url stringlengths 37 208 | title stringlengths 4 148 | author stringclasses 173
values | publish_date stringclasses 1
value | categories listlengths 0 12 | tags listlengths 0 27 | featured_image stringlengths 0 272 | content stringlengths 0 56.1k | comments_count int64 0 900 | scraped_comments_count int64 0 50 | comments listlengths 0 50 | scraped_at float64 1.76B 1.76B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/10/fumik-an-arduino-wall-drawing-robot-jellyfish/ | Fumik: An Arduino Wall Drawing Robot Jellyfish | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"plotter",
"wall plotter"
] | If you’ve ever wanted to build a large format plotter but didn’t have the floor space, maybe put it up against the wall and make it cute.
That’s the idea behind Fumik
, the wall-drawing robot. As you might expect, the little device is just a motion base with a pen. We hope there’s paper against the wall since not everyone wants computer-generated art on their drywall.
The maximum size is apparently 5 m wide by 3 m tall, plenty of room to express yourself. The controller is an Arduino Mega, and stepper motors with a CNC shield drive the whole assembly. Interestingly, the motor and electronics are all onboard the jellyfish itself, rather than the wall.
The device only holds one pen at a time, but you can draw with one color and then manually change the pen. The files on GitHub are good, but you’ll need to intuit some of the mechanics from the videos. However, since it uses off-the-shelf hardware, it should be pretty easy to figure it out. This looks like a cheap and cheerful wall plotter, and the results speak for themselves.
We have seen similar
wall plotters
.
More than once
, even. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6444564",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2022-03-10T16:20:59",
"content": "I am surprized how precize this is (from the video). With the stepper motors so far apart, this is not a triangle (with the length determined solely by the length of the 3 sides, the upper being always the s... | 1,760,372,765.282687 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/10/how-did-we-get-to-the-speed-of-light/ | How Did We Get To The Speed Of Light? | Jenny List | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"c++",
"light",
"speed of light"
] | Every high school physics student knows
c
, or the speed of light, it’s 3 x 10^8 metres per second. More advanced or more curious students will know that this is an approximation, and the figure of
299,792,458
metres per second that forms the officially accepted figure comes from a resonance of the caesium atom from which is derived a value for the second.
Galileo Galilei, whose presence in this story should come as no surprise. Justus Sustermans,
Public domain
.
But for those who are
really
curious about measuring the speed of light the question remains: Just how did we arrive at that figure and how long have we been measuring it? The answer contains some surprises, and some exceptionally clever scientific thought and experimentation over the centuries.
The nature of light and whether it had a speed at all had been puzzling philosophers and scientists since antiquity, but the first experiments performed in an attempt to measure it were you will not be surprised to hear, performed by Galileo sometime in the early 17th century. His experiment involved his observation of assistants uncovering lanterns at known distances away, and his observations failed to arrive at a figure.
Later that century in 1676 the first numerical estimate of the speed of light was made by the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer, who observed an apparent variation in the period of one of Jupiter’s moons depending upon whether the Earth was approaching it or moving away from it. From this he was able to estimate the time taken for light to cross the Earth’s orbit, and from there the mathematician Christiaan Huygens was able to produce a figure of 220,000,000 metres per second.
Spinning Cogs And Mirrors: Time Of Flight
The mile-long evacuated tube used in Michelson’s time-of-flight experiment. H. H. Dunn,
Public domain
.
The experiments with which we will perhaps be the most familiar are the so-called time of flight measurements, which take Galileo’s idea of observing the delay as light travels over a distance, and bring to it ever higher precision. This was first performed in the middle of the 19th century by the French physicist Hippolyte Fizeau, who reflected a beam of light from a mirror over several kilometres, and used a toothed wheel to chop it into pulses. The pulses could be increased in frequency by moving the wheel faster until the time taken for the light to travel the distance from wheel to mirror and back again matched the separation between teeth and the returning pulse could be observed. His calculation of 313,300,000 metres per second was successively improved upon through the work of succession of others
including Léon Foucault
, culminating in the
series of experiments by the American physicist Albert A. Michelson
in the 1920s. Michelson’s final figure stood at 299,774,000 metres per second, measured through a multi-path traversal of a mile-long evacuated tube in the California desert. In the second half of the century the techniques shifted to laser interferometry, and in the quest to define the SI units in terms of constants, eventually to the definition mentioned in the first paragraph.
The most fascinating part of the story probably encapsulates the essence of scientific discovery, namely that while to arrive at something takes the work of many scientists building on the work of each other, it can then often be rendered into a form that can be understood by a student who hasn’t had to pass through all that effort. We could replicate Fizeau and Michelson’s experiments with a pulse generator, laser diode, and oscilloscope, which while of little scientific value nearly a century after Michelson’s evacuated tube, is still
immensely
cool. Has anyone out there given it a try?
