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https://hackaday.com/2022/09/04/hackaday-links-september-4-2022/ | Hackaday Links: September 4, 2022 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"apple",
"hackaday links",
"machine vision",
"pentalobe",
"right to repair",
"taxes",
"tesla",
"Therac-25"
] | Say what you will about Tesla, but there’s little doubt that the electric vehicle maker inspires a certain degree of fanaticism in owners. We’re used to the ones who can’t stop going on about neck-snapping acceleration and a sci-fi interior. But the ones we didn’t see coming are
those who feel their cars are so bad that they need to stage a hunger strike
to get the attention of Tesla. The strike is being organized by a group of Tesla owners in Norway, who on
their website
enumerate a long list of grievances, including design defects, manufacturing issues, quality control problems, and customer service complaints. It’s not clear how many people are in the group, although we assume at least 18, as that’s the number of Tesla cars they used to spell out “HELP” in a parking lot. It’s also not clear how or even if the group is really off their feed, or if this is just a stunt to get the attention of Tesla honcho and notorious social media gadfly Elon Musk.
No matter where you live, the taxman always cometh. And technology is making the job of squeezing out every bit of revenue possible easier, as we learned with the story this week that
France is using AI software to find undeclared swimming pools
. A lot of swimming pools were built during pandemic lockdowns, and apparently a fair number of property owners forgot to mention that fact to their local tax authorities. One such agency teamed up with Google, because of course it’s Google, to use machine vision to look for pools in aerial imagery. Once a pool is geolocated, it’s cross-checked against tax records to make sure the owner is paying their fair share. Honestly though, is this really something that requires AI? Anyone who has ever creeped on the neighbors via Google Maps knows that the unearthly turquoise glow of a pool really jumps out at you; it seems like this would have been far cheaper and less dystopic to just dump this job off on a summer intern.
Let’s see, so far we’ve dumped on Tesla and Google, so who’s next? Amazon? Nah, let’s go for Apple! We’ve mentioned their self-repair kits a few times lately, and the bulky kits and complex procedures don’t really do much but pay lip service to the right-to-repair movement. Honestly, for our community, a big old kit of specialty tools and a couple hundred pages of documentation are more like Christmas morning than something to complain about, but we can see where something like that would be off-putting to the normies. But really, the most fascinating thing about this whole thing is learning about
the Apple pentalobe drive screw
. Not being in the Apple ecosystem much, we hadn’t run across that particularly hellish bit of hardware, but it was interesting learning a little about it — and thinking up ways to defeat it without buying a special tool.
And finally, [Kyle Hill] continues his great “Half-Life Histories” series of short documentaries with
a look at the Therac-25 disaster
.
We’d heard of it before
, but what we hadn’t realized is that the notorious “single programmer” who wrote the buggy code was a hobbyist who apparently wrote the code to control the powerful medical linear accelerator as a sort of side project. The video does a good job breaking down the edge conditions that triggered the accidents, which resulted in six massive radiation overdoses and the death of four patients. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509571",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2022-09-04T23:33:31",
"content": "Oh no poor Tesla owners :( I bet they have giant crypto and GME portfolios too",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6509635",
"author": "s",
... | 1,760,372,575.776119 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/04/hackaday-prize-2022-drying-clothes-with-ultrasound/ | Hackaday Prize 2022: Drying Clothes With Ultrasound | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2022 Hackaday Prize",
"clothes dryer",
"dryer",
"ultrasonic",
"ultrasound"
] | Clothes dryers are great, and a key part of modern life, but they do use a lot of energy. [Mike Rigsby] decided to see if there was a more efficient method of drying clothes that could compete with resistive heating for efficiency.
Thus, he started work on an ultrasonic clothes dryer
.
In early testing, he found ultrasonic transducers could indeed blast droplets of moisture away from fabric, effectively drying it. However, unlike heat, the ultrasonic field doesn’t effectively permeate through a pile of clothes, nor can it readily be used with a spinning drum to dry many garments at once.
[Mike]’s current experiments are centered around using a basket-type system, with a bed of ultrasonic transducers at the bottom. The idea is that the basket will shake back and forth, agitating the load of clothing and allowing the different garments to effectively contact the transducers. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s an interesting approach to the problem. We’d love to see a comparison of the energy use of a full-scale build versus a regular dryer.
We’ve heard of the ultrasonic drying concept before, too,
with the Department of Energy researching the matter
. It could just be that we’ll all be using ultrasonic dryers in decades to come!
The
Hackaday
Prize2022
is Sponsored by: | 29 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509529",
"author": "Sweeney",
"timestamp": "2022-09-04T20:10:23",
"content": "Maybe a system like the old fashioned mangle would work better. Pass the items, one at a time, past a line or lines of transducers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,575.840023 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/04/this-vintage-alphanumeric-display-was-huge-hot-heavy-and-expensive/ | This Vintage Alphanumeric Display Was Huge, Hot, Heavy, And Expensive | Donald Papp | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"alphanumeric",
"classic",
"daylight readable",
"incandescent",
"vintage"
] | It’s easy to take display technology for granted nowadays, but the ability to display data in a human-readable way was not always easy. This is demonstrated well by the
Pinlite 30003 Alphanumeric Display Module
, a four-character display that was pure luxury for its time.
Each display is a rectangular vacuum tube containing 17 incandescent light filaments.
Not only were the 17 segments that make up each display capable of showing any letter or number, but they were even daylight-readable! Each of those 17 segments is an incandescent lamp filament, which is how the required brightness was achieved. The sturdy module shown here holds four such displays, each of which is on its own pluggable board with a dedicated character decoder chip directly behind it.
As [AnubisTTL] points out, the resulting unit is bulky, has terrible character spacing, and was no doubt very costly. By today’s standards, it is almost unimaginably heavy, hot, and impractical. But before high-brightness LEDs were a thing, a daylight-readable alphanumeric character display was
really
something special. It would absolutely have been worth the money and effort to the right people.
Before small and efficient displays were commonplace, the solution to the problem of how to display data efficiently and in an easy-to-read format took a lot of really unusual (and clever) turns as engineers worked around the limitations of the time. This resulted in oddities
like the SD-11 Sphericular Display
, which is mostly empty space on the inside. Another great example is the
Eidophor, a projector from before projectors were even a thing
. | 20 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509497",
"author": "chango",
"timestamp": "2022-09-04T17:37:24",
"content": "A Numitron by any other name…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6509518",
"author": "Wolf",
"timestamp": "2022-09-04T19:35:14",
... | 1,760,372,576.198771 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/04/gp2040-a-configurable-game-pad-firmware/ | GP2040: A Configurable Game Pad Firmware | Dave Rowntree | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"DirectInput",
"gamepad",
"lwip",
"React",
"rgb",
"RNDIS",
"rp2040",
"xinput"
] | [feralAI] and fellow GitHub contributors present for your viewing pleasure
GP2040: an open source game pad firmware
for RP2040-based hardware. The dual-core RP2040 is a good platform to use for gaming inputs, as there is plenty of CPU grunt to get sub-1 ms USB polling time, regardless of any other tasks the controller may be performing. Currently the firmware supports PC, Android, RPi, Nintendo Switch, PS3, PS4 (legacy mode), and the sweet
MiSTer FPGA-based retro-gaming platform
.
The firmware supports the older
DirectInput API
and the newer shiny (but rather restrictive) XInput API (no, it’s not the old X11 input extension with the same name) — as well as the usual controller features like
SOCD
cleaning, D-pad mapping, and RGB support for additional distractions. There is even support for those tiny OLED displays (SSD1306 and friends), although we can’t think of a use case for that at the moment. Configuration is particularly interesting, however, as it is based upon an embedded web application. This is where the pin mappings to your actual hardware are defined, as well as all that RGB bling, if you so desire.
But how does the humble RP2040 (be it in Pico guise or compatible) provide a web page, you ask? The quick answer comes thanks to Microsoft and their Remote Network Driver Interface Specification (RNDIS) support. RNDIS implements a network device over USB, and luckily, other OSs have caught up and implemented it also. The GP2040 firmware leverages
TinyUSB
to implement the RNDIS protocol,
lwIP
to implement a lightweight network stack (whilst only occupying a rather paltry 40k of flash), and finally
react-bootstrap
to code the actual web logic. (Aren’t modern open source libraries awesome?) If you feel the need to use the source (whether you are named Luke or not) the project can be found on the
GP2040 GitHub
.
If you’re into gaming on game pads, but quite like the responsiveness of the trusty mouse, look no farther than this
neat hybrid controller
. But if this modern stuff with 45 buttons and levers all over the place is just too much, and you’ve a hankering for the controllers of old,
this might be more your style
.
Thanks to [DJBiohazard] on the
Hackaday Discord server
for the tip! | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509470",
"author": "70sjukebox",
"timestamp": "2022-09-04T15:35:39",
"content": "Hmm, wonder of you could mod this to fake speed runs by playing back TAS (tool assisted speed runs). Not that it would be a positive thing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,575.650724 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/04/fail-of-the-week-bronze-brazed-wrought-iron/ | Fail Of The Week: Bronze-Brazed Wrought Iron | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Fail of the Week"
] | [
"bronze",
"fail of the week",
"wrought iron"
] | [Will Stelter], a promising young blacksmith working out of Montana, had
a terrific idea for a unique composite material
for finishing off a knife build. This build is a collaboration between multiple blacksmiths, and as the youngster of the group, [Will] really wanted to pull out the stops and finally make a material he’d been contemplating for years to impress the elders. He knows that if you try to forge wrought iron at too low a temperature, it develops cracks and splits. Could you do this on purpose, and then fill these cracks with bronze? It would be quite the stunning material, with the bright bronze veins running through the dark iron. He had to try.
Unfortunately, our young experimenter ran into some problems that didn’t have enough time to overcome. First, getting the bronze to flow and fill the voids of the iron was a challenge, particularly when heating with a torch. Throwing the whole experiment into a forge resulted in the bronze leaking through the enclosure. The most promising attempt was a beefed-up box, set in an oven for about 20 minutes, with the temperature high enough to liquefy the bronze. It was looking great, until he cut into it and found too many air pockets for a workable billet.
The attempt was a failure, but we’re delighted that [Will] went ahead and put the video out there anyway. And if you know how to make this work, go drop a comment on his channel, and we’ll all look forward to a part two, where he finally nails the technique. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509430",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2022-09-04T12:01:37",
"content": "I wonder if its excess flux from using braising rods is causing the bubbles – gets liquid and flows inside but doesn’t then escape when the centre gets hot enough it turns to gas with all the now molten... | 1,760,372,576.130106 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/04/diy-fume-extractor-with-attiny13-speed-control/ | DIY Fume Extractor With ATtiny13 Speed Control | Tom Nardi | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"attiny13",
"fume extractor",
"mosfet",
"pwm",
"TP4056"
] | Let’s be honest, commercially-available soldering fume extractors are cheap enough that you probably don’t need to build one yourself. But it still makes for a good starter project, especially if you go out of your way to really flex your maker muscles like
[Arnov Sharma] did with this tidy build
.
All the hallmarks of modern hardware making are on display here — you’ve got the 3D printed enclosure, a motor salvaged from a cheap toy quadcopter, and a custom PCB which uses the ATtiny13 and an AO4406 MOSFET to implement a PWM speed control.
The first press of the button starts the motor off at max speed, but keep pushing it, and the motor’s speed will ramp down until it turns off entirely. There’s even a TP4056 charge controller to top off the internal 18650 cell when the fume extractor is connected to a USB power source.
Is it over-engineered? Perhaps. But projects like these are a great opportunity to practice your skills,
whether it’s PCB design
or
creating bespoke 3D printed enclosures
. In the era of cheap 32-bit microcontrollers, it’s also refreshing to see hackers still dragging the ATtiny from time to time.
Thanks to [Abe] for the tip. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509380",
"author": "Jouni",
"timestamp": "2022-09-04T08:24:11",
"content": "Crazy noise from the prop.Just get a 5V PC fan, glue it to some small baseboard to keep it upright and plug into USB power supply. Low noise and gets the job done. You probably want always the maximum sucki... | 1,760,372,575.712718 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/03/pretty-pico-macropad-eases-transition-back-to-office/ | Pretty Pico Macropad Eases Transition Back To Office | Kristina Panos | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"macro pad",
"macropad",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi Pico"
] | [Thomas “Mel” Maillioux] is no stranger to the custom mechanical keyboard game — and faced with having to return to the office, they decided to whip up
a sweet little macropad
to both commemorate the occasion and make work a bit easier.
This cotton candy-colored block of beauty was designed to pay homage to [Mel]’s favorite joystick, the TRS-80 self-centering number with the single red, square button, and it looks fantastic. They started this journey by studying the key legends on their laptop to determine which macros might serve them best, based on which legends were the most worn.
Fortunately, all the macros they wanted to use — lock the workstation, save the current, active file, minimize/restore all windows, snap windows to the right or left, and volume control — are all macro’d already within Windows, so that made things rather easy.
Hardware-wise, it doesn’t get much easier than a Raspberry Pi Pico, some mechanical switches, an old USB cable, and donor CAT5 pairs so it looks pretty inside and out. Plus, the handy rotary encoder volume knob will mute and un-mute when pressed. We think the snap-fit enclosure looks great, and it needs no supports to boot. If you want to make your own, be sure to
check out the repo
.
Okay, we lied:
macro pad making does get easier
, provided you have access to a 3D-printer.
Via
MKKC Discord | 33 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509371",
"author": "Bruce D Lightner",
"timestamp": "2022-09-04T07:25:20",
"content": "My mama told me not to say anything if I had nothing good to say. No comment.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6509378",
"author": ... | 1,760,372,575.912888 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/03/machine-learning-app-remembers-names-so-you-dont-have-to/ | Machine Learning App Remembers Names So You Don’t Have To | Dan Maloney | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"app",
"conversation",
"name",
"named-entity recognition",
"NER",
"OpenNLP"
] | Depending on your point of view, real-life conversations with strangers can either be refreshing or terrifying. Some of us are glib and at ease in new social situations, while others are sure that the slightest flub will haunt them forever. And perhaps chief among these conversational faux pas is forgetting the name of the person who just introduced themselves a few seconds before.
Rather than commit himself to a jail of shame on such occasions, [Caleb] fought back with
this only slightly creepy name-recalling smartphone app
. The non-zero creep factor comes from the fact that, as [Caleb] points out, the app crosses lines that most of us would find unacceptable if Google or Amazon did it — like listening to your every conversation. It does this not to direct ads to you based on your conversations, but to fish out the name of your interlocutor from the natural flow of the conversation.
It turns out to be a tricky problem, even with the help of named-entity recognition (NER), which basically looks for the names of things in natural text. Apache OpenNLP, the NER library used here, works well at pulling out names, but figuring out whether they’re part of an introduction or just a bit of gossip about a third party is where [Caleb] put the bulk of his coding effort. That, and trying to make the whole thing at least a little privacy-respecting. See the video below for a demo.
To be sure, this doesn’t do much more than a simple, ‘remind me of your name again?’ would, but without the embarrassment. It’s still pretty cool though, and we’re especially jazzed to learn about NER and the tons of applications for it. Those are projects for a future day, though. We’re just glad to see that [Caleb] has moved on from monitoring the bodily functions of
his dog
and
his kid
. At least for now. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509375",
"author": "Piotrsko",
"timestamp": "2022-09-04T07:44:17",
"content": "Never had this issue, but I have known people for years and still don’t know their name. If you’re careful.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "65094... | 1,760,372,575.957818 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/03/nevermore-is-what-you-get-when-engineers-design-air-filters-for-3d-printers/ | Nevermore Is What You Get When Engineers Design Air Filters For 3D Printers | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"air filter",
"smells",
"UFP",
"VOC",
"voron"
] | What happens when an air filter for 3D printers gets designed by engineers with a passion for function, a refusal to compromise, and a desire to do without bad smells or fumes? You get
the Nevermore
, a design for a recirculating active-carbon filtration system to deal with VOCs (volatile organic compounds) from 3D printing.
3D-printable parts and an easy-to-fill chamber for bulk-activated carbon make this recirculating air filter for VOCs a smart, space-saving design.
The
Nevermore Micro
(and larger
Nevermore Max
) were originally intended to complement the
Voron
3D printer design, but are made such that they can be used with just about anything else. These filters use 3D-printable parts, and are designed to be easily filled (and refilled) using bulk-activated carbon instead of some kind of proprietary pre-packed filter like most commercial offerings. The Voron project is all about a printer without compromises, and the Nevermore comes from that same design ethos.
A Nevermore filter sits inside the build chamber, and works by recirculating air inside while passing it through the activated carbon. The idea is that by concentrating on dealing with the problem at the source inside a relatively small build chamber, one doesn’t need a lot of airflow. A small recirculating air filter can do the job efficiently, though for best results, the build chamber should be as sealed as possible.
One interesting caution is that it seems not all activated carbon is the same, and it is absolutely crucial to use only acid-free, steam-activated (not acid-washed) carbon in a recirculating filter like the Nevermore. There are
horrifying photos of oxidized metal surfaces
resulting from using acid-residue carbon, some of which took only minutes to occur. Thankfully, there are pointers to trusted sources for the known-good stuff.
It’s known that
3D printing results in chemical and particle emissions
. These differ significantly depending on both material and type of printer, but it’s enough of an issue to warrant attention. One deals with particulates with something like a HEPA filter, but VOCs require a carbon filter. This is where the Nevermore comes in. Active carbon filters will wear out simply from exposure to the air, so if one is serious about cleaning VOCs when printing, it is definitely worth looking into bulk carbon with a design like the Nevermore. | 27 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509298",
"author": "Scott",
"timestamp": "2022-09-04T00:40:00",
"content": "What a fantastic idea. Thank you for pointing this out to community!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6509303",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,372,576.027309 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/03/hackaday-prize-2022-treadmill-becomes-human-powered-generator/ | Hackaday Prize 2022: Treadmill Becomes Human-Powered Generator | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2022 Hackaday Prize",
"exercise",
"generator",
"treadmill"
] | Running on a treadmill is a great way to workout, but what if the effort you put in could be put to use?
This treadmill generator from [Amitabh Shrivastava] does just that.
The build starts with a regular old treadmill, which has a motor inside typically used to power the tread. Instead, the motor’s control electronics were removed, and it was repurposed to work as a generator. The output from the treadmill’s DC motor was fed directly to a DC-DC converter. This was then fed to an inverter that generates 120 V AC, which can power appliances that use up to 20-25W based on [tinkrmind’s] running performance.
It’s a fun way to generate power during a workout. If you don’t want your treadmill’s monitor to die in the middle of a
Friends
rerun, you’ll have to dig deep on those long runs. We’ve seen similar builds before too,
with exercise bikes being a popular method of generating electricity
. In fact, that’s [Amitabh]’s next project! Video after the break.
The
Hackaday
Prize2022
is Sponsored by: | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509253",
"author": "Andrew Peters",
"timestamp": "2022-09-03T21:16:35",
"content": "BasicallyHomeless did this to power a gaming PC, too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6509302",
"author": "Garth Bock",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,372,576.076179 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/03/this-pico-w-iot-starter-project-gets-you-into-home-assistant-quick-as-a-flash/ | This Pico-W IoT Starter Project Gets You Into Home Assistant Quick As A Flash | Dave Rowntree | [
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"home automation",
"home-assistant",
"IoT",
"mqtt",
"Pi Pico W"
] | Many of us hacker types with some hardware knowledge and a smattering of embedded experience would like to get into home automation, but there can be quite a learning curve. If you’re looking for a hackable starting point; something to deploy, learn about and then later expand upon, then look no further than the
PicoW Home Assistant Starter
project from [Danilo Campos].
The project is based upon the
arduino-pico
core, which supports a whole pile of RP2040-based boards, so you don’t need to restrict yourself to the “official” Pico-W, so long as you have working networking, Wi-Fi or otherwise. Integration is provided by the
arduino-home-assistant
library, which acts as the bridge between your sensors and other widgets, MQTT, and thence the network beyond. Events and sensor data on the end-point are packaged up with MQTT and published out to the broker via the network provided, all for minimal initial effort. Once you’ve got the basic connectivity to your Home Assistant instance working, there are many code examples in the arduino-home-assistant GitHub page to give you a helping start to connect whatever tickles your fancy.
It turns out we’ve covered HA quite a bit on these fair pages, like for example, these sweet
automated window blinds
. Another hack uses
load cells under the bed legs to detect if someone is in bed or not
, and if this isn’t your thing, maybe your idea of a home assistant is a
bit more like this one
? | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509211",
"author": "Edwin",
"timestamp": "2022-09-03T18:10:08",
"content": "Nice !If you can’t get your hand on a pico w, try Esphome with some esp8266 (i.e. d1 mini)Might even be easier.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "65092... | 1,760,372,576.299146 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/03/streamlining-the-toolchain/ | Streamlining The Toolchain | Elliot Williams | [
"Rants"
] | [
"automation",
"newsletter",
"open source",
"toolchain"
] | Sometimes I try to do something magical, and it works. Most of the time this happens because other people have done a good part of the work for me, and shared it. I just cobble a bunch of existing tools into a flow that fits my needs. But the sum of all the parts is often less than the whole, when too many of the steps involve human intervention. Tools made for people simply keep the people in the loop.
For instance, I wanted to take a drawing that my son made into a stamp, by way of a CNC machine and whatever scrap wood we have kicking around in the basement. It’s easy enough, really. Take the photo, maybe use a little tweaking in GIMP to get the levels right, export it into Inkscape for the line detection and maybe even make the GCode right there, or take it off to any convenient SVG-to-GCode tool.
While this works straight out of the box for me, it turns out that’s because I have experience with all of the sub-tools. First, it helps a lot if you get the exposure right in the first place, and that’s not trivial when your camera’s light meter is aiming for grey, but the drawing is on white paper. Knowing this, you could set it up to always overexpose, I guess.
Still, there’s some experience needed in post-processing. If you haven’t played around with both image processing
and
image editing software, you don’t know how they’re going to interact. And finally, there are more parameters to tweak to get the CNC milling done than a beginner should have to decide.
In short, I had a toolchain up and running in a jiffy, and that’s a success. But in terms of passing it on to my son, it was a failure because he would have to learn way too many sub-tools to make it work
for him
. Bummer. I’m left wondering if I can streamline all of the parts to work together well enough, or whether I’m simply needed in the loop.
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning?
You should sign up
! | 13 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509182",
"author": "Confused",
"timestamp": "2022-09-03T14:12:33",
"content": "Not sure if I understood the point of the post….are you saying something about your son or your cobbled together efforts?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_... | 1,760,372,576.609609 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/02/this-weeks-hack-chat-sets-the-stage-for-supercon/ | This Week’s Hack Chat Sets The Stage For Supercon | Tom Nardi | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"2022 Hackaday Supercon",
"Hack Chat",
"Supercon"
] | While the 2020 and 2021 Remoticons were a blast, we all know that virtual events are no substitute for in-person conferences. Which is why we’re so excited to once again invite the Hackaday community to converge on Pasadena in November for a weekend of talks, workshops, and hardware hacking for our sixth Supercon.
To help get the community prepared for the triumphant return of what we very humbly believe to be the greatest hardware hacking conference the world has ever seen,
we invited Majenta Strongheart to this week’s Hack Chat
to answer the community’s questions about this hotly anticipated event. There’s an incredible number of moving pieces involved in an event like Supercon, and as Head of Design and Partnerships at our parent company SupplyFrame, she’s integral to putting them all together right up until the doors open on November 4th.
The Chat kicked off with a general confirmation that yes, we did receive your talk and/or workshop proposal. It seems several people didn’t receive the intended confirmation message when they sent their information on, but Majenta assured everyone that all of the completed forms were received correctly and are currently under review. If you put in a proposal, you should be notified in the next few weeks about whether or not it was accepted.
With that out of the way, the next big question was the one that so many of you have been wondering: what does the Hackaday Supercon look like in the era of COVID? The truth is, things are still evolving and it’s hard to be sure of anything with two more months to go. But Majenta did confirm that the decision has been made to limit ticket sales compared to previous years so that attendees have a bit more breathing room — literally and figuratively. In addition many of the planned events will be held outdoors, and the talks will be streamed live for anyone who’d rather not sit in the audience.
Majenta also took this opportunity to let everyone know that the volunteer application form for Supercon will be available very soon, and that as usual, those who are willing to help out will get a free ticket in exchange. Speaking of which, if you’d rather pay the gold price,
General Admission tickets for the 2022 Supercon are currently on sale
.
As you might imagine, Majenta has been exceptionally busy as of late, so we appreciate her taking the time to sit down with us and Chat. If you couldn’t make this live discussion about Supercon, don’t worry. You can send questions, ideas, or comments, to superconference@hackaday.io and we’ll see what we can do.
The Hack Chat is a weekly online chat session hosted by leading experts from all corners of the hardware hacking universe. It’s a great way for hackers connect in a fun and informal way, but if you can’t make it live, these overview posts as well as the
transcripts posted to Hackaday.io
make sure you don’t miss out. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,576.558718 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/02/robot-brutally-chops-but-makes-poor-guacamole/ | Robot Brutally Chops But Makes Poor Guacamole | Lewin Day | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"guacamole",
"salad"
] | Making guacamole by hand normally takes [Estefannie] about 9 minutes. Given her insatiable appetite for the delicious condiment, she spends a lot of time whipping it up in the kitchen at home. Thus, it’s a task ripe for automation, and she set about
building a robot to do the job instead.
The robot starts by chopping ingredients like tomato, onion, and avocado with a knife that swivels to cover the entire chopping board surface. Once chopped, a sweeping blade pushes the ingredients into a bowl to form the guacamole.
Initial tests were messy, and ingredients were chopped a little inconsistently. Later work involved reprogramming the machine to chop ingredients separately, rather than all at once, which did improve the quality of the guacamole significantly. However, fundamentally, it wasn’t making good guac, so much as it was making a very chunky salad. It simply couldn’t do all the complicated jobs required to make a smooth, delicious dip.
[Estefannie] elected to instead let it live out its life as a mighty chopper, showing off its prowess by having it attack candy, cake, watermelon, and chocolate, which was pretty fun to watch. It bears noting that if you’re building
a robot that swings a blade around
, you need to be
very
careful. If you’re looking for something a bit safer,
perhaps a Taco Bot is in your future
. | 27 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508994",
"author": "Then",
"timestamp": "2022-09-02T16:21:22",
"content": "Hows Simone Giertz?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6509089",
"author": "None",
"timestamp": "2022-09-03T00:03:56",
"content":... | 1,760,372,577.038242 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/02/this-week-in-security-malicious-clipboards-snakes-on-a-domain-and-binary-golf/ | This Week In Security: Malicious Clipboards, Snakes On A Domain, And Binary Golf | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Binary Golf",
"sky is falling",
"This Week in Security"
] | There’s a bit of a panic regarding Chromium, Google Chrome, the system clipboard, and of all things, Google Doodles on the New Tab Page. It’s all about
Chromium issue 1334203, “NewTabPageDoodleShareDialogFocusTest.All test fails when user gesture is enforced”
. You see, Chromium has quite a large regression test suite, and Google engineers want to ensure that the Google Doodles always work. A security feature added to the clipboard handling API happened to break a Doodles test, so to fix the Doodle, the security feature was partially reverted. The now-missing feature? Requiring user interaction before a page can read or write to the clipboard.
Now you understand why there’s been a bit of a panic — yes, that sounds really bad. Pages arbitrarily reading from your clipboard is downright malicious and dangerous. And if no interaction is required, then any page can do so, right? No, not quite. So, Chrome has a set of protections, that there are certain things that a page cannot do if the user has not interacted with the page. You might see this at play in Discord when trying to refresh a page containing a video call. “Click anywhere on this page to enable video.” It’s intended to prevent annoying auto-play videos and other irritating page behavior. And most importantly, it’s *not* the only protection against a page reading your clipboard contents.
See for yourself
. Reading the clipboard is a site permission, just like accessing your camera or mic.
Now it’s true that a site could potentially *write* to the clipboard, and use this to try to be malicious. For example, writing
rm -rf /
on a site that claims to be showing off Linux command line tips. But that’s always been the case. It’s why you should always paste into a simple text editor, and not straight into the console from a site. So, really, no panic is necessary. The Chromium devs tried to roll out a slightly more aggressive security measure, and found it broke something unrelated, so partially rolled it back. The sky is not falling.
The Sky Is Falling
If you’re running a Gitlab instance, haven’t grabbed the update released on the 22nd, and have imports from Github enabled,
you may have a problem
. CVE-2022-2884 allows arbitrary code execution when importing a malicious Github repository. The saving grace is that only registered users can perform this action, but there are still the twin dangers of a compromised account, and a user unintentionally importing a malicious repo. If you can’t get to updating right away, you can disable Github imports, to mitigate the issue.
If you’re running a Bitbucket Server or Bitbucket Data Center instance, and haven’t installed
the update from the 21st
, you may have a problem. Multiple endpoints in these Atlassian products have an command injection vulnerability, and if your server contains public repositories, it’s a pre-auth attack. CVE-2022-36804 scores an eye-watering 9.9 CVSS scale.
And if you use Foxit PDF Editor or PhantomPDF, those two programs have
just released substantial security updates
, fixing multiple RCE vulnerabilities. The most notable element of the update is bringing the V8 javascript engine up to current, as the old bundled version had known vulnerabilities in it. I’ve had to deploy Foxit for a client, humorously, because Adobe PDF reader would crash when trying to view a particular PDF generated with Adobe Photoshop. Regardless of why any of us run Foxit, get it up to date!
Snakes on a Domain
sysmon.lnk
shows up in your startup folder. That, uhh, probably isn’t good, right? It’s a link to an executable in a suspicious folder,
c:\users\\appdata\roaming\PpvcbBQh\ctfmon.exe
, and passes
update.py
as an argument. This is the situation researchers at Huntress were investigating, and
the story definitely goes down the rabbit hole — snake hole?
ctfmon.exe
is actually the IronPython interpreter, a nifty runtime that enables Python code that can talk to
.net
libraries. That just leaves the Python script. Malicious? Yes. We’ll call it stage 1. Stage 2 is a very large base64 encoded string, given a random variable name, decoded and then
exec()
‘d. Typical obfuscation stuff.
So what does the payload do? To safely examine the contents of this and other obscured variables, Huntress researchers turned to
CyberChef
, a nifty Open Source project for just this sort of deobfuscation. And guess what, it loads a few libraries, then deobfuscates another huge string. This time it’s a .net executable, stage 3. What does it do? There’s a tool for that,
dnSpy
.
Stage 3 decodes yet another obfuscated string, then launches a non-malicious
msbuild.exe
process. It then pulls off a “Process Hollowing” maneuver, launching a victim process and injecting foreign code for that process to run. Since MSBuild is a trusted program, most antimalware tools won’t bother it. This injection is stage 4, but the fun isn’t over. This code isn’t .Net, but is an open source execute-assembly, essentially code reverse engineered from Cobalt Strike. And yes, it’s also a loader, kicking off another .net binary, stage 5.
