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https://hackaday.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-testing-follow-up-rapid-immunologic-testing/ | Coronavirus Testing Follow-Up: Rapid Immunologic Testing | Dan Maloney | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Medical Hacks",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [] | When I started writing
my recent article on COVID-19 testing
, I assumed that I would be doing a compare and contrast sort of article. Like many people, I assumed that the “gold standard” test would be the reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test that I described in some detail. And indeed it is, but it’s not without its problems, such as the lack of certified labs and the need for trained technicians to run the samples. I also assumed there would be another test, a simple serological test that could use antibodies to discern if there was an active or even a previous, resolved infection.
At the time I wrote the first article, I could find no indication of an immunologic test for COVID-19 (more specifically, a test for SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19). But almost as rapidly as the number of COVID-19 cases rises, the news changes, and it appears that simple, rapidly performed antibody tests are now or soon will be available. They likely won’t replace the gold standard RT-PCR test, but they do stand to be a game-changer for the front line providers and the victims of this disease. So it pays to take a quick look at immunoassays for infectious diseases, and learn how they work.
Innate and Adaptive
To understand how immunoassays work, it’s necessary to know a little bit about how the human immune system recognizes invaders and targets them for destruction. It’s a vastly complex system, of course, seeing as it is tasked with differentiating between self and non-self cells based on only the slimmest of clues, and a full treatment would take far more time than is needed to get the idea. So yes, this is an extremely stripped-down tour of the immune system, but it should suffice for the task.
Since the main job of the immune system is to recognize and destroy invaders ranging from bacteria to viruses and even other human cells, it has to have something to key on that allows it to be both extremely selective and very aggressive. Proteins, with nearly infinite variability thanks to being composed of 21 different amino acids, make a perfect target, and doubly so since the exteriors of most invaders bristle with dozens of different proteins.
An immune response starts with the
innate immune system
, a rapid-acting set of first responder cells. The innate system is non-specific; beyond the ability to differentiate between self and non-self, its cells will pretty much eat anything. When it does encounter a bacterium or virus particle, it envelops it and breaks it down, a process known as phagocytosis. All those proteins that were studding the surface of the invader are then presented to another set of cells that form a second immune system, the
adaptive immune system
.
General structure of an immunoglobulin molecule. Source:
Biology Discussion
The cells of the adaptive system have their own proteins on the surface, formally referred to as immunoglobulins (Ig) but commonly known as antibodies. These proteins are always shown in diagrams as a Y shape, which is actually pretty accurate. The “arms” of the Y are highly diverse, with different antibodies having different sequences of amino acids. This produces a population of antibodies with varying affinities for other proteins, depending on the size, shape, and electrostatic charge of the amino acids.
When the innate immune cells present the bits and pieces of an invader’s proteins to the adaptive system, with any luck, one of the antibodies will randomly match and bind to the invader. This starts a cascade of events that cause the genes that encoded the matching antibody to be massively amplified in a process called clonal expansion. Cells of the immune system can take days to weeks to mount this defense, but once it starts, a huge number of cells go on patrol, armed with antibodies specific for the infection. Once the invaders are swept up, most of this army of cells is demobilized, but a few memory cells hang on to that specific antibody, ready to mount the offensive rapidly through the innate immune system if the same challenge arises again.
Going With the Flow
Monitoring the state of the immune system, therefore, can tell us not only if a patient is currently fighting an infection, but by digging into the institutional memory of the immune system, it can also tell us if someone has ever faced a specific challenge. All of this requires that we have a sample of the specific antibodies that have been produced by the body as it mounts its defense against a virus. Traditionally, that has been a slow and difficult process, where cells from animals challenged with the virus are painstakingly cultured and amplified through human cell lines, with the resulting antibodies purified before being made available for use in immunoassays.
Antibody purification usually takes months, but in the case of COVID-19, the first antibodies were isolated very quickly. An-Suei Yang
et al
at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan raised a monoclonal antibody (mAb) against the N, or nucleocapsid, protein of the virus. It took them just 19 days to isolate and purify the antibodies, using a process involving artificial intelligence models of the interactions of antibodies and antigens. Predictions from the model allowed them to create a library of DNA sequences coding for antibodies that should have specificity for the N protein, which can be produced and selected without having to run them through animals first. They managed to cut two months off the usual time to produce an antibody, and have gone on to create others that are so specific for SARS-CoV-2 that they will not bind to any other human coronavirus.
Putting the purified mABs to work in a usable assay is another challenge, and multiple companies are working around the clock to perfect their version of a test. Most of these tests, which are called point-of-care (POC) tests, use the lateral flow architecture. Pregnancy tests are a common example of a lateral flow immunoassay, and are very similar to the COVID-19 POC tests that are soon to hit the market.
Lateral flow tests work by taking a sample from a patient, probably blood for COVID-19 tests, and applying it to an absorbent matrix. The matrix is generally nitrocellulose, through which the blood will rapidly move thanks to capillary action. On its way through the matrix, the sample will cross a region filled with dried buffer reagents and a special mix of antibodies. These antibodies are not necessarily specific for SARS-CoV-2 proteins; they’ll stick to pretty much every protein in the sample. But they are conjugated to some sort of particle, like a colloidal gold microbead or a dyed latex particle. These will provide the visual signal later on in the test.
After crossing the conjugate region of the test, the proteins in the sample are now “decorated” with microparticles. The continue migrating up the strip until the cross lines containing dried mAbs specific for SARS-CoV-2 proteins. Depending on the test format, there could be two or three viral antibodies in these test lines, plus at least one control line that pretty much reacts with anything. Any of the decorated viral proteins in the sample will bind to the test lines, with the accumulation of conjugate producing a colored line that’s easily visible against the background of the matrix.
It’s important to note that there’s also a backdoor technique. Rather than raising up antibodies against SAR-CoV-2 proteins, cloned fragments of viral proteins can be used instead. In this case, the proteins would be applied to the test strips and would bind any conjugated-decorated antibodies in the patient sample. The main advantage here is that mAbs against the viral proteins are not needed, with the disadvantage being that different patients will express higher or lower amounts of antibodies depending on where they are in the viral infection cycle, as well as their general immune response.
Running and interpreting lateral flow immunoassays takes very little training, and the results are generally available within 20 minutes or so. Compared to the hours needed for a qPCR assay, not to mention the certified labs and the time needed to ship samples to them, the benefits of a point-of-care immunoassay are obvious.
Currently, there are at least nine lateral flow immunoassays for various SARS-CoV-2 proteins being developed. Some of them are shipping, some are in validation, and some are seeking approval from regulators. But all of them are based on the amazing complexity and adaptability of the immune system, the system that’s tasked with keeping humans alive in a world where challenges come is the smallest and most insidious packages imaginable. | 12 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232791",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30T14:13:16",
"content": "Very informative and enjoyable read. Thanks",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6232830",
"author": "kc8rwr",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30T15:27:19",
... | 1,760,373,539.085717 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/30/vinyl-cutter-migrates-from-scrapbooks-to-gaskets/ | Vinyl Cutter Migrates From Scrapbooks To Gaskets | Sonya Vasquez | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"gasket",
"gasket copying",
"vinyl cutter"
] | We know it all too well: another smoothly-operating night in the garage easily halted by a broken component. In the late hours of the night, no hardware store will open its doors. And while waiting may reward the patient, creativity may reward those who act now. That’s exactly where [Justin] found himself one evening: with a torn gasket. Not to be dismayed, he turned to his fiancee [Amy] and the two of them managed to
design and cut a perfectly fitting replacement gasket
on [Amy’s] vinyl cutter in a mere matter of minutes.
In the video after the break, the two step us through their process in detail. By starting with an image of the existing gasket, they capture a reference image. Some light work in photoshop cleans up everything except the resulting gasket they’re looking for. Finally, sizing “by eye” in the vinyl cutter’s software after measuring an existing dimension gives them sufficient precision to remake a duplicate gasket that’s eye-for-eye indistiguishable from the original.
It seems like we often hear about vinyl-cut gaskets in passing or in the comments, but it’s great to see a team post such a fabulous success story putting them to good use. And in case a plain old’ vinyl cutter blade wont do the trick, why not try
running it at ultrasonic speeds
? | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232732",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30T11:26:36",
"content": "There is another traditional solution to this problem that does not need any special equipment at all. (which most of you probably already know, I am mentioning this for the edification of those who don... | 1,760,373,538.877296 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/30/ammo-can-battery-50-ah-lifepo4-clad-in-army-green/ | Ammo Can Battery; 50 Ah LiFePO4 Clad In Army Green | Mike Szczys | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"ammo can",
"ammo can power box",
"battery management system",
"bms",
"LiFePO4",
"Lithium-ion battery"
] | For the price of a mid-range Android phone, [Kenneth Finnegan]
turned a 50 caliber ammo can into a 50 amp-hour portable power supply
. The battery pack uses four 3.5 V LiFePO
4
cells wired in series to achieve a nominal 12 V supply that stands in for a traditional lead-acid battery. The angel of second-hand purchases was smiling on this project as the cells were acquired on eBay in unused condition, complete with bus bars and mounting spacers. All it took to fit them in the case was to grind off the spacers’ dovetails on the outer edges.
There are many benefits to Lithium Iron Phosphate chemistry over traditional lead acid and [Kenneth] spells that out in his discussion of the battery management system at work here. While the newer technology has a much better discharge curve than lead-acid, there’s a frightening amount of power density there if these batteries were to have a catastrophic failure. That’s why there are Battery Management Systems and the one in use here is capable of monitoring all four cells individually which explains the small-gauge wires in the image above. It can balance all of the cells to make sure one doesn’t get more juice than the others, and can disconnect the system if trouble is a-brewin’.
Connections for the battery are routed to terminals mounted in the side of the ammo can. Since there are two contacts for each of the positive/negative connections [Kenneth] needed to split the connection when wiring things up. This is where a very interesting wire-splicing technique comes into play. Here you can see he has mated the three wires together by wrapping them with some fine-gauge wire before they get a thorough solder and shrink wrap treatment.
What does one do with so much power in a nice luggable package? We’d wager that this makes
a perfect power source for a mobile amateur radio repeater
. | 23 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232718",
"author": "tekkieneet",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30T10:15:30",
"content": "I wrap bare AWG26 on drill bit for splicing thick wires too. Mine is round and more uniform, so the heat shrink joint looks a bit better. :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []... | 1,760,373,539.294819 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/29/rock-out-while-you-knock-out-germs/ | Rock Out While You Knock Out Germs | Kristina Panos | [
"Lifehacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"copper tape",
"hand washing",
"lockdown life",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi Zero W",
"spotify"
] | We don’t know about you, but we’re pretty tired of singing two rounds of “Happy Birthday” or counting Mississippi to 20 each time we wash our hands. It’s difficult to do it without thinking about the reason why, and that’s not good for positivity. If you’d rather have your spirits lifted every time you hit the sink, you need a better soundtrack.
[Deeplocal] made
a soap dispenser that gathers one of your top 20 tunes from Spotify and plays it for 20 seconds
while you lather. The best part is that the songs don’t start at 0:00 — the code is written to use the preview clip of each one, so you get the algorithmically-determined best part.
Scrubber is a pretty simple build that uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a speaker bonnet powered by a LiPo, but we dig it just the same. The switch is adaptable to pretty much any soap dispenser — just stick two pieces of copper tape where they’ll make contact when the pump is pushed down, and solder wires to them. Check out the demo after the break.
We’ve often wondered how much more water we’re using with all the increased hand-washing out there. Adjusting to this apocalypse is arduous for all of us, but the environment is still a concern, so try to remember to turn the water off while you’re not using it. Is anyone out there working on an easy way to adapt home faucets to add motion or foot control? Because that would be awesome right about now.
The nice thing about Scrubber is that you can focus on washing your hands and doing so properly.
If you’d rather watch a digital hourglass to pass the time, light up your lockdown lavatory lifestyle with LEDs
.
Via
reddit | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232714",
"author": "shinsukke",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30T09:38:05",
"content": "Man we’re fast approaching the time where the acceptable amount of computing horsepower for blinking an LED would be an i7, aren’t we?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,538.76521 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/29/can-you-print-with-highlighter-ink/ | Can You Print With Highlighter Ink? | Lewin Day | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"inkjet",
"printer",
"uv"
] | With huge swathes of people either out of work or working from home, many are now attempting all manner of exciting or silly projects in their downtime. [Emily Velasco] is no exception.
She decided to explore the feasability of printing with highlighter ink.
It’s a messy business. Wear gloves.
The hack starts with a rather ancient inkjet printer, so old that it works with tractor feed paper. [Emily] set about gutting several highlighter pens and squeezed out the ink reservoirs into a ladle. The printer’s ink cartridge was then filled with the fluid, and a test print was fired off. Upon initial extraction, it appears blank. However, with the aid of a UV light, the printed pattern is revealed. It appears that the inkjet is printing a very faint image, such that the system almost works as an “invisible ink”.
It’s a fun little hack with an old printer, made easier as it lacks the DRM of newer models.
It’d probably be quite achievable with a dot-matrix, too
. If you’re similarly tinkering in the innards of your peripherals,
be sure to let us know
. Video after the break.
Can you print with highlighter ink? Watch to find out! You can spare the 57 seconds. We're not allowed to do anything anyway
pic.twitter.com/ftKqtPjlcd
— Emily Velasco (@MLE_Online)
March 26, 2020 | 30 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232651",
"author": "Nik",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30T02:37:23",
"content": "Can someone try to make Crayola printer?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6232655",
"author": "EllisGL",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30T02:47:... | 1,760,373,539.160005 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/29/hackaday-links-march-29-2020/ | Hackaday Links: March 29, 2020 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"folding@home",
"hackaday links",
"HP3",
"InSight",
"lander",
"marble machine",
"percussive maintenance",
"shovel",
"supercomputer",
"teamhackaday",
"The Mole"
] | It turns out that whacking busted things to fix them works as well on Mars as it does on Earth, as
NASA managed to fix its wonky “mole”
with a little help from the InSight lander’s robotic arm. Calling it “percussive maintenance” is perhaps a touch overwrought; as we
explained last week
, NASA prepped carefully for this last-ditch effort to salvage the HP³ experiment, and it was really more of a gentle nudge that a solid smack with the spacecraft’s backhoe bucket. From
the before and after pictures
, it still looks like the mole is a little off-kilter, and there was talk that the shovel fix was only the first step in a more involved repair. We’ll keep an ear open for more details — this kind of stuff is fascinating, and beats the news from Earth these days by a long shot.
Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic news isn’t all bad. Yes, the death toll is rising, the number of cases is still growing exponentially, and billions of people are living in fear and isolation. But ironically, we’re getting good at community again, and the hacker community is no exception. People really want to pitch in and do something to help, and we’ve put together some resources to help. Check out our Hackaday
How You Can Help spreadsheet
, a comprehensive list of what efforts are currently looking for help, plus what’s out there in terms of Discord and Slack channels, lists of materials you might need if you choose to volunteer to build something, and even a list of recent COVID-19 Hackaday articles if you need inspiration. You’ll also want to check out
our calendar of free events and classes
, which might be a great way to use the isolation time to better your lot.
Individual hackers aren’t the only ones pitching in, of course. Maybe of the companies in the hacker and maker space are doing what they can to help, too.
Ponoko is offering heavy discounts for hardware startups
to help them survive the current economic pinch. They’ve also enlisted other companies, like Adafruit and PCBWay, to join with them in offering similar breaks to certain customers.
More good news from the fight against COVID-19. Folding@Home, the distributed computing network that is currently working on folding models from many of the SARS-CoV-2 virus proteins,
has broken the exaFLOP barrier
and is now the most powerful computer ever built. True, not every core is active at any given time, but the 4.6 million cores and 400,000-plus GPUs in the network pushed it over from the petaFLOP range of computers like IBM’s Summit, until recently the most powerful supercomputer ever built. Also good news is that
Team Hackaday
is forming a large chunk of the soul of this new machine, with 3,900 users and almost a million work units completed. Got an old machine around? Read
Mike Sczcys’ article on getting started
and join Team Hackaday.
And finally, just because we all need a little joy in our lives right now, and because many of you are going through sports withdrawal, we present what could prove to be the new spectator sports sensation:
marble racing
. Longtime readers will no doubt recognize the mad genius of Martin and his Marble Machine X, the magnificent marble-dropping music machine that’s intended as a follow-up to
the original Marble Machine
. It’s also a great racetrack, and Martin does an amazing job doing both the color and turn-by-turn commentary in the mock race. It’s hugely entertaining, and a great tour of the 15,000-piece contraption. And when you’re done with the race, it’s nice to go back to listen to
the original Marble Machine tune
— it’s a happy little song for these trying times. | 19 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232626",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2020-03-29T23:42:28",
"content": "Yea, relax, just like 1918. But it will eventually burn out, the question is when and how many will it take with it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,373,538.827273 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/29/custom-drill-press-table-eliminates-hassles/ | Custom Drill Press Table Eliminates Hassles | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"adjustable",
"bits",
"cooling",
"drill press",
"electric",
"tools",
"workshop"
] | Getting a perfect workshop together, with all the right tools, is a dream for many. A lot of us cobble together what we can with a dremel tool, a soldering iron, and whatever work surface happens to be available in the kitchen or spare bedroom. But even when we finally get a permanent garage or shop to work in, there are still some challenges to overcome with our workspaces. [Workshop From Scratch] was having issues with his drill press,
and solved them with this custom build
.
Rather than modify an existing press, he first welded a table together from scratch using square tube. From there he set about solving those issues. The first was having to make a large number of adjustments up and down when working on larger pieces. For that he added an electrically adjustable worktop which keeps him from having to make constant adjustments of the press itself. The second improvement over the standard press workspace was adding a cooling system for the cutting tools, saving himself money in bits and allowing quicker drilling.
The finished product looks professional thanks to a quality paint job and, of course, having all the right tools in the workshop in the first place to put something like this together. We all have an idea in our heads about the perfect workshop for our own needs, but don’t forget to
think outside the box when it comes to building one yourself
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232584",
"author": "richfiles",
"timestamp": "2020-03-29T20:46:28",
"content": "That table is incredible! A very fine fabrication job!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6232675",
"author": "Drew",
"timestamp": "2020-03-30... | 1,760,373,538.918626 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/29/nih-approved-3d-printed-face-shield-design-for-hospitals-running-out-of-ppe/ | NIH Approved 3D-Printed Face Shield Design For Hospitals Running Out Of PPE | Lewin Day | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"personal protective equipment",
"PPE",
"virus"
] | As the world faces a pandemic of monumental proportions, hospitals have been hit hard. The dual problems of disrupted manufacturing and supply chains and huge spikes in demand have led to many medical centres running out of protective gear. Makers have stepped up to help in many ways by producing equipment, with varying results. [Packy] has shared a link to a 3D-printable face shield that, unlike some designs floating around,
is actually approved by the National Institute of Health in the USA.
The shield consists of a 3D printed headband, which is then coupled with a transparent piece of plastic for the face shield itself. This can be lasercut, or sourced from a document cover or transparency sheet. The design is printable in PLA or a variety of other common materials, and can be assembled easily with office supplies where necessary.
The design is available from the NIH here.
(Update: 4/1/2020
here’s
an alternate link
as original link seems to be suffering from heavy server load) For those eager to help out, it’s important to do so in an organised fashion that doesn’t unduly take resources away from healthcare professionals trying to get an important job done. We’ve seen other hacks too,
such as these 3D printed ventilator components being rushed into service in Italy. | 108 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232542",
"author": "Piecutter",
"timestamp": "2020-03-29T18:15:50",
"content": "This is great if you want Qty 1 sometime later today. The same thing could probably be accomplished in a more expedient manner without the delay of 3D printing, though. The visor could be cut and folded... | 1,760,373,539.515432 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/29/pumping-concrete/ | Pumping Concrete | Mike Szczys | [
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"concrete",
"dumbbell",
"exercise",
"mold making",
"weight lifting"
] | Due to social distancing, gym rats throughout the world are turning everyday objects into exercise equipment to keep up the routine without actually hitting the gym. A particularly pleasing version of this are
these concrete dumbbells
whipped up by the unfortunately named hacker [ShitnamiTidalWave].
If you happen to have half a bag of concrete — quick set or otherwise — out in the shed you can follow the lead on this one. But even if you’re not the kind of person who has “arm day” on your calendar (most of us here in the Hackaday bunker do not) this hack is still worth your time. Mold making is one of the uber-useful skills you should have in your hacker toolkit and [ShitnamiTidalWave] has done both an excellent job of building a mold, and of explaining the process.
Raw material for this one couldn’t be easier; each mold is made out of plywood, 2×4 stud, and nails, along with handles made of 3/4″ PVC pipe. The studs were ripped down and used to create the 45 degree chamfers at each edge. Mold-making veterans will tell you that release agent is a must and in this case rubbing the insides of the molds with wax made it a snap to pry the wooden forms off of the set concrete.
Concrete has a tendency to crack as it cures so if you’re casting large pieces like
this touch-sensitive concrete countertop
you might want to throw in some fiber reinforcement to the mix. If you’re keen on seeing some of the more impressive mold-making skills at work, check out
how metal parts are cast from 3D-printed molds
and
how a master duplicates parts using silicone molds
.
[via
r/DIY
] | 39 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232482",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2020-03-29T14:33:03",
"content": "Reminds me of some dumbbells my uncle had back in the 80’s. They were made of a tough plastic exterior with a plug at one end. Being a curious kid, I popped the cap off of one and was surprised to fin... | 1,760,373,539.369794 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/29/how-to-try-generative-optimization-at-home/ | How To Try Generative Optimization At Home | Donald Papp | [
"how-to",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"dfm",
"Fusion 360",
"generative design",
"generative optimization",
"load bearing",
"part design"
] | Chairs, spokes on a wheel, bridges, and all kinds of other load-bearing objects are designed such that material is only present where it is needed. There’s a process by which the decisions about how much material to put and where is determined by computer, and illustrating this is [Adam Bender]’s
short primer on how to use generative optimization
in Autodesk’s Fusion 360 (which offers a variety of free licenses) using a wheel as an example.
Things start with a solid object and a definition of the structural loads expected. The computer then simulates the force (or forces) involved, and that simulation can be used to define a part that only has material where it’s really needed. The results can be oddly organic looking, and this process has been used to
optimize spacebound equipment
where every gram counts.
It’s far from an automated process, but it doesn’t look too difficult to navigate the tools for straightforward designs. [Adam] cautions that one should always be mindful of the method of manufacturing when designing the part’s final form, which is always good advice but especially true when making oddball shapes and curves. To see the short process in action, watch the video embedded below. | 29 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232457",
"author": "Charles",
"timestamp": "2020-03-29T11:16:39",
"content": "I am quite concerned about fatigue resistance and unexpected stresses.In fatigue, small “cracks” develop and advance each cycle. Won’t this designs be less robust as there is less material? It is even wor... | 1,760,373,539.232371 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/29/got-me-feeling-blue/ | Got Me Feeling Blue | Brian McEvoy | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"blue light therapy",
"cyborg",
"led",
"menopause",
"therapy",
"wearable"
] | Sleep schedules are an early casualty in the fight to be productive. Getting good sleep is an uphill battle, so anything that can help us is a welcome ally. We all know about the phone and computer settings that turn down the infamous blue hues at sunset, but what about
when you want
more
blue light
? Maybe you want to convince your body to stay awake to pre-acclimate for a trip across time zones. Perhaps you work or live in a place that doesn’t have windows. Menopause introduces sleep trouble, and that is a perilously steep hill.
[glowascii] takes the approach of keeping-it-simple when they arrange six blue LEDs under a flesh-tone patch, which isn’t fooling anyone and powers the lights with a USB power pack. Fremen jokes aside, light therapy is pricey compared to parts some of you have sitting in a drawer. Heck, we’d wager that a few of you started calculating the necessary resistor sizes before you read this sentence. Even if you don’t need something like this, maybe you can dedicate an afternoon to someone who does.
DIY therapy has a special place in our (currently organic) hearts, such as in this
rehabilition glove
or a
robot arm
.
Bein a alien. V3 of the GlowUp wearable! DIY jet lag / SAD device ⚡️ Making it real for a contest on
@hacksterio
with
@AARPiLabs
, solving the symptoms of menopause (a ton of biotech stuff applies)!
https://t.co/t0GWBzjSTH
pic.twitter.com/SjayFbL9Ra
— alex ☆ glow (@glowascii)
February 22, 2020
Thank you for the tip, [cyberlass]. | 22 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232447",
"author": "Dave Webster",
"timestamp": "2020-03-29T09:13:19",
"content": "Looks very pretty and all but I though we were moving to white or yellow led’s for that mid day feeling..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6232... | 1,760,373,539.574883 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/28/ondophone-on-point/ | Ondophone On Point | Brian McEvoy | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"carpentry",
"instrument",
"music",
"sound",
"wintergatan"
] | The name Ondophone is a mash-up of two instruments, the Marxophone, and the ondes martenot. From the Marxophone, [Wintergatan] borrows the spring-loaded hammers, which repeatedly strike a string once activated. The ondes martenot loans its Theremin-like sound and ability to lean back on western semi-tone notes.
Mating such different instruments
requires a team, and much like the name, it produces a splendid blend.
At the left-hand side of the Ondophone, we see the spring-hammer battering away on a steel string whenever the neck moves up or down. Next to it is an Ebow that vibrates a string with an electromagnet and can maintain a note so long as it has power. Hidden within the neck are magnets to demarcate semi-tone locations, so it’s possible to breeze past them for a slide sound or rest on them to follow a tune.
The combination of intermittent hammering and droning lends well to the “creepy” phase of the song, which leads segues to the scope-creep that almost kept this prototype on the drawing board. The video talks about all the things that
could
have been done with this design, which is a pain/freedom we know well. KISS that Ondophone headline act goodbye.
The ondes martenot is an early electronic instrument, so we’ve some
high-tech iterations
, and if you haven’t heard what’s possible with a
DIY Ebow, we will harp
on you. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232454",
"author": "Mike Vose",
"timestamp": "2020-03-29T10:13:45",
"content": "Outstanding. Music, art and engineering all in one instrument.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6232455",
"author": "Alexander Wikström",
"t... | 1,760,373,539.651048 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/28/a-really-garbage-project/ | A Really Garbage Project | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"alcohol sensor",
"blynk",
"garbage",
"IoT",
"trash"
] | No matter who you are, you produce garbage of some kind or another. Two students decided they wanted to create a smart garbage can that could alert them
when the can is full or even when it is stinky
.
We will go on on the record: we didn’t know that an alcohol sensor could tell if your garbage is stinky, so if that works, that’s a new one on us. However, it makes a certain kind of sense because garbage ferments. We thought garbage smelled because of hydrogen sulfide and methane.
Trash cans have a tough life, so if you really want to duplicate this, you’ll probably want to mount things a bit more securely. The software, however, runs everything through a cloud service and from there can use Blynk for a phone app and IFTTT to ship things to a spreadsheet, should you care to track your garbage history statistics.
You can see in the video this is a small proof of concept can. We almost want to build one just to see if the sensor really knows when the can is smelly.
Granted, the project may not be the most practical, but it is amazing how easy it is now to build devices with a high degree of connectivity thanks to the wealth of inexpensive boards and services available.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen
Blynk
. For that matter, it isn’t even our first
smart trash can
. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232429",
"author": "Osgeld",
"timestamp": "2020-03-29T04:07:19",
"content": "neat and all, but history dictates you know when the garbage is full and stinky … its managing that in coordination with public works that is the hard part for some people (like just about all my neighbors... | 1,760,373,539.614333 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/28/an-open-source-shipboard-computer-system/ | An Open Source Shipboard Computer System | Tom Nardi | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"boat",
"M5Stack",
"navigation",
"nmea",
"onboard",
"openwrt",
"sailing"
] | We’re not sure how many of you out there own a boat large enough to get its own integrated computer network, but it doesn’t really matter. Even if you can’t use this project personally, it’s impossible not to be impressed with
the work [mgrouch] has put into the “Bareboat Necessities” project
. From the construction of the hardware to the phenomenal documentation, there’s plenty that even landlubbers can learn from this project.
In its fully realized form, the onboard computer system includes several components that work together to provide a wealth of valuable information to the operator.
Inside the Boat Computer module
What [mgrouch] calls the “Boat Computer” contains a Raspberry Pi 4, a dAISy AIS receiver, an RTL-SDR, a GPS receiver, serial adapters, and the myriad of wires required to get them all talking to each other inside a weatherproof enclosure. As you might expect, this involves running all the connections through watertight panel mounts.
Combined with a suite of open source software tools, the “Boat Computer” is capable of interfacing with NMEA sensors and hardware, receive weather information directly from NOAA satellites, track ships, and of course plot your current position on a digital chart. The computer itself is designed to stay safely below deck, while the operator interacts with it through an Argonaut M7 waterproofed HDMI touch screen located in the cockpit.
For some people, that might be enough. But for those who want to do big, [mgrouch] further details the “Boat Gateway” device. This unit contains an LTE-equipped WiFi router running OpenWrt and all the external antennas required to turn the boat into a floating hotspot. Of course it also has RJ45 jacks to connect up to the other components of the onboard system, and it even includes an M5Stack Core with LAN module so it can display a select subset of sensor readings and navigational data.
If you’d like to do something similar on a
slightly
smaller scale, we’ve seen sailing computers that
pushed all the data to a wearable display
or
even a repurposed eReader
. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232387",
"author": "eternityforest",
"timestamp": "2020-03-28T23:24:34",
"content": "What kind of boat is too small for computer networks? This is HaD we’re talking about!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6232448",
"au... | 1,760,373,539.713835 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/28/poor-maintenance-could-have-led-to-fatal-b-17-crash/ | Poor Maintenance Could Have Led To Fatal B-17 Crash | Tom Nardi | [
"News"
] | [
"B-17",
"Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress",
"crash",
"faa",
"Nine-O-Nine",
"NTSB",
"wwii"
] | In October the
Nine-O-Nine
, a fully restored Boeing B-17G bomber owned and operated by the Collings Foundation, crashed with thirteen people on board. After landing hard and skidding into the de-icing tanks at the Bradley International Airport, all but the tail and port wing of the 74 year old WWII aircraft was destroyed. Seven lives were lost in the accident, including that of Pilot Ernest “Mac” McCauley, who was regarded as one of the most experienced B-17 pilots in the world.
While the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation is still ongoing and hasn’t made a final determination as to what ultimately brought down the
Nine-O-Nine
, enough serious maintenance issues were uncovered while examining the wreckage that
the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has decided to rescind the Collings Foundation’s license to conduct any more paid flights
on their remaining WWII aircraft. While many have spoken out in support of these “living history” flights, the FAA says they must be conducted in such a way that they don’t hinder the safety of other air traffic.
With the vast majority of the B-17’s airframe gone, the NTSB investigation has focused on the four 1,200 horsepower Wright R-1820 “Cyclone” engines recovered from the crash site. Investigators found that hastily attempted repairs to engine number 4, which is believed to have failed in-flight, were actually hindering normal operation:
Regarding engine 4, to prevent the magneto “P” leads from separating from the
magnetos, someone had attempted to rig the magneto leads in place with safety wire.
Inspection and testing of engine 4 left magneto revealed the movement of the safety-wired lead caused grounding to the case, which rendered the magneto lead inoperative.
