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https://hackaday.com/2022/04/20/turning-scrap-copper-into-beautiful-copper-acetate-crystals/ | Turning Scrap Copper Into Beautiful Copper Acetate Crystals | Dan Maloney | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"copper",
"copper acetate",
"crystal",
"peroxide",
"vinegar"
] | Crystals, at least those hawked by new-age practitioners for their healing or restorative powers, will probably get a well-deserved eye roll from most of the folks around here. That said, there’s no denying that crystals do hold sway over us with the almost magical power of their beauty, as with
these home-grown copper acetate crystals
.
The recipe for these lovely giant crystals that [Chase Lean] shares is almost too simple — just scrap copper, vinegar, and a bit of hydrogen peroxide — and just the over-the-counter strength versions of those last two. The process begins with making a saturated solution of copper acetate by dissolving the scrap copper bits in the vinegar and peroxide for a couple of days. The solution is concentrated by evaporation until copper acetate crystals start to form. Suspend a seed crystal in the saturated solution, and patience will eventually reward you with a huge, shiny blue-black crystal. [Chase] also shares tips for growing crystal clusters, which have a beauty of their own, as do dehydrated copper acetate crystals, with their milky bluish appearance.
Is there any use for these crystals? Probably not, other than their beauty and the whole coolness factor of watching nature buck its own “no straight lines” rule. And you’ll no doubt remember [Chase]’s
Zelda
-esque potassium ferrioxalate crystals
, or even when he
turned common table salt into perfect crystal cubes
. | 37 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6463441",
"author": "Severe Tire Damage",
"timestamp": "2022-04-21T02:06:24",
"content": "Crystals are great. Why am I not growing more crystals.? The possibilities are endless.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6463447",
"au... | 1,760,372,721.824087 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/20/bring-precision-to-the-woodshop-with-an-electronic-router-lift/ | Bring Precision To The Woodshop With An Electronic Router Lift | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"machining",
"router",
"router table",
"stepper",
"woodworking"
] | One of the knocks that woodworkers get from the metalworking crowd is that their chosen material is a bit… compliant. Measurements only need to be within a 1/16th of an inch or so, or about a millimeter, depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on. And if you’re off a bit? No worries, that’s what sandpaper is for.
This electronic router lift
is intended to close the precision gap and make woodworking a bit less subjective. [GavinL]’s build instructions are clearly aimed at woodworkers who haven’t dabbled in the world of Arduinos and stepper motors, and he does an admirable job of addressing the hesitancy this group might feel when tackling such a build. Luckily, a lot of the mechanical side of this project can be addressed with a commercially available router lift, which attaches to a table-mounted plunge router and allows fine adjustment of the cutting tool’s height from above the table.
What’s left is to add a NEMA 23 stepper to drive the router lift, plus an Arduino to control it. [GavinL] came up with some nice features, like a rapid jog control, a fine adjustment encoder, and the ability to send the tool all the way up or all the way down quickly. Another really nice touch is the contact sensor, which is a pair of magnetic probes that attach temporarily to the tool and a height gauge to indicate touch-off. Check the video below to see it all in action.
One quibble we have with [GavinL]’s setup is the amount of dust that the stepper will be subjected to. He might need to switch out to a dustproof stepper sooner rather than later. Even so, we think he did a great job bridging the gap between mechatronics and woodworking — something that
[Matthias Wandel] has been doing great work on
, too. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6463433",
"author": "Marcus S",
"timestamp": "2022-04-21T01:25:26",
"content": "Dust proof stepper? I thought those cheap NEMA stepper motors were completely sealed already, other than maybe rubber wipers on the shaft bearings.It’s not like the router has any better dustproofing th... | 1,760,372,721.301962 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/20/copper-rectifying-ac-a-century-ago/ | Copper: Rectifying AC A Century Ago | Dave Rowntree | [
"History",
"Parts"
] | [
"Copper Oxide",
"diode",
"rectifier",
"Robert Murray-Smith",
"semiconductor"
] | [Robert Murray-Smith] presents for us an interesting electronic device from years gone by, before the advent of Silicon semiconductors,
the humble metal oxide rectifier
. After the electronic dust had settled following the brutal AC/DC current wars of the late 19th century — involving Edison, Tesla and Westinghouse to name a few of the ringleaders — AC was the eventual winner. But there was a problem. It’s straightforward to step down the high voltage AC from the distribution network to a more manageable level with a transformer, and feed that straight into devices which can consume alternating current such as light bulbs and electrical heaters. But other devices really want DC, and to get that, you need a rectifier.
It turns out, that even in those early days, we had semiconductor devices which could perform this operation,
based not upon silicon or germanium, but copper. Copper (I) Oxide is a naturally occurring P-type semiconductor, which can be easily constructed by heating a copper sheet in a flame, and scraping off the outer layer of Copper (II) Oxide leaving the active layer below. Simply making contact to a piece of steel is sufficient to complete the device.
Obviously a practical rectifier is a bit harder to make, with a degree of control required, but you get the idea. A CuO metal rectifier can rectify as well as operate as a thermopile, and even as a solar cell, it’s just been forgotten about once we got all excited about silicon.
Other similar metallic rectifiers also saw some action, such
as the Selenium rectifier, based on the properties of a Cadmium Selenide – Selenium interface, which forms an NP junction, albeit one that can’t handle as much power as good old copper. One final device, which was a bit of an improvement upon the original CuO rectifiers, was based upon a stack of Copper Sulphide/Magnesium metal plates, but they came along too late. Once we discovered the wonders of germanium and silicon, it was consigned to the history books before it really saw wide adoption.
We’ve covered
CuO rectifiers before
, but the Copper Sulphide/Magnesium rectifier is new to us. And if you’re interested in yet more ways to steer electrons in one direction, checkout our coverage of the
history of the diode
.
Thanks [Setvir] for the tip! | 33 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6463349",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2022-04-20T20:21:00",
"content": "There were copper diodes into the transistor age. I remember an article where someone took a razor charger apart, and there was a copper diode of some sort. Very small.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,721.019209 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/20/2022-sci-fi-contest-glowing-led-cubes-make-captivating-artifacts/ | 2022 Sci-Fi Contest: Glowing LED Cubes Make Captivating Artifacts | Lewin Day | [
"contests",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"2022 Sci-Fi Contest",
"cube",
"LED cube"
] | LED cubes were once an exercise in IO mastery, requiring multiplexing finesse in order to drive arrays of many LEDs. Going RGB only increased the challenge. This build from [DIY GUY Chris] shows how much easier it is these days, when every LED has a smart addressable controller on board,
and serves as a great sci-fi prop to boot.
Yes, the build relies on the venerable WS2812B addressable LEDs, soldered up in 5×5 grids on each of the six faces of the cube. Running the show is the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, sourced here as an individual part rather than in its development board form. An SPI memory chip is on board for the code, along with a USB-C connector for programming. Signals pass around the cube via soldered connections along the edges of the custom PCBs that make up the faces of the solid.
Sitting on its 3D printed stand, the cube glows brightly while drawing a full 2 amps of power. [Chris] coded up a variety of animations, from simple color breathing routines to frantic dazzle animations sure to captivate any cyberpunk thieves that come to steal your magic glowing artifact.
If rectangular prisms aren’t your fancy, though, you can always consider building yourself
a glowing D20 instead.
Video after the break. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6463415",
"author": "Eric Weatherby",
"timestamp": "2022-04-20T23:32:53",
"content": "“any cyberpunk thieves that come to steal your magic glowing artifact.”That is *totally* a Quantum AI core that a party of Runners are planning to steal from Renraku in an epic heist.",
"parent... | 1,760,372,720.945046 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/20/a-rotary-encoder-how-hard-can-it-be/ | A Rotary Encoder: How Hard Can It Be? | Al Williams | [
"ARM",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Microcontrollers",
"Slider"
] | [
"encoder",
"mbed",
"quadrature encoder",
"rotary encoder"
] | As you
may have noticed
, I’ve been
working with an STM32 ARM CPU using Mbed
. There was a time when Mbed was pretty simple, but a lot has changed since it has morphed into Mbed OS. Unfortunately, that means that a lot of libraries and examples you can find don’t work with the newer system.
I needed a rotary encoder — I pulled a cheap one out of one of those “49 boards for Arduino” kits you see around. Not the finest encoder in the land, I’m sure, but it should do the job. Unfortunately, Mbed OS doesn’t have a driver for an encoder and the first few third-party libraries I found either worked via polling or wouldn’t compile with the latest Mbed. Of course, reading an encoder isn’t a mysterious process. How hard can it be to write the code yourself? How hard, indeed. I thought I’d share my code and the process of how I got there.
There are many ways you can read a rotary encoder. Some are probably better than my method. Also, these cheap mechanical encoders are terrible. If you were trying to do precision work, you should probably be looking at a different technology like an optical encoder. I mention this because it is nearly impossible to read one of these flawlessly.
So my goal was simple: I wanted something interrupt driven. Most of what I found required you to periodically call some function or set up a timer interrupt. Then they built a state machine to track the encoder. That’s fine, but it means you eat up a lot of processor just to check in on the encoder even if it isn’t moving. The STM32 CPU can easily interrupt with a pin changes, so that’s what I wanted.
The Catch
The problem is, of course, that mechanical switches bounce. So you have to filter that bounce either in hardware or software. I really didn’t want to put in any extra hardware more than a capacitor, so the software would have to handle it.
I also didn’t want to use any more interrupts than absolutely necessary. The Mbed system makes it easy to handle interrupts, but there is a bit of latency. Actually, after it was all over, I measured the latency and it isn’t that bad — I’ll talk about that a little later. Regardless, I had decided to try to use only a pair of interrupts.
In Theory
In theory, reading an encoder is a piece of cake. There are two outputs, we’ll call them A and B. When you turn the knob, these outputs send out pulses. The mechanical arrangement inside is such that when the knob is turning in one direction, pulses from A are 90 degrees ahead of the pulses from B. If you turn the other way, the phase is reversed.
People usually think of the pulses as going positive, but most real encoders will have a contact to ground and a pull up resistor, so actually, the outputs are often high when nothing is happening and the pulses are really low pulses. You can see that in the diagram when no one is turning the knob, there is a long stretch of high signal.
Note on the left side of the diagram that the B signal drops before the A signal every time. If you sample B at the falling edge of A, you will always get a 0 in this case. The width of the pulses depends on the speed you turn, of course. When you turn the other way, you get the case on the right side of the diagram. Here, the A signal goes low first. If you sample at the same point, B is now 1.
Note there is nothing magic about A, B, or the clockwise and counterclockwise labels. All it really means is “one way” and “the other way.” If you don’t like how the encoder is moving you can just swap A and B or swap it in software. I just picked those directions arbitrarily. Usually, channel A is supposed to “lead” in the clockwise direction, but it also depends on the edge you measure and how you connect everything. In software, you generally add one to a count for one direction and subtract for the other direction to get an idea of where you are over time.
There are many ways you can read this sort of input. If you are sampling it, it is pretty easy to build a state machine from the two bits and process it that way. The output forms a gray code so you can throw away bad states and bad state transitions. However, if you are sure about your input signal, it can be much easier than that. Just read B on one edge of A (or vice versa). You could verify the other edge if you wanted a little more robustness.
In Practice
Unfortunately, real mechanical encoders don’t look like the above diagram. They look more like this:
A better drawing
Actual scope trace
This leads to a problem. If you are interrupting on both edges of input A (the upper trace on the scope), you will get a series of pulses at both edges. Notice that B is in different states at each edge of A, so if you get an even number of pulses in total, your total count will be zero. If you are lucky, you might get an odd number in the right direction. Or you might get the wrong direction. What a mess.
But on the sampling edge of A, B is rock solid. The lower trace on the scope looks like a straight line because all the B transitions are off the screen at that scale. That’s the secret to easily debouncing an encoder. When A is changing, B is stable and vice versa. Since it is a gray code, that makes sense, but it is the insight that makes a simple decoder possible.
The Plan
So the plan is to notice when A goes from high to low and then read B. Then ignore A until B changes. If you want to monitor B, of course, it has the same problem so you have to lock it to A which is stable at the change. In my case, I didn’t want to use two more interrupts so I follow this logic:
When A falls, record the state of B and update the count. Then set a lock flag
If A falls again, if the lock flag is set or B has not changed, do nothing.
When A rises, if B has changed, record the state of B and clear the lock flag.
That means in the scope trace above, the first dip in the top trace causes us to read B. After that, none of the transitions on the screen will have any effect because B has not changed. The rising edge off the screen that occurs after B has had a noisy high to low transition will be the one that unlocks the algorithm.
The Problem
There is a problem, though. The whole scheme relies on the idea that B will be different on a true rising edge for A compared to a falling edge. There is one case where B doesn’t change but we still want to accept the A edge. That’s when you change directions. If you monitored B, that would be easy to solve, but that’s more code and two more interrupts. Instead, I decided that for a person twisting a knob, if you wildly twist in different directions very quickly, you won’t even notice that one or two clicks of the encoder went the wrong way. What you will notice is if you make a fine adjustment and then twist the other way deliberately.
When you think you know the previous state of B and nothing has changed in a while (like a few hundred milliseconds) the code will reset its idea of B to unknown so that the next B signal will be considered valid no matter what.
I used the
Kernel::Clock::now
feature from Mbed. It isn’t clear if you are supposed to call that from an interrupt service routine (ISR), but I am and it seems to work without problems.
The only other issue is to make sure the count doesn’t change in the middle of reading it. I disabled interrupts around the read just to make sure.
The Code
You can find the code on
GitHub
. If you made it through all the explanations, you should have no problem following along.
void Encoder::isrRisingA()
{
int b=BPin; // read B
if (lock && lastB==b) return; // not time to unlock
// if lock=0 and _lastB==b these two lines do nothing
// but if lock is 1 and/or _lastB!=b then one of them does something
lock=0;
lastB=b;
locktime=Kernel::Clock::now()+locktime0; // even if not locked, timeout the lastB
}
// The falling edge is where we do the count
// Note that if you pause a bit, the lock will expire because otherwise
// we have to monitor B also to know if a change in direction occurred
// It is tempting to try to mutually lock/unlock the ISRs, but in real life
// the edges are followed by a bunch of bounce edges while B is stable
// B will change while A is stable
// So unless you want to also watch B against A, you have to make some
// compromise and this works well enough in practice
void Encoder::isrFallingA()
{
int b;
// clear lock if timedout and in either case forget lastB if we haven't seen an edge in a long time
if (locktime<Kernel::Clock::now())
{
lock=0;
lastB=2; // impossible value so we must read this event
}
if (lock) return; // we are locked so done
b=BPin; // read B
if (b==lastB) return; // no change in B
lock=1; // don't read the upcoming bounces
locktime=Kernel::Clock::now()+locktime0; // set up timeout for lock
lastB=b; // remember where B is now
accum+=(b?-1:1); // finally, do the count!
}
Setting up the interrupt is easy because of the
InterruptIn
class. This is like a
DigitalIn
object but has a way to attach a function to the rising or falling edge. In this case, we use both.
Latency
I wondered how much time it took to process an interrupt on this setup, so that code is available if you set
#define TEST_LATENCY 1
. You can see a video of my results, but TLDR: It took no more than 10 microseconds to get an interrupt and often about half of that.
Getting the encoder right was a little harder than I thought it would be, but mostly because I didn’t want to process more interrupts. It would be simple enough to modify the code to watch the B pin relative to the A pin and have a true understanding of the correct state of B. If you try that modification, here’s another idea: by measuring the time between interrupts, you could also get an idea of how fast the encoder is turning, which might be useful for some applications.
If you want a
refresher on gray code
and some of where it is useful, we’ve talked about it before. If all this sounds oddly familiar, I
used an encoder on an old version of Mbed
in 2017. In that case, I used a canned library that periodically polled the inputs on a timer interrupt. But like I say, there’s always more than one way to make stuff like this happen.
[Headline image: “
Rotary Encoder
” by
SparkFunElectronics,
CC BY 2.0. Awesome.] | 70 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6463269",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2022-04-20T17:08:09",
"content": "The Gray code aspect of encoders means that bouncing doesn’t really matter, as long as you handle the reading correctly.For interrupt driven approach, read the pin states at beginning of interrupt and compare... | 1,760,372,721.236747 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/20/this-laptop-gets-all-the-pcie-devices/ | This Laptop Gets All The PCIe Devices | Arya Voronova | [
"computer hacks",
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"eGPU",
"express card",
"external graphics card",
"mini pci express",
"mini-PCIe",
"pci express",
"PCI-E",
"PCIe",
"video card"
] | Did you ever feel like your laptop’s GPU was sub-optimal, or perhaps that your laptop could use a SAS controller? [Rob Rogers] felt like that too, so now he has the only
Dell Latitude business-class laptop that’s paired with an AMD RX580 GPU
– and more. Made possible because of a PCIe link he hijacked from the WiFi card, he managed to get a SAS controller, a USB 3.0 expansion card, the aforementioned GPU and a dual-port server network adapter, all in a single, desk-top setup, as the video demonstrates.
First off, we see a PCIe packet switch board based on a PLX-made chip, wrapped in blue tape, splitting a single PCIe x1 link into eight. The traditional USB 3.0 cables carry the downstream x1 links to the four PCIe cards connected, all laid out on [Rob]’s desk. [Rob] demonstrates that all of the cards indeed function correctly – the SAS controller connected to a server backplane with whole 22 TB of storage in it, a few devices plugged into a USB 3.0 card, an Ethernet cable with an active link in the network card, and wrapping up the video showing 3DMark results of the RX580 clearly paired with the laptop’s mobile CPU. There’s four more spots on the PCIe switch card, so if you wanted to connect a few NVMe SSDs without the costly USB enclosures that usually entails, you absolutely could!
Now, there’s a reason why we don’t see more of such hacks. This seems to be a Latitude E5440 and the card is plugged into a mini-PCIe slot, which means the entire contraption is bound by a single PCI-E Gen2 x1 link, heavily offsetting the gains you’d get from an external GPU when, say, gaming. However, when it comes to the types and amount of peripherals, this is unbeatable – if you want to add an external GPU, high-speed networking and a SAS controller to the same computer that you usually lug around, there isn’t really a dock station you can buy for that!
Our collection of cool PCIe hacks has been growing, with hackers
adding external GPUs through ExpressCard
and
mini PCIe
alike,
fitting PCIe slots
where the factory refused to provide one, and
extending the onboard M.2 slots
for full-size PCIe cards. Nowadays, with these packet switches, it’s easy as ever to outfit any PCIe capable device with a whole slew of features – as this Raspberry Pi Computer Module
motherboard with
eleven
PCIe slots
demonstrates. Wonder how PCIe works, and why all of that is possible? We’ve written
an entire article
on that! | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6463226",
"author": "Jason Pyeron",
"timestamp": "2022-04-20T15:40:40",
"content": "What about the docking port?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6463250",
"author": "FlaxWombat",
"timestamp": "2022-04-20T16:36:... | 1,760,372,721.075111 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/20/commodore-c64-the-most-popular-home-computer-ever-turns-40/ | Commodore C64: The Most Popular Home Computer Ever Turns 40 | Bil Herd | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Retrocomputing",
"Slider"
] | [
"bil herd",
"c116",
"c128",
"C264",
"C364V",
"c64",
"commodore",
"commodore business machines",
"KIM1",
"VIC-20"
] | This year marks the anniversary of the most popular selling home computer ever, the Commodore 64, which made its debut in 1982. Note that I am saying “home computer” and not personal computer (PC) because back then the term PC was not yet in use for home computer users.
Some of you have probably not heard of Commodore, which is kind of sad, though there is a simple reason why — Commodore is no longer around to maintain its legacy. If one were to watch a documentary about the 1980s they may see a picture of an Apple computer or its founders but most likely would not see a picture of a Commodore computer in spite of selling tens of millions of units.
To understand the success of the C64 I would first back up and talk about the fabled era of home computers which starts with understanding the microprocessor of the day, the venerable 6502. Check out the video and follow along below.
The 6502
The 6502 was the brainchild of Chuck Peddle and a team of engineers, Bill Mensch, Wil Mathes and others, who were all working at Motorola — we called them the Motorla Five even though there were seven of them. Chuck’s team successfully shrunk down a full sized PCB known as the main processor board onto a single chip, known now as a microprocessor, the 6800 to be exact. While this evolutionary step seems whole and natural to someone like you or I, the existence of the microprocessor was deemed a threat to those at Motorola who made their money selling the main processor board for tens of thousands dollars vs the $250 that the 6800 was slated to sell for. Mr. Peddle basically received a “cease and desist” letter from Motorola to stop work on the 6800 which Chuck took to mean that they were abandoning the project and the intellectual property it represented. Chuck and company then joined MOS Technology in Norristown PA and subsequently released the 6502 microprocessor which sold initially for $25 and ultimately less than a dollar. The fact that the lawyers disagreed with Chuck is a different story.
KIM-1
KIM-1
The 6502 is at the heart of many of the home computers of the era starting with Atari, Apple, BBC Micro, and of course Commodore. One of the earliest examples of the 6502 was a system known as KIM-1. Contrary to popular belief, the KIM-1 was not designed by Chuck Peddle but rather someone from the Calculator Group at MOS lead by John May. When asked about his contribution to computers in general, Mr. Peddle’s response was that he was proud of the Input/Output (I/O) chips of the day as a computer with no I/O is just a processor but add I/O and you have terminals, cash registers, printers, etc.
I cut my teeth on the 6502 as a young bench technician at a company named Pennsylvania Scale Company in the late 70’s, doing processor controlled instrumentation which was pretty much a burgeoning field at the time. Turns out I had an affinity for how microprocessors “thought” and had worked my way up to the title of Hardware Design Engineer by the time I applied for a job at Commodore, fair to say that I would not have had my career in electronics without the existence of the 6502.
Sometime during this time Commodore, under the reins of its founder Jack Tramiel, purchased MOS technologies and became a computer company that owned a chip fabrication plant known as a chip fab for short. Though the purchase of the chip fab was initially instituted with an eye on the calculator market, Commodore found itself in the position of being a computer company that could make its own (custom) IC’s, or chips. This would change how home computers were designed in the days to come.
PET
Chuck’s next endeavor centered around the line of computers known collectively as PET. Chuck had told me what PET stood for in his mind, but I have since forgotten which of the several interpretations is correct. PET computers had a built in keyboard and monitor which was important back then as usable monitors were somewhat rare. The PET found a home in business, academia and industrial usage and so was something of a predecessor to the “home computer” in my book.
Commodore PET. Computer courtesy of [Bill Taylor]
The VIC Chip
Meanwhile a chip designer known mostly for designing Read Only Memory (ROM) named Albert Charpentier made it his goal to design a new video interface chip, the chip that made computers exciting due to the colors and motion that could be created. To prove the chip was doable in a very 1970’s fashion, Albert designed a PCB to prototype the new video controller IC, a chip that was to become known as the VIC-1 chip. This chip was designed specifically to integrate with the 6502 processor and was tightly integrated with the address/data busses and control signals The story goes that it was 11:00 at night when suddenly the color display started working and the VIC chip’s legacy started.
VIC-20
At one point a system was built around the VIC chip in order to show off the chip’s capabilities, a system designed by Charpentier and a young chip designer named Bob Yannes who went on to design the popular SID chip — more on that later. Talk then turned to selling that system as a new computer product. A relatively young programmer named Bob Russell is credited with convincing the boss, Jack Tramiel, that if Commodore was going to sell a computer based on the VIC chip that it should be a “real” computer and the project was transferred to Chuck Peddle’s group who had the experience of designing and producing the PET. Ultimately this computer became known as the VIC-20 and was designed by an engineer named Bill Seiler, with the software code being written by John Feagans and Bob Russell.
VIC-20
The VIC-20 was Commodore’s “TI Killer” as it targeted the same space that the Texas Instruments TI-99 computer system was selling into. The VIC-20 had 4 – 5 kB of Random Access memory, 16 kB of ROM and built in sound in the form of three sound generators in the VIC chip.
It was during this time that Commodore started to exercise its overseas manufacturing capabilities which would later set it apart from other home computer companies.
Next, Albert Charpentier set his sights on a new version of the VIC chip, this time with the inclusion of Movable Object Blocks known in the industry as “sprites”. These are predefined blocks of graphics that can be moved around by simply changing pointers as opposed to continuously using the processor to move the object around the screen. The sprites were also capable of letting the processor know when they collided with each other, an important aspect when gaming, freeing up the processor even more.
Behind the scenes, Albert had taught the VIC chip to share the main memory bus with the 6502 processor in a way so as to make use of an unused window in time to get most of the graphics done: it “shared” the memory bus in a multiplexed fashion. The decision to do multiplexing was brilliant in my humble opinion, and would go on to be a feature of most all of the Commodore computers to follow to include the Amiga line of computers.
SID and the C64
The SID chip included features such as envelope generators, oscillators, and filters, all components of the musical synthesizers of the day.
Much like the VIC-20 before it, these amazing chips were combined into a demo and shown to Jack Tramiel, and the decision was made to produce the Commodore C64. The C64 is listed in the Guinness Book or World Records as the most popular home computer ever sold at 27 million units. In the time since, there has been some analysis of serial numbers that suggest that fewer units were sold in actuality, but there is little doubt that it far outsold the competition.
The C64 became Commodore’s “Apple Killer” as it was targeted at the market shared with the Apple II. The price of the C64 started out at $595 USD, lowered to $299 and finally lowered to $199 at a time when the competition cost over $1,000 . During this time, Commodore’s founder Jack Tramiel stated famously that we made “computers for the masses not the classes” with emphasis on selling the hardware at a fair price which would open the door to massive software sales.
C64 Courtesy of [Jim Brain]
After the success of the C64, Tramiel set his sights on the small business market and the very low cost markets currently occupied by the Timex Sinclair line of computers. This lead to the TED series of computers, where TED stood for TExt Display. The TED series started as a family of three models; the C116, The C264 and the C364V.
The C116
The C116 was my first introduction to the inner workings of Commodore as a young, enthusiastic design engineer employed by MOS Technologies/Commodore Business Machines. My boss Shiraz Shivji showed me the color Spectrum computer made by Timex Sinclair and said that this was what we were going after.
C116 Courtesy of [Rob Clarke]
In what feels now like a blink of the eye we had produced the C116 shown below, which centered around a single chip, or as close to a single chip computer as we could get. The central chip, in addition to a custom version of the 6502, was the TED chip and it produced 121 colors — actually it produced 128 colors but 8 shades of black — and the sound in a single chip. The C116 had 16 kB of DRAM in the form of the brand new 16 kB X 4 (64 kB) DRAMs of the day and was in a beautiful case designed by Ira Velinski. The C116 was designed to sell for $49 USD.
C264/C364V
Next in the family was the C264 computer, a 64 kB Byte computer with the same 121 colors and simple sound. The computer was nowhere near as interactive as the C64, as it lacked sprites and the dedicated SID sound chip, but our attitude was that someone who wanted a game machine should “buy a C64”. This was meant to be a dedicated text and static color machine for business. We developed new printers, disk drive, and monitor to round out the family. The C264 was designed to sell for $79 USD.
The last of the TED series was the C364V, where “V” stood for voice. Commodore had acquired some of the talent that made the groundbreaking TI Speak-and-Spell™. With this leg up on the voice interactive market Commodore was set to release the “Talking Magic Desk” a desktop motif that gave verbal prompts which was very aggressive for 1984.
We showed the entire suite of “TED” computers and peripherals at the 1984 CES show. Before leaving the show we started hearing rumors that Commodore’s founder, Jack Tramiel, had quit, which we sadly found out to be true.
Plus/4 Courtesy of [Bill Pelton]
The TED series would consequently get axed in that the C116, the C364V, and all of the peripherals were canceled. The C264 would have built-in software added and be renamed the “PLUS/4” which did not thrill any of us that worked on it. The delay
did
give us time to build in a real UART (MOS 6551) which augmented its text capabilities but ultimately the product underperformed as a stand alone computer instead of a family of capabilities and peripherals.
One positive aspect of the TED project was that Commodore finally built a $79 version of the computer known as the C16. We still hear from people who grew up in Europe that their first computer was a C16.
The hardware for the TED was done by myself and Dave Haynie — the design was already done when I got there — and the software was done by Fred Bowen, Terry Ryan and John Cooper as shown in the TED Easter Egg.
The Commodore LCD
As the engineering was ramping down for the TED series, we started to work seriously on our next computer, the Commodore LCD. Commodore had not been idle and had purchased a manufacturer of LCD assemblies named Eagle Pitcher, and became the only US based company that could produce. We did the initial architecture of the LCD based upon a central Memory Management Unit (MMU) as we were trying to speed up the 6502 of the day through some memory management tricks. Ultimately we turned the hardware effort over to Jeff Porter and Ian Kirschman with software being done by Hedley Davis, Andy Finkle, and Caryolyn Scheppner. The LCD system was slated to be the next evolutionary step in the Commodore product line, but sadly it was canceled by the person that replaced Jack Tramiel.
Commodore LCD
Commodore LCD
Finally, we heard that the end of the 8-bit era was upon us in the form of the 16/32 bit Amiga computer, a recent acquisition by Commodore of what was basically a bunch of ex-Atari engineers designing the next generation coin op video game that Commodore was set on turning into a business machine. There was just one problem, the Amiga wasn’t slated to be completed for at least another year.
C128
A bunch of engineers got together and decided that we could squeak a final 8 bit computer through in the time available before the Amiga would fully hit. All of us knew from experience that a computer that would require all new software was a non-starter, at least not without commitment from upper management which seemed to be missing now that Tramiel was gone.
C128
Back Into the Storm – A Design Engineer’s Story of Commodore Computers in the 1980s
Including a C64 compatibility mode just made sense to us engineers as did the name C128 to reflect having twice the memory of the C64. (The C128 was designed to support a total of 512 kB memory but that’s a different story.) The design was mostly completed and a working example running a C64 game was shown to management which struck a chord with said management who were pining for the days of huge sales of the popular C64.
The entire story of the C128 development can be found in the book
Back into the Storm: A Design Engineer’s Story of Commodore Computers in the 1980s
but before it was done, we would have two microprocessors, with the addition of a Z80, as well as three operating systems and simultaneous 40 column and 80 column outputs. It was designed to sell for $199 USD but probably sold more often at $299. The hardware was done by Bil Herd, Dave Haynie, and Frank Palaia, the software was done by Fred Bowen, Terry Ryan and Von Ertwine.
Vintage Computer Festival
If you can’t get enough 8-bit computing, will be celebrating the anniversary of the C64 this year with the first installment at the
Vintage Computer Festival
this weekend in Wall New Jersey. Albert Charpentier will be there as well as Dave Haynie, Bob Russell, Andy Finkle, Hedley Davis, myself, and others. | 107 | 36 | [
{
"comment_id": "6463204",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2022-04-20T14:24:34",
"content": "Motorola sued Chuck Peddle twice? Motorola did release the 6800. And Mos Technology released the 6500, a 6502 that was plug in compatible with the 6800. Motorola didn’t like that one bit, hence a ... | 1,760,372,721.748258 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/20/gaskets-can-they-be-3d-printed/ | Gaskets, Can They Be 3D Printed? | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"3d printed gasket",
"gasket",
"TPU"
] | Anyone who’s owned an older engine, whether it be in a car, motorcycle, or garden machine, will at some time have been faced with the need for a gasket. Even when the gasket is readily available there may be an imperative to fix the engine rather than wait for the part to arrive, so it’s common to make your own replacements. Simple ones are easy to cut from thin card, but if you’ve ever tried to do this with a really complex one you’ll know the pain of getting it right. This is the problem tackled in a video from [the_eddies],
who has explored the manufacture of replacement gaskets by 3D printing
.
