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https://hackaday.com/2019/12/07/file-systems-for-tiny-devices/ | File Systems For Tiny Devices | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"development",
"embedded",
"files",
"filesystem",
"open source",
"remote",
"security",
"software"
] | Sometimes you build a computer and use it every day. Sometimes you build a different type of computer and it sits alone on a mountaintop for years. The design considerations for these two setups are remarkably different, right down to the type of file system used. For small computers like [Jo] is using, and for the amount of time they sit alone in remote locations,
he decided to build his own file system for them
.
Known as JesFs ([Jo]’s embedded serial File system), the file system is for SPI Flash and intended for use in scientific data logging. It can be used on the chip-scale processors found in many development boards, and is robust enough to use in applications where remoteness is a concern. It has a small RAM footprint, is completely open source, includes wear leveling, and has a number of security features built-in as well.
Some of the benefits of using a file system on such a tiny chip aren’t immediately obvious unless you’re doing a lot of data logging, but it does allow you to change virtually any aspect of the firmware much more easily if everything is accessible as a file, and not something you would have to change by reflashing the whole chip, for example.
There are also a number of traps that you can easily fall into when working with file systems for tiny devices. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6201134",
"author": "Mike Massen in Perth, Western Australia",
"timestamp": "2019-12-08T03:16:48",
"content": "Nice one, I had similar issue while back so direct sector/track was fine for me then but, this looks better for some compatability issues, thanks for posting :-)",
"par... | 1,760,373,663.541556 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/07/esp32-audio-sampling-with-interrupts-and-iram/ | ESP32 Audio Sampling With Interrupts And IRAM | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"interrupts",
"iram"
] | Interrupting while someone is talking is rude for humans, but smart for computers. [Ivan Voras] shows how to use interrupts to
service the ESP32 analog to digital converters when sampling sound
. Interestingly, he uses the Arduino IDE mixed with native ESP-IDF APIs to get the best performance.
Like most complex interrupt-driven software, [Ivan’s] code uses a two-stage interrupt strategy. When a timer expires, an interrupt occurs. The handler needs to complete quickly so it does nothing but set a flag. Another routine blocks on the flag and then does the actual work required.
Because the interrupt service routine needs to be fast, it has to be in RAM. [Ivan] uses the IRAM_ATTR attribute to make this work and explains what’s going on when you use it.
…the CPU cores can only execute instructions (and access data) from the embedded RAM, not from the flash storage where the program code and data are normally stored. To get around this, a part of the total 520 KiB of RAM is dedicated as IRAM, a 128 KiB cache used to transparently load code from flash storage.The ESP32 uses separate buses for code and data (“Harvard architecture”) so they are very much handled separately, and that extends to memory properties: IRAM is special, and can only be accessed at 32-bit address boundaries.
This is very important because some ESP-IDF calls — including adc1_get_raw — do not use this attribute and will, therefore, crash if they get pushed out to flash memory. At the end, he muses between the benefit of using an OS with the ESP32 or going bare metal.
If you want to know more about the
Arduino on ESP32
, we covered that. We also
dug deeper into the chip
a few times. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6201119",
"author": "ROB",
"timestamp": "2019-12-08T01:03:23",
"content": "Most things you can do on an ESP32 you can also do on an ESP8266, except that the ESP8266 doesn’t have Bluetooth.The ESP8266 can do Arduino as well.If you’re deciding between Arduino and bare metal then there... | 1,760,373,663.629992 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/07/learn-water-purification-techniques-with-this-stem-learning-kit/ | Learn Water Purification Techniques With This STEM Learning Kit | Gerrit Coetzee | [
"green hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2019 Hackaday Prize",
"coagulation",
"electro-coagulation",
"stem"
] | We see a lot of great STEM education projects. These projects have a way of turning into something much larger. How many commercial devices and machines are built on Raspberry Pi’s and Arduinos? [Ryan Beltrán] is using common materials to teach
people how to clean water
. This particular kit demonstrates a water purification process called electro-coagulation.
When current is passed through two electrodes suspended in water it changes the surface charge on the suspended solids. This causes the solids, metals, and oils to clump together which makes them considerably easier to treat and clean.
The kit consists of a jar, electrodes, some 3D printed parts, and a pre-flashed Arduino. There’s also salts and filters to finalize the purification process. Students can start the experiment right away and if they’re inspired they’ll have all the tools to try more advanced techniques.
Often STEM kits
lean heavily to robotics
or computer science, but there are so many vast and interesting fields out there with problems that need to be solved.
The
Hackaday
Prize2019
is Sponsored by: | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6201113",
"author": "wibble",
"timestamp": "2019-12-08T00:01:21",
"content": "What is the actual science behind this? The square space website link to learn more is broken. I get the concept – some sort of electrolysis treatment encourages coagulation, but beyond being able to the u... | 1,760,373,663.583534 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/07/beer-keg-becomes-high-performance-pizza-oven/ | Beer Keg Becomes High-Performance Pizza Oven | Lewin Day | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"Pizza",
"pizza oven"
] | Pizza varies all around the world, with several cities having put their own mark on the Italian dish. To make an authentic pie in the Neapolitan style requires extremely high temperatures in order to cook the pizza through in just a couple of minutes. Armed with a beer keg and some ingenuity, [AndrewW1977] got down to work,
building a rig that could get the job done.
The build starts by cutting the keg in half. A series of zigzag steel pieces are welded inside, in order to give the refractory cement more surface area to stick to. With the cement poured and set, a handle was welded to the keg for ease of use, as well as a thermometer to monitor internal temperatures.
Initial attempts to cook using the rig used a wood-fired rocket stove design. This had the drawback of taking up to 45 minutes to reach the appropriate temperature, so the build then switched to using
God’s Gas
, clean burning propane, as a fuel source. With a jet-style burner installed in the base, the oven was ready to start turning out pizzas.
The idea of cooking a hot, fresh pizza in just a couple of minutes has us salivating at the possibilities.
We’ve seen other high-speed pizza ovens, too
. Video after the break. | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6201089",
"author": "RoGeorge",
"timestamp": "2019-12-07T20:03:06",
"content": "Let’s hope there are no zinc plated kegs, and no bad zinc fumes!:o)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6201201",
"author": "Obiwan",
... | 1,760,373,663.960245 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/07/upgrade-your-shades-to-find-lost-items/ | Upgrade Your Shades To Find Lost Items | Sharon Lin | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"computer vision",
"laser",
"opencv",
"servos"
] | Ever wish you could augment your sense of sight?
[Nick Bild]’s latest hack helps you find objects (or people) by
locating their position
and tracking them with a laser. The device, dubbed Artemis, latches onto your eyeglasses and can be configured to locate a specific object.
Images collected from the device are streamed to an NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier board, which uses a SSD300 (Single Shot MultiBox Detection) model to locate objects. The model was pre-trained with the
COCO dataset
to recognize and localize 80 different object types given input from images thresholded in OpenCV. Once the desired object is identified and located, a laser diode activates.
Probably due to the current thresholds, the demo runs mostly work on objects placed further apart against a neutral background. It’s an interesting look at applications combining computer vision with physical devices to augment experiences, rather than simply processing and analyzing data.
The device uses two servos for controlling the laser: one for X-axis control and the other for Y-axis control. The controls are executed from an Adafruit Itsy Bitsy M4 Express microcontroller.
Perhaps with a bit more training, we might not have so much trouble with “Where’s Waldo” puzzles anymore.
Check out some of our other sunglasses hacks, from
home automation
to
using LCDs
to lessening the glare from headlights. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6201051",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2019-12-07T15:08:01",
"content": "nice!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6201125",
"author": "Nick Bild",
"timestamp": "2019-12-08T01:51:25",
"content": "Thanks!... | 1,760,373,664.007519 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/07/simple-pogo-programmer-for-esp8266-modules/ | Simple Pogo Programmer For ESP8266 Modules | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"ftdi",
"pogo",
"programmer"
] | ESP8266 development boards like the Wemos D1 Mini and NodeMCU are an excellent way to get a one-off project up and rolling quickly, but their size and relative complexity mean they aren’t necessarily a good choice for even short-run production hardware. On the other hand, programming the bare ESP modules can be something of a pain. But thanks to [Greg Frost],
flashing those tiny little boards just got a lot easier
.
His 3D printed design uses pogo pins to securely connect to the board’s castellated edges, which also holds it in place during the programming process. On the back side there’s just a few jumper wires and a couple of resistors, which ultimately lead to the FT232R FTDI board that actually connects the chip to the computer so you can program it.
We’d like to see a back panel that encloses the wiring, and perhaps an alternate version that deletes the space for the FTDI board in favor of a row of header pins. Both easy enough modifications to the basic design should [Greg] or anyone else feel so inclined. But even as it is, this is a great little programmer that can be sourced and assembled easily and cheaply.
This
isn’t the first 3D printed ESP8266 programmer
we’ve seen,
and there are some improvised versions
which are even cheaper to put together, but this design has a certain professional look that we think will be right at home on your bench. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6201017",
"author": "benishan",
"timestamp": "2019-12-07T12:19:48",
"content": "Nice",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6201253",
"author": "Timothy Schwarz",
"timestamp": "2019-12-08T23:37:43",
"content":... | 1,760,373,663.909073 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/07/this-cpu-has-only-one-instruction/ | This CPU Has Only One Instruction | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"computer",
"cpu",
"One instruction computer",
"one instruction cpu"
] | Most of us will be familiar at some level with the operation of a basic CPU, usually through exposure to microprocessors of the type that find their way into our projects. We can look at its internal block diagram and get how it works, see the registers and ALU, follow the principles of a von Neumann architecture, and understand that it has an instruction set with different instructions for each of its functions. We all know that this only describes one type of CPU though, and thus it’s always interesting to see alternatives. [Ike Jr] then has a project that should provide a lot of interest, it’s
a CPU that only has a single instruction
. It can only move data from one place to another, which seems to preclude any possibility of computation. How on earth can it work?
The machine has a set of registers as well as memory, and it achieves computation by having specific registers where we might expect to see instructions. For example the AND register is a two-position stack, that when it is full computes the AND of its two pieces of data and places the result in a general purpose register. The write-up goes into significant detail on the CPU’s operation, and while it’s unlikely the world will move en masse to this architecture it’s still a very interesting read. For now this is a machine that exists in software simulation rather than in silicon, and he’s working to release it so enthusiasts for unusual CPUs can have a go.
The idea of having registers that compute reminds us of a
transport triggered architecture
machine, being not the same as a one instruction CPU with
a more conventional computing instruction
.
Abstract PCB header image: Harland Quarrington/MOD [
OGL v1.0
]. | 37 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6201001",
"author": "martin",
"timestamp": "2019-12-07T09:10:47",
"content": "That looks as Forth language if the words would be replaced by “jump to”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6201003",
"author": "Marty",
"timesta... | 1,760,373,663.704759 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/06/tuning-up-the-thinkgeek-star-trek-intercom-panel/ | Tuning Up The ThinkGeek Star Trek Intercom Panel | Tom Nardi | [
"LED Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"intercom",
"prop",
"star trek",
"thinkgeek"
] | On
Star Trek
, all Kirk and friends had to do was snap the button on the always conveniently located intercom panel, start talking, and the intended recipient would immediately respond no matter where they were in the ship. How did it work? Who knows. In spite of, or perhaps even because of, the lightly-explained nature of the technology, the cherry-red wall intercoms still hold a certain charm for fans of the groundbreaking show.
A viewer sent [Fran Blanche]
a scaled down replica of the intercom from ThinkGeek
, and while it certainly looks fairly close to the original prop, it has a couple of annoying design elements. When triggered by the side-mounted motion sensors, the panel will play either the iconic
swoosh
of the automatic doors or the “Red Alert” sound effect. It’s a cute idea for a kid’s bedroom maybe, but not exactly ideal for somebody who regularly records YouTube videos.
Peak 23rd century technology
So the first order of business was to cut the motion sensors out of the circuit and replace them with a push button. [Fran] draws up a quick diagram to explain how these sensors work, and shows that they can easily be bypassed with a momentary switch since they normally bring the line high when triggered. She then converted the indicator light on the right side of the panel into a button to enable the alert sound effect, which is more accurate to how it worked in the show anyway.
The other issue, and perhaps the most egregious to
Star Trek
fans, is that the “Red Alert” indicator on the top of the panel didn’t actually flash like it did in the show. To design and build this panel and not put a few LEDs behind that piece of frosted plastic seems a bit like producing a Matchbox car and forgetting to make the wheels spin. With a couple of red LEDs and a bit of new wiring, the oversight was quickly rectified.
While it might not be perfect, at least ThinkGeek actually produced a functional product this time. It could have ended up like one of their April Fool’s “products” that never get put into production,
forcing a desperate Trekkie to begrudgingly build his own version
. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200904",
"author": "Joe",
"timestamp": "2019-12-06T21:31:33",
"content": "RIP Thinkgeek. You are missed!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6200911",
"author": "Pekka",
"timestamp": "2019-12-06T22:25:05",
... | 1,760,373,663.494735 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/06/this-week-in-security-tegra-bootjacking-leaking-ssh-and-strandhogg/ | This Week In Security: Tegra Bootjacking, Leaking SSH, And StrandHogg | Jonathan Bennett | [
"computer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"NFC",
"StrandHogg",
"superfish",
"This Week in Security"
] | CVE-2019-5700 is a vulnerability in the Nvidia Tegra bootloader, discovered by [Ryan Grachek], and breaking first here at Hackaday. To understand the vulnerability, one first has to understand a bit about the Tegra boot process. When the device is powered on, a irom firmware loads the next stage of the boot process from the device’s flash memory, and validates the signature on that binary. As an aside,
we’ve covered a similar vulnerability
in that irom code called selfblow.
On Tegra T4 devices, irom loads a single bootloader.bin, which in turn boots the system image. The K1 boot stack uses an additional bootloader stage, nvtboot, which loads the secure OS kernel before handing control to bootloader.bin. Later devices add additional stages, but that isn’t important for understanding this. The vulnerability uses an Android boot image, and the magic happens in the header. Part of this boot image is an optional second stage bootloader, which is very rarely used in practice. The header of this boot image specifies the size in bytes of each element, as well as what memory location to load that element to. What [Ryan] realized is that while it’s usually ignored, the information about the second stage bootloader is honored by the official Nvidia bootloader.bin, but neither the size nor memory location are sanity checked. The images are copied to their final position before the cryptographic verification happens. As a result, an Android image can overwrite the running bootloader code.
The simplest way to use this vulnerability is to replace the verification routine with NoOp instructions. The older T4 devices copy the Android image before the trusted OS is loaded, so it’s possible to load unsigned code as the Secure OS image. If you want to dig just a bit further into the technical details, [Ryan] has published
notes on the CVE
.
So what does this mean for the hobbyist? It allows for things like running uboot at the equivalent of ring 0. It allows running more recent Android releases on Tegra devices once they’ve been end-of-lifed. It might even be possible to load Nintendo Switch homebrew software on the Nvidia Shield TV, as those are nearly identical pieces of hardware. Hacks like this are a huge boon to the homebrew and modding community.
We’ve seen this before, and I suspect this style of vulnerability will show up in the future, especially as ARM devices continue to grow in popularity. I suggest this class of vulnerability be called Bootjacking, as it is a highjack of the boot process, as well as jacking instructions into the existing bootloader.
Leaky SSH Certificates
SSH certificates are a serious upgrade over simple passwords. So much so, services like Github and Gitlab have begun mandating SSH keys. One of the quirks of those services: Anyone can download public SSH keys from Github. When a client connects to an SSH server, it lists the keys it has access to, by sending the corresponding public keys. In response, if any of those keys are trusted by the server, it sends back a notification so the client can authenticate with the secret key.
[Artem Golubin] noticed the potential data leak, and
wrote it up in detail
. You could pick a developer on Github, grab his public SSH key, and start checking public-facing SSH servers to find where that public key is recognized. This seems to be baked into the SSH protocol itself, rather than just an implementation quirk. This isn’t the sort of flaw that can be turned into a worm, or will directly get a server compromised, but is an interesting information gathering tool.
HackerOne Exposed
HackerOne is a bug-bounty-as-a-service that represents a bunch of tech companies. Just recently they announced that
a vulnerability had been found in the HackerOne infrastructure itself
. A security researcher using the platform, [Haxta4ok00], was accidentally given an employee’s session key during a back-and-forth about an unrelated bug report, and discovered that session key allowed him to access the HackerOne infrastructure with the same permissions as the employee.
Session key hijacking isn’t a new problem; it is one of the attacks that led to the HTTPS everywhere approach we see today. Once a user has authenticated to a website, how does that authentication “stick” to the user? Sending a username and password with each page load isn’t a great idea. The solution is the session key. Once a user authenticates, the server generates a long random string, and passes it back to the browser. This string is the agreed upon token that authenticates that user for all further communication, until a time limit is reached, or the token is invalidated for another reason.
Not so long ago, most web services only used HTTPS connections for the initial user log-on, and dropped back to unencrypted connections for the bulk of data transfer. This session key was part of the unencrypted payload, and if it could be captured, an attacker could hijack the legitimate session and act as the user. The
Firesheep
browser extension made it clear how easy this attack was to pull off, and pushed many services to finally fixing the problem through full-time HTTPS connections.
HTTPS everywhere is a huge step forward for preventing session hijacking, but as seen at HackerOne, it doesn’t cover every case. The HackerOne employee was using a valid session key as part of a curl command line, and accidentally included it in a response. [Haxta4ok00] noticed the key, and quickly confirmed what is was, and that it allowed him access to HackerOne internal infrastructure.
The leak was reported and the key quickly revoked. Because it was leaked in a private report, only [Haxta4ok00] had access. That said, several other private vulnerability reports were accessed. It’s worth mentioning that HackerOne handled this as well as they could have, awarding $20,000 for the report. They updated their researcher guidelines, and now restrict those session keys to the IP address that generated them.
Via Ars Technica
StrandHogg
One of the more notable stories in the past week was all about Android, and malicious apps masquerading as legitimate ones.
StrandHogg
has been exploited in one form or another since 2017, and was first theorized in
a Usenix paper from 2015
. In some ways, it’s an extremely simple attack, but does some very clever things.
So how does it work? A malicious app, once installed, runs in the background waiting for a target app to be launched. Once the target app is detected, the malicious app jumps to the forefront, disguised as the target. From here, a phishing attack is trivial. More interesting, though, is the permissions attack. Your benign application appears to request file system permissions, camera permissions, etc. It’s not immediately apparent that the malicious app is the one that is actually requesting permissions.
The only actual vulnerability here seems to be the ability of a malicious app to rename and “reparent” itself, in order to spoof being part of the target app. Do note that at least on permissions popups, the name of the requesting application is blank during a StrandHogg attack.
Contactless Payment
Contactless payments look like magic the first time you see them. Just wave a compatible card or mobile device over the payment terminal, and payment happens over NFC. Since you’re reading this column, it’s safe to assume that quickly after that first moment of awe wears off, you starting wondering how this is all done securely. That is what [Leigh-Anne Galloway] and [Tim Yunusov] wanted to know as well.
They just released their research
, and managed to find several nasty tricks. A tin-foil hat might be overkill, but maybe it’s time to invest in an NFC blocking wallet.
They manipulated data in transit, allowing for much larger payments without a PIN entry, made purchases via an NFC proxy, and even illustrated a practical pre-pay attack where a card could be read, make a fake transaction, and then play that fake transaction back for a real payment terminal.
Superfish returns?
Twitter is a fascinating place.
Sometimes simple observations turn out to be CVE
s. An interesting interaction took place when [SwiftOnSecurity] pointed out an odd DNS name, “atlassian-domain-for-localhost-connections-only.com”, with the description that it allowed a secure HTTPS connection to a service running on localhost. Our friend from Google’s Project Zero, [Tavis Ormandy], pointed out that a valid https cert installed on localhost means that Atlassian must be shipping a private certificate for that domain name as part of their software. Follow the link, and you too can host this oddball domain with a valid HTTPS certificate.
This is a bad idea for several reasons, but not the worst thing that could happen. The worst case scenario for this style of mistake probably belongs to
Superfish
. An aptly name adware program was pre-installed on many Lenovo machines in 2014, with the helpful feature of showing you more personalized ads. In order to do this, the software simply added its own certificate authority information to the system’s trusted CA bundle… and shipped the private certificate and key along with the software. Yes, you read that right, any HTTPS certificate could be perfectly spoofed for a Lenovo user.
Looking at the Atlassian domain, another user noted that IBM’s Aspera software had a similar localhost domain and certificate. According to [Tavis], that software also includes a full CA cert and key. If an iteration of IBM software actually added that CA to a system’s root trust, then it’s another superfish: Any HTTPS certification could be successfully spoofed. | 9 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200835",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2019-12-06T15:19:33",
"content": "You miss the Atlassian Zeroday with their awesome secure localhost domain ‘https://atlassian-domain-for-localhost-connections-only.com’:https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/05/atlassian_zero_day_bug/",
... | 1,760,373,663.760329 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/06/not-quite-so-hot-stuff-a-thermal-exam-on-the-latest-raspberry-pi/ | Not-Quite-So-Hot Stuff: A Thermal Exam On The Latest Raspberry Pi | Jenny List | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"heat management",
"power management",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi 4"
] | When the Raspberry Pi 4 was first launched, one of its few perceived flaws was that it had a propensity to get extremely hot. It’s evidently something the Pi people take very seriously, so in the months since they have addressed the problem with a set of firmware updates. Now
they’ve taken a look at the effect of the fixes
in a piece on the Raspberry Pi web site, and it makes for an interesting comparison.
The headline figure is that all updates together remove about a watt of power from the load, a significant quantity for what is still a board that can run from a capable phone charger. Breaking down the separate parts of the updates is where the meat of this story lies though, as we see the individual effects of the various USB, memory, power management and clocking updates. In temperature terms they measure an on-load drop from 72.1 °C to 58.1 °C, which should be a significant improvement for any Pi 4 owner.
There is a debate to be had over in what role a computer such as a Pi should serve. As successive revisions become ever more desktop-like in their capabilities, do they run the risk of abandoning the simplicity of a cheap Linux box as a component that makes us come back for more? It’s a possibility, but one they have very well addressed by developing the Pi Zero. They have also successfully avoided the fate of the Arduino — inexorably tied to its ATmega powered original line despite newer releases. As we have frequently said when reviewing Raspberry Pi competitors, it’s the software support that sets them apart from the herd, something this power-draw story demonstrates admirably. | 53 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200780",
"author": "Jerry",
"timestamp": "2019-12-06T12:21:04",
"content": "“When You Hot, You Hot”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6200886",
"author": "Zack Strickland",
"timestamp": "2019-12-06T19:05:20",
... | 1,760,373,663.847557 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/06/gameslab-the-other-fpga-game-console-badge/ | Gameslab: The Other FPGA Game Console Badge | Dan Maloney | [
"FPGA"
] | [
"fpga",
"game boy",
"game console",
"xilinx zynq"
] | Anyone who was at Supercon will no doubt remember the badges that dangled around everyone’s neck. Some were reasonable, while some were neck-straining monsters that added anything and everything to hack the badge into something cool. We saw everything from AI cameras to a fully autonomous vehicle being worn with pride.
Sadly, one that we missed was
Gameslab
, [Craig J. Bishop]’s FPGA-based portable game console. No, not
that FPGA-based game console
; in an example of great minds thinking alike, [Craig] had actually been toying with his own handheld console design for quite some time. And we have to say the results are stunning.
The FPGA at the heart of this is a Xilinx Zynq FPGA-ARM Cortex A9 combo SoC, normally a prohibitively expensive monster of a chip. When [Craig] found “refurbished” Zynq chips on eBay for less than 10% of the cost of new units, it was literally game-on for the build. The console required a six-layer PCB to support the big BGA chip and the hundreds of support components around it. There’s a 5″ TFT touchscreen with a video controller implemented in the FPGA, a stereo sound system, and all the buttons and thumbsticks you’d expect on a modern console.
For our money, the best part is the case, about which [Craig] has yet to share any details. But it looks like a machined aluminum plate with wide chamfers around each cutout that contrast nicely with the brushed surface. We’ll be looking forward to more details on that and on progress with Gameslab. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200800",
"author": "jalnl",
"timestamp": "2019-12-06T13:47:27",
"content": "The link to Gameslab is wrong. It should behttps://craigjb.com/2019/11/26/gameslab-overview/instead ofhttps://hackaday.io/alanbjohnston",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,664.292742 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/05/a-magnetron-tear-down/ | A Magnetron Tear Down | Al Williams | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"magnetron",
"microwave oven",
"teardown"
] | Microwave ovens are everywhere, and at the heart of them is a magnetron — a device that creates microwaves. [DiodeGoneWild]
tore one apart
to show us what was inside and how it works. If you decide to do this yourself, be careful. The magnetron may have insulators made of beryllium oxide and inhaling dust from the insulator even one time can cause an incurable lung condition.
Luckily, you can’t get a lung problem from watching a video. In addition to just seeing the guts of the magnetron, there are also explanations about how everything works with some quick sketches to illustrate the points.
While we now think of a magnetron as a microwave oven component, they are important in many microwave devices including radar. They are interesting because all they can do is oscillate. You can’t use a magnetron as an amplifier (although it can pump a parametric amplifier). While they were instrumental in building compact and high-resolution radar during World War II, they have fallen out of favor today in that application because there are better alternatives. But there are over 1 billion magnetrons out in the wild, largely thanks to microwave ovens where the signal quality isn’t as important and the inexpensive construction is a big plus.
The beast has been around a long time, too, as an early form showed up in 1910. In 1925 there was a similar device but it topped out at 30 kHz. There was a time when the magnetron was
top secret
, but now you can
make your own
. | 28 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200721",
"author": "macona",
"timestamp": "2019-12-06T06:40:24",
"content": "You might fine BeO in some commercial mags but you won’t find it in microwave ovens. It’s way too expensive. When you do find one there will be stickers all over it warning that it is BeO.",
"parent_id... | 1,760,373,664.073646 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/05/the-heat-of-the-moments-location-visualization-in-python/ | The Heat Of The Moments – Location Visualization In Python | Sven Gregori | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"data visualization",
"heatmap",
"location tracking",
"map",
"openstreetmap",
"python",
"tracking"
] | Have you ever taken a look at all the information that Google has collected about you over all these years? That is, of course, assuming you
have
a Google account, but that’s quite a given if you own an Android device and have privacy concerns overruled by convenience. And considering that GPS is a pretty standard smartphone feature nowadays, you shouldn’t be surprised that your entire location history is very likely part of the collected data as well. So unless you opted out from an everchanging settings labyrinth in the past, it’s too late now, that data exists — period. Well, we might as well use it for our own benefit then and visualize what we’ve got there.
Location data naturally screams for maps as visualization method, and [luka1199] thought what would be better than
an interactive Geo Heatmap written in Python
, showing all the hotspots of your life. Built around the
Folium
library, the script reads the JSON dump of your location history that you can request from
Google’s Takeout service
, and overlays the resulting heatmap on the OpenStreetMap world map, ready for you to explore in your browser. Being Python, that’s pretty much all there is, which makes [Luka]’s script also a good starting point to play around with Folium and map visualization yourself.
While simply just looking at the map and remembering the places your life has taken you to can be fun on its own, you might also realize some time optimization potential in alternative route plannings, or use it to turn your last road trip route into an art piece. Just, whatever you do, be careful that you don’t accidentally
leak the location of some secret military facilities
.
[via
r/dataisbeautiful
] | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200730",
"author": "Dave J.",
"timestamp": "2019-12-06T07:24:58",
"content": "One of the scariest things about Google’s data collection is their Android usage tracking. Android tracks you even when the phone’s in the airplane mode. Watch this news story:https://video.foxnews.com/v/... | 1,760,373,664.423521 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/05/how-safe-is-that-ultrasonic-bath-for-flux-removal/ | How Safe Is That Ultrasonic Bath For Flux Removal? | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"cavitation",
"cleaning",
"flux",
"MEMS",
"pcb",
"removal",
"resonance",
"sonication",
"ultrasound"
] | How do you clean the residual flux off your boards? There are plenty of ways to go about the job, ranging from “why bother?” to the careful application of isopropyl alcohol to every joint with a cotton swab. It seems like more and more people are turning to ultrasonic cleaners to get the job done, though, and for good reason: just dunk your board and walk away while cavitation does the work for you.
But just how safe is it to sonically blast the flux off your boards? [SDG Electronics] wanted to know, so
he ran some cleaning tests
to get to the bottom of things. On the face of it, dunking a PCB in an aqueous cleaning solution seems ill-advised; after all, water and electricity famously don’t mix. But assuming all the nooks and crannies of a board can be dried out before power is applied, the cleaning solution itself should be of little concern. The main beef with ultrasonic cleaning seems to be with the acoustic energy coupling with mechanical systems on boards, such as crystal oscillators or micro-electrical-mechanical systems (MEMS) components, such as accelerometers or microphones. Such components could resonate with the ultrasonic waves and be blasted to bits internally.
To test this, [SDG Electronics] built a board with various potentially vulnerable components, including the popular 32.768-kHz crystal, cut for a frequency quite close to the cleaner’s fundamental. The video below goes into some detail on the before-and-after tests, but the short story is that nothing untoward happened to any of the test circuits. Granted, no components with openings as you might find on some MEMS microphones were tested, so be careful. After all, we know that
ultrasound can deal damage
, and if it can
levitate tiny styrofoam balls
, it might just do your circuit in. | 30 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200650",
"author": "packrat",
"timestamp": "2019-12-06T00:16:16",
"content": "Speaking of ‘Danger’:The head of the local Makerspace has two different sized (small) sonic cleaners from ‘Chairman Mao’s Dollarama’, (as one of our irreverent YouTubers puts it)…*He’s* concerned about po... | 1,760,373,664.496614 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/06/visiting-the-facom-128b-1958-relay-computer/ | Visiting The FACOM 128B 1958 Relay Computer | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"facom",
"facom 128b",
"relay computer",
"retrocomputing"
] | If you study the history of computing you might have heard of the FACOM 128B, a Japanese relay computer from 1958. It holds the distinction of being a contender for the oldest computer that still works in its original form, as it resides in a Fujitsu building in Numazu Japan. [CuriousMarc] visited the old computer and created
a video about it
as well as painting a picture of other contemporary machines. You can see the video below.