Header image: Tommology,
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 52 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6444544",
"author": "Brendan Hassett",
"timestamp": "2022-03-10T15:27:35",
"content": "This was demonstrated (the Fizeau method) by AlphaPhoenix on Youtube. He shows that it can be done with very basic equipment.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMO9uUsjXaI",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,765.808978 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/10/galaxy-users-accuse-samsung-of-throttling-performance-and-benchmark-rigging/ | Galaxy Users Accuse Samsung Of Throttling Performance And Benchmark Rigging | Chris Lott | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"benchmark",
"geekbench",
"GOS",
"S22",
"Samsung Galaxy",
"throttling"
] | A lot of Samsung Galaxy users think that
Samsung has been throttling smartphone performance
, so much so that they don’t live up to their published specifications. At issue is the game optimizing service (GOS) which is intended to throttle the CPU while playing games to prevent overheating. S22 owners have recently discovered that it’s not only games that are throttled, but there’s a list of over 10,000 apps which are subject to GOS control, and there is no way to disable it.
What they’re
really
upset over is the fact that popular benchmarking apps are not subject to GOS throttling — something that’s hard to see as anything but a blatant attempt to game the system. In fact, this past weekend the folks at Geekbench
banned four generations of Samsung Galaxy phones
(S10, S20, S21, S22) for benchmark manipulation.
Admittedly, thermal management is critical on today’s incredibly powerful handheld devices, and the concept of throttling is an accepted solution in the industry. But people are upset at the opaqueness and lack of control of GOS, not to mention cherry picking apps in order to excel at benchmarks. Furthermore Samsung has removed their vapor chamber cooling system from recent models. This makes GOS even more important and looks like a cost-savings measure that may have backfired. Currently there’s a petition with the government claiming false advertising, and users are actively pursuing a lawsuit against Samsung. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6444509",
"author": "Martin",
"timestamp": "2022-03-10T13:29:38",
"content": "Good, that I did not decide for Samsung a few months ago, when I needed a new phone. I really liked my Galaxy S5, but in the meantime it was too outdated (lack of memory for current apps). Now I have a Xi... | 1,760,372,765.531982 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/10/reflow-hotplate-teardown-uncovers-the-bare-minimum/ | Reflow Hotplate Teardown Uncovers The Bare Minimum | Al Williams | [
"Teardown",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"hot plate",
"hotplate",
"reflow"
] | [EEforEveryone] is trying to find a good hot plate for reflow soldering. After trying one cheap unit, he got
another one
. He was a bit underwhelmed. The grounding was suspect and the bed wasn’t totally flat. He tore it apart and was surprised that there was very little inside. While the construction wasn’t perfect, it was better than the previous unit. You can see a video of the teardown and review below.
Before powering it up, the first order of business was to rewire the ground system. After that, it was time to try it. However, by confusing Fahrenheit and Centigrade, he set the temperature much higher than necessary which creating a little smoke. Fixing the temperature helped, but there was still a bit of a smoky smell that eventually subsided.
The verdict? The hot plate worked well enough, but you probably do want to check the ground wiring before using it. That’s often a good idea where cheap equipment is concerned, anyway. But the real takeaway is that it looks like you could homebrew something equivalent without much trouble. The controller is an off-the-shelf module. A switch and a plug aren’t hard to figure out. The heating element could be a silicone heater or PCB heater meant for a 3D printer.
Of course, there are other options. You could use
a wok
. Or why not
a waffle iron
? You can also make a
custom PCB
. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6444446",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2022-03-10T09:59:15",
"content": "It’s a hotplate. How complicated do you expect it to be?There are a huge number of homebrew hotplates around, from repurposed irons through to profile-managed heated/cooled enclosures.",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,372,765.165913 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/09/the-fliegerfaust-roars-back-to-life-after-77-years/ | The Fliegerfaust Roars Back To Life After 77 Years | Tom Nardi | [
"History",
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"rocket launcher",
"world war II",
"wwii"
] | As their prospects for victory in the Second World War became increasingly grim, the Germans developed a wide array of outlandish “Wonder Weapons” that they hoped would help turn the tide of the war. While these
Wunderwaffe
obviously weren’t enough to secure victory against the Allies, many of them represented the absolute state-of-the-art in weapons development, and in several cases ended up being important technological milestones. Others faded away into obscurity, sometimes with little more then anecdotal evidence to prove they ever even existed.
One of these forgotten inventions is the Fliegerfaust, a portable multi-barrel rocket rocket launcher designed for use against low-flying attack planes. Although thousands were ordered to defend Berlin in 1945, fewer than 100 were ever produced, and there’s some debate about how many actually survived the war. But that didn’t stop
[Jonathan Wild] of
Wild Arms Research & Development
from building a functional replica
of the weapon based on contemporary documentation and blueprints.
Building the launcher was relatively straightforward, as it’s little more than nine tubes bundled together with a handle and a simplistic electric igniter. The trick is in the 20 mm (0.78 inch) rockets themselves, which are spin stabilized by the exhaust gasses exiting the four angled holes on the rear. With no fins or active guidance the path of each rocket is somewhat unpredictable, but this was known to be true of the original as well.
Note angled exhaust ports on each rocket.
Historical records disagree on how the rockets were actually fired, some state each barrel was ignited in sequential order while others claim the rockets were launched in volleys. [Jonathan] decided to design his igniter circuit so that all the rockets would be triggered simultaneously, but due to variations in the propellant, they leave the launcher at the staggered pace seen in the demonstration video below.