The advantages of CAD and easy manufacture are obvious, but perhaps many common plastics might not perform well in hot or oily environments. For that reason he settles on TPU filament, and gives it a test in a bath of 2-stroke fuel mix to see how well it resists degradation. It passes, as it does also when used with a carburetor, though we’d be curious to see the results of a long-term test. We’ve placed the video below the break, so reach your own conclusions.
Gaskets have featured here before, and if you’re interested then
there are other machines which can be used to make them
.
Thanks [Zane Atkins] for the tip! | 74 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6463154",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2022-04-20T11:15:06",
"content": "It’s not so hard to make a paper gasket using a ball-pein hammer. You tap around the edge of the part, letting the sharp edge shear the paper to the exact size. I am starting to get the impression that ... | 1,760,372,721.414302 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/20/developing-your-own-digital-film/ | Developing Your Own Digital Film | Matthew Carlson | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"cfexpress",
"M.2",
"NVMe"
] | In the olden days, you would have a roll of film that you could take to your local drug store and have them develop it. But a serious photographer would likely develop their own photos to maintain complete creative control. While photo editing software has largely replaced the darkroom of old, the images are still held on physical media, and that means there’s room for improvement and customization. In an article for
photofocus
,
[Joseph Nuzzo] shows how you can make your own CFexpress card
— the latest and greatest in the world of digital camera storage tech — for less than $100 USD.
The idea here is pretty simple, as CFexpress uses PCIe with a different connector. Essentially all you have to do is get a M.2 2230 NVMe drive and put it into an adapter. In this case [Joseph] is using a turn-key model from Sintech, but we’ve
shown in the past how you can roll your own
.
Now you might not give it much thought normally, but NVMe devices get pretty hot. This usually isn’t problem inside a large computer case, where they often have large amounts of air blowing over them. But inside a camera you need to dissipate that heat, so thermal compound is a must. With everything screwed together, you have your own card that’s faster and cheaper than commercial offerings.
It’s no secret
that there’s a lot of love for NVMe
. It’s easy, fast, and adaptable. Since the M.2 slot format includes SATA and PCIe, there’s a likely chance there is a PCIe bus in many cameras. The
PCIe bus on the Pi has been convenient for hacking
, and we wonder what sort of hacks are out there for cameras. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6463214",
"author": "Michael Henderson",
"timestamp": "2022-04-20T14:54:26",
"content": "Hopefully, your NVMe drive doesn’t exceed the power supply capacity of your camera. The PCIe M.2 spec allows for >2.5A of 3.3V current consumption.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,372,721.46005 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/19/charge-your-apple-with-apples/ | Charge Your Apple With Apples | Matthew Carlson | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"engin",
"ethanol",
"generator",
"phone charger"
] | When you think of ethanol, you might think of it as a type of alcohol, not alcohol itself. However, in reality, it is the primary ingredient in adult beverages. Which means humans have gotten quite good at making it, as we’ve been doing for a long time. With this in mind, [Sam Barker] decided to
make ethanol out of apples to power a small engine to charge his phone
.
The steps for making
pure ethanol
is quite similar to making alcoholic cider. A friend of [Sam’s] had an orchard and a surplus of apples, so [Sam] boiled them down and stored the mush in jugs. He added activated dry yeast to start the fermentation process. A dry lock allowed the CO2 gas that was being created to escape. Over a few weeks, the yeast converted all the sugar into ethanol and gas. In the meantime, [Sam] sourced a chainsaw and adapted the engine to run on ethanol, as ethanol needs to run richer than gasoline. The video below the break tells the story.
With his solution at just 15% ethanol, he needed to distill it to get pure ethanol for the engine to run. With a little bit of handwaving due to UK laws, [Sam] soon had a 94% ethanol solution. The next step was to use a molecular sieve, which absorbed the water but not ethanol. He secured the engine and generator to an old cutting board, and [Sam] was ready for the first test. Fine-tuning the right throttle and choke took a while, but [Sam] had it going consistently when he ran into a snag; the phone wasn’t charging. He revved the engine up, and his little charge regulator exploded. His multimeter probes were backward when he had measured the generator, and it was outputting a negative voltage. With the board swapped, the phone was charged. But [Sam] saw over 50 volts coming off the motor at times. So like most of here at Hackaday, he wanted to see how fast/high/far it could go. This ultimately fried the motor.
If you’re interested in modifying generators to suit your particular fuel needs, we have
generators running on natural gas
,
ammonia
, and
even your own feet
. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6463124",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2022-04-20T07:27:54",
"content": "So many inefficiencies so much waste but it works. Bigger waste of alcohol. Loudest noise to charge a phone.A bicycle light generator is self limited to 300mA. AC to DC and some resistance, probably eas... | 1,760,372,721.127411 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/19/micromachining-with-a-laser/ | Micromachining With A Laser | Al Williams | [
"cnc hacks",
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"fiber laser",
"fibre laser",
"laser"
] | [Breaking Taps] has a nice pulsed fiber laser and decided to try it to
micromachine with silicon
. You can see the results in the video below. Silicon absorbs the IR of the laser well, although the physical properties of silicon leave something to be desired. He also is still refining the process for steel, copper, and brass which might be a bit more practical.
The laser has very short duration pulses, but the pulses have a great deal of energy. This was experimental so some of the tests didn’t work very well, but some — like the gears — look great.
This probably isn’t going to work with your $200 Chinese laser engraver. But if you do have the right kind of laser (his is a generic one that runs about $4000-$6000), the tips about focal length and timing will probably save you some experimenting on your own.
We have to admit we were a bit jealous. Not only does he have access to a fairly nice laser, but he also has access to a scanning electron microscope which is of better quality than the ones we used to use and we don’t even have access to those anymore. You can see a lot of analysis of the parts carried out under the SEM in the video.
If you are looking to justify the cost of a fiber laser, they do make
dandy PCBs
. We’ve even seen a little of how these
lasers work internally
. | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6463326",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2022-04-20T18:55:25",
"content": "I was able to cut extremely thin strips of steel with a 100W Co2 laser. Grab a spark plug feeler gauge set some time and you can try it yourself.The maximum useable thickness to cut was .001″, and you can ... | 1,760,372,721.869211 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/19/oled-display-kicks-knob-up-several-accurate-notches/ | OLED Display Kicks Knob Up Several Accurate Notches | Tom Nardi | [
"hardware",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"digital gauge",
"knob",
"oled display",
"Volume knob"
] | As far as input devices go, the potentiometer is pretty straightforward: turn it left, turn it right, and you’ve pretty much seen all there is to see. For many applications that’s all you need, but we can certainly improve on the experience with modern technology. Enter this
promising project from [upir] that pairs a common potentiometer with a cheap OLED display
to make for a considerably more engaging user experience.
To save time, the code is fine tuned in a simulator.
The basic idea is to mount the display over the potentiometer knob so you can show useful information such a label that shows what it does, and a readout of the currently detected value. But you’ll likely want to show where the knob is currently set within the range of possible values as well, and that’s where things get interesting.
In the video after the break, [upir] spends a considerable amount of time explaining the math behind details like the scrolling tick marks. The nearly 45 minute long video wraps up with some optimization, as getting the display to move along with the knob in real-time on an Arduino UNO took a bit of extra effort. The final result looks great, and promises to be a relatively cheap way to add an elegant and functional bit of flair to an otherwise basic knob.
With the code and this extensive demonstration of how it all works, adding a similar capability to your next knob-equipped gadget shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. Perhaps it could even be
combined with the OLED VU meters we’ve covered previously
.
Be sure to let us know
if you end up using this technique, as we’d love to see it in action.
Thanks to [Marko] for the tip. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6463034",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2022-04-19T23:07:10",
"content": "Definitely a hack XD XDI just learned that 10 turn potentiometers with counting knobs can be had for a couple dollars.This is an amazing hack because you could switch the granularity with another button. O... | 1,760,372,721.924675 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/19/custom-fit-small-shop-crane-lightens-the-load/ | Custom-Fit Small Shop Crane Lightens The Load | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"boom",
"crane",
"fabrication",
"jib",
"mast",
"metalwork",
"winch"
] | On the shortlist of workshop luxuries, we’d bet a lot of hackers would include an overhead crane. Having the ability to lift heavy loads safely and easily opens up a world of new projects, and puts the shop into an entirely different class of capabilities.
As with many of us, [Jornt] works in a shop with significant space constraints, so
the jib crane he built
had to be a custom job. Fabricated completely from steel tube, the build started with fabricating a mast to support the crane and squeezing it into a small slot in some existing shelves in the shop, which somehow didn’t catch on fire despite being welded in situ. A lot of custom parts went into the slewing gear that mounts the jib, itself a stick-built space frame that had to accommodate a pitched ceiling. A double row of tubing along the bottom of the jib allows a trolley carrying a 500 kg electric winch to run along it, providing a work envelope that looks like it covers the majority of the shop. And hats off for the safety yellow and black paint job — very industrial.
From the look of the tests in the video below, the crane is more than up to the task of lifting engines and other heavy loads in the shop. That should prove handy if [Jornt] tackles another build like
his no-compromises DIY lathe
again. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462989",
"author": "OHS",
"timestamp": "2022-04-19T21:22:37",
"content": "That lack of end-stop makes me nervous. Looks like it makes him nervous too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6462994",
"author": "HaHa",
"timesta... | 1,760,372,722.695565 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/19/2022-sci-fi-contest-the-animatronic-baby-yoda-youve-always-wanted/ | 2022 Sci-Fi Contest: The Animatronic Baby Yoda You’ve Always Wanted | Lewin Day | [
"contests",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"2022 Sci-Fi Contest",
"baby yoda",
"Grogu",
"sci-fi",
"star wars"
] | Simple robot parts make up the internals.
When it comes to sci-fi, it’s hard to go past
Star Wars,
and many submissions to our contest land in that exact universe. [Kevin Harrington]’s entry is one such example, with his animatronic Baby Yoda
that’s exactly as cute as you’d hope it would be.
The build is based on
a Pololu Romi chassis
, a simple two-wheeled differential-drive robot platform. It’s paired with a robot arm in the form of Hephaestus Arm 2, which provides the articulation for the precocious little creature. An ESP32 microcontroller serves as the brains of the operation, controlling all the servos and motors that make baby Yoda move. Control is via WiFi, using a website hosted on the ESP32
via RBE1001lib.
The animatronic baby Yoda would surely be a hit sitting on one’s shoulder at any sci-fi convention. Overall, it’s a simple robot that becomes more personable by skinning it with an adorable toy. It’s not the first baby Yoda (or Grogu) that we’ve seen, either – the popular character
has inspired builds before, too!
Video after the break. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6463159",
"author": "GYRE",
"timestamp": "2022-04-20T11:32:04",
"content": "this implies we wanted anything to do with a baby yoga",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6463256",
"author": "Snow",
"timestamp": "2022-04-20T16:3... | 1,760,372,722.647641 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/19/mobile-focused-windows-11-leaves-taskbar-stuck-along-the-bottom/ | Mobile-Focused Windows 11 Leaves Taskbar Stuck Along The Bottom | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"design",
"taskbar",
"user experience design",
"Windows 11"
] | Yeah, I’ll admit it: I’m a Windows person. Two years ago this summer, I traded in an overworked Windows 7 laptop that was literally screaming in pain for a SFF Windows 10 box as my main machine. But 10 might mean the end for this scribe, who has used Windows since the late 1980s. Admittedly, it’s for a fairly petty reason —
Microsoft have gotten rid of alternate-location taskbar support in Windows 11
. As in, you can have the taskbar anywhere you want, as long as it’s the bottom of the screen.
Years ago, I switched my taskbar to the top for various reasons. For one, it just made more sense to me to have everything at the top, and nothing at the bottom to interrupt visual flow while reading a web page or a document. Plenty of people move it to one of the sides or hide it when not in use for the same reason. More importantly, I thought moving the taskbar to the top would help with my neck/shoulder strain issues, and I believe that it has. So oddly enough, this one little thing may be the dealbreaker that gets me to switch after thirty-something years to Linux, where top-aligned taskbars are more or less the norm.
I’m not alone in my fierce defense of a relocatable taskbar — a post about the issue on the Microsoft Feedback Hub has received over 17,000 votes of support, as it is one of the most requested features. However, in a recent Reddit AMA where a user asked about moving the taskbar to the sides, Microsoft basically said that the UI reflow is difficult to implement there and is not worth it, so they removed the feature. What? Yeah, you read that right. That ‘really small’ set of users who took the time to take to the feedback hub? Screw them, I guess, and legions more who took to other Internet outlets to complain and commiserate.
(And) when you look at the data, while we know there is a set of people that love it that way and, like, really appreciate it, we also recognize that this set of users is really small compared to the set of other folks that are asking for other features. So at the moment we are continuing to focus on things that I hear more pain around.
— Tali Roth, Microsoft’s Head of Product, via
Neowin
What I don’t get is this: if they’ve already implemented it on the previous versions, what’s so hard about doing it again? Did they completely rewrite the codebase for Windows 11 or something and didn’t want to do that part this time?
It seems as though the problem is that way back when, they implemented the standard case of the taskbar being at the bottom, and treated the top and side locations as exceptions and coded them thusly. That’s obvious enough.
So probably they’re tired of that work-around now, and, whether they rewrote the codebase for Windows 11 or not, they probably recognize that the whole taskbar object ought to be built from the ground up in such a way that it supports any of the four locations, and just don’t want to bother in favor of implementing or tweaking other features.
Of course, this is all wild speculation. I’m not even sure this box of mine will run Windows 11. So feel free to pick up where I’ve left off in the comments. And I guess I’ll take your Linux distro recommendations as well, because I figure some of you will do it anyway. I’m thinking KDE Neon or something.
On the other hand, there are a few upsides to Windows 11:
it has an OS-wide dark mode, and they brought back the idea of the startup sound
. Remember reassigning the startup sound to some mp3 you
got off of Napster
ripped from a CD? Those were the days.
Images via
Microsoft | 96 | 32 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462876",
"author": "rclark",
"timestamp": "2022-04-19T17:12:41",
"content": "I prefer my taskbar on the bottom. That said, M$ should give those people still on Windows the option to move the taskbar where-ever they want. Even multiple taskbars if that is to your liking. We all ha... | 1,760,372,722.501194 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/19/a-line-follower-with-no-brains/ | A Line Follower With No Brains | Jenny List | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"friction",
"line follower",
"robot"
] | A line follower is a common project for anyone wishing to make a start in robotics, a small wheeled device usually with some kind of optical sensor which allows it to follow a line drawn on the surface over which it runs. In most cases they incorporate a small microcontroller or perhaps an analogue computer which supplies power and steering control, but
as the Crayon Car from [Greg Zumwalt] demonstrates
, it’s possible to make a line follower without any brains at all.
This seemingly impossible feat is achieved thanks to the line and road surface, it runs on a piece of paper over which the line is drawn with a crayon. The robot has a single straight-line drive wheel at one end and a pair of driven rollers at 90 degrees to each other at the other end, with the magic happening due to the difference in friction between paper and crayon. The robot follows a circular track with no problem, and while we can see it’s not without flaws we doubt it would be possible to make a simpler follower.
Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that
this is not the first line follower we’ve shown you which claims to have no brains
, but we’d claim that since the previous machine had an analogue circuit, this one is a more worthy contender to the crown. | 26 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462836",
"author": "monsonite",
"timestamp": "2022-04-19T15:39:48",
"content": "There was a line follower in one of the UK electronic magazines back in the mid 1970s – possibly “Everyday Electronics”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"commen... | 1,760,372,722.361288 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/19/arm-pumps-up-the-volume-with-mbed-and-a-potentiometer/ | Arm Pumps Up The Volume With Mbed And A Potentiometer | Al Williams | [
"ARM",
"Featured",
"Skills",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"arm",
"blackpill",
"mbed"
] | Last time, I
told you how to get started
with the “Black Pill” STM32F411 board using the Mbed OS. The example program, admittedly, didn’t use many of the features of the OS, unless you count what the USB serial port driver uses behind the scenes. However, this time, we’ll make a practical toy that lets you adjust your PC’s volume level with a pot.
The Black Pill module on a breadboard.
The Black Pill is a good choice for this application since it has analog inputs and can act as a USB keyboard. In fact, the Mbed OS has drivers for all kinds of USB devices. We’ve seen the serial port, but you can also look like a mass storage device or a mouse, for example. Just for practice, we’ll create two threads of execution. One will read the pot and send a message over to the other thread. That thread will communicate with the PC as a USB keyboard. Any computer that understands media keys on a keyboard should work with the device.
Threads
Creating threads is very simple. For many cases, you just define a void function that takes no arguments and use it with a Thread object:
readknobThread.start(vol_thread);
Of course, the function shouldn’t return unless you want the thread to end. As I mentioned in the last post, you can sleep with the
ThisThread::sleep_for
call. There is also a
yield
call if you simply want to give up the time slice without sleeping for a specific amount of time.
You can also create a function that does return and have it execute if there is idle time where no threads are ready to execute. Call
rtos_attach_idle_hook
to set that function. If you don’t provide one, the default causes the processor to sleep.
You can get fancy with threads, mainly by changing their stack size and priority. The join method of the Thread object lets you wait for a thread to terminate. You can set a thread’s name during the object’s construction. However, to do so, you have to specify all the other options, too. This is handy when you are debugging so you can tell one thread from another easily. Here’s how:
Thread readknobThread(osPriorityNormal,OS_STACK_SIZE,nullptr,"KNOB");
Thread keyboardThread(osPriorityNormal,OS_STACK_SIZE,nullptr,"KBD");
Normally, though, you can just stick with the default constructor. You can always change the priority later. You can also set the default stack size (normally 4 kB) in the project’s
json
file, as long as you want all threads to use the same default.
Volume
How hard is it to make the Black Pill look like a USB keyboard and send, say, a volume down command? Easy:
USBKeyboard kbd;
...
kbd.media_control(KEY_VOLUME_DOWN);
This could be a very simple program indeed. However, I wanted to play some with multithreading so I made it a little harder. The program has two threads. One watches the potentiometer and decides if it has moved up or down by a set amount. Then it issues a command using a mailbox to the other thread.
USB classes, including USBKeyboard, share many base classes.
The other thread waits for mail to arrive and acts on it by sending media keys. This, too, is a bit overdone since there is really only one piece of data shared between the threads. But the mail mechanism can transfer arbitrary structures, so it is useful to know about it.
Multithread Communications
The Mbed OS offers several features to help threads cooperate:
ConditionVariable – A mechanism for one thread to signal other threads that a condition changed.
EventFlags – Similar to condition variables, but allows a thread to wait on multiple events. You can wait for any of a set of flags to signal or wait for all of the set to signal.
Queue – A queue allows one thread to load up pointers that another thread consumes.
Mail – This is similar to a queue, but stores the sent data rather than pointers.
Mutex – A mutex is a resource that only one thread can own at a time. This allows threads to cooperate without interfering with each other.
Semaphore – This is similar to a mutex, but has a count associated with it. You can’t use a mutex in an interrupt handler, but you can use a semaphore.
For this simple example, assuming we wanted to use threads at all, we could have used nearly any of these mechanisms. A global variable along with a condition variable, an event, a mutex, or a semaphore would have worked fine.
A queue would also work, but I decided to use mail. The sender simply calls
try_alloc
on the mailbox to allocate space for a new entry. Then you populate the new entry and call put.
The receiver does a
try_get
and, when done with the data, calls free on the mailbox to release the memory back to the pool.
A Problem
The only problem with the design is that a pot is not an optical encoder. It will stop around 0 ohms and also at the maximum value. This means the pot can get “stuck.” For example, if the pot is already all the way down when the device starts, you can’t lower the volume any lower than it started. You also have problems if you, say, turn the volume down and someone else turns it up using a different method.
Pots on a breadboard can be handy.
To combat this, the code uses the Black Pill’s button as a mute button. In addition, it resets the idea of the pot’s position when you mute or unmute. So if you are stuck, you can follow the procedure of muting the audio, roughly centering the pot, and then unmuting.
Granted, this would have been a better place for an encoder, but I wanted to do analog input and I happened to have some
breadboard-mountable pots
.
The Result
The resulting code is on
GitHub
. I wanted to oversample the analog input since there was quite a bit of noise on the line so I created the AnalogInOversample class:
#ifndef __ANALOGINOVERSAMPLE_H
#define __ANALOGINOVERSAMPLE_H
// Simple class to read 16-bit counts from ADC and average N samples
// Up to you not to overflow 32-bits!
class AnalogInOversample : public AnalogIn
{
protected:
uint8_t N; // # of samples
public:
// constructor assumes 16 samples, or set your own
AnalogInOversample(PinName pin, uint8_t n=16,float vref=MBED_CONF_TARGET_DEFAULT_ADC_VREF)
: AnalogIn(pin,vref) { N=n; }
// access N
uint8_t get_N(void) { return N; }
void set_N(uint8_t n) { N=n; }
// Here's the meat of it
unsigned short read_u16(void)
{
uint32_t samples=0; // 32 bits for 16-bit samples
for (int i=0;i<N;i++) samples+=AnalogIn::read_u16();
return samples/N;
}
};
#endif
There’s More
Of course, there’s plenty more you can do with these boards. You can also apply most of what we’ve talked about with Mbed to any of
the supported boards
. If you need ultimate control and performance, perhaps you’d prefer something a bit less abstract. But if you need a simple RTOS, you can do worse than spend some time learning about Mbed.
That said, the
STM32Duino
project is also very robust and if you are experienced with the Arduino, you might prefer it. However you go, these boards are a good value and certainly easy to work with. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462834",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2022-04-19T15:32:51",
"content": "I’ve been working on an Engine Control Unit using the black pill. Love the fact that the black pill has a Floating Point Unit. It really increases the computational power over something like a bluepill. Ho... | 1,760,372,722.553187 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/19/edible-electronics-let-us-hear-the-lamentations-of-the-chocolate-bunnies/ | Edible Electronics Let Us Hear The Lamentations Of The Chocolate Bunnies | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Holiday Hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"arduino",
"chocolate bunny",
"edible circuits"
] | Yet another
Day of the Chocolate Bunnies
has passed by, and what did you do to mark the occasion? You likely kicked back and relaxed, surrounded by whatever you gave up for Lent, but good for you if you mixed chocolate and electronics like [Repeated Failure] did. They created
a completely edible chocolate Easter bunny that screams when bitten
.
So obviously, the hardest part is figuring out something to build the circuit with that is both conductive and safe to eat. [Repeated Failure] spent a lot of time with carbon
oleogel
paste, which is made from natural oils and waxes. Not only was it less conductive than [Repeated Failure]’s skin, it came out pitch black and tasted like nothing, which kind of a bonus, when you think about it.
Then came the cake paint, which [Repeated Failure] laced with trace amounts of silver powder. While that worked somewhat better, a successful circuit would have likely required near-fatal amounts of the stuff. Yikes!
The winner turned out to be edible silver leaf, which is like gold leaf but cheaper. Ever had Goldschläger? Gold leaf is what’s suspended inside. The really nice thing about silver leaf is that it comes in thin sheets and can easily be cut into circuit traces with scissors and connected to I/O pins with copper tape. Be sure to check it out after the break, including [Repeated Failure]’s friend’s reaction to innocently biting the chocolate bunny’s ears off, as one tends to do first.
Think you’d rather
hear plants giggle?
Sure, it sounds cute, but it’s actually kind of creepy. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462761",
"author": "KC8KVA",
"timestamp": "2022-04-19T12:13:32",
"content": "I am SO going to do something similar next year for Easter. This made my day!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6462776",
"author": "Belga",
... | 1,760,372,722.743403 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/19/bare-metal-gives-this-pi-some-classic-synths/ | Bare Metal Gives This Pi Some Classic Synths | Jenny List | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"dx7",
"fm synthesis",
"raspberry pi",
"yamaha"
] | We’re used to seeing the Raspberry Pi crop up in a wide range of the projects we show you here, but it’s fair to say that they usually feature some sort of operating system. There’s another way to use a Pi, more akin to using a microcontroller such as the Arduino: by programming it directly, so-called bare-metal programming.
MiniDexed
is an example, and it copies a classic Yamaha professional synthesiser of the 1980s, by emulating the equivalent of eight of the company’s famous DX7 synthesisers in one unit. It takes almost any Pi, and with the addition of an audio board, a rotary encoder, and an LCD display, makes a ready-to-go unit. Below the break is a video of it in operation.
It’s fair to say that we’re not experts in Raspberry Pi bare metal programming, but it’s worth a diversion into the world of 1980s synthesisers to explore the DX7. This instrument was a staple of popular music throughout the 1980s and was a major commercial success for Yamaha as an affordable FM synthesiser. This was a process patented at Stanford University in the 1970s and subsequently licensed by the company, unlike other synths of the day it generated sound entirely digitally. It’s difficult to overestimate the influence of the DX7 as its sound can be heard everywhere, and it’s not impossible that you own a Yamaha FM synth even today if you have in your possession a sound card.
Curious about the DX7? Master chip-reverse-engineer [Ken Shirriff]
exposed its secrets
late last year. | 18 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462756",
"author": "Bill Gates",
"timestamp": "2022-04-19T11:51:51",
"content": "nice! A lot of expensive equipment replaced with a tiny little box. I checked on ebay, these things are going for $2000+, it’s insane what people want for old technology.",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,372,722.602827 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/18/ray-traced-doom-really-shines/ | Ray-Traced Doom Really Shines! | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Games",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"does it run doom",
"ray tracing"
] | We’re huge fans of taking retro games and adding new graphics features to them, so you had to know that when [Sultim Tsyrendashiev] released
his ray-traced Doom engine
, we would have to cover it. Now this does break with tradition — instead of running Doom on every conceivable platform, this version requires an AMD or Nvidia ray tracing capable card. On the other hand, the spirit of Doom is certainly alive, as ray-traced Doom has already been demonstrated on the Steam Deck. Check out the video below for a demo, and come back after the break for more info.
The most exciting part of this graphical feat may be
the RayTracedGL1 library
that “simplifies the process of porting applications with fixed-function pipeline to real-time path tracing.” Besides Doom, there’s also been demos made of Serious Sam and Half-Life 1. There’s even experimental Linux support! We managed to compile and
test it on our system
, running a 6700 XT and Fedora 35 with bleeding edge Mesa. There are a few visual glitches to work out, but it’s an outstanding project so far. The only complaint we have is that it’s based on prboom, not the still-maintained GZDoom, though with enough attention who knows where the project will go. If this leaves you hungry for more, check out more
retro-upgrades
, or
Doom on more devices
. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462611",
"author": "hinspect",
"timestamp": "2022-04-19T05:15:41",
"content": "This reminds me of playing Wolfenstein back in 1995 on my EISA Bus 486. I assume it was a DOS version. It sure was a lot of fun back then!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,722.791782 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/18/honey-did-you-feed-the-lamp-company-wants-to-create-living-light-bulbs/ | Honey, Did You Feed The Lamp? Company Wants To Create Living Light Bulbs | Al Williams | [
"News"
] | [
"bacteria",
"bioluminescence",
"lighting"
] | The BBC’s [Peter Yeung] had an interesting post about
a small French town experimenting with using bioluminescent organisms to provide lighting
. A firm called
Glowee
is spearheading the effort in Rambouillet and other towns throughout France, using a variety of biological techniques to harness nature’s light sources.
Glowing animals are reasonably common ranging from fireflies to
railroad worms
. In the case of the French street lighting, Glowee is using a marine bacterium known as
aliivibrio fischeri
. A salt-water tube contains nutrients and when air is flowing through the tube, the bacteria glow with a cool turquoise light. The bacteria enter an anaerobic state and stop glowing if you shut off the air.
While the company claims the bulbs take less energy to produce and operate than LED bulbs, they also admit that the bulbs produce a fraction of the light. We aren’t clear on how the nutrients get into the tubes and how long the bulbs last. Critics point out that the bulbs will probably be very temperature sensitive and the density of the bacteria could vary depending on their reproduction.
Animals that generate light do so using a chemical reaction involving an enzyme known as luciferase. One strategy that Glowee wants to develop is extracting luciferase and using it without the living organisms. Apparently, this same technology is used by a Canadian company to produce biodegradable glow sticks.
Using biological lighting isn’t a new idea. According to the BBC, miners have been known to use fireflies in jars where a flame is too dangerous and tribes in India have used glowing fungi to illuminate dense jungle areas.
We’ve seen
novelty lighting
use these techniques to good effect. It also makes a
decent nightlight
. | 30 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462602",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2022-04-19T04:57:58",
"content": "EMP proof lighting.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6462621",
"author": "Kryptylomese",
"timestamp": "2022-04-19T05:50:08",
"content": "... | 1,760,372,722.916369 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/18/2022-sci-fi-contest-schrodingers-trigger-is-trained-on-electrons-not-cats/ | 2022 Sci-Fi Contest: Schrödinger’s Trigger Is Trained On Electrons, Not Cats | Kristina Panos | [
"contests"
] | [
"electron tunneling",
"reverse bias",
"schrodingers cat",
"tunneling"
] | While it’s true that Hackaday scribes and their families are sadly unable to compete in our contests, Hackaday alum are more than welcome to throw their hat in the ring. [Legionlabs] even made a game of it — they used only parts from the scrap heap, and even played beat the clock to build
a real, science-fictiony, working thing in eight hours or less
.
Okay, cool, but what does it do? Well, put simply, a rising edge on the input drives one of two outputs, lighting one of two drool-worthy flanged LEDs. Which output will [alight] is unknowable until observed, thus the Schrodinger’s aspect. In practice, the output is determined by sampling. In this case, the sampling is of the time difference between three electron-tunneling events.
Stage one of Schrodinger’s Trigger is a pair of inputs — one variable 10-15 VDC input and 5 VDC input. Then comes the electron-tunneling event generator. [Legionlabs] is reverse-biasing a semiconductor junction (a 2N551 transistor). What does that mean? If we consider the junction as a diode and apply voltage in the wrong direction, what happens? At best, nothing; at worst, the smoke monster appears to admonish us.
But with a semiconductor acting as a diode, some electrons are bound to jump across the junction. This is known as
tunneling
, and is a useful phenomenon as it is purely random.
Stage three consists of amplifying the signal from these rebel electrons via hex inverters. Why not op-amps? The CD4069s were cheaper and within reach. Finally, the amplified signals are sampled with an ATtiny12, and some assembly logic figures out which LED to light.
It’s nice to see an entry that leans more toward the science side of things while winning aesthetically. We dig the nice ABS enclosure, and are totally envious of [Legionlabs]’ access to flanged LEDs and those glass table top mounting point discs in the corners. | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462466",
"author": "Tom Price",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T23:29:46",
"content": "Please tell me that no cats were killed in the making of this machine",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6462476",
"author": "Jerry",
... | 1,760,372,722.8543 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/18/the-epic-journey-of-repairing-an-hp-9830a-desktop-computer-from-the-1970s/ | The Epic Journey Of Repairing An HP 9830A Desktop Computer From The 1970s | Robin Kearey | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"computer repair",
"HP9830A",
"vintage computers"
] | We love our retrocomputers here at Hackaday, and we’re always delighted to see someone rescue an historic artefact from the landfill. Sometimes, all it takes is replacing a broken power switch or leaky capacitor; other times you need to bring out the oscilloscope and dig deeper into internal circuitry. But the huge amount of work
[Jerry Walker] put into bringing an HP 9830A back on its feet
is something you don’t see very often.