And yes, I too am hearing echoes of Samuel L Jackson getting tired of snakes on the plane. Stage 5 runs a script that patches AMSI, the Anti-Malware Scan Interface, clearing yet another barrier to full compromise. And finally it contained another obfuscated string, though this obfuscation was more than a simple base64 routine. Writing a decryption program in Python, they finally had a stage 6 binary, the actual Remote Access Trojan (RAT). This does the things you would expect, ensuring the persistence is in place, downloading updates, and contacting a command and control server for instructions.
What a ride. Someone really wanted their malware to be hidden. There are some indicators of compromise in the post, though it seems like this persistence chain was written to avoid leaving static IoCs — just change the final encryption key, and the whole set of nesting dolls are different.
Binary Golf 3
The
Binary Golf Grand Prix 3
is now over, a fun contest to find the smallest file that will crash a program of your choice. It’s great practice for vulnerability hunting, since the goal is a simple crash, not a complex vulnerability chain like we normally cover. The minimal file size challenge generally means that the contestant figures out exactly what causes the crash. There are bonus points for doing a write-up, manipulating the program counter, reaching arbitrary code execution, and the biggest bonus for getting a fix merged for the crash discovered. Everybody wins!
Now that the contest is over, some of the entries are getting published with more to follow. To end out this week, we have two such entries that are particularly fun, because they’re retro!
Two Bytes Only
[Pierre Kim] and [Alexandre Torres] may be stretching the rules just a bit, as
they’re sending their file over a network connection to a telnetd service
. At two bytes, it’s an impressive feat.
0xff0xf7
is the payload, and it crashes every telnetd client based on the old BSD telnetd from 1991.
0xf
f is IAC, interpret as command, and
0xf7
is understood as the Erase Character command. The problem is that the telnetd binary is still in the negotiation and authentication phase of the connection, and not all of the initialization steps have been completed. Because the input processing code is shared between these states, a pointer is dereferenced that has yet to be initialized, and kablam.
Pokemon RCE
This one wasn’t a formal entry in BGGP3, but is still a great story. Nintendo has a legacy of designing add-ons for their consoles that sell briefly in Japan, and never see the light of day in the rest of the world. (Looking at you, 64DD.)
One such device was the Mobile Adapter GB, which tethered a GameBoy Color/Advance to a mobile phone for online connectivity. Pokemon Crystal had support for this gadget, and trading worked by sending HTTP requests to the Nintendo endpoint, and then checking later for responses using the POP protocol. That response was a base64 encoded data structure. Twiddling values in that struct led to a crash, but that wasn’t good enough for [Harvey Phillips],
who definitely wanted arbitrary code execution on his GBC emulator
.
Well never fear, Pokemon Crystal also supported Battle Colliseum, where you could dial a friend with the same game, and play together over the mobile network. Again, in 2001! Pokemon Crystal does have another quirk, and it’s already being used for crazy speedruns.
0x15
is used as a control character
in the Japanese version of the game, and the game’s text engine will perform a code jump upon trying to display this character. It’s not clear exactly what the original use of these control characters were, but they’re likely a workaround to make the game run on the very limited hardware of the GBC. The
0x3F
control character does a similar jump, but just happens to jump into a location just a few bytes ahead of the Mobile Adapter buffer.
And thus an exploit was finally found. Initiate a battle, replace the save to transfer with your code, and then use
0x3F 0x00 0x00
as the trainer’s name. The remote device tries to show the “wants to battle” text, but the control code triggers a jump into this “mobile script”. Even though this didn’t make the contest, [Harvey] uses the 43 bytes of shellcode to write a “3” to the screen. Beautiful. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508959",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2022-09-02T14:19:48",
"content": "Always enjoy these summaries and usually learn something as well – in this case not being a chrome user I had no idea anything was going on, and not being a windoze user those long exploit chains while ... | 1,760,372,576.651938 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/02/truthsayer-uses-facial-recognition-to-see-if-youre-telling-the-truth/ | Truthsayer Uses Facial Recognition To See If You’re Telling The Truth | Dan Maloney | [
"Machine Learning",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"Face Mesh",
"face recognition",
"FER",
"lie detector",
"machine learning",
"machine vision",
"mood",
"opencv",
"pulse"
] | It’s hard to watch [Mark Zuckerberg]’s 2018 Congressional testimony and not come to the conclusion that he is, at a minimum, quite a bit different than the average person. Of course, having built a multibillion-dollar company that drastically changed everything about the way people communicate is pretty solid evidence of that, but the footage at least made a fun test case for
this AI truth-detecting algorithm
.
Now, we’re not saying that anyone in these videos was lying, and neither is [Fletcher Heisler]. His algorithm, which analyzes video of a person and uses machine vision to pick up cues that might be associated with the stress of untruthfulness, is far from perfect. But as the first video below shows, it is a lot of fun to see it at work. The idea is to capture data like pulse rate, gaze direction, blink rate, mouth posture, and even hand position and use them as a proxy for lying.
The second video
, from [Fletcher]’s recent DEFCON talk, has much more detail.
The key to all this is finding human faces in a video — a task that seemed to fail suspiciously frequently when [Zuck] was on camera — using OpenCV and MediaPipe’s Face Mesh. The subject’s pulse is detected by watching for subtle changes in the color of a subject’s cheeks as blood flows through them, which we’ve heard about plenty of times but never before seen presented so clearly and executed so simply. Gaze direction, blinking, and lip compression are fairly easy to detect too. [Fletcher] also threw in
the FER library
for facial expression recognition, to get an idea of the subject’s mood. Together, these cues form a rough estimate of the subject’s truthiness, which [Fletcher] is quick to point out is just for entertainment purposes and totally shouldn’t be used on your colleagues on the next Zoom call.
Does [Fletcher]’s facial mesh look familiar? It should, since we once watched him
twitch his way through a coding interview
. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508908",
"author": "Your comment is awaiting moderation",
"timestamp": "2022-09-02T11:28:35",
"content": "very cool. defo worth watching the videos … and no annoying adverts !!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6508913",
"au... | 1,760,372,576.706163 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/02/the-ease-of-wireless-charging-without-the-wait/ | The Ease Of Wireless Charging, Without The Wait | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"automation",
"charger",
"charging",
"phone",
"port",
"usb",
"wired",
"wireless"
] | Historically, there have been a few cases of useful wireless power transmission over great distances, like a team at MIT that was able to light up a 60 W bulb at several meters, and of course Nikola Tesla had grand dreams of drawing energy from the atmosphere. But for most of us wireless power is limited to small, short-range devices like cellphone chargers. While it’s not a lot of work to plug in a phone when it needs a charge,
even this small task can be automated
.
This build begins with a 3D printed cradle for the smartphone to sit in. When the device detects that the phone has been placed in the cradle, it uses a linear actuator to drive a custom-built charging cable into the phone’s USB port. Similarly, when the phone is lifted from the cradle the cable is automatically removed. It appears that there is some play in the phone’s position that lets the charger be plugged in smoothly, and the project’s creator [Larpushka] points out that the linear actuator is not particularly strong so we don’t imagine the risk of damage is very high.
While wireless charging still may have the edge when it comes to keeping debris out of the port, we still really enjoy a project like this that seems to be done for its own sake. There are some improvements that [Larpushka] plans to make, but for now we’re delighted by this build. For anyone looking to add true wireless charging to any phone that doesn’t have it, though,
it’s not too difficult to accomplish either
. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508878",
"author": "Pritchard",
"timestamp": "2022-09-02T09:06:02",
"content": "An easier solution would have been to integrate one of those magnetic (like magsafe) style USB connectors into a dock. But that wouldn’t be as cool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,372,576.863335 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/lego-rig-makes-pretty-water-vortexes/ | LEGO Rig Makes Pretty Water Vortexes | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"lego",
"sphere",
"water vortex"
] | LEGO and its Technic line is a great way to learn about all kinds of mechanical things, but it’s also just a whole lot of fun to play with. We suspect the latter reason is what got [Brick Technology] to pursue creating
a trippy water vortex with the building toy.
The first design uses a transparent plastic sphere as a water vessel. Inside the sphere is placed a small turbine, turned from the outside via a magnetic coupling. This means the sphere can remain intact, with no holes required, nor complicated seals which can leak. It works well, and produces a vortex when the turbine is spun by a regular LEGO motor. A second attempt elects to rotate the entire sphere itself. Small LEGO wheels are then used to hold the sphere in place on the rapidly spinning turntable. The results are impressive, creating a large and relatively well-formed vortex.
Naturally, though, the video saves the best for last. The big transparent sphere is installed in a rig that surrounds it completely. The sphere itself is spun up thanks to wheels installed on two different axes. This allows the sphere to be spun in various directions under command from a PlayStation controller, creating more complicated vortexes and flow patterns. A set of swiveling casters are provided to hold the sphere in place as it rotates in various directions, and are damped with springs and rubber bands to stop the rig shaking itself apart.
Is there much purpose to this? Well, not on the surface level, no. However, it would certainly make one heck of a rig for
shaking up cocktails.
Or, if for some reason you need a noisy yet attractive centrifugal separator, maybe this could do the trick. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508831",
"author": "2ftg",
"timestamp": "2022-09-02T06:08:00",
"content": "That looks so nice.Always fun to see LEGO’s being used for quick prototypes and experiments.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6508935",
"author": "Yu... | 1,760,372,576.906077 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/a-liquid-metal-fountain-that-works-at-room-temperature/ | A Liquid Metal Fountain That Works At Room Temperature | Robin Kearey | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"fountain",
"glassblowing",
"NaK",
"sodium-potassium alloy"
] | A fountain is a great way of adding a little flair to an otherwise boring pond. All you need is a pump, a filter and some pipes, along with a nozzle to scatter the pressurized water in some aesthetically pleasing way. Fountains are generally quite safe: if any of the parts malfunction, the worst thing that can happen is some minor flooding.
How different this is for [Advanced Tinkering]’s
recent project, the NaK Fountain
. If this one were to spring a leak, it’s quite likely to take out its surroundings in a huge fireball. That’s because the fluid inside is an alloy of sodium and potassium in about a 1:3 ratio, known as NaK (pronounced like “knack”), which is a liquid at room temperature. Unfortunately, it’s also highly reactive: NaK oxidizes quickly when exposed to air and can even catch fire spontaneously. Contact with water will result in a fiery explosion that scatters corrosive liquids everywhere.
[Avanced Tinkering] therefore built the whole setup inside a custom-made glass enclosure. In his video (embedded after the break) he shows off his glass-blowing skills to make a small nozzle inside a larger glass tube that acts as a reservoir, with a pipe bringing the liquid back to the nozzle. Also embedded in the glasswork are two tungsten electrodes that serve to implement a rather unusual type of pump.
This magneto-hydrodynamic pump works thanks to the Lorentz force. The two electrodes are used to pass a current through the liquid metal in the
x
direction, while a pair of neodymium magnets positioned just outside provide a magnetic field oriented along the
y
axis. The Lorentz force then acts upon the liquid in the
z
direction, pushing it up through the nozzle. Such a pump is convenient when dealing with highly reactive liquids, because it doesn’t require any moving parts that could leak or corrode.
[Advanced Tinkering] went through a few iterations for his glasswork, trying out different pipe orientations and ways to seal the electodes. A vacuum pump was used to remove all traces of moisture and oxygen, with argon providing an inert atmosphere for the NaK to flow freely without accumulating oxides. The end result is quite impressive: a jet of liquid metal that seems to reach about 15 cm in height.
If you’d like to try this yourself (which we obviously don’t recommend), there’s a
reasonably easy way to obtain metallic sodium
. You’ll also need to learn some glassblowing, which
isn’t as hard as it may seem
. | 26 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508799",
"author": "chango",
"timestamp": "2022-09-02T02:47:13",
"content": "This seems identical to this demonstrator:https://youtu.be/9EGAXOWpGy8",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6508828",
"author": "MinorHavoc",
... | 1,760,372,576.976134 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/03/plotter-churns-out-labels-with-roll-of-tape/ | Plotter Churns Out Labels With Roll Of Tape | Danie Conradie | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"grbl",
"label printer",
"pen plotter"
] | Like it or not, organizing your workspace from time to time is a necessary chore. Labels can go a long way towards taming the most unruly of benches, but writing them out by hand isn’t exactly ideal. Looking for something a bit neater, [sandy] built a simple
pen plotter to write labels on a roll of tape
.
The plotter uses the usual 3D printer components like steppers, drivers, belts, and rails. The tape holder is printed with flexible arms for a tight grip, and a servo is used to raise and lower the pen while writing.
The
custom control board
includes an Arduino Nano clone and a pair of stepper drivers, and an optional Bluetooth module and can be configured for a variety of machine control applications. A pair of Android apps are used to generate and send the G-code from a phone to the GRBL firmware loaded on the Arduino.
This seems to fall in the category of “entry-level” custom automation tools which help to save some time and effort on repetitive tasks without blowing the budget. We would include the various
component tape cutters
we’ve
seen in this category
, as well as
smart build platform for manual PCB assembly | 24 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509158",
"author": "Daid",
"timestamp": "2022-09-03T11:14:32",
"content": "Sounds familiar…https://hackaday.com/2022/07/10/masking-tape-pen-plotter-gets-an-upgrade/(Still a fun build that I should replicate, but it was featured two months ago)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,372,577.600866 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/03/oops-all-analog-sticks/ | Oops! All Analog Sticks | Arya Voronova | [
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"analog stick",
"xbox controller",
"xbox controller hack"
] | Knowing his friend is a first-person shooter enthusiast, [Solderking] came up with a
unique modified XBox controller
as a gift. Tongue in cheek, you could argue that this controller is fully analog, as all of the buttons have been removed and replaced with analog sticks — each stick emulating four different buttons with its four different directions.
For this mod, he picked a controller known to have button connections available on testpoints. The controller’s buttons are digital inputs, but a bit of additional resistance wasn’t a problem for the IC in charge. Having tested that to be extra sure, he started the rebuilding work. As any self-respecting one-off mod, the bulk of this project involved JB Weld, point-to-point soldering of wires and taking a Dremel to the shell. That said, this project pays attention to detail, with portions of potentiometer track material carefully scraped off so that contact couldn’t be made in center position, and 3D printed spacers keeping the looks within the “gift-worthy” boundary.
After finishing the controller, [Solderking] tested it to confirm that it was absolutely atrocious to use, and breathed a sigh of relief, with yet another mod well done. We’ve already covered a few of his other fun efforts, like this
Pokemon Ruby
Nintendo cartridge restoration project
where some delicate soldering was called for, or this
broken mouse turned 12-key macropad. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509176",
"author": "anon",
"timestamp": "2022-09-03T13:46:42",
"content": "Perfectly awful (love it). Shame he did not keep them entirely analog and the ability to press multiple buttons at once but great details",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,577.072159 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/02/3d-printing-a-prosthetic-compatible-golf-club/ | 3D Printing A Prosthetic-Compatible Golf Club | Danie Conradie | [
"Medical Hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed prosthetic",
"accessibility",
"amputee",
"golf"
] | Relearning an old sport, or starting a new one, can be challenging for amputees. Besides the obvious physical aspects, custom prosthetics or adaptors might need to be made and fitted, which can be very expensive. With the power of 3D printing and some machining, [Ian Davis] was able to build a
custom prosthetic golf club
to get a quadruple amputee back on the greens.
The recipient of this prosthetic lost both hands above the wrists, so [Ian] had to come up with a mechanism that could hold the club and mimic wrist motion throughout the swing. He was able to achieve this motion with a simple four-plate hinge for each arm. For optimal ergonomics, [Ian] also added two-axis adjustability, with only a single bolt needing to be loosened per axis. A standard golf club can be used and is clamped in the printed holders.
Machined prosthetic sockets were used to allow quick connection to the user’s existing prosthetic forearms. Theoretically, this should also allow him to switch clubs without excessive hassle. [Ian], an amputee himself, has used his engineering skills to build a series of
prosthetic hands
and even a
custom controller mod
to get back to gaming with fewer flesh fingers. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,577.110429 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/02/fixing-a-hot-shop-with-science/ | Fixing A Hot Shop, With Science | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"conduction",
"convection",
"foam",
"heat",
"heat barrier",
"mylar",
"polystyrene",
"radiation",
"reflective"
] | We know that pretty much everybody in the Northern hemisphere has had a hellish summer, and there’s little room for sympathy when someone busts out with, “Oh yeah? You think THAT’s hot? Well, lemme tell you…” But you’ve got to pity someone who lives in north Texas and has a steel Quonset hut for a shop. That’s got to be just stupidly hot.
But stupid hot can be solved — or at least mitigated — with a little smarts, which is what [Wesley Treat] brought to bear with
this cleverly designed shop door heat shield
. When it pushes past 42°C — sorry, that sounds nowhere near as apocalyptic as 108°F — the south-facing roll-up door of his shop becomes a giant frying pan, radiating heat into his shop that the air conditioner has trouble handling. His idea was to block that radiant heat with a folding barrier, but to make sure it would be worth the effort, he mocked up a few potential designs and took measurements of the performance of each. His experiments showed him that a layer of extruded polystyrene (XPS) foam insulation covered with reflective Mylar did better than just the foam or Mylar alone.
The finished heat shield is an enormous tri-fold plywood beast that snugs up against the door when things get toasty in the shop. There’s a huge difference in temperature between the metal door and the inside surface of the shield, which will hopefully keep the shop more comfortable. We imagine that the air between the door and the shield will still heat up, and convection could still distribute all that hot air into the shop. But at least he’s giving the AC a fighting chance.
In addition to great shop tips like this and
his custom storage bins
, [Wesley] is
a talented signmaker
. He’s pretty funny too — or maybe that’s just the heat talking. | 42 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509112",
"author": "LUFO",
"timestamp": "2022-09-03T02:58:18",
"content": "Wouldn’t a shade OUTSIDE help more than a heat shield inside?The inside will still remain hot regardless of the shield.Wouldn’t it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,372,577.204732 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/02/cutting-the-grass-with-frickin-lasers/ | Cutting The Grass With Frickin’ Lasers | Dave Rowntree | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"diode laser",
"lawnmower",
"rover"
] | We techie types are quite often much more comfortable in front of a keyboard knocking out code, than out in the yard splitting logs for winter, and even the little jobs like cutting the grass are sometimes just too much like hard manual labour for our liking. The obvious solution is a robot mower, but they’re kinda boring, with their low-tech spinning metal blades. What we need is a big frickin’ laser. YouTuber [rctestflight] has been experimenting with
using a 40W blue diode laser module to cut the weeds
, (Video, embedded below) and it sort of works, albeit in a rather dangerous fashion.
A nice flat ‘cut’
The first test used a fixed assembly, mounting the laser to a camera lens, upon a rotating gear driven by a small stepper motor. An Arduino controls the beam scanning, very slowly, burning the grass in its sights. But with a range limited to around eight feet best case, sitting in one spot just isn’t going to
cut
it. (sorry) The obvious next step was to mount one of the tested laser modules onto a moveable platform. After tweaking one of his earlier projects — a tracked rover — with a new gearbox design, it could now drive slow enough to be useful for this slow task. The laser was mounted to a simple linear rail slider, with an attempt at a vacuum pickup system to suck up the clippings, removing them from the beam path, and stopping them impeding the cutting efficiency of the laser.
Obviously this vacuum idea didn’t work, and since the contraption takes the best part of a week to cut just one small area, we reckon it would likely be growing faster than that! Still, it must have been fun to build it anyway. It just goes to show that despite the march of technological progress, maybe the boring old spinning blades of old are still the best way to get the job done.
Lawnmowing is clearly one of those jobs we love to hate, and do so with hacks. Here’s
a way to prevent your mower sucking up foreign bodies
and hurling them at you at ballistic speeds, and for those who really want to be hands off,
add RTK-GPS to a robot mower
, and just leave it to do the dirty work.
Thanks to [Måns], [electronoob] and [Ostracus] for the tip! | 29 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509083",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-09-02T23:31:17",
"content": "“You’ll shoot your eye out kid!’",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6509084",
"author": "Yet Another Robert Smith",
... | 1,760,372,577.275162 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/02/magnetic-gearbox-can-go-fast-but-not-hard/ | Magnetic Gearbox Can Go Fast But Not Hard | Danie Conradie | [
"Parts"
] | [
"3D printed gears",
"magnetic gears",
"planetary gears"
] | 3D printed gearboxes are great for experimental designs, but due to roughness and inaccuracies in the printed surfaces, they can wear quickly and be rather noisy. As a possible alternative, [Resetman] is experimenting with
magnetic 3D printed gearboxes
that work without physical contact between the rotating wheels, and can also be “geared” for different ratios in some interesting ways.
Naturally, two closely spaced wheels with magnets will interact with each other, with the ratio defined by the number of magnets on each wheel. A much less obvious implementation is a second-order radial flux coaxial magnetic gearbox. It works similar to a normal planetary gearbox, with an outer and inner wheel containing magnets, and an intermediate ring known as a flux modulator, containing equally spaced pieces of ferromagnetic steel metal. In [Resetman] demonstration, the flux modulator is just a 3D printed ring screws around its circumference.
The most obvious disadvantage is of course severely limited torque transfer. [Resetman] could easily accelerate the sun wheel to 12,000 RPM if the flux modulator is accelerated slowly, but any sudden changes in speed would cause it to lose synchronization. Of course, you can consider this a torque-limiting feature for certain use cases. With a bit of testing, he determined the torque limit at a 1:4 ratio was a meager 0.05 Nm. This could be increased by some optimization, for example rearranging the magnets to form Halbach arrays, and reducing the air gaps between the components.
Magnetic gearboxes are nothing new, we’ve featured another
demonstrator
before, and even did an
“Ask Hackaday” on the subject
. What would you use these for? Let us know below. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509059",
"author": "tonyvr",
"timestamp": "2022-09-02T21:12:02",
"content": "Magnetic coupling’s “killer app’ is manipulation of mechanisms inside a high vacuum vessel.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6509068",
"autho... | 1,760,372,577.322471 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/02/hackaday-prize-2022-a-cooler-for-your-footwear/ | Hackaday Prize 2022: A Cooler For Your Footwear | Lewin Day | [
"The Hackaday Prize",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"2022 Hackaday Prize",
"footwear",
"shoes",
"water cooling"
] | Sweaty feet can be uncomfortable, and the smell generated in one’s shoes isn’t much to admire, either. In an effort to help solve this issue,
[Revoxdyna] has created a cooler for one’s feet that should help out in hot conditions.
Modern shoes, particularly sneakers, are often ventilated, but it’s not always enough. This build takes things further, using active cooling. Water is pumped through tubes and into a copper insole which cools the sole of the foot. It’s achieved thanks to a pump assembly that mounts to the rear of the shoe in a 3D printed housing. The water itself is chilled with a thermoelectric cooler, which helps remove heat from the shoe area.
There is some bulk to the design, which would prevent its use in performance applications in its current form. However, we could imagine companies like Nike leaping at the chance to build some very fancy, high-tech shoes along these lines in future. After all, they already managed to create
power laces,
and this is even cooler again! Pun definitely intended.
The
Hackaday
Prize2022
is Sponsored by: | 15 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6509026",
"author": "TG",
"timestamp": "2022-09-02T18:45:31",
"content": "I’m working on something like this for full-body. Call it the Texas stillsuit. Uses a salvaged scooter battery and a little mini-fridge compressor in a backpack, a heat exchanger and some tubing under the clot... | 1,760,372,577.489919 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/rolling-sphere-robotic-arm-seems-serpentine/ | Rolling Sphere Robotic Arm Seems Serpentine | Danie Conradie | [
"Parts",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"Dynamixel",
"robotic arm",
"tentacle"
] | Hinge joints are usually the simplest to use for robotic applications, but if you want motion that looks more organic, rolling joint (or rolling contact) mechanisms are worth a look. [Skyentific] is experimenting with this mechanism and
built a 6-degree-of-freedom robotic arm
with it.
The mechanism doesn’t necessarily need the physical surfaces to roll across each other to work, and you can get to two degrees of freedom with the virtual rolling sphere mechanism. [Skyentific] demonstrates how these work with both cardboard cutouts and 3D printed models. Stacking three of these mechanisms on top of each other, with each stage driven by three Dynamixel servos, the motion seems almost serpentine.
Since the servos are driving the small bottom linkages of each stage, they are operating at a significant mechanical disadvantage. The arm can just barely keep itself upright on top of the table, so [Skyentific] mounted it upside down to the bottom of the table to reduce the load of its weight. With the front stage removed, the load is significantly reduced, and it doesn’t struggle as much.
An interesting advantage of this mechanism is that there is always a straight path down the center for cabling. The length of this line between the two plates remains the same throughout the entire range of motion, so it can also be used to route a rigid drive shaft. This is actually what was done on the
LIMS2-AMBIDEX robot
to rotate its hand, and is also where saw this mechanism for the first time. Interestingly, that implementation didn’t drive the linkages themselves, but used tension cables around the mechanism. We also see this in a very similar
tentacle robot
, so it might be a better option. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508540",
"author": "come2",
"timestamp": "2022-09-01T09:18:03",
"content": "This robot arm is really cool, and as a yt comment said, “aesthetic”, but I do think using 9 servos for 6 DoF isn’t the best idea. Wouldn’t lack of precision in the servo command make them sometimes work ag... | 1,760,372,577.442277 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/31/converting-an-old-atv-to-electric-drive/ | Converting An Old ATV To Electric Drive | Lewin Day | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"atv",
"ev",
"quad bike"
] | [RCLifeOn] happened upon an old petrol-powered ATV that had seen better days. He decided it was the perfect candidate for
a conversion to electric drive
.
First up, the chassis was stripped back and cleaned, before being given a fresh coat of paint. It then got fresh valve stems for the tires and was ready for its drivetrain conversion.
The motor of choice is a brushless type, rated for 42 kW at 120 V. [RCLifeOn] doesn’t have batteries capable of maxing out those specs, yet, but carried on with the build. The motor was mounted on the chassis, and a 3D printed hub was installed to get the sprocket on the end of the motor.
A stress test uphill killed the speed controller. This was not unexpected, as it was a cheap unit severely undersized for the application.
The first drive was rough and ready, as the speed controller wasn’t sensored, the gearing wasn’t quite right, and the chain wasn’t very tight. However, it did successfully make it around the grass, slowly. Further improvements then included a water cooling circuit for the speed controller and the addition of a battery compartment. That wasn’t enough to stop the speed controller bursting into flames during a difficult uphill climb, though.
Fundamentally, though, the project shows promise. Bigger batteries, a sensored speed controller, and appropriate gearing should make it a quick beast. 42 kW of power is a good amount for a light ATV, plus there’s the benefit of instant-on torque from an electric motor.
We’ve seen [RCLifeOn] tackle some high-powered electric builds before, like
his impressive powered surfboard.
With the right parts, we’re sure he’ll have this thing ripping about at pace before long! | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508508",
"author": "sdfdsfsdfs",
"timestamp": "2022-09-01T06:30:03",
"content": "It is a bit baffling that this guy isn’t using incredibly popular, significantly cheaper mid-drive e-bike motors which already have reduction gearboxes in them and are designed for roughly the speed an... | 1,760,372,577.833346 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/31/solar-cells-as-art-form/ | Solar Cells As Art Form | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Art"
] | [
"art",
"mobile",
"oscillator",
"solar cell",
"sound",
"speaker"
] | When most of us approach a project, we have a certain problem to solve. 3D printing, microcontrollers, batteries, and all kinds of technologies are usually tools to accomplish some task. This is not necessarily true in the art world, though, where the intrinsic nature of these tools can be explored for their own sake rather than as a means to an end.
The latest one that came across our desk is this light-powered sound generator
.
The art piece looks a bit like a mobile with rotating arms, holding various small solar cells each connected to a speaker. As the arms pivot, the light falling on the cells changes which drives a specially-designed circuit connected to a speaker. The circuit acts as an oscillator, passing the changing voltage from the cell through various capacitors and transistors to produce changing tones in the speaker.
The effect of the rotating solar panels is not only oscillations from the speakers as the light changes, but oscillations in the sound of the speakers as they rotate towards and away from the observer. It’s a unique project and perfect for the art show it was in. It’s also not the only sound-focused art installation we’ve ever seen before,
be sure to check out this one based on an ESP32
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508452",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-09-01T02:07:02",
"content": "” As the arms pivot, the light falling on the cells changes which drives a specially-designed circuit connected to a speaker. The circuit acts as an oscillator, passing the cha... | 1,760,372,577.653277 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/31/the-cheat-way-to-perfectly-split-an-oreo/ | The Cheat Way To Perfectly Split An Oreo | Lewin Day | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"food",
"knife",
"oreo",
"oreos"
] | Believe it or not, much research has been done in
how to perfectly split Oreos
with an even amount of cream on both sides. Early studies suggested it simply wasn’t possible, with one side always getting the majority of the cream. However,
[Ian Charnas] has now found a sneaky workaround.
First attempts involved heating in a microwave or chilling the cookies in the freezer. Neither helped in the slightest. A vacuum chamber only served to delaminate the cream from both sides of the cookie entirely, while water jet cutting made an awful mess.
[Ian] ended up realizing that crack propagation could be used to prepare Oreos for a perfect split. A knife was used to score a groove all around the cream layer, right down the middle. The Oreos were then frozen, turning the cream effectively solid. When the Oreo is then twisted, the groove serves as a starting point for a crack that propagates across the surface, splitting the cream neatly between both halves.
[Ian] took things further by building a 3D-printed lathe that grooves Oreos using a sterilized scalpel blade. This allows cookies to be quickly prepped for a perfect split. However, you are left eating frozen Oreos at the end of it, with some sacrifices to freshness.
It’s a neat way to approach the Oreo splitting problem, even if it’s only one step removed from simply using a knife. We’ve seen [Ian]’s work before, too, in the form of
the radioactively-powered Game Boy
. Video after the break. | 28 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508404",
"author": "Eric Weatherby",
"timestamp": "2022-08-31T23:20:20",
"content": "And when he displayed it at a science fair,A man from a large academy was there.He took just one taste and widened his eyes,And said, “Son, we’re giving you the Nobel Prize!”It’s the incredible Ore... | 1,760,372,577.721866 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/31/mh-z19-like-ndir-co2-sensor-hc8-found-and-explored/ | MH-Z19-like NDIR CO2 Sensor HC8 Found And Explored | Maya Posch | [
"hardware",
"Teardown"
] | [
"CO2 sensor",
"HC8",
"mh-z19"
] | While on the search for an alternative to directly buying the fairly expensive MH-Z19 CO2 sensor,
[spezifisch] came across a ‘BreeRainz’ branded gadget
(also found under other brands) that claimed to use an
NDIR
(Non-Dispersive Infrared) sensor for measuring CO2 levels, while costing only €25. This type of sensor allows for CO2 levels to be measured directly, rather than inferred, making them significantly more precise.
The BreeRainz DM1308A device cracked open.
After cracking the gadget open (literally, due to the hidden screws), the CO2 sensor is clearly visible. While superficially identical to an MH-Z19, the NDIR sensor is actually called ‘HC8’, is produced by 广州海谷电子科技有限公司 (Guangzhou Haigu Electronic Technology Co., Ltd.). While being pin-compatible with the MH-Z19, its UART protocol is not the same. Fortunately there is a datasheet to help with implementing it, which is what [spezifisch] did.