From a purely historical standpoint, this project is an absolute triumph. Considering the weapon was last known to have been used during the Battle of Berlin, there’s an excellent chance that no living person had seen or heard one fired up until this point. Of course we’ll never know how it compares to the real thing, but at least we have more context than a few B&W pictures could provide. [Jonathan] says he’s currently working on a book that details how the researched and built his replica, which we’re eager to get a look at.
For those wondering about the legality of such an endeavour, [Jonathan] has been in close contact with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) and made sure all Local, State and Federal laws were followed during the development and testing of his replica. Even though there’s no explosive warheads in the rockets, the launcher has been registered as what’s known as a “Destructive Device” under the National Firearms Act. Federally these can be legally owned by civilians, but specific laws can vary by State, so dabbling in homebrew Wonder Weapons isn’t recommended unless you’ve got a good lawyer on speed dial. | 36 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6444395",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2022-03-10T06:43:20",
"content": "Sort of the rocket powered bullet scaled up.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6444402",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2022-03-10T07:03:01"... | 1,760,372,765.673175 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/09/webgpu-better-than-webgl/ | WebGPU… Better Than WebGL? | Al Williams | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"gpu",
"opengl",
"WebGL",
"webgpu"
] | As the browser becomes more like an operating system, we are seeing more deep features being built into them. For example, you can now do a form of assembly language for the browser. Sophisticated graphics have been around using WebGL since around 2011, but some people find it hard to use. [Surma] was one of those people and tried a new method that is just surfacing to do the same thing:
WebGPU
.
[Surma] liked it better and shares a lot of information in the post and — oddly — the post doesn’t use WebGPU for graphics very much. Instead, the post focuses on using GPU cores for fast computation, something else you can do with WebGPU. If your goal is to draw on the screen, though, you need to know the basics and the post links to a site with
examples
of doing this.
Remember that you may have to do something
special to turn on WebGPU in your browser
or switch browsers. While WebGL was a thin wrapper over OpenGL, WebGPU is an abstraction that can drive Vulkan, Metal, or DirectX 12 — all popular ways to talk to a GPU, depending on your operating system.
The post is long and covers topics like shaders, pipelines, and staging buffers. Of course, the API is in draft and not stable, but it seems substantial enough that what you learn now will probably be useful in the future, too.
We’ve seen GPU processing used to do
neural networks in the browser
. You might also be interested in checking out
GPU.js
. | 19 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6444358",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2022-03-10T04:31:41",
"content": "GPU’s have a very large attack surface. Sometimes they can be configured to write to shared memory that is read only to the CPU. Allowing unfettered access to your GPU from the internet, could be very risky... | 1,760,372,765.58206 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/09/vfd-character-display-turned-into-audio-vu-meter/ | VFD Character Display Turned Into Audio VU Meter | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"vacuum fluorescent display",
"vfd",
"VU meter"
] | Humans love visualising music, whether it’s in the form of an inscrutable equation drawing squiggles in Winamp, or a simple VU meter pulsing with the beat. This build from [mircemk] is of the latter variety,
repurposing a VFD display to do the job.
The project is built around a VFM202MDA vacuum fluorescent display, which provides that lovely green-blue glow we all know and love, driven by a PT6314 driver chip. This has the benefit that it can be readily driven by a microcontroller in much the same way as the familiar HD44780 character LCD driver chip. With some minor tweaks, the character set can be modified to allow the display to become a surprisingly-responsive VU meter.
An Arduino Nano runs the show, with an envelope follower circuit feeding a signal for the left and right channels into the analog inputs of the microcontroller. The Arduino then measures the voltage on those inputs and feeds the necessary commands to the PT6314 driver to update the display.
The resulting VU meter has 38 bars per channel, and is highly responsive. The fast flickering of the meter bars in response to the music make it compelling to watch, and the era-appropriate enclosure the project is built in adds plenty to the aesthetic.
We’ve seen other VU meter builds before too, like this one that uses a little physics knowledge
to create a more realistic analog-like needle meter.
Video after the break. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6444445",
"author": "Per Jensen",
"timestamp": "2022-03-10T09:53:52",
"content": "I love VFD’s and it surely looks better than the uglt blue/white LCD, but a link to your colleague’s article about the latter would be in order.https://hackaday.com/2021/11/08/visualizing-audio-with-an... | 1,760,372,765.473548 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/09/building-a-pendulum-clock-out-of-lego/ | Building A Pendulum Clock Out Of Lego | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"lego",
"mechanical clock"
] | Pendulum clocks aren’t used quite as often these days as their cumbersome mechanics and timekeeping abilities have long been outshone by electronic alternatives. However, they’re still fun and they do work, so [PuzzLEGO]
set about building a working example with Lego
.
The rear view reveals the escapement built from Lego Technic parts.
The core of the clock is the escapement, a linkage which the pendulum can only turn in one direction. As the pendulum swings once per second, it lets the escapement gear turn one notch forward at a time, turning the gears of the clock which drive the hands. It’s powered with a falling weight in the form of a drink bottle full of water, which turns the gears of the clock via a chain.
The clock can only run for approximately an hour, so it’s set up with a second and minute hand instead of the more usual minute and hour hand. However, with the pendulum tuned to the appropriate length and the weight fitted, it pleasantly ticks and tocks the seconds away.