[Marc] explains how a relay machine was already behind the times in 1958, and also shows how the 5,000 relay machine is laid out. The machine on display came from a Tokyo university and did the kind of computations you might use a computer for today to do engineering design.
Watching — and hearing — the beast run a program to add three and three is very illustrative. The keyboards reminded us of old adding machines. The machine uses floating point or bi-quinary that stores each digit as 7 bits. This led to a wide word width but made it simple to see when a relay got stuck since each number had two parts and only one relay was on in each part for any number.
The video isn’t just a home movie of the visit but shows how the operator entered data and instructions along with how to read the output display. The machine had 180 words of memory that took several cabinets. That works out to about 13K of memory. That was still enough to set up the solution for a 5×5 matrix inversion. We were amused to see that a program loop was literally a loop of punched tape.
We like flying a jet plane but are nostalgic for airships. By the same token, we kind of wish our desktop computer used relays like this. We’d probably be pretty unhappy if either of those were really true. Then again, we have seen a
single board relay computer
recently.
We’ve actually
seen this computer in an earlier post
. There we noted the computer was asynchronous, something that would be unusual in a modern CPU. | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6201042",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2019-12-07T14:34:18",
"content": "It’s great that there are people who care and mantain this machine and people who make a video (like this one) about it. Interesting history and technology. Regarding the article, the 13K is a bit misleading,... | 1,760,373,664.25504 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/06/behind-amazons-doors-is-a-library/ | Behind Amazon’s Doors Is A Library | Al Williams | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"amazon",
"AWS",
"distributed systems"
] | Some people love Amazon, while others think it has become too big and invasive. But you have to admit, they build gigantic and apparently reliable systems. Interestingly, they recently released a library of white papers from their senior staff called the
Builder’s Library
.
According to their blog post:
The Amazon Builders’ Library is a collection of living articles that take readers under the hood of how Amazon architects, releases, and operates the software underpinning Amazon.com and AWS. The Builders’ Library articles are written by Amazon’s senior technical leaders and engineers, covering topics across architecture, software delivery, and operations. For example, readers can see how Amazon automates software delivery to achieve over 150 million deployments a year or how Amazon’s engineers implement principles such as shuffle sharding to build resilient systems that are highly available and fault tolerant.
The Amazon Builders’ Library will continue to be updated with new content going forward.
Right now there are only two topic areas: Architecture and Software Delivery/Operations. There are however a number of papers in each topic. For example, “
Challenges with Distributed Systems
” gives an overview of best practices for building systems with multiple computers.
Other papers cover things such as leader election, load shedding, and effective caching. Overall, it looks like a lot of interesting reading.
Amazon is into a dizzying array of services these days, ranging from
satellite ground stations
to oddball ways to
deliver your latest coffee mug
. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200972",
"author": "RandyKC",
"timestamp": "2019-12-07T03:44:56",
"content": "Brilliant way to promote AWS.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6201156",
"author": "qwert",
"timestamp": "2019-12-08T06:31:22",
... | 1,760,373,664.542055 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/06/inkjet-printing-on-the-cheap-with-a-continuous-ink-system/ | Inkjet Printing On The Cheap With A Continuous Ink System | Lewin Day | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"continuous ink",
"ink",
"inkjet printer",
"printer"
] | Inkjet printers are cheap to buy, but expensive to run. Replacement cartridges can easily cost double the price of the hardware itself, leading many to decry the technology entirely. However, the hackers of the world have the problem licked –
enter the continuous ink system.
[cprossu] wanted an affordable color printing solution for the hackerspace. A cheap printer was sourced from a thrift store. The model chosen was selected for its lack of cartridge DRM and the availability of kits on eBay for conversion to a continuous ink system. This involves running large refillable tanks of ink instead of small individual cartridges which must be thrown away when empty.
[cprossu] discusses both the challenges you’ll likely face in a general build, as well as the specific work required to handle the conversion on an Epson Artisan 725. There’s also excessive label-maker abuse, which always brings a smile to our face. It’s a conversion well worth considering if you find yourself regularly purchasing expensive cartridges.
We’ve even seen similar builds as far back as 2009, right from the ground up! | 39 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200938",
"author": "eternityforest",
"timestamp": "2019-12-07T00:25:07",
"content": "I used to wonder why anyone would care about the cost of inkjets ink since you only need to replace them twice a year or so at most.Then I worked at an office with real busisness types. They print ... | 1,760,373,664.876614 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/06/swapping-the-roms-in-mini-arcade-cabinets/ | Swapping The ROMs In Mini Arcade Cabinets | Tom Nardi | [
"classic hacks",
"Games"
] | [
"arcade cabinet",
"bus pirate",
"flash",
"hex editor",
"i2c",
"reverse engineering",
"spi"
] | You’ve probably seen a few of these miniature arcade games online or in big box retailers: for $20 USD or so you get scaled-down version of a classic arcade cabinet, perfect for a desk toy or to throw up on a shelf as part of your gaming collection. Like any good Hackaday reader, you were probably curious about what makes them tick. Thanks to [wrongbaud],
we don’t have to wonder anymore
.
Over the course of several blog posts, [wrongbaud] walks readers through the hardware and software used in a few of these miniature games. For example, the
Rampage
cabinet is using a so-called “NES on a Chip” along with a SPI flash chip to hold the ROM, while
Mortal Kombat
is using a Genesis emulation solution and parallel flash. It wouldn’t be interesting if they didn’t throw you a few curves now and again, right?
But these are more than simple teardowns. Once [wrongbaud] gives an overview of the hardware, the next step is reading the respective flash storage and trying to make sense of the dumped data. These sort of games
generally reuse the hardware among a number of titles
, so by isolating where the game ROM is and replacing it, they can be made to play other games without hardware modification. Here, this capability is demonstrated by replacing the ROM data for
Rampage
with
Yoshi’s Cookie
. Naturally it’s one
of those things that’s easier said than done
, but it’s an interesting proof of concept.
The
Mortal Kombat
cabinet is a newer addition to the collection, so [wrongbaud] hasn’t progressed quite as far with that one. The parallel flash chip has been dumped with the help of an ESP32 and a MCP23017 I/O expander, and some Genesis ROM headers are identifiable in the data, but there’s still some sifting to be done before the firmware structure can be fully understood.
Even if you’re not
in the market for a diminutive arcade experience
, the information that [wrongbaud] has collected here is really phenomenal. From understanding protocols such as I2C and SPI to navigating firmware dumps with a hex editor, these posts are an invaluable resource for anyone looking to get started with
reverse engineering
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200951",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2019-12-07T01:03:54",
"content": "I want to know what’s in those bigger ones that are getting more commodity than custom priced now, and go on sale after Christmas.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,664.682558 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/06/david-williams-is-fpga-curious/ | David Williams Is “FPGA-Curious” | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"hardware"
] | [
"2019 Hackaday Superconference",
"fpga",
"robotics"
] | If you hadn’t noticed, we had a bit of an FPGA theme running at this year’s Superconference. Why? Because the open-source FPGA toolchain is ripening, and because many of the problems that hackers (and academics) are tackling these days have become complex enough to warrant using them. A case in point: David Williams is a university professor who just wanted to build a quadruped robotics project. Each leg has a complex set of motors, motor drivers, sensors, and other feedback mechanisms. Centralizing all of this data put real strains on the robot’s network, and with so many devices the microcontrollers were running out of GPIOs. This lead him to become, in his words, “FPGA-curious”.
If you’re looking for a gentle introduction to the state of the art in open-source FPGAs, this is your talk. David covers everything, from a bird’s eye view of hardware description languages, through the entire Yosys-based open-source toolchain, and even through to embedding soft-CPUs into the FPGA fabric. And that’s just the first 18 minutes. (
Slides
for your enjoyment, and you can watch the talk embedded below the break.)
The second half of the talk is more about his personal experience and advice based on the last year or so of his experience going from FPGA newbie to master of his own robot. He highlights the versatility of a soft-CPU in an FPGA versus a pre-baked microcontroller solution. With the microcontroller you get all of the peripherals built into the silicon, but with the FPGA you get to
write your own
peripherals. Want a 10-wire SPI-like bus? Just code it up. Your peripherals are as simple or complex as you need them to be.
On the hardware side, David touts the PMOD standard (
a man after our own heart
!) and points out the large ecology of PMOD-compatible devices out there. Going for a plug-in solution also means that your engineering job is reduced to building a carrier board that can seat the FPGA brainboard of your choosing and interface it with a bunch of PMODs. It’s hard to get much simpler than that.
David is very much interested in the software layer as well, and encouraging re-usability of Verilog code among designs. Towards this end he’s written his own bus and interconnect standard, and a few modules that do things such as buffer data, process video, and so on. While we would have probably gone for the open-source standard
WISHBONE interconnect architecture
, David bundled a bunch of the possible signals together and called it a “pipe”. Compared to WISHBONE, David’s design makes a few judicious choices and thus streamlines interconnection greatly. He has
code to go with it all
, so have a look if you’re interested. We’re just speculating, but if you wrote a “pipe” to WISHBONE connector, you’d have the best of both worlds.
Finally, David isn’t just whistling Dixie. He took a video camera, plugged it into his Supercon badge via the cartridge slot, and had it displaying video in real time, all of this using pieces of code that he’d previously written and simply connected together with his “pipes”. A great demo is very convincing.
In sum, David’s talk is a great summary of the state of play in open-source FPGAs right now. Whether you’re getting your first taste, or are a moderately skilled FPGA developer, there is something for you here. And if anything, David’s call to end the fifty years of secrecy and IP-hoarding that have surrounded FPGAs is a rallying cry that we can get behind. We’ve gotten the tools in our hands now, and the hardware has become cheap and accessible. If you’re looking for a place to start, try the
self-guided FPGA workshop
from Supercon, and then maybe Al Williams’
FPGA Bootcamp
. The time for a hacker FPGA revolution is ripe. To arms! | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200895",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2019-12-06T20:33:57",
"content": "“And if anything, David’s call to end the fifty years of secrecy and IP-hoarding that have surrounded FPGAs is a rallying cry that we can get behind. ”And greater speeds is always appreciated.",
"par... | 1,760,373,664.791415 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/06/chandrayaan-2-found-by-citizen-scientist-reminds-us-of-pluto-discovery/ | Chandrayaan-2 Found By Citizen Scientist; Reminds Us Of Pluto Discovery | Al Williams | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"News",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"astronomy",
"ISRO",
"moon",
"Planet",
"Pluto",
"space",
"Vikram"
] | What does Pluto — not the dog, but the non-Planet — have in common with the Vikram lunar lander launched by India? Both were found by making very tiny comparisons to photographs. You’d think landing something on the moon would be old hat by now, but it turns out only three countries have managed to do it. The Chandrayaan-2 mission would have made India the fourth country. But two miles above the surface, the craft left its planned trajectory and went radio silent.
India claimed it knew where the lander crashed but never revealed any pictures or actual coordinates. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took pictures several times of the landing area but didn’t see the expected scar like the one left by the doomed Israeli lander when it crashed in April. A lot of people started looking at the NASA pictures and one Indian computer programmer and mechanical engineer, Shanmuga Subramanian,
seems to have been successful
.
According to Shanmuga and NASA, he looked at the last known position and velocity and
used it to estimate where there might be debris
. A white speck about a kilometer away from the proposed landing site wasn’t there on earlier images of the same area. NASA received the report of the suspected finding and confirmed it along with finding a spray of debris.
Is It or Isn’t It?
According to NASA, the camera resolution is about 1.3 meters per pixel and the largest debris is about two square pixels. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) claims they already knew where the lander crashed. On the other hand, a senior ISRO official has cast doubt on the NASA images, although he points out he is stating his personal views. Still, you’d presume if they know where it is, they would know for sure if the NASA analysis is correct or not.
See For Yourself
NASA has a great before and after image that shows the difference very clearly. You can see it below:
Pluto in a Blink
This couldn’t help but remind me of how Pluto was discovered using a machine called a
blink comparator
. This machine dates back to 1904 and — like many things — has been superseded by modern technology. In 1930, scientists knew there was something pulling the orbits of the planets but they didn’t know where it was.
The blink comparator helps you find something that moves by showing you two photographic plates in quick succession. Anything in the same spot on both plates appears stationary. Anything moving in the frame will stand out as it appears to jump from one spot to another.
In 1906, Percival Lowell started searching for “Planet X” in earnest. He died ten years later never knowing that he had photographed Pluto twice in 1915 but failed to notice it. Retrospectively, there were at least 14 other photographs of the quasi-planet that no one noticed at the time, going back to 1909.
In 1929 — after a lot of legal battles between the Lowell Observatory and Lowell’s widow, the search resumed with Clyde Tombaugh given the task as something suitable for a young astronomer. Tombaugh took pictures of the night sky in pairs and used a blink comparator to see if anything moved. He had a 13″ telescope — respectable, but not huge by today’s standards.
The discovery came out in March of 1930. Did you know that since then Pluto still hasn’t made it all the way around the sun? A year on Pluto is nearly 250 Earth years long. You can see more about the comparator at the Lowell Observatory in the video below.
Modern Science
While Tombaugh wasn’t technically a citizen scientist, we have access to tools he couldn’t dream of. While blink comparators are a thing of the past, we have a whole arsenal of digital imaging tools along with large numbers of images from ground-, space-, and vehicle-based telescopes and cameras. We applaud Shanmuga Subramanian for making use of these tools so successfully.
You can even do
observations with a crowd
if you like. You can also use some
pretty big scopes
online. Meanwhile, good luck to ISRO with their third mission, coming soon. | 40 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200882",
"author": "deshipu",
"timestamp": "2019-12-06T18:56:02",
"content": "speck",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6201288",
"author": "Kaz",
"timestamp": "2019-12-09T05:38:02",
"content": "Kirk?",
... | 1,760,373,664.629207 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/06/hackaday-podcast-045-raspberry-pi-bug-rapidly-aging-vodka-raining-on-the-cloud-and-this-wasnt-a-supercon-episode/ | Hackaday Podcast 045: Raspberry Pi Bug, Rapidly Aging Vodka, Raining On The Cloud, And This Wasn’t A Supercon Episode | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Cloud Print",
"CoreXY",
"ESP32",
"Hackaday Podcast",
"leds",
"Raspberry Pi 4",
"WiFi Jammer"
] | Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams talk over the last three weeks full of hacks. Our first “back to normal” podcast after Supercon turns out to still have a lot of Supercon references in it. We discuss Raspberry Pi 4’s HDMI interfering with its WiFi, learn the differences between CoreXY/Delta/Cartesian printers, sip on Whiskey aged in an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner, and set up cloud printing that’s already scheduled for the chopping block. Along the way, you’ll hear hints of what happened at Supercon, from the definitive guide to designing LEDs for iron-clad performance to the projects people hauled along with them.
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 045 Show Notes:
New This Week:
That’s It, No More European IPV4 Addresses
The ESP32, Laid Bare
Hackaday @ 36C3
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Raspberry Pi 4 HDMI Is Jamming Its Own WiFi
Eben Upton responds to HDMI/WiFi interference, referencing poorly shielded cables
TEMPEST
Core XY Explained
Joshua Vasquez digs into corexy
Jubilee: A Toolchanging Homage To 3D Printer Hackers Everywhere
Aging Alcohol In 30 Minutes
Microbalance Determines Alcohol Content
Scientists reveal why whisky tastes better with water
Mike Harrison Knows Everything About LEDs
RGB LEDs: How To Master Gamma And Hue For Perfect Brightness
Buttery Smooth Fades With The Power Of HSV
DIY Photo Backup In The Field
Little Backup Box: Raspberry Pi-based backup device for photographers
Print From The ESP8266, Courtesy Of Google
Best Buy’s IoT Goes Dark, Leaving Some “Smart” Products Dumbfounded
What happens when the sun sets on a smart product?
Red Bricks: Alphabet To Turn Off Revolv’s Lights
Quick Hacks:
Mike’s Picks:
UNIX Version 0, Running On A PDP-7, In 2019
Robot Vs. Superbug
Barcaderator Is Coin-Op Arcade Up Top And Kegerator Down Below
Elliot’s Picks:
Needling Your Projects: 3D Printed PCB Probing Jig Uses Accupuncture Needles
Mechanical Seven-Segment Display Mixes Art With Hacking
DIY CNC Router Uses Chains The Right Way
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Lessons In Li-Ion Safety
Supercon: The Things You Brought, And A Few You Forgot
Amy Qian’s flexture demo board
A Fantastic Frontier Of FPGA Flexibility Found In The 2019 Supercon Badge | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200879",
"author": "Mario (@tinnef101)",
"timestamp": "2019-12-06T18:38:07",
"content": "Oh my gosh, i have listened every single podcast! (and i love the pace. Really comfy to get home and have a new and fresh podcast in the pipeline)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,373,664.725391 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/05/automated-cat-feeder-leaves-little-to-chance/ | Automated Cat Feeder Leaves Little To Chance | Tom Nardi | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"automation",
"cat feeder",
"load cell",
"scale",
"stepper motor"
] | We often like to say that if something is worth doing, then it’s worth
overdoing.
This automatic cat feeder built by [krizzli]
is a perfect example of the principle. It packs in far more sensors and functions than its simple and sleek outward appearance might suggest, to the point that we think this build might just set the standard for future projects.
The defining feature of the project is a load cell located under the bowl, which allows the device to accurately measure out how much feed is being dispensed by weight. This allows the feeder to do things such as detect jams or send an alert once it runs out of food, as well as easily adjust how much is dispensed according to the animal’s dietary needs. To prevent any curious paws from getting into the machine while it’s doling out the food, the lid will automatically open and close during the filling process, complete with optical sensors to confirm that it moved as expected.
All of the major components of the feeder were printed out on a Prusa i3 MK3S, and [krizzli] says that the feed hopper can be scaled vertically if necessary. Though at the current size, it’s already packing around a week’s worth of food. Of course, this does depend on the particular feline you’re dealing with.
In terms of electronics, the feeder’s primary control comes from an ESP8266 (specifically, the Wemos D1 Mini), though [krizzli] also has a Arduino Pro Mini onboard so there’s a few more GPIO pins to play with. The food is dispensed with a NEMA 17, and a 28-BYJ48 stepper is in charge of moving the lid. A small OLED on the side of the feeder gives some basic information like the time until the next feeding and the dispensed weight, but there’s also a simple API that lets you talk to the device over the network. Being online also means the feeder can pull the time from NTP, so kitty’s mealtime will always be on the dot.
Over the years we’ve seen an
incredible array of automatic cat feeders
, some of which featuring the sort of
in-depth metrics possible when you’ve got on onboard scale
. But we can’t help but be impressed with how
normal
this build looks. If nothing else, of all the feeders we’ve seen, this one is probably the most likely to get cloned and sold commercially. They say it’s the most sincere form of flattery. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200601",
"author": "Dog of Tears",
"timestamp": "2019-12-05T21:37:29",
"content": "Looks great now, but, how about after they push it off that counter? :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6200606",
"author": "Ren",
... | 1,760,373,664.932078 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/05/dont-forget-the-baby/ | Don’t Forget The Baby! | Jenny List | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2019 Hackaday Prize",
"atmega328",
"mp3",
"supercapacitor"
] | It must be a common worry among parents, that they might forget their offspring and leave them in the car where they would succumb to excessive heat. So much so that [Matt Meerian] has produced
an alarm that issues a verbal reminder to check for the youngster
when the vehicle is turned off.
It’s a simple enough device, with an ATmega328, an off-the-shelf MP3 module, and a power supply regulator to deliver 5 V into a pair of supercapacitors from the vehicle accessory socket’s 12 V. The idea is that the power is cut when the vehicle ignition is turned off, and that the supercaps have enough energy within them to play the reminder sample for the driver to check for forgotten children.
We can’t help remarking that a percentage of cars leave their accessory sockets turned on all the time, so it would be interesting to ponder how one might detect the car being turned off in that case. He muses about using a surplus cell phone instead of his ATmega328, perhaps the MEMS sensor on a phone could also be used to detect the vibrations of the engine stopping as it was turned off. Such cars notwithstanding, this unit is a straightforward solution to the problem in hand.
The
Hackaday
Prize2019
is Sponsored by: | 47 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200532",
"author": "mike",
"timestamp": "2019-12-05T19:43:52",
"content": "” It must be a common worry among parents, that they might forget their offspring and leave them in the car ”Any parent that would “forget” their kid in the car should be instantly branded and have a tattoo ... | 1,760,373,665.104108 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/05/retrotechtacular-the-gyro-x/ | Retrotechtacular: The Gyro-X | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Retrotechtacular",
"Slider"
] | [
"Alex Tremulis",
"gyro-x",
"gyronaut x-1",
"gyroscopic car",
"Lane Motor Museum",
"Thomas Summers"
] | In the 1950s, American automobiles bloomed into curvaceous gas-guzzlers that congested the roads. The profiles coming out of Detroit began to deflate in the 1960s, but many bloat boats were still sailing the streets. For all their hulking mass, these cars really weren’t all that stable — they still had issues with sliding and skidding.
One man sought to fix all of this by re-imagining the automobile as a sleek torpedo that would scream down the road and fly around turns. This man, Alex Tremulis, envisioned the future of the automobile as a two-wheeled, streamlined machine, stabilized by a gyroscope. He called it the Gyro-X.
A Revolutionary Two-Wheeler
Alex Tremulis and the Gyro-X. Image via
Hemmings
Alex Tremulis had designed many cars that were futuristic for their time, like the
Cord 810/812
and the
Tucker ’48
. He went to work for Ford in 1952 as the Chief of Advanced Styling, and helped design the
Ford Gyron
concept car in 1961.
When you consider that gyros have long been used to stabilize everything from space ships to submarines, a gyroscopic car is really not that far-fetched. Try as he might, Tremulis couldn’t get Ford to seriously invest in the idea. A few years after the Gyron, Tremulis designed the
Gyronaut X-1
, a streamlined motorcycle that set a few land speed records at Bonneville.
Tremulis left Ford and teamed up with gyroscope expert Thomas Summers, who usually dealt with missiles and rockets. In 1963, Tremulis and Summers founded Gyro Transport Systems in Northridge, CA. The two secured $750,000 from investors — that’s roughly $6.3 million in today’s money — to create what was supposed to be the future of the automobile: sleek but safe, small but stylish.
Lean, Mean Driving Machine
Image via
the Gyro-X Files
.
The prototype was up and running by 1967, and appeared at the International Automobile show in New York. The magazine
Science & Mechanics
featured it in their
September 1967 issue
.
The Gyro-X proves that it’s possible to design an economy car without sacrificing a shred of speed or style. It could do 120 MPH with only an 80-horsepower Mini Cooper engine mounted in the back. It turned like a motorcycle, but with no leaning necessary — just turn the wheel and the gyro leans the car for you. When it was time to park, outrigger training wheels dropped down to keep it from falling over.
At just 42″ wide, two cars could fit side by side in the same lane, as dangerous as that sounds. Just before the company went under, Tremulis was working on a family version that was a whole foot wider and three feet longer — a real grocery-getter.
Gyro-assisted turning explained by
Jared Owen Animations
.
Of course, the real feature is the gyroscope that made this tiny two-wheeler possible in the first place. The 22″ diameter gyro sat in front, mere inches from the driver’s kneecaps.
When the car is driving in a straight line, the gyro makes micro adjustments to keep it upright. As the steering wheel is turned in either direction, the gyro moves in unison with the front wheel.
The gyroscope was hydraulically driven off the motor, and it took three full minutes to wind its way up to 6,000 RPM, so it’s not intended for quick getaways. But the gyro would keep spinning for about two hours after the car shut off. Perhaps that energy could have been used to charge a generator for an electric motor, or a battery for charging electronic devices.
Spinning Out of Control
Though the Gyro-X could do 120 MPH, it probably shouldn’t have. The two-wheeled wonder was consistently unstable at speeds over 70 MPH. Tremulis and Summers couldn’t solve the complicated engineering issues quickly enough to please the investors, who got antsy and pulled their money. By 1970, Gyro Transport Systems was out of business.
The Road to Restoration
The only Gyro-X ever produced became the custody of Thomas Summers. By 1975, he had turned it into a three-wheeler and put a Volkswagen engine in the back so he could license it in California.
The years had not been kind to the Gyro-X. Image via
YouTube
It disappeared for a while and resurfaced in 1994, when a Las Vegas musician named John Windsor obtained it as payment for a debt. The car was nearly unrecognizable, and the gyro itself was long gone.
Windsor put up a video in 2009
giving a tour of the car and explaining how he came to own it. He didn’t know what he had, and so he used the internet to spread the word. It worked. The video got a bite, and Windsor sold it to a private collector, who may have bitten off more than they could chew.
In 2011, Jeff Lane, founder and director of the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tennessee
bought it from the collector and started pushing the Gyro-X down the road to restoration
. Lane and his crew painstakingly restored it from photos and a few known measurements, an effort that took several years and around half a million dollars. The hardest part was, of course, replacing the gyro. You can’t just
find
those things, not at that scale. Lane hired an Italian firm specializing in yacht-stabilizing technology to make a new gyro, and that required them to fly someone out to do digital scans of the car.
Here is a brief documentary about the restoration effort
, which was filmed somewhere in the middle of the process. Below are images of the fully-restored Gyro-X, all courtesy of the Lane Motor Museum. After that, we’ve embedded some vintage footage of it whizzing around Southern California.
The Gyro-X rides again after a lengthy restoration process.
The Lane Motor Museum spared no expense and missed no details.
Here’s the shiny new custom-built gyro.
Thanks to [Jared Owen] and
his fantastic animation channel
for inspiring this post.
Retrotechtacular is a weekly column featuring hacks, technology, and kitsch from ages of yore. Help keep it fresh by
sending in your ideas for future installments
. | 42 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200496",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2019-12-05T18:09:11",
"content": "cool",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6200502",
"author": "Jack Aubrey",
"timestamp": "2019-12-05T18:30:16",
"content": "This t... | 1,760,373,665.984298 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/05/a-stm32-tonewheel-organ-without-a-single-tonewheel/ | A STM32 Tonewheel Organ Without A Single Tonewheel | Gerrit Coetzee | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"midi",
"organ",
"stm32",
"synthesizer",
"tonewheel"
] | The one thing you might be surprised not to find in [Laurent]’s beautiful
tonewheel organ build is any tonewheels at all.
Tonewheels were an early way to produce electronic organ sounds: by
spinning a toothed wheel
at different frequencies and transcending the signal one way or another it was possible to synthesize quite an array of sounds. We like to imagine that they’re all still there in [Laruent]’s organ, albeit very tiny, but the truth is that they’re being synthesized entirely on an STM32 micro controller.
The build itself is beautiful and extremely professional looking. We were unaware that it was possible to buy keybeds for a custom synthesizer, but a model from FATAR sits at the center of the show. There’s a MIDI encoder board and a Nucleo development board inside, tied together with a custom PCB. The UI is an momentary encoder wheel and a display from
Mikroelektronika
.
You can see and hear this beautiful instrument in the
video
after the break. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200471",
"author": "DRM",
"timestamp": "2019-12-05T17:00:28",
"content": "Beautifully done–the Leslie is especially cool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6200524",
"author": "Buddy Casino",
"timestamp": "2019-12-05T19:1... | 1,760,373,666.029234 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/05/updating-to-windows-10-for-fun-and-profit-make-those-oem-keys-go-further/ | Updating To Windows 10 For Fun And Profit: Make Those OEM Keys Go Further | Jonathan Bennett | [
"computer hacks",
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"update",
"windows",
"Windows 10"
] | Microsoft seems to have an every-other-version curse. We’re not sure how much of this is confirmation bias, but consider the track record of releases. Windows 95 was game-changing, Windows 98 famously
crashed during live demo
. Windows 2000 was amazing, Windows ME has been nicknamed the “Mistake Edition”. XP was the workhorse of the world for years and years, and Vista was… well, it was Vista. Windows 7 is the current reigning champion of desktop installs, and Windows 8 was the version that put a touchscreen interface on desktops. The “curse” is probably an example of finding patterns just because we’re looking for them, but the stats do show a large crowd clinging to Windows 7.
Windows 10 made a name for itself by automatically installing itself on Windows 7 and Windows 8 computers, much to the annoyance of many unexpecting “victims” of that free upgrade. Several years have gone by, Windows 10 has gotten better, and support for Windows 7 ends in January. If you’re tied to the Windows ecosystem, it’s time to upgrade to Windows 10. It’s too bad you missed out on the free upgrade to Windows 10, right?
About that… It’s probably an unintended side effect, but all valid Windows 7 and Windows 8 keys are also valid Windows 10 keys. Activation is potentially another issue, but we’ll get to that later.
What Exactly Do They Mean by OEM License?
Microsoft has finally come to their collective senses:
Windows install ISOs are available for download
. There are only 2 ISOs, 32 bit and 64 bit. Both images support home and professional versions, and the right version is installed based on the Windows key provided.
Speaking of versions, let’s talk about the different Windows versions. Not the difference between home and professional, but what is meant by an OEM license. Take a look at Windows 10 Pro on Amazon. Right now I see Windows 10 Professional for $184.99, and a Windows 10 Professional OEM for $113. What’s the difference? The packaging may look different, calling Microsoft Support might be a different experience, but the main difference is that an OEM key is locked to the computer it is first installed on.
How do computer upgrades work with an OEM key? The Ship of Theseus is a useful thought experiment. Taken directly from
the Wikipedia article
:
If it is supposed that the famous ship sailed by the hero Theseus in a great battle has been kept in a harbour as a museum piece, and as the years went by some of the wooden parts began to rot and were replaced by new ones then, after a century or so, all of the parts had been replaced. The question then is if the “restored” ship is still the same object as the original.
If it is then supposed that each of the removed pieces were stored in a warehouse, and after the century, technology developed to cure their rotting and enabled them to be put back together to make a ship, then the question is if this “reconstructed” ship is still the original ship. And if so, then the question also regards the restored ship in the harbour still being the original ship as well.
