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https://hackaday.com/2022/06/11/odd-inputs-and-peculiar-peripherals-using-a-commodore-light-pen-on-a-modernish-computer/ | Odd Inputs And Peculiar Peripherals: Using A Commodore Light Pen On A Modern(ish) Computer | Robin Kearey | [
"classic hacks",
"computer hacks"
] | [
"commodore",
"Light Pen",
"usb hid"
] | If you worked with computers back in the 1970s, there’s a good chance you used a light pen at some point: a simple input device that you’d point at the CRT screen to highlight text, choose menu options or manipulate graphic objects. Although ubiquitous in those days, the light pen lost the battle for ergonomics to the humble mouse and was all but extinct by the late 1980s. Touchscreen styluses implement a similar function today, but touching the screen somehow doesn’t feel the same as simply pointing at it.
We therefore applaud [Maciej Witkowiak]’s efforts to bring the light pen into the 21st century by building
a USB interface for a Commodore 64/128 light pen
. At its heart is an Arduino Micro Pro that implements the USB HID protocol to communicate with any modern computer. It connects to the classic light pen as well as to the computer’s analog display signal and uses those to calculate the delay between the video synchronization pulses and the light pen’s output. The sync pulses are extracted from the video signal by an LM1881, a sync separator chip that will be familiar to anyone who’s worked with analog video signals.
The Arduino calculates the light pen’s position based on the measured timing intervals and reports it to the computer, using the absolute positioning mode that’s also used by things like drawing pads. [Maciej] demonstrates his system in the video embedded below, in which he uses it to operate the menus on an X window system. A great success then, although there’s one catch: light pens only work on CRT displays, so you’ll need to drag one of those big glass beasts out of storage if you want to try this yourself.
We’ve featured the Commodore light pen before in
this odd gaming input device
. A similar device
built with a discrete LED matrix
is a good illustration of the light pen’s working principle. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482960",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2022-06-12T08:31:46",
"content": "cool project!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6482998",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2022-06-12T13:48:14",
"content": "I never us... | 1,760,372,665.794087 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/11/glass-classic-but-mysterious/ | Glass: Classic, But Mysterious | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"glass",
"materials"
] | For a large part of human history, people made things from what they could find. Some stones make arrowheads. Others make sparks. Trees can turn into lumber. But the real power is when you can take those same materials and make them into something with very different properties. For example, plant fibers turning into cloth, or rocks giving up the metals inside. One of the oldest engineered materials is glass. You’d think as old as glass is (dating back at least 4,500 years), we’d understand all there is to know about it by now. According to
an interesting post
by [Jon Cartwright] writing in Physics World, we don’t. Not by a long shot.
According to [Jon] there are at least five “glassy mysteries” that we still don’t understand. Sure, it is easy to just melt sand, soda, and lime —
something we’ve talked about before
— but, in fact, many materials can turn glassy when cooled quickly from liquid to solid. The problem is, we don’t really understand why that happens.
The point about almost anything can be made glassy is really interesting, too. Did you know that ant colonies and crowds at music festivals behave like glass? Simulated annealing — a computer algorithm for working with difficult optimization problems — is also exploiting the same kind of behavior we see in glass.
Turning metal into glass is hard. You have to cool it very quickly, sometimes on the order of billions of degrees per second. But the payoffs are big. With no grain boundaries, metallic glass doesn’t wear easily and doesn’t easily absorb kinetic energy. For example, a ball bearing hitting a steel plate will bounce a few times, but the plate will quickly absorb the energy in the bearing. A metallic glass plate, however, will absorb much less energy from the bearing. Want to see? Watch the video below.
We’ve talked about how glass is made along with other old engineering materials. If you have a laser cutter, you might even be able to
3D print glass
without using
insane temperatures
(the link on that post is dead, but the videos are still there). | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482930",
"author": "justsayin",
"timestamp": "2022-06-12T02:33:14",
"content": "Seems like a tuning fork made of that stuff would ring for a very long time. Might make an amazing bell. Maybe it could be made into some kind of resonant circuit retirement? This sure would be fun to p... | 1,760,372,665.962901 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/11/homebrew-an-os-from-scratch-snowdrop-shows-how-its-done/ | Homebrew An OS From Scratch? Snowdrop Shows How It’s Done | Donald Papp | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"assembly",
"homebrew OS",
"multitasking",
"os",
"snowdrop",
"x86"
] | Ever wondered what it would take to roll your own OS? [Sebastian]’s
Snowdrop OS
might just provide you with some insight into that process, and maybe even some inspiration.
[Sebastian] created Snowdrop completely from scratch, using only x86 assembly language. It’s more than just bare-bones, and boasts a number of useful utilities and programs including a BASIC interpreter and linker (for creating standalone BASIC executables.) That’s not even touching on the useful essentials, like multitasking and a GUI framework. There are even a number of resources specifically for making game development easier. Because as [Sebastian] puts it, what’s a operating system without games?
Interested in giving Snowdrop a try, or peek at the source code? The
binaries and sources section
has all you need, and the other headings at the top of the page will send you to the various related goodies. If you have a few minutes, we recommend you watch a walkthrough of the various elements and features of Snowdrop in
this video tour
(embedded after the page break.)
Snowdrop is an ambitious project, but we’re not surprised that [Sebastian] has made it work; we’ve seen his low-level software skills before, with his fantastic efforts around the classic stand-up arcade game,
Knights of the Round
. | 21 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482913",
"author": "Sword",
"timestamp": "2022-06-11T23:07:11",
"content": "That is really cool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6482916",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2022-06-11T23:23:42",
"content": "Is it bad... | 1,760,372,665.852542 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/11/hackaday-prize-2022-binpal-is-a-convenient-recycling-reminder/ | Hackaday Prize 2022: BinPal Is A Convenient Recycling Reminder | Robin Kearey | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"google calendar",
"recycling",
"reminder"
] | While curbside pickup of recyclables is convenient, it does require you to keep track of which type of waste is picked up when: miss the biweekly paper pickup and you’ll soon find yourself stockpiling four weeks’ worth of boxes and newspapers. When [Dominic Buchstaller]’s stack of cardboard began to reach his ceiling, he decided to take action by building himself
BinPal: a fridge magnet that helps you remember when to take out which bin
.
At heart of the simple but effective BinPal is an ESP32 board that connects to Google Apps Script and retrieves the pickup schedule from Google Calendar. If one of four categories of waste is due for pickup, its icon is highlighted on an LCD screen. The user can press a touch-sensitive button to confirm the bin has been brought out for pickup; if that hasn’t been done by 8 pm, the display’s backlight starts flashing as an additional reminder.
The outer shell of the device is made from laser-cut plywood, with a few strong magnets glued inside to ensure the BinPal stays firmly attached to the fridge. In the true spirit of recycling, [Dominic] used only components that he had in his parts bin to make the BinPal. However, these parts are all easily available online, and with the full schematics and code available on the project’s Hackaday.io page it should be easy to adapt the design to different hardware platforms as well.
[Dominic]’s design was inspired by
a flashing LED chore reminder
we featured a few years ago. You can also make household task reminders by
reusing a Kindle for its ePaper display
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2022
is Sponsored by: | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482896",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2022-06-11T20:36:57",
"content": "We’ve been recycling since about 1975, when a neighbor took her newsprint to a place that bought it, and we sent ours along. Since about 1980, there’s been pickup, like clockwork.We don’t forget.",... | 1,760,372,666.116449 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/11/odd-inputs-and-peculiar-peripherals-a-macropad-with-a-handy-layout-screen/ | Odd Inputs And Peculiar Peripherals: A MacroPad With A Handy Layout Screen | Jenny List | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"keypad",
"macro pad",
"rp2040"
] | The idea of a macro keypad is a great one, a set of keys programmable with frequent but complex tasks. But once programmed, how can the user keep track of which key does what? To save the world from grubby, hand-written sticky labels, here’s [Andreas Känner] with
the Badger 2040 keypad
— a macro pad with a display to show keymap info that’s fully programmable using CircuitPython.
At its heart is a
Pimoroni Badger 2040
e-ink screen and RP2040 board which sits in a 3D-printed enclosure which in turn magnetically attaches to a 3D-printed keyboard enclosure. Inside is an I/O expander board, which is hand-wired to the switches. The firmware allows for easy configuration and even extension of the keypad itself, and presents itself to the host computer through USB. It’s even possible to have multiple different layouts on the same device.
Full details can be found in
a comprehensive write-up on his website
, and
all the files are in a GitHub repository
. If this doesn’t satisfy your need for customisable input goodness, then
it’s not the first macro keypad we’ve shown you
. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,666.199791 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/11/the-tools-that-lovingly-tore-apart-a-vintage-computer-game/ | The Tools That Lovingly Tore Apart A Vintage Computer Game | Donald Papp | [
"Games",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"game assets",
"night light",
"reverse engineering",
"vintage"
] | The structure of computer game assets can be a bit of a mystery, even more so the older a game is, and some amount of reverse-engineering can be expected when pulling apart a game like 1995’s
Night Light
.
[voussoir] had fond memories of this game by GTE Entertainment, which had an interesting “flashlight” mechanic to serve the exploration theme. Spooky shapes in dark rooms would be revealed to be quite ordinary (and therefore not scary at all) once illuminated with a flashlight, which was directed by the mouse.
Extracting game assets was partly straightforward, thanks to many of them being laid out in a handy folder structure, with
.bmp
files for each level in a modest resolution. But there were also some unusual
.mov
files that were less than a second long, and those took a little more work to figure out.
It turns out that these unusual movie files were 80 frames in length, and each frame was a tile of a larger image. [voussoir] used
ffmpeg
to extract each frame, then wrote a Python script to stitch the tiles together. Behold! The results are high-resolution versions of each level’s artwork. Stitching the first 16 frames into a 4×4 grid yields a 1024×768 image, and the remaining 64 frames can be put into a 8×8 grid for a fantastic 2048×1376 version. The last piece was extracting audio, but sadly the ISO [voussoir] was using seems to have had errors, and not all the audio survived.
With intact assets in hand, [voussoir] was able to re-create the core of the game, which can be seen about halfway down into
the writeup
. Audio clues play simply while the flashlight effect is re-created in the browser with the game’s original level artwork, and it’s enough to ring those nostalgia bells. It’s a pretty successful project, even though not all of the assets have been tracked down, and not all of the audio was able to be extracted due to corruption. If you have any insights on that front, don’t keep them to yourself! Send [voussoir] an email, or chime in here in the comments.
Reverse engineering has a strong history when it comes to games, and has manifested itself in sometimes unusual ways, like the time
Atari cracked the NES
. Had the subsequent legal challenge gone differently, the game landscape might have looked very different today. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482840",
"author": "aki009",
"timestamp": "2022-06-11T14:27:56",
"content": "Oh this is nothing compared to cracking Commodore 64 games back in the day. Everything was unique. And optimized (down to the clock cycle). And one-off. Now that was fun detective work. Back in the day. So... | 1,760,372,666.162774 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/11/inside-an-ebay-marking-laser/ | Inside An EBay Marking Laser | Dan Maloney | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"co2",
"engraving",
"galvanometer",
"galvo",
"ir",
"laser",
"marking",
"Synrad"
] | When it comes to trolling eBay for cool stuff, some people have all the luck. Whereas all we ever seem to come across is counterfeit chips and obviously broken gear listed as, “good condition, powers on”, [Les Wright] actually
managed to get more than he bargained for
with one of his recent eBay purchases.
In his video teardown and tour of an industrial marking laser, [Les] suggests that he was really just in it for the optics — which is not a surprise, given his interest in
optics in general
and
lasers in particular
. The 20-W CO
2
laser once etched barcodes and the like into products on assembly lines, but with a 2009 date code of its own, it was a safe bet that it was pitched due to a burned-out laser tube. But there were still high-quality IR optics and a precision X-Y galvanometer assembly to be harvested, so [Les] pressed on.
The laser itself ended up being built around a Synrad RF-stimulated CO
2
tube. By a happy accident, [Les] found that the laser actually still works, at least most of the time. There appears to be an intermittent problem with the RF driver, but the laser works long enough to release the magic smoke from anything combustible that gets in its way. The galvos work too — [Les] was able to drive them with a Teensy and a couple of open-source libraries.
Galvos, lenses worth more than $800, and a working laser tube — not a bad haul. We’ll be following along to see what [Les] makes of this booty. | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482815",
"author": "Aaron Christophel",
"timestamp": "2022-06-11T11:34:05",
"content": "Had something very similar once from the German Craigslist, fully functional and the speed is very impressive.Made a video about it back then:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkLO3aTMDug",
"p... | 1,760,372,665.90848 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/11/bug-zapper-counts-and-serenades-its-victims/ | Bug Zapper Counts And Serenades Its Victims | Sven Gregori | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"attiny",
"bug zapper",
"DFPlayer",
"Digispark",
"mosquito",
"mosquitoes",
"pest control"
] | Not many creatures are as universally despised as mosquitoes, whether it’s the harmless kind that, at worst, makes you miss winter, or the more serious ones that can be a real threat to your health. A satisfying way to deal with them is to send them off with a bang using one of those racket-shaped high voltage metal mesh bug zappers. [lmu34] saw big potential for some additional gamification here,
and decided to equip his zapper with a kill counter and matching sound effects
.
The initial thought was that there has to be a way to detect when a mosquito hits the mesh, and use that to trigger further events — in [lmu34]’s case play a sound file and increment a counter. After taking the zapper apart and doing a bit of research, he put theory into practice using a Digispark Pro board containing an ATtiny167, the DFPlayer module for playing a set of WAV files, and an ambitious four digit 7-segment display to keep track of the “score”. A new 3d-printed cover provided enough space to house all the components, including a charging circuit as he swapped the original two AAA batteries with a rechargeable one, which gave a bit more power for the display.
Of course, with these operation voltages, it would be difficult to detect activity on the high voltage side more than once, so [lmu34] went with current sensing instead. He distinguishes between two different levels here and maps them as
normal kill
and
monster kill
for the big zaps respectively, playing different sounds for each. Have a look at the video after the break for some quick demonstration.
All in all, this is a delightfully absurd modification that almost screams for an ESP32 to enable multiplayer mode as next iteration. But if chasing mosquitoes with low-tech gadgets isn’t for you,
there’s always lasers
and
good old torture
, although those can’t be repurposed
to do some hardware fault injections
during the winter months then. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482788",
"author": "tomás zerolo",
"timestamp": "2022-06-11T08:21:01",
"content": "“… a Digispark Pro…”I see what you did there…“… detect activity […] more than once…”… and there. Very clever :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,372,666.00471 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/10/heres-what-it-takes-to-fill-a-piano-with-water/ | Here’s What It Takes To Fill A Piano With Water | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"flex seal",
"piano",
"water",
"water proofing"
] | Filling a piano with water probably sounds frivolous and asinine to many. However, it also sparks a certain curiosity as to what it would be like.
Thankfully, [Mattias] put in the hours of work to find out so we don’t have to!
It doesn’t make a great pool, though.
A first attempt with an upright piano failed quickly. After just four minutes submerged in water, the wooden hammers would seize up as they swelled with moisture.
A grand piano was sourced for a second attempt. The strings were first detensioned to make things easier to work with, and the internal frame pried out from the surrounding piano body. To stop the water pouring out past the keys and strings, a simple solution was implemented: tilting the piano up so the water remained in the body below. A judicious application of various sealing agents was then used to seal the frame. Amazingly, the best information on sealing a piano came from enthusiasts building aquariums out of plywood boxes. Go figure.
The water has a muting effect on the piano’s sound as you might expect. The sound is particularly compelling when heard via underwater mics placed in the water-filled cavity. It almost sounds like a plucked instrument, and gives everything a strangely maritime feel. The sound waves can be seen on the surface of the water, too.
The experiment came to a tragic end when the piano was overfilled, dumping water over the keys and hammers. This caused every key to jam, killing the piano for good.
It’s a fun build, and a very silly one, if you can stand to watch a piano treated in this way. [Mattias] has form in the area of oddball instrument hacks, too, as we’ve previously featured
his helium guitar
. Video after the break. | 25 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482763",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2022-06-11T05:07:42",
"content": "That just sounds like a thinly veiled excuse to get YouTube views.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6482909",
"author": "UnderSampled",
... | 1,760,372,666.067015 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/10/simple-snap-action-mechanism-is-100-3d-printed/ | Simple Snap Action Mechanism Is 100% 3D Printed | Lewin Day | [
"Parts"
] | [
"3d print",
"snap mechanism",
"spring"
] | Plastics are wonderous materials, much loved for their ability to elastically deform and spring back to their original shape. They’re a category of materials perfect for creating things like living hinges and similar mechanisms,
and this 3D printed snap action device shows that off admirably.
The device consists of an outer housing, into which two printed springs are inserted. These leaf springs are curved and protrude towards the center of the housing. A slide is then inserted into the housing with a cam in its middle. The cam allows the slide to push past the springs when actuated, while also holding it in place at rest.
As demonstrated the mechanism reliably snaps back and forth between its two positions in a satisfying manner. It’s shown with one side of the housing removed so we get a good idea of how it works. It’s 100% 3D printed, as well. Anyone looking to replicate the design should note the importance of printing orientation, particularly in the case of the spring pieces, which won’t work if layered up in the wrong way.
Overall, it’s a neat design that could prove useful for those eager to build printed switches or other mechanical devices. It’s also simply a great way to learn about
3D printed springs
and working with deformable plastic structures. Video after the break. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482755",
"author": "jenningsthecat",
"timestamp": "2022-06-11T02:56:38",
"content": "That is very cool! There’s something just so simple, elegant, and satisfying about designs like that. I have to wonder if it was made simply as a demonstration, or if it has a larger purpose.I also... | 1,760,372,665.750343 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/10/making-a-projector-screen-out-of-flex-seal-works-okay-kinda/ | Making A Projector Screen Out Of Flex Seal Works Okay, Kinda | Lewin Day | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"projector",
"projector screen"
] | Watching movies on the big screen is fun, but getting out to the cinema or drive-in can be a hassle. It’s possible to get the same experience at home with a little creativity, as shown in
this DIY projector screen
build by [The Hook Up].
The build started with a giant motorized roller screen designed for a patio. It was scored on the cheap as it was salvaged after removal from its original home. Having seen a screen door turned into a boat with the help of Flex Seal, [The Hook Up] was confident that the flyscreen could be sealed up and used for projection.
Right away, the going got tough. Light applications weren’t really filling in the holes in the flyscreen, while thick applications had major issues with runs. Eventually, the screen was painted with 3 gallons of white Flex Seal and hung up to test.
The runs caused issues, as the lumpy screen texture was distracting when viewing movies. Additionally, the glossy finish was creating unsightly reflections. After some trial and error, the issues were solved by sanding the Flex Seal surface flat and using matte clear spray paint to dull the shine.
The result was a grand projection screen that rolls down at the touch of a button, the likes of which
we’ve seen before,
though at significant cost. [The Hook Up] readily admitted that the several hundred dollars invested might have been better spent on
buying a pre-made screen
. Nonetheless, it’s a cool project, and we respect the creator for putting in the work! Video after the break. | 6 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482737",
"author": "perry",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10T23:23:52",
"content": "Sorry but my screen was a heck of a lot cheaper.2 x 10′ 1/2 emt $15 at the time.2 x 8′ 3/8 round bar $162 x 3/8 edge trim for shelving $81 Dollor store white plastic table cloth.Projector in the rear on a... | 1,760,372,666.441262 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/10/3d-printed-lobe-pump-shifts-water-well/ | 3D-Printed Lobe Pump Shifts Water Well | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"lobe pump",
"pump",
"water pump"
] | Lobe pumps are perhaps most popularly known for their use in Rootes-type superchargers, but they can pump water, too. [Let’s Print] demonstrates this ably with a 3D-printed design
that can pump with the best of them.
The design uses two figure-eight shaped counter-rotating rotors, or lobes. As the rotors turn, they trap fluid between the rotor and the housing, forcing it towards the outlet. It’s a positive-displacement design, meaning it traps a fixed volume of fluid in each rotation, moving it from inlet to outlet.
The design requires proper timing of the two rotating lobes in order to ensure they maintain the closed volume and don’t impact each other. This is achieved with a pair of timing gears on the back of the pump. The housing, lobes, and gears are all 3D-printed, making this a build that anyone can replicate at home with their own printer.
ABS was used for the rotors for its better handling of friction without melting as easily. However, resin-printed lobes were also employed for their higher tolerances, too, with both designs working acceptably in practice.
The pump still needs more improvement; the hope is to reduce the leaks out of the rear of the pump. [Let’s Print] also intends to add a motor to the pump itself rather than using a power drill to run the device. It’s great to see these 3D-printed pump builds
continuing in earnest
. Video after the break. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482715",
"author": "JvandeWerken",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10T21:19:49",
"content": "His next onehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB_B5vPLLo8works even better.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6482720",
"author": "Nathan",
... | 1,760,372,666.86061 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/10/an-interesting-circular-stewart-platform/ | An Interesting Circular Stewart Platform | Dave Rowntree | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"6-DOF",
"arduino pro mini",
"h-bridge",
"Stewart platform",
"tb6612"
] | Stewart platforms are pretty neat, and not seen in the wild all that often, perhaps because there aren’t a vast number of hacker-friendly applications that need quite this many degrees of freedom within such a restricted movement range. Anyway, here’s
an interesting implementation
from the the curiously named [Circular-Base-Stewart-Platform] YouTube channel (no, we can’t find the designer’s actual name) with a
series of videos from a few years ago, showing the construction and operation of such a beast. This is a very neat mechanism comprised of six geared motors on the end of arms, engaging with a large internal gear. The common end of each arm rides on the central shaft, each with its own bearing. With the addition of the usual six linkages, twelve ball joints, and a few brackets, a complete platform is realised.
This circular arrangement is so simple that we can’t believe we haven’t come across it before. One interesting deviation from the usual Stewart platform arrangement is the use of a central slip-ring connector to provide power, allowing the whole assembly to rotate continuously, in addition to the usual six degrees of freedom the mechanism allows. Control is courtesy of an Arduino Pro Mini, which drives the motors using a handful of Pololu
TB6612
(PDF) dual H-bridge driver modules. Obviously, the sketch running on the Arduino will give the thing a fixed motion, but add in an additional data link over that central slip-ring setup (or maybe a wireless link), and it will be much more useful.
We recently saw another
6-DOF actuator design, using flexures
, yet another
ball-balancing hack
, but if you want an actually useful Stewart platform application, checkout this
pool-playing robot
!
Thanks [quibble_droid] for the tip! | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482693",
"author": "ConsultingJoe",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10T19:02:22",
"content": "WOW. That is amazing. One axis and all that motion.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6482700",
"author": "Bubba",
"timestamp": "2022-06-... | 1,760,372,667.161115 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/10/the-unique-challenges-of-aerial-robotics/ | The Unique Challenges Of Aerial Robotics | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"ardupilot",
"autonomous aircraft",
"autonomous robot",
"computer vision",
"drone",
"gps",
"Hack Chat",
"SLAM"
] | When we think of robotics, the first thing that usually comes to mind for many of us is some sort of industrial arm that’s bolted to the floor, or perhaps a semi-autonomous rover trudging its way across the dusty Martian landscape. While these two environments are about as different as can be, the basic “rules” are pretty much the same. Being on firm ground ground gives the robot a clear understanding of its position and orientation, which greatly simplifies tasks such as avoiding collisions or interacting with nearby objects.
But what happens when that reference point goes away? How does a robot navigate when it’s flying through open space or hovering in mid-air? That’s just one of the problems that fascinates Nick Rehm,
who stopped by to host this week’s
Aerial Robotics Hack Chat
to talk about his passion for flying robots. He’s currently an aerospace engineer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where he works on the unique challenges faced by autonomous flying vehicles such as the detection and avoidance of mid-air collisions, as well as the development of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) systems. But before he had his Master’s in Aerospace Engineering and Rotorcraft, he got started the same way many of us did, by playing around with DIY projects.
In fact, regular Hackaday readers will likely recall seeing some of his impressive builds. His
autonomous ekranoplan designed to follow a target
using computer vision graced the front page in April. Back in 2020, we took a look at his
recreation of SpaceX’s Starship prototype
, which used a realistic arrangement of control surfaces and vectored thrust to perform the spacecraft’s signature “Belly Flop” maneuver — albeit with RC motors and propellers instead of rocket engines. But even before that, Nick recalls asking his mother for permission to pull apart a Wii controller so he could use its inertial measurement unit (IMU) in a wooden-framed tricopter he was working on.
Discussing some of these hobby builds leads the Chat towards Nick’s
dRehmFlight project
, a GPLv3 licensed flight control package that can run on relatively low-cost hardware, namely a Teensy 4.0 microcontroller paired with the GY-521 MPU6050 IMU. The project is designed to let hobbyists easily experiment with VTOL craft, specifically those that transition between vertical and horizontal flight profiles, and has powered the bulk of Nick’s own flying craft.
Moving onto more technical questions, Nick says one of the most difficult aspects when designing an autonomous flying vehicle is getting your constraints nailed down. What he means by that is having a clear goal of what the craft needs to do, and critically, how long it needs to do it. How far does the craft need to be able to fly? How fast? Does it need to loiter at the target location, and if so, for how long? The answers to these questions will largely dictate the form of the final vehicle, and are key to determining if it’s worth implementing the complexity of transitioning from VTOL to fixed-wing horizontal flight.
But according to Nick, the biggest challenge in aerial robotics is onboard state estimation. That is, the ability for the craft to know its position and orientation relative to the ground. While high-performance computers have gotten lighter and sensors have improved, he says there’s still no substitute for having a ground-based tracking system. He mentions that those fancy demonstrations you’ve seen with drones flying in formation and working collaboratively towards a task will almost certainly have an array of motion capture cameras tucked off to the side. This makes for an impressive show, but greatly limits the practical application of these drone swarms.
Nick’s custom Raspberry Pi 4-powered quadcopter lets him test autonomous flight techniques.
So what does the future of aerial robotics look like? Nick says open source projects like ArduPilot and PX4 are still great choices for hobbyists, but sees promise in newer platforms which pair the traditional autopilot with more onboard computing power, such as
Auterion’s Skynode
. More powerful flight controllers can enable techniques such as simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), which uses 3D scans of the environment to help the robot orient itself. He’s also very interested in
technologies that enable autonomous flight in GPS-denied environments
, which is critical for robotic craft that need to operate indoors or in situations where satellite navigation is unavailable or unreliable. In light of the incredible success of NASA’s
Ingenuity
helicopter, we imagine these techniques will also play an invaluable role in the future airborne exploration of Mars.
We want to thank Nick for hosting this week’s
Aerial Robotics Hack Chat
, which turned out to be one of the fastest hours in recent memory. His experience as both an avid hobbyist and a professional in the field provided exactly the sort of insight the Hackaday community looks for, and his gracious offer to keep in touch with several of those who attended the Chat to further discuss their projects speaks to how passionate he is about this topic. We expect to see great things from Nick going forward, and would love to have him join us again in the future to see what he’s been up to.
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. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482719",
"author": "Nick Rehm",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10T21:42:06",
"content": "Thanks for the awesome overview article, and for having me!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6482752",
"author": "js",
"timestamp": "2022-06... | 1,760,372,667.036282 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/10/ep-172-frickin-laser-beams-squishy-stomp-switches-and-a-tiny-but-powerful-diy-loom/ | Hackaday Podcast 172: Frickin’ Laser Beams, Squishy Stomp Switches, And A Tiny But Powerful DIY Loom | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Join Hackaday Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Assignments Editor Kristina Panos for a free-as-in-beer showcase of the week’s most gnarly but palatable hacks. But first, a reminder! Round 2 of the 2022 Hackaday Prize comes to an end in
the early hours of Sunday, June 12th
, so there’s still enough time to put a project together and get it entered.
This week, we discuss the utility of those squishy foam balls in projects and issue the PSA that it is in fact pool noodle season, so go get ’em. We drool over if-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-afford-it 3D printers with staircases and such, and wonder why breadboard game controls didn’t already exist. Later on we laugh about lasers, shake the bottle of LTSpice tips from [fesz], and ponder under-door attacks. Finally, we’re back to frickin’ laser beams again, and we discover that there’s a fruity demoscene in Kristina’s backyard.
Direct Download link
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 172 Show Notes:
News This Week:
Round 2 of the Hackaday Prize ends Sunday morning!
Odd Inputs and Peculiar Peripherals Contest clacks on until July 4th
Elliot is Stateside and says the Boulder library has a cool makerspace
What’s that Sound?
No What’s That Sound this week as Elliot is on vacation,
so here are the coolest tornado sirens ever
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Anyone Can Be The Master Of This Master Lock Safe
Surprisingly Stomp-able Soft Switches
The World’s Most Expensive 3D Printers
Odd Inputs And Peculiar Peripherals: The GameBug Turns Your Breadboard Into A Game Console
Bug Eliminator Zaps With A Laser
Low-Cost Stereovision System (Disparity Map) For Few Dollars[v1]
3D-Printed Power Loom Shows How Complex Weaving Really Is
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
LTSpice Tips And A Long Tutorial
A Breath Of Fresh Air For Some Arcade Classics
Refilling Single-Use Miele Dishwasher AutoDos Detergent Dispensing Disks
Kristina’s Picks:
3D Printed Protection Against “Under-Door” Attacks
How To Use LEGO Bricks For Data Storage
The Wonderfully Weird Wireframe Game Boy That Actually Works
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Laser Propulsion Could Satisfy Our Spacecraft’s Need For Speed
Outline 2022: Everyone Should Go To A Demo Party | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482656",
"author": "Then",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10T16:32:02",
"content": "Has Doom been ported to a loom already?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6482692",
"author": "Kristina Panos",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10... | 1,760,372,666.953672 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/10/odd-inputs-and-peculiar-peripherals-the-simplest-of-pi-400-cyberdecks/ | Odd Inputs And Peculiar Peripherals: The Simplest Of Pi 400 Cyberdecks | Jenny List | [
"contests",
"Cyberdecks"
] | [
"cyberdeck",
"lcd display",
"raspberry pi 400"
] | The trend for making cyberdecks has seen the Raspberry Pi emerge as a favourite for these home-made computer workstations, with the all-in-one Raspberry Pi 400 providing a particularly handy shortcut to integrating the computer and keyboard components. There’s still the question of the cyberdeck chassis and screen though, and it’s one that [
bobricius
] has answered
in what may be the simplest manner possible
, by means of a riser PCB from the expansion port holding a 320×240 SPI display.