We’ve seen other great builds from [PuzzLEGO] before, too,
like this inventive Rubik’s Cube build
. Video after the break. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6444231",
"author": "Eric Chapin",
"timestamp": "2022-03-09T21:19:49",
"content": "Could be useful for punishing children. Make him or her stand in the corner until the big hand reaches to bottom. Like an hourglass",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,765.113036 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/09/class-a-amplifiers-virtually/ | Class A Amplifiers, Virtually | Al Williams | [
"Parts"
] | [
"amplifier",
"class a amplifier",
"LTSpice",
"SPICE"
] | If you didn’t know better, you might think the phrase “class A amplifier” was a marketing term to help sell amplifiers. But it is, of course, actually a technical description of an amplifier that doesn’t distort the input waveform because it doesn’t depend on multiple elements to handle different areas of the input waveform. Want to know more? [FesZ] has a new video covering the
basics of class A amplifiers
including some great simulations. You can see the video below.
A class A amplifier uses a transistor that is always biased on. It never saturates or switches off. This is good for linearity, but not always the best for efficiency so there are other classes of amplifiers, too. However, for many applications, class A is the most common configuration.
There are a number of trade-offs involved with each type of amplifier and [FesZ] covers them in detail. But the real interesting part is the simulations in Spice. Sure, you can build the circuits and look at everything with a meter or scope, but using Spice is much handier.
There is a second video upcoming. We hope he covers other amplifier types too, as you really do want to understand the differences when you need to design something. If you want more Spice stuff,
check out some of our previous posts
. If for some reason, you don’t like LTSpice, there’s always
Micro-Cap 12
. | 21 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6444186",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2022-03-09T19:56:33",
"content": "Of course, there is reason for class A. Class C may be more efficient, but you wouldn’t want the distortion for audio or some RF use.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,765.230022 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/09/bringing-the-art-of-origami-and-kirigami-to-robotics-and-medical-technology/ | Bringing The Art Of Origami And Kirigami To Robotics And Medical Technology | Maya Posch | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Robots Hacks",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"kirigami",
"origami",
"self-assembling robot",
"self-assembly",
"self-folding"
] | Traditionally, when it comes to high-tech self-assembling microscopic structures for use in medicine delivery, and refined, delicate grippers for robotics, there’s been a dearth of effective, economical options. While some options exist, they are rarely as effective as desired, with microscopic medicine delivery mechanisms, for example, not having the optimal porosity. Similarly, in so-called soft robotics, many compromises had to be made.
A promising technology here involves the manipulation of flat structures in a way that enables them to either auto-assemble into 3D structures, or to non-destructively transform into 3D structures with specific features such as grippers that might be useful in both micro- and macroscopic applications, including robotics.
Perhaps the most interesting part is how much of these technologies borrow from the Japanese art of
origami
, and the related
kirigami
.
Flat Is Better
Self-folding scaffolds in anatomically relevant geometries. (Randall et al., 2012)
Rather than trying to build three-dimensional structures, it is significantly more efficient if one can coax sheets of a material or even individual molecules to self-assemble into the desired shape. In the area of biomedical engineering, for example, there are strong use cases for everything from drug delivery mechanisms that can precisely and efficiently deliver certain drugs where they are needed, to microsopic surgical tools such as grippers that can be controlled using external triggers.
In a review paper by
Randall et al. (2012)
, potential applications and the state of the art at the time were explored, focusing on the use of hinge-based, self-folding mechanisms. The exciting notion here is that it would allow us to create tiny mechanisms using two-dimensional lithography methods and similar common 2D manufacturing mechanisms.
As demonstrated in the image on the right, Randall et al. were able in previous research to produce 2D structures that when released from a substrate self-folded into a 3D structure using built-in hinges. This essentially makes these structures into a self-assembling type of origami by designing the positioning of the hinges.
They note that the use of lithography as commonly used in the semiconductor industry is not optimal for this type of assembly, due to a preference to use organic and other materials that are not commonly encountered in semiconductor lithography. The use of soft lithography methods that shape biopolymers and similar into the requisite shape were thought to be promising.
Self-Assembling Machines
In an article by
Felton et al. (2014)
(
PDF
), a similar method to Randall et al is used, except on a much larger scale with self-assembling robots. The essential idea here is to use the concept of computational origami to create what is essentially a flat circuit board with embedded electronics. Upon activation, shape-memory composites along embedded hinges are activated
(Credit: Felton et al., 2014)
Their demonstrated robot uses a sandwich of layers of pre-stretched polystyrene (PSPS), paper and a PCB. The PSPS is a shape-memory polymer that when heated to approximately 100°C contracts. When the joint has completed its rotation, the heat source is removed and as the PSPS hardens, the new orientation is permanent until heated again.
Of the five steps required to fold the robot from a flat shape into the final, 3D shape, three are self-folding, with motors handling the remaining two steps. After connecting a power source to the flat assembly, it takes approximately four minutes for the folding steps to complete and the joints to cool down. After folding, the robot can then proceed to walk around in its new, three-dimensional configuration.
Not all of their robots folded successfully, however: as they note in the paper, they needed three attempts to get a successful self-assembly. Apparently precision with the hinges to get them into the desired orientation is an issue there. Even so, considering the low cost of the materials, one could imagine flat, self-assembling robots like these being mass-produced.