This raises the question of whether harvesting NDIR CO2 sensors like this is worth it to save a few Euros. A quick look on German Amazon shows that the device in question currently costs €35, while a genuine MH-Z19 can be bought for €25 or less. There are also many
MH-Z19 models
(B, C and D), which cover an even wider price range. All of which points to finding an NDIR sensor-containing device can be interesting when it’s on sale, but if all you care about is the sensor itself, it’s probably best to just buy them directly. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508380",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-08-31T21:34:48",
"content": "I still have some trouble finding hidden screws, but over the decades I’ve learned a few of the tricks that are implemented. But, I’m still surprised to read that someone does... | 1,760,372,577.773965 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/31/hackaday-prize-2022-a-sun-chasing-robot/ | Hackaday Prize 2022: A Sun-Chasing Robot | Lewin Day | [
"Robots Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2022 Hackaday Prize",
"robot",
"solar power",
"solar robot"
] | There’s plenty of power to be had from the sun, but you need to be out of the shade to receive it. [Dennis] built a robot by the name of Sun Chaser
that has the smarts to go where the sun is shining.
Sun Chaser is essentially a robotic solar panel, tasked with filling up its batteries as much as possible. It can then be used as a power supply for campsites or other remote areas, and used to charge devices as required.
A Raspberry Pi runs the show, paired with a Squid motor controller to run the drive system. Sun Chaser has a motorized solar panel onboard which can track the sun for maximum output, with the aid of six photoresistors to guide the positioning. A camera is used to image the area around Sun Chaser, too, and processing is used to identify sunny regions which will provide the most energy.
Even outside of its useful applications, the idea of having a robot that can run around and keep itself juiced up is a fun one.
Solar power gives a robot a greater sense of autonomy
, after all. This author has experimented in this field
to great enjoyment, too
. Video after the break.
The
Hackaday
Prize2022
is Sponsored by: | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508312",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-08-31T18:36:20",
"content": "And at sunset, they all dash into the ocean like lemmings.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6508379",
"author": "a_do_... | 1,760,372,577.879042 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/31/backup-camera-digital-dash-road-assist-in-1969/ | Backup Camera, Digital Dash, Road Assist… In 1969? | Al Williams | [
"car hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"concept car",
"holden hurricane",
"Rant"
] | If your friend told you their car had a backup camera, a digital dashboard, climate control, could scan for radio stations, and even helped stay on the road, you wouldn’t think much about it. Unless the year was 1969. The car — the Hurricane by Australian automaker Holden — was never a production vehicle. But it was way beyond the state of the art in 1969 and isn’t too dated, even today. The concept car was actually found in 1988 and restored by 2011. Honestly, it still looks great.
The car looks amazing and was meant to be a research vehicle and — probably — nice eye candy for the car shows. Seating two passengers with a mid-mounted 253 cubic inch V8, it featured many things we take for granted now: a backup camera, temperature control, and a (somewhat) digital dashboard, for example. There was a system to help it stay in lane, but that required magnets in the road — it was 1969, after all.
The fiberglass body was unique and had a canopy instead of doors. The power seats lifted up when the canopy came up and went down for driving. The passenger compartment was a steel cage. The vehicle featured headrests, a foam-lined fuel tank, and a fire warning system. Two of the brakes were even oil-cooled.
Great looks even today
Who needs gull wings?
A CRT backup camera
A 1969 digital clock
Sure, the car is undeniably cool, but it also reminds us that it is important to reach beyond the possible. We imagine that if you tried to build something this far ahead of our current tech today, you’d have to be prepared to finance it yourself. The car probably didn’t do anything financially for Holden in the near term. But look at how much foresight the designers of this car had! Granted, some things just were’t ready yet. The digital clock with the dials is probably not going to last long on bumpy roads. Magnets on the road have their own problems and were doubtlessly impractical. But the ideas are solid and you imagine influenced future designers.
So what are we doing today that is just beyond our reach but will inspire the future? Are we just adding more CPUs and more memory to existing things? Some extra buttons on our mouse? Are we adding one more feature to our programming language of choice? Where are the truly innovative programming languages, CPU architectures, and I/O devices coming from? It is hard to imagine 50 years from now someone remembering a great deal of what we build today and considering it revolutionary.
Meanwhile, who’s up for building a replicate Hurricane? It isn’t as
ridiculous as it sounds
. Not that it isn’t
a major undertaking
, but it would probably be easier with today’s technology to match some of what the Hurricane was doing before we’d even landed on the moon. | 65 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508266",
"author": "Rick",
"timestamp": "2022-08-31T17:30:02",
"content": "Imagine getting in and out when it‘s raining ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6508271",
"author": "electronoob",
"timestamp": "2022-... | 1,760,372,578.08605 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/small-engine-failure-leads-to-impromptu-teardown/ | Small Engine Failure Leads To Impromptu Teardown | Tom Nardi | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Teardown",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"connecting rod",
"engine",
"harbor freight",
"predator",
"small engine"
] | When the 6.5 HP (212 cc) Harbor Freight Predator engine in his kid’s go-kart gave up the ghost after some particularly hard driving, [HowToLou] figured it would be a good time to
poke around inside the low-cost powerplant
for our viewing pleasure. As a bonus, he even
got it up and running again
.
The shattered rod, and its replacement.
For an engine that has a retail price of just $160 USD, we’ve got to admit, the inside of the Predator doesn’t look too shabby. Admittedly, [HowToLou] determined that the cause of the failure was a blown connecting rod, but he also mentions that
somebody
had previously removed the engine’s governor, allowing it to rev up far beyond the nominal maximum of 3,600 RPM. No word on who snuck in there and yanked the governor out, but we’re betting it wasn’t the 7-year old driver…
Replacing the connecting rod meant taking most of the engine apart, but for our education, [HowToLou] decided to take it a bit further and remove
everything
from the engine. After stripping it down to the block, he re-installs each piece while explaining its function. If you’ve ever wanted to see what makes one of these little engines tick, or perhaps you’ve got a Predator 212 cc in need of a repair or rebuild, the presentation is a fantastic resource.
Incidentally, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen the go-kart in question — back in June, we
covered the unique electric reverse that [HowToLou] came up with for it
. | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508768",
"author": "Josiah Gould",
"timestamp": "2022-09-01T23:29:08",
"content": "Perfect! As someone who sells these engines on a daily basis a detailed teardown is great information. I really appreciate this.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,372,578.149264 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/powering-a-cellphone-with-gasoline/ | Powering A Cellphone With Gasoline | Lewin Day | [
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"catalyst",
"fossil fuels",
"fuel",
"liquid fuel",
"phone",
"smartphone",
"thermoelectric generator"
] | Batteries are a really useful way to store energy, but their energy density in regards to both weight and volume is disappointing. In these regards, they really can’t compete with fossil fuels. Thus, [bryan.lowder] decided to see if he could
charge a phone with fossil fuels as safely and inoffensively as possible.
Obviously, with many national grids relying on fossil fuels for a large part of their generation, most of us are already charging our phones with fossil fuels to some degree. However, the aim here was to do so more directly, without incurring transmission losses from the long runs through the power grid.
The system works by catalytically oxidizing so-called white camping fuel, which is closely related to the gasoline we run in our cars. This oxidation process generates heat but at sub-flame temperatures, thus avoiding the mess and danger of regular combustion. This heat is then used to power a thermoelectric generator (TEG) in much the same way as NASA relies on radioisotopes
to do the same job.
The device emits fumes, but less than burning gasoline would do. There’s no fire involved, and it’s largely silent. The fuel itself is stored in a hip flask, with vapors passing through the catalytic material and heating the thermoelectric generator to around 180°C. A regulator then bumps the voltage output to 5V and passes it to a USB port for charging a phone.
[bryan.lowder] hasn’t provided details on the performance of the build, yet. We’re keen to see the numbers, as the low efficiency of TEGs would mean that quite a volume of fuel would likely be required to charge the phone.
We’ve seen liquid fuels touted before as a compact source of electricity,
often in combination with fuel cells.
The technique is yet to catch on en masse, but if you’re tinkering in this area,
be sure to let us know! | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508695",
"author": "Twisty Plastic",
"timestamp": "2022-09-01T20:07:24",
"content": "I’m curious just what is in the exhaust.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6508707",
"author": "random noise from the abyss....",
... | 1,760,372,578.209946 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/hackaday-prize-2022-a-spring-driven-digital-movie-camera/ | Hackaday Prize 2022: A Spring-Driven Digital Movie Camera | Lewin Day | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2022 Hackaday Prize",
"8mm",
"8mm film",
"camera",
"raspberry pi",
"video"
] | These days, most of us are carrying capable smartphones with high-quality cameras. It makes shooting video so easy as to take all the fun out of it. [AIRPOCKET] decided to bring that back,
by converting an old spring-driven 8mm film camera to shoot digital video.
The camera in question is a magazine-fed Bell & Howell Model 172 from the 1950s. In its original spring-driven form, it could shoot for approximately 35 seconds at a (jerky) frame rate 16 fps.
In this build, though, the film is replaced with a digital imaging system designed to fit in the same space as the original magazine. A Raspberry Pi Zero 2 was pressed into service, along with a rechargeable battery and Pi camera module. The camera is timed to synchronise with the shutter mechanism via a photosensor.
Since it uses the original optics and shutter speed, the resulting video is actually very reminiscent of the Super 8 cameras of the past. It’s an impressive way to get a retro film effect straight into a digital output format. The alternative is to just
shoot on film and scan it afterwards
, of course! Video after the break.
The
Hackaday
Prize2022
is Sponsored by: | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508667",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2022-09-01T18:37:59",
"content": "Fun project, nicely done!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6508677",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2022-09-01T19:21:31",
"content": "Next st... | 1,760,372,578.265006 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/cogeneration-and-district-heating-for-comfortable-homes-and-happy-factories/ | Cogeneration And District Heating For Comfortable Homes And Happy Factories | Maya Posch | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"district heating"
] | Most of modern society’s energy usage is
spent on heating
in some form, whether it is to heat water, raise the temperature in a room, or for use in industrial processes. This makes it an excellent target for improvements in efficiency and resilience, as well as in the effort to decarbonize the world’s energy production. Here district heating and similar solutions are likely to play a major role in the near future.
Over the past decades, a number of nations have either already built out extensive district heating grids, or are in the process of doing so. The main advantage of these heating grids is that they not only allow for more efficient, centralized generating of heat, but also allow for e.g. industrial waste heat to be used productively rather than wasted, even if most of the heat will come from either dedicated or
cogeneration
thermal plants.
Recently, district heating has received a big push in e.g. China in the form of nuclear cogeneration, while the potential of using thermal storage to buffer heat for later use along with the concept of tying data centers into heating grids are also being explored. Although district heating is hardly new, it may help to ease humanity into a low-carbon future, without losing a bit of comfort.
A Complicated History
The main benefit of
district heating
(DH) is their overall efficiency boost over many smaller heat sources, such as single household gas- or mineral oil-fired boilers, also due to using what would otherwise have been mostly waste heat. In addition, the sources that provide heat to the system can be highly diverse, even if coal has been the fuel of choice for heating grids in the West. The first generation DH systems were built in the late 19th century, with New York City’s
steam-based network
being a prime example of this. This type of first-generation system also shows the issues that prevented their adoption in many other cities.
The
2007 New York City steam explosion
was one of twelve steam pipe explosions since 1987, with the 2007 explosion involving an 83 year old pipe rupturing and allowing the hot, pressurized steam to burst through the ground, seriously injuring people and causing a large amount of damage. The DH systems that were built starting around the 1930s and into the 1970s would instead use hot water, heated by cogeneration plants. While still pressurized, these systems do not pose the same safety risks as a pressurized steam system.
Rather than mostly a group of dedicated, coal-fired plants that feed a steam-based system, these second-generation DH systems and the subsequent improvements (like insulated pipes instead of plain concrete pipes) would generally be based around cogenerating thermal plants, so that nearby cities and communities could be provided with both heat and electricity. This approach found a big uptake in the Scandinavian countries, as well as in the former Soviet Union.
Suggested heat supply sources for Berlin by 2030 under different scenarios. (Gonzalez-Salazar et al., 2020)
The build-out of DH systems has largely stalled for the past decades, however. Due to the availability of cheap natural gas, and in the case of countries like Norway and France due to low electricity prices, the financial incentive to put in the pipes for a new DH system or to extend an existing DH system was often absent. Many existing DH systems also had their sources switched from low-carbon nuclear to fossil fuels, as was the case with DH grids in the former USSR. East Germany’s
Greifswald
and similar
cogenerating VVER PWR
s were shut down in the 1990s, with coal and gas plants taking their place.
In the March 1989 IAEA Bulletin,
Losev et al.
describe the DH plans that existed back then to further extend the use of nuclear power plant cogeneration into the European part of the USSR. Of course, with the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the few DH systems that did get implemented since then use primarily fossil fuels as their sources.
Cities such as Berlin are a good example here, with its two (Western & Eastern) separate DH systems. Although this network extends to essentially just the size of the city before the USSR’s collapse, it is still the largest DH system of Germany. Currently Berlin is trying to find ways to move away from the carbon-heavy coal-fired plants that provide the bulk of its heat supply, with
Gonzalez-Salazar et al. (2020)
providing a few possible scenarios.
In their evaluation of alternative sources, they found that industrial waste heat could provide a small contribution, with the bulk being taken up by burning (heavily polluting) communal
solid waste
(trash) and
biomass
, primarily in the form of wood chips in the current coal plants. The overwhelming majority of the heat supply would be provided by fossil gas (NG), however, with the idea that NG alternatives like (green) hydrogen could be swapped in at some (distant) point in the future.
In their ideal scenarios, power-to-heat (P2H) would also be used, which involves converting electricity into heat using technologies like resistive heating, heat pumps, etc.
Finding The Right Balance
The Swiss Beznau nuclear power plant in 2003. (photo: Roland Zumbühl)
As the situation in Berlin and New York City shows, having a DH system doesn’t necessarily mean that it is low-carbon, or easily converted from a pollution-belching monstrosity. In addition to integrating low-carbon heat sources, the fact remains that the siting of the heat supply is important for the system’s efficiency. For thermal plants and sources of industrial waste heat, this means that they have to be located sufficiently close to the consumer, generally within a few tens of kilometers to minimize heat losses.
This also plays a role when it comes to the P2H scenario of using excess power from solar and wind power installations to heat up some form of thermal storage. Since the storage has to be placed sufficiently close to the end-user, this means that the electrical power has to be transferred via transmission lines to this storage facility. Without sufficient available capacity on these transmission lines, the excess power would still have to be curtailed. Relying solely on excess power would also mean a highly variable heat input into the system, requiring some kind of backup heat supply, like fossil fuels or nuclear power, or accept periods of unfulfilled heating demands.
The most efficient scenario is probably that of the traditional nuclear power cogenerating plants, as used heavily by former Soviet states, as well as by Switzerland at its
Beznau nuclear power plant
. This plant was retrofitted in 1984 to provide district heating to nearby communities, which had the additional benefit of less waste heat ending up in the nearby river, as well as saving over 14 million cubic meters of natural gas by the connected households.
An aspect of such cogenerating plants is that part of the steam is used for the DH system rather than for producing electricity. Since this steam is extracted after it has already (partially) expanded in the turbine stage, the reduction in electricity production is generally minimal. Even so, it is conceivable that by adding thermal storage to the DH system and accepting waste heat from industrial processes, as well as data centers, etc. less steam would have to be diverted, allowing for more electricity production, without otherwise affecting the system.
Using P2H in this scenario would likely make very little sense, as adding more heat would free up more electricity, but P2H only makes sense if there is already excess electricity on the local grid, making it essentially useless. Using relatively constant sources of heat, like data centers and aluminium smelting facilities (as seen in e.g. Norway), could however provide additional redundant supplies of heat to the system.
Increase The Heat
Temperature ranges of heat application processes and types of nuclear power plant (source: IAEA)
Having continuous access to heating is important and a matter of survival in many nations, including during extreme weather events like the February 2021 Texas winter storms that saw many households cut off from both gas and electricity. Similarly, many industries require a constant source of heat, such as in glass and steel manufacturing, as well as the petrochemical industry. These heating demands scale across a wide range of temperatures, from around a 100°C for DH systems, to 300 to ~1000°C for industrial heat.
The reliability demand reinforces the importance of having reliable sources proving the heat. Here nuclear plants are the sole type of source that has a capacity factor of >90%, and no reliance on daily, weekly or even monthly refueling. This is also why chemical plants and other industries that seek to move away from fossil fuels have a strong interest in small modular reactors for
industrial process heat
, as even brief drops in supplied heat can grind production to a halt, or even destroy a manufacturing line.
High-temperature (helium) gas-cooled reactors (HTRs) – like the Chinese
HTR-PM
– reach much higher temperatures than traditional water-cooled (LWR or HWR) reactors, making them suitable for an even larger number of industrial processes, while also providing electrical power. This should ideally provide industrial processes with heat and power 24/7 for the years that the fuel lasts, making it a very attractive, economical and low-carbon source.
The Haiyang 1 and 2 reactors. (Credit: SPIC)
The reliability of cogenerating nuclear plants has been proven over many decades, which has made it an obvious choice for nations like China, as they seek to find alternatives for coal-fired plants in their DH systems. The Chinese city of Haiyang, in Shandong province, is currently working to fully
convert
its DH system from coal-fired boilers to nuclear cogeneration. As reported, the heat from the AP-1000 Haiyang-1 reactor alone was sufficient to replace 12 coal-fired boilers.
The goal is to produce enough heat for the
entire city
of Haiyang using this single nuclear plant, along with electrical power and heat for desalination, effectively eliminating most fossil fuel usage by the city’s inhabitants.
Beyond The District
An inevitable part of a DH system is that the large diameter insulated pipes have to be buried into the ground, which can be rather disruptive. Depending on the situation, a
heat pump
system can be an acceptable alternative, providing much higher efficiency than a simple resistive heating system. These do of course require a reliable source of electrical power, but heat pump systems can be installed at the whim of a home owner.
Since 2004 the EU has had the
CHP Directive
(Combined Heat and Power) in force, which is supposed to increase the proliferation of cogeneration and district heating within the EU. Despite this, the biggest observable change has often been households switching from mineral oil for heating to gas (due to perceived cost savings), along with a push for heat pumps.
When comparing the EU’s heating decarbonization efforts to nations which have fully embraced using nuclear power for DH and industrial heat, it raises many questions about the feasibility of creating a low-carbon DH system without involving nuclear power. It’ll be interesting to see how things work out in this regard the coming years, especially with the current energy crisis having completely torpedoed the economics behind involving fossil gas in any way.
[Heading image: The
Akademik Lomonosov
floating nuclear power plant, moored at Pevek, Russia. It provides power and heat to the isolated community.] | 28 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508642",
"author": "X",
"timestamp": "2022-09-01T17:18:02",
"content": "https://powering.mit.edu/project-faqs/cogeneration",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6508648",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2022-09-01T17:39:37"... | 1,760,372,579.174481 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/its-a-plane-its-a-train-um-its-both/ | It’s A Plane… It’s A Train… Um… It’s Both? | Al Williams | [
"News",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"hyperloop"
] | What kind of electric vehicle travels at 620 miles per hour (998 km/h)? According to Canadian and French company TransPot, their FluxJet will do it and they want to use it to virtually shrink the Great White North. An electric jet? Not exactly. The FluxJet is a magnetic levitation (maglev) train riding in a vacuum tube with contactless power delivery.
The company claims it can carry 54 passengers or 10 tons of cargo. You can see two videos about the concept below. Judging by the second video, the device might be controlled by a serial port — well, probably not, but we were still amused to see the directory of
tty
devices on the screen.
Pipe dream (no pun intended)? Maybe. But they did get $550 million in funding and a plan to build a line between Calgary and Edmonton that will take 45 minutes to traverse. Reports are that they did demonstrate a 1-ton 18-foot-long prototype, although we couldn’t find any actual video footage of that — just hints of it in the marketing videos.
Of course, this
isn’t the first such system
proposed as a “hyperloop” but they do seem to be building momentum financially. We aren’t clear what they are talking about with the “veillance flux,” but we also know that since they are a French-speaking organization, it may just be another way to say “sensors” because — we think — veillance is a French word that means watching. We also aren’t sure how a train in a vacuum has much in common with an airplane.
Maglev
isn’t new, either.
So what do you think? Do you want to go hundreds of miles an hour in a vacuum tube? Is this just another CGI boondoggle or will you really be able to traverse the Canadian tundra in a few hours? Elon Musk often gets credit for inventing the hyperloop, but we always remember Donald Fagan’s song, IGY which contains the line:
On that train, all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
That would be just under 2,500 miles per hour on the surface, although we imagine Fagan was thinking about cutting through the Earth. | 101 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508613",
"author": "nekoplanetd",
"timestamp": "2022-09-01T15:38:10",
"content": "What a waste of money and time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6508628",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2022-09-01T16:32:56",... | 1,760,372,578.533945 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/iron-nitrides-powerful-magnets-without-the-rare-earth-elements/ | Iron Nitrides: Powerful Magnets Without The Rare Earth Elements | Dan Maloney | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"coercivity",
"crystallography",
"hysteresis",
"iron",
"neodymium",
"nitrogen",
"permanence",
"physics",
"rare-earth",
"saturation"
] | Since their relatively recent appearance on the commercial scene, rare-earth magnets have made quite a splash in the public imagination. The amount of magnetic energy packed into these tiny, shiny objects has led to technological leaps that weren’t possible before they came along, like the vibration motors in cell phones, or the tiny speakers in earbuds and hearing aids. And that’s not to mention the motors in electric vehicles and the generators in wind turbines, along with countless medical, military, and scientific uses.
These advances come at a cost, though, as the rare earth elements needed to make them are getting harder to come by. It’s not that rare earth elements like neodymium are all that rare geologically; rather, deposits are unevenly distributed, making it easy for the metals to become pawns in a neverending geopolitical chess game. What’s more, extracting them from their ores is a tricky business in an era of increased sensitivity to environmental considerations.
Luckily, there’s more than one way to make a magnet, and it may soon be possible to build permanent magnets as strong as neodymium magnets, but without any rare earth metals. In fact, the only thing needed to make them is iron and nitrogen, plus an understanding of crystal structure and some engineering ingenuity.
Getting Everything Lined Up
To start things off, what even is a permanent magnet? Like many simple questions about nature, there’s no easy answer that doesn’t require a fair amount of hand-waving. Even physicists eventually get to a point where their answer comes down to, “We just don’t know.” But that doesn’t mean magnetism is a complete mystery, and the things that we do know about it are pretty straightforward, and actually help in understanding how both rare earth magnets and their alternatives work.
We’ve taken a stab at
the basics of magnetism
before, but to summarize, any charged particle, like an electron, has what’s known as an intrinsic magnetic moment, meaning they act like little magnets. In atoms with filled electron shells, these magnetic moments cancel each other out because each pair of electrons have moments that point in opposite directions. But in atoms with unpaired electrons in their outer shells, there’s nothing to cancel out the magnetic moments, which means these elements are magnetic. These elements tend to come from two specific areas of the periodic table: the d-block metals like cobalt, nickel, and iron, and the f-block
actinides
lanthanides, which include the rare-earth metals like samarium, neodymium, and praseodymium.
Ferromagnetic elements tend to have unpaired electrons, like those from the middle of the d- and f-blocks of the periodic table. But what about nitrogen, all the way over there in the p-block? Source:
Minute Physics
There’s more to a magnet than just where its ingredients came from on the periodic table, though. Magnetism is about getting all those intrinsic magnetic moments lined up and acting in the same direction. Just like the electrons in an atom of a magnetic element have to not fight each other, the atoms must also arrange themselves so that their magnetic moments are all pointing the same way. This is referred to as having a high magnetic anisotropy, and is one of the characteristics of strong magnets. Rare-earth metals like neodymium have very high magnetic anisotropy, which contributes to the strength of rare-earth magnets.
But rare-earth metals by themselves actually make pretty poor magnets, at least on a practical level. This is due to their relatively low Curie point, which is the temperature above which a substance loses its magnetic properties. At room temperature, a pure bar of neodymium wouldn’t be a magnet at all. In fact, it would need to be chilled to below 20 K to have any magnetic properties. To get around that, rare-earth metals are mixed with other ferromagnetic elements to form alloys that have a strong magnetic coercivity while also having a decent Curie point. The most common rare-earth magnet alloy, a combination of iron, neodymium, and boron, has a Curie temperature in the range of 300-400°C, depending on the exact mix of elements.
The Power of Crystals
Crystal structure of Fe
14
Nd
2
B. If you can figure it out, good luck to you. Source: Jun Sugiyama,
et al
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.3.064402
Going further down the rabbit hole of magnetism requires getting comfortable with the concepts of crystallography. This is a fiendishly complicated subject, with nomenclature and terminology that’s confusing because it seems like it’s the same as standard chemical formula notation, but it’s clearly not. A full understanding of how adding neodymium to iron makes a powerful permanent magnet, and how making a powerful magnet without any rare earth is possible, would require a deeper dive into crystallography than we have space for here. Luckily, the basics will suffice, along with a little hand waving. And credit is due here to my friend Zachary Tong, who pitched in and helped me get my head around these difficult topics.
The crystal structure of a substance is all about how its atoms pack together into ordered arrangements. The building block of crystals is called the unit cell, which is the smallest possible repeating unit of the crystal. For neodymium magnets, the unit cell formula is Nd
2
Fe
14
B. This is confusing when you look at schematics of the crystal structure, which show far more than two neodymium atoms and fourteen irons. But the important thing here is that the unit cell shape of Nd
2
Fe
14
B is what’s known as simple tetragonal (ST), which sounds like it should be a pyramid but is actually a cube that has been stretched along one axis. This axial asymmetry gives each crystal a high degree of magnetic anisotropy, which is part of the reason that neodymium magnets are so strong. The other factor is that the neodymium boosts the number of unpaired electrons in the alloy compared to plain iron alone, which makes for a stronger overall magnetic moment.
Rust Plus Fertilizer
So with all this in mind, how can the addition of nitrogen to iron make magnets that have properties comparable to rare-earth magnets? Again, it’s partly to do with the crystal structure, and partly to do with the electronic structure of the elements in the alloy. Iron normally has a unit cell that’s either body-centered cubic (BCC), where eight iron atoms are centered on the corners of a perfect cube and one atom is at the dead center, or face-centered cubic (FCC), with an atom at each corner and one in the center of each face. But when nitrogen is alloyed with iron, the cubic unit cell structure gets distorted in what’s known as a body-centered tetragonal (BCT) structure. What happens is that the nitrogen atoms get incorporated into the interstitial space of the crystal, elongating one side. This asymmetry is similar to the tetragonal crystal structure of neodymium magnets. Coupled with the ferromagnetic properties of iron, the result is a strongly magnetizable alloy without the need for rare-earth metals.
Crystal structure of α”-Fe
16
N
2
. Note how the nitrogen distorts and expands the cubic structure in one dimension. Source: “The occurrence and the crystal structure of α”-iron nitride”,
doi:10.1098/rspa.1951.0155
Iron nitrides are nothing new. Nitriding processes, such as gas nitriding by exposing heated steel to ammonia, have been used for steel finishing for more than a century. The more complex iron nitride α”-Fe
16
N
2
was first discovered in 1951; its magnetic properties were explored in the early 1970s and again in the 1990s as part of the search for new and better heads for hard drives and other magnetic recording media.
This alloy showed promise in magnetics but proved difficult enough to work with that results weren’t easily reproducible, so interest in α”-Fe
16
N
2
waned until the late 2000s, when methods of producing thin films of the material were developed. These experiments showed that these films may have two to three times the magnetic energy product, a key measurement in determining the strength of a magnet, than neodymium magnets. Along with all the other properties that have been discovered, this makes iron nitride an excellent candidate for a new kind of magnet without rare earth elements.
How to Make a Magnet
With most scientific discoveries, there’s a long way between the lab and a practical commercial product, and this is true with iron nitride magnetics. A lot of the recent advances in iron nitride permanent magnets have come from the lab of Jian-Ping Wang in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Four different methods for synthesizing bulk α”-Fe
16
N
2
material have been developed there, some of which show some promise in the industrial environment.
Device for straining FeN wire samples during annealing. Sample is #28, strain is supplied by tightening screw #62. Source:
US Patent application US20180294078A1
The earliest methods of making α”-Fe
16
N
2
required a high-temperature process with rapid quenching of the nitrided sample, which doesn’t lend itself to scaling up to industrial production. One of the first attempts to get around this was the use of ion implantation. This technique, in which ions are accelerated in a vacuum by a strong electric field and slammed into a target substrate, is common in semiconductor manufacturing, where it is used to dope silicon wafers. To make iron nitride magnets, pure iron foils 500 nm thick are mounted on a silicon substrate and bombarded with atomic nitrogen ions. This is followed by a series of annealing steps, which activate the implanted nitrogen and produce a thermal strain in the material that traps the nitrogen inside the foil’s crystal structure, producing the distortion necessary. Foils of α”-Fe
16
N
2
made this way show hard magnetic behavior, and practical magnets can be made by stacking the foil into layers and binding them into a single structure.
Low-temperature nitridation is also possible, using iron oxide nanoparticles as a starting material. In this method, the particles are treated with ammonia gas to get the nitrogen into the crystal structure. Alternatively, iron oxide can be mixed with ammonium nitrate in a planetary ball mill; after a few days of milling at 600 rpm, the stainless steel balls decompose the ammonium nitrate into elemental nitrogen, which diffuses into the iron nanoparticles. The resulting α”-Fe
16
N
2
is then separated by magnet and can be formed into solid shapes. This method seems like it would easily scale up to an industrial process.
High-temperature nitridation of iron foils and wires is also possible. This method uses ribbons of an iron-copper-boron alloy and exposes it to an atmosphere of ammonia and hydrogen at 550°C for 28 hours, followed by a rapid treatment at 700°C and an ice-water quench. A variation on this method is the strained-wire approach, where high-purity iron is melted in a crucible with urea. The nitrogen that decomposes from the urea diffuses into the iron, and the mixture goes through heat treatment and quenching steps before being hammered flat and cut into strips. The strips are put into a straining device and stretched during an annealing step, which serves to elongate the crystal structure and trap the diffused nitrogen.
Strong permanent magnets aren’t the only thing that iron nitrides might be good for. Soft magnetics, which are materials with lower coercivity and are good for things like the cores of transformers and inductors, or for read-write heads of magnetic media, may also be possible by
doping α”-Fe
16
N
2
with elements like carbon, oxygen, or boron
. These dopants reduce the magnetic anisotropy of the crystal structure, making it harder to permanently magnetize them while maintaining high saturation magnetization.