How much of a computer’s hardware can you upgrade and still consider it the same computer? Rather than wrestle with such a philosophical question for every instance, Microsoft has opted for a simple rule. A new motherboard constitutes a new computer.
So where does that leave us? First, you can go download a Windows 10 ISO, burn it to a DVD, and do a free upgrade right now from Windows 7 or 8. Boot into Windows as normal, and then run the setup executable from the DVD. Follow the prompts to start the upgrade. The installer will copy everything it needs to the hard drive and reboot the machine. After the install finishes, Windows will go through the activation process again, and activation should succeed.
Something about the free upgrade process forces Microsoft to treat this Windows 10 activation as a new computer activation. Because every Windows 7/8 key is eligible for the free upgrade, this means that you can do a full hardware rebuild, motherboard included, and use your Windows 7 OEM key to install Windows 10, and activation should succeed. Do note that this will work only once. Once you’ve used your free upgrade, that Windows key is once again locked, and out of additional activations.
Give Windows The Old Switcheroo
There is one more trick worth mentioning. You may be familiar with the challenge of upgrading hardware on an existing Windows install. It’s not uncommon for booting with the new hardware to trigger a BSOD before the desktop even loads. The Windows 10 upgrade process has the side-effect of re-installing all the hardware drivers, making it a perfect time for that hardware upgrade. The timing on this is a little tricky. You need to run the setup off the Windows 10 disk and wait for the setup files to finish copying over. When the setup program reboots to start the actual installation, pull the power plug before the drive starts to boot again. You may find it useful to first turn off quiet boot in BIOS. The window for interrupting the process is narrow, but success gives you a hard drive with all your existing data and programs, ready to install Windows 10 on next boot. Rebuild the hardware with all the changes you’d like to make, and boot off that hard drive. Windows 10 will install the proper drivers, just like a fresh install, and the Windows 7 key should activate without any issues.
It’s time to face the music, and upgrade from Windows 7. If you just can’t stomach Windows 10, at least there are options.
Open Shell
is the open source successor to Classic Shell, and many find it to smooth the rough edges. Alternatively, maybe it’s time to look at Linux? We’re still holding out hope that the Year of the Linux Desktop™ is coming. Or for those willing to go over to the dark side, there is that
other Unix derived desktop OS
you could use. In any case, stay secure out there. | 215 | 48 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200425",
"author": "jcwren",
"timestamp": "2019-12-05T15:07:07",
"content": "And then you can enjoy all the Windows 10 updates that brick your system.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6200461",
"author": "GEO",
... | 1,760,373,665.462272 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/05/1984-weatherman-pi-shows-the-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes/ | 1984 WeatherMan Pi Shows The Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"raspberry pi",
"unicorn HAT",
"weather display"
] | When [MisterM]’s MIL gave him a rad 80s portable cassette player, he jumped for joy. Once he figured out the window was exactly the same size as the standard for Raspberry Pi HATs, the possibilities left him reeling. A flurry of ideas later, he settled on
a weather display featuring a Pimoroni Unicorn HAT HD
.
The 1984 Weatherman Pi pulls data from the Dark Sky API every 1.5 seconds using a Zero W. [MisterM] chose to highlight the current temperature, conditions, and rain probability, though there are heaps of other API goodies still on the table. It shows the current weather conditions as animations, scrolls the temperature, and gives a nice graph of rainfall probability.
Surprisingly, the dazzling display isn’t our favorite part. See those spongy headphones up top? They’re not just for decoration, though they go a long way in helping the cassette player keep its identity. Whenever there’s a change in the weather, they shimmy back and forth on a 9g servo. If the servo were continuous, it might be neat to use them as a weather vane.
Be sure to check out [MisterM]’s comprehensive demo/build video waiting for you on the B-side. We love a good weather display around here, and
the more colorful and literal
, the better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=9aZER9OiExg
Via
Instructables | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200385",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2019-12-05T12:15:34",
"content": "nice!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6200398",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2019-12-05T14:14:51",
"content": "There may be those who will... | 1,760,373,665.626265 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/05/a-thermal-typewriter-for-burning-thoughts/ | A Thermal Typewriter For Burning Thoughts | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"POS printer",
"raspberry pi",
"thermal printer",
"typewriter"
] | There’s a certain charm to old technologies that have been supplanted by newer versions. And we’re not just talking about aesthetic nostalgia this time. With older versions of current technology, you are still connected to the underlying process, and that’s a nice feeling.
Part of the typewriter’s charm is in its instant permanence. These days, its so easy to backspace, delete, and otherwise banish thoughts to the void without giving them a fair trial, though it’s nice not to have to pound the keys to make an impression. At the typewriter, your words are immediately committed to paper, for better or worse. You can usually see them pretty well, although maybe not on the current line, and that is good for letting the words flow without judgment.
[Murtaza Tunio] recently used a thermal POS printer in an art project, but it had since grown cold with disuse.
Why not turn it into a typewriter?
All it took was a Raspberry Pi, a USB keyboard, and an existing Python library for communicating with these parallel printers. Typing is a bit challenging for a few reasons. For one thing, [Murtaza] has to type five lines before the words become visible. The enter key doesn’t come across for some reason, so a different one had to be assigned. On the upside, [Murtaza] can trigger the paper cutter with a keystroke.
Not too hot on thermal printers?
You might find this e-ink typewriter refreshing
. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200394",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2019-12-05T13:21:06",
"content": "Sounds like the printer needs a CR+LF while a typical Pi linux would only send a LF when enter pressedhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,373,665.77217 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/04/led-matrix-watch-is-the-smart-watch-we-didnt-know-we-wanted/ | LED Matrix Watch Is The Smart Watch We Didn’t Know We Wanted | Gerrit Coetzee | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"0603",
"led",
"matrix",
"watch",
"wrist"
] | [Mile] put together this stunning
LED matrix watch
, on which the stars of this show are the 256 monochrome 0603 LEDs arranged in a grid on its face. The matrix is only 1.4in in the diagonal and is driven by a combination of an LED driver and some shift registers. The brain is an ATmega328p. We appreciate the extra effort taken to add a USB to UART adapter so the mega can be programmed over USB. It also contains all the necessary circuitry to charge and maintain the lithium battery inside safely.
Input into the device is done with a
hall effect sensor
which keeps the build from having any moving parts. The body is a combination of 3D printed parts and really fetching brass details connecting to the band.
If it weren’t over the top enough the build even has an ambient light sensor so the display can dim or brighten depending. We bet [Mile] is pretty proud to wear this on their wrist. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200341",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2019-12-05T07:35:56",
"content": "This very sleek and well executed clock project is from 2017 :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6200343",
"author": "Marty",
"timestamp... | 1,760,373,665.676121 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/04/a-self-healing-stretchable-electronic-skin/ | A Self-Healing, Stretchable Electronic Skin | Sharon Lin | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"electric skin",
"fabrication",
"nanotechnology"
] | In a report published by
Science Advances
, a research team from the United States and Korea revealed a strain-sensitive, stretchable, and autonomous
self-healing semiconductor film
. In other words, they’ve created an electronic skin that’s capable of self-regulation. Time to cue the ending track from
Ex Machina
? Not quite.
Apart from the inevitable long timeline it will take to see the material in production, there are still challenges to improve sensing for active semiconductors. The methods used by the team – notably using a dynamically cross-linked blend of polymer semiconductor and self-healing elastomer – have created a film with a gauge factor of 5.75×10^5 at full strain. At room temperature, even with fracture strains, the material demonstrated self healing.
The technique mimics the self healing properties of human skin, accelerating the development of biomedical devices and soft robots. While
active-matrix transistor array-based sensors
can provide signals that reduce crosstalk between individual pixels in electronic skin, embedding these rigid sensors and transistors into stretchable systems causes mechanical mismatch between rigid and soft components. A strain-sensing transistor simplifies the process of fabrication, while also improving mechanical conformability and the lifetime of the electronic skin.
The synthetic skin was also shown to operate within a medically safe voltage and to be waterproof, which will prevent malfunctions when placed in contact with ionic human sweat.
[Thanks Qes for the tip!] | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200361",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2019-12-05T09:40:05",
"content": "What does “self healing” mean? I have on of those “self healing” cutting mats and when i scratch it with knife while cutting, it remains scratched…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,373,665.721504 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/04/building-an-engine-with-an-a-c-compressor/ | Building An Engine With An A/C Compressor | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"compressor",
"engine",
"piston"
] | Air conditioning compressors aren’t exactly a mainstay of the average hacker’s junk box. Typically, they’re either fitted to a car to do their original job, or they’re on the bench getting refurbished. However, with the right mods,
it’s possible to turn one into a functioning internal combustion engine.
The build starts by disassembling the compressor, which contains three double-sided pistons. The housing is drilled with ports to allow gas to flow into and out of the cylinders, as well as to transfer from one side of the piston to the other. Acrylic end plates are fitted to the assembly. One end acts as an intake manifold, delivering air and fuel to the cylinders. The other side acts as the cylinder head, mounting the sparkplugs. Everything is then connected with acrylic tubing and a small square section of acrylic is turned into a carburetor to supply the air-fuel mix. Ignition is handled by coils triggered by the movement of the flywheel.
After an initial failure due to the acrylic manifold cracking, a stronger part is fabricated, and the engine bursts into life. The acrylic end caps give a great view of the combustion process in action. We’d love to see the a dyno graph on how much power and torque the unit puts out, or to see it hooked up to a bicycle or cart.
We’ve seen others attempt their own engine builds, too
. If you’ve got an unconventional engine build of your own,
be sure to let us know.
Video after the break. | 38 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200284",
"author": "localroger",
"timestamp": "2019-12-05T00:04:27",
"content": "I seriously doubt that engine can run more than a minute or so without destroying itself since it has no cooling system. A similar mod was common, and much more practical, to make mini steam engines f... | 1,760,373,665.843346 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/04/start-your-day-with-the-mountain-that-rises/ | Start Your Day With The Mountain That Rises | Tom Nardi | [
"clock hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"clock",
"e-ink",
"ESP32",
"web interface"
] | Like many of us, [Zach Archer] enjoys the comfort of his darkened room so much that he has trouble getting up and facing the day. To make things a little easier for himself, he decided to put together a custom alarm clock that would
fill his mornings with the glorious glow of LEDs
; and since he finds the mountains an inspirational sight he decided to wrap the whole thing up in a 3D printed enclosure that resembles snow capped peaks.
But even Bob Ross himself couldn’t have imagined a snowy mountain range that featured an integrated e-ink screen. The big 4.2″ panel is connected to
a custom designed PCB by [romkey]
, which was graciously donated for this project. An ESP32 runs the show, providing a convenient web interface to control not only the clock, but various aspects of the mountain’s internal LEDs such as fade in time and total duration.
[Zach] says he originally printed the mountains in PLA, but the heat generated by the LEDs eventually started to cause things to warp. Switching over to translucent PETG not only solved the heat problem, but made for a very effective LED diffuser. Rather than complex animation patterns, he’s found that smoothly transitioning between different shades of blue and green seems to work best for him in the mornings.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen
somebody use LEDs to get them out of bed in the morning
, but we do appreciate the aesthetic that [Zach] has achieved here between the design of the mountains and the impressive artwork on the e-ink display. Then again, we’re also quite partial to
this version that looks like a warp core
, so our tastes do run the gamut. | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200268",
"author": "KayserSoze",
"timestamp": "2019-12-04T22:26:23",
"content": "Most of my wake ups are with small mountain rise. And I don’t live in Switzerland.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6200294",
"author": "... | 1,760,373,665.88972 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/04/sara-adkins-is-jamming-out-with-machines/ | Sara Adkins Is Jamming Out With Machines | Kristina Panos | [
"cons",
"Machine Learning",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"2019 Hackaday Superconference",
"algorithm",
"fft",
"machine learning",
"markov chains",
"midi",
"music",
"neural networks",
"Supercon"
] | Asking machines to make music by themselves is kind of a strange notion. They’re machines, after all. They don’t feel happy or hurt, and as far as we know, they don’t long for the affections of other machines. Humans like to think of music as being a strictly human thing, a passionate undertaking so nuanced and emotion-based that a machine could never begin to understand the feeling that goes into the process of making music, or even the simple enjoyment of it.
The idea of humans and machines having a jam session together is even stranger. But oddly enough, the principles of the jam session may be exactly what machines need to begin to understand musical expression. As Sara Adkins explains in her enlightening 2019 Hackaday Superconference talk,
Creating with the Machine
, humans and machines have a lot to learn from each other.
To a human musician, a machine’s speed and accuracy are enviable. So is its ability to make instant transitions between notes and chords. Humans are slow to learn these transitions and have to practice going back and forth repeatedly to build muscle memory. If the machine were capable, it would likely envy the human in terms of passionate performance and musical expression.
The jam session is an ideal venue for two (or more) humans to play around in the same musical sandbox. Once they agree on a key, the door to improvisation is unlocked. They can play back and forth, riffing on each other’s ideas. Machines may not feel, but they can definitely learn aspects of musical composition by algorithmically interpreting the musical data from a performer and regurgitating it back through different methods. Sara’s talk takes us through a few of the ways that humans and machines can jam out together.
The Jamming Algorithm
Sara wrote a series of compositions that are meant to be played by humans and machines together through interactive algorithms. She starts with a composition called “Breathe” that uses a rule-based algorithm to interpret solo electric guitar input and feed it through a granular synthesizer. The guitar player uses a foot pedal to take FFT snapshots of their performance, which gives the machine information about the pitch and duration of the notes they played.
Once the algorithm determines the prevailing harmonics, it plays them back as ethereal, droning sine waves that sound like an ocean. The algorithm also takes input from a lapel mic taped under the player’s nose to create an amplitude envelope that affects the rate of granular synthesis. This adds a nice staccato counterpoint to the lapping sine waves.
Bach Has Entered the Session
For another composition using recurrent neural networks, Sara used TensorFlow to train a 3-layer long short-term memory (LSTM) on a diet of 405 Bach chorales. A chorale is a short hymn-like piece that’s usually written for four-voice harmony — a soprano, an alto, a tenor, and a bass. The algorithm for this piece is a two-part process. Once the content is there and the network has been trained, the performer uses a MIDI interface to control movement through the neural network checkpoints, sustain or skip selected notes, and adjust the tempo. Sara trained the neural network for three days, and
the difference between day one and day two is amazing
.
The last composition Sara shares in her talk is called Machine Cycle, which she composed for an ensemble with a MIDI keyboard soloist, a guitarist, and some harmonic sine wave drones. As the keyboardist plays, the machine snatches phrases at random and creates a Markov chain of possible embellishments like grace notes and slight changes in rhythm, before the algorithm plays back the result. While this is happening, another human acting as conductor can control parameters like the output tempo, and whether any notes are skipped.
The idea of humans and machines jamming together is an interesting one for sure. We’d like to feed
the sounds of industrial machinery
into these algorithms just to see what kind of new metal comes back. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200260",
"author": "Padrote",
"timestamp": "2019-12-04T22:08:56",
"content": "this is great. like Eno’s “discreet music” but on steroids.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,666.356443 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/04/the-story-of-a-secret-underground-parisian-society/ | The Story Of A Secret Underground Parisian Society | Sharon Lin | [
"clock hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"horology",
"Paris",
"urban exploration"
] | Deep in the heart of Paris, a series of underground tunnels snakes across the city. They cross into unkept public spaces from centuries ago that have since vanished from collective memory – abandoned basements, catacombs, and subways hundreds of miles apart.
Only a few groups still traverse these subterranean streets. One that came into public view a few years ago, Les
UX
(Urban eXperiment), has since claimed several refurbished developments, including restoring the long neglected Pantheon clock and building an
underground cinema
, complete with a bar and restaurant.
While the streets of Paris are tame during the day, at night is when Les UX really comes alive. A typical night might involve hiding in the shadows away from potential authorities roaming the streets, descending into the tunnels through a grate in the road, and carrying materials to an agreed upon drop off location. Other nights might involve wedging and climbing over pipes and ladders, following the routes into the basements of buildings left unguarded.
[via Will Cowan]
Members have claimed to be able to access every last government building and telecom tunnel in the city. Even members of the Parisian police force can’t help but admire the knowledge and skills of the underground hackers. One of the members, [Lazar Kunstmann], was able to describe the process of
stealing a Picasso
– apparently an easy enough task for anyone who has the time to observe the lax security within the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris.
Granted, sneaking around the tunnels and under secured buildings isn’t as easy as some members may make it sound. Accessing the tunnels – an illegal but rarely enforced act – is already quite difficult. Finding an unlocked entrance can be an exceptionally long trek from the nearest subway, and knowing the secret entrances can require connections with other urban explorers. Even crawling around in the tunnels is a filthy and exhausting activity for the uninitiated.
Shadowy Beginnings, Professional Present
The organization had its start some time in 1981, beginning with the stolen plans for many of Paris’s underground tunnels and passageways. They have since grown into an enclave of anonymous artists and concerned citizens who have come together to restore medieval crypts and celebrate the forgotten sites of Parisian past. Few have ever come forward about their existence apart from [Kunstmann], who has since
spoken
to
magazines
and
published a book
based on his experiences.
According to his account, the organization is divided into several subunits – one that specializes in infiltration (an all-female team known as the Mouse House), one that couriers internal messages and communicates over a coded radio network, one that keeps a database of organization activities, one that organizes the staged shows and readings, one that specializes in photography, and one that works on restorations (known as Untergunther).
[via UX]
The latter team is made up of more experienced professionals – architects and historians, often with a personal interest in the object of restoration, as in the case of the Pantheon clock. Professional clockmakers such as [Jean-Baptiste Viot] assisted in the multiyear project, painstakingly recreating gears that were too rusted or worn to be restored and refurbishing other parts of the clock that had been corroded or weathered from years of neglect. When the newly restored clock was revealed in October 2007, however, they were met with attention from the Paris police force.
While the group may have begun as a clan of rebellious teenagers, it eventually grew into something far more sophisticated. The entire operation for the Pantheon required special care taken to understand the mechanisms behind the clock tower and the techniques used by its original architects. [Viot] especially wanted to undergo the project since oxidation had so ruined the original works that they would soon be impossible to repair without replacing every part. As a professional horologist, he had the skills required for the job, and Les UX had been looking to undergo the restoration for years. The team built a workshop outfitted with armchairs, a table, bookshelves, a minibar, and red velvet drapes concealed into wooden crates to blend into the paraphernalia stored within the monument. Only at the dead of night was the clock repair equipment brought out. The group did everything from updating the workshop’s electrical wiring to growing their own vegetable garden on the terrace. Even if members were caught at night, a fake badge was enough to get past the security guards.
The autopsy of the clock revealed that someone appeared to have sabotaged the clock, possibly a Pantheon employee tired of winding the monument once a week. They cleaned the parts in a hot bath of soap, ammonia, and oxalic acid, scrubbing and polishing every surface. Then they replaced or recreated pulleys, cables, the broken escape wheel, and missing parts like the pendulum bob. By the time the project had finished, the team felt that it would be a good idea to notify the authorities about their work in order to ensure proper future maintenance of the public monument. They offered to meet the director of the monument in person, but were startled to find that the authorities refused to believe their story, instead suing UX at 48,300 euros and up to a year of jail time. The then-deputy of the monument even hired a clockmaker to re-sabotage the work. (The clockmaker refused other than disengaging the escape wheel, the same part that had been sabotaged the first time.)
Authorities Barge In
The Pantheon wasn’t the first time the police were brought face-to-face with a Les UX project. Back in 2004, a widely covered story emerged of a police force discovering an underground movie theater run by the group, containing a movie screen, bar, and kitchen. The space was equipped with telephones and electricity, with movies ranging from 1950s classics to modern thrillers. The police were less than happy with their discovery, but when they returned for a formal investigation, the space had been entirely vacated.
[via UX]
In fact, the authorities so opposed the group’s activities that they began a new unit to track the group through the city’s sewers and catacombs in an effort to identify members of the group and charge them for their actions. The Centre of National Monuments similarly replaced their administrator after their embarrassment over not noticing how the group had entered the Pantheon building so easily. Over the course of the scheme, large planks were even carried up the clock tower in order to construct a small workshop inside the space.
As for the trial against the restorers, the judge ruled in favor of the Untergunther members. It may have been seen as a relief, but it was definitely not the expected culmination of the project – the main reason the project was revealed in the first place was to provide authorities with the information they needed to wind up the clock so that it would work again.
[via UX]
Some members of Les UX certainly felt that they had to do something to help save the lost public works of Paris, especially if the local government wasn’t going to take action. Others were simply excited to continue celebrating the Parisian underground world. Many had been students in the Latin Quarter in the 80s and 90s, when secret parties were common to find in the tunnels.
While the Pantheon remains the group’s proudest feat, there are still active events going on and restorations in the works. Past exploits have included rock concerts for up to 4000 people in the quarries, projections off a locked film theater (showing subtly subversive programming by international filmmakers), and an art exhibition in a supposedly seal-off underground gallery. Members were even known to travel through a series of interconnected caves beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel tower, every Bastille day to watch the fireworks from the roof of the building.
While it’s not affiliated with Les UX, there are a number of videos online that show some parts of the Paris underground scene and the artists affiliated with the tunnels. | 28 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200199",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2019-12-04T18:18:03",
"content": "like +1",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6200200",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2019-12-04T18:20:41",
"content": "We need the Paris ve... | 1,760,373,666.201962 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/04/ben-krasnow-builds-a-mass-spectrometer/ | [Ben Krasnow] Builds A Mass Spectrometer | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"ionization",
"isotope",
"magnetic",
"mass spectrometer",
"potassium",
"transimpedance",
"tungsten",
"vacuum"
] | One of the features that made
Scientific American
magazine great was a column called “The Amateur Scientist.” Every month, readers were treated to experiments that could be done at home, or some scientific apparatus that could be built on the cheap. Luckily, [Ben Krasnow]’s fans remember the series and urged him to tackle a build from it:
a DIY mass spectrometer
. (Video, embedded below the break.)
[Ben] just released the video below showing early experiments with a copper tube contraption that was five months in the making; it turns out that analytical particle physics isn’t as easy as it sounds. The idea behind mas spectrometry is to ionize a sample, accelerate the ions as they pass through a magnetic field, and measure the deflection of the particles as a function of their mass-to-charge ratio. But as [Ben] discovered, the details of turning a simple principle into a working instrument are extremely non-trivial.
His rig uses filaments extracted from carefully crushed incandescent lamps to ionize samples of potassium
iodide
chloride; applied to the filament and dried, the salt solution is ionized when the filament is heated. The stream of ions is accelerated by a high-voltage field and streamed through a narrow slit formed by two razor blades. A detector sits orthogonal to the emitter across a powerful magnetic field, with a high-gain trans-impedance amplifier connected. With old analog meters and big variacs, the whole thing has a great mad scientist vibe to it that reminds us a bit of
his one-component interferometer setup
.
[Ben]’s data from the potassium sample agreed with expected results, and the instrument is almost sensitive enough to discern the difference between two different isotopes of potassium. He promises upgrades to the mass spec in the future, including perhaps laser ionization of the samples. We’re looking forward to that.
Thanks to the mysterious [M] for the tip. | 31 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200192",
"author": "LightningPhil",
"timestamp": "2019-12-04T17:40:15",
"content": "Awesome build! Potassium-40, being radioactive, could be a good comparison measurement and possibly simpler to do, even if starting from scratch.+ points of making lightly radioactive plasma!",
... | 1,760,373,666.585359 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/04/can-you-store-renewable-energy-in-a-big-pile-of-gravel/ | Can You Store Renewable Energy In A Big Pile Of Gravel? | Lewin Day | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [] | As the world grapples with transitioning away from fossil fuels, engineers are hard at work to integrate new types of generation into the power grid. There’s plenty of challenges, particularly around the intermittent nature of many renewable energy sources. Energy storage projects are key to keeping the lights on round the clock, even when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
Conventional grid-level energy storage has long made use of pumped hydro installations where water is pumped uphill to a storage reservoir where it can later be used to run a generator. More recently, batteries are being used to do the job. When you consider the cost of these installations and their storage capacities, there is a gap between batteries and pumped hydro. A
recently published whitepaper proposes Mountain Gravity Energy Storage
— gravity-based energy storage using sand or gravel in mountainous areas — is the technology that can bridge the gap.
They’re Storing Energy On Mountains Now
A diagram of an representative example installation in Molokai Island, Hawaii.
The concept of Mountain Gravity Energy Storage, or MGES, involves storing excess energy from the grid by raising sand or gravel to a higher elevation. This is achieved using a pair of cranes, which load the material into storage containers, before pulling them up to height on a cable. The material can then be held in storage at higher elevation until power is requested by the grid. At this stage, the material can be reloaded into storage containers, and lowered to the bottom storage site, with gravity doing the work to pull the weight back down, turning a generator in the process. Interestingly, the same electric motors that lifted the gravel in the first place can also be used as the generators.
If this sounds familiar, you’d be right. It’s not dissimilar from
the basic theory of pumped hydroelectric installations
, where water is pumped into a dam, and then allowed to flow out through a turbine when energy is required. However, these installations are typically only economically viable in larger installations of 50 MW and above. MGES systems are intended as an option for smaller installations, on the order of 1-20 MW output. For small islands or other isolated areas, an MGES could be a great way to support the local power grid in combination with renewable sources of energy.
Can You Spare a Mountain?
A GIS data analysis was used to determine areas around the world that would be viable for MGES installations.
The viability of such an installation is dependent on the availability of suitable mountainous terrain. The higher the elevation difference between the top and bottom of the system, the more energy can be stored. An MGES would likely become viable for areas where the natural landscape enables an elevation gap of between 500-2000 meters.
Obviously, using sand or gravel as the energy storage medium brings its own set of challenges. It’s not possible to easily pump dry materials around like liquids, hence the need for cranes to move the material. Said cranes would need to be specially designed to carry heavy loads, and work reliably for high duty cycles during periods of rapid energy transfer. Loading and unloading of the sand or gravel would ideally be done with an automated system, with the paper’s authors suggesting this be handled by passing containers underneath the upper and lower storage areas. Thus, gravity could simply feed the material into the containers when required through a hopper. This adds a small loss of potential energy to the system, but minimizes the complication of the loading and unloading process.
On the other hand, pumped hydro has its own problems. One is the need for large amounts of water. Another is that storage reservoirs are prone to evaporation and freezing.
Is It Competitive?
While the basic physics of the system is sound, there are pitfalls to such a system. There’s a high degree of mechanical complexity involved, which not only complicates the design, but also adds to maintenance and running costs which could spoil the viability of a full-scale project. In large-scale electricity grids, pumped hydro is likely a more prudent choice, being an established technology that scales well to higher power levels. For smaller scale, isolated grids, MGES could have a place, but it is forced to compete with battery systems capable of delivering similar power levels. In these cases, batteries have the edge for short-term storage, while MGES could prove valuable where energy needs to be stored for weeks or months at a time. This has particular relevance to holiday spots, where there may be large seasonal changes in energy use.
If there’s a particularly bold company willing to invest in a pilot plant in a far-flung mountainous island, we may yet see such a system in action. It would likely make quite the spectacle, or eyesore, depending on your point of view. In the event that happens, we’ll be sure to cover it, but for now, MGES remains a novel and interesting concept that hasn’t quite reached fruition just yet. | 117 | 37 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200144",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2019-12-04T15:17:47",
"content": "How is this any more efficent than using pumped water? The friction increase in using a solid medium over a fluid would be a huge loss of “energy”. Pumped water does the same thing and doesnt require cranes ... | 1,760,373,667.248537 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/04/zombies-ate-your-neighbors-tell-everyone-through-lora/ | Zombies Ate Your Neighbors? Tell Everyone Through LoRa! | Sven Gregori | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"disaster",
"emergency communications",
"ESP32",
"ESP8266",
"LoRa",
"mesh network",
"radio",
"wifi"
] | As popular as the post-apocalyptic Zombie genre is, there is a quite unrealistic component to most of the stories. Well, apart from the whole “the undead roaming the Earth” thing. But where are the nerds, and where is all the apocalypse-proof, solar-powered tech? Or is it exactly this lack of tech in those stories that serves as incentive to build it in the first place? Well, maybe it doesn’t have to be the end of the world to seek for ways to cope with a collapse of our modern communication infrastructure either. Just think of natural disasters — an earthquake or hurricane causing a long-term power outage for example. The folks at [sudomesh] tackle exactly this concern with their
fully open source, off-grid, solar-powered, LoRa mesh network,
Disaster Radio
.
The network itself is built from single nodes comprising of a battery-backed solar panel, a LoRa module, and either the ESP8266 or ESP32 for WiFi connectivity. The idea is to connect to the network with your mobile phone through WiFi, therefore eliminating any need for additional components to actually use the network, and have the nodes communicate with each other via LoRa. Admittedly, LoRa may not be your best choice for high data rates, but it is a good choice for long-range communication when cellular networks aren’t an option. And while you can built it all by yourself with everything available on
[sudomesh]’s GitHub page
, a TTGO ESP32 LoRa module will do as well.
If the idea itself sounds familiar, we did indeed cover similar projects like
HELPER
and
Skrypt
earlier this year, showing that LoRa really seems to be a popular go-to for off-grid communication. But well, whether we really care about modern communication and helping each other out when all hell breaks loose instead of just primevally defending our own lives is of course another question. | 24 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200127",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2019-12-04T13:24:42",
"content": "“…fully open-source…LoRa module…ESP8266 or ESP32…”Hmm… something doesn’t quite add up, here…I like the concept, but it would be nice to base it on an easily-scratch-built radio in one of the amateur ba... | 1,760,373,666.518355 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/04/restoring-a-dead-commodore-128dcr/ | Restoring A Dead Commodore 128DCR | Tom Nardi | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"commodore",
"commodore 128",
"power supply",
"repair",
"restoration"
] | Another day, another retro computer lovingly restored to like-new condition by [Drygol]. This time, the subject of his attention is a Commodore 128DCR that earned every bit of the “For Parts, Not Working” condition it was listed under. From a spider infestation to a cracked power supply PCB, this computer was in quite a state. But in the end
he got the three decade old machine back in working condition
and even managed to teach it a few new tricks along the way.
