triumph of hardware miniaturization. Nearly 25 years later, our expectations for commercially designed and manufactured gadgets are naturally quite a bit higher. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be impressed
when somebody pulls off a similar feat in the DIY space
.
The Xling by [dsl] follows the classic Tamagotchi concept. A little creature, apparently inspired by the demon from Netflix’s
Disenchantment
, lives in your pocket and needs occasional attention to remain healthy. The user pushes a few buttons to interact with the creature displayed on the display to do…whatever it is you do with a pet demon. Feed it souls and what have you.
But unlike the iconic 90s toy, both the hardware and software for the Xling are open source. The CERN-OHL-W licensed PCB was designed in KiCad and features an ATmega1284P microcontroller and SH1106G controller for the 128 x 64 OLED display.
Power is provided by an AP3401 DC-DC converter, MCP73831 charge controller, and a 400 mAh 3.7 V battery. Everything fits inside of a 3D printed case that looks like it could easily hang off of a keyring.
While the hardware is admirable enough, the software side of things is quite interesting as well. The Xling is running on a FreeRTOS kernel ported to the ATmega, but the GPLv3 licensed firmware sill needs some work. Right now only a few core functions are implemented, and [dsl] is hoping to get some ideas and feedback from the community so his dream of a fully open source demonic Tamagotchi can finally be realized.
Build enough of them, and you might even be able to
implement another virtual pet Singularity
. But to be safe, maybe you shouldn’t. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234974",
"author": "opless",
"timestamp": "2020-04-06T15:09:11",
"content": "First",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6235058",
"author": "qwert",
"timestamp": "2020-04-06T20:50:12",
"content": "Wait we’r... | 1,760,373,530.094059 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/navigating-self-driving-cars-by-looking-at-whats-underneath-the-road/ | Navigating Self-Driving Cars By Looking At What’s Underneath The Road | Maya Posch | [
"car hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"GPR",
"gps",
"ground penetrating radar",
"lgpr",
"localizing ground-penetrating radar",
"mit",
"self-driving cars"
] | When you put a human driver behind the wheel, they will use primarily their eyes to navigate. Both to stay on the road and to use any navigation aids, such as maps and digital navigation assistants. For self-driving cars, tackling the latter is relatively easy, as the system would use the same information in a similar way: when to to change lanes, and when to take a left or right. The former task is a lot harder, with situational awareness even a challenge for human drivers.
In order to maintain this awareness, self-driving and driver-assistance systems use a combination of cameras, LIDAR, and other sensors. These can track stationary and moving objects and keep track of the lines and edges of the road. This allows the car to precisely follow the road and, at least in theory, not run into obstacles or other vehicles. But if the weather gets bad enough, such as when the road is covered with snow, these systems can have trouble coping.
Looking for ways to improve the performance of autonomous driving systems in poor visibility, engineers are currently experimenting with ground-penetrating radar. While it’s likely to be awhile before we start to see this hardware on production vehicles, the concept already shows promise. It turns out that if you can’t see whats on the road ahead of you, looking underneath it might be the next best thing.
Knowing Your Place in the World
Certainly the biggest challenge of navigating with a traditional paper map is that it doesn’t provide a handy blinking icon to indicate your current location. For the younger folk among us, imagine trying to use Google Maps without it telling you where you are on the map, or even which way you’re facing. How would you navigate across a map, Mr. Anderson, if you do not know where you are?
GPS revolutionized how we navigate.
This is pretty much an age-old issue, dating back to the earliest days of humanity. Early hunter-gatherer tribes had to find their way across continents, following the migratory routes of their prey animals. They would use landmarks and other signs that would get passed on from generation to generation, as a kind of oral map. Later on, humans would learn to navigate by the stars and Sun,
using a process called celestial navigation
.
Later on, we’d introduce the concept of longitude and latitude to divide the Earth’s surface into a grid, using celestial navigation and accurate clocks to determine our position. This would remain the pinnacle of localization and a cornerstone of navigation until the advent of radio beacons and satellites like the GPS constellation.
So it might seem like self-driving vehicles could use GPS to determine their current location, skipping the complicated sensors and not not bothering to look at the road at all. In a perfect world, they could. But in practice, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
Precision is a Virtue
The main issue with a systems like GPS is that accuracy can vary wildly depending on factors such as how many satellites are visible to the receiver. When traveling through wide open country, one’s accuracy with a modern, L5-band capable GPS receiver can be as good as 30 centimeters. But try it in a forest or a city with tall buildings that reflect and block the satellite signals, and suddenly one’s accuracy drops to something closer to 5 meters, or worse.
It also takes time for a GPS receiver to obtain a “fix” on a number of satellites before it can determine its location. This isn’t a huge problem when GPS is being used to supplement position data, but it could be disastrous if it was the only way a self-driving vehicle knew where it was. But even in perfect conditions, GPS just doesn’t get you close enough. The maximum precision of 30 centimeters, while more than sufficient for general navigation, could still mean the difference between being on the road and driving off the side of it.
One solution is for self-driving vehicles to adopt the system that worked for our earliest ancestors, using landmarks. By having a gigantic database of buildings, mountains and other landmarks of note, cameras and LIDAR systems could follow a digital map so the car always has a good idea of where it is. Unfortunately, such landmarks can change relatively quickly, with buildings torn down, new buildings erected, a noise barrier added along a stretch of highway, and so on. Not to mention the impact of poor weather and darkness on such systems.
The Good Kind of boring
When you think about it, what’s below our feet doesn’t change a great deal. Once a road goes down, not too much will happen to whatever is below it. This is the reasoning behind the use of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) with vehicles, in what is called localizing ground-penetrating radar (LGPR). MIT has been running experiments on the use of this technology
for a few years now
, and recently ran tests with having LGPR-equipped vehicles
self-navigate in both snowy and rainy conditions
.
They found that the LGPR-equipped system had no trouble staying on track, with snow on the road adding an error margin of only about 2.5 cm (1″), and a rain-soaked road causing an offset of on average 14 cm (5.5″). Considering that their “worst case” findings are significantly better (by about 16 cm) than GPS on a good day, it’s easy to see why there’s so much interest in this technology.
Turning Cars into Optical Mice
The GPR system sends out electromagnetic pulses in the microwave band, where layers in the ground will impact how and when these pulses will be reflected, providing us with an image of the subsurface structures.
Subsurface imagery created with LGPR
This
isn’t unlike how an optical mouse works
, where the light emitted from the bottom reflects off the surface it’s moving on. The mouse’s sensor receives a pattern of reflected light that allows it to deduce when it’s being moved across the desk, in which direction, and how fast.
LGPR is similar, only in addition to keeping track of direction and speed, it also compares the image it records against a map which has been recorded previously. To continue the optical mouse example, if we were to scan our entire desk’s surface with a sensor like the one in the mouse and perform the same comparison, our mouse would be able to tell exactly where it is on the desk (give or take a few millimeters) at all times.
Roads would be mapped in advance by a special LGPR truck, and this data would be provided to autonomous vehicles. They can then use these maps as reference while they move across the roads, scanning the subsurface structures using their LGPR sensors to determine their position.
Time will Tell
Whether or not this LGPR technology will be the breakthrough that self-driving cars needed is hard to tell. No matter what, autonomous vehicles will still need sensors for observing road markings and signs because above ground things change often. With road maintenance, traffic jams, and pedestrians crossing the street, it’s a busy world to drive around in.
A lot of the effort in making autonomous vehicles “just work” depends less on sensors, and more on a combination of situational awareness and good decision making. In the hyper-dynamic above ground world, there are countless times during even a brief grocery shopping trip that one needs to plan ahead, take rapid decisions based on sudden events, react to omissions in one’s planning, and deal with other traffic both by following the rules and creatively adapting said rules when others take sudden liberties.
With a number of autonomous vehicles on the roads from a wide variety of companies,
we’re starting to see how well they perform in real-life situations
. Here we can see that autonomous vehicles tend to be programmed in a way that makes them respond very conservatively, although adding a bit more aggression might better fit the expectations of fellow (human) drivers.
Localizing ground-penetrating radar helps by adding to the overall situational awareness, but only if somebody actually makes the maps and occasionally goes back to update them. Unfortunately that might be the biggest hurdle in rolling out such a system in the real world, since the snow-covered roads where LGPR could be the most helpful are likely the last ones to get mapped. | 51 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234955",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-04-06T14:08:39",
"content": "Seems a complicated solution instead of using the presence of cat-eyes on most roads.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6234973",
"author": ... | 1,760,373,530.246162 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/download-a-bit-of-sinclair-history/ | Download A Bit Of Sinclair History | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"prototype",
"rom",
"ZX Spectrum"
] | If you are a devotee of the Sinclair series of 8-bit home computers then a piece of news from the Centre For Computing History in Cambridge may be of interest to you,
they’ve released a copy of the ROM from their ZX Spectrum prototype
. This machine surfaced last year as part of a donation form the company originally contracted to write the Spectrum ROM and has been given pride of place int heir exhibition ever since. They’ve been doing some very careful work on it, and while
The Register reports
they can’t yet make the board boot, they have extracted the code for study. In the video below the break, we see it running on the Speccy emulator on an older Windows PC.
The ROM comes with an invitation to the ZX Spectrum community to analyze it against the stock version, in the hope of revealing ossified fragments of code such as that for the Microdrive storage peripheral which never made it into the stock Spectrum. But should you simply want to try your favorite games with the earliest possible version of the ROM, you can do that too.
We covered the machine’s emergence
last year, meanwhile, if you haven’t been to the Centre for Computing History yet, we suggest you
take a look at our review
from a few years ago. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234928",
"author": "John Doe",
"timestamp": "2020-04-06T11:57:45",
"content": "Speaker on picture looks much younger then the whole rest, isn’t it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6234984",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
... | 1,760,373,530.434879 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/06/global-status-board-keeps-eye-on-covid-19-situation/ | Global Status Board Keeps Eye On COVID-19 Situation | Tom Nardi | [
"LED Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"annunciator",
"api",
"Covid-19",
"ESP32",
"wall mounted"
] | When it comes to keeping abreast of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are basically two schools of thought. Some people would rather not hear the number of confirmed cases or deaths, and just want to focus on those who recovered. That’s fair enough. But others want to have all of the available data at their disposal so they can form their own conclusions about what’s happening with this virus on a global scale.
Looking at this incredible COVID-19 status board
, we’ll give you one guess which category [Reuben] falls into.
Note the laser engraved component labels
Constructed out of 2020 extrusion with both 3D printed and laser cut parts, this wall-mounted display is built to last. Clearly [Reuben] believes we’re in this one for the long haul, and taking a peek at the plethora of data points this device can show at once, it’s not hard to see why.
Stats are pulled down every hour from a JSON API by an ESP32 and stored on an SD card. A running total of confirmed cases, deaths, and recoveries are shown on several TFT displays located behind the face of the display. On the right, the relative severity of the infection in 32 different countries is visualized with LEDs of varying brightness.
Perhaps the most visually striking element of the display is the large annunciator panel on the left side, which lights up to show various conditions all over the world. We appreciate that [Reuben] has thought ahead and added a light that can be used once a vaccine is deployed for COVID-19, but the inclusion of a “MARTIAL LAW” indicator certainly doesn’t help us shake the feeling we’ve all found ourselves in a proper dystopia.
For those who’d would rather get their information from the source rather than have it filtered through the media, we’ve recently covered
a few APIs that will allow you to pull your own up-to-date COVID-19 stats
. Whether you’re looking to build something as elaborate as this display, or just want to echo it out to the terminal, making sure you’re seeing
accurate data is key to identifying the turning point
. | 25 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234894",
"author": "Michael",
"timestamp": "2020-04-06T08:34:28",
"content": "Sorry This is pointless project. It looks like something from the 70s. It’s like one of them MB electronic games that use to take them old C size batteries. I feel hackaday as gone right down hill now. Se... | 1,760,373,530.157119 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/05/an-arduino-free-automatic-alcohol-administrator/ | An Arduino-Free Automatic Alcohol Administrator | Kristina Panos | [
"green hacks",
"Lifehacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"airline tubing",
"dispenser",
"IR proximity sensor",
"lockdown life",
"submersible pump",
"transistor"
] | With all the hands-free dispenser designs cropping up out there, the maker world could potentially be headed for an Arduino shortage. We say that in jest, but it’s far too easy to use an Arduino to prototype a design and then just leave it there doing all the work, even if you know going in that it’s overkill.
[ASCAS] took up the challenge and built
a cheap and simple dispenser that relies on recycled parts and essential electronics
. It uses an IR proximity sensor module to detect dirty digits, and a small submersible pump to push isopropyl alcohol, sanitizer, or soap up to your hovering hand. The power comes from a sacrificial USB cable and is switched through a transistor, so it could be plugged into the wall or a portable power pack.
We admire the amount of reuse in this project, especially the nozzle-narrowing ballpoint pen piece. Be sure to check out the build video after the break.
Hopefully, you’re all still washing your hands for the prescribed 20 seconds. If you’re starting to slip, why not
build a digital hourglass and watch the pixels disappear? | 30 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234870",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2020-04-06T05:05:41",
"content": "I got excited when I read that headline and got disappointed when I got to the bit about dirty digits – but I guess it could be adapted :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,530.388271 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/05/harry-potter-wand-hack-makes-magic-real/ | Harry Potter Wand Hack Makes Magic Real | Richard Baguley | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"harry potter",
"machine learning",
"opencv"
] | Any sufficiently advanced hack is indistinguishable from magic, a wise man once observed. That’s true with this cool build from [Jasmeet Singh] that
magically opens a box when you wave a Harry Potter magic wand in the right way
. Is it magic? No, it’s a neat hack that uses computer vision to track the wand and recognize when you make the magic gesture.
The trick is based on the same technique that Universal Studios use in their Harry Potter theme park, as detailed in a patent with the snappy title of “
System and method for tracking a passive wand and actuating an effect based on a detected wand path
“. The basic idea is that a retroreflective dot on the end of the wand reflects light from a set of infra-red LEDs around the camera. An infra-red sensitive camera detects this reflected light as a bright dot. This camera is tied into a computer vision system that tracks the path of the dot, then triggers the action if it follows a certain pattern.
The version that [Jasmeet] built uses a Raspberry Pi NoIR camera, and a Raspberry Pi 3 running OpenCV. This feeds into a machine learning graph that detects the letters of the alphabet. If the detected letter is an A (for Alomahora, the Harry Potter open spell), then the box opens. If it is a C, the box closes. This is all tied together using Python.
It’s a neat build that ties together a number of interesting techniques, and which could keep the kids amused for a while. You could also expand it further, such as adding a death ray that triggers if you trace an S for Sectumsempra. That’ll teach them not to mess with the dark arts. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234867",
"author": "Guru Bucakroo",
"timestamp": "2020-04-06T04:39:29",
"content": "if I had a lathe and a source for the retroreflective beads they use on the wands, I’d love to set up shop making custom handmade wands that work with the park’s system. I want to put one into my ca... | 1,760,373,530.473381 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/05/hackaday-links-april-5-2020/ | Hackaday Links: April 5, 2020 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"basic",
"BBC Micro",
"birth announcement",
"bork",
"commit",
"Covid-19",
"enig",
"error",
"Git",
"hackaday links",
"license",
"panelizing",
"pcb",
"tweet",
"twitter"
] | Git is powerful, but with great power comes the ability to really bork things up. When you find yourself looking at an inscrutable error message after an ill-advised late-night commit, it can be a maximum pucker-factor moment, and keeping a clear enough head to fix the problem can be challenging. A little proactive social engineering may be in order, which is why Jonathan Bisson wrote
git-undo
, a simple shell script that displays the most common un-borking commands he’s likely to need. There are other ways to prompt yourself through Git emergencies, like
Oh Shit, Git
(or for the scatologically sensitive,
Dangit Git
), but git-undo has the advantage of working without an Internet connection.
Suddenly find yourself with a bunch of time on your hands and nothing to challenge your skills? Why not try to write a program in a single Tweet? The brainchild of Dominic Pajak, the
BBC Micro Bot
Twitter account accepts tweets and attempts to run them as BASIC programs on a BBC Microcomputer emulator, replying with the results of the program. It would seem that 280 characters would make it difficult to do anything interesting, but check out some of the results. Most are graphic displays, some animated, and with an unsurprising number of nods to 1980s pop culture. Some are truly impressive, though, like
Conway’s Game of Life
written by none other than Eben Upton.
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing all sorts of cultural shifts, but we didn’t expect to see much change in the culture of a community that’s been notoriously resistant to change for over a century: amateur radio. One of the most basic facts of life in the amateur radio world is that you need a license to participate, with governments regulating the process. But as a response to the pandemic,
Spain has temporarily lifted licensing requirements for amateur radio operators
. Normally, an unlicensed person is only allowed to operate on amateur bands under the direct supervision of a licensed amateur. The rules change allows unlicensed operators to use a station without supervision and is intended to give schoolchildren trapped at home an educational experience. In another change, some countries are
allowing special callsign suffixes
, like “STAYHOME,” to raise awareness during the pandemic. And
the boom in interest in amateur radio
since the pandemic started is remarkable; unfortunately, finding a way to take your test in a socially distant world is quite a trick. Our friend Josh Nass (KI6NAZ) has
some thoughts about testing under these conditions
that you might find interesting.
And finally, life goes on during all this societal disruption, and every new life deserves to be celebrated. And when Lauren Devinck made her appearance last month, her proud parents decided to send out
unique birth announcement cards with a printed circuit board feature
. The board is decorative, not functional, but adds a distinctive look to the card. The process of getting the boards printed was non-trivial; it turns out that free-form script won’t pass most design rule tests, and that panelizing them required making some compromises. We think the finished product is classy, but can’t help but think that a functional board would have really made a statement. Regardless, we welcome Lauren and congratulate her proud parents. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234838",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2020-04-05T23:16:21",
"content": "BBC Micro Bot? With all the C-64, Apple II, Tandy and ZX-81 (former) owners stuck at home and the BBC Micro is the first out of the gate? Come people, let’s get on the 8-bit ball!",
"parent_id": nul... | 1,760,373,530.518608 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/05/diy-closed-cell-silicone-foam/ | DIY Closed-Cell Silicone Foam | Bryan Cockfield | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"acid-base",
"baking soda",
"caulk",
"Chemistry",
"closed cell",
"foam",
"silicone",
"vinegar"
] | Most of us have a junk drawer, full of spare parts yanked from various places, but also likely stocked with materials we bought for a project but didn’t use completely. Half a gallon of wood glue, a pile of random, scattered resistors, or in [Ken]’s case, closed-cell silicone foam. Wanting to avoid this situation he set about
trying to make his own silicone foam and had a great degree of success
.
Commercial systems typically rely on a compressed gas of some sort to generate the foam. Ken also wanted to avoid this and kept his process simple by using basic (pun intended) chemistry to generate the bubbles. A mixture of vinegar and baking soda created the gas. After a healthy amount of trial and error using silicone caulk and some thinner to get the mixture correct, he was able to generate a small amount of silicone foam. While there only was a bit of foam, it was plenty for his needs. All without having a stockpile of extra foam or needing to buy any specialized equipment.