There’s a lot of promise to so-called “clean-earth” magnets — so much so that the University of Minnesota has spun off a company, Niron Magnetics, to turn the concepts and processes into products. We’re keen to see where this technology goes, and look forward to powerful magnets made with nothing but rust and fertilizer. | 41 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508603",
"author": "Andy Ince",
"timestamp": "2022-09-01T14:51:00",
"content": "A really interesting article. I studied crystallography as part of a Geology degree and it is very challenging to visualise some of the more complex silicate structures found on rock minerals. Good to s... | 1,760,372,578.397507 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/custom-calculator-brings-us-back-to-the-70s/ | Custom Calculator Brings Us Back To The 70s | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"70s",
"arduino",
"calculator",
"cherry mx",
"display",
"keys",
"mechanical",
"microcontroller",
"switch"
] | There are certain design aesthetics from every era that manage to survive the fads of their time and live throughout history. Ancient Greek architecture is still drawn upon for design inspiration in modern buildings, the mid-century modern style from the 60s still inspires various designs of consumer goods, and the rounded, clean looking cars from the 90s are still highly desirable qualities in automotive design. For electronics, though, we like this
70s-inspired calculator that [Aaron] recently built
.
The calculator hearkens back to the days of calculators like the
HP-29C
with its large buttons and dot-matrix display. [Aaron] built the case out of various woods with a screen angled towards the user, and it uses a LCD display similar to those found in antique calculators. The brain of the calculator is an Arduino which fits easily into the case, and [Aaron] also built the keyboard from scratch with Cherry MX-style mechanical keys soldered together into a custom shape.
The software to run the calculator is fairly straightforward, but we are most impressed with the woodworking, styling, and keyboard design in this build. [Aaron] is also still ironing out some bugs with the power supply as it uses a DC-DC converter to power the device from a single lithium battery. For those who are more fond of early 2000s graphing calculators instead, be sure to take a look at this
graphing calculator arcade cabinet
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508587",
"author": "Jack",
"timestamp": "2022-09-01T13:29:29",
"content": "Nice keyboard/calc.Those individual switch breakout boards make great sense for ergonomic keyboards where the keys are on a 3d curve. They’d also be great for optical switches; I can imagine a ws2812 type c... | 1,760,372,578.306231 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/30/an-amstrad-portable-you-wont-have-seen/ | An Amstrad Portable You Won’t Have Seen | Jenny List | [
"Cyberdecks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Amstrad",
"amstrad cpc",
"CPC464"
] | Of all the players in the home computer world in the 1980s, Alan Sugar’s Amstrad was a step ahead in ease of use over its competitors. The Amstrad CPC series of computers came with their own monitors that also had a built-in power supply, and featured built-in data recorders or disk drives as standard. Despite having a line of business computers and an eventual move into PC territory that included portable machines, Amstrad never produced a CPC which wasn’t anchored to the desktop. [Michael Wessel] has taken that challenge on himself with a CPC464 that had a broken cassette recorder,
and come up with a creditable take on a portable computer that never was
.
Starting with an ethos of not modifying the CPC case more than necessary, the defective tape drive has gone to be replaced with an HDMI TFT screen and a video converter board. In went a 512K RAM expansion, an SD card disk expansion, and a stereo amplifier. A small power supply board also takes power for the unit via USB-C, such that it can operate from a power bank.
The result is a fully functional and hugely expanded CPC that’s as much cyberdeck as it is retrocomputer, and given that if we remember correctly that these machines were CP/M capable it could be of greater use than simply gaming. [Michael] hasn’t
entered his creation into our ongoing Cyberdeck Contest
, but we think it would make a strong contender.
This isn’t the first Amstrac CPC we’ve shown you,
here’s a very different take on a modernized machine
. | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507960",
"author": "mathman",
"timestamp": "2022-08-30T20:26:17",
"content": "Okay, THAT is cool!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6507970",
"author": "Chaosbc",
"timestamp": "2022-08-30T21:15:54",
"content": "Awesom... | 1,760,372,578.622988 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/30/monitoring-a-cats-litter-box-usage-with-ai/ | Monitoring A Cat’s Litter Box Usage With AI | Lewin Day | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"home hacks"
] | [
"cat",
"cat litter",
"litter box",
"litterbox",
"pet",
"pets"
] | [Estefannie] is a proud cat owner, but one of her cats has a bad habit of eating plastic. That means she needs to keep an eye on that cat’s bowel movements, but with two cats in the house, it’s difficult to know who did what. Thus, she whipped up an AI system
to log her cats bathroom visits and give her peace of mind.
It’s not the most glamorous project — [Estefannie] notes she took over 50,000 pictures of her cats using the litterbox to train Microsoft Azure’s Custom Vision model. But after some work, it could readily identify which cat was using the litter box when fed images from a NoIR camera. The system then differentiates between number 1 and number 2 via the time the cat spends in the litter box. It’s not perfect, but it works.
The Raspberry Pi runs a Node.JS server to collate the results, paired with a website front-end for easy data display. That way, anyone on [Estefannie’s] WiFi network can see who did what from a browser. We’ve seen
cat litter boxes put on the Internet of Things
before, and we’ve even seen people hack
litterbox DRM
, too. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507962",
"author": "Arthur G. Mezins",
"timestamp": "2022-08-30T20:35:41",
"content": "I had a major plastic (sheet) eating cat that ended up getting megacolon and shortly after that diagnosis, he died, as he wasn’t having a good time of it. I tried hard to make his favorite snack ... | 1,760,372,578.578912 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/30/militaries-are-rushing-to-get-anti-drone-lasers-operational/ | Militaries Are Rushing To Get Anti-Drone Lasers Operational | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"anti-air",
"drone",
"laser",
"laser weapon"
] | Flying drones have been a part of modern warfare for a good few decades now. Initially, most of these drones were built by traditional military contractors and were primarily used by the world’s best-funded militaries. However, in recent conflicts in Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere have changed all that. Small commercial drones and compact militarized models have become key tools on the battlefield, for offense, defence, and reconnaissance.
With so many of these tiny craft buzzing around, militaries are scrambling for practical ways to shoot them down. Lasers might be just the ticket to do exactly that.
Why Lasers?
The Mobile Expeditionary High Energy Laser 2.0, or MEHEL 2.0, is a US-built anti-drone laser system that has been trialed on Stryker combat vehicles. It can be seen here as the tan unit fitted on top of the vehicle. Credit: US Army, public domain
Shooting down
drones
, even the basic plasticky ones you get at Walmart, is a frustrating exercise. They’re tiny, and thus surprisingly difficult to see. They can also be difficult to detect, even if their radio emissions do help track them down.
The big problem for modern militaries, though, is that drones are often incredibly cheap. It’s simply not practical to fire a $10,000 or $50,000 missile to shoot down a drone worth a tenth of the price. Bullets are cheaper, but without guidance, they’re more difficult to get on target. The ones that miss tend to fall back to Earth, injuring people in the process. Plenty of them
will
miss, too, because those tiny drones are both very maneuverable, and again, very hard to track.
In many ways, lasers offer the perfect solution to this problem. The laser destroys targets by melting or incinerating drones with its powerful beam. There is no ammo involved, so many shots can be fired as long as the laser has power and doesn’t overheat. There are no shells flying through the air that will continue on to cause collateral damage, either. Of course, a laser weapon still requires a tracking system to aim at a target. However, unlike a guided missile, that expensive tracking system isn’t destroyed in an explosion when taking out a target.
Naturally, the reality of anti-drone laser technology will be nothing like what you might have seen in the movies.
Star Wars
-style pulses of light and
pew pew
sounds simply don’t reflect reality. Instead, laser weapons are more likely to be silent, barring the whirr of any cooling equipment, and many will likely rely on infrared laser technology which is invisible to the human eye.
The MEHEL 2.0 system has racked up many successful drone kills in testing. Credit: US Army, public domain
Defence contractor Raytheon
has recently announced
it will invest in a new European hub to develop laser weaponry. Its primary goal will be to develop laser weapons to take out small drones, and will work on testing and fielding such hardware for military applications. These lasers would likely be intended for use on military vehicles, which can both house and carry the weapon system while providing it with the necessary power to fire.
Other countries are rushing to field their own systems, too. Russia claims to have used an anti-drone laser with 5 km range in Ukraine
in May this year.
Meanwhile,
French company CILAS
is citing success with a system that relies on radar or camera tracking, and uses a laser under 10 kW power to destroy small drones. China has developed a system
using a fiber laser
operating in the tens of kilowatts range, while Lockheed Martin also has a similar system in development, with an eye to
defending against drone swarms.
The US Army’s own
MEHEL 2.0 laser testbed
has also shown much success at engaging drones in testing.
Defensive laser weapons have applications for land, sea, and air vehicles. Being able to shoot down incoming enemy drones or munitions can have a major effect on a unit’s ability to operate in or around a contested battleground. Credit: US Navy, public domain
It comes at a time that other laser weapon systems are also coming to fruition. The US Air Force has long pursued lasers as a potential way to defend aircraft from incoming missiles.
Earlier this year
, the Air Force received prototype lasers from Lockheed Martin designed for this very purpose, operating in the 60 kW range. The hope is that these high-performance lasers, mounted in pods carried by aircraft, could shoot down incoming missiles before they get close enough to do any real harm.
Unlike anti-missile lasers for fighter jets, those targeting small drones will likely be somewhat more achievable to field in the near term. They likely won’t need to be as powerful, as often they’ll be used to destroy craft made out of plastics and composites rather than advanced aerospace metal alloys. They’ll also operate at far shorter ranges. An incoming air-to-air missile moves at many times the speed of sound, so tracking and destroying it at long range is key. Small drones move at maybe a few hundred kilometers per hour at best, so it’s far more practical to deal with them at closer range.
As the tragic warfare this year has shown, even cheap, tiny drones are changing the face of the battlefield. Laser weapons seem the best way for militaries to counter this threat. All that’s left to do is develop and field them in real numbers, and the metagame of modern warfare will shift once again. | 121 | 33 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507910",
"author": "Twisty Plastic",
"timestamp": "2022-08-30T17:15:42",
"content": "It’s just a cat and mouse game. As this is perfected we will see drones with shiny, or sacrificial surfaces.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,372,578.939029 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/30/custom-printed-knobs-in-just-a-few-lines-of-code/ | Custom Printed Knobs In Just A Few Lines Of Code | Tom Nardi | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"3D printed parts",
"knob",
"openscad",
"parametric design"
] | While not everyone is necessarily onboard for the CAD-via-code principle behind OpenSCAD, there’s no denying the software lends itself particularly well to parametric designs. Using a few choice variables, it’s possible to make a model in OpenSCAD that can be easily tweaked by other users — even if they have zero prior experience with CAD.
Take for example this
parametric-knob-maker written by [aminGhafoory].
The code clocks in at less than 100 lines, but if you’re looking to spin up your own version, all you
really
need to pay attention to are the clearly labeled variables up at the top. Just plug in your desired diameter and height, fiddle around a bit with the values that get fed into the grip generating function, and hit F7 to export it to an STL ready for printing.
Now admittedly, all the knobs generated with this code will look more or less the same. But that’s the beauty of open source, should you want to print out some wild looking knobs, you can at least use this code as a basis to build on. With the core functionality in place, you just need to concern yourself with writing a new function to generate a grip texture more to your liking.
Of course, if you want to make your OpenSCAD designs even easier for others to modify,
you’ll want to look into its impressive customizer capability
which replaces manually edited variables with friendly sliders and text input boxes.
Projects like the
Ultimate Box Maker
we looked at back in 2018
are an excellent example of how powerful OpenSCAD can be if you give your design the proper forethought. | 27 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507884",
"author": "Severe Tire Damage",
"timestamp": "2022-08-30T15:58:35",
"content": "OpenSCAD rules! There is nothing better.Thanks for posting this — it is yet one more thing I can study and learn from.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,578.756237 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/30/maiden-kansas-city-keyboard-meetup-was-a-clacking-good-time/ | Maiden Kansas City Keyboard Meetup Was A Clacking Good Time | Kristina Panos | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Kansas City",
"keyboard",
"keyboard meetup",
"mechanical keyboard",
"mechanical keyboard meetup",
"meetup"
] | Wow! I can’t believe it already came and went — but the first annual (semi-annual?) Kansas City Keyboard Meetup was, in my opinion, a rousing success. And I think organizer and Discord-nominated god among men [Ricardo] agrees with me. (He does; I checked before we left the venue.)
First of all, the attendance was off the charts, perhaps thanks in part to our announcement last week. We aim to get you the news sooner next time, in case you want to come in from surrounding states and municipalities. RSVPs sat around 20-something, and then shot up to 60 or so in the days leading up. Fortunately, there were enough tiny sandwiches, granola bars, and s t i c k e r s to go around. I already put mine on my keebin’ toolbox.
The Hive Was Buzzing
The event took place at Hive Co-Working thanks to [Nick], and overall, the space turned out to be a good layout. We were set up right inside the windows looking out to the street, and I like to think that we drew in a few passers-by, though I am probably more than a little bit biased. I wondered aloud on the way home how a sandwich board out on the sidewalk would have affected the influx of randos.
My husband pointed out that even though we were all the way downtown, this is Kansas City and not New York City, and most of the keyboard enthusiasts about town were already accounted for. Hmpf. I still say we should try a sandwich board next time. We could go meta and mention the tiny sandwiches inside. Don’t worry — there was plenty of sanitizer and napkins to go around, plus a box of gloves.
Anyway, between the bricks of the building, the big windows, broad daylight, potted cacti, and keyboards of all vintages everywhere, it was like
r/mk
come to life. I got there, put my bags down, located [Ricardo], and started getting set up. Since it was on top, I started by putting my plastic divider box full of handmade keycaps on the food table, which seemed appropriate.
Everything else I was able to place nearby, except for my goofy cigar box keyboard that I built to play
Sesame Street pinball
. That went on the table by the door with the stickers, the giveaway bowl full of the names of hopeful clackers, and the thank-you cards that are going back to those companies that provided items for the various giveaways. Next time, I’ll set up a laptop so people can play.
Weirdo Boards, Mine and Otherwise
I was going to bring one or both of my Kinesis Advantages — one black and one yellow-beige — and they would have been in good company with [Andrew]’s nearly identical pair. But alas, I forgot, and there wasn’t really room for them anyway. Not on any of the tables in the main room, nor the big table in the adjacent conference room.
Admittedly, [Andrew] had the cooler setup, anyway — a Kinesis Advantage MPC Classic running ADB on a thicc PowerBook. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it into the boardroom before the video died, but [Andrew] got a picture of it in time.
Here’s what I did bring:
Infogrip BAT
— I have one left and one right, and they don’t match cosmetically, but that’s okay.
Model M — this one was born in June of 1987. It was my daily driver for a long time, and it makes a fine gaming keyboard as long as you’re home alone.
the
ErgoDox
that I
built
— I ended up selling this baby.
2% Malk
— I finally put the decals on the morning of the meetup!
T1-99/4A keyboard — I bought this by itself on ebay thinking it would make a good cyberdeck keyboard. I think I talked about the switches once. . . [link to Keebin’ maybe if it’s true]
the
X-Bows
— mostly so other people could try this sort of entry-level split. Mostly, I just commiserated with another owner about the things we don’t like.
Boards Galore, From Here to the Boardroom
Alright, enough about my stuff. There were plenty of other cool tools, including few mice, one of which was sprawled out across the real estate between the key wells of a Kinesis Advantage. And the whole thing really was a good mix of vintage boards, weirdo stuff, custom builds, and the colorful candy of modern rectangles and near-rectilinears. And I was not the only one who brought artisan keycaps. A few others were sprinkled about, both resin and not.
Here are all the old boards I saw that weren’t mine:
As if there weren’t enough different things to clack on, someone brought a comprehensive switch tester. And someone else brought a keeb that resembles a switch tester.
And now for something completely different: a huge DEF CON badge!
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/daft_punk.mp4
All in all, I had a great time, and it went by way too quickly. I have a ton of ideas for next time, and I can’t wait to see how the meetup and the scene evolve over time. Thanks again to [Ricardo] for organizing, [Nick] for hooking us up with the Hive, and the vendors who provided the giveaway items. Whether you made it or missed it, come join us in
the Discord
. See you next time! | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507890",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-08-30T16:19:53",
"content": "Thank you [Kristina] for the report!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6508005",
"author": "Jonathan Wilson",
"time... | 1,760,372,579.288816 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/30/c64-turned-theremin-with-a-handful-of-parts/ | C64 Turned Theremin With A Handful Of Parts | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"c64",
"commodore 64",
"theremin"
] | The theremin is popular for its eerie sound output and its non-contact playing style. While they’re typically built using analog hardware, [Linus Åkesson] decided to make one
using the venerable Commodore 64.
The instrument works by measuring the capacitance between its two antennas and the Earth. As these capacitances are changed by a human waving their hands around near the respective pitch and volume antennas, the theremin responds by changing the pitch and volume of its output.
In this case, the humble 555 is pressed into service. It runs as an oscillator, with its frequency varying depending on the user’s hand position. There’s one each for pitch and volume, naturally, using a clamp and spoon as antennas. The C64 then reads the frequency the 555s are oscillating at, and then converts these into pitch and volume data to be fed to the SID audio chip.
[Linus Åkesson] demonstrates the build ably by performing a slow rendition of
Amazing Grace
. The SID synthesizer chip in the C64 does a passable job emulating a theremin, used here with a modulated pulse wave sound. It’s an impressive build and one we fully expect to see at a big chiptune show sooner rather than later. We’re almost surprised nobody came out with a C64 Theremin cartridge back in the day.
We’ve seen other fancy theremin-inspired builds recently too,
like this light-based design
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507812",
"author": "Justin",
"timestamp": "2022-08-30T12:03:39",
"content": "Great idea. Now let’s make a Theremin controlled doorbell out of this.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6507816",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,372,579.211797 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/30/a-beautiful-diy-guided-saw/ | A Beautiful DIY Guided Saw | Dave Rowntree | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"custom tool",
"saw",
"woodworking"
] | [JSK-koubou] has quite the talent for creative woodwork, particularly building interesting tools or improving existing ones. This recent project (multiple build videos below:
part 1
,
part 2
, and
part 3
) is a very flexible type of guided pull saw, whereby a fine-toothed saw blade is fixed in the bed, and the workpiece is pulled over it it. By fixing it at a shallow angle, and enabling the blade to be raised up through the bed, the workpiece can be progressively cut by simply pulling it over the blade, then winding it up a little until the final cut length is achieved.
From a construction perspective, the tool is all-metal, built from a collection of the off-the-shelf parts, and thick, hand-cut aluminium alloy plate, nary a CNC tool in sight. The only unusual component is the saw blade itself,
which might be a bit tricky to track down if you were so inclined to reproduce the build. It appears (well if you believe the auto-translation by Google Lens, anyway) to be a spare blade for a commercial guide saw available in Japan at least.
We found it particularly pleasing to see the use of a home-built anodizing setup to give it a bit of a jazzy color scheme for some of the plates, just because. Like with many of the build videos from this YouTuber, it is well worth watching all of them, if only just to gather a few ideas for one’s own workspace, if you can stop yourself getting distracted looking at all the other neat tools he uses on the way.
DIY tool builds are not uncommon in these parts, here’s a neat
DIY combo table-based project
, and here’s a homebrew
auto-lowering metal bandsaw
which could be a real timesaver. | 19 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507776",
"author": "Hugo",
"timestamp": "2022-08-30T08:51:00",
"content": "It’s a beautiful build, but let’s be clear, this isn’t a creative design, it’s a faithful clone of a commercially available tool, the Bridge City Jointmaker Pro (JMP).",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,372,579.105662 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/31/water-level-sensor-does-not-use-water-level-sensor/ | Water Level Sensor Does Not Use Water Level Sensor | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"float",
"geolocation",
"LoRa",
"LoRaWAN",
"pivot",
"sensors",
"stm32",
"water level"
] | When interfacing with the real world, there are all kinds of sensors available which will readily communicate with your microcontroller of choice. Moisture, pH, humidity, temperature, location, light, and essentially every other physical phenomenon are readily measured with a matching sensor. But if you don’t have the exact sensor you need,
it’s sometimes possible to use one sensor as a proxy for another
.
[Brian Wyld] needed a way to monitor the level of a remote body of water but couldn’t use a pressure or surface-level sensor, so he used a sensor typically intended for geolocation instead. This particular unit, an STM-type device with a built-in accelerometer, is attached to a rotating arm with a float at one end. As the arm pivots, the microcontroller reports its position and some software converts the change in position to a water level. It’s also paired with a LoRa radio, allowing it to operate off-grid.
Whether there is a design requirement to use an esoteric sensor to measure something more common, or a personal hardware limitation brought about by a shallow parts drawer, there’s often a workaround like this one that can accomplish the job. Whatever the situation, we do appreciate hacking sensors into other types of sensors
just as much as anything else
. | 26 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508213",
"author": "Marcus",
"timestamp": "2022-08-31T15:57:41",
"content": "Sorry to nitpick, but it’s wrong to write that it senses position: it senses *orientation*, and that makes a lot more sense: The project uses an *accelerometer*.It’s not the change in position (you can of ... | 1,760,372,579.347714 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/31/we-cant-switch-to-electric-cars-until-we-get-more-copper/ | We Can’t Switch To Electric Cars Until We Get More Copper | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"electric vehicles",
"ev",
"evs",
"mining",
"renewable",
"renewable energy",
"renewables"
] | Reducing emissions from human activity requires a great deal of effort in many different sectors. When it comes to land transport, the idea is generally to eliminate vehicles powered by combustion engines and replace them with electric vehicles instead. At a glance, the job is simple enough. We know how to build EVs, and the technology is getting to the point where they’re capable of replacing traditional vehicles in many applications.
Of course, the reality is not so simple. To understand the problem of converting transportation to electric drive en masse, you have to take a look at the big numbers. Focus in on the metrics of copper,
and you’ll find the story is a concerning one.
Raw Materials Are Key
Switching over to EVs isn’t just as simple as drawing up the blueprints for new models and churning them out. Unfortunately, the world’s industrial infrastructure has been built up and honed over the last century or so to build enough cars, trucks, and buses to suit the world’s demands, give or take some wobbles with supply chains in the last few years. There are sprawling factories located all over the world, dedicated solely to the tasks of churning out engines, fuel systems, and chassis for these vehicles, numbering in the millions each year.
“
Geely assembly line
” by Siyuwj
As of yet, there aren’t enough factories to churn out motors, battery packs, and ancilliary hardware to replace all those combustion drivetrains. That’s assuming that the world’s existing body plants could build enough EV-ready chassis in the first place. Worsening the problem, we simply aren’t digging up enough raw materials to feed these non-existent factories in the first place.
Foremost amongst the materials that we lack is copper. As an excellent conductor, it’s a fundamental ingredient in everything electrical and electronic. When it comes to electric vehicles, where efficiency is paramount, it’s often not practical to replace it with other conductors like aluminium, either.
In fact, a modern EV requires approximately twice as much copper as a traditional combustion-engined vehicle. Thus, if we want to eventually have the entire car industry only building electric vehicles, that’s going to up the car industry’s copper demands by 150%.
It’s not just EVs that are increasing the demand for copper, either. EV chargers also require plenty of copper, too. Add in the demands from the renewable energy sector, for things like solar panels and wind turbines to run those chargers, and the figure gets ever larger.
Analytics firm S&P Global pegs worldwide copper demand to
double by 2035.
The increase will continue towards 2050, with projections suggesting a world demand of 53 million metric tons . The company’s report bases these figures on the amount of copper required for countries to achieve existing net-zero emissions targets. At best, the company predicts minor deficits in copper supplies in coming decades, assuming mining operations ramp up their efforts and recycling is pursued in earnest.
According to the US Geological Survey, the total amount of discovered copper on Earth is in the realm of 2.8 billion metric tons. Estimates suggest there’s another 3.5 billion metric tons of copper out there
somewhere
still waiting for us to find it. That’s plenty to serve us well into the future, but first it needs to be dug out of the ground and processed into usable material.
“
Chuquicamata copper mine
” by Alexander Gerst. (Taken from the ISS!)
Currently, the world’s biggest producer of copper is Chile, putting out 5.7 million tons in 2020, with that number largely remaining stable over the last few years of reporting. The country hosts most of the largest copper mines in the world. Peru and China come in second and third place, producing 2.2 million tons and 1.7 million tons respectively. With 40% of copper output coming from Chile and Peru alone, sources of copper are relatively highly concentrated compared to other materials on the market.
In order to bump up production, new mines will have to be established and existing ones expanded. Of course, for mining companies to act, first these other sources of copper must look profitable on paper. As it stands, discoveries of new deposits have been
few and far between
, of late, and they’ve been of lower grades that are less attractive to mine, financially speaking. As per the way the world commodities market tends to work, we will likely see copper prices spike as shortages bite, before miners rush in to develop new copper deposits that are now profitable to work with.
As it stands, legislation has passed in several jurisdictions to ban combustion-engined vehicles and force a switch to EVs. Similarly, there’s huge pent-up demand for new renewable energy projects, particularly after this year’s spikes in fossil fuel prices amidst disrupted supplies. Copper demand isn’t going anywhere, so sooner or later, the world will have to get digging, and fast. If I owned a mining company, I’d want to get a head start. | 205 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508161",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2022-08-31T14:04:51",
"content": "Is it really “reducing emissions” switching from ICE engines to EVs or is it more a matter of “Changing emissions” ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,372,579.987156 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/31/building-a-glowing-demon-core-lamp/ | Building A Glowing Demon Core Lamp | Lewin Day | [
"History",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"demon core",
"experiment",
"lamp",
"Los Alamos National Laboratory",
"nuclear"
] | The so-called
Demon Core
was a cursed object, a 6.2 kilogram mass of plutonium intended to be installed in a nuclear weapon. Instead, slapdash experimental techniques saw it feature in several tragic nuclear accidents and cause multiple fatalities. Now, you can
build yourself a lamp themed after this evil dense sphere.
A later recreation of the infamous “Slotin Accident” that occurred with the Demon Core. Credit: Public Domain, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Creator [skelly] has designed the lamp to replicate the
Slotin incident
, where the spherical
Demon Core
was placed inside two half-spheres of beryllium which acted as neutron reflectors to allow it to approach criticality. Thus, the core is printed as a small sphere which is thin enough to let light escape, mimicking the release of radiation that doomed Louis Slotin. The outer spheres are then printed in silvery PLA to replicate the beryllium half-spheres. It’s all assembled atop a stand mimicking those used in the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1940s.
To mimic the
Core’s
deadly blue glow, the build uses cheap LED modules sourced from Dollar Tree lights. With the addition of a current limiting resistor, they can easily be run off USB power in a safe manner.
The
Demon Core
has become a meme in recent times, perhaps as a new generation believes themselves smart enough not to tinker with 6.2 kilograms of plutonium and a screwdriver. That’s not to say there aren’t still dangerous nuclear experiments going on,
even the DIY kind
. Be careful out there! | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508117",
"author": "bob",
"timestamp": "2022-08-31T11:14:39",
"content": "The demon core gets a lot of coverage on youtube, but what gets forgotten are the incidents where multiple workers at los alamos were injected with plutonium solutions as guinea pigs. My pet theory is the dem... | 1,760,372,579.400645 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/31/electromagnetic-field-drops-2022-talk-videos/ | Electromagnetic Field Drops 2022 Talk Videos | Jenny List | [
"cons"
] | [
"electromagnetic field",
"talks",
"videos"
] | Earlier this year we made the journey to a field in the West of England for the Electromagnetic Field hacker camp. It was the usual few days of fun in the open air, but due to a few technical difficulties we were unable to point you to any of the talks. We’re happy to note that now the dust has settled they are uploading talks, and
there are a decent number up on YouTube with more to come
.
Paging through the talks uploaded so far, and there’s plenty to get your teeth into. We’ll start with a couple that should be viewed as a pair,
[Robin Wilson] on UK railway signalling
, and [Anthony Williams] giving us
a crash course in railway safety
, and then while we’re on a railway theme continue to [Hugh Wells] on
hacking the train ticket system
. Those first two amply demonstrate the best in our community, in that here are professionals sharing knowledge with us we’d never hear without working in that field.
Another esoteric talk that’s typical of a hacker camp schedule and which should be of interest to anyone who has wrestled with time synchronization comes from [John Dalziel], who gives us
a brief history of time zones and daylight saving time
. A talk that had me riveted during a train journey though came from [Cybergibbons], who describes
penetration testing at a cruise ship scale
.
These are just a few of the ones uploaded thus far, and as this is being written there are more appearing. So keep checking and you’ll see some really good ones. Meanwhile,
have a read of our report from the event
. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508291",
"author": "just passing",
"timestamp": "2022-08-31T18:01:33",
"content": "As someone who still reads “drops” as synonymous with “abandons”, I was a little confused for a moment…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "650829... | 1,760,372,581.565321 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/30/simple-hacks-to-make-lego-train-track-out-of-other-pieces/ | Simple Hacks To Make LEGO Train Track Out Of Other Pieces | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"lego",
"lego train",
"train",
"train set"
] | LEGO trains are fun to play with, but as with any model train, you so seldom have enough track to fulfill your greatest desires. YouTuber [brick_on_the_tracks] has come up with
some creative ideas of his own
to make track compatible with Lego trains using other techniques.
TRAINED LEGO PROFESSIONALS! DO NOT ATTEMPT IN REAL LIFE!
The most straightforward is to
use the LEGO fence piece
, first released in 1967. They can be laid in two rows, four studs apart, and they’ll serve as perfectly functional train track. It’s a 100% legal building technique as per the official LEGO rules, too. Official track pieces can be linked up by placing them on a 1-stud-high booster. [brick_on_the_tracks] argues that it’s up to nine times cheaper than using official track, but it depends on how you’re building your layout, and you need to take into account the need for a base plate.
On the sillier side of things, it’s actually possible to use mini-figures as track, too. Again, it’s a 100% legal technique, though the trains don’t run as smoothly compared to the fence track. It’s very amusing, though, and could be a fun addition to a build you’re taking to a local LEGO convention.
If you’re really strapped for cash though, you can go as far as
using cardboard.
It’s not legal in the LEGO world, and it’s pretty basic, but you could literally make up a layout using nothing but a craft knife and pizza boxes. We’ve actually featured other LEGO train hacks before,
like this neat automatic decoupler design
. | 27 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508043",
"author": "you wouldn't download a railway",
"timestamp": "2022-08-31T05:11:55",
"content": "Given the rails are pure plastic it’s also possible to 3D print them if desired. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while – actually a large part of why I even have a 3D printe... | 1,760,372,582.183293 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/30/making-a-pipe-crimper-from-scrap/ | Making A Pipe Crimper From Scrap | Dave Rowntree | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"chain sprocket",
"crimper",
"upcycling"
] | We love upcycling around these parts — taking what would be a pile of rusty scrap and turning it into something useful — and this
project from YouTuber [Hands on Table] is no different
. Starting with a pair of solid looking sprockets, one big, one small, and some matching chain, a few lumps of roughly hewn steel plate were machined to form some additional parts. A concentric (rear mounted) plate was temporarily welded to the sprocket so matching radial slots could be milled, before it was removed. Next, the sprocket was machined on the inside to add a smooth edge for the crimping fingers (is that the correct term? We’re going with it!) to engage with.
These fingers started life as an off the shelf 3/8″ HSS tool bit, ground down by hand, to produce the desired
crimping profile. A small piece of steel was welded on to each, to allow a small spring to act on the finger, enabling it to retract at the end of the crimping action. We did spot the steel plate being held in place with a small magnet, prior to welding. The heat from that would likely kill off the magnetic field in a short space of time, but they’re so cheap as to be disposable items anyway.