Further, all of the spark plugs in the number 3 and 4 engines were found to be fouled and had electrode gaps that were out of tolerance. From an examination of the aircraft’s maintenance records, it was also learned that an arcing and burned wire had been replaced without any investigative steps taken to find what caused the failure to begin with.
With basic maintenance tasks either not being performed or at least done incorrectly, the FAA has called into question the culture of safety at the Collings Foundation. The paper is careful not to directly accuse the Foundation or any of its staff with outright negligence, but the implication seems clear.
The loss of
Nine-O-Nine
hit especially close to home
for Hackaday.
Just a month prior to the crash we had the opportunity to tour the aircraft
, and came away with a newfound respect for not only those who designed and built the iconic bomber but the brave young men who flew it. Losing such a rare and historically significant aircraft and its crew was already a tragedy, but to find that negligence may be to blame is truly inexcusable. | 49 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232356",
"author": "Steven13",
"timestamp": "2020-03-28T20:26:46",
"content": "Interesting how the damage to the aircraft is mentioned before the human cost.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6232361",
"author": "N",
... | 1,760,373,540.266926 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/27/can-solder-paste-stencils-be-3d-printed-they-can/ | Can Solder Paste Stencils Be 3D Printed? They Can! | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"how-to",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"KiCAD",
"openscad",
"solder paste",
"solder stencil"
] | 3D printed solder paste stencil, closeup.
[Jan Mrázek]’s
success with 3D printing a solder paste stencil
is awfully interesting, though he makes it clear that it is only a proof of concept. There are a lot of parts to this hack, so let’s step through them one at a time.
First of all, it turns out that converting a PCB solder paste layer into a 3D model is a bit of a challenge. A tool [Jan] found online didn’t work out, so he turned to
OpenSCAD
and wrote a script (
available on GitHub
) which takes two DXF files as input: one for the board outline, and one for the hole pattern. If you’re using
KiCad
, he has a Python script (
also on GitHub
) which will export the necessary data.
The result is a 3D model that is like a solder paste mask combined with a raised border to match the board outline, so that the whole thing self-aligns by fitting on top of the PCB. A handy feature, for sure. [Jan] says the model pictured here printed in less than 10 minutes. Workflow-wise, that certainly compares favorably to waiting for a stencil to arrive in the mail. But how do the actual solder-pasting results compare?
3D printed solder stencil on PCB, after applying solder paste.
[Jan] says that the printed stencil had a few defects but it otherwise worked fine for 0.5 mm pitch ICs and 0402 resistors, and the fact that the 3D printed stencil self-registered onto the board was a welcome feature. That being said, it took a lot of work to get such results. [Jan]’s SLA printer is an Elegoo Mars, and he wasn’t able to have it create holes for 0.2 mm x 0.5 mm pads without first
modifying his printer for better X/Y accuracy
.
In the end, he admits that while a functional DIY solder stencil can be 3D printed in about 10 minutes, it’s not as though professionally-made stencils that give better results are particularly expensive or hard to get. Still, it’s a neat trick that could come in handy. Also, a quick reminder that we stepped through
how to make a part in OpenSCAD
in the past, which should help folks new to OpenSCAD make sense of [Jan]’s script. | 37 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232062",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2020-03-27T20:28:10",
"content": "This has me wondering if my Eagle -> Fusion 360 would work to capture the layout and board dimensions. Need to check if my older Prusa can print to a fine-enough resolution. The idea of self-registration is e... | 1,760,373,540.44076 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/27/supercon-talk-mike-szczys-runs-down-the-state-of-the-hackaday-2019/ | Supercon Talk: Mike Szczys Runs Down The State Of The Hackaday 2019 | Elliot Williams | [
"cons"
] | [
"2019 Hackaday Superconference",
"state of the hackaday"
] | 2019 was a great year for Hackaday. It marked the fifteenth year of the hacker community’s hive-brain, which is essentially
forever
in Internet Years, and we’re still laser-focused on bringing you the hacks that inspire you to create the hacks that inspire someone else to create the hacks of tomorrow. We’re immensely proud that Hackaday remains a must-read in the worldwide community of folks doing creative things with technology.
At the Superconference, our editor-in-chief Mike Szczys covered
the best new developments here at Hackaday HQ in 2019
: new weekly columns, mobile-friendly formats for both Hackaday’s front page and the mobile app for Hackaday.io,
our podcast
, some great new contests, and a ton of great
in-depth original articles from our crew of writers
. And that’s just what was new last year.
The part of Mike’s talk that I enjoyed the most, though, was his look back fifteen years ago to when Hackaday was just born. In the intervening 5,545 days, we’ve written more than 34,718 articles. (So much for “hack-a-day”, he says, doing the math.) We’re nearing our millionth comment. That’s a lot of Hackaday. So it’s fun to ask what has changed over this time, and track it through the memory of a hardware hacker.
Dig the old image styling! Groovy.
Back in 2008, Hackaday was a spry four-year-old, and we were featuring robot hacks where the brains and Internet connectivity were
provided by WRT-54G routers
, SMS connectivity was provided by
hacking into a Nokia 3100
, and the battery weighed more than the motors yet only lasted fifteen minutes. Today’s hacks toss in an ESP32, any old cheap SMS module, and an off-the-shelf Li-Ion battery pack and will run for days. Don’t even get me started on 3D printers. Or the ease of writing software for any of these machines. We’ve never lived in better times!
But that doesn’t mean that every project has to be a superconducting supercollider either; it’s equally important to showcase our simpler projects too, to give new people a foothold into the hacking scene. And it’s similarly crucial to show people how you failed, tried, and tried again before declaring victory. If all of our finished projects look like they were conjured out of thin air, it hides all of the learning that went into them, and that’s where a lot of the real gold is buried.
While we add features, media come and go, and the cutting edge becomes
less and less distinguishable from magic
, one thing remains constant: showing each other what we’re up to, sharing our best tips and tricks, and pushing forward the hacker state of the art. Long live Hackaday! | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232032",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-03-27T19:00:07",
"content": "“We’ve never lived in better times!”Biological hacks. ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6232035",
"author": "alfcoder",
"timestamp": "2020... | 1,760,373,540.699264 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/27/phantom-express-the-spaceplane-that-never-was/ | Phantom Express: The Spaceplane That Never Was | Tom Nardi | [
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"boeing",
"darpa",
"Falcon 9",
"glider",
"nasa",
"reusable",
"Space Shuttle",
"spaceplane",
"SpaceX"
] | Even for those of us who follow space news closely, there’s a lot to keep track of these days. Private companies are competing to develop new human-rated spacecraft and assembling satellite mega-constellations, while NASA is working towards a return the Moon and the first flight of the SLS. Between new announcements, updates to existing missions, and literal rocket launches, things are happening on a nearly daily basis. It’s fair to say we haven’t seen this level of activity since the Space Race of the 1960s.
With so much going on, it’s no surprise that not many people have heard of the XS-1 Phantom Express. A project by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the XS-1 was designed to be a reusable launch system that could put small payloads into orbit on short notice. Once its mission was complete, the vehicle was to return to the launch site and be ready for re-flight in as a little as 24 hours.
Alternately referred to as the “DARPA Experimental Spaceplane”, the vehicle was envisioned as being roughly the size of a business jet and capable of carrying a payload of up to 2,300 kilograms (5,000 pounds). It would take off vertically under rocket power and then glide back to Earth at the end of the mission to make a conventional runway landing. At $5 million per flight, its operating costs would be comparable with even the most aggressively priced commercial launch providers; but with the added bonus of not having to involve a third party in military and reconnaissance missions which would almost certainly be classified in nature.
Or at least, that was the idea. Flight tests were originally scheduled to begin this year, but earlier this year prime contractor Boeing abruptly dropped out of the program. Despite six years in development and over $140 million in funding awarded by DARPA, it’s now all but certain that the XS-1 Phantom Express will never get off the ground. Which is a shame, as even in a market full of innovative launch vehicles, this unique spacecraft offered some compelling advantages.
A Scaled Down Shuttle
Launching like a rocket and landing like an airplane, one might assume the XS-1 Phantom Express to be something of a miniature Space Shuttle. Indeed there are similarities between the two craft, and there’s no question that lessons learned from the development, manufacture, and operation of the Shuttle fleet were taken into account. Realistically, if anyone is designing a spaceplane and doesn’t at least refer to the mountain of data NASA has accumulated on the subject, they’d be doing themselves an incredible disservice.
But there are some fundamental differences between the two vehicles that make it difficult to compare them directly. For one, even conservative math would put the payload capacity of the Shuttle at least 12 times that of the XS-1. This naturally meant less thrust would be required to get the vehicle off the launch pad, so the XS-1 didn’t need an external propellant tank or strap-on boosters. The vehicle’s single Aerojet Rocketdyne AR-22 engine and all of the propellant required for the mission would be contained within the craft’s roughly cylindrical fuselage.
That meant the XS-1 would land in the same condition it was in when it took off; an extremely important detail with regards to rapid reusability. On each Shuttle mission the external propellant tank would burn up in the upper atmosphere and the solid rocket boosters, while technically reusable, would need to be fished out of the ocean by a separate recovery team and go through a lengthy refurbishment process.
In comparison, the XS-1 would have only required a thorough inspection and refueling between missions.
This level of aircraft-like reusability is the ultimate goal of several “New Space” companies
such as SpaceX and Rocket Lab, as it promises to completely revolutionize how we utilize Earth orbit.
Even still, space is hard. While one could logically conclude that the cost and complexity of a space launch system has a fairly linear relationship with its payload capacity, even the smallest orbital rockets are technical marvels that navigate a razor-thin line between generating useful thrust and self-annihilation. Maintaining that delicate balance all the way to orbit is exceptionally difficult no matter how large or small the craft is. Which is exactly why the XS-1 was never designed to go that far.
Falling, With Style
While the XS-1 might have the outward appearance of the Space Shuttle Orbiter, in operation it would have been much closer to the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket. It would accelerate the payload up to hypersonic speeds,
ideally as high as Mach 10 according to a DARPA program overview
, and carry it up to the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. But it wouldn’t have had the energy to actually take the payload all the way to its final altitude, let alone enter orbit itself.
Once the XS-1 reached apogee, it would release a dorsal-mounted payload module. This module, itself essentially a small rocket, would continue the mission independently. Already traveling at high velocity through the thin upper atmosphere, it would be able to push the payload the rest of the way “up the hill” and into orbit with a comparatively low-thrust engine.
Like the Falcon 9, the XS-1 would have been able to either return to the launch site or land downrange.
With its primary mission now complete, the XS-1 would begin falling back down to Earth on a sub-orbital trajectory. Reentering the atmosphere at relatively low velocity, only minimal shielding would have been necessary to survive aerodynamic heating. After being slowed to sub-sonic speeds by air resistance, the craft’s delta wing and over-sized control surfaces would give it the cross-range capability to glide back to the launch site.
Winged Victory
Even
before they managed to send one of them into space
, engineers were already trying to design a hybrid vehicle that would combine the power of a rocket with the more docile flight characteristics of an airplane. The Space Shuttle proved that the idea could work in the real-world, but so many concessions had to be made that it’s difficult to really call it a success.
While a technical triumph in its own right
, the winged Orbiter never delivered on its promise of cheap and rapid access to space. In fact, one could argue it did the exact opposite.
Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser
Today, SpaceX has shown that
you don’t need wings to make a reusable rocket
. While they’re still a long way off from daily flights, they’ve achieved a reflight cadence equal to that of the Space Shuttle program at a fraction of the cost. Even so, winged spacecraft have an undeniable appeal to engineers and futurists alike.
Companies like Virgin Galactic and Sierra Nevada are pushing ahead with their own versions of the concept, though of course its still far too early to say if they’ll be any more successful than the Shuttle was. In any event, while the XS-1 Phantom Express will likely go down as yet another in a long line of “paper rockets” that never left the drawing board, it’s safe to say that the dream of a practical spaceplane is alive and well. | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232014",
"author": "Bruce Perens",
"timestamp": "2020-03-27T18:22:14",
"content": "We need some discussion of X-37B, obviously, since it seems to be the upper component of Phantom Express. And the Falcon 9 and X-37B combination fulfill the mission.",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,373,540.49643 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/27/hackaday-podcast-060-counting-bees-dogbox-transmissions-and-the-lowdown-on-vents-bipap-and-pcr/ | Hackaday Podcast 060: Counting Bees, DogBox Transmissions, And The Lowdown On Vents, BiPAP, And PCR | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"coronavirus",
"folding@home",
"Hackaday Podcast",
"PCR",
"polymerase chain reaction",
"ventilator"
] | Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys recount the past week in hardware hacking. There’s a new king of supercomputing and it’s everyone! Have you ever tried to count bees? Precision is just a cleverly threaded bolt away. And we dig into some of the technical details of the coronavirus response with a close look at PCR testing for the virus, and why ventilators are so difficult to build.
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 060 Show Notes:
New This Week:
Folding@Home
Now the world’s most powerful supercomputer
Compare to the:
IBM Power System AC922, IBM POWER9 22C 3.07GHz, NVIDIA Volta GV100, Dual-rail Mellanox EDR Infiniband
Here’s the numbers of the folding array:
Folding@home stats report
Join Team Hackaday on Folding@Home
Team Hackaday enters top 20 wordwide!
Team Hackaday summary page
There’s some interesting new hardware out in the wild:
ESP32-S2 Samples Show Up
New Part Day: Battery-Less NFC E-Paper Display
E-Ink Price Tags Fall Off Store Shelves Onto Your Workbench
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Bee Counter Will Have You Up To Your Nectar In Hive Data
Counting Bees
Hacking A Bee Hive
Counting Bees With A Raspberry Pi
Screwy Math For Super Fine Adjustments: Differential Screws
Compliant Quadruped Legs Using Servos
Mini Robot Dog #3 – Rudimentary Stability – YouTube
Gyroscopic Wi-Fi LED Die Is Pretty Fly
Maker moekoe’s kind of soldering iron
Take Your PCBs From Good To Great: Toner Transfer
Anyone know what this antenna is all about?
Breaking Into A Secure Facility: STM32 Flash
3D Printed Dogbox Transmission Kicks Your Desk Into High Gear
AC/DC – T.N.T. (Live at Donington, 8/17/91) – YouTube
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
A Boring Tale With Six Sides
Inverse Kinematics Robot Arm Magna-Doodles The Time For You
The Drone That Can Play Dodgeball
Mike’s Picks:
Ken Shirriff Unfolds A Nuclear Missile Guidance Computer With Impressive Memory
A NES Motherboard For The Open Source Generation
This V8 Makes A Shocking Amount Of Power
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Coronavirus Testing: Just The Facts
Open qPCR Machine: Your Personal Real-Time PCR Machine
Information for Laboratories: 2019-nCoV
Ventilators 101: What They Do And How They Work | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,373,540.117837 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/27/self-playing-whistle-while-you-work-from-home/ | Self-Playing Whistle While You Work From Home | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Arduino Uno",
"blower fan",
"lockdown life",
"servo",
"slide whistle",
"stepper motor"
] | In ridiculous times, it can help to play ridiculous instruments such as the slide whistle to keep your bristles in check. But since spittle is more than a little bit dangerous these days,
it pays to come up with alternative ways to play away the days during lockdown life
.
Thanks to some clever Arduino-driven automation, [Gurpreet] can maintain a safe distance from his slide whistle while interacting with it. Slide whistles need two things — air coming in from the top, and actuation at the business end. The blowing force now comes from a focused fan like the ones that cool your printed plastic as soon as the hot end extrudes it. A stepper motor moves the slide up and down using a printed rack and pinion.
Here’s a smooth touch — [Gurpreet] added a micro servo to block and unblock the sound hole with a cardboard flap to make the notes more distinct. Check out the build video after the break, which includes
a music video
for “My Heart Will Go On”, aka the theme from
Titanic
. It’s almost like the ship herself is playing it on the steam whistles from the great beyond.
Speaking of, did you hear about
the effort to raise and restore the remains of her radio room? | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231974",
"author": "Prodigity",
"timestamp": "2020-03-27T15:30:39",
"content": "It brings tears to my eyes",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6231978",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-03-27T15:52:10",
"con... | 1,760,373,540.169006 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/27/this-week-in-security-0-days-pwn2own-ios-and-tesla/ | This Week In Security: 0-Days, Pwn2Own, IOS And Tesla | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"0-day",
"sandcastle",
"tesla",
"This Week in Security"
] | LILIN DVRs and cameras are being
actively exploited by a surprisingly sophisticated botnet campaign
. There are three separate 0-day vulnerabilities being exploited in an ongoing campaigns. If you have a device built by LILIN, go check for firmware updates, and if your device is exposed to the internet, entertain the possibility that it was compromised.
The vulnerabilities include a hardcoded username/password, command injection in the FTP and NTP server fields, and an arbitrary file read vulnerability. Just the first vulnerability is enough to convince me to avoid black-box DVRs, and
keep my IP cameras segregated from the wider internet
.
Windows Under Attack
Code in a font-rendering library, shared between multiple Windows versions,
was discovered to be vulnerable
to a malicious Adobe Postscript font. A document can be constructed that uses this vulnerability to run arbitrary code when opened, or even shown on the preview pane,
which sounds a bit familiar
.
Microsoft acknowledges the bug, as well as the fact that it’s being exploited in the wild in “limited, targeted attacks that attempt to leverage this vulnerability.”
As has been pointed out
, that sort of language is generally means that an exploit is being used in a government sponsored campaign. Microsoft plans to wait for April’s patch Tuesday to fix this bug, mainly because it’s the now-unsupported Windows 7 where this is a more serious problem.
One further note, the Windows 7 patch for this one will be limited to extended support customers only. There are a few listed mitigations, including de-registering the vulnerable DLL. Another suggested course of action, disabling the preview pane, is probably a good preventative measure for vulnerabilities to come, too.
Pwn2Own 2020
Another event forced online by Coronavirus,
Pwn2Own 2020 wrapped up last week
. While it’s disheartening to see conferences canceled, online events end up being more accessible to the rest of us.
Multiple impressive attacks were shown off, like the two-stage compromise in Adobe Reader and Windows, where opening a PDF led directly to SYSTEM level compromise. Another impressive demonstration was the virtual machine escape, where an attacker could compromise a Virtualbox VM from the inside, and gain access to the bare metal OS. Taking the “Master of Pwn” title were Richard Zhu and Amat Cama of Fluoroacetate.
Android on an iPhone
Remember
Linux on the iPhone
, from 2010? They’re back in the form of
project Sandcastle
. Android running on an iPhone 7 is quite a trick, and the devs credit access to high quality hardware simulation as the primary enabler for this awesome hack.
Hand-in-hand with Project Sandcastle is the news that
Checkrain
now has expirimental support for iOS 13.4.
checkra1n 0.9.9 experimental prerelease – experimental 13.4 support, please test on other firmwares also. to run on 13.4, tick the 'allow untested iOS versions' checkbox in the options view –
https://t.co/dmdZNMHbJh
— qwertyoruiop (@qwertyoruiopz)
March 18, 2020
If you need to brush up on iOS security, we covered
the underlying checkm8 bug
when it was announced last year. It’s a bug in the burnt-in bootloader on Apple devices, allowing jailbreaking with nothing more than a USB tether.
Tesla and Chromium
Chrome/Chromium is everywhere, and even toppled the once mighty IE. In the wide landscape of browsers, there is essentially Chromium derived browsers, and Firefox. Safari exists, yes, but even that shares a common heritage with Chromium. What’s the downside to everyone using the same shared codebase? Now the bugs are write once, run everywhere too!
A Chromium bug first reported way back in 2016
was still lurking in the Tesla Model 3 firmware
. It’s a simple attack — a series of calls to
history.pushState()
locks and eventually crashes the browser. In the Tesla, however, the crashing browser brought down a host of other functions, including the speedometer and turn signals. It’s fixed in the latest firmware release, but perhaps this should be a cautionary tale about putting all our eggs in one codebase basket.
Cloud Enabled Routers
I distinctly remember advising several of my customers to throw their routers in the trash, after an automatic update brought always-on cloud connectivity. It might be “useful” to be able to update settings by logging into your Linksys account from anywhere, but it also means that
your router is one password away from compromise
. The payload is simple, just change the DNS settings on the router to servers controlled by the attacker. If your network is suddenly acting strange, checking your router’s DNS settings is another step to add to the troubleshooting list. If you are able to restrict admin actions to a wired ethernet port, or even the local WiFi, you should do so.
Netflix and Bugcrowd Update
I would be remiss to not update you on
the Bugcrowd story from last week
. Undoubtedly as a result of the publicity garnered, Netflix has intervened and declared the bug to be valid after all. The researcher has been paid a bounty, and Netflix has already deployed a fix for the issue he found.
So far there’s no word on whether Bugcrowd is revisiting their policy of enforcing non-disclosure for out-of-scope bugs. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231998",
"author": "Alexander Wikström",
"timestamp": "2020-03-27T17:31:14",
"content": "“perhaps this should be a cautionary tale about putting all our eggs in one codebase basket.”Well, sometimes making one’s own solution to a problem has its advantages.Though, also tends to have... | 1,760,373,540.657686 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/27/faking-your-way-to-usb-c-support-on-laptops-without-it/ | Faking Your Way To USB-C Support On Laptops Without It | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"adapter",
"dongle",
"macbook",
"USB C"
] | Is there no end to the dongle problem? We thought the issue was with all of those non-USB-C devices that want to play nicely with the new Macbooks that only have USB-C ports. But what about all those USB-C devices that want to work with legacy equipment?
Now some would say just grab yourself a USB-C to USB-A cable and be done with it. But that defeats the purpose of USB-C which is
One-Cable-To-Rule-Them-All
[
1
]
. [Marcel Varallo] decided to keep his 2011 Macbook free of dongles and adapter cables by
soldering a USB-C port onto a USB 2.0 footprint on the motherboard
.
How is that even possible? The trick is to start with a USB-C to USB 3 adapter. This vintage of Macbook doesn’t have USB 3, but the spec for that protocol maintains backwards compatibility with USB 2. [Marcel] walks through the process of freeing the adapter from its case, slicing off the all-important C portion of it, and locating the proper signals to route to the existing USB port on his motherboard.
[1] Oh my what a statement! As we’ve seen with the Raspberry Pi USB-C debacle,
there are actually several different types of USB-C cables
which all look pretty much the same on the outside, apart from the cryptic icons molded into the cases of the connectors. But on the bright side, you can plug either end in either orientation so it has that going for it. | 42 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231906",
"author": "ziew",
"timestamp": "2020-03-27T11:38:28",
"content": "Can’t see the end result, so I’m sorta disappointed. But since he hacked the adapter, it’s hack, nonetheless ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "62319... | 1,760,373,540.617543 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/28/a-1950s-ampex-tape-recorder-microphone-preamplifier-restoration/ | A 1950s Ampex Tape Recorder Microphone Preamplifier Restoration | Jenny List | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"ampex",
"audio",
"preamp",
"Tube Preamp"
] | So often when we read of a modification on a classic piece of tube electronics we prepare to wince, as such work often results in senseless butchery of a well-preserved survivor. With [Frank Olson]’s work
on a 1958 Ampex 601 tape recorder
though we were pleasantly surprised, because while he makes a modification to allow its use as a stand-alone microphone preamplifier he also performs an extremely sympathetic upgrade to modern components and retains it in substantially the form it left the Ampex factory.
The video below the break is a satisfying wallow in pre-PCB-era construction for any of the generation who cut their teeth on tube, chassis, and tag strip electronics. We can almost smell the phenolic as he carefully removes time-expired capacitors and fits modern replacements complete with period features such as sheathing over their leads. The larger multiway can electrolytics are left in the chassis, with their modern miniaturised equivalents nestling underneath them out of sight. We all know that electronic components have become a lot smaller over the decades, but it’s still a bit of a shock to see just how tiny even a high voltage electrolytic has become.
The Ampex would have been a very high quality tape recorder when new, and while this one has a problem with its mechanism it’s that quality that makes it easier for him to do this work in 2020. There’s every chance that this one could be returned to service as a tape recorder if someone was of a mind to fix it, and meanwhile it will give Frank excellent service as a high quality pre-amp. This is how resto-mods should be done!
Ampex are very much still in existence making digital storage products, but back in the 1950s they were at the forefront of analogue magnetic tape technology. We’ve written in the past about how Bing Crosby
had a hand in the development of high quality tape recorders
, and also about
Ampex’s part in the gestation of the video recorder
. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232302",
"author": "Boris",
"timestamp": "2020-03-28T17:36:07",
"content": "I’m surprised by the modern microphone jack/connector.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6232333",
"author": "cliff claven",
"timestamp... | 1,760,373,540.544876 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/28/reading-the-tea-leaves/ | COVID-19 Statistics: Reading The Tea Leaves | Elliot Williams | [
"News"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"logarithmic",
"newsletter",
"statistics"
] | If you’ve been tracking the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world, as we have, you’ve doubtless seen a lot of statistics. The raw numbers look shocking, and in many cases they are, but as always it’s crucially important to ask yourself what the numbers mean.
For instance, our own Tom Nardi put together a counter that
displays the total number of COVID-19 cases in the US
. It’s a cool project that puts together some web-scraping, a nice OLED screen, and a 3D-printed network display. When this is all over, it can be easily re-trained to show some other statistic of interest, and it’s a great introduction to a number of web APIs. However, it’s looking at the wrong number.
Let me explain. Diseases spread exponentially: the more people who have it, the more people are spreading it. And exponential curves all look the same when you plot out their instantaneous values — the raw number of COVID-19 cases. Instead, what distinguishes one exponential from another is the growth parameter, and this is related to the number of new cases per day, or more correctly, to the day-to-day change in new cases.
If left unchecked, and especially in the early stages of spread, the number of new cases grows every day. But as control efforts, mainly
social distancing
, take effect, the rate at which the number of new cases can slow, or even go negative. That’s the plan, anyway.
As is very well explained by
this video from 3 Blue, 1 Brown
, if this were a naturally spreading epidemic, the point at which the new cases just starts to decline marks the halfway point in the course of the disease. Here, we’re hoping that particularly strict quarantining procedures will cut this run even shorter, but if you’re interested in how the disease is spreading, the point when daily new infections turns around is what you’re looking for.
Why not put the daily difference in new cases on your desktop, then? These numbers are noisy, and the difference jumps all around. To be serious, you would probably want to put a
moving average
on the new cases figure, and look at that difference. Or simply show the new cases instead and look for it to drop for a few days in a row.
Still, this won’t be a perfect measure. For starters, COVID-19 seems to incubate for roughly a week without symptoms. This means that whatever numbers we have, they’re probably a week behind the actual situation. We won’t see the effects of social distancing for at least a week, and maybe more.
Further complicating things is the availability of tests, human factors like weekends when more people get tested but fewer government reporting offices are open, timezones, etc. (What happened on Feb. 13?)
I’m not going to go so far as to say that the COVID-19 stats that we see are useless — actually far from it. But if you’re going to armchair quarterback this pandemic, do it right. Plot out the daily new cases, maybe apply a little smoothing, at least in your head, and realize that whatever you’re seeing now probably represents what happened last week.
When you finally see the turning point, you may celebrate a little, because that means the halfway point was a week ago. We’ve seen it happen in China around Feb 2, and I’m looking forward to it happening here. I hope it happens wherever you are, and soon.
We will get through this. Stay safe, all. And keep yourself uninfected to keep others uninfected.
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 212 weeks or so. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning?
You should sign up
! | 63 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232234",
"author": "Andy Piugh",
"timestamp": "2020-03-28T14:10:23",
"content": "Can I also recommend the graphing method used here?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XLXg4fYsc",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6232278",
... | 1,760,373,540.803336 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/28/bcd-to-i2c-turning-a-counter-into-whatever-you-want-it-to-be/ | BCD To I2C: Turning A Nixie Counter Into Whatever You Want It To Be | Sven Gregori | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"bcd",
"counter",
"nixie",
"nixie clock",
"nixie tube",
"PCB design"
] | Whenever a project calls for displaying numbers, a 7-segment display is the classic and straightforward choice. However, if you’re more into a rustic, retro, almost mystical, and steampunky look and feel, it’s hard to beat the warm, orange glow of a Nixie tube. Once doomed as obsolete technology of yesteryear, they have since reclaimed their significance in the hobbyist space, and have become such a frequent and deliberate design choice, that it’s easy to forget that older devices actually used them out of necessity for lack of alternatives. Exhibit A: the impulse counter [soldeerridder] found in the attic
that he turned into a general-purpose, I2C controlled display
.
Instead of just salvaging the Nixie tubes, [soldeerridder] kept and re-used the original device, with the goal to embed an Intel Edison module and connect it via I2C. Naturally, as the counter is a standalone device containing mainly just a handful of SN74141 drivers and SN7490 BCD counters, there was no I2C connectivity available out of the box. At the same time, the Edison would anyway replace the 7490s functionality, so the solution is simple yet genius: remove the BCD counter ICs and design a custom PCB containing a PCF8574 GPIO expander as drop-in replacement for them, hence allowing to send arbitrary values to the driver ICs via I2C, while keeping everything else in its original shape.
Containing six Nixie tubes, the obvious choice is of course to
use it as a clock
, but [soldeerridder] wanted more than that. Okay, it
does
display the time, along with the date, but also some sensor values and even the likes on
his project blog
. If you want to experiment with Nixie tubes yourself, but lack a matching device,
Arduino has you obviously covered
. Although, you might as well
go the other direction
then. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232347",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2020-03-28T19:53:12",
"content": "cool hack. reminds me of the Schneider Venus and Mars multimere combi. one is a 4+ nixie voltmeter and the other the converter for resistors and currents. On the back is a big centronics connector with ... | 1,760,373,540.83907 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/28/a-soldering-lightsaber-for-the-speedy-worker/ | A Soldering LightSaber For The Speedy Worker | Jenny List | [
"Machine Learning",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"machine learning",
"soldering iron",
"temperature-control"
] | We all have our preferences when it comes to soldering irons, and for [
Marius Taciuc
] the strongest of them all is for a quick heat-up. It has to be at full temperature in the time it takes him to get to work, or it simply won’t cut the mustard.
His solution is a temperature controlled iron, but one with no ordinary temperature control
. Instead of a normal feedback loop it uses a machine learning algorithm to find the quickest warm-up.
The elements he’s using have a thermocouple in series with the element itself, meaning that to measure the temperature the power must be cut to the element. This duty cycle can not be cut too short or the measurements become noisy, so under a traditional temperature control regimen there is a limit on how quickly it can be heated up. His approach is to turn it on full-time for a period without stopping to measure the temperature, only measuring after it has had a chance to heat up. The algorithm constantly learns how long to switch it on to achieve what temperature, and is able to interpolate to arrive at the desired reading. It’s a clever way to make existing hardware perform new tricks, and we like that.