Obviously the shattered PSU was the most pressing issue with the Commodore. Interestingly, the machine still had its warranty seal in place on the back, so whatever happened to this PSU seems to have occurred without human intervention.
Rather than just replacing the PSU, [Drygol] first pieced the board back together with the help of cyanoacrylate glue, and then coated the top with an epoxy resin to give it some mechanical strength. On the back side the traces were either repaired or replaced entirely with jumper wires where the damage was too severe.
With the PSU repaired and tested, he moved on to cleaning the computer’s main board and whitening all the plastic external components. Even the individual keycaps took a bath to get them looking like new again. This put the computer in about as close to like-new condition as it could get.
But why stop there? He next installed the JiffyDOS modification to improve system performance, and wired in an adapter that lets the computer output a crisp 80 columns over S-Video. It’s safe to say this particular Commodore is in better shape now than it was when it rolled off the assembly line.
While an impressive enough final result, this is still fairly tame for [Drygol]. If you want to see a real challenge, take a look at the insane amount of work that went into
recreating this smashed Atari 800XL case
. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200098",
"author": "Graham242",
"timestamp": "2019-12-04T09:12:19",
"content": "Minor correction: chattered PSU -> shattered PSU.Unless, of course, it’s talking insessently about unimportant things – that would be more than annoying.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,373,666.412024 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/03/freecad-techdraw-workbench-tutorial/ | FreeCAD TechDraw Workbench Tutorial | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"drafting",
"freecad",
"mechanical drawing"
] | FreeCAD started out a little shaky, but it has gotten better and better. If you are trying to draw a schematic, it probably isn’t the best way to do it. However, it is a great graphical alternative to OpenSCAD for 3D printing and even incorporates OpenSCAD if you don’t want to choose. However, if you have a 3D part — regardless of how you want to create it in real life — having a proper mechanical drawing is very valuable. FreeCAD’s TechDraw workbench makes this very easy and [Joko] has a
tutorial
that shows exactly how to do it.
Machinists everywhere are used to looking at these drawings that typically show a top view, a front view, and a side view. The program will automatically project the views you select and then allows you to pick dimensions. It creates them and keeps them up to date if you change them in the model later.
The only things we had to remember from drafting class are which dimensions you need and which you don’t. FreeCAD just puts them where you tell it to.
If you need a mechanical drawing to show a colleague, a customer, a machine shop, or to file with a patent, FreeCAD has you covered. We didn’t try it, but you ought to be able to pull in OpenSCAD files and then create a drawing from that, as well.
FreeCAD is changing rapidly, especially if you
download
the latest versions. However, we did do a tutorial that
will get you started
. You can even send it data from
KiCAD
. Now if they would make a schematic workbench, we’d be very happy. | 33 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200081",
"author": "Anool Mahidharia",
"timestamp": "2019-12-04T06:54:47",
"content": "Techdraw TB is awesome.And there IS a PCB workbench available for FreeCAD (I haven’t yet tried it out, since KiCAD FreeCAD works great ATM).https://github.com/marmni/FreeCAD-PCBInstructions at :... | 1,760,373,666.74615 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/03/inject-keystrokes-any-way-you-like-with-this-bluetooth-keystroke-injector/ | Inject Keystrokes Any Way You Like With This Bluetooth Keystroke Injector | Gerrit Coetzee | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"bluetooth",
"injector",
"keystroke",
"sd card"
] | [Amirreza Nasiri] sends in this cool
USB keystroke injector.
The device consists of an Arduino, a Bluetooth module, and an SD card. When it’s plugged into the target computer the device loads the selected payload from the SD card, compromising the system. Then it does its unique trick which is to switch the injector over to Bluetooth mode. Now the attacker has much more control, albeit local, over the system.
While we would never even be tempted to plug this device into a real computer, we like some of the additional features, like how an added dip switch can be used to select from up to eight different payloads depending on the required attack. The addition of a
photo diode
is also interesting, and makes us dream of all sorts of impractical movie hacker scenarios. [Amirreza] says it’s to trigger when the person leaves the room and turns the lights off.
[Amirreza] has all the code and design files on the GitHub. There are also a few payload examples, which should be fun to hack on. After all, one of life’s pleasures is to find new ways to
mess
with your friends. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200073",
"author": "Murray",
"timestamp": "2019-12-04T04:58:38",
"content": "That’s an LDR not a photodiode. Not available in Europe due to the cadmium in a cadmium sulfide cell. That being said is does a good job of detecting darkness.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,666.456982 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/03/line-printer-does-its-best-teletype-impression/ | Line Printer Does Its Best Teletype Impression | Tom Nardi | [
"computer hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"line printer",
"linux",
"teletype",
"terminal",
"virtual terminal"
] | Back in the early days of computing, user terminals utilized line printers for output. Naturally this took an incredible amount of paper, but it came with the advantage of creating a hard copy of everything you did. Plus it was easy to annotate the terminal output with nothing more exotic than a ballpoint pen. But once CRT displays became more common, these paper terminals (also known as teleprinters, or teletypes) quickly fell out of style.
A fan of nostalgic hacks, [Drew DeVault] recently tried to
recreate the old-school teletype experience with (somewhat) more modern hardware
. He picked up an Epson LX-350 line printer, and with a relatively small amount of custom code, he was able to create a fairly close approximation of what it would have been like to use one of these terminals. He’s published all the source code, so if you’ve got an old line printer and a Linux box, you too can learn what it was like to measure your work day in reams of paper.
This is made possible by the fact that the modern Linux
virtual
terminal is simply a userspace emulation of those physical terminals of yore. [Drew] just need to write some code that would essentially spawn a shell on the Linux USB line printer device, plus sprinkle in some quality of life improvements such as using Epson’s proprietary ANSI escape sequences to feed the paper out far enough so the user can see what it says before pulling it back in to write the next interactive line.
Of course, the experience isn’t perfect as the printer naturally doesn’t have a keyboard attached to it. If you’re looking for something a bit more authentic, you could always
convert an old electric typewriter into a modern-ish teletype
. | 22 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200040",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2019-12-04T00:37:34",
"content": "Line printers are different from character printers. An 80 or 132 column line printer would have 80 or 132 print wheels. At entire line of text would be printed in one (very loud) action.",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,373,666.962337 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/03/build-your-own-tools-for-more-power/ | Build Your Own Tools For More Power | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"belt grinder",
"cad",
"design",
"Fusion 360",
"metal working",
"tools"
] | Building something on your own usually carries with it certain benefits, such as being in full control over what it is you are building and what it will accomplish, as well as a sense of pride when you create something that finally works just the way you want it. If you continue down that path, you may eventually start making your own tools to help build your other creations, and if you also have some CAD software you can
make some very high quality tools like this belt grinder
.
This build comes to us from [Emiel] aka [The Practical Engineer] who is known for his high quality solenoid engines. His metal work is above and beyond, and one thing he needed was a belt grinder. He decided to make a 3D model of one in CAD and then build it from scratch. The build video goes through his design process in Fusion 360 and then the actual build of this beast of a machine. The motor is 3.5 horsepower which, when paired with a variable frequency drive, can provide all of his belt grinding needs.
[Emiel]’s videos are always high quality, and his design process is easy to follow as well. We’re always envious of his shop as well, and it reminds us a lot of
[Eric Strebel] and his famous designs
. | 19 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200022",
"author": "mniog",
"timestamp": "2019-12-03T22:03:18",
"content": "No shields, no e-stop button or any other safety feature. A moment of unawareness and you can lose a limb – but who cares when there’s sweet youtube cash from views.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,... | 1,760,373,666.801974 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/02/self-driving-cars-are-predicting-driving-personalities/ | Self-Driving Cars Are Predicting Driving Personalities | Sharon Lin | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"machine learning",
"self-driving cars",
"social psychology"
] | In a recent study by a team of researchers at MIT, self driving cars are being programmed to
identify the social personalities
of other drivers in an effort to predict their future actions and drive safer on roads.
It’s already been made evident that autonomous vehicles lack social awareness. Drivers around a car are regarded as obstacles rather than human beings, which can hinder the automata’s ability to identify motivations and intentions, potential signifiers to future actions. Because of this, self-driving cars often cause bottlenecks at four-way stops and other intersections, perhaps explaining why the majority of traffic accidents involve them getting rear-ended by impatient drivers.
The research taps into social value orientation, a concept from social psychology that classifies a person from selfish (“egoistic”) to altruistic and cooperative (“prosocial”). The system uses this classification to create real-time driving trajectories for other cars based on a small snippet of their motion. For instance, cars that merge more often are deemed as more competitive than other cars.
When testing the algorithms on tasks involving merging lanes and making unprotected left turns, the behavioral predictions were shown to improve by a factor of 25%. In a left-turn simulation, the automata was able to wait until the approaching car had a more prosocial driver.
Even outside of self-driving cars, the research could help human drivers predict the actions of other drivers around them.
Thanks [Qes] for the tip! | 29 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199800",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2019-12-03T04:32:48",
"content": "Sounds like they should track every vehicle by building 3D models of the drivers, passengers and capture images of the license plates along with the make and model of the vehicle and then build up their pri... | 1,760,373,667.026811 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/02/vintage-plotter-gets-bluetooth-upgrade/ | Vintage Plotter Gets Bluetooth Upgrade | Tom Nardi | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"plotter",
"rs-232",
"uart",
"vintage"
] | Recently [iot4c] stumbled upon this gorgeous Robotron Reiss plotter from 1989, brand-new and still in its original box. Built before the fall of the Berlin Wall in East Germany, it would be a crime to allow such a piece of computing history to go unused. But how to hook it up to a modern system? Bad enough that it uses some rather unusual connectors, but it’s about to be 2020, who wants to use wires anymore? What this piece of
Cold War hardware needed was an infusion of Bluetooth
.
While the physical ports on the back of the Robotron certainly look rather suspect, it turns out that electrically they’re just RS-232. In practice, this means converting it over was fairly straightforward. With a Bolutek BK3231 Bluetooth module and an RS-232 to UART converter, [iot4c] was able to create a wireless adapter that works transparently on the plotter by simply connecting it to the RX and TX pins.
A small DC buck converter was necessary to provide 3.3 V for the Bluetooth adapter, but even still, there was plenty of room inside the plotter’s case to fit everything in neatly. From the outside, you’d have no idea that the hardware had ever been modified at all.
But, like always, there was a catch. While Windows had no trouble connecting to the Bluetooth device and assigning it a COM port, the 512 byte buffer on the plotter would get overwhelmed when it started receiving commands. So [iot4c] wrote a little script in Node.js that breaks the commands down into more manageable chunks and sends them off to the plotter every 0.1 seconds. With this script in place the Robotron moved under its own power for the first time in ~30 years by parsing a HP-GL file generated by Inkscape.
If you’re interested in a plotter of your own but don’t have a vintage one sitting around, never fear. We’ve seen an influx of DIY plotters recently, ranging from builds that
use popsicle sticks and clothespins
to
customizable 3D printed workhorses
. | 25 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199772",
"author": "Stefan",
"timestamp": "2019-12-03T00:26:47",
"content": "OMG. Original packed ROBOTRON hardware? You gotta be kidding me! How?I want this so bad!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6199856",
"author":... | 1,760,373,667.090878 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/02/cooking-a-turkey-with-880-aa-batteries/ | Cooking A Turkey With 880 AA Batteries | Lewin Day | [
"cooking hacks",
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"AA cell",
"cooking",
"slow cooker",
"turkey"
] | Cooking a turkey right is serious business this time of year. With major holidays on the line, there’s no room for error – any mistake can leave guests disgruntled and starving. [Stephen Farnsworth] took a risk, though,
and attempted to cook a turkey using AA batteries.
The allure of the AA for such a task is precisely because it’s such a poor choice. Designed for portability rather than high power output, it was never designed to be the energy source for a major cooking job. To get things over the line, [Steve] busted out the math to figure out how many batteries would be required. This involved computing cooking efficiencies, battery thermal performance, and the specific heat of the bird itself. With the numbers coming together a 300W slow cooker was put on duty, in order to avoid over-draining the batteries.
With 880 AAs loaded into a custom carrier, [Steve] hooked up the power meter and the cooker and kept a close eye on the temperatures. After a couple of hours, the battery pack started to heat up, so additional cooling was brought in to avoid fire. At just before the six hour mark, the turkey was cooked through and ready to eat. Estimates are that the batteries still had plenty of capacity to keep going for a few hours yet, too.
It’s not a fast or effective way to cook a turkey, but it’s certainly achievable. We fully expect [Steve] to submit the coin-cell turkey cook-off next year, too. Remember, a little engineering always helps,
especially in the kitchen
. Video after the break. | 52 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199713",
"author": "Burnin Dogs",
"timestamp": "2019-12-02T21:19:59",
"content": "Back in the time before time (aka the 1980s, aka my childhood) I remember an episode of the show “Mr. Wizard” or was it “Mr. Wizard’s world”? It was something like that. Anyway, clearly the adults of ... | 1,760,373,667.333832 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/02/john-mcmaster-explains-crypto-ignition-phone-keys-and-how-to-reproduce-them/ | John McMaster Explains Crypto Ignition Phone Keys And How To Reproduce Them | Lewin Day | [
"cons",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"2019 Hackaday Superconference",
"CIK",
"crypto",
"cryptography",
"stu-iii",
"Supercon"
] | When you’re a nation state, secure communications are key to protecting your sovereignty and keeping your best laid plans under wraps. For the USA, this requirement led to the development of a series of secure telephony networks over the years. John McMaster found himself interested in investigating the workings of the STU-III secure telephone,
and set out to replicate the secure keys used with this system.
An encryption key in a very physical, real sense, the Crypto Igntion Key was used with the STU-III to secure phone calls across many US government operations. The key contains a 64KB EEPROM that holds the cryptographic data.
[John] had a particular affinity for the STU-III for its method of encrypting phone calls. A physical device known as a Crypto Ignition Key had to be inserted into the telephone, and turned with a satisfying clunk to enable encryption. This physical key contains digital encryption keys that, in combination with those in the telephone, are used to encrypt the call. The tactile interface gives very clear feedback to the user about securing the communication channel. Wishing to learn more, John began to research the system further and attempted to source some hardware to tinker with.
As John explains in his Hackaday Superconference talk embeded below, he was able to source a civilian-model STU-III handset but the keys proved difficult to find. As carriers of encryption keys, it’s likely that most were destroyed as per security protocol when reaching their expiry date. However, after laying his hands on a broken key, he was able to create a CAD model and produce a mechanically compatible prototype that would fit in the slot and turn correctly.
Due to the rarity of keys, destructive reverse engineering wasn’t practical, so other methods were used. Thanks to the use of the STU-III in military contexts, the keys have a National Stock Number that pointed towards parallel EEPROMs from AMD. Armed with the datasheet and
X-rays of encryption keys from the Crypto Museum
, it was possible to figure out a rough pinout for the key. With this information in hand, a circuit board was produced and combined with an EEPROM and a 3D print to produce a key that could replicate the functionality of the original.
With the key inserted into the handset and turned, calls could be secured at the touch of the button across standard analog phone lines.
Like most projects, it didn’t work first time. The printed key had issues with the quality of the teeth and flushing of the support material, which was solved by simply removing them entirely and relying on the circuit board to index to the relevant pins. Testing was performed using a PKS-703 key reader, which itself was an incredibly rare piece of hardware. In combination with a logic analyzer, it revealed that a couple of the write pins were lined up backwards. Once this was fixed, the key worked and could be programmed with a set of encryption keys. Once inserted into the STU-III and turned, the telephone sprung to life!
Despite this success, there’s still a long way to go before John can start making secured phone calls with the STU-III. Only having one phone, he’s limited to how much he can do — ideally, a pair is needed in order to experiment further. He is also trying to make it easier for others to tinker with this hardware which involves the development of a circuit board to allow keys to be read and reprogrammed with a standard EEPROM writer. He’s also begun reverse engineering of the STU-III’s internals. As a bit of fun, John went as far as to reproduce some promotional swag from the project that spawned the STU-III, showing off his Future Secure Voice System mug and T-shirt.
Reverse engineering national security devices certainly comes with its own unique set of challenges, but John has proven he’s more than up to the task. We look forward to seeing the crypto community hack deeper into this hardware, and can’t wait to see hackers making calls over the venerable STU-III! | 17 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199695",
"author": "RunnerPack",
"timestamp": "2019-12-02T20:02:07",
"content": "Are there any audio samples available of what the encrypted output sounds like? (Can’t watch the video right now)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,373,667.513459 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/02/how-to-get-into-cars-choosing-your-first-project-car/ | How To Get Into Cars: Choosing Your First Project Car | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"cars",
"project car",
"project cars"
] | The automobile is a wonderous invention, perhaps one of the most transformative of the 20th century. They’re machines that often inspire an all-consuming passion, capturing the heart with sights, sounds, and smells. However, for those who grew up isolated from car culture, it can be difficult to know how to approach cars as a hobby. If this sounds like you, fear not – this article is a crash course into getting your feet wet in the world of horsepower.
So You Like Cars, Eh?
Project cars let you do things that you’d never dare attempt in a daily.
The first step to becoming a true gearhead is identifying your specific passion. Car culture is a broad church, and what excites one enthusiast can be boring or even repulsive to another. Oftentimes, the interest can be spawned by a fond memory of a family member’s special ride, or a trip to a motor race during childhood.
Knowing what kind of cars you like is key to your journey. You might fall in love with classic American muscle and drag racing, or always fancied yourself in the seat of a tweaked-out tuner car a la
The Fast And The Furious.
Movies, posters, magazines, and your local car shows are a great way to figure out what excites you about cars. Once you’ve got an idea of what you like, it’s time to start thinking about picking out your first project car.
To Craigslist And Back Again
Choosing the right project car is a process that requires careful research, realistic ambition, and emotion. Your own circumstances, taking into account your living situation, finances, and the country you live in, all feed into this decision. Weighing these factors is key to sourcing a sweet ride that you’ll actually be able to enjoy.
Once you’ve got a good idea of the type of cars you’re into, this will help you narrow down what you’re looking for. If you want to go cruising out on the sand dunes, a drop-top 4WD or even a beach buggy might be for you. If you want to soak up the sun on a twisty mountain road, you might be looking at roadsters. Or, if you want to lay down the ultimate lap times, a high-powered coupe with serious track credentials could be just the ticket. Identifying what you want to do with your car will help you choose the right model. Don’t be afraid to reach out to other enthusiasts to ask for tips!
Jalopnik have long run a great series
helping people choose the right vehicle, and communities like
OppositeLock
are always open to questions. Alternatively, head out to your local Cars and Coffee, and start chatting with the owners of the rides you like best. The nicer members of the car scene will always be glad to chat and point you in the right direction.
Now that you’ve got an idea of what you’re looking for, it’s time to consider your budget. This should take into account not just the purchase price of the car, but other fees like insurance and registration. Being that you’re an enthusiast, you’ll want some cash set aside for modifications and upgrades, too, along with basic maintenance. Getting this right can be the difference between cruising the boulevards on a sunny summer’s afternoon, versus staring out the window at your former darling as it slowly rusts away under a tarp.
This author bought an MX-5 for a bargain price, thanks to the wrecked paint. “I’ll just respray it!” he said… back in 2016. Long story short, the paint has not yet been improved.
Consider the condition of the vehicle you’re looking at sourcing. You can generally knock money off the purchase price for body or mechanical damage. If you’re looking to do an engine swap anyway, buying a car with a blown head gasket is a great way to save coin. On the flipside, if you want a car that looks and feels nice, purchasing a car with heavily sun-damaged paint is going to cost thousands to fix. Money can be saved by doing the work yourself, but think carefully about your abilities and circumstances. There’s no point planning to respray your own car if you live in an apartment and have to work in the street!
There are several ways to keep things affordable. Certain cars become ultra-desirable, driving their prices up. If you’re just out of college with a part time job, you’re probably not going to be able to score a Mark IV Supra to build your own tribute to Paul Walker. Similarly, marques like Ferrari and Lamborghini will be out of reach. However, other factors also come into play. Certain vehicles, such as Mustangs and Miatas, are desirable to a wide range of enthusiasts. Despite this, as they were built in such large numbers, they remain affordable on the second-hand market. This has knock-on benefits, too. The popularity of these vehicles has led to a vibrant aftermarket, making replacement parts and performance hardware both cheap and readily available. For those on limited budgets, this can make all the difference. A set of shocks for a popular muscle car like an old Camaro can be had for a couple hundred dollars. If instead, you’re riding around in a 1980s Mercedes with air suspension, you could be looking at five times as much – if you can find the parts at all.
Your country of residence feeds into this, too. Corvettes and Challengers are a viable choice in the US, with parts on the shelf in every small town in the country. Junk yards are similarly full of old wrecks to pick over. If you find yourself down in Australia however, these cars would be a far more expensive choice. If you can get such a car in the first place, you’ll find everything from brake pads to universal joints have to be special ordered in from overseas, because it’s simply not viable for local stores to keep large stocks of parts for such obscure vehicles. Instead, those in the antipodes might consider picking up a Ford Falcon or Holden Commodore to get started with. This is a story that plays out around the world. Swedes will find it far easier to source parts for Volvos, while a Japanese resident will easily lay their hands on a Skyline that would be near-unobtainable in the States.
If you’re a beginner in the automotive scene, it definitely pays to go easy on yourself by choosing a vehicle with a strong local scene. On top of cheap parts, it also allows one to draw on the rich local knowledgebase when diagnosing problems. Finding a good local car forum or Facebook group can be a huge help when you’re starting out. Plus, if you’re lucky, you’ll meet a local greybeard or two with a few parts cars tucked away in a garage somewhere.
Narrowing It Down
One of these Jeeps is a cheap front-wheel-drive SUV with decent fuel economy, the other is a great base for a serious off-road rig. Spotting the difference can be tough for the uninitiated!
With the basics laid out, let’s consider an example. You’ve decided, after much pondering, that you’ve always wanted an offroad rig to tackle the trails in your local area. Lacking the knowledge to begin with, you join some local Facebook groups, and start eyeing off rides and asking questions. You’ve always been partial to Jeeps, but you want a car you can also use for the grocery run, so have a hard top in mind. Scraping the local classifieds, you’ve seen plenty of Jeep Patriots at used car lots, for fairly reasonable prices. This looks like a great way into the hobby, so you decide to post online to get some feedback before heading out.
Your post is met with a torrent of abuse and derision. Hardcore four-wheelers are laughing at you for considering a “mall-crawler”, and teenagers too young to drive are calling you a soccer mom in the comments. Thankfully, a handful of members reach out, asking a few questions about what you’re actually looking for in a car. You mention that you want to go offroad, do a little mudding, but as you’re looking for a second vehicle, your rig doesn’t have to be too nice and you’re not concerned about fuel economy.
The more helpful group members tell you that the Patriot, being a model based around front wheel drive and lacking good stock parts and aftermarket support, isn’t really the car for you. Instead, being based in the United States, they point you towards the XJ model Jeep Cherokee. With a stout 4.0 l engine, a rich community, and great aftermarket support, help and parts will always be close at hand. Plus, there’s plenty of beaters available for under a couple grand, so you won’t feel too guilty if you do end up wrecking out on the trail.
You end up doing a little more research, and with the help of your new pals, source a weather-beaten 1993 model with well-worn upholstery and plenty of charm. Being a simple car to work on with a huge fanbase, you begin to teach yourself to change the oil and coolant and do basic maintenance, and even manage to tackle the job of replacing your belts when the charging system suddenly conks out. With the help of your fellow wheelers, you slap a lift kit on and some big mud tyres, and have a great weekend wrenching while sinking a few beers. Your new rig can handle plenty of the local rough stuff, and you start eyeing off a classic CJ for your next build, just maybe!
It’s All About Community
Fundamentally, the best way to learn about cars is with the community by your side. It’s virtually a necessity too, particularly when trying to source rare parts or figure out how to diagnose strange sounds you haven’t heard before. By doing your research and learning about what’s out there before you buy, you can score yourself a great ride and begin an exciting project. Skip these steps, and you risk spending a huge wad of cash on a poorly performing lawn ornament. Good luck out there, and next time, we’ll look at what tools you’ll need when you’re starting to tinker with your new rig. Happy wrenching! | 75 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199661",
"author": "Nick L",
"timestamp": "2019-12-02T18:21:19",
"content": "Buy a RX-7 they said, it’ll be fun they said :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6200430",
"author": "rallen",
"timestamp": "2019-12-... | 1,760,373,667.452349 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/02/amsat-cubesat-simulator-hack-chat/ | AMSAT CubeSat Simulator Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"cubesat",
"PocketQube",
"satellite",
"simulator",
"solar",
"space",
"telemetry",
"testing",
"The Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, December 4th at noon Pacific for the
AMSAT CubeSat Simulator Hack Chat
with
Alan Johnston
!
For all the lip service the world’s governments pay to “space belonging to the people”, they did a pretty good job keeping access to it to themselves for the first 50 years of the Space Age. Oh sure, private-sector corporations could spend their investors’ money on lengthy approval processes and pay for a ride into space, but with a few exceptions, if you wanted your own satellite, you needed to have the resources of a nation-state.
All that began to change about 20 years ago when the
CubeSat concept
was born. Conceived as a way to get engineering students involved in the satellite industry, the 10 cm cube form factor that evolved has become the standard around which students, amateur radio operators, non-governmental organizations, and even private citizens have designed and flown satellites to do everything from relaying ham radio messages to monitoring the status of the environment.
But before any of that can happen, CubeSat builders need to know that their little chunk of hardware is going to do its job. That’s where Alan Johnston, a teaching professor in electrical and computer engineering at Villanova University, comes in. As a member of
AMSAT
, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation, he has built a
CubeSat simulator
. Built for about $300 using mostly off-the-shelf and 3D-printed parts, the simulator lets satellite builders work the bugs out of their designs before committing them to the Final Frontier.
Dr. Johnston will stop by the Hack Chat to discuss his CubeSat simulator and all things nanosatellite. Come along to learn what it takes to make sure a satellite is up to snuff, find out his motivations for getting involved in AMSAT and CubeSat testing, and what alternative uses people are finding the platform. Hint: think high-altitude ballooning.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, December 4 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. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199674",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2019-12-02T19:06:23",
"content": "So the Hack Chat will a simulation????",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,667.55643 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/02/winter-is-coming-this-clock-will-let-you-know-when/ | Winter Is Coming, This Clock Will Let You Know When | Tom Nardi | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"clock hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"animated",
"clock",
"DFPlayer",
"Game of thrones",
"led",
"shield"
] | For
Game of Thrones
fans, it’s an awkward time. The show has ended its run on HBO (not without a certain level of controversy), the planned prequel is still years away, and who knows when George R. R. Martin will actually get around to writing the final books in the series. Fans have no choice but to entertain themselves while waiting for further tales of adventure from Westeros, which is how we get things like
this motorized clock from [Techarge]
.
Inspired by the now iconic opening sequence from the HBO series, elements of the 3D printed model spin around while the theme song is played courtesy of a DFPlayer Mini MP3 player module and small 2 watt speaker. The audio hardware, motor, and four digit LED display module in the front are all connected to an Arduino with a custom PCB shield, giving the inside of the clock a very clean and professional appearance.
Around the back side [Techarge] has two small push buttons to set the hour and minutes, and a large toggle to control the music and movement. As of right now it needs to be switched on and off manually, but a future enhancement could see it kick on hourly. We’d also like to see an RTC module added to the PCB, or better yet, switch over to the ESP8266 and just pull the time down from NTP.
Who knows? By the time you’ve built one of these clocks for yourself, and the
hand-made Iron Throne phone charger stand
to go with it, maybe ol’ George will have slipped out a new book. But don’t count on it. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199658",
"author": "jacques1956",
"timestamp": "2019-12-02T18:16:12",
"content": "“Winter Is Coming, This Clock Will Let You Know When”Too late for me, living in snow since november 15th.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,667.596479 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/03/a-mini-vending-machine-to-ramp-up-your-sales/ | A Mini Vending Machine To Ramp Up Your Sales | Jenny List | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2019 Hackaday Prize",
"stm32",
"vending machine"
] | A common sight in the world of hackerspaces is an old vending machine repurposed from hawking soda cans into a one-stop shop for Arduinos or other useful components. [Gabriel D’Espindula]’s
mini vending machine
may have been originally designed as an exercise for his students and may not be full sized, but we can see it or machines like it taking away some of the demand for those surplus models.
Its construction mimics that of some older 3D printers in using laser-cut ply to form the components of a box. Behind a clear lockable door are the shelves containing the products, at the back of which are continuous rotation servos that will drive the spiral Archimedes screws that eject the products. To the side is a membrane keypad and display, and the whole is drawn together with an STM32 board and an Arduino. It supports both RFID card login and keyboard login, and though it’s not finished we can see it forming the basis of a very useful system.
He’s posted the most recent progress in the form of a video that we’ve placed below the break. All the various files are available for download, so should you fancy one yourself then you have a good chance of success.
The
Hackaday
Prize2019
is Sponsored by: | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,373,667.635186 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/03/jonas-salk-virologist-and-vaccination-vanguard/ | Jonas Salk, Virologist And Vaccination Vanguard | Kristina Panos | [
"Biography",
"History",
"Original Art",
"Science"
] | [
"influenza",
"polio",
"polio vaccine",
"Thomas Francis",
"vaccine",
"virology"
] | In the early 1950s, the only thing scarier than the threat of nuclear war was the annual return of polio — an easily-spread, incurable disease that causes nerve damage, paralysis, and sometimes death. At the first sign of an outbreak, public hot spots like theaters and swimming pools would close up immediately.
One of the worst polio epidemics in the United States struck in 1952, a few years into the postwar baby boom. Polio is more likely to infect children than adults, so the race to create a vaccine reached a fever pitch.