If this is starting to look familiar, then you’d be right to recognise it as a slightly higher-quality version of those cheap LCD screens that have been available for the Pi for quite a few years. Alongside the screen is a pair of speakers, and the whole thing extends upwards from the back of the Pi 400. We’d question how much load can be taken by the expansion connector, but in practice it seems not to be taking too much.
The device in use can be seen in the video below the break. It’s definitely not the largest of displays, and when used as a desktop, it’s rather cramped, but it seems adequate for a terminal. It has the advantage over many cyberdecks that when the novelty has waned, it can be removed, and the Pi 400 used with a conventional display.
The Pi 400 has been with us for nearly a couple of years now, and perhaps hasn’t had the recognition it deserves. If you’ve never tried one,
take a look at our review from when it came out
. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482650",
"author": "not",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10T15:59:31",
"content": "Really convenient when one does not want the screen to be seen: one hand is enough to obfuscate those 73.8E3 pixels at once.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,372,666.914009 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/10/this-week-in-security-for-the-horde-feature-not-a-bug-and-confluence/ | This Week In Security: For The Horde, Feature Not A Bug, And Confluence | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"confluence",
"DogWalk",
"Follina",
"This Week in Security"
] | If you roll way back through the history of open source webmail projects, you’ll find Horde, a groupware web application. First released in 1998 on Freshmeat, it gained some notoriety in early 2012 when it was discovered that the 3.0 release had been tampered with, and packages containing a backdoor had been shipped for three months. While this time around it isn’t an intentional backdoor, there is
a very serious problem in the Horde webmail interface
. Or more accurately, a pair of problems. The most serious is CVE-2022-30287, an RCE bug allowing an authenticated user to trigger code execution on the connected server.
The vulnerable element is the Turba address book module, which uses a PHP factory method to access a specific address book. The
create()
method has an interesting bit of code, that first checks the initialization value. If it’s a string, that value is understood as the name of the local address book to access. However, if the factory is initialized with an array, any of the address book drivers can be used, including the IMSP driver. IMSP fetches serialized data from remote servers, and deserializes it. And yes, PHP can have deserialization bugs, and this one runs code on the host.
But it’s not that bad, it’s only authenticated users, right? That would be bad enough, but that second bug is a Cross-site Request Forgery, CSRF, triggered by viewing an email. So on a vulnerable Horde server, any user viewing a malicious message would trigger RCE on the server. Oof. So let’s talk fixes. There is a new version of the Turba module that seems to fix the bugs, but it’s not clear that the actual Horde suite has pushed an update that includes it. So you may be on your own. As is pointed out on the Sonar Blog where the vulnerability was discovered, Horde itself seems to be essentially unmaintained at this point. Maybe time to consider migrating to a newer platform.
Vulnerability or Feature?
The slow-roll continues in regards to Microsoft’s handling of Follina. There’s another, similar, problem:
DogWalk
. It’s not quite as bad as Follina, this one is a problem in the
.diagcab
handling. The cab can point to an XML file on a remote WebDAV server, and the files returned bypass the normal checks for disallowed file names. So for instance,
\..\..\..\..\..\..\..\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\malicious.exe
gets created, with predictably disastrous consequences.
Now, is this a vulnerability? Well, on one hand, it’s a file downloaded from the internet that the user intentionally opened. On the other, it’s not an executable and shouldn’t run arbitrary code. A web browser will happily download and let a user run the potentially malicious file. It’s not a 10.0, but that sounds like a vulnerability. Microsoft declined issuing a CVE, similarly to their initial handling of Follina, which is still
an unpatched 0-day vulnerability being exploited in the wild
. We could speculate that Microsoft has received a National Security Letter regarding the bug, but that’s a vanishingly unlikely scenario.
The Other Vulnerability That Wasn’t
Or maybe it is a vulnerability. You decide. The Formidable library is a Node.js library for parsing form data, including file uploads. The vulnerability is
CVE-2022-29622
, an arbitrary file upload issue. You may already see the contention there. The file upload library allows arbitrary uploads — by design. This is literally a feature of the library. So was the entire vulnerability report, scoring a 9.8, utter bunk? Well no, there is actually a bug — or at least a feature that doesn’t always act as expected.
When you use Formidable to do a file upload, it replaces the name with a random hex string. There’s an option to keep the file extension, so if you upload
example.txt
, you get a file named
84d38f5e070c248df3cdccc00.txt
on the server. The problem is how much of the filename is considered the extension. Everything after the first period was counted as extension, meaning that if you uploaded a file named
test.pdf.jqlnn⟨img src="a"⟩.png
, you get a file named
randomstring.pdf.jqlnn⟨img src="a"⟩.png
. If you were depending on this arrangement to sanitize the uploaded file name, you may get a XSS or even RCE for your trouble. But that isn’t a vulnerability in Formidable.
This is the argument that
[Zsolt Imre] makes in his analysis of the issue
, and
further defense
. The real kicker is that the rushed fix
introduced an issue at least as serious
as the one it was trying to fix.
Confluence Under Exploit
Atlassian’s Confluence has
a critical unauthenticated RCE that’s being exploited in the wild
. Researchers at Volexity broke the story, after investigating a pair of compromised servers.
Samples of the attack have been caught
in various honeypots, and it looks like a simple exploit. Because of the nature of confluence servers, this issue has the potential to have follow-on effects, resulting from attackers having a foothold into developer networks.
Bits and Bytes
Just how scary is it to expose RDP to the internet?
For these old Linux hands, scarier that exposing SSHD
. They clocked almost 40,000 attempts after 4 days, most of which trying for the Administrator account. Also interesting was how many attacks were coming from a pair of network blocks, 45.227.254.0/24 and 194.165.16.0/24, both belonging to Flyserver.
The
SSNDOB Marketplace was taken offline
, after over 10 years in operation. This was the group
likely behind the swatting attack on Brian Krebs.
The only unfortunate part of this one is that there haven’t been any arrests as part of the takedown. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482644",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10T15:31:55",
"content": "I really enjoy reading these articles every week, thank you",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6482654",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,372,666.744365 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/10/a-secure-phone-fit-for-a-prime-minister/ | A Secure Phone Fit For A Prime Minister | Jenny List | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"encryption",
"GCHQ",
"telephone"
] | The curtain of state secrecy which surrounds the type of government agency known primarily by initialisms is all-encompassing and long-lived, meaning that tech that is otherwise in the public domain remains top secret for many decades. Thus it’s fascinating when from time to time the skirts are lifted to reveal a glimpse of ankle, as has evidently been the case for
a BBC piece dealing with the encrypted phones produced by GCHQ
and used by Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s. Sadly, it’s long on human interest and short on in-depth technology, but nevertheless from it can be deduced enough to work out how it most likely worked.
We’re told that it worked over a standard phone line and transmitted at 2.4 kilobytes per second, a digital data stream encoded using a paper tape key that was changed daily. If we were presented with this design spec to implement in a briefcase using 1980s components, we’d probably make an ADPCM (Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation) system with an XOR encryption against the key, something we think would be well within the capabilities of early 1980s digital logic and microprocessors. We’re wondering whether the BBC have made a typo and that should be kilo
bits
rather than kilobytes to work on a standard phone line.
No doubt there are people in the comments who could tell us if they were willing to break the Official Secrets Act, but we’d suggest they don’t risk their liberty by doing so. It’s worth noting though, that GCHQ have been known to show off some of their past glories, as in
this 2019 exhibition at London’s Science Museum
. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482602",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10T11:22:21",
"content": "Schematics?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6482615",
"author": "MrSVCD",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10T12:45:34",
"content": "“O... | 1,760,372,666.802928 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/10/stem-award-goes-to-accessible-3d-printing-project/ | STEM Award Goes To Accessible 3D Printing Project | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"News"
] | [
"3d printing",
"education",
"stem"
] | When you are a 15-year old and you see a disabled student drop the contents of their lunch tray while walking to a table, what do you do? If you are [Adaline Hamlin], you design
a 3D printed attachment for the trays
to stop it from happening again.
The work was part of “Genius Hour” where [Hamlin’s] teacher encouraged students to find things that could be created to benefit others. An initial prototype used straws to form stops to fit plates, cups, and whatever else fit on the tray. [Zach Lance], a senior at the school’s 3D printing club, helped produce the actual 3D printed pieces.
[Hamlin] won the Tennessee STEM and Innovation Network’s STEM for ALL Award, and she is making the design available to other schools where it can help other students. We aren’t sure how the parts attach to the lunch tray, but we suspect some glue is involved.
We love seeing young inventors and their projects. If you haven’t worked with students before, it is a very rewarding experience. There are lots of
potential activities
. You can help and many high school teachers are doing
an amazing job
teaching our kinds of things to kids. Better still, they are sharing their experiences and materials with a worldwide audience. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482588",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10T10:00:04",
"content": "In Korean schools the tray is also the bowl + plate + cutlery holder. They are a single piece of stainless steel with depressions punched into them. Nothing to lose!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,372,666.994512 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/09/porting-doom-to-a-forgotten-apple-os/ | PortingDOOMTo A Forgotten Apple OS | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"90's",
"a/ux",
"apple",
"doom",
"gcc",
"mac",
"macintosh",
"macx",
"Motorola 68000",
"nextstep",
"quadra 800",
"unix",
"x11"
] | Apple hasn’t always had refined user experiences in their operating systems. In the distant past of the ’90s they were still kind of clunky computers that were far from the polished, high-end consumer machines of the modern era. That wasn’t all that Apple offered back then, though. They had a long-forgotten alternative operating system that was called A/UX designed for government applications, and [Keriad] is here to show us
this relic operating system and port
DOOM
to it
.
A/UX was designed in the pre-PowerPC days when Macintosh computers ran on Motorola 68000 chips. Luckily, [Keriad] has a Mac Quadra 800 with just such a chip that is still fully-functional.
DOOM
was developed with the NeXTSTEP operating system which can run on old Macs thanks to another tool called MacX which allows X11 applications to run on Mac. A version of gcc for A/UX was found as well and with the source code in hand they were eventually able to compile a binary. There were several hiccups along the way (including the lack of sound) but eventually
DOOM
was running on this forgotten operating system.
The main problem with the build in the end, besides the lack of sound, is that the game only runs at 2 – 3 frames per second. [Keriad] speculates that this is due to all of the compatibility layers needed to compile and run the game at all, but it’s still impressive. As far as we know, [Keriad] is the first person to port
DOOM
to this OS, although if you’re looking for something more straightforward we would recommend
this purpose-built Linux distribution
whose sole task is to get you slaying demons as quickly as possible. | 28 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482540",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10T05:20:56",
"content": "A/UX was Unix based. So it is unix, with a gui.Microsoft had their version of Unix in 1980, Xenix. It had to have a different name for legal reasons, but they bought rights to the Unix source code... | 1,760,372,667.224093 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/09/see-how-to-effectively-use-a-green-screen-in-a-limited-space/ | See How To Effectively Use A Green Screen In A Limited Space | Donald Papp | [
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"green screen",
"limited space",
"OBS Studio",
"streaming"
] | Virtual green screens are pretty neat, but for results, nothing beats the real thing. But what if you have limited space? [Fred Emmott] had about 30 inches behind his desk to work with, and
shares what it took to make a green screen work reliably in a limited space
.
Even (and consistently deployable) lighting is even more important than the camera.
When it comes right down to it, the fundamentals of camera work (lighting, angles, and so on) are unchanged, but hanging a green screen only 30 inches behind one’s desk does make it a bit more challenging to dial in the right environment. In addition, [Fred] wanted a solution that could be deployed and packed away without much of a hassle, and without taking up too much storage space. He ended up using a collapsible green screen that can be pulled straight up and out from its container, similar to portable stand-up banners used at trade shows.
As for the camera end of things, [Fred] found that reliable, quality lighting was critically important, even more so than the camera used. For repeatable results, he suggests disabling any automatic features (such as low light enhancement, or auto white balance, and settings of that nature) and to use LED lighting in the ‘daylight’ range for illumination and fill. The key to good green screen results is to light things evenly, and this is a bit more challenging when working in such a tight space.
To deal with this, [Fred] suggests lights that can be easily repositioned, and put them as far back from things as you can. Get the lighting as even as possible, then adjust your software to match ([Fred] uses
OBS Studio
) for best results. Once that’s done, it can be more easily set up and torn down with minimal fiddling.
Computers sure make all this much easier than it was back in the day, and if you’re curious, here is
all about how green screens were done before the digital age
. | 15 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482525",
"author": "David Lang",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10T02:19:54",
"content": "Amazon has a bunch of green screens that you can pull down like an old projection screen.the virtual green screens are possibly better than nothing, but I find that I’m distracted by the backgrounds th... | 1,760,372,667.276 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/09/throw-out-that-box-no-build-a-shelving-unit/ | Throw Out That Box? No, Build A Shelving Unit | Kristina Panos | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"cardboard",
"hot glue",
"reuse",
"shelving"
] | Are you one of those people who hoards cardboard for someday, and then periodically breaks it all down and puts it out for recycling because you haven’t done anything with it yet? Well, load up a new blade in the utility knife and fire up that hot glue gun, because the [Cardboard Ninja]’s gonna show you
how to make a shelving unit from the biggest box in your collection
.
[Cardboard Ninja] goes about the build quite smartly, cutting the legs from the four long bends already in the cardboard. This is repeated in the shelves, which are made from the box’s sides — [Cardboard Ninja] takes advantage of the bends when it comes to cutting out the shelves and creates the other three with the edge of a metal ruler. The rest of the cardboard is devoted to supports for shelves and legs.
While you could use this unit to hold all the other, smaller boxen you have lying around, that would be a gross under-utilization. You see, the way this is put together, it can hold upwards of 133 lbs (60 kg) total, provided the rules of weight distribution are followed, and the heaviest things are on the bottom shelf.
That does seem like a lot of weight, but given that this was constructed by someone who has a holster for their utility knife and calls themselves [Cardboard Ninja], I think we can trust their stress tests and just go with it. Given
that
, it’s always a good idea to anchor shelving units to the wall.
You know, this would make a pretty good entry into
the second Challenge of this year’s Hackaday Prize
. Remember: this is the final weekend to enter, and the window closes at
7AM Pacific on Sunday
, so get hackin’! | 17 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482519",
"author": "Eric Chapin",
"timestamp": "2022-06-10T01:50:24",
"content": "Great simple recycling hack if you don’t have cats! I have cats and one of them goes out of her way to find boxes and destroys it. If I build a shelf out of boxes, it wouldn’t last the night.",
"... | 1,760,372,667.345357 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/09/mouse-charging-mod-shows-even-simple-hacks-can-end-up-complex/ | Mouse Charging Mod Shows Even Simple Hacks Can End Up Complex | Donald Papp | [
"Battery Hacks"
] | [
"charging",
"modification",
"mouse",
"usb",
"USB C",
"usb receptacle"
] | Hardware hacks have something in common with renovations that involve taking down a wall: until one actually gets started and opens things up, there’s no telling what kind of complications might be lurking. [voussoir] has a project that demonstrates this nicely:
modifying a rechargeable mouse to use USB-C instead of micro-B
turned out to have quite a few little glitches in the process. In fact, changing the actual receptacle was the simplest part!
On one hand, the mouse in question seems like a perfect candidate for easy modification. The enclosure isn’t too hard to open, there is ample space inside, and USB is used only for recharging the battery. So what was the problem? The trouble is something familiar to anyone who has worked on modifying an existing piece of hardware: existing parts are boundaries to hacking work, and some are less easily modified than others.
Changing the receptacle was one thing, but making sure of alignment and seating depth was a learning experience.
In [voussoir]’s case, the first little glitch was that the small PCB hosting the original mini-B receptacle had a screw hole in it, used to keep it secure during repeated plugging and unplugging. Ensuring the new USB-C receptacle used the same screw was a bit of a pain, but after dealing with that there was another issue: [voussoir] had mounted the new USB-C receptacle flush with the plastic of the mouse, but that didn’t allow a cable to seat fully. The receptacle needed to protrude a bit, or the charging cable couldn’t plug in far enough. Back to the workbench, and so it went for a few more iterations.
The modification was ultimately successful, but the ordeal demonstrates how having to work around physical design constraints can bring unexpected issues. It’s bad enough when one is just making a minor hardware tweak to an existing mouse, let alone
entirely recreating vintage Apple mice designs for modern computers
. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482481",
"author": "sampleusername",
"timestamp": "2022-06-09T20:40:27",
"content": "There was absolutely no need to engineer a solution that used the same mounting screw as the original. Hot glue is perfectly suitable for securing a small connector such as this, and with some libe... | 1,760,372,667.534361 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/09/swapped-rom-revives-ailing-hp-48s-calculator/ | Swapped ROM Revives Ailing HP-48S Calculator | Tom Nardi | [
"Parts",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"flash",
"hp calculator",
"repair",
"rom",
"socket"
] | Buying broken gear for cheap is time honored hacker tradition, and while we might not always be successful in reviving it, rarely do we come away empty handed. There’s always parts to salvage, and you can’t put a price on the knowledge to be gained when poking around inside an interesting piece of hardware. So we’re not surprised at all to hear that
[Tomas Pavlovic] jumped at the chance to grab this faulty HP-48S calculator
for a couple bucks.
Luckily for us, the story doesn’t end at the bottom of his parts bin. When he got the HP-48S back home, he immediately set out to see if it could be repaired. After changing out a few choice components and not seeing any result in the device’s behavior, he became suspicious that the problem may be with the firmware; specifically, the soldered-on chip that holds it.
Dumping the original ROM.
After carefully lifting the NEC uPD23C2000GC from its resting place for the last 30 years or so, he wired up an adapter that let him connect the chip to his programmer so its contents could be dumped. Rather than trying to find another ROM chip, he decided to wire in a socket and found a re-writable SST39SF040 that could stand in as a replacement. Flashing a fresh copy of the firmware to the new socketed chip got the calculator up and running again, with the added bonus of allowing [Tomas] to pull the chip and flash a different firmware version should he care to experiment a bit.
Now, we know what you’re thinking. Where was the fix? What exactly brought this piece of 1990s gear back to life? That part, unfortunately, isn’t very clear. You’d think if the original ROM chip was somehow faulty, [Tomas] wouldn’t have been able to so easily pull a valid firmware image from it. That leaves us with some pretty mundane possibilities,
such as a bad solder joint on the chip’s pins
. If that was indeed the case, this fix could have been as
simple as running a hot iron over the pins
…but of course, where’s the fun in that?
Update
: We heard back from [Tomas], and it turns out that when compared to a known good copy, the dumped firmware did have a few swapped bits. His theory is that the NEC chip is in some weird failure mode where the calculator wouldn’t run, but it was still functional enough to get most of the content off of it. What do you think? Let us know in the comments. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482448",
"author": "Danjovic",
"timestamp": "2022-06-09T18:42:25",
"content": "Magnet wire is king!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6482476",
"author": "willmore",
"timestamp": "2022-06-09T19:58:21",
"content": "HP ... | 1,760,372,667.4811 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/09/the-case-for-designer-landline-phones/ | The Case For Designer Landline Phones | Kristina Panos | [
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"ITT Teleconcepts",
"landline phone",
"ma bell",
"phone",
"rotary phone",
"Teleconcepts"
] | Long before the idea of hot dog-shaped iPhone cases, Otter Boxen, or even those swappable Nokia face plates, people were just as likely to express themselves with their landline phones. Growing up at my house in the 80s, the Slimline on the kitchen wall was hidden inside a magneto wall set from the early 1900s, the front of which swung out to reveal the modern equipment behind it. Back in my bedroom, I had the coolest phone ever, a see-through Unisonic with candy-colored guts. Down in the basement was my favorite extension, tactility-wise: a candy apple-red wall unit with dimly-lit circular push buttons that were springy and spongy and oh-so fun to dial.
Popular culture shows us that people were dreaming of cool telephone enclosures before they were even a thing. Obviously, TV secret agent Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone wasn’t plausible for the technology of that era, but it also wasn’t really feasible for aesthetic reasons. For decades, phone subscribers had to use whatever equipment Ma Bell had to offer, and you couldn’t just buy the things outright at the mall — you had to lease the hardware from her,
and
pay for the service.
Back when phones still belonged to Ma Bell, she eventually went from the black truncated pyramid of the 1930s desk phone to all kinds of offerings like the princess phone, the Sculptura (or doughnut phone), and the stowaway models which turned the device into either a secret stationery/stationary stash box-looking thing, or a miniature roll-top desk. This landline phone madness all started in 1954, when AT&T released the classic “500” desk phone in five glorious colors: white, beige, green, blue, and pink.
But the real freedom came from a ruling in 1975 that opened the doors for all kinds of designs
.
A phone fit for a princess.
Ah yes, the doughnut phone.
Cigars? 8-tracks? No, just the den extension. Classy.
Why have a plain phone when you could have a plane phone?
A Clear Competitor
And then there was
ITT Teleconcepts
. This Connecticut-based company were pioneers in the designer telephone arena, taking genuine POTS-worthy guts branded with ITT or Stromberg Carlson or GTE/Automatic Electric and enclosing them in interesting and often transparent forms. Some, like the Chromephone and the Apollo are tamer than others, with basic geometric shapes and shiny accents. Others are pretty wild, and would definitely have looked great when illuminated by say, one of those Greek goddess-imprisoning rain lamps of the same era.
ITT Teleconcepts designed many different types of custom phone, some of which were pretty far out — you might remember me talking on
Hackaday Podcast #165
about a see-through periscope-shaped phone that I found on ebay. I played the watch list game and sure enough, they sent me an offer for a reduced price — to my surprise, they offered me 90% off the list price, taking the thing from $300+ to about $36. I figured it was some kind of fat-finger situation, and yes, it was a mistake on the seller’s part.
Start Your Own Collection
If you like weird phones, don’t dismay — these interesting Teleconcepts units weren’t as rare as some say they are, and they don’t all cost hundreds of dollars today. Although they have handwritten tags on the bottoms that make it seem like they were crafted one at a time by an artist, these phones were in fact mass produced. They’re out there, and they don’t always go for hundreds of dollars.
I recently found an interesting specimen myself — a phone mostly hidden inside the tummy of a teddy bear named KC Bearifone. It’s a Teleconcepts unit dated 1986. This nightmare-fuel unit features speakerphone — in fact, it may be speakerphone-only — and the bear’s eyes and mouth move in sync with the caller’s voice. Yeah.
Here’s a video of KC Bearifone in glorious action
.
Analog landline phones are pretty darn simple, especially compared with a modern cell phone. So what about the home gamer of decades past? Surely there were a few people out there putting phone guts into interesting enclosures, and the mind reels with the possibilities. Were you one of these people? Did you or do you have a cool old landline phone? Leave a message at the beep. | 34 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482414",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-06-09T17:30:32",
"content": "Well, I can imagine a room with both the Beariphone and Teddy Ruxpin both talking at once!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Ruxpin",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,667.605995 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/09/the-compu-tor-is-a-raspberry-pi-laptop-in-a-mahogany-case/ | The Compu-tor Is A Raspberry Pi Laptop In A Mahogany Case | Robin Kearey | [
"Cyberdecks",
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"cyberdeck",
"mahogany",
"raspberry pi laptop"
] | The Compu-tor, designed by [Henry Edwards], is one of those things that doesn’t neatly fit into any categories.
It is a clamshell-type portable computer
, although unlike most laptops, it doesn’t come with a built-in battery. It has a sleek custom-designed case, but lacks the futuristic sci-fi looks typical of a cyberdeck. The keyboard can act as an input device, but can also turn into a musical instrument.
In short, it’s a bit of all of those things, but the most striking part is the beautifully-machined mahogany case. The two halves are connected through two beefy friction hinges and a silicone ribbon cable: the bottom half contains the keyboard, speakers, USB ports and power connections, while the top half holds a Raspberry Pi and a 10″ touchscreen. The display bezel has that curved shape typical of CRT monitors, fitting nicely with the 1970s vibe given off by the dark wood.
Another retro touch is in the connections between the various circuit boards and the front panel switches: [Henry] used wire-wrapping, something we haven’t seen for a while. The keyboard is a simple grid of identical keys with handwritten labels. Other labels, like that of the power connector, are made from traditional embossing tape.
The Compu-tor runs Debian, and seems to be quite usable as a compact laptop. It even comes with USB ports to hook up external devices, and with a simple 12 V input it should be no problem to find an external power source for it. Wood seems to be a popular material to build Raspberry Pi-based laptops from: we’ve seen them housed in anything ranging from
wooden cigar-boxes
to
laser-cut plywood
, and even
incredibly tiny boxes
. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482386",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2022-06-09T15:44:19",
"content": "I was gonna call it perfectly executed Pi-top until I saw the external battery, so I’m downgrading it to “well”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,372,667.656958 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/09/revolving-doors-arent-just-annoying-theyre-energy-saving-too/ | Revolving Doors Aren’t Just Annoying, They’re Energy Saving Too | Lewin Day | [
"Engineering",
"green hacks"
] | [
"building",
"building services",
"door",
"doors",
"energy efficiency",
"hvac",
"revolving door",
"revolving doors"
] | While most of us have been content with swing and sliding doors for the vast majority of our needs around the home, the revolving door remains popular in a wide variety of contexts.
It’s a confounding contraption that always feels ready to snatch and ensnare the unwary user. However, these doors do have certain benefits that have allowed them to retain popularity in many public buildings around the world. Let’s dive in to why below.
You Spin Me Right Round
A drawing from the 1888 patent filing of Theophilus Van Kannel for a “storm-door structure.” In the 19th century, Van Kannel was keenly aware of the benefits of keeping the weather out. Credit:
Patent filing, public domain
The revolving door dates back to the late 19th century, with two main patent filings occurring around that time. One H. Bockhacker in Germany filed a patent for a rotating cylindrical door in 1881. Meanwhile, the more well-known Theophilus Van Kannel was granted a patent in 1888 for a three-partition revolving door with all the major features we’re familiar with today.
Both of these inventors were keenly aware of the benefits of such a design. Their rotating doors were intended to allow entry and egress from a building without excessive exchange of air. Swing and sliding doors enable wind and rain to easily enter a building unless used in a dual-stage airlock design. In comparison, a rotating door that is sealed at the edges prevents this almost entirely. Only a small pocket of air is exchanged as each segment of the door rotates. Even better, a properly-designed rotating door won’t get blown open by the wind, and allows people to enter and exit a building at the same time. These benefits led to the adoption of rotating doors in many public buildings.
In fact, due to the lower amount of air exchange, the revolving door has become a key feature in many skyscrapers. These taller buildings are subject to what is referred to as the “chimney effect.” As the building’s HVAC system heats the air inside, this warm air rises as its buoyancy increases. This creates a pressure differential with a lower pressure at the base of the building. When a swing door is opened at ground level, this causes an in-rush of air. This then forces heated air out the top of the building in turn. This breeze is frustrating for occupants and bad for efficiency, as the fresh air must then be heated again, using more energy. The same effect happens in the warmer months, too, in reverse, as cooler air sinks through the building in the opposite direction.
Whether built in a 3- or 4-leaf design, revolving doors create a useful airlock that prevents excessive air exchange with the outside world. This allows for greater comfort inside, protects the ground floor from weather, and improves energy efficiency.
The naturally-sealing design of a revolving door prevents this issue. While the door does not seal as well as a regular closed swing door, it exchanges far less air as it works compared to a swing door being open and closed repeatedly. The effect is noticeable even in smaller buildings. Larger buildings that are more subject to the chimney effect, with greater pressure differentials, will notice significantly greater benefit.
A simple study run by MIT in 2006
found that the benefits from revolving doors could be profound. Estimates were that solely using revolving doors in one building would save 74% of its current annual energy consumption on heating, cutting 15 tons of CO2 output.
Some folding doors feature segmented designs that allows the doors themselves to be folded out of the way. This can be useful for bringing long or large objects through the door, or for maximizing throughput in emergency events.
It does highlight one of the pitfalls of the revolving door, however. In order to gain the benefits, the revolving door must be used in preference to swinging types. Even in buildings with revolving door entrances, many
building codes
mandate that swinging doors also be present. This is often wise practice, as revolving doors can be a liability in an emergency, prone to being jammed or overwhelmed by sudden rushes for the exits. However, if people regularly use the swing doors in preference to the revolving door, it’s not saving any energy at all.
It’s a simple fact that revolving doors often present a frustration to busy people. There’s a reason they don’t often appear in action films — after all, there’s pretty much no way to get through one in a hurry. Manually push-operated types can allow someone to push through quickly, but the rate must be limited mechanically to avoid injuring other people that may also be transiting the door at the same time. Alternatively, automatic doors can turn at a constant rate, but they must often be relatively slow in order to remain accessible to those who aren’t as mobile and quick as others. Careful provision must also be made for proper access by wheelchair users and those using other mobility aids.
Overall, revolving doors have an important role to play in our buildings. They may be slow and frustrating, particularly when the automatic ones randomly stop (looking at you, IKEA), but they can save us huge amounts on our energy bills.
That’s good for the climate too
, at a time when we need every last bit of efficiency we can get! | 43 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482352",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2022-06-09T14:14:33",
"content": "Crowd control, HACK the planet.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6482355",
"author": "psuedonymous",
"timestamp": "2022-06-09T14:21:19",
"c... | 1,760,372,667.74308 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/09/live-floppy-music-adds-elegance-to-any-event/ | Live Floppy Music Adds Elegance To Any Event | Tom Nardi | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"electronic music",
"floppy",
"floppy drive",
"music"
] | It wasn’t long after early humans started banging rocks together that somebody in the tribe thought they could improve on things a bit by doing it with a little rhythm. As such the first musician was born, and since it would be a couple million years before humanity figured out how to record sound, musical performances had to be experienced live throughout most of history. On the cosmic scale of things, Spotify only shows up about a zeptosecond before the big bash at midnight.