We appreciate this project for the ingenuity of taking something relatively simple (an acid-base reaction) and putting it to use in a way we’ve never seen before. While [Ken] doesn’t say directly on the project page what he uses the foam for, perhaps it or a similar type of foam could be used for
building walk-along gliders
.
Photo via
Wikimedia Commons | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234801",
"author": "jafinch78",
"timestamp": "2020-04-05T20:50:13",
"content": "Neat video and method. Wondered about the silicone oil when making the molds of stone tile and stones to make decorative concrete stamps. I used and still have a few tubes of Type 2 silicone so wonder... | 1,760,373,530.557873 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/05/making-an-arduino-ventilator-read-this-first/ | Making An Arduino Ventilator? Read This First | Al Williams | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Covid-19",
"life critical",
"real-time",
"RTOS",
"safety critical",
"ventilator"
] | Thanks to the virus crisis, lots of people are designing makeshift ventilator designs in the hopes of saving people’s lives. Many of these are based around some sort of Arduino-powered CPU. [Armstrong Subero] things that’s a great idea, but
cautions that making an electronic pair of dice is a different proposition than creating a machine to breathe for someone
. But he isn’t just complaining. He talks about considerations when building a real-time and safety-critical system.
[Armstrong] has a lot of good points, although we aren’t sure you need the complexity of a real-time operating system just to squeeze a bag. If anything, that seems like it might make it more susceptible to unexpected operation. However, we agree with his comments that you should have closed-loop control to make sure the device is working, alarming when the device isn’t working, and watchdog timers to guard against lockup.
One excellent point from the post:
For example a high availability system real time system may be specified as having an up time of around 99% in a 24 hour period. Which 1% of the day is it acceptable to have the ventilator not operational? Since we have 1440 minutes in a day, which 14.4 minutes of the day should the patient not be allowed to breathe?
However, he does have some solid suggestions such as using an IDE with debugging and adhering to a coding standard such as MISRA. Of course, he also points out you might choose a different CPU that has safety-critical certifications and corresponding libraries. One suggestion is to have multiple CPUs, and this is a common enough solution in many safety-critical systems. For example, imagine 3 CPUs driving a switching circuit that requires a low logic level to turn on.
You could make the outputs go to inputs if the CPU wants to not drive the switch, or pull the output to ground if it does. Then a pull-up resistor holds the state high if no CPU pulls it to ground. All CPUs could sense the state of the line and if they don’t think it looks right they sound their own alarm. Some systems vote so that two of three CPUs must agree (at least) or, in some cases, three out of five.
We’ve been talking about
ventilators quite a bit lately
. The kind of mechanical design [Armstrong] is probably thinking of is like the
MIT design
we talked about last week. | 70 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234752",
"author": "localroger",
"timestamp": "2020-04-05T17:30:54",
"content": "So many reactions. Firstly, it’s not really rocket science. You use a fast booting system with a watchdog timer and a state machine whose state is in nonvolatile memory. But secondly, no you don’t w... | 1,760,373,530.695913 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/05/data-glove-gets-a-grip-on-gesture-input/ | Data Glove Gets A Grip On Gesture Input | Kristina Panos | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"gesture control",
"hall effect",
"magnets",
"Teensy",
"wearable computing"
] | If we really want wearable computing to take off as a concept, we’re going to need lightweight input devices that can do some heavy lifting. Sure, split ergo keyboards are awesome. But it seems silly to restrict the possibilities of cyberdecks by limiting the horizons to imitations of desk-bound computing concepts.
What we really need are things like [Zack Freedman]’s somatic data glove
. This fantastically futuristic finger reader is inspired by DnD spells that have a somatic component to them — a precise hand gesture that must be executed perfectly while the spell is spoken, lest it be miscast. The idea is to convert hand gestures to keyboard presses and mouse clicks using a Teensy that’s housed in the wrist-mounted box. You are of course not limited to computing on the go, but who could resist walking around the danger zone with this on their wrist?
Each finger segment contains a magnet, and there’s a Hall effect sensor in each base knuckle to detect when gesture movement has displaced a magnet. There’s a 9-DoF IMU mounted in the thumb that will eventually allow letters to be typed by drawing them in the air. All of the finger and thumb components are housed in 3D-printed enclosures that are mounted on a cool-looking half glove designed for weightlifters. [Zack] is still working on gesture training, but has
full instructions for building the glove up on Instructables
.
It’s true: we do love split ergo keyboarded cyberdecks, and
this one is out of this world
. | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234766",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2020-04-05T18:35:03",
"content": "Seems like a well thought out work in progress. Got to wonder if you could ever really get useable speeds with something like this though – absence of haptic feedback and if you are wearing it anyway po... | 1,760,373,530.595501 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/05/the-clue-tracker-points-you-to-a-target-using-circuitpython/ | The CLUE Tracker Points You To A Target, Using CircuitPython | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"gps hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"CircuitPython",
"clue",
"enclosure",
"gps",
"tracker"
] | The main components are an Adafruit CLUE, Stemma GPS, and a lithium-polymer battery. No soldering required.
[Jay Doscher] shares a quick GPS project he designed and completed over a weekend.
The device is called the
CLUE Tracker
and has simple goals: it shows a user their current location, but also provides a compass heading and distance to a target point. The idea is a little like geocaching, in that a user is pointed to a destination but must find their own way there. There’s a 3D printed enclosure, and as a bonus, there is no soldering required.
The CLUE Tracker uses the
Adafruit CLUE board
(which is the same size as the BBC micro:bit) and
Stemma GPS sensor
, with the only other active component being a lithium polymer battery. The software side of the CLUE Tracker uses CircuitPython, and [Jay] has the
code and enclosure design available on GitHub
.
[Jay] did a nice job of commenting and documenting the code, so this could make a great introductory CircuitPython project. No soldering is required, which makes it a little easier to re-use the parts in other projects later. This helps to offset costs for hackers on a budget.
The fact that a device like this can be an afternoon or weekend project is a testament to the fact that times have never been better for hobbyists when it comes to hardware.
CircuitPython is also a fast-growing tool
, and projects like this can help make it easy and fun to get started. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234711",
"author": "socksbot",
"timestamp": "2020-04-05T13:02:52",
"content": "Hard Mode:https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cheap_gps.png",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6234716",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-04-0... | 1,760,373,530.737453 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/05/turn-off-those-batteries-with-their-protection-chip/ | Turn Off Those Batteries With Their Protection Chip | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"battery protection",
"battery shutdown",
"dw01",
"lithium",
"lithium battery"
] | It should be a feature of every device powered by a lithium-ion battery, that it has a protection chip on board that automatically disconnects it should it go out of its safe voltage range. A chip most often used for this purpose in single-cell applications is the Fortune Semiconductor DW01, and [Oliver] shares
a tip for using this chip to power down the battery
. The DW01 has a CS, or current sense pin, which if taken high momentarily will put the chip into an off state until the battery is disconnected.
Looking at
the DW01 datasheet
we can see that this would work, but we can’t help having a few questions. The CS pin is a safety sensor pin, providing over current, short circuit, and reverse polarity detection. It’s the kind of pin one might mess with only when one is absolutely certain it’s not likely to trigger a dangerous fault condition, so a bit of care should be required. However, we can see that leaving its resistor in place and supplying it a momentary logic level through another resistor should work. We’d be interested in the views of any readers with more experience in the world of lithium battery protection on this hack.
Meanwhile, a good read for any reader should be
our look last year at lithium-ion safety
. | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234681",
"author": "Gérald",
"timestamp": "2020-04-05T08:39:31",
"content": "There should be a physical switch to disconnect battery when a device is stored for a long time. I’ve modified some devices like this, and batteries in them is still working great after 10 years or more. W... | 1,760,373,530.793386 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/04/r-c-toilet-paper-roll-is-the-hero-we-deserve/ | R/C Toilet Paper Roll Is The Hero We Deserve | Tom Nardi | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"Popsicle stick",
"remote control",
"toilet paper"
] | For reasons that most rational consumers can’t fathom, a not inconsiderable segment of the population believes the key to their continued survival during a pandemic unprecedented in modern times is to stockpile toilet paper. This leaves those of us not compelled to act based on the whims of our bowels looking at bare racks in the paper product aisle more often than not.
Which makes it the perfect time for
[Ariel Yahni] to develop his remote controlled toilet paper roll
. With this gadget deployed, you just might have a chance at drawing the Karens away from all the rolled gold long enough to grab yourself a pack. Even if it doesn’t distract the other
competitors
shoppers, you can at least enjoy the looks on their faces as it scurries by.
The project starts with, of all things, popsicle sticks. These are used to make a reinforced platform to which the two motors, radio receiver, speed controller, and battery are mounted. With some clever packing, [Ariel] is able to (tightly) fit it inside of a cardboard tube with just the bottoms of the two wheels protruding through cutouts. A careful wrapping with toilet paper is then used to give it the look of a partially used roll, including a trailing “tail” that flutters in its wake.
In the video after the break, you can see [Ariel] take his roll of motorized TP through a local mall for a test drive. We’re sorry to say that nobody appears to make a wild dive for it during the test. But that could be because the video was recorded back in December before people had resorted to fighting over toiletries. It also explains why he was able to get into a mall in the first place.
Just think, if we had
embraced the high-tech toilets of the future back when we had a chance
, we could have avoided this whole thing. As far as dystopias go, this one is shaping up to be pretty weird. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234703",
"author": "Experienced Experimenter",
"timestamp": "2020-04-05T11:44:52",
"content": "Use less toilet paper, make yourself a portable bidet from an empty squeeze bottle (shampoo) or 1 liter plastic soda bottle by drilling a hole sideways in the cap while it is screwed on.E... | 1,760,373,530.841476 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/04/an-adapter-to-solve-your-esp-01-breadboard-woes/ | An Adapter To Solve Your ESP-01 Breadboard Woes | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Parts"
] | [
"adapter",
"breadboard",
"ESP-01",
"header",
"prototyping",
"voltage regulator"
] | The ESP-01 launched the ESP8266 revolution back in 2014, and while today you’re far more likely to see somebody use a later version of the chip in a Wemos or NodeMCU development board, there are still tasks the original chip is well suited for. Unfortunately, they can be tricky to use while prototyping because they aren’t very breadboard friendly,
but this adapter developed by [Miguel Reis] can help
.
Of course, the main issue is the somewhat unusual pinout of the ESP-01. Since it was designed as a daughter board to plug into another device, the header is too tight to fit into a breadboard. The adapter that [Miguel] has come up with widens that up to the point you can put it down the centerline of your breadboard and have plenty of real estate around it.
The second issue is that the ESP-01 is a 3.3 V device, which can be annoying if everything else in the circuit is running on 5 V. To get around this, the adapter includes an SPX3819 regulator and enough capacitors that the somewhat temperamental chip gets the steady low-voltage supply it needs to be happy.
[Miguel] has released the schematics and board files so you can spin up your own copy of the adapter,
but they’re also available for around $3 USD from his Tindie store
. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234682",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2020-04-05T09:00:15",
"content": "You are still using 5V logic?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6234834",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-04-05T22:55:40"... | 1,760,373,531.128858 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/04/typing-by-slamming-your-laptop-closed-repeatedly/ | Typing By Slamming Your Laptop Closed. Repeatedly | Danie Conradie | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"bash",
"cw",
"laptop",
"morse code"
] | Do you sometimes feel that your custom mechanical keyboard is not quite loud enough to proclaim your superior hacking powers? Or do you need a more forceful way shout in all caps at someone who is wrong on the internet? For all this and more, [Jesse Li] has got you covered, with a
set of bash scripts that allows you to type by slamming your laptop closed
repeatedly, using Morse code.
Not the fastest way to type, but definitely the most forceful
The scripts are quite simple, and work receiving the lid open/close events from ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface), recording the open and close timestamp and converting the timing to dots and dashes. After slamming to the required rhythm, you keep the lid open to see the character appear.
Why would want this? Well, you can now type the letter E by closing your laptop, instead of locking it. Maybe use it to send an emergency message while you’re being held by terrorists in a B-grade action movie. Otherwise, we think this is just an entertaining little hack that’s probably the product of quarantine induced boredom.
Morse code, otherwise known as CW, is still in surprisingly widespread use by ham radio operators, because it’s good at getting messages across intercontinental distances when signal conditions are bad and
CW-only ham radio gear
is cheap and
easy to build yourself
. We’ve also covered the
Koch Method of learning CW
, so don’t be afraid to dabble a bit during the quarantine. | 26 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234599",
"author": "Rick",
"timestamp": "2020-04-04T23:17:55",
"content": "This cannot possibly be good for the hinge or the FFC cables/slip rings running through it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6234712",
"author"... | 1,760,373,531.068146 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/04/neopixel-matrix-simulation-lets-you-virtually-groove-to-the-lights/ | NeoPixel Matrix Simulation Lets You Virtually Groove To The Lights | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"led",
"neopixel",
"RGB LED",
"simulation",
"ws2812b"
] | You are stuck at home quarantined and you want to do some Arduino projects. The problem is you don’t have all the cool devices you want to use. Sure, you can order them, but the stores are slow shipping things that aren’t essential these days. If you want to get a headstart while you are waiting for the postman, check out Wokwi’s Playground. For example, you can write code to drive
a virtual NeoPixel 16×16 matrix
. There’s even example code to get you started.
There are quite a few other choices in the playground including Charlieplexed LEDs, a keypad, and an LCD. There are also challenges. For example, in the traffic light challenge, you are given code that uses a task scheduler library to implement a traffic light. You have to add a turn signal to the code.
In addition to LEDs in various configurations, the site has some serial bus components, an LCD, a keypad, and a NeoPixel strip. There are also a few tools including an EasyEDA to KiCad converter and a way to share sourcecode similar to Pastebin.
Of course, simulations only get you so far, but the site is a fun way to play with some different I/O devices. It would be very nice if you could compose for the different components together, but you could work your code in sections, if necessary. You can do similar things with
TinkerCad circuits
. If you want to install software, there’s
a simulator
for you, too. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234618",
"author": "reg",
"timestamp": "2020-04-05T00:14:11",
"content": "That could be fun to play with.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6234684",
"author": "neimado",
"timestamp": "2020-04-05T09:03:47",
"content":... | 1,760,373,531.006925 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/04/self-glowing-ring-is-its-own-battery/ | Self-Glowing Ring Is Its Own Battery | Lewin Day | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"jewelry",
"ring"
] | LED jewelry has always been a popular part of the maker community. Oftentimes, coin cells are used as a compact source of power, or wires are run to discreet hidden battery packs. [OguzC3] went another route, however,
creating a glowing ring which works as its own battery.
The design will be familiar to those who have done high-school experiments on basic batteries. An aluminium pipe forms the inner surface of the ring, which is then wrapped in a layer of newspaper. A copper outer ring is then placed outside. When soaked in a salt water solution, this forms a basic battery. The voltage output is only around 0.5 volts, so a joule thief circuit is built into the ring to step this up high enough to drive an LED. [OguzC3] reports that the ring lasts several hours at a time, and only needs a quick rinse in fresh salty water to recharge.
It’s a creative concept, and the final piece looks like a magical object from the world of fantasy. It would make a great addition to any cosplay, and we’re sure the technique could be adapted to other accoutrements, too.
A similar experiment done in a more extreme way is this electric car charged via lemons
. If you’ve got your own battery chemistry project cooking up at home,
be sure to let us know! | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234528",
"author": "Jaycop",
"timestamp": "2020-04-04T17:15:38",
"content": "Super clever",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6234537",
"author": "Earl Colby Pottinger",
"timestamp": "2020-04-04T18:01:39",
"content": "B... | 1,760,373,531.304492 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/04/can-solid-save-the-internet/ | Can Solid Save The Internet? | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News"
] | [
"encryption",
"internet",
"newsletter",
"PODS",
"privacy",
"solid"
] | We ran an
article on Solid this week
, a project that aims to do nothing less than change the privacy and security aspects of the Internet as we use it today. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the World Wide Web as a side project at work, is behind it, and it’s got a lot to recommend it. I certainly hope they succeed.
The basic idea is that instead of handing your photos, your content, and your thoughts over to social media and other sharing platforms, you’d store your own personal data in a Personal Online Data (POD) container, and grant revocable access to these companies to access your data on your behalf. It’s like it’s your own website contents, but with an API for sharing parts of it elsewhere.
This is a clever legal hack, because today you give over rights to your data so that Facebook and Co. can display them in your name. This gives them all the bargaining power, and locks you into their service. If instead, you simply gave Facebook a revocable access token, the power dynamic shifts. Today you can migrate your data and delete your Facebook account, but that’s a major hassle that few undertake.
Mike and I were discussing this on
this week’s podcast
, and we were thinking about the privacy aspects of PODs. In particular, whatever firm you use to socially share your stuff will still be able to snoop you out, map your behavior, and target you with ads and other content, because they see it while it’s in transit. But I failed to put two and two together.
The real power of a common API for sharing your content/data is that it will make it that much easier to switch from one sharing platform to another. This means that you could easily migrate to a system that respects your privacy. If we’re lucky, we’ll see competition in this space. At the same time, storing and hosting the data would be portable as well, hopefully promoting the best practices in the providers. Real competition in where your data lives and how it’s served may well save the Internet. (Or at least we can dream.)
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
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! | 32 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234485",
"author": "Rog Fanther",
"timestamp": "2020-04-04T14:12:02",
"content": "And since those “PODs” must be stored somewhere, this have the potential to create a new source of revenue to host/storage providers, like, $10/month to store your POD up to the size of X gigabytes ….... | 1,760,373,531.256155 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/04/open-source-telescope-controller-puts-smart-features-in-old-telescopes/ | Open Source Telescope Controller Puts Smart Features In Old Telescopes | Richard Baguley | [
"News",
"Space",
"Tablet Hacks"
] | [
"telescope"
] | In times like these, we all need to look beyond ourselves. This project might help: OnStep is an open-source telescope controller, a device that controls a telescope to point at something interesting in the sky. Want to take a look at M31? Use an app on a PC or smartphone, select the object and the OnStep will pan and tilt your telescope until the Andromeda Galaxy pops into view.
Smart telescopes are not new: we’ve seen telescopes like the
Meade LX90
that include smart controllers that can, with varying degrees of success, use GPS signals to figure out the time, the location and which way to point to see Uranus. These use proprietary controllers, though, and are generally expensive. OnStep is designed to be simple, low cost and buildable from off the shelf parts.
It is pretty hardware agnostic: the controller can be an Arduino, a Teensy 3 or even an ESP32. The PCB design can work with any of these controllers. The same is true of the motors that move the telescope, so you can build the device from parts that you might have lying around. Many of those who have built OnStep controllers have adapted older telescope mounts that are motorized but aren’t smart. Others have used older mounts and replaced the slow, inaccurate motors with more precise ones that make the telescope more accurate and smooth. The
gallery of telescope builds on the OnStep wiki
is a great place to start and see examples like this
30-year old Celestron telescope that was brought into the 21st century with a OnStep conversion
, or this conversion of a
1960s telescope that adds a smart mount
.