Most researchers were looking into live-virus vaccines, which had worked nicely for smallpox and rabies and become the standard approach. But Jonas Salk, a medical researcher and budding virologist, was keen on the idea of safer, killed-virus vaccines. He believed the same principle would work for polio, and he was right. Within a few years of developing his vaccine, the number of polio cases in the United States dropped from ~29,000 in 1955 to less than 6,000 in 1957. By 1979, polio had been eradicated in the US.
Jonas Salk is one of science’s folk heroes. The polio vaccine was actually his sophomore effort — he and Thomas Francis developed the first
influenza vaccine
in the 1940s. And he didn’t stop with polio, either. Toward the end of his life, Salk was working on an AIDS vaccine.
The Salk family L-R: Jonas, Dora, Lee, Daniel, and Herman. Image via
San Diego Union-Tribune
A Doctor in the House
Jonas Salk was born in 1914 and raised in New York City. He was the oldest son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who didn’t have much money or education, but wanted the best for their children.
Salk has said in interviews that he was not interested in science as a child — he was “merely interested in things human”.
The NYC polio epidemic of 1916
would have likely given Jonas an eyeful of humanity in the form of afflicted classmates with crutches and leg braces.
Jonas was a curious kid who read everything he could get his hands on. He had dreams of becoming a lawyer, but his mother wanted a doctor in the house. When Jonas was 13, he entered Townsend Harris High School, a public school for gifted students. Two years later at age 15, Jonas entered City College of New York (CCNY), where he would earn a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. A fifteen-year-old college freshman at this competitive college was not particularly noteworthy, because many of the students there had skipped more than one grade.
After CCNY, Salk went to study medicine at NYU. It was here that he decided that although he liked medicine, he didn’t want to practice it. Salk was more interested in research. He believed he was meant to help humankind rather than treat the individual.
Thomas Francis, left, and Jonas Salk in 1955. Image via
the University of Michigan
The Flu Fighters
For thousands of years, people believed influenza, or the flu, was caused by bacteria. The influenza virus was first discovered in the early 1930s, around the time Salk entered med school. In his senior year, he had a chance to spend time in a lab that was researching influenza, and he jumped on it. Salk believed that the virus strains could be effectively destroyed and still immunize, and he was eager to test this theory. As it turns out, he was right.
Salk did postgraduate work in virology, and spent some elective time in the laboratory of his mentor, Thomas Francis. It was here that he and Francis developed the first influenza vaccine by incubating a strain of the virus in a chicken embryo, then rendering it inactive.
Polio microbes on the loose. Image via
JPMS
Paralyzing Polio
Salk started his residency in Francis’ lab at Mount Sinai Hospital. Within a few years, he was eager to study infectious diseases in his own lab. He wouldn’t have to wait long. A man named Harry Weaver contacted him about researching polio. Weaver was director of research at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, and was in a position to offer Salk his own lab and researchers. Soon, Salk started to get grants, which he used to build up his virology laboratory.
In 1947, Salk began working on a polio vaccine. First he had to sort out all 125 known strains of the virus. As he did, he noticed they all fell into one of three basic types. A successful vaccine would have to cover all three groups to give full protection from polio. Having figured this out, his next problem was making enough vaccine to experiment with. Luckily, in 1948, a group of scientists discovered that
the polio virus would multiply just fine on scraps of non-nerve tissue from human embryos
, meaning that a full-blown organism like a chicken embryo was not necessary. Thanks to this discovery, Salk could iterate much more quickly.
At the same time, another researcher named Albert Sabin was working on a live-virus vaccine to be taken orally. Sabin believed that only a live, weakened virus could make the human body produce antibodies, and believed that Salk was wasting his time trying to make an effective vaccine with dead strains.
Dr. Salk injects a child with his polio vaccine. Image via
The New Atlantis
The Polio Pioneers
In July 1952, Salk was ready to try out his killed-virus vaccine. His first patients were children who had already contracted polio and recovered. After vaccination, they all showed an increase in antibodies.
Then he tried the vaccine on himself, his wife, and his own children. When everyone in his family showed increased antibodies and no signs of illness, Salk knew it was time to share it with the world.
In 1953, Salk reported his results to the American Medical Association, and a massive trial was conducted the following year. One million children, known as
the polio pioneers
, were injected with Salk’s vaccine, and the results were incredible, with 60-70% prevention. The US wasted no time rolling out mass inoculations for children.
Unfortunately,
there was an incident at one of the labs producing the vaccine
. Some of the lots contained a live virus, and this mistake generated 40,000 new polio cases from the 120,000 poorly-controlled vaccines. The labs adopted higher standards and resumed production, but the incident would have a lasting impact on the pharmaceutical world. The news must have been bittersweet for Albert Sabin, who was still working on his live-virus version. Sabin completed human trials of his oral vaccine in 1957, and it was approved in 1962.
Jonas holds up bottles of the culture he used to grow the polio virus. Image via
Forbes
Could You Patent the Sun?
Once his vaccine was proven effective, Salk instantly shot to rock star status, much to his dismay. All the attention took time and energy away from his research, and he regretted losing his privacy and anonymity, especially where his research was concerned. Salk received a load of honors for his vaccine, including four honorary degrees and Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In an interview with Edward R. Murrow, he was asked who owned the patent on the vaccine. Salk famously replied, “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
Though it’s easy to believe that Salk had completely altruistic intentions and never thought to patent it himself, it has since been discovered that the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis’ lawyers had inquired about it at some point, and were told that the vaccine wasn’t novel enough to warrant a patent. Some would argue that the public had paid for it already through programs like the March of Dimes.
The Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA. Image via
Salk Institute
Giving Back: The Salk Institute
Salk was never in it for the money, and he never forgot where he came from. In 1963, he established the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA to provide a research space for scientists working toward the elimination of diseases like multiple sclerosis and cancer. The Salk Institute was the kind of place he could only dream of as a student.
Salk died of heart failure in 1995. Toward the end of his life, he had been working on vaccines for cancer, multiple sclerosis, and AIDS.
Jonas Salk had a huge impact on virology, on the United States, and on the longevity of thousands of baby boomers. The world could certainly use more scientists who follow his philosophy of helping humankind as a whole. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199980",
"author": "Alex Dovetail",
"timestamp": "2019-12-03T19:30:14",
"content": "“For thousands of years, people believed influenza, or the flu, was caused by bacteria.”Seems a bit suspect since bacteria were only discovered in the 1600’s.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,373,669.284607 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/03/testing-carbon-fibre-reinforced-filament-by-building-an-over-engineered-skateboard/ | Testing Carbon Fibre Reinforced Filament By Building An Over-Engineered Skateboard | Danie Conradie | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed longboard",
"3d printer filament",
"3d printing",
"exotic 3D printing filaments",
"skateboard"
] | Advances in filaments for FDM 3D printers have come in leaps and bounds over the past few years, and carbon fibre (CF) reinforced filament is becoming a common sight. Robotics extraordinaire [James Bruton] got his hands on some CF reinforced PLA, and ended up building a completely
over-engineered 3D printed skateboard.
(Video, embedded below.)
[James] started by printing some test pieces with a 0.5 mm and a big 1.2 mm nozzle with and without the CF, which he subjected to cantilever deflection tests. The piece with CF was 20% stiffer than without.
[James] then built an extremely strong and cool looking skateboard deck with alternating section of the CF PLA and toughened PLA, totalling 2.7 kg of filament. It was extremely strong, so after bolting on a set of trucks and wheels, he did some mild riding at a local skate park, where it survived without any problems. He admits it was completely over-engineered, but points out in that the internal cavities in the deck is the perfect place for batteries on an electric long board.
Designing something from the ground up with the strength and weaknesses 3D printing in mind, leads to some very interesting and innovative designs, of which this is a perfect example, and we hope to see many more like it. We’ve featured a number of [James]’ project, including the
remote controlled bowling ball
he built for [Mark Rober] and his impressive
OpenDog
and
Start Wars robots
. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6200046",
"author": "an engineer",
"timestamp": "2019-12-04T01:17:59",
"content": "over-engineered? I don’t think any engineering was involved….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6200062",
"author": "sudos",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,373,669.161315 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/03/electric-dreams-help-cows-survive-the-desert-of-the-real/ | Electric Dreams Help Cows Survive The Desert Of The Real | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"agriculture",
"farming",
"music",
"russia",
"the matrix",
"virtual reality"
] | Pictures of a cow wearing a pair of comically oversized virtual reality goggles recently spread like wildfire over social media, and even the major news outlets eventually picked it up. Why not? Nobody wants to read about geopolitical turmoil over the holidays, and this story was precisely the sort of lighthearted “news” people would, if you can forgive the pun, gobble up.
But since you’re reading Hackaday, these images probably left you with more questions than answers. Who made the hardware, what software is it running, and of course, why does a cow need VR? Unfortunately, the answers to the more technical questions aren’t exactly forthcoming. Even tracking the story back to the
official press release from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Moscow Region
doesn’t tell us much more than we can gather from the image itself.
But it does at least explain
why
somebody went through the trouble of making a custom bovine VR rig: calm cows produce more milk. These VR goggles, should they pass their testing and actually be adopted by the Russian dairy industry, will be the newest addition to a list of cow-calming hardware devices that farmers have been using for decades to get the most out of their herds.
Presented in Cattle-Vision
The press release claims that the VR goggles were modified from commercially available hardware to take into account the shape and size of a cow’s head, but there’s no word of which product served as the basis for the experiment. Given the massive size of the goggles in relation to the cow’s human handler though, it’s safe to assume that whatever headset was used is being completely obscured by the obviously custom enclosure.
That said, because we can see no obvious cables coming from the headset, it’s possible researchers using some variant of the phone-based VR goggles that were all the rage after the release of Google Cardboard. We’ve noticed that
excitement over these simple gadgets has waned significantly
in the last year or so, but here the idea makes perfect sense. If you’re looking to outfit whole herds of animals with this technology, a basic plastic enclosure that holds a cheap Android device makes perfect sense.
One also has to wonder what sort of optics are required to fool a cow into thinking they’re looking at a real pasture. Like many prey animals, a cow’s binocular vision is minimal when compared to human vision. In other words, they have limited depth perception when looking directly ahead. In fact, it’s said that cows have trouble discerning shadows from actual holes in the ground, and will avoid walking over them. On the other hand, they have excellent panoramic vision which allows them to see nearly 360 degrees without having to move their heads.
Accordingly, it seems there would be little need for the sort of stereoscopic optics used in even low-cost VR headsets. A more likely arrangement would perhaps be a large-format phone (or small tablet) behind a Fresnel lens that would expand the image to fill the cow’s field of view. Since the goggles don’t appear to wrap around the cow’s head it seems unlikely it could provide much more than a 180 degree view for the animal, but that may still be enough to achieve the desired effect.
Adding a New Dimension
It might seem like this technology is a stretch, but one could argue that it’s simply the logical evolution of what dairy farmers have already been doing for decades. For nearly as long as humans have been keeping cows domestically, it’s been known that they seem to enjoy listening to music. In the early days farmers would actually play instruments for their herds, but as technology improved, they installed loudspeakers and piped in recorded audio.
In an oft-referenced 2001 study
, psychologists from the University of Leicester observed a 3% increase in milk production in cows that were exposed to slow, relaxing music during the day. That might not seem like a lot on a small scale, but when multiplied by thousands of cows, it’s certainly worth the cost of a few speakers. The science behind this is still not fully understood, and the psychologists explained the experiment was designed primarily to fact-check the anecdotal claims of farmers who were already serenading their animals.
A band performs live music for dairy cows, circa 1930. Image credit: Wisconsin Historical Society
The general consensus is that nervous and agitated cows produce less milk, so anything that can calm them down should result in a noticeable increase in yield. Some even claim the
taste
of the milk is improved when the animal is more relaxed, but there’s even less science to back up that idea.
Given this, the idea that providing the cows with visual stimulation to go along with the music that many farmers are already playing for them doesn’t seem completely unreasonable. The press release claims that researchers have already found wearing the VR headset seems to improve the cow’s general mood. In the future, a more comprehensive study will be performed to see how much it actually increases milk production over existing techniques.
Life Imitates Art
Even so, it’s hard to look at this experiment and not see it as needlessly complex. After all, humans have been managing to coax milk out of cows for all of recorded history without any video game trickery. But of course, the demands of modern farming are quite a bit different than the idyllic mental images most of us have. If you’re picturing something that looks like what they put on the carton: a handful of cows meandering around a wide-open pasture, complete with grain silos and a windmill in the background;
the reality of a high-yield dairy farm
might come as something of a shock.
Dairymaster Rotary Milking Parlour
It could be that providing the cows with a vision of a somewhat less dystopian environment might make life in captivity easier for them. If this sounds a bit like the plot of
The Matrix
, that’s because it literally is. As depressing a realization as it may be, putting cows into a virtual environment where they can forget they’re being mechanically drained of their bodily fluids in service of a technologically superior species might be the nicest thing we can do for them.
From a purely practical standpoint it seems like lining their pens with high-definition displays showing scenes from a spring meadow would make more sense than equipping each cow with an individual video system, but perhaps the simulation wouldn’t be accurate enough. Like Morpheus said, “No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.” | 64 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199903",
"author": "Clemens",
"timestamp": "2019-12-03T15:17:54",
"content": "Somehow, putting up this charade feels even more unethical to me than slaughtering them for meat…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6199908",
... | 1,760,373,669.824378 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/03/the-open-makers-cube-have-hack-will-travel/ | The Open Makers Cube: Have Hack, Will Travel | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed parts",
"DIN rail",
"mobile workbench",
"NopSCADlib",
"openscad",
"portable"
] | Don’t bother denying it, we know your workbench is a mess. A tangled pile of wires, tools, and half-completed projects is standard decor for any hardware hacker. In fact, if you’ve got a spotless work area, we might even be a bit skeptical about your credentials in this field. But that’s not to say we wouldn’t be interested in some way of keeping the electronic detritus in check, perhaps something like the
Open Makers Cube created by [technoez]
.
This all-in-one hardware hacking station uses DIN rails and 3D-printed mounting hardware to allow the user to attach a wide array of tools, gadgets, and boards to the outside surface where they’re easily accessible. The OpenSCAD design includes mounts for the usual suspects like the Raspberry Pi, Arduino Uno, and general purpose breadboards. Of course, your own custom mounts are just a few lines of code away.
The Cube also includes a lighted magnifying glass on a flexible arm so you can zoom in on what you’re working on, a simple “helping hands” attachment, and provisions for internal USB power. It even features angled feet so the front side of the cube is held at a more comfortable viewing angle. All of which is held together by a lightweight and portable frame built from square aluminum tubing.
We can understand if you’ve got some doubts about the idea of mounting all of your tools and projects to the side of a jaunty little cube. But even if the jury is still out on
the mobile workspace concept
, one thing is for sure: the Open Makers Cube is easily one of the best documented projects we’ve seen in recent memory. Thanks to NopSCADlib, [technoez] was able to generate an exploded view and Bill of Materials for each sub-assembly of the project. If you’ve ever needed
proof that NopSCADlib was worth checking out
, this is it. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199861",
"author": "dendad",
"timestamp": "2019-12-03T12:34:46",
"content": "” In fact, if you’ve got a spotless work area, we might even be a bit skeptical about your credentials in this field.”WOW!I must be a genius!!!! It is hard ti find some clear space on any of my workbenches... | 1,760,373,669.873549 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/03/building-a-mechanical-oscillator-tesla-style/ | Building A Mechanical Oscillator, Tesla Style | Lewin Day | [
"Science"
] | [
"ac",
"alternating current",
"mechanical oscillator",
"oscillator",
"tesla"
] | Before Tesla devised beautifully simple rotary machinery, he explored other methods of generating alternating current. One of those was the mechanical oscillator, and [Integza] had a go at
replicating the device himself
. (Video, embedded below the break.)
Initial attempts to reproduce the technology using 3D-printed parts were a failure. The round cylinder had issues sealing, and using O-ring seals introduced too much friction to allow the device to oscillate properly. A redesign that used external valving and a square cylinder proved more successful.
Once the oscillator was complete, the output shaft was fitted with magnets and a coil to generate electricity. After generating a disappointing 0.14 volts, [Integza] went back and had a look at the Maxwell-Faraday equations. Using this to guide the design, a new coil was produced with more turns, and the magnetic flux was maximised. With this done, the setup could generate seven volts, enough to light several LEDs.
While it’s not a particularly efficient generator, it’s a great proof-of-concept. Yes, Tesla’s invention worked, but it’s easy to see why he moved on to rotary designs when it came to real-world applications. We’ve seen [Integza] take on other builds too,
like the ever-popular Tesla turbine. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199883",
"author": "Miroslav",
"timestamp": "2019-12-03T14:25:46",
"content": "Connect it to a steel beam and very slowly vary the oscillation frequency. Profit once the building starts to shake :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,373,669.654862 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/02/fun-with-a-200-kw-fiber-laser/ | Fun With A 200-kW Fiber Laser | Dan Maloney | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"amplifier",
"doping",
"fiber laser",
"glass fiber",
"laser",
"optics",
"Pumping",
"stimulated emission",
"ytterbium"
] | We’ve all heard the “Do not stare into laser with remaining eye” joke. It’s funny because it’s true, as pretty much any laser a hobbyist can easily come by can cause permanent damage to eyes unless the proper precautions are taken. But
a fiber laser with 200kW peak power
is in another hazard class entirely.
Granted, outsized power ratings like this are a bit misleading, based as they are on femtosecond-long pulses. And to be sure, the fiber laser that [Marco Reps] tears down in the video below was as harmless as a kitten when he got it, thanks to its output optics having been unceremoniously shorn from the amplifier by its former owner. Reattaching the output and splicing the fiber would be necessary to get the laser lasing again, but [Marco] had other priorities in mind. He wanted to understand the operation of a fiber laser, but the tangle of fibers on two separate levels inside the chassis was somewhat inscrutable. The coils of fiber wrapped around the aluminum drums inside the chassis turned out to be the amplifier; fed by a semiconductor seed laser, the light pulse travels through the ytterbium-doped fiber of the two-stage amplifier, which is the active gain medium where stimulated emission, and therefore amplification, occurs.
With a little reverse engineering and the help of an online manual, he was able to understand the laser’s operation. A laser company helped him splice the optics back together – seeing the splicing rig in action is worth the price of admission alone – and the unit seems to be in more or less working order at this point. Normally the most powerful laser we see around here are the CO
2
lasers in
those cheap Chinese laser cutters
, so we’re looking forward to learning more about fiber lasers. | 23 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199814",
"author": "Mike Massen in Perth, Western Australia",
"timestamp": "2019-12-03T06:17:18",
"content": "Fascinating, thanks for posting :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6199819",
"author": "Phrewfuf",
"timestam... | 1,760,373,669.603093 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/02/supercon-the-things-you-brought-and-a-few-you-forgot/ | Supercon: The Things You Brought, And A Few You Forgot | Kristina Panos | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"2019 Hackaday Superconference",
"Supercon"
] | Part of the fun of Supercon is that there is so much available in one place. For the price of admission, you’re surrounded by expertise, power, and soldering irons. Digi-Key brought several large parts bins stuffed full of everything from passives to LEDs to chips for people use in hacking away on their badges. But one thing that makes the whole experience really special is the stuff people bring. We don’t just mean the projects you brought to show off, we mean the stuff you bring to enhance your Supercon experience, whether it be tools, bits and bobs, or other fun stuff to play with.
This year was my first Supercon, and you never forget your first. I had a great time, and was overwhelmed by how much awesomeness was going on in one place. I wish Supercon was a simulation I could run again and again so I could listen to every talk, attend every workshop, and spend time talking to everyone about the things they brought and the cool things they’re doing with their time and badges.
Awesome Stuff Hanging Off of People
Hanging around every neck was a Hackaday or Adafruit badge (or both!) in various stages of hacked-ness. But we want to give a shout-out to some of the other things people were wearing around like the badges of honor they are.
I was so glad that I encountered [
Amy Qian
] and her amazing array of flexure examples. [Amy], a mechanical engineer by day, gave a workshop on these flexible mechanisms she designed, including one that functions as a cat feeding schedule. Those lucky enough to attend got to
make their own gripper mechanism
out of laser-cut Delrin.
By wearing this board full of examples around the Supercon village, [Amy]’s reach extended to anyone curious enough to ask about them.
[
Craig Bishop
]’s big, beautiful Gameslab stopped me in my tracks, as I’m sure it did everyone who laid eyes on it. This labor of love started coming to life when [Craig] was able to source a handful of huge, expensive FPGA chips for a lot less than usual.
Here are some pictures of the beautiful v1.0 guts
.
Last fall, we showed you [Tim Trzepacz]’s
Stylish!
, a sweet little synth that looks like a cyclops with a Cheshire grin. Back then, we could only show you the render.
[Tim] originally designed this as a short run of premium swag badges for MAGWest, each in a lovely handmade wooden case, and he was walking around with one of these rare beasts clipped to his waist like a cowboy belt buckle. It was super cool just to see it in person, but then [Tim] kicked it up a notch and gave us a screamin’ demo.
A Carnival of Amazing Things
Besides the hardware being worn on a lanyard, there was a steady parade of items pulled out of backpacks, wheeled in on carts, or driven into Supercon under their own power. Some were even source from local party stores and thrift shops, performing into fantastic things I saw and/or played with.
I like big badge hacks and I cannot lie. [RobotGrrl] spent her time in the badge hacking area using everything from the swag bag poster tube to plastic utensils to six-packs of snack crackers to build a tree-planting robot driven by her Adafruit edge badge. In autonomous mode, the ‘bot will search for well-lit locales to plant its payload. Once it finds a place in the sun, the robot requests confirmation from a human, who would respond with a yes or no via Tensorflow voice commands.
Elsewhere in the Hacker Village, [Chris Gervang] was piloting a very different vehicle. After taking the logic noise synthesizer workshop hosted by [Elliot Williams] he turned the Verilog tricks he learned toward the IRDA transceiver on the badge. Of course with infrared working he wanted something to control and found that in the form of this large remote-controlled shark balloon sourced at a local party supply store. He and [Thomas Sarlandie] got to work and before long, started driving the shark around with a Supercon badge. With badge hacks like these, you’re gonna need a bigger venue.
[Josh]’s BeagleBone-based stenography keyboard will not play the theme from Jaws, unless he turns it into a MIDI device. What it will do is support a bunch of different dictionaries for different contexts thanks to an SD card slot. If it could do both, it would be the keyboard of my dreams.
A demo board for the captivating toolchanger on [Joshua Vasquez]’s
Jubilee printer
[HD Retrovision] brought VGA to his HaDge
I got my hot little hands on Digi-Key’s FLIR projector
[Arnold]’s self-driving Zumi flying the Jolly Wrencher
To drive home a sense of the eclectic seen at every turn, check out this quartet of oddities.
LEDs, LEDs Everywhere
It seems that our love for LEDs will never dim, just burn brighter with each step forward in blinky technology. Here are just a few of the projects that lit up the balmy November nights of this year’s Supercon.
Dante’s LED Polyhedrons?
[Krisin Paget’s] LED Display
Every time I saw
[Greg Davill] and his dazzling LED polyhedra
, a crowd was gathered around to marvel at their complexity. Sure, [Greg] could have used pre-made LED panels, but picking and placing each one by hand is a sure route to mad respect and piles of internet points. How does he get back under the hood? The last panel attaches to the metal frame with magnets. This image is from
a particularly awesome meeting of the dense LED panel minds
.
[Kristin Paget]’s Pixel Flinger lit up the tents of the Hacker Village where everyone was busy pushing their badges to the limit. It’s made of a whole bunch of RGB LED panels that are networked together with six ESP8266s. These out of sync rainbows indicate some kind of a network issue that might have been caused by interference. [Kristin]’s hopes for it never dimmed, and neither did ours. Since we live in the future, she was able to throw money at the problem, and had a new router delivered directly to Supercon later that day. The router solution worked so well that [Kristin] was able to show
Finding Nemo
on it.
Saturday night after the Hackaday Prize ceremony concluded, it was time to get down. There were rented arcade cabinets and a DJ, but the biggest draw inside the Design Lab was the game [John McMaster] contributed — a
colorful marriage of Minesweeper and DDR
. Step on a tile’s lamp-style switch, and if you’re lucky, it comes up blue, green, or red. And just like the computer version, blue stands for 1, green for 2, and red for 3 (it maxes out at 3). [John] had a big bag of champagne poppers on hand for explosions.
The Badger Badge – edge-lit acrylic badger dances to internal mp3 like no one is watching.
Elvis would totally have worn LED glasses.
This twinkly LED jacket added sparkle to the evenings
We were go for creativity in the badge hacking area.
The Shitty Add-On wall was anything but.
The Stuff You Wish You’d Brought
I went around asking people what they wish they’d brought, and I have to agree with most of the answers. The number one answer centered around that great intangible resource: time. Many people wanted more time to prepare for Supercon, and basically everyone wanted much more time
at
Supercon.
Some people wished they had brought their current project to work on, and that’s totally relatable. After all, what better place than this gathering of great international minds is there to squash the bugs? [Joshua Vasquez] told me he wished he’d brought more screws, and the Digi-Key guys wanted a way to get extras of the more popular parts in their bins.
Some people wanted to have their own soldering iron and tools, but there is only so much luggage a person can carry. Yours truly would have packed some shorts, because that California sunshine is no joke, even in November. Now I’m back in the dreary Midwest, dreaming of next year. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199621",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2019-12-02T16:28:45",
"content": "So, what was the price of the FLIR projector?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6199684",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2019-12-02T19:... | 1,760,373,669.709849 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/02/making-your-own-caving-headlamp/ | Making Your Own Caving Headlamp | Sharon Lin | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"caving",
"lamp",
"led",
"light"
] | An important distinction between equipment used for caving, climbing, biking, and other outdoor activities is the level of stress that’s generally applied. For instance, while climbing helmets are built to withstand the impact of sharp rocks, they’re not made to protect a biker’s head from suddenly hitting the ground. Likewise, while camping headlamps may be able to survive a light rainfall, they’re probably not made to shine at the 800 lumens after being submerged underwater.
[LukeM] built himself a caving headlight, after being “fed up with what was available on the market”. While
his project
is a bit older, it’s still pretty helpful for any newer hobbyists looking to try their hand at building a custom headlamp. Many cavers have to carry around a few primary – one main light for general visibility and a secondary light for focusing on specific objects. These are typically worn on the helmet, attached somehow to prevent the light source from falling off mid-climb. From tricky operations, varying distances, cost, and ease of battery replacement, there are a number of reasons why a caver might want to build their own customizable head lamp.
The result is rugged, waterproof, reliable, bright enough to supplement flashes in caving photos and also dim enough for general use (30-700 lumens). It has options for wide and narrow beams, displays a neutral to warm color, and is relatively upgradeable without too much trouble. At the same time, it’s also fairly compact, with all of the components packed inside of a short section of 3″x2″ aluminum tubing, protected at the back and front by aluminum and acrylic backings. The LEDs used are four Cree XP-E R2 bin LEDs and a hipFlex driver from TaskLED with programmable settings for max output, thermal protection temperature, warning voltage, and lighting modes. I’m personally already smitten with the level of customizability of this build.
On top of all of that, it’s been cave tested and approved! | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199561",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2019-12-02T12:43:38",
"content": "For a nice warm light you can’t beat a carbide flame for caving. :-)Maybe someone could make an LED equivalent, with a low colour temperature and a really wide spread. (The nice thing about carbide lamp... | 1,760,373,669.218253 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/02/quick-and-dirty-operate-an-intercom-via-telegram/ | Quick And Dirty: Operate An Intercom Via Telegram | Danie Conradie | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"electronic door lock",
"home intercom upgrade",
"intercom",
"Raspberry Pi Zero",
"telegram"
] | Never underestimate the quick and dirty hack. It’s very satisfying to rapidly solve a real problem with whatever you have on hand, and helps to keep your hacking skills sharp for those big beautifully engineered projects. [Guillaume M] needed a way to remotely open his apartment building door for deliveries, so he hacked the
ancient intercom to be operated via Telegram
, to allow packages to be deposited safely inside his mailbox inside the building’s front too.
[Guillaume] needed to complete the hack in a way that would allow him to return the intercom to its original state when he moves out. Opening the 30-year-old unit, he probed a row of screw terminals and identified a 13V supply, ground, and the connection to the buildings’ door lock. He connected the lock terminals to a relay, which is controlled by a Raspberry Pi Zero W that waits for the “open” command to be sent to a custom Telegram Bot.
To power the Pi, [Guillaume] connected it to the 13V supply on the intercom via a voltage divider circuit. Voltage dividers usually make lousy power supplies, since the output voltage will fluctuate as the load changes, but it looks as though it worked well enough for [Guillaume]. The intercom had a lot of empty space inside, so after testing everything was packed inside the housing.
If you want to achieve the same with an ESP8266,
there’s a library for that
. Just keep in mind that being dependent on web servers to open critical doors
might get you locked out
. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199559",
"author": "lab",
"timestamp": "2019-12-02T12:35:08",
"content": "This is an elvox intercom system. Good job on the project but your wiring is wrong. According to the schematic the door opens when you short pins 6 and 7. 3 and 4 are always on short by default.",
"pa... | 1,760,373,669.542533 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/01/building-a-faux-retro-portable-computer/ | Building A Faux Retro Portable Computer | Tom Nardi | [
"Cyberdecks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"all-in-one",
"aluminum extrusion",
"portable computer",
"retrocomputing"
] | The modern laptop has its origins in the mid to late 1980s, when shrinking computer hardware and improvements to battery technology finally made mobile computing practical. But before the now iconic clamshell form factor became the standard, there was a market for so-called “portable” computers. These machines often resembled pieces of luggage with keyboards attached, and even at their peak, they were nowhere near as practical as today’s ultra-thin notebook computers. But for the more nostalgic among us, these vintage portables do have a special sort of charm about them.
Looking to recapture some of that magic with modern components,
[davedarko] has started working on his own Raspberry Pi portable computer
. Just like those machines of yore, his build is designed to be a self-contained computing experience that you can lug around, but not exactly something you’d be popping open on the train. Its extruded aluminum frame holds the display, power supply, and audio hardware, with
plenty
of room to spare for additional hardware should he decide to pack in a couple hard drives or something more exotic.