He’s appeared on these pages quite a few times over the years, but perhaps you’d like to see
the first version of the same hardware
. Meanwhile watch the quick heat up in action with a fuller explanation in the video below. | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232209",
"author": "electrobob",
"timestamp": "2020-03-28T12:07:06",
"content": "Pretty good toy example for machine learning.My soldering station needs ~10 seconds to heat up, and as far as I can see it does the same thing – full on blast for a while and then goes into the loop. I... | 1,760,373,540.890339 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/27/trimmed-pcb-makes-the-ultimate-portable-n64/ | Trimmed PCB Makes The Ultimate Portable N64 | Tom Nardi | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"handheld game",
"n64",
"nintendo",
"portable game system",
"trimmed"
] | One of the most impressive innovations we’ve seen in the world of custom handhelds is the use of “trimmed” PCBs. These are motherboards of popular video game consoles such as the Nintendo Wii and Sega Dreamcast that have literally been cut down to a smaller size. As you can imagine, finding the precise shape that can be cut out before the system stops functioning requires extensive research and testing. But if you can pull it off, some truly incredible builds are possible.
Take for example
this absolutely incredible clamshell N64 built by [GMan]
. After cutting the motherboard down to palm-sized dimensions, he’s been able to create a handheld system that’s only a bit larger than the console’s original cartridges.
Incidentally those original cartridges are still supported, and fit into a slot in the rear of the system Game Boy style. It’s still a bit too chunky for tossing in your pocket, but we doubt you could build a portable N64 any smaller without resorting to emulation.
In the video after the break, [Gman] explains that the real breakthrough for trimmed N64s came when it was found that the system’s Peripheral Interface (PIF) chip could be successfully relocated. As this chip was on the outer edge of the PCB, being able to move it meant the board could get cut down smaller than ever before.
But there’s more than just a hacked N64 motherboard living inside the 3D printed enclosure. [Gman] also designed a custom PCB that’s handling USB-C power delivery, charging the handheld’s 4250 mAh battery,
and providing digital audio over I2S
. It’s a fantastically professional setup, and you’d be forgiven for thinking the board was part of the original console.
Considering how well designed and built this N64 SP is, it probably will come as no surprise to find this isn’t the first time [Gman] has put something like this together. He used many of the same tricks to
build his equally impressive portable Dreamcast last year
. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6233262",
"author": "[TheDarkTiger]",
"timestamp": "2020-03-31T18:40:01",
"content": "I always have a hate/love relation with these kind of hack.One one side, it butchers and destroys old consoles.On the other, it create magnificent functional work of art.This one is really well don... | 1,760,373,541.019806 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/27/nasa-spinoff-prints-electronics/ | NASA Spinoff Prints Electronics | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"News"
] | [
"eforge",
"electronic alchemy",
"nasa"
] | NASA says
that Electronic Alchemy’s
eForge 3D printer
is another space program spinoff. The printer looks a lot like a conventional 3D printer but unlike its mundane cousin it can print sensors, lights, and other electronic components. It does that by using one of six or eight different materials.
Six of the eight spools each have some sort of electronic property. According to the company they have conductive filament, resistive filament, insulating filament, capacitive filament, and both N- and P-type semiconductors.
This strikes us a bit odd though, since we wouldn’t normally think of a filament as having capacitance alone. Perhaps it has a high dielectric constant that becomes the sandwich filling between conductive parts. The same goes for semiconductors, we’d expect an amorphous solar cell might be printable, but we’d expect active devices to usually require a crystalline structure.
According to the NASA post, they have or will have filaments that light up, magnetic materials, and piezoelectric substances. It all sounds great and the videos look interesting, but we will be very intrigued to see how it plays out in practice.
If you think you want one, be prepared. The price looks as though it will start around $10,000 so this won’t be an item in every garage. The filaments are 4mm which is disappointing since they could really be a game-changer if they work as advertised. Even if you had to
swap filaments
a few times for each layer, if the materials would work in an ordinary printer, there would be a much larger market. We assume the substrate material to be just ordinary PLA or some other thermoplastic. We’d love to see this married with
a real PCB mill
. | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232122",
"author": "Hughe",
"timestamp": "2020-03-28T02:05:27",
"content": "Solid proof that resistance isn’t futile?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6232158",
"author": "Rob",
"timestamp": "2020-03-28T04:51:0... | 1,760,373,541.142153 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/27/microbatteries-on-the-grid/ | Microbatteries On The Grid | Bryan Cockfield | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"grid",
"microinverter",
"modular",
"raspberry pi",
"solar",
"storage"
] | Not everybody has $6500 to toss into a Tesla Powerwall (and that’s a low estimate), but if you want the benefits of battery storage for your house, [Matt]’s modular “microbattery” storage system might be right up your alley. With a build-as-you-go model,
virtually any battery can be placed on the grid
in order to start storing power from a small solar installation or other power source.
The system works how any other battery installation would work. When demand is high, a series of microinverters turn on and deliver power to the grid. When demand is low, the batteries get charged. The major difference between this setup and a consumer-grade system is that this system is highly modular and each module is networked together to improve the efficiency of the overall system. Its all tied together with a Raspberry Pi that manages the entire setup.
While
all of the software is available to set this up
, it should go without saying that working with mains power is dangerous, besides the fact that you’ll need inverters capable of matching phase angle with the grid, a meter that handles reverse power flow, a power company that is willing to take the power, and a number of building code statutes to appease. If you don’t have all that together,
you might want to go off-grid instead
. | 35 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6232102",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2020-03-27T23:28:40",
"content": "You know, rather than dealing with the inefficiencies of charging and discharging, and the $0.50/kWh cost of the batteries, and the fire risk and capital and maintenance cost of a pile of power stuff, I’d be... | 1,760,373,541.08378 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/27/measuring-uv-c-for-about-5/ | Measuring UV-C For About $5 | Richard Baguley | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"UV-C",
"Zap"
] | Looking to sterilize something? Give it a good blast of the old UV-C. Ultraviolet radiation in the shortest wavelength band breaks down DNA and RNA, so it’s a great way to kill off any nasties that are lurking. But how much UV-C are you using? [Akiba] at Hackerfarm has come up with
the NukeMeter
, a meter that measures the output of their UV-C sterilizer the
NukeBox
. It is built around a $2.50 sensor and a $3 Arduino.
The NukeMeter is built around a GUVA-S12SD UV sensor breakout board.
This sensor
is really designed for UV-A detection, but a quick look at the spec sheet revealed that it is sensitive to UV across all of the bands. So, it can be used as a UV-C sensor if you know how sensitive it is to this particular frequency band.
However, the sensor is not that sensitive to UV-C light, so [Akiba] had to do a bit of minor surgery on the circuitry that surrounds the sensor to tweak the output. The sensor was designed to measure relatively low levels of UV light (such as sunlight), and now they are blasting it with a shedload of radiation, so they have to effectively disable one of the op-amps that normally scales the output up, which involves replacing a couple of resistors. That’s a bit of a pain to do with surface mount components, but it is doable with a steady hand and a small tip soldering iron.
Next, an Arduino takes the voltage output of the sensor and converts it into a light level. The mathematics of how this works are all well detailed in the post, but it isn’t complicated, and the source code is
here
.
Using this, [Akiba] was able to measure how the lights performed, how quickly they warmed up and how much the light level varies along the length of the fluorescent tube.
One caveat to bear in mind here: [Akiba] designed this to measure the output of the low-pressure mercury vapor lamps they are using at Hackerfarm, which output a very narrow frequency band, peaking at 250 nM. This design would not work for a more broadband output or for one which mixed UV-C with UV-A and UV-B. For that, you would need a more sophisticated design that would probably cost more than $5.
SAFETY NOTE: Don’t mess with UV-C light sources unless you have a good idea of what you are doing and are sure that the light is contained, e.g. in a sealed box, maybe with interlocks. Remember that you also rely on DNA, and inadvertently zapping your own DNA can cause all sorts of unpleasantness. | 90 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231870",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2020-03-27T08:17:53",
"content": "I was wondering about creating own sterilisation box, i have a toddler so it would be neat to sanitise toys and anything that mnight end up in her mouth curently we use biling water and alcohol based saniti... | 1,760,373,541.740138 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/26/launch-console-delivers-enjoyment-to-software-deployment/ | Launch Console Delivers Enjoyment To Software Deployment | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"16 segment display",
"2FA",
"code launcher",
"guarded toggle switch",
"raspberry pi",
"Yubikey"
] | Sometimes it feels as though all the good physical interactions with machines have disappeared. Given our current germ warfare situation, that is probably a good thing. But if fewer than ten people ever will be touching something, it’s probably okay to have a little fun and make your own interfaces for things.
Fun definitely seems to be some of the inspiration behind [sethvoltz]’s retro-style launch console
. This two-factor authorization token-based system is responsible for an important task that usually receives no fanfare — deploying code to production.
The console is centered around a Yubikey, which is type of hardware dongle for 2FA. Flipping the guarded toggle switch will initiate the launch sequence, and then it’s time to insert the Yubikey into the 3D-printed lock cylinder and wait for authorization. If the Raspberry Pi decides all systems are go, then the key can be turned ninety degrees and the mushroom button mashed. You have our permission to peek at the declassified demo after the break. Stick around for a CAD view inside the lock cylinder.
Console culture was great, but the old full-size cabinets sure took up a lot of space. If you’re more of a hardware person,
check out this mini-console for testing multiple servos
.
Via
Adafruit | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231874",
"author": "abjq",
"timestamp": "2020-03-27T08:33:43",
"content": "This will be excellent for those “first power on” moments when all those electrolytics and tantalums you put on the wrong way around go bang!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{... | 1,760,373,541.831542 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/26/whats-in-a-name-for-a-tool-battery-pack/ | What’s In A Name For A Tool Battery Pack? | Al Williams | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"18650",
"battery pack",
"makita",
"rayovac"
] | Power tools have come a long way. It used to be you needed extension cords or a generator for your tools, but now you can get just about anything with a nice rechargeable battery pack. As it turns out, most of those packs are made by the same company, and [syonyk] wanted to see how similar two different Makita packs and a Rayovac pack were.
What he found was surprising
. The outsides were very similar, but what was on the inside?
The Rayovac pack was easy to open and had a controller, a thermal cutoff device, and two layers of 18650 batteries. The similar Makita pack looked identical from the outside until he tried to take it apart. The maker had plugged one screw hole and used security screws instead of the Phillips heads like on the Rayovac.
Once open, the insides looked totally different. The battery management board was larger, potted, and connected to the battery using nickel strips instead of soldered wires.
A smaller Makita pack should be about the same with a single layer of batteries. Makes sense, right? It does make sense, but it isn’t true. There was a much cheaper board inside and the cells used didn’t even match the published spec which is decidedly naughty.
Despite the markings, not all of the packs met their rated specs. The Rayovac pack for example may have had a slightly higher output voltage. The small Makita didn’t meet its Wh rating. Even two packs from the same company didn’t have anything near the same innards, and while the larger pack was well constructed, the smaller pack looked a little slipshod for many reasons covered in the post.
Maybe these toolmakers
should hire
[Timothy Economu]. If you want to see the guts of a much bigger battery, take a look at this
Tesla Model 3
pack teardown. | 17 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231835",
"author": "Thinkerer",
"timestamp": "2020-03-27T03:26:14",
"content": "When this is confounded with counterfeits, the big losers are the manufacturers themselves. One hopes they’ll get after it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comm... | 1,760,373,541.407924 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/26/introducing-the-hackaday-calendar-of-virtual-events/ | Introducing The Hackaday Calendar Of Virtual Events | Tom Nardi | [
"cons"
] | [
"calendar",
"Covid-19",
"events",
"show and tell"
] | For many of us, the social distancing procedures being used to help control the spread of COVID-19 have been a challenge. We can’t go to our hackerspaces, major events have been postponed or canceled entirely, and even getting parts has become difficult due to the immense pressure currently being placed on retailers and delivery services. For even the most stoic hacker, these are difficult times.
But you don’t have to go through it alone. We might not be able to meet in person, but that doesn’t mean the exchange of thoughts and ideas has to stop.
Hackaday has started up a calendar of events
you can use to keep track of virtual classes and hangouts that you can take part in from the comfort of your own home. You don’t even need to wear pants (but you should, just to be safe).
Hacker Check-in
returns tomorrow at 5pm Eastern time and this weekend is packed with must-see entries. You can start your Saturday by taking part in a
KiCad/FreeCAD meetup
, sit in on the
BSides Atlanta
security conference, jump over to a
hardware show and tell in New Delhi
, and then cap things off with
an introduction to quantum computing
presented by Kitty Yeung.
Looking to be more than an idle participant? If you want to teach a class, host a show and tell, or put together a round-table discussion, drop a line to
superconference@hackaday.io
. Pretty much anything of interest to the hacking and making community is fair game, and who knows when you’ll ever get another chance at a captive audience like this. When you haven’t left the house in a week, there’s not a whole lot you
won’t
watch online.
It’s easy to see social distancing as an overreaction,
but the numbers don’t lie
. Things are serious out there, especially in the dense population centers where hacker events generally take place.
By staying home and taking part in events virtually
, we can do our part to control the spread of this virus and hopefully return things to normal that much sooner. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231786",
"author": "Leonard",
"timestamp": "2020-03-26T23:05:33",
"content": "I was social distancing from age 11 :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6231791",
"author": "Hummmmmmmmmm",
"timestamp": "2020-03-26... | 1,760,373,541.616163 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/26/put-down-new-roots-from-home-with-a-free-form-tree-of-life/ | Put Down New Roots From Home With A Free-Form Tree Of Life | Kristina Panos | [
"Art",
"Lifehacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"Circuit Sculpture",
"led",
"mandala",
"tree of life"
] | Mandalas are meditative objects that mean many things to myriad religions. Psychologist Carl Jung equated them with the concept of the Self as a whole, and put forth the notion that an urge to create mandalas signifies a period of intense personal growth.
[Sander van de Bor] took up the mandala challenge at the beginning of 2020 and decided to create several of them in free-form electronic style. If you’re looking for a healthy new way to deal,
[Sander] has step-by-step instructions for making your own light-up tree of life
by wrangling a wad of wires into a trunk and branches. Big bonus if you already find soldering to be soothing.
[Sander] starts by forming a circle from brass rod. This is the base for the rest of the build and will tie all the LED grounds together. The tree is twisted from a cluster of enameled copper wires that are eventually soldered together to distribute power from a coin cell out to the six SMT LEDs.
You could argue that the tree should be ground because it’s rooted to Earth, but you could also argue that the circle should be ground because the circle of life is a grounding force. Something to think about while you design and build your own, eh?
If electronic sculpture becomes your new thing,
explore all the angles with the master manipulator, [Mohit Bhoite]
. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231745",
"author": "Vinalon",
"timestamp": "2020-03-26T20:26:49",
"content": "mandalas are nice; I used to make them when I had an office job.I’d take a stack of post-it notes, and whenever I got bored waiting for tests or something, I’d color in the top one’s quadrants with differ... | 1,760,373,541.355691 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/26/its-not-an-arc-lamp-its-a-lamp-arc/ | It’s Not An Arc Lamp, It’s A Lamp Arc | Jenny List | [
"home hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"desk lamp",
"lamp",
"led",
"lighting"
] | One wouldn’t expect there to be much to cause envy in the world of desk lamps, after all whether it’s a classic Anglepoise or a dollar store LED affair if it does its job of casting the requisite quantity of light where it’s needed, most of us are happy. But then we saw [Ronny Ziss]’s
LED arc desk lamp
, and suddenly all other lamps simply aren’t good enough any more. If it’s not a wall-to-wall arc of LEDs spanning the length of the desk, it quite simply no longer cuts the mustard. We’ve entered the world of lamp envy, folks, and it’s a poorly-illuminated place to be.
As you can see in the video below the break both the hardware and the software of this lamp are impressive in their own right, the structure being an aluminium extrusion carrying an addressable white LED strip fitted into an arc between two custom plywood blocks on the walls either side of the desk. The software is controlled through a rotary encoder, and allows command of the position, width, and brightness of the illuminated portion, as well as having a hidden Pong game. Sadly he doesn’t reveal the software or the microcontroller in question, however the task is not an onerous one and it’s likely most Hackaday readers could put it together using their board or processor of choice.
In years of lamp projects on Hackaday, we can’t find another quite like this one.
Conventional lamp projects can still be stylish though
. | 17 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231716",
"author": "alfcoder",
"timestamp": "2020-03-26T18:43:21",
"content": "“you don’t want a criminal lawyer… you want a criminal lawyer” :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6231721",
"author": "Hummmmmmmmmm",
"times... | 1,760,373,541.792475 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/26/what-does-githubs-npm-acquisition-mean-for-developers/ | What Does GitHub’s Npm Acquisition Mean For Developers? | Ben James | [
"Current Events",
"Software Development"
] | [
"acquisition",
"github",
"javascript",
"microsoft",
"node",
"NPM",
"open source",
"package manager",
"security"
] | Microsoft’s open-source shopping spree has claimed another victim: npm. [Nat Friedman], CEO of GitHub (owned by Microsoft), announced the move recently
on the GitHub blog
.
So what motivated the acquisition, and what changes are we likely to see as a result of it? There are some obvious upsides and integrations, but these will be accompanied by the usual dose of skepticism from the open-source community. The company history and working culture of npm has also had its moments in the news, which may well have contributed to the current situation. This post aims to explore some of the rationale behind the acquisition, and what it’s likely to mean for developers in the future.
What is npm?
Many Hackaday readers will be familiar with npm (Node Package Manager), one of the backbones of the open-source JavaScript community. If you’ve played around with any kind of web or JavaScript project recently, you’ve probably used npm to install and manage dependencies, with it currently servicing 75 billion downloads a month. It is the most popular package manager for JavaScript, and enables re-use and sharing of modules throughout the JavaScript community; it’s what’s responsible for the
node_modules
folder in your project munching all your disk space.
At its most basic level, npm allows you to download and install JavaScript modules from the online registry, either individually, by running for example,
npm install express
, or installing from a
package.json
file, which contains details of all a project’s dependencies. If you want to read more about how npm manages dependencies and how its parallels with the Node Module Loader allow some neat simultaneous version loading, npm have
written a nice explainer here
.
npm is certainly not without criticism or competitors, but most developers are familiar with basic use, and I think would agree that it’s played a vital role in the growth of the JavaScript ecosystem, whether that’s new frameworks, niche modules, Typescript, polyfilling or testing.
What is its history?
npm was started in 2009, by [Isaac Schlueter], who
details in a blog post his thoughts on the recent acquisition
.
npm Inc is a company, not an entirely open source project. They provide the open-source registry as a free service, and charge a fee for private, commercial packages. It has previously been rumored that there was trouble making ends meet from low quantity, low fee license sales.
As a business, it has previously received venture capital funding, and also brought in new executive management to attempt to dramatically increase revenues. Under new management, numerous employees were dismissed, with many claiming they were dismissed unfairly. Further employees resigned voluntarily, raising questions about company culture and the stability/longevity of npm. We hope that the acquisition by GitHub will relieve the financial pressure on the company and allow it to resolve these issues whilst serving the open-source community more effectively, under stable conditions.
Enter GitHub
In npm’s blog post, [Isaac Schlueter] talks about how an acquisition by GitHub has been on the cards for a while, even going so far as recounting asking the GitHub product lead [Shanku Niyogi] why on earth they hadn’t already bought npm.
Why did it seem so obvious? With the source for so many npm packages hosted on GitHub, and GitHub launching the moderately popular GitHub Packages, it seemed only natural that both could benefit from tighter integration. So what might we see in the future?
Many users of GitHub will be familiar with its automated security alerts for vulnerabilities. When your project contains a dependency that has had a security vulnerability disclosed, GitHub will send you an automated email/notification containing the level of risk, the affected code, and an automatically generated pull request which fixes the issue. This is a pretty neat feature, and this author has been glad of it on numerous occasions. While this works well in theory, in complex projects with many interdependent packages, I’ve found that the automated security fixes can sometimes awkwardly bump package versions without fully propagating through the dependency tree, requiring a lot of manual hassle to fix.
I’m very hopeful that this acquisition can bring about a security update experience with much tighter integration with npm, whether that’s making the automated updates more intelligent and frictionless for the developer, or making it easier for maintainers to disclose vulnerabilities and release automated GitHub patches faster. In GitHub’s blog post announcing the acquisition, they state their commitment to using the opportunity to improve open source security, and their aim to “trace a change from a GitHub pull request to the npm package version that fixed it”.
As far as GitHub Packages is concerned, the aim is to move all private packages from npm’s paid service to GitHub Packages, with the view of making npm an entirely public package repository.
Even with these obvious benefits in mind, there is still some uncertainty as to whether the move was driven and initiated by GitHub for these reasons, or whether it’s because of the value it provides to Microsoft as a whole instead.
What npm means to Microsoft
Microsoft’s appetite for open source is growing. It seems like yesterday that we wrote about
Microsoft acquiring GitHub
, and despite all the speculation on its future at the time, it only seems to have grown stronger with the extra resources available. Since the acquisition, we’ve notably seen the release of free unlimited private repos, GitHub Security Lab and GitHub Actions, all welcome and overdue features that have been well-received in the open-source community. GitHub mobile apps for iOS and Android have also been released in the past few days, attracting a few raised eyebrows for not being open source.
A cynic might say that acquiring npm is a cheap way of Microsoft trying to win some sentiment from the open-source community, and of course, that may be a factor, but the move will have technical benefits for them too. Microsoft are increasingly big users of JavaScript, and are invested in the ecosystem. Notably, they’ve created Typescript, and they need a stable and solid package repository as much as any group of developers.
It’s yet to be determined whether npm will have any integration with any of Microsoft’s offerings, or if it’s purely of use to GitHub. At this stage, it’s hard to say, though it’s telling that GitHub announced the move along with their strategy, whilst Microsoft has stayed quiet on the topic.
Conclusion
I don’t think anyone can deny that the open-source JavaScript development experience has the potential to become significantly smoother when the largest source repository becomes more integrated with the largest package repository. It remains to be seen how these improvements are implemented, whether they’re made available for public/private users, and how kind they’ll be to open-source competitors, but only time will tell. | 33 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231698",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2020-03-26T17:56:44",
"content": "GitHub growing is not remarkable if M$ puts some USD160000000 into it. But how many open source projects have left github since? Microsoft has personally cost me a month of my life while doing my end-year... | 1,760,373,541.483359 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/cesium-clock-teardown-or-quantum-physics-playground/ | Cesium Clock Teardown, Or Quantum Physics Playground | Al Williams | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"atomic clock",
"cesium",
"HP"
] | Half the fun of getting vintage test equipment is getting to open it up. Maybe that’s even more than half of the fun. [CuriousMarc] got an
HP 5061A Cesium clock
, a somewhat famous instrument as the model that attempted to prove the theory of relativity. The reason? The clock was really the first that could easily be moved around, including being put on an airplane. You can watch the video below.
According to the video, you can simplify special relativity to saying that time slows down if you go fast — that is known as time dilation. General relativity indicates that time slows down with increasing gravity. Therefore, using airborne Cesium clocks, you could fly a clock in circles high up or fly at high speeds and check Einstein’s predictions.
We really like the line from the device’s manual: “The Model 5061A Cesium Beam Frequency Standard is itself capable of defining frequency and therefore needs no calibration.” The definition of the hyperfine transitions of cesium was — by international agreement — 9,192,631,770 Hz.
A 5 MHz crystal oscillator generates a signal that is modulated by a 137 Hz signal. The modulated signal gets multiplied by 18 and then, using harmonics, by 102. This provides a signal of roughly the correct value which excites the cesium beam tube. The tube’s output is used in a phase-locked loop to discipline the 5 MHz clock to be right on. This works because the tube will put out twice the modulated frequency if the carrier frequency is exactly the same as the cesium’s hyperfine transition frequency. If there is any variation, the output will include the fundamental frequency (137 Hz) which is absent if the loop is in lock.
The tube eventually runs out of cesium because the instrument literally boils away a few grams of cesium. [Marc’s] appeared to have some life still left in it. You can tell the instrument has been serviced because the tube is marked as Agilent, so it isn’t the original tube.
The video has a good explanation of cesium and exactly what hyperfine transition is. The defined frequency is in the absence of magnetic fields, but since the Earth has a magnetic field you have to have a strategy to deal with that. In the tube, there are strong magnets that overrule the Earth’s field. This cause an error, but a known error that the instrument can correct.
Ever wonder how clock standards were
before the nuclear age
? Most of us still have to settle for
rubidium
or
GPS discipline
. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231400",
"author": "Bruce Perens",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25T20:06:53",
"content": "Did you enter this with speech recognition? It’s relativity!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6231412",
"author": "Al Williams",
... | 1,760,373,541.892469 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/electromagnetic-field-2020-cancelled/ | Electromagnetic Field 2020 Cancelled | Jenny List | [
"cons"
] | [
"electromagnetic field",
"emf",
"EMF camp"
] | It’s the news we were all expecting but not looking forward to hearing:
this summer’s EMF Camp which was to be held at the end of July in Herefordshire, UK, has been cancelled
. This is of course due to the ongoing public health measures surrounding the COVID-19 virus pandemic. With the country on lockdown for the forseeable future, this is a responsible decision for a gathering the size of EMF which hosted around 2,500 attendees in 2018.
Existing ticket holders will be refunded, and will be guaranteed a ticket to the next event in 2022. According to the announcement, EMF is in the red to the tune of at least £25,000 ($29,523) because of non-refundable payments associated with booking the event, something to remember in two years time when faced with the choice of a normal ticket or a supporters ticket.
Work on starting conference badge production has been halted, but development continues apace and will not go to waste as it will form the basis of the 2022 item. This will make them the event badge team with the earliest preparation ever, and from what we saw when we had a brief look at an early prototype last year it should be a badge worth waiting for.
We’re sure all readers will understand the gravity of the situation, and that the EMF team have taken an appropriate response to what is an extraordinary series of events. Organising a hacker camp is a tough job at the best of times, and this must have been particularly hard on them. We thank them for their work on our behalf at previous events and in preparing for this aborted one, and we look forward to the next EMF Camp in 2022. | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231382",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25T19:23:00",
"content": "“Electromagnetic Field 2020 Cancelled”The end of the world as we know it. :-pBut since it’s not even April isn’t it a bit soon to be cancelling something three months away?",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,373,541.982176 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/gsm-module-does-more-than-advertised/ | GSM Module Does More Than Advertised | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Cellphone Hacks"
] | [
"features",
"ftp",
"gsm",
"m590",
"neoway",
"sms",
"TCP",
"unadvertised"
] | For many projects, a WiFi connection is overkill, too complicated, or too far away to work properly. Even though it’s relatively ubiquitous, sometimes the best choice for getting data to or from the real world is a connection to the cellular network, which can be done with the M590 module for about a dollar each. For that price, lots of people have had the opportunity to explore the module itself, and [marcrbarker] shows
some of the extra, unadvertised, features it has
.
Acting as a GSM module that can send and receive SMS messages is just the tip of the iceberg for this tiny device which we saw once before for a
DIY GPS tracker
. With a USB TTL serial data module, a lot more is on the table including answering voice calls and responding with
DTMF
tones, operate as a dial-up modem, connect with TCP, and even has some FTP capabilities. [marcrbarker] also suggests that it could do “call pranking” where it can send signals without being charged for a call.
There are a lot of details on the project site about all of this newfound functionality, and it reminds us of a time when it was discovered that not only was the ESP8266 a cheap WiFi module, but it could also run custom programs on its own. While the M590 probably can’t do all of that, it does seem to have a lot more locked away than most of us had thought before. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231368",
"author": "Peter",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25T18:44:57",
"content": "The Neoway M590 is a GPRS module. Hasn’t GPRS/UTMS capability been deprecated in the US in favor of LTE? Maybe idk what I’m talking about but what carrier would these work with in the US?",
"parent_id... | 1,760,373,541.945879 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/geofence-warrant-sends-mans-privacy-over-the-handlebars/ | Geofence Warrant Sends Bicyclist’s Privacy Over The Handlebars | Kristina Panos | [
"Current Events",
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"dragnet",
"eula",
"geofence",
"geofence warrant",
"google",
"guilty until proven innocent",
"location tracking",
"privacy",
"sensorvault"
] | About a year ago, Zachary McCoy took a bike ride around his neighborhood in Gainesville, Florida. It may have been forgettable to him, but not to history. Because McCoy used an app to track his mileage, the route was forever etched in the Google-verse and attached to his name.
On the day of this ill-fated bike ride, McCoy passed a certain neighbor’s house three times. While this normally wouldn’t raise alarm, the neighbor happened to be the victim of a burglary that day, and had thousands of dollars worth of jewelry stolen. The Gainesville police had zero leads after a four-day investigation, so they went to the county to get a geofence warrant.
Thanks to all the location data McCoy had willingly generated, he became the prime suspect
.
A generic geofence via
Google
Bike Ride Inside the Geofence
McCoy had no idea about any of this until he received a vague email from Google ten months after the bike ride. The email stated that the police wanted access to all of his account information, and that Google would be turning it over to them unless he dropped everything, got a lawyer, and successfully blocked it in court within the next seven days.
The only clue in the email was a case number, which led him to the burglary report on the Gainesville Police Department’s website. Unsure what to do, he turned to his parents who hired a lawyer with money from their savings account. The lawyer quickly figured out that McCoy was being targeted because of a geofence warrant, which allows law enforcement to search
Google’s vast Sensorvault archive
for a list of all mobile devices that were active within a certain area during a specific time range. It’s the opposite of innocent until proven guilty, and as you can imagine, it fingers many innocent people.
The only shred of privacy left in this situation is that McCoy would remain anonymous up until the seven day period elapsed. Fortunately, McCoy’s lawyer was able to clear his name without releasing it to the police, although they certainly know it now that the case has made national news. How? The lawyer filed a motion declaring the geofence warrant null and void, which made the police backpedal. The state attorney’s office told McCoy’s lawyer that they found details that led them away from his client, and they simply withdrew the warrant.
There’s almost always a
relevant xkcd
.
EULA Text Walls Are Privacy Prisons
Like millions of people, Zachary McCoy has willingly sacrificed privacy in the name of convenience. Our more grizzled readers may be disappointed to learn that McCoy doesn’t read through those novel-length end user license agreements, and didn’t realize that he was allowing Google to keep a record of everywhere he’s been by turning on his location. Although it’s ultimately Google that made him have to hire a lawyer, they may not be the only bad guy in this particular equation.
The app McCoy used to track his bike rides, RunKeeper, which launched in 2008, has been around nearly as long as Android phones themselves. In 2016,
the company that owns the app got in legal trouble in Europe
because RunKeeper not only continues to track users when they’re not using it, it also sends user location data to a US-based advertiser.
It’s cliché at this point, but it bears repeating: nothing is free except maybe your mother’s love. If there’s no cost to you, then you are the product. Carefully consider what you join, and opt out while you can. | 98 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231338",
"author": "Madfury",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25T17:38:43",
"content": "We need true anonymization, but is that possible?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6231403",
"author": "V",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25... | 1,760,373,542.243282 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/thunder-pack-is-a-bolt-of-lightning-for-wearables/ | Thunder Pack Is A Bolt Of Lightning For Wearables | Kristina Panos | [
"LED Hacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"blinkenlights",
"leds",
"pwm",
"stm32",
"Wearables"
] | Do you need portable power that packs a punch?
Sure you do, especially if you want to light up the night by mummifying yourself with a ton of LED strips. You aren’t limited to that, of course, but it’s what we pictured when we read about [Jeremy]’s Thunder Pack. With four PWM channels at 2.3 A each, why not go nuts? [Jeremy] has already proven the Thunder Pack out by putting it through its paces all week at Burning Man.
Click to embiggen!