It’s a great looking project that has the basics mostly sorted, but which is still being worked on and improved by a dedicated group of users. While we tend to focus on ourselves in difficult times, sometimes it is better to look up in the sky and see that the stars are still shining. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234458",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2020-04-04T12:51:36",
"content": "Oooooo will have to bookmark this. Got a Celestron that’s been sitting unused since one of the lounge lions chewed up the controller. (Which I could probably patch up, just seems it’s been bottom of ... | 1,760,373,531.189291 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/04/is-this-the-oldest-still-working-geostationary-satellite/ | Is This The Oldest Still-Working Geostationary Satellite? | Jenny List | [
"Space"
] | [
"dead satellites",
"geosynchronous",
"LES-5",
"satellite"
] | The LES-5 spacecraft
Regular followers of space news will know that when satellites or space probes reach the end of their life, they either are de-orbited in a fiery re-entry, or they stay lifeless in orbit, often in a safe graveyard orbit where they are unlikely to harm other craft. Sometimes these deactivated satellites spring back into life, and there is a dedicated band of enthusiasts who seek out these oddities. Dead satellite finder extraordinaire [Scott Tilley] has turned up a particularly unusual one, a craft that is quite likely to be
the oldest still-working geostationary satellite
.
LES-5 is an experimental satellite built by MIT’s Lincoln Labs, launched in 1967, and used to test military UHF communications in a geosynchronous orbit. It had an active life into the early 1970s after which it was placed in a graveyard orbital slot for redundant craft. It’s lain forgotten ever since, until this month when [Scott] found its beacon transmitting on 236.75 MHz. The Twitter thread is an extremely interesting glimpse into the satellite finder’s art, as first he’s not certain at all that it is LES-5 so he waits for its solar eclipse to identify its exact position.
Whether anything on the craft can find another use today is not certain, as he finds no evidence of its transponder. Still, that something is working again 53 years after its launch is a testament to the quality of its construction. Should its transponder be reactivated again it’s not impossible that people might find illicit uses for it, after all
that’s not the first time this has happened
. | 39 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234437",
"author": "aki009",
"timestamp": "2020-04-04T10:35:42",
"content": "Ah, the reliability of electronics before RoHS. (RoHS is to electronics, what a government mandate to not use rust prevention would be for cars.)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,533.626528 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/03/oscilloscope-and-microscope-augmented-with-ghosts/ | Oscilloscope And Microscope Augmented With Ghosts | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"augmented reality",
"diagnostics",
"microscope",
"oscilloscope",
"pcb",
"pepper's ghost",
"Printed Circuit Board"
] | Augmented reality saw a huge boom a few years ago, where an image of the real world has some virtual element layer displayed on top of it. To get this effect to work, however, you don’t need a suite of software and smart devices. [elad] was able to
augment a microscope with the output from an oscilloscope
, allowing him to see waveforms while working on small printed circuit boards with the microscope.
The build relies on a simplified version of the
Pepper’s Ghost
illusion. This works by separating two images with a semi-transparent material such as glass, placed at an angle. When looking through the material, the two images appear to blend together. [elad] was able to build a box that attaches to the microscope with a projection of the oscilloscope image augmented on the view of the microscope.
This looks like it would be incredibly useful for PCBs, especially when dealing with small SMD components. The project is split across two entries,
the second of which is here
. In one demonstration the oscilloscope image is replaced with a visual of a computer monitor, so it could be used for a lot more applications than just the oscilloscope, too. There aren’t a lot of details on the project page though, but with an understanding of Pepper’s Ghost this should be easily repeatable. If you need more examples, there are
plenty of other builds that use this technique
. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234411",
"author": "Mike Massen in Perth, Western Australia",
"timestamp": "2020-04-04T05:14:36",
"content": "Nice idea, thanks for post :-)Would be great to view a system with temp and other parameters on demand whilst viewing, just need method to determine where we are looking an... | 1,760,373,533.077344 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/03/making-aerogel/ | Making Aerogel, It’s Not For The Faint-Hearted | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"aerogel",
"Chemistry",
"materials"
] | Aerogel — that mixture of air and silica — is one of those materials that seems like a miracle. It is almost not there since the material is 99% air. [NileRed] wanted to make his own and he
documented his work
in a recent video you can see below.
If you decide to replicate his result, be careful with the tetramethyl orthosilicate. Here’s what he says about it:
And the best part is, that when it’s in your eyes, it gets under the surface, and the particles are way too small to remove. For this reason, you could go permanently blind.
It can also mess up your lungs, so you probably need a vent hood to really work with this. It isn’t cheap, either. The other things you need are easier to handle: methanol, distilled water, and ammonia.
The process involves developing a silica gel and then letting it dry. Sounds easy, but you’ll see in the video that it isn’t as simple as it sounds. [NileRed] made it harder because he wanted to make nice shapes of aerogel even though it is very fragile. The construction of the mold is actually very clever and requires a trip to the dollar store.
Drying the material out requires a lot more methanol to displace water. Then you can remove the methanol leaving the air in the material. Doing that requires CO
2
to drive out the methanol and then rapidly convert the liquid CO
2
into a gas. A sous vide cooker found a new use in the process.
This was not a quick project. The video is 43 minutes long and we can’t think of where you’d cut anything out, other than the promotion of other videos in the last few minutes.
Given you can buy an aerogel disc or cylinder for around $40, we aren’t sure we are going to rush to replicate this experiment. On the other hand, we were super impressed with the work and it was interesting to see the solutions to the difficult problems.
There are other materials that can form aerogels, including
ceramics
. [Ben Krasnow] has done a similar video in the past that uses
a very similar process
, but he didn’t have the clever molds that [NileRed] uses. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234391",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-04-04T02:57:38",
"content": "Ima wait for the Jell-O brand version, where you just boil some air in your kettle and add it to a packet of next to nothing, stir and leave in the fridge for half an hour.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,533.128698 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/03/a-touchless-handwashing-timer-comes-in-handy/ | A Touchless Handwashing Timer Comes In Handy | Lewin Day | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"Circuit Playground Express",
"Covid-19",
"handwash",
"handwashing"
] | In 2020, it’s no longer enough to simply wash your hands. You’ve got to do it
right.
Proper process involves rubbing soap and water over every surface of your hands, and taking a full 20 seconds to do the job. While many recommend singing various popular songs to keep time, that can be more than a little embarassing in shared spaces.
[Alex Glow] instead created this simple timer to help out.
The timer is built on the Adafruit Circuit Playground Express, a devboard that features 10 RGB LEDs already onboard, making the project a cinch. It also comes with a MEMS microphone and a light sensor all ready to go. Thus, with a bit of code, [Alex] was able to create a timer activated by a loud noise, such as clapping. Once detected, the timer starts, flashing its LEDs to indicate time remaining. There’s also a nightlight feature, which activates when light levels decrease, making it easier to navigate the bathroom in the dark.
It’s a useful little project for these troubled times, and one that makes great use of everything onboard the Circuit Playground Express. Having everything included certainly does make projects come together quickly.
You can even program it from your phone!
Video after the break.
View this post on Instagram
Today’s project: a touchless handwashing timer, with rainbow reward feedback :3 Needs a cute waterproof case, but this is good enough for now. ✨ Tutorial on @hacksterio — hackster.io/glowascii
A post shared by
Alex Glow
(@glowascii) on
Mar 26, 2020 at 5:04pm PDT | 23 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234373",
"author": "J. Peterson",
"timestamp": "2020-04-04T00:15:46",
"content": "In that photo, the PCB looks like a cartoon virus.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6234379",
"author": "Somun",
"timestamp": "2020-04-04T... | 1,760,373,533.288176 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/03/led-heart-beats-with-the-beholder/ | LED Heart Beats With The Beholder | Lewin Day | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"arduino nano",
"led",
"wireframe"
] | Many a maker likes to use their craft to create gifts for loved ones. [Jiří Praus] was celebrating having been married for 5 years,
and crafted this beautiful LED heart sculpture to commemorate the occasion
.
The outer shell was created by first starting with a 3D printed heart shape. This was used as a form upon which the brass wire could be soldered together to form an attractive heart-shaped cage. Inside, an Arduino Nano is hooked up to a series of WS2812b LEDs. The LEDs are flashed in time with the heartbeat of the person holding the heart, thanks to a MAX30102 heartbeat sensor. There’s also a TP4056 charge module and a small lithium battery to provide power for the device.
Adding the heartbeat sensor really makes this project shine, forming a connection between the holder and the device itself. The tasteful craftsmanship of the brass design makes this an excellent gift, one we’re sure anyone would like to receive. We’ve seen [Jiří Praus] make the most of this artform before too, with projects like this
stunning tulip
or
dead-bug Arduino
. Video after the break. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234318",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2020-04-03T20:19:52",
"content": "“heart-shaped cage”. Sounds like most every relationship I’ve ever been in.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6234323",
"author": "Hum... | 1,760,373,533.174813 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/03/charging-pad-flips-for-solar-power/ | Charging Pad Flips For Solar Power | Lewin Day | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"QI",
"qi charger",
"qi coil",
"solar"
] | Charging pads are now a common, popular way to charge small devices. They have the benefit of reducing wear on connectors and being easier to use. [bcschmi6] decided to build a solar powered charging pad,
which should come in handy when out and about.
The build uses a 3 W square solar panel, hooked up to an Adafruit solar charging board. This charges a pair of 18650 lithium batteries. The batteries only put out a maximum of 4.2 V, so they’re hooked up to a boost converter to get the output a little higher, up to 5.2 V. The output of the boost converter is then hooked up to a charging pad harvested from an Anker charger, and it’s all wrapped up in a tidy 3D printed frame.
We imagine the device would be great for camping. It could be left charging in the sun during the day, before being flipped over and used as a charging pad at night. It would be easy to build a bigger version for charging several phones at once, too. If you want to build your own charging coils,
that’s a thing, too.
And if you’ve got your own solar project cooking up as we head into summer,
be sure to let us know! | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234262",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2020-04-03T18:58:23",
"content": "Really nice project, well done. Just wondering how the 500ma at 5v boost converter keeps up with the 1A+ power draw from the charger?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,533.214644 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/03/cellular-tracking-used-during-covid-19-pandemic/ | Cellular Tracking Used During COVID-19 Pandemic | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Medical Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"celluar network",
"cellular phone",
"coronavirus",
"Covid-19",
"mobile phone"
] | As most in the technology community know, nation states have a suite of powerful tools that can be used to trace and monitor mobile phones. By and large, this comes up in discussions of privacy and legislation now and then, before fading out of the public eye once more. In the face of a global pandemic, however, governments are now using these tools in the way many have long feared – for social control. Here’s what’s happening on the ground.
The Current Situation
With COVID-19 sweeping the globe, its high level of contagiousness and rate of hospitalizations has left authorities scrambling to contain the spread. Unprecedented lockdowns have been put in place in an attempt to flatten the curve of new cases to give medical systems the capacity to respond. A key part of this effort is making sure that confirmed cases respect quarantine rules, and isolate themselves to avoid spreading the disease. Rules have also been put in place in several countries
where all overseas arrivals must quarantine
, regardless of symptoms or status.
“According to an epidemiological investigation you were near a corona patient on 06/03/20. You must immediately enter a home isolation by 20/03/20 to protect your relatives and the public. If you have fever, cough, etc. call A-101. Learn more at the link gov.il/corona” – An Israeli government text message. Source: @kann_news
In order to achieve this,
Israel has begun to use the cellular devices to track suspected coronavirus cases.
Using technology initially developed for counterterrorism purposes, it allows Israeli authorities to monitor the movements of individual citizens. If a citizen is detected as having spent 10 minutes or more within 2 meters of an infected person,
they are sent a text message instructing them to self-isolate until a particular date.
While a very effective method of tracing possible infection contacts, it also shows the incredible granularity of the data available to Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency. With this capability, it would also be trivial to track phone users for enforcement purposes, too.
South Korea has also been actively tracing citizen’s mobile phones.
Public health organisations have sent out texts detailing the recent movements of infected people,
revealing intimate details of their citizens private lives. In one ridiculous case, a woman who had supposedly sustained serious injuries in a recent car accident was noted to be travelling to weddings and restaurants, leading to a grilling by TV reporters after she was identified by internet users.
Iran tried a more obvious method
, asking users to install an app that promised to help diagnose coronavirus symptoms. It secretly leaked user’s live location data, and once this was public knowledge, it was promptly removed from the Play Store
for breaking Google’s Terms of Service
. This method is quite transparent to even a moderately technical user, and stands out for this reason. Of course, this does not mean that Iran doesn’t have more serious capabilities behind the scenes for cellular tracking, but it does raise questions as to why such a blatantly obvious approach would be attempted.
A screenshot of a Chinese website used to determine whether individuals have travelled to disease hotspots.
China has dealt with COVID-19 longer than anyone, and is heavily experienced with domestic surveillance technologies. An independent source has confirmed this technology is being used for access control to buildings. At entry points, individuals scan a QR code which takes them to a phone provider’s website. Entering their details, the user is shown a record of their location in the last 14 days. If they have avoided disease hot zones, they’re granted admittance to the facility.
Justification?
The ideal democracy governs with the consent of the people. While people might object to the invasion of their privacy like this in normal circumstances, they may be willing to make this tradeoff in times of peril. It’s not clear that any of the above-mentioned countries attempted to obtain their citizens’ consent.
What stops governments from using these same domestic spying powers after the health crisis ends? Oftentimes, even if it’s not used in the mainstream, intelligence organisations that operate in the dark can get away with using such tools with impunity, even in violation of the country’s own laws. We know that many have been doing so for years. If anything, it serves as a useful reminder to the public that no mobile device can be considered secure from nosy government actors.
Looking Ahead
It’s important to remember that cellphone-based tracking systems come with a major caveat. Those who don’t wish to be tracked always have the option of simply not carrying a cellular device. There are currently no nation states that enforce the carrying of a mobile phone, and so the best way to dodge such tracking is to simply opt-out of the technology altogether. In this modern era, anyone making such a decision is giving up a lot, and it’s not one that can be made lightly. For some though, it’s no option at all – where phones are used for access control to buildings, it’s hard to avoid. In China, for instance, a corona-tracking function has been tied into Alipay, the most popular pay-by-phone app, and some cities require a green light on a cellphone to use public transportation.
World governments have shown their hand, making it clear to the public that they have an immensely powerful and threatening technology at their disposal, and that they’re willing to use it without consent. While it is currently being employed in service of public health, the potential ramifications are plain to see. It may prove difficult for citizens to win back civil liberties that have been suspended in the current quarantine. Time will tell. | 43 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234226",
"author": "Lindsay Wilson",
"timestamp": "2020-04-03T17:41:11",
"content": "Fun fact: here in the UK, our glorious NHS (All hail! All Hail! All Hail the NHS!) has determined that it will spend SIX weeks developing a tracking app instead of using one which Singapore current... | 1,760,373,533.392327 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/03/hackaday-podcast-061-runaway-soldering-irons-open-source-ventilators-3d-printed-solder-stencils-and-radar-motion/ | Hackaday Podcast 061: Runaway Soldering Irons, Open Source Ventilators, 3D Printed Solder Stencils, And Radar Motion | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"dvorak layout",
"Hackaday Podcast",
"metal printing",
"solder stencil",
"ventilator"
] | Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams sort through the hardware hacking gems of the week. There was a kerfuffle about whether a ventilator data dump from Medtronics was open source or not, and cool hacks from machine-learning soldering iron controllers to 3D-printing your own solder paste stencils. A motion light teardown shows it’s not being done with passive-infrared, we ask what’s the deal with Tim Berners-Lee’s decentralized internet, and we geek out about keyboards that aren’t QWERTY.
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Direct download
(60 MB or so.)
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 061 Show Notes:
New This Week:
NIH Approved 3D-Printed Face Shield Design For Hospitals Running Out Of PPE
Maker vs Virus
(Germany)
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Professional Ventilator Design Open Sourced Today By Medtronic
BCD To I2C: Turning A Nixie Counter Into Whatever You Want It To Be
Can Solder Paste Stencils Be 3D Printed? They Can!
Cutting SMT Stencils With A Laser
DIY Solder Stencils From Soda Cans
3D Metal Printer Uses Welding Wire
Teardown Of Costco Ceiling Light Reveals Microwave Motion Sensor And Hackable Design
GitHub – jdesbonnet/RCWL-0516: Information about RCWL-0516 microwave proximity switch module (ICStation.com SKU 10630)
A Soldering Lightsaber for the Speedy Worker
Homebrew Not A Hakko
Quick Hacks:
Mike’s Picks:
Pumping Concrete
Trimmed PCB Makes The Ultimate Portable N64
Designing Printed Adapters For Power Tool Batteries
Elliot’s Picks:
Magnets Turn Flexible PCB Into Electric Grasshopper
Reverse Engineering A Ceiling Fan Remote
Ondophone On Point
Can’t-Miss Articles:
SOLID Promises A New Approach To How The Web Works
Perhaps August Dvorak Is More Your Type | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234205",
"author": "Mario",
"timestamp": "2020-04-03T16:28:52",
"content": "There is an update on the Medtronics thing! Dave Jones has done a video about it and apperently they have published lots of stuff after the backlash:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TltM74rNasM",
"parent... | 1,760,373,533.027586 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/03/minimalist-magnetic-minute-minder-mesmerizes/ | Minimalist Magnetic Minute Minder Mesmerizes | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"clock hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino nano",
"ball bearings",
"f'n magnets",
"hall effect sensor",
"real time clock",
"stepper motor",
"wall clock"
] | Timepieces are cool no matter how simplistic or granular they are. Sometimes its nice not to know exactly what time it is down to the second, and most of the really beautiful clocks are simple as can be. If you didn’t know this was a clock, it would still be fascinating to watch the bearings race around the face.
This clock takes design cues from the Story clock, a visual revolution in counting down time which uses magnetic levitation to move a single bearing around the face exactly once over a duration of any length as set by the user. As a clock, it’s not very useful, so there’s a digital readout that still doesn’t justify the $800 price tag.
[tomatoskins] designed a DIY version that’s far more elegant
. It has two ball bearings that move around the surface against hidden magnets — an hour ball and a minute ball. Inside there’s a pair of 3D-printed ring gears that are each driven by a stepper motor and controlled with an Arduino Nano and a real-time clock module. The body is made of plywood reclaimed from a bed frame, and [tomatoskins] added a walnut veneer for timeless class.
In addition to the code, STLs, and CAD files that birthed the STLs, [tomatoskins] has a juicy 3D-printing tip to offer. The gears had to be printed in interlocked pieces, but these seams can be sealed with a solution of acetone and plastic from supports and failed prints.