So its only fitting that
[Linus Åkesson] has perfected the musical floppy drive
to the point that it can now be played live. We understand the irony of this being demonstrated via the video below the break, but we think it still gets the point across — rather than having to get a whole array of carefully-scripted drives going to perform something that even comes close to a musical number, he’s able to produce tones by manipulating a single drive in real-time.
In his write-up, [Linus] not only goes over the general nuts and bolts of making music with floppy drives, but specifically explains how this Commodore 1541-II drive has been modified for its new life as a digital virtuoso. From his experiments to determine which drive moves corresponded to the most pleasing sounds, to the addition of a small microphone and a piezo sensor paired with an LMC662-based amplifier to provide a high-fidelity capture of the drive’s sounds and vibrations, there’s a lot of valuable info here for anyone else looking to make some sweet tunes with their old gear.
We’ve seen something of a resurgence of the floppy drive this year,
with folks like Adafruit digging into the classic storage medium
, and an experimental project to
allow the Arduino IDE to create bootable x86 floppies
. You won’t hear any complaints from us — while they might not offer much capacity compared to more modern tech, there’s something about a stack of multi-colored disks with hastily applied labels that warms our cold robotic hearts. | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482310",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2022-06-09T11:30:02",
"content": "That is a great deal of fun, I’ve never seen anybody use a floppy drive in that way for music, its all been more pipe organ style where each drive or drive grouping plays a note.",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,372,667.803847 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/09/a-linux-distribution-for-doom/ | A Linux Distribution ForDOOM | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games",
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"bootable",
"busybox",
"distribution",
"doom",
"fbdoom",
"iso",
"linux"
] | If you’ve gone further into the Linux world than the standard desktop distributions like Ubuntu or Fedora, you have undoubtedly come across some more purpose-built distributions. Some examples are Kali for security testing, DragonOS for software-defined radio, or Hannah Montana Linux for certain music fans. Anyone can roll their own Linux distribution with the right tools, including [Shadly], who recently created one
which only loads enough software to launch the 1993 classic
DOOM
.
The distribution is as simple as possible and loads no bloat other than what’s needed to launch the game. It loads the Linux kernel and the standard utilities via BusyBox, then runs
fbDOOM
, which is a port of the game specifically designed to run on the Linux framebuffer with minimal dependencies. After most of that, the only thing left is to use GRUB to boot the distribution, and in just a moment, Doomguy can start slaying demons. The entire distribution is placed into a bootable ISO file that can be placed on any bootable drive.
As far as
DOOM
hacks go, we’re used to seeing the game running on hardware it was never intended for like
the NES
or on
an office phone
. This one, on the other hand, gives us a little more insight into just how little is needed for a full-fledged Linux distribution, as long as what you need to do is relatively straightforward. | 40 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482287",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2022-06-09T08:18:04",
"content": "Linux was the last platform to port to?:D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6482291",
"author": "Nath",
"timestamp": "2022-06-09T09:30... | 1,760,372,667.874821 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/08/a-lab-grade-measurement-microphone-for-not-a-lot/ | A Lab-Grade Measurement Microphone For Not A Lot | Jenny List | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"MEMS",
"microphone"
] | The quality of any measurement can only be as good as the instrument used to gather it, and for acoustic measurements, finding a good enough instrument can be surprisingly difficult. Commonly available microphones can be of good quality, but since they are invariably designed for speech or music, they need not have the flat or wide enough response and low noise figure demanded of an instrumentation microphone.
Microphones for measurement purposes can be had for a very large outlay, but here’s [Peter Riccardi] with a unit designed around an array of MEMS capsules
that delivers comparable performance for a fraction of the cost
.
The result is both an extremely interesting project for those of us with an interest in audio, and a thorough delve into some aspects of its design for those who are merely curious. It uses four capsules in an effort to cancel out induced electrical noise, and boasts some impressive comparative measurements when tested against a commercial measurement microphone. We could almost see ourselves building this project.
Interested in audio technology? Try our
Know Audio
series. | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482279",
"author": "Morz",
"timestamp": "2022-06-09T07:29:20",
"content": "Reading the write up, Its a fairly impressive project but looking at the board and implementation it seems to not take into the affects of proper shielding and signal integrity which could likely boost the p... | 1,760,372,667.932092 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/08/pyscript-python-in-the-web-browser/ | PyScript: Python In The Web Browser | Al Williams | [
"Software Development"
] | [
"browser",
"browser based tool",
"python",
"scripting"
] | A chainsaw can make short work of clearing out the back forty. It can also make a good horror movie. So while some people will say we don’t need another tool to allow more malicious scripting in the browser, we also know that, like any tool, you can use it or abuse it. That tool?
PyScript
, which is, of course, Python in the browser.
The tool is in the early experimental phase, so the project doesn’t suggest using it in a production environment yet. However, if it works well, the promise is not just that you can write browser-based applications in Python — you’ll have a handy way to reuse existing Python code and even be able to run the same code on the browser that currently runs on the server. This has a lot of implications for improved client/server applications, or cases where you want to be able to run against a local backend when disconnected and a remote backend when you do have a connection. Of course, you can interoperate with JavaScript, too.
However, the real goal is to make web-based programming accessible to beginners in the same way as programming systems like Scratch or JSFiddle do. As such, the actual project is less of a piece of software and more of an integration between existing pieces. According to the post:
PyScript is a single-page application (SPA) written in TypeScript using the Svelte framework, styled with Tailwind CSS, and bundled with rollup.js.
PyScript wouldn’t be possible without building on top of a recent version of Pyodide—a CPython interpreter compiled with emscripten to WebAssembly, enabling Python to run in the browser. PyScript provides a thin abstraction layer over Pyodide by encapsulating the required boilerplate code, which you’d otherwise have to type yourself using JavaScript.
So how hard is it to create PyScript code? Not very:
What’s interesting is that this requires no server set-up whatsoever. Save that text to a file, open it in a browser and it runs. Well, of course, no server set-up for you. Presumably, the work is being done on the pyscript.net server which takes a lot of set-up! There’s also a bit of load time for something this simple, as you might expect, especially on the first load. You can, however, host your own server.
Some people will love this, and others will hate it. Either way, it is here, and if you have to script in the browser, you could do worse than Python. We are still holding on to
Fortran
, though maybe we should
upgrade to Forth
. | 25 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482240",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2022-06-09T02:49:30",
"content": "*sigh* The ability to specify the language (per the “type” attribute) in the “script” tag is part of the official HTML. But nooOOOOooo, they just had to go and create an entirely different tag. -_-",
... | 1,760,372,667.996896 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/08/unorthodox-toolbox-switcheroo-barbecue/ | Unorthodox Toolbox Switcheroo: Barbecue! | Sven Gregori | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"barbecue",
"bbq",
"grilling",
"toolbox",
"welding"
] | Despite all the progress in cooking methods over the past millennia, nothing can ever replace the primeval sensation of staring into the embers as your food slowly gets ready. Barbecues are the obvious choice to satisfy this cave nostalgia, and while size might matter in some cases, sometimes you just want the convenience of being able to take your grilling device to the beach, park, or just really anywhere but home.
Other times you’re [Laura Kampf] and don’t want to use an old toolbox for storing tools
.
It all started with one of those typical three-layer folded cantilever toolboxes that [Laura] really likes for their mechanical construction, but not so much from a usability point of view. Being someone with a knack for turning random stuff into barbecues, this was an intriguing enough device to take apart. After plenty of time spent grinding bolts and paint off, she cut out the tray bottoms to weld metal mesh pieces as grill grates in their place — but you can watch the whole progress in the video below then.
The folding mechanics play out really nicely here. Not only can you access the grill goods by moving them away from the burning coals that are placed in the center bottom part of the box, it also provides you with two different heat layers. The individual lids on each side add even more variety, and this might even work as portable little smoker.
We’ve seen [Laura]’s work a few times before already, and in case you haven’t, go check out her
beer keg motorcycle side car
,
wheelbarrow bicycle trailer
, or
Zippo lighter turned drill bit storage box
. | 24 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482056",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T09:03:26",
"content": "Like a BBQ wit hskewers on a PC case, except those cases have brominated flame retardant, highly toxic:https://www.pinterest.com/pin/388576274079411307/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brominated_flame_retard... | 1,760,372,668.055145 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/07/a-breath-of-fresh-air-for-some-arcade-classics/ | A Breath Of Fresh Air For Some Arcade Classics | Sven Gregori | [
"Games",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"altoids",
"arcade games",
"oled",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"rp2040",
"snake game"
] | It’s said that good things come in small packages, which is hard to deny when we look at all the nifty projects out there that were built into an Altoids tin. Now, if that’s already true for the regular sized box, we can be doubly excited for anything crammed into their
Smalls
variety ones, which is what [Kayden Kehe] decided to use as housing for his
mintyPico, a tiny gaming console running homebrew versions of Snake, Breakout, Pong, and a few more
.
As the “Pico” might have already given away, the project is built around a Raspberry Pi Pico board, and being intended as portable device, [Kayden] went with a version that also houses LiPo battery charging circuitry. A set of 3d-printed parts pack the board along with a matching battery and a button panel neatly into the tin itself, while a size-appropriate SSH1106 OLED goes into the lid. All design files along with the MicroPython code of the games can be found
on the project’s GitHub page
.
You may have felt this strange sense of familiarity when you read the project’s name, and indeed,
the mintyPi gaming console
was a major inspiration for [Kayden] here, as was
the Pico Snake project
. Considering this was his junior year high school project, this is certainly an impressive and nice mash-up of those two projects. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482101",
"author": "w3e3",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T12:41:18",
"content": "too small screen(or too big enclosure ;-) )i’m old man i need bigest screen",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6482196",
"author": "a_do_z",
... | 1,760,372,668.209388 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/07/ltspice-tips-and-a-long-tutorial/ | LTSpice Tips And A Long Tutorial | Al Williams | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"LTSpice",
"simulation",
"SPICE"
] | We always enjoy videos from [FesZ], so when we saw his latest about
tips and tricks for LTSpice
, we decided to put the 20 minutes in to watch it. But we noticed in the text that he has an entire series of video tutorials about LTSpice and that this is actually episode 30. So there’s plenty to watch.
Like any tips and tricks video, you might know some of them and you may not care about some of them — for example, the first one talks about setting the colors which is a highly personal preference. But it is a good bet you’ll find something to like in the video.
Ever get a timestep error? [FesZ] has advice for that. Want thermal information? Looking for an easy way to find RMS values? The video covers all of that and more. Note that if you run LTSpice under Wine (like we do), the Alt key mouse shortcuts will probably not work since most Linux desktops will use Alt+mouse to move windows. However, if you poke around in your settings, you can probably move that function to the Windows key, so that the Alt key will work in LTSpice and other programs. For example, in recent versions of KDE, look under Window Management, Window Behavior, and then Window Actions to change the modifier key from Alt to Meta.
We were really interested in watching some of the other videos. The topics ranged from the simple like using the .step directive to higher-level topics like simulating crystals, measuring power factor, and working with transformers (something
we’ve talked about, too
.). In fact, we’ve done
our own (shorter) series on getting started with LTSpice
, so if you’ve wanted to binge-watch something, there are plenty of videos for you to get started simulating. You might also want to check out
our Circuit VR series
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482000",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T06:20:07",
"content": "The simulations are nice but I don’t see anywhere we can download at least the .asc (schematic) and .plt (plot) files for them. Am I missing something?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,372,668.329181 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/07/the-worlds-most-expensive-3d-printers/ | The World’s Most Expensive 3D Printers | Al Williams | [
"News"
] | [
"3d printing"
] | How much would you pay for a 3D printer? Granted, when we started a decent printer might run over $1,000 but the cost has come way down. Unless of course, you go pro. We were disappointed that this [All3DP]
post didn’t include prices
, but we noticed a trend: if your 3D printer has stairs, it is probably a big purchase. According to the tag line on the post, the printers are all north of $500,000.
Expensive printers usually have unique technology, higher degrees of automation, large capacity or some combination of that, and a few other factors. At least two of the printers mentioned had stairs to reach the top parts of the machine. And the Black Buffalo — a cement printer — uses a gantry that looks like it is part of a light show at a concert. It is scalable, but apparently can go up to three stories tall!
Size isn’t always the biggest factor, but it helps. The ExOne S-Max Pro has a 1,260 liter build volume (see the video below). On the other hand, the Optomec LENS 860 looks large, but not that large. It does, however, create large titanium parts, so there is that. For wow factor, the SLM Solutions NXG XII 600 has a total of 12 lasers. Each laser carries 1,000 watts.
We put a few videos below. Check out the high-resolution print head on the Black Buffalo. Just kidding, we have printers almost as large as the orifice of that thing.
We’ve seen some
pretty big printers before
. Of course, some printers don’t have to be big to make
really big prints
. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481903",
"author": "Powder goes in, part comes out.",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T00:13:31",
"content": "There are even some industrial “printers” that are combination CNC milling and also laser 3D printing. Best of both worlds?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSnsyNZDgzYThat said, “on... | 1,760,372,668.248835 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/07/automate-parts-kitting-with-this-innovative-smd-tape-slicer/ | Automate Parts Kitting With This Innovative SMD Tape Slicer | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cutter",
"kitting",
"linear bearing",
"smd",
"stepper",
"tape"
] | Nobody likes a tedious manual job prone to repetitive stress injury, and such tasks rightly inspire an automated solution.
This automatic SMD tape cutter
is a good example of automating such a chore, while leaving plenty of room for further development.
We’re used to seeing such tactical automation projects from [Mr Innovative], each of which centers on an oddly specific task. In this case, the task involves cutting a strip containing a specific number of SMD resistors from a reel, perhaps for assembling kits of parts. The mechanism is simple: a stepper motor with a rubber friction wheel to drive the tape, and a nasty-looking guillotine to cut the tape. The cutter is particularly interesting, using as it does a short length of linear bearing to carry a holder for a razor blade that’s mounted perpendicular to the SMD tape. The holder is mounted to a small motor via a crank, and when the proper number of parts have been fed out, the motor rotates one revolution, driving the angled blade quickly down and then back up. This results in a shearing cut rather than the clipping action seen in
this automated wire cutter
, also by [Mr Innovative].
Curiously, there seems to be no feedback mechanism to actually measure how many resistors have been dispensed. We assume [Mr Innovative] is just counting steps, but it seems easy enough to integrate a photosensor to count the number of drive sprocket holes in the tape. It also seems like a few simple changes would allow this machine to accommodate SMD tapes of different sizes, making it generally useful for SMD kitting. It’s still pretty cool as a tactical project, though, and does a great job inspiring future improvements. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482072",
"author": "sxm",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T10:18:01",
"content": "I like it. Has that homemade-but-made-well feel.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6482088",
"author": "HTF",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T11:28:44",
... | 1,760,372,668.289443 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/07/cheap-oscilloscope-is-well-cheap/ | Cheap Oscilloscope Is… Well… Cheap | Al Williams | [
"Reviews",
"Teardown"
] | [
"FNIRSI",
"oscilloscope"
] | We always enjoy watching [Kerry Wong] put an oscilloscope through its paces. His recent video is looking at a very inexpensive FNIRSI 1014D ‘scope that you can also find rebranded. You can usually find these for well under $200 at the usual places. Can you get a reasonable scope for that cost? [Kerry] has a list of issues with the scope ranging from short memory depth to low sensitivity. He did, however, like that it is USB powered so it can be operated from a common battery pack, which would make it truly floating.
The ‘scope looks like a lot of other inexpensive ‘scopes, but you can see some concessions to price. For example, the encoder knobs don’t have a push button function, making the scope more difficult to operate. While the specs are relatively modest, [Kerry] wasn’t sure the instrument was even living up to them.
The scope did start up fast and had responsive controls, which is good. There were some display oddities as the horizontal sweep changed. The scope claims to have 100 MHz bandwidth. However, it appears this is vastly overstated. In addition, there was some measurement offset as frequency increased.
The teardown shows there isn’t much on board and the design doesn’t seem very sophisticated. Granted, the scope is cheap, but maybe it is just too cheap. [Kerry] wasn’t impressed and, from what we saw, we weren’t either. His exact quote was: “I wouldn’t touch this ‘scope with a ten-foot pole.”
Last time we checked in with [Kerry], he was looking at
cheap ‘scope meters
which fared better for a similar price. It is amazing how much times have changed for
cheap ‘scopes
. | 55 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481740",
"author": "Steven Naslund",
"timestamp": "2022-06-07T18:45:31",
"content": "I have learned to be very cautious of these cheaper digital scope. When I compare them to high end older analog scopes, I find the digitals miss quite a bit. Especially things like noisy signals ... | 1,760,372,668.428216 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/07/how-to-make-a-difference-through-plant-metabolism/ | How To Make A Difference Through Plant Metabolism | Maya Posch | [
"green hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"carbon cycle",
"genetic engineering",
"plant metabolism"
] | Generally when we consider the many plants around us, we imagine them efficiently using the electromagnetic radiation from the Sun via photosynthesis in their leaves — pulling carbon-dioxide from the air, as well as water from the soil via their roots, and grow as quickly as they reasonably can. In reality, the efficiency of this process is less than 10% of the input energy, and the different types of plant metabolisms that have formed over the course of evolution aren’t all the same.
Among the plant metabolisms in use today, some use significantly more efficient carbon fixation pathways, while others end up wasting a lot of the energy they obtained from photosynthesis with unnecessarily complicated processes, especially to deal with waste. How fast plants can grow if they had all evolved the most efficient carbon fixation pathway has been the subject of a number of studies these past decades, involving everything from crop plants to trees.
As these studies are showing us, more than a scientific and evolutionary biological curiosity, these genetically engineered plants offer real opportunities in everything from food production to reforestation.
Reinventing With Evolution
Vertebrate versus cephalopod eye. Note the inversion of the retina (1) and nerves (2). Cephalopods lack the vertebrate blind spot (4).
Over the course of billions of years on Earth, the process of evolution has led to the formation of fascinating biological structures, as well as many curious branching paths and incidences of reinventing the same structure differently. The vertebrate and
cephalopod
eyes
for example, which appear to have formed independently, and are both very similar and wildly different. This process is called
convergent evolution
.
As striking as eyes and converging features such as wings among dinosaurs (birds), mammals and insects are, perhaps less obvious but no less important is the convergent evolution of photosynthesis. Over the course of millions of years, the rough versions of photosynthesis of early plants turned into a number of distinct photosynthesis pathways, all based around the
RuBisCO
(ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase-oxygenase) enzyme and associated
Calvin cycle
.
Most plants use so-called
C
3
carbon fixation
, which uses a fairly basic Calvin cycle. This has an
overall efficiency
of at most 3.5% (relative to Sun radiation energy input), whereas the less common
C
4
carbon fixation
cycle peaks at over 4%. C
4
and
CAM
(crassulacean acid metabolism) are a form of convergent evolution, where both use phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) to capture CO
2
and thus create an increased concentration of CO
2
around the RuBiscCO enzymes to reduce
photorespiration
.
The reactions of the RuBisCO enzyme with carbon-dioxide and oxygen.
A core issue with RuBisCO as can be seen in its above listed reactions is that it reacts with both CO
2
and O
2
, whereas the latter reaction is obviously undesirable due to the lack of carbon atoms involved. The 2-phosphoglycolate (
2-PG
, or C
2
H
2
O
6
P
3-
) metabolic product that results from the reaction with oxygen is toxic to the plant as it inhibits some metabolic pathways and thus has to be dealt with. This is where for C
3
plants photorespiration is essential, as it allows for the 2-PG to be converted to the desired
PGA
(3-Phosphoglyceric acid) that is used for the formation of sugars the plant needs to thrive, as captured in this graphic by
Williams et al. (2013)
of the metabolic pathways for C
3
and C
4
plants:
Metabolic pathways of C3 and C4 plants. (Credit: Williams et al., 2013)
What this tells us is that many plants – including food crops and species of trees – which use the C
3
carbon fixing cycle are spending a significant amount of the energy they gain from photosynthesis on breaking down this 2-PG that forms due to the interaction between RuBisCO and oxygen. Due to this photorespiration process, the loss of water via the
stoma
(pores) also increases.
Since RuBisCO binds more readily with oxygen rather than carbon-dioxide when temperatures increase, this puts natural limits on viable environmental conditions for C
3
plants, and explains why C
4
and especially CAM plants are found in warmer, more arid conditions. The logical conclusion thus is that if we were to transplant appropriate elements of the C
4
, CAM or other pathways as found in e.g. cyanobacteria into C
3
plants, this could noticeably increase their growth rate by reducing the energy wasted on photorespiration.
Field Tests
Diagram of the leaf anatomy of C3 (A) and C4 (B) plants. The latter split up CO2 concentration and the Calvin cycle into two cells. (Credit: Cui, 2021)
After initial attempts at tweaking the RuBisCo enzyme directly to increase its affinity for carbon-dioxide were less than successful, focus during the 1990s shifted to understanding and optimizing. At this point in time, it’s generally acknowledged that engineering C
4
-style carbon fixation in C
3
plants is a viable path forward, by using existing C
4
plants as template. Relevant here is whether a C
3
species also has a related C
4
species to make the genetic engineering more straight-forward. Another active point of discussion here is whether to pursue a one or two cell strategy, as noted by
Cui (2021).
Other researchers have sought to find novel ways to enhance photosynthesis, such as
Nölke et al. (2014)
, who added the expression of a polyprotein (DEFp) taken from
Escherichia coli
glycolate dehydrogenase (GlcDH) to potato plants (
Solanum tuberosum
), with a resulting 2.3x increase in tuber yield. This same approach can potentially be applied to other plants as well, with likely a similar yield increase.
Impact of DEFp expression on potato phenotype and tuber yield. (Noelke et al., 2014)
Wang et al. (2020)
reported on a modified rice species using a similar approach as Nölke et al., albeit with mixed results. This study was followed by
Nayak et al. (2022)
who reported promising results that may lead to GE rice with these modifications being introduced in field trials. Related field trial data is available from
South et al. (2019)
, who performed field trials using transgenic tobacco plants. These plants showed a roughly 40% boost in useful biomass production compared to the wild type.
Obviously, before any of these GE species would be distributed to farmers for next year’s crops a lot more experiments and field trials would have to be performed to ensure the effectiveness, long-term stability of these modifications and overall safety. Even so, these experiments provide a tempting glimpse at a future in which today’s agricultural output is increased by 150-200%, with zero need for additional nutrients, a decrease in water requirements and much better resistance to heatwaves, which are expected to occur much more regularly due to the ongoing climate change.
Which raises the question of whether a similar approach could be used to make regular trees much more efficient at fixing carbon from the atmosphere as well.
A Forest While You Wait
Conventional wisdom tells us that trees take a long time to grow. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most types of plants which are referred to as ‘trees’ (i.e. there is no biological definition of ‘tree’) use the C
3
carbon fixation metabolism. In a recent preprint article by the
Living Carbon Team et al. (2022)
, a modification akin to the previously discussed crop-based transgenic species is reported as having been applied to poplars. These hybrid poplars were subsequently planted in fields in Oregon,
as detailed
on the Living Carbon Team’s website. With the preprint article reporting a roughly 50% increase in biomass gain relative to standard poplars, this would lead credence to the lofty goals on the
Living Carbon
website
As explained on the
FAQ
page for the project, all the plants modified this way that are planted are female, ergo the genetic modifications will not spread to other, wild poplars via pollen, but will remain contained to just the planted trees. The project is done in partnership with Oregon State University (OSU), with over 600 of these hybrid poplars already planted. The goal is to get as many of them planted over the coming years as part of a carbon capture approach.
Together with the prospect of significantly boosting the output from crops, forests that grow 50% faster than conventional forests, this would seem to make for rather interesting future we can look forward to.
Genetic Engineering
One major elephant in the room when it comes to this topic is that of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), or “genetically engineered” (GE) as is the more correct term. Many countries have legislation that prohibits or severely limits the growing, import and sale of GE organisms, products, seeds, etc. Undoubtedly this will be the biggest hindrance in getting any of these photosynthesis-enhanced plants to be accepted.
Even though many arguments can be made for the inherent safety of these hybrid trees since neither humans nor cattle are likely to consume forests and trees in general, the divide between the logical world of science and the emotion-driven world of the average person and daily news cycle is stark indeed in this context.
Despite this, with the current course of the world towards one where droughts, famine and all other highly unpleasant symptoms of climate change will be felt by ever more people, it might be that the tools that science has provided us with will be our salvation here, allowing us to feed millions and make a sizable dent in the excess CO
2
in the atmosphere, all by making plants better at hoarding carbon. | 31 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481737",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2022-06-07T18:41:33",
"content": "Optimising pigments might be an approach for efficiency boost also…http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Biology/pigpho.html#:~:text=They%20also%20have%20a%20red,that%20increases%20their%20photo... | 1,760,372,668.594549 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/07/2022-hackaday-prize-reuse-recycle-and-revamp-all-the-things/ | 2022 Hackaday Prize: Reuse, Recycle, And Revamp All The Things | Kristina Panos | [
"contests",
"green hacks",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"2022 Hackaday Prize",
"recycle",
"recycling",
"reuse",
"revamp"
] | Where has the year gone? It’s already summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and the second Challenge of
the 2022 Hackaday Prize
ends this weekend, along with your chance at one of ten $500 prizes. If you thrive on last-minute challenges, consider the eleventh hour upon you. But don’t panic; there’s still a decent amount of time left to
start a new project over on Hackaday.io
and get it entered into the contest.
The second Challenge focuses on creating new ways of recycling materials. What does this look like? That’s a pretty broad topic, but it could be anything from a better method of chip harvesting to an inexpensive and/or low-energy process for shredding used plastic and forming it into millable blocks.
Don’t just think big on a commercial scale — imagine what people can do at home with the stuff in their recycle bin or their neighbor’s trash. If everyone had access to one of [Jerzeek]’s
plastic scanners
for identifying the type of plastic that mystery bucket or old watering can was made of, just think what could be done. As long as your project focuses on reusing, recycling, or revamping, we want to see it!
So far, we’ve seen a bunch of excellent projects, many of which are focused on recycling plastic. There’s
the Pullstruder
, which creates PET filament from plastic bottles, and
a method for vacuum-forming HDPE plastic directly from milk jugs
. There has to be more than one way to upcycle acrylic scraps into new sheets and jewelry, but
the best one definitely involves a panini press and a car jack
.
Recycling plastic is totally fantastic, but it’s not the only material available at the dump. You’ll probably have no trouble finding
tires from which to make footstools and tables
, and if you’re lucky, there’ll be
an old phone that could be turned into an IoT assistant
. If you want to take the circularity thing literally,
dig up a printer and and old CD player and turn them into a mini pottery machine that uses cornstarch
.
[jude_pullen] is vacu-forming plastic milk jugs ’til the cows come home.
[Guillermo Perez Guillen]’s cornstarch mini pottery machine spins us right round.
So basically, we have a bunch of awesome entries right now, but we don’t have yours! Remember: it doesn’t have to be a new project, just a new project
page
. Did you revolutionize recycling during lockdown? Make a new project and tell us about it! Just don’t forget to actually enter the thing by using the drop-down on the left before 7AM PDT on Sunday, June 12th. Need a time converting countdown thingy?
We’ve got you
.
After the recycle bin is empty, we’ll be moving on immediately to the Hack It Back challenge. This time, we’ll be asking you to teach old tech new tricks, or to bring a piece of gear back from the dead. Turn a blender into a Dremel-like tool, or give an old ‘scope a screen upgrade. You know what to do!
The
Hackaday
Prize2022
is Sponsored by: | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482048",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T08:36:12",
"content": "If I am reading this right, someone cut a piece out of a milk bottle (like I and surely countless others) and stuck it on a commercial/consumer vacformer? This is the hack?",
"parent_id": nul... | 1,760,372,668.475253 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/07/the-wonderfully-weird-wireframe-game-boy-that-actually-works/ | The Wonderfully Weird Wireframe Game Boy That Actually Works | Robin Kearey | [
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"Circuit Sculpture",
"game boy",
"Game Boy pocket",
"wireframe"
] | We see lots of great hardware projects here at Hackaday: some are extremely clever, some are beautifully made, and some show off their maker’s extraordinary skills. Others are just plain weird, but still manage to include some or even all of the above categories. Case in point:
[kgsws]’s Wireframe Game Boy project
. It’s probably the weirdest Game Boy mod we’ve seen so far, but also extremely impressive from a technical point of view.
The basic idea was to take a Game Boy Pocket and remove its outer shell, replacing it with a cage-like structure made from thick copper wire. That sounds kind of reasonable; think of those transparent Game Boys, only without the transparent plastic. [kgsws]’s video (embedded below) shows him bending a few pieces of copper wire to match the Game Boy’s overall shape, then adding mounts for the cartridge socket, the display, the D-pad and the four buttons. After that you’d simply slide in the PCB, insert some batteries and off you go, right?
Well, this wouldn’t do for [kgsws]. What he did instead, was use a hot air desoldering station to remove all chips from the motherboard and proceed to mount them directly inside the wireframe without a PCB. He then used dozens of thin copper wires to hook up the cartridge slot, the CPU, RAM, buttons, and everything else to reconstruct the motherboard’s functionality. We cringed a bit when we saw him brutally cut the display’s flat cable with scissors, and that too was connected to the rest of the system through flying wires, soldered directly onto the screen’s contacts.