If you’re not familiar with the HP 9830A, it’s a desktop computer from the early 1970s, fully built from discrete logic gates. The machine on [Jerry]’s desk turned out to be completely dead, with not even the fan spinning up. This was caused by a dodgy power switch, but replacing that switch was just the beginning: there were several bad components inside the power supply as well as a huge amount of moist dirt on the back of the motherboard. After a thorough cleaning and the replacement of several failed components, all four power rails were running within spec again.
Next came the complex task of debugging the four PCBs that together make up the CPU. [Jerry] hooked up his logic analyzer to these boards to visualize the CPU’s internal state as it stepped through its microcode. Again, several TTL chips turned out to be broken and needed replacement. With the CPU working, it was time to get to the main program ROM, which ended up consuming much of [Jerry]’s repair time.
The problem with broken ROM chips is not so much finding a replacement, but getting a correct copy of their contents. Luckily, a cycle-accurate HP 9830a emulator exists which contains copies of the entire firmware. With several of the dozens of ROM chips dodgy or dead, repairing the original ROM board was not a realistic proposition, so [Jerry] designed a complete replacement board instead. With a modern, reprogrammable EPROM chip and some glue logic it was also a huge help in the rest of the repair process, as it allowed him to run custom machine code on the computer.
The replacement ROM board contains just one EPROM and some decode logic.
With a few test routines written into the EPROM [Jerry] was able to test all the RAM, ROM and registers as well as the display, and found yet more broken chips to be replaced and faulty connections to be repaired. With all the main functions now working, the HP 9830A came to life and responded to commands again. The only remaining issue was in the tape drive, which turned out to be caused by a broken sensor. Once that was replaced, the repair process was finally complete.
[Jerry]’s running commentary on his 26-part video series gives lots of great insights into the intricacies of computer architecture, so if you’re looking for something to binge watch, forget Netflix and put on [Jerry]’s videos instead. They also show the importance of a systematic troubleshooting method: start with the most bare-bones system possible, verify that it works exactly as intended, and only then start adding other components.
If you can’t get enough of vintage HP gear repairs, check out
this repair of the related HP 9825
. The ongoing process of
restoring a Centurion Minicomputer
is also definitely worth following.
Thanks for the tip, [mgsouth]! | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462451",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T22:57:35",
"content": "This was my first computer, and it was interesting to use: very limited memory, weird Rocky Mountain Basic dialect of the BASIC language. The cassette drive was kinda dodgy even back then, and the ... | 1,760,372,723.055957 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/18/build-your-own-cat-some-assembly-required/ | Build Your Own Cat – Some Assembly Required | Arya Voronova | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed pets",
"pet",
"robot",
"robot cat",
"robotic animals",
"roboticcat"
] | Robotic pets are sci-fi material, and [Kevin McAleer] from [Kev’s Robots] is moving us all ever so closer towards a brighter, happier, more robotic future. One of his latest robot builds,
PicoCat, is a robot cat with servo-driven paws
. It follows in the footsteps of
the OpenCat project
made by Dr. Rongzhong Li back in 2016, and we’re always happy seeing someone pick up where another hacker left off. [Kevin] took heavy inspiration from the OpenCat design – rebuilding it with hardware more friendly and accessible for makers today.
Projects like these, involving data processing and calculations to get the servos moving just right, stand to benefit from the computing power of recently released RP2040 MCU. As such, the Pimoroni Servo 2040 board is a crucial component of this build, being both the brains of the project and also a PIO-boosted driver for the eleven servos helping this robot come alive. This cat’s eyes are an ultrasonic sensor, and you can add a whole lot more sensors for any robotic intention of yours. Don’t expect this kitty to jump one meter high or scratch your favourite couch to death
just yet
, but there’s already a lot of potential, especially coupled with a small speaker.
Does this robotic cat interest you, whether it’d be due to your sci-fi propensity or a cat hair allergy? You’re in luck, because [Kevin] is
keeping things firmly in the “open-source everything” realm
. MicroPython code is stored
in a GitHub repo
, STLs are in a
.zip
linked on the page
, and there’s plenty of renders to never leave you confused on what goes where. With all these resources, you can source the servos and the boards, fire up your 3D printer and sit down to assemble your own PicoCat. But not just that, [Kevin] also recorded three whole streams with insights, giving us over four hours of how-it-came-to-be video material for us to learn from. First,
two streams
of him designing the PicoCat in Fusion360, and then, him talking about
the way he creates unit tests in MicroPython
to improve his robots’ reliability and significantly reduce the amount of bugs cropping up.
This is not the last we will hear from [Kevin]’s robot-filled workshop, and previously, we’ve covered his
Cray-1-shaped Pi Zero cluster system
and a
Raspberry Pi theremin
, both as open and reproducible as this kitty! As you assemble yourself a PicoCat, or perhaps
a Stanford Pupper
or any of the other
lovely quadru-pets we’ve previously featured
, you might wonder how to properly move the servos, and we’ve
covered a project that teaches you specifically that
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462481",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T23:54:15",
"content": "But it’s not furry and it doesn’t have a bum to stick in your face! Still good, but some things to work on for V2.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,372,723.106154 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/18/ask-hackaday-would-a-scooter-get-you-back-to-the-office/ | Ask Hackaday: Would A Scooter Get You Back To The Office? | Kristina Panos | [
"Ask Hackaday",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"electric scooter",
"google",
"working from home"
] | So we’re two plus years into the pandemic at this point. Are you still working from home in the most comfortable clothes ever sewn? We figure that of the lot of you who said goodbye to that drab, tiled carpet in 2020, most have probably heard rumblings about returning to the office. And probably a good portion have at least been forced into a hybrid schedule.
Lots of companies would love to see their employees once again milling about all those
glass and steel observation tanks
office buildings they pay so much for. And while some are likely just forcing employees to come back, others are offering incentives, such as Google.
The tech giant recently partnered with electric scooter manufacturer Unagi
to provide a “Ride Scoot” program designed to lure many of Google’s US-based employees back to those brightly-colored code playgrounds they call offices with a fun mode of private transportation. The plan is to offer a full reimbursement of the monthly subscription fee for Unagi’s Model One folding scooter, which retails for $990.
The subscription is normally $49 a month plus a one-time $50 sign-up fee, but this amount will be slightly discounted (and waived) for eligible Google employees. There is one caveat to the system: an employee must use the scooter for a minimum of nine commutes to the office per month, although Google says they’re gonna be a bro about it and use the honor system.
I’d Rather Drive
I’m not sure that a reimbursed ride to work is that much of a perk. It does coincide nicely with rollercoaster gas prices, but I would assume that many residents of the cities where Google is implementing the Ride Scoot program tend use mass transportation to get to to the office. (Although I wouldn’t be surprised if the average cost of mass transit is also rising.) I live in a car-centric town that houses plenty of Google Fiber employees, and am not surprised to see that they left it off the list of eligible locations, most of which are on the west coast. I would call out the temperate climate of the cities on the list, except that it includes NYC. Of course, scooters make sense there for other reasons.
Image via
Twitter
Some other companies are offering the standard stuff you’d expect to see:
meal programs, fuel and transportation reimbursement, and childcare stipends
. Microsoft welcomed employees back with free food, and the cafeteria was filled to capacity. Not a great look given the ongoing pandemic, but it would be pretty unfair to give people a free lunch and force them to eat it alone at their desks.
If you’re still working from home, do you still love it? Are you secretly tired of it and miss your big desk and walls and going out to lunch, or just going someplace other than home to work? Do you kind of want to go back to the office, just not every day? You’re not alone. Personally, I don’t have an office to go to, but I wouldn’t mind having a place where I could keep my backup Kinesis Advantage, print and copy things quickly, and be free of the distractions of home.
Apple is telling people they have to be in the office specifically on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays
, which honestly sounds bad for morale. Why not Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday? No one wants to be in the office on Mondays or Fridays, anyway. That way, you gather enough people on site to have pure face-to-face meetings and presentations, but it’s easier for everyone to ease into the week. So what would it take to get you back to the office? Let us know in the comments. | 73 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462283",
"author": "Darren",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T17:10:19",
"content": "NoA. Privately owned e scooters are illegal to use in my country (UK).B. I am more productive and happier at home.C. Scooters are not an ideal transport method in a country where it rains half of the year.... | 1,760,372,723.823788 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/18/movie-prop-electronics-hack-chat/ | Movie Prop Electronics Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, April 20 at noon Pacific for the
Movie Prop Electronics Hack Chat
with Ben Eadie!
It wasn’t too long after the invention of cinema that the need for special effects became apparent. If you want to tell stories, especially the science fiction type of story, you need to build a plausible universe, including all the gadgets and gizmos within it. And so right from the start, propmakers and set designers have had the challenge of making things look futuristic using the technology of the present day.
All too often, the realities of budgets and time constraints have reduced this crucial world-building to an exercise in blinkenlights. But not always. Ben Eadie is a maker and inventor who works in the world of movie magic, specializing in props and practical effects. While he’s certainly as much in love with blinkenlights as any of us, there’s more than that to making a movie look good. He’ll stop by the Hack Chat to talk about how he incorporates electronics into his practical effect builds, and perhaps even reveal some of the movie magic for us.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, April 20 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462306",
"author": "Feinfinger (super villain in nostalgy mode)",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T17:56:27",
"content": "Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator?Someone?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6462309",
"author": "t... | 1,760,372,723.349475 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/18/gun-safe-made-safer-with-lithium-battery-upgrade/ | Gun Safe Made Safer With Lithium Battery Upgrade | Arya Voronova | [
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"firearm",
"gun safe",
"Li-ion",
"Lithium-ion battery",
"pistol safe",
"safe"
] | A proper gun safe should be difficult to open, but critically, allow instant access by the authorized party.
[Dr. Gerg] got a SnapSafe
and discovered that, while it was quite easy to use, it would also lock the owner out easily whenever the batteries would run out. Meant to be used with four AAA batteries and no way to recharge them externally, this could leave you royally screwed in the exact kind of situation where you need the gun safe to open. This, of course, meant that the AAA batteries had to go.
Having torn a few laptop batteries apart previously, [Dr. Gerg] had a small collection of Li-ion cells on hand – cylindrical and pouch cells alike. Swapping the AAA battery holder for one of these was no problem voltage-wise, and testing showed it working without a hitch! However, replacing one non-chargeable battery with another one wasn’t a viable way forward, so he also added charging using an Adafruit LiPo charger board. One 3D printed OpenSCAD-designed bracket later, he fit the board inside the safe’s frame – and then pulled out a USB cable for charging, turning the battery into a backup option and essentially creating an UPS for this safe. Nowadays, the safe sits constantly plugged into a wall socket, and [Dr. Gerg] estimates it should last for a few weeks even in case of USB power loss.
When you read about hacking gun safes,
it’s usually because of their poor security
, with even biometric models
occasionally falling victim to prying fingers
. There’s talk about moving the locking features into the guns themselves, but
we remain skeptical
. “Powering an electronically locked box with internal batteries” is a fun problem, and just recently, we’ve seen it solved in a different way in
this intricate voice-activated lockbox
. | 37 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462166",
"author": "miked",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T15:47:55",
"content": "Adding an explosive device made it safer? Really?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6462180",
"author": "sjm4306",
"timestamp": "2022-0... | 1,760,372,723.665622 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/18/mercury-thrusters-a-worldwide-disaster-averted-just-in-time/ | Mercury Thrusters: A Worldwide Disaster Averted Just In Time | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"hall effect",
"hall effect thruster",
"ion propulsion",
"ion thruster",
"mercury thruster",
"satellite",
"space",
"space vehicle",
"spacecraft"
] | The field of space vehicle design is obsessed with efficiency by necessity. The cost to do anything in space is astronomical, and also heavily tied to launch weight. Thus, any technology or technique that can bring those figures down is prime for exploitation.
In recent years, mercury thrusters promised to be one such technology. The only catch was the potentially-ruinous environmental cost. Today, we’ll look at the benefits of mercury thrusters, and how they came to be outlawed in short order.
Electric Thrust
As we’ve explored
in our previous in-depth explainer
, ion thrusters have proven valuable in innumerable space missions. Rather than using chemical reactions to generate thrust, they use electric fields to accelerate ions instead. Compared to traditional rockets, they can’t generate anywhere near as much thrust. However, they are far more fuel-efficient. This means they can generate far more delta-v (change in velocity) with the same amount of fuel.
NASA experimented with mercury-based ion thrusters on the SERT-I (pictured) and SERT-II spacecraft. However, mercury was deemed too toxic to use in future missions. Credit: NASA, public domain
Although their thrust is so meagre that you could never use one to launch a vehicle into orbit, they find their primary application in stationkeeping for satellites, helping them maintain position over time against the forces of upper-atmospheric drag. They can also be used to propel long-range probes that don’t have gravity to fight against.
These days, most thrusters use inert gases like xenon or krypton as fuel. However, these gases are expensive and their molecules are relatively lightweight. Mercury, on the other hand, is much heavier, still very easy to ionize, and easy to store on a spacecraft in liquid form. It’s also very, very, cheap. By sheer virtue of its toxicity, many industries are often stuck paying to dispose of mercury as a byproduct. The old saying that “
you can’t even give it away
” really does apply here.
The Problem
Mercury has a multitude of uses, such as the thermometer seen here. However, the silvery liquid metal is now used less often due to knowledge of its negative health effects. Credit:
CambridgeBayWeather
, public domain
While mercury makes an excellent ion thruster fuel on paper, its toxicity is too potent to ignore. Causing deletrious effects to the nervous system and brain, its presence in the environment can have major negative effects on human populations. From lowering IQs to damaging memory, it’s all bad all the way down. It’s a toxin that accumulates in the body over time, and often enters the human body through the food chain. Indeed, mercury concentrations in many sea creatures mean that pregnant women are specifically advised to avoid many types of seafood.
For this reason, NASA abandoned the use of mercury as a propellant after initial experiments in the 1970s. Outside of contaminating the atmosphere, mercury comes with other risks too. There are occupational hazards for the crews working on the thrusters. Furthermore, explosions on the launchpad or crashes would spread the toxic material into the surrounding environment.
For these reasons, mercury was quickly considered a “dead fuel” by NASA, simply too dangerous to use despite the benefits.
Concerning Developments
NASA moved on to xenon-fuelled Hall effect thrusters after mercury was deemed too dangerous to use. Credit: NASA JPL, public domain
As is so often the case, however, a Silicon Valley startup was reported to be “disrupting” an established industry by rehashing an old idea.
Bloomberg
ran a story in 2018
, regarding the activities of startup Apollo Fusion. Industry insiders told the outlet that the startup was shopping around a new thruster technology using mercury as a propellant.
This quickly set alarm bells ringing for many around the world. With SpaceX planning to launch
over 10,000 satellites
over a period of a few years, and many other companies rushing to establish their own massive satellite fleets, prospects were terrifying. If Apollo Fusion got a contract to equip thousands of satellites with mercury thrusters, widespread pollution of the entire Earth was suddenly on the table.
A scientific paper
showed that a constellation of 2,000 satellites with 100 kg of propellant on board would deposit 20,000 kg of mercury into the upper atmosphere each year for a decade. Due to the weight of mercury ions, the majority would end up falling back to Earth, and account for 1% of existing global mercury emissions. Modelling suggested 75% of this mercury would end up in the world’s oceans, with negative impacts on marine life and fishing operations.
60 Starlink satellites seen prior to deployment in 2019.
Concerns abounded that if mercury thrusters were used for upcoming constellations of thousands of satellites, it could spread significant pollution into the atmosphere and around the world. Credit:
SpaceX, public domain
Great effort has been expended over the decades to reduce the amount of mercury in the environment. The Minimata Convention on Mercury, a treaty from the United Nations, provided a framework for controlling mercury use by signatory countries. 128 countries signed the treaty, involving restrictions on the use of mercury in everything from batteries to lamps, soaps, and cosmetics.
At the time of signing in 2013, the idea of a return to mercury propulsion simply wasn’t on the table. Apollo Fusion wasn’t established until 2016. Worse, US regulations meant that there was precious little stopping any company that wished to launch mercury into space. Communication satellites fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission,
which allowed satellite operators to self-certify their craft
as having no deleterious impacts on humans or the environment.
A Safe Resolution
Thankfully, the hard work of scientists lobbying against the technology bore fruit. In March this year, the UN held a meeting regarding the Minamata Convention on Mercury, and
adopted a resolution
to phase out any use of mercury as a satellite propellant by 2025.
With most spacefaring nations being signatories to the convention, it makes the business case for mercury thrusters virtually unviable. As for Apollo Fusion, the company has stuck to working in the world of ion propulsion, though may have given up mercury propellants at this time. The company, which was
acquired
by American space launch company Astra, has since flown a xenon thruster in space
as part of SpaceX’s Transporter-2 mission last year.
In any case, it seems that the thousands of satellites to be put in orbit in coming years will go up to space without mercury-spewing thrusters onboard. That should come as a great relief to all of us down here on Earth, where there is already more than enough mercury pollution as it is. | 60 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462018",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T14:44:52",
"content": "And again the baby is out with the bathwater. There’s no reason to ban them – if there is something better then everyone will use that. If there isn’t, then forcing the case just hurts the industry for virtu... | 1,760,372,723.519057 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/18/vintage-computer-festival-east-is-this-weekend/ | Vintage Computer Festival East Is This Weekend | Tom Nardi | [
"cons",
"News"
] | [
"VCF",
"VCF East",
"VCF East 2022"
] | This weekend the InfoAge Science and History Museum in Wall, New Jersey will
once again play host to the Vintage Computer Festival East
— the annual can’t-miss event for anyone who has even a passing interest in the weird and wonderful machines that paved the way for the supercomputers we now all carry around in our pockets. Ticket holders will have access to a program absolutely jam packed with workshops, talks, and exhibits that center around the dual themes of “Women in Computing” and “Computers for the Masses”, plus a consignment and vendor area that almost guarantees you’ll be going home a little poorer than when you got there. But hey, at least you’ll have some new toys to play with.
For those that can’t make the pilgrimage to the tropical wonderland that is the Jersey Shore in April, all three days of the Festival will be live-streamed to the VCF YouTube page. There’s even
an official Discord server
where you can chat with other remote attendees. We’re glad to see more events adopting a hybrid approach after two years of COVID-19 lockdown, as it gives the far-flung a chance to participate in something they would otherwise miss completely. That said, there’s no virtual replacement for the experience of browsing the exhibits and consignment areas, so if it’s at all possible we recommend you get yourself to InfoAge for at least one of the days.
Incidentally, don’t worry if you’ve got the sneaking feeling that it hasn’t been anywhere near a year since the last time the VCF descended on Wall Township.
The 2021 Festival got pushed to October
because of the lingering plague, but rather than permanently change the date going forward, the 2022 Festival has returned to its traditional season. Of course that means the wait until VCF 2023 will seem unusually long after this double-shot, so
here’s hoping we see another swap meet at the InfoAge campus
before the end of the year. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462461",
"author": "gregg4",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T23:19:32",
"content": "And all of you who are going will find a Timelord there.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,723.392944 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/18/gridfinity-3d-printed-super-quick-tool-storage-and-retrieval/ | Gridfinity: 3D Printed Super Quick Tool Storage And Retrieval | Dave Rowntree | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"modular",
"open source",
"quick retrieval",
"tool storage"
] | Our favourite cyborg [Zack Freedman] has been stumbling over a common problem many of us will be all too familiar with — that of tool storage and the optimal retrieval thereof. His solution is the
Gridfinity: A modular workshop organisation system
.
Never chase your pen around on the desk again
In [Zack]’s words, the perfect workshop has tools and materials arranged in the following way: (a) every item has a dedicated home within reach of where you’ll use it. (b) items are exposed and in position for instant grabification. (c) the storage system shields you from accidents like spills and injuries. (d) it is effortless to setup and easy to put back and rearrange. An instant-access storage solution such as the Gridfinity is designed not to help you store more stuff, but finish more projects. The idea is very simple — display your stuff so that you can quickly find what you need and get back to the project as quickly as possible. We think these aims are pretty spot on!
From an implementation perspective, the system consists of a 3D printed base plate with a grid structure. It is angled internally so storage bins drop in, but are not easy to knock out. Storage units drop into the grid in various sizes and orientations, such that everything is contained within the grid’s outer boundary, so the whole assembly will fit inside a drawer with ease. Small part storage bins have a curved inner surface enabling one to easily scoop out a part when required. A partial lid on the top allows them to be stacked vertically if required.
Super-quick access to fully sorted stock – no more searching
Whilst the system is work in progress, there are still about a hundred different storage units, for anything from 3D printer nozzles to racks for tweezers. Implemented as parameterised models in Fusion360, it is easy to tweak existing models for your stuff, or create totally new ones, from the supplied templates.
No discussion of tool organisation would be complete without first considering the
king of tool organisation [Adam Savage]
, the principle of first order retrieval is a strong one. For a more in-your-face solution, you could go down the
pegboard-on-wheels route
, or perhaps if you’re less mobile and in a tight squeeze, then get comfortable with the French cleat and build something
full custom right into the walls
. Whatever solution you come up with, do share it with us! | 32 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6461462",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T10:42:50",
"content": "Can I get the key dimensions and re-do it in OpenSCAD? kthxbye!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6461507",
"author": "lthemick",
"tim... | 1,760,372,723.592468 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/17/processing-audio-with-the-rp2040/ | Processing Audio With The RP2040 | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"adc",
"arm",
"audio",
"digital signal processing",
"dsp",
"effects",
"guitar",
"pwm",
"raspberry pi",
"rp2040"
] | The Raspberry Pi, although first intended as an inexpensive single-board computer for use in education, is now ubiquitous in electronics communities. Its low price as well as Linux platform and accessible GPIO make it useful in many places outside the classroom. But, if you want to abandon the ease-of-use in favor of an even lower price, the Raspberry Pi foundation makes that possible as well with the RP2040 chip, commonly found on the Pico. [Jason] shows us one way to make use of this powerful chip by
putting one in an audio digital signal processing board
.
While development boards are available for this chip, [Jason] has opted instead for a custom PCB which he designed himself and includes an integrated headphone amplifier and 3.5 mm audio jacks. To do the actual DSP work, the RP2040 chip uses three 12-bit ADC channels and 16 controllable PWM channels. The platform is also equipped with the TLV320AIC3254 codec from Texas Instruments. With all of this put together, he has a functioning open-source platform he calls the DS-Pi.
[Jason] has built this as a platform for guitar effects and as a customizable guitar amp modeler, but with a platform that is Arduino-compatible and fairly easy to program it could be put to use for anything involving other types of music or audio processing, like
this specialized MIDI-compatible guitar effects platform
which is built around the same processor. | 9 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6460790",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T05:12:10",
"content": "Has anyone put a 2040 on an arduino uno style board yet?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6461561",
"author": "Owlman",
"timestamp": "2022... | 1,760,372,723.710408 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/17/drill-press-piece-fastening-101/ | Drill Press Piece Fastening 101 | Arya Voronova | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"c-clamp",
"clamp",
"clamps",
"drill press",
"drilling",
"hold down",
"vise"
] | What are the options you have for securing your workpiece to the drill press table?
[Rex Krueger] shows us that there’s plenty
, and you ought to know about them. He goes through the disadvantages of the usual C-clamps, and shows options like the regular drill press vice and a heavy-duty version that even provides a workpiece tilting mechanism, and points out small niceties like the V-grooves on the clamps helping work with round stock. For larger pieces, he recommends an underappreciated option — woodworkers’ wooden handscrew clamps, which pair surprisingly well with a drill press. Then, he talks about the hold-down drill press clamps, a favourite of his, especially when it comes to flat sheets of stock like sheet metal or plastic.
As a bonus for those of us dealing with round stock, he shows a V-block he’s made for drilling into its side, and round stock clamp, made by carefully drilling a pair of wooden hand screw clamps, for when you need to drill into a dowel from its top. The ten-minute video is a must watch for anyone not up to speed on their drill press piece fastening knowledge, and helps you improve your drilling game without having skin in it.
We’ve covered a few ingenious and unconventional drill piece fastening options before, from this wise held down
by repurposed bicycle quick-release parts
, to
an electromagnetic wise
that left our readers with mixed opinions. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6460665",
"author": "RÖB",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T04:17:55",
"content": "The main image (before you play the video) give a lot away.I drill press vice somehow seems to a better tool that the alternatives he has described.But ultimately safety is an endless journey as there are alw... | 1,760,372,723.873919 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/17/hackaday-links-april-17-2022/ | Hackaday Links: April 17, 2022 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"apollo 11",
"canon",
"drone",
"hackaday links",
"heatsink",
"Honda",
"moon dust",
"Orlan",
"regolith",
"russia",
"skiving",
"takedown",
"uav",
"ukraine",
"windows 95"
] | There are plenty of stories floating around about the war in Ukraine, and it can be difficult to sort out which ones are fact-based, and which are fabrications. Stories about the technology of the war seem to be a little easier to judge, and so stories about
an inside look at a purported Russian drone reveal
a lot of interesting technical details. The fixed-wing UAV, reported to be a Russian-made “Orlan,” looks quite the worse for wear as it’s given a good teardown by someone wearing Ukraine military fatigues. In fact, it looks downright homemade, with a fuel tank made from what looks like an old water bottle, liberal use of duct tape to hold things together, and plenty of hot glue sprinkled around — field-expedient repairs, perhaps? The big find, though, is that the surveillance drone carried a rather commonplace — and cheap — Canon EOS Rebel camera. What’s more, the camera is nestled into a 3D printed cradle, strapped in with some hook-and-loop tape, and its controls are staked in place with globs of glue. It’s an interesting collection of hardware for a vehicle said to cost the Russian military something like $100,000 to field. The video below shows a teardown of a different Orlan with similar results, plus a lot of dunking on the Russians by a cheery bunch of Ukrainians.
One of the best things about 3D printing is that it gives you not only the ability to create parts that never existed before, but also to recreate parts from existing mechanisms that are difficult or impossible to come by. And perhaps nowhere is this latter use case put to the test more than in the automotive world, where styles change on a whim and broken or missing parts can put a real crimp in your ride. Perhaps sensing the potential loss of revenue from parts that are printed rather than purchased, Honda has issued
a takedown order for any models related to their brands
. Models for anything from high-wear interior trim parts to functional parts were included in the takedown issued to Prusa’s Printables; it’s not clear if similar orders were issued to other model repositories. What’s interesting is that Prusa reports the Scary Legal Letter was accompanied by a long list of specific models it wanted removed, meaning some corporate lawyers — or more likely, their interns — trolled through the site looking for anything even slightly Honda-esque. We get the the need to protect IP, but preventing people from printing a replacement windshield washer tank cap seems overly aggressive.
If you happened to have had a spare $500,000 lying around, looks like you missed your chance to
pick up five Orlan drones
bid on a piece of space history —
a sample of the first lunar regolith collected by the Apollo 11 mission
. The moon dust is part of the “contingency sample” that Neil Armstrong was supposed to collect immediately after stepping onto the surface of the Moon; in case they had to book it out of there in a hurry, NASA wanted to make sure they had at least one souvenir. But, like any tourist, Armstrong was fiddling with his camera and didn’t get around to collecting the contingency sample for a couple of minutes, during which scientists back on Earth were no doubt horrified by thoughts of the LM sinking into the lunar dust. How exactly a plastic bag filled with dust in Armstrong’s pocket would have made such a scenario any better is a mystery, but regardless, everything went according to plan and after
a weird journey back on Earth
, the samples made it to the auction block this week, where they were
sold to an anonymous collector for half a million dollars
. We really should have been more on the ball with this story, and if anyone out there missed out on the bidding because we failed to give you a heads-up, we sincerely apologize.
In another bit of algorithmic serendipity, most of us in the Hackaday writer’s secret underground lair got a video recommended to us that we simply have to pass on. It shows
the process by which certain heatsinks are made
, and it’s a strangely hypnotic thing to watch. The process, called skiving, uses a wide and incredibly sharp blade to skim very thin sections from a block of copper or aluminum and then tilt them up to stand vertically. Increment down the block, repeat the process, and soon you’ve got a solid block of material turned into a beautiful heatsink, and without any waste, at least compared to how much swarf would be generated by traditional machining. In fact, it occurs to us that were not sure how to classify this operation — it’s certainly not additive machining, like 3D printing, but neither likewise does it fit into the subtractive machining bucket. Whatever it is, be sure to check out
the other skiving videos on the channel
— you won’t be disappointed.
And finally, if you’ve got a spare 90 minutes, we heartily suggest you find something better to do than watch
the full video of the original Windows 95 launch
. Unless, of course, you love that cringe, because there’s plenty of cringeworthy material here. For those not willing to commit to the full experience,
Gizmodo has done an admirable job pulling out the best parts
, which includes silliness from the likes of Bill Gates (of course), Steve Ballmer, and Jay Leno — we’d forgotten about his appearance. Between the checks written to Leno and the Rolling Stones for the rights to “Start Me Up” — did anyone actually read
all
the lyrics
? — this party set Microsoft back quite a few bucks. But, given that
some major players are still running Windows 95 today
, it was probably a drop in the bucket. | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6460044",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T00:07:26",
"content": "“We get the the need to protect IP, but preventing people from printing a replacement windshield washer tank cap seems overly aggressive.”Once 3D printing and scanning matures It’ll do to design IP what ... | 1,760,372,723.93382 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/17/the-555-gives-the-carolinacon-badge-life/ | The 555 Gives The CarolinaCon Badge Life | Jenny List | [
"cons"
] | [
"555",
"badgelife",
"Carolinacon"
] | For the electronic badge enthusiast, these last two years have seen something of a famine. While the pandemic may not be over yet, we’re learning to live with it in 2022, and there’s the prospect of a flush of new badges even if not all events are in-person yet. First to reach us is the
Carolinacon Online 2 badge
, a fairly simple affair which naturally has us pleased as punch because it incorporates the only chip that’s guaranteed to get you through the semiconductor shortage, an NE555 timer. It’s got everything, a flashing LED, and, well, that’s it because with the best will in the world a 555 is no powerhouse on its own. As a memento and a way to support the event it fits the bill, but it’s fair to say that this is no electronic tour de force.
Carolinacon Online 2
launches on Friday 29th of April, and features
a schedule of talks
and
a set of merch including the badge
. If you’re thinking of previous Carolinacon badges, this event has always taken the simple-but-effective route.