If you dig minimalism but think this clock is a bit too vague to read,
here’s a huge digital clock made from small analog clocks
. | 26 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234184",
"author": "Alex Rossie",
"timestamp": "2020-04-03T15:33:30",
"content": "Does the ball bearing roll or slide?If it slides it will produce wear rings (faster) which might actually look cool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,373,533.539436 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/03/this-week-in-security-openwrt-zoom-and-systemd/ | This Week In Security: OpenWrt, ZOOM, And Systemd | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"javascript",
"rubber ducky",
"SMBGhost",
"Wireguard"
] | OpenWrt
announced a problem in opkg
, their super-lightweight package manager. OpenWrt’s target hardware, routers, make for an interesting security challenge. A Linux install that fits in just 4 MB of flash memory is a minor miracle in itself, and many compromises had to be made. In this case, we’re interested in the lack of SSL: a 4 MB install just can’t include SSL support. As a result, the package manager can’t rely on HTTPS for secure downloads. Instead,
opkg first downloads a pair of files
: A list of packages, which contains a SHA256 of each package, and then a second file containing an Ed25519 signature. When an individual package is installed, the SHA256 hash of the downloaded package can be compared with the hash provided in the list of packages.
It’s a valid approach, but there was
a bug, discovered by [Guido Vranken]
, in how opkg reads the hash values from the package list. The leading space triggers some questionable pointer arithmetic, and as a result, opkg believes the SHA256 hash is simply blank. Rather than fail the install, the hash verification is simply skipped. The result? Opkg is vulnerable to a rather simple man in the middle attack.
OpenWrt doesn’t do any automatic installs or automatic updates, so this vulnerability will likely not be widely abused, but it could be used for a targeted attack. An attacker would need to be in a position to MitM the router’s internet connection while software was being installed. Regardless, make sure you’re running the latest OpenWrt release to mitigate this issue.
Via Ars Technica.
Wireguard V1.0
With the Linux Kernel version 5.6 being finally released,
Wireguard has finally been christened as a stable release
. An interesting aside, Google has
enabled Wireguard in their Generic Kernel Image (GKI)
, which may signal more official support for Wireguard VPNs in Android. I’ve also heard reports that one of the larger Android ROM development communities is looking into better system-level Wireguard support as well.
Javascript in Disguise
Javascript makes the web work — and has been a constant thorn in the side of good security. For just an example, remember
Samy
, the worm that took over Myspace in ’05. That cross-site scripting (XSS) attack used a series of techniques to embed Javascript code in a user’s profile. Whenever that profile page was viewed, the embedded JS code would run, and then replicate itself on the page of whoever had the misfortune of falling into the trap.
Today we have much better protections against XSS attacks, and something like that could never happen again, right? Here’s the thing, for every mitigation like Content-Security-Policy, there is a guy like [theMiddle] who’s coming up with new ways to break it. In this case, he realized that
a less-than-perfect CSP could be defeated by encoding Javascript inside a .png
, and decoding it to deliver the payload.
Systemd
Ah, systemd. Nothing seems to bring passionate opinions out of the woodwork like a story about it. In this case, it’s
a vulnerability found by [Tavis Ormandy]
from Google Project Zero. The bug is a race condition, where a cached data structure can be called after it’s already been freed. It’s interesting, because this vulnerability is accessible using DBus, and could potentially be used to get root level access.
It was fixed with systemd v220
.
Mac Firmware
For those of you running MacOS on Apple hardware, you might want to check your firmware version. Not because there’s a particularly nasty vulnerability in there, but because
firmware updates fail silently during OS updates
. What’s worse, Apple isn’t publishing release notes, or even acknowledging the most recent firmware version.
A crowd-sourced list
of the latest firmware versions is available, and you can try to convince your machine to try again, and hope the firmware update works this time.
Anti-Rubber-Ducky
Google
recently announced a new security tool
, USB Keystroke Injection Protection. I assume the nickname, UKIP, isn’t an intentional reference to British politics. Regardless, this project is intended to help protect against the infamous
USB Rubber Ducky attack
, by trying to differentiate a real user’s typing cadence, as opposed to a malicious device that types implausibly quickly.
While the project is interesting, there are already
examples of how to defeat it
that amount to simply running the scripts with slight pauses between keystrokes. Time will tell if UKIP turns into a useful mitigation tool. (Get it?)
SMBGhost
Remember
SMBGhost
, the new wormable SMB flaw? Well, there is already
a detailed explanation and PoC
. This particular PoC is a local-only privilege escalation, but a remote code execution attack is like inevitable, so go make sure you’re patched! | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234156",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-04-03T14:12:50",
"content": "I guess one could cynically regard the UKIP as a Google power grab to disable password hoarding utilities/hardware and make google accounts the one login to rule them all.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,533.464488 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/03/full-colour-full-motion-video-on-an-audio-cassette/ | Full-Colour, Full-Motion Video – On An Audio Cassette! | Jenny List | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"analog video",
"audio cassette",
"cassette",
"video"
] | A lot of projects we feature use video in some form or other, but that video is invariably digital, it exists as a stream of numbers in a computer memory or storage, and is often compressed. For some of us who grew up working with composite video there is a slight regret that we rarely get up-close and personal with an analogue stream, so [Kris Slyka]’s project
putting video on a conventional audio cassette
is a rare opportunity.
It’s fair to say this isn’t the highest quality video.
Readers with long memories may recall the
Fisher-Price PixelVision
toy from the late 1980s which recorded black-and-white video on a conventional cassette running at many times normal speed. This system does not take that tack, instead it decreases resolution and frame rate to a point at which it can be recorded at conventional cassette speeds. The result is not particularly high quality, but with luminance on one side of a stereo recording and chrominance on the other it does work.
The video below the break is a run through the system, with an explanation of how video signals work. Meanwhile the code for both
encoder
and
decoder
are available through the magic of GitHub. If you’re interested further, take a look at
our examination of a video waveform
. | 29 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234129",
"author": "Polymath",
"timestamp": "2020-04-03T11:25:46",
"content": "Ham’s have been doing this (called audio bandwidth Slow Scan TV) for more than 50 years… cassette recording and playback were often used…. monochrome and color… even from Ham satellites. Kind of reinv... | 1,760,373,533.751279 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/03/esp8266-and-sensors-make-for-a-brainy-nerf-ball/ | ESP8266 And Sensors Make For A Brainy NERF Ball | Tom Nardi | [
"Science",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"football",
"mpu6050",
"nerf",
"physics",
"sensors",
"sports"
] | For his final project in UCLA’s Physics 4AL program,
[Timothy Kanarsky] used a NodeMCU to smarten up a carefully dissected NERF football
. With the addition to dual MPU6050 digital accelerometers and some math, the ball can calculate things like the distance traveled and angular velocity. With a 9 V alkaline battery and a voltage regulator board along for the ride it seems like a lot of weight to toss around; but of course nobody on the Hackaday payroll has thrown a ball in quite some time, so we’re probably not the best judge of such things.
Even if you’re not particularly interested in refining your throw, there’s a lot of fascinating science going on in this project; complete with fancy-looking equations to make you remember just how poorly you did back in math class.
As [Timothy] explains in the write-up, the math used to find velocity and distance traveled with just two accelerometers is not unlike the sort of dead-reckoning used in intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Since we’ve already seen model rockets with their own silos
, seems all the pieces are falling into place.
The NodeMCU polls the accelerometers every 5 milliseconds, and displays the data on web page complete with scrolling graphs of acceleration and angular velocity. When the button on the rear of the ball is pressed, the data is instead saved to basic Comma Separated Values (CSV) file that’s served up to clients with a minimal FTP server. We might not know much about sportsball, but we definitely like the idea of a file server we can throw at people.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen an instrumented football.
Back in 2011 it took some pretty elaborate hardware to pull this sort of thing off
, and it’s fascinating to see
how far the state-of-the-art has progressed
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234151",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-04-03T13:34:06",
"content": "Where’s the targeting sensors and control surfaces?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6234173",
"author": "Shonky",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,373,533.675124 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/02/infinite-flying-glider/ | Infinite Flying Glider | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"airplane",
"fan",
"foam",
"glider",
"hot-wire",
"nichrome",
"paper airplane",
"toy",
"updraft",
"walkalong",
"wire cutter"
] | If you’ve exhausted your list of electronics projects over the past several weeks of trying to stay at home, it might be time to take a break from all of that and do something off the wall. [PeterSripol] shows us one option by
building a few walkalong gliders
and trying to get them to fly forever.
Walkalong gliders work by following a small glider, resembling a paper airplane but made from foam, with a large piece of cardboard. The cardboard generates an updraft which allows the glider to remain flying for as long as there’s space for it. [PeterSripol] and his friends try many other techniques to get these tiny gliders, weighing in at around half a gram, to stay aloft for as long as possible, including lighting several dozen tea candles to generate updrafts, using box fans, and other methods.
If you really need some electricity in your projects, the construction of the foam gliders shows a brief build of a hot wire cutting tool using some nichrome wire attached to a piece of wood, and how to assemble the gliders so they are as lightweight as possible. It’s a fun project that’s sure to be at least several hours worth of distraction, or even more if you have
a slightly larger foam glider and some spare RC parts
. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234110",
"author": "Barnace",
"timestamp": "2020-04-03T09:51:22",
"content": "He is a smart guy, but I really wish he stopped using fake, click baity video thumbnails…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6234130",
"author... | 1,760,373,533.798124 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/02/teaching-science-with-an-empty-soda-bottle/ | Teaching Science With An Empty Soda Bottle | Tom Nardi | [
"Science"
] | [
"digital microscope",
"educational",
"QR codes",
"soda bottle",
"upcycled"
] | Creating the next generation of scientists and engineers starts by getting kids interested in STEM at an early age, but that’s not always so easy to do. There’s no shortage of games and movies out there to entertain today’s youth, and just throwing a text book at them simply isn’t going to cut it anymore. Modern education needs to be engrossing and hands-on if it’s going to make an impact.
Which is exactly what the
Institute of Science and Technology Austria hopes to accomplish with the popSCOPE program
. Co-founded by [Dr. Florian Pauler] and [Dr. Robert Beattie], the project uses off-the-shelf hardware, 3D printed parts, and open source software to create an engaging scientific instrument that students can build and use themselves. The idea is to make the experience more personal for the students so they’re not just idle participants sitting in a classroom.
The hardware in use here is quite simple, essentially just a Raspberry Pi Zero W, a camera module, a Pimoroni Blinkt LED module, and a few jumper wires. It all gets bolted to a 3D printed frame, which features a female threaded opening that accepts a standard plastic soda (or pop, depending on your corner of the globe) bottle. You just cut a big opening in the side of the bottle, screw it in, and you’ve saved yourself a whole lot of time by not printing an enclosure.
So what does the gadget do? That obviously comes down to the software it’s running, but out of the box it’s able to do time-lapse photography which can be interesting for biological experiments such as watching seeds sprout. There’s also a set of 3D printable “slides” featuring QR codes, which the popSCOPE software can read to show images and video of real microscope slides. This might seem like cheating, but for younger players it’s a safe and easy way to get them involved.
For older students, or anyone interested in homebrew scientific equipment,
the Poseidon project offers a considerably more capable (and complex) digital microscope
made with 3D printed parts and the Raspberry Pi. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234152",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-04-03T13:48:57",
"content": "I love practical re-use of containers and anything that would be discarded, but I am not seeing the particular benefit of using a pop bottle in this instance unless the grant money came from the loca... | 1,760,373,533.843205 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/02/the-attiny-series-is-a-great-companion-in-isolation/ | The ATtiny Series Is A Great Companion In Isolation | Inderpreet Singh | [
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"attiny",
"breadboard",
"making",
"projects"
] | As a consequence of the social distancing and self isolation, many a maker has been searching for ways to cure boredom. So what happens when you put a maker in a closed space with electronics parts. The answer is
a bunch of random microcontroller projects that help beat boredom
. [Danac1886] posts a video with a bunch of experiments with the ATtiny series of microcontrollers which can be a source of time-killing inspiration for these tough days of solitude.
The video is based upon a variety of controllers ranging from the ATtiny85 to the ATtiny84 and even includes the ATtiny2313. There is also a project with the ATtiny10, an SMD SOT23-6 package that is quite amazing to behold. All the devices can be programmed using the Ardino as an ISP so all you need is another Arduino lying around in case you do not have an AVR ICSP.
As for the projects themselves, there is an assortment of things that start with the basic blinking LED, adding an I2C LCD and then moving on to a 7 segment display counting up with variable speed controlled with a pot. We really loved how much these tiny projects inspire and can help someone get started with basic electronics and programming.
If you are looking to get started, have a look at
the Jumbo LED with the Attiny10
and we assure you, it will brighten your day. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234034",
"author": "qwert",
"timestamp": "2020-04-03T00:02:32",
"content": "Never seen that ATtiny10 before, that’s pretty adorable. Truly tiny.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6234174",
"author": "Eric Chapin",
... | 1,760,373,533.89356 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/02/diy-esp32-alarm-system-leverages-433-mhz-sensors/ | DIY ESP32 Alarm System Leverages 433 MHz Sensors | Tom Nardi | [
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"433 mhz",
"arduino alarm system",
"ESP32",
"home alarm system",
"home automation",
"telegram"
] | There’s a huge market for 433 MHz alarm system hardware out there, from PIR motion detectors to door and window sensors. If you want to put them to work, all you need is a receiver, a network-enabled microcontroller, and some code. In his latest video,
[Aaron Christophel] shows how easy it can be
.
In essence, you connect a common 433 MHz receiver module to an ESP32 or ESP8266 microcontroller, and have it wait until a specific device squawks out. From there, the code on the ESP can fire off using whatever API works for your purposes. In this case [Aaron] is using the Telegram API to send out messages that will pop up with a notification on his phone when a door or window is opened. But you could just as easily use something like MQTT, or if you want to go old-school, have it toggle a relay hooked up to a loud siren.
Even if you aren’t looking to make your own makeshift alarm system, the code and video after the break are a great example to follow if you want to get started with 433 MHz hardware. Specifically, [Aaron] walks the viewer through the process of scanning for new 433 MHz devices and adding their unique IDs to the list the code will listen out for. If you ever wondered how quickly you could get up and running with this stuff, now you’ve got your answer.
In the past we’ve seen
the Raspberry Pi fill in as an RF to WiFi gateway
for these type of sensors, as well as projects that
pulled them all together into a complete home automation system
on the cheap. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233999",
"author": "kdev",
"timestamp": "2020-04-02T20:26:51",
"content": "If you’re thinking of playing around in the 433MHz range, be aware of the FCC regulations for that band:1) Polling transmissions of no more than 2 seconds per HOUR.2) More frequent polling allowed only if th... | 1,760,373,535.057131 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/01/teaching-robots-workplace-etiquette/ | Teaching Robots Workplace Etiquette | Maya Posch | [
"Machine Learning",
"News",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"commplan",
"CSAIL",
"hri",
"human-robot interaction",
"markov model",
"mit"
] | Most often, humans and robots do not have to work directly together, instead working on different parts in a production pipeline or with the robot performing tasks instead of a human. In such cases any human-robot interaction (HRI) will be superficial. Yet what if humans and robots have to work alongside each other? This is a question which a group of students at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) have recently studied some answers to.
In their
paper on human-robot collaborative tasks
(PDF), they cover the three possible models one can use for this kind of interaction: there can be no communication (‘silent’), the communication can be pre-programmed (state machine), or in this case a
Markov model
-based system. This framework which they demonstrate is called CommPlan and it uses observation data from human subjects to construct a Markov model that can integrate sensor data in order to decide on its next action.
In the experiment they performed (the preparation of a meal; see the embedded video after the break), human subjects had to work alongside a robot. Between the three different approaches, the CommPlan one was the fastest, using voice interaction only when it deemed it to be necessary. The experiment’s subjects expressed hereby a preference for bidirectional communication, much as would occur between human workers.
The principles of HRI and human-human interaction are essentially the same: for optimal team work each member needs to receive and provide the information which they or other team members need at the right time. Too early or too late causes friction, omitting information can cause delays and worse. Redundant information can also cause frustration:
The goal of the CommPlan framework thus is to use its sensors and model of the human mind state (what would be appropriate in a given situation) to only give the information that its human partner expects and appreciates:
The benefit of having a framework like CommPlan is thus two-fold: not only does it improve the overall efficiency of the process, it also makes the interaction go smoother, with fewer points of friction and frustration. Whether our team mates are warmblooded humans or servo-actuated robotic arms, at the end of the day the humans at the very least prefer to feel content about the team effort.
Here’s to the day when our robotic friends will give their human partner a hi-five to celebrate the collaborative solving of a particular difficult task.
http://people.csail.mit.edu/unhelkar/files/videos/2020_Unhelkar_Li_Shah_HRI_video.mp4 | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233894",
"author": "James Cue",
"timestamp": "2020-04-02T14:43:41",
"content": "Having workplace robots use sensors to detect any unusual objects (read: humans) placed in its programmed movements path ought to be implemented in the machine!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,534.465091 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/01/making-pcbs-with-a-vinyl-cutter/ | Making PCBs With A Vinyl Cutter | Richard Baguley | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"pcb",
"surface mount",
"vinyl cutter"
] | You might assume that you need a lot of expensive stuff to make your own PCBs, but that isn’t the case: you can do it with a vinyl cutter and a few common chemicals and tools. [Emiliano Valencia] has
laid out the entire process
. While we’ve seen plenty of make your own PCB guides before, this one goes a bit further as it covers using the vinyl cutter to make solder masks, so you can use it for surface mount designs.
The end result of the process that [Emilano] lays out is the tinyDice, a cute little electronic die that can fit on a keyring. The whole process is very well written up, and even experienced PCB makers will probably find a few useful tricks here.
The really interesting part for us was using the vinyl cutter to make three parts of the process: the etching mask, the solder mask that protects the traces and the solder stencil that applies the solder to the pads for surface mounting.
That is possible because the solder mask uses Kapton tape which is tough enough to stand the heat of the reflow process, and is a lot easier to use than the UV resins that are generally used. The etching and solder stencils are made from the vinyl material that is most commonly used in these cutters, but the solder mask is made from thin Kapton tape which is attached to a vinyl backing but then transferred onto the PCB. It does sound a bit fiddly in places, but there are plenty of photos to show how it is done.
Kudos to [Emiliano] for also coming up with a neat way to make the solder stencil out of vinyl by stacking four vinyl cutouts on top of each other. That gives the applied solder enough thickness that it should melt and flow without problems, but also gives nice clean solder pads. Now, if only he could work out how to make a pick & place out of sticky-back plastic and popsicle sticks, we would be sorted…
We’ve covered plenty of other ways to make PCBs, from
expensive mills
to using the same vinyl cutter to
make PCBs on glass
. What tips do you have for making PCBs out of common household materials? | 26 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233730",
"author": "EllisGL",
"timestamp": "2020-04-01T23:30:09",
"content": "Laser printer and vinyl sticker method worked well for me in the past.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6234374",
"author": "MW",
"t... | 1,760,373,534.376285 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/01/a-digital-pitch-pipe-gets-you-in-tune/ | A Digital Pitch Pipe Gets You In Tune | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"Circuit Playground Express",
"music",
"pitch pipe"
] | Some humans are blessed with perfect pitch, an ability that comes in handy when pursuing the musical arts. For many others though, a little help is often appreciated. A pitch pipe is a handy way to find the starting note of a performance, and [Isaac]
decided to build his own in the digital realm
.