After a few iterations, [Jeremy] has landed on the STM32 microcontroller family and is
currently working to upgrade
to one with enough flash memory to run CircuitPython.
The original version was designed to run on a single 18650 cell, but [Jeremy] now has three boards that support similar but smaller rechargeable cells for projects that don’t need quite as much power.
We love how small and powerful this is, and the dongle hole is a great touch because it opens up options for building it into a wearable. [Jeremy] made
a fantastic pinout diagram
and has
a ton of code examples in the repo
. If you want to wade into the waters of wearables,
let whimsical wearables wizard [Angela Sheehan] walk you through the waves
. | 19 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231303",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25T15:52:40",
"content": "How much do they weigh? Wondering if PoEoAC works yet.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6231324",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,373,542.108841 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/ventilators-101-what-they-do-and-how-they-work/ | Ventilators 101: What They Do And How They Work | Bob Baddeley | [
"Current Events",
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Medical Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"coronavirus",
"Covid-19",
"CPAP",
"cpap hack",
"cpap machine",
"lung",
"medical devices",
"prusa",
"respiration",
"respirator",
"ventilation",
"ventilator"
] | Treating the most serious cases of COVID-19 calls for the use of ventilators. We’ve all heard this, and also that there is a shortage of these devices. But there is not one single type of ventilator, and that type of machine is not the only option when it comes to assisted breathing being used in treatment. Information is power and having better grasp on this topic will help us all better understand the situation.
We recently wrote about a
Facebook group focused on open source ventilators
and other technology that could assist in the COVID-19 pandemic. There was an outpouring of support, and while the community is great when it comes to building things, it’s clear we all need more information about the problems doctors are currently dealing with, and how existing equipment was designed to address them.
It’s a long and complicated topic, though, so go get what’s left of your quarantine snacks and let’s dig in.
As we dig in, let’s address one common point of confusion in terminology: respirators are masks designed to protect the wearer, like keeping health workers from inhaling particles carrying Coronavirus, while ventilators are devices used by patients to help them breathe adequately.
How Our Lungs Work
Image Source:
Wikimedia Commons
Our respiratory system does two things; it brings oxygen into the body, and it expels carbon dioxide from the body. It does this by taking air from atmosphere and passing it through smaller and smaller structures in the lungs, terminating in capillaries; these are tiny ‘veins’ that are able to pass individual molecules into and out of the blood stream.
The simplest way to imagine this respiratory system is as an inverted tree: a large trunk (the trachea) branches over and over again (bronchioles), ending in tiny leaves (alveoli) that perform the gas transfer. The alveoli are tiny structures like clusters of grapes and are covered in capillaries. The capillaries diffuse molecules of O2 into the bloodstream where they are carried around by blood cells, and take CO2 out. This mechanism is driven by pressure differences between the concentrations of O2 and CO2 in the blood cells compared to the air. The important part is surface area, as the more capillary surface area available to effect gas transfer, the better, which is why the lungs are a lot of tiny spheres instead of two giant cavities.
The gas transfer is assisted by respiration (breathing in and out). The body needs to constantly expel the carbon dioxide-rich air and bring in fresh oxygen-rich air, and this is done by changing the volume of the lungs. The diaphragm (underneath the lungs) and intercostal muscles (between the ribs) both perform work to expand the lungs. This increases the volume of the lungs and air rushes in to fill that volume in each of the small alveoli. Expiration is a mostly passive process; the muscles relax and return to their natural state, much like a stretched rubber band returning to its natural state. Active expiration requires effort from additional muscles.
There are little hairs called
cilia and mucus-producing cells
throughout the inside of this system. Their job is to capture waste and foreign particles that have been inhaled, and push them up and out, where they cross into the esophagus and the digestive system.
There are lots of things that can cause problems with this delicate system. If the branches are blocked, say with too much mucus, then there’s less surface area available for the gas transfer, and the person can’t get enough air with the same amount of breathing. If the bronchioles or capillaries become stiff (e.g. from smoking) or scarred, then it becomes difficult to squeeze the air out. If the lungs become damaged the alveoli can break down and the lung surface area is reduced, so diffusion is impaired. If the lungs become inflamed the airway is constricted and it becomes difficult to pass a large enough volume of air into and out of the lungs for gas transfer. If the person breathes too fast and moves a lot of air, or too slow and doesn’t move enough air, then their blood gas concentrations get out of whack. Too much carbon dioxide in the blood and the body becomes acidic, which is a problem that other organs then have to solve.
There are other problems that can happen in this system, such as the brain not getting the right signals about the amount of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the blood, or the brain being forgetful about telling the body to breathe. Those aren’t what’s happening with COVID-19.
Why Breathing Becomes a Problem
The CDC has a
good guide on clinical management of patients
that gives the stats on how the disease presents and what kinds of care they need. In patients that experience the worst symptoms of COVID-19, the problems are pneumonia (infection that leads to the lungs filling with fluid), dyspnea (difficult or labored breathing), and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In simple terms, the patients can’t breathe well enough.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_Pneumonia_cartoon.jpg
The patient is struggling to breathe because the pneumonia is causing excess mucus production and cell infection, filling the alveoli and blocking the branches and reducing the surface area available for gas transfer. The alveoli that are accessible still work, but there aren’t enough of them available to sustain the patient. The result is labored breathing and insufficient gas transfer, which can lead to death.
According to the WHO,
approximately 14% of the infected require hospitalization and oxygen support, and 5% require ICU admission
. Looking at Bergamo, Italy, that 14% of the entire population is
overwhelming hospitals
, while in places that are better prepared, or where the curve is flattened, the health care system is stressed less.
The doctors in Italy are suggesting that the hospitals are becoming epicenters for virus transmission, and that home care may be preferred if possible, especially since they don’t have all of the resources they need. This is what’s causing the DIY community to look at ways to quickly develop some of those resources.
How We Provide Assisted Breathing
There are three main ways to help people who have difficulty getting O2 into their blood and CO2 out:
Open up their airway to increase surface area
Increase the oxygen content of the air
Make it easier for them to breath in large volumes of air
Since air is 78% nitrogen, 1% argon, and 21% oxygen (with traces of other gases), there’s a lot of room for improvement in gas transfer by increasing the percentage of oxygen. Carbon dioxide diffuses a lot more easily than oxygen, so USUALLY it’s not a problem to get the CO2 out. At home this is done with an oxygen concentrator or delivered tanks. In a hospital this is done with central O2.
Another thing to do is to open up more of those passages and clear up the blockages and get at all those alveoli. One way to do that is the same way that works for sleep apnea; positive air pressure. By putting positive air pressure in all the branches, it helps keep those airways open just like gently blowing up a balloon keeps it from collapsing. The only thing is that the “balloon” we’re talking about here is made of delicate tissue that’s already stressed, and over-pressurizing is catastrophic.
We also help get more gas transfer to happen in the alveoli that are still accessible. This can be done by assisting the patient with the effort of inhaling, again with positive air pressure. In patients, labored breathing means they get exhausted just trying to get enough air, so assistance with the inhalation is necessary and this is often where ventilators become part of treatment.
The ultimate goal with these three things is to give the patient time to develop antibodies and fight the virus and clear out the lungs, so the patient could be on mechanical assistance for up to two weeks.
The Ventilator
The ventilator can help with these things. It doesn’t produce oxygen, but passes provided oxygen through it and to the patient. There are multiple kinds depending on the severity of the infection. Ideally you want NIV, or non-invasive ventilation which uses an external mask. Invasive ventilation requires a tracheostomy or endotracheal tube inserted in the nose or mouth down into the lungs, which is an incredibly difficult and risky process that can only be done by a qualified physician in a medical care setting and can lead to other complications.
A CPAP machine creates heated, humidified, positive air pressure in the airway through a sealed face mask. By
PruebasBMA
–
Own work
,
CC BY-SA 3.0
,
Link
To best explain a ventilator, let’s start with a CPAP and work our way up. Short for Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, a CPAP takes normal air and compresses it and presents that higher pressure air through a hose to a mask. Usually the pressure is between 4-20cm H2O. If you’ve never used one, think about what it would be like to grow up in a swimming pool with your head above water, where your lungs are constantly pushing the water out of the way to breathe, and then after years you get out of the pool. Your muscles have to do a lot less work to bring in the air, and it rushes in easily. The CPAP is the same concept; by supplying higher pressure air, your lungs work less to inspire than they would otherwise and they can take deeper fuller breaths. More importantly, the pressure keeps the passageways from collapsing. Exhaling is a little more difficult, but remember that this is a mostly passive process; the natural elasticity of the lungs and muscles can overcome the increased pressure, within limits of course.
The BiPAP is the next level up. With some fancy sensing, it’s possible to detect the exhalation beginning, and then drop the pressure level down for the exhalation, making it easier to breathe out. You’ll see an IPAP and an EPAP number, which is the inhalation pressure, and exhalation pressure. Note that in both cases it’s still positive air pressure; we can’t have the passages collapsing on exhalation either. The other advantage is that with a greater difference in pressures, you can have a greater tidal volume (the amount of air that goes in and out in each breath, typically about 500mL or 7mL/kg of body mass) because the greater IPAP allows for more in, and the lower EPAP allows for easier expiration.
The ventilator is the next logical step. It can adjust the pressure either reactively or proactively, or both with special limits. For example, it could allow the patient to breathe on their own with BiPAP-like support, but ensures that the patient is breathing at least a certain number of breaths per minute, or it could take over the breathing process entirely and increase and decrease pressure at specific times to make the patient breathe when they couldn’t otherwise on their own.
Some ventilators are designed for home use, where the system vents the expired air directly from the patient, and the patient is relatively stable. With these ventilators the tube can be connected to a mask or to a tracheostomy tube.
Other ventilators are designed for acute hospital use. These have much more complex interfaces for the variety of treatment modes for which they are capable. They typically do invasive ventilation in which an endotracheal tube is inserted in the nose or mouth and down into the lungs. The biggest factor here is that the expired air is captured by the system and filtered before being released. In an application where the patient has a transmissible disease, this point is particularly important.
Most of these machines have an additional port that takes in supplied oxygen. This can be tanks, but not likely because of the high rate of flow needed. An oxygen concentrator can only supply about 10L/min. In the case of acute hospital ventilators, much more may be required. Most hospitals have central O2, capable of supplying up to 50L/min.
The Many Challenges of Ventilator Design
Now that you have the basics behind the tech, here are some specific challenges.
You must have a good seal on the mask the person is wearing on their face. If you don’t have a good seal, the mask will leak and you won’t be able to maintain positive pressure. Poor sealing is one of the main reasons for these kinds of devices to fail.
Monitoring expiration is important. The face mask must allow expired gases to leave, or else the patient will be rebreathing their own air. The machine knows how much it vents and takes that into account when supplying pressure. When the patient breathes out, the expired air doesn’t go into the machine, it goes out through the face mask vents and into the air. In a hospital environment, this would be aerosolizing the virus, which would be very bad, which is why the there are ventilator designs for hospitals that capture the expired air through a different tube and filter it.
You have to maintain the level of positive pressure consistently; if there’s a leak you have to ramp up to maintain the pressure level, and if the leak is plugged you have to drop down immediately. If you go above the pressure level intended, you can easily do damage to the lungs. Pressures are typically in the 4-40cm H2O range. This is a big important requirement, because messing this one up does a lot of damage fast.
You have to heat and humidify the air
. Usually the sinuses do a good job of this, but on a ventilator, this isn’t possible because the sinuses may be bypassed. When the air is too dry, it can lead to hypothermia, bronchospasm, extra mucus production (which is bad because it blocks more passages), or other problems.
With warm wet environments comes bacteria growth, and Legionnaires’ disease, a severe form of pneumonia caused by bacteria, is a serious risk in already compromised patients. Having an unsanitary environment could quickly cause problems worse than the original disease.
You have to be able to supply a lot of oxygen. A portable oxygen concentrator (POC) won’t work for a couple reasons; First, it doesn’t pull out enough oxygen for the patients that have needed supplemental O2 so far. Second, it only dispenses oxygen when it detects breath, but since there’s positive air pressure going in, the sensors on the POC won’t work. Depending on the needs of the patient, a larger oxygen concentrator might be sufficient, but any ventilator design needs to allow for an oxygen inlet.
The good news is that you only have to be able to supply positive pressure; ventilators do not suck the air out of the lungs. They merely provide varying levels of positive pressure and let the elasticity of the ribs and diaphragm take care of the exhalation.
Either you’ll need lots of sensors (PaCO2, TcCO2, SpO2, FiO2 in addition to flow and pressure) and the ability to have complex algorithms, or you’ll need an expert constantly monitoring the patient. If they roll over and pinch the tube, or move and break the seal, or get agitated, or their condition changes in any way, it may be necessary to change the settings of the machine. The software that runs on existing devices is complicated, with good reason. You may not think about your breath rate throughout the day, but your body is regularly adjusting the amount of air it needs, and the system has to account for that.
An adult male lung has a volume of about 5L, but tidal volume is roughly 500mL. This means that the system needs to be able to supply pressured air for at least 500mL per inhalation, and may need to keep applying pressure for the exhalation.
Any design needs to be manufacturable using existing parts that are readily available. The reason for the shortage of ventilators now is that demand jumped faster than the manufacturers’ abilities to create product. They already have supply chains, manufacturing lines, injection molds, and working designs that are tested and proven. The only thing holding them back is their ability to source and assemble the components fast enough, and then distribute them, and you better believe they’re throwing every resource they can, with the assistance of every government, at solving all of the supply chain problems they have now. The entire point of flattening the curve is to give everyone as much time as possible to solve problems.
Using Ventilators Requires Highly-Skilled Health Care Workers
Besides the physical constraints of a machine, you need trained physicians to monitor the patients. IF you could get a DIY solution, these are the other things to consider.
Each patient will need to be titrated and adjusted regularly. This is the process of figuring out what the right levels are for giving the patient treatment. There are multiple variables, like the inhalation pressure and exhalation pressure, whether the machine is leading the breathing cycle or the human, the rate, the sensitivity of the sensors. There is a huge risk of damaging the patient’s lungs through negligence. If the settings aren’t exactly right, then the patient could end up having to do more work fighting the machine than they would be doing without the machine, or have an improper blood gas balance. For example, if the EPAP setting is too high, the patient may be taking in more than they are exhaling, which is clearly not a sustainable solution.
The same goes for O2 levels in the supplied gas. Since increasing the O2 levels can lead to flammable or explosive situations, it’s important that the system not leak and that there are sensors and protections in place to ensure that the O2 is going to the right place in the right amounts. Also, supplying too much oxygen can suppress the brain’s “drive to breathe” mechanism, the signal telling the respiratory system to breathe in and out, leading them to stop breathing.
Cleanliness is essential, as it could cause issues worse than the original disease, and the ability to keep the machine clean even if it’s only used for a week, is critical.
In most cases where a ventilator is needed, the patient has
comorbidities (additional medical conditions) such as hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory system disease
(also
here
), which makes treatment more challenging.
The biggest thing is that if the person’s conditions are so severe that they’re on a ventilator, then they’re going to need to be near immediate care, which means the solution has to be in a hospital setting.
Even if we had a surplus of ventilators, the number of ICU beds and critical care staff would end up being the limiting factor
.
Any new device will require training of the caregiver, so it needs to work like existing units with which they are familiar, or be really easy to learn.
It needs to be said that proper resource allocation is important here. We can’t have anyone hoarding ventilators for anticipated need while people are dying without them. Every ventilator that comes off a production line needs to go to a patient in need, and we should move them around as we can.
Current Manufacturing Efforts
The companies that make the necessary machinery are well aware of the problem and
are ramping up production as quickly as they can
. In addition to increasing production of the right kinds of ventilators, they are looking at CPAP and BiPAPs and non-life-support ventilators and exploring ways to take these medical devices with all of the appropriate safety mechanisms and certifications already in place and production lines already set up, and trying to find ways to adapt them to the specific needs for COVID-19.
One of their biggest problems right now is supply chain. China was shut down for a long time. Transportation routes are in disarray with airlines having fewer flights, countries closing borders, and even in the best of times shipping by sea takes a month. I know that
GE has opened job postings for laborers to work on their assembly line in Madison, WI
where I am writing this article, and I assume others all over the world are ramping up production to the best of their ability. Shifts are getting added, processes paralellized where possible, and injection molds warmed up. Setting up additional manufacturing lines might help, but it takes time to make all of the specialized equipment necessary. Even if new factories could retool quickly, the routing of components may be the more limiting factor and it’s quite possible that a specialized component will be a limiting factor for the entire industry. If production depends on a specific part, and an assembly line is already consuming that part as fast as it can be made, adding a second assembly line doesn’t “
make the baby
” any faster.
Some are looking into creative ways of
multiplexing existing ventilators
, just last week we saw Dr. Charlene Babcock demonstrate
one way to convert a single ventilator for use with four patients
based on a n emergency medicine feasibility study. As an exercise, try syncing your breath with someone near you and maintaining it. Even if you can get it to work for an extended period of time, you’d have to take into consideration that in a hospital all patients would have to be on all the same settings, with synchronized breaths of the same volume, they would all have to have the same resistance, and any change to any of them might mean that patient was no longer compatible with the other patients on the ventilator. Basically, it only works if you make them unconscious, and even then only briefly.
Conclusions
The DIY community is fantastic, and has a lot of bright people who are very capable of a variety of things. We’ve already seen 3D printed parts come to the rescue. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is being hacked together in rapid order by hackerspaces and
3D printing companies
. Ventilators, though, are a whole new beast with a complexity similar to life support in a spaceship, though different enough that asking a car company to make one is like asking a ventilator company to retool to make a car. Asking a car company to make PARTS to help with supply chain problems makes sense, though.
See the requirements put out by the UK for a ventilator solution
for a more thorough guide to what’s needed.
My hope isn’t to discourage entirely; my hope is that this 101 will help guide a little so that effort isn’t wasted on solutions that can’t work. There’s an argument that “if there aren’t enough ventilators and patients are being turned away, I’d rather have a slim chance with a hacked solution than no chance with no solution. The reality is closer to “if there aren’t enough ventilators, a hacked solution will most likely do more damage than good, take up too much time from already strained health care resources, and could lead to death.” As the Hackaday community isn’t one for shying from a challenge, though, if you’re going to start somewhere, you should start with existing solutions that are close and in no short supply, like oxygen generators and BiPAPs and some kinds of ventilators, and look into how they could be modified without bypassing the safety mechanisms built into them, rather than start from scratch. As a community, we can and should help whenever possible. Let’s do it alongside the guidance of trained health professionals who have the skills to navigate the needs and the risks of assisted breathing. | 88 | 44 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231254",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25T14:20:36",
"content": "Somewhere in there is the iron lung for completeness sake.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6231460",
"author": "JFGoforth",
"times... | 1,760,373,542.371265 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/ken-shirriff-unfolds-a-nuclear-missile-guidance-computer-with-impressive-memory/ | Ken Shirriff Unfolds A Nuclear Missile Guidance Computer With Impressive Memory | Mike Szczys | [
"computer hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"core memory",
"ICBM",
"ken shirriff",
"Titan II",
"Titan missile"
] | Longtime followers of [Ken Shirriff’s] work are accustomed to say asking “Where does he get such wonderful toys?”. This time around
he’s laid bare the guidance computer from a Titan missile
. To be specific, this is the computer that would have been found in the Titan II, an intercontinental ballistic missile that you may remember as a key part of the plot of the classic film
WarGames
. Yeah, those siloed nukes.
Amazingly these computers were composed of all digital logic, no centralized controller chip in this baby. That explains the need for the seven circuit boards which host a legion of logic chips, all slotting into a backplane.
But it’s not the logic that’s mind-blowing, it’s the memory. Those dark rectangles on almost every board in the image at the top of the article are impressively-dense patches of magnetic core memory. That fanout is one of two core memory modules that are found in this computer. With twelve plates per module (each hosting two bits) plus a parity bit on an additional plate, words were composed of 25-bits and the computer’s two memory modules could store a total of 16k words.
This is 1970’s tech and it’s incredible to think that when connected to the accelerometers and gyros that made up the IMU this could use dead reckoning to travel to the other side of the globe. As always, [Ken] has done an incredible job of walking through all parts of the hardware during his teardown. He even includes the contextual elements of his analysis by sharing details of this moment in history near the end of his article.
If you want to geek out a little bit more about memory storage of yore, you can
get a handle on core, drum, delay lines, and more in Al Williams’ primer
. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231227",
"author": "Robert",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25T12:39:38",
"content": "Reminded me of this Russian fellow explaining how they had problems with nuclear missile navigation, ” … sometimes it would hit New York nicely and sometimes it would miss.”“So, how did you fix it?”“We add... | 1,760,373,542.802477 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/hack-the-quarantine-not-just-the-medical-equipment/ | Hack The Quarantine, Not Just The Medical Equipment | Jenny List | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"hackathon",
"lockdown",
"quarantine"
] | As the COVID-19 pandemic invades in some way every corner of life, we’ve seen significant effort from the hardware community in considering the problem of inadequate supplies of medical equipment. The pandemic and its associated quarantine and lockdowns do not stop at medical supplies though, a whole host of problems associated with the whole population self-isolating are there to be solved. This makes
Hack Quarantine
, an online event that bills itself as “A global virtual hackathon”, particularly interesting. It’s encouraging its participants to look at the wider aspects of the whole thing rather than solely dreaming up an open-source ventilator design, because in the absence of clinical trials or indeed any experts in medical devices it’s possible that medical equipment from a hackathon might be of limited usability.
The hackathon will run from March 23rd to April 12th, and it already has
a schedule of talks and workshops
. We can’t help noticing a dearth of hardware-related stuff among all the software, and perhaps this could be where you come in. It’s something that never ceases to amaze us as Hackaday writers, the depth of hardware skill among our readership, and we’re guessing that plenty of you could bring something to this event.
We’ve brought you more than a few COVID-19 stories over the last few weeks. If this hackathon isn’t for you then
can we point you at our Folding@Home team
? Also,
you may wish to look at the best fabric choice for your own face masks
. | 10 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231186",
"author": "Nitpicker Smartyass",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25T08:16:52",
"content": "While I clearly welcome any effort to keep people busy and enthusiastically occupied, the hackathons I have witnessed so far (e.g. the “official” one here in Germany) have been quite disturbin... | 1,760,373,542.748862 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/24/another-pc-power-supply-project/ | Another PC Power Supply Project | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"ACS712",
"atx",
"pc power supply",
"power supply",
"tft"
] | Economy of scale is a wonderful thing, take the switch-mode power supply as an example. Before the rise of the PC, a decent multi-voltage, high current power supply would be pretty expensive. But PCs have meant cheap supplies and sometimes even free as you gut old PCs found in the dumpster. [OneMarcFifty] decided to make
a pretty setup for a PC supply
that includes a very nice color display with bargraphs and other niceties. You can see the power supply in action in the video below.
The display is a nice TFT driven by an Arduino Nano. The project uses ACS712 current sensor modules, which are nice Hall effect devices that produce a linear output for current and have over 2 KV of voltage isolation.
There are three current sensors, one for each output. Really what makes this impressive compared to many similar projects is the very nice graphical output. The GitHub has all the software as well as PCB layouts. Of course, you’ll have to adapt the enclosure to your specific power supply, but it should be pretty easy to arrange an enclosure.
With only a few buttons, the user interface is a little clunky, but no more so than a lot of other projects. You essentially only use the buttons to change the speed, scale, and resolution of the bar graphs. The output voltages are fixed and there are no current limits.
Another answer is to find a higher voltage supply and mate it with
a cheap power supply module
. We’ve also seen
non-PC power supplies put in a PC case
. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231229",
"author": "Peter Knoppers",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25T12:52:53",
"content": "“There are no current limits” sounds rather ominous… Author probably wanted to write: “there are no user settable current limits”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,542.855921 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/24/quantum-sensor-receives-from-0-hz-to-1000-ghz/ | Quantum Sensor Receives From 0 Hz To 1000 GHz | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"army",
"quantum radio",
"quantum sensor",
"Rydberg Atoms"
] | Although it isn’t that uncommon to have broadband radio coverage in a single device, going from 0 Hz to 1000 GHz with one antenna and receiver is a bit much. But not for the US Army it seems, because they’ve developed
a quantum sensor
that can cover that range.
The technology uses
Rydberg atoms
, which are atoms with a highly excited valence electron. They’ve been used for a variety of sensing applications before, such as reading the cosmic microwave background radiation. However, until the Army’s work there has been no quantitative analysis of using them for wide-spectrum communications.
If you want to read more about
Rydberg atoms
, [Dan Maloney] covered that last year. The basic idea is that one laser beam excites an atom to the Rydberg state and another laser probes the state of the atom. It seems the Army used a single split beam for both jobs with an arrangement of modulators.
The size of the Rydberg sensor was about a centimeter and the experiments compared the sensitivity to other sensors of similar size. Before you get too excited though, the sensor may be small, but the lab to house it isn’t. The team optically pumped rubidium with lasers. We’ve seen
quantum radios
that require more lab setup, though. | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231133",
"author": "Mike Massen",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25T02:05:55",
"content": "Thanks for post :-)Hmm, down to zero Hertz is an extraordinary claim – if true could it be possible then to detect wavelengths greater in size than that of a typical solar system or even a EM photon w... | 1,760,373,542.536386 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/24/equipping-a-workshop-using-plywood-and-handheld-power-tools/ | Equipping A Workshop Using Plywood And Handheld Power Tools | Danie Conradie | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bench tools",
"power tools",
"woodworking"
] | Properly equipping a home workshop for the DIY discipline of your choice can often end up costing more than we would like to admit, and is a never ending process. [JSK-Koubou] is doing exactly that, except he is building almost all of his equipment using plywood, hand-held power tools and a LOT of attention to detail.
As far as we can tell the series really got started with a humble
hand-held circular saw guide,
with every tool being used to build more tools. So far the list boasts more than 50 different videos of tools built around a drill, circular saw, jigsaw, router, planar or grinder. This includes a wood lathe, drill press, jointer and various drills guides and sanders. The level of precision each tool almost eye watering. He even pulls out a dial gauge on some builds to check alignment. We honestly didn’t know plywood equipment could look this good and work so well. Check out the YouTube playlist after the break to see for yourself.
Previously we also covered [JSK-Koubou]’s set of
perfectly tuned wooden speaker enclosures
, the craftsmanship is really something to behold. For more impressive homebuilt hardware, take a look at this
8-axis camera crane
built by another YouTuber for his home shop. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231114",
"author": "Mark Smith",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25T00:32:08",
"content": "Anyone that likes this should check out Matthias Wandel on youtube. He builds his own tools usually out of baltic birch…. Usually using tools he made out of baltic birch. :)",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,542.594244 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/24/lidar-system-isnt-just-a-rangefinder-anymore/ | LIDAR System Isn’t Just A Rangefinder Anymore | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"laser",
"lidar",
"rangefinder",
"time of flight"
] | For any project there’s typically a trade-off between quality and cost,as higher quality parts, more features, or any number of aspects of a project can drive its price up. It seems as though [iliasam] has managed to avoid this paradigm entirely with his project.
His new LIDAR system
knocks it out of the park on accuracy, sampling, and quality, and somehow manages to only cost around $114 in parts.
A LIDAR system works by sending out many pulses of light in different directions, measuring the reflections of that light as it returns. LIDAR systems therefore improve with higher frequency pulses and faster control electronics for both the laser output and the receiving data. This system manages to be accurate to within a few centimeters and works up to 25 meters all while operating at 15 scans per second. The key was a high-powered laser module which can output up to 75 watts for extremely short times. More details can be
found at this page
(
Google Translate from Russian
).
Another bonus from this project is that [iliasam] has made everything available
from his GitHub page
including hardware specifications, so as long as you have a 3D printer this won’t take long to produce either. There’s even detailed breakdowns of how the laser driving circuitry works, and how there are safety features built in to keep anyone’s vision from accidentally getting damaged. Needless to say, this isn’t just a laser rangefinder module but if you want to see how you can repurpose those,
[iliasam] can show you that as well
. | 15 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231045",
"author": "NufS",
"timestamp": "2020-03-24T20:56:32",
"content": "This one is non movable single point distance measuring device. Aliexpress already has 2D devices for $65 shipped. Other than that it is a nice project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,373,542.946298 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/24/another-blinky-light-project-with-a-covid-19-twist/ | Another Blinky Light Project — With A COVID-19 Twist | Al Williams | [
"ATtiny Hacks"
] | [
"blinking led",
"Covid-19",
"virus"
] | It seems all anyone is talking about right now is the virus scare that has most of us with a little extra time on our hands. [Paul Klinger] — a name we’ve seen before — built a blinking LED project to pass the time. So what? Well, the lights are made to look like a SARS-CoV-2 virus and the
LEDs blink the virus RNA code
. You can see the results in the video below.
This isn’t very surprising when you consider we’ve seen [Paul] make
tiny things
and even
blink out his own DNA
, so he’s clearly got some specific interests in this area.
The project requires 22 LEDs of various colors. A tiny CPU makes it practical. As you might expect, the real issue is getting everything to stay in one place while you are building it. The wire frame has a makeshift hinge so you can crack the virtual virus open and replace the battery or reprogram the controller.
Even with all the LEDs, [Paul] says he gets a day on a single CR2032 coin cell. We suppose after the crisis is over, you could repurpose this as a Christmas tree ornament. Or make a few copies for a baby mobile (as long as it was too far away for the tyke to reach). | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230991",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2020-03-24T18:46:00",
"content": "Too soon?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6231208",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25T11:29:55",
"content": "G... | 1,760,373,542.896117 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/24/wind-farms-in-the-night-on-demand-warning-lights-are-coming/ | Wind Farms In The Night: On-Demand Warning Lights Are Coming | Sven Gregori | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"ads-b",
"AESA",
"air traffic control",
"aircraft detection",
"radar",
"regulations",
"renewable energy",
"safety",
"wind power",
"Wind turbine"
] | There appears to be no shortage of reasons to hate on wind farms. That’s especially the case if you live close by one, and
as studies have shown
, their general acceptance indeed grows with their distance. Whatever your favorite flavor of renewable energy might be, that’s at least something it has in common with nuclear or fossil power plants:
not in my back yard
. The difference is of course that it requires a lot more wind turbines to achieve the same output, therefore affecting a lot more back yards in total —
in constantly increasing numbers globally
.
Personally, as someone who encounters them occasionally from the distance, I find wind turbines mostly to be an eyesore, particularly in scenic mountainous landscapes. They
can
add a futuristic vibe to some otherwise boring flatlands. In other words, I can not judge the claims actual residents have on their impact on humans or the environment. So let’s leave opinions and emotions out of it and look at the facts and tech of one issue in particular: light pollution.
This might not be the first issue that comes to mind when thinking about wind farms. But wind turbines are tall enough to require warning lights for air traffic safety, and can be seen for miles, blinking away in the night sky. From a pure efficiency standpoint, this doesn’t seem reasonable, considering how often an aircraft is actually passing by on average. Most of the time, those lights simply blink for nothing, lighting up the countryside. Can we change this?
Light On Demand
Wind farms locations across Europe as reported in the Wind Power database (Source:
SETIS
)
Improving warning lights to light up only when there’s an actual aircraft to warn in its vicinity isn’t a new idea, and individual tests to achieve this have been successfully carried out in the past. Looking at the map of wind farms in Europe, it’s not too surprising that Germany is especially interested in this subject, and is now
implementing new regulations
to enforce an on-demand warning light system as requirement for wind farms, expected to come into affect this summer.