The version they produced in 2021
for example had a hidden message behind the silkscreen, revealed through clever placement of LEDs controlled by an ATtiny microcontroller. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6459617",
"author": "Ken",
"timestamp": "2022-04-17T20:52:19",
"content": "“As a memento and a way to support the event it fits the bill, but it’s fair to say that this is no electronic tour de force.”As a tool to solicit promotion to the hacker community via Hackaday it was a compl... | 1,760,372,723.970464 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/17/measuring-electromagnetic-fields-with-just-an-arduino-and-a-piece-of-wire/ | Measuring Electromagnetic Fields With Just An Arduino And A Piece Of Wire | Robin Kearey | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"antenna",
"electromagnetic interference",
"emf detector"
] | Electromagnetic interference problems can be a real headache to debug. If you need to prove what causes your WiFi to slow down or your digital TV signal to drop, then the ability to measure electromagnetic fields (EMF) can be a big help. Professional equipment is often very expensive, but building an EMF detector yourself is not even that difficult: just take a look at Arduino expert [Mirko Pavleski]’s
convenient hand-held electromagnetic field detector
.
The basic idea is quite simple: connect an antenna directly to an Arduino’s analog input and visualize the signal that it measures. Because the input of an ADC is high impedance, it is very sensitive to any stray currents that are picked up by the antenna. So sensitive in fact, that a resistor of a few mega-Ohms to ground is required to keep the sensor from triggering on any random kind of noise. [Mirko] made that resistance adjustable with a few knobs and switches so that the detector can be used in both quiet and noisy environments.
Making the whole device work reliably was an interesting exercise in electromagnetic engineering: in the first few iterations, the detector would trigger off its own LEDs and buzzer, trapping itself in a never-ending loop. [Mirko] solved this by encasing the Arduino inside a closed, grounded metal box with only the required wires sticking out. The antenna’s design was largely based on trial-and-error; the current setup with a 7 cm x 3 cm piece of aluminium sheet seemed to work well.
While this is not a calibrated professional-grade instrument, it should come in handy to find sources of interference, or even simply to locate hidden power cables. You can view this as a more advanced version of
[Mirko]’s Junk Box EMF Detector
; if you have a second Arduino lying around, you can use that one
to generate interference instead
. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6459631",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2022-04-17T20:58:31",
"content": "Interesting… wonder if it can pulse another pin and radiate that, so you can make a nonlinear junction detector.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,372,724.013012 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/15/multicolor-drawbot-highlights-importance-of-limit-switches/ | Multicolor Drawbot Highlights Importance Of Limit Switches | Lewin Day | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"core xy",
"CoreXY",
"multicolor plotter",
"plotter"
] | Plotters and drawing robots are fun projects that let you create art with all the precision and perfection that computer numerical control can deliver. [TUENHIDIY] demonstrates that ably with the
Multicolor DrawBot
.
The build relies on a simple XY Cartesian design, using a pair of NEMA 17 stepper motors. It’s built in the typical CoreXY fashion, running GRBL firmware on an Arduino Uno.
Where [TUENHIDIY] gets creative is in the pen itself. Rather than using a simple ballpoint or marker, instead, a retractable multicolor pen is used instead. With the multicolor pen on board, [TUENHIDIY] notes the importance of limit switches in the design. These allow the the ‘bot to make multiple passes, each time in a different color, to build up a multicolor image. Without the limit switches in place, it would be impossible to line up each following pass.
We’d love to see the build taken even further with a servo-based system for switching colors automatically. As it is, though, [TUENHIDIY] has a capable plotter that can deliver tidy multicolor artworks.
One of the more curious applications of plotters of late are those
used to send faux handwritten letters through the postal system
. Video after the break. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457517",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2022-04-15T20:43:06",
"content": "It’s not impossible to line up each colour without limit switches (which in this case should be called homing switches). The coordinates don’t change between jobs, so if you didn’t have homing switches the... | 1,760,372,724.053465 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/15/2022-sci-fi-contest-motorized-at-at-walker-gets-around-with-servos/ | 2022 Sci-Fi Contest: Motorized AT-AT Walker Gets Around With Servos | Lewin Day | [
"contests",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"2022 Sci-Fi Contest",
"AT-AT",
"star wars",
"walker"
] | The AT-AT Walker was one of the more fearsome weapons of the Star Wars universe, even if it was incredibly slow and vulnerable to getting tangled up in Rebel tow cables. However, you can build your own small-scale example using servos for propulsion,
as [Luke J. Barker] ably demonstrates.
Taking off the outer shell reveals the servo motors driving the leg linkages.
The build is a remix of the motorized AT-AT from [LtDan]
on Thingiverse
, originally powered by a 90 rpm DC gearmotor. [Luke] remixed the design, setting it up to be driven by eight servomotors instead. They’re controlled from a SparkFun RedBoard Edge, an Arduino-compatible microcontroller board that fits rather neatly inside the AT-AT shell.
Programmed with a simple sine-wave walk cycle, the AT-AT ambles along in a ponderous manner. It’s altogether very much like the
real
fictitious thing, albeit without the scorching sizzle of blaster fire ringing out across a frozen plain.
Quadruped vehicles never really caught on for military use, but that’s not to say
nobody ever tried.
Video after the break. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457482",
"author": "Mhajicek",
"timestamp": "2022-04-15T18:49:46",
"content": "Even seeing the Walker as a little kid I knew it was a horribly stupid design. Slow, vulnerable, heavy, and expensive.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,372,724.239184 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/15/the-2022-hackaday-prize-hack-chat-kicks-things-off/ | The 2022 Hackaday Prize Hack Chat Kicks Things Off | Tom Nardi | [
"contests",
"Hackaday Columns",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2022 Hackaday Prize",
"Hack Chat"
] | The 2022 Hackaday Prize is on, and we’ve already seen some incredible submissions by folks who believe their idea just might have what it takes to make the world a better place. But as with all contests, it’s good to understand all the rules before you get too involved. We promise nothing’s hidden in the fine print, but we certainly don’t fault anyone who wants to make sure.
Which is why Majenta Strongheart, Head of Design and Partnerships at our parent company Supplyframe,
stopped by this week’s Hack Chat
to answer any and all questions the community had about this global hardware design challenge. A lot of ground was covered in an hour, with Majenta making sure everyone’s questions and concerns were addressed to their satisfaction. After all, with a residency at the Supplyframe DesignLab and a total of $125,000 in prize money up for grabs, we want to make sure everyone’s got the facts straight.
So what burning questions did the Hackaday community have about this year’s Prize? Several people wanted to know more about the themes of sustainability, circularity, and climate crisis resiliency. For example, what exactly does circularity mean in this context? While Challenge #2 “Reuse, Recycle, Revamp” most clearly exemplifies the idea, Majenta explained that this time around the judges will be giving particular consideration to ideas that limit the extraction of raw materials and the production of waste.
For a practical example, 2022 Hackaday Prize judge James Newton pointed to
the direct granule extruder designed by Norbert Heinz
. The project, which took 5th place last year, allows waste plastic to easily be repurposed in a desktop 3D printer. This includes objects which the printer itself produced, but for whatever reason, are no longer desired or needed. This “life-cycle” for printed objects, wherein the same plastic can be printed over and over again into new objects, is a perfect encapsulation of circularity within the context of this year’s prize.
Others were looking for clarification on the contest rules. Specifically, there was some confusion about entering existing projects into the competition. Did it have to be a completely new idea? What if you’d already been working on the project for years, but had never shown it publicly before? Not to worry — existing projects can absolutely be entered into the 2022 Hackaday Prize. In fact, even if the project had already been entered into the Hackaday Prize previously, it’s still fair game.
But there is an important caveat: to be eligible for this year’s Prize, the project
MUST
be documented on a new Hackaday.io page. Additionally, if it’s a project that has previously been entered into a Hackaday contest, you’ll have to show that it is “
significantly different from when previously entered and show meaningful development during the course of the Contest
“, as
stated in the official rules
. In layman’s terms, it means that anyone who tries to submit and old and outdated Hackaday.io page into the competition will find their entry disqualified.
Towards the end of the Chat, Erin Kennedy, a Hackaday Prize veteran that readers may know better as “
Erin RobotGrrl
” brought up the subject of mentors. In previous years, hardware luminaries like
Andrew “Bunnie” Huang
and
Mitch Altman
were made available to offer advice and guidance to the individuals and teams behind the Prize entries. While very proud of this effort, Majenta explained that at least for now, Mentor Sessions are on hold until that aspect of the program can be retooled. The main issue is figuring out the logistics involved; planing video calls between several groups of busy folks is just as tricky as it sounds. That said, bringing the Mentor Sessions back for 2022 isn’t completely out of the question if there’s enough interest from the competitors.
We appreciate Majenta taking the time to directly answer questions from the community, and hope that those who had their questions or concerns addressed during the Chat will ultimately decide to toss their hat into the ring. With a worthy goal and plenty of opportunities to win, we sincerely want to see as many people as possible get their entries in before the October 16th deadline. If you’re ready to take the next step,
head over to the Contest page and show us what you’ve got
.
The Hack Chat is a weekly online chat session hosted by leading experts from all corners of the hardware hacking universe. It’s a great way for hackers connect in a fun and informal way, but if you can’t make it live, these overview posts as well as the
transcripts posted to Hackaday.io
make sure you don’t miss out. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,724.429242 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/15/hackaday-podcast-164-vintage-nasa-soldering-mouse-bites-attiny85-graphics-and-pvc-pontoons/ | Hackaday Podcast 164: Vintage NASA Soldering, Mouse Bites, ATTiny85 Graphics, And PVC Pontoons | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Join Hackaday Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Managing Editor Tom Nardi as they review the most interesting hacks and stories of the previous week. This time we’ll start things off by talking about the return of in-person events, and go over several major conventions and festivals that you should add to your calendar now. Then we’ll look at a NASA training film from the Space Race, an interesting radio-controlled quirk that Tesla has built into their cars for some reason, a very promising autonomous boat platform, and some high performance visuals generated by an ATtiny85. Stick around to find out what happens with an interplanetary probe looses its ride to space, and why the best new enclosure for your Raspberry Pi 4 might be a surveillance camera.
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 below!
Direct Download
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 164 Show Notes:
News This Week:
Warm Up Your Extruders, RepRap Festivals Are Back
About – 2022 Open Hardware Summit
Vintage Computer Festival East – Vintage Computer Federation
What’s that Sound?
Think you know this week’s sound?
Enter for a chance to win
a coveted Hackaday Podcast t-shirt!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
NASA Hardware Techniques: Soldering Space Electronics Like It’s 1958
Specifications You Should Read: The NASA Workmanship Standards
Basic Soldering Lesson 1 – “Solder & Flux” – YouTube
Just In Case You Want To Charge Your Neighbor’s Tesla
Best Ways To Make PCB Breakaway Tabs, Revealed
Hackaday Superconference: Nick Poole On Boggling The Boardhouse
Robotic Boat Rides High On PVC Pipe Pontoons
Mindblowing Graphics From An ATtiny85
GitHub – Antiemes/Gravity_Waves: Gravity waves Arduino demo
Coin Acceptors Are Higher-Tech Than You Think
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Skip The Shipping, Print Your Own Cable Chains
Stress-Testing An Arduino’s EEPROM
Hall Effect Module Knows Where Your Motor Is
Tom’s Picks:
Astrophotography On The Game Boy Camera
SDR Listens In To Your Tires
Wordle Comes To The Nokia N-Gage Thanks To New SDK
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Mothballing Rosalind: How To Put A Space Mission In Storage
Review: Vizy Linux-Powered AI Camera | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6462319",
"author": "Chris Muncy",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T18:23:53",
"content": "When I was in school for electronics engineering (back in the 80’s) we all carried the tradition pink pencil erasures specifically to clean edge card connectors. Worked like a charm and made the coppe... | 1,760,372,724.380932 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/15/printable-carbide-opens-up-interesting-possibilities/ | Printable Carbide Opens Up Interesting Possibilities | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"News"
] | [
"3d printed metal",
"cemented carbide"
] | Sandvik, a large company headquartered in Sweden, has apparently been producing cemented carbide for a long time — according to them, since 1932. The material is known for being highly wear-resistant. Now the company says they have
a process to 3D print the material
. You can see a video about the new material, below.
If you haven’t encountered this material, it is essentially fine carbide particles bound in metal. You’ll find the material widely used in cutting tools. The slogan “Freedom of Design has Never Been Harder” is both clever and confusing, but we took their point.
The process is more or less like other metal binder technology. A powder of tungsten carbide and cobalt mixed with glue creates a green body which you still need to fire to get to the finished part.
What kind of things can you make? Here’s a quote from one of Sandvik’s engineers:
For instance, in wire drawing, productivity is usually limited by how fast the wire can be drawn with maintained quality, which in turn depends on the temperature in the wire drawing die. People have been trying to solve this problem for decades, but it’s been extremely difficult. A 3D printed, cooled wire nib is the answer to this riddle. It took a mere four days to produce, from the first basic sketch to the fully sintered product – thanks to our materials and proprietary process.
Don’t plan on loading up your Ender 3 with cemented carbide filament. This is, after all, a metal material. However, 3D printing can offer geometries that would be difficult to obtain with traditional methods. So even if you have to turn to a professional 3D printing shop, it is good to know you can create in this ultra-hard material.
Printing in metal has a different
set of issues than using plastics
. If you really want your current printer to do metal,
it can
, but you’ll have to cheat a bit. Or try
electroplating
. | 23 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457449",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2022-04-15T16:38:12",
"content": "Sounds like something Dan Gelbart could do with his Rapidia company.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6457543",
"author": "Rumble_in_the_Jungle... | 1,760,372,724.852502 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/15/this-week-in-security-openssh-git-and-sort-of-nginx-0-day/ | This Week In Security: OpenSSH, Git, And Sort-of NGINX 0-day | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"Git",
"nginx",
"This Week in Security"
] | OpenSSH has
minted their 9.0 release
, and it includes a pair of security changes. Unlike most of the releases we cover here, this one has security hardening to prevent issues, not emergency fixes for current ones. First up, the venerable scp/rcp protocol has been removed. Your
scp
commands will now use SFTP under the hood. The more interesting security change is the new default key exchange, the NTRU algorithm. NTRU is thought to be quantum-hard.
So quick primer: Modern encryption depends on trapdoor functions — calculations that are easy to perform in one direction, but very difficult to reverse. The first such scheme was the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, which uses large prime numbers multiplied together. The multiplication is easy, but factoring the result is a very hard problem. If a shortcut were ever found to make factoring easier, the security of Diffie-Hellman would suffer. Such a shortcut has theoretically been found in Shor’s Algorithm. (Similar shortucts have theoretically been found in other schemes, including elliptic curve.)
Shor’s Algorithm is actually quite clever. The video above explains it much better than I can, but the key is that it depends on a feature that can be built into quantum computers, so that many possible solutions can be processed at once, and the incorrect ones cancel out, leaving only a likely-to-be-correct output. The problem is that cutting-edge quantum computers have managed to factor 21 into its prime factors. Not a 21 digit number, mind you, but 21.
We’re a very long ways from the quantum computing crypto-apocalypse we’ve been promised. So why are projects implementing quantum-resistant protocols? The “capture now, decrypt later” scenario. Because it’s the key exchange protocol that will be potentially vulnerable, an entire SSH session can be captured now, and once a quantum computer exists that breaks the handshake, the entire session can be decrypted offline. It’s still anyone’s guess how long till a corporation or nation-state has a practical quantum computer. Even if it takes another 20 years, some data will still be sensitive and subject to decryption.
NTRU uses
vector math on a lattice
as the one-way function, as it still holds up well against classical computers, and there hasn’t been a quantum-accelerated attack discovered against it. Just in case NTRU turns out to be vulnerable in an unforseen way, it’s being combined with the previous standard, x25519, an Elliptic Curve solution.
NSO Targets the EU?
Software from
the NSO Group has popped up in an awkward spot again
. This time, ForcedEntry seems to have been used in an attempt to compromise officials in the European Union’s European Commission. NSO has denied the allegation, stating that their tools could not have been responsible for the reported attempts. Remember that NSO sells its spyware to multiple governments will very little oversight as to what those governments do with it. It should be made clear that this is almost certainly not the government of Israel, nor even NSO directly that has gone after the EU. Some coverage has left that point a bit vague. Interestingly, rather than being discovered by professionals at the EU, the affected commissioners were notified by Apple via email.
Git Issues
Git for Windows has
just released a round of updates
to fix
CVE-2022-24765
. The problem here is that a
.git
folder at the root of a Windows drive is seen as a valid configuration for any Git operation outside a legitimate Git directory. The danger is that another user or malicious program could create this directory, and the next time Git is run, arbitrary commands can be triggered via the config.
And speaking of Git, there’s an interesting data leak that was just announced,
notgitbleed
. Weird name? [Aaron Devaney] and [Will Deane] found the issue in 2021 and picked “GitBleed” as their vulnerability name, but another group of researchers beat them to the name with
a similar but distinct problem
. Not ones to take themselves too seriously, the tongue-in-cheek alternative was chosen.
The actual problem is developers and our muscle memory when doing a git push. Make the commit, push to Github, and punch in username and password. However, when making that first commit, Git will ask you for your name and email. If not paying attention, it’s all to easy to give it a username and password. Surely, I hear you scoff, no more than a small handful of developers would make that mistake. Extrapolating from their findings, it looks like over 50,000 passwords have leaked in commit metadata over the years.
Social Typosquatting and Takeover
We’ve talked about domain/subdomain takeover, where a domain has been allowed to expire, but is still considered active somewhere. A
new tool from [Utku Sen]
lets you look for social media links that are vulnerable in the same way. Imagine I intended to link to my Twitter account,
asking you all to follow me there
, but I typo’d the link. If there wasn’t already an account at the misspelled link, someone could create one and pretend to be me. For evidence, there’s even the article where I linked to the (fake) account. Whoops! That’s where socialhunter comes in. Point it at a URL, and it looks for bogus social media links. Apparently many bug bounty programs will accept such typos as valid issues, so get to work!
Amazon RDS Heist
Some vulnerability finds just read like an old-fashioned caper film, and
this is one of them
. Lightspin researchers were working on the Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), which is Amazon’s cloud database offering. One option for the database engine for RDS is PostgreSQL. There are a handful of ways to escape the SQL engine and run code on the machine, but the obvious holes are plugged: You don’t have true superuser access, cannot load an untrusted language extension, etc. There are a handful of extensions available, and
log_fwd
is the interesting one. This lets you access log files as a foreign table, super useful for debugging. If you can investigate log files, can you check out other files with this trick, too? Researchers tried, attempting to import
../../../../../etc/passwd
. This threw an error, naturally. Life can’t be that easy.
A few more requests later, and it was clear that there was a pattern-matching validator function that was blocking path traversal. PostgreSQL uses foreign data wrappers to acess external data like this, and they include validator functions as an optional feature. Optional to the extent, you can disable them at runtime. So, disable the validator, and then try to access the
passwd
file? Paydirt.
Any file on the filesystem that the PostgreSQL daemon could read, the user could, too. After looking for anything interesting, the term
grover
popped up. Following a series of linked config files, there was finally an API credential uncovered. This credential allowed access to AWS as a
csd-grover-role
, an internal AWS service. At this point, researchers had pierced the veil, and were playing in the AWS backend. They called it a day’s work, and turned the findings over to Amazon. AWS security validated the bug, confirmed that it hadn’t been exploited in the past, and were curiously tight-lipped about what the
grover
service is. Regardless, the bug is fixed, and it’s an interesting tale of escaping the AWS sandbox.
NGINX 0-day — Maybe
There’s been some rumblings, just as this column is headed to the presses, that
NGINX may have a 0-day exploit
in the wild. It appears that specifically the LDAP reference implementation in NGINX that is vulnerable. F5 has
confirmed that there is indeed an issue
. There have been security fixes pushed to the
nginx-ldap-auth
repo, assumably fixing the issue. BlueHornet is the group that leaked the bug, and
has published its take on the story
. Using LDAP with NGINX? This is one to take a close look at. | 20 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457420",
"author": "Frankel",
"timestamp": "2022-04-15T14:44:17",
"content": "I know what a quantum computer with 4095 qubits cannot break: My 4096 bit key.google:>how many qubits 2022>The plan includes building intermediate-size machines of 127 and 433 qubits in 2021 and 2022Guess... | 1,760,372,724.630306 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/15/mini-darktower-clone-restores-your-childhood/ | MiniDarkTowerClone Restores Your Childhood | Kristina Panos | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"board game",
"classic game",
"Feather S2",
"momentary buttons",
"TFT LCD"
] | Remember
DarkTower
? No? Well, it’s a really cool combination board game, RPG, and computer game from 1981. Orson Welles pimped it on TV and explained it thusly: “collect three keys, lay siege to the tower, and defeat the enemy within”. The Tower itself was a battery-powered computer on lazy Susan that showed numbers on a couple of 7-segment displays, pictures via three carousels, and had a 12-button keypad. Thanks to a lawsuit, few copies remain, and even fewer of them are in working condition.
Working copies of
DarkTower
go for hundreds online, but who can afford such an extravagance when these 40+ year old towers are prone to battery leakage and loose connections? Certainly not [Mighty Studios], who was hoping to give the gift of
DarkTower
to a friend and
decided to build a mini reproduction instead
. Fortunately for us, the project is completely open source. You can check out the build video below, which has plenty of links, including one that goes to the code.
In this day and age, it doesn’t take much to reproduce the internals of the Tower. [Mighty Studios] pulled it off with a Feather S2, a 320 x 420 TFT LCD screen, a speaker, and a couple of momentary buttons. The screen can show all the pictures, (which were only displayed one at a time in the original game anyway), any necessary numbers, and all the requisite menu options.
[Mighty Studios] got mighty lucky when it came to the case, as [Stinkevil] had already created a dice tower version and put it on Thingiverse. After a bit of tweaking and some hole-punching, [Mighty Studios] had a mini tower scaled to the Feather S2 with just enough room to stuff in all the components and wires. Between a PDF of the original rule book and someone’s Java version of the game, [Mighty Studios] had plenty to use as a guide for programming in the rule set before mailing it off to their friend. We have to admit, we’re pretty jealous.
Don’t want to amass an army and conquer evil forces?
There are all types of board games you could emulate with a microcontroller
.
Thanks for the tip, [foamyguy]! | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457384",
"author": "Alex",
"timestamp": "2022-04-15T12:14:19",
"content": "Restoration Games did a version called “Return to Dark Tower” as well:https://restorationgames.com/return-to-dark-tower/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,372,724.528235 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/16/iot-pool-monitor-helps-you-keep-it-crystal-clear/ | IoT Pool Monitor Helps You Keep It Crystal Clear | Lewin Day | [
"home hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"ESP32",
"pool",
"pool controller"
] | Having a pool is great, but it also requires significant monitoring and maintenance to keep it crystal clear and clean. The OPNpool controller from [Coert Vonk] aims to help in this task,
integrating neatly into the smart home ecosystem of today.
OPNpool runs on an ESP32, and is capable of monitoring pool controllers, pumps, and chlorinators, as well as working with thermostats and other hardware to control the state of the pool. This allows the system to do useful things like run high-powered pumps when electricity is cheapest, or to find the best timing to run heating circuits. The controller relies on MQTT messaging and can integrate
with Home Assistant
for those that prefer to run their own cloud-independent smart home systems.
With WiFi onboard the ESP32, there’s no need for a hardwired LAN connection, and the system can be administered remotely over the web. It’s also capable of
talking with other hardware over RS-485
and bringing it under its own control. With OPNpool installed, monitoring pool conditions can be done from the leisure of one’s deck chair with a smartphone, rather than squinting and dark LCDs in equipment cabinets.
It’s a useful tool that could be just the ticket for the savvy, IoT-aware pool owner.
We’ve seen other DIY pool controllers before, too.
With summer just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to get hacking! | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457958",
"author": "Ton VAN KAAM",
"timestamp": "2022-04-16T21:49:36",
"content": "Great idea Coert. How well is the reception of wifi in combination with the esp32. I’ve build an Internet radio and used also an esp32, but I had to add an external antenna to boost the reception (6d... | 1,760,372,724.571304 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/16/easy-extensible-open/ | Easy, Extensible, Open | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Rants"
] | [
"hardware",
"open source"
] | I’m a huge DIY’er. I don’t like to buy things when I can build them myself. But honestly, that doesn’t always end up in the optimal allocation of my time, when viewed from a getting-stuff-done perspective. Sometimes, if you’ve got a bigger project in mind, the right way is the quick way, and the quick way is buying something that already works. But when that something is itself not hackable, you’d better be darn sure that it does what you need, and what you could reasonably expect to need in the future, out of the box. And that’s where extensibility comes in.
It’s rare to find products out there that are designed to be both easy to use for the newbie, but extensible for the advanced user. For one, it’s hard work to tick either one of these boxes alone, so it’s twice as hard to nail both. But my other sinking suspicion is that designers tend to have an end user in mind, and maybe only
one
end user, and that’s the problem. When designing for the newbie, convenience is king. Or if targeting the pro, you maximize flexibility, but perhaps at the expense of designed-in complexity.
There’s a way out, a cheat code, if you will. And that’s making the project open source. Go ahead and hide the complexity from the new user if you want — as long as the pro is able to dive into the schematics or the source code, she’ll figure out how to extend it herself. Openness frees the designers up to worry about making it easy to use, without compromising its flexibility.
I think that this blend of easy and extensible, through openness, is what fundamentally drove the success of Arduino. On the surface layer, there are libraries that just do what you want and drop-down menus with examples to access them. But when you needed to actually
use
the chip’s hardware peripherals directly, there was nothing stopping you. For the community at large, the fact that all of the code was openly available meant that extending the base was easy — and let’s not beat around the bush, the community’s libraries, tutorials, and example projects are the real reason for the success of the platform.
Look around you, and look out when you’re making that next non-DIY shortcut purchase. Is it easy to use? Can you make it do the things that it doesn’t yet do? Just two simple requirements, yet they seem to knock out so many products if you want both. Then look at those that are both simple and flexible — are they also open? At least in my little world, the answer is almost always “yes”.
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning?
You should sign up
! | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457832",
"author": "mgrusin",
"timestamp": "2022-04-16T14:39:29",
"content": "“Simple things should be simple. Complex things should be possible.”– Alan Kay (while working at PARC)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6457962",
... | 1,760,372,724.681839 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/16/tiny-pneumatic-tool-made-from-a-single-ish-bolt/ | Tiny Pneumatic Tool Made From A Single(-ish) Bolt | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"engraving",
"graving",
"metalworking",
"pneumatic",
"single-bolt",
"stainless"
] | We’ve noticed a couple of things about the “Widget from a Single Bolt” genre of metalworking videos. The first thing is that almost all of them need to use a freakishly large bolt, and many of them also rely on other materials to complete the build. And secondly, these builds all pretty much depend on a lathe to transform the bolt into the intended widget.
While
this single-bolt pneumatic graving tool build
is guilty on that first count, it somehow manages to avoid needing a lathe. Not that [AMbros Custom] wouldn’t have greatly benefited from a lathe to make this somewhat specialized and unusual tool a reality. A graving tool or graver is used during metal engraving, the art of making controlled cuts into flat metal surfaces to render complicated designs. A powered graver like this can make engraving faster and more precise than a traditional manual graver, which is typically powered by light taps with a special hammer.
The lathe-less build [AMbros] undertook was quite ambitious given the number of moving parts and the tight tolerances needed for a pneumatic tool. The real hero here is the hand drill pressed into service as an impromptu lathe; teamed with various tools from files to emery cloth to even a Dremel and an angle grinder, it did a respectable job turning down the various parts. The entire build is shown in the video below, and it’s worth a watch just to see what ingenuity can accomplish when coupled with sheer persistence.
Hats off to [AMbros] for sticking with what was admittedly a problematic build, and here’s hoping a lathe is in his future. With that, he may be able to pull off other impressive “single-bolt” builds, like
this combination padlock
. Or throw another bolt or two in and pull off t
his cryptex-like safe
.
[via
Instructables
] | 17 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457784",
"author": "Alex99a",
"timestamp": "2022-04-16T12:12:56",
"content": "If he used a hand drill as an impromptu lathe then he used a lathe and it isn’t a lathe-less build.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6457786",
... | 1,760,372,724.798048 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/16/paper-tape-reader-self-calibrates-speaks-usb/ | Paper Tape Reader Self-calibrates, Speaks USB | Donald Papp | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"optical",
"paper tape",
"punched tape",
"retrocomputing",
"tape reader",
"usb",
"vintage computing"
] | Input devices consisting of optical readers for punched paper tape have been around since the earliest days of computing, so why stop now? [Jürgen]’s
Paper Tape Reader
project connects to any modern computer over USB, acting like a serial communications device. Thanks to the device’s automatic calibration, it works with a variety of paper materials. As for reading speed, it’s pretty much only limited to how fast one can pull tape through without damaging it.
Stacked 1.6 mm PCBs act as an enclosure, of sorts.
While [Jürgen]’s device uses LEDs and phototransistors to detect the presence or absence of punched holes, it doesn’t rely on hardware calibration. Instead, the device takes analog readings of each phototransistor, and uses software-adjusted thresholds to differentiate ones from zeros. This allows it to easily deal with a wide variety of tape types and colors, even working with translucent materials. Reading 500 characters per second isn’t a problem if the device has had a chance to calibrate.
Interested in making your own?
The build section of the project has all the design files
; it uses only through-hole components, and since the device is constructed from a stack of 1.6 mm thick PCBs, there’s no separate enclosure needed.
Paper tape and readers have a certain charm to them.
Cyphercon 4.0 badges featured tape readers
, and we’ve even seen the unusual approach of
encoding an I
2
C byte stream directly onto tape
. | 22 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457731",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2022-04-16T08:46:38",
"content": "Nicely made, nicely documented.I almost wish I had a need for a paper tape reader!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6457735",
"author": "bob",
... | 1,760,372,724.743652 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/15/calculating-pi-on-the-4004-cpu-intels-first-microprocessor/ | Calculating Pi On The 4004 CPU, Intel’s First Microprocessor | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"4004",
"caculating pi",
"cpu",
"intel 4004",
"Pi"
] | These days we are blessed with multicore 64-bit monster CPUs that can calculate an entire moon mission’s worth of instructions in the blink of an eye. Once upon a time, though, the state of the art was much less capable; Intel’s first microprocessor, the 4004, was built on a humble 4-bit architecture with limited instructions. [Mark] decided calculating pi on this platform
would be a good challenge.
It’s not the easiest thing to do; a 4-bit processor can’t easily store long numbers, and the 4004 doesn’t have any native floating point capability either. AND and XOR aren’t available, either, and there’s only 10,240 bits of RAM to play with. These limitations guided [Mark’s] choice of algorithm for calculating the only truly round number.
[Mark] chose to use a spigot algorithm
from [Stan Wagon] and [Stanley Rabinowitz],
also referred to as the “Double-Stan Method.” This algorithm only uses integer division and is rather fitting for the limitations of the 4004 chip.
Running on a real 4004 with peripheral hardware simulated inside an STM32, it spent 3 hours, 31 minutes and 13 seconds calculating 255 digits of pi, and correctly, too. As a contrast, an experiment [Mark] ran on a first-generation Xeon processor calculated 25 million digits of pi in under a second. Oh, how far we’ve come.
We’ve seen
other resource-limited pi calculators before, too.