As noted, this technique could be rather useful for rapid prototyping, and to make it easy for everything from robots to satellites to self-assemble once their intended location has been reached. The temperature for their heat-sensitive polymer of 100°C is a quality of the selected material, and depending on the intended environmental operating conditions, different materials could be picked to adapt to a different temperature range.
A Delicate Touch
Example of kirigami: St. Paul’s Cathedral by Bharath Kishore.
The aforementioned studies involved what are essentially types of high-tech origami, as their 3D shape derived from their 2D surface using nothing but a number of folds. This is distinct from kirigami (切り紙), as is made clear by the name: 切り (kiri) meaning ‘to cut’ and 紙 (kami) meaning ‘paper’. Instead of the folding of the paper creating the final shape, with kirigami it are the initial cuts made in the paper which determine the 3D shape that it will assume.
A well-known Western example of kirigami can be found in so-called
pop-up books
, where opening a page will result in a variety of shapes forming from the flat paper due to the way the paper was cut, occasionally helped by a guiding fold. Depending on the level of sophistication the most delicate shapes can be created in this manner.
The 2D kirigami sheets, their transformations and force-displacement curves (Hong et al., 2022)
This was also the guiding principle behind a recent study by
Hong et al. (2022)
in
Nature Communications
, with an attempt to create a type of computational kirigami that would allow for three-dimensional shapes to be translated to a series of cuts in a flat surface. A simple example of this is demonstrated in the article with three basic shapes:
At the core of their approach to computational kirigami is the Gauss-Bonnett theorem. Within the field of differential geometry this covers the relationship between surfaces, connecting its geometric curvature with its Euler characteristic (topological curvature). This applies to e.g. the
geodesic
curvature of Earth and its
Gaussian
curvature. Effectively this provides a mathematical way to describe the transformations as they move from the different representations
Using finite element method (FEM) simulation and analytical modeling the morphology changes were compared with the theoretical model, establishing the correlation between the boundary curvature of the 2D kirigami sheet and the Gaussian curvature of the 3D shape.
Using the thus developed model, Hong et al. moved to create a soft gripper that could exert precisely defined forces, allowing for delicate objects to be picked up and released again without damage.
Programmable delicate and noninvasive kirigami gripper. (Hong et al., 2022)
This structure consists out of essentially two flaps alongside a central region, on which an external (pulling) force is exerted. Due to the precisely calculated slits in the structure, the force exerted causes a non-permanent deformation of the thus created gripper. Because of the large amount of control, this simple structure can then be used to grip, hold and gently release anything from raw egg yolk to a live fish. It also has enough force to pick up and hold onto a human hair, as demonstrated in the embedded video:
Thinking Outside The Box
Possibly the most intriguing aspect of the preceding studies is how much of it can already be applied today. Rather than taking the obvious path of focusing on finding ways to directly construct complex, three-dimensional structures – whether on a macro- or microscopic scale – we can instead make the box assemble itself.
Although it is hard to say at this point how much of this research will find real-life uses, and what will run in other hurdles along the way, there does appear to be a lot of promise in these 2D-transformation-focused approaches. Much like with general research into self-assembling nanostructures, there does appear to be a trend towards engineering systems which can handle the assembly themselves.
While medical applications of self-folding, surgical nanobots are probably still a while off, that doesn’t mean that we can’t already make self-assembling, flatpack-style robots, along with gentle robotic grippers and wherever else our imagination and mathematics take us. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6444537",
"author": "mathman",
"timestamp": "2022-03-10T15:07:48",
"content": "Great article!DG is one of my favorite fields of math and this is really a very hands-on application of it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6444539... | 1,760,372,765.328228 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/09/upgraded-3d-printed-tank-gets-better-drivetrain-and-controls/ | Upgraded 3D Printed Tank Gets Better Drivetrain And Controls | Lewin Day | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"large 3d prints",
"tank"
] | When it comes to 3D printed builds, they’re often limited in size due to the small build volume of most printers. However, [Ivan Miranda] has always gone big with his builds,
and his latest tank design shows that off in spades.
Looks comfy!
[Ivan] has been
working on printed human-sized tanks for years
, and his latest revision aims to solve many of the problems that have hampered its performance in the past. A belt drive is the first major upgrade, aiming to improve the reliability of the drivetrain which has been a pain point in the past. The motor mounts also get built out of aluminium this time to help keep things cooler, as melting was a potential concern previously.
The tank’s controls are also upgraded, this time using a simple pedal system to control the brushless motors for easier driving. There’s even a printed seat for better ergonomics. The result is a giant tank big enough for an adult human, with the bonus that it’s now easy to steer and no longer requires [Ivan] to lie down inside to fit.