A small ring rides on top of the assembly, bolted to the fixed rear plate. The prevents the crimping fingers from falling out . The fingers are constrained by the slots in the rear plate, so the result is that they can only move radially. As the big sprocket is rotated, they get progressively pushed towards the center, giving that nice, even crimping action. Extra mechanical advantage is provided by driving the small sprocket with a wrench. Super simple stuff, and by the looks of the device in action, pretty effective at crimping the hose fittings it was intended for.
Taking one thing and turning it into something else may well be the very essence of hacking. We’ve seen many hacky upcycling efforts, such as this
bench disk sander built from a dryer machine motor
. Of course, upcycling is not limited to machines, tools and electronic doodads. Here a
trapper hat made out of an old skirt
. And why not?
Thanks to [Zane] for the tip! | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508022",
"author": "Danjovic",
"timestamp": "2022-08-31T02:15:25",
"content": "Awesome. Thanks for sharing the video.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6508028",
"author": "mh1992",
"timestamp": "2022-08-31T03:25:21",
... | 1,760,372,582.061905 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/30/lora-air-quality-monitor-raises-the-bar-on-diy-iot/ | LoRa Air Quality Monitor Raises The Bar On DIY IoT | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"environmental monitor",
"gas sensor",
"The Things Network",
"VOC detection"
] | We’ve seen an incredible number of homebrew environmental monitors here at Hackaday, and on the whole, they tend to follow a pretty predicable pattern. An ESP8266 gets paired with a common temperature and humidity sensor, perhaps a custom PCB gets invited to the party, and the end result are some values getting pushed out via MQTT. It’s a great weekend project to get your feet wet, but not exactly groundbreaking in 2022.
Which is why we find the
AERQ project from [Mircea-Iuliu Micle]
so refreshing. Not only does this gadget pick up temperature and humidity as you’d expect, but its Bosch BME688 sensor can also sniff out volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and gases such as carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The datasheet actually claims this is the “first gas sensor with Artificial Intelligence (AI)”, and while we’re not sure what exactly that means in this context, it’s a claim that apparently warrants a price tag of $15+ USD a pop in single quantities.
There’s an AI hiding in there someplace.
But the fancy sensor isn’t the only thing that sets AERQ apart from the competition. Instead of a member of the ubiquitous ESP family, it’s using the Wio-E5, a relatively exotic STM32 package that integrates a long-range LoRa radio. [Mircea-Iuliu] has paired that with a Linx USP-410 chip antenna or, depending on which version of the four-layer PCB you want to use, a u.Fl connector for an external antenna. The whole thing is powered by a simple USB connection, and its Mbed OS firmware is setup to dump all of its collected data onto
The Things Network
.
All told, it’s a very professional build that certainly wouldn’t look out of place if it was
nestled into some off-the-shelf air quality monitor
. While the high-end detection capabilities might be a bit overkill for home use, [Mircea-Iuliu Micle] points out that AERQ might provide useful insight for those running indoor events as COVID-19 transitions into its endemic stage. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6508008",
"author": "AQI enthusiast",
"timestamp": "2022-08-31T00:32:16",
"content": "great AQI monitor project.Particulate Matter is very useful for human safety air quality monitoring.thanks for posting",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,372,581.618942 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/29/a-primer-for-the-homebrew-game-boy-advance-scene/ | A Primer For The Homebrew Game Boy Advance Scene | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"coding",
"developer",
"game boy advance",
"games",
"gba",
"homebrew",
"programming",
"tutorial"
] | As video game systems pass into antiquity, some of them turn out to make excellent platforms for homebrew gaming. Not only does modern technology make it easier to interact with systems that are now comparatively underpowered and simpler, but the documentation available for older systems is often readily available as well, giving the community lots of options for exploration and creativity. The Game Boy Advance is becoming a popular platform for these sorts of independent game development,
and this video shows exactly how you can get started too
.
This tutorial starts with some explanation of how the GBA works. It offered developers several modes for the display, so this is the first choice a programmer must make when designing the game. From there it has a brief explanation of how to compile programs for the GBA and execute them, then it dives into actually writing the games themselves. There are a few examples that [3DSage] demonstrates here including examples for checking the operation of the code and hardware, some simple games, and also a detailed explanation the framebuffers and other hardware and software available when developing games for this console.
While the video is only 10 minutes long, we recommend watching it at three-quarters or half speed. It’s incredibly information-dense and anyone following along will likely need to pause several times. That being said, it’s an excellent primer for developing games for this platform and in general, especially since emulators are readily available so the original hardware isn’t needed. If you’d like to build something from an even more bygone era than the early 2000s, though, take a look at
this tutorial for developing games on arcade cabinets
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507749",
"author": "elwing",
"timestamp": "2022-08-30T05:56:11",
"content": "I’ll just leave that here:https://felixjones.github.io/gba-tutorial/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6507935",
"author": "Greg Chabala",
... | 1,760,372,582.111311 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/29/genshin-security-impact/ | Genshin Security Impact | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Genshin Impact",
"kernel driver",
"ransomware"
] | An MMORPG with cute anime-style characters and maybe a bit too much inspiration taken from another classic Nintento franchise, Genshin Impact is a relatively popular game across the PlayStation, iOS, Android, and PC platforms. That last one has already generated a bit of controversy, since the PC version game includes an anti-cheat kernel driver that runs in the Windows kernel context, and on initial release
that module kept running even after the game was closed
.
That anti-cheat driver is back in the news, with
Trend Micro discovering a ransomware campaign that includes
mhyprot2.sys
, the anti-cheat driver, as a component of the infection. The module is known to have vulnerabilities, and is still a signed kernel driver, so the malware campaign loads the driver and uses its functions to disable anti-malware protections.
The rest of the campaign is straightforward. Starting with access to a single domain-connected machine, an attacker uses that foothold to gain access to the domain controller. The malicious script is hosted on shared storage, and
PsExec
is used to run it on all the domain member machines. The real novelty here is the use of the vulnerable anti-cheat kernel driver as the anti-malware bypass. As far as we can tell, this driver is *still* signed and considered trustworthy by Windows. We join the call to Microsoft, to revoke this vulnerable driver, as it’s now actively being used in ongoing malware campaigns. For more on security,
check out our weekly column on the topic
, | 29 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507727",
"author": "bit",
"timestamp": "2022-08-30T03:21:35",
"content": "How we reached the point that consumers thought that anti-cheat in the form of a root-kit is acceptable, I’ll never know.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,372,581.684303 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/29/800-mountain-bike-seat-post-chopped-in-two/ | $800 Mountain Bike Seat Post Chopped In Two | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"bike",
"cable",
"dropper",
"electronic",
"reroute",
"seat post"
] | For those unfamiliar with the sport of mountain biking, it’s a wild hobby that is rife with hacking. It started in the early 70s when the first dedicated mountain bikers were hacking road bikes together to ride on trails to varying levels of success, but only in the last decade or so have there been a lot of electronics appearing in various bike parts that we can all tinker with as well. This video discusses some of the downsides with a very expensive electronic seat post on a mountain bike,
and attempts to solve its shortcomings by cutting it in half
.
This build involves a dropper seat post, which is an a
djustable seat for mountain biking
that functions like an office chair. By pushing a button on the handlebars, the seat post can be rapidly adjusted up or down on-the-fly. Normally these seat posts use a cable to actuate, but this expensive version is wireless. The only problem is the battery will occasionally fly off when hitting big jumps, so [Berm Peak Express] decided to cut the existing proprietary battery system out and create a new housing for it. The new housing has a wired extension for the battery in its new location under the seat instead of behind it, and this gives it the clearance it arguably should have had from the manufacturer.
While not the most involved project of all time, it does take a certain mentality to take a hacksaw to a bike part that costs more than a large percentage of bicycles. It’s a niche product to be sure, but it also shows that some of the biggest annoyances with proprietary parts are not too difficult to overcome. And, it is interesting to see the ways that some people are hacking bikes outside of
admittedly clever ebike conversions
. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507690",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2022-08-29T23:38:05",
"content": ">$800>ooh! it’s WIRELESS!CONSOOM",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6507691",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp... | 1,760,372,582.233988 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/29/magic-eye-tubes-go-solid-state-with-this-plug-in-replacement/ | Magic Eye Tubes Go Solid State With This Plug-In Replacement | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"6E5",
"6U5",
"cathode ray",
"indicator",
"magic eye",
"solid state"
] | Perhaps nothing added quite so much to the charm of vacuum tube circuits from back in the heyday of the vacuum tube as did the “Magic Eye” indicating tube. With the ghostly green glow of its circular face, magic eyes stood in for more expensive moving-coil meters for things like tuning indicators and VU meters. And while they may be getting hard to come by today, fear not —
this solid-state replacement for the magic eye tube
is ready to stand in for your restoration projects.
To pull off this clever build, [Gord Rabjohn] started with original 6E5 and 6U5 magic eye tubes, presumably ones that either no longer worked or had become too weak to see. The glass envelopes of the cathode-ray tubes were carefully cut from the sockets, and the guts of the tubes were discarded to make room for the replacement circuit, which lives on two PCBs. A rectangular control board holds an LM3915 bar graph LED driver chip, while a round display PCB holds 120 surface-mount green LEDs. The circular display board is mounted at the top of the control board and perpendicular to it, with a diffuser mounted above the LEDs. Everything is stuffed back into the original glass envelope and socket, making this a plug-in replacement for the tube.
The effect is quite convincing, as shown in the video below. True, you can see some evidence of the individual LEDs even with the diffuser, but honestly this just makes the display look more like the iris of an eye. We really like the look of this and we appreciate the work [Gord] put into it, especially the documentation. For a little more on how the tubes worked, check out
[Al Williams]’ article.
Thanks to [Adrian] for the tip. | 35 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507642",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-08-29T20:07:48",
"content": "Excellent!Now to build replacement LED displays for early HP calculators…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6507659",
... | 1,760,372,581.751335 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/29/2022-cyberdeck-contest-steampunk-cyberdeck-is-made-from-wood-leather-brass-and-e-paper/ | 2022 Cyberdeck Contest: Steampunk Cyberdeck Is Made From Wood, Leather, Brass And E-Paper | Robin Kearey | [
"contests",
"Cyberdecks"
] | [
"2022 Cyberdeck Contest",
"cyberdeck",
"e-ink display",
"steampunk"
] | Laptop screens have come a long way ever since the first LCD-equipped portables hit the market back in the 1980s. But even today’s high-resolution, full-color screens are not ideal for use in direct sunlight: limited contrast and annoying reflections can make reading awkward and working nearly impossible. Electronic-paper displays don’t suffer from those problems, but their low update speed and lack of color limit their use for general computing.
For some people however, the limitations of e-ink are not a deal-breaker. One of them is [Alleycat], who built
a portable computer specifically for use in direct sunlight
and equipped it with a 10.3″,
1872×1404 resolution e-ink display. It’s powered by a LattePanda Alpha 800s that runs Windows 10, and is mainly used for text-based tasks.
The LattePanda and the display are mounted inside a beautiful hand-made wooden case with a brass cover and leather straps, which makes it look like a kind of steampunk attaché case. A beefy power bank makes it a truly mobile machine, even though it doesn’t come with a built-in keyboard: [Alleycat] is too much of an ErgoDox fan to include anything inferior with the Steampunk Cyberdeck.
With an update rate of 15 Hz the display is nowhere near as fast as a modern TFT screen, but it looks entirely usable when [Alleycat] demonstrates scrolling in a web browser and even the classic DOS game
Alley Cat
. In fact, it reminds us of those first-generation LCD screens that were fitted on 286-class laptops back in the day, although with a vastly higher resolution.
We’ve seen a few e-ink based computer designs before, such as
this Macintosh Classic II
and
this e-ink laptop project
. The steampunk theme would go well with
a hand-crafted metal mouse
or
this tiny display
. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507603",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-08-29T18:35:35",
"content": "Nice, and while I understand his keyboard requirement, I think it should have a lid/cover to protect the screen when in transit.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"r... | 1,760,372,581.909206 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/29/review-lidl-parkside-micrometer/ | Review: Lidl Parkside Micrometer | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Reviews",
"Slider",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"lidl",
"metrology",
"micrometer"
] | A couple of years ago
we published a look at precision measurement tools
, in particular vernier calipers and micrometer screw gauges. It featured a look at how they work and how they’re used, and a comparison of good and bad quality instruments. When comparing micrometers we had three of them, a Mitutoyo and a Moore & Wright representing decent quality, and an £8 ($9.41) Daniu from Banggood from the cheaper end of the market. As you might expect, the Daniu was laughably bad, with noticeable play in its thread and jaws that were not parallel to the extent you could see light between them. You might consider it case closed for cheap micrometers then, were it not that while on my summer travels through the Benelux countries I spied
a Parkside micrometer
in a Lidl supermarket for €8.99 ($8.92). I had to buy it and investigate.
Some Measuring Devices With Your Groceries?
Lidl is a German supermarket chain that can be found all over Europe, and like their arch-competitor Aldi they feature the “Middle of Lidl” aisles full of all sorts of useful stuff that changes on a regular basis. Among this is a comprehensive range of tools under the Parkside brand, which is basically on par with the good stuff from Harbor Freight, and are in fact quite good for the price. Thus even though it’s about the same price as the Daniu I had higher expectations for the Parkside micrometer.
The micrometer is packaged in the usual plastic case in a small cardboard box, and comes with a large paper instruction sheet and a small spanner for zero adjustment. Taking it out of the case, it follows exactly as you’d expect from a micrometer with a solid drop-forged frame and an aluminium barrel on the micrometer head. It can measure up to 25 mm at a resolution of 0.01 mm, exactly like the others I tested in 2020. So my nine dollars or so has got me a micrometer, but is it any good? How do you evaluate a micrometer screw gauge? I re-borrowed the two comparison instruments from 2020, and set out to find out.
The Tiniest Sliver Of Light Gives It Away
The mirror finish on the Mitutoyo jaw face reflecting the “H” of the Hackaday website.
It’s worth saying that the jaw faces are polished, but not to a mirror finish as those on the Mitutoyo and neither do they appear to have been hardened. In the first instance, comparing with the Daniu I closed the jaws against the force of the ratchet, and held it up against the light to spot any imperfections in the way they meet. Against the blue sky through my window I couldn’t see any, but a friend did the same thing against the more intense point source of an electric light and indeed there was the tiniest discernable sliver of light. Not
the obvious wedge of light
I caught with the Daniu back in 2020 and less than the visible sliver of light when it is measuring a human hair, but definitely enough to knock a few hundredths of a milimetre off my trust in its accuracy.
The next step in the evaluation involves opening the jaws about half way, and feeling for any play in the thread. None discernable, at least one win over the Daniu which had the barrel flapping around with significant play. Then a zero test, after adjusting the zero position with the spanner a few repeated closings with the ratchet, to check that it always returns to the same zero point. In this case as with all micrometers it’s possible to overshoot the zero and damage the thread if you apply too much force, but just on the ratchet it would land in the same place. A pass on a couple of tests then, so while it’s not the worst micrometer ever it’s obvious that the low price brings at least one compromise.
A Tiny Discrepancy In Measurement
Opening up the three micrometers from the 2020 piece again it’s immediately obvious in the silky feel of the thread and the lack of wobble in the ratchet just where the money goes in an expensive micrometer, and just how comedically bad the Daniu was by comparison. But it’s the Parkside in our sights today, so it’s time to make a few comparitive measurements between it and the Mitutoyo. First up were the old standbys of a piece of paper and a human hair in which the Parkside returned the same as the Mitutoyo, and then the machined shaft of the Moore & Wright which returned a difference of 0.01 mm.
Parkside
Mitutoyo
Sheet of paper
0.12 mm
0.12 mm
Human hair
0.05 mm
0.05 mm
Moore & Wright shaft
6.79 mm
6.80 mm
The discrepancy in this table when measuring the shaft may be small, but it harks back to that sliver of light from imperfectly aligned jaws. As expected if the shaft meets the jaws at anything but the highest point of the jaw it will return a slightly smaller reading, thus it immediately has an error on everything it returns. Discussing it with friends there was raised the intriguing possibility of lapping the faces by drawing a sheet of exceptionally fine abrasive through the closed jaws, however I have my doubts as to whether this would do anything but make the gap worse.
What I can say about the Parkside micrometer screw gauge is that it appears reasonably well-built, but I can’t present it as the equal of the more expensive instruments when its faces are anything but parallel. I would say therefore that it would be good for basic measurements when machining or in CAD work where an error of 0.01 mm or 0.02 mm wouldn’t matter too much, but perhaps I wouldn’t quite trust it when working with extremely fine tolerances. Still, it’s not the worst among cheap micrometers and it’s on sale for a very reasonable price even if it’s not in the same precision instrument league as the Mitutoyo. If you don’t have a micrometer screw gauge yet then you could do a lot worse at this end of the market. | 50 | 24 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507575",
"author": "Your comment is awaiting moderation",
"timestamp": "2022-08-29T17:22:50",
"content": "Ah ….. it’s hard to beat the middle of lidl. I go into this super market with a set budget and often find myself battling between buying a completely non essential charcoal fir... | 1,760,372,582.005531 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/29/a-detonation-engine-prototyped-using-resin-printing/ | A Detonation Engine Prototyped Using Resin Printing | Dave Rowntree | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"arduino",
"jet engine",
"pulsejet",
"resin printing",
"Shchelkin sprial"
] | Over the years [Integza] has blown up or melted many types of jet engine, including the humble pulsejet. Earlier improvements revolved around pumping in more fuel, or forced air intakes, but now it’s time for a bit more refinement of the idea, and he takes a sidestep towards the more controllable detonation engine. His
latest experiment
(video, embedded below) attempts to dial-in the concept a little more. First he built a prototype from a set of resin printed parts, with associated tubing and gas control valves, and a long acrylic tube to send the exhaust down. Control of the butane and air injection, as well as triggering of the spark-ignition, are handled by an Arduino — although he could have just used a 555 timer — driving a few solid state relays. This provided some repeatable control of the pulse rate. This is a journey towards a very interesting engine design, known as the
rotating detonation engine
. This will be very interesting to see, if he can get it to work.
Supersonic exhaust plume with the characteristic ‘mushroom’ shape
Detonation engines operate due to the pressure part of the general thrust equation, where the action is in the detonative combustion. Detonative combustion takes place at constant pressure, which theoretically should lead to a greater efficiency than boring old deflagration, but the risks are somewhat higher. Apparently this is tricky to achieve with a fuel/air mix, as there just isn’t enough oomph in the mixture. [Integza] did try adding a
Shchelkin spiral
(we call them springs around here) which acts to slow down the combustion and shorten the time taken for it to transition from deflagration to detonation.
It sort of worked, but not well enough, so running with butane and pure oxygen was the way forward. This proved the basic idea worked, and the final step was to rebuild the whole thing in metal, with CNC machined end plates and some box section clamped with a few bolts. This appeared to work reasonably well at around 10 pulses/sec with some measurable thrust, but not a lot. More work to be done we think.
We hinted at earlier work on forced-air pulsejets, so
here that is
. Of course, whilst we’re on the subject of pulsejets, we can’t not mention [Colinfurze] and his
pulsejet go kart
. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507547",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-08-29T16:06:06",
"content": "The Attack; Killing Tomatoes!B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6507757",
"author": "Mystick",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,372,582.278516 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/28/automate-your-desk-with-the-upsy-desky/ | Automate Your Desk With The Upsy Desky | Bryan Cockfield | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"automation",
"controller",
"desk",
"ESP32",
"home",
"motorized",
"standing",
"USB C"
] | It might be surprising for some, but humans actually evolved to be long-distance runners. We aren’t very fast comparatively, but no other animal can run for as long or as far as a human can. Sitting at a desk, on the other hand, is definitely not something that we’re adapted to do, so it’s important to take some measures to avoid many of the problems that arise for those that sit at a desk or computer most of the day. This build takes it to the extreme,
not only implementing a standing desk but also a ton of automation for that desk as well
.
This project is an improvement on a prior build by [TJ Horner] called the
WiFi Standing Desk Controller
. This new version has a catchier name, and uses an ESP32 to run the show. The enclosure is 3D printed and the control board includes USB-C and a hardware UART to interface with the controller. The real perks of this device are the automation, though. The desk can automatically lift if the user has been sitting too long, and could also automatically lift if it detects no one is home (to help keep a cat off of the desk, for example). It also includes presets for different users, and can export data to other software to help analyze sitting and standing patterns.
The controller design is open source and could be adapted to work on a wide-array of powered desks. As we’ve seen in the past, with the addition of a motor,
even hand-crank standing desks can be upgraded
. If you haven’t gotten into the standing desk trend yet, we hope that you are at least occasionally going for a run. | 33 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507386",
"author": "Roger Roger",
"timestamp": "2022-08-29T02:18:15",
"content": "I went to school to be a draftsman (pencil+table). We had tables at almost elbow height and a stool that maintained our torso elevation regardless of sitting/standing. No need for automation, no cat... | 1,760,372,582.34842 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/28/sleep-posture-monitor-warns-you-away-from-dangerous-positions/ | Sleep Posture Monitor Warns You Away From Dangerous Positions | Dan Maloney | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"attiny85",
"IMU",
"life hacks",
"position",
"posture",
"sleep"
] | Age, we’re told, is just a number, but that number seems to be the ever-increasing count of injuries of a ridiculous nature. Where once the younger version of us could jump from a moving car or fall out of a tree with just a few scrapes to show for the effort, add a few dozen trips around the sun and you find that just “sleeping funny” can put you out of service for a week.
Keen to avoid such woes, [Elite Worm] came up with
this sleep posture alarm
to watch for nocturnal transgressions, having noticed that switching to a face-down sleeping position puts a kink in his neck. He first considered using simple mechanical tilt switches to detect unconscious excursions from supine to prone. But rather than be locked into a single posture, he decided to go with an accelerometer instead. The IMU and an ATtiny85 live on a custom PCB along with a small vibrating motor, which allows for more discrete alerts than a buzzer or beeper would.
Placed in a 3D printed enclosure and clipped to his shorts, the wearable is ready to go. The microcontroller wakes up every eight seconds to check his position, sounding the alarm if he’s drifting into painful territory. [Elite] did some power analysis on the device, and while there’s room for improvement, the current estimated 18 days between charging isn’t too shabby. The video below has all the details; hopefully, design files and code will show up on
his GitHub
soon.
Considering that most of us spend a third of our life sleeping, it’s little wonder hackers have attacked sleep problems with gusto. From
watching your brainwaves
to
AI-generated nonsense ASMR
, there’s plenty of hacking fodder once your head hits the pillow. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6693597",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2023-10-24T15:54:21",
"content": "Contact of this maker ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,582.383994 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/28/led-clock-uses-micro-qr-codes-to-show-the-time/ | LED Clock Uses Micro QR Codes To Show The Time | Robin Kearey | [
"clock hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"led matrix",
"micro QR",
"QR clock"
] | As you probably know, we love our clocks here at Hackaday. Odd display technologies are always interesting to see, as are unusual encoding techniques such as binary, ternary or higher-radix number systems. Still, clocks are typically meant to be human-readable, even if their encoding might be a little eccentric.
[Kitchi] however built
an LED-based clock that is not human-readable
, at least not without quite a bit of training. This is because it displays the time by generating a QR code, which only becomes readable to most humans through the use of a smartphone app. Of course, this negates the need for a clock since your smartphone will already have one anyway — but whoever said a clock needs to be useful?
To be fair, the display could conceivably be read by a determined human, since the QR format used is the tiny Micro QR M2 version that measures only 13×13 pixels. It’s capable of storing ten decimal digits, just enough to hold the date and time in
mmddhhmmss
format. The fixed part of the QR code is made of paper, while the variable part is formed through a grid of 90 white LEDs. The LEDs are mounted on a piece of prototype board along with a PIC 16F1504 microcontroller, two TM1637 LED drivers and a DS1307 real-time clock with battery backup.
If decoding QR codes is not your thing, or you simply haven’t got your smartphone on you, then the QR clock can also be set to a more human-readable format by adding a jumper. The time will then scroll across the LED screen in ordinary decimal format.
The video in the link is in Japanese, with no automatic translation available, but the build process is clearly shown and should be understandable even if you can’t follow the cheerful robotic narrator. We’ve seen a couple of QR-code based clocks before, some
with an LCD screen
and some
with retro styling
, but all of those use the larger standard QR code which definitely no human can decode visually. Or can you? Let us know in the comments!
Thanks for the tip, [J. Peterson]! | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507256",
"author": "Frankel",
"timestamp": "2022-08-28T11:14:57",
"content": "Didn’t pass my scan test in “Binary Eye” and “Barcode Scanner” from F-Droid.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6507309",
"author": "IIVQ",
... | 1,760,372,582.485147 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/28/high-speed-rc-jet-car-is-a-harsh-teacher/ | High Speed RC Jet Car Is A Harsh Teacher | Danie Conradie | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"jet engine",
"land speed racing",
"projectair",
"R/C car"
] | Making machines go fast has always been a seemingly unavoidable impulse for humans. With the advent of radio control, it’s possible to get a taste of the rush without putting your life and too much money on the line. In the spirit of speed, [James Whomsley]
strapped a jet turbine engine to an RC car
, and learned some hard lessons along the way.
The car started as a four-wheel drive electric race car, but [James] removed most of the drive train components and mounted the jet turbine engine on a pair of 3D printed struts. Originally intended for large-scale RC planes, the little jet engine produces about 120 N of thrust. To allow the car to stop, [James] kept the drive shafts and connected them to a centrally mounted disk brake unit.
For the
first high-speed test runs
, James added a vacuum-formed shell and a pair of large vertical stabilizers for high-speed stability. On the 3rd test run at a local racetrack, the car got up to 190 km/h (118 MPH) before it veered off the track and crashed. Fortunately, the chassis and engine only sustained minor damage and were easy to repair.
James rebuilt the car with a lower engine to reduce the center of gravity and added an electronic gyro in an attempt to stabilize the car at high speed. Time ran out, and he wasn’t able to test the car before taking it to a
high-speed RC event
held on a runway. This led to another crash when the car again veered off the track after badly oscillating. After checking the onboard footage, [James] discovered the receiver had experienced a loss of signal, and an incorrect fail-safe setting made the engine go full throttle. After more tests, James also found that excessive play in the steering mechanism had caused the gyro to induce oscillations.
Although this car failed in the end, [James] intends to take the lessons learned into a new high-speed car build. [rctestflight] also did some testing with an
EDF-powered RC car
recently, and used a drone flight controller for high speed stability. This is not [James]’ first foray into speed machines, having
previously experimented with a rocket plane
. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507275",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-08-28T13:27:16",
"content": "Is it time to dust off the “Fail of the Week” series?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6507289",
"author": "a_do... | 1,760,372,582.693785 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/27/giant-keyboard-is-just-our-type/ | Giant Keyboard Is Just Our Type | Kristina Panos | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"cardboard",
"guinnessbookofworldrecords",
"keyboard",
"particle board",
"PVC",
"rickroll"
] | We like big keyboards and we cannot lie, and we’ve seen some pretty big keyboards over the years. But this one — this one is probably the biggest working board that anyone has ever seen.
[RKade] and [Kristine] set out to make the world’s largest keyboard
by Guinness standards – and at 16 feet long, you would think they would be a shoe-in for the world record. More on that later.
As you might have figured out, what’s happening here is that each giant key actuates what we hope is a Cherry-brand lever switch that is wired to the pads of a normal-sized keyboard PCB. Once they designed the layout, they determined that there were absolutely no existing commercial containers that, when inverted, would fit the desired dimensions, so they figured out that it would take 350 pieces of cardboard to make 70 5-sided keycaps and got to work.
Aside from the general awesomeness of this thing, we really like the custom buttons, which are mostly made of PVC components, 3D printed parts, and a bungee cord for the return spring.
[RKade] encountered a few problems with the frame build — mostly warped boards and shrunken holes where each of the 70 keys mount. After the thing was all wired up (cleverly, we might add, with Ethernet cable pairs), [RKade] rebuilt the entire frame out of three-layers of particle board.
By the way, Guinness rejected the application, citing that it must be an exact replica of an existing keyboard, and it must be built to commercial/professional standards. They also contradict themselves, returning no search results for
biggest keyboard
, but offer upon starting a world record application that there is a record-holding keyboard on file after all, and it is 8 ft (2.4 m) long. It’s not
the concrete Russian keyboard
, which is non-functional, but we wonder if it might be
the Razer from CES 2018
that uses Kailh Big Switches.
Once the keyboard was up and running, [RKade] and [Kristine] duke it out over a game of
Typing Attack
, where the loser has to type all the lyrics to “Never Gonna Give You Up” on the giant keyboard. Check it out after the break.
Via
KBD #92 | 17 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507209",
"author": "rnjacobs",
"timestamp": "2022-08-28T05:22:51",
"content": "I wonder what was the scale of the keyboard that was at The Computer Museum in Boston, back when it still existed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,372,582.749328 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/27/a-raspberry-pi-handheld-computer-you-might-want-to-use/ | A Raspberry Pi Handheld Computer You Might Want To Use | Jenny List | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"Miryoku layout",
"Pad computer",
"pi handheld",
"portable computer"
] | Amid the many wonderful form factors being explored by the makers of cyberdecks, there’s one that’s emerged which harks back to an earlier generation of portable computers: the handheld pad with a keyboard. These units are typically around the size of a hardback book, with the upper half being a screen and the lower a keyboard.
The latest to come our way is from [Richard Sutherland]
, and it’s a very tidy pad computer indeed.
Inside the well-designed layered 3D printed case is the frequently-chosen Raspberry Pi 4, along with a PiSugar power supply board and 5,000 mAH battery and a 4.3″ touchscreen display. The keyboard has seen a lot of care and attention, featuring high-quality tactile switches that follow the
Miryoku keyboard layout
. He says it’s a thumb-typing keyboard, but anyone looking for more can either adapt the design to their liking or simply plug in an external board when faster typing is needed.
We like the pad computer trend
as it offers
useful computing power
in a far more convenient format than a laptop, and we think this is a particularly nice one. It would be nice to see where people take this design, and who knows, we might give one a try for writing some Hackaday articles. If you’d like to see more pad computer goodness, we recently showed you one built
in the shell of a classic Amstrad
. | 49 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507211",
"author": "Feinfinger (WIMP at work)",
"timestamp": "2022-08-28T06:03:49",
"content": "Would it run all day with one charge if using a Pi-zero as brain?That would make me write a letter to Santa…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,372,582.835232 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/27/youtube-like-its-1970s-france-with-this-minitel-vcr-mashup/ | YouTube Like It’s 1970s France With This Minitel-VCR Mashup | Dan Maloney | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"level shifter",
"lirc",
"mash-up",
"Minitel",
"raspberry pi",
"serial",
"vcr",
"vlc",
"youtube"
] | When it’s not just sticking fake gears on things and calling it a day, the Steampunk look is pretty cool. Imagining technology in a world stuck with Victorian aesthetics is a neat idea, and one that translates to the look of other time periods —
Fallout
, anyone?