Generally speaking, there are two options to know about an object in the sky within a wind turbine’s surroundings:
the turbine is looking for an aircraft in the sky
the aircraft reports its presence to the turbine
Established technologies exist for both options in form of radar and transponder signals respectively.
Radar
To simplify the basic concept of radar: radio waves are emitted into the wild, and if there is anything in their way, they bounce back to be received again, making it possible to determine the presence and distance of an object. Repeat it in a constant manner, and that object’s angle and velocity can be determined as well.
Like anything else in technology, radar systems have vastly improved and changed over time, and using
Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA)
antennas nowadays, they can not only track multiple objects at once, but also look a lot more subtle than they used to. Instead of huge antennas rotating around, causing potentially new problems with the public, the radio wave angles are directed electronically, allowing the whole system to be fully stationary and placed into an inconspicuous looking box. Paint it like a cow, and no one might even notice it at all.
Transponder Signals
It would be even less conspicuous if we moved the responsibility to the aircraft itself, namely using
ADS-B
signals. ADS-B is often considered as a replacement for radar itself in air traffic control, and essentially consists of a transponder located within the aircraft that is periodically sending the aircraft’s identity, position, and altitude as
radio signals
for
everyone
to
receive
.
Of course, if a Raspberry Pi or ESP32 at home can receive the signals and make sense of the data, so can a wind farm.
The Catch
So far so good in theory, but as usual, in practice it isn’t that straightforward. A sophisticated system like an active phased array radar has a price tag, and the whole point here was to encourage more wind power adoption. Costs aside, if there is any disturbance with the radar signal causing it to become unreliable, the whole system would have to be bypassed, turning the lights fully back on anyway.
ADS-B would have significantly lower costs, however there are other concerns and issues with that approach, aside from
possible satellite navigation reliability concerns
. While large commercial airplanes are mostly regulated to require ADS-B transponders, it’s not necessarily the case for the smaller ones. And of course, not everything that flies has to be an airplane to begin with, and neither would it necessarily be of civil use. As ADS-B allows the tracking of an aircraft, some of them might not want to have that option, and others maybe
shouldn’t
have that option. In worst case, the system won’t be able to detect the very object that would actually need the warning lights.
Ignoring the details of which technology would be used, another aspect to consider is the interoperability with the wind turbines themselves, and the grown complexity of such a system as well as the security implications following it. Once the lights are triggered by an external event, and that event needs to be distributed to multiple turbines, things can go wrong in a lot of places, and the general reliability of such a system would be questionable. Plus, it wouldn’t take a take a hardcore conspiracy theorist to think about the consequences of such a system maliciously malfunctioning one day.
The Bigger Issue
But let’s take a step back and look at the initial problem itself: warnings lights are brightening up the night sky in order to inform pilots that a tall construction is present. To me, it sparks the question “why?”. Why do we fully rely on humans to handle air traffic safety here?
This isn’t even a question about your stance on renewable energy or light pollution, but why is there a necessity to shine a light at all as warning — regardless if it’s continually or on-demand, or whether we are talking about wind turbines, radio towers or just any tall enough construction. Installing on-demand warning light systems surely makes sense from an efficiency point of view, and I guess you have to start in some place, so why not wind turbines, but shouldn’t we rather focus on a whole new warning system altogether?
Take ship navigation for comparison: for centuries the lighthouse was the essential system to aid ships to safe harbor and avoid collisions on rocks and cliffs. And yes, they are still around today, with a surprising percentage of them even shining into the sea, but for the most part, newer navigation systems have replaced them for most of the parts. Yet, provocatively stated, air safety regulations are one step short of hiring plane spotters to manually turn the warning lights on. Ships have detailed maps of the ocean floor. Why don’t airplanes have the same for the ground?
We will see what the future brings, maybe our grandchildren will shake their heads in disbelief how we used to place all this responsibility in a few human hands without any concerns. Until then, we can look forward to a slightly darker night sky in the countryside again, at least in some parts of the world. Whether all this is really happening in the name of promoting renewable energy sources remains to be seen.
(Banner image by
Jeswin Thomas
) | 117 | 36 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230948",
"author": "GameboyRMH",
"timestamp": "2020-03-24T17:14:59",
"content": "A combination of active and passive technologies might make the most sense here: Maybe a “light on demand” beacon on the tip of the blade, then a stripe of phosphorescent or radioluminescent material i... | 1,760,373,543.111197 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/26/whirling-shutters-on-this-field-mill-measure-electrostatic-charges-at-distance/ | Whirling Shutters On This Field Mill Measure Electrostatic Charges At Distance | Dan Maloney | [
"classic hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"amplifier",
"electrostatic",
"Field Mill",
"op-amp",
"shutter",
"STATIC",
"transimpedance"
] | Hardly a person hasn’t experienced the sudden, sharp discharge of static electricity, especially on a crisp winter’s day. It usually requires a touch, though, the classic example being a spark from finger to doorknob after scuffing across the carpet. But how would one measure the electrostatic charge of an object without touching it? Something like
this field mill
, which is capable of measuring electrostatic charge over a range of several meters, will do the trick.
We confess to not having heard of field mills before, and found [Leo Fernekes]’ video documenting his build to be very instructive. Field mills have applications in meteorology, being used to measure the electrostatic state of the atmosphere from the ground. They’ve also played a role in many a scrubbing of rocket launches, to prevent the missile from getting zapped during launch.
[Leo]’s mill works much like the commercial units: a grounded shutter rotates in front of two disc-shaped electrodes, modulating the capacitance of the system relative to the outside world. The two electrodes are fed into a series of transimpedance amplifiers, which boost the AC signal coming from them. A Hall sensor on the shutter allows sampling of the signal to be synchronized to the rotation of the shutter; this not only generates the interrupts needed to sample the sine wave output of the amplifier at its peaks and troughs, but it also measures whether the electrostatic field is positive or negative. Check out the video below for a great explanation and a good looking build with a junk-bin vibe to it.
Meteorological uses aside, we’d love to see this turned toward any of the dozens of Tesla coil builds we’ve seen. From
the tiny
to
the absurd
, this field mill should be able to easily measure any Tesla coil’s output with ease. | 34 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231645",
"author": "Jim",
"timestamp": "2020-03-26T15:47:13",
"content": "I don’t know that you’d be able to use it on a Tesla Coil – Tesla Coils operate at higher frequencies (>50kHz, usually >200 kHz) so the AC would average out when the shutter is open. Standard electrostatic f... | 1,760,373,545.359166 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/26/stay-informed-how-to-pull-your-own-covid-19-data/ | Stay Informed: How To Pull Your Own COVID-19 Data | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"api",
"Covid-19",
"data",
"json",
"python"
] | For all the technology we have, it can still be frustratingly difficult to get any concrete information from the media. Sometimes all you want to do is to cut through the noise and see some real numbers. Watching talking heads argue for a half hour probably isn’t going to tell you much about how the COVID-19 virus is spreading through your local community, but seeing real-time data pulled from multiple vetted sources might.
Having access to the raw data about COVID-19 cases, fatalities, and recoveries is, to put it mildly, eye-opening. Even if day to day life seems pretty much unchanged in your corner of the world, seeing the rate at which these numbers are climbing really puts the fight into perspective. You might be less inclined to go out for a leisurely stroll if you knew how many new cases had popped up in your neck of the woods during the last 24 hours.
But this article isn’t about telling you how to feel about the data, it’s about how you can get your hands on it. What you do with it after that is entirely up to you. Depending on where you live, the numbers you see might even make you feel a bit better. It’s information on your own terms, and in these uncertain times, that might be the best we can hope for.
Scraping the CDC Website
If you’re in the United States, then the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is perhaps the single most reliable source of COVID-19 data right now. Unfortunately, while the agency offers a wealth of data through their Open Data APIs, it seems that things are moving a bit too fast for them to catch up at the moment. At the time of this writing there doesn’t appear to be an official API to pull from,
only a human-readable website
.
Of course if we can read it, than so can the computer. The website is simple enough that we can split out the number of total cases with nothing more than a few lines of Python, we don’t even need to use a formal web scraping library. It should be noted that this isn’t a good idea under normal circumstances as changes to the site layout could break it, but this (hopefully) isn’t something we need to be maintaining for very long.
import requests
# Download webpage
response = requests.get('https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html')
# Step through each line of HTML
for line in response.text.splitlines():
# Search for cases line
if "Total cases:" in line:
# Split out just the number
print(line.split()[2][:-5])
Everything should be pretty easy to understand in that example except perhaps the last line. Basically it’s taking the string from the web page, splitting it up using spaces as delimiters, and then cutting the last five characters off the back to remove the closing HTML tag. Definitely a hack, but that’s sort of what this site is all about.
There are a couple important things you need to remember when pulling data from the CDC like this. First of all, since the website is an important source of information right now, don’t hammer it. There’s really no reason to hit the page more than once or twice a day. Second, even in a pandemic the CDC is apparently keeping normal business hours; the website says the stats will only be updated Monday through Friday.
Johns Hopkins Unofficial API
A better option, especially if you’re looking for global data, is using the database maintained by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE). This data is collected from multiple sources all over the globe and is being updated constantly. Whether or not you realized it at the time, there’s an excellent chance
you’ve already seen their online dashboard
as it’s become an invaluable reference to anyone tracking the progress of COVID-19.
This data is
published to an official GitHub repository
on a daily basis for anyone who wants to clone it locally, but that’s not terribly convenient for our purposes. Luckily, French data scientist
Omar Laraqui has put together a web API
that we can use to easily poll the database without having to download the entire thing.
His API offers a lot of granularity, and allows you to do things like see how many cases or recoveries there are in specific provinces or states. You need to experiment around with the location codes a bit since there doesn’t appear to be a listing available, but once you’ve found the ID for where you want to look it’s easy to pull the latest stats.
import requests
# Get data on only confirmed cases
api_response = requests.get('https://covid19api.herokuapp.com/confirmed')
# Print latest data for location ID 100: California, USA
print(api_response.json()['locations'][100]['latest'])
The API also has a convenient endpoint at
/latest
which will simply show you the global totals for active cases and deaths.
Virus Tracker API
Another option is the free API available from
thevirustracker.com
. I’m somewhat hesitant to recommend this service as it has all the hallmarks of somebody looking to capitalize on a disaster and the site seems to go down regularly. That said, it’s easy to use and gives you a number of very convenient data points that don’t seem to be available from other sources.
For example it allows you to see how many of the cases are considered serious, as well as how many new cases have been added today. The API also includes a listing of recent news items related to the country you have selected, which could be useful if you’re looking to make your own dashboard.
import requests
# Request fails unless we provide a user-agent
api_response = requests.get('https://thevirustracker.com/free-api?countryTotal=US', headers={"User-Agent": "Chrome"})
covid_stats = api_response.json()['countrydata']
# Break out individual stats
print("Total Cases:", covid_stats[0]["total_cases"])
print("New Today:", covid_stats[0]["total_new_cases_today"])
The COVID Tracking Project
While it lacks the global data of the Johns Hopkins database, the
COVID Tracking Project
provides the most feature rich and well documented API currently available. The project was started by a team of journalists in early March, and is committed to collecting accurate information not only from state and district health agencies, but from a network of trusted local reporters. Interestingly, they say the project would likely be suspended should the CDC roll out their own API with complete state-level data.
There’s an incredible wealth of information available through this API, including historical daily data for individual states where available. The API is also unique in that it will not only show how many people have tested positive for COVID-19, but also those who were cleared of it. This allows you to see how much testing each state is actually doing, and is one of the key points of data the project wants to see reported officially by the CDC.
import requests
# Get current data for New York, USA
api_response = requests.get('https://covidtracking.com/api/states?state=NY')
# Show positive and negative test results
print("COVID-19 Testing Results in", api_response.json()['state'])
print("Positive:", api_response.json()['positive'])
print("Negative:", api_response.json()['negative'])
Because their team carefully reviews the data before pushing it out, the COVID Tracking Project might not get updated as quickly as some other sources. But if you’re looking for the most accurate information about what’s happening on “on the ground” in the United States, this is definitely the API you want.
Knowledge is Power
After playing around with these data sources for a bit, you’re likely to notice that they don’t always agree. Things are moving so quickly that even when going straight to the source like this, there’s a certain margin of error. A reasonable approach may be to take multiple data sources and average them together, though that assumes you’re able to drill down to the same level on each service.
As stated in the intro of this article, what you do with this information is entirely up to you.
For my own purposes I put together a little network attached display
so I can monitor the total number of cases in the United States, and honestly it’s been a sobering experience. Seeing the number increase by
thousands
each day has really put the situation into focus for me; and I know that by the time this article is published, the number shown in the picture will be considerably lower than the latest figures.
I can’t say I’m particularly glad to have the latest numbers on my desk every morning, but I’d rather know what we’re up against than remain oblivious. Something tells me many of you will feel the same way. If you’re looking for less of a downer, you could always roll in some happier data, perhaps even showing an animation whenever the number of recoveries goes up. Stay safe out there. | 34 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231597",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-03-26T14:06:14",
"content": "Data is easy. Understanding is what people go through higher-education for. Seeing how much “Lies, damn lies, and statistics” are part of our lexicon, we need all the education we can get.",
"parent_... | 1,760,373,544.989704 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/26/ben-krasnow-rolls-old-school-camera-out-for-photolithography/ | [Ben Krasnow] Rolls Old School Camera Out For Photolithography | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"darkroom",
"develop",
"etching",
"film",
"lens",
"metallizing",
"photolithography",
"shutter",
"sputtering"
] | In a time when cameras have been reduced to microchips, it’s ironic that the old view camera, with its bellows and black cloth draped over the viewscreen for focusing, endures as an icon for photography. Such technology appears dated and with no application in the modern world, but as [Ben Krasnow] shows us,
an old view camera is just the thing when you want to make homemade microchips
. (Video, embedded below.)
Granted, the photolithography process [Ben] demonstrates in the video below is quite a bit upstream from the creation of chips. But mastering the process on a larger scale is a step on the way. The idea is to create a high-resolution photograph of a pattern — [Ben] chose both a test pattern and, in a nod to the season, an IRS tax form — that can be used as a mask. The camera he chose is a 4×5 view camera, the kind with lens and film connected by adjustable bellows. He found that modifications were needed to keep the film fixed at the focal plane, so he added a vacuum port to the film pack to suck the film flat. Developing film has always been magical, and watching the latent images appear on the film under the red light of the darkroom really brings us back — we can practically smell the vinegary stop solution.
[Ben] also steps through the rest of the photolithography process — spin coating glass slides with photoresist, making a contact print of the negative under UV light, developing the print, and sputtering it with titanium. It’s a fascinating process, and the fact that [Ben] mentions both
garage chip-maker [Sam Zeloof]
and
[Justin Atkin] from the Thought Emporium
means that three of our favorite YouTube mad scientists are collaborating. The possibilities are endless. | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231580",
"author": "mies",
"timestamp": "2020-03-26T12:36:03",
"content": "This guy is an absolute legend.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6231583",
"author": "troisieme type",
"timestamp": "2020-03-26T12:49:29",
"c... | 1,760,373,544.664606 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/26/two-perspectives-on-james-clerk-maxwell-and-his-equations/ | Two Perspectives On James Clerk Maxwell And His Equations | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"history",
"james clerk maxwell",
"maxwell's equations"
] | We are unabashed fans of [The History Guy’s] YouTube channel, although his history videos aren’t always about technology, and even when they are, they don’t always dig into the depths that we’d like to see. That’s understandable since the channel is a general interest channel. However, for this piece on James Clerk Maxwell, he brought in [Arvin Ash] to handle the science side. While [The History Guy] talked about Maxwell’s life and contributions, [Arvin] has a complementary video
covering the math behind the equations
. You can see both videos below.
Of course, if you’ve done electronics for long, you probably know at least something about Maxwell’s equations. They unified electricity and magnetism and Einstein credited them with spurring one of his most famous theories.
Deriving Maxwell’s equations is a math nightmare, but [Arvin] doesn’t do that. He uses some amazing graphics to explain how the equations relate electricity and magnetism. A great deal of our modern world — especially related to any sort of radio technology — builds on these four concise equations.
One thing we didn’t realize is how wide-ranging Maxwell’s interest were. He contributed to astronomy by explaining Saturn’s rings, derived statistical laws about gasses, and worked on color vision, including creating the first light-fast color photograph. He also contributed to thermodynamics, control theory, and optics. Those were the days!
We really enjoyed the way the two videos support each other. Understanding the math is a big deal to us, but understanding the man’s life and the context he lived in is pretty interesting, too. We hope we see more such collaborations.
Not that we don’t do our part to try to tell technology history with a bit more depth than a typical history book. Do you remember [Rufus Turner]?
We do
. We’ve even had a few debates over
who really invented radio
. If you want more of that, you can always browse our
history
tag. | 30 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231550",
"author": "Alex Rossie",
"timestamp": "2020-03-26T08:34:30",
"content": "As I understand it Maxwells equations as well as being intrinsically relativistic, is readily quantised and the symmetry he “shoehorned” in is a good example of gauge symmetry.Wonderful serendipity?",... | 1,760,373,545.28899 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/automating-hand-sanitizer-if-you-can-find-any/ | Automating Hand Sanitizer — If You Can Find Any | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Covid-19",
"fishing line",
"hand sanitizer",
"servo"
] | We once saw a Romeo and Juliet production where the two families were modern-day mob families with 3-piece suits and pistols. If they made King Richard III set in this week, the famous line might be: “Hand sanitizer, hand sanitizer, my kingdom for hand sanitizer!” Even if you have a supply stashed in your prepper cache, you have to touch the bottle so you could cross-contaminate with other users. Public places often have automatic dispensers to combat this, and
now you can too
. [Just Barran] shows the device in a video, you can see below.
Sourcing parts for projects is sometimes a problem, but right now we are betting the hand sanitizer will be the hardest component. Of course, the Internet is ripe with homemade brews that may or may not be effective based on beer, grain alcohol, or a variety of other base materials.
[Barran] has a big junk box. so he snagged an Arduino and an ultrasonic sensor. The part that is a little tricky is pulling down the pump. The basic idea is to use a servo motor to pull some fishing line. To engage the bottle, there is a small bit of plastic from a notebook cover and the fishing line goes to both sides of it. One side of the fishing line is fixed and the other is what the servo pulls.
We might have used a solenoid to push the button, but we like the servo method for its simplicity. In the end, it does look like it works well. Changing the bottle out probably requires a little surgery since there is a screw holding the plastic bracket in and you might have to update the fishing line lengths. That might be an impediment for a commercial project, but for your own use, it doesn’t seem like it would be a problem.
Fishing line
is more useful than you might think. We’ve even seen it used as belts in
3D printers
. | 31 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231514",
"author": "starhawk",
"timestamp": "2020-03-26T05:40:36",
"content": "That “production” was a movie. I saw it in middle school, IIRC… oh, how my English teacher from back then (with whom I am still friends!) would love to hear that I still remember that… :D maybe I’ll call... | 1,760,373,544.823369 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/table-held-up-by-strings-teaches-physics/ | Table Held Up By Strings Teaches Physics | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"compression",
"string",
"tensegrity",
"tension"
] | If you’ve never heard of a tensegrity structure, you should stop now and watch the video below. In it, [The Action Lab] shows a 3D printed table that is
held up only with strings
. We didn’t say suspended by strings but held up. Or so it appears. The model is from
Thingiverse
, but it is one of those things you have to see to believe.
The basic idea is pretty simple. Strings have a lot of tensile strength but collapse under the slightest compressive force. The arrangement of strings puts the force on the center string which is essentially hanging — the force is pulling the string down. The other three strings aren’t just for show, though, they keep the structure from tipping over in any one direction.
There are actually real-life examples of these kinds of structures. The video shows the Skylon at the Festival of Britain as one example and an Australian bridge. The video also makes the point that the human body uses tensegrity, since tendons are very similar to the strings in the model.
This would be a great experiment for a homeschooler or even kids cooped up in quarantine. The print itself doesn’t look very challenging, although the assembly might be a bit tricky.
This isn’t the first structure like this
that we’ve seen
. If the talk about tendons makes you think this might be useful in robotics,
you’d be correct
. | 34 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231494",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2020-03-26T02:17:36",
"content": "I believe bicycle wheels also work in the same way.The axel hangs from the top spokes rather than sitting on the lower spokes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,373,544.741327 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/25/silicone-and-ai-power-this-prayerful-robotic-intercessor/ | Silicone And AI Power This Prayerful Robotic Intercessor | Dan Maloney | [
"Art",
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"ai",
"Amazon Polly",
"animatronic",
"art",
"machine learning",
"ml",
"Religion",
"sacred",
"text to speech"
] | Even in a world that is as currently far off the rails as this one is, we’re going to go out on a limb and say that
this machine learning, servo-powered prayer bot
is going to be the strangest thing you see today. We’re happy to be wrong about that, though, and if we are, please send links.
“The Prayer,” as [Diemut Strebe]’s work is called, may look strange, but it’s another in a string of pieces by various artists that explores just what it means to be human at a time when machines are blurring the line between them and us. The hardware is straightforward: a silicone rubber representation of a human nasopharyngeal cavity, servos for moving the lips, and a speaker to create the vocals. Those are generated by a machine-learning algorithm that was trained against the sacred texts of many of the world’s major religions, including the Christian Bible, the Koran, the Baghavad Gita, Taoist texts, and the Book of Mormon. The algorithm analyzes the structure of sacred verses and recreates random prayers and hymns using Amazon Polly that sound a lot like the real thing. That the lips move in synchrony with the ersatz devotions only adds to the otherworldliness of the piece. Watch it in action below.
We’ve featured several AI-based projects that poke at some interesting questions.
This kinetic sculpture
that uses machine learning to achieve balance comes to mind, while AI has even been employed in
the search for spirits from the other side
.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/video-1.mp4
[Via
Twitter
, but we recommend abstaining from the comments, for obvious reasons.] | 27 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6231456",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2020-03-25T23:08:06",
"content": "Will not make oral sex joke, will not make oral sex joke, WILL NOT MAKE ORAL SEX JOKE…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6231462",
"author"... | 1,760,373,545.098542 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/24/turn-by-wire-is-a-machinists-sixth-sense/ | Turn By Wire Is A Machinist’s Sixth Sense | Sonya Vasquez | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"lathe",
"turn-by-wire"
] | It’s hard not to be a little intimidated by the squeaks and whirs that come with your first journey into a machine shop. Here, skilled machinists pilot giant hunks of cast iron that turn metals into piles of chips to yield beautiful parts. But what if machine tools themselves didn’t have to seem so scary. What if using them could feel a bit more intuitive, even, dare we say, natural from the get-go?
Enter
Turn by Wire
, a unique set of force feedback and machine control concepts applied to a lathe brought to you by researchers [Rundong Tian], [Vedant Saran], [Mareike Kritzler], [Florian Michahelles], and [Eric Paulos] at Berkelely.
Turn by Wire vastly reimagines the relationship between a user’s control inputs and the machine outputs in two ways: (1) by changing the mapping between the hand cranks and machine movements and (2) by changing the haptic feedback felt by the machinist. Since both of these interactions can be defined programmatically, the researchers created three unique ways of interacting with the lathe. First, by defining a tool path in the graphic user interface (GUI), the machinist can use a single hand crank to step forward and back in time along that toolpath. Second, by applying virtual guidelines in the GUI, both the machine and the hand cranks will physically snap to the guide lines when they are sufficiently close. Finally, the hand cranks can be used to teach the machinist a technique by adding resistive forces into the hand cranks depending on movement while a machinist is stepping through a process like peck drilling.
This is a great example of [Tom Knight’s] “just wrap a computer around it!” as mentioned by [Bunnie Huang] when we featured the
IQ Motor Modules
. It’s a powerful example of how putting a computer between the controls and the machine can correct for real world imperfections, be they in the mechanics of the machine of the operator. For the curious, have a look at [Rundong’s]
paper
published at UIST and [Vedant’s]
master’s thesis
. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230927",
"author": "Gilliam",
"timestamp": "2020-03-24T16:00:31",
"content": "the physical disconnect between machine and operator is sort of like advanced surgery machines(dual 3d maneuvering hand grips), large motorized construction equipment(cat/backhoe, hydraulic actuated diggi... | 1,760,373,545.037376 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/24/coronavirus-testing-just-the-facts/ | Coronavirus Testing: Just The Facts | Dan Maloney | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Medical Hacks",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [] | The news these days is dominated by the one big story: the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the first reports of infection surfaced in China sometime in late 2019, the novel coronavirus that causes the disease, bloodlessly dubbed SARS-CoV-19, has swept around the globe destroying lives, livelihoods, and economies. Getting a handle on the disease has required drastic actions by governments and sacrifices by citizens as we try to slow the rate of infection
As with all infectious diseases, getting ahead of COVID-19 is a numbers game. To fight the spread of the virus, we need to know who has it, where they are, where they’ve been, and whom they’ve had contact with. If we are unable to gather the information needed to isolate potential carriers, all that we can do is impose mass quarantines and hope for the best. Hence the need for mass COVID-19 testing, and the understandable hue and cry about its slow pace and the limited availability of test kits.
But what exactly do these test kits contain? What makes mass testing so difficult to implement? As we shall see, COVID-19 testing is anything but simple, even if the underlying technology, PCR, is well-understood and readily available. A lot of the bottlenecks are, as usual, bureaucratic, but there are technical limits too. Luckily, there are clever ways around those restrictions, but understanding the basics of COVID-19 testing is the best place to start.
Going Hyperbolic
Currently, the only way to detect an active SARS-CoV-2 infection is by the use of polymerase chain reaction, or PCR.
We’ve covered PCR in some detail before
, but briefly, PCR is a laboratory method that relies on the cellular machinery that allows DNA to replicate itself. PCR is a three-step process:
Denaturation
, which uses high temperatures to break the hydrogen bonds between base pairs in the DNA double helix, creating complementary single strands of DNA;
Annealing
, which occurs as the temperature of the reaction is lowered and short oligonucleotide primers, specific for a section on the target DNA, bind to the single strands;
Extension
, where the DNA between the primers is filled in by an enzymatic reaction. The result is a double-stranded DNA segment, which then goes through subsequent rounds of denaturation, annealing, and extension, resulting in exponential amplification of the specific target DNA.
If the DNA you’re looking for is present, the PCR process will amplify it to a large enough amount that it becomes easy to detect. If what you’re looking for is absent, it will not be amplified and it becomes equally easy to note its absence.
Molecular biology techniques in general, and PCR specifically, are incredibly powerful and flexible technologies. In the case of viruses like coronaviruses, that flexibility is advantageous because the viral genome is contained in a single-stranded molecule of RNA rather than DNA. Detecting the presence of the viral RNA in a patient sample, which is generally a throat swab containing viral particles expelled from the lungs and pharynx, requires first isolating the RNA, then turning it into DNA with the enzyme reverse transcriptase. That DNA is then amplified using PCR.
In either PCR or RT-PCR, detection of the amplified DNA region is accomplished by tagging the reaction with fluorescent probes. The probes bind nonspecifically to DNA, and when produced in abundance by PCR generate an easily detected signal. In actual practice, the kinetics of the PCR reaction are monitored by measuring the fluorescence after each cycle of PCR. This is known as quantitative PCR, or qPCR; when couple with reverse transcriptase, the process is called RT-qPCR.
PCR’s ability to detect the specific genetic signature of SARS-CoV-2 relies on the use of carefully selected primer oligonucleotides. Using the viral genome data published by the Chinese in January, the main primers were designed to amplify the genes coding for two viral encapsulation proteins. Along with those are primers for all SARS-like coronaviruses, as well as a primer for a human gene that should always be present, which acts as a positive control to make sure the reaction worked.
It’s In The Environment
Like any diagnostic or therapeutic technology, testing for COVID-19 is tightly controlled by regulatory agencies around the world. As frustrating as the delays caused by the necessary certifications may be, they’re understandable given that human lives are at stake. An emergency situation such as the current pandemic no doubt will relax some of those bureaucratic necessities, but they’re not likely to be eliminated entirely. Still, the simplicity of PCR and the availability of the reagents and instruments needed to perform the test are tempting targets for biohackers who are eager to do their part.
Fortunately, there’s a large unmet need for environmental testing that biohackers can pursue.
Chai
, a biotech company in Santa Clara, offers a low-cost, open qPCR instrument that’s capable of the exact kinds of protocols being used for human coronavirus testing. The instrument uses a Beagle Bone Black and while it is not cheap at $5,000 or so, it’s an order of magnitude less expensive than commercial, certified qPCR machines. Chai is currently marketing “environmental test kits” that can be used to swab doorknobs, desks, or other hard surfaces that might harbor droplets from an infected patient’s cough or touch. Thanks to PCR’s signal amplification ability, the samples can contain as little a single copy of the viral genome and still be detected.
Chai is clearly not playing games here and specifically caution against use with human samples. They are strictly in the environmental testing market, but that’s a good thing. Coronavirus can only get into the environment once it escapes from a host, and the virions can only survive for a limited amount of time away from a host cell. That makes environmental testing an excellent proxy for the viral load of the humans in that environment, and can be used to get an idea of the dynamics of that load over time. By making relatively cheap qPCR tests possible, Chai is offering a backdoor solution to the problem of limited human testing.
It’s unlikely that human COVID-19 testing via RT-qPCR can be made to go much faster than it already is. Even when the logistics problems regarding the manufacture and distribution of test kits are solved, there are only so many certified qPCR machines to go around, and only so many technicians to run them. Add to that the likelihood that the techs themselves will get sick, and human testing can only proceed so fast. Innovations like drive-through testing are only intended to protect health care workers and the testing environment (since the throat swab often causes patients to cough, drive-through testing where the patient only cracks the car window means a cough doesn’t contaminate an exam room). And such testing will only increase the number of samples that need to be processed.
Despite these challenges, the availability of PCR as a diagnostic method has been a boon to epidemiology in general and the fight against COVID-19 specifically. And if others follow Chai’s lead in environmental testing, with any luck we may soon see a flood of new data that will reveal the true scope of this pandemic and finally let us start making some headway against it. | 42 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230891",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2020-03-24T14:32:08",
"content": "This article actually leaves out a huge part of the testing problem: these are only testing for the presence of the virus. They’re not serological tests: that is, they don’t test for *antibodies* against the ... | 1,760,373,544.90828 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/24/breaking-into-a-secure-facility-stm32-flash/ | Breaking Into A Secure Facility: STM32 Flash | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"arm",
"attack",
"exception",
"firmware",
"memory read-out protection",
"microcontroller",
"security",
"stm",
"stm32"
] | In a perfect world, everything would be open source. Our current world, on the other hand, has a lot of malicious actors and people willing to exploit trade secrets if given the opportunity, so chip manufacturers take a lot of measures to protect their customers’ products’ firmware. These methods aren’t perfect, though, as [zapb] shows while
taking a deeper look into an STM microcontroller
.
The STM32F0 and F1 chips rely on various methods of protecting their firmware. The F0 has its debug interface permanently switched off, but the F1 still allows users access to this interface. It uses flash memory read-out protection instead, which has its own set of vulnerabilities. By generating exceptions and exploiting the intended functions of the chip during those exceptions, memory values can be read out of the processor despite the memory read-out protection.