[Ivan’s] big printers are key to his success on big builds
. One new part for the tank weighs a full 5.8 kg, printed in just 2.5 days! We can’t wait to see what giant thing he builds next. Word is the tank will be getting a turret, too. Video after the break. | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6444237",
"author": "HaHa",
"timestamp": "2022-03-09T21:34:38",
"content": "Is there a single printed part in that ‘tank’ that couldn’t have been cut out of wood or metal?3d printing is great to produce hard/impossible to make parts…I don’t see any…wrong tool (for the visible parts ... | 1,760,372,765.860722 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/09/raspberry-pi-and-the-story-of-sd-card-corruption/ | Raspberry Pi And The Story Of SD Card Corruption | Arya Voronova | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Slider"
] | [
"file system corruption",
"micro sd",
"Micro Sd Card",
"raspberry pi",
"sd card",
"SD card corruption",
"sdtool"
] | Tales of Raspberry Pi SD card corruption are available online by the fistful, and are definitely a constant in Pi-adjacent communities. It’s apparent that some kind of problems tend to arise when a Raspberry Pi meets an SD card – which sounds quite ironic, since an SD card is the official and recommended way of booting a Pi. What is up with all of that?
I can start with a history lesson. Back when Raspberry Pi launched in 2012 –
which is now 10 years ago
– there were SD card controller driver problems, which makes sense given the wide variety of SD cards available out there. They were verifiably fixed one by one at some point in time, as debugging goes, their impact decreased and bugs with individual cards got smoothed over. This is how the “Pi SD card corruption” meme was originally born; however, if the problems were to end there, so would the meme. Yet, tales of broken SD cards plague us to this day – way less severe than they were in the beginning, but pronounced enough that you’ll see people encounter them every now and then.
Over the years, a devoted base of Pi SD card haters has grown. Their demand has been simple – Raspberry Pi has to get an ability to boot from something else, in large part because of corruption reasons, but also undeniably because of speed and capacity/cost limitations of SD cards. Thanks to their demands and work, we’ve seen a series of projects grow from unofficial efforts and hacks into officially supported Raspberry Pi abilities – USB boot being initially more of a workaround but now something
you can enable out of the box
, SSD-equipped Pi enclosures
becoming more of a norm
, and now,
NVMe boot appearing on the horizon
. Every few years, we get a new way to boot a Pi.
Should You Ditch SD Cards?
I’d like to make it clear – booting from an SSD or USB drive is a very nice option, and when you want your Pi to be fast, responsive, and reliable, you can absolutely try it. The SD card slot has stayed after all this time, is not about to disappear, and neither will all the SD cards in our drawers. Should you personally ditch SD cards? The answer is more likely to be “no” than “yes”.
Not everyone encounters SD card problems, with SD card images being the first thing available whenever you see a cool new project, and an SD-equipped Pi still a staple of an average maker contraption. Proponents of USB and network boot also cite improved latency for Pi-as-desktop usage, easier Pi management in case of network boot, and these alone are good reasons – but definitely not for every project out there. SD cards remain the simplest and cheapest option to boot a Pi.
You cannot always avoid SD card boot either. Booting a Pi Zero from an USB stick requires that you either waste your only USB port or add an entire USB hub into the mix, complicating the setup further, adding pesky cables and failure points. When it comes to portable and battery-powered devices built with a Pi, an SD card is hard to beat in terms of power consumption – USB flash drives aren’t known for being low-power-optimized, and neither are USB hubs, which you’ll notice if you check how warm a USB hub IC can get after passing a relatively low amount of USB packets.
In the end, even the most devoted external SSD booting enthusiasts might still want to add an SD card for the independent additional storage that it brings. The slot is there, and if you have a card to spare – why not use it? Unless you encounter problems, that is – so let’s go through those.
Why Do Cards Still Fail?
First of all, fake and cheap cards ruin the fun for everyone. MicroSD card clones are ever-present and hard to distinguish from legitimately made cards, but certainly
not subject to the same quality standards
. Cheap cards share the “low quality standards” part, but at least, you can recognize a no-name card by looking at it. Neither fake nor cheap cards are typically suitable for an entire OS to run from. They will not only make your Pi behave way more sluggishly than it actually can run, but will also result in mysterious failures and, later on, pretty explicit corruption.
Getting decent cards from reputable places
is part of a recipe for a calm Pi exploration journey, and nowadays, it doesn’t even really break the bank anymore, given the hefty amount of storage that you get for your money.
Even genuine cards can cause trouble. Our hackerspace bought a batch of genuine Samsung cards for our Pis back in 2014, and every single one of them has eventually died with the same symptoms – since every Pi used a card from the same batch, it ended up with hackerspace infrastructure dying out device-by-device, frustrating the members relying on it. After all, an SD card is a complex highly-integrated device, with the controller being a small purpose-built CPU – there’s room for firmware errors, manufacturing defects, and just good old hardware randomness. Supposedly, we are past this,
but be wary
.
It Is Now Safe To Turn Off Your SBC
Like majority of storage devices nowadays, an SD card has two separate entities inside – controller and flash memory. The controller has some flash management busywork to do whenever it gets sent some data to write, but doing it on the spot would be time-consuming, delaying subsequent write operations, and possibly wasteful. Subsequently, the SD card controller has to have a small piece of cache memory, and keep a list of operations that are yet to be performed but haven’t been.
This is the rationale behind “shutting down your Pi safely” aka “running
poweroff
before unplugging power” talking point – if you don’t give your SD card a bit of time and maybe even an automated advance notification from the OS, there might be pending write operations that will never get completed, resulting in garbled storage when you next power up the card. Some seasoned engineers claim that such shutdowns are eventually guaranteed to irreversibly break an average SD card long-term, due to how the cards work internally, and I wouldn’t argue with them on that.