But what if you try to create a technological aesthetic based on a more recent and less celebrated time? That’s what [ghettobastler] has attempted with
this somewhat bizarre Minitel-YouTube-VCR mash-up
. Taking inspiration from
a webcomic’s take on “Formicapunk,”
modern tech based on the aesthetic of the wildly successful French videotex service of the 70s and 80s, the system uses a very cool Minitel 1B terminal and a Raspberry Pi 3.
A custom level-shifter for the Pi
With the help of a level-shifting circuit, the Mintel and the Pi talk over serial, allowing the terminal to be used as, well, a terminal for the Pi. Videos are downloaded from YouTube by the Pi, which sends the video to the VCR from its composite output, and controls the VCR with an IR LED that emulates the original remote. Come to think of it, just watch the video below — it’s probably easier than trying to describe it.
It’s weird, true, but we love the look of that Minitel terminal. Something about it just screams cyberdeck; if anyone has a spare one of these, get busy and put something together for our
Cyberdeck Design Contest
. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507186",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2022-08-27T23:33:26",
"content": "Nice. Love the name “Formicapunk” but I think for the 70’s “Shagpunk” would be better.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6507200",
"author"... | 1,760,372,582.88499 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/29/visual-mandela-effect-you-dont-know-iconic-images-as-well-as-you-think/ | Visual Mandela Effect: You Don’t Know Iconic Images As Well As You Think | Kristina Panos | [
"Featured",
"Misc Hacks",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"cornucopia",
"Fruit of the Loom",
"Mandela effect",
"pikachu",
"visual Mandela effect",
"VME"
] | Pop quiz, hotshot: does the guy on the Monopoly box (standard edition) wear a monocle? Next question: does the Fruit of the Loom logo involve a cornucopia? And finally, does Pikachu have a black-tipped tail? If you answered yes to any of these, I am sad to say that you are wrong, wrong, wrong.
So, what’s the deal? These are all examples of the visual version of
the Mandela effect
(VME), which is named after the common misconception/mass false memory that anti-Apartheid activist Nelson Mandela died decades ago in prison, despite leading South Africa in the latter half of the ’90s and living until 2013.
Many people even claim having seen TV coverage of his funeral, or say they learned about his death in school during Black History Month
. The whole thing has VICE wondering
whether CERN is causing these mass delusions somehow
with the LHC.
The more attention VME gets, the more important it seems to be to study it and try to come to some conclusion. To that end, University of Chicago researchers Deepasri Prasad and Wilma A. Bainbridge
submitted an interesting and quite readable study earlier this year purporting that the VME is ‘evidence for shared and specific false memories across people’
. In the study, they conducted four experiments using crowd-sourced task completion services.
Experiment One: Characterizing VME
First, the team generated sets of images using forty different image concepts (e.g. Pikachu-the-idea and not surprised_pikachu.jpg or some other specific image). Of these forty, six of them had already been casually reported to elicit VME — including C3PO, the Fruit of the Loom logo, Curious George, the Monopoly Man, Pikachu, and the Volkswagen logo. The rest were image concepts like the Bluetooth icon, Hello Kitty, and Bugs Bunny.
Then they made an image set comprised of three images of each concept — one unaltered, and two manipulated in GIMP. For the six VME-inducing image concepts, one of the altered images represented the reported VME version.
The participants were instructed to choose the canonical image from the set. In addition, they were asked to rate their familiarity with the image concept, and estimate the number of times they’d encountered it in their lifetime.
The team determined that for an image to exhibit VME, it must have five characteristics:
a low ID accuracy (a lot of people make that same mistake)
there has to be a specific incorrect version of the image that is being falsely recognized (everybody agrees it’s a cornucopia in the Fruit of the Loom logo and not an alpine horn, for example)
the incorrect responses must be highly consistent across people
the images show low accuracy even when rated as familiar
responses on these images have a high incidence of being confidently incorrect (everyone is sure that Pikachu’s tail is black-tipped)
Their results suggest that people are just as likely to commonly mis-remember the same images as they are to correctly remember the same images. What’s interesting about Experiment One is that they picked up a seventh image concept that people commonly misremember: Waldo of
Where’s Waldo?
fame carries a simple brown cane, which people frequently forget about when asked to draw Waldo from memory. The team labeled these seven images as ‘VME-apparent’.
Experiment Two: Understanding the ‘V’ in VME
Here, the team tried to understand why the VME-Apparent Seven do what they do — induce a memory that is specific, shared, and false. They tested the study participants’ attention and perception using a program called MouseView, which is analogous to eye tracking.
The participants viewed the canonical versions of the VME-Apparent Seven one at a time on a computer screen. Each 500×500 image was obscured with a white overlay, except for a small aperture (5% of the viewing window) that moved with the mouse — move the cursor around, and you see a little bit at a time.
Before seeing each image with the overlay, the participant was shown a blurred version of the whole image for 250ms in an attempt to imitate the way people take in the gist of an image at first, and use points of visual interest to guide further inspection. Then the team created a map of the points where participants fixated.
In the testing phase, the participants were shown the canonical image and the VME version and asked to choose between them. Surprisingly, many people chose the VME version to indicate what they’d seen during the trial.
Experiment Three: Quantifying VME
In the previous experiment, the team found no link between inspecting behavior while the canonical images were overlaid with white and false memories. But they believe it’s “possible that these false memories were caused by differences in the accumulated viewing experience of the cultural icons over time.” They don’t show C3PO’s legs that often in the films, so it seems reasonable that a large group of people would mis-remember both legs as being gold.
Another explanation of course is that they’ve been exposed to the VME version of C3PO given the nature of Internet phenomenons and the fact that the Mandela Effect has been covered in the media.
In order to quantify the weight that VME versions have on the public, the team auto-scraped the top 100 images for each of the VME-apparent concepts from Google.
They separated them into three groups — those that don’t show the VME because it isn’t there (e.g. a head shot of C3PO), those that show the whole but have no VME element (a full-body shot of ‘3PO showing the silver leg), and those that show the whole and do contain VME manipulation.
The results of people’s natural experiences varied widely among the seven image concepts. For one thing, most of the images of C3PO (51%) don’t show his legs, or do show the VME (24% have two gold legs). The number of Waldo and Volkswagen images showing VME where substantial, but not as high. Most of the rest do include the full figure, but lack elements of VME. Here, the team concluded that VME can occur even though a person has extensive experience with the canonical image.
Experiment Four: Testing for VME
Lastly, the team tested the power of VME across memory paradigms as encountered in the first three experiments. The first two tests were visual, but the team proposes that a stronger test would be to see whether people produce VMEs without prompting. So this time, they had participants complete a web-based drawing task to see if VME occurs during free recall.
First, the participants rated their familiarity with an image concept on a scale from 1-5. People with scores less than 3 where shown the correct image for three seconds. After a one-second delay where a white screen with a fixation cross was shown, they were to draw the image from memory, spending as much time as they wanted, but with a minimum of two minutes.
People whose familiarity was ≥ 3 were asked to prove it by drawing the image from memory under the same time frame, but without seeing the image for reference at any point.
In long-term recall, C3PO, Waldo, Curious George, and Volkswagen had the highest instance of VME error in the drawings. If I may interject and defend the participants a bit — most monkeys do have tails, which suggests that
Curious George is either an ape or a Barbary macaque
. Since drawings from both short-term and long-term recall exercises include spontaneous VME errors, the results suggest that VME is not only an error of recognition, it can also be conjured during recall.
So What Does It All Mean?
We already knew that human memory is often unreliable, but this is usually held up in the context of eyewitness reports of events that people saw occur only one time. To study the impact of false memory among so-called image concepts that we all feel so intimately familiar with is certainly important, and quite interesting to boot. We wait with bated breath to see how the Mandela effect mutates over time, both in the standard sense and the visual.
Speaking of the visual: could you draw the Jolly Wrencher from memory? We mean accurately, of course. Try it, and let us know how you fared in the comments. | 63 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507509",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2022-08-29T14:33:40",
"content": "There’s an easy answer for the C3PO leg… most of the first film he was stumbling around in the sand when we saw his legs so silver leg was reflecting sand, which made it look gold just a bit off shad... | 1,760,372,583.120533 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/29/six-shooter-swaps-powder-for-popped-capacitors/ | Six Shooter Swaps Powder For Popped Capacitors | Tom Nardi | [
"Parts",
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"capacitor",
"electrolytic capacitor",
"pistol",
"revolver"
] | Modern firearms might seem far removed from the revolvers of the Old West, but conceptually, they still operate on the same principle: exploding gunpowder. But as anyone who has put too much voltage through an electrolytic capacitor knows, gunpowder isn’t the only thing that explodes. (Yes, it isn’t technically an explosion.)
[Jay Bowles] wondered if it would be possible to construct an
electrically-fired weapon that used used a standard capacitor
in place of the primer and powder of a traditional cartridge. While it would naturally have only the fraction of the muzzle velocity or energy of even the smallest caliber firearm, it would be an interesting look at an alternate approach to what has been considered a largely solved problem since the mid-1800s.
In his latest
Plasma Channel
video, [Jay] walks viewers through the creation of his unconventional pistol, starting with a scientific determination of how much energy you can get out of popped capacitor. His test setup involved placing a capacitor and small projectile into an acrylic tube, and noting the relation between the speed of the projectile and the voltage passed through the cap. At 30 VDC the projectile would reliably fire from the barrel of his makeshift cannon, but by tripling the voltage to 90 VDC, he noted that the muzzle velocity saw the same 3X improvement.
Confident in the basic premise, [Jay] then put together some “cartridges” that consisted of a capacitor with a aluminum projectile glued to the top. The squat cylinders aren’t particularly aerodynamic, but the important part is that they’re the same diameter as the capacitor itself. This gives a good seal around the acrylic chamber and barrel, which in turn limits how much gas is wasted. In a real firearm the lead projectile would actually be of a slightly larger diameter than the barrel itself, so that it gets squeezed down as it passes through. But in this case, there aren’t tens of thousands of pounds per square inch pushing the projectile along, so the clearances need to be a bit roomier.
The rest of the very cyberpunk-looking pistol is also assembled from acrylic, as we’ve come to expect from anything [Jay] builds. We especially liked the use of a standard cordless tool battery as the power source, and the two plates which come into contact with the leads of each capacitor as they’re rotated into place is a brilliant touch. If there’s a shortcoming of the design it’s probably that you have to manually advance the cylinder between shots, but the use of magnets to make sure the cylinder has properly aligned with the barrel is a clever low-tech solution.
At the end of the video, [Jay] demonstrates that the pistol does a solid job of plinking cans…at least for awhile. The acrylic construction unfortunately only survived about a dozen shots before failing. It sounds like the second version of this project will implement a metal cylinder, among other improvements, which we’re looking forward to seeing.
It’s worth noting that, unlike many of [Jay]’s previous projects, this isn’t intended to be a how-to. He’s not advocating that anyone try to build one of these at home, and doesn’t provide the instructions to do so. If you’d like to follow along with something slightly less dangerous, check out his
supersized Van de Graaff generator
or
handheld Slayer-Exciter wands
. | 43 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507474",
"author": "ono",
"timestamp": "2022-08-29T11:46:25",
"content": "ah, the old fascination of authors here for anything that explodes and shoots things…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6507477",
"author": "Ergo... | 1,760,372,583.264263 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/29/giant-3d-printer-aims-to-produce-life-sized-boat/ | Giant 3D Printer Aims To Produce Life-Sized Boat | Bryan Cockfield | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"boat",
"cubic meter",
"frame",
"go-kart",
"large",
"structure"
] | As 3D printers become more ubiquitous, the number of custom designs and styles of printers has skyrocketed. From different printing materials and technologies to the movements of the printing head, we’ve seen all kinds of different takes on these tools. But one thing that has been largely limited to commercial and industrial use has been large print sizes — leaving consumer level prints to be split into several pieces to fit together later.
Not so with this giant 3D printer from [Ivan], though
.
The design goals for this build are to print an entire boat that [Ivan] can captain himself, and additionally an entire go kart chassis in a single piece. It’s part of a contest between him and another YouTuber and as far as we can tell he’s well on his way to completing the challenge. The printer will be able to churn through 4 kg of filament per day, and has a printable volume of
1000x1000x1420
millimeters, or just shy of 1.5 cubic meters.
While this video is just the first step of building the frame and the printer guides, we can’t wait to see the next steps in the process. It’s one of the largest 3D printers we’ve ever seen, at least outside of
printers designed for building entire houses out of concrete
. | 13 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507457",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2022-08-29T09:37:09",
"content": "Gotta get those clicks!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6507464",
"author": "IanS",
"timestamp": "2022-08-29T10:22:37",
"content": "Life-s... | 1,760,372,583.17018 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/28/a-pi-camera-to-be-proud-of/ | A Pi Camera To Be Proud Of | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"digital camera",
"Mirrorless compact",
"Raspberry pi camera"
] | The Raspberry Pi HQ camera has appeared in a variety of builds since its introduction back in 2020, and has brought with it many opportunities for photographic projects to compete with the professionals.
The latest we’ve been sent is from [Kevin McAleer]
, who has taken the camera with a full-size Pi and clothed it in a case very similar to the crop of mirror-less compact cameras.
Inside the box is a Waveshare touchscreen that fits on the GPIO header, and a NanoWave 5000 mAH USB battery pack. The camera module fits on the front of the unit, with the C-mount ready to take a lens. Software is still a work in progress and is promised to be a Python script controlling the various camera programs. There are enough Pi camera projects for software to be a matter of choice and taste.
We like the form factor and we like the use of the very compact NanoWave battery, so we think this is a design with some possibilities. Perhaps a cover over the Pi ports might be of use though for general robustness in the face of everyday photography. The question remains though, whether it can come close to the performance of even a budget mirror-less compact camera, and we’re guessing that will depend as much on the operator skill, lens quality, and software capabilities as it does on the Pi HQ module. We look forward to seeing what comes of this project, but meanwhile you can see a video with all the details below the break. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507407",
"author": "sensors",
"timestamp": "2022-08-29T05:34:34",
"content": "This module has been around for about 4 years now. One wonders if there’s been modules with better sensors since.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6... | 1,760,372,583.364233 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/28/share-screen-to-rgb-panel-with-pi-pico-w/ | Share Screen To RGB Panel With Pi Pico W | Danie Conradie | [
"LED Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"bitluni",
"Pi Pico W",
"RGB LED matrix"
] | RGB LEDs are great for adding a bit of color to your life, and it’s even more satisfying to use a matrix of them as a graphic display. [bitluni] built an RGB LED display with Pi Pico to which you can
share a pixelated version of your PC’s screen
.
[bitluni] wanted to gain some experience with
MicroPython
on the
Raspbery Pi Pico W
, and had previously used WebSockets to transmit display data over WiFi. Unfortunately, the available MicroPython WebSockets implementation didn’t leave enough RAM for the rest of the code. Instead, he set up a simple HTTP server on the Pico that receives the pixel data as a POST request. This makes for a slow refresh rate but still looks great, especially with the 3D printed rear-projection frame.
To send display data from the computer, [bitluni] uses a simple locally hosted HTML page that takes the Pico’s IP address, and prompts you to select the display or window you want to share. It uses JavaScript to grab the display data, generate the required low-res pixel values, and send the POST request.
This looks like a fun weekend project to add to your lab or home and only costs about $20 in parts. It’s basically a scaled-down version of his
giant ping pong ball wall display
. | 13 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507394",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2022-08-29T04:12:22",
"content": "Where did [bitluni] get a Pico W? AFAIK the Pico W is still zero stock everywhere.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6507396",
"author": "Drone... | 1,760,372,583.314027 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/28/hackaday-links-august-28-2022/ | Hackaday Links: August 28, 2022 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"apple",
"Artemis 1",
"carbon dioxide",
"co2",
"hackaday links",
"Hubble",
"jwst",
"orion",
"privacy",
"right to repair",
"sls",
"snuff film",
"ssd",
"WASP-39b"
] | The countdown for the first step on humanity’s return to the Moon has begun.
The countdown for Artemis 1
started on Saturday morning, and if all goes well, the un-crewed Orion spacecraft atop the giant Space Launch Systems (SLS) booster will liftoff from the storied Pad 39B at Cape Canaveral on Monday, August 29, at 8:33 AM EDT (1233 GMT). The mission is
slated to last for about 42 days
, which seems longish considering the longest manned Apollo missions only lasted around 12 days. But, without the constraint of storing enough consumables for a crew, Artemis is free to take the scenic route to the Moon, as it were. No matter what your position is on manned space exploration, it’s hard to deny that launching a rocket as big as the SLS is something to get excited about. After all, it’s been 50 years since anything remotely as powerful as the SLS has headed to space, and it’s an event that’s
expected to draw 100,000 people
to watch it in person. We’ll have to stick to
the NASA live stream
ourselves; having seen a Space Shuttle launch in person in 1990, we can’t express how much we envy anyone who gets to experience this launch up close.
Speaking of space, there are some interesting results from the James Webb Space Telescope this week, with the announcement of
the first unambiguous detection of carbon dioxide on an exoplanet
. The planet, named WASP-39b, was discovered in 2011. It’s about 700 light-years away in the constellation Virgo, and is classified as a “hot Jupiter” planet, which is a gas giant that orbits close to its star. After being discovered by ground-based telescopes, both the Hubble and the Spitzer space telescopes took a look at it, and discovered signatures of water vapor in its atmosphere, in addition to sodium and potassium. Then Webb had a turn, and its
ultra-cold infrared optics
saw that the planet’s atmosphere strongly absorbs light from its star in the 4.1- to 4.6-micron range — just where CO
2
would absorb. As exciting a scientific result as it is, it’s also an engineering triumph that teases just what this telescope is capable of.
A couple months back
, we featured a story about Apple’s new attempt at placating the “Right to Repair” crowd by making the tools and materials needed to effect repairs on some of the products available. Discussing this on the podcast that week, we referred to it as a case of “malicious compliance” on Apple’s part. But after reading
this article on MacBook self-repair
, it looks like the huge kit of tools they rent out and the exorbitant prices on simple parts like batteries might have a different, more basic origin — the design conflict between usability and serviceability. Apple has a brand — sleek, polished, user-friendly, and undeniably tactile — and that’s what all its designs have to be about. If that means you have to glue pieces together to avoid visible fasteners, so be it. Maintaining that brand means making any of their products easy to take apart has to take a back seat to style, and that’s why it takes so many specialized tools to get the job done. One can — and should — still take issue with the price of Apple replacement parts, but for the most part, these devices are complicated to repair exactly because they’re Apple products. In other words, if you want sensible access to your devices, you might want to avoid the Apple ecosystem.
And finally, when your device is not repairable at all what do you do? If it’s in warranty still, you usually send it back for a replacement, after checking off all the usual customer service boxes. But one customer in Germany with a defective SSD had an additional box to check —
complete and utter mechanical destruction of the SSD
. In order to return Samsung 980 PRO SSD, the customer was instructed to either drill holes through the NAND flash, or smash it with a hammer. Presumably this was done for privacy reasons, but the fact that they requested video evidence of the procedure seems a bit odd. The snuff film, with the weapon of choice being an angle grinder, is below — destruction starts at about the 5:00 minute mark. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507369",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2022-08-28T23:37:40",
"content": "“But one customer in Germany with a defective SSD had an additional box to check — complete and utter mechanical destruction of the SSD.”Maybe try starting with built-in thermal destruction aka a Samsung... | 1,760,372,583.786526 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/28/hackaday-prize-2022-compact-solar-tracking-system-doesnt-break-the-bank/ | Hackaday Prize 2022: Compact Solar Tracking System Doesn’t Break The Bank | Danie Conradie | [
"Solar Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2022 Hackaday Prize",
"mppt",
"solar tracker"
] | If you need to squeeze every available watt out of a solar panel, you’ll probably want to look into a solar tracking system. Unfortunately, they are usually quite large, heavy, and expensive. As an alternative, [JP Gleyzes] has put together a
DIY solar tracking system that aims to address these issues
.
Starting with a 100 W flexible solar panel purchased during a Black Friday sale, [JP] first created a simple frame using 20 mm PVC tubing and a few 3D printed brackets. It mounts on a wooden base with a printed worm gear rotation mechanism, powered by a stepper motor. The tilt is a handled by a lead screw made from a threaded rod, connected between the wooden base and the top of the solar panel, and is also driven by a stepper motor.
For even more efficiency, [JP] also created an
MPPT
charge controller with companion app using an ESP32, modified 20 A buck converter, and current sensor module. The ESP32 also controls the stepper motors. The optimum angle for the solar panel
determined using the date, time, and the system’s GPS position
. [JP] had also created a simple Android app to calibrate the panels’ start position.
This project is a
finalist in the Planet-Friendly Power
challenge of the 2022 Hackaday Prize, and all the details to build your own are available on your project page. Looking at the size of the system, we suspect future iterations could be even smaller.
The
Hackaday
Prize2022
is Sponsored by: | 33 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507345",
"author": "Technocoma",
"timestamp": "2022-08-28T20:23:42",
"content": "Amazingly well made project !Is it worth spending 55€ for a 100W rated panel (compared to a fixed optimized setup) ?At 20c€ a kWh in France, 55€ represents 275 kWh. So given a benefit of 20% more ener... | 1,760,372,583.485261 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/27/2022-hackaday-prize-boondock-echo-connects-your-radios-with-the-cloud/ | 2022 Hackaday Prize: Boondock Echo Connects Your Radios With The Cloud | Dave Rowntree | [
"Radio Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2022 Hackaday Prize",
"audio",
"baofeng",
"cloud",
"ESP32",
"radio",
"radio repeater"
] | [
Mark J Hughes
] volunteers as a part of a local community fire watch which coordinates by radio. The La Habra Heights region of Los Angeles is an area of peaks and valleys, which makes direct radio connections challenging. Repeaters work well for range improvement, but in such areas, there is no good place to locate these. [Mark] says that during an emergency (such as a wildfire) the radio usage explodes, with him regularly tracking as many as eight radio frequencies and trying to make sense of it, whilst working out how to send the information on and to whom.
This led him together with collaborator [
Kaushlesh Chandel
] to create
Project Boondock Echo
, to help alleviate some of the stress of it all. The concept is to use a cheap Baofeng radio to feed into a gateway based around an ESP32 audio development kit. Mount this in a box with a LiPo based power supply, and you’ve got yourself a movable radio-to-cloud time-shift audio recorder.
By placing one or more of these units in the properties of several of the community group radio operators, all messages can be captured to an audio file, tagged with the radio frequency and time of transmission, and uploaded to a central server. From there they can be retrieved by anybody with access, no matter the physical location, only an internet connection is needed.
The next trick that can be performed, is to reverse the process and queue up previous recordings, and send it back over the cloud to remote locations for re-transmission via radio into the field. This is obviously a massive asset, because wherever there is some urbanization, there is likely an internet connection. With the addition of a Boondock Echo unit, anyone that has a receiver within a few miles can be fully connected with what’s going on outside the range of direct radio communications.
Source for the ESP32’s firmware as well as the web side of things can found on the
project Boondock Echo GitHub
, complete with some STLs for a 3D printed box to sit it in. Like always, there’s more than one way to solve a particular problem. Here’s an
amateur radio repeater based using an RTL-SDR and a Raspberry Pi
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2022
is Sponsored by: | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507187",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2022-08-27T23:33:50",
"content": "Be properly licensed, and whatever you do don’t interfere with emergency personnel.If you want to replicate this.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "650... | 1,760,372,583.414121 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/27/introducing-fissure-a-toolbox-for-the-rf-hacker/ | Introducing FISSURE: A Toolbox For The RF Hacker | Dan Maloney | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"framework",
"I/Q",
"packet",
"python",
"reverse engineering",
"RF",
"sdr"
] | No matter what the job at hand is, if you’re going to tackle it, you’re going to need the right kit of tools. And if your job includes making sense out of any of the signals in the virtual soup of RF energy we all live in, then you’re going to need something like
the FISSURE RF framework
.
Exactly what FISSURE is is pretty clear from its acronym, which stands for Frequency Independent SDR-Based Signal Understanding and Reverse Engineering. This is all pretty new — it looks like [Chris Poore] presented
a talk at DEFCON
a few weeks back about using FISSURE to analyze powerline communications between semi-trucks and their trailers, and they’ve got a talk scheduled for next month’s GNU Radio Conference as well. We’ve been looking through all the material we can find on FISSURE, and it appears to be an RF hacker’s dream come true. They’ve got a few examples on
Twitter
, like brute-forcing an old garage door opener with a security code set by a ten-position DIP switch, and sending tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) signals to a car. They also mention some of the framework’s capabilities on the GitHub README; we’re especially interested in packet crafting for various protocols. The video below has some more examples of what FISSURE can do.
It looks like FISSURE could be a lot of fun, and very handy for your RF analysis and reverse engineering work. If you’ve been using
Universal Radio Hacker
like we have, this looks similar, only more so. We’ll be downloading it soon and giving it a try, so be on the lookout for a hands-on report.
Thanks to [Joseph Reith] for the tip. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507156",
"author": "Marcus",
"timestamp": "2022-08-27T20:42:55",
"content": "I was super amazed when I stumbled on this on twitter, posted a link to it on the #gnuradio chat room, and then people were like “yep, they’re at GRCon, it’s gonna be fun”.By the way, the day they’ll be at... | 1,760,372,583.530325 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/27/the-quiet-before-the-storm/ | The Quiet Before The Storm? | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Science"
] | [
"newsletter",
"rants",
"science"
] | My wife and I are reading a book about physics in the early 1900s. It’s half history of science and half biography of some of the most famous physicists, and it’s good fun. But it got me thinking about the state of physics 120 years ago.
What we’d now call classical mechanics was fully settled for quite a while, and even the mysterious electricity and magnetism had been
recently put to rest by Maxwell and Heaviside
. It seemed like there was nothing left to explain for a while. And then all the doors broke wide open.
As much as I personally like Einstein’s relativity work, I’d say the most revolutionary change in perspective, and driver of the most research in the intervening century, was quantum mechanics. And how did it all start? In the strangest of ways – with
Niels Bohr worrying about why hydrogen and helium gasses gave off particular colors
when ionized, which lead to his model of the atom and the idea of energy in quantum packets. Or maybe it was
De Broglie’s idea that electrons could behave like waves
or magnets, from slit and cathode-ray experiments respectively, that lead to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
Either way, the birth of the strangest and most profound physics revolution – quantum mechanics – came from answering some ridiculously simple and straightforward questions. Why does helium emit pink, and how do TVs work? (I know, they didn’t have TVs yet…) Nobody looking at these phenomena, apart or together, could have thought that answering them would have required a complete re-thinking of how we think about reality. And yet it did.
I can’t help but wonder if there are, in addition to the multi-bazillion dollar projects like the Large Hadron Collider or the James Webb Space Telescope, some simpler phenomena out there that we should be asking “why?” about. Are we in a similar quiet before the storm? Or is it really true that the way to keep pushing back the boundaries of our ignorance is through these mega-projects?
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning?
You should sign up
! | 82 | 32 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507072",
"author": "Comedicles",
"timestamp": "2022-08-27T14:30:21",
"content": "I would place Einstein’s 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect near or at the top. Among other things, what is known now as “Plank’s constant” and the quantization of light come from that paper.",
... | 1,760,372,583.654889 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/27/an-elegant-ethernet-library-for-your-next-rp2040-project/ | An Elegant Ethernet Library For Your Next RP2040 Project | Arya Voronova | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"10base-t",
"ethernet",
"library",
"Paspberry Pi Pico",
"PIO",
"rp2040",
"udp"
] | A few days ago we covered a project that brought Ethernet connectivity to the Raspberry Pi Pico using little more than some twisted pair and a RJ-45 connector. It was a neat trick, but not exactly ready for widespread adoption. Looking to improve on things a bit, [tvlad1234] has taken that project’s code and rewritten it into a
friendly library you can use with any RP2040 board
.
In case you missed it, the initial demo did
10BASE-T transmission by bit-banging with the PIO
, and was able to send UDP messages to devices on the wired LAN. It was an impressive accomplishment, but its code didn’t make it easy to build your project around it. This new library makes UDP messaging as easy as a
printf
, offloading all non-PIO-managed Ethernet signal work onto the RP2040’s second CPU core. The library even generates a random MAC address out of your flash chip’s serial number!
As a demonstration of the new library, [tvlad1234] has put together a simple
Ethernet-connected temperature monitor
using the BMP085 or BMP180 sensor connect over I2C. If you feel like you could use an Ethernet transmit-only sensor in your life, browsing the source code would be a great start. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507049",
"author": "Peter Knoppers",
"timestamp": "2022-08-27T12:09:51",
"content": "This (desparately) needs receive functionality as well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6507069",
"author": "Rog77",
"timest... | 1,760,372,584.47901 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/27/diy-video-transmitter-turned-wifi-jammer/ | DIY Video Transmitter Turned WiFi Jammer | Danie Conradie | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"FPV",
"video transmitter",
"WiFi Jammer"
] | The proliferation of FPV drones has brought a flood of cheap wireless video tech. After flying and crashing a cheap FPV drone for a bit, [GreatScott] decided to try his hand at building his own
video transmitter
, which turned out to be a lot harder than expected.
While digital technology has caught up to the FPV world, a lot of systems still use analog video, especially for drone racing. The video quality isn’t great, but it has the advantage of very low latency. The technology is very similar to the old analog TV broadcasts, but mainly uses the 5.8 GHz license-free bands. It is essentially analog video signal, frequency modulated onto a 5.8 GHz carrier signal transmitted through an appropriately sized antenna.
After a brief failed experiment with a simple circuit built from discrete components, [GreatScott] turned his attention to voltage-controlled oscillators (VCO). He bought a couple of 5.8 GHz VCOs from Aliexpress, and created and used a simple opamp circuit to boost the FPV camera video signal to the required input level for the VCO. This failed to produce any identifiable image on his video receiver goggles. In an attempt to confirm that the VCOs produced the desired frequency, he ordered a similar 2.4 GHz VCOs and built a short range (20 cm)
WiFi jammer
. With a signal generator to create a simple input signal, and confirmed that it interfered with his laptop’s WiFi connection.
After more experimentation with other VCOs, the closest [GreatScott] came to success was a barely identifiable image transmitted using a Maxim 2.4 GHz VCO. If you have any ideas on what is missing in the VTX circuit, drop them in the comments below.
Building RF circuits that interfere with the legitimate signal around you, or broadcasting out of band, is generally not a great idea, and could earn you an
unpleasant visit from the authorities
. If you want to build your own digital video transmission, take a look at the
Wifibroadcast
project. | 31 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507029",
"author": "Steven B",
"timestamp": "2022-08-27T09:36:21",
"content": "Last time I checked in on analog video it was Amplitude modulated. VCO sounds like voltage controlled frequency modulation. . . Audio was FM.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,584.543495 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/26/dead-eeprom-dumped-with-help-of-body-diodes/ | Dead EPROM Dumped With Help Of Body Diodes | Arya Voronova | [
"hardware",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"body diode",
"data recovery",
"eprom",
"esd diode"
] | [Jason P], evidently an enjoyer of old reliable laser printing tech,
spilled a drink
(
nitter
) onto his Panasonic KX-P5400 SideWriter. After cleanup, everything worked fine — except that the PSU’s 5 V became 6.5 V during the accident, and the EPROM with LocalTalk interface firmware died, connection between VCC and GND seemingly interrupted inside the chip. Understandably, [Jason] went on Twitter, admitted the error of his ways, and sheepishly
asked around for EPROM dumps.