The project is based on the Adafruit Circuit Playground express, which packs in all the peripherals needed right on board. The buttons are used to select the pitch required, with the LEDs used to display the selected note. Blue means flat, green means natural, and red means sharp. A 3D printed outer ring is clipped on to the board to denote the pitches for the user. To play the note, the user simply blows on the pitch pipe. The onboard MEMS microphone detects this and plays the note on the onboard speaker.
It’s a tidy little project that is a great way to get one’s feet wet with embedded programming and working with audio. We’ve seen the Circuit Express pop up before too,
such as in this pizza-box DJ mixer.
Video after the break. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233775",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2020-04-02T03:43:42",
"content": "This is only incidental to the article, but here’s a cute party trick to emulate perfect pitch. Most people have a pretty reliable lowest note they can sing. If you memorize what note that is, you... | 1,760,373,534.414538 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/01/impractical-switches-for-the-bored-maker/ | Impractical Switches For The Bored Maker | Inderpreet Singh | [
"Art"
] | [
"diy",
"Experiments",
"switch"
] | Cabin fever: the inability to socialize with other humans does weird things to the human brain. Then again some of us are born to stand out, and one such amazing maker, [Lee], is spending time
making weird switches from basically anything
.
So what would you consider weird? How about using a
piece of pasta
? How about using the conductivity of an
empty sink
? There is even an
experiment with breakfast cereal
, though we do not recommend it for production use. [Lee] continues to pour experiments into Twitter and recently has gotten some conductive tape. Stick some on a game joystick and you got yourself an
instant switch on a switch
.
These experiments prove that there is a lot you can do with the stuff you have around your house and the other end of the circuit doesn’t necessarily need to be a humble LED. You could get more interesting results with adding the likes of a microcontroller like an ATtiny. Coupling it with
a DIY LED badge
would be a great idea and we’d love to see what you come up with. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233660",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-04-01T19:16:55",
"content": "The common or garden wooden clothes peg (pin) makes neat switches, either put a screw in each side of the jaws or wrap with a foil tape and you’ve got a normally closed switch you can momentary open ... | 1,760,373,534.621528 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/01/stay-smarter-than-your-smart-speaker/ | Stay Smarter Than Your Smart Speaker | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"alexa",
"Amazon Echo",
"amazon echo dot",
"confidentiality",
"cortana",
"google home",
"kill switch",
"privacy",
"siri",
"smart speaker"
] | Smart speakers have always posed a risk to privacy and security — that’s just the price we pay for getting instant answers to life’s urgent and not-so-urgent questions the moment they arise. But it seems that many owners of the 76 million or so smart speakers on the active install list have yet to wake up to the reality that this particular trick of technology requires a microphone that’s always listening. Always. Listening.
With so much of the world’s workforce now working from home due to the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, smart speakers have suddenly become a big risk for business, too —
especially those where confidential conversations are as common and crucial as coffee
.
Imagine the legions of lawyers out there, suddenly thrust from behind their solid-wood doors and forced to set up ramshackle sub rosa sanctuaries in their homes to discuss private matters with their equally out-of-sorts clients. How many of them don’t realize that their smart speaker bristles with invisible thorns,
and is even vulnerable to threats outside the house?
Given the recent study showing that
smart speakers can and do activate accidentally up to 19 times per day
, the prevalence of the consumer-constructed surveillance state looms like a huge crisis of confidentiality.
So what are the best practices of confidential work in earshot of these audio-triggered gadgets?
Image by Roberto Parada via
the Atlantic
Hey Alexa, Who’s to Blame?
On the one hand, people and their tastes are the problem. That sleek cylinder or stubby hockey puck of an assistant is designed to be attractive enough that people will display it prominently in their homes. Most people don’t want their appliances to come with constant reminders of their inherent dangers, because warnings are visual noise.
Take stoves for instance. Stoves designers assume that their users have a certain level of base knowledge. It goes with out saying that hot stoves are hot, but you weren’t born knowing that — you either learn that by burning your hand, or by heeding the warnings of other humans.
With smart speakers, the downsides are far less obvious, and the injury less instant. It’s easy to be drawn in by their technological siren song, because a faceless assistant with a pleasing voice that exists to serve and can provide most any answer immediately is an exciting and attractive idea. Come up with something like that, and you can pretty much write the book on how it looks. At least, until public opinion or litigation makes you change your mind.
xkcd #1807
Privacy Protection Possibilities
Should the makers of smart speakers shoulder some of the responsibility of saving us from ourselves? Probably. Power tools have warnings and dead man switches, but that’s because misusing power tools has immediate, obvious, and painful consequences. Misappropriated data can have life-altering consequences, too.
Just ask anyone who’s had their life turned upside down because of a geofence warrant
.
In seeking out an answer to this issue, more control seems like a good start. Physical solutions are the safest way, second only to not having an open mic in the first place. Most smart speakers have a mic mute button, but you’ll have to remember later why Alexa’s not answering you.
An easy way to kill the network connection would be nice, too. You already have the power to isolate your smart speaker(s) on their own network and give it the ol’ man-in-the-middle finger whenever you need to — but that requires basic network admin skills that many people don’t have. A software dashboard would be useful for disabling them for chunks of time without leaving the couch, so consider setting up your work hours as times when Siri, Cortana, and Okay Google are put into a cone of silence.
Of course, smart speakers aren’t the only ubiquitous products with microphones, so solving the consumer-created problems are just the start. The best solution to all of this nonsense may be to usher in an era of protective fashion, starting with
bracelets that drown microphones in ultrasonic waves
. | 56 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233609",
"author": "Alexander Wikström",
"timestamp": "2020-04-01T17:20:48",
"content": "One simple solution to this whole problem is. “Don’t use smart speakers/assistants.”Another more tricky solution is to roll your own where the server is in your hands. Then just have it go and ... | 1,760,373,534.56752 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/01/accurate-dispensing-of-toilet-paper-will-get-us-through-the-crisis/ | Accurate Dispensing Of Toilet Paper Will Get Us Through The Crisis | Jenny List | [
"home hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"april fools",
"Covid-19",
"sinclair",
"sinclair zx81",
"toilet paper"
] | As we enter our second week of official COVID-19-related lockdown where this is being written, it’s evident that there are some resources we will have to conserve to help get us through all this. Instead of just using all of something because we can nip out to the store and buy more, we have to look at what we’ve got and treat it as though it will have to get us through the next three months. It’s not always certain that on our infrequent trips to the supermarket they’ll have stocks of what we want.
This is the very last of the toilet paper in my local supermarket, on the 8th of March.
A particular shortage has been of toilet paper. The news was full of footage showing people fighting for the last twelve-pack, and since early last month there has been none to be had for love nor money. To conserve stocks and save us from the desperate measures of having to cut the
Daily Mail
into squares and hang them on the wall, a technical solution is required. To this end I’ve created a computerised toilet roll dispenser which carefully controls the quantity of the precious sanitary product, in the hope of curbing its consumption to see us through the crisis.
In the midst of a full lockdown it’s difficult to secure immediate delivery of our usual maker essentials, so rather than send off for the controller boards I might have liked it has been necessary to make do with what I had. In the end I selected an older single board computer I had in a box under my bench. The
Sinclair ZX81
has a single-core Z80 processor running at 3.25 MHz, dual-channel memory, a Ferranti GPU, and plenty of expansion possibilities from its black plastic case. I chose it because I could repurpose its
thermal printer peripheral
as a toilet paper printer, and because it has an easily wiped and hygienic membrane keyboard rather than a conventional one that could harbour germs.
Hardware wise I found I was fairly easily able to adapt a standard roll of Cushelle to the ZX printer, and was soon dispensing sheets with the following BASIC code.
10 REM TOILET PAPER PRINTER
20 FOR T=0 TO 44
30 LPRINT ""
40 NEXT T
50 LPRINT "---------- TEAR HERE -----------"
For now it’s working on the bench, but it will soon be mounted with a small portable TV as a monitor on the wall next to the toilet. Dispensing toilet paper will be as simple as typing
RUN
and hitting the ZX’s NEW LINE key, before watching as a sheet of toilet paper emerges magically from the printer. It’s the little hacks like this one that will be so useful in getting us through the crisis. After all, this Sinclair always has a square to spare. | 51 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233560",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2020-04-01T15:43:33",
"content": "I love the repurposing of that older technology, especially when it fulfills a genuine need and performs better at it than its original task.I’d love to reproduce that but, sadly, my ZX81 died around 1985. ... | 1,760,373,534.713061 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/01/gold-cables-really-do-work-the-best/ | Gold Cables Really Do Work The Best | Jenny List | [
"Featured",
"home entertainment hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"\"audiophiles\"",
"april fools",
"audio analyser",
"audiophile",
"gnu radio",
"hi-fi"
] | As a writer, I have long harboured a dream that one day an editor will buy me a top-of-the-range audio analyser, and I can set up an audio test lab and write pieces debunking the spurious claims made by audiophiles, HiFi journalists, and the high-end audio industry about the quality of their products. Does that amp really lend an incisive sibilance to the broader soundstage, and can we back that up with some measurable figures rather than purple prose?
An Audio Playground You Didn’t Know You Had
An Audio Precision APx525 audio analyser. Bradp723 (
CC-BY-SA 3.0
)
Sadly Hackaday is not an audio magazine, and if Mike bought me an Audio Precision he’d have to satisfy all the other writers’ test equipment desires too, and who knows where that would end! So there will be no Hackaday audio lab — for now. But that doesn’t mean I can’t play around with audio analysis.
Last month we carried a write-up of
a Supercon talk from Kate Temkin and Michael Ossmann
, in which they reminded us that we have a cracking general purpose DSP playground right under our noses; GNU Radio isn’t just for radio. Once I’d seen the talk my audio analysis horizons were opened up considerably. Maybe that audio analyser wouldn’t be mine, but I could do some of the same job with GNU Radio.
It’s important to stress at this point that anything I can do on my bench will not remotely approach the quality of a professional audio analyser. But even if I can’t measure infinitesimal differences between very high-end audio circuitry, I can still measure enough to tell a good audio product from a bad one.
Making An Audio Analyser From A Software Defined Radio
My single-frequency THD+N analayser flowgraph in GNU Radio
For my
ersatz
audio analyser I decided to keep it pretty simple, and measure only the total harmonic distortion, or THD. Strictly speaking I’m measuring THD plus noise, but in the context of experimentation this does not concern me. THD is expressed as a percentage, and it’s generally best thought of as the percentage of the signal emerging from a device under test that is due to the distortion present in the device. Thus a theoretical perfect device has a THD of 0%. The simplest way to measure THD is to inject a single frequency on the device input, then to divide what remains on the output when that frequency is filtered out by the component of that frequency present on the output. This requires a set of extremely good filters, hard work in analogue circuitry but a simple task in GNU Radio.
The flowgraph I came up with
is a pretty simple one: a low pass filter cuts off just above the injected frequency while a high pass one cuts in just above that to give me the harmonics. Then it’s a simple case of mathematics to derive my % THD reading.
I’m using opposite channels of my stereo sound card as input and output, and if I hook them directly together I retrieve a THD figure with a 1kHz input of 0.0024%. Thus I’ve measured the THD of a Dell soundcard, and while it’s not as bad as it could be, for comparison a unit pitched at audiophiles would boast an extra couple of leading zeros. But of course, I haven’t just measured the THD of the soundcard.
While in theory the all-digital signal path of GNU radio is distortion-free, in fact it introduces distortion of its own. There is quantisation distortion, and distortion induced by imperfections in the filters, and then of course there is noise coming from whatever else a computer running a multitasking desktop operating system is doing. A good example came when I took the screenshot of the flowgraph, immediately the THD jumped by a factor of ten for a short time. There is a really good reason why that professional audio analyser costs so much, and why we don’t use commodity soundcards to do the job instead.
Are Gold Cables Really Better?
For 99 quid this had better be good!
Having an audio analyser to play with, albeit a not very good one, I cast around for a test subject to try with it. The obvious thing to do was to try a comparative test, and so to that end I dropped in a couple of orders for cables. Is there any truth in the claims of upmarket cable manufacturers, or is it simply snake oil designed to part the customer from their hard-earned?
I picked up a pair of 3 ft USB cables, extremely different ones from opposite ends of the market. One was a £4 ($5) Amazon Basics cable such as the one you are probably using to charge your phone, while the other was a £99 ($123) Gold Reference Series cable from Grundlagen Audio in Germany which its manufacturer claims through its gold plated Active Quantum Nanoparticle construction delivers an exceptionally low THD for digital audio transfers compared to that of conventional cables. What could I do, but hook each cable up in turn and give it a go?
Out of the box, both cables were of near-identical length and weight, but the Grundlagen was noticeably stiffer than the Amazon cable. Probably all that extra gold isn’t as flexible or something. I used the flowgraph linked above, but with a USB sink and source replacing the audio ones. I’d expect the THD figures to be significantly lower with this arrangement because of course I will have removed my poor-quality sound card from the equation. So in with the first cable, starting with the Amazon Basics cable in a loopback from USB port to USB port. Immediately I was able to measure a respectable THD at 1 kHz of 0.00014%, not surprising given the lack of a sound card. Very good, but what about the cable costing twenty times as much? In went the Grundlagen, and straight away the difference was clear with a 1 kHz THD of 0.00007%, half that of the Basics cable. Can you hear a difference when the number is that small? Probably not, but it does prove that a gold cable is better than a grey one even if they sound the same.
The folks at Grundlagen were kind enough to share a video with us showing how they manufacture their cables. Meanwhile should any of you wish to take the idea of an audio analyser in GNU Radio any further, we’re all ears. | 88 | 42 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233510",
"author": "x3n0x",
"timestamp": "2020-04-01T14:12:05",
"content": "The really funny thing about Audio, is that everything is subjective, as everybody has different taste. There is something to be said for buying a piece of gear that has the best possible THD, and so on, b... | 1,760,373,534.877213 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/02/wheelbarrow-bass-drives-a-sound-garden/ | Wheelbarrow Bass Drives A Sound Garden | Kristina Panos | [
"green hacks",
"how-to",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"bass guitar",
"cigar box guitar",
"piezo",
"trimmer line",
"wheelbarrow"
] | One of the best things about making music is that it’s so easy to do. There are countless ways to make interesting sounds out of nearly anything if you’re willing to experiment a little bit — just ask anyone who has ever made a guitar out of a cigar box and a broom handle.
[Vicious Squid] dug in to the fertile soil of the garden implement world and cultivated
a three-string upright bass with a rich, soulful sound from a familiar workhorse — an aluminium wheelbarrow
. Much of the build is made from reclaimed wood, like the solid mahogany neck from an old door frame, and a broom handle.
The bass is constructed arch-top style, meaning that the soundboard — the wood on the front with the f-holes — is a flat piece tacked to curved ribs that span the width of the ‘barrow. A broom handle sound post mounted front to back pushes vibrations from the soundboard to the aluminium body. To round out the agricultural aesthetic, [Vicious Squid] strung it with weed-whacker bass strings, which are no doubt inspired by the use of actual trimmer line.
It’s already plenty loud, but [Vicious Squid] added a piezo pickup for wheeling it into the recording studio. Slap your way past the break to hear a little ditty.
Are your instrument-building skills at the sapling stage? Start with something simpler, like
a sliding rubber bandolin
. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234002",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2020-04-02T20:50:16",
"content": "Well that’s all well and good but now I don’t have a wheelbarrow!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6234007",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp... | 1,760,373,534.754769 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/02/fda-says-ppe-can-be-reused-after-trip-through-shipping-container-decontamination-system/ | FDA Says PPE Can Be Reused After Trip Through Shipping Container Decontamination System | Jenny List | [
"Featured",
"Medical Hacks",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"decontamination",
"hydrogen peroxide",
"PPE"
] | We are hearing so much in the news about shortages of personal protective equipment, or PPE, for healthcare workers. Factories are being asked to perform the impossible when it comes to production be the need is so real, so immediate, and so widespread.
The problem with rapid consumption of PPE is that once it has been exposed to infection, it’s contaminated and can’t be used again. Physically it may be fine, but it retains the capability to infect other people. If there were some way it could be effectively cleaned and decontaminated for re-use, it would reduce the strain on the supply chain and result in a greater availability of PPE for all those who require it.
This is the promise of
Battelle’s Critical Care Decontamination System
, a shipping-container-sized unit which has received
approval from the FDA
at break-neck speed.
Hydrogen Peroxide: It’s Not Just For Rockets
via Battelle CCDS Overview PDF
Each container houses a main chamber into which the infected PPE is loaded protected by an airlock and a set of filters, and the decontamination magic happens courtesy of several hours’ exposure to hydrogen peroxide vapour. The mechanism of using hydrogen peroxide as a disinfectant is simple and well-understood, it’s a chemical that readily degrades into highly reactive hydroxyl radicals which in turn attack any organic material they encounter. This effectively neutralises any viruses or bacteria that may be present on the PPE, leaving it clean and disinfected for its next user, and with the whole cycle from start to finish including loading and unloading taking twelve hours. The particularly flexible aspect of the system comes in its shipping container home, making it very straightforward to move from place to place where it is needed using standard trucks and loading equipment.
All this is most impressive and has the potential to be a game-changer for hard-pressed hospitals in the thick of the epidemic, but it is dangerous to latch onto any one solution and long-term the best solution will still be to build up a sustained manufacturing effort all PPE that is in short supply.
[Main image source:
@PaigePfleger
] | 96 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233943",
"author": "ktrammel",
"timestamp": "2020-04-02T17:16:01",
"content": "What about ultraviolet light? Seems like that would be less destructive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6233964",
"author": "Alexander Wi... | 1,760,373,535.008802 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/02/autonomous3d-rover-with-tank-tracks-rules-the-fields-almost/ | Autonomous 3D Rover With Tank Tracks Rules The Fields. Almost | Danie Conradie | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"ardurover",
"gearbox",
"rctestflight",
"rover",
"tracked vehicle"
] | Scope creep is a real pain in the real world, but for projects of passion it can have some interesting consequences. [rctestflight] was playing around with 3D printed rover gearboxes, which morphed into a
3D printed tank build
.
[rctestflight]’s
previous autonomous rover
project had problems with the cheap geared motors, and he started experimenting with his own gearbox designs to use with lower RPM /
Kv brushless drone motors. The tank came about because he wanted a simple vehicle to test his design. “Simple” went out the window pretty quickly and the final product was completely 3D printed except for the fasteners, axles, bearings, and electronics.
The tracks and gears are noisy, but it works quite well. On outdoor tests [rctestflight] did find that the tracks were prone to hooking on vines and branches, which in one case caused it to throw a track after the aluminium shaft bent. An Ardurover navigation system was added and with a 32 Ah battery was able to run autonomously for an entire day and there was surprisingly little wear on 3D printed gearbox and tracks afterward. All the STL files are up on
Thingiverse
, but [rctestflight] recommends waiting for an upcoming update because he discovered flaws in the design after filming the video after the break.