If you’ve been running your own mathematical experiments, don’t hesitate to
drop us a line
. Just be sure to explain in clear terms if your work is full of the more obscure letters in the Greek alphabet! | 26 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457679",
"author": "that_jojo",
"timestamp": "2022-04-16T05:21:58",
"content": "I was looking at building some 4004-based educational boards to help my work team understand the operation of a simple computer but good lord I didn’t realize how expensive they were at this point. So p... | 1,760,372,724.915983 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/15/javascript-is-everywhere-even-msdos/ | Javascript Is Everywhere. Even MSDOS | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"javascript",
"msdos"
] | Although pundits have joked that Java’s “write once, run everywhere” slogan might be better expressed as “write once, debug everywhere,” a relative of Java — JavaScript — has delivered on both promises better than its namesake. Thanks to its proliferation in browsers, JavaScript is a veritable lingua franca of computer languages which has led to entire applications being written in it using tools like Node.js and Electron, and not just browsers. But what if you are still using MSDOS or Windows 98? We know some of you do, at least on retro machines. Don’t feel left out, the DOjS project has
jSH, a JavaScript engine for DOS and related operating systems
.
Why? We don’t know, but we applaud the effort. The example from the project’s homepage shows how to rename all the file extensions in a directory:
if (args.length < 3) {
Println("Usage:");
Println(" jSH.exe renall.js ");
Exit(1);
}
var dir = args[0];
var oldExt = args[1].toUpperCase();
var newExt = args[2].toUpperCase();
var files = List(dir);
for (var i = 0; i " + dir + "\\" + newName);
Rename(dir + "\\" + oldName, dir + "\\" + newName);
}
}
Println("All done...");
Of course, there are a million other ways to do this. On the other hand, there's a package manager -- assuming you have a working network connection, and we can imagine a few cases where this could be a little useful.
If you are trying to avoid JavaScript, you might have to consider retreating to
CP/M
. Or embrace it, and do your next
logic simulation
on MSDOS (maybe). | 35 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457637",
"author": "ian 42",
"timestamp": "2022-04-16T02:19:04",
"content": "I’d prefer (for java) “write once, doesn’t run anywhere”. I’ve never seen something written in java that shouldn’t have been written in something else..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replie... | 1,760,372,725.068432 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/15/2022-sci-fi-contest-a-friendly-wall-drawing-robot/ | 2022 Sci-Fi Contest: A Friendly Wall Drawing Robot | Lewin Day | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"drawing",
"drawing robot"
] | Drawing on walls is fine for children, but adults tend to get bored quickly with such antics. Even more so when they realize who is responsible for cleaning up afterwards. Instead, consider delegating those duties to a friendly helper by the name of Fumik,
as [engineer2you] has done.
Fumik, who looks like a cute little jellyfish, can draw pictures up to 5 meters wide and 3 meters high, making for a massive canvas. Powered by an Arduino Mega 2560 outfitted with a CNC shield, a pair of stepper motors drive pulleys with toothed belts to move Fumik to various positions along the wall. Another smaller stepper motor is used to drive the pen forwards and backwards as needed. Fumik can be programmed to trace out various designs in SVG format. These must be converted to code and programmed into the Arduino, at which point Fumik can begin work, drawing on the wall with its pen.
It’s a fun build, and based on photos shared by [engineer2you,] Fumik is quite able at drawing clean and neat designs without a lot of smudging or jagged lines. As a bonus, it’s easy to swap out the pen, so multicolored designs can be drawn in multiple passes.
We’ve seen other robot drawing builds before, too,
like this capable portrait artist
. Video after the break. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457595",
"author": "r4m0n",
"timestamp": "2022-04-15T23:33:19",
"content": "Sure, this is the contest entry post, but you guys already posted about this project last month…https://hackaday.com/2022/03/10/fumik-an-arduino-wall-drawing-robot-jellyfish/Also, there’s not a single tag i... | 1,760,372,725.000198 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/17/solaris-might-be-free-if-you-want-it/ | Solaris Might Be Free If You Want It | Al Williams | [
"News",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"solaris",
"sun",
"unix"
] | There was a time when “real” engineering workstations ran
Linux
Unix. Apollo and Sun were big names and Sun’s version was Solaris. Solaris has been an iffy proposition since Oracle acquired Sun, but Oracle announced last month that you can download and use
Solaris 11.4 CBE free for non-production use
.
Do you care? If you ever wanted to run “real” Unix this is an option although, honestly, so is Free BSD and it probably has better community support. On the other hand, since you can virtualize a machine to spin up, it might be worth a little time to install it.
On the other hand, if you have an old SPARC machine — this could be big news. We aren’t sure how far back the hardware this will support will go, but this could be just what you need to breathe new life into that eBay pizza box from Sun you’ve had in the basement. Of course, if you have an FPGA SPARC system, this might be interesting too, but we have no idea how much other stuff you need to implement to be able to benefit from Solaris.
Will you install Solaris? If so, tell us why. We are sure we won’t have to prompt you to tell us why not. In 2017, we thought we’d seen the
end of Solaris
, but apparently not. Maybe this will help those folks
still on Solaris 9
. | 58 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6458713",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2022-04-17T14:03:33",
"content": "“There was a time when “real” engineering workstations ran Linux.”I think you meant Unix, not Linux.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6458717",
"author... | 1,760,372,725.159949 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/17/laptop-usb-c-charging-hack-lets-you-leave-the-brick-at-home/ | Laptop USB-C Charging Hack Lets You Leave The Brick At Home | Dan Maloney | [
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"brick",
"charger",
"laptop",
"power supply",
"USB C",
"wall wart"
] | At their best, laptops are a compromise design. Manufacturers go to great lengths to make the slimmest, lightest, whatever-est laptops possible, and the engineering that goes into doing so is truly amazing. But then they throw in the charger, which ends up being a huge brick with wire attached to it, and call it a day.
Does it have to be that way? Probably, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to slim down the overall footprint of laptops at least a little. That’s what [Joe Gaz] did when he
hacked his laptop to allow for USB-C charging
. Tired of the charger anchoring down his HP X360, [Joe] realized that he could harvest the PCB from a USB-C charger adapter dongle and embed it inside his laptop.
We’ve seen similar modifications made to Thinkpads
in the past, and it’s good to see the process isn’t that far removed with other brands.
After popping open the laptop, which is always an adventure in reverse mechanical engineering, he found that removing the OEM charger jack left just enough room for the USB-C charger. Mounting the board required a 3D printed bracket, while enlarging the original hole in the side of the laptop case took some cringe-inducing work with a file. It looked like it was going to be pretty sloppy at first, but he ended up doing a pretty neat job in the end. The whole modification process is in the video below.
The end result is pretty slick — [Joe] can now carry a much more compact USB wall-wart-style charger, or eschew the charger altogether and rely on public USB charging stations. Either way, it sure beats lugging a brick around. If you’re interested in laptop hacking, or even if you just want to harvest the goodies from a defunct machine, check out
this guide to laptop anatomy
by our own [Arsenijs Picugins]. | 47 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6458439",
"author": "Jonathan Holmes",
"timestamp": "2022-04-17T12:01:22",
"content": "This is great!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6458521",
"author": "Joe Gaz",
"timestamp": "2022-04-17T12:39:56",
"content": "Tha... | 1,760,372,727.052889 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/17/kicad-plugin-gives-your-pcbs-that-handmade-look/ | KiCAD Plugin Gives Your PCBs That Handmade Look | Al Williams | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"KiCAD",
"pcb",
"Printed Circuit Board"
] | The first PCBs we built involved a draftsman laying out large pieces of tape. The finished artwork would be photographically reduced to produce the board. This solved a few problems. It was easier to work on the large pieces and any errors were reduced by the scale amount. Boards from this era have a distinct appearance because the tracks are generally curved. But when computer-aided drafting took over, the early packages couldn’t deal with wavy lines making all sorts of angles. So traces started appearing at very common angles like 45 degrees or 90 degrees only. If you use KiCAD, though,
there’s no reason to have rectilinear traces
. Now
there is a plugin to help make your boards appear like old-fashioned circuit boards
.
The video by [mitxela] below talks about how we got here and debunks some common myths about PCB design. The plugin produces rounded corners and teardrop-shaped pads. There’s also a
second post
on the topic with more details. The effect isn’t just ornamental. There are some reasons
graceful traces might be better than sharp angles
. | 29 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6458132",
"author": "Artenz",
"timestamp": "2022-04-17T08:29:46",
"content": "It is certainly not true that you can send “any design” and it will get “etched to perfection”. Even when I request electrical checks, I have received boards that turn out to have shorts. Making your desi... | 1,760,372,727.383382 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/16/taking-a-close-look-at-parallel-plate-capacitors/ | Taking A Close Look At Parallel Plate Capacitors | Al Williams | [
"Parts"
] | [
"capacitors",
"physics"
] | Of course, we all know that capacitors are conceptually two conductors separated by a dielectric of some sort. But outside of air-variable capacitors you normally don’t see them looking like that. For example, a film capacitor has its plates rolled up in a coil with an insulating film in between. You can’t really see that unless you take them apart. But [Electronoobs] makes some
giant capacitors using large plates
and does a few experiments to demonstrate their characteristics. You can see his work in the video below.
The arrangement reminded us of a Leyden jar except there’s no physical motion. He also had some entertaining footage of electrolytic capacitors exploding when connected backwards. The reason, by the way, is that electrolytic capacitors have conductive goo in them. By putting a controlled current through them during manufacturing, a very thin insulating layer forms on one electrode. The thinner the layer, the higher the potential capacitance is. The downside is that putting current in the opposite way of the formation current causes catastrophic results, as you can see.
The value of a capacitor depends on the area, the spacing, and the type of dielectric between the plates. The video covers how each of those alters the capacitor value. Real capacitors also have undesirable characteristics like leakage and parasitic resistance or inductance.
It used to be that capacitance meters were exotic gear, but these days many meters have that capability. This would be a great set of experiments for a classroom or as the basis for a kid’s science project. For example, measuring different dielectric materials to determine which is the best for different purposes.
Granted, capacitors are pretty basic physics, but it is easy to get wrapped up in using them and not think about what’s going on inside. This video is a good introduction or a refresher, if you need one. It is easy enough to make
your own variable capacitors
or even
special capacitors for high voltages
. | 16 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6458090",
"author": "Valeriu Sprintu",
"timestamp": "2022-04-17T05:24:41",
"content": "Very good presentation for beginners.They should take care that SMD capacitor line marking is for ++++",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "645812... | 1,760,372,726.768161 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/16/a-neat-little-tool-to-reset-the-fuses-on-your-attiny/ | A Neat Little Tool To Reset The Fuses On Your ATtiny | Robin Kearey | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"attiny",
"boost converter",
"hv programming"
] | If you’re an experienced hacker, you’ve probably run into a problem at some point and thought “let’s make a tool to automate that”. A few hours later you’ve got your tool, but then realize that the amount of work you put into making the tool vastly exceeds what you would have needed to solve the original problem manually. That really doesn’t matter though: developing a fancy tool can be a rewarding experience that teaches you way more about the original problem than you would have learned otherwise. [sjm4306]’s
ATtiny High Voltage Fuse Reset-er
is a clever device that firmly falls into this category.
The problem it solves is familiar to anyone who’s ever worked with Atmel/Microchip’s ATtiny series of microcontrollers: set one of the configuration fuses incorrectly and you’re no longer able to reprogram your chip. Getting the ATtiny back to its original configuration requires a high-voltage programming step that involves pulling the reset pin to 12 V in what’s otherwise a 5 V system. You could simply grab a spare 12 V supply and hack together a level shifter with a few transistors, but where’s the fun in that?
[sjm4306]’s solution is built on a pretty purple PCB that contains an ATmega328, an OLED display, and sockets to accommodate various versions of the ATtiny series microcontrollers. To generate the required 12 V, one could simply use an off-the-shelf boost converter IC. But instead, he decided it would be interesting to make such a circuit out of discrete components and control it using the ATmega. After all, this chip already contains timers to generate PWM signals and an ADC to measure the converter’s output voltage, so all it took was to write some control logic in the form of a PID controller.
The end result, as you can see in the video embedded below, is a convenient little PCB that runs off a 5 V USB power supply and resets the fuses on your ATtiny at the push of a button. Sometimes, simple tools that do one thing well are all you need; however, if you’re looking for an all-in-one AVR programmer that also supports HV programming, check out
this AVR Multi-Tool
. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6459435",
"author": "happy",
"timestamp": "2022-04-17T19:26:41",
"content": "It is a beautiful device.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6462150",
"author": "Twisty Plastic",
"timestamp": "2022-04-18T15:41:35",
"conten... | 1,760,372,726.709992 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/16/rss-printer-gives-you-the-hard-copy-news-you-desire/ | RSS Printer Gives You The Hard Copy News You Desire | Lewin Day | [
"classic hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"news",
"news ticker",
"thermal printer"
] | The days of yore saw telex machines and dot-matrix printers with continuous feed paper churning out data in hardcopy form in offices around the world. [Jan Derogee] wanted a bit of that old-school charm, and set about building a RSS news printer using
a venerable old printer in his possession.
The build relies on an ESP8266, with the WiFi-enabled microcontroller readily capable of jumping online and querying RSS feeds for content. It scrapes the XML files for title, description, and publication date information, and formats this for output to the printer. The microcontroller then spits out the data over a Commodore serial interface to a Brother HR-5C printer. Unlike dot-matrix printers of its contemporary era, the HR-5C is a thermal printer. Once loaded up with a roll of the appropriate paper, it can print continuously without requiring any hard-to-source ink ribbons.
Armed with a continuous supply of wireless internet and 210 mm rolls of thermal printer paper, [Jan]’s system should provide news summaries to him for years to come.
We’ve seen similar retro news ticker projects before, too
. Video after the break. | 23 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457987",
"author": "Misterlaneous",
"timestamp": "2022-04-16T23:17:05",
"content": "This would have been super cool in 2005, but print is dead. Waste of resources.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6458035",
"author": "... | 1,760,372,727.322302 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/16/can-you-help-solve-the-mystery-of-this-1930s-tv/ | Can You Help Solve The Mystery Of This 1930s TV? | Jenny List | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"crt",
"television",
"tv"
] | 84 years ago, a teenager built a TV set in a basement in Hammond, Indiana. The teen was a radio amateur, [John Anderson W9YEI], and since it was the late 1930s the set was a unique build — one of very few in existence built to catch one of the first experimental TV transmitters on air at the time, W9XZV in Chicago. We know about it because of its mention in a 1973 talk radio show, and because that gave a tantalizing description it’s caught the interest of [Bill Meara, N2CQR].
He’s tracking down whatever details he can find through a series of blog posts
, and though he’s found a lot of fascinating stuff about early TV sets he’s making a plea for more. Any TV set in the late ’30s was worthy of note, so is there anyone else out there who has a story about this one?
The set itself was described as an aluminium chassis with a tiny 1″ CRT, something which for a 1930s experimenter would have been an expensive and exotic part. He’s found
details of a contemporary set
published in a magazine, and looking at its circuit diagram we were immediately struck by how relatively simple the circuit of an electrostatically-deflected TV is. Its tuned radio frequency (TRF) radio front end is definitely archaic, but something that probably made some sense in 1939 when there was only a single channel to be received. We hope that [Bill] manages to turn up more information.
We’ve
covered some early TV work here not so long ago
, but if you fancy a go yourself
it’s not yet too late to join the party
. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457936",
"author": "Ken",
"timestamp": "2022-04-16T20:30:56",
"content": "Oh great, so we’re blaming the ‘boob tube’ on radio amateurs now? LOL",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6457943",
"author": "Amiable Ninja",
"times... | 1,760,372,726.923982 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/15/this-diy-updi-programmer-is-nice-and-cheap/ | This DIY UPDI Programmer Is Nice And Cheap | Donald Papp | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"arduino",
"AVR",
"microcontoller programming",
"UPDI",
"usb"
] | [Daumemo] likes experimenting with DIY electronics, and like many people, eventually ran across an AVR microcontroller with a Unified Program and Debug Interface (UPDI). One option is of course to purchase an UPDI programmer, but an even better solution was to
make a DIY USB version from nice, cheap parts
.
Programming an Attiny404 over the UPDI interface.
UPDI is an interface for external programming and on-chip debugging of microcontrollers, and [Daumemo]’s solution is based on the
jtag2updi
project. It combines an Arduino Nano (in this case, a clone) with a single resistor, a single capacitor, and a six pin angled header (with a cleverly bent pin) to enable programming UPDI devices over a USB connection. [Daumemo] is happy to report that the device works just fine in both Microchip Studio with AVRDUDE, or
PlatformIO
.
Is an Arduino Nano a bit overpowered in this role? Maybe, but the price is certainly right. There’s no need for a custom PCB either, since everything can be soldered direct to the Nano board. A
matching 3D printed enclosure
is about all that’s needed to make a robust and reliable DIY USB UPDI programmer out of a handful of parts, and that sounds good to us.
On the other hand, if you do find yourself making custom PCBs, you may be interested in another of [Daumemo]’s DIY projects: a
printable structure to turn a rotary tool into a PCB drill press
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457425",
"author": "Severe Tire Damage",
"timestamp": "2022-04-15T15:16:27",
"content": "Is an Arduino Nano a bit overpowered in this role?Since you asked. No. About right actually.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6457919",
... | 1,760,372,726.968221 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/14/weve-heard-of-bricking-a-hard-drive-but/ | We’ve Heard Of Bricking A Hard Drive, But… | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"fraud",
"retrocomputing",
"scam"
] | Mass storage has come a long way since the introduction of the personal computer. [Tech Time Traveller] has an interesting video about the dawn of PC hard drives focusing on a company called
MiniScribe
. After a promising start, they lost an IBM contract and fell on hard times.
Apparently, the company was faking inventory to the tune of $15 million because executives feared for their jobs if profits weren’t forthcoming. Once they discovered the incorrect inventory, they not only set out to alter the company’s records to match it, but they also broke into an outside auditing firm’s records to change things there, too.
Senior management hatched a plan to charge off the fake inventory in small amounts to escape the notice of investors and government regulators. But to do that, they need to be able to explain where the balance of the nonexistent inventory was. So they leased a warehouse to hold the fraud inventory and filled it with bricks. Real bricks like you use to build a house. Around 26,000 bricks were packaged in boxes, assigned serial numbers, and placed on pallets. Auditors would see the product ready to ship and there were even plans to pretend to ship them to CompuAdd and CalAbco, two customers, who had agreed to accept and return the bricks on paper allowing them to absorb the $15 million write off a little at a time.
Unfortunately, the fictitious excellent financial performance led to an expectation of even better performance in the future which necessitated even further fraud. The company had turned around, but only on paper. A downturn in the computer business and maxed-out credit signaled the beginning of the end. Suppliers and employees weren’t getting paid. A senior manager violated insider trader rules and dumped a lot of stock.
The turnaround CEO finally resigned and a new CEO found the fraud and released the findings that they were in the hole for $100 million. Bankruptcy pushed the company’s assets to Maxtor and criminal charges against 16 people ensued ending in fines and jail time. It isn’t clear if any of the boxed bricks were shipped to anyone by accident or by a disgruntled employee with a rubber paycheck. [Tech Time Traveller] speculates that if someone has one, it would be quite the collector’s item.
We hear about companies doing
questionable things
, of course, but this really is impressive in scope. At least they weren’t scamming end users as
some tech companies have done
. | 38 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457317",
"author": "Eric Weatherby",
"timestamp": "2022-04-15T06:01:29",
"content": "“Once they discovered the incorrect inventory, they not only set out to alter the company’s records to match it, but they also broke into an outside auditing firm’s records to change things there, ... | 1,760,372,727.192009 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/14/a-nitrogen-soldering-iron-review/ | A Nitrogen Soldering Iron Review | Al Williams | [
"Reviews"
] | [
"nitrogen",
"soldering",
"soldering iron"
] | If you’ve ever welded, you know that some welders blow a shield gas over the work for different reasons. For example, you often use a gas to displace oxygen from the area and avoid oxidation. You can also solder using a nitrogen shield. This allows higher temperatures and a reduction of flux required in the solder. Wave soldering often uses nitrogen, and JBC offers a soldering iron that can employ nitrogen shield gas. [SDG Electronics] puts
that iron through its paces
in the video below.
As you might expect, this isn’t a $50 soldering iron. The price for the iron is just under $1,000 and that doesn’t include the power supply or the nitrogen source. The nitrogen generator that converts compressed air into nitrogen is particularly expensive so [SDG] just used a cylinder of gas.
Cost aside, is it worth it? The video shows solder jobs at different flux levels with and without nitrogen. We couldn’t see much difference, although [Steve] mentions that the soldering seemed to be a little easier under nitrogen. The higher flux solder also performed better. Examination under a microscope showed some differences, but nothing that would compel you to spend on the gas iron. With no flux, the solder didn’t want to wet. Adding a small amount of flux resulted in a good joint with nitrogen and while the normal soldering iron didn’t do as well, it wasn’t bad and it isn’t clear why this would be a big advantage for practical use.
There were some advantages to using nitrogen for some specialty soldering jobs, but it didn’t seem compelling. Using flux helps and you would have to buy a lot of flux to break even on the investment in this iron.
We’ve seen lots of
inexpensive irons
lately that do a good job. Or, why not
convert a really cheap iron
into a usable station? | 30 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457289",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2022-04-15T03:02:08",
"content": "This seems like it would be something, at least not entirely out of the realms of possibility, that someone could build themselves, if all be it not as polished, no doubt much less expensive. A small secti... | 1,760,372,727.119513 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/14/engineering-on-a-deadline-for-squid-game/ | Engineering On A Deadline ForSquid Game | Adam Fabio | [
"hardware"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"MrBeast",
"Squid Game",
"william osman"
] | If you asked us for an epic tale of designing and building under a deadline, one of the last places we would think to look is a
MrBeast
video. Yet here we are, thanks in no small part to the
epic skills of one [William Osman]
.
What do you do when a major YouTube celebrity asks you to handle a project with an impossible deadline? If you’re [William], you say “heck yeah” and figure out the details later. In this case, it was famed YouTuber [Jimmy Donaldson], aka
MrBeast
, who was planning his own version of
Squid Game
. In this version, no one dies, but a few players do walk away with a lot of cash.
The premise is simple — “kill” people with a motion-sensing gun turret, just like the one in the show. The problem is that the show had all the tools of movie magic – multiple takes, video editing, you name it. [William] was tasked with handling a live event, with 456 real people, and no do-overs. Oh, and the whole thing had to be ready in 3 weeks.
The kills had to be pretty obvious too – we’re talking simulated blood squirting everywhere. So [William] decided to build his own version of a blood squib – the device Hollywood has used for decades to simulate bullet wounds. Initial work with pneumatic systems proved to be impractical. That’s when he put on his manager hat — and hired people to solve the problem for him. You might recognize a few of them —
[Allen Pan] makes an appearance
, as well as
chemical genius [NileRed]
. Even
[TheBackYardScientist] shows up
.
The video documents [William]’s journey, getting 500 copies of a board built and delivered on deadline. As such, there isn’t a ton of detail about the internal workings of the system. A pair of AA batteries feed into a boost converter, which powers an ESP8266 inside an ESP-WROOM-02 module. The ESP drives a few LEDs and a MOSFET. The MOSFET is connected to the star of the show – an
MGJ firewire initiator
– think of it as a model rocket igniter on steroids. The initiator hides behind a bag of YouTube-friendly yellow “blood”. When the system is commanded to kill, the initiator pops the bag, spraying blood everywhere.
Doing this for one device isn’t so bad, but we’re following
Squid Game
rules – which means 456 competitors. Further, there were 100 iPhones loaded with a custom kill app for the workers. Add a central server into the mix, and you’ve got 557 devices in close quarters basting on 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz. Did we mention that [William] had never done a test with more than a handful of devices?
Want to find out what happens? Check out the video below! | 35 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457235",
"author": "Braddo",
"timestamp": "2022-04-15T00:15:02",
"content": "TLDW",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6457237",
"author": "skrubis",
"timestamp": "2022-04-15T00:18:49",
"content": "the vide... | 1,760,372,727.263819 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/14/the-simplest-electro-mechanical-telephone-exchange-that-actually-works/ | The Simplest Electro-Mechanical Telephone Exchange That Actually Works | Robin Kearey | [
"classic hacks",
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"analog telephony",
"pots",
"telephone exchange"
] | While rarely seen by users, the technology behind telephone exchanges is actually quite interesting. In the first hundred or so years of their existence they evolved from manually-operated switchboards to computer-controlled systems, but in between those two stages was a time when dialling and switching was performed electromechanically. This was made possible by the invention of the stepping switch, a type of pulse-operated relay that can connect a single incoming wire to one of many outgoing wires.
Public telephone exchanges contained hundreds of these switches, but as [dearuserhron] shows, it’s possible to make a smaller system with way fewer components:
the Cadr-o-station is built around one single stepper switch
. Although it looks rather complicated, the only other components are a bunch of ordinary 24 V relays and a few power supplies. Together they make up a minimal telephone exchange that connects up to ten handsets.
It doesn’t have all the functionality of a larger system however, as only a single voice circuit is made to which all phones are automatically connected. Still, it does allow users to dial a number and let the other phone ring, which might be good enough for a home or indeed the hackerspace where it’s currently sitting. It’s also a fine demonstration of how relatively simple technology can be applied to make a surprisingly complex system.
[dearuserhron] wrote
an in-depth article
on the workings of electromechanical telephone exchanges, which might come in helpful to anyone who’d like to design such a system for their own home. For a more general introduction into analog phone technology, check out
our analysis of a 1970s rotary telephone
. | 34 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457162",
"author": "Col. Panek",
"timestamp": "2022-04-14T20:36:48",
"content": "The coolest relays are the ones which stepped two ways. They’d step up for the first number, then over for the second. So they had like 100 contacts in one deck, and there were two or 3 decks. I forgo... | 1,760,372,727.454489 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/14/2022-sci-fi-contest-nixie-calculator-is-resplendent-in-walnut-enclosure/ | 2022 Sci-Fi Contest: Nixie Calculator Is Resplendent In Walnut Enclosure | Lewin Day | [
"contests"
] | [
"2022 Sci-Fi Contest",
"calculator",
"nixie tube",
"nixie tubes"
] | The Nixie tube is one of the most popular display technologies amongst the hacker and maker set. Glowing numerals can warm even the coldest heart, particularly when they’re energized with hundreds of volts. [ohad.harel] used these glorious displays to build the TORI Nixie Calculator,
with beautiful results.
The build uses seven IN-12 Nixie tubes for numerals, along with an IN-15A which displays mathematical symbols like +, %, and M. It’s equipped with a 32-key keyboard using mechanical key switches. Everything is wrapped up in a beautiful walnut enclosure that fits the tubes and keyboard perfectly, giving the final build a nice mid-century aesthetic.
Impressively, it goes beyond the basic usual calculator functions, also handling conversions between metric and imperial units. It’s a nice feature that would make it a wonderful tool to have on one’s desk beyond the simple aesthetic charm of the Nixie tubes.
Nixie projects never seem to die. Their beauty and warmth captivates builders to this day. Indeed, we’ve even seen some makers go to the trouble of creating
new tubes from scratch! | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457129",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2022-04-14T18:50:07",
"content": "Beautiful it may be but once again I feel tricked into following a link to an advert. No schematics or other project files, just a link to a web site where you can buy one.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth"... | 1,760,372,727.496196 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/14/remoticon-2021-jeroen-domburg-sprite_tm-hacks-the-buddah-flower/ | Remoticon 2021 // Jeroen Domburg [Sprite_tm] Hacks The Buddah Flower | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Remoticon",
"8051",
"badge hacking",
"hacking",
"rickroll",
"sprite_tm"
] | Nobody likes opening up a hacking target and finding a black epoxy blob inside, but all hope is not lost. At least not if you’ve got the dedication and skills of [Jeroen Domburg] alias [Sprite_tm].
It all started when [Big Clive] ordered a chintzy Chinese musical meditation flower and found a black blob. But tantalizingly, the shiny plastic mess also included a 2 MB flash EEPROM. The questions then is: can one replace the contents with your own music? Spoiler: yes, you can! [Sprite_tm] and a team of Buddha Chip Hackers distributed across the globe got to work. (
Slides here
.)
[Jeroen] started off with
binwalk
and gets, well, not much. The data that [Big Clive] dumped had high enough entropy that it looks either random or encrypted, with the exception of a couple tiny sections. Taking a look at the data, there was
some
structure, though. [Jeroen] smelled shitty encryption. Now in principle, there are millions of bad encryption methods out there for every good one. But in practice, naive cryptographers tend to gravitate to a handful of bad patterns.
Bad pattern number one is XOR. Used correctly, XORing can be a force for good, but if you XOR your key with zeros, naturally, you get the key back as your ciphertext. And this data had a lot of zeros in it. That means that there were many long strings that started out the same, but they seemed to go on forever, as if they were pseudo-random. Bad crypto pattern number two is using a linear-feedback shift register for your pseudo-random numbers, because the parameter space is small enough that [Sprite_tm] could just brute-force it. At the end, he points out their third mistake — making the encryption so fun to hack on that it kept him motivated!
Decrypted, the EEPROM data was a filesystem. And the machine language turned out to be for an 8051, but there was still the issue of the code resident on the microcontroller’s ROM. So [Sprite_tm] bought one of these flowers, and started probing around the black blob itself. He wrote a dumper program that output the internal ROM’s contents over SPI. Ghidra did some good disassembling, and that let him figure out how the memory was laid out, and how the flow worked. He also discovered a “secret” ROM area in the chip’s flash, which he got by trying some random functions and looking for side effects. The first hit turned out to be a
memcpy
. Sweet.
[Neil555]’s Rosetta Stone
Meanwhile, the Internet was still working on this device, and [Neil555] bought a flower too. But this one had a chip, rather than a blob, and IDing this part lead them to an SDK, and that has an audio suite that uses a derivative of WMA audio encoding. And that was enough to get music loaded into the flower. (Cue a short rick-rolling.) Victory!
Well, victory if all you wanted to do was hack your music onto the chip. As a last final fillip, [Sprite_tm] mashed the reverse-engineered schematic of the Buddha Flower together with [Thomas Flummer]’s
very nice DIY Remoticon badge
, and uploaded our very own intro theme music into the device on a badge. Bonus points? He added LEDs that blinked out the LSFR that were responsible for the “encryption”. Sick burn!
Editor’s Note: This is the last of the Remoticon 2 videos we’ve got. Thanks to all who gave presentations, to all who attended and participated in the
lively Discord back channel
, and to all you out there who keep the hacking flame alive. We couldn’t do it without you, and we look forward to a return to “normal” Supercon sometime soon. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457142",
"author": "David Given",
"timestamp": "2022-04-14T19:32:27",
"content": "Hey, congratulations!I was one of the people on the thread, and did some work teaching the new instructions to ghidra to reverse engineer the ROM (ghidra is _awesome_), but after several failed attemp... | 1,760,372,727.547826 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/13/2022-sci-fi-contest-a-hand-following-robot-powered-by-arduino/ | 2022 Sci-Fi Contest: A Hand-Following Robot, Powered By Arduino | Lewin Day | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"robot",
"ultrasonic"
] | If there’s one thing audiences love in sci-fi, it’s a cute robot companion that follows the heroes around. If you want one of your own,
starting with this build from [mircemk] could be just the ticket
.
The build relies on the classic Arduino Uno microcontroller, which talks to a HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor module and two infrared sensors in order to track a human target and follow it around. Drive is thanks to four DC gear motors, driven by a L293D motor driver, with a two-cell lithium battery providing power for everything onboard.