Amazingly, the system managed to boot up and run its software after it got a pair of fresh batteries. Despite a slightly dodgy D-pad, the naked Game Boy actually turned out to be fully usable, although it probably requires somewhat more delicate handling than Nintendo’s famously bullet-proof hardware. We’ve seen Game Boys modded into all kinds of different
shapes
and
sizes
, but none quite as unusual as today’s. If it’s wireframe construction you like, check out
this eerie sound generator
or
this beautiful circuit sculpture clock
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481678",
"author": "fiddlingjunky",
"timestamp": "2022-06-07T15:56:21",
"content": "That’s an absolutely bonkers project. This guy needs a brazing torch, though I commend him for using the tools at hand. I sure hope he was using lead-free solder ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,372,668.52105 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/07/ec-hacking-your-laptop-has-a-microcontroller/ | EC Hacking: Your Laptop Has A Microcontroller | Arya Voronova | [
"computer hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"embedded controller",
"eSPI",
"Framework laptop",
"LPC"
] | Recently, I stumbled upon
a cool write-up by [DHowett],
about reprogramming a Framework laptop’s Embedded Controller (EC). He shows us how to reuse the Caps Lock LED, instead making it indicate the F1-F12 key layer state – also known as “Fn lock”, AKA, “Does your F1 key currently work as F1, or does it regulate volume”. He walks us through adding custom code to your laptop’s EC firmware and integrate it properly into the various routines the EC runs.
The EC that the Framework uses is a MEC1521 chip from Microchip, and earlier this year, they
open-sourced the firmware
for it. Now, there’s a
repository of microcontroller code
that you can compile yourself, and flash your Framework laptop’s motherboard with. In a comment section of HackerNews, a Framework representative has speculated that you could
add GPIOs to a Framework motherboard
through EC firmware hacking.
Wait… Microcontroller code? GPIOs? This brings us to the question – what is the EC, really? To start with, it’s just a microcontroller. You can find an EC in every x86 computer, including laptops, managing your computer’s lower-level functions like power management, keyboard, touchpad, battery and a slew of other things. In Apple land, you might know them as SMC, but their function is the same.
Why have we not been reprogramming our ECs all this time? That’s a warranted question, too, and I will tell you all about it.
What’s The EC’s Job?
The EC controls a whole bunch of devices in your laptop. Not devices connected to USB, LVDS/eDP or PCIe, because those would fall within the purview of the chipset. Instead, these are devices like power switches, the charger chip, and various current monitors, since these have to work correctly even when the chipset and CPU are powered off. But of course, it’s not just power management – there’s a whole lot of things in a laptop you need GPIOs for.
The EC of a EEE PC 701. This one even has some extra signals for media buttons that were left out in hardware!
Generally, anything that you’d control with a
digitalWrite
or monitor using a
digitalRead
, measure through an ADC, or talk to using I2C – these are things handled by the EC. Thus, the EC reads battery state and charger voltages, drives the fans with PWM and takes temperature measurements from various sensors. The laptop keyboard is a key matrix, and the EC scans that matrix and processes key presses, forwarding the key events to the chipset that your OS then reads. Whether your touchpad is PS/2 or I2C, the EC handles it and exposes it to the OS, too.
Your laptop’s power button is connected directly to the EC. As a result, your EC is the first thing to get powered on; and if a broken laptop of yours has no reaction to the power button, it means the EC can’t do its power management job for whatever reason. In fact, if you check Framework laptop’s recently published
reduced schematics,
you’ll see that the EC has it own separate power rail coming directly from the battery.
How does it even talk to the chipset? For about two decades, ECs have been using the LPC bus – a four-bit wide bus superficially resembling qSPI. Apart from ECs, it’s only really been used by TPMs in the recent times. LPC uses frequencies from 25MHz to 100MHz. Thus, if you want to put a logic analyzer to your LPC signals and capture some packets, your typical cheapo 25Msps LA won’t do, but an
off-the-shelf FPGA board
or a way faster LA will work wonders, and there’s a
pretty cool paper
using LPC manipulation and an FPGA to extract keys from TPMs.
LPC is about two decades old, and is a direct successor to
the ISA bus
– in fact, in some laptop schematics from 2003 you’ll find the EC connected through ISA instead, but it’s all LPC beyond that. However, recent ECs talk eSPI instead,
a qSPI-like interface meant to replace LPC,
and the Framework EC talks eSPI, too.
Of Course, There’s Firmware Involved
Every EC has firmware, and every laptop (and desktop, and server!) has an EC. The EC firmware is nearly always closed-source. As such, the EC firmware is one of the binary blobs we tend to miss when talking about proprietary parts inside our computers. Often, the EC firmware is stored on the same SPI flash chip as the BIOS – other times, there’s a separate external or on-chip flash, in which case, you typically have an UART bootloader you can reflash your EC through. All of that depends on which specific manufacturer and model of the EC you have.
Often, your EC is built on something like ARM or 8051 architecture, other times it’s something more obscure like CompactRISC. The common thing is – at most, you’ll get a binary blob when it comes to your EC’s firmware. At some point, when Google got into laptop business, a group of their engineers presumably said “enough”, and
open-sourced their EC code
– which is what Framework has been building on when it comes to their own EC firmware. Last year,
System76 opened up their EC code,
too. Unfortunately, the situation remains dire for other laptop manufacturers.
Could your EC get backdoored? Not likely – it tends to be harder to modify and update EC firmware than it is to do the same with BIOS images. Now, could you yourself modify your EC’s behavior? It’s at least technically possible, and I’d argue that you should have always been able to do that.
So, What About Hacking?
Of course, with every subsystem of a laptop, you’ll find a subgroup of Thinkpad enthusiasts that have already dug deep and used it to pull off some fun and useful things. The EC is one such aspect, and they
sure have something to offer
– reprogramming keyboard layouts and removing battery locks, mainly. With keyboard layouts, they’ve managed to make older (and apparently more superior) keyboards work with newer laptops, with
a tutorial
talking about how specifically you need to insulate certain pins, and a
super convenient way to flash the changes.
The battery part is more vital, however – you can more often than not live with a subpar keyboard, even on supposedly otherwise-stellar ThinkPads. The problem is the “genuine” battery check in the EC, which doesn’t let you charge (or even operate from) the battery if it doesn’t pass. This isn’t just limited the third-party battery options, in case that’s what it sounds like – such checks also prohibit use of Lenovo batteries that were just meant for a different kind of Thinkpad, but otherwise mechanically, electrically and electronically perfectly suitable.
There’s a video on
how ThinkPad EC hacking unfolded
, and I recommend you check that one out to see what’s up. Now, Lenovo didn’t seem to like that people were swapping keyboards and enabling use of third-party batteries that Lenovo themselves stopped selling ‘genuine’ counterparts for anymore. So, at some point, they decided to
close one of the most comfortable ways
for EC firmware updating, and release a BIOS update citing “security improvements”. The relevant CVE says this:
A vulnerability was reported in various BIOS versions of older ThinkPad systems that could allow a user with administrative privileges or physical access the ability to update the Embedded Controller with unsigned firmware.
If you ask me, this description is bonkers. This sentence essentially means “the laptop’s owner can flash EC firmware not approved by Lenovo”. I do wonder what led to it and what the possible justification might be, but in the end, whatever the reason, it’s a distraction from what I believe. That is, updating the EC firmware on one’s own laptop should be possible, and Lenovo closed a user-friendly way to do just that.
Also, without doubt, not all manufacturers respect your right to repair when it comes to ECs. As an example, for almost a decade now, Dell has been shipping their laptops with ECs that have encrypted firmware, keys fused inside the EC. This has been a particular problem for Dell laptop repair, as EC die every now and then. While you can buy a blank EC and reflow it in place of the Dell’s dead one, it won’t have the decryption keys Dell flashes into the EC at the factory, and therefore won’t run Dell’s encrypted firmware. Modifications are off the table here – it’s not even possible to source a fitting replacement for the EC when your laptop is broken, even though the chips themselves are abundant.
What Can You Do Now?
Now there’s three manufacturers that have open source firmware for ECs – Google, System76 and Framework. What could you do with this firmware, though? As with any underutilized area of hacking, it will take time to realize its full potential. Remapping keys is not the only thing – you could implement a 80% battery charge limit for cell longevity if your laptop’s manufacturer didn’t provide you with one, add extra layers to your laptop keyboard without any need for OS support, maybe tweak your fan curves. Or, indeed, you could add some GPIOs inside your laptop, for whatever sensors or buttons your heart desires.
You can also fix bugs, which crop up in ECs every now and then, and can be quite annoying to deal with – imagine
keyboard keys getting stuck
every now and then, seemingly randomly, and that’s exactly what happens when you have an EC bug. Bug fixes or improvements, just like with any firmware currently closed to us, we won’t see a slew of cool hacks starting tomorrow, but there are definitely cool things on the horizon when it comes to EC hacking. | 25 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481655",
"author": "ec",
"timestamp": "2022-06-07T14:46:58",
"content": "> “the laptop’s owner can flash EC firmware not approved by Lenovo”Don’t see how it’s limited to just the owner.These are business laptops so it’s expected of them to plug up potential security issues, even on... | 1,760,372,668.66052 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/07/the-origin-of-the-fresnel-lens/ | The Origin Of The Fresnel Lens | Al Williams | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"fresnel",
"lens",
"optics"
] | If you are a Hackaday reader, you probably know what a Fresnel lens is. You find them in everything from overhead projectors to VR headsets. While it seems commonplace now, the Fresnel lens was an important invention for its day because it revolutionized maritime navigation and, according to
a post over at IEEE Spectrum
, that was the driving force behind its invention. In fact, the lens has been called “
the invention that saved a million ships
“.
The problem stems from issues in navigation. Navigating by the sun and the stars is fine, but not workable when you have heavy cloud cover, or other reasons you can’t see them. A lighthouse often marked an important point that you either wanted to navigate towards or, sometimes, away from. Sure, today, we have GPS, but for a long time, a lighthouse was your best bet.
The problem is that in those days, a lighthouse was an oil lamp, a concave mirror, and an ordinary lens. This made the lighthouses difficult to spot. Napoleon started the Commission of Lighthouses as part of the Corps of Bridges and Roads. This is the Corps that employed optical genius, Agustin-Jean Fresnel. Although some lighthouses were already using lenses, they weren’t using the special Fresnel-style lenses. There had been speculation about building this type of lens, but Fresnel was apparently unaware of them when he proposed his lens for lighthouse use in 1819. His proposed lens was a bit different than earlier proposals, too.
The lens works like a series of prisms, the ones on the edges bending light more sharply and the center bending it hardly at all. Compared to a conventional lens, a Fresnel will be thinner and lighter or — conversely — for the same thickness and weight, the Fresnel can have better properties. However, the distortions make them less suitable for imaging where regular lenses still reign supreme. A thinner lens, of course, should let more light through, which is important when you are trying to shoot a beam a long distance. Fresnel’s lenses let through 98% of the lamp’s output, which could signal ships up to 32 km away.
By 1823, the lenses were appearing on lighthouses. By 1860, all lighthouses in the United States were using the improved optics. One of those things that you don’t really give a lot of thought to, but at one time it was major high tech. You have to wonder in 200 years what we are using today that will be relegated to the ordinary and commonplace.
You can see replica
lighthouse lenses
in the video below. If you make your own, though, be careful
not to get a big head
. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481595",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2022-06-07T11:26:35",
"content": "Look inside a taillight or a turn signal lens. You’ll see the same stepped pattern. Almost invisible from the outside. Same concept.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,372,668.834464 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/07/3d-printed-power-loom-shows-how-complex-weaving-really-is/ | 3D-Printed Power Loom Shows How Complex Weaving Really Is | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"loom",
"shuttle",
"warp",
"weaving",
"weft"
] | The seemingly humble flying-shuttle loom, originally built to make the weaving of wide cloth faster and easier, stood at the threshold between the largely handcrafted world of the past and the automated world that followed. And judging by how much work went into
this miniature 3D-printed power loom
, not to mention how fussy it is, it’s a wonder that we’re not all still wearing homespun cloth.
Dealing with the warp and the weft of it all isn’t easy, as [Fraens] discovered with this build. The main idea with weaving is to raise alternate warp threads, which run with the length of the fabric, to create a virtual space, called the shed, through which a shuttle carrying the weft thread is passed. The weft thread is then pressed in place by a comb-like device called the reed, the heddles carrying the warp threads shift position, and the process is repeated.
[Fraens]’ version of the flying-shuttle loom is built mostly from 3D-printed parts, with a smattering of aluminum and acrylic. There are levers, shafts, and cams galore, not to mention the gears and sprockets that drive the mechanism via a 12-volt gear motor. The mechanism that moves the shuttle back and forth in the shed is particularly interesting; it uses cams to release the tension stored in elastic bands to flick the shuttle left and right. Shuttle timing is critical, as a few of the fails later in the video show. [Fraens] had to play with cam shape and lever arm length to get the timing right, not to mention having to resort to a chain drive to get enough torque to move the shuttle.
We’ve seen power looms before, but mainly those that
operate at a somewhat more stately pace
than this one. Hats off to [Fraens] for showing the true complexity involved in automating weaving. | 35 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481569",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2022-06-07T09:01:05",
"content": "It’s all fun and games until the cross beams go askew on the treadle.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6481644",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
... | 1,760,372,668.785149 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/06/how-to-use-lego-bricks-for-data-storage/ | How To Use LEGO Bricks For Data Storage | Robin Kearey | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"data storage",
"lego",
"punch cards"
] | Those old enough to have encountered punch cards in their lifetime are probably glad to be rid of their extremely low data density and the propensity of tall stacks to tip over. But obsolete as they may be, they’re a great tool to show the basics of binary data storage: the bits are easily visible and can even be manipulated with simple tools. As an experiment to re-create those features in a more modern system, [Michael Kohn] made
a punch card-like system based on LEGO bricks
that stores machine code instructions for a 65C816 CPU, the 16-bit successor to the venerable 6502.
Bits are stored on a white 8×20 stud board, onto which small black pieces are placed. A white background stud encodes a logic “zero”, while a black stud encodes a logic “one”. The bits are read out by an array of reflectance sensors, which conveniently has the same 8 mm pitch as standard LEGO studs. A big wheel driven by a stepper motor slides the data card under the readout circuit along a short stretch of LEGO train tracks.
The optical sensors are read out by an MSP430 series microcontroller, which also drives the motor through a stepper motor driver. Once the data is read out, the bytes are transferred into a WDC W65C265SXB board, which executes them as machine code instructions on its 65C816 CPU. In the video below, you can see a program being loaded that blinks an LED.
We’ve featured educational punch-card systems before, like
this Raspberry Pi-based model
. If you’ve got a bunch of actual punch cards that need reading out, check out
this Arduino-powered readout system
. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481555",
"author": "MyCo_Guy",
"timestamp": "2022-06-07T06:42:29",
"content": "This post just comes in time for me. Thank you.I was experimenting with using 4 LDRs and a 4011 to grab data displayed as black and white squares on my monitor.This is definitely an extension to try out.... | 1,760,372,668.878493 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/06/refilling-single-use-miele-dishwasher-autodos-detergent-dispensing-disks/ | Refilling Single-Use Miele Dishwasher AutoDos Detergent Dispensing Disks | Maya Posch | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"miele",
"powerdisc",
"single use"
] | As part of [Erich Styger]’s recent kitchen overhaul with more power-efficient machines, he came across the ‘AutoDos’ feature of the new Miele G 27695-60 dishwasher. These are essentially overpriced containers of dishwashing powder that go into a special compartment of the machine, from which the dishwasher can then dispense the powder as needed. The high price tag and purported single-use of these containers led to the obvious question of
whether they can be refilled
.
With a cost of over $10 per PowerDisk container, each containing 400 grams of powder that suffice for ~20 cycles, it should be obvious that this is not a cheap system. Fortunately, each PowerDisk is just a foil-covered plastic container with no real special components. This meant that one hole and some funnel action later, [Erich] had refilled an empty PowerDisk with fresh powder, with the Miele dishwasher happily purring away and none the wiser that it wasn’t using Genuine Miele PowerDisk Dishwasher Powder™.
How well this system holds up long-term is uncertain, as the containers were not designed for constant reuse, but it offers the perspective of some creative 3D printing to create an (ABS-based?) container alternative. Having a automatic powder or liquid dosing system in a dishwasher is a pretty useful feature, but when it gets tied to what is clearly a cash grab, it rather ruins the deal.
(Thanks to [Christian] for sending this one in) | 46 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481516",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2022-06-07T02:22:57",
"content": "Thank you for the PSA about this dishwasher and its special soap cartridge. I don’t think I’ll be buying one.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,372,669.010156 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/08/injekto-injection-machine-reaches-2-0/ | Injekto Injection Machine Reaches 2.0 | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"injection molding"
] | Last time we looked in on Injekto — a homemade plastic injection machine — it was at version 1.0. A
recent video from the team
that you can see below shows version 2 which is much improved and can work with 3D printed molds. Injection molding takes a lot of pressure and the machine certainly looks stout with lots of machined aluminum.
If you want to skip the build process, you can skip up to around the 9-minute mark. That’s where they show a machined mold and a 3D printed mold being used with the machine.
The first attempt overfilled the mold, but with a little clean-up, it looked pretty good, and, of course, there’s a way to adjust the fill amount. The 3D plastic molds cost about $100, cheap for a mold, but expensive for a 3D print. They also tested some cheaper printers and resin to create molds at a lower cost which also worked well.
The second version of the machine is a step up
from the old version
, as you’d expect. There are other ways to
build an injector
, of course, but this does look like a well-polished setup. We liked the dual injection buttons to keep your hands clear of the pinch points, for example. | 22 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482225",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T23:59:34",
"content": "Plastic injection molding is nice but aluminum injection molding is much better. Unlike plastic it doesn’t become trash after being used.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,668.932213 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/08/live-subtitles-for-your-life/ | Live Subtitles For Your Life | Jenny List | [
"hardware"
] | [
"closed captions",
"head-up display",
"heads-up",
"hud",
"subtitles"
] | Personal head-up displays are a technology whose time ought by now to have come, but which notwithstanding attempts such as the Google Glass, have steadfastly refused to catch on. There’s an intriguing possibility in [Basel Saleh]’s CaptionIt project though,
a head-up display that provides captions for everyday situations
.
The hardware is a tiny I²C OLED screen with a reflector and a 3D-printed mount attached to a pair of glasses, and it’s claimed that it will work with almost any ARM v7 SBC, including more recent Raspberry Pi boards. It uses the
vosc
speech recognition toolkit to read audio from a USP audio device, with the resulting text being displayed on the screen.
The device is shown in action in the video below the break, and without trying it ourselves we can’t comment on its utility, but aside from the novelty we can see it could have a significant impact as an accessibility aid. But it’s as an electronic Babel fish coupled with translation software that we’d like to see it develop, so that inadvertent but hilarious international misunderstandings can be shared by all.
Regular readers will know that we’ve brought you plenty of
HUD tomfoolery
in the past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIHrooFKeLU | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482204",
"author": "Doug",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T21:40:36",
"content": "To each their own, but I don’t see eyeglass mounted HUD’, filling any of my desires or needs, any time soon.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6482213",... | 1,760,372,669.060158 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/08/retrotechtacular-the-forgotten-vacuum-tube-a-d-converters-of-1965/ | Retrotechtacular: The Forgotten Vacuum Tube A/D Converters Of 1965 | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"adc",
"analong to digital",
"att",
"bell labs",
"crt",
"deflection plates",
"gray code",
"reflected binary code",
"shadow mask",
"vacuum tube"
] | In any era, the story of electronics has very much been about figuring out how to make something happen with what’s available at the time. And as is often the case, the most interesting developments come from occasions when needs exceed what’s available. That’s when real innovation takes place, even if circumstances conspire to keep the innovation from ever taking hold in the marketplace.
This gem of a video
from the Antique Wireless Association has a perfect example of this: the long-lost analog-to-digital converter vacuum tube. Like almost every mid-20th-century innovation in electronics, this one traces its roots back to the Bell Laboratories, which was keenly interested in improving bandwidth on its
massive network of copper lines and microwave links
. As early as 1947, one Dr. Frank Gray, a physicist at Bell Labs, had been working on a vacuum tube that could directly convert an analog signal into a digital representation. His solution was a cathode ray tube similar to the CRT in an oscilloscope. A beam of electrons would shine down the length of the tube onto a shadow mask containing holes arranged in a “reflected binary code,” which would later be known as
a Gray code
. The analog signal to be digitized was applied to a pair of vertical deflector plates, which moved the beam into a position along the plate corresponding to the voltage. A pair of horizontal deflector plates would then scan the beam across the shadow mask; where electrons fell on a hole, they would pass through to an output plate to be registered as a bit to be set.
Fast forward twenty years, and Dr. Gray’s basic idea was leveraged to build a 224 Mb/s analog-to-digital converter that just wasn’t possible with the transistors of the day. The innovation with this tube was to parallelize the output — instead of a single electron beam being rastered across the shadow mask at the appropriate position, a ribbon of electrons fell on an entire 9-bit row before striking an array of output detectors.
As usual for Bell Labs, the tube performed excellently, nearly matching the theoretical signal-to-noise ratio. But alas, another project in the lab to build an all-solid-state ADC had gained traction while the tube was being perfected, and much of what drove both projects fell apart as AT&T concentrated on microwave guideline and optical fiber for their digital networking needs.
As innovative as the vacuum tube ADC was, it never appears to have seen use in any production networks. But it’s still a fantastic illustration of what’s possible under constrained conditions. We’d love to see one of these tubes, if any still exist, resurrected and put through its paces.
Thanks to [Mark Erdle] for the tip. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482180",
"author": "daveboltman",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T19:14:45",
"content": "“224 Mb/s analog-to-digital converter” – absolutely amazing for the 1960s!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6483187",
"author": "William... | 1,760,372,669.241609 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/08/handling-bulk-material-the-spice-must-flow/ | Handling Bulk Material: The Spice Must Flow! | Anne Ogborn | [
"how-to"
] | [
"bulk material",
"conveyor",
"conveyor belt",
"screw conveyor"
] | Your [Bornhack] plans include leaving lemons in patterns as an info display. Your squirrel feeder needs to only dispense nuts when the squirrels deserve it. As
promised last week
, an intro to gating, feeding, and moving bulk material.
Gates
Bulk material flow needs control. Starting is easy, it’s stopping that’s hard.
Dump Gate, Slide Gate, Clamshell Gate
If your need is just to dump out the entire contents of the bin, a
dump gate
works – a trapdoor with a latch. If you need to stop before emptying the bin, you can use a
slide valve
– a flat piece of material in a box that slides in and out. Friction from material bearing down on them causes large open/close forces. Material can jam between the flap and the housing when closing.
A variation is the clam shell gate — a section of a cylinder on arms that swings aside, like a crane’s grab. They tend to leak, but with the material’s weight against the hinge pin, they are easier to close with a high force against them.
The
upward bell
gate, helps with in-bin flow pattern and seals well. Open by pulling from above or pushing from below, through the outlet. The material moving around the gate acts to improve the flow, and because the material at the lip is on an inclined surface, they tend to seal better. If it still has a leakage problem, a flexible lip can cure it.
A cone, suspended on a cable below the outlet of the hopper is a
downward bell
. Lowering the cable lets material flow between the outlet rim and the bell. When the cable is raised, if a lump sticks at one place the bell moves aside. The sealing surfaces are angles, so material rolls off. The bin is shallower and there’s no outlet pipe. This design ensures clearance so large particles don’t wedge against the wall as the bell closes.
Upward Bell, Downward Bell, Double Bell
Any of these gates would close just fine if not for the material in the bin.
Double gates
exploit this. The main bin has a normal gate and outlet. The outlet is below the lip of the much smaller, lower
control bin
. If the control bin fills, the main bin stops. The control bin has a gate larger than the main bin. Closing the main gate as far as it will go reduces flow through the control gate to a trickle. The control gate can now be fully closed, which fills the control bin and blocks the main outlet.
You might not want to share environments between bins. Maybe one has pressure, nasty chemicals, or hot gases. In that case, a rotary airlock gate is a paddle wheel apparatus in a close fitting housing. Material is metered out as it turns. A double gate also works (blast furnaces use double bells). If you need to meter a set amount, a sliding cavity like a grocery store bulk bin works. So does a rotary airlock.
Locomotive sander systems spread sand on the rails to increase traction. The sand is gated with a “sand trap”. A pipe supplies sand to a ‘valve’ with a sharp upward U bend. Of course this blocks. A compressed air line from a valve in the cab feeds into the upward end of the U bend. As long as air flows, the blockage is constantly cleared and sand flows. It’s collected and sent to the wheels.
Feeders
If you need a constant flow, independent of how much is in the bin, you need a feeder.
The rotary air lock can be a simple feeder. A conveyor feeder is a belt at the bottom of the bin. One side has a slight gap between bin and belt. Material covers the belt as high as the gap. A screw feeder is a helical screw at the bottom of the hopper, taking material off to the side. The screw needs a varying pitch, starting out slow and increasing, to let it fill gradually from all along the hopper. A vibratory feeder is a chute designed to arch, with a vibrator to make it flow anyway.
Any of these can have a poor pattern of feeding, taking from one place along it’s inlet. Fins and inserts in the bin can help – a doctor blade to regulate how deep the first couple inches of belt feed,
or an anti-rathole type insert
to keep mass flow going.
Conveyors
Unlike a feeder, a conveyor depends on whatever is feeding it to control the feed rate. Feeders are for controlling feed rate. Conveyors for moving stuff. A feeder will change it’s output when it’s speed changes. A conveyor may change how much is in each section (the ‘loading’) but the output is speed independent.
Screw conveyors
should have a fixed pitch, and can be angled up to 45 degrees. Belts can be inclined up to the angle of repose of the material. These are best made with a slight ‘V’ in the belt so the material doesn’t roll off. Boards on the side also work, but introduce friction into the system as the material slides against them.
Don’t overlook skips — a bucket pulled up an incline. The front wheels run on tracks slightly narrower than the back wheels. Dip the inside tracks down at the end to dump.
Moving floors made of long strips will move a pile of material if actuated in the proper sequence. Picture the order as ‘123123123123’: shove 1 backwards suddenly, and the material above it will stay with the mass, do 2 and 3, then slowly move all forward. They also move solid objects, so many trucks have such floors.
Finally, you can always fluidize the material and blow it about with air or water, then remove the fluid at the other end. Think old time logging, with logs floated down the river.
Have fun hacking. We hope we’ve given you some options for dealing with
walnuts
. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482157",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T17:14:20",
"content": "So wait, all the bulk material articles were just leading up to where you could use a “The Spice Must Flow” headline/title? :-D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,669.198601 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/08/induction-heater-uses-new-coil/ | Induction Heater Uses New Coil | Bryan Cockfield | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"coil",
"cooking",
"induction",
"iron core",
"magnetic field",
"mazzilli zvs driver",
"mosfet",
"stove"
] | Induction cook tops are among the most efficient ways of cooking in the home that are commercially available to the average person. Since the cook surface uses magnetic fields to generate heat in the cookware itself, there is essentially no heat wasted. There are some other perks too, such as faster cooking times and more fine control, not to mention that it’s possible to build your own induction stove. All you need is some iron, wire, and a power source, and you can have something
like this homemade induction cooker
.
This induction heater has a trick up its sleeve, too. Instead of using an air coil to generate heat in the cookware, this one uses an iron core instead. The project’s creator [mircemk] built an air core induction stove in the past, and this new one is nearly identical with the exception of the addition of the iron core. This allows for the use of less wire, and uses a driver circuit called a Mazzilli ZVS driver running through some power MOSFETs to power the device. A couple inductors limit the current to 20A, but it appears to work just as well as the previous stove.
This build puts a homemade induction stove well within reach of anyone with an appropriate power supply and enough wire and inductors to build the coils. [mircemk] has made somewhat of a name for himself involving project that use various coils of wire, too, like this project we featured recently which uses two overlapping air-core coils
to build an effective metal detector
. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482145",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T15:56:18",
"content": "“Since the cook surface uses magnetic fields to generate heat in the cookware itself, there is essentially no heat wasted. ”Title Photo: Device with large heat sinks….",
"p... | 1,760,372,669.289124 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/08/how-is-voyager-still-talking-after-all-these-years/ | How Is Voyager Still Talking After All These Years? | Dan Maloney | [
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"Cassegrain",
"gain",
"parabolic",
"reflector",
"traveling wave tube amplifier",
"TWTA",
"voyager"
] | The tech news channels were recently abuzz with stories about
strange signals coming back from
Voyager 1
. While the usual suspects jumped to the usual conclusions — aliens!! — in the absence of a firm explanation for the anomaly, some of us looked at this event as an opportunity to marvel at the fact that the two Voyager spacecraft, now in excess of 40 years old, are still in constant contact with those of us back on Earth, and this despite having covered around 20 billion kilometers in one of the most hostile environments imaginable.
Like many NASA programs, Voyager has far exceeded its original design goals, and is still reporting back useful science data to this day. But how is that even possible? What 1970s-era radio technology made it onto the twin space probes that allowed it to not only fulfill their primary mission of exploring the outer planets, but also let them go into an extended mission to interstellar space, and still remain in two-way contact? As it turns out, there’s nothing magical about Voyager’s radio — just solid engineering seasoned with a healthy dash of redundancy, and a fair bit of good luck over the years.
The Big Dish
For a program that in many ways defined the post-Apollo age of planetary exploration, Voyager was conceived surprisingly early. The complex mission profile had its origins in the “Planetary Grand Tour” concept of the mid-1960s, which was planned to take advantage of an alignment of the outer planets that would occur in the late 1970s. If launched at just the right time, a probe would be able to reach Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune using only gravitational assists after its initial powered boost, before being flung out on a course that would eventually take it out into interstellar space.
The idea of visiting all the outer planets was too enticing to pass up, and with the success of
the Pioneer missions
to Jupiter serving as dress rehearsals, the Voyager program was designed. Like all NASA programs, Voyager had certain primary mission goals, a minimum set of planetary science experiments that project managers were reasonably sure they could accomplish. The Voyager spacecraft were designed to meet these core mission goals, but planners also hoped that the vehicles would survive past their final planetary encounters and provide valuable data as they crossed the void. And so the hardware, both in the spacecraft and on the ground, reflects that hope.