For a slightly more complex and expensive rover, check out our coverage of
Perseverance
, NASA’s MARS 2020 Rover. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234261",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2020-04-03T18:53:05",
"content": "Cool project / workshop / craftmanship.The thingiverse link is actually a youtube redirect….https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4234076",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,535.163172 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/02/star-trackers-telling-up-from-down-in-any-space/ | Star Trackers: Telling Up From Down In Any Space | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider",
"Space",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"celestial navigation",
"gps",
"navigation",
"positioning",
"satellite navigation",
"star tracker"
] | Keeping track of position is crucial in a lot of situations. On Earth, it’s usually relatively straight-forward, with systems having been developed over the centuries that would allow one to get at least a rough fix on one’s position on this planet. But for a satellite out in space, however, it’s harder. How do they keep their communications dishes pointed towards Earth?
The stars are an obvious orientation point. The Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem (AACS) on the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes has the non-enviable task of keeping the spacecraft’s communication dish aligned precisely with a communications dish back on Earth, which from deep space is an incomprehensibly tiny target.
Back on Earth, the
star tracker
concept has become quite popular among photographers who try to image the night skies. Even in your living room, VR systems also rely on knowing the position of the user’s body and any peripherals in space. In this article we’ll take a look at the history and current applications of this type of position tracking.
Celestial Navigation
Milky Way over Uruguayan lighthouse. (Credit: Mauricio Salazar)
Celestial navigation
has been practiced for thousands of years. In theory, all you need is your eyes and some knowledge of how the Sun, Moon and stars move in the skies throughout the seasons to get a sense of direction. But this doesn’t tell you your position on the Earth’s surface.
For most of human history, ships would stay within sight of the coast and rarely cross large bodies of water. When they did crossings, they would often use
dead reckoning
, using one’s known position, heading and speed. Although the concept of
latitude
had been around for a while, measuring latitude accurately required
angle-finding instruments
, such as an
astrolabe
, invented around 200 BC, or a
sextant
, invented in the 16th century.
An astrolabe, sextant, or similar measures the angles between known celestial bodies, from which the latitude can be deduced. The
determining of longitude
was a major question that ultimately came down to
having an accurate clock
, as longitude and solar time are directly related. The invention of timepieces that were both accurate and
could be used on a ship
or moving vehicle would not be solved until the 19th century when they became reliable and affordable enough that alternatives (
lunar distance method
) fell out of favor.
Finding one’s way in space
Voyager 1 drawing with its components.
Although navigating in the mindbogglingly massive vacuum of space may seem harder than navigating on Earth, essentially the same principles apply. The most important thing is to have at least one point of reference. In the case of Earth-based navigation, this can be the Sun, the Moon or any bright star with a known trajectory and location in the sky.
For a space probe, the common metaphor of ‘sailing the ocean of stars’ is rather apt when it comes to navigation. The Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem (AACS) as it is known on the Voyager,
Cassini
, and other spacecraft form the core of the navigation and positioning system. In the case of
Cassini
, it uses a number of sensors, including
Stellar Reference Units
(SRU), Inertial Reference Units (IRU) and Sun sensors (SSA). These SRUs are CCD-based star trackers that together with the other units keep the spacecraft aware of its relative position in space.
The
Voyager spacecraft use a similar AACS
system, as did other spacecraft in the past and probes after Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. For attitude reference, star trackers, star scanners, solar trackers, sun sensors, and planetary limb trackers are used. Voyager’s AACS uses a sun sensor for yaw and pitch reference, and a star tracker to continuously track a bright star at right angles for roll reference.
Galileo
references a star scanner that rotates with the spinning part of the spacecraft.
Magellan
used a
star scanner
to obtain a fix on two bright stars during a special maneuver every few orbits.
Star tracker with DSLR camera attached. (Credit: astrobackyard.com)
It isn’t just in space where star trackers are useful, either. In order to take photographs of the Milky Way and the night sky, the film or camera sensor requires long exposure times in order to gather sufficient light from the (faint) star light. Because the Earth rotates continuously, the position of the stars is shifting, and this makes a blurred mess over even a ten second exposure time, let alone half a minute or longer. In the old days, rotating the camera or telescope along with the stars was done by aligning a pivot with the earth’s axis and
turning it at a preset rotation speed
for one’s location on Earth
. More modern astrophotography rigs use a photo sensor that keeps a fix on one or more stars, moving the camera that is mounted on top of the tracker with just the right amount to get a sharp image.
Bodies in Space
For the moment at least, the Final Frontier when it comes to tracking one’s position is not outer space, but our living rooms. Significant R&D money is being invested in creating an ever more realistic and natural Virtual Reality (
VR
) experience. This requires that the system can keep track of not only where the user is looking in the virtual world, but also where their appendages are currently located.
Good view of the infrared LEDs on an Oculus Rift CV1, used in its tracking system. (Credit: iFixit.com, CC BY-NC-SA)
In VR
positional tracking
aims to determine the yaw, pitch, and roll of displays, controllers, or body parts. Here there are two main options: either sensors on the user keep track of markers in their surroundings, like the
Oculus Rift S
does, or sensors that surround the user keep track of markers on the user’s body or on the controllers, like the
Oculus Rift CV1
‘s aptly named Constellation system. Of course, each solution comes with its own
set of advantages and disadvantages
(and aggravated users).
Methods for
motion capture
, often used for (CGI) films and video games, operate similarly. The big difference between VR and motion capture is that for motion capture it is acceptable to gear the subject up in special suits with markers, while also often including the finer details of facial movements, something that is less interesting in VR than tracking the movement of one’s digits. You don’t want to spend twenty minutes suiting up just to play a game.
Good Tracking Goes Places
Whether navigating a celestial body’s surface, the space between the stars, or a virtual reality while flailing wildly in the living room amidst curious glances from your pets, the challenges posed by determining position and orientation remain. Only the actual space that is being navigated changes.
Improved navigation on Earth has led humankind to explore and settle virtually every bit of land on this planet, to create accurate maps, and to locate ourselves in the Earth’s oceans, land, and skies with ever-increasing precision. Over time we learned to create our own markers in addition to the Sun and stars, using light houses, radio beacons, and ultimately a
constellation of satellites to enable navigation
.
In space, our probes don’t just navigate by stars alone anymore either. The
NASA Deep Space Network
provides both communication and tracking services to any spacecraft inside our solar system, and beyond. At this point in time, only the network’s largest
70-meter antenna
can still communicate with and track the Voyager probes
as they venture ever further
into deep space.
It’s an interesting inversion that what allowed early sailors to navigate the seven seas and later space probes to navigate the solar system is now used to keep track of you in your living room as you explore the worlds that exist within our collective imagination. | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233900",
"author": "CodeToad",
"timestamp": "2020-04-02T14:56:36",
"content": "Good article, great art!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6233905",
"author": "unochepassa",
"timestamp": "2020-04-02T15:19:00",
"content... | 1,760,373,535.125987 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/02/peel-apart-your-isps-router/ | Peel Apart Your ISP’s Router | Jenny List | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"adsl",
"backdoor",
"router"
] | Whether your home Internet connection comes by ADSL, fibre, cable, or even satellite, at some point in the chain between your ISP and your computer will be a router in your home. For some of us it’s a model we’ve bought ourselves and loaded up with a custom distro, but for the majority it’s a box supplied by our ISP and subject to their settings and restrictions. [Paddlesteamer] has just such a router, a Huawei model supplied by the Turkcell ISP, and
decided to do a little snooping into its setup
.
In a tale of three parts, we see the device unravel, from uncovering a shell to reverse engineering its update process, to delving in its firmware and finally removing all its restrictions entirely. It’s a fascinating process in which we learn a lot, such as the way a man-in-the-middle attack is performed on the router’s connection tot he ISP, or that it contains an authorised SSH key seemingly giving Huawei a back door into it. You may never do this with your ISP’s router, but it pays to be aware of what can be put in your home by them without your realising it.
The Golden Age of router hacking may be behind us as the likes of the Raspberry Pi have replaced surplus routers as a source of cheap Linux boards, but as this shows us there’s still a need to dive inside a router from time to time. After all,
locked-down routers are hardly a new phenomenon
.
Via
Hacker News
. | 35 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233850",
"author": "Bernard Kerckenaere",
"timestamp": "2020-04-02T11:30:59",
"content": "Pfsense ftw! Never been happier with a router distro. Especially after switching from running it on a VM (with assigned dedicated nics off course) to a netgate RCC-VE 2440 Board. Full VLAN and... | 1,760,373,535.556646 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/02/particle-sniffer-for-pollution-point-sources/ | Particle Sniffer For Pollution Point Sources | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"particulate",
"particulate analysis",
"particulates",
"pm2.5"
] | When measuring air quality, particulate matter is an important metric to watch. The PM2.5 rating refers to particulate matter that has a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers. While it’s often measured by authorities on a city-wide basis,
[rabbitcreek] wanted a way to track down point sources indoors.
The tool [rabbitcreek] built is in a similar form factor to a typical infrared workshop thermometer. Inside, it packs a Honeywell HPMA115S0-TIR laser particle sensor, hooked up to an ESP32 which runs the show. The sensor chosen makes things easy, with the device already set up with a blower and inlet and outlet ports for taking accurate readings.. Results are displayed on an SSD1306 OLED screen. It’s all wrapped up in a 3D printed case with a trigger grip, and a dog nose on the front which hints at the devices true purpose.
In testing, the device proves capable of detecting point sources of atmospheric particulates like flowers and a toaster. It’s something we’re sure would prove handy to those working in HVAC and environmental assessment industries.
We’ve seen other rigs for monitoring particulates before, too.
Video after the break. | 13 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233829",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2020-04-02T09:32:46",
"content": "Just struggling to see what the number is.https://laqm.defra.gov.uk/public-health/pm25.htmltells me mass of particles under 2.5 um per cubic metre of air.So when that thing says (for example) 500 does that m... | 1,760,373,535.650618 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/01/using-the-steam-controller-with-lego-motors/ | Using The Steam Controller With LEGO Motors | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"ESP32",
"h-bridge motor controller",
"lego",
"Steam Controller"
] | While Valve’s Steam Controller was ultimately a commercial failure, there’s no denying it’s an interesting piece of hardware. With dual trackpads, a wealth of buttons, and Bluetooth capability, it could be the ideal way to control your next build. Thanks to a recent project by [geggo],
now you’ve even got an example you can follow
.
A custom PCB holding an ESP32 and DRV8833 dual H-bridge motor controller is used to interface with standard LEGO motors using their stock block-like connectors. That means the board is a drop-in upgrade for whatever motorized creation you’ve already built.
Since the ESP32 obviously has WiFi in addition to Bluetooth, that also means this little board could be used to control LEGO projects over the local network or even Internet with some changes to the firmware.
Interestingly, while Valve officially enabled Bluetooth on the Steam Controller back in 2018, it sounds like some undocumented poking and reverse engineering was necessary to get it working here. That’s great for those of us who like a good hack, but if you’re more interested in just getting things working, [geggo] has been good enough to release the source code to get you started.
If you’re not interested in Bluetooth but want to get your creation up and moving, we’ve recently covered how one hacker
used the ESP8266 to bring his LEGO train to life
by integrating it into his smart home. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6239590",
"author": "cliftad",
"timestamp": "2020-04-23T05:44:17",
"content": "The Steam Controller was never a “commercial failure” it actually sold very well. The Devs simply lost interest in it, for whatever reason.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,535.326585 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/01/fail-of-the-week-how-not-to-die-of-boredom-during-isolation/ | Fail Of The Week: How Not To Die Of Boredom During Isolation | Dan Maloney | [
"Fail of the Week"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"fail of the week",
"fotw",
"magnet",
"neodymium",
"safety"
] | They say you can’t actually die from boredom, but put a billion or so people into self-isolation, and someone is bound to say, “Hold my beer and watch this.” [Daniel Reardon]’s brush with failure, in the form of
getting magnets stuck up his nose while trying to invent a facial touch reminder
, probably wasn’t directly life-threatening, but it does underscore the need to be especially careful these days.
The story begins with good intentions and a small stack of neodymium magnets. [Daniel]’s idea for a sensor to warn one of impending face touches was solid: a necklace with magnetic sensors and wristbands studded with magnets. Sounds reasonable enough; one can easily see a compact system that sounds an alarm when a hand subconsciously crosses into the Danger Zone while going in for a scratch. Lacking any experience in circuits, though, [Daniel] was unable to get the thing working, so he started playing with the magnets instead. One thing led to another, and magnets were soon adorning his earlobes, and then his nostrils. Unfortunately, two magnets became locked on either side of his septum, as did two others meant to neutralize the pull of the first pair. So off [Daniel] went to the emergency department for a magnetectomy.
Of course it’s easy to laugh at someone’s misfortune, especially when self-inflicted. And the now-degaussed [Daniel] seems to be a good sport about the whole thing. But the important thing here is that we all do dumb things, and hackers need to be especially careful these days. We often work with sharp, pointy, sparky, toxic, or flammable things, and if we don’t keep our wits about us, we could easily end up in an ER somewhere. Not only does that risk unnecessary exposure to COVID-19, but it also takes medical resources away from people who need it more than you do.
By all means, we should be hacking away these idle hours. Even if it’s not in support of COVID-19 solutions, continuing to do what we do is key to our mental health and well-being. But we also need to be careful, to not stretch dangerously beyond our abilities, and to remember that the safety net that’s normally there to catch us is full of holes now.
Thanks to [gir.st] for the tip — you actually were the only one to send this in. | 26 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233477",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2020-04-01T11:45:05",
"content": "YES at the moment you don’t want to do anything might mean you may potentially end up in a hospital – they have enough to do at the moment. but mind you they might get a laugh at your stupidity.",
"pa... | 1,760,373,535.490099 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/04/01/empanada-becomes-impractical-delicious-synth/ | Empanada Becomes Impractical, Delicious Synth | Lewin Day | [
"News"
] | [
"conductive paint",
"empanada"
] | Vegemite is an Australian staple – a rich, protein-filled sandwich spread with a strong salty flavor. It serves as a great way to add a little umami to any dish, which is the hottest open secret in Australian cuisine this decade. It also works as a servicable conductive paint,
which [Alex] used to make this baked good into a musical device.
The basis of the device is a basic audio example sketch running on an Adafruit Circuit Playground Express. The code was tweaked to play a 7-note C major scale. The PCB was then attached to the empanada with toothpicks through each pad, with the baked good itself seemingly connected to the ground plane. The toothpicks through the pads were then coated with Vegemite, and another toothpick treated the same way and used as a stylus. By touching the toothpick to the empanada and one of the pads, the circuit is made, and a note is played.
It’s an impractical way to go about musical performance, sure. But it is an effective demonstration of foodstuffs used in electronics. Calvin Harris did much the same back in 2009,
albeit with humans substituting for the delicious pastry.
Video after the break. | 20 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233439",
"author": "Dom",
"timestamp": "2020-04-01T08:10:44",
"content": "There’s some, but not a lot of protein in vegemite. It’s a “yeast extract” made from the leavings of beer brewing. It’s delicious, but only in small quantities. It’s not jam or honey.You spread butter on your... | 1,760,373,535.607961 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/31/handheld-3d-scanning-using-raspberry-pi-4-and-intel-realsense-camera/ | Handheld 3D Scanning, Using Raspberry Pi 4 And Intel RealSense Camera | Donald Papp | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"3d scanning",
"depth camera",
"depth sensing",
"handheld",
"Intel RealSense",
"mesh",
"Photogrammetry",
"point cloud",
"raspberry pi",
"RGB-D",
"RTAB-map",
"SLAM"
] | Raspberry Pi 4 (with USB 3.0) and Intel RealSense D415 depth sensing camera.
When the Raspberry Pi 4 came out, [Frank Zhao] saw the potential to
make a realtime 3D scanner that was completely handheld and self-contained
. The device has an Intel RealSense D415 depth-sensing camera as the main sensor, which uses two IR cameras and an RGB camera along with the Raspberry Pi 4. The Pi uses a piece of software called
RTAB-Map
— intended for robotic applications — to take care of using the data from the camera to map the environment in 3D and localize itself within that 3D space. Everything gets recorded in realtime.
This handheld device can act as a 3D scanner because the data gathered by RTAB-Map consists of a point cloud of an area as well as depth information. When combined with the origin of the sensing unit (i.e. the location of the camera within that area) it can export a point cloud into a mesh and even apply a texture derived from the camera footage. An example is shown below the break.
As far as 3D scanning goes, it’s OK if you’re thinking these results are not perfect. It’s true that the results don’t hold a candle to
photogrammetry
. But considering the low resolution of the Intel RealSense’s RGB camera and the fact that RTAB-Map is a
SLAM
(simultaneous localization and mapping) sandbox and
not
3D scanning software, these results are amazing from a handheld device that is essentially outputting this in its spare time.
While this project might appear to consist of only a few components and some open software, getting it all to work together was a challenge.
Check out the project’s GitHub repository
to take advantage of [Frank]’s hard work, and watch the video embedded below. | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233432",
"author": "tekkieneet",
"timestamp": "2020-04-01T07:27:08",
"content": "You would want some exhaust vents on the opposite side of that fan to get air flow across the heat sink.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6233494... | 1,760,373,535.746118 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/31/shoot-the-moon-with-this-homebrew-hardline-rf-divider/ | Shoot The Moon With This Homebrew Hardline RF Divider | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"Coax",
"dielectric",
"Earth-Moon-Earth",
"EME",
"ham",
"hardline",
"impedance",
"moon bounce",
"transformer"
] | You can say one thing for [Derek]’s amateur radio ambitions — he certainly jumps in with both feet. While most hams never even attempt to “shoot the Moon”, he’s building out an Earth-Moon-Earth, or EME, setup which requires this little beauty:
a homebrew quarter-wave hardline RF divider
, and he’s sharing the build with us.
For background, EME is a propagation technique using our natural satellite as a passive communications satellite. Powerful, directional signals can bounce off the Moon and back down to Earth, potentially putting your signal in range of anyone who has a view of the Moon at that moment. The loss over the approximately 770,000-km path length is substantial, enough so that receiving stations generally use arrays of
high-gain Yagi antennas
.
That’s where [Derek]’s hardline build comes in. The divider acts as an impedance transformer and matches two 50-ohm antennas in parallel with the 50-ohm load expected by the transceiver. He built his from extruded aluminum tubing as the outer shield, with a center conductor of brass tubing and air dielectric. He walks through all the calculations; stock size tubing was good enough to get into the ballpark for the correct impedance over a quarter-wavelength section of hardline at the desired 432-MHz, which is in the middle of the 70-cm amateur band. Sadly, though, a scan of the finished product with
a NanoVNA
revealed that the divider is resonant much further up the band, for reasons unknown.
[Derek] is still diagnosing, and we’ll be keen to see what he comes up with, but for now, at least we’ve learned a bit about homebrew hardlines and EME. Want a bit more information on Moon bounce?
We’ve got you covered
. | 21 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233395",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2020-04-01T03:43:59",
"content": "I’ve been learning SimSmith for the past 2 months, so I typed in his circuit to check the calculations.A 50 ohm generator into a 41.56 ohm transmission line of 90 degrees length into a 25 ohm load does ind... | 1,760,373,535.888609 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/31/magnets-turn-flexible-pcb-into-electric-grasshopper/ | Magnets Turn Flexible PCB Into Electric Grasshopper | Erin Pinheiro | [
"hardware"
] | [
"electromagnet",
"flexible circuit board",
"flexible PCB",
"flexible robotics",
"magnets"
] | Just because something doesn’t seem to have an apparent purpose, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try making it anyway. As flexible PCBs become cheaper and easier to order from low-scale fab houses, we’re seeing hobbyists experiment with new uses for them such as
[Carl Bugeja]’s jumping circuit
.