Instead,
[Manawyrm] wondered
— would the chip have anti-ESD body diodes from GND to IO pins, by any chance? A diode mode multimeter check confirmed, yes! It was time for an outlandish attempt to recover the firmware. [Manawyrm] proposed that [Jason] connect all output pins but one to 5 V, powering the EPROM through the internal VCC-connected body diodes – reading the contents one bit at a time and then, combining eight dumps into a single image.
After preparing a TL866 setup, one hour of work and some PHP scripting later, the operation was a success. Apparently, in certain kinds of cases, dead ROM chips might still tell their tales! It’s not quite clear what happened here. The bond wires looked fine, so who knows where the connection got interrupted – but we can’t deny the success of the recovery operation! Need a primer on dumping EPROMs that are not dead?
Here you go.
Here's a cool trick to recover data from a broken/defective EEPROM after an overvoltage or reverse-power event:
Misuse the internal ESD protection diodes to feed the chip with voltage through the data pins. Then take multiple dumps with different bits being powered.
https://t.co/WHUiiaJdgf
— Manawyrm (@Manawyrm)
August 26, 2022
We thank [Chaos] for sharing this with us! | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6507004",
"author": "Ghent The Slicer",
"timestamp": "2022-08-27T06:01:24",
"content": "Excellent hack.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6507005",
"author": "internet",
"timestamp": "2022-08-27T06:24:45",
"content": "... | 1,760,372,584.054602 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/26/make-your-own-vinegar/ | Make Your Own Vinegar | Danie Conradie | [
"chemistry hacks",
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"alcohol",
"fermentation",
"vinegar"
] | Making fermentation work for us is one of the original hacks that allowed humans to make food last longer, and festivities more interesting. [Mike G] has been experimenting with
making his own vinegar
, and found the end product to be a delicious addition to his cooking.
The first step is similar to making alcoholic beverages. Take something that contains sugar, like fruit, mix it with water and let stand. Wild yeast will feed on the sugar and create alcohol. Once the alcohol content reaches the 6-12% range, the resulting liquid can be separated from the solids and left exposed to the air. This allows Acetobacter bacteria to convert the alcohol into acetic acid, producing vinegar. The entire process takes around 30 days.
[Mike]’s first round of experiments was mainly with fresh fruit, with the addition of raisins. To prevent white mold from forming the mixtures should be stirred daily, but life got in the way and mold got out of control on all the fruits, except for the raisins. This gave [Mike] the to try another round with dried fruit, which was significantly less prone to mold, and produced deliciously flavored vinegar. [Mike] also demonstrated their use in a couple of mouth-watering dishes.
The DIY vinegar production process is just begging for some
fermentation monitoring and automation tech
. We’ve seen plenty of
sourdough
and
beer production
projects, which we suspect could also be applied to vinegar production with some minor changes.
Thanks for the tip [Keith Olson]! | 32 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6506975",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2022-08-27T02:14:17",
"content": "“Make Your Own Vinegar” Huh? Did I miss something? Are we facing a vinegar shortage now – like everything else in the past 19 months?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,584.17917 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/26/water-monitor-measures-the-cost-of-your-shower-thinking-time/ | Water Monitor Measures The Cost Of Your Shower Thinking Time | Danie Conradie | [
"Battery Hacks",
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"esphome",
"greatscott"
] | The shower is one of the top thinking places for many of us, but can get a bit out of hand with water wastage and utility bills if you go down a deep rabbit hole. To be more mindful of his water usage in the shower, [GreatScott!] created a
power sipping water monitor
that lives there.
The device is built around a cheap 1/2″ brass water flow rate sensor connected to his shower hose, which outputs pulses as a small wheel passes an internal hall effect sensor. The datasheet didn’t contain any spec for pulses/volume, so [GreatScott!] had to experimentally determine this by filling a one-liter container with water and counting the pulses. He found that the pulse count per liter was dependent on the flow rate, so he narrowed down the variables and just determined the average count at his shower’s pressure and flow rate.
The sensor is connected to a battery-powered ESP8266 housed inside a sealed 3D-printed enclosure in the shower. To reduce power usage to a minimum, a flow switch was added in series with the flow meter, which only switches on the ESP8266 when water starts flowing. A
latching circuit
keeps the ESP powered after the water stops, giving it enough time to transmit the data before shutting down. This type of circuit is very handy for any battery-powered project connected to an external switch or sensor.
It is programmed with
ESPHome
and outputs the data to a local
Home Assistant
server, so no data is saved on someone else’s server. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6506949",
"author": "*Mostly lead free anyway",
"timestamp": "2022-08-26T23:39:05",
"content": "Do hope the brass fittings are lead free* and all.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6507032",
"author": "PeterJ",
"... | 1,760,372,584.110198 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/26/a-guide-to-3d-printing-model-aircraft-wings/ | A Guide To 3D Printing Model Aircraft Wings | Danie Conradie | [
"Parts"
] | [
"3d printed plane",
"airfoil",
"tom stanton",
"wing"
] | The exact airfoil shape of a wing has a massive effect on the performance and efficiency of an aircraft and will be selected based on the intended flight envelope. If you’re moving beyond foam board wings, 3D printing is an excellent way to create an accurate airfoil, and [Tom Stanton] provides us with an excellent guide to
modeling wing sections for easy printing
.
[Tom] used the process demonstrated in the video after the break to create the wing for his latest
VTOL RC aircraft
. It was printed with
lightweight PLA
, which can ooze badly when it stops extruding. To get around this, he designed the wings and their internal ribs to be printed in one continuously extruded line.
He wanted a wing that would allow a smooth transition from hover to forward flight, and used the
Airfoil Tools website
to find and download the appropriate airfoil profile. After importing the profile into Fusion 360, he created internal ribs in a diagonal grid pattern, with lightening holes running along the length of the wing. A cylinder runs along the core of the wing to fit a carbon fiber wing spar. The ribs are first treated as a separate body in CAD and split into four quadrants. When these quadrants combine with the outer shell, it allows the slicer to treat the entire print as a continuous external perimeter line using “
vase mode
“.
These steps might seem simple, but it took about 3 weeks of experimentation to find a process that works. It’s primarily intended for straight wings with a continuous profile, but it should be adaptable to tapered/swept wings too. A well-designed airframe is essential when pushing aircraft to the edge of efficiency, like
solar-powered plane to fly overnight
. | 32 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6506898",
"author": "dgrc",
"timestamp": "2022-08-26T20:47:40",
"content": "Very cool for 3d printing of anything that has to be a light, load-bearing structure. Taking to the next step, define the shape, define the loads – tension, compression and shear, then define the infill tha... | 1,760,372,584.319941 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/26/bit-banged-ethernet-on-the-raspberry-pi-pico/ | Bit-Banged Ethernet On The Raspberry Pi Pico | Dave Rowntree | [
"Network Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"10base-t",
"ethernet",
"Paspberry Pi Pico",
"PIO",
"rp2040",
"udp"
] | Whilst the Raspberry Pi RP2040 is quite a capable little chip, on the whole it’s nothing really special compared to the big brand offerings. But, the PIO peripheral
is
a bit special, and its inclusion was clearly a masterstroke of foresight, because it has bestowed the platform all kinds of capabilities that would be really hard to do any other way, especially for the price.
Our focus this time is on Ethernet, utilizing the PIO as a simple serialiser to push out a pre-formatted bitstream. [kingyo] so far has managed to implement the
Pico-10BASE-T providing the bare minimum of UDP transmission
(GitHub project) using only a handful of resistors as a proof of concept. For a safer implementation it is more usual to couple such a thing magnetically, and [kingyo] does show construction of a rudimentary pulse transformer, although off the shelf parts are obviously available for this. For the sake of completeness, it is also possible to capacitively couple Ethernet hardware (checkout
this Micrel app note
for starters) but it isn’t done all that much in practice.
Inside the expedient pulse transformer.
UDP is a simple Ethernet protocol for transferring application data. Being connection-less, payload data are simply formatted into a packet buffer up front. This is all fine, until you realize that the packets are pretty long and the bitrate can be quite high for a low-cost uC, which is why devices with dedicated Ethernet MAC functionality have a specific hardware serialiser-deserialiser (SERDES) block just for this function.
Like many small uC devices, the RP2040 does not have a MAC function built in, but it does have the PIO, and that can easily be programmed to perform the SERDES function in only a handful of lines of code, albeit only currently operating at 10 MBit/sec. This will cause some connectivity problems for modern switch hardware, as they will likely no longer support this low speed, but that’s easily solved by snagging some older switch hardware off eBay.
As for the UDP receive, that is promised for the future, but for getting data out of a remote device over a wired network, Pico-10BASE-T is a pretty good starting point. We’ve seen a few projects before that utilize the PIO to generate high speed signals,
such as DVI
, albeit with a heavy dose of overclocking needed. If you want a bit more of an intro to all things Pico, you could do worse than check out this
video series we highlighted a while back
. | 29 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6506863",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-08-26T18:57:58",
"content": "So, it isimple, TX only, but doesn’t the transmitting CPU need some form of ACK?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "650686... | 1,760,372,584.249918 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/26/hackaday-podcast-183-stowaway-science-cold-basements-and-warm-beers/ | Hackaday Podcast 183: Stowaway Science, Cold Basements, And Warm Beers | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Assignments Editor Kristina Panos met up on a secret server to discuss the cream of this week’s crop of hacks. After gushing about
the first-ever Kansas City Keyboard Meetup coming up tomorrow — Saturday the 27th
, we start off by considering the considerable engineering challenge of building a knife-throwing machine, the logistics of live-streaming on the go, and the thermodynamics of split-level homes.
This week, Kristina came up with the What’s-That-Sound and managed to stump Elliot for a while, though he did eventually guess correctly after the tape stopped rolling. Think you know what it is? Then
fill out the form
and you’ll earn the chance to win a genuine Hackaday Podcast t-shirt!
Later in the show, we look at a macro pad that breaks the mold, an ASCII terminal like it’s 1974, and a Z80 that never was (but definitely could have been). Stick around as we root for the CubeSats hitching a ride aboard Artemis I, and at last call on the ‘cast, it’s lagers vs. ales (vs. ciders).
Direct download.
Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 183 Show Notes:
News:
The First-Ever Kansas City Keyboard Meetup Is This Weekend
Kinesis Advantage in Men In Black + bonus fake typing
What’s that Sound?
If you know what that sound was,
you should fill out the form here
to win a t-shirt!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Knife Throwing Machine Gets The Spin Just Right
Paper Airplane Machine Gun V2.0
Livestreaming Backpack Takes Streaming On-The-Go
2022 Cyberdeck Contest: Extruded Rig Exudes Coolness
ESP8266 Smart Vents Keep Tabs On Home Temps
Is This The Oldest Open Source HVAC Project In Existence?
Deepdeck: Going Beyond The Macro Pad
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
An ASCII Terminal Like It’s 1974
Make Multi-Material Resin Prints With A Syringe (And A Bit Of Patience)
Why Didn’t We Think Of Making A Remote Trigger Button?
Kristina’s Picks:
Keycap Shine? No, Shiny Keycaps
Z80 Single-Board Computer Looks Like It Could Have Been A Killer Product
PicoStepSeq Is Small But Perfectly Formed
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Unpacking The Stowaway Science Aboard Artemis I
Why Do Brits Drink Warm Beer? | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6506833",
"author": "Kristina Panos",
"timestamp": "2022-08-26T17:13:13",
"content": "Update on the scorching split-level problem at Casa de Panos: we had an HVAC salesman out this morning to discuss the problem. It turns out that that when they knocked down the wall dividing the li... | 1,760,372,584.636885 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/26/machine-learning-gives-cats-one-more-way-to-control-their-humans/ | Machine Learning Gives Cats One More Way To Control Their Humans | Dan Maloney | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"AWS",
"cats",
"Lamdba",
"meow",
"microphone",
"raspberry pi",
"Tensorflow Lite"
] | For those who choose to let their cats live a more or less free-range life, there are usually two choices. One, you can adopt the role of servant and run for the door whenever the cat wants to get back inside from their latest bird-murdering jaunt. Or two, install a cat door and let them come and go as they please, sometimes with a “present” for you in their mouth. Heads you win, tails you lose.
There’s another way, though: just let the cat ask to be let back in. That’s the approach that [Tennis Smith] took with
this machine-learning kitty doorbell
. It’s based on a Raspberry Pi 4, which lives inside the house, and a USB microphone that’s outside the front door. The Pi uses Tensorflow Lite to classify the sounds it picks up outside, and when one of those sounds fits the model of a cat’s meow, a message is dispatched to AWS Lambda. From there a text message is sent to alert [Tennis] that the cat is ready to come back in.
There’s a ton of useful information included in the repo for this project, including step-by-step instructions for getting Amazon Web Services working on the Pi. If you’re a dog person, fear not: changing from meows to barks is as simple as tweaking a single line of code. And if you’d rather not be at the beck and call of a cat but still want to avoid the evidence of a prey event on your carpet,
machine learning can help with that too
.
[via
Tom’s Hardware
] | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6506806",
"author": "mjrippe",
"timestamp": "2022-08-26T15:45:18",
"content": "I think you meant “Heads, they win. Tails, you lose.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6506826",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2022-08-... | 1,760,372,584.589057 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/26/this-week-in-security-in-mudge-we-trust-dont-trust-that-app-browser-and-firefox-at-pwn2own/ | This Week In Security: In Mudge We Trust, Don’t Trust That App Browser, And Firefox At Pwn2Own | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Mudge",
"Pwn2Own",
"This Week in Security"
] | There’s yet another brouhaha forming over Twitter, but this time around it’s
a security researcher making noise
instead of an eccentric billionaire. [Peiter Zatko] worked as Twitter’s security chief for just over a year, from November 2020 through January 2022. You may know Zatko better as [Mudge], a renowned security researcher, who
literally wrote the book on buffer overflows
. He was a member at
L0pht Heavy Industries
, worked at DARPA and Google, and was brought on at Twitter in response to the July 2020 hack that saw many brand accounts running Bitcoin scans.
Mudge was terminated at Twitter January 2022, and it seems he immediately started putting together a whistleblower complaint. You can access
his complaint packet on archive.org
, with
whistleblower_disclosure.pdf
(PDF, and
mirror
) being the primary document. There are some interesting tidbits in here, like the real answer to how many spam bots are on Twitter: “We don’t really know.” The very public claim that “…
<5% of reported mDAU for the quarter are spam accounts
” is a bit of a handwave, as the monetizable Daily Active Users count is essentially defined as active accounts that are not bots. Perhaps Mr. Musk has a more legitimate complaint than was previously thought.
Over 30% of Twitter’s employee computers had security updates disabled on some level, and about half of Twitter staff had access to production systems. At one point, [Mudge] felt the need to “seal the production environment”, fearing vandalism from an internal engineer in response to political upheaval. To his astonishment, there was nothing in place to prevent, or even track that sort of attack. Another worrying discovery was a lack of a disaster plan around a multi-node failure. The details are redacted, but some number of data centers going down gracefully at the same time would cripple Twitter’s infrastructure for weeks or longer, with the note that bootstrapping back to service would be a challenge of unknown difficulty. Interestingly, this exact scenario almost took Twitter down permanently in Spring 2021. I’ll note here that this also implies that Twitter could feasibly suffer from a split-brain scenario if network connectivity between its data centers were interrupted. This is an effect in high-availability systems where multiple systems are running in master mode, and the shared data-set converges.
There was some odd pushback, like the request that [Mudge] give his initial overview of problems orally, and that he not send the written report to board members. It’s never a good sign when you get a request
not
to put something in writing. Later, [Mudge] brought an outside firm in to prepare reports on how well Twitter was doing combating the spam and bot problem. Twitter’s executives hired a law firm, routing the reports to the firm first, where they were scrubbed of the most embarrassing details, and only then delivered to [Mudge]. Astounding.
An internal-facing system for Twitter engineers was seeing nearly 3,000 daily failed logins. No one knew why, and it was never addressed. Employee workstations did not have functioning backups, and the response from executives was that at least this gave them a reasonable excuse to not comply with official requests for records. As of earlier this year, Twitter had an estimated 10,000 services that may have Log4j vulnerabilities, and no workable plan to address the possible vulnerabilities. If you wanted
a bug bounty from Twitter
, this seems like a great place to start.
Things didn’t get better. [Mudge] tried to blow the whistle internally, on what he considered to be a fraudulent report presented December 16th to Twitter’s board. This effort percolated through Twitter’s internal structure for a month, and on January 18th he stated that he had
an accurate report
(PDF, and
PDF mirror
) nearly ready to present to the board. In an apparent desperate attempt to prevent this report from being delivered, [Mudge] was fired the next day, January 19th.
My initial response is well summed up by Martin McKeay, ironically on Twitter.
Given the choice between believing Mudge and almost any CEO in the US, I'm going to choose Mudge.
— Martin McKeay (@mckeay)
August 23, 2022
And when you’re looking for a well-reasoned dissent, Robert Graham is usually a good source.
He doesn’t disappoint on this topic
, making the case that while many of [Mudge]’s concerns are valid, the overall package is overblown. He points to several sections in the complaint that are statements of opinion instead of statements of fact, stating, “It makes him look like a Holy Crusader fighting for a cause, rather than a neutral party delivering his professional expertise.”
In-App Browser
iOS and Android apps have picked up a new habit — opening links in the app itself instead of opening them in your primary browser. You may not have thought anything about the in-app browser, but
[Felix Krause] sure has
. See, when an app runs its own browser, that app is the boss now. Developer wants to inject some CSS or JS on a site, or every site? No problem. And here, HTTPS won’t save you. But surely none of the popular apps would take advantage of this, right?
That brings us to
inappbrowser.com.
Send that link to yourself, and open it in the app. It searches for odd or known-dangerous JS objects, and lists everything it finds. Keep in mind that not all injected code is malicious, it might just be themeing a page, or adding functionality to already existing content. There are a few apps that seem particularly troublesome, like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. TikTok, to no one’s surprise, captures every screen tap and keyboard press while using the inn-app browser. And while most other in-app browsers have a button to open in your primary browser, TikTok leaves that one out, making it even harder to escape their garden. These issues were specifically observed on iOS, but it’s very likely that similar problems exist in Android apps.
Firefox At Pwn2Own
This story comes to us by way of Pwn2Own Vancouver 2022, where [Manfred Paul] demonstrated a novel attack on Mozilla’s Firefox browser. By chaining multiple prototype corruption vulnerabilities, an attack goes all the way from running JavaScript code on a website, to arbitrary code execution on the host computer. It’s a single-click exploit, a really nasty one, but thankfully it was demonstrated at Pwn2Own and fixed in Firefox 100.0.2. Zero Day Initiative has the write-up for us, and
part one details the first exploit
, jumping from JavaScript execution to arbitrary code execution, but still inside the render sandbox.
The starting point here is to understand that Firefox implements some of its features entirely inside JavaScript, and all the Javascript that runs inside the renderer sandbox is running in the same context. One of those features that is implemented in JavaScript is top level await, a way to load a JavaScript module in the background. If the loaded module overrides the array prototype in a particular way, that override gets called in the feature code. Once called, a handle to the module gets leaked back to the untrusted code. This handle isn’t intended to be exposed, and calls to its functions can be unsafe. This allows breaking out of the JavaScript engine and writing values to arbitrary memory locations — albeit all still inside the browser’s sandbox. Another clever trick is used to actually execute arbitrary code. Floating-point constants are stored inline in WebAssembly methods, and these are executable sections of memory. So snippets of code to run can be encoded as floating-point numbers, and the return pointer overwritten to jump into the code. This isn’t practical for a larger payload, so this technique is used to mark a larger ArrayBuffer object as executable, and then jump to that, which provides arbitrary execution of much larger bits of code.
Part two of the post
is all about how to escape the sandbox and get code running on the system. And in this story, it’s JavaScript Prototype Pollution all the way down. Even outside the sandbox, various bits of the Firefox browser are implemented in JS, and there are several interfaces through which sandboxed code talks to the parent process. So the attack code fiddles with the Object prototype, and then needs to get the
tab.setAttribute()
function to run, where the manipulated prototype will inject an attribute. The easiest way to pull this off is to crash the tab in question, and since we have arbitrary memory access, it’s trivial. The attribute that gets added is how to handle a title text overflow, and the action to take is to set the tab’s sandbox level to 0. Sneaky.
Google Has Entered the DDoS Fight
Google has quite the feather in their DDoS mitigation cap, having
successfully stopped the largest HTTPS DDoS attack on record
, handling 46 million requests per second against one of their customers. The idea of this attack is that it’s computationally expensive to perform an HTTPS handshake, and if enough new connections arrive at the same time, the servers backing the service can’t keep up. Keep the pressure on, and the service is totally inaccessible.
The real challenge in trying to stop this particular attack is to discern the malicious traffic from legitimate users. This customer had already been using Google’s Adaptive Protection, so a fingerprint of legitimate traffic had been gathered. The exact details on how malicious traffic was matched hasn’t been published, but one could guess that multiple new connections from the same IP address, and known compromised IPs could be part of that solution. Regardless, it’s an impressive feat.
What Could Go Wrong? This.
And finally, pointed out by user [Hecker] on the
Hackaday Discord server
, we see
the ugly unintended side effect of scanning users’ photos for illegal material
. It seems that the mere act of backing up photos to Google Photos triggers such a scan, and this turned into a nightmare scenario for one user. A picture taken for a medical diagnosis led to account termination and a police inquiry, though the detective assigned to the case determined that the whole situation was ridiculous and no crime had occurred. Privacy really does matter, especially for the innocent.
LastPass
And some very last minute news,
LastPass has published a notice
that they detected unauthorized access to their source code via a compromised developer account. It sounds like they are doing a thorough investigation of the incident. LastPass is designed so that all the secrets are stored on the user’s computer, so it’s unlikely that any user data has been compromised. Yet. The one attack LastPass could be vulnerable to is the introduction of malicious code into the browser plugin and mobile apps, and a compromised dev account is in some sense the worst case, so it’s good that they caught it. I’m quite confident their experts are combing through their development environment and codebase with fine toothed combs at this very moment. More next week if there are updates to be had. | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6506775",
"author": "abjq",
"timestamp": "2022-08-26T14:18:38",
"content": "“fixed in Firefox 100.0.2”it would be instructive if exploit hunters could also tell us what the earliest version is, where their exploit would work.That would expose the futility of the upgrade treadmill.",... | 1,760,372,584.694777 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/26/you-paid-for-this-paper-now-you-can-read-it-without-paying-again/ | You Paid For This Paper. Now You Can Read It Without Paying Again | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"academic publishing",
"govenment",
"open-access",
"scientific research"
] | There is probably very little among the topics covered here at Hackaday that doesn’t have its roots somewhere in scientific research. Semiconductor devices for example didn’t simply pop into being in Bell Labs or Texas Instruments, the scientists and engineers who created them did so standing on the shoulders of legions of earlier researchers who discovered the precursor steps that made them possible. As many readers will know, scientific research for its own sake is expensive, so much so that much of it is funded by governments, from your taxes. The research papers with the findings are then hidden from public view behind paywalls by the publishers who distribute them, an injustice which should soon be over for Americans,
thanks to a White House memorandum paving the way for federally funded research to be freely available to the public at no cost
by no later than 2025.
The academic publishing business originates in the days when paper was king, and it has several tiers. Officially an academic journal is usually the product of a professional body in its field, but it is normal for the publishing itself to be contracted out to a specialist academic publishing company. They accept submissions of papers, edit them, and arrange peer reviewers, before publishing the journals. Originally this was a paper process, but while journals are still printed it’s the Internet through which they are now read. The publishers pay nothing to the researcher for their paper and often only a nominal sum to the reviewers for their input, but charge a hefty subscription for access to the content. As you might imagine it’s an extremely lucrative business, so as this Hackaday scribe saw when she worked in that industry, the publishers and the learned bodies are in no hurry to kill their golden goose.
This move to open access may make few immediate waves outside the world of scientific publishing, but it affirms the principle that taxpayers should be able to see the fruits of their spending. As such it will be of benefit to less-well-off researchers and institutions worldwide. Rest in peace
Aaron Swartz
, if only you could have seen this day!
White House pic: Matt H. Wade,
CC BY-SA 3.0
. | 44 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6506708",
"author": "Mo",
"timestamp": "2022-08-26T11:03:28",
"content": "About time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6506712",
"author": "Edwin",
"timestamp": "2022-08-26T11:32:02",
"content": "excellent news",
... | 1,760,372,584.893932 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/24/a-hacky-automatic-camera-slider-using-no-motors/ | A Hacky Automatic Camera Slider Using No Motors | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"camera slider",
"tape measure"
] | Camera sliders are a great way to get smooth, continuous panning shots. You can buy off the shelf or build yourself a motorized model pretty easily these days. However,
[Shivam Dehinwal] came up with a hack that’s even simpler again.
The design uses a 3D-printed base which mounts the camera on top. Four wheels are installed underneath to allow the base to roll on smooth surfaces.
Inside the base, there’s a slot to install a Komelon Touch Lock measuring tape, with the tape’s auto-retract mechanism used to create the sliding function. Pressing the center disc on the measuring tape brakes the tape retract mechanism. The harder you press, the more it slows down.
In the slider, this is achieved with a screw-in puck that contacts the tape measure’s brake. Tighten the puck down, and the tape measure retracts very slowly, moving the slider at a crawl. Leave the puck loose, and the tape measure retracts more quickly for faster panning shots.
It’s a neat way to build a camera slider, of which we’ve seen
many before in the past
. It never needs batteries and adjustment is as easy as turning a screw. Sometimes the simple ways have their charms. Video after the break.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/F3XDAFAL6TCAIL3.mp4 | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6506031",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-08-24T22:11:30",
"content": "I don’t think “panning” is the correct term for what the camera is doing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6506033",
... | 1,760,372,584.734133 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/24/skarper-e-bike-conversion-kit-simplifies-electrifying-your-bike/ | Skarper E-Bike Conversion Kit Simplifies Electrifying Your Bike | Al Williams | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"e-bike",
"ebike",
"electric bike"
] | If you’re a Hackaday reader, it’s a good bet you could figure out how to convert your bike to use an electric motor. But you might have more important things to do, so a start up company, Skarper, wants to help you with a conversion kit and the folks over at [autoevolution]
took a closer look at how it works
. The interesting part is that it transfers power from the motor to your wheels through a disc that substitutes for the bike’s disc brake. You can see a promotional video about the product from the company below.
Unlike some conversions, it looks like with this kit you can easily snap the assembly on the bike when you want it powered and take it off when you want it to function normally or if you want to take the electronic part inside with you.
The company claims that the 250-watt motor can to propel a bike to nearly 20 miles per hour. But we’re willing to bet you can’t go that fast and get the claimed 37-mile range. On the plus side, a 30-minute charge will net you another 12 miles and a full charge only takes 2.5 hours. The battery and motor weigh a bit more than 7 pounds. Obviously, you’ll need a bike that has disc brakes.
Cost? About $1,200, so it isn’t quite an impulse buy. Especially if you have the time and wherewithal to roll your own solution. For example, try a
skateboard motor
. Makes it easier, too, if
you have a 3D printer
. | 65 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6505963",
"author": "MrSVCD",
"timestamp": "2022-08-24T19:05:49",
"content": "Is this pedal assist or a motorcycle conversion kit?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6505970",
"author": "Earl",
"timestamp": "2022-08-24T19:1... | 1,760,372,585.057642 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/24/space-based-solar-power-folly-or-stroke-of-genius/ | Space-Based Solar Power: Folly Or Stroke Of Genius? | Maya Posch | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"solar",
"space",
"space-based solar power"
] | The Sun always shines in space, unless a pesky planet gets in the way. That’s more or less the essential thought behind space-based solar power (
SBSP
) as newly pitched by ESA’s director general, Josef Aschbacher
on Twitter
. Rather than putting photovoltatic solar panels on the Earth’s surface which has this annoying property of constantly rotating said panels away from the Sun during what is commonly referred to as ‘night’, the panels would be put stationary in space, unaffected by the Earth’s rotation and weather.
Although a simple idea, it necessitates the solving of a number of problems. The obvious first question is how to get these panels up in space, hundreds of kilometers from the Earth’s surface, to create a structure many times larger than the International Space Station. The next question is how to get the power back to Earth, followed by questions about safety, maintenance, transfer losses and the inevitable economics.
With organizations ranging from NASA to China’s Academy for Space Technology (CAST), to US institutions and others involved in SBSP projects, it would seem that these problems are at the very least deemed to be solvable. This raises the question of how ESA’s most recent proposal fits into this picture. Will Europe soon be powered from orbital solar panel arrays?
Asking The Right Questions
Simplified summary of space-based solar power (SBSP). Credit: ESA.
ESA’s announcement doesn’t come out of nowhere, but follows the completion of
two studies
on the topic that were commissioned at the beginning of this year. According to these studies it would be possible to provide competitively priced electricity to European homes and businesses by 2040, with as big selling that this could alleviate the need for large-scale grid utility storage solutions.
As we have
covered previously
, grid-level storage is going to be under pressure to bridge dips in solar electricity production. SBSP satellites would however be beaming energy down to Earth ideally 24/7, giving them similar performance to a nuclear power plant at well over 90% capacity factor. This is also noted on the ESA
overview page
for SBSP and specifically their proposed
SOLARIS
project.
In a nutshell, the lack of atmosphere makes space-based solar significantly more efficient than Earth-based solar, with a projected SBSP satellite requiring about 600,000 panels stretching over a kilometer across to generate about 2 GW, akin to a nuclear plant with two reactors.
For the ground-based receiving station – for the microwave or laser-based radiation being beamed down from the SBSP satellite – a footprint of about ten times that (~10 km) would be needed. Although this would make the ground-based footprint smaller than that of the roughly six million PV solar panels plus overcapacity, it would take significantly more space than a comparable coal, gas or nuclear power plant.
The questions here seem to condense down to two primary questions, assuming that fossil fuels are not an option:
Is SBSP competitive with a well-run nuclear power program as in e.g. South Korea and China?
Is SBSP competitive with a 100% renewable grid backed fully by storage?
A Political Minefield
It is an unfortunate reality that energy policy is heavily politicized. When it comes to ESA’s SOLARIS pitch, this could be regarded as a way to get funding approved for Europe’s own heavy-lift rocket program that could compete with something on the level of SpaceX’s Starship.
This is a point raised by Eric Berger in
his analysis
, which also references Elon Musk’s strong dismissal of SBSP, and a
2019 analysis
by physicist Casey Handmer of SBSP. Handmer addresses the other elephant in the room, of transmission efficiency and overall system losses. The power from the solar panels has to be converted to microwaves for transmission, transmitted to the ground station, which captures what makes it through the atmosphere using a gigantic metal mesh antenna, where it has to be converted again to a form usable for the electrical grid.