This is a very detailed breakdown of this specific attack on theses controllers, but it isn’t “perfect”. It requires physical access to the debug interface, plus [zapb] was only able to extract about 94% of the internal memory. That being said, while it would be in STM’s best interests to fix the issue, it’s not the
worst attack we’ve ever seen on a piece of hardware
. | 20 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230831",
"author": "Erich Styger",
"timestamp": "2020-03-24T11:09:23",
"content": "I’m wondering why STM did not respond untilhttps://www.cert-bund.de/was involved? That sounds odd.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6230867",
... | 1,760,373,545.413972 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/24/inverse-kinematics-robot-arm-magna-doodles-the-time-for-you/ | Inverse Kinematics Robot Arm Magna-Doodles The Time For You | Erin Pinheiro | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"custom clock",
"drawing clock",
"electromagnet",
"inverse kinematics",
"magnadoodle",
"magnet",
"robot arm"
] | Following a surge of creativity fueled by the current lockdown, [Diglo] writes in with
his tabletop clock driven by a robotic arm drawing on a Magna Doodle tablet
. And if you have one of those still lying around with some old toys and don’t mind cannibalizing it for the project, you too can follow along the source files to build your own.
The clock works by exploiting the principle that Magna Doodle tablets work by being drawn on with a magnetic stylus. That way, to draw on one of them you don’t need to add a point of articulation to bring the pen up and down, [Diglo] simply attached a controllable electromagnet to the end of a two-dimensional SCARA arm. In total, the whole build uses three stepper motors, two to control the movement of the arm, and one on the back of the tablet to sweep a magnetic bar which “erases” it.
This clock is similar to another we’ve featured a few years ago,
which also used a Magna Doodle
, but greatly improves on the idea. If a Magna Doodle seems too childish to build a magnetic clock however, there’s always
ferrofluidic displays to try to dip your fingers into
, but we really think you should watch this one in action after the break first. | 8 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230811",
"author": "ekaggrat",
"timestamp": "2020-03-24T08:41:09",
"content": "great implementation but not as elegant as :https://hackaday.com/2015/10/06/robot-clock-writes-time-over-and-over-and-over/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,373,545.460983 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/23/ingenious-hacks-that-brought-the-original-prince-of-persia-to-life/ | Ingenious Hacks That Brought The Original Prince Of Persia To Life | Roger Cheng | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"apple II",
"jordan mechner",
"prince of persia"
] | For many 8-bit computing veterans, the original
Prince of Persia
game was our first exposure to fluid life-like animation on screen. This groundbreaking technical achievement earned the game’s place in nostalgia and history. Ars Technica invited its original creator [Jordan Mechner] to
sit in front of a camera and talk through many technical and game design challenges
he had to solve. (Video embedded below. Bonus: correct pronunciation of
Karateka
directly from the creator’s mouth.)
Enjoy the journey back in time as [Jordan] broke down the convoluted process behind
Prince of Persia
‘s rotoscope animation. Starting with VCR footage, to film negatives, to tracing out with black markers and white correction fluid to generate a high contrast reference suitable for the (then) state-of-the-art digitizer. But generating those frames was just the beginning! They consumed majority of an Apple II’s memory, thus fighting memory constraints was a persistent headache. Fortunately for us, that limitation also motivated memorable elements such as our “Shadow Man” alter ego.
This
Prince of Persia
feature is the latest episode of Ars Technica’s “War Stories” series, inviting people behind notable games to talk about their work behind the scenes. The creators of
Myst
put a lot of effort into minimizing the impact of CD-ROM seek times, an entirely theoretical endeavour as they had no CD burner for verification. The creators of
Crash Bandicoot
paged in game content from CD in 64kb chunks as a player progressed, allowing creation of levels too large to fit in a PlayStation’s memory all at once. Read over these and other
short synopsis of episodes so far
or go straight to their
YouTube playlist
.
If this talk of wrangling bits with 6502 assembly code has whet your appetite for more, the
source code for
Prince of Persia
is available for digging into. Don’t worry if you have long since lost track of your Apple II (or never had one) as the code can
run in an emulator
. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230799",
"author": "Digitalzombie",
"timestamp": "2020-03-24T07:12:32",
"content": "The Ars Technica “War Stories” are AWESOME!Every single one is a gem.And I don’t even visit their website. ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,373,545.507388 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/23/the-drone-that-can-play-dodgeball/ | The Drone That Can Play Dodgeball | Rich Hawkes | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"dodgebot",
"drone",
"event camera",
"quadcopter"
] | Drones (and by that we mean actual, self-flying quadcopters) have come a long way. Newer ones have cameras capable of detecting fast moving objects, but aren’t yet capable of getting out of the way of those objects. However, researchers at the University of Zurich have come up with a drone that can not only detect objects coming at them, but can quickly
determine that they’re a danger and get out of the way
.
The drone has cameras and accompanying algorithms to detect the movement in the span of a couple of milliseconds, rather than the 20-40 milliseconds that regular quad-copters would take to detect the movement. While regular cameras send the entire screens worth of image data to the copter’s processor, the cameras on the University’s drone are
event cameras
, which use pixels that detect change in light intensity and only they send their data to the processor, while those that don’t stay silent.
Since these event cameras are a new technology, the quadcopter processor required new algorithms to deal with the way the data is sent. After testing and tweaking, the algorithms are fast enough that the ‘copter can determine that an object is coming toward it and move out of the way.
It’s great to see the development of new techniques that will make drones better and more stable for the jobs they will do. It’s also nice that one day, we can fly a drone around without worrying about the neighborhood kids lobbing basketballs at them. While you’re waiting for your quadcopter delivered goods, check out
this article
on a quadcopter testbed for algorithm development. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230771",
"author": "Cbob",
"timestamp": "2020-03-24T03:58:21",
"content": "Those Skynet drones just got a little harder to take out",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6230845",
"author": "Prodigity",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,373,546.139127 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/23/lego-my-colorful-custom-clock/ | LEGO My Colorful Custom Clock | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"DS3231 RTC",
"led matrix",
"lego",
"LEGO clock",
"real time clock"
] | [Sofia] spent a lot of time looking around for the perfect LEGO clock. Eventually, she realized that
the perfect LEGO clock is, of course, the one you build yourself
. So if you find yourself staring at the same old boring clock, contemplating time and the meaning of time itself, why not spend some time making a new timepiece?
You probably already had the LEGO out (no judgment here). This build doesn’t take a whole lot of building blocks — just a microcontroller, a real-time clock module, some LED matrices to display the digits, shift registers if they’re not already built into the matrices, and a pair of buttons for control. [Sofia] used an Arduino Nano, but any microcontroller with enough I/O ought to work. Everybody needs a colorful new way to block out their time.
We love the way this clock looks, especially the transparent panels in front of the LED panels. Given the countless custom pieces out there from all the special sets over the years, we bet you could come up with some really interesting builds.
If your kid is too young to tell time, try building
a kid-friendly clock to give them segmented structure
.
Via
r/duino | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230740",
"author": "captnmike",
"timestamp": "2020-03-24T00:14:29",
"content": "Nice work",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6230818",
"author": "princeofpersia",
"timestamp": "2020-03-24T09:36:22",
"content": "I thoug... | 1,760,373,545.940284 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/23/mit-ventilator-designed-with-common-manual-resuscitator-submitted-for-fda-testing/ | MIT Ventilator Designed With Common Manual Resuscitator; Submitted For FDA Testing | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Medical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"mit",
"ventilator"
] | In many parts of the world the COVID-19 pandemic is causing shortages in hospital space, staff, medical supplies, and equipment. Severe cases may require breathing support, but there are only so many ventilators available. With that in mind,
MIT is working on FDA approval of an emergency ventilator system
(E-Vent). They have submitted the design to the FDA for fast track review. The project is open source, so once they have approval the team will release all the data needed to replicate it.
The design is actually made simple by using something that is very common: a manual resuscitator. You have doubtlessly seen these on your favorite medical show. It is the bag someone squeezes while the main character struggles valiantly to save their patient. Of course, having someone sit and squeeze the bag for days on end for thousands of people isn’t very practical and that’s where they’ve included an Arduino-controlled motor to automate the process.
The tricky thing is that, forcing air into your lungs isn’t always good for them. Even healthy lungs can be stressed by too much inflation and people who already have lung problems may be able to handle only a tenth of what a healthy set can manage. That’s why the device needs a closed loop control system that monitors pressure from the patient and modifies the flow.
Any solution should be utilized only in a healthcare setting with direct monitoring by a clinical professional. While it cannot replace an FDA-approved ICU ventilator, in terms of functionality, flexibility, and clinical efficacy, the MIT E-Vent is anticipated to have utility in helping free up existing supply or in life-or-death situations when there is no other option.
Further, any low-cost ventilator system must take great care regarding providing clinicians with the ability to closely control and monitor tidal volume, inspiratory pressure, bpm, and I/E ratio, and be able to provide additional support in the form of PEEP, PIP monitoring, filtration, and adaptation to individual patient parameters. We recognize, and would like to highlight for anyone seeking to manufacture a low-cost emergency ventilator, that failing to properly consider these factors can result in serious long-term injury or death.
This isn’t a unique idea, and the MIT team provides links to other similar projects. The team’s work is not totally online yet, because they are still testing. For example, the acrylic apparatus that squeezes the bag may not hold up to the repetitive stress very well. The team may look to other projects that predated the crisis. For example, have a look at the
AIR device
presented at a conference last year in the video below. There’s also this interesting document from
a Johns Hopkins resident
.
Almost as interesting as the device itself is the comments people are leaving about the design. It is a great example of how the Internet opens up totally new ways to collaborate on a critical problem like this one.
Of course, we’ve seen collaboration on
COVID-19 testing
, too. If you want to help, you can add your compute power to the virtual supercomputer
folding proteins to help find a cure
. | 48 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230685",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2020-03-23T20:24:21",
"content": "Well in these times improvisation is what we need, and to quote the hackers favourite movie, Wargames.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uVunn6Vux4",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": ... | 1,760,373,546.429449 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/23/a-boring-tale-with-six-sides/ | A Boring Tale With Six Sides | Jenny List | [
"cnc hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"boring",
"cnc",
"hexagon",
"mill"
] | Making a hole in a piece of material is a straightforward process, after all most of us will have some form of drill. If we need a hole that isn’t round though, after the inevitable joke about bad drill control leading to oval holes, what do we do? Get busy with a file perhaps? Or shell out for a shaped punch? [Skunkworks] has taken a different tack,
using LinuxCNC and a vertical mill to machine near-perfect hexagonal and other polygonal holes
.
The tool path appears to be more star-shaped than polygon shaped, the reason for which becomes apparent on watching the videos below the break as the rotation of the tool puts its cutting edge in a polygonal path. Anyone who has laboured with a file on a round hole in the past will be impressed with this piece of work.
The latest in the saga takes the work from simple hexes into other shapes like stars, and even tapered polygonal holes. These in particular would be a significantly difficult task by other means, so we look forward to what other developments come from this direction.
Thanks [Andy Pugh] for the tip. | 18 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230653",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2020-03-23T19:02:35",
"content": "This got me wondering. I remember these.http://i.ytimg.com/vi/L5AzbDJ7KYI/hqdefault.jpgI was presently surprised.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EGw45yD44Iw&feature=emb_title",
"parent_id": null,
"de... | 1,760,373,546.045325 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/23/the-new-xbox-just-how-fast-is-12-teraflops/ | The New Xbox: Just How Fast Is 12 TeraFLOPS? | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Games",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"floating point",
"flops",
"supercomputer",
"supercomputing",
"teraflop",
"teraflops",
"top500",
"xbox",
"xbox series x"
] | Microsoft’s new Xbox Series X, formerly known as Project Scarlet, is slated for release in the holiday period of 2020. Like any new console release, it promises better graphics, more immersive gameplay, and all manner of other superlatives in the press releases. In a sharp change from previous generations, however, suddenly everybody is talking about FLOPS. Let’s dive in and explore what this means, and what bearing it has on performance.
What is a FLOP anyway?
Typically, when we talk about “flops” with regards to a new console launch, we’re referring to something like the Sega Saturn, in which sales are drastically below expectations. In this case, we’re instead talking about FLOPS, or “floating point operations per second”. This measures the number of calculations a CPU or GPU can perform per second with floating point numbers. These days, it’s typical to talk about FP32 performance, or calculations with 32-bit floats. Scientific or other applications may be more concerned with FP64, or “double” performance, which typically returns a much lower figure.
The number of FLOPS a given processor can achieve is a way of comparing performance between different hardware. While software optimisations and different workloads mean that it’s not a perfect guide to how real-world applications perform, it’s a useful back-of-the-envelope number for comparison’s sake.
How Does The New Rig Stack Up?
Microsoft’s new console runs on AMD’s hottest new silicon.
Reports from Microsoft state that the GPU in the new Xbox Series X is
capable of delivering 12 teraflops, based on AMD’s new RDNA 2.0 technology.
Interesting to note is that the release talks about only the GPU performance. Over the last few decades, GPUs have come to exceed the raw processing power of CPUs, and thus this is the focus of the comparison.
For a consumer device that lives under a television, this is a monumental figure. In its time, Playstation 3 represented a huge advance in the amount of processing power tucked inside an affordable game console. Back then, the raw grunt of the PS3, combined with its ability to run Linux,
led to a series of supercomputing clusters around the world.
The biggest of these, the Condor Cluster, employed 1760 consoles, and was employed by the US Air Force for surveillance tasks.
Capable of 500 teraflops
, similar performance today could likely be gained with well under 100 Series X consoles. Unfortunately, Microsoft have announced no plans to allow users to run custom operating systems on the platform.
ASCI Red was a US government supercomputer, capable of 3.1 teraflops in its final guise, using Pentium II Xeon processors. It led the June 2000 TOP500 list, and used up to 850 kW of electricity when running.
Comparing the Series X to contemporary computer hardware, performance is on par with NVIDIA’s current flagship GPU, the GeForce RTX 2080 TI, which delivers 13.45 teraflops with 32-bit floating point math. Given the capability to run dual-GPU systems on the PC platform, and the fact that the new Xbox won’t be released until later this year, PCs will retain the performance lead, as expected.
Looking into the supercomputer realm is a fun exercise. Way back
in June 2000
, ASCI Red held the #1 spot on the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. The Xbox Series X should easily best this, and if you traveled back in time with one, you’d steal the crown. In the next publication in November, it had been beaten by its newer counterpart, ASCI White, with a real performance of 4.938 teraflops and a theoretical peak of 12.288. The Xbox Series X would still have a chance at holding the title until June of 2002, when NEC’s Earth Simulator came online,
boasting over 35 teraflops in real-world tests.
ASCI Red itself used 850kW in operation, with Earth Simulator using a monumental 3200 kW. It’s nice to know the Series X will
sip only around 300 W in use
. In twenty years we’ve made it possible for the world’s fastest supercomputer to make its way into the average living room for the most performant game of Fortnite possible.
If we look at older consoles, the gap is vast. The Xbox 360 put out just 240 gigaflops, while the original Xbox made do with just 20 gigaflops. Going back a further generation, the Playstation 1 and Nintendo 64 made do with somewhere in the order of just 100 megaflops. Advances in hardware have come thick and fast, and the roughly half-decade lives of each console mean there’s a big jump between generations.
Going back further is hardly worth considering, as the performance is so glacial. Prior to the Playstation 1, floating point units were a luxury, and 32-bit architectures were only just getting started. However, some tests have indicate
a Commodore 64 is capable of somewhere in the realm of 400 FLOPS per second
— in BASIC, with no FPU. Now, somewhere between 12.5-17 million C64s were sold, making it the best selling computer in history. Add them all up, and you get 6.8 gigaflops – over an order of magnitude less than a single Series X. Obviously, there’s no real way to achieve this in practice, but it gives one a rough idea just how far we’ve come!
What It All Means
Fundamentally, the Xbox Series X continues the roughly exponential growth in computing power in the console market. This will enable ever prettier gaming experiences, with
real-time ray tracing becoming a possibility
, along with
higher framerates and resolutions
.
With the availability of purpose-built, high-end hardware in the PC space, it’s unlikely we’ll see the Series X used in other realms, which is a shame because Linux on Playstation 3 was pretty excellent. Despite the similarities to PC architectures, both Microsoft and Sony have been resolute in keeping their platforms locked down, stopping users from running their own code or operating systems. Regardless, it’s impressive to see the computing power that’s now brought to bear in our very own living rooms. Game on! | 73 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230618",
"author": "Sjaak",
"timestamp": "2020-03-23T17:17:15",
"content": "In Dutch the word ‘flop’ means failure.. I suppose you can’t have enough flops..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6230635",
"author": "Thorste... | 1,760,373,546.348119 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/23/side-channel-attacks-hack-chat-with-samy-kamkar/ | Side-Channel Attacks Hack Chat With Samy Kamkar | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"audio",
"cold boot",
"dslr",
"electromagnetic",
"security",
"Side channel",
"The Hack Chat",
"Thermal"
] | Join us on Wednesday, March 25 at noon Pacific for the
Side-Channel Attacks Hack Chat
with Samy Kamkar!
In the world of computer security, the good news is that a lot of vendors are finally taking security seriously now, with the result that direct attacks are harder to pull off. The bad news is that in a lot of cases, they’re still leaving the side-door wide open. Side-channel attacks come in all sorts of flavors, but they all have something in common: they leak information about the state of a system through an unexpected vector. From monitoring the sounds that the keyboard makes as you type to watching the minute vibrations of a potato chip bag in response to a nearby conversation, side-channel attacks take advantage of these leaks to exfiltrate information.
Side-channel exploits can be the bread and butter of black hat hackers, but understanding them can be useful to those of us who are more interested in protecting systems, or perhaps to inform our reverse engineering efforts. Samy Kamkar knows quite a bit more than a thing or two about side-channel attacks, so much so that he gave
a great talk at the 2019 Hackaday Superconference
on just that topic. He’ll be dropping by the Hack Chat to “extend and enhance” that talk, and to answer your questions about side-channel exploits, and discuss the reverse engineering potential they offer. Join us and learn more about this fascinating world, where the complexity of systems leads to unintended consequences that could come back to bite you, or perhaps even help you.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, March 25 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. | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230607",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-03-23T16:47:38",
"content": "Side-channel attacks as applied to cryptoprocessors would be interesting.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6230641",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.... | 1,760,373,546.090029 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/23/gyroscopic-wi-fi-led-die-is-pretty-fly/ | Gyroscopic Wi-Fi LED Die Is Pretty Fly | Kristina Panos | [
"LED Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"castellated pads",
"esp8285",
"ESP8285-01F",
"gyro",
"gyroscope",
"LED cube",
"LED dice"
] | As cool as sculptural LED cubes are, the only thing you can really do is look at them. They’re not going to stand up to a lot of handling, and as tedious as it is to bend all those leads when building them, you probably wouldn’t want to mess with them anyway.
LED dice on the other hand are robust, blinky playthings with many possibilities
, especially if they have a gyroscope and wireless control like the one [moekoe] built. Inside this tiny 25cm³ die is the equally small ESP8285-01F, which lets [moekoe] control the rainbow light show with a Blynk app.
As you will see in the excellent build video that makes this build look challenging instead of impossible, the cube gets permanently sealed up with solder joints. Most but not all of these transfer power, ground, and data around the faces.
Once the cube is together, [moekoe] uses pogo pins to program it, and can charge the little LiPo inside through contact pads. We love the idea of using a cubical printed jig to help solder the PCB edges together, but not as much as we love [moekoe]’s
home-brewed SMT soldering setup
.
If you want an easier way to make sculptural LED cubes,
build yourself a lead-formin’ machine
. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230648",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2020-03-23T18:51:52",
"content": "Maybe encase it in clear resin and either have two corners as metal contacts and make a little cradle to charge it or just wrap some copper wire around each pcb and have wireless charging. Smd anything ten... | 1,760,373,545.994033 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/23/ask-hackaday-what-should-we-be-doing-during-coronavirus-lockdown/ | Ask Hackaday: What Should We Be Doing During Coronavirus Lockdown? | Mike Szczys | [
"Ask Hackaday",
"Current Events",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"coronavirus",
"Covid-19"
] | There’s a lot of good in the world and that includes you. Humanity has a way of coming together at crucial moments and we have certainly reached that with the outbreak and spread of the novel coronavirus. At this point, most people’s daily lives have been turned upside down. We can all have an impact on how this plays out.
It’s scary, it’s real, but we will get through this. What we need to focus on now is how we can behave that will lead to the best outcomes for the largest number of people. The real question is, how can we help? If you’re stuck at home it’s easy to feel powerless to help but that’s not true. Let’s cover a few examples, then open up the discussion in the comments so we can hear what has been working for you.
Hunker Down and Stay Home
The Hackaday readership is based all over the world, so do follow your local directives, but for a very large and growing number of countries the word is to stay home and thereby slow the spread of of the COVID-19 virus.
But to keep civilization running there are still many people that must go to work in critical roles like health care providers, food delivery and grocery, pharmacy, police and fire, people keeping the water and power running, and many more. We should do our part to protect their health by maintaining social distancing and quarantine practices. In that interest, it’s really important that you take great care of yourself and your family during this time.
Making a plan is your best friend in this case. Being stuck at home and constantly reading news of the outbreak is certain to affect your mental well-being. Put together a schedule for yourself and your family that provides the kind of stability you had during normal work/school/family life. Include time to unhook from the news and read a book, try out in-home exercise options, visit by phone or internet with friends and family, and do things that are silly, that make you happy, and keep you healthy so that you feel good and make it bearable to continue to
stay home.
Elliot Williams has a great example of this. He’s returned some of the normalcy of a daily schedule for his son (and the rest of the family) by
building an activity clock for a kindergartner who can’t yet tell time
. What other good ideas do we have in the “make cabin fever more bearable” category?
Conserve Resources
To my previous point, the better you can conserve your resources the less often you need to visit the store. I’m incredibly thankful for the people risking their own health to deliver food to stores, stock shelves, and work the checkout. Let’s all give them a helping hand by using their services as efficiently and infrequently as we can.
Whip up an inventory system for everything you have on hand and try to match it up to a menu plan. Figure out how many days each meal will last (leftovers are my fav) and this will let you know how long you can go between trips to the store. While you’re at it, make note of when items will spoil and work to use them completely before they do. This may sound small, but it has a huge impact if everyone does it!
Check Websites of Your Local Health Care Systems for Ways to Help
I’m sure this varies greatly from location to location, but I found out last week that our local hospital system has a Volunteer Services Team. The reason I found out about it is that the team put out
a call for “sewing savvy volunteers” here in Madison, Wisconsin
. Have you already guessed why they’re asking?
Yes, sadly the local system is already running out of protective masks for the hospital workers. Wouldn’t it be amazing if tailors from throughout the community were able to sew masks when the health workers are in dire need? That’s the plan and the volunteer services team is getting an approved design and instructions out to people in my area who have sewing machines.
Last week we saw that Prusa put out
a plan for 3D printable face shields
(usually used along with masks), we’ve also received word that hackerspaces are standing up organized efforts to help
like this one at TXRX Labs in Houston
. Things efforts seem perfect for the Hackaday crowd, but the key is to get in contact with the right group from your local health provider and contribute to a coordinated effort.
Connect with Your Parent-Teacher Association
It’s possible that students out of school will not return during this school year. But those kids are growing up every single day and they deserve the best education that we can give them. This is a huge challenge for all involved, and every bit of effort helps here.
The Parent-Teacher Association (or equivalent in your area) is an administrative body whose purpose is to facilitate coordination between the teaching system and the families of the students. Our community is highly skilled in computers, networking, and working remotely. Reach out to your PTA and let them know you’d like to help out. Can we be the volunteer IT services so many school districts and families need right now?
Hitch Your Computer to the Research Hive-Mind
It may seem small, but
adding your computer’s extra processing power to the Folding@Home effort
could have a big impact in research into stopping COVID-19. It’s kind of like mining bitcoin, except you’re mining research data about how the folded proteins inside the virus work.
This is needle-in-a-haystack work that lets researchers identify which drugs may be effective and where to focus their efforts. If the FAH effort were to help bring an effective drug into use even just one day sooner, that would mean a huge number of human lives saved. Let’s do this!
What Do You Think We Should Do To Help Right Now?
It is really hard to stay home and feel like you’re doing anything to help
. But of course, in doing so you already are helping to slow the virus! Can we do more?
How do you think we can have a meaningful impact on this crisis? Much effort is being focused right now on the health care response. What can we all do to aid in that? What are the other issues outside of health care that also need some attention to get things moving in the right direction? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. | 59 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230551",
"author": "Phillip Torrone",
"timestamp": "2020-03-23T14:06:57",
"content": "thanks for posting this for the community. look for the helpers, look for the hackers .. for the folks working on this that are covid-19 related or essential services, adafruit is here to help:ht... | 1,760,373,546.24047 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/23/esp32-s2-samples-show-up/ | ESP32-S2 Samples Show Up | Al Williams | [
"Microcontrollers",
"News"
] | [
"ESP32",
"ESP32-S2",
"espressif"
] | The ESP8266 is about six years old now and the ESP32 is getting more mainstream every day. Unsurprisingly, Espressif is developing even newer product and the ESP32-S2 was in the hands of some beta testers last year. Now it is finally landing as “final silicon” samples in people’s hands. [Unexpected Maker] got a few and a prototype development board for the chip and
shared his findings
in a recent video.
The ESP32-S2 has a single core LX7 running at 240 MHz along with a RISC-V-based coprocessor. Onboard is 320K of RAM and 128K of ROM. You might notice this is less than the ESP32. However, the device can support up to 128MB of external RAM and up to 1GB of external flash. It also supports USB, although the prototype module appears to have an external USB chip on it.
There are no extras like Bluetooth, Ethernet or CAN, but there are 43 GPIO and 14 touch sensors. There are other differences, some plus and some minus. There are two UARTs, down from the ESP32’s three. However, there’s also a camera interface and more crypto hardware. There is a way to use time of flight measurements with WiFi to estimate position, which could be interesting if it works well.
The big news, though, is automatic power management that claims 5uA in idle mode and 24uA [while running the ULP coprocessor] at 1% duty cycle. Honestly, it almost seems like the -S2 is really meant to be a secure ESP8266 more than a next-generation ESP32. That’s not totally fair since the new board has lots more processing power than an ESP8266, but still.
We looked at the -S2 when
Espressif announced it
. The ESP-32 could
operate on relatively low power with effort
, but the -S2 should make even lower power operation easier. | 56 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230506",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2020-03-23T11:27:59",
"content": "“The ESP32-S2 has a single core LX7 running at 240 MHz along with a RISC-V-based coprocessor”They should drop LX and adopt RISC-V everywhere.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,546.675049 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/23/classic-macintosh-gets-an-ipad-infusion/ | Classic Macintosh Gets An IPad Infusion | Tom Nardi | [
"classic hacks",
"Mac Hacks"
] | [
"adapter",
"ipad",
"mac",
"mac Classic",
"touch screen"
] | We know the classic Mac fans in the audience won’t be happy about this one, but the final results are simply too clean to ignore. With a laser-cut adapter and a little custom wiring, [Travis DeRose] has come up with a repeatable way to modernize a Compact Macintosh (Plus, SE, etc) by
swapping out
all
of its internals for an iPad mini
.
He goes over the whole process in the video after the break, while being kind enough to spare our sensitive eyes from having to see the Mac’s enclosure stripped of its original electronics. We’ll just
pretend
hope that the computer was so damaged that repair simply wasn’t an option.
Anyway, with a hollow Mac in your possession, you can install the adapter that allows the iPad to get bolted in place of the original CRT monitor. You won’t be able to hit the Home button anymore, but otherwise it’s a very nice fit.
Those with some first hand iPad experience might be wondering how you wake the tablet up once the Mac is all buttoned back up. That’s an excellent question, and one that [Travis] wrestled with for awhile. In the end he came up with a very clever solution: he cuts into a charging cable and splices in a normally-closed momentary push button. Pushing the button essentially “unplugs” the iPad for a second, which just so happens to wake it up. It’s an elegant solution that keeps you from having to make any modifications to that expensive piece of Apple hardware.
If there’s one thing we’re not thrilled with, it’s the empty holes left behind where the ports, switches, and floppy drive were removed. As we’ve seen in the past, you can simply
cut the ports off of a motherboard and glue them in place
to make one of these conversions look a little more convincing. If you’re going to do it, might as well go all the way. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230478",
"author": "Josiah David Gould",
"timestamp": "2020-03-23T08:14:07",
"content": "I hate to be the first one, but gutting a case and gluing an iPad in there does not make this a hack.Now, add in a Lightning to ADB for a keyboard and mouse and make the floppy functional… Is t... | 1,760,373,546.48317 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/22/compliant-quadruped-legs-using-servos/ | Compliant Quadruped Legs Using Servos | Danie Conradie | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"hobby servo",
"james bruton",
"OpenDog",
"quadruped",
"robotics",
"walking robot"
] | Walking robots that move smoothly are tricky to build and usually involve some sort of compliant leg mechanism — a robot limb that can rebound like natural physiology for much better movement than what a stiff machine can accomplish. In his everlasting quest to build a real working robot dog, [James Bruton] is working on an affordable and accessible Mini Robot Dog, starting with the
compliant leg mechanism
.
The 3D printed leg mechanism has two joints (hip and knee), with an RC servo to drive each. To make the joints compliant, both are spring-loaded to absorb external forces, and the deflection is sensed by a hall effect sensor with moving magnets on each side. Using the inputs from the hall effect sensor, the servo can follow the deflection and return to its original position smoothly after the force dissipates. This is a simple technique but it shows a lot of promise. See the video after the break.
A project can sometimes develop a life of its own, or in the case of [James]’s
OpenDog
, spawn experimentally evolving offspring. This is number four, and it’s designed to be a platform for learning how to make a quadruped walk properly, and to be simple and cheap enough for others to build. We’re looking forward to seeing how it turns out.
If you missed it, also check out this robot’s weird sibling,
self-balancing Sonic
. | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230504",
"author": "ThisGuy",
"timestamp": "2020-03-23T11:21:18",
"content": "Speaking as a mechatronics engineer, it’s a nice idea, but I think what we really need is a somewhat affordable BLDC controller with current control/feedback which could implement this directly in the con... | 1,760,373,546.729302 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/22/eavesdropping-assistant-disturbs-the-sound-of-silence/ | Eavesdropping Assistant Disturbs The Sound Of Silence | Sven Gregori | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"Assistant",
"dc motor",
"laser cut",
"microphone",
"social interaction"
] | Unless you happen to be from Finland, this is just an all too familiar situation: you’re stuck in an inescapable situation with this one person who is really more of an acquaintance than a friend, and neither of you knows who should say something in hopes of keeping a conversation going. Awkward silence is inevitable, and the longer it lasts, the more excruciating the thought of opening your mouth becomes. Well, consider those days over, thanks to [Jasper Choi] and his friends, who blessed us with
the
System for Awkward Silence Solution and Interaction Enhancer
, or SASSIE.