Voyager primary reflector being manufactured, circa 1975. The body of the dish is made from honeycomb aluminum and is covered with graphite-impregnated epoxy laminate skins. The surface precision of the finished dish is 250 μm. Source: NASA/JPL
The most prominent physical feature of both the ground stations of the Deep Space Network (DSN), which we’ve
covered in-depth
already, and the Voyager spacecraft themselves are their parabolic dish antennas. While the scale may differ — the DSN sports telescopes up to 70 meters across — the Voyager twins were each launched with the largest dish that could fit into the fairing of the Titan IIIE launch vehicle.
Voyager High-Gain Antenna (HGA) schematic. Note the Cassegrain optics, as well as the frequency-selective subreflector that’s transparent to S-band (2.3-GHz) but reflects X-band (8.4-GHz). Click to enlarge. Source: NASA/JPL
The primary reflector of the High Gain Antenna (HGA) on each Voyager spacecraft is a parabolic dish 3.7 meters in diameter. The dish is made from honeycomb aluminum that’s covered with a graphite-impregnated epoxy laminate skin. The surface of the reflector is finished to a high degree of smoothness, with a surface precision of 250 μm, which is needed for use in both the S-band (2.3 GHz), used for uplink and downlink, and X-band (8.4 GHz), which is downlink only.
Like their Earth-bound counterparts in the DSN, the Voyager antennas are a Cassegrain reflector design, which uses a Frequency Selective Subreflector (FSS) at the focus of the primary reflector. The subreflector focuses and corrects incoming X-band waves back down toward the center of the primary dish, where the X-band feed horn is located. This arrangement provides about 48 dBi of gain and a beamwidth of 0.5° on the X-band. The S-band arrangement is a little different, with the feed horn located inside the subreflector. The frequency-selective nature of the subreflector material allows S-band signals to pass right through it and illuminate the primary reflector directly. This gives about 36 dBi of gain in the S-band, with a beamwidth of 2.3°. There’s also a low-gain S-band antenna with a more-or-less cardioid radiation pattern located on the Earth-facing side of the subreflector assembly, but that was only used for the first 80 days of the mission.
Two Is One
Three of the ten bays on each Voyager’s bus are dedicated to the transmitters, receivers, amplifiers, and modulators of the Radio Frequency Subsystem, or RFS. As with all high-risk space missions, redundancy is the name of the game — almost every potential single point of failure in the RFS has some sort of backup, an engineering design decision that has proven mission-saving in more than one instance on both spacecraft over the last 40 years.
On the uplink side, each Voyager has two S-band double-conversion superhet receivers. In April of 1978, barely a year before its scheduled encounter with Jupiter, the primary S-band receiver on
Voyager 2
was shut down by fault-protection algorithms on the spacecraft that failed to pick up any commands from Earth for an extended period. The backup receiver was switched on, but that was found to have a bad capacitor in the phase-locked loop circuit intended to adjust for Doppler-shift changes in frequency due primarily to the movement of the Earth. Mission controllers commanded the spacecraft to switch back to the primary receiver, but that failed again, leaving
Voyager 2
without any way to be commanded from the ground.
Luckily, the fault-protection routines switched the backup receiver back on after a week of no communication, but this left controllers in a jam. To continue the mission, they needed to find a way to use the wonky backup receiver to command the spacecraft. They came up with a complex scheme where DSN controllers take a guess at what the uplink frequency will be based on the predicted Doppler shift. The trouble is, thanks to the bad capacitor, the signal needs to be within 100 Hz of the lock frequency of the receiver, and that frequency changes with the temperature of the receiver, by about 400 Hz per degree. This means controllers need to perform tests twice a week to determine the current lock frequency, and also let the spacecraft stabilize thermally for three days after uplinking any commands that might change the temperature on the spacecraft.
Double Downlinks
An Apollo-era TWTA, similar to the S-band and X-band power amps used on Voyager. Source:
Ken Shirriff
On the transmit side, both the X-band and S-band transmitters use separate exciters and amplifiers, and again, multiple of each for redundancy. Although downlink is primarily via the X-band transmitter, either of the two S-band exciters can be fed into either of two different power amplifiers. A Solid State Amplifier (SSA) provides a selectable power output of either 6 W or 15 W to the feedhorn, while a separate
traveling-wave tube amplifier (TWTA)
provides either 6.5 W or 19 W. The dual X-band exciters, which use the S-band exciters as their frequency reference, use one of two dedicated TWTAs, each of which can send either 12 W or 18W to the high-gain antenna.
The redundancy built into the downlink side of the radio system would play a role in saving the primary mission on both spacecraft. In October of 1987,
Voyager 1
suffered a failure in one of the X-band TWTAs. A little more than a year later,
Voyager 2
experienced the same issue. Both spacecraft were able to switch to the other TWTA, allowing
Voyager 1
to send back the famous
“Family Portrait” of the Solar system
including the Pale Blue Dot picture of Earth, and for
Voyager 2
to send data back from its flyby of Neptune in 1989.
Slower and Slower
The radio systems on the Voyager systems were primarily designed to support the planetary flybys, and so were optimized to stream as much science data as possible back to the DSN. The close approaches to each of the outer planets meant each spacecraft accelerated dramatically during the flybys, right at the moment of maximum data production from the ten science instruments onboard. To avoid bottlenecks, each Voyager included
a Digital Tape Recorder (DTR)
, which was essentially a fancy 8-track tape deck, to buffer science data for later downlink.
Also, the increasing distance to each Voyager has drastically decreased the bandwidth available to downlink science data. When the spacecraft made their first flybys of Jupiter, data streamed at a relatively peppy 115,200 bits per second. Now, with the spacecraft each approaching a full light-day away, data drips in at only 160 bps. Uplinked commands are even slower, a mere 16 bps, and are blasted across space from the DSN’s 70-meter dish antennas using 18 kW of power. The uplink path loss over the current 23 billion kilometer distance to
Voyager 1
exceeds 200 dB; on the downlink side, the DSN telescopes have to dig a signal that has faded to the attowatt (10
-18
W) range.
That the radio systems of
Voyager 1
and
Voyager 2
worked at all while they were still in the main part of their planetary mission is a technical achievement worth celebrating. The fact that both spacecraft are still communicating, despite the challenges of four decades in space and multiple system failures, is nearly a miracle. | 49 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482128",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T14:32:01",
"content": "” To avoid bottlenecks, each Voyager included a Digital Tape Recorder (DTR), which was essentially a fancy 8-track tape deck, to buffer science data for later downlink.”Ah, 8-track we miss you. Good thin... | 1,760,372,671.328192 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/08/computer-shaped-lego-brick-brought-to-life/ | Computer-Shaped LEGO Brick Brought To Life | Arya Voronova | [
"Art",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed lego",
"enameled wire",
"lego",
"lego computer",
"minaturization",
"miniature computer",
"miniaturized",
"oled",
"oled screen"
] | In childhood, many of us wondered — wouldn’t it be cool if our miniature toys had “real” functions? Say, that our toy cars actually were able to drive, or at least, that the headlights could light up. [James Brown] captures some of this childhood expectation of magic, recreating the 2×2 45°-sloped Lego bricks with computer screens and panels drawn on them by
building a LEGO brick
(thread,
nitter
) with an actual display inside of it.
This is possible thanks to an exceptionally small OLED display and a microcontroller board that’s not much larger. It’s designed to plug onto a LEGO platform that has an internal 9V battery, with power exposed on the brick’s studs. [James] has taken care building this — the brick was built with help of a tiny 3D-printed form, and then, further given shape by casting in what appears to be silicone or resin.
We’ve yet to hear more details like the microcontroller used — at least, the displays look similar to the ones used in a different project of [James]’,
a keyboard where every keycap has a display in it
(thread,
nitter
). Nevertheless, it is lovely to witness this feat of micro-engineering and fabrication. It reminds us of an another impressive build we covered recently — a
1/87 scale miniature Smart Car
that’s as functional as you can get!
Very happy about this.
pic.twitter.com/1FofmKbqJP
— James Brown (@ancient_james)
June 7, 2022 | 26 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6482085",
"author": "fho",
"timestamp": "2022-06-08T11:17:32",
"content": "I love how this is tagged as “art”. Truly impressive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6482105",
"author": "Arya Voronova",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,372,671.009855 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/06/this-4-desalination-device-provides-drinking-water-for-the-whole-family/ | This $4 Desalination Device Provides Drinking Water For The Whole Family | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"desalination",
"mit",
"water"
] | Researchers at MIT and in China have improved the old-fashioned solar still with a new inexpensive device that harnesses
the sun to remove salt from water
. Traditionally, these kinds of systems use a wick to draw water, but once the wick becomes fouled with salt, the device needs cleaning or other maintenance. Not exactly what you want in a survival situation. You can
read the paper in Nature
if you want more details.
The key to this new technique is black paint and polyurethane with 2.5-millimeter holes drilled in it. The idea is that warmer water above the insulating medium causes the salt to concentrate in the cooler water beneath the insulator allowing efficient vaporization of the water. As the water evaporates, it causes the salt concentration at the top to rise, which then sinks due to the higher density and lower-concentration salt water rises to the top to evaporate.
Because the materials are commonplace, the team says a one-meter-square system costs about $4 to produce. A system that size could provide a family’s daily drinking water.
So far, the prototype system has worked in the lab for at least a week without accumulating salt. The next challenge is to scale it to something more practical, but due to the low cost and simplicity of the system, it seems it would be easy enough to make that happen or to reproduce the device for your own testing.
Desalination is a problem you can
approach from many different angles
. You can also harvest
clean water from fog
, something else that started at MIT. | 48 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481324",
"author": "SparkyGSX",
"timestamp": "2022-06-06T11:34:22",
"content": "The description wasn’t very clear to me, but if I understand correctly, the idea is that the water is still evaporated, so it’s basically a solar still, but without the problem of salt crystals depositi... | 1,760,372,671.417229 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/06/bug-eliminator-zaps-with-a-laser/ | Bug Eliminator Zaps With A Laser | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"deterrent",
"laser",
"machine learning",
"mosquito",
"neural network",
"neutralize",
"tracking"
] | Mosquitoes tend to be seen as an almost universal negative, at least in the lives of humans. While they serve as a food source for plenty of other animals and may even pollinate some plants, they also carry diseases like malaria and Zika, not to mention the itchy bites. Various mosquito deterrents have been invented over the years to solve some of these problems, but one of the more interesting ones is this project by [Ildaron]
which attempts to build a mosquito-tracking laser
.
The device uses a neural learning algorithm to identify mosquitoes flying nearby. Once a mosquito is detected, a laser is aimed at it and activated in order to “thermally neutralize” the pest. The control system as well as the neural network and machine learning are hosted on a Raspberry Pi and Jetson Nano which give it plenty of computing power. The only major downside with this specific project is that the high-powered laser can be harmful to humans as well.
Ideally, a market for devices like these would bring the price down, perhaps even through the use of something like an ASIC specifically developed for these mosquito-targeting machines. In the meantime, [Ildaron] has made this project available for replication on his
GitHub page
. We have also seen similar builds before
which are effective against non-flying insects
, so it seems like only a matter of time before there is more widespread adoption — either that or Judgement day! | 27 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481306",
"author": "hartl",
"timestamp": "2022-06-06T08:30:56",
"content": "“so it seems like only a matter of time before there is more widespread adoption”Sea lice zapper:https://hackaday.com/2017/04/10/submersible-robots-hunt-lice-with-lasers/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth... | 1,760,372,671.483288 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/05/new-part-day-x1501-makes-for-a-tiny-and-open-linux-som/ | New Part Day: X1501 Makes For A Tiny And Open Linux SoM | Arya Voronova | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"castellated",
"Embedded Linux",
"ingenic",
"linux",
"New Part Day",
"som",
"system-on-module",
"x1501"
] | Ever wanted to
run Linux in an exceptionally small footprint?
Then [Reimu NotMoe] from [SudoMaker] has something for you! She’s found an unbelievably small Linux-able chip in BGA, and designed a self-contained tiny SoM (System on Module) breakout with power management and castellated pads. This breakout contains everything you need to have Linux in a 16x16x2mm footprint. For the reference, a 16mm square is the size of the CPU on a Raspberry Pi.
This board isn’t just tiny, it’s also well-thought-out, helping you put the BGA-packaged Ingenic X1501 anywhere with minimal effort. With castellated pads, it’s easy to hand-solder this SoM for development and reflow for production. An onboard switching regulator works from 6V down to as low as 3V, making this a viable battery-powered Linux option. It can even give you up to 3.3V/1A for all your external devices.
The coolest part yet – the X1501 is surprisingly friendly and NDA-free. The
datasheets are up for grabs,
there are no “CONFIDENTIAL” watermarks – you get a proper 730-page PDF. Thanks to this openness, the X1501 can run mainline Linux with minimal changes, with most of the peripherals already supported. Plus, there’s Efuse-based Secure Boot if your software needs to be protected from cloning.
More after the break…
What’s so cool about the X1501? The Ingenic X1501 is an adorable little BGA with RAM built-in – no high-speed routing hassles. Sure, you only get 8M of RAM, but you can strip Linux down a whole lot –
half of that RAM is free
for your own use. You can do quite a bit with small amounts of RAM on Linux, as we’ve seen this year with the
$15 Linux computer.
We’ve seen Ingenic-made chips bring Linux to a slew of cheap products, from
game consoles
to
small hackable security cameras.
If you’re tired of your MCU giving you headaches, perhaps you’d like to benefit from all the interfaces, libraries, languages, and frameworks that Linux offers. This SoM is a wonderful stepping stone for ease of development.
You get a 1GHz MIPS32r2 core, with a spare 300MHz core for all your real-time tasks; 2MB of internal flash fits Uboot and a Linux kernel with plenty of room to spare. You can connect a MicroSD card for troves more storage. You also
get all the interfaces
like USB, SPI, I2C, and SDIO, as well as analog and digital audio support. There’s a bit of a DMA hiccup, but nothing that can’t be solved with a bit of time and help from a community.
Speaking of a community – [Reimu] says she’s pitched this board for CrowdSupply, so be on the lookout. If anyone’s interested in helping polish the kernel quirks, a few developer-aimed units are on the table for sure! After the crowdfunding completes, all the design files will be open-sourced – otherwise, such a board would be trivial for others to clone. If you’d like some cool project ideas for such a module – how about a
tiny Linux-powered mobile phone?
This one has an Ingenic X1000 inside.
Would you like to know how such boards are created? We’ve seen an impressive write-up about
taming small ARM chips with custom PCBs and Linux!
Got USB host mode working on the
#X1501
Pico. Patches coming in Linux kernel v5.19.
pic.twitter.com/QILjcZ4PfV
— ReimuNotMoe (@ReimuNotMoe)
May 30, 2022 | 26 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481268",
"author": "doragasu",
"timestamp": "2022-06-06T05:31:19",
"content": "Very interesting board. 64 MiB RAM is enough for lots of things in Linux without GUI and using BusyBox. My only complaint is the small 2 MiB flash, that will barely fit uboot, and a stripped down compres... | 1,760,372,671.076393 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/05/quantum-computing-the-first-taste-is-free/ | Quantum Computing: The First Taste Is Free | Al Williams | [
"computer hacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"quantum computing",
"qubits",
"shots"
] | There are a few ways to access real quantum computers — often for free — over the Internet. However, most of these are previous-generation machines that have limited capabilities. Great for learning, perhaps, but not something you could do anything practical with. Xanadu, however, has announced what they claim to be a computer capable of reaching quantum advantage that is free for anyone to use, within limits.
Borealis
— the computer in question — uses photonic states and has the capability of working with over 216 squeezed-state qubits.
The company is selling time on the computer, but the free tier includes 5 million free shots on Borealis and 10 million shots on an earlier series of quantum computers. You can also buy pay-as-you go service for about $100 per million shots on Borealis.
While a few million shots may sound like a lot, we noticed that the quickstart demo consumes 10,000 shots and that’s presumably something simple. That’s still about 500 runs of that on Borealis — not bad for free on a state-of-the-art quantum computer. You will be wanting to debug with a simulator, though.
We presume the developers are Beatles fans given that you use software called Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields to access the machines. Your job is controlled by Python and there is a cloud simulator to save your shots.
We won’t pretend to understand all there is about squeezed light qubits and the Borealis architecture. But you can get some general practice in our
series on quantum computing
. Or there are a few
lectures
around including one that aims at
different levels of experience
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481267",
"author": "Barış",
"timestamp": "2022-06-06T05:24:23",
"content": "I am a scientist trying to use “Quantum Computing” (closer to quantum information theory in my case) for my work. My view is usually quite different from a “computer scientist” point of view, since I am mo... | 1,760,372,671.114496 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/05/hackaday-links-june-5-2022/ | Hackaday Links: June 5, 2022 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"bioprinting",
"cartilage",
"collagen",
"delivery bot",
"ear",
"hackaday links",
"Hackaday Prize",
"Ingenuity",
"mars",
"Perseverance",
"starship",
"transplant"
] | The big news this week comes from the world of medicine, where
a woman has received a 3D-printed ear transplant
. The 20-year-old woman suffered from microtia, a rare congenital deformity that left her without a pinna, the external structure of the ear. Using scans of the normal ear, doctors were able to make a 3D model of what the missing pinna should look like. Raw material for the print was taken from the vestigial ear of the patient in the form of cartilage cells, or chondrocytes. The ear was printed using a bioprinter, which is a bit like an inkjet printer. The newly printed ear was placed into a protective structure and transplanted. The operation was done in March, and the results are pretty dramatic. With a little squinting, it does look a bit like there are some printing artifacts in the ear, but we’d imagine that’s more from the protective cage that was over the ear as it healed.
Interesting news from Jezero crater on Mars this week as NASA revealed that
Perseverance
is now autonomously blasting rocks with its laser
. During its recent drive in the ancient river delta, the rover spotted two rocks that seemed interesting to its Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science, or AEGIS, system. Rather than sending the images back to controllers on Earth and waiting for instructions, AEGIS used the IR laser in the rover’s SuperCam to blast away at the surface or each rock, while monitoring the spectrum of the resulting plasma plume. This marks the first time AEGIS has been used by
Perseverance
, and the thought is that it will allow the planetary science team to concentrate on the really interesting rocks.
Meanwhile, the air wing of the Mars 2020 expedition is still making history, with
Ingenuity
having racked up its 28th flight recently. To celebrate, NASA released
video of the helicopter’s 25th flight
, which was a 700-meter hop over a landscape that looks a lot like any sandy desert here on Earth. The plucky helicopter just keeps going, although the approaching Martian winter is expected to curtail operations. The aircraft’s batteries are getting harder to charge, as controllers fight to balance the decreased output of its increasingly dusty solar panel with the increased need to run its internal heaters against the brutal Martian cold. NASA hopes the helicopter will survive the winter, but there’s no guarantee that Ingenuity will still be flying come springtime. Which is strange — we’d have laid odds that the whole technology demonstration would have ended in a tangled heap of wreckage by the fifth flight. Shows how much we know.
It seems hard to believe that June has rolled around already, but here we are almost halfway through 2022. And that means we’re coming up on the end of
Round 2 of the Hackaday Prize
. The theme for this round was “Reuse, Recycle, and Revamp”, and we’ve seen a ton of great entries. Entries for the “three Rs” round end on June 12, so you’ve still got a week to get something in. Or, if your “R” leans more toward “repair”, you’ll want to check out the “Hack it Back” challenge of Round 3. And don’t forget our other cool contest:
“Odd Inputs and Peculiar Peripherals.”
We know there’s a huge community of keyboard builders and attachment aficionados out there, and we’re looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.
And finally, you know you’re starting to make a difference when they start making fun of you. That’s probably what the people over at Starship Technologies, makers of the cutest dang delivery bots you’ve ever seen, are saying now that Starship fail videos appear to be making their way into the zeitgeist. We’ve featured a few lately in this space, including
a train wreck
and
a bot wandering in the woods
. Turns out there’s quite a little cottage industry in documenting these bots — and those of other companies, of course — in their less graceful moments. The one that got us was
this speed-run into a giant hole in the sidewalk
, which raises far more questions about pedestrian safety than it does about robot navigation. We suspect we’ll see many more of these snuff films as robot deliveries penetrate the market more and more. | 16 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481188",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2022-06-05T23:04:19",
"content": "Go Perseverance, increase the Science to 11 !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6481199",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2022-06-05T... | 1,760,372,671.161414 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/05/anyone-can-be-the-master-of-this-master-lock-safe/ | Anyone Can Be The Master Of This Master Lock Safe | Arya Voronova | [
"Reverse Engineering",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"2FA",
"gun safe",
"locksport",
"logic analyser",
"logic analyzer",
"pistol safe",
"safe",
"uart"
] | [Etienne Sellan] got one of these lovely $5 logic analyzers. As with any shiny new tool, he started looking for things to investigate with it, and
his gaze fell on a Sentry Safe
(produced by Master Lock). On the surface level, this keypad-equipped safe is designed decently when it comes to privilege separation. You can take the keypad board off and access its backside, but the keypad doesn’t make any decisions, it merely sends the digits to a different board embedded behind the safe’s door. The solenoid-connected board receives the PIN, verifies it, and then controls the solenoid that unlocks the safe.
[Etienne] hooked up a logic analyzer to the communication wire, which turned out to be a UART channel, and logged the keypad communication packets — both for password entry and for password change. Then, he wrote some Arduino code to send the same packets manually, which worked wonders. Bruteforcing wasn’t viable, however, due to rate limitation in the solenoid controller. Something drew his attention from there – if you want to change the password, the keypad requires you enter the factory code, unique to each safe and supplied in the instruction manual. That code entry is a separate kind of packet from the “change password” one.
More after the break…
Armed with an Arduino able to send packets imitating those produced by the keypad, [Etienne] found a critical bug – sending the password change command didn’t actually require the factory code packet to be sent first. By sending a single packet saying “please change the code to 00000”, the PIN code will be reset. All you need for that is an MCU injecting serial packets, and [Etienne] built just that, embedding an ATmega circuit into a shell of a marker, tip replaced with a two-pin header.
If you want to hack such a safe, you just need to remove the keypad, take the cap off the marker, touch two pins to test points on the keypad board, and press a button that sends a packet to the safe —
as shown in a video by [Etienne]
. Just a bit shy of a James Bond-suited tool, this marker will yield you a gun in times of need, or perhaps a wad of cash, as long as you can locate a Sentry Safe out in the wild.
This is exceptionally bad, obviously – given that this safe is advertised for storing valuables and firearms. The company was notified of the problem but never responded. If you have a safe that’s affected, however, [Etienne]
designed a replacement solenoid board
that isn’t susceptible to any malicious packets. The designs for everything are open-source, in the best of hacker traditions. With this board, your safe’s safety is one PCB order away. As if [Etienne]’s work had to be any cooler, he also wrote a firmware that adds OTP code support to this board, so you can use your favorite 2FA app to open this safe, too.
We tip our hats to [Etienne] finding this bug, making a cool proof-of-concept, and then even creating a fix – in the face of the manufacturer straight up ignoring the problem. We often see hardware hackers
upgrading their safes
or
breaking into them,
and it’s nice to see a project that manages to do both.
Hi
@SentrySafe
&
@MasterLockUS
,
I just found a software vulnerability in your electronic safe firmware that allow to open safe without secret code.
I made a pocket payload injector as PoC.
Is it possible to discuss with you to provide details and help fix ?
Cc
@LockPickingLwyr
pic.twitter.com/B4A75Ws1OG
— Etienne Sellan (@etienne_sellan)
February 21, 2022 | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481159",
"author": "Lazarus Robotics",
"timestamp": "2022-06-05T20:07:26",
"content": "If Masterlock gave two hoots about security the lock picking lawyers you tube stream would have dried up long ago.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment... | 1,760,372,671.231265 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/05/the-ethics-of-when-machine-learning-gets-weird-deadbots/ | The Ethics Of When Machine Learning Gets Weird: Deadbots | Donald Papp | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Machine Learning",
"News"
] | [
"ai",
"chatbot",
"deadbot",
"ethics",
"machine learning"
] | Everyone knows what a chatbot is, but how about a deadbot? A
deadbot
is a chatbot whose training data — that which shapes how and what it communicates — is data based on a deceased person. Now let’s consider the case of a fellow named Joshua Barbeau, who created a chatbot to simulate conversation with his deceased fiancee. Add to this the fact that OpenAI, providers of the GPT-3 API that ultimately powered the project, had a problem with this as their terms explicitly forbid use of their API for (among other things) “amorous” purposes.
[Sara Suárez-Gonzalo], a postdoctoral researcher, observed that this story’s facts were getting covered well enough, but nobody was looking at it from any other perspective. We all certainly have ideas about what flavor of right or wrong saturates the different elements of the case, but can we explain exactly
why
it would be either good or bad to develop a deadbot?
That’s precisely what [Sara] set out to do.
Her writeup is a fascinating and nuanced read that provides concrete guidance on the topic
. Is harm possible? How does consent figure into something like this? Who takes responsibility for bad outcomes? If you’re at all interested in these kinds of questions, take the time to check out her article.
[Sara] makes the case that creating a deadbot could be done ethically, under certain conditions. Briefly, key points are that a mimicked person and the one developing and interacting with it should have given their consent, complete with as detailed a description as possible about the scope, design, and intended uses of the system. (Such a statement is important because machine learning in general changes rapidly. What if the system or capabilities someday no longer resemble what one originally imagined?) Responsibility for any potential negative outcomes should be shared by those who develop, and those who profit from it.
[Sara] points out that this case is a perfect example of why the ethics of machine learning really do matter, and without attention being paid to such things,
we can expect awkward problems to continue to crop up
. | 41 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481125",
"author": "hmmm",
"timestamp": "2022-06-05T17:17:18",
"content": "This would provide an excellent opportunity for product sales! The emulated loved one could hawk products, and because they were loved/trusted, a purchase might be more likely.",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,372,670.896338 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/06/a-solar-frame-from-scratch/ | A Solar Frame From Scratch | Matthew Carlson | [
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"CNC plasma",
"kris",
"milling",
"solar",
"woodworking"
] | “From scratch” is a bit of a murky expression. How scratchy does it get? Are you just baking your bread yourself or are you growing your own wheat? Rolling your own solar installation probably doesn’t involve manufacturing your own photovoltaic cells. But when it comes to making the frame to hold your panels, why not
machine your own brackets and harvest the wood from trees nearby?
. That’s what [Kris Harbour] did with his over-engineered 8.4kW solar stand.
He already had a wind turbine and a few solar panels elsewhere on the property, but [Kris] wanted a bit more power. At the start of the video, [Kris] makes an offhand comment that he wants this to last 30-40 years at a minimum. Everything from the focus on the concrete footings to the oversized brackets and beams reflects that. The brackets were cut on his plasma CNC and the wood was cut to rough dimensions using a sawmill on his property. He admits that the sapwood will rot away a bit after 20ish years, but since the core of the posts is heartwood, structurally they’ll last a long time. After planing down to the right size, cutting hole and grooves was a bit of an involved procedure. The structure is quite tall once erected and we loved watching it come together. The most impressive thing here is that this structure was put together by just a single person. All the rafters were cut and hand-chiseled to the right sizes and hoisted into place. The panels ultimately weren’t delivered on time and he had to switch to using new panels rather than the used panels he was expecting.
Previously, [Kris] had shown
off his impressive hydroelectric setup
. We’re looking forward to seeing the new solar array power all the projects [Kris] is planning in the future. Video after the break. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481487",
"author": "hinspect",
"timestamp": "2022-06-06T23:44:50",
"content": "Dang! Those Footers are not going to walk off if they are dug & poured",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6481493",
"author": "gershwin",
"time... | 1,760,372,670.948795 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/06/using-a-lidar-sensor-to-monitor-your-mailbox/ | Using A LIDAR Sensor To Monitor Your Mailbox | Robin Kearey | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"home-assistant",
"lidar",
"mailbox",
"mqtt"
] | The inconvenience of having to walk to your mailbox to check for mail has inspired many hackers to install automated systems that let them know when the mail has been delivered. Mailbox monitors have been made based on several different mechanisms: some measure the weight of the items inside, some use cameras and machine vision, while others simply trigger whenever the mailbox’s door or flap is moved. When [Gary Watts] wanted to install a notification system for his 1940s brick letterbox, his options were limited: with no flap or door to monitor, and limited space to install mechanical contraptions,
he decided to use a LIDAR sensor instead
.
Probably best-known for their emerging application in self-driving cars, LIDAR systems send out a laser pulse and measure the time it takes for it to be reflected off a surface. In the case of [Gary]’s mailbox, that surface is either the brick wall or a letter leaning against it. Since letters are inserted through a vertical slot, they will usually be leaning upright against the wall, providing a clear target for the laser.
The LIDAR module, a VL53L0X made by ST, is hooked up to a Wemos D1 Mini Pro. The D1 communicates with [Gary]’s home WiFi through an external antenna, and is powered by an 18650 lithium battery charged through a solar panel. The whole system is housed inside a waterproof plastic case, with the LIDAR sensor attached to the inside of the mailbox through a 3D-printed mounting bracket. On the software side, the mailbox notifier is powered by Home Assistant and MQTT. The D1 spends most of its time in deep-sleep mode, only waking up every 25 seconds to read out the sensor and send a notification if needed.
We’ve seen quite a few fancy mailbox monitors over the years: some are
extremely power efficient
, some use
multiple sensors to allow for different use-cases
, and some
others are simply beautifully designed
. | 31 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481468",
"author": "Amiable Ninja",
"timestamp": "2022-06-06T21:44:33",
"content": "The inconvenience of walking to the mailbox? What the heck is wrong with you Nancy?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6481475",
"autho... | 1,760,372,671.544999 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/06/live-glucose-monitoring-with-the-apple-watch/ | Live Glucose Monitoring With The Apple Watch | Al Williams | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"apple watch",
"blood glucose",
"continuous glucose monitor"
] | There has been a rumor that Apple is working on a glucose monitoring solution for the Apple watch. [Harley] decided not to wait and managed to
interface an Abbot FreeStyle Libre sensor with the Apple watch
. The sensor doesn’t directly read glucose continuously, but it does allow for more frequent reading which can help diabetic patients manage their blood sugar levels. However, as part of the hack, [Harley] effectively converts the meter to a continuous-reading device, another bonus.