Can you rely on an SD card even if unsafe shutdowns happen every now and then? My experience says “yes”. One of my first “engineering” role jobs was testing a Pi-based commercial device for exactly this problem, where I’ve built a test setup powering down a Pi during SD card writes and ran it for a few days, with our software still passing all the tests. To my knowledge, we shipped that hardware combination successfully long-term. With ZeroPhone,
unconventional power management
without a software counterpart to compensate for its shortcomings led to regular (sometimes even cyclical) brownouts every few days during a span of few years, whenever I’d forget to charge it. The SD cards I used survived quite well long-term and live to this day, save for an uneventful
fsck
every now and then.
My conclusion is that, while safe powerdowns are desired, being lax is not the end of the world, and many a hobbyist who has yanked the power cable out of their Pi carelessly will confirm this experience. However, if your software does a considerable amount of writing to the same SD card you run your OS from, perhaps you’d like to offload it somewhere else.
Don’t Cheap Out On Your PSU Either
There’s an unusual suspect to be mentioned, and that is power supply quality. Sometimes mentioned offhand, it’s an underappreciated reason, and I’ve had a years-long corruption-plagued hackerspace Pi debugging quest where that turned out to be the culprit. The Pi in question was the only one from an entire Pi network to get these issues, and was also powered by a hand-soldered LM2576 SMPS without a ground plane in sight – obviously the only viable solution at the time of build, which stayed there for ages because of the “hey, it works” human factor.
While the DC-DC doesn’t power the SD card directly — there’s a 5 V to 3.3 V regulator onboard for that — every single part of that setup, from the Pi to the filesystem, was replaced. Pis can be current-hungry, especially if they’re powering other USB devices. Thin cables and underspec supplies can lead to brownouts, and the poor SD cards pay the price.
Swapping the DC-DC to a regular blue “LM2596” module, reinforced with extra capacitors and thicker wires, was the solution that actually made the corruption problems disappear. There might be a lesson about noise propagation somewhere in there. For you, the conclusion I recommend, based on this and other similar but less puzzling experiences, is – obey the Ohm’s law in spirit, and make sure the path for juices to flow to your Pi isn’t constricted by an awfully thin and long MicroUSB or Type-C cable, or a DC-DC setup that turns out to be subpar.
New And Underappreciated Helpers
Nifty tricks appeared over the years that, if suitable for your use-case, will give you extra anti-corruption protection and undoubtedly provide some peace of mind. One such thing is
the OverlayFS option in Raspbian
, a small menu entry in
raspi-config
that was added sometime in 2019. If you enable it and reboot, your Pi will behave the same, but none of the changes you make will actually get written to your SD card – which also means they won’t get saved and will disappear after your reboot. If you want to change files on your SD card, you’ll want to disable OverlayFS, reboot, make the changes, re-enable OverlayFS and reboot again. There might be a way around this, but
that’s for you to figure out
.
A similar option is
also available with
sdtool
, which is small piece of software you can run on your Pi that instead directs your MicroSD card to go into read-only mode – which
all SD cards, big and small, are capable of
. If you don’t run the latest Raspbian, or maybe you want to switch your card’s read-only status without reboot, this approach might could be basically made for you.
Something else you might want to try are eMMC chips. Designed to be suitable for an OS to run from, they also happen to be compatible with the SD card interface on the Raspberry Pi, and you’ll find some Pi-compatible ones for sale using your search engine of choice. Recently, someone who swore that they held one of these mythical Pi 4 Compute Modules (reportedly, for a few seconds) told me that they use onboard eMMC storage. Not that the Out Of Stock warnings make me feel hopeful I could ever really verify, but if that’s indeed the case, how bad could it be?
A Little Corruption Can’t Hurt
The amount of stories about Raspberry Pi card corruption is daunting, but it’s a drop in a bucket when you consider that forty million of them have been sold. This is the gist of what goes into a typical SD card corruption case. If you ever need to deal with pesky SD corruption problems, you now know what to look for, and likely learned some new variables you can tweak. Get a good card, a good power supply, and don’t let others’ negative experiences, real or rumored, get you down! | 107 | 38 | [
{
"comment_id": "6444013",
"author": "Harvie.CZ",
"timestamp": "2022-03-09T15:13:21",
"content": "I think that PI just needs beefy tantalum capacitor which will only provide power for the SD card. So if you have unexpected power outage, the SD card will still have power for second or two after the C... | 1,760,372,766.677466 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/09/kia-recalls-cars-over-airbag-controller-assembly-issue/ | Kia Recalls Cars Over Airbag Controller Assembly Issue | Chris Lott | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"airbags",
"automotive",
"eeprom",
"Kia",
"recall"
] | Last month
Kia Motors announced a large recall
due to possibly defective airbag controller units (ACU). The recall spans many models and model years — in the United States alone it covers over 400K cars, and over half a million cars worldwide. From
the NHTSA report
we learn that the problem happened at assembly when the cover of some ACUs interfered with the pins of an EEPROM chip. This can cause some of the pins to open-circuit. If your car had this problem, a warning light would come on, but more seriously, the airbags would not deploy in an accident. Kia estimates that less than 1% of the cars using this ACU have this issue. Cars which have this fault will get a new ACU, and other cars will get a firmware upgrade to keep this from happening should the EEPROM pins break loose in the future.