The robot works in a simple manner, following a hand placed in front of the robot’s sensors. First, the robot checks for the presence of an object in front using the ultrasonic sensor. If something is detected, the twin infrared sensors mounted left and right are used to guide the robot, following the hand.
It’s not a sophisticated algorithm, and it won’t really let your robot follow you down a crowded street. However, it’s a great project to learn on for beginners and could serve as a great entry into more advanced projects
using face tracking or other techniques
. Video after the break. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,727.582197 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/13/home-made-stirling-engines-from-expedient-materials/ | Home Made Stirling Engines From Expedient Materials | Jenny List | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"stirling",
"stirling cycle",
"stirling engine"
] | Many of us have read about Stirling engines, engines which form mechanical heat pumps and derive motion from the expansion and contraction of a body of air. A very few readers may have built one, but for many they remain one of those projects we’d rather like to try but never quite have the inclination.
The YouTube channel of [Geral Na Prática]
should provide plenty of vicarious enjoyment then, with the construction of a range of Stirling engines from commonly available materials. We have Coke cans, PVC pipe, and nebuliser cartridges forming pistons and cylinders, with wire wool serving as a regenerative heat store. The latest video is below the break,
an amazing 10-cylinder rotary device
.
The Stirling engine is perhaps the quintessential example of a device whose time never came, never able to compete in power and efficiency with first steam engines and then internal combustion engines, it has over the years been subject to a variety of attempted revivals. Today it has appeared variously in
solar power projects
and in
NASA’s hypothetical off-world power plants
, and will no doubt continue to be promoted as an alternative energy conversion mechanism. We’ve featured many working model Stirling engines in our time and even done a longer investigation of them, but sadly we’ve yet to see a story involving a practical version.
Our thanks to [TheFinn] for the tip! | 28 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6456094",
"author": "fiddlingjunky",
"timestamp": "2022-04-13T19:04:53",
"content": "Stirling engines found a home in AIP (a catch-all term for subs in the traditional “diesel” class with improved underwater loiter/travel endurance) subs for a time. The Swedish Gotland-class, which ... | 1,760,372,727.645249 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/13/the-future-of-energy-storage-on-both-sides-of-the-meter/ | The Future Of Energy Storage On Both Sides Of The Meter | Maya Posch | [
"Engineering",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"grid storage",
"Heat pump",
"hydrogen storage",
"thermal energy storage"
] | That energy storage is a hot topic is hardly a surprise to anyone these days. Even so, energy storage can take a lot of different forms, some of which are more relevant to the utility provider (like grid-level storage), while others are relevant to business and home owners (e.g. whole-house storage), and yet other technologies live in this tense zone between utility and personal interest, such as (electric)
vehicle-to-grid
.
For utilities a lot of noise is being made about shiny new technologies, such as hydrogen-based storage, while home- and business owners are pondering on the benefits of relying solely on the utility’s generosity with feed-in tariffs, versus charging a big battery from the solar panels on the roof and using the produced power themselves. Ultimately the questions here are which technologies will indeed live up to their promises, and which a home owner may want to invest in.
Dealing With A Changing Grid
Bath County Pumped Storage Station (Credit: CHA)
For many decades the electrical grid has been a relatively straightforward system with dispatchable generators and consumers, with the former producing when required and the latter consuming and a bit of on-grid storage to smooth over the bumps and valleys. The biggest change that has been occurring over the past decades has been the introduction of electrical generators that only produce electricity when weather and other conditions are just right.
The result of this has been that the peaks got a lot taller and the valleys a lot deeper. While curtailment of unnecessary (excess) power would be a potential solution, a popular idea is to use as much of this excess power as possible at a later point by storing it somehow. At this point in time, most grid-level energy storage is provided by compressed air energy storage (
CAES
) and pumped hydro storage (
PHS
). What these two technologies have in common is that they both have a relatively low energy density by volume, but make up by that through having a lot of volume.
In the case of the second-largest PHS system, the
Bath County Pumped Storage Station
in Virginia, its upper reservoir has a capacity of 43,000,000 m
3
(35,599 acre-ft), which provides it with enough gravity potential to provide power for 11 hours at around 3 GW, for a total of 24 GWh. With a round-trip efficiency of 79%, it provides important storage for
PJM Interconnection
, to buffer energy and take the stress off transmission interconnects between parts of the grid.
For CAES there are not nearly as many installations as there are of PHS installations, mostly due to the complexity of finding subterranean caverns with the right (airtight) properties. Because of this, there are only two CAES installations in operation in the world today: the McIntosh, Alabama (USA) and Huntorf, Elsfleth (Germany) CAES plants. The former has a capacity of 2,860 MWh, the latter 870 MWh.
As a result of the diabatic process used with these CAES plants, the compression process creates waste heat, and subsequent expansion requires input of heat. In the case of these existing plants, natural gas plants are used for this, which in the case of the McIntosh CAES plant results in an overall system efficiency of 27%, up to over 40% when combined with energy recovery mechanisms.
For PHS the number of potential new sites where such storage sites could be economically constructed aren’t too many, which has led to the focus on new technologies that could provide PHS-like storage, without the logistical and situational complications.
Hydrogen Storage
The so-called ‘
hydrogen economy
‘ has its roots in the 1970s, when the term was coined by John Bockris during a talk at General Motors. The main driving idea behind it is that hydrogen can be used to decarbonize many aspects of industrial processes, as well as to create ammonia (NH
3
), which forms an essential element of fertilizer. It’s also been suggested to use ammonia as an intermediate form before converting back to hydrogen.
At this point in time natural gas (NG, mostly fossil methane) provides most of the hydrogen and ammonia used. As a result, the use of excess electricity to create hydrogen via electrolysis has been suggested as a source instead. None of this has been developed into large-scale projects yet, however. This comes alongside trials to mix hydrogen into NG, up to a certain percentage. Large amounts of hydrogen in NG infrastructure can lead to issues such as metal embrittlement, due to the hydrogen diffusing through pipe walls.
To
store hydrogen
, for later use (e.g. time-shifting large amounts of energy), currently mature technologies are
compression
and
liquefying
. Complications here are the immediate energy loss from electrolysis (~20-30%), the losses of compression or cooling down the hydrogen gas, the leakage from storage containers, and if conversion back to electricity is desired, the 40-60% efficiency of a hydrogen fuel cell (HFC).
Everything taken together, the round-trip efficiency of a hydrogen-based storage system for the grid would be
between 18 – 46%
, according to studies. This would be a major drop in efficiency compared to PHS and CAES systems, while adding more complexity and the potential hazards of handling cryogenic liquids and highly inflammable gases. This makes such a system a very hard sell. When the hydrogen is to be used immediately, the question is also whether it cannot be produced more efficiently through e.g.
radiolysis
.
Thermal Energy Storage
Overview of the thermal energy transfer in the Natrium reactor design. (Source: TerraPower)
Comparatively, thermal energy storage (
TES
) is significantly more efficient and straightforward. It’s seeing significant use in the form of
geothermal heat pump
s which can cool and heat buildings rather efficiently. In an industrial setting, molten salt storage is a common type of
sensible heat
storage, the concept of which is behind
storage heaters
, which many private homes use.
With concentrated solar power (
CSP
) plants, molten salt is often used to store the heat from the solar rays, after which the heated salt can be used to generate steam for use with a conventional steam turbine generator. This is also the operating principle behind the
TerraPower Natrium
Generation IV reactor, which uses the heat from nuclear fission to heat the salt. Because of the slow heat loss, and high efficiency of such a heat transfer system, it can be used to generate electricity or heat, even after storing the molten salt and not using its thermal energy for a week.
A 400 MWh capacity system would need a tank of about 9 m tall and 24 m in diameter, using nothing but conventional materials that would be safe to handle (when not hot). Compared to the complexities of PHS, CAES and especially hydrogen-based systems, TES could end up playing a big role for energy storage. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the
Ouarzazate CSP plant
in Morocco is the largest energy storage plant on account of its molten salt storage at 3,005 MWh.
Keeping Things Simple
Even if PHS and CAES capacity is unlikely to be expanded significantly any more, there would seem to be still a number of technologies that utility providers can look at to expand storage capacity, even without resorting to electrochemical batteries. This also gives some hints as to what might make sense for private home and business owners.
Since on-grid storage is unlikely to see massive expansion, there is little incentive for grid operators to motivate the feed-in of intermittent power from solar and wind power. When there is the option of using locally installed PV solar panels as well solar water heating systems (sometimes combined in the same panel) to charge up a battery installed inside the same building and heat up water, the costs of this system are highly predictable, and compensated by the electricity (and natural gas) not used from the utility provider.
With the many uncertainties in the energy market and the current world economy it’s hard to say what the coming years will bring, but sticking with proven systems, and aiming for local consumption for small producers might be just the ticket.
[Heading image: Noor III Solar Tower of the Ouarzazate Power Station, at dusk. (Credit: Marc Lacoste) ] | 81 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6456069",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2022-04-13T17:42:02",
"content": "“The result of this has been that the peaks got a lot taller and the valleys a lot deeper.”Let’s have look at what the situation actually looks like.https://techxplore.com/news/2022-04-youve-heard-droughts-e... | 1,760,372,728.265765 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/13/nixie-spectrum-display-has-seven-bands/ | Nixie Spectrum Display Has Seven Bands | Al Williams | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"IN-13",
"in13",
"nixie"
] | A spectrum visualizer is always a fun project, but we really liked [Yannick99]’s take on it since it uses
seven IN-13 Nixie tubes for the display
. The tubes, of course, need high voltage so part of the project is a high voltage power supply. The spectrum part is a little more ordinary using an op amp and an MSGEQ7 filter IC.
The chip feeds a microcontroller and the microcontroller, with a little help, drives the tubes. The results are great, as you can see in the video below. There are several other videos showing the testing and prototyping, too. The MSGEQ7 is a cute chip that offloads the usual FFT logic from the microcontroller. It does all the work and communicates in a very unusual way. You reset the device and then pulse the strobe input. This causes an analog voltage to appear on the output pin corresponding to the 63 Hz band level. Another strobe pulse selects the next band and you just repeat indefinitely, something the microcontroller is good at.
The only issue, of course, is locating IN-13 tubes. They are around if you look for them, but they may not be cheap. Expect to pay about $20 each for them, more or less. We wondered if you could
make an LED look-alike replacement
. If you are wondering about the lifespan of these tubes, someone’s
already done the testing
. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6456096",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2022-04-13T19:09:48",
"content": "So this EQ7 chip for a display of the 7 band audio spectrum must be put in many box style stereo systems with the big glory display.I had to go through all the ways to try and adjust what we took to be ... | 1,760,372,728.390716 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/13/arming-with-an-os/ | Arming With An OS | Al Williams | [
"ARM",
"Featured",
"Microcontrollers",
"Skills",
"Slider"
] | [
"arm",
"blackpill",
"mbed",
"stm32"
] | We see tons of projects with the infamous “Blue Pill” STM32 boards. They are cheap and plentiful and have a lot of great features, or at least they were before the chip shortage. I recently picked up a “Black Pill”, which is very similar but has an even more powerful processor. For a few bucks, you get an ARM CPU that can run at 100 MHz (but with USB, probably 96 MHz). There’s 512 kB of flash and 128 kB of RAM. There’s a USB type C port, and even a button and an LED onboard. The thing fits on a breadboard and you can program it with a cheap STLink dongle which costs about $10.
The Black Pill module on a breadboard.
Of course, you then have to consider the software. The STM32Cube stuff is a lot to set up and learn but it does let you do just about anything you can imagine. Then there is the STM32Duino plug-in that lets you use it as a beefy Arduino. That works and is easy enough to set up. However, there’s also Mbed. The only problem is that Mbed doesn’t work right out of the box. Turns out, though, it isn’t that hard to set up. I’ll show you how easy it is to get things going and, next time, I’ll show you a practical example of a USB peripheral that uses the mBed RTOS features.
First Steps
Obviously, you are going to need a Black Pill. There are at least two choices but for as cheap as they are there is little reason not to get the STM32F411 version that has more memory. The DIP form factor will fit in whatever breadboard you happen to have and a USB C cable will power the board so unless you are driving a lot of external circuitry, you probably don’t need an external supply.
Unlike some boards, though, the USB port won’t help you for programming unless you burn in a bootloader. In theory, the board can do DFU if you hold down the BOOT0 button during reset. However, my board would only enter DFU mode on occasion. Reading the Internet that sounds like a common problem. The trick seems to be to unplug the USB and replug it instead of using the reset button. Press BOOT0 while plugging in the board. After a few seconds, release the BOOT0 button. That makes it a little more reliable. Then you need a DFU flash program to program a
.bin
file to write to alt 0 of the DFU device at location 0x08000000. All that and you still don’t get debugging.
Luckily, an STLink v2 dongle that goes from USB to a 10-pin connector is very inexpensive — $10 or less. This will let you do programming and debugging. However, there is also a trace feature that these dongles don’t support.
You can get along fine without tracing, but it is handy that you can do “printf-style” output via a feature called SWO (serial wire output) and not have to use the USB port as a serial port. If you want SWO, you’ll either need a more expensive version of STLink (with the bigger connector) or there is, of course,
a hack
. You can also use other similar probes like the
Blackmagic probe
. In some cases, you can also use semihosting, but it is better to either get the right probe, hack the SWO output, or just use the debugger. Of course, if you are setting up the USB serial port — easy enough to do — then you can use it with no problems.
The STLink dongle I used has 10 pins. Unfortunately, not all of the clones have the same pinout. The four pins on the Blackpill, starting at the left while looking at the connector are: 3.3 V, SWDIO, SWCLK, and Ground. If you don’t mind getting power from the USB port, you only need the last three pins.
Usually, these clone adapters have a pinout on the case. For mine, the three wires I needed were on pins 6, 7, and 8. If you do draw 3.3 V from the device, be careful. Drawing too much current or shorting the power line will kill the dongle.
Another issue with the clones is that they often have out-of-date firmware loaded. You can get the official
STM32CubeProgrammer
that knows how to update them. Just remember to unplug the device after you update and refresh the list of programmers after you plug it back in.
Software
As I mentioned, there are lots of options and
plenty of toolsets
. I generally like the
Mbed tools
. When we first looked at Mbed, it was sort of an Arduino-like ecosystem. The IDE was online, but you could go offline with a few options. However, since then it has grown and now has a variety of tools and even a full-blown operating system if you want it. There is a way to select “bare metal” mode if you are trying to build something simple, but with something like the Black Pill, you have plenty of memory and so pushing a lot of code to it isn’t really a problem. Even without bare metal mode, the linker tries to remove things you aren’t using, so it isn’t so bad.
The bad news, though, is that the ecosystem doesn’t directly support the Black Pill. It does, however, support a Nucleo board with the same CPU. That will work and for simple tests, it isn’t bad. Sure, the pin names are wrong but you can just specify the real names like
PC_13
instead of
LED1
. However, the real bad news is that target board has no USB support. If you try to use USB drivers, you will simply halt because the system assumes you don’t have the hardware to handle it.
There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that there is
a user-contributed setup
for the Black Pill. It has a more stable clock reference, allows USB, and has correct pin definitions. The not-so-great news is that it only seems to work on the Mbed IDE running locally. That’s not so bad since I wanted to use something local anyway. If you use a different toolset, you might find yourself on your own to get the targets defined.
PlatformIO
also
seems to work
as it did for the Blue Pill.
Let’s Go!
Once you have everything assembled, it is pretty easy to get a program running. Next time, I’ll show you some more fun with USB, but for now, let’s do a simple LED flasher with some output on a USB serial port. For example, you can run the “Blinky” sample in
an online emulator
. The problem is that
printf
doesn’t go anywhere useful on our board.
No problem:
#include "mbed.h"
#include "USBSerial.h"
DigitalOut led(LED1);
USBSerial usbSerial(false); // don't wait for connection
int main() {
usbSerial.connect(); // set up serial port
while (1) {
led = !led;
usbSerial.printf("Blink! LED is now %d\n", led.read());
ThisThread::sleep_for(500ms);
}
}
It is that simple. Just set up a project as described in the Black Pill configuration. That is:
Create a new project in Mbed IDE.
Right-click on the program’s root folder and in the popup window select Add library…
Enter
https://os.mbed.com/users/hudakz/code/BLACKPILL_Custom_Target
and click on the Next button.
Open the drop-list and select default then click Finish.
Open the BLACKPILL_Custom_Target folder and drag the TARGET_BLACKPILL_F411CE folder to the project root folder.
Drag custom_targets.json from the BLACKPILL_Custom_Target folder into the root folder.
Delete the BLACKPILL_Custom_Target folder from your project.
Open the Target drop-list and click on the button with a “chip” icon on it.
Open the USB device drop-list and select your STM32 ST-Link programmer (or the DFU device if you are going that route).
Select BLACKPILL_F411CE as the target.
Click on the Save All button.
If you are using the STLink, you can simply click the run button or the debug button to get started. If you selected DFU, the IDE will tell you where it left the .bin file. That’s what you’ll need to feed your DFU programmer. If you use Linux, the dfu-util line will look like:
dfu-util -d 0483:df11 -a 0 -s 0x80000000:leave -D blackpill-program.bin
About the Example
The default constructor for
USBSerial
causes the program to hang until you actually open the serial port which may or may not be a behavior you want. However, with the Black Pill and my setup, it didn’t reliably enumerate the serial port using the default constructor anyway.
In the simulator, they use the
wait_ms
function to pause, but I change it to the more modern
ThisThread::sleep_for
. The truth is, the above program has a full-blown RTOS with scheduled prioritized tasks and a variety of synchronization methods ranging from mailboxes to mutexes. There are also drivers for USB devices of all kinds, CAN bus, file systems, and lots more. We aren’t using any of those things right now, but they’re there. We still have a single thread and can work with it using methods like
sleep_for
.
Plain Old Printf
If you prefer to just have
printf
and the other console I/O go to the USB port by default, you can add the following code, assuming you also have the
usbSerial
object visible to this code.
namespace mbed
{
FileHandle *mbed_override_console(int fd)
{
return &usbSerial;
}
}
Then you can use
printf
instead of
usbSerial.printf
and the result will be the same. There’s only one catch. If you use the default
USBSerial
constructor, your program will hang until the USB port connects. But if you set the first constructor argument to false, that won’t happen. What will happen is when your program attempts to write output and nothing is there the
stdio
library will helpfully decide you don’t need to try any further so nothing will appear. To solve that, you need to periodically call
clearerr(stdout)
or on any other handle that you might use. There are other alternatives. For example, you can avoid calling things like
printf
when
usbSerial::connected()
returns false. Or, call
clearerr
when you detect the port going from not connected to connected. If you are interested, I’ve left another example on
GitHub
to get you started.
Next Steps
The Mbed IDE in Debugger Mode
You can easily run the code through the debugger, which is quite nice. Of course, there are plenty of other debugging options since, at the core, it is basically a gdb server talking to hardware over the STLink connection.
Next time, though, we’ll turn the Black Pill into a fake USB keyboard and use it to send volume control commands to a PC that correspond to motion on a potentiometer connected to an analog input. Along the way, we’ll create some threads and make them cooperate. | 28 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6456046",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2022-04-13T15:30:20",
"content": "It seems to me the Blue Pill / Black Pill boards have pretty-much merged these days – if you can get one. I have a small herd of them. The newer boards (even if a couple years old) are blue or black, and al... | 1,760,372,727.92907 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/13/nasa-hardware-techniques-soldering-space-electronics-like-its-1958/ | NASA Hardware Techniques: Soldering Space Electronics Like It’s 1958 | Dave Rowntree | [
"hardware",
"History"
] | [
"assembly",
"nasa",
"soldering",
"space race",
"vintage"
] | [PeriscopeFilms] on YouTube has many old TV adverts and US government reels archived on their channel, with some really interesting subjects to dive in to. This first one we’re highlighting here is a
1958 film about NASA Soldering Techniques
(Video, embedded below), which has some fascinating details about how things were done during the Space Race, and presumably, continue to be done. The overall message about cleanliness couldn’t really be any clearer if they tried — it’s so critical it looks like those chaps in the film spend far more time brushing and cleaning than actually wielding those super clean soldering irons.
Of particular note are some of the details of wire stripping and jointing with components, such as the use of a hot-wire device to remove the insulation from wire, rather than use the kind of stripper we have lying around that cuts into the insulation and slightly distorts the wire in the process. That just won’t do. If they did have to use a cutting-type stripper, it must be precisely the right size for job, and calibrated daily.
The road to the Moon is paved with calibrated wire strippers.
When soldering a pre-tinned wire to a leaded component, a clamp is required to prevent movement of the wire, as is a thermal shunt on the component lead to protect the delicate component from excess heat. They even specify how much to wrap a wire around a terminal to be soldered, never bending the wire more than 180 degrees.
The bottom line in all this is, is that the work must be as perfect as is possible, as there is very little chance of sending someone up to fix a dodgy soldering job, once the assembly is hurtling around the planet. They call it too much of a science to be called an art and too much art to be called a science, and we can sure appreciate that.
As you would expect (and it’s not exactly a big secret) NASA has some very exacting standards for assembly of all hardware, like this
great workmanship standard
, which is well worth studying. Soldering is an important subject for many of us, we’ve covered the
subject of solder metallurgy
, as well as looking at
how ancient hardware hackers soldered without the benefit of much modern knowledge
.
Thanks [Mike] and [TheFinn] for the tip! | 44 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455992",
"author": "Al Williams",
"timestamp": "2022-04-13T11:25:41",
"content": "https://hackaday.com/2016/08/09/hot-wire-strippers-are-probably-the-best-tool-you-arent-using/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6456051",
... | 1,760,372,728.090868 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/13/desktop-soundbar-is-ideal-for-pc-use/ | Desktop Soundbar Is Ideal For PC Use | Lewin Day | [
"computer hacks",
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"computer speakers",
"soundbar",
"surround sound"
] | Soundbars are a rather strange category of speaker, most typically used with televisions to add some punch that the drivers crammed into a flatscreen TV simply can’t match. [Matt] of
DIY Perks
wanted a soundbar that was better suited to use on a computer desk rather than in a loungeroom,
and set about creating one.
Regular soundbars aren’t great for a computer desk as they tend to deliver sound directed at one’s chest rather than one’s ears. [Matt]’s design instead angles its speakers slightly upwards, aimed at the user’s head as it should be. The build uses reclaimed wooden flooring for a cheap source of pretty wood that isn’t as ugly or flaky as MDF.
The design acts as a monitor stand and keyboard hutch, raising the screen to a comfortable height for viewing. The speakers themselves are in acoustic enclosures mounted on either side, also helping to provide good stereo separation. A subwoofer is also built into the shelf to add some bass response, with an impressively-neat bass chamber design. Finished off with some LED lights and a USB hub, the design delivers great sound along with a lovely desk environment for getting work done.
[Matt] does love a nice DIY build;
his water-cooled outdoor TV is a particular delight.
Video after the break. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455990",
"author": "punkdigerati",
"timestamp": "2022-04-13T11:23:21",
"content": "I’m not sure if that can really be classified as a sound bar. Monitor stand with built in speakers perhaps.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "64... | 1,760,372,728.143882 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/12/lego-fourteen-segment-display-needs-plenty-of-motors/ | Lego Fourteen-Segment Display Needs Plenty Of Motors | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"14 segment",
"14-seg",
"14-segment display",
"lego"
] | Hackers love 7-segment displays, and will gladly wax lyrical about the silly words you can
almost
spell on them and so on. Less appreciated are their bigger cousins, the fourteen and sixteen segment displays, which get all alphanumeric about things and are thus much easier for humans to read. You can even build the former out of Lego,
as [ord] demonstrates.
A look at the mechanism driving the display.
The “segments” are made up of Lego shafts that are pushed up through a yellow matrix of holes when they are switched “on.” A full seven motors are used to make the single-character display work, each one driving two segments. Two Lego Powered Up controller bricks are required to drive everything going on here, making the final design not just mechanically complicated, but electronically complicated as well.
Amusingly, those don’t come cheap, either; the parts total cost of this build is likely somewhere between $50-100 US. You probably don’t want to build an entire scrolling message board using this design, even if it does look resplendent in black and taxi yellow.
We’ve seen [ord]’s work before, too, in the form of
these mechanically magnificent 7-segment Lego displays.
Video after the break.
[Thanks to Keith Olson for the tip!] | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6456013",
"author": "Abe",
"timestamp": "2022-04-13T12:49:17",
"content": "Cool, lego version of the tube B7971 …it shall be dubbed L7971 ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,728.30839 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/12/hacking-an-experimental-esa-satellite/ | Hacking An Experimental ESA Satellite | Lewin Day | [
"Space"
] | [
"ESA",
"hack",
"satellite",
"satellite hack"
] | Hacking these days means everything from someone guessing your password and spamming your contacts with toxic links, to wide-scale offensive cyberattacks against infrastructure by sophisticated operators backed by nation states. When it comes to hacking satellites, though, [Didelot Maurice-Michel]
found himself tangling with some hardware belonging to the European Space Agency.
As part of an event called HackCYSAT, hackers were invited to attack the ESA’s OPS-SAT, a CubeSat intended to demonstrate improved techniques for mission control and more advanced satellite hardware. The computer hardware on board is ten times more powerful than other existing ESA satellites, and aims to take satellite technology on a new leap forward.
As with most hacking contests, it wasn’t a perfect representation of a real attack. Hackers were instructed to only exploit the payload, and a system image was provided for them to work with.
[Didelot] goes into a great deal of detail, explaining how he worked his way through the security architecture of the satellite’s software, leading to takeover of the satellite with root privileges. He found several vulnerabilities along the way, with the ESA being notified of such well before publication of the article this month.
In today’s geopolitically-fraught world, it only makes sense that satellites would become another battleground for cyber soldiers on all sides. Friendly exercises like HackCYSAT can serve as great training for those working on satellite embedded systems to help them shore up security, while also being a useful guide for offensive operatives to hone their skills as well.
We recently looked at the amazing bounty to be had
when eavesdropping on satellites, too.
If you’re out there experimenting in this space-based field, don’t hesitate to drop us a line
with your findings
. Happy hacking! | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455917",
"author": "Carsten",
"timestamp": "2022-04-13T02:17:54",
"content": "Please pay special attention to the last paragraph, where it is revealed that the HackCYSAT quietly cancelled the event without really telling the people who had submitted applications.Bad look if you ask... | 1,760,372,728.348711 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/12/bungee-corded-bass-zither-really-slaps/ | Bungee-Corded Bass Zither Really Slaps | Kristina Panos | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"bass",
"bungee cord",
"zither"
] | Surely we’ve all played some bass riffs on a stretched-out rubber band before, right? [Nicolas Bras] found that the ultimate musical rubber bands are bungee cords, and used seven of them to build
a double-bass zither that can be plucked or struck with drumsticks
. Be sure to check it out in the build/demo video after the break.
[Nicolas] is what you might call a hardware store hacker. This is not his first instrumental rodeo by far; in fact, he has spent the last 15 years building instruments from stuff like PVC and other commonly-available items.
One thing in this build that’s not so commonly available is the large sound box [Nicolas] built to strap the bungee cords across. He also made custom bridges for the bungees that are topped with triangular wood, which makes them look like little row houses.
In order to actually play the thing, [Nicolas] arranged the row houses in a 2-point bridge system for dual-note strings, which sound good between the bridges and the bungee hooks, but not so much between the bridges themselves. Overall, the zither has a great, mellow sound no matter how he plays it, and we just might have to string one of these up ourselves.
Not a strings person? Then you might be sated by
[Nicolas]’ PVC pipes, which play “Popcorn” perfectly
.
Thanks for the tip, [Keith]! | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455888",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2022-04-12T23:18:59",
"content": "” He also made custom bridges … which … look like little row houses.” I think they look more like Monopoly Hotels, he should paint them red. Anyway I love this, it looks simple enough for me to build (w... | 1,760,372,728.444629 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/12/hall-effect-module-knows-where-your-motor-is/ | Hall Effect Module Knows Where Your Motor Is | Al Williams | [
"Parts"
] | [
"hall effect",
"magnetic encoder",
"magnetometer",
"MLX90393",
"shaft encoder"
] | If you have a motor and you’d like to know where the shaft position is, you are likely to turn to an optical encoder scheme. However, as [lingib] points out, you can also use
a magnet and a magnetometer
. You can see how it works in the video below.
The MLX90393 is a 3-axis hall effect device and, with a magnet on the shaft, the X and Y outputs of the spinning magnet will form a quadrature output that you can easily read.
The magnet is strong enough that the Earth’s magnetic field becomes negligible. Post-processing involves scaling the two inputs to the same amplitude and shifting them so they are centered on zero. Then the angle in radians is the atan2 function of the X and Y coordinates.
We are always entertained by how many ways there are to measure any particular physical quantity. If you want to know more about
the hall effect
, we have you covered. In addition to magnetic and optical,
mechanical encoders are also common
. | 22 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455853",
"author": "Taylorian",
"timestamp": "2022-04-12T20:27:14",
"content": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbFRWaNAWDg&ab_channel=AvELet us not forget resolvers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6456060",
"author"... | 1,760,372,728.499981 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/12/skip-the-shipping-print-your-own-cable-chains/ | Skip The Shipping, Print Your Own Cable Chains | Lewin Day | [
"Parts"
] | [
"3D printed parts",
"cable chain"
] | CNC machines and 3D printers tend to have plenty of cabling which must be neatly managed while the machine moves. If not properly taken care of, wires can easily end up tangled in the moving bits leading to a dead machine at best, and some kind of raucous fire at worst. [Nikodem Bartnik] decided to create his own cable chains for his CNC build
to keep everything in check.
The benefit of cable chains is that they stop cables splaying everywhere while still allowing them to move as needed with the axes of the machine. [Nikodem] created 20mm and 40mm chains for his build, affixed into the aluminium extrusion with bolts and T-nuts for easy assembly. The chains are assembled by hand, with 3D printed clips that hammer in place to hold the cables inside once inserted.
Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from buying cable chains off the shelf. But if you don’t want to wait for shipping in this era of cursed supply chains, or you want a cable chain you can customize to perfectly suit your machine,
making your own could be the way to go. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455834",
"author": "Twisty Plastic",
"timestamp": "2022-04-12T19:18:11",
"content": "“The benefit of cable chains is that they stop cables splaying everywhere while still allowing them to move as needed with the axes”Well, yah, they do that. They also enforce a minimum bend radius ... | 1,760,372,728.54883 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/12/ask-hackaday-is-it-time-for-waste-heat-and-cold-area-heating-to-shine/ | Ask Hackaday: Is It Time For Waste Heat And Cold Area Heating To Shine? | Jenny List | [
"green hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"area heating",
"gas",
"heat pumps",
"waste heat"
] | It’s difficult to escape the topic of energy supply at the moment, with the geopolitical situation surrounding the invasion of Ukraine leaving the natural gas supply to an entire continent in jeopardy. Fortunately we’re watching the green shoots of an early spring here in the Northern hemisphere so the worst of the winter weather is behind us, but industrial customers can take no such solace from the season and will have to weather whatever price hikes are to come. Every alternative idea for energy supply is on the table, and with the parallel imperative of decarbonising the economy this goes beyond the short term into a future without so much need to rely on gas.