The skeletal frame has plenty of room for activities.
We particularly like the 3D printed hinge and lock mechanism he designed that holds the keyboard closed against the front of the frame. Sufficiently
old
experienced readers will recall this particular feature being a defining characteristic of portables such as the Osborne 1 and Compaq Portable, and it’s great to see it included here. All it needs now is a leather handle on the side to complete the look.
[davedarko] still has some work ahead of him, as ultimately he’d like to completely enclose his computer’s frame with laser cut panels. But the build is certainly progressing nicely, and frankly, it’s already at the point where we’d have no problem pulling it out at the next hackerspace meetup. Between builds like this
and the growing collection of cyberdecks
we’ve covered recently, it looks as though
1980s design aesthetic is alive and well
within the hacker community.
[Thanks to HappyFox for the tip.] | 48 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199483",
"author": "geocrasher",
"timestamp": "2019-12-02T06:08:12",
"content": "I like this so much! I used to work with a fellow who wrote reviews on PC’s back in the 1980’s, and still owned the original Compaq Portable that was used in the original PC Magazine review in 1982 or ... | 1,760,373,669.497567 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/01/almond-open-personal-assistant-from-stanford/ | Almond: Open Personal Assistant From Stanford | Al Williams | [
"internet hacks"
] | [
"alexa",
"almond",
"cortana",
"google",
"Personal Assistant",
"siri",
"stanford"
] | The current state of virtual personal assistants — Alexa, Cortana, Google, and Siri — leaves something to be desired. The speech recognition is mostly pretty good. However, customization options are very limited. Beyond that, many people are worried about the privacy of their data when using one of these assistants. Stanford Open Virtual Assistant Lab has rolled out
Almond
, which is open and is reported to have better privacy features.
Like most other virtual assistants, Almond has skills that determine what it can do. You can use Almond in a browser, on a Google phone, or as a command line application. It all lives on
GitHub
, so if you don’t like something you are free to fix it.
The skills are on a market-like thing known as Thingpedia. There are a surprising number, although not nearly as many as commercial devices. The assistant can integrate with Nest, GNOME, Gmail, Twitter, Slack, and many more services.
The natural language processing is impressive. Here are some examples from the web site:
When the New York Times has an article about China, translate the headline to Chinese, then email it to my friend.
When I leave home, turn off the heating.
When I post to Twitter, copy the post to Facebook.
Get the Bitcoin price and then send it to my colleague on Slack.
The web site is a little glitzy and the GitHub will take some time to parse. However, the
documentation
is very readable.
Almond is begging to be run on a smart speaker and there is
a way to do it
. You can even run it using a docker image that is already configured.
What we really want to do is build Almond
into a robot
. For now, we may just repurpose a
Google Raspberry Pi
. | 19 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199463",
"author": "jlbrian7",
"timestamp": "2019-12-02T03:49:21",
"content": "Glad I saw this. I have been looking at setting up snips (https://snips.ai/), but this may be just what I was looking for!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,373,669.929555 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/01/hackaday-links-december-1-2019/ | Hackaday Links: December 1, 2019 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"cyber monday",
"hackaday links",
"OSHWA",
"pulsar",
"radioastronomy",
"RTL-SDR",
"space",
"Tindie"
] | We can recall a book from our youth that cataloged some of the most interesting airplanes in the world. One particularly interesting beast was dubbed “The Super Guppy”, a hilariously distended cargo plane purpose-built for ferrying Saturn rocket sections around the US in the 1960s. We though the Guppies were long gone, victims like so many other fascinating machines of the demise of the Apollo program. It turns out we were only 4/5 right about that, since one of the original five Super Guppies is still in service, and
was spotted hauling an Orion capsule from Florida to Ohio
for vacuum testing. The almost 60-year-old plane, a highly modified C-97 Stratofreighter, still has a big enough fan-base to attract 1500 people to brave the Ohio cold and watch it land.
The news this week was filled with reports from Texas of
a massive chemical plant explosion
that forced the evacuation of 50,000 people from their homes the day before Thanksgiving. The explosion and ensuing fire at the TPC Group petrochemical plant were spectacular; thankfully, there were no deaths and only two injuries reported from the incident. The tie-in to the hacker community lies in what this plant made: butadiene, or synthetic rubber. The plant produced about 16% of the North American market’s supply of butadiene, which we know from
previous coverage
is one of the polymers in acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS. It remains to be seen if this will put a crimp in ABS printer filament supplies, or any of the hundreds of products that butadiene is in, including automotive tires and hoses.
Remember when “Cyber Monday” became a thing? We sure do; in the USA, it was supposed to be the first workday back from the Thanksgiving break which would afford those lacking a fast Internet connection at home the opportunity to do online shopping on company time. The idea seems so year 2000 now, but the name stuck, and all kinds of sales and bargains are now competing for your virtual attention and cyber dollars. That includes Tindie, of course, where the
Cyber Monday Sale
is running through December 6. There’s tons to chose from, including
products that got started as Hackaday.io projects
and
certified open-source hardware products
. Be sure to check out the Tindie
Twitter feed
and
blog
for extra discount codes, too.
Speaking of gift-giving, we got an interesting tip about a product we never knew we needed. Called
“WorkBench”
, it’s a modular development system that takes care of an oft-neglected side of prototyping: the physical and mechanical layout. Too often we just start with a breadboard on the bench, and while that’ll do for lots of smaller projects, as the build keeps growing and the breadboards keep coming, things can get out of hand. WorkBench aims to tidy things up by providing a basal platen onto which breadboards, microcontrollers, perfboards, or just about anything else can be snapped. Handles make the whole thing portable, and a clear acrylic cover protects your hard work.
We love to hear stories about citizen science, especially when the amateurs scoop the professionals. Astronomy seems to be a hotbed for this brand of discovery, usually as a lone astronomer peering into the night sky to see a comet or asteroid nobody has seen before.
Catching a glitching pulsar in the act
is an entirely different level of discovery, though. Back in February, Steve Olney detected a 2.5 parts-per-million increase in the 89-millisecond period of emissions for
the Vela pulsar
using his RTL-SDR-based observatory. Steve has some fascinating information about pulsars and his observatory on
his website
. Color us impressed that he was able to pull off this observation without the benefit of millions of dollars in equipment and a giant parabolic dish antenna. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199449",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2019-12-02T01:46:55",
"content": "I live down the street from where the Super Guppy spends most of its time. I didn’t realize people thought they were gone.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,373,670.032549 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/01/a-stm32f4-based-arduino-in-the-feather-form-factor/ | A STM32F4 Based Arduino In The Feather Form Factor | Gerrit Coetzee | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2019 Hackaday Prize",
"adafruit",
"Feather",
"Minh4",
"STM23F4"
] | [minh7a6] loves the Adafruit Feather, but sees some
room for improvement
.
First is the matter of 5V tolerance. While just about everything is available in a 3.3v range these days, sometimes it’s just nice not to have to care. The main controller on the Feather is plenty powerful, but its intolerant pins just wouldn’t do so it was swapped for a chip from the ever popular STM32F4 line.
Then he wanted better energy efficiency when running from battery. In order to achieve this he switched from a linear regulator to a buck-boost converter. He also felt that the need for a separate SWD adapter for debugging seemed unnecessary, so he built a
Black Magic Probe
right in.
He’s just now finishing up the Arduino IDE support for the board, which is pretty cool. There’s no intention to produce this souped up Feather, but all the files are available for anyone interested.
The
Hackaday
Prize2019
is Sponsored by: | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199414",
"author": "Freddie Chopin",
"timestamp": "2019-12-01T21:04:32",
"content": "I like STM32, especially STM32F4 although there was a time they cared nothing for hobbyists… When their only experience of humanity was a toilet seat coming at them down a steel corridor.",
"pa... | 1,760,373,669.985432 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/30/let-a-cpr-robot-save-the-day/ | Let A CPR Robot Save The Day | Gerrit Coetzee | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2019 Hackaday Prize",
"CPR",
"robot"
] | Four highschool students in Lyon France are
building a CPR robot
, with the aim of removing the endurance problem faced by those delivering this form of essential first aid.
By every after action report, CPR is an emotionally and physically exhausting way to save a life. When someone’s heart stops beating their breathing stops too. After that there’s a very small window in which to keep just enough oxygen in the blood to prevent brain damage and organ failure. A person has to precisely position their hands and press, repeatedly, with enough force to break someone’s sternum in order to keep their heart pumping; sometimes for over fifteen minutes waiting for rescue to arrive. On top of that, depending on which school of thought they learned the technique, they may be required to also force air into the patients lungs.
While this pushes the boundary of human endurance, a robot would not have the same issue. In fact, many of the existing problems are solved.
CPAP Machines
can force air into lungs all day long. A motor and a mechanism could position and provide the mechanical pumping motion to keep the blood flowing. Sensors could tell when the heart takes back over. The machine is currently a proof-of-concept built from plywood, and off-the-shelf parts. Yet it can maintain the 30 compression – 2 breath cycle indefinitely on a CPR Dummy.
It’s an interesting idea; while defibrillators do exist, they don’t always get the heart going in time. We wonder if someone more medically inclined can weigh in on this interesting idea.
The
Hackaday
Prize2019
is Sponsored by: | 24 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199220",
"author": "Mike Westman",
"timestamp": "2019-11-30T21:10:18",
"content": "Already a thing.https://www.zoll.com/medical-products/resuscitation-system/autopulse/ems/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6199569",
"a... | 1,760,373,670.349569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/30/multi-material-3d-printing-makes-soft-robot/ | Multi Material 3D Printing Makes Soft Robot | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"3d printing",
"hotend",
"mixing hot end",
"multimaterial"
] | When you zoom in on a fractal you find it is made of more fractals. Perhaps that helped inspire the Harvard 3D printers that have various arrays of mixing nozzles. In the
video below
you can see some of the interesting things you can do with an array of mixing nozzles. The coolest, we think, is a little multi-legged robot that uses vacuum to ambulate across the bench. The
paper
, however, is behind a paywall.
There are really two ideas here. Mixing nozzles are nothing new. Usually, you use them to mimic a printer with two hot ends. That is, you print one material at a time and purge the old filament out when switching to the new filament. This is often simpler than using two heads because with a two head arrangement, both the heads have to be at the same height, you must know the precise offset between the heads, and you generally lose some print space since the right head can’t cross the left head and vice versa. Add more heads, and you multiply those problems. We’ve also seen mixing nozzles provide different colors.
The printers in the video, can lay down filament of different types and achieves very rapid change overs. According to the authors:
… exploit(s) the diode-like behaviour that arises when multiple visco-elastic materials converge at a junction to enable seamless, high-frequency switching between up to eight different materials…
This should be within reach of existing hobby-level mixing hot ends, although perhaps it requires different materials than we currently use.
In addition to the robot, there is a folding origami-like structure that uses both rigid and flexible plastic. The only thing that struck us is that while the array of nozzles makes fast prints with repetitive structure, it didn’t seem possible to turn them off. So the things you could print with, say, an 8-head nozzle would be very limited by the spacing between the nozzles since all the nozzles print together.
Still, this could be a good research project for anyone with a mixing hotend. The capability is even available on
tiny printers
. If you want to mix four filaments, there’s always the
diamond
. If you get results — positive or negative — experimenting with this technique, write it up, hit us with a
tip
, and we’ll pass it along. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199218",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2019-11-30T20:43:11",
"content": "Even if you could turn off the extra nozzles you would still have the problem of multiple extruders needing perfectly matching height from the build plate to avoid interference as the ‘off’ nozzle cross... | 1,760,373,670.395343 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/30/circuit-simulation-in-python/ | Circuit Simulation In Python | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"analog circuit",
"circuit",
"integration",
"LTSpice",
"modeling",
"numpy",
"programming",
"python",
"simulation",
"SPICE"
] | Using SPICE to simulate an electrical circuit is a common enough practice in engineering that “SPICEing a circuit” is a perfectly valid phrase in the lexicon. SPICE as a software tool has been around since the 70s, and its open source nature means there are more SPICE tools around now to count. It also means it is straightforward enough to use with other software as well, like
integrating LTspice with Python for some interesting signal processing circuit simulation
.
[Michael]’s latest project involves simulating filters in LTspice (a SPICE derivative) and then using Python/NumPy to both provide the input signal for the filter and process the output data from it. Basically, it allows you to “plug in” a graphical analog circuit of any design into a Python script and manipulate it easily, in any way needed. SPICE programs aren’t without their clumsiness, and being able to write your own tools for manipulating circuits is a powerful tool.
This project is definitely worth a look if you have any interest in signal processing (digital or analog) or even if you have
never heard of SPICE before
and want an easier way of simulating a circuit before prototyping one on a breadboard. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199181",
"author": "RoGeorge",
"timestamp": "2019-11-30T16:07:59",
"content": "The problem with LTspice is its license is tied to non-commercial use.A free alternative to LTspice is QUCS.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quite_Universal_Circuit_SimulatorQUCS has some extra features, in... | 1,760,373,670.246418 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/30/simple-acrylic-plates-make-kirlian-photography-a-breeze/ | Simple Acrylic Plates Make Kirlian Photography A Breeze | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"acrylic",
"capacitive coupling",
"corona",
"corona discharge",
"dielectric",
"high voltage",
"kirlian",
"tesla coil"
] | We know, we know – “Kirlian photography” is a term loaded with pseudoscientific baggage. Paranormal researchers have longed claimed that Kirlian photography can explore the mood or emotional state of a subject through the “aura”, an energy field said to surround and emanate from all living things. It’s straight-up nonsense, of course, but that doesn’t detract from the beauty of plasma aficionado [Jay Bowles]’
images produced by capacitive coupling and corona discharge
.
Technically, what [Jay] is doing here is not quite Kirlian photography. The classic setup for “electrophotography” is a sandwich of photographic film, a glass plate, and a metal ground plate. An object with a high-voltage, high-frequency power supply attached is placed on top of the sandwich, and the resulting corona discharge exposes the film. [Jay]’s version is a thin chamber made of two pieces of solvent-welded acrylic and filled with water. A bolt between the acrylic panes conducts current from a Tesla coil – perhaps
this one
that we’ve featured before – into the water. When something is placed on the acrylic, a beautiful purple corona discharge streams out from the object.
It’s an eerie effect, and it’s easy to see how people can see an aura and attribute mystical properties to it. In the end, though, it’s not much different than touching
a plasma globe
, and just about as safe. Feeling a bit more destructive? Corona discharge is a great way to make art, both
in wood
and
in acrylic
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6204110",
"author": "Keith Klassen",
"timestamp": "2019-12-19T22:11:40",
"content": "Best description/explanation of this phenomena I’ve ever seen. Thanks for the work",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,670.430389 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/30/robot-vs-superbug/ | Robot Vs. Superbug | Bryan Cockfield | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"biology",
"camera",
"Chemistry",
"d-bot",
"lab",
"microbiology",
"Octoprint",
"open source",
"Pi camera",
"raspberry pi",
"reprap",
"research"
] | Working in a university or research laboratory on interesting, complicated problems in the sciences has a romanticized, glorified position in our culture. While the end results are certainly worth celebrating, often the process of new scientific discovery is underwhelming, if not outright tedious. That’s especially true in biology and chemistry, where scaling up sample sizes isn’t easy without a lot of human labor. A research group from Reading University was able to
modify a 3D printer to take some of that labor out of the equation, though
.
This 3D printer was used essentially as a base, with the printing head removed and replaced with a Raspberry Pi camera. The printer X/Y axes move the camera around to all of the different sample stored in the print bed, which allows the computer attached to the printer to do most of the work that a normal human would have had to do. This allows them to scale up massively and cheaply, presumably with less tedious inputs from a large number of graduate students.
While the group hopes that this method will have wide applicability for any research group handling large samples, their specific area of interest involves researching “superbugs” or microbes which have developed antibiotic resistance. Their
recently-published paper
states that any field which involves bacterial motility, colony growth, microtitre plates or microfluidic devices could benefit from this 3D printer modification. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199158",
"author": "KayserSoze",
"timestamp": "2019-11-30T12:50:51",
"content": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_handling_robot",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6199169",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timesta... | 1,760,373,670.292005 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/29/building-your-own-tensegrity-structure/ | Building Your Own Tensegrity Structure | Sharon Lin | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"geometry",
"physics",
"tensegrity"
] | It seems that tensegrity structures are trending online, possibly due to the seemingly impossible nature of their construction. The strings appear to levitate without any sound reason, but if you bend them just the right way they’ll succumb to gravity.
The clue is in the name.
Tensegrity is a pormanteau of “tension” and “integrity”
. It’s easiest to understand if you have a model in your hand — cut the strings and the structure falls apart. We’re used to thinking of integrity in terms of compression. Most man-made structures rely on this concept of engineering, from the Empire State Building to the foundation of apartment building.
Tensegrity allows strain to be distributed across a structure. While buildings built from continuous compression may not show this property, more elastic structures like our bodies do. These structures can be built on top of smaller units that continuously distribute strain. Additionally, these structures can be contracted and retracted in ways that “compressionegrities” simply can’t exhibit.
How about collapsing the structure? This occurs at the weakest point. Wherever the load has the greatest strain on a structure is where it will likely snap, a property demonstrable in bridges, domes, and even our bodies.
Fascinated? Fortunately, it’s not too difficult to
create your own
structures.
[Thanks Alan for the tip!] | 37 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199137",
"author": "Donnie Agema",
"timestamp": "2019-11-30T08:48:27",
"content": "Just one of the many ingenious inventions of it*s creator – Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fullerhttps://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Buckminster_Fuller",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,373,670.599518 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/29/making-your-own-chain-sprockets-the-tidy-way/ | Making Your Own Chain Sprockets, The Tidy Way | Lewin Day | [
"Parts"
] | [
"chain",
"chain sprocket",
"metal working",
"sprocket",
"template"
] | Chain sprockets are a key drivetrain component in a lot of builds. Unfortunately they can be difficult to source, particularly for those outside the reach of retailers like McMaster-Carr. In such situations,
you might consider making your own.
The toothed profile on a chain sprocket can be produced in a simple manner by drawing a base circle, along with a series of circles spaced appropriately for the chain in question. This involves measuring the pitch and roller diameter of the chain. With these measurements in hand, a template can be created to produce the sprocket.
From there a series of holes are drilled to rough out the basic shape of the teeth, before the sprocket is then cut down to its appropriate outer diameter. The finishing work consists of chamfering the sprocket’s thickness, as well as the filing the sharp edges of the teeth for smooth engagement.
It’s a quick and easy method for producing sprockets with well-defined, accurate profiles.
We’ve featured other rough and ready methods before, too
. Video after the break. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199150",
"author": "jaap",
"timestamp": "2019-11-30T10:51:23",
"content": "You don’t have to restrict yourself to round shapes when following this technique.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6199151",
"author": "Lech Kaczyńs... | 1,760,373,670.731267 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/01/creating-easy-glass-circuit-boards-at-home/ | Creating Easy Glass Circuit Boards At Home | Tom Nardi | [
"hardware"
] | [
"art",
"glass",
"pcb",
"smd",
"substrate"
] | This tip for creating glass substrate circuit boards at home might hew a bit closer to arts and crafts than the traditional Hackaday post, but the final results of the method
demonstrated by [Heliox] in her recent video
are simply too gorgeous to ignore. The video is in French, but between YouTube’s attempted automatic translation and the formidable mental powers of our beloved readers, we don’t think it will be too hard for you to follow along after the break.
The short version is that [Heliox] loads her Silhouette Cameo, a computer-controlled cutting machine generally used for paper and vinyl, with a thin sheet of copper adhered to a backing sheet to give it some mechanical strength. With the cutting pressure of the Cameo dialed back, the circuit is cut out of the copper but not the sheet underneath, and the excess can be carefully peeled away.
Using transfer paper, [Heliox] then lifts the copper traces off the sheet and sticks them down to a cut piece of glass. Once it’s been smoothed out and pushed down, she pulls the transfer paper off and the copper is left behind.
From there, it’s just a matter of soldering on the SMD components. To make it a little safer to handle she wet sands the edges of the glass to round them off, but it’s still glass, so we wouldn’t recommend this construction for anything heavy duty. While it might not be the ideal choice for your next build, it certainly does looks fantastic when mounted in a stand and blinking away like [Heliox] shows off at the end.
Ironically,
when compared to some of the other methods
of
making professional looking PCBs at home
that
we’ve seen over the years
, this one might actually be one of the easiest. Who knew?
[Thanks to James for the tip.] | 41 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199380",
"author": "Raukk",
"timestamp": "2019-12-01T18:13:10",
"content": "Considering that HaD has had at least 3 other articles on glass PCBs, I’m surprised that none of them were linked to.https://hackaday.com/?s=Glass+pcb",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,373,670.67841 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/01/turning-a-bad-bench-supply-into-a-better-bench-supply/ | Turning A Bad Bench Supply Into A Better Bench Supply | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"bench supply",
"buck",
"constant current",
"DC_DC",
"DPS5005",
"programmable",
"Riden RD6006",
"switching"
] | ‘Tis the season for dropping hints on what new doodads would make a hacker happy, and we have to admit to doing a little virtual window shopping ourselves. And as a decent bench power supply is on our list, it was no surprise to see videos reviews that the hive mind thinks will help us make a choice pop up in our feed. It’s a magical time to be alive.
What did surprise us was
this video on a mashup of two power supplies
, both of which we’ve been eyeing, with the result being one nicely hacked programmable bench PSU. It comes to us courtesy of [jeffescortlx], who suffered with one of those no-name, low-end 30V-5A bench supplies that has significant lag when changing the settings, to the point that it’s difficult to use, not to mention dangerous for sensitive components.
So he got a hold of
a Riden RD6006
programmable buck converter, which is something like
those ubiquitous DPS power supply modules we’ve seen so much of
, only on steroids. The Riden takes up to 70V input and turns it into a 0-60V output at up to 6 amps, at constant current or constant voltage. It also just happens to (almost) fit as a replacement for the faceplate of the dodgy old supply. A few SMD resistors simulate the original front panel pots being pegged so that the supply outputs maximum voltage and current, and a little finagling with the case and fan was needed to fit everything up, but the finished product actually looks really good, and fixes all the problems of the original.
We love this hack, and may well cobble this together for our bench. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199365",
"author": "RF Dude",
"timestamp": "2019-12-01T16:36:34",
"content": "I like your hack / bash turning a mediocre power supply into a great one. Most impressed by the built in scope and battery charge feature, the latter is what most of us do anyway. Or cranking up the c... | 1,760,373,670.797689 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/01/manual-mesh-bed-levelling-for-3d-printers/ | Manual Mesh Bed Levelling For 3D Printers | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"auto bed leveling",
"autolevel",
"level",
"tramming"
] | In 3D printing, we often talk about leveling the print bed, although that’s not an accurate term. A bed that is level in our terms presents a flat surface that is parallel to the path of the print head, but within reason we care little about that. Instead we care more about it being parallel to the path of the head than it being perfectly flat. If we had a perfectly flat bed — say a sheet of glass — you’d think it might be pretty easy, but for some other materials it could be convex or concave or even have ripples all over the place. [Teaching Tech] shows you how to manually “level” the bed
using a mesh but without using an automatic sensor
. You can see the technique in the video below.
When you use adjustments to level the bed, you are tramming it, but only the very pedantic use that term for
fine adjustment
. But no amount of adjusting bed springs will get rid of bulges and ripples. A common solution is to use a sensor to measure the distance to the bed and form a mesh correction. Then, as the printer head moves in the XY plane, the software will adjust the Z-axis to rise over bumps and go down if there is a concave portion of the bed. What [Teaching Tech] is doing, however, is a manual mapping. You won’t need to add a sensor to your printer to take advantage of the method.
The technique does require — probably — reflashing your firmware, and the firmware he uses appears to be Marlin. However, Repetier and perhaps other firmware does this too. The LCD bed leveling option makes it pretty trivial to do the actual work, and once you compute the mesh, you shouldn’t have to do it again. Essentially, the printer will probe multiple points and pause, allowing you to adjust the head using the usual piece of paper.
Each time you make the adjustment, the printer remembers the height adjustment and then uses the collection of different heights to build up the correction mesh. This is essentially the same process that occurs with a probe except your manual adjustment is standing in for the probe data. You shouldn’t need to do that very often as long as the shape of the bed doesn’t change.
If you can update your firmware, this is a cheap way not to have to add a Z probe to your printer. Then again, adding one isn’t that expensive, and then the whole process is automated. That automation makes it easy to recheck it or even run it before each print if you like.
There are lots of other techniques. A
force-sensitive resistor
can be shared among printers, for example, and would actually work with this technique if you have a serious bed problem. If you mill PCBs, you might run into the same problem, and there’s a
very similar solution
. | 18 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199336",
"author": "e",
"timestamp": "2019-12-01T13:27:07",
"content": "Can one simply print a web of suitable thickness that spans the bed mounting points and use the resulting print as a shim beneath the bed?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,670.858182 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/12/01/deeppcb-routes-your-kicad-pcbs/ | DeepPCB Routes Your KiCAD PCBs | Al Williams | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"autorouting",
"KiCAD",
"pcb"
] | Computers can write poetry, even if they can’t necessarily write good poetry. The same can be said of routing PC boards. Computers can do it, but can they do it well? Of course, there are multiple tools each with pluses and minuses. However, a slick web page recently announced
deeppcb.ai
— a cloud-based AI router — and although details are sparse, there are a few interesting things about the product.
First, it supports KiCAD. You provide a DSN file, and within 24 hours you get a routed SES file. Maybe. You get three or four free boards –apparently each week — after which there is some undisclosed fee. Should you just want to try it out, create an account (which is quick and free — just verify your e-mail and create a password). Then in the “Your Boards” section there are a few examples already worked out.
We haven’t tried the service yet, but reading notes from people who have doesn’t give us a great feeling. Apparently, the router only wants two-layer boards with a limited number of wires, for the free version at least. One user reported they used up all three boards and only got error results back.
The real question is do we need AI routing? If you have parts well placed, routing isn’t that hard and there are other autorouters that can do a great job. Of course, many people won’t want to trust their designs to a cloud service. However, the technology could be interesting, especially if it could move things around and work towards different goals (e.g., low noise, minimum size, etc.).
There are
others
, of course. Then again, you can do it
all on the cloud
, if you like.
We couldn’t see a picture of an example PCB from the system, so our header image comes from a different source. c-g. [
CC BY 2.0
] | 36 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199299",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2019-12-01T09:10:05",
"content": "> You provide a DSN file, and within 24 hours you get a routed SES fileDon’t know about anybody else, but I get a mechanical turk vibe when an automated system takes 24 hours to produce a result.Setup websi... | 1,760,373,670.939009 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/30/youve-got-mail/ | You’ve Got Mail? | Richard Baguley | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"Electric Imp",
"mail",
"post"
] | Life is full of tough decisions, such as deciding whether you want to go to the end of the drive to check if the mail has arrived. These questions are made even more arduous in the winter months, but [Catpin] has a solution.
The Mail Box Alert
uses an Electric Imp, a solar panel and a proximity sensor to let you know if you’ve got mail.
It’s a neat build, with the brains provided by that
Electric Imp
which handles most of the heavy lifting. This wakes up every five minutes and checks whether the status of a small proximity sensor has changed. If it has, it pings a website. The unit sits at the bottom of the postbox, so if your friendly neighborhood post person has put in any letters, it will have changed. The Imp is powered by a small battery, which is in turn charged by a solar panel. That means that it doesn’t require any power cables or other wiring, as long as it is in the range of WiFi. With the addition of a 15-hours overnight deep sleep, [Catpin] found that the whole thing could be run from a couple of 18650 LiPo batteries.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the writeup was discussing the problems that he found with the build, such as the fact that a LiPo battery won’t perform that well in a Wisconsin winter. So, this was replaced with a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery that should be a bit more tolerant of the chill. There is also a writeup on how to create the same project using an ESP8266 if required. | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199298",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2019-12-01T08:57:42",
"content": "The problem is even worse when ‘the mail’ is just that batch of folded together odd formats of printed stuff that just has to go straight into the recycle bin on the porch.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,671.009224 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/30/an-efficient-homemade-wood-furnace/ | An Efficient Homemade Wood Furnace | Sharon Lin | [
"hardware"
] | [
"angle grinder",
"furnace",
"heating"
] | For poor [workshop from scratch], winter brings the joy of a cold workshop. Since the building is structurally made from tin, warming up the room is difficult.
Naturally, the solution was to construct a
homemade wood furnace
. The build starts off with an angle grinder being taken to a compressed air tank. After sawing off the top and sanding down the edges, the builder slices out an opening and welds together some rods into a stand for the center. He then proceeds to weld some external frames for the furnace, as well as a chimney stack, some nifty covers joined by hinges, and a fan/temperature regulator to keep the fire going.
Most of the pieces seem to come from scrap metal lying around the workshop, although the degree to which the entire project comes together is quite smooth. Some filter and spray paint do the trick for cleaning up the furnace and making it look less scrappy. The last step? A stack of wooden logs and a blow torch to start the fun. Outside of the furnace, an LCD screen keeps track of the temperature, giving some feedback and control.
The result is perhaps a too effective at warming up the workshop, but the problem sure is solved! | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199273",
"author": "captnmike",
"timestamp": "2019-12-01T03:36:52",
"content": "Nice, but it would be more efficient if the combustion air was from the outside and not the heated air in the room",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,373,671.066588 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/30/this-week-in-securitymalicious-previews-vnc-vulnerabilities-powerwall-and-the-5th-amendment/ | This Week In Security:Malicious Previews, VNC Vulnerabilities, Powerwall, And The 5th Amendment | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"fifthamendment",
"tesla",
"This Week in Security",
"vnc"
] | Malware embedded in office documents has been a popular attack for years. Many of those attacks have been fixed, and essentially all the current attacks are unworkable when a document is opened in protected view. There are ways around this, like putting a notice at the top of a document, requesting that the user turn off protected view. [Curtis Brazzell] has been researching phishing, and how attacks can work around mitigations like protected view. He noticed that
one of his booby-trapped documents phoned home
before it was opened. How exactly? The preview pane.