Artist impression of a solar power satellite. Credit: ESA.
Assuming a generouss 80% conversion efficiency of the PV electricity to microwaves, this would also require the satellite to somehow deal with 400 MW of waste heat for a 2 GW array in an environment where heat shedding is notoriously difficult. For the microwave transmission itself through the Earth’s atmosphere, losses would be incurred as well through attenuation and reflection by water and other elements (
Karmakar et al., 2010
).
The power that would ultimately be received on the ground would thus be anything but constant, but rather fluctuate with factors like the amount of water vapor between the satellite and ground station antenna. Of the 2 GW originally captured, 1.8 GW would be converted to microwaves, which by the estimate of Dr. Handmer would be no more than 40%, leaving us with 720 MW, which after further ground station and transmission losses is likely to amount to between 500 MW – 700 MW, depending on the weather.
At this point we find ourselves confronted with the uncomfortable question about the logistics of getting these satellites into space, assembled, and above all funded.
Too Cheap To Measure
Damage observed to ISS solar array 3A, panel 58 (cell side on left, Kapton backside on right). Note by-pass
diode is disconnected due to MMOD impact. (Credit: Hyde et al., 2019)
As fast as launch prices have been dropping ever since companies like SpaceX threw down the commercial launch gauntlet, getting a kilogram of anything up into orbit is still expensive, even with SpaceX’s
Starship
flying regularly. Its launch cost would be likely
about $10 million
per flight, or $100 per kilogram. The weight of one of these satellites would be far more than the entire ISS, including its PV panels, supporting structure, microwave generator and transmission antenna plus additional control and communication hardware.
The cost of one of these satellites plus ground station would be in the order of billions, all to generate the equivalent of what a large concentrated solar plant (CSP) or small nuclear plant could generate today. Even assuming launch costs were to drop to the $10/kg suggested by Elon Musk, it would not fix the thermal issues and transmission losses. Nor would it address the unsolved problem of assembly and maintenance.
If the ISS were launched today with a Starship, it’d still need in-orbit assembly using humans and/or a robotic arm. Assembling the largest in-orbit structure in human history presents many open questions. The ESA-commissioned Frazer-Nash report states that they expect in-orbit assembly to take anywhere between four to six years, per satellite.
Even assuming that optimistic estimate, this compares to the five to six years construction time observed (
Lovering et al., 2016
) with nuclear plants, e.g. during France’s 1970s build-out or today’s nuclear power plant construction in China, with even the massively delayed and over budget
Olkiluoto
3 EPR reactor at about €8.5 billion for 1.6 GW output reaching an levelized cost of electricity of €30/MWh. Modern reactors also have a rated lifespan of 80+ years, which further helps to amortize the large up-front costs.
This leads to the next point, namely that of maintenance. Although SBSP satellites and PV solar arrays are safely outside the bounds of Earth’s atmosphere and its weather, they are subject to space weather, including space debris, as well as micrometeorites. The ISS has seen its share of damage to both its central structures and its solar panels. Together with the increased radiation exposure in space, this means that space solar arrays would degrade much more rapidly than ground-based arrays, and possibly be taken out by an unlucky hit on a crucial part of the satellite.
The expected lifespan of such a satellite can be estimated based on data
gleaned from the ISS
in particular. Unlike Earth-based solar arrays, the
arrays on spacecraft
use gallium-arsenide instead of silicon. These do not degrade as quickly in the harsh environment of space, even if they’re still vulnerable to a kinetic strike. This necessity to radiation-proof the PV solar panels also means that they’re much more costly than the mass-produced PV solar panels commonly used on Earth.
With in-orbit repair for these SBSP satellites, here too we run into the problem that no such thing has ever been attempted, beyond maintenance work on space stations like the ISS, using astronauts and robotic arms, and the service missions on the Hubble Space Telescope. These were heroic endeavors.
A Hard Case
As a potentially much cheaper alternative to SBSP, one can imagine something like
space-based mirrors
. These would not be as high-tech as orbital PV solar arrays beaming microwaves to the ground, but could be as simple as self-unfolding mirror satellites with ion thrusters to maintain position. These could reflect sunlight to a PV solar array on Earth, for example, costing only a fraction and using mostly proven technology.
Back in 2019, China had
announced
that it would ‘most likely’ launch its own SBSP satellites into orbit between 2021 and 2025, with a MW-level satellite being launched by 2030. So far there has been a severe lack of updates. The distinct feeling here is that perhaps SBSP is more of a national prestige thing, even more so than space stations. From massive orbital construction to a range of other ‘never done before’ items, a successful SBSP project would perhaps be the grandest national power flex imaginable.
Meanwhile it seems that the best strategy to power our societies is to keep building nuclear plants alongside solar and wind, none of which requires us to invent whole new technologies and industries from scratch. | 137 | 38 | [
{
"comment_id": "6505904",
"author": "Robogeek78",
"timestamp": "2022-08-24T17:14:56",
"content": "I would be more interested in a solar shade to reduce the heat energy incoming from the sun, to be placed at the L1 point between the earth and sun.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replie... | 1,760,372,585.25054 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/24/telephoto-lens-without-the-fiscal-pain/ | Telephoto Lens Without The Fiscal Pain | Jenny List | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"lens",
"photography",
"telephoto"
] | If you’re in the market for a telephoto lens, the available range of optics for your camera is limited only by the size of your bank account. So when
[Pixels and Prisms] promises a telephoto for $13 USD
it has to be worth a second look, right? Where’s the catch.
The lens has a 3D printed shell containing the optics, with associated focusing and aperture, and has a mount designed for Canon cameras to give a result with 163 mm focal length and f/2.5 . When a Canon lens costs many times more it’s evident that there is some compromise involved, and it comes in the lens system being very simple and comprised of off-the-shelf surplus lenses without the great effort put in by the manufacturer to correct distortion. The result is nonetheless a very creditable lens even if not the first choice for a paparazzo in pursuit of an errant politician.
The real interest for us in this open source project comes in it being something of an experimenter’s test bed for lenses. There’s no need to use the combination shown and the design can be readily adapted for other lenses, so spinning one’s own lens system becomes a real possibility. Plus it’s achieved the all-too-easy task of engaging a Hackaday writer’s time browsing the stock of
the Surplus Shed
.
We’ve featured a lot of lens projects over the years, but
they more often take an existing camera lens as a starting point
. | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6505873",
"author": "Timothy McN",
"timestamp": "2022-08-24T16:21:10",
"content": "I would humbly encourage these creative DIY optics champions to put a few more diagrams, photographs, and STL previews of their clever wares to upgrade their “zen” minimalist web site from the current... | 1,760,372,584.955629 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/24/how-resilient-is-the-natural-gas-grid/ | How Resilient Is The Natural Gas Grid? | Dan Maloney | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [] | A few years ago, I managed to get myself on a mailing list from a fellow who fancied himself an expert on energy. Actually, it seemed that no area was beyond his expertise, and the fact that EVERY EMAIL FROM HIM CAME WITH A SUBJECT LINE IN CAPS WITH A LOT OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!! really sealed the deal on his bona fides. One of the facts he liked to tout was that natural gas was the perfect fuel. Not only is it clean-burning and relatively cheap, it’s also delivered directly to consumers using a completely self-powered grid. Even under “zombie apocalypse” conditions, he claimed that natural gas would continue to flow.
At the time, it seemed a bit overstated, but I figured that there was at least a nugget of truth to it — enough so that I converted from an electric range and water heater to gas-powered appliances a couple of years ago, and added gas fireplaces for supplemental heat. I just sort of took it for granted that the gas would flow, at least until the recent kerfuffle over the Nordstream pipeline. That’s when I got a look at
pictures of the immense turbine compressors
needed to run that pipeline, the size and complexity of which seem to put the lie to claims about the self-powered nature of natural gas grids.
Surely a system dependent on such equipment could not be entirely self-powered, right? This question and others swirled doubt in my mind, and so I did what I always do in these cases: I decided to write an article so I could look into the details. Here’s what I found out about how natural gas distribution works, at least in North America.
Gathering In
Assessing the claims of my all-caps interlocutor requires a basic understanding of oil field geology. Something like 12% of natural gas production in the US in 2018 was from so-called associated dissolved sources, in which the natural gas is a byproduct of oil production. Associated gas was once, and often still is, considered a nuisance that was either vented to the atmosphere or flared off at the well. Associated gas is often dissolved into the liquid phase within the crude oil reservoir, in much the same way that carbon dioxide is dissolved into the liquid in a bottle of soda. And just like when you uncap a soda bottle suddenly, the natural gas dissolved into crude oil can bubble out of solution when the reservoir is tapped by drilling. Associated natural gas can also be a gas phase that exists in a crude oil reservoir but is not dissolved into the liquid phase.
Natural gas can often occur associated with oil reservoirs. Source:
US Energy Information Administration
, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
On the other hand, some natural gas reservoirs are non-associated, where the gas is found without any significant crude oil present. Non-associated natural gas is often found where an impervious rock layer forms a cap over a porous rock like sandstone, through which the gas produced by decaying fossil vegetation filters. These reservoirs are often under significant pressure too, making it easy to extract once the reservoir is tapped. There are other types of natural gas reservoirs in the broad non-associated category, like shale gas and coalbed gas.
No matter what the type, exploitation of a natural gas reservoir starts with drilling a well and connecting it to a network of gathering pipelines. These pipes form an immense network that connects thousands of wells to upstream processing and pipeline systems. Depending on the type of reservoir, gathering pipes can conduct either raw natural gas or liquid crude oil. The US on-shore gathering network has
about 240,000 miles (386,000 km) of pipe
— enough to cover the distance to the Moon.
Cleaning It Up
Raw natural gas usually has much more than just methane in it. Depending on the reservoir type, natural gas can range from a mix of methane, propane, and butane along with other gasses like water vapor, carbon dioxide, and
even helium
, to an emulsion of crude oil and water foamed up with gas. Most natural gas wells need at least some processing before entering the gathering system, using a device called a gas production unit, or GPU. These machines are essentially adapters between the high-pressure gas in the reservoir and the lower pressures used in the gathering system. GPUs drop the gas pressure with a choke, but to prevent the sudden drop in pressure from cooling the gas mixture to the point where it freezes, the GPU heats the process gas. On the low-pressure side of the GPU, a horizontal separator lets water and liquid hydrocarbons settle out, while the gas phase rises. Some of the gas is tapped off as instrument gas, which is burned to provide the heat for the first stage of the GPU.
Instrument gas is one of the first examples of the self-powered nature of the natural gas grid. Instrument gas is tapped off to power all sorts of equipment along the entire system, parts of which are often very remote and well beyond the practical reach of the electrical grid. In addition to being burned for processes that require heat, instrument gas can be used to run generators that provide backup power for electrical components. The pressure of raw natural gas is also sometimes used to run turbine pumps, and often to pressurize reservoirs and force products to the surface.
Under Pressure
In a dehydrator tower, wet natural gas flows up via bubble caps through TEG, drying out as it rises. The TEG is boiled to removed the water before being reused. Source
Kimray, Inc.
Water is a constant problem for pipeline operations. Even non-associated deposits classified as “dry gas” reservoirs will usually contain at least some water vapor, which could condense within a pipeline and cause internal corrosion, or potentially freeze and occlude a pipe. Dehydrating natural gas is an important step in getting gas ready for the transmission pipeline system. Natural gas is often dehydrated using a chemical treatment process that exposes the wet gas to triethylene glycol, or TEG. TEG is highly hygroscopic, and is used in tall dehydrator towers that are filled with horizontal trays. TEG enters the top of the tower and flows down each tray, while wet natural gas enters the bottom of the tower. The gas bubbles through the TEG, which absorbs the dissolved water vapor. Dehydrated gas exits the top of the tower, while the wet TEG flows out the bottom to a reformer, which uses instrument gas to power burners that heat the liquid to drive off the water, leaving the TEG ready to use again.
After the natural gas is dried and any contaminating propane or butane is removed, it’s ready to enter the transmission system. The transmission system is the long-haul transportation system for bulk gas, consisting of large-diameter, high-pressure pipelines. In the US, there are both interstate and intrastate pipelines, with a total length of about 3 million miles (4.8 million km) that carry about 2.7 trillion cubic feet (76 billion cubic meters) of gas each year.
Transmission pipelines operate at anywhere from 200 to 1,500 psi (1.3 to 10.3 MPa). To achieve the pressure and flow rate to efficiently transport the gas, and to make up for the pressure losses resulting from customer usage and those incurred by pipeline friction, transmission pipelines use compressor stations along the line. Most transmission compressors are powered by gas turbines, which are powered by the very natural gas that is being shipped. Compressor stations tap natural gas from the high-pressure side to power the gas turbine engine, which in turn powers the compressor — another example of the self-powered nature of the natural gas grid. Of course compressor stations require electricity, too, which is provided by the regular electrical grid, or by backup generators that are powered by natural gas. Compressor stations located beyond the electrical grid will often run completely off gas-powered generators.
To The Customers
The typical residential gas meter set is entirely mechanical and powered by the process gas.
While some natural gas customers, like power plants and large-scale chemical plants, can be serviced directly off the high-pressure distribution system, most end-users are actually serviced by a local distribution company, or LDC. These operators maintain the local network of gas mains, laterals, and metering devices that snake under the streets of most cities. LDCs maintain one or more connections to the natural gas transmission system, and use regulators to lower the gas pressure within their system and flowmeters to measure gas usage. LDCs are also responsible for injecting the methyl mercaptan odorant that gives natural gas its characteristic smell.
By and large, the pressure regulation and metering done by LDCs are mechanical in nature; regulators tend to use diaphragms and springs to reduce the pressure in a main to the very low pressure, often just a fraction of a psi, used by many gas appliances. Metering methods vary, but the meters for residential and commercial customers are often powered by bellows expanding under gas pressure to tally up the flow of gas.
Like transmission pipeline operators, LDCs rely on electricity to power quite a bit of their equipment, including monitoring and control gear. And in most cases, the LDCs are connected to the grid just like everyone else. Like the transmission operators, they’ve also got natural gas-fired backup generators in case of local outages, but almost all of the major distribution functions are powered by the pressure of the natural gas itself.
So, while there’s far more to the story than Mr. All-Caps let on, it looks like he wasn’t far off the truth. The natural gas grid really is largely self-powered and engineered to keep on working no matter what. | 83 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6505851",
"author": "Frankel",
"timestamp": "2022-08-24T14:25:15",
"content": "Thank you for including sane and scientifically correct SI units in the article! I can always to MPa into bar easily on my wetware CPU. psi should be abandoned for good.",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,372,585.572582 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/24/macintosh-classic-ii-with-e-ink-display/ | Macintosh Classic II With E-Ink Display | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Mac Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"adb",
"Apple Desktop Bus",
"display",
"e-ink",
"mac Classic",
"macintosh classic ii",
"raspberry pi"
] | As various antique computers age, it becomes increasingly hard to operate them as hardware begins to physically fail. Keeping these systems up and running often requires scavenging parts from other machines which are only becoming harder to find as time goes on. But if you throw out the requirement of using only era-appropriate components, there are some interesting ways to revive older devices with a few touches of modern tech,
like this Mac Classic with a unique display
.
The Macintosh Classic II was the successor to the first Macintosh computer Apple sold that had a price tag under $1000. As such, there were some lower specs for this machine such as the monochrome 512×342 display. This one has been retrofitted with an e-ink display which actually gives it some of the same grayscale aesthetic as the original. The e-ink display is driven by a Raspberry Pi which displays a replica System 7 environment and a set of photos.
While the only part of the computer that’s original is the shell at this point, the project’s creator [Dave] also built in support for the Apple Desktop Bus through an Arduino so the original Apple mouse and keyboard can be used. While it’s largely an illusion of a working Mac Classic, we still appreciate the aesthetic.
If you’re more of a classic Apple purist, though,
take a look at this SE/30 which uses almost entirely original parts
with the exception of a Raspberry Pi to allow it to communicate with the modern Internet. | 30 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6505811",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2022-08-24T11:23:39",
"content": "Personally I was hoping for some sort of translator board, so the old hardware could drive the e-ink display. Sadly it’s a Ras-Pi in a case.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,585.330792 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/24/frequency-counter-restoration-impeded-by-kittens/ | Frequency Counter Restoration Impeded By Kittens | Al Williams | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Teardown",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"HP",
"neon",
"repair",
"restoration",
"test equipment"
] | We think of digital displays as something you see on relatively modern gear. But some old gear had things like nixies or numitrons to get cool-looking retro digital displays. The HP 521A frequency counter, though, uses four columns of ten discrete neon bulbs to make a decidedly low-tech but effective digital display. [Usagi Electric] has been r
estoring one of these
for some time, but there was a gap between the second and third videos as his workshop became a kitten nursery. You can see the last video below.
In previous videos, he had most of the device working, but there were still some odd behavior. This video shows the final steps to success. One thing that was interesting is that since each of the four columns are identical, it was possible to compare readings from one decade to another.
However, in the end, it turned out that the neon bulbs were highly corroded, and replacing all the neon bulbs made things work better. However, the self-check that should read the 60 Hz line frequency was reading 72 Hz, so it needed a realignment. But that was relatively easy with a pot accessible from the back panel. If you want to see more details about the repair, be sure to check out the earlier videos.
We love this old gear and how clever designers did so much with what we consider so little. We hate to encourage your potential addiction, but we’ve given
advice on how to acquire old gear
before. If you want to see what was possible before WS2812 panels, you could build this
neon bulb contraption
. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6505852",
"author": "Garth Bock",
"timestamp": "2022-08-24T14:28:32",
"content": "I remember seeing one of these at our university back in the 70’s. It was later sold as extraneous equipment. Great informative video. Glad you didn’t have a cat-tastrophe and your tech-cat-nical staff... | 1,760,372,585.624319 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/23/the-first-ever-kansas-city-keyboard-meetup-is-this-weekend/ | The First-Ever Kansas City Keyboard Meetup Is This Weekend | Kristina Panos | [
"News"
] | [
"keyboard",
"keyboard meetup",
"meetup",
"swap and shop",
"swap meet"
] | Sometimes, if you wait long enough for something you want, it will come to you. Whether it’s the law of attraction or just plain laziness, it has finally happened —
there’s a keyboard meetup happening within a 500-mile radius of me
. As far as I know, it’s the first one ever in Kansas City. I’m going, I’m bringing weird keyboards, and I might even have some Hackaday stickers to sprinkle around.
Although the event was originally planned to take place in the side room of a coffeehouse in the historic northeast, it was quickly moved to a much larger, co-working space downtown to accommodate all the maniacs like yours truly who want to bring a whole bunch of keebs. I’m even bringing some tables, y’all.
This’ll be more than just a show and tell, because what kind of object-focused nerd gathering would be complete without a swap meet element? You’re probably going to find that all kinds of keyboards and keyboard accessories are for sale, but you also might get lucky and win a cute bag of switches from Kinetic Labs, or a 3×4 macro pad from Boardsource (who will also have stickers on hand).
Come for the cool keyboards, and stay for the conversations you’ll strike up with the awesome folks who brought them. Who knows, maybe we’ll all infiltrate the slammin’ ice cream shop down the street.
Questions? Comments? Just want to share your excitement?
Come join the Discord
! If you’re planning to show up on Saturday,
please take a second to fill out the head count document
. If you do, it’ll probably net you a deli sandwich when you get there.
If you can’t make it, that’s okay — stay tuned for coverage of the event, and start planning for the next one, because hopefully, there will be many more to come.
Main and thumbnail images by
Mingwei Lim
on
Unsplash | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6505605",
"author": "Myself",
"timestamp": "2022-08-23T16:38:29",
"content": "Oh that sounds like so much fun! I love all the new-build activity going on in the keyboard space. I’m sickened by seeing historical artifacts stripped of their unique keyboards without which they cannot o... | 1,760,372,585.865238 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/23/optimizing-the-mining-of-uranium-from-coal-ash-and-seawater/ | Optimizing The Mining Of Uranium From Coal Ash And Seawater | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"uranium",
"uranium mining"
] | Of all the elements that make up the Earth’s crust,
uranium
is reasonably
abundant
, coming in at 49th place, ahead of elements such as tin, tungsten and silver. Ever since humankind began to exploit uranium for its fissile properties in energy production, this abundance has also translated into widespread availability for
mining
. As of 2019, Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia formed the world’s main producers, accounting for about 68% of output.
Considering the enormous energy density of uranium when used as fuel in a nuclear fission reactor, the demand for uranium is relatively low, especially combined with the long (two years on average) refueling cycles of commercial reactors. The effect is that even with the very inefficient once-through fuel cycle – which only uses a fraction of the uranium fuel’s potential energy – uranium market prices have remained relatively low and stable even amidst geopolitical crises.
Despite this, the gradual rise in
uranium market
prices ($10/lb in 2003, $49/lb in 2022), as well as the rapid construction of new reactors is driving new exploration. Here recent innovations may make uranium fuel even more accessible to all nations, by unlocking the billions of tons of uranium found in plain seawater as well as the many tons of fly ash produced by coal plants every single day.
It’s The Economy, Silly
Effect of uranium price on fuel cost (source: World Nuclear Association)
The primary reason why most nuclear plant operators opt for a once-through
fuel cycle
that only uses a fraction of the fissile U-235, is that the fuel costs for a nuclear plant are so incredibly low. While the up-front costs for a new, GW-level nuclear power plant are considerable, the operating costs over its 40-100 year lifespan are very low, which is where the added cost that reprocessing spent fuel, to remove the newly formed actinides and transuranics, makes little
economic sense
.
This economic angle is also one of the factors that has made the development of
fast neutron reactors
(FNRs) unattractive. While these FNRs can breed their own fuel from fertile isotopes through neutron capture, they are more complicated and expensive than a light water reactor — virtually all commercial nuclear plants in operation today. These factors all play a role in whether certain uranium resources are economical to extract from the ground or other sources, while making it quite obvious why extracting uranium from fly ash and seawater wasn’t economical before.
Even though the Earth’s seas and oceans contain an estimated 4.6 billion tons of uranium, the dilution of it into these vast waters means that that you have to filter out a substance of which there are only a few molecules per billion. Similarly for fly ash, separating the uranium from the other components in the ash has to be done in a way that is efficient enough to compete with existing mining methods, such as in-situ leaching (
ISL
).
However, another potential benefit of extracting uranium from seawater and fly ash is that it can fully avoid the environmental impact of traditional mining, while potentially helping with addressing the environmental hazard posed by fly ash.
Coal Waste Problem
Aerial photograph of the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash spill.
Coal ash
consists out of the ash that remains at the bottom of the boiler along with the fine ash, or fly ash, that is captured by electrostatic precipitators or similar equipment installed in or near the coal plant’s chimneys. It contains some left-over carbon, along with large amounts of silicon dioxide, aluminium oxide and calcium dioxide. In addition, it contains trace elements of many heavy metals and similarly problematic substances, including arsenic, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, lead and mercury.
Finding a way to recycle or process fly ash has been an increasingly problematic topic, especially now that fly ash is generally not released into the atmosphere any more, but instead stored in massive coal ash ponds. These ponds form a potential hazard, as illustrated by the 2008
Kingston Fossil Fuel Plant slurry spill
, that released 4.2 million cubic meters (1.1 billion US gallons) of fly ash mixed with water into the adjacent Emory River. The subsequent clean-up cost the lives of approximately 40 workers from exposure to the hazardous chemicals.
While fly ash is increasingly mixed into everything from concrete to tarmac and toothpaste, the sheer amount produced means that a significant amount of the approximately 34.7×10
6
tons of fly ash produced by coal plants in the US alone each year ends up in landfills. Mining fly ash for useful elements like uranium could help with reducing its total volume, while potentially making it easier to use the left-over material.
Yellowcake, also called urania.
As early as 2007, Sparton Resources from Canada
reported
producing
yellowcake
(mostly U
3
O
8
) from fly ash from a Chinese coal-fired plant. Uranium levels were found to be about 160 ppm, corresponding to about 0.2 kg of yellowcake from a ton of ash. As
noted
by The Economist in a 2010 article, this compares to the 1,000 ppm or more in uranium ore. Using a process involving sulfuric and hydrochloric acid that is reminiscent of in-situ leeching, the uranium and other dissolved elements are then filtered out and precipitated using ammonium carbonate.
At that point in 2010, Sparton claimed to be able to extract a kilogram of uranium this way for $77, with the uranium spot price market then being $90. Most of the R&D on this topic appears to occur in China, where it is considered a viable source of uranium fuel, especially in light of the more than hundred new nuclear reactors China has planned or is
in the process
of constructing, and its focus on self-reliance.
Sun et al. (2016)
describe the extraction of uranium from bottom ash, and the high concentration of uranium (374 mg/kg) in the bottom ash remaining after high-germanium containing coal was burned. Although uranium mined from CFA isn’t a big industry yet, ongoing research and small-scale trials as described show the viability of this approach.
Mining The Oceans
The concept of filtering uranium out of sea- and ocean waters is a simple one: essentially it comes down to pumping as much water as possible through a filter system that will retain the elements we are interested in, after which the uranyl molecules can be further processed into reactor fuel. Where things get tricky is that although the oceans contain hundreds of times more easily accessible uranium than dry land, the low density of a few particles per billion (ppb) makes it essential to have a highly efficient filtering method.
As
noted
by a 2017 Stanford article, the approach used at that point involved sticking plastic fibers containing a compound called
amidoxime
into the water and waiting for the fibers to become saturated with uranyl, which can then be processed. In 2018, PNNL
reported
recovering a whole gram of yellowcake from seawater this way.
In a study published last year in
Nature
,
Yang et al. (2021)
, demonstrate an alternative approach where seawater is led through a hierarchical porous membrane, not unlike the branching network of a lung or blood vessels. By coating the insides of the thus formed channels with amidoxime and forcing uranium-containing water through them, they demonstrated a significantly improved extraction rate over previous attempts, mostly due to the massively increased surface area, and the increased flow of water across the amidoxime-coated material.
Once saturation has been reached, the uranium can be dissolved using hydrochloric acid, following the usual processing approach into fuel for reactors. The thus cleaned membrane can then be reused many times, making it a potentially economical option, and a way to extract uranium for one’s own needs for any nation that has access to a body of sea- or ocean water.
Not Running Out Soon
Unlike fossil fuels, which are beginning to see some significant production drops as many of the best oil, coal and gas fields have been exploited to the point of exhaustion, fission reactors using only uranium as fuel can sustain human society at its current energy levels for thousands of years, even without significant investment in the reprocessing of spent fuel, or in fast neutron reactors. Perhaps even more tantalizing is that it adds the cleaning up of the toxic waste created by coal plants as a feature of this transition.
In addition to exploiting fly ash for uranium, some researchers are trying to determine whether rare-earth elements can perhaps also be economically recovered from these ashes. In this way the pollution of yesterday may conceivably help power the future, in an ironic twist.
Banner image:
Chien Wai of PNNL holding up vial with 5 grams of yellowcake
recovered from seawater. | 55 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6505570",
"author": "David W",
"timestamp": "2022-08-23T14:55:19",
"content": "I’m more surprised that they’re not using reverse osmosis and the like to filter out Lithium. It is said that there is more lithium In the the sea than on land. So why not go after both lithium and Uraniu... | 1,760,372,585.72853 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/23/ryobi-battery-hack-keeps-cpap-running-quietly/ | Ryobi Battery Hack Keeps CPAP Running Quietly | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"backup",
"battery pack",
"CPAP",
"inverter",
"Li-ion",
"ryobi"
] | When it comes to cordless power tools, color is an important brand selection criterion. There’s Milwaukee red, for the rich people, the black and yellow of DeWalt, and Makita has a sort of teal thing going on. But when you see that painful shade of fluorescent green, you know you’ve got one of the wide range of bargain tools and accessories that only Ryobi can offer.
Like many of us, Redditor [Grunthos503] had a few junked Ryobi tools lying about, and managed to cobble together
this battery-powered inverter
for light-duty applications. The build started with a broken Ryobi charger, whose main feature was a fairly large case once relieved of its defunct guts, plus an existing socket for 18-volt battery packs. Added to that was a small Ryobi inverter, which normally plugs into the Ryobi battery pack and converts the 18 VDC to 120 VAC. Sadly, though, the inverter fan is loud, and the battery socket is sketchy. But with a little case modding and a liberal amount of hot glue, the inverter found a new home inside the charger case, with a new, quieter fan and even an XT60 connector for non-brand batteries.
It’s a simple hack, but one that [Grunthos503] may really need someday, as it’s intended to run a CPAP machine in case of a power outage — hence the need for a fan that’s quiet enough to sleep with. And it’s a pretty good hack — we honestly had to look twice to see what was done here. Maybe it was just the green plastic dazzling us. Although maybe we’re too hard on Ryobi — after all,
they are pretty hackable
.
Thanks to [Risu no Kairu] for the tip on this one. | 34 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6505519",
"author": "Adam",
"timestamp": "2022-08-23T11:19:26",
"content": "Props to the builder for taking existing parts and making something that works better for them – looks almost OEM, retains safety components (though I’d consider fusing the XT60 connector), and only required... | 1,760,372,585.803383 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/08/23/knife-throwing-machine-gets-the-spin-just-right/ | Knife Throwing Machine Gets The Spin Just Right | Danie Conradie | [
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"knife",
"lidar",
"servo motors"
] | Despite how it might appear in bad action movies, throwing a knife and making it stick in a target is no easy feat. Taking inspiration from the aforementioned movies, [Quint] and his son built a
magazine-fed knife throwing machine
, capable of sticking a knife at any distance within its range.
Throwing a sharp piece of metal with a machine isn’t that hard, but timing the spin to hit the target point-first is a real challenge. To achieve this, [Quint] used a pair of high-performance servo motors to drive a pair of parallel timing belts. Mounting a carriage with a rotating knife-holder between the belts allows for a spinning throw by running one belt slightly faster. The carriage slides on a pair of copper rails, which also provide power to the knife holder via a couple of repurposed carbon motor brushes.
At first, the knife holder was an electromagnet, but it couldn’t reliably hold or release the stainless steel throwing knives. This was changed to a solenoid-driven mechanism that locks into slots machined into the knives. Knives are fed automatically from a spring-loaded magazine at the back as long as the trigger is held down, technically making it full-auto. To match the spin rate to the throwing distance, a LIDAR sensor is used to measure the distance, which also adjusts the angle of the aiming laser to compensate for the knife’s trajectory.
The development process was fraught with frustration, failure, and danger. Unreliable knife holders, exploding carriages, and faulty electronics that seemingly fired of their own accord were all challenges that needed to be overcome. However, the result is a machine that can both throw knives and nurture a kid’s passion for building and programming.
Over-engineered, impractical projectile weapons tend to make rather entertaining projects. We’ve covered everything from
automated airsoft sentry turrets
, to an
iced tea launcher
and even a
supersonic baseball cannon
. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6505494",
"author": "Risu no Kairu",
"timestamp": "2022-08-23T08:51:26",
"content": "Bringing the knife to a gun fight",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6505532",
"author": "MughtyWinky",
"timestamp": "2022-08-23... | 1,760,372,585.923902 |
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