The Future is Cloudy
A district heating plant in Vienna, Austria. Joadl,
CC BY-SA 3.0 AT
A
collaboration between a Finnish district heating network and Microsoft
caught our eye because the location of a new data centre for the tech giant was chosen specifically to supply waste heat to the network, rather than releasing it to the environment. It’s not uncommon at all for European cities to use district heating networks but they are normally supplied by waste incinerators, boilers, or combined heat and power stations. The use of data centre waste heat is a novelty, as is in particular the siting of the data centre being dictated by the network.
Individual gas boilers are economical and convenient, but despite being better for the environment than the coal fires they would have replaced when first introduced, by today’s standards they have a higher carbon footprint than is ideal. Governments around the world are
encouraging their replacement with more efficient air-source heat pumps
, but as we read about the Microsoft waste heat deployment we couldn’t help wondering whether it’s worth considering the cutting edge of district heating systems — the cloud is other peoples’ servers, after all.
No, Maybe the Future is Cold
When we think of a district heating system, our minds move immediately to a scaled-up version of that domestic heating boiler. A very large boiler or other heat source heats up water, and this piping-hot water is sent down underground pipes to our homes where it flows through our radiators and keeps us warm. It’s simple to understand
and has stood the test of time
, but as anyone who has walked around a centrally-heated school or hospital on a frosty morning and seen the melted spots on the ground where the pipes are can tell you, even the best-insulated pipes will waste some heat into the soil. The lower the temperature in the pipes the less energy transfer there will be to the soil, but as the pipe temperature approaches ambient temperature of course it would not be enough to heat a home. At this point we return to those heat pumps mentioned above, and encounter the so-called cold district heating system.
Unless we happen to exist at absolute zero, everything has some heat. A freezing cold lake has some heat in that it can be made colder by taking some of its heat away, and that’s exactly what a heat pump does. The air-sourced ones take heat from cold air, but heat pumps can use any medium as a source. A “cold area heating network” pipes water around at close to ambient temperature to be used as a source for heat pumps on customer premises, which might seem like a pointless exercise until we consider that while some heat pumps can take heat from the system, others can put heat into it. Industrial users can pass their waste heat into the pipes allowing consumers to recover it, and the network becomes a lot like a power grid with many smaller source nodes rather than a simple distribution system with only one large node.
It’s probably too late for a momentum shift towards cold area heating for many cities, but we’re curious to hear from any readers with knowledge on the subject. Do any of you live in a city with cold area heating? Or perhaps you’re aware of another data centre area heating project? We’d be fascinated to hear in the comments.
Banner image: “
Steam Heat Plant
” by Greg Habermann, CC BY 2.0. | 82 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455795",
"author": "Alan McIntyre",
"timestamp": "2022-04-12T17:23:33",
"content": "I’m glad to see systems like this being discussed more often. It’s annoying to see a bigass plume of steam being dumped into the air during the winter by some industrial process right across the ro... | 1,760,372,728.666263 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/12/mindblowing-graphics-from-an-attiny85/ | Mindblowing Graphics From An ATtiny85 | Elliot Williams | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"attiny85",
"graphics",
"library",
"oled screen",
"sprites"
] | [Görg Pflug] wrote in with his
really nice graphics library
. It’s got multiple layers, two text consoles, greyscale, internal halftoning, and sprites. It can pull off a number of classic graphics tricks and demos. Oh yeah, and did we mention it runs on a
freaking ATtiny85
and an I2C OLED screen?!
This is an amazing piece of work — if you’d asked us if this was possible, we would have probably said “no”. And now it’s yours to use in your own projects. The GitHub repo is full of demos showing off everything from switching between multiple layers, extremely rapid text scrolls, animations, boing balls, and even a Wolfenstein-style raycaster. On an ATtiny85.
There’s
a demo video
, embedded below, that shows it all off, but honestly you have to think about what’s going to to be suitably wowed. The first demo just seems to have a graphic wave over static text, for instance. No big deal? It’s blending the greyscale layers together and dithering them out to black and white for the OLED in real time! On an ATtiny85.
While the library is written in straight C++, there are even a couple examples of how you’d integrate this with Arduino’s Wire library if you so wished. We don’t know about you, but this makes us want to whip together an ATtiny85 and SSD1306 OLED demo board just to start playing around. This isn’t just an amazing hack, but it would also be a useful way to add graphics and a nice console to any project you’re working on.
Did we mention it’s all done on an ATtiny85? Over I2C? Kudos! | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455784",
"author": "McNugget",
"timestamp": "2022-04-12T16:10:49",
"content": "This is impressive for an attiny85.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6455794",
"author": "G0bol",
"timestamp": "2022-04-12T17:19:16... | 1,760,372,728.791904 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/12/scientists-are-now-declaring-new-species-via-photos-and-video/ | Scientists Are Now Declaring New Species Via Photos And Video | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"new species",
"noaa",
"science",
"species",
"taxonomy",
"zoology"
] | Identifying new species is key to the work of zoologists around the world. It’s an exciting part of research into the natural world, and being the first to discover a new species often grants a scientists naming rights that can create a legacy of one’s work that lasts long into the future.
Traditionally, the work of taxonomy involved capturing and preserving an example of the new species. This is such that it could be classified properly and studied in detail by scientists working now and in the future. However, times are changing, and scientists are beginning to identify new species
on the basis of videos and photos instead.
Quality Matters
The first new species
to be considered definitively identified and classified solely on the basis of video evidence is a comb jelly, or ctenophore, known by its scientific name of
Duobrachium sparksae
. Comb jellies are small carnivorous invertebrates that live in the sea, and are often as small as just a few millimeters in length. Found at a depth of 3,900 meters underwater, the new species was discovered on an expedition led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.
No sample was captured for further study or preservation; instead, the high-definition video collected from a remotely-operated vehicle named
Deep Discoverer
was used as a basis for the findings instead. “We collected high-definition video and described what we saw,” scientist Mike Ford told
The Guardian,
adding “We went through the historical knowledge of ctenophores and it seemed clear this was a new species and genus as well. We then worked to place it in the tree of life properly.”
Photos captured by NOAA scientists of of
Duobrachium sparksae
. Visible are the species’ long tentacles and eggs in the gonads, details captured well by the high-definition video capabilities of the
Deep Discoverer
remotely-operated vehicle. Credit:
NOAA paper
As for the unconventional methods used to describe the new species, NOAA scientist Allen Collins noted that “some inspect species descriptions have been done with low-quality imagery and some scientists have said they don’t think that’s a good way of doing things.” Acknowledging the team’s use of high-quality footage, he says that the work with
Duobrachium sparksae
has been relatively straightforward. “For this discovery, we didn’t get any pushback. It was a really good example of how to do it the right way with video,” he says.
Fundamentally, the team didn’t have much choice in the matter, anyway. “We didn’t have sample collection capabilities on the ROV at the time. Even if we had the equipment, there would have been very little time to process the animal because gelatinous animals don’t preserve very well; ctenophores are even worse than jellyfish in this regard,” said Collins, adding “High-quality video and photography were crucial for describing this new species.”
All in Agreement? Nay.
The issue of using photographic or video documentation for this purpose remains controversial, however. In 2016, a paper decrying the practice was signed by 493 taxonomists and specimen collection researchers, only to be rejected from publication in Nature in 2016.
Later published elsewhere,
the document references various submissions to the scientific literature dating back as far as 2007 in support of the practice.
The paper’s primary argument is that classifying species without capturing an actual specimen compromises “objectivity, replicability, and refutability.” Without a specimen that can be subjected to physical examination, the signatories of the paper are concerned that dubious claims of “new species” could flood in with little more than some photographs as evidence. As these can be readily doctored to a believable degree far more easily than a physical specimen, there are real fears this could cause major issues in the world of zoology going forwards.
Such methodology also leaves future scientists with little to work with, should they wish to look more closely at structures in the animal or particular features to relate the species to others or to perform more detailed taxonomical investigations. Photographs of a creature cannot reveal any new information under a microscope, nor provide genetic material for further investigation.
Marleyimyia xylocopae was classified based on photos taken of two living examples of the species.
Credit: Marshall, SA, Evenhuis, NL, CC-BY-4.0
Not everyone is against the practice, however.
An earlier paper
takes a more balanced view, accepting the very real benefits of having an actual physical example of a creature when classifying a new species. In the eyes of the authors, this is very much the “gold standard.” The authors also discredit any notions that capturing examples of a species from the wild is deleterious in any real way, noting that when it comes to the vast majority of populations, capturing a handful of samples for scientific analysis is seldom of any real detriment.
However, it also notes the practical concerns of capturing, moving, and maintaining such samples, something which can frustrate the efforts of research scientists immensely. It also supports the contention that proper, high-resolution photography that captures necessary details can actually be more than enough to differentiate a new species from those already existing in the established taxonomy. This notion is supported through the naming of a “distinctive fly species” which the researchers dub
Marleyimyia
xylocopae,
solely on the basis of photographic evidence of two living examples, as a fly captured by the scientists escaped before it could be preserved as a specimen.
As the paper notes, digital collections of high-quality images of all manner of species are becoming a mainstay in the world of zoology, and serve as a primary way that taxonomists and other researchers do their work. Thus, it seems likely that more flexibility on the capture and preparation of traditional dead specimens will be the way of the future. However, with the value that can be gained from the genuine physical article, many scientists will still be doing their utmost to collect such specimens wherever possible. | 22 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455762",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2022-04-12T14:38:34",
"content": "While I can see the value of using such methods to assist in the identification of creatures like ctenophores and their cousins, I don’t like the idea of classifying species without the benefit of DNA... | 1,760,372,728.73332 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/12/warm-up-your-extruders-reprap-festivals-are-back/ | Warm Up Your Extruders, RepRap Festivals Are Back | Tom Nardi | [
"cons",
"News"
] | [
"East Coast RepRap Festival",
"Midwest RepRap Festival",
"reprap festival"
] | Like pretty much every other large gathering, the Midwest and East Coast RepRap Festivals had to be put on hold during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But now that the United States is cautiously returning to something that looks a lot like normal, both Festivals have now confirmed they will be back to full-scale live events for 2022.
After experimenting with a virtual event and a scaled-down show in 2021, the
Midwest RepRap Festival (MRRF)
will be returning to the Elkhart County 4H Fairgrounds in Goshen, Indiana from June 24th to the 26th. No tickets will be required for attendees or exhibitors, everyone is welcome to just show up and have a good time. There will however be sponsorship opportunities for anyone who wants to support this long-running event.
Summer already booked up? In that case, the
East Coast RepRap Festival (ERRF)
will be taking place from October 8th to the 9th at the APG Federal Credit Union Arena in Bel Air, Maryland. Tickets cost $10 for both exhibitors and attendees, though anyone under 17 gets in for free. Even though ERRF only confirmed their 2022 plans recently, it looks like there are only a few sponsor spots still left open.
Hackaday has attended both events
in the past, and
we’ve always come back blown away
by the incredible variety of printers, projects, and products on display. It seems like there wouldn’t be that many different ways to show off melted plastic, but trust us, these folks always manage to surprise you. Given the amount of time that’s passed since either event was able to operate at normal capacity, we predict these 2022 Festivals are going to be smash hits that you won’t want to miss if you’re even remotely interested in 3D printing. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455745",
"author": "dudenamedben",
"timestamp": "2022-04-12T12:59:17",
"content": "luckily the orlando maker faire only skipped one year instead of two. good ol’ florida noticed that a society should function in the face of fear rather than cower. because of that tons of kids an... | 1,760,372,729.084797 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/12/a-v2-rocket-inspired-steam-turbine-skateboard-is-just-around-the-corner/ | A V2 Rocket Inspired Steam Turbine Skateboard Is Just Around The Corner | Dave Rowntree | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"catalyst",
"CNC machined",
"hydrogen peroxide",
"reaction turbine",
"steam engine"
] | [Integza] never fails to amuse with his numerous (and sometimes really sketchy) attempts to create usable thrust, by pretty much all means possible and the latest video (embedded below)
attempting to run a reaction turbine from decomposing hydrogen peroxide
, doesn’t fail to disappoint. The inspiration came from the
WWII V2 rocket
, which used Sodium Permanganate to breakdown Hydrogen Peroxide. This produced high pressure steam, which spun a turbine, which in turn drove the turbopumps that delivered the needed huge quantity of alcohol and liquid oxygen into the combustion chamber.
After an initial test of this permanganate-peroxide reaction proved somewhat disappointing (and messy) he moved on to a more controllable approach — using a catalytic converter from a petrol scooter in place of the messy permanganate. This worked, so the next task was to build the turbine. Naturally, this was 3D printed, and the resulting design appeared to work pretty well with compressed air as the power source. After scaling up the design, and shifting to CNC-machined aluminium, it was starting to look a bit more serious. The final test shows the turbine being put through its paces, running from the new precious metal catalyst setup, but as can be seen from the video, there is work to be done.
There appears to be a fair amount of liquid peroxide passing through into the turbine, which is obviously not desirable. Perhaps the next changes should be the mount the catalyser vertically, to prevent the liquid from leaving so easily, as well as adding some baffling to control the flow of the liquid, in order to force it to recycle inside the reaction vessel? We can’t wait to see where this goes, hopefully the steam-turbine powered skateboard idea could actually be doable? Who knows? But we’re sure [Integza] will find a way!
With steam power, there’s more than one way to get usable rotational work,
like using a reciprocating engine
, which can be expanded to
a whole machine shop
, and whilst boiling water (or catalytically decomposing Hydrogen Peroxide) provides high pressure gas, how about
just using boiling liquid nitrogen
? Possibly not. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455719",
"author": "dudenamedben",
"timestamp": "2022-04-12T08:47:58",
"content": "While I am not a huge fan of the whole ethos of youtube monetization, I do appreciate that many people still have the ability to learn and own and pass on various skills that would otherwise be lost ... | 1,760,372,729.326062 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/11/this-chariot-is-pulled-by-a-team-of-motorcycles/ | This Chariot Is Pulled By A Team Of Motorcycles | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"chariot",
"motorcycle",
"motorcycle chariot"
] | We’re fans of unusual forms of transport here, so when we saw
an article featuring a home-made motorcycle chariot
we knew we had to share it with you. You’ll probably notice it comes from the keyboard of our colleague [Lewin Day] as he moonlights writing for
The Drive
, and he’s brought along a lot of context and history to the dual-Husqvarna chariot built by [Jack Field].
The machine itself is a chariot in the ancient Roman fashion, a two-wheeled platform on which the rider stands and holds the reins. Instead of a team of horses though there is the aforementioned pair of Husqvarna motorcycles, and a pair of rods to their handlebars with throttle and brake controls take the place of reins. It’s fair to say that this might not be the least hazardous of conveyances, but it appears both rideable and controllable, and will appear at motorcycle shows. truth be told we’d like to have a go ourselves, but since it’s in Australia we think there’s little chance. Unexpectedly the motorcycle chariot is not a new idea, with their being used for full-scale races back in the 1930s. There’s a trip into that world with some exciting but lethal-looking racing action to view, but it seems that these machines exist here in 2022 mostly for show.
This isn’t the first machine operated by reins we’ve brought you,
how about a rein-operated tractor
? | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455690",
"author": "Redhatter (VK4MSL)",
"timestamp": "2022-04-12T05:56:24",
"content": "Somehow, I don’t think Queensland Transport, NSW’s RTA… or the equivalents in any other Australian state would let you register that contraption for road use.",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,372,729.216419 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/11/trenton-computer-festival-makes-youtube-debut/ | Trenton Computer Festival Makes YouTube Debut | Tom Nardi | [
"cons",
"News"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"TCF",
"Trenton Computer Festival",
"youtube"
] | While it doesn’t have the recognition of DEF CON or even HOPE, the Trenton Computer Festival (TCF) holds the record for the longest continually running computer convention, dating all the way back to 1976. TCF has offered vendor spaces, a swap meet, workshops, and keynote talks for almost as long as the personal computer has existed. But until now, all that knowledge was only available to those in the Northeast US that were willing to follow the itinerant event as its bounced between venues over the decades.
Or at least, that used to be the case. Like many events, TCF was forced to go virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic, which meant for the first time all the talks were actually recorded. Over the weekend, the organizers announced that
all of the talks and demonstrations from 2020 and 2021 had been uploaded to a new YouTube channel
, opening them up to a global audience.
Bill Gates at TCF in 1989
Two years might not sound like much, especially given the fact that there’s still 40+ years unaccounted for. But thanks to the incredible amount of content that is squeezed into each year’s event, the TCF YouTube channel is currently playing host to more than 80 presentations that run the gamut from live musical performances to deep-dives on the Apollo Guidance Computer and quantum computing. Whatever you’re interests happen to be, there’s a good chance you’ll find a presentation or two that talks about it in this impressive collection.
When we made our last visit to this legendary convention
, our only real complaint was the fact that none of the presentations were being recorded. With over 40 talks crammed into a six hour event, attendees couldn’t hope but to see more than a fraction of what was on the schedule. The nature of going virtual obviously made it much easier to preserve all this incredible content for later viewing, but it’s unclear if the organizers will be able to maintain that momentum in 2023 when it’s expected TCF will once again be in-person. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455673",
"author": "Feinfinger",
"timestamp": "2022-04-12T02:07:17",
"content": "Please put a trigger warning below the title if pictures of B.G. are included.o;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6455674",
"author": "Ken",
... | 1,760,372,729.374925 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/11/glow-in-the-dark-computer-memory-illuminates-the-fundamentals/ | Glow In The Dark Computer Memory Illuminates The Fundamentals | Chris Wilkinson | [
"computer hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"6502",
"memory",
"phototransistor",
"ram",
"volatile"
] | Computer memory has taken on many forms over the years, from mercury-based delay-line tubes to handwoven magnetic core. These days, volatile storage using semiconductors has become ubiquitous with computing, but what if there was a better way? [Michael Kohn] has been working on a new standard for computer memory that
uses glow in the dark stickers
.
Clearly we jest, however we’re still mighty impressed by the demonstration. Eight delightful star-shaped phosphorescent stickers represent eight bits of memory, totaling one byte. The glow in the dark material is stuck to the inside of short cylinders, each of which contains a white LED and a phototransistor. The memory array is wired up to an iceFUN FPGA board, which is then connected via level shifters to a Western Design Center MENSCH single board computer.
To write a ‘1’ to memory is as simple as writing to the corresponding memory address using 6502/65C816 assembly language. Using the STA command will illuminate the white LED at that memory address, in turn irradiating the glow in the dark sticker and ‘saving’ the state. Conversely, LDA at the same address will read from the phototransistor, which picks up the glow (or lack thereof) emitted from the sticker.
A refresh cycle is needed to sustain the 0s and 1s across the memory array as the phosphorescence fades, not dissimilar to modern DRAM requiring frequent recharging to maintain memory contents. The entire setup is a tangible demonstration of the fundamentals of volatile computer memory, and would make for a fun beginner project. [Michael] has more details on his
website
and
GitHub
page.
While the FPGA board has its own little set of blinkenlights, an
8-bit RGB LED array
would make this project even brighter. | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455654",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2022-04-11T23:11:14",
"content": "Not as cool as this.Sadly, some of the links are broken.https://hackaday.com/2014/08/07/dots-and-dashes-on-a-roll/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,372,729.270882 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/11/blood-pressure-cuff-hacked-into-water-level-sensor/ | Blood Pressure Cuff Hacked Into Water Level Sensor | Al Williams | [
"hardware"
] | [
"fluid level",
"level sensor",
"pressure sensor"
] | We often write a post and then learn something new and cool from the comments. The same thing happened when [Andreas] posted a video about monitoring fluid levels. Commenters told him that the best fluid level sensor was a
hacked blood pressure monitor
. He didn’t know that, and we didn’t either, until we watched his video, below.
It is well-known that an air-tight tube in a tank that is closed at the top and open inside the tank will develop a pressure that corresponds to the liquid level in the tank. This is a common approach when you want the pressure sensor to be far away from the tank in, say, an enclosed building. So why use a blood pressure monitor? Because a common enhancement to the system is to use a pump to pressurize the measurement tube first so the system can tolerate small leaks. The blood pressure monitor has everything you need: a pump, a valve, and a pressure sensor.
To get accurate results, you need to measure differential pressure. Pressure transducers can measure gauge pressure, differential pressure, or absolute pressure, depending on the kind you select. [Andreas] took apart a cheap blood pressure cuff and there were all the needed parts. Like most cheap consumer gear, though, the CPU was a mystery blob of epoxy.
Some prebuilt sensor modules had some issues because of the 5V supply. In the end, he used a new sensor, a microcontroller, and then used the pump and valve from the blood pressure cuff. It is easier to repurpose the blood pressure machine than build an airtight system from scratch.
Pressure sensors are usually just sophisticated versions of
old barometer technology.
Like most things, there are many ways to measure fluid levels including ultrasonics, floats, capacitive sensors,
and, of course, math
. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455670",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2022-04-12T01:47:48",
"content": "But if I scavenge from my blood pressure meter, how will I know when my pressure is low?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6455672",
"a... | 1,760,372,729.038105 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/14/3d-printing-pills-all-at-once/ | 3D Printing Pills All At Once | Al Williams | [
"Medical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"3d printing",
"medicine",
"personalized medicine",
"pharmaceutical"
] | To the uninitiated, it might seem like a gimmick to 3D print pharmaceuticals. After all, you take some kind of medicine, pour it in a mold, and you have a pill, right? But researchers and even some commercial companies are 3D printing drugs with unusual chemical or physical properties. For example, pills with braille identification on them or antibiotics with complex drug-release rates. The Universidade de Santiago de Compostela and the University College London can now 3D print pills without relying on a layer-by-layer approach. Instead, the machine
produces the entire pill directly
.
According to
a recent report
on the study, there are at least two things holding back printed pills. First, anything medical has to go through rigorous testing for approval in nearly any country. In addition, producing pills at typical 3D printing speeds is uneconomical. This new approach uses multiple beams of light to polymerize an entire tank of resin at once in as little as seven seconds.
With 3D printed drugs, it is possible to tailor release profiles for individual cases and make hybrid drugs such as a French drug that joins anticancer drugs with another drug to manage side effects. Is this a real thing for the future? Will doctors collect enough data to make it meaningful to tailor drugs to patients? Will regulators allow it? For hybrid medicine, is there really an advantage over just taking two pills? Only time will tell.
Sure, technology can help
dispense pills
. We know, too, that 3D printing can be useful for prostheses and
medical devices
. We aren’t so sure about pharmaceuticals, but in the meantime you can
already order custom-printed vitamins
. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457058",
"author": "William Gallant",
"timestamp": "2022-04-14T15:50:56",
"content": "What about other people hacking into this tech and producing say Fentanyl or are they already? Printing all at once and in Braille are excellent.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,372,729.521597 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/14/less-is-more-or-how-to-replace-a-25000-bomb-sight-for-20-cents/ | Less Is More — Or How To Replace A $25,000 Bomb Sight For 20 Cents | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"complexity",
"norden",
"wwii"
] | Depending on who you ask, the Norden bombsight was either the highest of high tech during World War II, or an overhyped failure that provided jobs and money for government contractors. Either way, it was super top secret in its day. It was also expensive. They cost about $25,000 each and the whole program came in at well over a billion dollars. The security was over the top. When not flying, the bombsight was removed from the plane and locked in a vault. There was a pyro device that would self-destruct the unit if it were in danger of being captured. So why did one of the most famous missions of World War II fly with the Norden replaced by 20 cents worth of machined metal? Good question.
You often hear the expression “less is more” and, in this case, it is an accurate idea. I frequently say, though, that “just enough is more.” In this case, though, less was actually just enough. There were three reasons that one famous mission in the Pacific theater didn’t fly the Norden. It all had to do with morale, technology, and secrecy.
The Mission
A B-25 in Flight
Sometimes, appearances matter. If you ever test a user’s reaction to waiting for output, you will find that they are more tolerant of watching a screen of data scroll by slowly than they are of waiting less time for the data to appear suddenly out of nowhere. Doolittle’s raid on Japan was like that. It wasn’t really practical and was unlikely to change the outcome of the war, but it made people feel like something was being done.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was seriously upset. Even though Hawaii wasn’t part of the mainland, it was part of the country and Americans keenly felt the threat that Japan could strike American soil. America needed to strike back but had few options. Much of the navy was out of commission because of the attack. The planes of the era couldn’t cross the Pacific loaded with bombs and fuel. The Americans had no missiles that could make the trip, either.
Enter Jimmy Doolittle. Where nearly everyone else thought there was no way to retaliate, Doolittle and a few others were convinced he could find a way. He formed a squadron of B-25 Mitchell Bombers and set out to prepare them for the trip to Japan.
Less… Much Less
The B-25 had a normal range of 1,300 miles, but it needed to go at least 2,400 from an aircraft carrier to hit Japan. Everything had to go to lighten the planes and make room for additional fuel tanks. Guns, blast plates, cold-weather equipment, and some radios had to go.
A Norden ready to fly
New fuel tanks took up some of the space created. One other thing that had to go was the Norden bombsight. It wasn’t good for low altitude bombing was the official story. However, the weight was also significant and — perhaps the main reason — it seemed possible that at least one of the planes might be shot down and captured. The Army Air Corps did not want to risk the Norden. Turns out, the Germans got the plans delivered to them before the war and had their own version of it, but no one knew that at the time.
But You Still Need a Sight
Photo by [Pi3.124]
CC BY-SA 4.0
However, you still need some kind of bombsight. That’s where Charles Ross Greening with some machining help created what he called the “Mark Twain” bombsight. The newspapers would later call it the “twenty-cent bombsight” because of the few materials it used. Here’s a description from Wikipedia:
[The Mark Twain] consisted of a quadrangle measuring 7 inches (18 cm) by 7 inches (18 cm), inscribed with a 90° arc in 10° increments, and placed horizontally on the Norden mount. When the quadrangle was turned left or right, a handle deflected the Pilot direction indicator, indicating the prescribed heading for the pilot. A vertical piece, measuring 5.25 inches (13.3 cm) by 7.25 inches (18.4 cm), set the dropping angle, based on bomb size, altitude, wind conditions, and ground speed. The vertical piece had a sighting bar with a “V” notch at the rear, which was to be aligned with a point at the front, just as in a rifle sight. The bombardier aimed the bombsight in the direction of the target, raising the tail as he got closer, until he reached the dropping angle, when he would release the bombs.
Simplicity, itself. Yet less is more. It is possible that the cheap sight may have worked better than the Norden’s actual performance, at least in some cases. The raid was sort of a success. It didn’t manage to do much real damage and all the planes were ditched, but it had a positive effect on Allied morale and the opposite effect on the Japanese population.
Lessons Learned
There’s a famous old story that NASA spent money to build the space pen and the Russians simply used pencils. Turns out that the story isn’t true (NASA didn’t pay to develop the Fisher space pen). But it reminds me of the 20 cent bombsight. While you can cut too far, sometimes less really is more.
I think we forget this too often. We often hear of relatively simple systems failing due to having too much software layered on top of them unnecessarily. For example, check out EDN’s report on the infamous
Toyota firmware problems
. Granted, this could be a case of poor workmanship more than over-complication, but then again, I’d rather have a handful of dedicated CPUs doing very specific tasks on bare metal than some big processor with an RTOS handling so many life-critical tasks.
If you want to know more about the hype around the
Norden
, we talked about it before. We’ve also talked
about the era’s heavy bombers, too
.
Headline photo:
Norden Bombsight at Computer History Museum
by Allan J. Cronin, CC BY-SA 3.0 | 64 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6457023",
"author": "jenningsthecat",
"timestamp": "2022-04-14T14:16:50",
"content": "“I’d rather have a handful of dedicated CPUs doing very specific tasks on bare metal than some big processor with an RTOS handling so many life-critical tasks.”Amen brother! Systems built according... | 1,760,372,729.478477 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/14/great-beginnings-the-antikythera-mechanism-gets-a-day-zero/ | Great Beginnings: The Antikythera Mechanism Gets A “Day Zero” | Dan Maloney | [
"History",
"News"
] | [
"Anitkythera",
"annular eclipse",
"antiquity",
"calendar",
"eclipse",
"epicycle",
"lunar",
"saros",
"solar"
] | When an unknown genius sat down more than 2,000 years ago to design and build an astronomical instrument, chances are good that he or she didn’t think that entire academic institutions devoted to solving its mysteries would one day be established. But such is the enduring nature of the Antikythera mechanism, the gift from antiquity that keeps on giving long after being dredged up from a shipwreck in the Aegean Sea.
And now, new research on the ancient mechanism reveals that like other mechanical calendars,
the Antikythera mechanism has a “day zero,”
or a minimum possible date that it can display. The analysis by a team led by [Aristeidis Voulgaris] gets deep into the weeds of astronomical cycles, which the mechanism was designed to simulate using up to 37 separate gears, 30 of which have been found. The cycle of concern is the saros, a 223 lunar month cycle of alignments between the Earth, Sun, and Moon. The saros can be used to predict eclipses, astronomical events of immense importance in antiquity, particularly annular eclipses, which occur when the Moon is at apogee and therefore eclipses less of the Sun’s surface.
The researchers looked at historical annular eclipse data and found that saros cycle 58 had a particularly long annular eclipse, on 23 December 178 BCE. The eclipse would have been visible at sunrise in the eastern Mediterranean, and coupled with other astronomical goodies, like the proximity to the winter solstice, the Sun entering Capricorn, and the Moon being new and at apogee, was probably so culturally significant to the builder that it could serve as the initial date for calibrating all the mechanisms pointers and dials.
Others differ with that take, of course, saying that the evidence points even further back, to a start date in the summer of 204 BCE. In any case, if like us you can’t get enough Antikythera, be sure to check out
our overview of the mechanism
, plus [Clickspring]’s exploration of
methods perhaps used to build it
. | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6456969",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2022-04-14T12:03:41",
"content": "In all likelihood identical copies of the Antikythera mechanism were expensive but relatively commonplace. It demonstrates refined construction techniques and you don’t get those on a one-off prototype. You get... | 1,760,372,729.636295 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/14/versatile-reflow-oven-controller-uses-esp32-s2/ | Versatile Reflow Oven Controller Uses ESP32-S2 | Al Williams | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"ESP32-S2",
"oven",
"reflow"
] | [Maker.Moekoe] wanted a single controller board that was usable with different reflow ovens or hotplates. The result is a
versatile board based on the ESP32-S2
. You can see a video of the board’s assembly in the video below.
The board sports several inputs and outputs including:
2x MAX6675 thermocouple sensor input
2x Fan output with flyback diodes
2x Solid state relay output
3x Buttons
1x LED
1x Buzzer
1x Servo motor output
0.96 inch OLED display
You could probably find a use for the board for other similar applications, not just ovens.
The video is oddly relaxing, watching parts reflow. It is like watching a 3D printer, no matter how many times we see it, we still find it soothing to watch. You can also see how he integrated the board with a toaster oven.
Overall, the board looks great and the workmanship is also very good. If you’ve never seen anyone set heat-set threaded inserts into a 3D printed piece, be sure to watch around the four minute mark.