The circuit is based a coil printed on the flexible PCB itself acting as an electromagnet, but unlike other designs which use the same trick, in this one the coil is made to be the static side of an actuator. Attached to the circuit with folding arms is a stack of two permanent magnets, which work as the moving part. Since the magnets make up most of the mass of the circuit, as they’re pushed down and sprung back up, it causes the whole thing to leap around just under one centimeter off the table like a little electric grasshopper.
This is far from [Carl]’s first appearance here on Hackaday, and he’s been clearly busy exploring new uses for flexible PCBs with their properties as electromagnets, from making
POV displays with them
to
small robots that move around through vibration
. We’re excited to see what else he can come up with, and you can see this one in action after the break.
[Thanks spiralbrain for the tip!] | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233373",
"author": "Col. Panek",
"timestamp": "2020-04-01T01:53:07",
"content": "Words fail.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6233486",
"author": "MR",
"timestamp": "2020-04-01T12:21:17",
"content": "Be... | 1,760,373,535.692271 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/31/using-a-vending-machine-bill-acceptor-with-arduino/ | Using A Vending Machine Bill Acceptor With Arduino | Tom Nardi | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"bill acceptor",
"counterfeit",
"ir led",
"money"
] | We’ve all seen, and occasionally wrestled with, bill acceptors like the one [Another Maker] recently liberated from an arcade machine. But have you ever had one apart to see how it works? If not, the video after the break is an interesting peak into how this ubiquitous piece of hardware tells the difference between a real bill and a piece of paper.
But [Another Maker] goes a bit farther than just showing the internals of the device. He also went through the trouble of
figuring out how to talk to it with an Arduino
, which makes all sorts of money-grabbing projects possible. Even if collecting paper money isn’t your kind of thing, it’s still interesting to see how this gadget works on a hardware and software level.
As explained in the video, a set of belts are used to pull the bill past an array of IR LEDs. The hardware uses these to scan the bill and perform some dark magic to determine if it’s a genuine piece of currency. [Another Maker] notes that these readers actually need to receive occasional firmware updates to take into account new bill designs. In fact, the particular unit he has is so out of date that it won’t accept modern $5 bills; which may explain how he got it for free in the first place.
Years ago we saw one of these bill acceptors used to make a DIY Bitcoin ATM
. Of course back then, a few bucks would get you a semi-reasonable amount of BTC. These days you would
skip the paper currency and do it all digitally
. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233298",
"author": "mm",
"timestamp": "2020-03-31T20:11:02",
"content": "I think your peak should be peek",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6233323",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2020-03-31T21:32:06",
"content... | 1,760,373,535.835966 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/31/chatty-coaster-agitates-in-a-friendly-way/ | Chatty Coaster Agitates, In A Friendly Way | Lewin Day | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"chatbot",
"coaster"
] | Awkward silences can be highly uncomfortable. Thankfully, they’re a problem that can be solved by technology. Chatty Coaster aims to do just this,
detecting pauses in conversation and interjecting with helpful questions to move things along.
The coaster is built around an Arduino Micro, which uses a microphone to detect audio levels in the room. When it detects an extended silence, it then fires off a sound clip using a SparkFun audio breakout board. The questions vary from plain to politically sensitive, so there’s a good chance you could get some spicy conversation as a result. Any talking device runs a risk of being more annoying than helpful, and there’s certainly a risk that Chatty Coaster could fall into this category. Choosing the right content seems key here.
Overall, while this may not be the ultimate solution to boring company, it could get a laugh or two and serves as a good way to learn how to work with audio on microcontrollers. Video after the break.
We’ll admit, when we were reading this one,
we thought we had déjà vu
. But this one’s a lot less blamey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmdYapnYCJM | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233281",
"author": "Wally G",
"timestamp": "2020-03-31T19:13:47",
"content": "I sense a hint of Red Dwarf’s Talky Toaster here!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6233346",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-03-3... | 1,760,373,535.787535 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/31/perhaps-august-dvorak-is-more-your-type/ | Perhaps August Dvorak Is More Your Type | Kristina Panos | [
"Biography",
"Curated",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"August Dvorak",
"dvorak",
"dvorak layout",
"inertia",
"keyboard",
"qwerty",
"typewriter",
"US Navy",
"William Dealey"
] | One of the strangest things about human nature is our tendency toward inertia. We take so much uncontrollable change in stride, but when our man-made constructs stop making sense, we’re suddenly stuck in our ways — for instance, the way we measure things in the US, or define daytime throughout the year. Inertia seems to be the only explanation for continuing to do things the old way, even when new and scientifically superior ways come along. But this isn’t about the metric system — it’s about something much more personal. If you use a keyboard with any degree of regularity, this affects you physically.
Many, many people are content to live their entire lives typing on QWERTY keyboards. They never give a thought to the unfortunate layout choices of common letters, nor do they pick up even a whisper of the heated debates about the effectiveness of QWERTY vs. other layouts. We would bet that most of our readers have at least heard of the Dvorak layout, and assume that a decent percentage of you have converted to it.
Hardly anyone in the history of typewriting has cared so much about subverting QWERTY as August Dvorak. Once he began to study the the QWERTY layout and all its associated problems, he devoted the rest of his life to the plight of the typist. Although the Dvorak keyboard layout never gained widespread adoption, plenty of people swear by it, and it continues to inspire more finger-friendly layouts to this day.
Composer of Comfort
Image via
@mwichary
August Dvorak was born May 5th, 1894 in Glencoe, Minnesota. He served in the US Navy as a submarine skipper in WWII, and is believed to be a distant cousin of the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák. Not much has been published about his early life, but Dvorak wound up working as an educational psychologist and professor of the University of Washington in Seattle, and this is where his story really begins.
Dvorak’s interest in keyboards and typing was struck when he advised a student named Gertrude Ford with her master’s thesis on the subject of typing errors. Touch typing was only a few decades old at this point, but the QWERTY layout had already taken a firm hold on the industry.
As Dvorak studied Ford’s thesis, he began to believe that the QWERTY layout was to blame for most typing errors, and was inspired to lead a tireless crusade to supplant it with a layout that served the typist and not the typewriter. His brother-in-law and fellow college professor, William Dealey, joined him on this quest from the beginning.
AOEUIDHTNS
Dvorak and Dealey put a great deal of effort into analyzing every aspect of typing, studying everything from frequently-used letter combinations of English to human hand physiology. In 1914, Dealey saw a demonstration given by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, who were using slow-motion film techniques to study industrial processes and worker fatigue. He told Dvorak what he’d seen, and they adopted a similar method to study the minute and complex movements of typists.
In 1936, after two decades of work, Dvorak and Dealey debuted
a new layout
designed to overcome all of QWERTY’s debilitating detriments. Whereas QWERTY places heavy use on the left hand and forces fingers outside the home row over 60% of the time, the Dvorak layout favors hand alternation and keeping the fingers working at home as much as possible. In this new arrangement, the number of words that can be typed without leaving the home row increased by a few thousandfold. Dvorak and Dealey along with Gertrude Ford and Nellie Merrick published all of their psychological and physiological findings about typing in the now out-of-print
Typewriting Behavior
(1936).
The original Dvorak layout. From
Typewriting Behavior
via
@rand.ferch
Haters Gonna Hate
Dvorak teaching in 1932. Image via
The University of Washington
At first, it seemed as though the Dvorak-Dealey simplified layout had half a chance of supplanting QWERTY. Dvorak found that students who had never learned to touch type could pick up Dvorak in one-third the time it took to learn QWERTY.
Dvorak entered his typists into contests, and they consistently out-typed the QWERTYists by a long shot. It got so bad that within a few years, Dvorak typists were banned outright from competing. This decision was overturned not long after, but the resentment remained. QWERTY typists were so unnerved by the speed of the Dvorak typists that Dvorak typewriters were sabotaged, and he had to hire security guards to protect them.
The QWERTY is Too Strong
Although there were likely many factors at play, the simple fact is that by the time Dvorak patented his layout, Remington & Sons had cornered the market on typewriters. Even so, Dvorak released his keyboard during the Depression, and hardly anyone could afford to buy a new typewriter just because there was some hot new layout.
Although Dvorak typewriters were never mass-produced, they almost made waves thanks to the US Navy. Faced with a shortage of trained typists during WWII, they experimented with retraining QWERTY typists on Dvorak and found a significant increase in speed. They allegedly ordered thousands of Dvorak typewriters, but were vetoed by the Treasury department because of QWERTY inertia.
August Dvorak went on to make one-handed keyboards with layouts for both the left and right hand. In 1975, he died a bitter man, never understanding why the public would continue to shrug their overworked shoulders and keep using QWERTY keyboards. He might have been pleased to know that the Dvorak layout eventually became an ANSI standard and comes installed on most systems, but dismayed to find the general population still considers it a fringe layout.
I’m tired of trying to do something worthwhile for the human race. They simply don’t want to change! | 129 | 40 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233234",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2020-03-31T17:10:08",
"content": "I have been well aware of the built-in, purposeful inefficiency of the QWERTY keyboard. However, after close to 60 years experience as a touch-typist, I’m not interested in retraining my muscle-memory; way to... | 1,760,373,536.25466 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/31/reverse-engineering-a-ceiling-fan-remote/ | Reverse Engineering A Ceiling Fan Remote | Rich Hawkes | [
"home hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"ceiling fan",
"ESP32",
"fan",
"hassio",
"home automation",
"home-assistant",
"reverse engineer"
] | In the quest to automate everything in your home, you no doubt have things that aren’t made with home automation in mind. Perhaps your window AC unit, or the dimmer in your dining room. [Seb] has several ceiling fans that are controlled by remotes and wanted to connect them to his home automation system. In doing so, [Seb]
gives a good overview of how to tackle this problem and how to design a PCB
so he doesn’t have a breadboard lying around connected to the guts of his remote control.
There are several things [Seb] needs to figure out in order to connect his fans to
Home Assistant
, the home automation system he uses: He needs to determine if the circuit in the remote can be powered by 5 or 3.3 V, he needs to connect the circuit to an ESP32 board, and he needs to figure out if he can create a custom PCB that combines the circuit and the ESP32 into one. The video goes through each of these steps and shows the development of each along the way.
There’s a lot of info in the video, so it might need to be slowed down a bit to see all the details. There are some other reverse engineering of home automation gear on the site,
here
, or, you might want to build your own
remote to control your automated devices
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6234350",
"author": "Martin Glob",
"timestamp": "2020-04-03T22:23:34",
"content": "It’s the new black ;-) Us reading people are a dying breed….But usually you can find links, diagrams etc. in the comment section of the video (click the youtube icon)",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,373,536.293782 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/31/behind-the-scenes-of-foldinghome-how-do-you-fight-a-virus-with-distributed-computing/ | Behind The Scenes Of Folding@Home: How Do You Fight A Virus With Distributed Computing? | Roger Cheng | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Medical Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"distributed computing",
"Distributed Denial of Service",
"folding@home",
"protein",
"research",
"virus"
] | A great big
Thank You
to everyone who answered the call to participate in Folding@Home, helping to understand proteins interactions of SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Some members of the FAH research team
hosted an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Reddit
to provide us with behind-the-scenes details. Unsurprisingly, the top two topics are “Why isn’t my computer doing anything?” and “What does this actually accomplish?”
The first is easier to answer. Thanks to people spreading the word —
like the amazing growth of Team Hackaday
— there has been a huge infusion of new participants. We could see this happening on the leader boards, but in this AMA we have numbers direct from the source. Before this month there were roughly thirty thousand regular contributors. Since then,
several hundred
thousands more
started pitching in. This has overwhelmed their server infrastructure and resulted in what’s been termed a friendly-fire DDoS attack.
The most succinct information was
posted by a folding support forum moderator
.
Here’s a summary of current Folding@Home situation :
* We know about the work unit shortage
* It’s happening because of an approximately 20x increase in demand
* We are working on it and hope to have a solution very soon.
* Keep your machines running, they will eventually fold on their own.
* Every time we double our server resources, the number of Donors trying to help goes up by a factor of 4, outstripping whatever we do.
Why don’t they just buy more servers?
The answer can be found on
Folding@Home donation FAQ
. Most of their research grants have restrictions on how that funding is spent. These restrictions typically exclude capital equipment and infrastructure spending, meaning researchers can’t “just” buy more servers. Fortunately they are optimistic this recent fame has also attracted attention from enough donors with the right resources to help. As of this writing, their backend infrastructure has grown though not yet caught up to the flood. They’re still working on it, hang tight!
Computing hardware aside, there are human limitations on both input and output sides of this distributed supercomputer. Folding@Home need field experts to put together work units to be sent out to our computers, and such expertise is also required to review and interpret our submitted results. The good news is that our contribution has sped up their iteration cycle tremendously. Results that used to take weeks or months now return in days, informing where the next set of work units should investigate.
As promised, here is our first glimpse of the
#COVID19
spike protein (aka the demogorgon) in action, courtesy of
@foldingathome
. More to come!
pic.twitter.com/iD2crCMHcX
— Greg Bowman (@drGregBowman)
March 16, 2020
Is this work actually useful?
In a word, yes. Folding@Home results are available to researchers at no cost, and this data has contributed to many published papers and even more in the pipeline. For more details on publishing
see our earlier update
, but there were a few new questions in this AMA beyond papers.
This global pandemic has attracted attention at all levels, so there are many other computational research projects running like
AlphaFold
and efforts
at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
. Folding@Home isn’t even the only distributed computing platform, with
Rosetta@Home on BOINC
also vying for time on people’s personal computers. Are we all just duplicating effort? The team assured us that we are not. All of these are complementary efforts attacking the challenge from different sides. They are coordinating with, not competing against, all of these other researchers.
They do acknowledge it’s hard to make their work understandable outside of medical researchers. But public outreach is something they very much want to improve upon. They haven’t found a way to condense such a complex field into a single tweet, but in the meantime they’ll settle for efforts like
this eleven-part thread
summarizing how Folding@Home helps drug discovery and development.
What does the future hold?
We’re big fans of open source here at Hackaday, and thankfully someone brought up that topic. There is intent to open-source the Folding@Home client but that hasn’t happened yet and obviously not their top priority at the moment. They hope opening their source will attract contributors to bring Folding@Home to more platforms. BOINC is an obvious candidate, and we can also think of upcoming
powerful video game consoles with teraflops to spare
. Software developers who have a newfound interest in this field can get started by looking over the existing open-source foundations:
GROMACS
for their CPU folding core, and
OpenMM
for their GPU folding core. Additional technical background can be found on the
folding support forum
.
We’d love to have you join in the effort, if you do,
use the team code #44851 to track your stats as part of Team Hackaday
. And, we encourage all participants to continue even after this specific crisis is over, whenever that may be. After the original SARS subsided, research attention withered and in hindsight that might have been a mistake. Yes, we need to focus on SARS-CoV-2 today, but researchers want a better general understanding of the whole family. It’s only a matter of time before SARS-CoV-
3
(or whatever its name will be) makes its appearance, how prepared will we be? Your support of Folding@Home will continue to be valuable long after this pandemic has been retired to the history books.
[Main image source:
Simulation of millisecond protein folding: NTL9 (from Folding@home)
] | 25 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233179",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2020-03-31T14:38:43",
"content": "Thank you for the update!I’ve been letting my computer chew away on work units since the first article in this series came out, with some time off now and then to reduce wear and tear from thermal cyc... | 1,760,373,536.756988 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/31/3d-metal-printer-uses-welding-wire/ | 3D Metal Printer Uses Welding Wire | Ted Yapo | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3D metal printer",
"3d prining",
"welding"
] | If you’ve seen both a fused filament fabrication (FFF) printer and a wire welder, you may have noticed that they work on a similar basic principle. Feedstock is supplied in filament form — aka wire — and melted to deposit on the work piece in order to build up either welds in the case of the welder, or 3D objects in the case of the printer. Of course, there are a number of difficulties that prevent you from simply substituting metal wire for your thermoplastic filament. But, it turns out these difficulties can be overcome with some serious effort. [Dominik Meffert] has done exactly this with his
wire 3D printer project
.
Extruder cold end using a standard feeder roller
For his filament, [Dominik] chose standard welding wire, and has also experimented with stainless steel and flux-cored wires. Initially, he used a normal toothed gear as the mechanism in the stepper-driven cold end of his Bowden-tube extrusion mechanism, but found a standard wire feeder wheel from a welder worked better. This pinch-drive feeds the wire through a Bowden tube to the hot end.
In thermoplastic 3D printers, the material is melted in a chamber inside the hotend, then extruded through a nozzle to be deposited. Instead of trying to duplicate this arrangement for the metal wire, [Dominik] used a modified microwave oven transformer (MOT) to generate the low-voltage/high-amperage required to heat the wire restively. The heating is controlled through a phase-fired rectifier power controller that modulates the power on the input of the transformer. Conveniently, this controller is connected to the cooling fan output of the 3D printer board, allowing any standard slicer software to generate g-code for the metal printer.
To allow the wire to heat and melt, there must be a complete circuit from the transformer secondary. A standard welding nozzle matching the wire diameter is used as the electrode on the hot end, while a metal build plate serves as the other electrode. As you can imagine, getting the build plate — and the first layer — right is quite tricky, even more so than with plastic printers. In this case, added complications involve the fact that the printed object must maintain good electrical continuity with the plate, must not end up solidly welded down, and the fact that the 1450 °C molten steel tends to warp the plate.
Considering all the issues that have to be solved to make this all work, we are very impressed with [Dominik’s] progress so far! Similar issues were solved years ago for the case of thermoplastic printers by a group of highly-motivated experimenters, and it’s great to see a similar thing starting to happen with metal printing, especially using simple, readily-available materials.
This isn’t the only approach to DIY metal printing, though. We saw
one that used electron beam melting (EBM)
not too long ago.
Thanks to [Krzysztof] for the tip! | 45 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233124",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2020-03-31T11:10:39",
"content": "Well, it’s doing something – and it’s a great effort to even get to that point. I’m surprised though that particularly with a process that won’t allow bridging we’re still stuck with 3-axis machines. I’m no... | 1,760,373,536.372499 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/31/fail-of-the-week-in-cad-remember-to-model-the-environment/ | Fail Of The Week: In CAD, Remember To Model The Environment | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"advice",
"cad",
"design",
"fail of the week"
] | What’s wrong with the above picture? Failure can be an excellent teacher, and [J. Peterson] reminds us all of this when he says to
remember to model the environment when designing things in CAD
. He contrasts a failure with a success to demonstrate what that means.
The failure was a stand for a screwdriver set, shown above. He modeled up a simple stand to hold a screwdriver handle and the bits in a nice, tight formation. He didn’t model any of parts, he just took some measurements and designed the holder. Everything fit just fine, but it had a major ergonomic problem: you can barely reach the handle because it is fenced in by the surrounding bits! Had he modeled all of the parts during the design phase, and not just the part he was making, this problem would have been immediately obvious during the design phase.