The Windows Explorer interface has a built-in preview pane, and it helpfully supports Microsoft Office formats. The problem is that the preview isn’t generated using protected view, at least when previewing Word documents. Generating the preview is enough to trigger loading of remote content, and could feasibly be used to trigger other vulnerabilities. [Curtis] notified Microsoft about the issue, and the response was slightly disappointing. His discovery is officially considered a bug, but not a vulnerability.
VNC Vulnerabilities
Researchers at Kaspersky
took a hard look at several VNC implementations
, and uncovered a total of 37 CVEs so far. It seems that several VNC projects share a rather old code-base, and it contains a plethora of potential bugs. VNC should be treated similarly to RDP — don’t expose it to the internet, and don’t connect to unknown servers. The protocol wasn’t written with security in mind, and none of the implementations have been sufficiently security hardened.
Examples of flaws include: Checking that a message doesn’t overflow the buffer
after
having copied it into said buffer. Another code snippet reads a variable length message into a fixed length buffer without any length checks. That particular function was originally written at AT&T labs back in the late 90s, and has been copied into multiple projects since then.
There is a potential downside to open source that is highlighted here. Open source allows poorly written code to spread. This isn’t a knock against open source, but rather a warning to the reader. Just because code or a project uses an OSS license doesn’t mean it’s secure or high quality code.
There are more vulnerabilities still in the process of being fixed
, so watch out for the rest of this story.
Powerwall
And since we’re talking about security fails, Tesla’s Powerwall contained a few of them. It’s unclear how many of these have been fixed with firmware updates, but the researchers at Hacker’s Choice
just released the results of their testing
.
The highlight of of the work is the hard-coded wifi password, set to the unit’s serial number. The problem is that the serial number is a known format:
ST<YY><L>0001<XYZ>
. “YY” is the year of manufacture. So far, that’s only since 2015, meaning there’s only 5 possible options. “L” is the revision, with only 6 seen in the wild so far. The last 7 digits appear to be a linearly incrementing number, with only numbers between 1000 and 2000 being seen. The real kicker is that the wifi network name appears to contain the last 3 digits of the serial number, giving that information away for free. For those keeping track at home, that means that an attacker trying to connect to a Powerwall’s wifi network has only 30 possible passwords to try, given this best case scenario.
How bad could it be, for an attacker to gain access to a Powerwall’s network? There is a web-based management interface that uses the same password as the wifi. This interface has all sorts of useful functions, like inverting the power sensor logic. This option probably exists to work around a hapless electrician that installed the sensor clamp backwards, but different combinations of inversion lead to various interesting results, like charging the grid when the battery should be charging, or pulling power instead. Another fun option is to change the power output to the home to another country’s standard. Doubling the voltage or changing the power frequency could be disastrous.
While this research was just published, the firmware tested appears to be from late 2017, with multiple updates released since then. Tesla hasn’t published details about security fixes in their firmware releases, so it’s hard to know how many of the problems presented here have been fixed.
Passwords, Freedom, and Self-incrimination
A legal fight has been slowly brewing in the US over the last few years. The central question is this: Does the Constitutionally guaranteed right against self-incrimination apply to passwords? Courts have been testing this issue for years, but so far a case has not come before the US Supreme Court. Prior cases have applied something known as the “Foregone Conclusion Exception”. This essentially means that with a warrant, police can compel an individual to turn over documentation that is known to exist.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court weighed in on the issue recently
, and found that the act of giving a password is inherently testimonial, and therefore protected under the 5th amendment.
No person…shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself….
This is yet another case of the difficulty of applying laws and rulings from before the computer revolution. If the password was instead a combination to a safe, it would be easy enough to open that safe through various means, even without the cooperation of the individual. Modern encryption is an entirely different realm, where decryption is impossible without the password. This latest ruling rejects the notion that the forgone conclusion exception can apply to a password. This issue will likely be decided at the US Supreme Court eventually.
We’re running this weekend because of Thanksgiving, but keep your eyes peeled Friday mornings for This Week in Security, and we’ll keep you up to date with these stories and more. | 29 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199248",
"author": "deshipu",
"timestamp": "2019-12-01T00:27:16",
"content": "There is no “YY” or “L” in “ST0001″… Does anybody really review those articles before posting?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6199260",
"a... | 1,760,373,671.136298 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/28/hacking-transmitters-1920s-style/ | Hacking Transmitters, 1920s Style | Sharon Lin | [
"classic hacks",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"antenna",
"breadboard",
"radio",
"RF",
"transmitter"
] | The origin of the term “breadboard” comes from an amusing past when wooden bread boards were swiped from kitchens and used as a canvas for radio hobbyists to roll homemade capacitors, inductors, and switches. At a period when commercial electronic components were limited, anything within reach was fair game.
[Andy Flowers], call sign K0SM,
recently recreated some early transmitters
using the same resources and techniques from the 1920s for the Bruce Kelley 1929 QSO Party. The style of the transmitters are based on [Ralph Hartley]’s oscillator circuit built for Bell Telephone in 1915. Most of the components he uses are from the time period, and one of the tubes he uses is even one of four tubes from the first Transatlantic contact in 1923.
Apart from vacuum tubes (
which could be purchased
) and meters (which could be scrounged from automobiles) [Flowers] recreated his own ferrite plate and outlet condensers for tuning the antennas. The spiderweb coils may not be as common today, but can be found in older Crosley receivers and use less wire than comparable cylindrical coils.
A number of others features of the transmitters also evoke period nostalgia. The coupling to the antenna can be changed using movable glass rods, although without shielding there are quite a number of factors to account for. A vertical panel in the 1920s style also shows measurements from the filament, plate current, and antenna coupling.
While amature radio has
become increasingly high-tech over the last few years
, it’s always good to see dedicated individuals keeping the old ways alive; no matter what kind of
technology they’re interested in
.
[Thanks Mark Erdle for the tip!] | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198801",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2019-11-29T03:34:06",
"content": "The amateur transatlantic test was in December of 1921, twenty years after Marconi spanned the Atlantic. Of course, by 1921 US hams, I don’t know about elsewhere, had been relegated to the “useless... | 1,760,373,671.184817 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/28/vertical-train-hauls-up-the-wall/ | Vertical Train Hauls Up The Wall | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"magnets",
"model railroad",
"model train",
"train",
"wall art"
] | Trains are great for hauling massive amounts of cargo from point A to point B, and occasionally, point C on weekends. But they’re not really known for climbing hills well, and anything vertical is right out. Regardless, [Can Altineller] knows what he wants and set to work,
creating the 3D Printed Wall Train
.
The first step was to get the train to stick to a vertical surface. This was achieved with the use of neodymium magnets in the train, which are attracted to laser-cut steel plates beneath the plastic tracks. The train itself consists of a custom 3D printed locomotive, outfitted with a motor and step-down gears that drive all four wheels. Said wheels are of a conical shape, and covered with rubber to provide enough grip to overcome gravity. The project is
a progression from [Cal]’s earlier four-motor build
.
The final result is a charming wall display, with the four-wheel drive train merrily tugging its carriages around the circular course ad infinitum. It’s a fun build, and we’d love to see similar techniques applied to a bigger layout. If this whets your appetite for model railroading,
consider building your own turntable
, or
implementing some fancy sensors
. Video after the break. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198776",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2019-11-29T00:41:07",
"content": "That does look pretty cool. Imagine a more complicated layout with switches and turnouts all mounted vertically.I remember years ago (maybe 30) having a toy car that drove up “walls”. Well much my to my... | 1,760,373,671.246476 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/28/iron-man-puts-yet-another-hacker-up-in-arms/ | Iron ManPuts Yet Another Hacker Up In Arms | Gerrit Coetzee | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2019 Hackaday Prize",
"iron man",
"robot arm",
"robotic arm",
"tony stark"
] | When
Iron Man
movie came out, we’d bet there wasn’t a single hacker that left the theater without daydreaming about having a few robotic lab assistants of their own. But unlike most of them, [Tony-Lin] decided to turn his celluloid dreams into a reality and
started work on his robotic arm, Abot
.
Abot is built from a combination of 5 mm nylon panels and 3D printed parts. One thing we found
particularly interesting
about this build is that the motor reductions for the joints are done using stages of pulleys and GT2 belting rather than planetary gear boxes or cycloidal drives. This produces a lightweight and affordable build.
He also designed his own driver boards for each motor using the STM32. They communicate with a CAN bus which uses USB connectors, an interesting choice. Just make sure not to try and charge your phone with it.
We have to admit to a little jealousy that [Tony] is moved himself a bit closer to being Tony Stark than the rest of us are likely to get. We’ll just have to live vicariously through the documentation of his project.
The
Hackaday
Prize2019
is Sponsored by: | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198761",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2019-11-28T23:10:01",
"content": "Well I’m grinding away here still with a Robotron and an ATTiny85… managed to get some speech recognition crammed into that so it can blink a light when I say “Jarvis” but TBH it’s super primitive ph... | 1,760,373,671.863714 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/28/a-division-in-voltage-standards/ | A Division In Voltage Standards | Sharon Lin | [
"Featured",
"home hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"alternating current",
"power",
"travel",
"voltage"
] | During my recent trip to Europe, I found out that converters were not as commonly sold as adapters, and for a good reason. The majority of the world receives 220-240 V single phase voltage at 50-60 Hz with the
surprisingly small number of exceptions
being Canada, Colombia, Japan, Taiwan, the United States, Venezuela, and several other nations in the Caribbean and Central America.
While the majority of countries have one defined plug type, several countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia use a collection of incompatible plugs for different wall outlets, which requires a number of adapters depending on the region traveled.
Although there is a fair degree of standardization among most countries with regards to the voltage used for domestic appliances, what has caused the rift between the 220-240 V standard and the 100-127 V standards used in the remaining nations?
Typical Residential Power
Mains power (or grid power, wall power, domestic power) refers to the general purpose AC electric power supply that is accessible in homes and businesses, typically for domestic appliances. Mains power can differ by voltage and frequency, and of course trying to use an incompatible value runs the risk of destroying your appliances.
Most commonly, power is delivered to a household in two or three wired contacts — a line wire (the hot contact carrying the AC between the power grid and the home), the neutral wire (completes the circuit and carries AC), and the ground wire (connects the equipment to the earth ground to protect against electric shocks).
The value for the voltage is the measurement on a single hot wire with respect to neutral or ground. Given the resistance in household wiring and the distance of extension cords used for domestic appliances, this value usually drops by the time it reaches an appliance, which is one of the reasons for values other than the mains voltage to be used for appliance ratings.
We’ve previously written about
power transmission equipment
and
the transformers you’ll find on typical utility poles
to provide residential feeds from two- or three-phase utility lines.
Where Did These Voltage Standards Originate?
The first large-scale central electric power plant was started by Thomas Edison in 1882, providing direct current (DC) at 110 V for 968 light bulbs in London. This was considered to be a “safe” voltage for consumers to use and was also the best voltage for the filaments used in his lightbulbs.
After his London plant, AC systems began to emerge in the United States, using transformers to step down higher voltages from distribution. Edison responded by
patenting a three wire distribution system in 1883
to provide greater versatility for users, which soon gave way to the War of Currents (there was actually
a recent motion picture
released on the topic).
Within the United States, after AC proved superior, Westinghouse Electric adopted the 110 VAC 60 Hz standard. European power companies, on the other hand, pushed the voltage to 240 V in order to improve distribution efficiency. At this point, insulated wires and safety measures in power distribution were sufficient that 240V was no longer considered dangerous for users, leading to the widespread adoption of the 240 VAC 50Hz standard.
Depending on the connection to the ground, wetness or resistance of their skin, surface area of their contact, and duration can all play a role in determining the real safety concerns for a person dealing with electrocution. But in modern times, circuit breakers, GFCI outlets (ground-fault circuit interrupter), and AFCI outlets (arc-fault circuit interrupter) have done much to address the electrocution and fire concerns of mains power.
This is the System We Have
This is the way things are and the way they shall be. There aren’t any plans for major changes to unify standard mains internationally. Converting from one system to another would be prohibitively expensive and there is no driving force to do so. Modern electronics manufacturers have for the most part made this a non-issue by designing power supplies that will happily function on either 240 V or 110 V, needing only a simple converter to make
the wide array of outlet types
play nicely with your country’s chose standard.
For devices that use the AC power directly, the plug type helps to ensure appliances relevant to the market are what is being sold. In countries like the United States, when the higher 240 V standard is needed an outlet is wired using two hot legs to obtain 200-240 V from a power grid system designed to deliver 110 V. | 152 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198670",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2019-11-28T18:23:06",
"content": "It’s surprising really that Texas didn’t want to go for 360V to show them yooropeens hwat’s hwat.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6198683",
... | 1,760,373,671.817612 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/28/raspberry-pi-4-hdmi-is-jamming-its-own-wifi/ | Raspberry Pi 4 HDMI Is Jamming Its Own WiFi | Bryan Cockfield | [
"News",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"hdmi",
"interference",
"radio frequency",
"raspberry pi",
"resolution",
"RF",
"wifi"
] | Making upgrades to a popular product line might sound like a good idea, but adding bigger/better/faster parts to an existing product can cause unforeseen problems. For example, dropping a more powerful engine in an existing car platform might seem to work at first until people start reporting that the increased torque is bending the frame. In the Raspberry Pi world, it seems that the “upgraded engine” in
the Pi 4 is causing the WiFi to stop working under specific circumstances
.
[Enrico Zini] noticed this issue and attempted to reproduce exactly what was causing the WiFi to drop out, and after testing various Pi 4 boards, power supplies, operating system version, and a plethora of other variables, the cause was isolated to the screen resolution. Apparently at the 2560×1440 setting using HDMI, the WiFi drops out. While you could think that an SoC might not be able to handle a high resolution, WiFi, and everything else this tiny computer has to do at once. But the actual cause seems to be a little more interesting than a simple system resources issue.
[Mike Walters]
on a Twitter post about this issue
probed around with a HackRF and discovered a radio frequency issue. It turns out that at this screen resolution, the Pi 4 emits some RF noise which is exactly in the range of WiFi channel 1. It seems that the Pi 4 is acting as a WiFi jammer on itself.
This story is pretty new, so hopefully the Raspberry Pi Foundation is aware of the issue and working on a correction. For now, though, it might be best to run a slightly lower resolution if you’re encountering this problem. | 87 | 30 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198633",
"author": "Rog Fanther",
"timestamp": "2019-11-28T16:19:33",
"content": "Hmm, just avoid using channel 1, then. ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6198634",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2019-11-28T1... | 1,760,373,671.527473 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/28/a-python-serial-terminal-to-get-you-out-of-a-jam/ | A Python Serial Terminal To Get You Out Of A Jam | Tom Nardi | [
"classic hacks",
"computer hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"python",
"Retro WiFi",
"retrocomputing",
"serial terminal",
"Terminal emulator"
] | When fiddling around with old computers, you can occasionally find yourself in a sticky situation. What may be a simple task with today’s hardware and software can be nearly impossible given the limited resources available to machines with 20 or 30 years on the clock. That’s where [bison] recently found himself when he needed to configure a device over serial, but didn’t have any way of installing the appropriate terminal emulator on his Fujitsu Lifebook C34S.
His solution, since he had Python 2.6 installed on the Debian 6 machine,
was to write his own minimal serial terminal emulator
. He intended for the code to be as terse as possible so it could be quickly typed in, should anyone else ever find themselves in need of talking to a serial device on Linux but can’t get
screen
or
minicom
installed.
The code is very simple, and even if you never find yourself needing to fire up an impromptu terminal, it offers an interesting example of how straightforward serial communications really are. The code opens up the
/dev/ttyS0
device for reading, and after appending the appropriate return character, pushes the user’s keyboard input into it. Keep looping around, and you’ve got yourself an interactive terminal.
With this program written, [bison] was able to connect the 266 MHz C34S to his Retro WiFi SI, a modem adapter that bridges the gap between a vintage computer and modern wireless network. Gadgets like these
allow you to browse BBSes as the creator intended
, and can be fashioned with nothing more exotic than
an ESP8266 running some open source code
. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198618",
"author": "Osgeld",
"timestamp": "2019-11-28T15:20:48",
"content": "so one can get debian 6 on a lifebook but had to type in a serial terminal",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6198624",
"author": "Feinfinger",... | 1,760,373,672.105693 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/28/add-leds-to-your-stained-glass/ | Add LEDs To Your Stained Glass | Jenny List | [
"Art",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"art",
"led",
"staied glass"
] | Stained glass is an art form that goes back many centuries, with the churches and cathedrals of Europe boasting many stunning examples from the mediaeval masters of the craft. You do not however have to go to York or Chartres cathedrals to experience stained glass, for it remains a vibrant and creative discipline with many contemporary practitioners. One thing the stained glass of today has in common with that of yesteryear though is that it remains static, being composed of pieces of glass held together by metal strips. This is something that [Frank Zhao] has addressed as he has evolved a technique that
allows him to incorporate LEDs into static stained glass
, making for a particularly eye-catching effect.
It’s likely that we join many readers in not knowing the intricacies of making a piece of stained glass, so his is a fascinating write-up for its step-by-step run-through. His stained glass cat has pieces of glass edged with copper tape, which he then solders together. Driving the LEDs is not something that should be alien to us, but his method of using the copper-and-solder stained glass joints as conductors for them by creating strategically placed cuts is very effective. The final effect is of a homogeneous piece without the cuts being particularly visible , but with a pleasing array of lights on the cat’s tail. Those of us for whom stained glass production is new have learned something of the technique, and stained glass artists have seen their craft do something completely new.
Stained glass hasn’t featured here too often, the closest we’ve come is this striking fake stained glass
Iron-Man themed panel
a few years ago. | 20 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198597",
"author": "Christian Black",
"timestamp": "2019-11-28T12:38:33",
"content": "Very nice bit of agile thinking. So simple. Excellent.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6198601",
"author": "Gordon J Endersby",
"time... | 1,760,373,672.039476 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/29/dub-siren-synth-does-it-the-old-school-way/ | Dub Siren Synth Does It The Old School Way | Lewin Day | [
"classic hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"555 timer",
"lm741",
"synth"
] | There’s little that can compare to the sheer obnoxious thrill of mashing the DJ siren when its your turn behind the decks. We’ve certainly been guilty of abusing the privilege at local house parties, and unsurprisingly have not been invited back. If we ever get another shot, though,
we’d be glad to have [lonesoulsurfer]’s dub siren at the ready.
This is a build for the old-school purists. There’s no microcontrollers or digital hardware here. The synth relies on two 555 timer ICs as the oscillators and an LM741 op-amp. These parts harken right back to the dawn of the integrated circuit era, and still do a great job in this application. There’s also a cheap reverb/echo module added in to fatten up the sound. It’s all laced up in an old CB radio enclosure, with the classic woodgrain applique doing much to add to the aesthetic.
It’s a build that’s simple enough for the electronics beginner, and would make a great tactile, analog addition to any DJ’s rig. If you need some wubwubs to go with your woowoos,
then consider building a Ball of Dub, too
. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199071",
"author": "Ken",
"timestamp": "2019-11-30T00:11:48",
"content": "“It’s all laced up in an old CB radio enclosure”What? That doesn’t look like any CB I am aware of, it actually looks like a large US Robotics modem, or maybe a table top scanner.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,671.984454 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/29/landbeest-a-single-servo-walking-robot/ | Landbeest, A Single Servo Walking Robot | Jenny List | [
"Robots Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2019 Hackaday Prize",
"Hackaday Prize",
"robot",
"strandbeest",
"walker"
] | Walking robots have a rich history both on and off the storied pages of Hackaday, but if you will pardon the expression, theirs is not a field that’s standing still. It’s always pleasing to see new approaches to old problems, and
the Landbeest built by [Dejan Ristic] is a great example
.
It’s a four-legged walker with a gait dictated by a cam-and-follower mechanism that allows it to perform the full range of leg movement with only one motor. Each cam can control more than one leg in synchronisation, and in his most recent prototype, there are two such mechanisms that work on opposite corners of a four-legged machine. The legs are arranged in such a way that the two corner-to-corner pairs pivot at their centres in a similar manner to a pair of scissors; allowing a servo to steer the robot as it walks.
The result certainly isn’t as graceful as
[Theo Janssen]’s Strandbeest
, from which it evidently takes inspiration for its name, but it’s no less capable for it. After the break you can see a video he’s posted which clearly illustrates its operation and demonstrates its ability to traverse obstacles.
The only thing that’s missing are the files and software should you wish to create your own. He’s unapologetic about this, pointing out that he’d prefer to wait until he is satisfied with it before letting it go. Since he’s put a lot of work in so far and shows no sign of stopping, we’re sure he’ll reach that point soon enough.
The
Hackaday
Prize2019
is Sponsored by: | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199041",
"author": "deshipu",
"timestamp": "2019-11-29T21:16:37",
"content": "I see two servos there, maybe I can’t count.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6199046",
"author": "k-ww",
"timestamp": "2019-11-29T2... | 1,760,373,672.156431 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/29/dsp-spreadsheet-talking-to-yourself-using-iq/ | DSP Spreadsheet: Talking To Yourself Using IQ | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"digital signal processing",
"dsp",
"quadrature mixer",
"spreadsheet"
] | We’ve done quite a bit with Google Sheets and signal processing: we’ve generated signals, created filters, and computed quadrature signals. We can pull all that together into an educational model for two SDRs talking to each other, but it’s going to require two parts: modulation and demodulation. Guess what? We can do that with a spreadsheet.
The first step is to generate a reference clock for the carrier. You’ll need a cosine wave (I) and sine wave (Q). Of course, you also need the time base. That’s columns A-C in
the spreadsheet
and works like other signal generation we’ve seen.
The Plot Thickens
Think about the IQ plot of what we have so far. Plotting IQ means putting I on the X axis of a graph and Q on the Y axis. When I=1, Q=0. That’s a spot right on the X axis at X=1. The same thing happens, but flipped around when I=-1. It also happens when I=0 and Q=1, but rotated 90 degrees. The key is that, in each case, the length of the vector is 1. Every spot, in fact, will have a length of 1 because sin
2
(x)+cos
2
(x)=1. If you look at the first 12 rows of the spreadsheet with default values, you’ll see that X and the Y move between 1 and -1 in such a way that the sum of their squares is always 1.
What does that mean? It means the IQ reference signal will draw a circle of radius 1 on the IQ plot. If we multiply both by the same amount, the radius will change, but you’ll still get a circle. That’s AM or amplitude modulation. You can think about a few other things, too. For example, if I and Q were exactly the same (an easy change to make in the spreadsheet; just set both columns to the sine or cosine), the phase angle will always be 45 degrees or 225 degrees. and the amplitude would always be the square root of two (assuming the original signals go from -1 to 1). Multiplying both by the same number will change the amplitude of the signal, but not the phase.
Multiplying one part of the IQ by some number and not the other will cause a change in phase. Imagine the part of the graph where I and Q make a 45-degree angle — that is, I=Q. If you make Q bigger, it must change the angle of the vector. So by manipulating the reference IQ signal we can create amplitude modulation or phase modulation and changing phase can also create frequency modulation.
Put it to the Test
In real life, you might have two stations both using DSP techniques to transmit and receive. In that case, the transmitter generates a reference IQ signal, manipulates it, and winds up putting out a single RF signal to the antenna.
The receiver can’t know for sure if the sending station is using DSP or not, but it doesn’t matter. The signal is the same either way. The receiver will generate its own IQ reference signal and reverse the transformation. Sort of. The problem is, there’s no way to know if the transmitter’s reference signal is in phase with the receiver’s. However, the relative phases will be the same and that’s all you care about if you even care about the phase at all.
There’s one other issue. When you recover the signal it will ride with a higher frequency signal that you’ll need to filter out. Luckily, we
already know how to do that
.
In the Sheets
Here’s how to read
the spreadsheet
. The main tab is where most of the action is. You can set the usual parameters at the top. The first three columns are the time base and the IQ reference signal. I’ll cheat and reuse these on the receive side, too. If you wanted to prove it would still work if the reference signals were out of phase, you could easily make the modification.
The rest of the columns up to column G are modulating the IQ reference. The resulting “radio” signal is in column G. This is both the output of the transmitter and the input to the receiver.
The receiver is in columns H and I because I reused the time base and the reference signal. If you look at the plot of the input signal and the output, you’ll see the high frequency component I mentioned.
Note that the modulating signal on I and Q are the same, so you only see the Q signal (the blue I signal is directly underneath it). Although you can see the low frequency matches the modulation signal, you can switch to the second tab to filter the high frequency component out.
That sheet uses the
FIR filter technique
we talked about before. The filter has a passband from 0 Hz to 60 Hz and the stopband starts at 100 Hz. You can see a partial gain vs frequency plot. There are 57 taps, so we will miss the first 57 samples as the algorithm loads itself with data.
Of course, the filter shifts the phase of the signal and misses the first few samples, so the time axis doesn’t align, but that doesn’t matter. Without a synchronized IQ reference, there wouldn’t be any hope of phase alignment anyway.
Final Tab
The final tab takes the data and allows you to do a vector plot against any of the samples. I cheated and used a script to enable the big arrow buttons, so you may have to grant permission before that will work. However, you don’t need the buttons if you don’t mind manually changing cell E1. It takes a little work to get the spreadsheet to make nice vector diagrams:
Honestly…
In a way, it is amazing you can do this much modeling in a spreadsheet. If you were serious, you should really think about using something like
Juypter
or — honestly — anything else. However, if you want to learn DSP concepts, having to learn a new tool first can be pretty daunting.
Using nothing more than a spreadsheet, you can use this model to think about what happens under certain circumstances. Once you outgrow it, you can move to something like MATLAB or any of the numerous clones of it, or tackle your code in C, Python, or whatever your language of choice happens to be. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199049",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2019-11-29T22:14:52",
"content": "0 comments, just thought I better reassure Al that he’s not talking to himself LOLTech articles like this dumping on a Friday tend to raise a collective sigh of Nooo… don’t make me use my braaain. Or... | 1,760,373,671.927855 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/29/a-fantastic-frontier-of-fpga-flexibility-found-in-the-2019-supercon-badge/ | A Fantastic Frontier Of FPGA Flexibility Found In The 2019 Supercon Badge | Roger Cheng | [
"cons",
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"FPGA",
"Slider"
] | [
"2019 Hackaday Superconference",
"badge hacking",
"conference badges",
"fpga",
"fpga board",
"FPGAs",
"Hackaday SuperConference",
"Superconference"
] | We have just concluded a successful Hackaday Superconference where a highlight for many was digging into
this year’s hardware badge
. Shaped in the general form of a Game Boy handheld gaming console, the heart of the badge is a large FPGA opening up new and exciting potential for badge hacking.
Beyond our normal tools of compiling custom code or modifying hardware with a soldering iron, we now have the option to change core hardware behavior with Verilog. And people explored this new frontier to great effect, as seen at the badge hacking ceremony. (Video embedded below.)
FPGAs are not new,
technically speaking
, why are they exciting now? We can thank their recent growth in capability, their rapidly falling cost, and the relatively new availability of open source toolchains. These developments elevated FPGA into one of the most exciting trends in hardware today, so this year’s badge master [Sprite_TM] built an open FPGA playground for several hundred of his closest Supercon friends. Let’s take a look at what people were able to accomplish in just a few days using this unique and powerful hardware.
Getting an Early Start: Custom Cartridges
Some of the fun started even before Supercon weekend. Badge development was done openly with a
Hackaday.io project page
and public Github repositories for
hardware
and
software
. Anyone who poked around would know what to expect. Like the fact each badge comes with a
blank prototype cartridge
featuring on board flash memory. Upon seeing the design for the cartridge, a few people like [
Thomas Flummer
] decided to build their own custom cartridges ahead of Supercon. We love seeing the enthusiasm for a piece of hardware they had not yet touched.
Others started with the canvas that was the blank cartridge. Everything from a LED array neatly laid out for charlieplexing, to [
Ben Hencke
] interfacing with Nintendo controllers for multiplayer gaming, to a VGA video output cable by [Ste Kulov], and many more.
Glorious Mono Sound
Alongside the blank cartridge, a modest little speaker was also distributed to be soldered to the audio amplifier chip and tacked in front of the badge. But word quickly spread that, if one is willing to temporarily unsolder one of the battery trays, it was possible to connect speaker wires from the back side of the badge. This simple and popular hack resulted in a tidy speaker installation. Others ignored the little speaker entirely and replaced them with larger units, some like [
Emily Velasco
] backed their big speakers with additional amplification.
They Blinded Me with
Science
LEDs and Wireless Comms
In full support of those who just want to blink an LED, the badge had several already on board and people could blink them from either C code or via Verilog. But the perf board made it easy to add more LEDs so we were in no shortage of badge lighting. From a colorful array by [
Thomas Sarlandie
] to a retina-destroying setup from [
Garrett Mace
].
On the opposite of “blink a LED” is the [Celcyon] Odin shield team, which arrived blazing with breathtaking ambitions. Their custom shield hosted not just a ESP32-WROOM-32 but also a RFM69HCW sub-GHz wireless transceiver plus supporting hardware. All this in service of their goal of turning the badge into the FPV control console for a robot, complete with video feed displaying on screen.
But people didn’t need to bring their own parts to have a hardware challenge on their hands. [Sprite_TM] had embedded one in the badge: The tiny onboard LEDs are actually RGB units, but unleashing their full color requires diving into schematics and Verilog. (The badge with the LED
requiring reflow
was an accidental master level challenge, kudos to [Ben] for making it work anyway.) [
Ian Frosst
] was one of several who dedicated time to solving the LED challenge. But after burning through many batteries, he made a quality-of-life hack adding a small buck converter module to run off USB power in a way that didn’t risk damaging the batteries (if present).
Truly a Choose Your Own Hardware Adventure Event
Even with the RGB challenge’s deliberate omissions, the badge offered plenty of power straight out of the box for those who prefer to stay in the software realm. We admire [Caroline] who didn’t know C programming coming into the weekend, but learned enough by the end to create a colorful palette animation demo. The gaming-inspired splash screen animations encouraged others to create splash screens from other domains. It was fun to see an old Windows startup screen on the badge.