We’ve seen plenty of
oven projects
. You can even use an
Easy Bake oven
. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6456942",
"author": "Rumble_in_the_Jungle",
"timestamp": "2022-04-14T10:07:54",
"content": "WARNING: sound mute highly advised!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6456972",
"author": "Pete",
"timestamp": "2022-04-... | 1,760,372,729.569127 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/13/pisquare-lets-you-run-multiple-hats-on-a-raspberry-pi/ | PiSquare Lets You Run Multiple HATs On A Raspberry Pi | Lewin Day | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"hat",
"hat interface",
"hat system",
"raspberry pi",
"raspberry pi hat"
] | The Raspberry Pi’s venerable 40-pin header and associated HAT ecosystem for upgrades has been a boon for the platform. It’s easy to stack extra hardware on to a Pi, even multiple times in some cases. However, if you want to run multiple HATs, and wirelessly at that, the PiSquare
might just be the thing for you.
The PiSquare consists of a board featuring both RP2040 and ESP-12E microcontrollers. It interfaces with Raspberry Pi HATs and even lets you run multiple of the same HAT on a single Raspberry Pi, as it’s not actually directly using the UART, SPI, or I2C interfaces on the host Pi itself. Instead, the PiSquare communicates wirelessly with the Pi, handling the IO with the HAT itself.
It’s unclear how this works on a software level. Simply using existing software tools and libraries for a given Raspberry Pi HAT probably won’t work with the wireless PiSquare setup. However, for advanced users, it could serve a useful purpose, allowing one Raspberry Pi to command multiple HATs without the fuss of having to run more single-board computers where just one will do. Boards will be available on Kickstarter for those interested in the device.
We’ve seen other creative things done
with the Raspberry Pi and the HAT system, too
. If you’ve been cooking up your own neat hacks for the platform,
drop us a line! | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6456868",
"author": "The Eternal President Kim Il Sung",
"timestamp": "2022-04-14T06:05:22",
"content": "Neat. Now if only everywhere weren’t sold out of Raspberry Pi’s and Arduinos…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6456884",
... | 1,760,372,729.709839 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/13/reducing-warping-in-metal-3d-prints/ | Reducing Warping In Metal 3D Prints | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3D metal printer",
"3d printing"
] | We are used to dealing with warping when printing with thermoplastics like ABS, but metal printers suffer from this problem, too. The University of Michigan has a new technology,
SmartScan
, that promises to reduce this problem. You can see a video about the technique, below.
The idea is to develop a thermal model of the printed part before laser sintering and then move the laser in such a way that heat doesn’t accumulate. The video shows how engraving metal in the traditional way causes the metal to warp as the laser heats up areas. Using the SmartScan thermal model, they were able to reduce deformation by almost half.
It sounds like they have not yet applied this to sintering in a 3D printer, so you can only assume that the results would be similar. Of course, heat distribution through a powder may well be different than through solid metal, so further testing is certainly warranted.
We couldn’t help but wonder, too, if the results would be almost as good if you simply selected random segments of the pattern to run instead of running totally in sequence. Sure, the model-based approach ought to be better, but we wonder if it would be much better compared to a simple dice roll method.
Meanwhile, we are still waiting for our metal 3D printer.
Copper
seems to be in reach. If fact, it is, if you don’t mind
some postprocessing
. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6456921",
"author": "Jc",
"timestamp": "2022-04-14T09:01:30",
"content": "They just need to slow down your print speed and apply hair spray and elmers glue stick with painters tape on an acetone wiped and properly trammed bed, right?So many wasted prints to get my machine in toleran... | 1,760,372,730.080798 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/13/does-your-programmer-know-how-fast-you-were-going/ | Does Your Programmer Know How Fast You Were Going? | Al Williams | [
"News",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"autonomous vehicle",
"police",
"self-driving car"
] | News reports were everywhere that an autonomous taxi operated by a company called Cruise was driving through San Francisco with no headlights. The
local constabulary tried to stop the vehicle
and were a bit thrown that there was no driver. Then the car moved beyond an intersection and pulled over, further bemusing the officers.
The company says the headlights were due to human error and that the car had stopped at a light and then moved to a safe stop by design. This leads to the question of how people including police officers will interact with robot vehicles.
For Cruise’s part, they have
a video informing law enforcement and others how to approach one of their vehicles
(see second video, below). You have to wonder how many patrol cops have seen it though. We don’t think we’d get away with saying, “We mentioned our automatic defense system in our YouTube video.”
Honestly, we aren’t sure that in an emergency situation we would want to find our list of automatic vehicle companies to find the right number to call. At the very least, you’d expect to have the number prominently on the vehicle. Why the lights didn’t turn on automatically is an entirely different question.
We can’t imagine that as autonomous vehicles catch on that regulations aren’t going to be forthcoming. Just like fire departments have access to Knox boxes so they can let themselves into places, we are pretty sure a failsafe code that stops a vehicle dead and unlocks its doors regardless of brand is probably a good idea. Sure, a hacker could use it for bad purposes, but they can also break into Knox boxes. You’d have to make certain the stop code security was robust.
What do you think? What happens when a robot car gets pulled over? What happens when a taxi passenger has a heart attack? We’ve talked about the issues surrounding
self-driving anomalies
before. Some of the questions have
no easy answers
. | 83 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6456769",
"author": "DionB",
"timestamp": "2022-04-13T23:30:20",
"content": "feature or bug? :p",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6456937",
"author": "Fungus",
"timestamp": "2022-04-14T09:53:16",
"content... | 1,760,372,730.196227 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/10/coin-acceptors-are-higher-tech-than-you-think/ | Coin Acceptors Are Higher-Tech Than You Think | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"coin acceptor",
"coin selector",
"coin-op",
"vending machine"
] | Coin-operated machines have a longer history than you might think. Ancient temples used them to dispense, for example, holy water to the faithful in return for their coins. Old payphones rang a bell when you inserted a coin so the operator knew you paid. Old pinball machines had a wire to catch things with holes in the middle so you couldn’t play with washers. But like everything else, coin acceptors have advanced quite a bit. [Electronoobs]
shows a unit that can accept coins from different countries
and it is surprisingly complex inside. He used what he learned from the teardown to build his own Arduino-based version.
For scale, there is the obligatory banana. Inside the box there are several induction coils and some photo electronics. In particular, there are two optical sensors that watch the coin roll down a ramp. This produces two pulses. The width of the pulse indicates the diameter of the coin, and the time between the pulses tells its speed.
So what are the two coils for? They form a transformer, and the coin moving between the coils changes the coupling in a way that depends on the material. By knowing the diameter, the transit speed of the coin, and the material, you can identify the coin. A little solenoid-driven flap moves out of the way to store a recognized coin. If it doesn’t move out of the way, the coin goes out of the coin return slot.
We wondered how the machine knows about local currency and what happens if the composition of a coin changes. The video shows how you teach the device about a coin by inserting a sample coin multiple times and letting the device measure. So even if you had some custom token, it should work.
The homebrew solution is pretty easy, especially the optical part. The coils are a bit more work since you need a big coil along with the associated driver and sense electronics. Then, of course, there is also the mechanics, which he did not build, since the commercial product was only $20.
We always enjoy teardowns, but this one was especially informative, and we enjoyed the reproduction of the operating principles.
Hero was a Greek
who lived a long time ago and would have really been interested in this teardown. We couldn’t help but think, too, of [Peter’s]
coin-operated calculator
. | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455457",
"author": "RH",
"timestamp": "2022-04-11T07:27:06",
"content": "This is my first time seeing this guy’s videos, but I have to give credit where credit is due: He’s great.While I share some oldbie-esque umbrage that so much information is put into videos rather than posts/t... | 1,760,372,730.039745 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/10/boards-for-playful-exploration-of-digital-protocols/ | Boards For Playful Exploration Of Digital Protocols | Arya Voronova | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"education",
"educational",
"i2c",
"i2c interface",
"protocol design",
"RCA",
"serial protocol",
"spi",
"STEAM education",
"uart"
] | Teaching people efficiently isn’t limited to transmitting material from one head to another — it’s also about conveying the principles that got us there. [Mara Bos]
shows us a toolkit
(Twitter,
nitter link
) that you can arm your students with, creating a small playground where, given a set of constraints, they can invent and figure communication protocols out on their own.
This tool is aimed to teach digital communication protocols from a different direction. We all know that UART, I2C, SPI and such have different use cases, but why? Why are baud rates important? When are clock or chip select lines useful? What’s the deal with the start bit? We kinda sorta figure out the answers to these on our own by mental reverse-engineering, but these things can be taught better, and [Mara] shows us how.
Gently guided by your observations and insights, your students will go through defining new and old communication standards from the ground up, rediscovering concepts like acknowledge bits, bus contention, or even DDR. And, as you point out that the tricks they just discovered have real-world counterparts, you will see the light bulb go on in their head — realizing that they, too, could be part of the next generation of engineers that design the technologies of tomorrow.
The toolkit she shows consists of boards each equipped with three toggle switches, some through-hole resistors and an LED, a buzzer signaling about short-circuits, and AAA battery holders to make the boards self-contained. These boards could easily be products of a soldering course themselves! Plugging these boards together with ever-abundant RCA cables, students work together in small groups, using switches on one set of boards to transmit data to the other set. She made a video demonstrating how these boards work, which is embedded below.
You don’t always need to stand in front of a whiteboard while teaching something — often, a few custom boards will do the trick, and oftentimes better. We’ve
seen educational PCBs for logic gates
before, and when it comes to kits you can hand out for experiments, a whole lot of concepts like
snap-together magnetic circuit blocks
. If you wonder why all these different tools are needed, remember that we’ve talked about
how education systems can fail a hacker’s mind
.
We thank [Chaos] for sharing this with us!
⚡️💡Two years ago, I wanted to explain some folks digital protocols like I²C. I wanted to skip the boring stuff; make it a hands-on experience. So I made these little boards that they could use as I/O pins and invent their own protocols to talk to each other across the table. 1/3
pic.twitter.com/si4W3eUqVu
— Mara Bos (@m_ou_se)
April 4, 2022 | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455488",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2022-04-11T11:29:13",
"content": "I like the simplicity of the design, but I really think there needs to be some sort of ESD protection on the input. Please correct me if I’m wrong.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,372,729.91392 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/10/hackaday-links-april-10-2022/ | Hackaday Links: April 10, 2022 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"audio clip",
"boring people",
"delivery bot",
"electron beam",
"hackaday links",
"Ingenuity",
"Jezero",
"mars",
"metal 3d printing",
"Perseverance",
"starship",
"what's that sound"
] | A funny thing happened on the way to the delta. The one on Jezero crater on Mars, that is, as the
Perseverance
rover may have
captured a glimpse of the parachute
that helped deliver it to the Red Planet a little over a year ago. Getting the rover safely onto the Martian surface was
an incredibly complex undertaking
, made all the more impressive by the fact that it was completely autonomous. The parachute, which slowed the descent vehicle holding the rover, was jettisoned well before the “Sky Crane” deployed to lower the rover to the surface. The parachute wafted to the surface
a bit over a kilometer from the landing zone
. NASA hasn’t confirmed that what’s seen in
the raw images
is the chute; in fact, they haven’t even acknowledged the big white thing that’s obviously not a rock in the picture at all. Perhaps they’re reserving final judgment until they get an overflight by the
Ingenuity
helicopter, which is currently landed not too far from where the descent stage crashed. We’d love to see pictures of that wreckage.
We recently had a Hack Chat on
3D printing metal
where Agustin Cruz came on to talk about his attempt to build an affordable electron beam sintering printer. The chat was great, and now Agustin has made a bunch of progress that’s worth a look. The idea behind electron beam sintering is simple — it’s basically a souped-up version of the electron gun and deflection coils in the back of a CRT, which blasts away at a bed of fine metal powder to sinter it together, layer by layer. The details, though, like working in a vacuum, precisely depositing a fresh layer of powder, and precisely controlling beam power and position, are non-trivial. Check out Agustin’s progress on
his Hackaday.io project
.
Do you think of yourself as a boring person? Chances are you don’t — it seems like being a bore is like having bad breath, in that it’s hard to tell if you’ve got it. But according to
a new study
, boring people are not only quantifiable, but the stereotypes about them are all pretty much true — or at least consistent. The methodology seems a little subjective, though — participants were asked to provide a brief description of a boring person, which hilariously included former US Vice President Al Gore for his “really monotone speech” and “no emotion.” They then imagined personality characteristics, hobbies, and occupations for these stereotypical bores, coming up with things like long-winded stories, geocaching, and accounting. Feeling personally attacked by this point, we read no further, but the take-home message seems to be that while everyone is boring to someone, you really have to work at it to be boring to everyone.
If you listen to the Hackaday Podcast, which of course immediately disqualifies you from the boring people cohort, you’ll know about the “What’s That Sound?” segment, where a short clip of some tech-relevant sound is played, and if you can identify it, riches and fame await. Well, if you can’t get enough of that stuff, head over to
the Museum of Endangered Sounds
, which seeks to preserve our auditory heritage before it slips away. The site has a mere smattering of sounds so far, including the AIM message alert, the old Nokia ringtone, Windows 95 startup, a floppy drive seeking tracks, and the sound of a cartridge being inserted into a Nintendo NES, complete with the obligatory blowing on the connector. We can think of literally thousands of more sounds worth preserving, and while we don’t see a way to contribute sounds, it might be worth pinging the proprietor if you can think of anything.
And finally, I share with you the following photo, sent by my son, currently studying at the University of Idaho, snapped moments before his attempted abduction:
Thankfully, he managed to sidestep the slow-moving swarm and make good his escape. I count thirteen of these
Starship delivery bots
in the picture, doing who the hell knows what. Are they heading back to base for the night? Off to an all-hands meeting? Or perhaps they’re on strike and working the picket line? Hard to say, but it’s interesting behavior for these things. | 19 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455400",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2022-04-10T23:46:46",
"content": "It’s a robot revolution. Run for your lives.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6455412",
"author": "Feinfinger (with diabolic laughter)",
... | 1,760,372,729.982095 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/10/robotic-boat-rides-high-on-pvc-pipe-pontoons/ | Robotic Boat Rides High On PVC Pipe Pontoons | Tom Nardi | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"autonomous boat",
"depth mapping",
"jet drive",
"pontoon"
] | If you want to build your own rover, there’s plenty of cheap RC trucks out there that will provide a serviceable chassis to work with. Looking to go airborne with a custom drone? Thanks to the immense popularity of first-person view (FPV) flying, you’ll find a nearly infinite variety of affordable fixed wing and quadcopter platforms out there to chose from. But when it comes to robotic watercraft, the turn-key options aren’t nearly as plentiful; the toys are all too small, and the commercial options are priced for entities that have an R&D budget to burn. For amateur aquatic explorers, creativity is the name of the game.
Take for example
this impressive vessel built by [wesgood]
. With a 3D printed electronics enclosure mounted to a pair of pontoons made of cheap 4-inch PVC pipe available from the hardware store, it provides a stable platform without breaking the bank. Commercial jet drive units built into the printed tail caps for the pipes provide propulsion, and allow the craft to be steered through differential thrust. Without rudders or exposed propellers, this design is particularly well-suited for operating in shallow waters.
A removable electronics tray allows for easy access.
Perched high above the water, the electronics box contains a Raspberry Pi 2, BU353 USB GPS receiver, and a Arduino Mega 2560 paired with a custom PCB that offers up convenient ports to connect a dual-channel Cytron 3 amp motor driver and Adafruit BNO055 9-DOF IMU. Power is provided by two 6,000 mAh LiPo batteries mounted low in the pontoons, and a matching pair of Adafruit current/voltage sensors are used to keep track of the energy budget. A small USB WiFi dongle with an external antenna plugged into the Pi offers up a WiFi network that [wesgood] can connect to with an iPad for control.
If the control software for the craft looks particularly well-polished, it’s probably because [wesgood] just so happens to be a professional developer with a focus on mobile applications. While we’re a bit skeptical of using WiFi for a critical long-distance link, we can’t deny that the iPad allows for a very slick interface. In addition to showing the status of the craft’s various systems, it lets the user either take manual control or place waypoints for autonomous navigation — although it sounds like that last feature is only partially implemented right now.
We love this design, and are eager to see more as the project develops. Recently [wesgood] experimented with
payloads that can be suspended from the bottom of the electronics box
, specifically a sonar module for performing bathymetric observations. There’s considerable interest in crowd sourced depth maps for inland waterways, and a robotic craft that can reliably chart these areas autonomously is
certainly a step up from having to collect the data manually
. | 11 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455376",
"author": "NAM",
"timestamp": "2022-04-10T20:52:28",
"content": "looks like a bomb",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6455533",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2022-04-11T14:19:31",
"conte... | 1,760,372,730.638121 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/10/a-super-simple-diy-ozone-generator/ | A Super Simple DIY Ozone Generator | Dave Rowntree | [
"Science"
] | [
"corona discharge",
"high voltage",
"ozone"
] | [Advanced Tinkering] needed a source of fresh ozone for some future chemistry related projects, and since buying an off-the-shelf unit would be, well, just plain boring, it was
obvious what to do
(Video, embedded below).
Wire mesh discharge surfaces separated with a glass tube
The concept of the corona-discharge ozone generator is pretty straightforward — a high-voltage AC potential is presented over a large surface area, such that any O
2
in the vicinity has the chance to get a decent dose of electrons ripping it apart and enabling the formation of the desired O
3
.
The construction is quite simple, just a pair of cylindrical metal wire mesh electrodes, separated by a glass tube, with a second glass tube surrounding the whole assembly. The use of high voltage AC allows the discharge to form by capacitive coupling across the central tube, giving a very simple construction. A pair of 3D-printed PLA end caps complete the reaction vessel, although it is noted in the video that the PLA is not terribly resistant to the corrosive effects of ozone, and time will tell whether these go the whole mileage.
Feed oxygen from an external generator is pumped into one end cap, at the bottom, with ozone-enriched gas passing out the other end, at the top, giving the gas a more complex path through the assembly and maximizing the contact with discharge. It will be interesting to see what the produced ozone will be used for in these future projects.
We’ve not seen a vast number of ozone hacks, but we’re no strangers to high voltage applications, like this
interesting hand disinfection device
, and this
simple hack that generates a six-figure voltage
with little more than some glasses of water, well not much more anyway. | 38 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455317",
"author": "Ron",
"timestamp": "2022-04-10T17:08:36",
"content": "Nothing like poisoning the air that you breath.https://www.lung.org/clean-air/outdoors/what-makes-air-unhealthy/ozone",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6... | 1,760,372,730.476167 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/10/this-3-5mm-cable-distorts-signals-hides-audio-filtering-circuit/ | This 3.5mm Cable Distorts Signals, Hides Audio-Filtering Circuit | Arya Voronova | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"3.5mm",
"audio cable",
"audio jack",
"bose"
] | [Avian]’s dad got a new ham radio transceiver with a 3.5 mm jack, and his pile-of-cables got him
a headphone cable from Bose headphones
. He built a DB9 to 3.5 mm adapter with that one – and it failed to let data through, outputting distorted garbage of a waveform instead. With a function generator and an oscilloscope, [Avian] plotted the frequency response of the cable, which turned out to be quite far from a straight line. What was up?
Taking the connector apart was a tricky job. A combination of blunt force and a nail polish remover soak didn’t quite get them all the way, so [Avian] continued to apply blunt force and took the jack apart with minimal casualties. Turned out that there was more to the 3.5 mm plug indeed — a whole PCB with a few resistors and capacitors, reverse-engineered into the schematic seen above.
Looks like Bose decided to tweak the audio characteristics of a specific pair of headphones, and an in-plug filter was, somehow, the most efficient solution. We probably shouldn’t expect to see this often, but it bears keeping in mind: next time your repurposed 3.5 mm cable doesn’t behave as expected, it would be prudent to do a capacitance test with your trusty meter or oscilloscope.
With
how small MCUs have gotten
, you can easily hide more than just a few capacitors! We don’t often see circuits built into cables, but when we do, it’s
for malicious purposes
. | 57 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455270",
"author": "Steve",
"timestamp": "2022-04-10T14:04:34",
"content": "This is pretty interesting, I’m actually thinking back to the times my cat chewed through my headphone wires, I replaced them but they never quite sounded the same after..",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,372,730.359231 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/10/a-turbocharged-robot-mop-to-save-your-date/ | A Turbocharged Robot Mop To Save Your Date | Robin Kearey | [
"home hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"cleaning robot",
"obstacle avoidance",
"robot mop"
] | Cleaning robots are great and all, but they don’t really excel when it comes to speed. If your room looks like a pigsty and your Tinder date is arriving in twenty minutes, you’ll need more than a Roomba to make a good impression. [Luis Marx] ran into this exact problem and decided to solve it by building
the world’s fastest cleaning robot
(video, embedded below).
[Luis] built his ‘bot from the ground up, inspired by the design of your average robot vacuum: round, with two driven wheels and some sensors to avoid obstacles. A sturdy aluminium plate forms the chassis, onto which two powerful motors are placed to drive a pair of large-diameter wheels. The robot’s body is made from 3D-printed components and sports a huge LED display on top that functions as a speedometer of sorts.
Building a vacuum system turned out to be rather difficult, and since [Luis] already had a robot vacuum anyway, he decided to make this a robot mop instead. A little tank stores water and soap, which is pumped onto a microfibre cloth that’s attached using a magnetic strip. Obstacle avoidance is implemented through three ultrasonic distance sensors: when the robot is about to run into something it will brake and turn in the direction where it senses the most empty space.
All of that sounds great, but what about the speed? According to [Luis]’s calculations, it should be able to reach 60 km/h, although his living room is too small to put that into practice. Whether it will provide much in the way of cleaning at that speed is debatable too, but who cares: having your own ultra-high-speed robot mop will definitely impress your date more than any amount of cleaning.
We’ve featured
a home-made robot mop
before, but it looks excruciatingly slow compared to this one. If you’re planning to build zippy indoor robots, you might want to look into fast navigation systems like
tracking ceiling lights
. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455261",
"author": "Keith Woodward",
"timestamp": "2022-04-10T12:58:59",
"content": "Cool robot! So funny the way he composited himself amongst the code at two thirds through!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6455305",
"auth... | 1,760,372,730.398273 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/11/quick-hacks-countersinking-screw-heads-with-3d-laser-engraving/ | Quick Hacks: Countersinking Screw Heads With 3D Laser Engraving | Dave Rowntree | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d laser engraving",
"countersink",
"inkscape"
] | Here’s a fun
quick hack from [Timo Birnschein] about using the 3D laser engraving
(or ‘stamp’ engraving) mode of certain laser cutter toolchains to create a handy countersink shape in a laser-cut and engraved workpiece. Since [Timo] uses a small laser cutter to cut out and mark project boards for their electronics builds, having an extra messy, manual countersinking operation with subsequent clean-up seemed like a waste of time and effort, if the cutter could be persuaded to do it for them.
Designs are prepared in Inkscape, with an additional ‘3D engraving’ layer holding the extra processing step. [Timo] used the Inkscape feathering tools to create a circular grayscale gradient, leading up to the central cut hole (cuts are in a separate layer) which was then fed into Visicut in order to drive the GRBL-based machine, However, you could do it with practically any toolchain that supports laser power control during a rastering operation. The results look perfectly fine for regions of the workpiece not on show, at least, but if you’re only interested in the idea from a functional point of view, then we reckon this is another great trick for the big bag of laser hacks.
There have been a great number of laser cutting hacks here over the years, since these tools are so darn useful. The
snapmaker machine can be a 3D printer, a CNC cutter and a laser cutter all in one
, albeit not too perfect at any of those tasks, but the idea is nice. If you own a perfectly fine 3D printer, but fancy a spot of laser engraving (and you have good eye protection!), then you could just
strap a 5W blue diode laser to it
and get your fix. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455584",
"author": "McNugget",
"timestamp": "2022-04-11T18:11:53",
"content": "That’s interesting but I’ll just keep doing it ole skool",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6455587",
"author": "lj",
"timestamp": "2022-04-11T... | 1,760,372,730.528026 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/11/review-vizy-linux-powered-ai-camera/ | Review: Vizy Linux-Powered AI Camera | Donald Papp | [
"Artificial Intelligence",
"digital cameras hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Slider"
] | [
"ai",
"camera",
"IR filter",
"machine learning",
"machine vision",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi 4",
"tensorflow"
] | Vizy
is a Linux-based “AI camera” based on the Raspberry Pi 4 that uses machine learning and machine vision to pull off some neat tricks, and has a design centered around hackability. I found it ridiculously simple to get up and running, and it was just as easy to make changes of my own, and start getting ideas.
Out of the box, Vizy is only a couple lines of Python away from being a functional Cat Detector project.
I was running pre-installed examples written in Python within minutes, and editing that very same code in about 30 seconds more. Even better, I did it all without installing a development environment, or even leaving my web browser, for that matter. I have to say, it made for a very hacker-friendly experience.
Vizy comes from the folks at
Charmed Labs
; this isn’t their first stab at smart cameras, and it shows. They also created the
Pixy
and
Pixy 2
cameras, of which I happen to own several. I have always devoured anything that makes machine vision more accessible and easier to integrate into projects, so when Charmed Labs kindly offered to send me one of their newest devices, I was eager to see what was new.
I found Vizy to be a highly-polished platform with a number of truly useful hardware and software features, and a focus on accessibility and ease of use that I really hope to see more of in future embedded products. Let’s take a closer look.
Looking Inside
Vizy is based on the Raspberry Pi 4, which sets it somewhat apart from most other embedded machine vision platforms. Like many other platforms, all code and vision processing for Vizy runs locally. However, running on a Raspberry Pi 4 also means having access to a familiar Linux environment, and this functionality brings a few benefits we’ll explore in a moment.
Vizy is by default an indoor device, but for more demanding environments, there is
an optional outdoor enclosure
.
Inside the case is tucked a Raspberry Pi 4, a fan, the lens assembly and camera (which uses the same Sony IMX477 sensor as the Raspberry Pi High Quality camera), and a small power and I/O management board attached to the top of the Pi’s 40-pin GPIO header. This board handles powering on and off, controls the switchable IR filter, accepts 12 V DC input, provides feedback with a beeper and RGB LED, and has an I/O header with screw terminals for easy interfacing to other devices.
Vizy can almost be thought of as a camera-shaped enclosure for a Raspberry Pi, since it provides full access to all of the Raspberry Pi 4’s ports, which all work as one would expect. One can plug in a monitor and keyboard and see a Linux desktop environment, and adding a feature like cellular wireless connectivity is as simple as plugging in and configuring a USB cellular modem. Interfacing to other systems or hardware — an expected task for a smart camera — becomes easier as a result of being able to use familiar interfaces and methods.
Hacker-Friendly Features
One of the things I liked the most about exploring Vizy was how quickly I started modifying sample code without even having to even leave my web browser, thanks to the built-in web terminal interfaces. Examples and applications are all written in Python, and while it’s certainly possible to use whatever method one wishes to edit Python code and push changes to the device, it’s also trivially simple to launch an editor in a new browser tab.
Clicking ‘Editor’ launches a Python editor in a new tab, loaded with the currently-running code.
Code can be edited and tested without leaving the web browser.
Here are some of the more interesting features I found in Vizy, each of them having something useful to offer. Their utility is enhanced by
excellent documentation
.
Hardware Features
Software-controlled, switchable IR filter
which is independent of the lens itself. An IR filter is typically built into most lenses because it provides better photos. However, there are times when going without an IR filter is desirable (a camera tends to see better at night without one, for example.) Vizy allows enabling (or disabling) the IR filter with a simple software command.
Lens mount is both M12 and C/CS compatible.
Most cameras accept one type of lens or the other, but Vizy allows using either (though it is recommended to use lenses without IR filters, because Vizy provides its own.)
I/O plug with screw terminals
provides a way for the camera to directly interface to other hardware and devices. The pins allow for robust digital input and output including serial communication, and software-switchable high-current 5 V and 12 V outputs are available to control external devices (
more details on the pinout is here
.)
The usual camera standards are present
such as a tripod mount, mounting shoe for camera accessories, and an optional outdoor enclosure.
All the usual Raspberry Pi interfaces are exposed
which means that Vizy doesn’t get in the way of anything a Raspberry Pi would normally be able to do. It’s even possible to plug in a keyboard and monitor (or
connect via VNC
, for that matter) and work on Vizy from a normal Linux desktop environment.
Software Features
Simple setup.
It takes virtually no time at all to be up and running, or configure the device to connect to a local network. Every part of Vizy’s functionality is accessible via a web browser.
Built-in applications and examples are easy to modify.
Two applications and a number of examples come pre-installed and ready to run:
Birdfeeder
automatically detects and identifies different species of birds, and
MotionScope
detects moving objects, measures the acceleration and velocity of each, and presents the data as interactive graphs. Examples include things like
TensorFlow object detection
, which runs locally and provides a simple framework for projects.
Development can be done entirely in the browser
, and any example or application can be launched in a Python editor in a new browser tab with a couple of clicks, with no need for a separate development environment (although Vizy also permits
SMB/CIFS-based file sharing on the local network
.)
Remote web sharing for access from outside one’s network
is a handy feature that creates a custom URL through which one may remotely access the device. A URL generated in this way is only valid for an hour, but established remote sessions won’t be terminated; a generated URL simply stops being valid. All of the usual features are accessible through
web sharing
— including web-based terminal windows and file editing — and the system handles simultaneous access by multiple users gracefully.
Powering the Camera
Vizy is nominally powered by the included 12 V wall adapter but
there are a number of options for powering the device
, which offers the typical hacker some flexibility. For example, it’s possible to power the device by applying 5 V to the USB-C connector, although doing this means the 12 V output on the I/O connector won’t be functional. Speaking of which, that 12 V output also can function as an input, allowing one to power the camera from an external 12 V source applied to the right screw terminals.
Power over Ethernet (PoE)
is also an option.
Power consumption reflects the device’s Raspberry Pi 4 internals, consuming around 3 W to 5 W depending on what it is doing. I measured between 500 mA and 600 mA at 5 V when idle, jumping to around 1 A while actively streaming the results of TensorFlow object detection in the camera view.
In-Browser… Everything
It’s one thing to be able to view live video or change hardware parameters from within a browser, but what’s even better is being able to edit Python code directly from a browser tab, complete with application console output. It’s a slick system that really makes modifying or writing code for the camera much more accessible. Need to create new files, or even open a terminal window to the Pi itself? That can be launched in a new tab, as well.
Of course, one can use whatever method one wishes to develop on the device. File sharing,
ssh
, and remote desktop (via VNC) are all options, as is simply plugging in a keyboard and monitor.
Loving This Direction
I was up and running in no time with Vizy, and the default application is a bird feeder watcher that detects birds, identifies their species, and uploads their pictures to a Google photo album. It’s capable of more than that, however. Want an idea of what goes into developing your own application? Here’s
a tutorial on rolling your own pet companion
, complete with treat dispenser.
Vizy comes with a number of useful examples that are ready to modify, and development doesn’t need anything more than a web browser. This helps make it more accessible while at the same time offering the average hacker a running start at implementing things like object detection in a project. In fact, thanks to the pre-installed TensorFlow examples, Vizy is only a couple lines of code away from being a functional
Cat Detector like this one
.
Vizy has a level of polish and set of features that I really hope to see more of in future products like this. Does a device like this give you any ideas for a new project, or perhaps breathe life into an old one? We definitely want to hear about it, so let us know in the comments. | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6455588",
"author": "Jon",
"timestamp": "2022-04-11T18:23:57",
"content": "This inspires me to pick up where I left off with my CV project.It seems like computer vision + AI might be at a place where it could watch my shop with me puttering around in it, and send an alert if I am us... | 1,760,372,730.587244 |
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