Built as a laser-cut rotating cylinder, and equipped with a pair of microphones, SASSIE detects and counts the duration of any ongoing silence in the room. Once a pre-defined time limit is reached, it rotates itself to a random direction, symbolically pointing a finger to one of the people present in the room to indicate its their turn to speak now. To break the silence right off the bat, the finger pointing is accompanied by some pre-recorded messages. Unfortunately the audio files exceeded the storage of the Arduino Uno used here, so the responsibilities had to be divided between two Arduinos, arranged with the help of some simple serial communication.
While this is obviously a tongue-in-cheek project, it might just be a welcoming relieve for people with social anxiety, and there is definitely potential to take the idea further. Maybe with some inspiration from
this happy robot fellow
, a future version might ease the conversation even further by suggesting a topic along the way. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230431",
"author": "Morusa",
"timestamp": "2020-03-23T02:35:01",
"content": "speechless…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6230436",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2020-03-23T02:55:32",
"content": "The only Fin I’... | 1,760,373,546.778849 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/22/hackaday-links-march-22-2020/ | Hackaday Links: March 22, 2020 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"camera",
"cons",
"Covid-19",
"face mask",
"hackaday links",
"ham radio",
"lens",
"license",
"mask",
"n95",
"O-ring",
"OSHW Summit 2020",
"PPE",
"VE testing",
"waterproof"
] | Within the span of just two months, our world of unimaginable plenty and ready access to goods manufactured across the globe has been transformed into one where the bare essentials of life are hard to find at any price. The people on the frontline of the battle against COVID-19 are suffering supply chain pinches too, often at great risk to their health. Lack of proper personal protective equipment (PPE), especially face masks, is an acute problem, and the shortage will only exacerbate the problem as healthcare workers go down for the count. Factories are gearing up to make more masks, but in the meantime, the maker and hacker community can pitch in. FreeSewing, an open-source repository of sewing patterns, has a pattern for
a simple face mask called the Fu
that can be made quickly by an experienced threadworker. Efficacy of the masks made with that pattern will vary based on the materials used, obviously; a slightly less ad hoc effort is the
100 Million Mask Challenge
, where volunteers are given a pattern and enough lab-tested materials to make 100 face masks. If you know how to sew, getting involved might make a difference.
As people around the world wrap their heads around the new normal of social distancing and the loss of human contact, there’s been an understandable spike in interest in amateur radio.
QRZ.com reports
that the FCC has recorded an uptick in the number of amateur radio licenses issued since the COVID-19 outbreak, and license test prep site
HamRadioPrep.com
has been swamped by new users seeking to prepare for taking the test. As we’ve discussed, the barrier for entry to ham radio is normally very low, both in terms of
getting your license
and
getting the minimal equipment
needed to get on the air. One hurdle aspiring hams might face is the cancellation of so-called VE testing, where Volunteer Examiners administer the written tests needed for each license class. Finding a face-to-face VE testing session now might be hard, but the VEs are likely to find a way to adapt. After all, hams were social distancing before social distancing was cool.
The list of public events that have been postponed or outright canceled by this pandemic is long indeed, with pretty much everything expected to draw more than a handful of people put into limbo. The hacking world is not immune, of course, with many high-profile events scuttled. But we hackers are a resourceful bunch, and the 10th annual Open Source Hardware Summit managed to go off on schedule as a virtual meeting last week. You can watch
the nearly eight-hour livestream
while you’re self-isolating. We’re confident that other conferences will go virtual in the near-term too rather than cancel outright.
And finally, if you’re sick of pandemic news and just want some escapist engineering eye candy, you could do worse than checking out
what it takes to make a DSLR camera waterproof
. We’ve honestly always numbered cameras as among the very least waterproof devices, but it turns out that photojournalists and filmmakers are pretty rough on their gear and expect it to keep working even so. The story here focuses (sorry) on Olympus cameras and lenses, which you’ll note that Takasu-san only ever refers to as “splash-proof”, and the complex system of O-rings and seals needed to keep water away from their innards. For our money, the best part was learning that lenses that have to change their internal volume, like zoom lenses, need to be vented so that air can move in and out. The engineering needed to keep water out of a vented system like that is pretty impressive. | 23 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230387",
"author": "Piecutter",
"timestamp": "2020-03-22T23:23:28",
"content": "“After all, hams were social distancing before social distancing was cool.”Yeah, kind of a hard wired instinct for a lot of them.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,546.914597 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/22/a-nes-motherboard-for-the-open-source-generation/ | A NES Motherboard For The Open Source Generation | Jenny List | [
"Nintendo Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"nes",
"retrocomputing",
"reverse engineering"
] | As the original hardware from the golden era of 8-bit computer gaming becomes a bit long in the tooth, keeping it alive has become something of a concern for enthusiasts. There have been a succession of remanufactured parts for many of the major platforms of the day, and now thanks to [Redherring32] it’s the turn of the NES console.
The OpenTendo is a completely open-source replacement for an original front-loading Nintendo Entertainment System motherboard
, using both original or after-market Nintendo CPU and PPU chips, and other still readily available components. It doesn’t incorporate Nintendo’s CIC lockout chip — Drew Littrell wrote
a great article on how that security feature worked
— but if you really need the authenticity there is also the
NullCIC
project that can simulate that component.
It’s an interesting exercise in reverse engineering as well as a chance to look at the NES at the chip level. Also for Nintendo-heads, it provides all the component footprints and schematic items in KiCAD format. Will many be built? Given that the NES was the best-selling console of its time there should be no shortage of originals to be found, but that in no way invalidates the effort put into this project. There will be NES consoles somewhere running for decades to come because of work such as this, simply remember that you don’t need to blow in the slot to make it work! | 36 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230341",
"author": "Vinny",
"timestamp": "2020-03-22T20:22:44",
"content": "Knowing Nintendo’s behavior when defending their IP, how much time until the author/Github gets a cease-and-desist letter?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,373,546.847481 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/22/new-part-day-battery-less-nfc-e-paper-display/ | New Part Day: Battery-Less NFC E-Paper Display | Erin Pinheiro | [
"Slider",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"e-ink",
"e-ink display",
"e-paper",
"e-paper display",
"intel",
"New Part Day",
"NFC",
"no battery",
"waveshare"
] | Waveshare, known for e-ink components aimed at hobbyists among other cool parts, has recently released a very interesting addition to their product line.
This is an enclosed e-ink display which gets updated over a wireless NFC connection
. By that description, nothing head-turning, but the kicker is that there is no battery inside the device at all, as it harvests the energy needed from the wireless communication itself.
Just like wireless induction charging in certain smartphones, the communication waves involved in NFC can generate a small current when passing through a coil, located on this device’s PCB. Since microcontrollers and e-ink displays consume a very small amount of current compared to other components such as a backlit LCD or OLED display, this harvested passive energy is enough to allow the display to update. And because e-paper requires no power at all to retain its image, once the connection is ended, no further battery backup is needed.
The innovation here doesn’t come from Waveshare however, as in 2013
Intel had already demoed a very similar device to promising results
. There’s
some more details about the project
, but it never left the proof of concept stage despite being awarded two best paper awards. We wonder why it hadn’t been made into a commercial product for 5 years, but we’re glad it’s finally here for us to tinker with it.
E-paper is notorious for having very low refresh rates when compared to more conventional screens, much more so when driven in this method, but
there are ways to speed them up a bit
. Nevertheless, even when used as designed, they’re perfectly suited for being used in
clocks which are easy on the eyes
without a glaring backlight.
[Thanks Steveww for the tip!] | 30 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230291",
"author": "WereCatf",
"timestamp": "2020-03-22T17:48:26",
"content": "Too expensive, by far, though not Waveshare’s fault. When will someone come out with a cheaper competitor for e-Ink?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,373,547.555542 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/22/coronavirus-and-foldinghome-more-on-how-your-computer-helps-medical-research/ | Coronavirus And Folding@Home; More On How Your Computer Helps Medical Research | Mike Szczys | [
"Featured",
"Medical Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"distributed computing",
"folding@home",
"protein",
"research",
"virus"
] | On Wednesday morning we asked the Hackaday community to
donate their extra computer cycles for Coronavirus research
. On Thursday morning the number of people contributing to Team Hackaday had doubled, and on Friday it had doubled again. Thank you for putting those computers to work in pursuit of drug therapies for COVID-19.
I’m writing today for two reasons, we want to keep up this trend, and also answer some of the most common questions out there. Folding@Home (FAH) is an initiative that simulates proteins associated with several diseases, searching for indicators that will help medical researchers identify treatments. These are complex problems and your efforts right now are incredibly important to finding treatments faster. FAH loads the research pipeline, generating a data set that researchers can then follow in every step of the process, from identifying which chemical compounds may be effective and how to deliver them, to testing they hypothesis and moving toward human trials.
First, here’s the rundown on how easy it is to set your computer up to help with Folding@Home’s Coronavirus effort:
Download and run the installer
for Linux, Mac, or Windows. Some people reported they needed to us the
alternate download links
.
Choose any name to identify your efforts on the public ranking system
Use the Team Hackaday team number to contribute to our collective rankings:
44851
It’s optional but I recommend getting your own passkey — it’s a hash that uniquely identifies your efforts and
you can get one emailed to you on the FAH Passkey page
Okay, let’s answer some questions! First up, does this actually make a difference?
Folding@Home Has a Record of Producing Results
The Folding@Home project started back in 2000. Much has been accomplished over the course of the past 20 years and I encourage you to go and read the lengthy
Examples of application in biomedical research
section of the Wikipedia page which takes an in-depth look at the impacts.
The effort has identified drug therapies for Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases, it’s been used in drug design for combating HIV and influenza (both are viral), and is used to study how cancer mutates. Now we have the chance to apply that to the COVID-19 virus. On an explain-it-like-I’m-five level, scientists are trying to simulate every possible combination of protein folding patterns, looking for locations that would let medicine grab hold and do some good.
It’s a huge challenge, similar to trying every combination on a padlock, but this lock takes a mind-bogglingly large number of combinations. Research scientists highlight where the most likely solutions lie, then use the mind-bogglingly huge power of the Folding@Home network and sets to work running the simulations. How powerful is the FAH network? Wikipedia lists it at 470 petaFLOPS as of early March 2020 which means 416 quadrillion floating point operations per second. That’s 416 million billion math problems solved every second!
But here’s the best part of all of this, the project is non-profit and makes the data freely available to other researchers upon request.
Can I Make Sure My Computer Only Works on the COVID-19 Problem?
No, but you don’t need to since the group is already prioritizing the coronavirus effort. Although the software does offer the option to work on a specific area of research, COVID-19 is not specifically listed. That is likely because this pandemic is fast moving and it’s not worth trying to push a new version of the software just to add this setting. For now, leave this on the default of “Any” and your computer will work on COVID-19 whenever there are Work Units (WU) available.
You can use the built-in web interface found at
http://localhost:7396/
to see what problem your computer is currently working on. Here you can see the “Learn more…” screen from currently running instance. This week I have only seen one time that my computer was working on a different project.
My Computer is Set Up, Why is it Idle Right Now?
The FAH servers dish out those WUs as fast as they can, but right now the network is growing as more people add their computers to the network. When all of the staged WUs run out, your computer will be idle until more become available. This has nothing to do with you, project maintainers are working to keep this buffer full.
Will This Lead to a Vaccine?
I’m not an expert but I believe the answer is that this research seeks to identify pharmaceutical treatments and a better understanding of how the protiens in the virus work. This is not necessarily in pursuit of a vaccine.
This is still incredibly important, it means that researchers are looking for drugs that can be used to treat patients who have the virus. Right now, COVID-19 is really good at evading our body’s natural defenses — our immune system. If drug therapies are discovered that weaken the virus, it may lead to our immune system having a foothold to fight the infection.
We need both a vaccine and drug therapies — consider the example of the seasonal flu where we have vaccines to protect people from infection and antiviral drugs to treat at-risk populations who have been infected. Research into both should be, and is, running in parallel.
Use #44851 for Team Hackaday
This effort is gamified, so join your fellow hackers on Team Hackaday by using team #44851 when you configure your Folding@Home software. When we first published, we had 21
active team members
, by Friday afternoon there were 737. Can we make that 7000 by the end of the week? | 56 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230235",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2020-03-22T15:03:29",
"content": "Forgive my ignorance on the topic, but who ultimately uses the data generated from this? Don’t get me wrong, it’s very important for everyone to help anyway they can but I always have in the back of my min... | 1,760,373,547.376594 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/20/keep-the-family-at-bay-while-working-from-home-with-this-wifi-do-not-disturb-dongle/ | Keep The Family At Bay While Working From Home With This WiFi Do Not Disturb Dongle | Dan Maloney | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"ESP32",
"ESP8266",
"neopixel",
"privacy",
"telecommuting",
"wifi",
"work from home",
"ws2812"
] | Those who have been suddenly introduced to the wonderful world of working from home over the last couple of weeks may have experienced a bit of culture shock. Even with today’s open floorplan workspaces and less-formal expectations, work isn’t home. That’s especially true with young children in the house, who’ll probably respond to seeing mommy or daddy working from home much differently than [Bob] from accounting would at the office.
To smooth out the rough spots of transitioning to a full-time work-from-home setup, [Brian Lough] threw together
this web-enabled “do not disturb” beacon
for his office door. The original idea was to simply provide a red light and a green light to let the rest of the family know when [Brian] would be in a meeting, but in an example of scope creep that turned out to be useful, [Mrs. Lough] rewrote the spec to include a button on the family-facing side so that she could alert him that his presence is requested.
[Brian] went through a couple of prototype using both an ESP32 and an ESP8266. We were rooting for the ESP32, which [Brian] was leveraging for its built-in capacitive touch input. That would have eliminated a physical button, but alas, the ESP8266 made it into the final build, along with lots and lots of Blu-Tack. The video below details the build and the code, and features an adorable Irish lesson as a bonus.
Yes, a simple text message would probably have satisfied the specs, but where’s the sport in that? Then again, as [Brian] points out, this build seemed
oddly familiar
for a good reason. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229765",
"author": "Kevin Kessler",
"timestamp": "2020-03-20T18:59:41",
"content": "The other danger to work-from-home productivity is being surrounded by various microcontroller development boards, test equipment, and new project ideas.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,547.477624 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/20/linux-fu-mapping-files/ | Linux Fu: Mapping Files | Al Williams | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Skills"
] | [
"file manipulation",
"Linux Fu",
"memory mapped"
] | If you use C or C++, you have probably learned how to open a file and read data from it. Usually, we read a character or a line at a time. At least, it seems that way. The reality is there are usually quite a number of buffers between you and the hard drive, so your request for a character might trigger a read for 2,048 characters and then your subsequent calls return from the buffer. There may even be layers of buffers feeding buffers.
A modern computer can do so much better than reading using things using old calls like
fgetc
. Given that your program has a huge virtual address space and that your computer has a perfectly good memory management unit within it, you can ask the operating system to simply map the file into your memory space. Then you can treat it like any other array of characters and let the OS do the rest.
The operating system doesn’t necessarily read the entire file in at one time, it just reserves space for you. Any time you hit a page that isn’t in memory, the operating system grabs it for you invisibly. Pages that you don’t use very often may be discarded and reloaded later. Behind the scenes, the OS does a lot so you can work on very large files with no real effort. The call that does it all is
mmap
.
Of course, there is always a catch. If you have a truly large file, you might have to do some work to map it partially and then map it again. Also creating or extending files is a bit more work using mapping. Still, memory mapping is easy to do in most common cases and well worth learning about.
Decisions
The first thing you have to decide is if you want to read the file or both read and write to the file. If you only need read access, you can ask for a private mapping. That means you’ll get the file as it exists and any changes you make will simply copy the pages to your own private copy. Typically, you won’t change files that you open like this anyway unless you create a new file to write changes to yourself.
However, if you want to write to the file just like you write to memory you’ll need a shared mapping. This can be used to share data with other processes, but it also makes sure the file gets updates as you make them — well, sort of. We’ll talk about
msync
a bit later.
Reading is Fundamental
You can find
example code online
for a simple word count program similar to
wc (mmwc)
. Instead of using
standard I/O calls (stdwd)
, it uses
open
to open the file for reading and then maps it into the program’s address space. We need to know the file size: a job for
stat
. Here’s part of the code:
int fd = open(filename, O_RDONLY); // open file
struct stat finfo;
char *b;
if ( fd == -1 )
{
perror(filename);
return 2;
}
if ( fstat( fd, &finfo ) == -1 ) // learn size of file
{
perror(filename);
return 3;
}
b=mmap( NULL, finfo.st_size, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, fd, 0 ); // map to memory
if ( b == MAP_FAILED )
{
perror("mmap");
return 4;
}
The arguments to
mmap
are simple. The first is an address. You almost never need to specify the address unless you are doing something exotic. If you do, there are many rules about how to set the address that vary based on platform. By specifying
NULL
,
mmap
will pick a spot for you. The next argument is a length followed by flags. In this case, we tell the system we only care to read the file. We also specify a private mapping and then the filehandle and an offset from the start of the file.
Once this call succeeds, the
b
variable has a pointer to the entire file in memory. Printing it out would be as easy as:
while (--len) putchar *b++;
The following code implements a simple word counting engine. Note the function
do_work
never uses any call that would relate to the input file. It simply processes data in memory:
while (len--) // process each character
{
if ( *b == '\n' ) l++;
if ( isspace(*b) )
{
if (state==1)
{
w++;
state=0;
}
}
else state=1;
b++;
}
Writing and the msync Consideration
Writing is a little trickier because the file is shared and also needs to have contents already. You might, for example, use
lseek
to set a file position and just write something at the end so the file was preloaded.
Before Linux 2.6.19, you had to call
msync
to make sure the file wrote to disk, but now you don’t. However, if you think your code may run on older kernels, it might be wise to use
msync
when writing to a mapped file.
In the example program
mmup.c,
we sidestep the size problems by working on the file in place. I also put a call into
msync
for good measure. The
mmap
line is similar to the previous version:
b = mmap( NULL, finfo.st_size, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0 );
Look at how simple the conversion code is:
int do_work( char *b, unsigned int len )
{
while (len--)
{
*b=toupper(*b);
b++;
}
return 0;
}
Isn’t that easy?
Compilers and libraries are pretty good these days, so I’ll leave performance measurements as an exercise for the interested. A lot will depend on how good your disk I/O system is, too. In theory, the memory mapped I/O should be faster than a program that is really doing disk I/O. However, libraries may be doing buffering and even mapping behind your back anyway, so the performance difference could be very slight. But the simplification in the code is a big plus regardless of the performance.
Perfect?
This seems great, but you should be aware of some potential issues. We are used to thinking that if we read some data from disk and nothing goes wrong, we can forget about it. But mapping a file isn’t the same as reading it. Suppose you map a file on a network drive and maybe read some pages out of it. Then the network goes down. A new page read will cause a fault because the underlying file is now gone. You can catch the
SIGBUS
signal that indicates this, but then what will you do?
Of course, if you still support 32-bit operating systems, you may find you quickly run out of address space if you process large files. True, you can make a smaller window with an offset in the file, but it is more work.
On the other hand,
mmap
makes many file handling programs simpler and easier to write. It is worth having in your arsenal of Linux programming tricks. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229745",
"author": "mm",
"timestamp": "2020-03-20T17:51:19",
"content": "Invalid security token",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6229747",
"author": "N",
"timestamp": "2020-03-20T17:59:09",
"content": "The correct ti... | 1,760,373,547.428154 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/20/hackaday-podcast-059-hydraulic-rockets-and-presses-machine-vision-that-bounces-and-stares-and-smart-speakers-that-listen-to-you/ | Hackaday Podcast 059: Hydraulic Rockets And Presses, Machine Vision That Bounces And Stares, And Smart Speakers That Listen To You | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams undertake a journey through the week of fantastic hacks. Add a new level of complexity to model rockets by launching them from a silo via pneumatic ram before the combustibles even get involved. The eyes of that sculpture are actually following you — and with laser focus! The Game Boy is a pillar of pop culture for a reason, there’s a superb talk that outlines all of the interesting choices that made the electronics so special. We round out the show with a rousing discussion of a space tow truck and a scholarly look at the sporadic wake patter of Alexa et al.
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 059 Show Notes:
New This Week:
The Corona Clock
Join Team Hackaday To Crunch COVID-19 Through Folding@Home
3D Printed Parts Keep Respirators Operational During COVID-19 Epidemic
Saving 4 Patients With Just 1 Ventilator
Corona Cancels Cons
Sophi Kravitz’s Keynote at Open Hardware Summit
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Watchman Watches You Watching Him Watch You
Silo Launched Model Rocket Goes Thoomp
Manual To Hydraulic Press, With A Paint Sprayer
Rover Runs Slow And Steady On Solar Power
Sawppy the Rover
Robotic Ball Bouncer Uses Machine Vision To Stay On Target
Juggling Machine Listens To The Bounce To Keep Ball In The Air
The Evolution of an Arduino Project – YouTube
The Ultimate Game Boy Talk
CCC “The Ultimate Talk” collection
Quick Hacks:
Mike’s Picks:
This Barometer Looks Mighty Fine, Rain Or Shine
Inside A CAN Bus Mileage Manipulator
Can Lego Break Steel?
Elliot’s Picks:
Patterned Plywood Makes For Attractive Speakers
Used Soda Stream Cylinder Becomes DIY Canned Air
Custom Reddit Keyboard Only Needs One Hand
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Smart Speakers “Accidentally” Listen Up To 19 Times A Day
Northrop Grumman Tests Space Tow Truck | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,373,547.190922 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/20/prusa-advises-on-printed-medical-devices-releases-face-shield/ | Prusa Advises On Printed Medical Devices, Releases Face Shield | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"face shield",
"food safe",
"medical devices",
"printable",
"prusa"
] | Like everyone else, hackers and makers want to do something to help control the spread of COVID-19. The recent posts on Hackaday dealing with DIY and open source approaches to respirators, ventilators, and masks have been some of the most widely read and commented on in recent memory. But it’s important to remember that the majority of us aren’t medical professionals, and that even the most well-meaning efforts can end up making things worse if they aren’t done correctly.
Which is
exactly what [Josef Průša] wanted to make clear about 3D printed medical equipment
in his latest blog post. Like us, he’s thrilled to see all the energy the maker community is putting into brainstorming ways we can put our unique skills and capabilities to use during this global pandemic, but he also urged caution. Printing out an untested design in a material that was never intended for this sort of application could end up being more dangerous than doing nothing at all.
The nested design lends itself to mass production.
To say that he and his team are authorities in the realm of fused deposition modeling (FDM) would be something of an understatement. They know better than most what the technology is and is not capable of, and they’re of the opinion that using printed parts in respirators and other breathing devices isn’t viable until more research and testing is done
For example, how can we ensure the porous plastic parts are sterilized and not just serving as a breeding ground for bacteria? It’s hardly a new concern; the debate about
printed objects in food contact applications has been going on for years
.
The safest option is to only use printed parts for structural components that don’t need to be sterile. To that end, [Josef] used the post to announce a newly published design of a
printable face shield for medical professionals
. Starting with an existing open source design, the Prusa Research team used their experience to optimize the headband for faster and easier printing. They can produce four headbands at once on each of the printers in their farm, which will allow them to make as many as 800 shields per day without impacting their normal business operations. The bottleneck on production is actually how quickly they can cut out the clear visors with their in-house laser, not the time it takes to print the frames.
It’s easy to get excited when
success stories featuring 3D printed medical devices are in the news
, but that doesn’t mean you should be cranking out lifesaving devices with that roll of bargain PLA you’ve had sitting around the shop. As difficult as it may be for some of us to admit, the safest thing might be to
let our spare CPU cycles do battle with COVID-19 instead
. | 37 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229703",
"author": "Jim",
"timestamp": "2020-03-20T15:20:41",
"content": "I agree with the final comment. 3D printing is cool, but things like headbands are normally made by injection molding, and produce a solid and easily sterilizable end product. Most 3D printing leaves small in... | 1,760,373,547.27578 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/20/this-week-in-security-working-from-home-edition/ | This Week In Security: Working From Home Edition | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"coronavirus",
"HTTP Desync",
"Trend Micro"
] | As the world sits back and waits for Coronavirus to pass, the normally frantic pace of security news has slowed just a bit. Google is not exempt, and
Chrome 81 has been delayed as a result
. Major updates to Chrome and Chrome OS are paused indefinitely, but security updates will continue as normal. In fact, Google has verified that the security related updates will be packaged as minor updates to Chrome 80.
Chinese Viruses Masquerading as Chinese Viruses
Speaking of COVID-19, researchers at Check Point Research stumbled upon
a malware campaign that takes advantage of the current health scare
. A pair of malicious RTF documents were being sent to various Mongolian targets. Created with a tool called “
Royal Road
“, these files target a set of older Microsoft Word vulnerabilities.
This particular attack drops its payload in the Microsoft Word startup folder, waiting for the next time Word is launched to run the next stage. This is a clever strategy, as it would temporarily deflect attention from the malicious files. The final payload is a custom RAT (Remote Access Trojan) that can take screenshots, upload and download files, etc.
While the standard disclaimer about the difficulty of attribution does apply, this particular attack seems to be originating from Chinese intelligence agencies. While the Coronavirus angle is new, this campaign seems to stretch back to 2017.
HTTP Desync
It’s a fairly common practice to build web services with a dedicated front-end server, and then a back-end server or group of servers. I just recently migrated a handful of websites that I host to this paradigm, using an Nginx server as a shared front-end that routes traffic to the appropriate Apache back-end server. Nginx scales better than Apache, and it helps ration public IPv4 addresses. There is an attack that takes advantage of this arrangement: HTTP request smuggling.
When using a dedicated front-end, common practice is to share a TCP connection, and potentially an SSL connection, and send all the traffic to the back-end in a single shared stream. Particularly when using SSL, the performance gain is substantial. Using a shared stream does introduce a dose of extra complexity. What happens when the front-end interprets a request differently than the back-end, and how does the back-end make sure to keep requests separate?
Back in 2005, an attack was devised that took advantage of the problems inherent in these two questions. The original
HTTP Request Smuggling attack
(
whitepaper
) was as simple as including two “Content-Length” headers in a request. It was found that in some combinations of front-end and back-end software, the front-end would use the last “Content-Length” header to interpret the request, whereas the web server itself would use the first header. With a bit of careful request crafting, then, an attacker could send a single HTTP request to the front-end, and have that single request interpreted as two separate requests by the back-end. This seems like a rather unimpressive attack, until you consider that many deployments rely on the front-end server for request verification and security controls. If you can sneak a malicious request past the front-end by embedding it in one that is harmless, you may have a path to attack the back-end server directly.
Request Smuggling didn’t catch on as a viable attack, and so much time has passed that all the major products automatically catch and mitigate this particular attack. Revealed at DEF CON 27,
HTTP Desync
is a new take on this old attack. Rather than specify content-length twice, this attack uses both content-length and chunked encoding. It’s another approach to the same end goal, give two different lengths that are understood differently. There are a handful of clever techniques that [James Kettle] covered in his DEF CON talk, like adding non-standard white spaces in the “Transfer-Encoding: chunked” header. One end sees the header as non-standard and ignores it, and the other might clean up the whitespace before processing the headers, leading to desync.
You may think that SSL protects against this technique, but we’re describing a scenario where the SSL certificate is installed on the front-end server. All the incoming requests are decrypted and interleaved together, and then may or may not get re-encrypted en route to the back-end. Because it’s that interleaving that gives rise to this class of vulnerability, the SSL connection doesn’t have an impact.
What can you actually do with this sort of attack? Bypass source IP restrictions to a certain endpoint, to name the simplest. Have your WordPress site’s /wp-admin page restricted to just one IP address? An HTTP Desync can bypass that restriction. In another example, [James] was able to dump all the custom HTTP headers the front-end was using, and then spoof some of those headers to gain admin access to an entire web service. The whole talk is great, check it out below:
The related news from this week,
[Emile Fugulin] took a look at HTTP Desyncs
and discovered that Amazon’s Application Load Balancer is potentially vulnerable in its default configuration, when paired with a Gunicorn back-end. If you’re using ALB, he suggests looking at the “routing.http.drop_invalid_header_fields.enabled” option, and turning it on if you can. Gunicorn has been patched, so go make sure you’re running the latest version there, as well.
Remote Code Execution in Security Product
Well this is awkward.
Trend Micro disclosed a set of five security bugs in its products
, and revealed that two of them have been actively exploited by attackers. The details are a bit sparse, but it seems that the two attacks found in the wild require some level of authentication before they could be exploited. The two vulnerabilities that seem the most alarming are CVE-2020-8598 and CVE-2020-8599, both of which allow remote compromise before any authentication. It’s humorous to see that the vulnerability bulletin lists a mitigating factor, paraphrased: You have a firewall and NAT, right? If you use Trend Micro, make sure it’s up to date, and maybe do a quick audit on what ports are open on your workstations.
Bugcrowd, Netflix, and Ethics
This story sneaked in just in time. An unnamed security researcher discovered a flaw in Netflix’s handling of session cookies, combined with their use of unsecured HTTP connections for a few endpoints. Yes,
Netflix is still vulnerable to Firesheep
.
That could have been the end of the story — Netflix should have made their bug bounty payment, fixed their unsecured subdomain, and all would be well. Instead, when our anonymous researcher submitted his finding through Bugcrowd, the firm that handles Netflix’s bug bounty program, the official response was that this finding is out-of-scope for a reward. That’s not surprising, it’s normal for a researcher to disagree with the target company about how important a vulnerability is. As one might expect, once the researcher was told his findings were out-of-scope, he made them public — and shortly got an official scolding from Bugcrowd. Apparently an out-of-scope bug submission is still in-scope enough to be kept secret. Even more concerning, Bugcrowd’s documentation doesn’t seem to include a set timeline, but implies that all disclosure must first receive the target company’s permission.
Bug-bounties are great, but Bugcrowd puts researchers into an ugly catch-22. I think it’s ethically rotten to refuse a payout, and then continue to hold a researcher over the barrel on an issue.
That’s it for this week, stay safe and do some security research! | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229704",
"author": "tomás zerolo",
"timestamp": "2020-03-20T15:21:11",
"content": "[On viruses masquerading as… viruses]Quoth the blurb: “these files target a set of older Microsoft Word vulnerabilities […]While the standard disclaimer about the difficulty of attribution does apply... | 1,760,373,547.618354 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/20/pop-a-wheelie-with-your-electric-skateboard-the-hacker-way/ | Pop A Wheelie With Your Electric Skateboard, The Hacker Way | Danie Conradie | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"electric skateboard",
"gyroscope",
"self balancing",
"self balancing skateboard"
] | Using a bit of tech to make up for a lack of skill is a time-honoured tradition, otherwise known as cheating among those who acquired the skill the hard way. Learning to
wheelie
manual a skateboard is usually paid for in bruises, but [blezalex] got around that by letting his
electric skateboard handle the balancing act
.
At first glance the board looks and rides like an average DIY electric skateboard, with an off-the-shelf a dual hub motor truck, VESC speed controllers and a wireless throttle. The party trick appears when the front wheel is popped off the ground, which activates the secret self-balancing mode. At this point a STM32F401 dev board and MPU-6050 IMU take over control of the motors, which is in turn controlled by leaning forward or backwards, like a hoverboard. The remote throttle turns into a dead man switch, which cuts power to the motors when released.
[blezalex] says he has had less that an hour of skateboard time in his life before getting on this one, which is a good testament of just how well it works. The biggest challenge was in getting the board to turn while on two wheels, which was solved by sensing side-to-side tilt of the board with the IMU and applying proportional differential torque to the wheels. With a bit of practice it’s also possible to smoothly shift between riding modes while moving.