The trick is to add a Bluetooth transmitter to the NFC sensor. Using a device called a MiaoMiao, the task seems pretty simple. The MiaoMaio is small, waterproof, and lasts two weeks on a charge, which is longer than the sensor’s life. Honestly, this is the hack since once you have the data flowing over Bluetooth, you can process it in any number of ways including using an app on the Apple watch.
It isn’t perfect. There’s a slight lag with readings due to the way the sensor works. However, you usually don’t care as much about the absolute value of your glucose (unless it is very high or very low). You are usually more interested in the slope of the change. This data is more than good enough for that.
In fact, the most complex part of this seems to be the watch app. It might be less work to feed the data to a machine learning model and let AI guide your insulin injections. Something to think about.
We have a keen interest in glucose monitoring around here and we know why it
is so darn hard
. Honestly, the idea of pushing
glucose meter data to a watch
isn’t new, but this is a well-done implementation with a lot of possibilities. | 27 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481444",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2022-06-06T19:10:37",
"content": "Maybe Abbott should talk to Harley about putting this into all their sensors?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6481496",
"author": "The Co... | 1,760,372,672.269156 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/06/outline-2022-everyone-should-go-to-a-demo-party/ | Outline 2022: Everyone Should Go To A Demo Party | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks",
"cons"
] | [
"demo",
"demo party",
"demoscene",
"outline"
] | The community of Hackaday readers is diverse and talented, and supplies us with plenty of motivation, feedback, knowledge, and of course cool stuff to show you. There are many interest streams within it, but it’s safe to say that we’re more directed towards the hardware scene here. One of those parallel streams which has much overlap is the demoscene, that area in which programming, art, and music come together and push computer hardware to the limit of its abilities in pursuit of the most eye-catching works. I took a road trip with a friend to
Outline
, a small demo party held on a farm in the eastern Netherlands, to take a look at the world of demos up-close as a hardware-focused outsider.
Like A Hacker Camp, But The Music’s Better
A still from Thrive, a 256 byte demo for the TIC-80 fantasy console.
If I wanted to sum up the flavour of Outline, I’d describe it as very similar to a small hacker camp, but with better music and partying. The hackerspaces are replaced by demo groups and awesome graphics take the place of robots and electronics, but the vibe of people with a passionate interest in the low-level understanding of technology is exactly the same. Even some of the same faces make an appearance. On the benches sit modern high-spec PCs alongside classic consoles and microcomputers, on the projector screen are live coding shaders or some of the most recognisable demos past and present, and in the air is an eclectic mix of live-DJ EDM and chiptunes.
As an outsider at a first demoscene event it’s difficult to appreciate the work from a comparative perspective, while like most of us I’m familiar with quite a few demos that have become popular I’m not well-equipped enough to talk about the code and techniques behind them But I can run through the various sections of the competition, and since
everything is online
I can link to a few of them. The competition is split up into several sections, which are loosely for all-out technology-no-object demos, space-limited 256 byte and 128 byte demos, and old-school demos for retrocomputing hardware. Each is a test of the programmer’s skill in fitting the most into the least of resources, and for those who appreciate such things it’s the cleverness of the technique which produces the demo that’s as much a draw as the look of the thing. I don’t think I have ever exercised such mastery over any of the computers I have owned. So browse the entries, and marvel at their ingenuity. My personal aesthetic favourites were
Thrive
by [Agenda] for the
TIC-80
fantasy console and
It’s about time
by [Guideline] for Windows, but you may have different tastes.
Don’t Forget The Hardware
Mine Storm 4D, on a lenticular holographic display.
Beyond the atmosphere and the demos themselves, there was a bit of hardware for the retrocomputer enthusiast. The Atari Falcon and Jaguar were neither destined to set the world on fire when they appeared, but there they were for those of us who drooled over them back in the day to lust for once more.
If the original hardware wasn’t enough then there was some newly minted retrocomputing hardware making a showing, with a couple of
minimig Amiga FPGA boards
showing Workbench. Star of the hardware show though went to
Mine Storm 4D
, a version of the classic Vectrex game
Mine Storm
running on a PC, for the Looking Glass Factory holographic portrait display. With
my visual superpower
I didn’t quite get a 3D effect, but I definitely got the holographic effect when moving my head.
Having never been to a demo party I didn’t know quite what to expect, but I can safely say I had a fantastic time, saw a lot of really cool stuff, and made some friends along the way. If you’ve never been to a demo party because it’s not quite your scene then all I can say is that you should give it a go. Every hardware hacker should go to a demo party! | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481410",
"author": "Lily",
"timestamp": "2022-06-06T17:16:11",
"content": "This is definitely on my bucket list. I just wish they were more popular in the US.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6481560",
"author": "pelru... | 1,760,372,672.324023 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/06/aerial-robotics-hack-chat/ | Aerial Robotics Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, June 8 at noon Pacific for the
Aerial Robotics Hack Chat
with
Nick Rehm
!
When it comes to robots, especially ones that need to achieve some degree of autonomy, the more constrained the environment they work in, the easier it is for them to deal with the world. An industrial arm tethered next to a production line, for example, only has to worry about positioning its tool within its work envelope. The problems mount up for something like an autonomous car, though, which needs to deal with the world in two — or perhaps two and a half — dimensions.
But what about adding a third dimension? That’s the realm that aerial robots have to live and work in, and it’s where the problems get really interesting. Not only are there hardly any constraints to movement, but you’ve also got to deal with the problems of aerodynamic forces, navigation in space, and control systems that need to respond to the slightest of perturbations without overcompensating.
The atmosphere is a tough place to make a living, and dealing with the problems of aerial robotics has kept Nick Rehm occupied for many years as a hobbyist, and more recently as an aerospace engineer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Nick has spent his time away from the office solving the problems of autonomous flight, including detection and avoidance of mid-air collisions, development of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) and fixed-wing aircraft, and even
ground-effect aircraft
. He’ll drop by the Hack Chat to discuss the problems of aerial robots and the challenges of unconventional aviation, and help us figure out how to deal with the third dimension.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, June 8 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481447",
"author": "greg",
"timestamp": "2022-06-06T19:17:01",
"content": "I thought the great genius Musk, Time mag’s Man of the Year, would have perfected 3D functioning robots by now. Didn’t he claim several years ago that for something like $60 million he could encircle the Ear... | 1,760,372,671.998889 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/06/original-xbox-v1-6-ram-upgrade-stacks-tqfp-chips/ | Original XBox V1.6 RAM Upgrade Stacks TQFP Chips | Arya Voronova | [
"computer hacks",
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"hacking the xbox",
"memory upgrade",
"ram upgrade",
"tssop",
"xbox"
] | RAM upgrades for the original XBox have been a popular mod — you could relatively easily bump your RAM from 64MB to 128MB. While it wouldn’t give you any benefit in most games written to expect 64MB, it does help with emulators, game development, and running alternative OSes like Linux. The XBox PCB always had footprints for extra RAM chips, so RAM upgrades were simple – just get some new RAM ICs and solder them onto the board. However, in the hardware revision 1.6, these footprints were removed, and RAM upgrades on v1.6 were always considered impossible.
[Prehistoricman]
brings a mod
that makes RAM upgrades on v1.6 possible using an old trick from the early days of home computers. He’s stacking new RAM chips on top of the old ones and soldering them on in parallel. The overwhelming majority of the RAM lines are shared between chips, which is what makes this mod possible – all you need to connect to the extra chips is magnet wire for extra RAM chip select lines, which are, thankfully, still available on the board. He shares a tutorial with plenty of illustrations, so it should be easier for you to perform this mod, in case you’re stuck with a newer console that doesn’t have the RAM chip footprints left onboard.
We
just covered
an original XBox softmodding tutorial, so this is as timely as ever! If you’re looking to read about the 128MB mod,
this is a good place to start.
We thank [DjBiohazard] for sharing this with us! | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481396",
"author": "Feinfinger (super villain in nostalgy mode)",
"timestamp": "2022-06-06T16:16:02",
"content": "I stacked RAM in TRS-80 days and later in Atari-ST. Seeing that done today gives me a wide smile!;-D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,372,672.205523 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/06/laser-propulsion-could-satisfy-our-spacecrafts-need-for-speed/ | Laser Propulsion Could Satisfy Our Spacecraft’s Need For Speed | Lewin Day | [
"Science",
"Space"
] | [
"laser",
"laser propulsion",
"space",
"space propulsion",
"space vehicle design",
"spacecraft"
] | There are many wonderful places we’d like to visit in the universe, and probably untold numbers more that we haven’t even seen or heard of yet. Unfortunately…they’re all so darn far away. A best-case-scenario trip to Mars takes around six months with present technology, meanwhile, if you want to visit Alpha Centauri it’s a whole four lightyears away!
When it comes to crossing these great distances, conventional chemical rocket technology simply doesn’t cut the mustard. As it turns out though, lasers could hold the key to cutting down travel times in space!
45 Days To Mars on the Laser
Laser thermal propulsion is a relatively simple concept, and could get our spacecraft travelling our celestial neighborhood quicker than ever. A powerful laser beam fired from Earth targets a large heat exchanger aboard the craft, through which is pumped a propellant. As the heated propellant expands, it’s ultimately exhausted out of a nozzle in much the same way as in a traditional rocket. It’s also similar to the concept of nuclear thermal propulsion, but instead of using heat from a nuclear reaction, it relies on externally-supplied laser energy.
A recent paper
suggests such a propulsion system could run at a
specific impulse
of around 3000 seconds. This is essentially a measure of how much thrust a engine develops per mass of fuel. At 3000 seconds, a laser thermal propulsion system could be said to be at least 12 times as fuel efficient in thrust terms as the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) on the Space Shuttle.
A rendering of a laser thermal propulsion spacecraft. Note the large reflector and rocket nozzle at the rear. Credit:
Duplay, 2022,
CC BY 4.0
This allows a laser thermal propulsion to achieve far greater changes in velocity with less fuel, which gives a space mission the ability to send payloads farther and faster. Calculations show that with an idealized mission plan, a payload of around 1000 kg could be sent to Mars in just 45 days, far quicker than the usual 6-7 months possible in typical chemical-fueled missions.
A conceptual laser thermal propulsion space mission to Mars. Credit:
Duplay, 2022,
CC BY 4.0
The technology involved is complex, as you’d expect. A large laser array with power on the order of 100 MW would be required for the mission. The spacecraft itself would be launched out of the atmosphere on a conventional chemical rocket, whereupon it would separate and reveal a large inflatable parabolic reflector. The ground-based laser would then fire for up to an hour, using adaptive optics to counter the effect of the Earth’s atmosphere on the beam. The parabolic reflector on the spacecraft would then focus the energy on to a chamber to heat hydrogen propellant that would be expelled out of a nozzle at great velocity, providing thrust.
If so desired, the spacecraft could be designed to release the payload capsule on its path towards Mars, with the laser thermal propulsion unit separating off and returning to a stable Earth orbit for refueling. This has the benefit that the propulsion system itself could be used multiple times in quick succession to loft payloads far beyond Earth.
Such a system has one major flaw that stands out. While a laser on Earth is used to accelerate the spacecraft to great velocity, there is no corresponding laser array on Mars that can decelerate the craft on arrival. Nor is using chemical propulsion a practical way to slow down, as this would take up far too much of the craft’s useful payload. Researchers instead have determined that a very careful aero-braking maneuver in the Martian atmosphere could be used to slow an arriving craft. However, it’s a delicate operation that must be executed flawlessly to ensure success.
Overall, such a system could be readily developed in the near term. While nobody has a 100 MW laser array just lying around, modern fiber optic laser technologies mean that such a power figure is not outside the realms of possibility. Similarly, much work would be required to create a reliable laser thermal spacecraft and ground system capable of sending payloads in useful directions in space not solely limited by the relative positions of spacecraft and ground laser.
Ride The Laser To The Stars
If you want to go as far as our nearest star, Alpha Centauri, you’ll need to travel even faster. Even going at the speed of light, it would take four years to get there. Thus, a probe intending to travel that far would want to be going as close to that speed as is possible to make it there in a reasonable period of time.
Laser sails
may just hold the answer to this problem. They rely on the concept of photon radiation pressure, where light hitting a surface actually creates pressure and pushes it along. They’re referred to as sails because the concept is exactly the same as that of a sailing ship of centuries past. Instead of cloth and wind, though, a laser sail substitutes in advanced nano-materials and powerful laser light.
A artist’s conception of the laser sail idea. Such a craft could potentially carry a gram-scale payload at relativistic speeds, up to around 0.2c. Credit:
Breakthrough Initiatives
Recent research suggests a laser sail on the scale of a few meters could propel a gram-weight craft at velocities up to 0.2 times the speed of light. This would enable reaching Alpha Centauri in around 20 years, rather than the tens of thousands of years it would take with conventional rocketry.
The concept would require the use of a sail made of exceedingly thin sheets of materials like aluminium oxide, silicon nitride, and molybdenum disulfide. Measuring thousands of times thinner than a sheet of paper, the sail would have to be strong enough not to tear, and also be capable of dissipating heat so as not to melt from the power of the laser propelling it along.
Advanced nano-patterning of the sail would be key to achieving this goal. The idea is to produce a sail with high reflectivity to maximize acceleration due to photonic pressure, while also maintaining high thermal emissivity to keep the sail cool enough not to melt. With
a 100 GW laser array
firing at the sail, that’s no mean feat. Much like a conventional sail on a sailing ship, the material would be allowed to billow out under the pressure of the incoming light. This reduces the chance of tears significantly.
At best, the sail would only be able to carry a tiny payload weighing a few grams. It’s hoped that advanced fabrication methods could create a microprocessor, cameras, and communication hardware for the probe that would be able to communicate over the vast distances between Alpha Centauri and Earth.
It’s a bold plan, and one that could enable space research to tackle subjects farther afield than ever before. However, the challenges involved are great. The requirement for hugely powerful laser arrays is beyond our current capabilities, and the issue of materials still needs to be solved. Furthermore, any message sent from a probe at Alpha Centauri would take four years to arrive back on Earth, so communications issues present themselves as well.
Regardless, the research run thus far by Breakthrough Initiatives shows that laser sail concepts aren’t necessarily just a matter for science fiction. With the right investment and development, they could prove to be a useful propulsion method for research craft one day in the future.
Conclusion
Unlike other seemingly sci-f tech, like ion thrusters, these laser propulsion methods are still quite a ways off being fielded in real space missions. There are huge challenges to overcome, and it also bears sparing a thought for any birds or other unlucky wildlife that finds itself in the beam of a megawatt- or gigawatt-class laser.
However, if we are to open up the heavens, it’s going to require more than our existing technology can achieve. Thus, these projects, or perhaps other
fancy new ideas
, could one day take us far beyond our own solar system. | 51 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481360",
"author": "WereCatf",
"timestamp": "2022-06-06T14:13:28",
"content": "A 100GW laser in a craft that weighs 1 gram and you have to somehow fit the power-source for the laser in that 1 gram as well? Uhh…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,672.153391 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/05/odd-inputs-and-peculiar-peripherals-the-gamebug-turns-your-breadboard-into-a-game-console/ | Odd Inputs And Peculiar Peripherals: The GameBug Turns Your Breadboard Into A Game Console | Robin Kearey | [
"Games",
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"GameBug",
"Joystick",
"solderless breadboard"
] | What’s more fun than playing video games? Designing your own video game hardware, of course! If you’ve followed these pages long enough you’ll have seen dozens of great examples of homebrew hardware, and perhaps been inspired to try such a project yourself. This often starts with assembling the basic bits onto a solderless breadboard, which is fine for programming but not so great for testing: squeezing pushbuttons into your breadboard works for basic debugging, but is not very user-friendly or reliable. A better solution can be found in
[Dimitar]’s GameBug: a set of breadboard-compatible joypad-like controllers
.
The GameBug’s design excels in its simplicity: a miniature analog joystick, four buttons arranged in a diamond pattern, a shoulder button and two sliding switches are sitting on a neat purple PCB. On the bottom are two rows of pin headers to ensure a snug fit on your solderless breadboard. There’s even a little vibrating motor for haptic feedback.
Interfacing with the GameBug is simplified by the integrated readout electronics. A Schmitt trigger-based debounce circuit ensures clean signals from all the pushbuttons, while a motor driver chip provides stable current to the haptic feedback system. An RGB LED can be used as yet another user feedback device, or simply for decorative lighting.
All design files are available on [Dimitar]’s
GitHub page
, along with an Arduino sketch to help you try out the GameBug’s functionality. Having a proper gamepad might come in handy with breadboard-based game systems like
Tiny Duck Hunt
or this
impressive mess of wires that makes up a Colecovision
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481448",
"author": "Niklas Roy",
"timestamp": "2022-06-06T19:40:29",
"content": "What a brilliant idea! Love the flexibility of this :) Adding a little TFT module with SD slot would make it a nice cartridge game.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,671.962654 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/05/thats-no-asteroid-oh-actually-it-is/ | That’s No Asteroid…Oh, Actually It Is | Al Williams | [
"News",
"Space"
] | [
"Asteroids"
] | How important is it to identify killer asteroids before they strike your planet? Ask any dinosaurs. Oh, wait… Granted you also need a way to redirect them, but interest in finding them has picked up lately including a new
privately funded program
called the
Asteroid Institute
.
Using an open-source cloud platform known as ADAM — Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping — the program, affiliated with B612 program along with others including the University of Washington, has already discovered 104 new asteroids and plotted their orbits.
What’s interesting is that the Institute doesn’t acquire any images itself. Instead, it uses new techniques to search through existing optical records to identify previously unnoticed asteroids and compute their trajectories.
You have to wonder how many other data sets are floating around that hold unknown discoveries waiting for the right algorithm and computing power. Of course, once you find the next extinction asteroid, you have to decide what to do about it. Laser? Bomb? A gentle push at a distance? Or hope for an alien obelisk to produce a deflector ray? How would you do it?
NASA is experimenting with
moving asteroids
. If you want to find some on your own, you might want to check out the
atlas of existing ones
. | 27 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481087",
"author": "bluecat57",
"timestamp": "2022-06-05T12:17:35",
"content": "Not important at all. As useful as drills in preparation for a nuclear attack.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6481108",
"author": "Phil ... | 1,760,372,672.062851 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/05/softmod-an-xbox-and-run-your-own-software/ | Softmod An Xbox, And Run Your Own Software | Donald Papp | [
"Xbox Hacks"
] | [
"jailbreak",
"modding",
"softmod",
"xbox"
] | The original Xbox might be old hardware, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth messing with. Wonder what it takes to softmod an original Xbox? Modding is essentially jailbreaking, and
soft
modding is doing it using an entirely software-driven process, with no need to crack open the case or mess with electronics.
Don’t let that fool you into thinking the process requires nothing more than pressing a button; it’s actually quite involved, but more accessible now that [ezContents] has published
a comprehensive walkthrough
for softmodding an original Xbox, complete with loads of screenshots and photos.
The process uses
a softmodding tool
but that’s only the first step. Making the magic happen comes from installing a carefully crafted save file to the console, booting with an exploited game disk, and then installing software that the manufacturer doesn’t want on the hardware, via a process that the manufacturer doesn’t want to happen. Considering that, it’s expected to have to jump through a few hoops.
Now that your original Xbox is freed from its shackles without having to crack open the case, maybe crack it open anyway and
check it for leaking caps and internal RTC batteries
before it dies a corrosive death. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481068",
"author": "darkspr1te",
"timestamp": "2022-06-05T08:59:04",
"content": "or you can just pull the eeprom to get the hdd unlock code, then using linux you can setup any new hdd with all the games and program you could want the re-lock the drive and throw it back into your OG... | 1,760,372,672.470721 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/04/universal-tft-display-backpack-helps-small-displays-shine/ | Universal TFT Display Backpack Helps Small Displays Shine | Donald Papp | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"backpack",
"breakout board",
"driver",
"i2c",
"microcontroller",
"tft"
] | TFT technology might be ancient news for monitors and TVs, but it’s alive and well when it comes to hobbyist electronics and embedded devices. They’ve now become even easier to integrate, thanks to the
Universal TFT Display Backpack
design by [David Johnson-Davies].
Breakout board, compatible with pinouts of most small TFT displays.
Such displays are affordable and easy to obtain, and [David] noticed that many seemed to have a lot in common when it came to pinouts and hookup info. The result is his breakout board design, a small and easy-to-assemble PCB breakout board that can accommodate the pinouts of a wide variety of TFT displays available from your favorite retailers or overseas sellers.
The board has a few quality-of-life features such as an optional connection for a backlight, and a staggered pin pattern so that different TFT boards can be pushed in to make a solid connection without soldering. That’s very handy for testing and evaluating different displays.
Interested? Head on over to the
GitHub repository
for the project, and while you’re at it, check out [David]’s
Tiny TFT Graphics Library 2
which is a natural complement to the display backpack. [David] sure knows his stuff when it comes to cleverly optimized display work; we loved his solution for
writing to OLED displays without needing a RAM buffer
. | 16 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481057",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2022-06-05T07:33:29",
"content": "I had no idea that interface boards er driver boards er riser cards er piggyback boards er daughter boards were called ‘backpacks’ these days. Nice project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,372,672.376656 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/04/gaze-inside-these-nanopower-op-amps/ | Gaze Inside These Nanopower Op-Amps | Donald Papp | [
"Parts",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"closeup",
"decapping",
"LPV801",
"LPV821",
"nanopower",
"op-amp"
] | [Robo] over at Tiny Transistor Labs has a fascinating look at
what’s inside these modern, ultra low-power devices
that consume absolutely minuscule amounts of current. Crank up the magnification, and go take a look at the dies on these two similar (but internally very different) devices.
Texas Instruments LPV801, under the hood.
The first unit is the
Texas Instruments LPV801
, a single-channel op-amp that might not be very fast, but makes up for it by consuming only a few hundred nanoamps. Inside, [Robo] points out all the elements of the design, explaining how a part like this would be laser-trimmed to ensure it performs within specifications.
The second part is the
Texas Instruments LPV821
which uses a wee bit more power, but makes up for it with a few extra features like zero-drift and EMI hardening. Peeking inside this device reveals the different manufacturing process this part used, and [Robo] points out things like the apparent lack of fuses for precise trimming of the part during the manufacturing process.
Seeing these structures up close isn’t an everyday thing for most of us, so take the opportunity to check out [Robo]’s photos. Tiny Transistor Labs definitely takes the “tiny” part of their name seriously, as we’ve seen with
their 555 timer, recreated with discrete transistors
, all crammed into a package that’s even the same basic size as the original. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481081",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2022-06-05T11:06:37",
"content": "More opamp die pictures:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/opamps-die-pictures/And of course richis-lab with lots of pictures of various IC’s. From 40+ variants of the 555 to all the clones of the STM... | 1,760,372,672.416582 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/04/ingenious-indigenous-artful-screw-conveyor/ | Ingenious Indigenous Artful Screw Conveyor | Anne Ogborn | [
"how-to"
] | [
"metal forming",
"metal work",
"screw conveyor"
] | Many of us have heard the name Archimedes’ screw — but not everyone knows the term screw conveyor.
These folks
(sadly, the videographer at [Breeze Media] doesn’t tell us their names, or the company name) has the process of building screw conveyors down to a fine art.
Screw conveyors are useful, but many folks shy away from them because they look hard to make. In this video, we see how it’s done. The crew in this video are doing it in metal for large equipment, but the same methods could be used in plastic sheet or paper on a small scale.
It starts with cutting washers and slitting radially. When they’re distorted into the final shape the hole will close up, so the hole is a bit larger than the pipe that forms the center. They’re then given a slight spiral (think a lock washer) by walloping with a sledgehammer. It works. The slit edges are welded together to make a ‘compressed’ spiral, and the end is welded to the pipe
Now for the ingenious bit. They have a tall gantry, just a couple of pipe poles with a crossbar, set up in the factory yard. Below it, they’ve drilled a well. The free end of the pipe goes down the well. The bottom of the spiral is clamped to a baseplate around the well. Next, the pipe is hoisted up to form the final shape. Finally, everything is welded in place.
In the video after the break, they’re making a screw feeder. It needs a lower pitch for the section under the hopper. So they clamp several turns, pull the main section out, weld it, then move the clamp and make the feeder section.
Hacks are partially art, and screws are visually interesting. This
piggy bank
has one. Put one in your next hack! | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481009",
"author": "Dagobert",
"timestamp": "2022-06-04T23:20:37",
"content": "OSHA…?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6481016",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2022-06-04T23:43:45",
"content": "Why w... | 1,760,372,672.54682 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/04/diy-keyboard-cant-get-much-smaller/ | DIY Keyboard Can’t Get Much Smaller | Donald Papp | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"keyboard",
"macropad",
"micro",
"mini",
"pi pico",
"Raspberry Pi Pico"
] | The
PiPi Mherkin
really, really can’t get much smaller. The diminutive keyboard design mounts directly to the Pi Pico responsible for driving it, has a similar footprint, and is only about 9 mm thick. It can’t get much smaller since it’s already about as small as the Pi Pico itself.
Running on the Pi Pico is the
PRK firmware
, a keyboard framework that makes the device appear as a USB peripheral, checking the “just works” box nicely. The buttons here look a little sunken, but the switches used are available in taller formats, so it’s just a matter of preference.
We have to admit the thing has a very clean look, but at such a small size we agree it is perhaps more of a compact macropad than an actual, functional keyboard. Still, it might find a place in the right project.
Design files are online
, if you’re interested.
If you like small, compact keyboards but would prefer normal-sized keys, check out the PiPi Mherkin’s big brother,
the PiPi Gherkin
which gets clever with dual-function tap/hold keys to provide full functionality from only 30 keys, with minimal hassle.
Keyboards are important, after all, and deserve serious attention,
as our own [Kristina Panos] knows perfectly well
. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481041",
"author": "waldo",
"timestamp": "2022-06-05T04:51:20",
"content": "Nice project. Mini keyboards are useful for all sorts of projects, like off-grid communicators, and cyberdecks. It sounds like he didn’t provide enough tolerance in the top plate holes (in addition to needi... | 1,760,372,672.688527 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/04/make-your-own-virtual-set/ | Make Your Own Virtual Set | Matthew Carlson | [
"Video Hacks",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"ArUco",
"green screen",
"unreal engine",
"video processing",
"virtual production"
] | An old adage says out of cheap, fast, and good, choose two. So if you’re like [Philip Moss] and trying to make a comedy series on a limited budget rapidly, you will have to take some shortcuts to have it still be good. One shortcut [Philip] took was to
do away with the set and make it all virtual
.
If you’ve heard about the
production of a certain western-style space cowboy
that uses a virtual set, you probably know what [Philip] did. But for those who haven’t been following, the idea is to have a massive LED wall and tracking of where the camera is. By creating a 3d set, you can render that to the LED wall so that the perspective is correct to the camera. While a giant LED wall was a little out of budget for [Philip], good old green screen fabric wasn’t. The idea was to set up a large green screen backdrop, put some props in, get some assets online, and film the different shots needed. The camera keeps track of where in the virtual room it is, so things like calculating perspective are easy. They also had
large arUco tags
to help unreal know where objects are. You can put a wall right where the actors think there’s a wall or a table exactly where you put a table covered in green cloth.
Initially, the camera was tracked using a Vive tracker and LiveLink though the tracking wasn’t smooth enough while moving to be used outside of static shots. However, this wasn’t a huge setback as they could move the camera, start a new shot, and not have to change the set in Unreal or fiddle with compositing. Later on, they switched to a RealSense camera instead of the Vive and found it much smoother, though it did tend to drift.
The end result called ‘Age of Outrage’, was pretty darn good. Sure, it’s not perfect, but it doesn’t jump out and scream “rendered set!” the way CGI tv shows in the 90’s did. Not too shabby considering the hardware/software used to create it! | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480946",
"author": "Mmmdee",
"timestamp": "2022-06-04T17:35:35",
"content": "The video accompanying this article was much more fun to watch than I originally expected. We may really be “living“ in a simulation or the Matrix.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [... | 1,760,372,672.735532 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/04/the-dangerously-delightful-homemade-rockets-of-thailand/ | The Dangerously Delightful Homemade Rockets Of Thailand | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"gunpowder",
"gyroscopic",
"parachute",
"recovery",
"rocket",
"thailand"
] | Every once in a while, we here at Hackaday stumble across something that doesn’t quite fit in with all the other amazing hacks we feature, but still seems like something that our dear readers need to see as soon as possible.
This video of homemade rockets in Thailand
is one of those things.
It comes to us from our friend [Leo Fernekes], who documents a form of amateur rocketry that makes the Estes rockets of our youth look pretty tame. It’s far easier to watch than it is to describe, but for a quick summary, the rockets are bamboo rings with a steel pipe across the diameter. The pipe is packed with homemade gunpowder and provided with nozzles that create both thrust and rotation. When ignited by torches touched to seriously sketchy primers, the rocket starts to spin up, eventually rising off the launch pad and screwing itself into the sky on a twisting column of gray smoke.
At three or four meters across, these are not small vehicles. Rather than letting a steel pipe plummet back to Earth from what looks like several hundred meters altitude, the rocketeers have devised a clever recovery system that deploys a parachute when the rocket motor finally melts through some plastic straps. The use of banana tree bark as a heat shield to protect the parachute is simple but effective; which is really the way you can describe the whole enterprise. [Leo] has another way to describe it: “Dangerously negligent madness,” with all due respect and affection, of course. It looks like a big deal, too — the air is obviously filled with the spirit of competition, not to mention the rotten-egg stench of gunpowder.