The contrasting success is an adapter he designed to mount an artistic glass marble to a lit display stand. The stand itself as well as the glass marble were modeled in CAD, then the adapter designed afterwards to fit them. With all of the involved objects modeled, he could be certain of how everything fit together and it worked the first time.
Now, to most people with a 3D printer of their own, discovering a part isn’t quite right is not a big (nor even a particularly expensive) problem to have, but that’s not the point. Waste and rework should be avoided if possible. To help do that, it can be good to remember to model the whole environment, not just the thing being made. Add it on to the pile of
great design advice we’ve seen for designing things like enclosures and interfaces
. | 51 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233085",
"author": "Giangio",
"timestamp": "2020-03-31T08:11:18",
"content": "I’m used to call this as “design”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6233086",
"author": "Moryc",
"timestamp": "2020-03-31T08:17:35",
"conte... | 1,760,373,536.577949 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/30/diy-bagpipes-made-from-common-household-items/ | DIY Bagpipes Made From Common Household Items | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"bagpipe",
"bagpipes",
"musical instrument"
] | The bagpipes, most commonly seen in their Great Highland form from Scotland, are a loud and imposing musical instrument. Known for being difficult to practice quietly, they’re not the ideal thing to pick up in these times of quarantine and isolation. But, if you must,
here’s how you can craft your own at home!
A garbage bag is used as the air bag for this design, readily available and easy to work with. A recorder is then installed into the bag to act as the chanter – the part of the instrument with with pitch is controlled by finger position. A second recorder is then installed as a drone, which produces the continuous harmonizing note typical of bagpipes. A pair of pens are used to create the blowpipe which supplies air to the instrument. Everything is then sealed up with tape and you’re ready to go!
While it’s not a great facsimile of an authentic Scottish bagpipe, it does work in the same way and make some noise. It would be interesting to see a talented player handle such a makeshift piece.
Alternatively, consider some of the alternative DIY instruments we’ve featured before
. Video after the break. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,373,536.405462 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/30/maxing-out-browser-tabs-with-2tb-of-memory/ | Maxing Out Browser Tabs With 2TB Of Memory | Lewin Day | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"browser",
"chrome",
"ram"
] | Tabbed browsing was a gamechanger, allowing users to effectively browse multiple websites at once without losing context. It proved a better solution than using multiple windows, and was an efficiency boon celebrated by all. Many of us are tab fiends, opening great numbers at a time as a habitual part of our workflow. [Linus] decided to find out
just how many he could open on a system armed with a full 2TB of RAM.
As may be obvious, setting up a system with 2TB of RAM is no mean feat. Special server-grade RAM modules were sourced, packing 128GB of RAM each, set up for ECC operation. Packing out 16 slots, there’s a performance penalty to addressing so much RAM with a single CPU, but for memory-intensive work, it’s worthwhile. The CPU in question is an AMD 64-core processor, providing plenty of grunt for the task at hand.
In testing, the machine began to slow down long before the RAM was full. Beyond 5000 tabs, things began to crawl. At 6000 tabs, it was simply impractical to open more, with the machine taking a full 26 seconds to respond to a single click. Memory usage at this point was just 200GB, suggesting that software limitations were getting in the way of opening yet more tabs.
While it’s not a useful measure of anything important, it’s fun to explore the limits nonetheless. We’ve seen their projects before,
such as this original Xbox casemod.
Video after the break. | 39 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233014",
"author": "ForSquirel",
"timestamp": "2020-03-31T02:11:08",
"content": "Unfortunately he didn’t turn off the correct flags to test this properly.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6233115",
"author": "Marvin",
... | 1,760,373,536.648937 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/30/professional-ventilator-design-open-sourced-today-by-medtronic/ | Professional Ventilator Design Open Sourced Today By Medtronic | Bob Baddeley | [
"Medical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"coronavirus",
"Covid-19",
"Coviden",
"Medtronic",
"open source",
"PB560",
"ventilator"
] | Medical device company
Medtronic released designs for one of their ventilators
to open source for use in the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a laudable action, and there is plenty to glean from the specs (notable is that the planned release is incomplete as of this writing, so more info is on the way). Some initial reactions: medical devices are complicated, requirements specifications are enormous, the bill of materials (BOM) is gigantic, and component sourcing, supply chain, assembly, and testing are just as vital as the design itself.
The pessimist in me says that this design was open sourced for two reasons; to capitalize on an opportunity to get some good press, and to flex in front of the DIY community and convince them that the big boys should be the ones solving the ventilator shortage. The likelihood of anyone actually taking these specs and building it as designed are essentially zero for a variety of reasons, but let’s assume their intent is to give a good starting point for newer changes. The optimist in me says that after what happened to California over the weekend with
170 ventilators arriving broken
, it might be nice to have open designs to aid in repair of existing non-functioning ventilators.
The design details released today are for their PB560 model, which was originally launched in 2010 by a company called Covidien, before it merged with Medtronic, so we’re already starting with a device design that’s a decade old. But it’s also a design that has proven itself through widespread use, and this data dump gives us a great look at what actually goes into one of these machines. Let’s take a look.
Requirements Documents
There are a few very long documents in this section, but the overview is that this describes a document for a medical device with a lot of features and a lot of requirements, designed and manufactured in an orderly timeline. Two points that are worth mentioning are that these documents are great for looking at all the technical requirements of a ventilator, and that many pages can be crossed off in the name of expediency.
Electrical Schematics
The design functions around an ST10F27? (where ? is either an 8 or a B or a 3, depending on how you squint when looking at the PDF). There’s an ST10F273M that’s currently in active production by ST, so that might be it. There isn’t a full BOM available yet, but looking at some of the components shows that they are still available. There are no less than 4 different PCBs, with a main board, a board for the buzzer, a board for the power pack connection, and a board to control the motor.
Manufacturing Documents
There are lots of pretty pictures inside the manufacturing documents that show how the unit is assembled, with some overview documents that show the details of the assembly workflow. It seems there are some documents missing, though, because there’s nothing about the blower itself.
What’s Missing
Despite it being a dump of 53MB, there’s quite a bit missing if you were trying to build this machine. However, Medtronic did mention in their press release that “
…software code and other information will follow shortly.
” so there are more details on the way. Here are the things we’d like to see:
Firmware
Mechanical design
PCB layout
Complete BOM, not just of the electronics but of all the components
Programming, test, and assembly fixtures
We Need More Medical Devices Published as Open Source
Thank you, Medtronic. This is a great step, and we hope that useful information can be gleaned from this available design, and that others will follow your lead. While it’s not possible to recreate the product with the currently available files, it is a revealing view of the complexity involved in not just ventilators but any medical device.
We hope that this could be used to repair existing units that are not in service. Already, having the service manual and an explanation of the testing process is a huge help in this area. If they were also to release the mechanical design it would technically become possible to fabricate replacement parts to the original specifications if OEM replacements were for some reason unavailable.
However, we suspect that the amount of work that would be required to spin up assembly of this particular product is more than could be accomplished in the amount of time available, and the resources that would have to be mobilized are probably the same resources already working on building medical devices for other designs. The documentation around the release says any products released based on this are only to be used for COVID-19, so if anyone does manage to take this and use it to start production in a timely manner it will be both incredibly helpful, and super impressive.
2020-03-31 Update:
Medtronic delivered on many of the missing documents, and have promised to release the rest soon. This release includes all of the mechanical design files, the electronic design files, BOMs, fixtures, and other components like wiring harnesses. It is yet another indication of the complexity of this product and the challenges that would have to be overcome to source all of the components needed to manufacture it. | 116 | 48 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232982",
"author": "Skrubis",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30T23:24:37",
"content": "everyone is calling bull%%@t on this. a PR stunt.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6232986",
"author": "Alex Rossie",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,373,536.986991 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/30/printed-door-handle-turns-key-with-a-servo/ | Printed Door Handle Turns Key With A Servo | Tom Nardi | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"door lock",
"home automation",
"key",
"servo"
] | [Madalin Valceleanu] had a somewhat unique problem. He wanted to make his front door a bit “smarter”, but none of the IoT door locks he found were compatible with the style of reinforced door he had. So he set out to
design and 3D print his own Internet-controlled door handle
.
Now we say handle and not lock because the internal mechanisms haven’t actually been replaced. Those aren’t exactly the kind of parts that lend themselves to being recreated in PLA, after all. The printed components simply replace the original plate and handle on the interior of the door.
In that case, you might be wondering what the point of all this was. If he’s still using the same internal mechanism, how does a new handle help? On his new handle, [Madalin] has integrated a servo that’s capable of turning the original key in the door. With the servo wired up to a Raspberry Pi, this allows him to lock and unlock the door through his home automation system.
[Madalin] has made the STLs for his printed handles available on Thingiverse,
but like most of these “bolt on” style door modifications
, we imagine the design is bespoke enough that it won’t be much practical use to anyone else. Still, it’s an excellent example of solving a real-world problem with some outside of the box thinking. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232932",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30T20:27:43",
"content": "Madalin has obviously put a lot of thought and effort into this design and thats great.But I would suspect printing an entire door lock mechanism out of PLA would probably be relatively strong enough for ... | 1,760,373,536.693906 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/30/teardown-of-costco-ceiling-light-reveals-microwave-motion-sensor-and-hackable-design/ | Teardown Of Costco Ceiling Light Reveals Microwave Motion Sensor And Hackable Design | Donald Papp | [
"LED Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"ceiling lamp",
"costco",
"led",
"microwave",
"motion sensing",
"teardown"
] | [hclxing] eagerly picked up an LED ceiling light for its ability to be turned on and off remotely, but it turns out that the lamp has quite a few other features. These include adjustable brightness, color temperature, automatic turnoff, light sensing, motion sensing, and more. Before installing, [hclxing] decided to
tear it down to see what was involved in bringing all those features to bear
, but after opening the lamp there wasn’t much to see. Surprisingly, besides a PCB laden with LEDs, there were exactly two components inside the unit: an AC power adapter and a small white controller unit. That’s it.
Microwave-based motion sensor board on top, controller board for LED ceiling light underneath.
The power adapter is straightforward in that it accepts 100-240 Volts AC and turns it into 30-40 Volts DC for the LEDs, and it appears to provide 5 V for the controller as well. But [hclxing] noticed that the small white controller unit — the only other component besides the LEDs — had an FCC ID on it. A quick bit of online sleuthing revealed that ID is attached to a
microwave sensor module
. Most of us would probably expect to see a PIR sensor, but this light is motion sensing with microwaves. We have
seen such units tested in the past
, which links to a video [hclxing] also references.
The microwave motion sensor board is shown here, and underneath it is a dense PCB that controls all other functions. Once [hclxing] identified the wires and their signals, it was off to Costco to buy more because the device looks eminently hackable. We’re sure [hclxing] can do it, given their past history with
reverse-engineering WyzeSense hardware
. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232899",
"author": "Alan",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30T18:51:36",
"content": "I work for a lighting company. When these came out I bought one, tested it and tore it down.1) It doesn’t come close to the specs it claims.2) It draws a considerable amount of power when “off”. I forget h... | 1,760,373,536.816998 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/30/solid-promises-a-new-approach-to-how-the-web-works/ | SOLID Promises A New Approach To How The Web Works | Lewin Day | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Interest",
"internet hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"decentralized",
"decentralized internet",
"personal online data stores",
"PODS",
"privacy",
"solid",
"Tim Berners-Lee"
] | As it stands on the modern Internet, your data is no longer your own. Your emails, photos, and posts all live on servers owned by large corporations. Their policies give them access to your data, which is mined to generate advertising revenue. And if you want your data back, there are innumerable hoops to jump through. Want it deleted entirely? Good luck.
Tim Berners-Lee, original creator of the World Wide Web, is behind the project.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, as the original creator of what became the Web, has drawn issue with the current state of play. To move the ball on the issue, he’s been working on a design for decentralized internet and the efforts have
led to the establishment of the Solid project
. The goal is to rectify online privacy and ownership issues and give users greater control over their personal data.
The big question is how do you do that? When SOLID was announced last year there were few if any details on the approach taken by the program. But since then, more details have surface and you can even take an early version of the program for a spin. Let’s take a look.
It’s All In The PODS
Solid is all about PODS – personal online data stores. The concept is simple. An individual has a pod in which all their personal data is stored. This can be hosted at home, or with an external provider, but the point is that you choose and control where your data is hosted. PODS are intended to be portable; you’re free to switch providers or self-host at any time.
The basic concept of Solid is that all data will be held in pods controlled by users. Image credit: Inrupt
On the internet as we know it today, a user uploads data to each service they use. By and large, this data is trapped. Everything you upload to Facebook lives in one silo, while everything you upload to Twitter lives in another. Solid seeks to change this, where instead of uploading data to remote services, the services are granted permission to access the data that lives in one of your PODS.
The overarching aim is to eliminate the hold that large corporations have over user data, and the negative consequences that come of this. The system is designed to safeguard against things like the
Cambridge Analytica scandal
, where millions of Facebook users had their data exploited for political purposes. Instead, the company would have to manually ask individual users for access to their PODS to achieve the same goal, without being able to operate in secret.
Pros and Cons
The goal of giving users the ultimate say over who access their data and how is a lofty and noble one. In practice however, there are several hurdles that must be overcome to achieve this. It will require major structural changes to the way we all go about our day to day business on the Web.
One of the main issues is data security. In the Solid model, a social media company would access data on users’ PODS, rather than storing it on their own servers. In an ideal world, this would limit them from mining user data (for targeted advertising, etc.) and go a long way to stop the data being accessed for malicious purposes. However, if a company is given access to a user’s data at all, there’s little to stop the data being copied on to a remote server. From there, the data can be mined and manipulated at will.
Additionally, the Solid model may conflict with the very business model many web companies are built on. The average user enjoys a huge swathe of free content and services online. These are all paid with by users exchanging their personal data, which is used to sell targeted ads, covering the costs of delivering these services. If this is circumvented by users locking down their data, many services may have to switch to other methods of generating revenue.
This need not be a complete roadblock, however. The advertising industry was able to survive for years without granular targeting data, and users could always choose just how much of their data they’re willing to trade for service. Some may not be comfortable at all, while others may consider trading information on their age, location and purchase habits if it gets them a 6-month subscription to watch
Friends
. This opens up another con of the system: uninformed users giving up access to their PODS without understanding with whom they will be sharing their data.
Of course, a major benefit of such a system is having all your data in one place. Want your IoT-enabled air conditioner to click on at home when you’re on your way back from a workout? Give your home HVAC access to the fitness data in your pod and you’re set. Want a lower premium on your health insurance because you never buy unhealthy food and your government doesn’t supply public healthcare? Send your purchase data to your insurer! With all the data under the user’s control, there’s also the possibility of easily revoking access if one changes one’s mind.
Future of the Project
Obviously, remaking the Web to better serve users won’t happen overnight. Berners-Lee has taken a sabbatical from other work to focus on Solid, considering it of paramount importance. Additionally, the project has attracted top talent,
with internationally renowed cryptography expert Bruce Schneier lending his skills to Inrupt
, an open source startup founded to push the project forward.
Resources are already available for developers keen to dive into the new ecosystem.
Whether or not Solid can take the Web by storm and usher in a new golden age of privacy and interoperability remains to be seen. We look forward to seeing what progress the project makes, and how it can change things for the better. | 71 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232867",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30T17:22:49",
"content": "I’d LOOOOVE that Hackaday.io implements it so we can finally download all the data from our projects for offline use :-)y’know, Internet is still not ubiquitous and there are times when we can’t access the ... | 1,760,373,537.095754 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/30/laser-artistry-hack-chat/ | Laser Artistry Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"art",
"galvo",
"glavanometer",
"laser",
"laser light show",
"led",
"Seb Lee-Delisle",
"The Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, April 1 at noon Pacific for the
Laser Artistry Hack Chat
with
Seb Lee-Delisle
!
It’s hard to forget the first time you see a laser light show. A staple at concerts starting in the 1980s, seeing a green laser lance out over the heads of tens of thousands of screaming fans to trace out an animated figure or pulsating geometric shapes was pure fascination, and wondering how it was all done was half the fun. As we all know now, it was all done with mirrors, tiny and connected to low-inertia galvanometers capable of the twitchiest of movements, yet precise enough to position the beam of light exactly where it needed to be to create the desired illusion. It was engineering, science, and art all wrapped up into one package.
Fast forward to the present day, and laser show technology has certainly advanced. Bulky laser tubes have been replaced by solid-state devices, more colors are available, and galvo designs have improved. The art and artistry of the laserist have grown with the tech, which is where our guest Seb Lee-Delisle comes into his own. We’ve featured some of Seb’s work before, like
an
Asteroids
laser vector display
and
enormous public laser displays
. And now he’ll stop by to talk about how the art and the tech combine in his hands to produce something much greater than the sum of its parts.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, April 1 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have
a handy time zone converter
.
Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232847",
"author": "Paulie",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30T16:13:56",
"content": "Knebworth Festival 1985, UK, Deep Purple headliners, remember the green lasers from backstage hitting reflective surfaces at the side, then illuminating the cloudbase a half-mile or so behind the crowd. A... | 1,760,373,537.13803 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/30/designing-printed-adapters-for-power-tool-batteries/ | Designing Printed Adapters For Power Tool Batteries | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"adapter",
"battery powered",
"power tool",
"thermistor"
] | Unless you’re particularly fond of having multiple types of batteries and chargers, you’d do well to make sure all your portable power tools are made by the same company. But what do you do if there’s a tool you really need, but your brand of choice doesn’t offer their own version of it? Rather than having to buy into a whole new tool ecosystem,
you might be able to design your own battery adapter
.
Note the locking tab that’s been printed separately.
As [Chris Chimienti] explains in the video after the break, the first thing you’ve got to do (beyond making sure the voltages match) is take some careful measurements of the connectors on your batteries and tools. His goal was to adapt a Milwaukee M12 battery to Makita CXT tool, so if you happen to have that same combination of hardware you can just use his STLs. Otherwise, you’ll be spending some quality time with a pair of calipers and a notepad.
Once the interfaces have been designed and printed, they are wired together and mounted to opposite ends of the center support column. In theory you’d be done at this point, but as [Chris] points out, there’s a bit more to it than just wiring up the positive and negative terminals. Many tools use thermistors in the batteries for thermal protection purposes, and when the tool doesn’t get a reading from the sensor, it will likely refuse to work.
His solution to the problem is to “hotwire” the thermistor lead on the battery connector with a standard resistor of the appropriate value. This will get the tool spinning, but obviously there’s no more thermal protection. For most homeowner DIY projects this probably won’t cause a problem, but if you’re a pro who’s really pushing their tools to the limit, this project might not be for you.
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen somebody
adapt batteries from different brands to work on their tools
. It’s a common enough problem once you start building up a workshop, although you could
always avoid it by building all your own tools
. | 26 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232850",
"author": "Martin",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30T16:37:39",
"content": "Often the thermistor (or other interface to the internal electronics) is only used by the charger and not by the power tool. The tool runs until some undervoltage or overcurrent protection kicks in. Lets h... | 1,760,373,537.202007 |
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