We think this is a really elegant cheat, now we need to build one of our own. Fortunately the STM32 firmware and instructions are all up on
GitHub
. Building your own electric skateboard has become really simple with the availability of
off-the-shelf components.
We’ve also seen a
bicycle with a wheelie cheat device
to prevent you falling on your back | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229668",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2020-03-20T12:37:44",
"content": "So basicaly a hoverboard with extra pair of useless wheels in the front? However i like the idea of being able to automaticaly switch between 4 wheel and 2 wheel mode.",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,373,547.668813 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/20/glixie-puts-a-new-spin-on-glow-in-the-dark-displays/ | “Glixie” Puts A New Spin On Glow-In-The-Dark Displays | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"dot matric",
"glow in the dark",
"led",
"nixie",
"phosphorescent",
"uv"
] | For as many projects as we see using Nixie tubes in new and unusual ways, there’s a smaller but often very interesting cohort of displays that fit into the “Nixie-like” category. These are projects where something other than the discharge of noble gasses is being used to form characters.
This scrolling phosphorescent single-character display
is one such project, and we think it looks fabulous.
Following the *ixie naming convention characteristic of these builds, [StephenDeVos] dubbed this the “Glixie.” This is on par with the size of
a [Dalibor Farny] handmade Nixie
, but not so big to be unwieldy. The display modality is glow-in-the-dark film that rotates past a vertical string of UV LEDs, which light up in turn as the cylinder rotates, building up the dot-matrix character column by column. There’s some fading of the first column by the time the whole character is built up, but not enough to be objectionable. We like the whole build, with laser-cut wood and the brass and steel hardware. Check it out in the video below.
If this phosphorescent display strategy seems familiar, it’s because we’ve seen it before. Remember
this persistence of phosphorescence display
? Or perhaps
this time-writing robot clock
? It’s not a new idea, but [Stephen]’s execution can’t be beat. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229648",
"author": "svofski",
"timestamp": "2020-03-20T10:40:37",
"content": "This looks brilliant and uses my favourite cheap stepper.I’ve just had a tangential idea: could one design two concentric barrels: the outer with holes and the inner with black dots. So that when offset s... | 1,760,373,547.755518 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/22/motorized-lego-train-gets-qi-charging-in-the-track/ | Motorized LEGO Train Gets Qi Charging In The Track | Tom Nardi | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"HomeKit",
"lego",
"motorized",
"qi charger",
"qi coil",
"train",
"wemos d1 mini"
] | This project started, as many do, with a simple idea. [Ben Hoad] just wanted
to take a static LEGO
Hogwarts Express
train kit and make it motorized
. It was compatible with standard LEGO track pieces, so all he should have to do was figure out how to shoehorn a motor in there and be done with it. Right?
Well, you already know how things like this go. It started with adding the motor, which ended up being relatively straightforward once [Ben] used some
community LEGO CAD tools
to figure out which kits had the specific parts he needed to redesign the train in such a way that he’d have enough space inside for the motor without ruining the way it looked. But then the feature creep kicked in, and he found himself falling down that familiar rabbit hole.
A 3D representation of the train’s internal components.
The first problem was how to reliably power the train. It turns out the rear car was more or less empty already, so that became home for two 18650 batteries
(the project details say “16850” but we believe that is merely a typo)
. [Ben] didn’t want to have to take the thing apart every time it ran down, so he wondered if it would be possible to add wireless charging.
A Qi coil in the bottom of the train car and one in a specially designed section of track got the power flowing, but getting them lined up proved a bit finicky. So he added a Hall effect sensor to the car and a strong magnet to the track, so the train would know when the coils were lined up and automatically pump the brakes.
So now he had a motorized train that could recharge itself, but how should he turn it on and off? Well, with an ESP8266 along for the ride, he figured it would be easy to add WiFi control. With a bit of code and the Homebridge project, he was able to get the train to appear as a smart switch to Apple’s HomeKit. That allows him to start and stop the train from his smartphone, complete with a routine that returns the train to the charging station once it’s finished making the rounds. [Ben] says the next steps are to put some sanity checks in, such as shutting the motors down if the train hasn’t passed the charging station in a few minutes; a sure sign that it’s not actually moving.
All [Ben] needs to do now is
implement automatic LEGO train decoupling
before the plastic Hogwarts students come back from spring break. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230202",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2020-03-22T12:11:00",
"content": "If the plastic world is anything like ours at the moment that spring break could be quiet lengthy",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6230214",
"auth... | 1,760,373,547.714608 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/22/bee-counter-will-have-you-up-to-your-nectar-in-hive-data/ | Bee Counter Will Have You Up To Your Nectar In Hive Data | Kristina Panos | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"bee hive",
"beekeeping",
"bees",
"Feather",
"header",
"ir leds",
"ItsyBitsy"
] | While we admit that free honey sounds pretty good, beekeeping is not some set-it-and-forget-it hobby where you can just put bees in a box and come back in a month to collect the goods. With the world’s bee population in decline, it’s more important than ever to monitor the health of hives.
One way to do that is to count the bees as they leave and reenter the hive
. You can use the data to determine how many workers are working, or to compare activity between multiple hives. If you notice the bees are gone for longer and longer periods, it’s probably because their nearby nectar sources are dwindling and they have to travel farther to find flowers.
This open-source bee counter built by [hydronics2] is designed to fit the opening of a standard hive. The bees can only buzz themselves back in by flying through one of 24 little IR break-beam gates. Our favorite thing about this build is the way [hydronics2] created the individual gates by sandwiching two boards together with headers as spacers. It’s such a simple and perfect solution.
It’s also pretty cool that the board is designed to be compatible with any Feather or ItsyBitsy board, so there are a lot of options for data handling. Check out the brief demo we planted after the break, and stick around for the build video. If you’d prefer a more hands-off approach,
try computer vision
.
[via
Instructables
] | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230185",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2020-03-22T09:58:53",
"content": "It would be interesting to recognise each bee. Presumably they are all different like humans and every other animal I can think of.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,373,547.929735 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/21/high-power-lora-and-tropospheric-reflection-experiments/ | High Power LoRa And Tropospheric Reflection Experiments | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"435MHz",
"amateur radio",
"LoRa",
"tropsphere"
] | We’re used to LoRa as a free-to-use digital radio protocol allowing not-very-high data rate communications over distances of a few miles. It’s made all kinds of distributed sensor systems a breeze, and some experimenters have made an art of achieving communication over hundreds of miles. But what would happen if you took a brute-force approach to LoRa and simply wound up the power?
In a bid to test its efficiency at bouncing off the troposphere in normal conditions, [Inductive Twig]
hooked up a HamShield 70cm LoRa shield to an 80W power amplifier and a high-gain Yagi antenna pointing directly upwards mounted with ingenuity on a spade
, and drove around looking at the received result. With an effective radiated power of 1500W this wasn’t your normal LoRa, instead being operated with LoRa as an amateur radio mode.
For those not familiar with radio propagation, radio waves bounce off some surprising things. In this case the aim was to bounce them off the troposphere, but while radio amateurs and LoRa distance chasers wait until weather conditions deliver a so-called “lift” in which the troposphere is especially reflective, here the experiment was performed under normal flat conditions. The result characterizes LoRa’s possibilities for everyday extreme-range mode rather than chasing records, and in that there were some interesting results. The reflected signal was receivable in bursts with low but consistent signal strength, with the limiting factor during the test as that they ran out of land upon which to drive in the southernmost peninsula of New Jersey. We’ve heard of War-Driving for open WiFi… does this car dashboard setup count as LoRa-Driving?
LoRa is designed as a protocol tolerant of low signal levels and some packet loss, so this experiment is an interesting demonstration of its possibilities when used at higher powers under a licensed transmission. It shouldn’t be possible to use the 70cm band for reliable tropospheric propagation under non-lift conditions, but this shows that it can be done. Meanwhile, take a look at
a previous attempt to push LoRa using a balloon
. | 29 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230161",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2020-03-22T06:20:46",
"content": "The brute force approach to tropospheric scatter commuications was what Western Electric did in Alaska in the 1950s, to provide datalinks for the DEW Line sites that guarded our northwestern border,... | 1,760,373,548.081437 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/21/how-constant-is-your-choice-of-lights/ | How Constant Is Your Choice Of Lights? | Jenny List | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"flicker",
"light",
"M5Stick"
] | The move from incandescent filament lamps to fluorescent, and then LED lighting over the last couple of decades has delivered immense benefits in terms of energy saving, but had brought with it problems for people sensitive to flicker or to too much of a particular set of wavelengths. It’s not always easy to quantify the propensity of a particular light for flickering. So [kk99]
has produced an instrument returning a visual indication of its quality
.
At its heart is an M5Stick ESP32 development platform, and a
TSL250R
light sensor hooked up to one of the ESP’s internal ADCs. The flicker waveform is displayed on the screen as a simple oscillograph, and a Fourier transform is performed to extract its frequency. The result is an extremely accessible and compact instrument, showing the suitability of the M5Stick form factor for such designs. So far we’ve only brought you
an M5Stick in a password keeper
, but we look forward to seeing more projects featuring it.
You can see the light flicker meter in action in the video below the break. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230144",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-03-22T03:23:03",
"content": "Noticing this a bit more with cheaper LED bulbs. The easy way to tell, though not really measure is to just waggle a pen or pencil back and forth, holding one end between your fingers and if you see ... | 1,760,373,547.997338 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/21/screwy-math-for-super-fine-adjustments-differential-screws/ | Screwy Math For Super Fine Adjustments: Differential Screws | Danie Conradie | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"adjustment",
"lathe",
"machine tools",
"precision"
] | For any sort of precision machine, precision adjustability is required. For the hacker this usually involves an adjustment screw, where the accuracy is determined by the thread pitch. This was not good enough for [
Mark Rehorst] who wanted adjustment down to 10 μm for his 3D printer’s optical end-stop, so he made himself a
differential adjustment screw
.
Tiny adjustment can be made to the green block due to the thread pitch differences
Differential screws work by having two threads with a slightly different pitch on the same shaft. A nut on each section of thread is prevented from rotating in relation to the other, and when the screw is turned their relative position will change only as much as the difference between the two thread pitches.
The differential screw in this case started life as a normal M5 bolt with a 0.8 mm thread pitch. [Mark] machined and threaded section of the bolt down to a M4 x 0.7 mm thread. This means he can get 0.1 mm (100
μm) of adjustment per full rotation
. By turning the bolt 1/10 rotation, the relative movement comes down to 10
μm.
This mechanism is not new, originating from at least 1817. If you need fine adjustments on a budget, it’s a very elegant way to achieve it and you don’t even need a lathe to make your own. You can partially drill and tap a coupling nut, or make a 3D printed adapter to connect two bolts.
Fabricating precision tools on a budget is challenging but not impossible. We’ve seen some interesting
graphite air bearings
, as well as a
3D printed microscope
with a precision adjustable stage. | 38 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230083",
"author": "cliff claven",
"timestamp": "2020-03-21T23:18:10",
"content": "“two treads with a slightly different pitch” Spelling of threads (not a nitpick– important word for search here)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,373,548.161174 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/21/the-fart-box-a-synthesizer-not-quite-like-others/ | The Fart Box, A Synthesizer Not Quite Like Others | Donald Papp | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"analog",
"fart box",
"music",
"synthesizer"
] | [lookmumnocomputer] enjoys creating synthesizers, and early last year he created one called
The Fart Box
. It is an entirely analog synthesizer with which, according to its creator, it is difficult to make anything that
doesn’t
sound gassy. It’s not quite like any other synthesizer, and while it is capable of acting like a regular analog synth it is never very far from cranking out farty sounds.
One may think this is just a gimmick, but it can actually be quite musical.
There’s a good demonstration at the 7:09 mark in the video
of what it can do. Entirely hand-made, it’s definitely a labor of love. There’s a bill of materials and a wiring diagram (of a sort) for anyone who is interested in such details, but it looks like it was a limited run only. [lookmumnocomputer]’s whole video is embedded below, and he
demonstrates its ability to act more like a “normal” synthesizer around 8:30
.
Synthesizer projects show enormous diversity. This one showcases the complex hand-made side of things, but we have also seen
a MIDI synthesizer crammed entirely inside a DIN connector
. How’s that for the opposite end of the spectrum? | 20 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230048",
"author": "Howard",
"timestamp": "2020-03-21T20:16:21",
"content": "Clearly the best video I’ve seen in a long time on the internet. Well done! Beautiful build and a really entertaining video!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,373,548.267756 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/21/compact-slayer-exciter-for-your-high-voltage-needs/ | Compact Slayer Exciter For Your High Voltage Needs | Tom Nardi | [
"Science"
] | [
"high voltage",
"slayer exciter",
"tesla coil",
"transistor"
] | Tesla coils are incredible pieces of hardware, but they can be tricky to build. Between the spark gap, capacitors, and finely tuned coils, it’s not exactly a beginners project. Luckily, there’s hope for anyone looking for a less complex way to shoot some sparks: the Slayer Exciter. This device can be thought of as the little cousin to the Tesla coil, and can be used for many of the same high voltage experiments while being far easier to assemble.
Now [Jay Bowles] is obviously no stranger to building his own Tesla coils, but since so many of his fans wanted to see his take on this less complex option,
he recently built his own Slayer Exciter
. After putting on a few of his own unique touches, the end result looks very promising. It might not be able to throw sparks as far as some of the other creations featured on his YouTube channel, but it’s still impressive for something so simple.
[Jay] uses two transistors in parallel for reliability
When we say simple, we mean it. Building a bare-bones Slayer Exciter takes only takes five components: the two coils, a transistor, a diode, and a resistor. For this build, power is provided by a trio of rechargeable 9 V batteries in the base of the unit which can be easily swapped out as needed.
In the video, [Jay] does a great job explaining and illustrating how this basic circuit creates exceptionally high frequency energy. In fact, the frequency is so high that the human ear can’t hear it; unfortunate news for fans of the Tesla coil’s characteristic buzz.
Generally speaking Slayer Exciters would have the same sort of vertical coils that you’d see used on a traditional Tesla coil, but in this case, [Jay] has swapped that out for a pancake coil held in the upper level of the device. This makes for a very compact unit that would be perfect for your desk, if it wasn’t for the fact that the arcs produced by this gadget are hot enough to instantly vaporize human skin. Just something to keep in mind.
We’ve seen Slayer builds in the past
, but none as well designed as this one. Incidentally, if you’re wondering about the array of neon indicator lights that [Jay] uses to visualize the electrical field,
we covered that project as well
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6230111",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2020-03-22T00:48:41",
"content": "Been reading this through all day and I still don’t get why Buffy is gonna be so thrilled about it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6230373",
... | 1,760,373,548.208183 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/21/living-in-corona-times/ | Living In Corona Times | Elliot Williams | [
"News"
] | [
"coronavirus",
"newsletter"
] | This week the new coronavirus has spread like wildfire. The good news last week has been the success with which China, Taiwan, and Singapore have handled the epidemic, and that western nations are just beginning to emulate their approach of reducing person-to-person interactions as much as possible to slow the rate of infection. The bad news, however, is that countries like Italy currently have a number of cases that is overwhelming their health system, and that the disease seems to be spreading rapidly in other countries. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Our sincerest thanks go out to all of the medical professionals who are providing care in this difficult situation. But also to those who are providing public infrastructure in less obvious ways: the cashiers who subject themselves to hundreds of contacts per day just so that you and I can buy toothpaste, for instance. The rest of us are staying at home as much as possible, washing our hands, and slowing the spread as much as possible simply by not catching or passing on the virus.
The original part, left, with its 3D-printed counterpart.
Of course, everyone wants to help, and there have been some heroic hacks. The
fablabs and hackerspaces in Italy who’ve been 3D printing respirator parts
for instance, have directly and obviously helped save lives. With respirators being the limiting factor in many hospitals, we’ve also seen
an effort to design an open source ventilator
,
adapt one to serve multiple patients
, and even a start towards
converting a CPAP fan into a ventilator
for emergencies.
But most of us don’t have medical expertise. If you have spare CPU cycles, consider donating them to the
folding@home effort to simulate the proteins in the virus
. And any hack to make the lives of those stuck in voluntary quarantine more “normal” is perhaps as important in the long run. I made a
simple clock to help my son
who’s stuck at home and can’t yet tell time, adjust to his new daily routine. Others have made more obviously whimsical devices. We like this
computer-vision face-touching alarm
. If it makes people smile while slowing down one transmission vector, it’s a win.
If you have the expertise, consider helping out your local schools with telepresence and online education. While a number of colleges are already geared up for distance learning, it’s uncharted territory for primary education most everywhere. I’m sure you can also think of other ways to help out locally. If so, don’t hesitate to
tell us your success stories
.
For the rest: simply washing your hands, staying healthy, and not passing the virus on to others is a quietly heroic act that we think shouldn’t be overlooked. Thanks.
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 212 weeks or so. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning?
You should sign up
! | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229979",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2020-03-21T15:23:08",
"content": "“While a number of colleges are already geared up for distance learning, it’s uncharted territory for primary education most everywhere.”Understandable considering the great differences between the two d... | 1,760,373,548.370292 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/21/stylish-mic-is-metal-printing-done-right/ | Stylish Mic Is Metal Printing Done Right | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"microphone",
"ribbon microphone"
] | [Eric Strebel] wanted a microphone to record voiceovers, and being a designer, wanted something suitably impressive for the task. Inspired by the classic Unidyne 55, he set about designing his own mic,
and used some pretty fancy techniques to get it built.
The mic was built around a ribbon element, providing good dynamic response. The design was created in CAD, and was initially intended to be constructed out of three seperate pieces. However, [Eric] realized that through the use of a binder jetting 3D printer, this wouldn’t be necessary.
Binder jetting is a technique in which a nozzle squirts binder into a powder bed to create a 3D printed part. In this case, a steel powder is used, which is then post-processed in an oven with liquid bronze. The bronze wicks into the finished part, adding strength. It’s a process which creates metal parts with very few limitations; the primary concern being minimum wall thicknesses.
With access to a binder jetting printer, [Eric] was free to design the stylish geometry of the final product. Mashing up hexagons with classic 50s curves, the final result is impressive. [Eric] now uses the microphone regularly to record voiceovers, and the aptly-named Hexavox even made an appearance at NAMM.
If you’re looking for more ways to DIY in your home studio,
consider building your own isolation shield
. Video after the break. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229925",
"author": "SubjectMatterExpert",
"timestamp": "2020-03-21T11:09:08",
"content": "It’s an enclosure, not a mic…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6229952",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2020-0... | 1,760,373,548.311046 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/21/googles-pigweed-for-arm-development-is-a-nice-surprise/ | Google’s Pigweed For ARM Development Is A Nice Surprise | Inderpreet Singh | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"arm",
"ci/cd",
"development",
"embedded",
"google",
"open source"
] | Setting up an environment for Embedded Development was traditionally a pain and so vendors provide integrated development environments to help bridge the gap. Google has open-sourced their version of an embedded targeted environment designated as embedded-targeted libraries which they trademarked Pigweed.
Google
trademarked Pigweed
with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in February and it popped up on the
Google Open Source Blog
along with some details.
The repository contains what Google is calling modules but taking a better look reveals that it a little more than that. Packaged in a Python Virtual Environment is a number of tools including an ARM compiler, the clang-format tool and Python 3.8 interpreter which runs more than a few things. The modules that come with Pigweed assist developers by running micro-automations such as the pw_watch module that monitors files for change and triggers a build, test and even flash and debug on hardware. There is also a module that allows pre-submit checks such as linting and formatting.
Google still does not consider this offering production ready though from what we have seen so far, it is a great place for many to start experimenting with for their embedded development automation needs. Anyone tried it out yet?
If you have been inspired with the amazing powers of automation and want to dive in yourself, have a look at
Software Development in BASH
and
Continuous Integration with Python
. | 25 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229917",
"author": "Efluon",
"timestamp": "2020-03-21T10:35:15",
"content": "So, this is Python scriptable but for developing in c++?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6229919",
"author": "WarrantyVoider",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,373,548.506244 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/20/expansion-board-puts-spotify-on-the-amiga-500/ | Expansion Board Puts Spotify On The Amiga 500 | Tom Nardi | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"A314",
"amiga",
"Amiga 500",
"expansion",
"spotify"
] | No doubt some purists in the audience will call this one cheating, since this Amiga 500 from 1987 isn’t
technically
connecting to Spotify and playing the music by itself. But we also suspect those folks might be missing the point of a site called Hackaday. With
all the hoops [Daniel Arvidsson] hopped through to make this happen
, what else could it be if not a hack?
This one starts, like so many projects these days, with the Raspberry Pi. Don’t worry Amiga aficionados, this classic machine hasn’t been gutted and had its internals replaced with a diminutive Linux board. But thanks to
an expansion card known as the A314
, you could say it’s received a penguin infusion. This clever board allows an internally mounted Raspberry Pi to communicate with the Amiga 500 through shared memory, making all sorts of trickery possible.
In this case, the Raspberry Pi is actually the one connecting to the Spotify Connect service with
raspotify
and decoding the stream. But thanks to a few pipes and an ALSA plugin, the audio itself is actually pushed into the Amiga’s sound hardware. In the video after the break, the process is demonstrated with tunes that are befitting a computer of this vintage.
This process is similar to how
one classic Apple fan got Spotify running on their Macintosh SE/30
with a similar respect for the vintage hardware. Of course if you actually
want
to gut your Amiga 500 and replace it with a Raspberry Pi, we’ve
seen some pretty good conversions to get you started
.
[Thanks to burningbroccoli for the tip.] | 16 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229901",
"author": "Kelvin Shirley",
"timestamp": "2020-03-21T07:53:26",
"content": "It’s a bit like when people had to use MPEG cards to watch DVDs on PCs because the CPUs werent powerful enough",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,373,548.424278 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/20/thermochromic-display-tells-you-the-temperature-despite-your-current-mood/ | Thermochromic Display Tells You The Temperature Despite Your Current Mood | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"dht22",
"heater",
"liquid crystal",
"pcb",
"resistive",
"SAMD21E18",
"thermochromic"
] | Readers who survived the 1970s will no doubt remember the “mood ring” fad, where a liquid crystal mounted to a ring would magically reveal your current emotional state to all and sundry by changing color.
This nifty thermochromic display
is based on the same principle, and while it might not start a new craze, it’s still pretty mesmerizing to watch.
This isn’t [Moritz v. Sivers]’ first attempt at a thermochromic display.
His earlier version
was far more complicated, using separate copper plates clad with thermochromic film for each segment, with Peltier devices to cool and heat them individually. Version two is much simpler, using a printed circuit board with heating elements in the shape of seven-segment displays etched into it. The thermochromic film sits directly on the heater PCB; a control PCB below has the MCU and sensors on it. The display alternates between temperature and humidity, with the segments fading in an uneven and ghostly way that really makes this fun to watch. [Moritz] has made
the build files
available, and there’s
a detailed Instructable
as well.
We’re always on the lookout for alternate display modalities, especially when they look this cool. We’ve seen
other thermochromic displays
before, of course, and
persistence of phosphorescence
looks great, too. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229863",
"author": "Mark",
"timestamp": "2020-03-21T02:53:42",
"content": "Two questions – do thermochromic displays “burn in” after use? And, where does one get a display that large?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6229866"... | 1,760,373,548.552942 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/20/this-v8-makes-a-shocking-amount-of-power/ | This V8 Makes A Shocking Amount Of Power | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"camshaft",
"coil",
"crankshaft",
"electric",
"electromagnet",
"engine",
"lathe",
"machine",
"solenoid",
"v8"
] | As a work of art, solenoid engines are an impressive display of electromagnetics in action. There is limited practical use for them though, so usually they are relegated to that realm and remain display pieces.
This one from [Emiel] certainly looks like a work of art, too
. It has eight solenoids, mimicking the look and internal workings of a traditional V8.
There’s a lot that has to go on to coordinate this many cylinders. Like an internal combustion engine, it takes precise timing in order to make sure that the “pistons” trigger in the correct order without interfering with each other through the shared driveshaft. For that, [Emiel] built two different circuit boards, one to control the firing of each solenoid and another to give positional feedback for the shaft. That’s all put inside a CNC-machined engine block, complete with custom-built connecting rods and shafts.
If you think this looks familiar, it’s because [Emiel] has become somewhat of an expert in the solenoid engine realm. He started off with a
how-to for a single piston engine
, then stepped it up with
a V4 design
after that. That leaves us wondering how many pistons the next design will have. Perhaps a solenoid version of the
Volkswagen W12
? | 32 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229825",
"author": "Will Baden",
"timestamp": "2020-03-20T23:21:37",
"content": "This is a cool project, thanks for sharing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6229832",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2020-03-20T23:46:... | 1,760,373,548.669791 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/20/3d-printed-dogbox-transmission-kicks-your-desk-into-high-gear/ | 3D Printed Dogbox Transmission Kicks Your Desk Into High Gear | Tom Nardi | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"gearbox",
"gears",
"model",
"transmission"
] | It’s often been our experience that some of the most impressive projects are the passion builds, the ones where the builder really put in their all and obsessed over every detail. Even if they don’t always have a practical application, it’s impossible to look at the final product and not respect the accomplishment.
Case in point, this absolutely incredible
3D printed model of a sequential “dogbox” transmission
created by [Indeterminate Design]. All of the STL files and a complete bill of materials are available for anyone brave enough to take on the challenge. It might never be mounted to a vehicle and driven around the track, but you can still flick through the gears and watch the complex gearing do its thing.
Even if you don’t want to necessarily build the model itself, [Indeterminate Design] takes you through the concepts behind this unique transmission and how it differs from the sort of gearboxes us lowly commuter drivers are familiar with. He’s even nice enough to explain what a dogbox is.
Put simply, this type of transmission allows the driver to simply move the gear change forward and backwards to step through the gears like in a video game. This prevents you from having to navigate an H-pattern gear shift while dealing with all the other stresses of competition driving. Watching it in action, you can certainly see the appeal.
If you prefer your printed gearboxes to be of the practical variety, we’ve certainly seen plenty of those as well. They’re perfect for next time you
need to move an anvil around the shop
. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229826",
"author": "Levent",
"timestamp": "2020-03-20T23:22:06",
"content": "Really cool, however dogbox is not what is described in the article. Gearboxes have different gear engagement methods, almost every passenger vehicle uses synchromeshes which are tiny rings between gears t... | 1,760,373,548.719988 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2020/03/19/thousands-of-internet-connected-satellites-above-us-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/ | Thousands Of Internet-Connected Satellites Above Us, What Could Possibly Go Wrong! | Jenny List | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"News",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"satellite",
"security",
"Starlink"
] | Our skies are full of satellites, more full than they have been, that is, because SpaceX’s Starlink and a bevvy of other soon-to-launch operators plan to fill them with thousands of small low-earth-orbit craft to blanket the Earth with satellite Internet coverage. Astronomers are horrified at such an assault on their clear skies, space-watchers are fascinated by the latest developments, and
in some quarters they’re causing a bit of concern about the security risk they might present
. With a lot of regrettable overuse use of the word “hacker”, the concern is that such a large number of craft in the heavens might present an irresistible target for bad actors, who would proceed to steer them into each other can cause chaos.
Invest in undersea cables, folks,
the Kessler Syndrome
is upon us, we’re doomed!
There Is Little As Dangerous As A Half-Truth
It’s worth taking a while to look at some of these stories, because when it comes to technology coverage there is little so dangerous as a half-truth in the hands of people who think Something Must Be Done™. Hacking satellites is an activity with a pedigree that goes back decades, but the advent of Starlink and others like it does not pose any more danger than any other of the craft launched since Sputnik back in 1957. To find out why it’s worth unpicking the sensationalist reports, and peering back in history a little way to uncover some of the real satellite hacking.
The FUNcube-1 CubeSat. Pa3weg /
CC BY 3.0
The
Scientific American
article linked in the first paragraph is representative of other similar pieces, and it starts by worrying about CubeSats. These relatively inexpensive satellites are often built from readily available parts which can be analysed for vulnerabilities, the story goes, making them an irresistible target for the Bad Guys.
On reading this half-truth it’s worth wondering whether the author really knows what a CubeSat is, because instead of a large unit with sophisticated propulsion and other onboard systems a Cubesat is a tiny device which simply doesn’t have space for much beyond the barest essential payloads. By and large they tumble through space for the limited time before their relatively low orbit decays, offering invaluable space-based opportunities for their builders but leaving relatively little scope for malicious activities. They lack the equipment to be instructed to switch orbits and smash into other craft, so while one being compromised would be a disaster for its owner it’s difficult to see how the average Cubesat would be a significant prize for an intruder.
They go onto another half-truth to cite the history of satellite hacking as a portent of future doom, under the premise that if it’s happened in the past then it must surely happen again. In some of this they are of course correct, in that there have been many instances of satellites being accessed by unauthorised third parties. But to cite incidents from ten, twenty, or thirty years ago as evidence is akin to citing vulnerabilities in a 1980s UNIX build as evidence of failings in a modern OS. Security comparisons between the two are simply not meaningful. To illustrate this it’s worth taking a look at some of the history of satellite hacking.
The Good Old Days Of Satellite Hacking
One of the FLTSATCOM craft beloved of the Brazilians. US Air Force (
Public domain
)
Decades ago, to be involved in space technology you had to be a government. The average Joe might just be able to listen to some satellite traffic, but the investment required to set up any kind of ground station was not in any way trivial. Thus satellites were not built with security in mind because it was deemed unlikely that anyone would have the means to access them. This led to many craft carrying open transponders, making them effectively always-on analogue repeaters in the sky.
As technology progressed it became possible to build or acquire ground station components for some of these transponders, and by the 1980s there were tales of shady companies selling transatlantic data links using illicit narrow-bandwidth carriers hidden amid the wideband TV feeds on commercial relays. This type of open-transponder hijack reached a mass-market in Brazil, where the US Navy’s
Fleet Satellite Communications System
dating from the late 1970s became so widely used as to become
almost akin to a CB radio
for the vast interior of that country. Even as satellite communications moved into the digital domain it was believed that the high barrier to entry would be enough of a deterrent, so for example the Iridium satellite phone system launched in the 1990s lacked encryption and
could easily be eavesdropped upon with an SDR in 2015
.
In 2020 though, even the most novice of satellite engineers will be aware of security, and we expect that the likes of SpaceX will not have employed novices. Just as you could steal a 1980s Cosworth Ford Sierra with rudimentary tools but their latest quick Mondeo model has a formidable engine immobiliser built-in, so is it likely to be no walk in the park to compromise any of the current crop of spacecraft. Their citing
a satellite hijack story from 1999
as reason to be worried in 2020 is about as valid as worrying about the Mondeo because a child could nick the Sierra; it simply isn’t credible. It’s not that there are not legitimate concerns to be expressed with relation to satellite security, it is simply that inflamatory and shoddy journalism is hardly the way to approach them.
Space debris cloud header image: NASA image /
Public domain | 55 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6229383",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2020-03-19T14:41:05",
"content": "Your automotive comparison was excellent! Here in the US I might have been tempted to compare the current generation Mustang with a Fairmont from the late 1970’s (sticking with Ford products for the s... | 1,760,373,548.860251 |
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