Should you try this at home? Probably not — we can think of dozens of reasons why this is a bad idea. Still, it’s amazing to watch, and seeing how much altitude these cobbled-up rockets manage to gain is truly amazing. Hats off to [Leo] for finding this for us. | 25 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480932",
"author": "Then",
"timestamp": "2022-06-04T16:08:13",
"content": "This is great :) nice video also, but why tha ‘nasa launch sequence’ voice over in the intro, wouldve prefered to hear the thai announcer (as briefly heard at the last launch)",
"parent_id": null,
"d... | 1,760,372,672.843037 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/04/a-home-payphone/ | A Home Payphone | Al Williams | [
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"payphone",
"phone",
"telephone"
] | We can’t condone what [Bertrand] did as a kid to make him a fan of payphones,
but we get his desire to have one of his own in his home
. Even if you don’t want one yourself, he’s got some good shots of the insides of a real phone that came from a casino in Vegas.
As you might expect, these phones were built like tanks. They obviously took a lot of abuse. We had to wonder how much each one cost to produce back in the day. Cleaning up an old phone and getting it to work doesn’t seem like a big effort, but there’s one thing we didn’t think about. Turns out there is a backplate that holds the 50-pound phone up and you need special studs that screw into the phone to hold it up while you put screws through both pieces.
He did connect the phone successfully to a regular phone jack, but his goal was to let his 5-year-old use the phone so he decided to actually wire it to a phone line simulator that just provides a connection between two phones.
New York City recently ripped out
its last payphones
. They were replaced with multipurpose kiosks, but there are still privately-owned payphones in the city. Of course, you can always use an old payphone as
a platform for a different project
. | 9 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480892",
"author": "Antron Argaiv",
"timestamp": "2022-06-04T12:20:35",
"content": "I did the same thing…bought one off eBay. Mine is a 3-slot rotary dial one, made by Automatic Electric. It’s been gutted to make it compatible with a normal phone line (the coin relay has been remo... | 1,760,372,672.951663 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/04/sorry-your-internet-connection-is-slow/ | Sorry, Your Internet Connection Is Slow | Al Williams | [
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"fiber optic",
"network"
] | How fast is your Internet connection? The days of 56K modems are — thankfully — long gone for most of us. But before you get too smug with your gigabit fiber connection, have a look at what researchers from the Network Research Institute in Japan have accomplished. Using a standard diameter fiber, they’ve moved data at a rate of
1 petabit per second
.
The standard fiber has four spatial channels in one cladding. Using wavelength division multiplexing, the researchers deployed a total of 801 channels with a bandwidth over 20 THz. The fiber distance was over 50 km, so this wasn’t just from one side of a lab to another. Well if you look at the pictures perhaps it was, but with big spools of fiber between the two lab benches. The project uses three distinct bands for data transmission with 335 channels in the S-band, 200 channels in the C-band, and 266 channels in the L-band.
To put this into perspective, a petabit — in theory — could carry a million gigabit Ethernet connections if you ignore overhead and other losses. But even if that’s off by a factor of 10 it is still impressive. We can’t imagine this will be in people’s homes anytime soon but it is easy to see the use for major backhaul networks that carry lots of traffic.
We are still amazed that we’ve gone from
ALOHA to 2.5-gigabit connections
. Although the Raspberry Pi can’t handle even a fraction of the bandwidth, you can
fit it with a 10-gigabit network card
. | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480866",
"author": "12AU76L6GC",
"timestamp": "2022-06-04T08:31:03",
"content": "It is also really surprising how much throughput you can get with off the shelf DWDM transceivers running multiple colors on conventional single mode fiber. The Raman pumps were probably because of the... | 1,760,372,673.183011 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/03/wooden-keycaps-minus-the-cnc/ | Wooden Keycaps Minus The CNC | Kristina Panos | [
"how-to",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"DSA keycaps",
"hand tools",
"keycap",
"woodworking"
] | What’s the most important part of the keycap? The average user-who-cares might tell you it’s the look and feel, but a keyboard builder would probably say the mounting style. That’s where the rubber meets the road, after all. For anyone trying to make their own keycaps, ‘the mount itself’ is definitely the correct answer. Try printing your own keycaps, and you’ll learn a lot about tolerances when it comes to getting the mount right.
Conversely, you could use a subtractive process like a wood mill to make keycaps. Sounds easy enough, right? But what about all of us who don’t have access to one? [cbosdonnat], who has no CNC, has blazed a cellulose trail,
combining hand-tooled wooden keycaps with 3D-printed mounts to create fully-customized keycaps
. It’s a great project with concise how-to, especially when it comes to building the jigs needed to keep the keycaps consistently sized and shaped.
It makes a whole lot of sense to start by hollowing out the bottom instead of shaping the business side first or even cutting out the key shape, since the mount is mechanically vital. Why waste time on the look and feel if the foundation isn’t there yet?
Hardwood is a must for DIY keycaps, because the walls need to be thin enough to both fit over the switch and within the matrix, and be sturdy enough not to break with use. We love the look of the varnish-transferred laser-printed logo, and only wish there was a video so we could hear the clacking.
There are all kinds of ways to put legends on DIY keycaps, like
waterslide decals
for instance. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481045",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-06-05T05:33:59",
"content": "“Hardwood is a must for DIY keycaps”AIUI, deciduous trees are hardwood, but some hardwoods are softer than some softwoods.B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,372,672.908545 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/03/optimizing-linux-pipes/ | Optimizing Linux Pipes | Al Williams | [
"Linux Hacks",
"News",
"Software Development"
] | [
"linux",
"optimization",
"pipes"
] | In CPU design, there is Ahmdal’s law. Simply put, it means that if some process is contributing to 10% of your execution, optimizing it can’t improve things by more than 10%. Common sense, really, but it illustrates the importance of knowing how fast or slow various parts of your system are. So how fast are Linux pipes? That’s a good question and one that [Mazzo]
sets out to answer
.
The inspiration was a highly-optimized fizzbuzz program that clocked in at over 36GB/s on his laptop. Is that a common speed? Nope. A simple program using pipes on the same machine turned in not quite 4 GB/s. What accounts for the difference?
What follows is a great use of performance measuring tools and optimization. Along the way there is plenty of exposition about how pipes work inside the kernel. In addition, some other subjects rear up including paging and huge pages. Using huge pages accounted for a 50% improvement, for example.
Did he finally get to 36GB/s? No, he actually got to 65 GB/s! There is a lot to learn both in specific techniques and the approach. At each step, careful profiling identified what was eating the most time and that time was reduced. The results speak for themselves.
We’ve talked about
pipes
several times in Linux Fu installments. You can
interact with pipes
. You can even
give them names
. | 28 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480848",
"author": "Amiable Ninja",
"timestamp": "2022-06-04T05:46:34",
"content": "You have blown my mind.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6480867",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2022-06-04T09:04:05",
"conten... | 1,760,372,673.120084 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/03/track-your-cats-weight-through-this-internet-connected-litter-box/ | Track Your Cat’s Weight Through This Internet-Connected Litter Box | Robin Kearey | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"cat litter box",
"IoT",
"load cells"
] | With feline obesity on the rise, keeping track of your cat’s weight is an important part of keeping them healthy. However, a weighing session can be anything from a routine job to a painful procedure, depending on your cat’s temperament. [Andy]’s cat Ellie is one of those who dislike being weighed, so in order to track her weight without drama [Andy] got creative and
built an internet-connected weighing platform for her litter box
.
The platform consists of two pieces of MDF held apart by two load cells, which are hooked up to an ESP8266. The ESP reads out the load cells and reports its findings to the Adafruit IO platform through its WiFi connection, sending updates to [Andy] whenever litter box use has been detected. The cat’s weight can be simply calculated by subtracting the weight of the unused litter box from the weight measured when it’s in use.
Getting reliable readings from the load cells was a bit of a challenge, since the measured weight fluctuated wildly as Ellie moved around the litter box. A combination of waiting for the readings to settle and using timeouts to discard the effect of brief movements resulted in reasonably stable measurements. The resolution was even good enough to measure the difference in litter weight before and after use. We’re not sure what’s the practical value of knowing how much your cat poops each time, but if the data is there you might as well log it.
[Andy] also imagines smart-home features of the IoT litter box: for example, he could run an air purifier or send in the Roomba after heavy usage. This is not even the first internet-connected litter box we’ve featured; we’ve seen
one connected to the Thingspeak platform
, as well as
one that sends poop alerts through Twitter
. If you’re not around to clean up the mess,
an automatic fume extractor might come in handy
. | 26 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480784",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2022-06-03T23:04:32",
"content": "Our lord and master the internet hath provided all the guidance required…https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkPxGfnXsAEaCp4?format=jpg",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,372,673.305593 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/02/surprisingly-stomp-able-soft-switches/ | Surprisingly Stomp-able Soft Switches | Kristina Panos | [
"classic hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"button",
"foam",
"momentary",
"switch",
"washers"
] | Competition sure brings out the brute in people, doesn’t it? So what do you do when you need a bunch of switches you can let people fist-pound or stomp on repeatedly without them taking damage? You could look to the guitar pedal industry and their tough latching switches, or you could simply
build your own smash-resistant buttons
as [wannabemadsci] has done.
The main thing about these switches is that they aren’t easily destroyed by shoes or angry fists. That’s because the shiny red push-me part of the button is made by cutting a foam ball in half.
Not easily crush-able Styrofoam, mind you — squishy, coated foam like an indoor football. This is mounted to the top of a sandwich made of hardboard and a couple pieces of easily-compressible foam from craft paintbrushes.
A brass washer is mounted to the middle of both pieces of hardboard, and these have wires soldered to them to read button presses. Then it’s just a matter of hooking it to a microcontroller like any other momentary.
There are all kinds of things you could cut in half for the top, like maybe tennis balls. Or, do what [Sprite_TM] did and
use inverted plastic bowls
. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480440",
"author": "StripeyType (@StripeyType)",
"timestamp": "2022-06-02T16:39:02",
"content": "Ohhh boy.Anyhow, yes. This is precisely how certain kinds of Devices are Improvised.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6480469",
... | 1,760,372,673.241838 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/02/the-great-euro-sat-hack-should-be-a-warning-to-us-all/ | The Great Euro Sat Hack Should Be A Warning To Us All | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Misc Hacks",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"satellite",
"satellite broadband",
"satellite hack",
"satellite internet"
] | Military officials and civilian security researchers have been warning us for years: cyberattacks are becoming a very real part of modern warfare. Far from being limited to military targets, cyberattacks can take out everything from vital public infrastructure to commercial and industrial operations, too.
In the early hours of February 24, as the Russian invasion force began raining missiles on Ukrainian cities, another attack was in progress in the digital realm. Suddenly, satellite terminals across Europe were going offline, with many suffering permanent damage from the attack.
Details remain hazy, but researchers and military analysts have pieced together a picture of what happened that night. The Great Euro Sat Hack prove to be the latest example of how vulnerable our digital infrastructure can be in wartime.
A Network Is Only As Secure As Its Weakest Point
The KA-SAT satellite operated owned by US company Viasat was launched in 2010. It’s charged with providing broadband satellite internet across Europe, with some limited coverage also extending to parts of the Middle East. Customers of the service include residential users across Europe, and
many industrial systems as well
.
5,800 wind turbines lost their satellite data connections during the attack, compromising remote monitoring of the hardware. Service was restored through a combination of replacing affected satellite modems and installing supplementary cellular/LTE data links. Credit:
ENERCON press site
On February 24, when Russian forces began their full-scale invasion of Ukraine,
the KA-SAT system similarly came under attack
. Thousands of terminals suddenly went offline in the early hours of the morning. Far from being limited to just Ukraine, users in Greece, Poland, Italy, Hungary, and Germany were all affected.
Notably,
5,800 wind turbines in Germany
had their administration systems go dark as the attack raged. When the satellite links went down, monitoring the wind turbines via SCADA systems was no longer possible. Thankfully, grid stability
was not affected
according to operator ENERCON, as grid operators maintained control over the wind power input to the grid via other methods.
Early reports
speculated that a simple distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack may have been to blame. This type of attack, where floods of traffic are used to overwhelm a network or server, is simplistic and short-lived.
However, it quickly became apparent that a much more serious attack had taken place.
Researchers analyzing the fallout
noted that many terminals had been permanently taken offline, and were no longer operable. Information slowly trickled out from various sources, indicating that the satellite itself had not been tampered with, nor damaged or physically attacked in any way. Thus, the issue likely laid in the ground segment of the KA-SAT network.
Official statements noted the consumer-grade Surfbeam2 modems were a primary target of the attack. This raises questions around how the attack then came to impact German energy infrastructure, which would be expected to use a more industrial-spec solution. Credit:
Viasat
Just over a month after the attack, Viasat released
a statement
explaining the scale and nature of the attack. According to the company’s report, action began at 03:02 AM UTC with a denial of service attack propagating from users of using SurfBeam 2 and Surfbeam2+ modems on a consumer-orientated section of the KA-SAT network. These modems located in Ukraine were generating large volumes of malicious traffic and were preventing legitimate users from remaining online. Viasat’s technical teams worked to block these malicious modems from the network, with more popping up as the team took them down.
During this period, modems were gradually dropping offline on this network partition. This accelerated at 4:15 AM, which saw a mass exodus of modems connecting to the KA-SAT network across Europe, all on the same consumer network partition. The missing modems were gone for good, with none attempting reconnection to the satellite network.
Later analysis showed that a breach had occurred in the management systems of the KA-SAT network, via a “misconfiguration in a VPN appliance.” The attackers accessed the management network and used it to issue commands to residential modems on the network, corrupting the flash memory onboard and rendering them inoperable.
In the aftermath,
security researcher Ruben Santamarta
was able to lay his hands on an affected Surfbeam2 modem, as well as another clean device untouched by the attack. Dumping the flash memory from both modems was revealing. The compromised modem had heavily corrupted flash memory compared to the original, which left the modems in a non-working state. The damage was so complete in some cases that affected modems
would not even display status lights
when turned on. 30,000 replacement modems were ultimately shipped to customers to get them back online in the weeks following the attack.
There are still some questions to be answered regarding the attack. It’s unclear precisely how attackers entered the management segment of the KA-SAT network, and the company is reticent to publicise what happened. The early DDOS attack followed by the bricking of modems also hints at a well-planned, multi-stage attack, suggesting the hack was planned well in advance. There’s also ancilliary questions, such as why German electricity infrastructure was affected by an attack supposedly limited to residential modems and a consumer-oriented network segment.
Those specifics are of interest to security researchers and those involved at the companies in question. More broadly, though, it shows that cyberattacks can and will be used against real infrastructure in times of war. Furthermore, the effects won’t necessarily be limited to targeted areas or the military. It’s all too easy for such an attack to have wide-ranging effects downstream when our networks span national borders.
Overall, it’s a chilling reminder of the vulnerabilities inherent in much of our infrastructure. This time it was satellite internet, other times it might be the
water supply
or the
health system.
The stakes are high in all of these cases, so there’s plenty of reason to invest in shoring up security wherever possible. | 46 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480403",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2022-06-02T14:11:20",
"content": "Zero thousand replacements isn’t much more than zero replacements ;P",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6481255",
"author": "FEW",
"time... | 1,760,372,673.387871 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/02/life-sized-colonial-viper-touches-down-in-australia/ | Life-Sized Colonial Viper Touches Down In Australia | Tom Nardi | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"battlestar galactica",
"cockpit",
"replica",
"viper"
] | Don’t worry, this 8.4 meter (27 foot) Australian Viper won’t bite, but it’s likely to do a number on any Cylon Raiders that wander too close to Canberra.
As recently reported by
Riotact
, creator [Baz Am] has been painstakingly piecing together this 1:1 scale replica of a Colonial Viper Mark II from the reimagined
Battlestar Galactica
series in his shed for several years now, and at this point things are really starting to come together.
On his personal site, [Baz] has been
maintaining a build log for the fictional spacecraft since 2017
that covers everything from the electronics that power the cockpit displays to the surprisingly intricate woodworking that went into the lathe-turned 30 mm cannons. He’s even documented interviews he conducted with members of the show’s special effects team in his quest to get his version of the Viper to be as screen-accurate as possible.
Plywood bulkheads are mounted to an internal metal frame.
No matter how you look at this build, it’s impressive. But one thing we especially appreciated was the skill with which [Baz] manages to repurpose what would otherwise be junk. For example, the main cockpit display is actually an in-dash navigation system pulled from a car, and the engine’s turbine blades are cut out of aluminum road signs. He’s even managed to outfit the Viper with an array of real aircraft instruments by collecting broken or uncalibrated units from local pilots.
While the Viper might look like it’s ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice, there’s still quite a bit of work to be done. The craft’s fuselage, made of metal, wood, and foam, needs to be coated with fiberglass, sanded, and then painted to match its televised counterpart. [Baz] says that process will take at least another year, but also mentions off-hand that he’s thinking of adding a
functional reaction-control system with cold gas thrusters
— so we’re going to go out on a limb and say this is probably one of those projects that’s never quite finished. Not that we’re complaining, mind you. Especially when you consider the shaky track record the
Battlestar Galactica
franchise has when it comes to neatly wrapping things up in the finale.
Thanks to [Kez] for the tip. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480377",
"author": "robomonkey",
"timestamp": "2022-06-02T12:51:22",
"content": "It’s like he’s building the Blackbird. Chief Tyrol would be proud!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6480426",
"author": "Darketh",
... | 1,760,372,673.442502 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/02/have-you-heard-of-mcga/ | Have You Heard Of MCGA? | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"ibm",
"MCGA",
"PS/2",
"vga"
] | In the world of PC graphics, the early standards followed the various video cards of the day. There was MDA, familiar through the original text-based DOS prompt, CGA, then EGA, and the non-IBM Hercules along the way. Finally in 1987 IBM produced the VGA, or Video Graphics Array standard for their PS/2 line of computers, which became the bedrock on which all subsequent PC graphics cards, even those with digital outputs, have been built. It’s interesting then to read an account from [Dave Farquhar] of
the other now-forgotten video standard that made its debut with the PS/2, MCGA, or Multicolor Graphics Array
. This was intended as an entry-level graphics system to compete with the more multimedia-oriented home computers of the day such as the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST.
Offering 320×200 graphics at 256 colors but only two colors at 640×480 it’s difficult to see how it could have been a viable competitor to the Amiga’s 4096-color HAM mode, but it did offer the ability to drive an RGB monitor through its VGA-like socket. The story goes that IBM intended it to provide an upgrade incentive for PS/2 customers to buy a more powerful model with VGA, but in the event a host of third-party VGA-compatible cards emerged and allowed more traditional ISA computers from third parties to retain a competitive edge and eventually sideline the PS/2 line entirely.
We called time on VGA back in 2016
, and it’s fair to say that it’s disappeared from PC hardware since then even if much of its technologies still lurk within. It’s pleasing to see though that it remains a stalwart of hacked-together display interfaces, with efforts such as
this 7400-based VGA card
continuing to impress us. | 21 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480342",
"author": "OG",
"timestamp": "2022-06-02T09:04:40",
"content": "What makes me laugh… OK, scoff, is when people to this day try to use some of these ridiculous monikers to describe resolutions. WTF is “WXGA?” Oh, and by the way, do you have EXTENDED or EXPANDED memory in yo... | 1,760,372,673.493577 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/01/dissecting-a-t1-line/ | Dissecting A T1 Line | Jenny List | [
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"powerpc",
"router",
"T1"
] | When it comes to internet connections, here in 2022 so many of us have it easy. Our ISP provides us with a fibre, cable, or DSL line, and we just plug in and go. It’s become ubiquitous to the extent that many customers no longer use the analogue phone line that’s so often part of the package. But before there was easy access to DSL there were leased lines, and
it’s one of these that [Old VCR] is dissecting
. The line in question is a T1 connection good for 1.536 Mbit/s and installed at great cost in the days before his cable provider offered reliable service, but over a decade later is now surplus to requirements. The ISP didn’t ask for their router back, so what else to do but give it the hacking treatment?
In a lengthy blog post, he takes us through the details of what a T1 line is and how it’s installed using two copper lines, before diving into the router itself. It’s an obsolete Samsung device, and as he examined the chips he found not the MIPS or ARM processors we’d expect from domestic gear of the period, but a PowerPC SoC from Freescale. Connecting to the serial port reveals it as running SNOS, or Samsung Network Operating System from an SD card, and some experimentation finds a default password reset procedure through the bootloader commands. The rest of the piece is dedicated to exploring this OS.
There was a time before the advent of the Raspberry Pi and similar cheap Linux-capable boards, that hacking a router was the way to get a cheap embedded Linux system, but now it’s much more done to liberate a router from the clutches of manufacturer and telco. Still,
it’s very much still part of the common fare here at Hackaday
. | 13 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480318",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
"timestamp": "2022-06-02T06:23:51",
"content": "I like that during bootup it says it’s an evil_empire_T1_router",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6480325",
"author": "hardwerker",
"tim... | 1,760,372,673.543393 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/01/building-faster-rsync-from-scratch-in-go/ | Building Faster Rsync From Scratch In Go | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Software Development"
] | [
"c++",
"custom",
"fast",
"fiber",
"file transfer",
"Go",
"gokrazy",
"internet",
"linux",
"refactoring",
"router",
"rsync",
"speed"
] | For a quick file transfer between two computers, SCP is a fine program to use. For more complex, large, or regular backups, however, the go-to tool is rsync. It’s faster, more efficient, and usable in a wider range of circumstances. For all its perks, [Michael Stapelberg] felt that it had one major weakness: it is a tool written in C. [Michael] is philosophically opposed to programs written in C,
so he set out to implement rsync from scratch in Go instead
.
[Michael]’s path to deciding to tackle this project is a complicated one. His ISP upgraded his internet connection to 25 Gbit/s recently, which means that his custom router was the bottleneck in his network. To solve that problem he migrated his router to a PC with several 25 Gbit/s network cards. To take full advantage of the speed now theoretically available, he began using a tool called gokrazy, which turns applications written in Go into their own appliance. That means that instead of installing a full Linux distribution to handle specific tasks (like a router, for example), the only thing loaded on the computer is essentially the Linux kernel, the Go compiler and libraries, and then the Go application itself.
With a new router with hardware capable of supporting these fast speeds and only running software written in Go, the last step was finally to build rsync to support his tasks on his network. This meant that rsync itself needed to be built from scratch in Go. Once [Michael] completed this final task, he found that his implementation of rsync is actually much faster than the version built in C, thanks to the modernization found in the Go language and the fact that his router isn’t running all of the cruft associated with a standard Linux distribution.
For a software project of this scope, we find [Michael]’s step-by-step process worth taking note of for any problem any of us attempt to tackle. Not only that, refactoring a foundational tool like rsync is an involved task on its own, let alone its creation simply to increase network speeds beyond what most of us would already consider blazingly fast. We’re leaving out a ton of details on this build so we definitely recommend checking out his talk in the video below.
Thanks to [sarinkhan] for the tip! | 53 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480292",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2022-06-02T03:37:10",
"content": "If you want to ditch Linux to improve speed then that’s fine because there is FreeRTOS. I assure you, it would run even faster.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,372,673.632109 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/01/its-tiktok-on-your-wrist/ | It’s TikTok, On Your Wrist! | Jenny List | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"TikTok",
"watch"
] | One of the ultimate objects of desire in the early 1980s was the Seiko TV wristwatch. It didn’t matter that it required a bulky external box in your pocket for its electronics, it was a TV on your wrist, and the future was here! Of course, now we have the technology to make wrist-mounted video a practical reality, but it’s sad to see we’ve opted to use our phones for video and never really followed up on the promise of a wrist-mounted television. There’s always hope though, and here it is in the form of [Dave Bennett]’s
ESP32-powered TikTok wristwatch
.
On the wrist is the ESP32 itself with an audio DAC and amplifier, LCD screen, and battery, but sadly this combo doesn’t have quite the power to talk to TikTok directly. Instead that’s done using Python on a companion PC with the resulting videos uploaded to the device over WiFi. It’s not the bulky electronics of the Seiko TV, so we’ll take it. All the info
can be found on GitHub
, and there’s a YouTube video below the break.
So the viral videos of a generation can now be taken on the move without resorting to a slightly less portable mobile phone. It may not be the most unobtrusive of timepieces, but it’ll certainly get you noticed. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480258",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2022-06-01T23:09:22",
"content": "That’s a poor attempt at a Dad joke, like the eye-pad when we wanted an iPad. This is what we really want…https://www.theodmgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/dsc02083.jpg",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,673.829866 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/03/recycled-speed-boat-beats-the-barnacles-out-of-your-average-rebuild/ | Recycled Speed Boat Beats The Barnacles Out Of Your Average Rebuild | Ryan Flowers | [
"Engine Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"boat",
"fiberglass",
"rebuild"
] | There’s an old saying that says “Anything is possible with enough Time, Money, or Brains. Pick two.” For [Mr HỒ Thánh Chế], the choice was obvious: Time, and Brains. This is evident by the impressive DIY boat build
shown in the video below the break
.
[Mr HỒ] starts with an Isuzu marine diesel engine that was apparently found on the beach, covered in barnacles and keel worms (and who knows what else). A complete teardown reveals that the crankcase was miraculously spared the ravages of the sea, and somehow even the turbo survived. After a good cleaning and reassembly, the engine rumbles to life. What’s notable is that the entire engine project was done with only basic tools, save for a lathe. Even generally disposable parts such as the head gasket are re-used.
Moving onto the hull, half of an old damaged boat is used and a new top is built. Car seats out of a Toyota sit behind a steering column also from a car, while the deck is built from scratch out of square tubing, foam board, and fiberglass.
What we liked about the project isn’t so much the end result, it has some build quality issues and it looks like the steering is far too slow, but what project of our own hasn’t been knocked together for fun with some obvious flaws? In fact, that’s very often the epitome of the Hacker spirit- doing it quick, dirty, having fun, and iterating as we go. For that, our hat is off to [Mr HỒ].
If boat recycling puts the wind in your sails, check out this
boat-turned-sauna project
.
Thanks [Ansen] for the tip. | 33 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480638",
"author": "EBo",
"timestamp": "2022-06-03T09:25:44",
"content": "WOW! That engine rebuild was out of this world. I never would have thought that he could have salvaged that engine. Well done!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,372,673.899418 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/02/practical-transistors-jfets/ | Practical Transistors: JFETs | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"jfet",
"mosfet",
"transistor"
] | Transistors come in different flavors. Tubes used an electric field to regulate current flow, and researchers wanted to find something that worked the same way without the drawbacks like vacuum and filament voltages. However, what they first found — the bipolar transistor — doesn’t work the same way. It uses a small current to modulate a larger current, acting as a switch. What they were looking for was actually the FET — the field effect transistor. These come in two flavors. One uses a gate separated from the channel by a thin layer of oxide (MOSFETs), and the other — a junction or JFET — uses the property of semiconductors to deplete or enhance carriers in the channel. [JohnAudioTech] takes a
decidedly practical approach to JFETs
in a recent video that you can watch below.
The idea for the FET is rather old, with patents appearing in 1925 and 1934, but there were no practical devices at either time. William Shockley tried and failed to make a working FET in 1947, the same year the first point-contact transistor appeared, which was invented while trying to create practical FETs. In 1948, the bipolar junction transistor hit the scene and changed everything. While there were a couple of working FETs created between 1945 and 1950, the first practical devices didn’t appear until 1953. They had problems, so interest waned in the technology while the industry focused on bipolar transistors. However, FETs eventually got better, boasting both very high input impedance and simplified biasing compared to bipolar technology.
Of course, there are drawbacks, too, so it is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each technology. [John’s] video will tell you a lot about the practical aspects of these versatile devices.
We liked that in addition to some theory and graphs, he also wired a FET on a breadboard and showed things like what happens when you cool the device down. There’s a second part of the video forthcoming, and we’re sure it will be worth watching, too.
If you want [Bil Herd’s] take on FET technology,
we have videos
, too. Because of their high input impedance, FETs are common in things like non-contact voltage sensors, theremins, and
guitar pre-amps
. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480613",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2022-06-03T05:46:40",
"content": "What’s i teresting is that when Jfets came along in the mid-sixties, they were tkuted for their ability to withstand cross-modulation. That’s forradio use.But in 1971, there was a bipolar transisto... | 1,760,372,673.787705 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/02/3d-printed-protection-against-under-door-attacks/ | 3D Printed Protection Against “Under-Door” Attacks | Donald Papp | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"hotel security",
"physical security",
"under-door attack"
] | “Under-door” style attacks are when an attacker slides a tool through the gap underneath a door, hooks the interior handle from below, and opens the door by pulling the handle downward. This kind of attack works on the sort of doors and locks commonly found in hotels, where turning the handle from the inside always results in an open door. [Michal Jirků] found himself in a hotel room with a particularly large gap underneath the door, and decided to
quickly design and print a door guard to protect against just such an attack
.
It’s a simple object, and twenty minutes of printing and a little double-sided tape is all it takes to deploy. Because an attacker performs an under-door attack with a sizable mechanical disadvantage, it doesn’t take much to frustrate the attempt, and that’s exactly what the object does. Physical security in hotels is especially important, after all, and crooks have been known to exploit known flaws
like the face-palmingly bad Onity key card lock exploit
.
If you’re having trouble picturing how it all works,
this video demonstrates an under-door attack in action
, so you can see how blocking the space by the handle would easily prevent the tool from getting where it needs to go. | 44 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480567",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-06-03T02:14:53",
"content": "A similar technique is how I accessed the network closets at a former workplace.The IT group figured they knew our infrastructure needs better than we did.They soon gave us the... | 1,760,372,674.172727 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/02/3d-printing-with-sound-directly/ | 3D Printing With Sound, Directly | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"3d printing",
"ultrasonic"
] | Canadian researchers at Concordia University want to change how you do 3D printing. Instead of using light or thermal mechanisms, they propose using ultrasound-activated sonochemical reactions. Sounds wild? You can see a video about it below, or read the paper in
Nature
.
The idea is that sound causes bubbles of cavitation. This requires a focused ultrasonic beam which means you can actually print through items that are transparent to ultrasonic energy. Wherever the cavitation bubbles form, liquid polymer turns solid.