And finally, receiving the biggest applause was Linux-on-Badge: this team used all the badge hacking tricks in the book. The hardware component was a 32 MiB SDRAM cartridge by [
Jacob Creedon
]. The default badge SOC FPGA bitstream was entirely replaced in order to support a minimalist Linux. Much of the development was done on [Michael Welling]’s computer, guided by the precedence of a LiteX project putting Linux on the
Radiona ULX3S
. This is a true success story of Supercon collaboration as the team (including [Drew Fustini], [Tim Ansell], [Sean Cross], and many others) came together and worked late into nights, drawing from the massive body of collective expertise of the community.
What’s Next for These FPGA Badges?
The badge hacking ceremony may have wrapped up the weekend’s activity, but we expect it is not the end of the story. Many said they intend to continue playing with the badge after the conference, with projects ranging from 3D graphics rendering to precision motion control. It is a far more interesting piece of hardware than any FPGA manufacturer’s evaluation board, and we’d love it if project collaboration continued on our
community chat channel
. This badge is too good to be left gathering dust on a shelf! | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6199032",
"author": "MikePDX",
"timestamp": "2019-11-29T20:33:07",
"content": "“It is a far more interesting piece of hardware than any FPGA manufacturer’s evaluation board” Indeed! I wasn’t able to attend, so I wish I could get one, as a kit of parts or even better all assembled. ... | 1,760,373,672.215623 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/29/simplified-ai-on-microcontrollers/ | Simplified AI On Microcontrollers | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ai",
"artificial intelligence",
"Espruino",
"gesture",
"microcontroller",
"open source",
"tensorflow",
"watch"
] | Artificial intelligence is taking the world by storm. Rather than a Terminator-style apocalypse, though, it seems to be more of a useful tool for getting computers to solve problems on their own. This isn’t just for supercomputers, either. You can load AI onto some of the smallest microcontrollers as well. Tensorflow Lite is a popular tool for this, but getting it to work on your particular microcontroller can be a pain,
unless you’re using an Espruino
.
This project adds support for Tensorflow to this class of microcontrollers without having to fuss around with obtuse build tools. Basically adding a single line of code creates an instance, all without having to compile anything or even reboot. Tensorflow is a powerful software tool for microcontrollers, and having it this accessible now is a great leap forward.
So, what can you do with this tool? The team behind this build is using Tensorflow on an open smart watch that can be
used to detect hand gestures
and many other things. They also opened up
these tools for use in a browser
, which allows use of the AI software and emulates an Espruino without needing a physical device. There’s a lot going on with this one, and it’s a bonus that it’s open source and ready to be turned into anything you might need,
like turning yourself into a Street Fighter
. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198925",
"author": "Shannon",
"timestamp": "2019-11-29T12:59:37",
"content": "Interesting, I’ve been keen on making a gesture interface for home automation for a while now.I’d probably back this Kickstarter if the case and strap weren’t so ugly.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth"... | 1,760,373,672.255853 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/29/thats-it-no-more-european-ipv4-addresses/ | That’s It, No More European IPV4 Addresses | Jenny List | [
"internet hacks",
"Network Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"internet",
"ip address",
"ipv4",
"IPv6",
"ripe"
] | When did you first hear concern expressed about the prospect of explosive growth of the internet resulting in exhaustion of the stock of available IP addresses? About twenty years ago perhaps? All computers directly connected to the internet must have an individual unique address, and the IPv4 scheme used since the 1980s has a 32-bit address space that provides only 4,294,967,296 possibilities. All that growth now means that IPv4 addresses are now in short supply, and this week RIPE, the body which allocates them in Europe, has announced that
it no longer has any to allocate
. Instead of handing new address blocks they will instead now provide ones that have been relinquished for example by companies that have gone out of business, and parties interested can join a waiting list.
Is the Internet dead then? Hardly, because of course IPv6, the replacement for IPv4, has been with us for decades and has a much larger 128-bit address space. The problem is that there is a huge installed base of IPv4 infrastructure which has always been cited as the reason to delay its adoption, so the vast majority of the internet-connected world has remained with IPv4. Even in an IPv4 world there are opportunities to be more efficient in the use of addresses such as the network address translation or NAT that many private networks use to share one address between many hosts, so it’s not quite curtains for your smart TV or IoT light bulb even though the situation will not get any easier.
The mystery comes in why after so many years we still use IPv4 so much. Your home router and millions like it will pick up an IPv4 address from your broadband provider’s pool, and there seems little reason why it can not instead pick up an IPv6 address and contain a gateway between the two. The same goes for addresses outside the domestic arena, and even in out community we find that IPv6 networks at events are labelled as experimental. Perhaps this news will spur the change, but meanwhile we don’t expect to be using an IPv6 address day-to-day very soon.
We know among Hackaday’s readership there will be people close to the coalface when it comes to IPv6 adoption. As always the comments are open, and we’d like to hear your views.
Header: Robert.Harker [
CC BY-SA 3.0
]. | 83 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198850",
"author": "Nitpicker Smartyass",
"timestamp": "2019-11-29T09:18:17",
"content": "Why do we still use IPV4? I see a couple of reasons for that, the most prominent probably being:– a lot of rubbish hard- and software cannot deal with IPV6. That includes routers, “intelligent... | 1,760,373,672.377111 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/28/your-wifi-signals-are-revealing-your-location/ | Your WiFi Signals Are Revealing Your Location | Sharon Lin | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"device security",
"IoT",
"research",
"Signals",
"wifi"
] | The home may be the hearth, but it’s not going to be a place of safety for too long.
With the abundance of connected devices making their ways into our homes, increasing levels of data may allow for more accurate methods for remote surveillance. By measuring the strength of ambient signals emitted from devices, a site can be remotely monitored for movement. That is to say, WiFi signals may soon pose a physical security vulnerability.
In a study from the University of Chicago and the University of California, Santa Barbara, researchers built on earlier studies where they could use similar techniques to “see through walls” to demonstrate a proof-of-concept for
passive listening
. Attackers don’t need to transmit signals or break encryptions to gain access to a victim’s location – they just need to listen to the ambient signals coming from connected devices, making it more difficult to track bad actors down.
Typically, connected devices communicate to an access point such as a router rather than directly with the Internet. A person walking near a device can subtly change the signal propagated to the access point, which is picked up by a receiver sniffing the signal. Most building materials do not block WiFi signals from propagating, allowing receivers to be placed inconspicuously in different rooms from the access point.
WiFi sniffers are relatively inexpensive, with models running for less than $20. They’re also small enough to hide in unsuspecting locations – inside backpacks, inside a box – and emit no signal that could be detected by a target. The researchers proposed some methods for safeguarding against the vulnerability: insulating buildings against WiFi leakage (while ensuring that desirable signals, i.e. signals from cell tower are still able to enter) or having access points emit a “cover signal” that mixes signals from connected devices to make it harder to sniff for motion.
While we may not be seeing buildings surrounded by Faraday cages anytime soon, there’s only going to be more attack surfaces to worry about as our devices continue to become connected.
[Thanks to Qes for the tip!] | 43 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198826",
"author": "hourly",
"timestamp": "2019-11-29T06:15:39",
"content": "WiSeehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ7Nz942yAY",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6198832",
"author": "friendly neighborhood spy",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,373,672.587916 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/27/steel-tubes-and-ground-plates-form-the-skeleton-of-this-diy-vertical-cnc-mill/ | Steel Tubes And Ground Plates Form The Skeleton Of This DIY Vertical CNC Mill | Dan Maloney | [
"cnc hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"atc",
"ball screw",
"cnc",
"drawbar",
"linear bearing",
"servo",
"spindle",
"tool chnager",
"tormach"
] | If you’re going to do it yourself, you might as well outdo yourself. That seems to be the thinking behind
this scratch-built CNC mill
, and it’s only just getting started.
According to [Kris Temmerman], the build will cost about $10,000 by the time he’s done. So it’s not cheap, and a personal CNC from Tormach can be had for less, but that’s missing the point entirely. [Kris] built most of the structural elements for the vertical mill from cheap, readily available steel tubing, of the kind used for support columns in commercial buildings. Mounted to those are thick, precision-ground steel plates, which eat up a fair fraction of the budget. Those in turn hold 35 mm linear bearings and ball screws for the three axes, each powered by a beefy servo. The spindle is a BT30 with a power drawbar, belt-driven by an external motor that [Kris] doesn’t share the specs on, but judging from the way it flings chips during the test cut in the video below, we’d say it’s pretty powerful.
There’s still plenty to do, not least of which is stiffening the column; perhaps filling it with
epoxy granite
would do the trick? But it sure looks like [Kris] is building a winner here, and if he keeps the level of craftsmanship up going forward, he’ll have a top-quality machine on his hands. | 29 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198352",
"author": "macona",
"timestamp": "2019-11-27T16:52:12",
"content": "$10k? For that i could get a nice used CNC mike a MyCenter1 or a fanuc robodrill.Oh well. He is going to have to do something to dampen that machine. It’s going to sing. There is a reason that machine tool... | 1,760,373,672.462691 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/27/the-golden-age-of-ever-changing-computer-architecture/ | The Golden Age Of Ever-Changing Computer Architecture | Sharon Lin | [
"computer hacks",
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Slider"
] | [
"computer architecture",
"ece",
"integrated circuits",
"machine learning",
"manufacturing",
"silicon",
"silicon design",
"TPU"
] | Given the accuracy of Moore’s Law to the development of integrated circuits over the years, one would think that our present day period is no different from the past decades in terms of computer architecture design. However, during the
2017 ACM Turing Award acceptance speech
, John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson described the present as the “golden age of computer architecture”.
Compared to the early days of MS-DOS, when designing user- and kernel-space interactions was still an experiment in the works, it certainly feels like we’re no longer in the infancy of the field. Yet, as the pressure mounts for companies to acquire more computational resources for running expensive machine learning algorithms on massive swaths of data, smart computer architecture design may be just what the industry needs.
Moore’s law predicts the doubling of transistors in an IC, it doesn’t predict the path that IC design will take. When that observation was made in 1965 it was difficult or even impossible to envision where we are today, with tools and processes so closely linked and widely available that the way we conceive processor design is itself multiplying.
Once Stratospheric Development Costs Have Become Merely Sky-High
In the past, innovation in computer architecture could be a risky move for a business to undergo, especially if there wasn’t any good reason why the industry standard had to be surpassed. At best, they could spend a fortune investing in R&D and output a game-changing design. At worst, they could tank their company and end up with a massive stock of unsellable units. While ideas like increasing cache sizes or buffer sizes could optimize one chokehold of an architecture, either the logistics of manufacturing or the costs of production can surpass these re-adjusted sticking points. Prior to VLSI, it would have been incredibly difficult to include as many processes on a single chip, and long wires between large components slowed down computation.
It is inarguable that with the democratized chip design by Mead and Conway and developments like RISC architecture, branch prediction, and the high-level programming languages that use them, the 1980s ushered in major innovations for computer architecture. It begs the question, where is the peak?
Dennard scaling
(a scaling law that states that as transistors get smaller, their power density stays the same, resulting in significant frequency increases) may have ended in 2006, and Moore’s Law looks to be breaking down in the near future, but with major industry support for faster computation in machine learning, and renewed interest in higher-level languages, domain specific architectures and custom-manufactured chips seems to be ushering in innovation for a different view of computer architecture. A focus on supercomputers and niche chips may help improve computation
even faster
than Moore’s Law predicts.
Uncorking the Bottleneck of Silicon Production
The new wave of Chinese semiconductor manufacturing is no secret — in 2014, The State Council of China issued the National Guidelines for Development and Promotion of the Integrated Circuit (IC) Industry,
a national policy for improving the country’s semiconductor production
. They increased investment, adopted a market-based approach, and focused on creating national champions through changes in industry revenue generation, production volume, and technological advances. With surging demand for Chinese smartphones (Huawei, Lenovo, Meizu, Xiaomi) and China-based consumer demand, there has been a lot of encouragement for improving manufacturing throughput.
While Chinese chip manufacturers may not be producing the most advanced architectural designs, they are still edging out competition in terms of the affordability and efficiency of their processes.
Funding for nanoscience
, cheap labor, and lower costs for factory maintenance and materials all contribute towards the lower cost of Chinese products, although there are also other manufacturers in countries such as Taiwan and Vietnam that are similarly providing cheap fabrication services.
To see how far silicon production has come it’s interesting to look at Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) — chips designed to perform a particular set of operations better (in terms like power or speed) than a general CPU could.
In the 1980’s the manufacturing of ASICs was a process that required a separate designer and manufacturer since there wasn’t a direct link between third-party design tools and semiconductor processes. Since then the process for manufacturing custom chips has massively improved. The results are obvious. For instance, the popularity of Bitcoin mining drove many new ASIC designs, as specialty hardware would provide greater hash power at a lower price, which translates into greater profits from electricity. Companies like Halong Mining, Bitmain, and BitFury produced — and continue to sell — a flurry of mining hardware to Bitcoin hopefuls. Many realized that the capabilities of GPUs to process large amounts of visual data efficiently was closely tied to the resource needs of new algorithms, ASICs can do the same but at a lower cost and power budget. You can probably guess that the algorithms now driving the industry focus on machine learning.
Architectures for Machine Learning
Google Tensor Processing Unit Board
In 2016, Google announced their
commercial TPU
, one of the first chips created specifically for the purpose of running machine learning algorithms. TPUs are used within the company for neural network computations behind products such as Google Search, Street View, Google Photos and Google Translate. Compared to RISC architecture, which focuses on simpler instructions that are used for a larger portion of applications (load, store, add, multiply), the TPU is based on CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) architecture, which implements higher-level instructions for running more complex tasks (such as many multiplies and adds for matrix multiplication).
Some other differences that mark the TPU as an improvement over CPUs and GPUS are the systolic array, deterministic design, and quantization choices. The systolic array mimics how the heart pumps blood since data flows through the chip in waves. For matrix multiplication, this is especially useful since the same inputs are reused many times without being stored back to a register. Wires only connect adjacent ALUs that performed fixed patterns of multiplication and addition, simplifying their design and shortening the wires needed.
Google’s
Tensor Processing Unit
block diagram
Deterministic design see
ks to be ultimately minimal, with no requirement for supporting a wider range of applications than neural network models. Due to the nature of the chips, prediction is much more reliable since only neural network predictions are ever being run. Control is a lot easier to design than for CPUs and GPUs, and while more ALUs and on-chip memory are needed for TPUs, they tend to be smaller than other chips.
This has the nice side effect of reducing cost (a function of area cubed) and increasing yield since smaller chips are less likely to have manufacturing defects.
Quantization uses an 8-bit integer for approximating a value given a max and min value. The technique helps reduce noise in calculations, since neural network predictions don’t require floating point precision with 32-bit or 16-bit values. Even an 8-bit value can suffice for the levels of accuracy needed, thus reducing the size of models quite dramatically.
There is also the matter of flexibility. Because the TPU is programmable, it is able to accelerate computations for many different types of neural network models. The computational resources used include a Matrix Multiplier Unit (MXU), Unified Buffer (UB) or SRAM working as registers, and an Activation Unit (AU) for hardwired activation functions. A dozen high-level instructions interface with these resources, such as multiplying or convolving with data and weights, reading weights from memory, and applying activation functions.
Microchips No Longer All That Micro
Cerebras compared to NVIDIA GV100
One of the most viral stealth companies,
Cerebras
, has been working on the largest silicon chip ever built. It measures at 46,225 mm
2
of silicon, with 1.2 trillion transistors. Compared to the largest GPU, it’s nearly 100x the size. The chip is designed around handling tensor operations and moving around data more efficiently. With SRAM memory on the chip, it simplifies operations that would typically travel longer distances within a cluster to processes that can communicate on the same chip. While there are general operations supported for control processing, there are also optimized tensor operations for data processing. In terms of the materials inefficiencies involved with the high power consumption and heat generation, a connector layer between the silicon and PCB handle the mechanical stress created by thermal expansion while a cold plate transfers away heat from the wafer chip.
The chip boasts 1.2 trillion transistors, 400,000 AI optimized cores, 18 Gb on-chip memory, and 9 PB/s of memory bandwidth. Compared to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti GPU, with 18.2 billion transistors, 4,352 CUDA cores, 11 Gb on-chip memory, and 616 GB/s of memory bandwidth, it is clear that the Cerebras has massive improvements over even the best commercially available GPUs. What had once been a manufacturing nightmare has become a reality with improvements in silicon manufacturing.
An Ever-Changing Landscape
With Moore’s law constantly on the horizon, researchers are constantly on the lookout for new methods for reducing latency in computation. Concepts such as
neuromorphic computing
, probabilistic computing, and
quantum chips
are making their way from theory to development. Neuromorphic computing uses low-power artificial synapses to mimic the neural structure of the human brain, although matching human cognitive flexibility can be challenging. Quantum chips have an immense number of factors that must be controlled in order to maintain the integrity of the qubits — the quantum bits most commonly created by a Josephson junction (superconductors coupled by a weak link consisting of a thin insulating barrier).
Just as Dennard may not have been able to foresee multicore processors, Moore was likely unable to predict the advent of machine learning and its effect on hardware manufacturing. Even the most creative visions for the future of computer architecture will have a difficult time predicting just how far computing will go, and to what lengths new companies will take memory and instruction set manipulation to strive for ever-increasing speed in the coming decade. | 32 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198317",
"author": "Patricia M Dooley",
"timestamp": "2019-11-27T15:16:07",
"content": "Thank you for a great article. This subject would be an amazing talk at Grace Hopper next year. We have a hardware track and are looking for incredible speakers. The CFP will probably go out ... | 1,760,373,673.009384 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/27/your-raspberry-pi-cluster-is-not-like-this-one/ | Your Raspberry Pi Cluster Is Not Like This One | Jenny List | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"cluster",
"raspberry pi",
"raspberry pi cluster"
] | Many readers will have had their first taste of experimentation with cluster computing through the medium of the Raspberry Pi. The diminutive Linux capable boards can easily be hooked up as a group via a network hub, and given the right software become a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. None of us will however have reached the heights of the Raspberry Pi cluster shown by Oracle at their Oracle OpenWorld conference, a mighty rack packing
a cluster of no less than 1060 Pi 3 B+ boards
. This machine is touted as a supercomputer and it’s worthy of the name, though perhaps it’s not in the same class as the elite in that field.
Getting that number of individual 3Bs into a human-sized rack is no easy feat, and they have gone for custom 3D-printed racks to hold the boards. PoE would have resulted in too much heat dissipation, so instead they use USB power from an array of large multi-way USB power supplies. A set of switches provide the networking, and a conventional server sits in the middle to provide storage and network booting.
It’s certainly a cool way to wow the crowds at a conference, but we’re unsure whether it delivers the best bang for your supercomputing buck or whether it’s more useful as a large room heater. Meanwhile you can take a look at a few more modest Pi clusters, with
unusual operating systems
, or
slightly more adherence to convention
.
Thanks [Frisco] for the tip. | 47 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198286",
"author": "Barefoot",
"timestamp": "2019-11-27T13:48:11",
"content": "Honest question: aside from the “cool” factor and/or learning about cluster computing, what benefit would there be to have a cluster of RasPi’s? Will it make typical computing tasks – web browsing, vide... | 1,760,373,673.203245 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/27/just-in-time-for-christmas-apple-macintosh-prototype-for-sale/ | Just In Time For Christmas: Apple Macintosh Prototype For Sale | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"apple",
"mac",
"macintosh",
"retrocomputing",
"twiggy"
] | We do love a bit of retrotechnology around our workspace. But we have to admit, we really want to find this
prototype Apple Mac
under the tree this year. There’s only one problem. There’s only one for sale and only two like it known to exist, for that matter. The auction house thinks it will fetch up to $180,000. We will guess that number is low, but we will find out on December 4th.
The 1983 computer has a pre-production plastic housing and a 5.25 inch “twiggy” drive. Apple provided this machine, apparently, to Encore Systems so they could develop MacWrite ahead of the machine’s release date.
According to the auction site, there are only two surviving machines that have the 5.25 inch disk drive. These were the same drives used in the Lisa and were not known for reliability. You can read more about how
Sony managed to escape Steve Jobs’ notice
to deliver their 3.5 inch drives to the new Apple Macintosh. If you want to read more about the pair of twiggys that survived and how they were restored,
Cult of Mac
has a good article about the whole affair.
This is an amazing piece of history and — Apple fan or not — you can’t deny that these were highly influential computers. We liked the quote from Jobs himself at the end of the auction notice:
I’m one of those people who think that Thomas Edison and the light bulb changed the world a lot more than Karl Marx ever did.
We agree Steve. We agree.
If you like Apple forensics, there’s always a
bad hard drive
lurking around. Or you can just
fake it
. | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198260",
"author": "Jack",
"timestamp": "2019-11-27T11:51:56",
"content": "“I’m one of those people who think that Thomas Edison and the light bulb changed the world a lot more than Karl Marx ever did.”And it’s rather a shame, because look at the mess that has resulted from materia... | 1,760,373,672.795257 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/26/turning-oleds-and-acrylic-into-faux-nixie-tubes/ | Turning OLEDs And Acrylic Into Faux Nixie Tubes | Dan Maloney | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"i2c",
"laser",
"multiplexer",
"nixie",
"oled"
] | Love ’em or hate ’em, Nixies and the retro clocks they adorn are here to stay. At least until the world’s stock of surplus Soviet tubes is finally depleted, that is. The glow discharge tubes were last mass manufactured in the 1980s, and while they’re not too hard to get a hold of yet, they will be eventually. And what better way to get ready for that dreaded day than by
rolling your own OLED faux Nixie tubes
?
Granted, [Derek]’s faux Nixies, appropriately dubbed “Fixies,” require just a touch of willing suspension of disbelief. We’ve never see Nixies with tiny jam jars as envelopes, so that’s probably the first giveaway. But looking past that, the innards of these fake displays do a pretty convincing job of imitating the texture of the real thing.
The numbers themselves are displayed on a 128×64 white OLED display using a Nixie-like True Type font. An orange acrylic filter in front of the display gives it that warm amber Nixie glow, with laser etchings mimicking both the fine hexagonal anode grid and the ghostly cathodes of the non-illuminated numerals. The tubes looked convincing enough that a clock was in order, and after sorting through an I2C bottleneck with the help of a multiplexer, [Derek] had a pretty decent faux-Nixie clock, complete with a solenoid-actuated mechanical gong. The double-digit display for the seconds will no doubt cause some consternation among Nixie purists, but that’s probably part of the fun.
Of course, just because Nixies aren’t being mass-produced today doesn’t mean you can’t get new ones. You just have to be willing to pay for them, and [Dalibor Farný] will gladly set you up with
his handmade artisanal Nixies
, or even
a clock kit using them
.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Fixie-Clock-demo-by-Extreme-Electronics.mp4 | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198232",
"author": "Keith Fulkerson",
"timestamp": "2019-11-27T07:28:27",
"content": "This company makes new nixie tubes:https://www.daliborfarny.com/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6198257",
"author": "robin",
... | 1,760,373,673.123661 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/26/how-to-run-ml-applications-on-particle-hardware/ | How To Run ML Applications On Particle Hardware | Sharon Lin | [
"Machine Learning",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"deep learning",
"keras",
"particle",
"tensorflow"
] | With the release of TensorFlow Lite at Google I/O 2019, the accessible machine learning library is no longer limited to applications with access to GPUs. You can now run machine learning algorithms on microcontrollers much more easily, improving on-board inference and computation.
[Brandon Satrom] published
a demo on how to run TFLite on Particle devices
(tested on Photon, Argon, Boron, and Xenon) making it possible to make predictions on live data with pre-trained models. While some of the easier computation that occurs on MCUs requires manipulating data with existing equations (mapping analog inputs to a percentage range, for instance), many applications require understanding large, complex sets of sensor data gathered in real time. It’s often more difficult to get accurate results from a simple equation.
The current method is to train ML models on specialty hardware, deploy the models on cloud infrastructure, and backhaul sensor data to the cloud for inference. By running the inference and decision-making on-board, MCUs can simply take action without backhauling any data.
He starts off by constructing a simple TGLite model for MCU execution, using mean squared error for loss and stochastic gradient descent for the optimization. After training the model on sample data, you can save the model and
convert it to a C array
for the MCU. On the MCU, you can load the model, TFLite libraries, and operations resolver, as well as instantiate an interpreter and tensors. From there you invoke the model on the MCU and see your results!
[Thanks dcschelt for the tip!] | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,373,672.932054 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/26/fail-of-the-week-z-tape-is-no-substitute-for-solder/ | Fail Of The Week: Z-Tape Is No Substitute For Solder | Dan Maloney | [
"Fail of the Week"
] | [
"adhesive",
"anisotropic",
"breadboarding",
"fail of the week",
"fotw",
"soic",
"solderless",
"tsop",
"Z-tape"
] | Here at Hackaday, we see all kinds of mechanical construction methods. Some are impressively solid and permanent, while others are obviously temporary in nature. The latter group is dominated by adhesives – sticky stuff like cyanoacrylate glue, Kapton tape, and the ever-popular hot glue. They’ve all got their uses in assembling enclosures or fixing components together mechanically, but surely they have no place in making solid electrical connections, right?
Maybe, maybe not. As
[Tom Verbeure] relates
, so-called Z-tape just might be an adhesive that can stand in for solder under certain circumstances. Trouble is, he couldn’t find the right conditions to make the tape work. Z-tape, more properly called “Electrically Conductive Adhesive Transfer Tape 9703”, derives its nickname from the fact that it’s electrically conductive, but only in the Z-axis. [Tom] learned about Z-tape in
[Joe FitzPatrick]’s malicious hardware prototyping workshop
at the 2019 Hackaday Superconference, and decided to put it to the test.
A card from a Cisco router served as a testbed thanks to an unpopulated chip footprint. The 0.5-mm pin spacing on the TSOP-48 chip was within spec for the Z-tape, but the area of each pin was 30 times smaller than the recommended minimum bonding area. While the chip was held down mechanically by the Z-tape, only five of the 48 pins were electrically connected to the pads. Emboldened by the partial success, [Tom] tried a 28-pin SOIC chip next. The larger pins and pads were still six times smaller than the minimum, and while more of the pins ended up connected by the tape, he was unable to make all 28 connections.
Reading the datasheet for the adhesive revealed that constant pressure from a clamp or clip might be necessary for reliable connections, which suggests that gluing down SMD chips is probably not the best application for the stuff. Still, we appreciate the effort, and the fine photomicrographs [Tom] made showing the particles within the Z-tape that make it work – at least in some applications. | 36 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198184",
"author": "sudos",
"timestamp": "2019-11-27T01:42:31",
"content": "A friend used the Z-tape to fix their HP 200LX screen. these have issue with the flex coming to the screen’s board being bonded by pressure from a foam pad.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,373,673.076615 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/28/a-printed-case-for-your-esp-environmental-sensors/ | A Printed Case For Your ESP Environmental Sensors | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"environmental monitoring",
"ESP32",
"ESP8266"
] | We’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating: rolling your own hardware solution is
ridiculously
easy these days. If you want to make a network attached environmental sensor, you wire a DHT11 up to an ESP8266 and you’re done. Time to move onto the software. In fact, it can take longer to come up with some kind of suitable enclosure for your hardware project than it does to assemble the thing.
Which is why [Pixel Hawk] has come up with this
elegant 3D printed enclosure for the ESP8266 and ESP32
. It’s designed to hold the microcontroller in the bottom compartment, while the environmental sensor (either the DHT11 or DHT22) is mounted to the top so it’s exposed to the outside. The case snap fits together so you don’t have to worry about gluing it, and there’s even an opening so you can keep the USB cable plugged in.
In the notes for the design, he mentions that in testing it was determined that the heat of the ESP itself can skew the temperature readings. So he recommends putting the microcontroller to sleep whenever possible, and keeping reads short so the enclosure doesn’t have time to heat up. He’s also created an alternate version of the case with more openings which should help combat this issue if you need to keep the chip awake.
If you’re looking for a complete solution, [Pixel Hawk]
has
included the source code he personally used to get his ESP32 sensor talking to Blynk, but you certainly don’t have to go that route if you don’t want to. There’s no shortage of existing projects out there that will help you
get started with whole-house environmental monitoring
. Our very own
[Elliot Williams] happens to be partial to MQTT
when he wants to get all his gadgets to play nice. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198572",
"author": "Rex",
"timestamp": "2019-11-28T09:50:29",
"content": "Hi,I wonder every time when see such cases for sensors.Guys, you’ll get incorrect measures. I built a lot of sensors on ESP and denied to use sensors in or on cases at all.It should be isolated very well from... | 1,760,373,673.260095 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2019/11/27/in-case-you-cannot-make-it-to-an-escape-room/ | In Case You Cannot Make It To An Escape Room | Brian McEvoy | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"escape",
"escape room",
"game",
"global thermonuclear war",
"task"
] | Escape rooms are awesome for people who like to solve puzzles, see how things work, or enjoy a mystery. Everyone reading this falls into at least one of those categories. We enjoy puzzles and mysteries, but we have a fondness for seeing how things work. To this end, we direct your attention to [doktorinjh]’s
“Bomb Disarming Puzzle in a Suitcase” Game
, which is a mysterious puzzle box he built himself. I guess the mystery is mostly in the gameplay, which you can watch below because he shows us his build photos and describes the hardware inside.
At its heart is an Arduino Mega, a wise choice since our back-of-the-napkin estimation puts his I/O count over forty-five and the Mega can handle them all with a few pins to spare. Working inside the confines of a briefcase came with its own challenges, but we adore the way he used the hexagon theme in the top panel to allow for knob clearance. It was so subtle that we almost missed it.
The escape room theme is delightful, and we appreciate the mix of
games
,
aesthetics
, and
techno-trickery
in many forms. | 17 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6198564",
"author": "Giorgio",
"timestamp": "2019-11-28T08:56:58",
"content": "https://hackaday.com/2018/11/06/suspense-courtesy-of-arduino-mess-of-wires/I did something similar but his better. Very good job.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"c... | 1,760,373,673.309193 |
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