As you might expect, the bubbles don’t make a nice clean edge, but we’ve seen conventional 3D prints that didn’t look any better. The idea that you might be able to print things inside of other things offers some interesting possibilities. In particular, it might be possible to inject a polymer into someone’s joints, and then 3D print structures inside their body with very little invasiveness.
We have to wonder if the ultrasonic energy could be moved around without moving the transducer the way a mirror can move a laser. On the other hand, the ultrasonic energy is relatively high, so maybe that’s not feasible. The transducers they are using, by the way, are commercially-available and used for medical purposes, so if you wanted to try this, it doesn’t seem like there is anything too exotic to deal with. Since they are for medical purposes, they probably aren’t cheap, but maybe something could be scrounged.
Usually sound isn’t something you want in your ordinary 3D printers
unless you are playing music on them
. We don’t know if the usual
levitation transducer
would work in this context, but you can always try. | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480543",
"author": "metalman",
"timestamp": "2022-06-02T23:26:34",
"content": "ultrasonic transducers are used in humidifiers and parts cleanersand all sorts of other stuff,I would bet that the ultrasonic recievers used in medical gear are the exotic parts,that and theimageing soft... | 1,760,372,673.952181 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/02/power-up-your-pencil-with-the-30000-rpm-erase-o-matic/ | Power Up Your Pencil With The 30,000 RPM Erase-O-Matic | Robin Kearey | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"eraser",
"mechanical pencil",
"motorized eraser"
] | There are some inventions that look completely pointless to the untrained eye: who would ever need a motorized garbage can, an electric pencil sharpener or a battery-powered eraser? Quite often, it turns out that there is some niche use case where such tools make complete sense, as is the case for motorized erasers. Having a tiny piece of rubber spinning at high speed gives artists and drafters a way to very precisely delete or lighten bits of their drawing, something that’s nearly impossible to do with a regular eraser.
[Franklinstein] however decided to
design a high-speed eraser integrated into a mechanical pencil
that brings the whole concept straight back to the pointless category, although not without showing off his advanced engineering skills. The Erase-O-Matic contains a miniature electric motor sourced from a quadcopter, together with an ultra-small lithium-ion battery and a power switch. The spinning bit is held by a tiny bearing, with the whole setup covered by a machined aluminium housing.
Tests with a laser tachometer show a rotational speed of about 30,000 RPM, which is almost three times as fast as a commercial electric eraser. And although it has very good erasing performance, it also wears out its tip in a few seconds, so a bit less speed could actually make this device more useful. If you’re planning to build one of these yourself, you might want to first read
our primer on small DC motors
. | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480511",
"author": "Severe Tire Damage",
"timestamp": "2022-06-02T20:51:58",
"content": "The youtube “thing” these days seems to be somebody with an absurd expression holding up whatever gadget they have brewed up. I am hoping this will pass soon. It sort of reminds me of the jok... | 1,760,372,674.006774 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/02/led-heart-keeps-tabs-on-your-runescape-character/ | LED Heart Keeps Tabs On YourRuneScapeCharacter | Tom Nardi | [
"Games",
"LED Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"api",
"physical display",
"RuneScape"
] | The MMORPG
RuneScape
holds a special place in the hearts of those who played it in the early 2000s. Sure it might seem exceptionally quaint by modern standards, but at the time it was groundbreaking stuff. Plus you could play it for free, which certainly helped get people onboard. While there’s a more modern build available, many who played the game from the early days prefer to stick with what they know, and continue to run a version of the game that has now become known as
Old School RuneScape
.
[Austin Blake] is one of those early adopters, and the
work he put into this LED health indicator
should tell you all you need to know about how dedicated he is to the classic game. The 3D printed heart holds an incredible 312 NeoPixel LEDs, which are controlled by a 5 volt compatible Arduino Nano Every located on the back side. Both the color and “fill level” of the heart will change in real-time to correspond to the health of the player character.
Building the light itself was pretty straightforward, but getting the health value from the game was another story. As [Austin] explains in the video, his first attempt involved using Python and some image recognition routines to literally read the indicator off of the screen. The idea worked, and is frankly a fascinating hack worth keeping in mind on its own, but unfortunately it was too slow to provide the real-time feedback he was looking for.
Eventually he turned his attention to
RuneLite
, which is an open source client for
Old School RuneScape
. Thanks to its open source nature he could have hacked a routine to read the current health value and send it off to the Arduino, but thanks to a mature plug-in system, he didn’t have to.
The game’s API let him create a simple and reliable way of getting the data out of the game, similar to
what we see in the flight simulator community for driving physical gauges and displays
.
RuneLite
features a repository of community-developed plugins, and [Austin] says that he’d be happy to submit his for inclusion if others are interested in building similar indicators — a
perfect match for this motion-sensing
RuneScape
axe
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480480",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2022-06-02T18:37:33",
"content": "All these great I/O devices… that aren’t entries in the ongoing I/O contest?Doesn’t anyone use Hackaday.io any more?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,372,674.26831 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/02/linux-fu-easy-widgets/ | Linux Fu: Easy Widgets | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"kde",
"linux",
"plasmoid"
] | Here’s a scenario. You have a microcontroller that reads a number of items — temperatures, pressures, whatever — and you want to have a display for your Linux desktop that sits on the panel and shows you the status. If you click on it, you get expanded status and can even issue some commands. Most desktops support the notion of widgets, but developing them is a real pain, right? And even if you develop one for KDE, what about the people using Gnome?
Turns out there is an easy answer and it was apparently inspired by, of all things, a tool from the Mac world. That tool was called BitBar (now
XBar
). That program places a widget on your menu bar that can display anything you want. You can write any kind of program you like — shell script, C, whatever. The output printed from the program controls what appears on the widget using a simple markup-like language.
That’s fine for the Mac, but what about Linux? If you use Gnome, there is a very similar project called
Argos
. It is largely compatible with XBar, although there are a few things that it adds that are specific to it. If you use KDE (like I do) then you’ll want
Kargos
, which is more or less a port of Argos and adds a few things of its own.
Good News, Bad News
The good news is that, in theory, you could write a script that would run under all three systems. The bad news is that each has its own differences and quirks. Obviously, too, if you use a complied program that could pose a problem on the Mac unless you recompile.
To exacerbate that problem, the documentation for Kargos seems to be wrong. This is partly because the version in the KDE repositories is out of date and even if you grab the latest release off GitHub, it is still out of date with the documentation. You really want to install from a clone of the GitHub, not from the release package or from the KDE repository for plasmoid. Part of the problem, too, is the documentation is terse and you sometimes have things that work but not in every case. It isn’t clear if this is by design or some interaction with the KDE desktop which is always changing.
Since I use KDE, I’m going to focus on Kargos, and I’ll point out a few things about Argos as I go. But you can expect to do some experimenting either way.
Basics
When you install the widget, you have to point it to a script. In general, the script will run periodically. For Kargos, you can set that interval in two different ways that we’ll talk about later.
In the simplest case, you’d have the script output a line of text that will appear on the panel, a separator, and then one or more lines of text that will appear when you click on the widget. Consider this:
#!/bin/bash
echo Hello Hackaday
echo ---
echo Test
echo 1
echo 2
echo 3
echo 4
If you put the Kargos widget on a panel and set it to read your script, you’ll wind up with just the text Hello Hackaday on your panel. When you click, you’d see something like this:
Excitement
A bit snazzier
As it is, this isn’t very exciting. However, each line of text can have a pipe character and some attributes to spruce things up and add function. Replace the one line that says Hello Hackaday with this:
ICON=$( curl -s "https://hackaday.com/favicon.ico | base64 -w 0 )
echo "Hello Hackaday | image='$ICON' href=http://www.hackaday.com"
Now the panel will look a bit snazzier and if you click the little chain link icon, you’ll visit your favorite website. Of course, the real interesting thing is when you can make items change. If you set a refresh interval on the configuration screen, the script will run that often. You can also name the script with a repeat interval. For example, a script of
haddemo.10s.sh
will run every 10 seconds but
haddemo.2m.sh
will run every two minutes.
You can also add a r
efresh=true
attribute to a text line to make clicking it run the script again. Suppose you want to ping google on demand. You can set the timer to 0 and do this:
#!/bin/bash
OUTPUT=$( ping -c 1 -q google.com | grep ^rtt | cut -d ' ' -f 4 | cut -d '/' -f 1 )
if [ -z "$OUTPUT" ]
then
echo "Error click to refresh | refresh=true color=orange" bash="'/usr/bin/systemsettings kcm_networkmanagement'" terminal=false
fi
# get an integer to compare (bash doesn't like floats)
IOUT=$( echo $OUTPUT | sed s/\\.// )
COLOR=green
if [ $IOUT -gt 90000 ] # 900000 is 90 ms
then
COLOR=red
fi
echo "Google.com: $OUTPUT ms | refresh=true color=$COLOR" bash="'/usr/bin/systemsettings kcm_networkmanagement'" terminal=false
echo ---
Now you’ll get a ping time from Google on your bar. It will turn color if it is slow or unable to ping. A small button will let you open network management.
However…
Colors don’t seem to work on the dropdown menus, which may be the desktop manager forcing theme colors, so your mileage might vary. There are also some differences compared to Argos. For example, Argos has an environment variable that tells you if the widget is open or not. That allows you to not run unnecessary parts of your script for better performance.
There are other differences, too, but if you stick to the basics, you should be fine. Even where things are different, it is still easier than writing two completely different widgets for the different systems.
There also seems to be some odd behavior. For example, the onclick attribute doesn’t work in dropdown items, either. Of course, it is open source, so if you hate it that much, feel free to go fix it!
Big Example
Since I like to follow the headlines on Hackday, I decided to take advantage of a feature of Kargos. In the previous examples, I only had one line before the dropdown separator (“—“). But if you have more than one line, the widget will rotate through them with a delay you can set in the widget settings.
Using
awk
it is easy to read the Hackaday RSS feed and pull out titles and links. A few images and you wind up with a nice RSS display. The parsing might not work for an arbitrary RSS feed as it is pretty simple-minded, but — in theory — you should be able to adapt this for other feeds.
Here’s the code:
</pre>
#!/bin/bash
curl "https://hackaday.com/feed/" 2>/dev/null |
awk '
BEGIN { n=-1; } # skip first item
/<title>/ {
# read titles
if (n==-1) next;
gsub("[[:space:]]*</?title>[[:space:]]*",""); item[n]=$0; next;
}
/<link>/ {
# read links
if (n==-1) { n=0; next; }
gsub("[[:space:]]*</?link>[[:space:]]*", ""); link[n++]=$0; next
}
END {
# output widget text
for (i=0;i<n;i++) {
printf("%s | href=\"%s\" imageURL=https://hackaday.com/wp-content/themes/hackaday-2/img/logo.png\n",item[i],link[i]);
}
print "---"
# output dropdown lines
for (i=0;i<n;i++) {
printf("%s | href=\"%s\"\n",item[i],link[i]);
}
}
'
<pre>
That’s not a lot of code for a full-blown RSS reader. You can see the stories in the panel and either click on them there or open up the widget to see a list all at one time.
Next Steps
Since the data is just text, it is simple to whip out little widgets using this system. For example, this is a pretty handy memory status widget:
#!/bin/bash
cat /proc/meminfo
echo ---
echo "<b>Tools</b>"
echo "--System status | bash=/usr/bin/ksysguard onclick=bash"
echo "--Htop | bash=/usr/bin/htop" terminal=true
cat /proc/meminfo
Obviously, having a script that reads data from an ESP32 or an Arduino would be trivial. Since a lot of what you want to do with something like this is operating system agnostic, browsing some of the
plugins for xbar
might give you an idea.
If you want something more sophisticated for just KDE, have a look at
Scriptinator
. You can tailor it more, but it is a bit more complex to manage.
For some reason, I’m obsessed with the Hackaday feed. I’ve turned it
into a filesystem
. It also
greets me
when I log in. Some of the plugins you’ll find are in bash and some are in Python. Don’t forget you can
mix them together
, too. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480453",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2022-06-02T17:15:34",
"content": "heh i don’t use any desktop environment (i like fvwm). to achieve this, I run from .xinitrc:xterm -ut -T status -n status -geometry 40×1-0+0 -cr black -fn -e status_script &in .fvwm2rc:Style “status” NoT... | 1,760,372,674.221206 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/03/quick-tip-improves-seven-segment-led-visibility/ | Quick Tip Improves Seven-Segment LED Visibility | Tom Nardi | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"7 segment LED display",
"filter",
"LED display",
"tint"
] | We’re suckers for a nice seven-segment LED display around these parts, and judging by how often they seem to pop up in the projects that come our way, it seems the community is rather fond of them as well. But though they’re cheap, easy to work with, and give off that all important retro vibe, they certainly aren’t perfect. For one thing, their visibility can be pretty poor in some lighting conditions, especially if you’re trying to photograph them for documentation purposes.
The tint film can be cut to size once applied.
If this is a problem you’ve run into recently,
[Hugatry] has a simple tip
that might save you some aggravation. With a scrap piece of automotive window tint material, it’s easy to cut a custom filter that you can apply directly to the face of the display. As seen in the video, the improvement is quite dramatic. The digits were barely visible before, but with the added contrast provided by the tint, they stand bright and beautiful against the newly darkened background.
[Hugatry] used 5% tint film for this demonstration since it was what he already had on hand, but you might want to experiment with different values depending on the ambient light levels where you’re most likely to be reading the display. The stuff is certainly cheap enough to play around with — a quick check seems to show that for $10 USD you can get enough film to cover a few hundred displays. Which,
depending on the project
, isn’t nearly as overkill as you might think. | 34 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480748",
"author": "zog",
"timestamp": "2022-06-03T20:09:04",
"content": "This is why commercial products tend to use a red film over the LED displays. Don’t people tear things apart anymore?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,372,674.3373 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/03/3d-printed-template-makes-perfect-dovetail-joints/ | 3D Printed Template Makes Perfect Dovetail Joints | Robin Kearey | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"dovetail",
"routing template",
"woodworking"
] | Dovetail joints on a piece of furniture are one of those features that make it say “master carpenter” rather than “IKEA”. Traditional hand-made dovetails require accurate measurements and even more accurate sawing and chiseling, skills that may take years to develop. A slightly less artisanal method is to use a router and a dovetail template; the router makes perfectly straight cuts while the template makes sure it goes only where it needs to go.
If you haven’t got one of those templates yet, check out [Guy Perez]’s design for
an adjustable dovetail template that’s easy to produce with a 3D printer
. It consists of ten separate pieces mounted on a T-rail, which enables them to slide sideways and thereby generate pins and tails of varying widths. The T-rail is mounted on a wooden body with an integrated clamp to hold the target piece, as well as an endstop to provide a reference for all measurements.
As you can see in the video embedded below, the resulting jig is easy to use and should result in near-perfect dovetails each time. [Guy] made the CAD files available as well as detailed instructions on their design, so you can easily adjust them if you need pieces with a different tail angle or want to use thicker wood.
While this jig will make cutting ordinary dovetail joints a lot easier, you can still show off your manual skills by making
an impossible mallet
. Want to join metal bits instead? Check out
this cute little dovetail cube
. | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480759",
"author": "Phil Barrett",
"timestamp": "2022-06-03T20:51:47",
"content": "I made something similar but used polycarbonate and cut them on a CNC machine. Sadly, they polycarbonate simply does not hold up well enough so I switched to aluminum which does.",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,372,674.382549 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/03/nasa-turns-to-commercial-partners-for-spacesuits/ | NASA Turns To Commercial Partners For Spacesuits | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"News",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"Artemis",
"artemis program",
"moon",
"nasa",
"spacesuit",
"SpaceX"
] | When NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station have to clamber around on the outside of the orbiting facility for maintenance or repairs, they don a spacesuit known as the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU). Essentially a small self-contained spacecraft in its own right, the bulky garment was introduced in 1981 to allow Space Shuttle crews to exit the Orbiter and work in the craft’s cavernous cargo bay. While the suits did get a minor upgrade in the late 90s, they remain largely the product of 1970s technology.
Not only are the existing EMUs outdated, but they were only designed to be use in space — not on the surface. With NASA’s eyes on the Moon, and eventually Mars, it was no secret that the agency would need to outfit their astronauts with upgraded and modernized suits before moving beyond the ISS. As such, development of what would eventually be the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) dates back to at least 2005 when it was part of the ultimately canceled Constellation program.
NASA’s own xEMU suit won’t be ready by 2025.
Unfortunately, after more than a decade of development and reportedly $420 million in development costs, the xEMU still isn’t ready. With a crewed landing on the Moon still tentatively scheduled for 2025, NASA has decided to let their commercial partners take a swing at the problem, and has
recently awarded contracts to two companies for a spacesuit
that can both work on the Moon and replace the aging EMU for orbital use on the ISS.
As part of the Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS) contract, both companies will be given the data collected during the development of the xEMU, though they are expected to create new designs rather than a copy of what NASA’s already been working on. Inspired by the success of the Commercial Crew program that gave birth to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, the contract also stipulates that the companies will retain complete ownership and control over the spacesuits developed during the program. In fact, NASA is even encouraging the companies to seek out additional commercial customers for the finished suits in hopes a competitive market will help drive down costs.
There’s no denying that NASA’s partnerships with commercial providers has paid off for cargo and crew, so it stands to reason that they’d go back to the well for their next-generation spacesuit needs. There’s also plenty of incentive for the companies to deliver a viable product, as the contact has a potential maximum value of $3.5 billion. But with 2025 quickly approaching, and the contact requiring a orbital shakedown test before the suits are sent to the Moon, the big question is whether or not there’s still enough time for either company to make it across the finish line.
The Competitors
In the June 1st announcement, NASA revealed it had awarded contracts to Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace for a next-generation spacesuit that can serve crews on the International Space Station through to its tentative retirement in 2030 as well as support exploration of the Moon as part of the Artemis program. While the announcement mentioned an aspirational goal of eventually using some variant of the suit on a crewed mission to Mars, it’s not a specific requirement of the contract.
Those following recent space developments will likely recognize the name Axiom.
The company seeks to develop their own private successor to the ISS
that will be built as an extension of the orbiting laboratory until such time that it’s ready to be disconnected and operate as a free-flying station. As part of their preparations,
Axiom recently conducted a privately funded mission to the ISS
, during which several experiments relating to the design and development of future space station hardware were conducted.
A prototype of Collins Aerospace’s spacesuit.
During a press briefing about the announcement, Axiom President & CEO Michael T. Suffredini revealed his company had already been working on their own spacesuit design before they were selected for the xEVAS contract, which makes sense given their goal of eventually operating their space station free from NASA’s bureaucracy. The fact that Axiom will be able to keep the design of the suit even though its development will be funded by the space agency is also a huge boon for the company, and likely one of the reasons they agreed to the arrangement in the first place.
While Axiom Space is the definition of a “New Space” company, Collins Aerospace is anything but. A subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, they designed the Apollo lunar spacesuits and are the prime contractor of the current EMUs. To say they have some experience in the spacesuit game would be something of an understatement.
Pitting an agile commercial space startup against an entrenched aerospace company that literally wrote the book on NASA’s spacesuits isn’t unlike the rivalry between SpaceX and Boeing to see which entity could be the first to design and build their own crew-rated spacecraft.
The “New Space” competitor came away with a resounding win in that round
, but it’s far too early to predict anything this time around.
The SpaceX Contingency
Some might be surprised that SpaceX wasn’t awarded a contract for the xEVAS program, given that the company already designed their own superhero-inspired suits for use aboard their Crew Dragon spacecraft. In 2021, Elon Musk even Tweeted that his company would take on the challenge of building a Moon-compatible spacesuit if that’s what it would take to make sure NASA stuck to its 2025 lunar landing deadline.
But realistically, NASA has already put most of the Artemis program on SpaceX’s shoulders. From awarding the company key roles in the
construction and resupply of the Lunar Gateway Station
to selecting Starship as the lander that will bring crews to the lunar surface, it’s no exaggeration to say that America’s lunar ambitions are almost entirely reliant on the Hawthorne, California company. For NASA to establish a long-term presence on the Moon, the Artemis program needs to maintain some level of diversity. Putting literally every step of the program into the hands of one company is simply too risky, even if the company has a track record of outperforming the competition.
That said, SpaceX doesn’t have to wait on an invitation from NASA to develop a new spacesuit. In February, the company announced
they would demonstrate a modified version of the Crew Dragon pressure suit
that would allow conducting an extravehicular activity (EVA) from the capsule on the private Polaris Dawn mission currently scheduled for the end of 2022. So whether or not the company was officially tasked with coming up with a backup plan for putting boots on the Moon, it looks like there’s a good chance they’re working on it. | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480721",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-06-03T17:29:00",
"content": "I think Duluth Trading Company should be given a go at it.B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6481036",
"author... | 1,760,372,674.44818 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/03/hackaday-podcast-171-rent-the-apple-toolkit-diy-an-industrial-cnc-or-save-the-birds-with-3d-printing/ | Hackaday Podcast 171: Rent The Apple Toolkit, DIY An Industrial CNC, Or Save The Birds With 3D Printing | Dan Maloney | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Join Hackaday Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Staff Writer Dan Maloney for a tour of the week’s best and brightest hacks. We begin with a call for point-of-sale diversity, because who wants to carry cash? We move on to discussing glass as a building material, which isn’t really easy, but at least it can be sintered with a DIY-grade laser. Want to make a call on a pay phone in New York City? Too late — the last one is gone, and we offer a qualified “good riddance.” We look at socially engineering birds to get them away from what they should be
really
afraid of, discuss Apple’s potential malicious compliance with right-to-repair, and get the skinny on an absolute unit of a CNC machine. Watching TV? That’s so 2000s, but streaming doesn’t feel quite right either. Then again, anything you watch on a mechanical color TV is pretty cool by definition.
Direct Download link
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 171 Show Notes:
News This Week:
Expired Certificate Causes German Payment Meltdown
What’s that Sound?
Congrats to [Tony] for identifying last week’s Voltron theme song!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Hackaday Prize 2022: PewPew LCD Plays With Python
Business Card Gamepad
NYC Hangs Up Its Last Pay Phone
Radioshack Phone Dialer – Red Box
(Hackaday post #1)
3D Print Glass With A Laser Cutter
Oasis 3DP
3D printing in wood
Using A Laser Cutter To Replicate An Optical Comparator Screen
Making a CNC Glass Cutter
The Huge Apple Toolkit For Fixing Your IPhone
iPhone 7 plus not turning on Data recovery. Crazy Short Circuit Finding. – YouTube
Saving Birds With 3D Printed Boats
Can You Build An Industrial Grade CNC With Only DIY Resources?
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Ultra Light VORON X-Beam Milled From Aluminium Tube Stock
Check Your Mailbox Using The AirTag Infrastructure
How To Move A Full-Sized Church Organ From A House To A Museum
Dan’s Picks:
Bottoms Up: Soda Can Help With Almost Any Project
Micro Tesla Turbine Is An Engineering Tour De Force
Track Down Ghosts In Your WiFi With The Pwnton Pack
3D Print A Colour TV
Mechanical Image Acquisition With A Nipkow Disc
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Making The Case For COBOL
The Joy Of Broadcast Media Vs. The Paradox Of Choice | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480743",
"author": "Cmholm",
"timestamp": "2022-06-03T19:54:08",
"content": "No GitHub link in the show notes, so I’m forced to ask when Elliot is going to release the Foodanator?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6480988",
... | 1,760,372,674.490053 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/03/3d-printed-flexture-shows-precision-in-action/ | 3D Printed Flexure Shows Precision In Action | Donald Papp | [
"Parts"
] | [
"3d printed",
"dial indicator",
"flexure",
"levers"
] | Here’s an older but fantastic video that is as edifying as it is short. [Topias Korpi] demonstrates a
3D printed flexure with a dial indicator on one end, and an M3 screw on the other
. As the screw is turned, the dial indicator moves steadily with roughly a 15:1 reduction between the movement of the screw and the indicator. Stable deflections of 0.01 mm are easily dialed in, and it’s neat seeing it work while the flexure itself shows no perceptible movement. A demonstration is embedded below the page break and is less than a minute long, so give it a watch and maybe get some ideas.
Flexures are fantastic designs
capable of a wide variety of physical functions
, and just as [Topias]’s demonstration shows, they can be
a natural complement to 3D printing
. In fact, flexures are an important part of the design and function of
JWST’s mirror actuators
, which are responsible for making astonishingly small adjustments to each of the space telescope’s 18 mirror sections. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6480700",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2022-06-03T15:13:42",
"content": "Small tip:When you design a flexture, then don’t “drill” round holes around the hinge points, because these are huge stress risers and and promote premature failure through fatgue. Instead, use a thin sec... | 1,760,372,674.540649 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/06/03/this-week-in-security-follina-open-redirect-rce-and-annoyware/ | This Week In Security: Follina, Open Redirect RCE, And Annoyware | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Annoyware",
"github",
"tails",
"This Week in Security"
] | Depending on who you ask, there’s either 2 vulnerabilities at play in Follina, only one, or according to Microsoft a week ago, no security problem whatsoever. On the 27th of last month, a
.docx
file was uploaded to VirusTotal, and most of the tools there thought it was perfectly normal. That didn’t seem right to [@nao_sec], who raised the alarm on Twitter. It seems this suspicious file originated somewhere in Belarus, and it uses a series of tricks to run a malicious PowerShell script.
Interesting maldoc was submitted from Belarus. It uses Word's external link to load the HTML and then uses the "ms-msdt" scheme to execute PowerShell code.
https://t.co/hTdAfHOUx3
pic.twitter.com/rVSb02ZTwt
— nao_sec (@nao_sec)
May 27, 2022
The odd document was next noticed by [Kevin Beaumont], who picked the name Follina for the vulnerability, and gives
some additional analysis
. A Word document can link to a remote template file, and that template file can use the
ms-msdt:
URI to launch
msdt.exe
, a diagnostic tool. An argument flag sent to that tool can include arbitrary commands. Put together, it means that viewing an office file runs arbitrary code. It’s worse, because the vulnerability chain can trigger from an Explorer preview. Protected mode won’t help you here.
Once researchers knew what to look for, it turns out that this has been floating around as a 0-day for over a month. It was reported to Microsoft and closed as not a security issue. Thankfully Microsoft has gotten the memo, issued CVE-2022-30190, and recommended a mitigation:
reg delete HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ms-msdt /f
And if 0patch is your thing, there’s a free patch available, as well as a deeper look at why the injected command gets executed
at their blog post
.
Accidentally Fixing Bugs
Your code review tooling sometimes gives false positives. The standard response is to ignore that false positive for a while, and then finally give in and make the change so the code is obviously and explicitly safe. But it was certainly a false positive, right?
[Paulino Calderon] has a story about this
. Spoiler: It wasn’t a false positive. CVE-2022-21404 was a deserialization bug in Oracle’s Helidon, fixed accidentally, by an engineer that just wanted his analysis tooling to shut up.
A Controlled Request and an Open Redirect
[Anton] brings us t
he tale of discovering a flaw in Seedr
, which was a video advertising service purchased by Mail.Ru. There’s a useful tip there, to watch for companies with good bug bounties to make acquisitions. Suddenly a code-base that hasn’t been hacked on by other researchers just became in-scope for bounties. Seedr was just such a situation, and he quickly found an API endpoint that took a video string as an argument. The site would then load the video url and parse its metadata. This wasn’t wide open, there were just a handful of video sites supported, like Youtube, Coub, or Vimeo. The video string could be manipulated with path traversal and the like. It seemed to be doing deserialization of the results, so if you could get one of those sites to return arbitrary results, you might be able to trigger a deserialization bug.
That idea tickled [Anton]’s memory, as there was an open redirect found in Vimeo a few years ago. That got him control over the deserialization routine, and the ability to read out a non-public file from the server. This was progress. The final key was a clever trick, writing some PHP code to the day’s logfile, then using the deserialization bug to trigger the execution of that code. It was quite the journey, but quite the impressive chain.
GitHub Breach Update
You may remember earlier this year, that OAuth tokens were nabbed from Heroku and Travis CI. The Github security team have kept investigating, and
have announced that those tokens were used to grab some data from NPM
, including a user database backup from 2015. That included usernames, hashed passwords, and email address for about a 100,000 users. There was also some data regarding private packages, including what looks like a targeted grabbing of those private packages from a couple organizations. The attack chain was to use the OAuth token to access a private GitHub repo, which contained an AWS key. The AWS buckets were the source of the leaked data. Notifications have been sent, and affected passwords reset.
Don’t Use Tails (Right Now)!
According to
the latest news release from the Tails browser
, you shouldn’t use it, if you rely on Tails+Tor for anything important. If you’re not familiar with it, Tails is a Linux distro that bundles a fork of Firefox and the Tor network into the Tor Browser. It’s usually installed on a flash drive, and booted read only, for a guaranteed anonymous and secure browsing experience.
A pair of bugs in Firefox
have undermined that assurance. The vulnerabilities could allow JavaScript code from one tab to escape its site sandbox, and run across the whole browser, capturing keystrokes and data from every site visited afterwords.
Since Tails doesn’t save anything to the drive, a reboot should clear anything malicious. Though a sufficiently capable attacker could likely chain multiple vulnerabilities together, and achieve root access to the Tails OS. Mounting a physical disk and making malicious modifications is quite plausible. The update to Tails 5.1 is expected any day now, and will fix the flaw.
Annoyware
It isn’t the most polished or technical, but as far as Escalation of Privilege attacks go, annoy-the-user-endlessly-til-he-gives-in is probably fairly effective.
That’s the idea behind ForceAdmin
. It’s a bit worse than that, as it’s a truly endless stream of UAC pop-ups, which prevents killing the process causing the pop-ups. This is truly evil, and it’s also sort of beautiful in its own way. Enjoy! | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6481001",
"author": "Adam",
"timestamp": "2022-06-04T22:28:09",
"content": "Why after more than 20 years of such bugs MS Office by default allows running arbitrary commands on users machine without asking?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,674.842689 |
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