We think this EEPROM is used for logging errors and crash events, and is therefore not in the critical path for airbag deployment. The original firmware apparently prevented deployment if the EEPROM had a fault. Presumably, after this patch, if pins break in the future, the fault indicator still lights up but you’ll have functioning airbags.
It’s not clear if these broken EEPROM pin solder joints were present from the start and the factory test procedures didn’t catch the problem. Or did the pins left the factory intact and were subsequently broke due to bumps and vibrations. Hardware issues aside, having safety critical firmware perform its primary function even when faults exist in non-essential parts of the circuit seems like a requirement that should have been applied to the ACU from the beginning.
This is a reminder of the importance of enclosure design and making sure your PCB layouts take into account all clearances necessary for the entire assembly. How many times have you got your PCB back and realized you forgot to even put mounting holes?
We
covered a similar issue a couple of years ago regarding the Takata airbag fiasco
. If you have a Kia,
this form on their website
tells you whether your vehicle is subject to the recall or not. | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443981",
"author": "Justin",
"timestamp": "2022-03-09T12:51:05",
"content": "It looks like the ACU can detect the failure and set a code/dash light. So you’ll know if your airbag will have a problem. But 1% failure rate is super high for vehicles – 400,000+ units. I’m not sure h... | 1,760,372,766.223143 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/07/flexypins-might-help-with-those-pesky-castellated-modules/ | FlexyPins Might Help With Those Pesky Castellated Modules | Arya Voronova | [
"hardware",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"ESP8266",
"pogo",
"Pogo pin",
"programmer",
"socket"
] | [SolderParty] just
announced FlexyPins
(Twitter,
alternative view
) – bent springy clips that let you connect modules with castellated pins. With such clips, you can quickly connect and disconnect any castellated module, swapping them without soldering as you’re prototyping, testing things out, or pre-flashing modules before assembly. They’re reportedly gold-plated, and a pack of ~100 will set you back 6EUR, shipping not included.
Of course, this is basically “fancy pieces of wire”, purpose-shaped, gold-plated and, hopefully, made out of material that is springy enough and doesn’t snap easily after bending a few times. We’ve seen this concept used for prototyping before, with random pieces of wire doing a pretty good job of maintaining connectivity, but these clips bring it that much closer to production-grade. It also makes us wonder – just how hard it is to solder 30-40 of them into a circuit? Do they self-align enough with
the footprints given
, or do you have to hold them with tweezers at a peculiar angle as you solder them? Time will tell, of course.
Don’t expect to see them used in regular circuits, as they’re quite space-consuming. However, for those of us prototyping and manufacturing, this is one more tool in our arsenal, and we’ve already seen
some fun uses for these
. They could also be pretty useful for experimenting with firmware of proprietary castellated modules, letting you reuse the same development board between different modules as you tweak things. And, if you’re like us and got a drawer with dead NodeMCU ESP32 boards, having a springy breakout for testing ESP32 modules might come in handy.
You can likely make such pins yourself – we’ve
reviewed this principle before
, with a nice 3D-printed jig to match! Flashing and testing castellated modules before soldering them seems to be a popular scenario, and for the aforementioned ESP8266 alone, we’ve reviewed quite a few testing and flashing jigs – check out
this 3D-printable one
, or this
Wemos-board-turned-pogopin-jig
one!
We thank [Chaos] and [adrien] for sharing this with us! | 51 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443110",
"author": "Alexander Wikström",
"timestamp": "2022-03-07T21:44:48",
"content": "That there is honestly a very nice looking interface to be fair.Wouldn’t be particularly hard to make such springs with a 3d printed jig. Though, the gold plated nature might be harder to trivi... | 1,760,372,766.087434 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/07/a-variable-capacitor-for-not-a-lot/ | A Variable Capacitor For Not A Lot | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"capacitor",
"radio",
"variable capacitor"
] | There’s one component which used to be ubiquitous in every experimenter’s junk box, but nowadays unless you happen to be a radio amateur the chances are you may not have seen one in a long time, if ever. We’re talking of course about the air-dielectric variable capacitor, the tuning element for millions of radio receivers back in the day but now long ago replaced by much flimsier polymer-dielectric parts. There’s still a need for variable capacitors though, in particular a high-voltage variant for use in magnetic loop antennas. It’s something that [Ben] had a need for,
which he solved with a clever combination of PCB material and 3D printing
.
While the variable capacitors of yore invariably used intersecting vanes on a rotor, this one has two large parallel plates that intersect as one is moved over the other with a lead screw. It’s cheap and effective, and best of all,
the files to make it can be downloaded from Thingiverse
. He claims a 34pF-164pF capacitance range, which, looking at the size of the plates we find to be believable (and which is a useful range for most HF applications). We like this solution, and believe it makes more sense than being scalped for an older example at a radio rally.
This isn’t the first variable capacitor we’ve shown you, though
some previous examples have been more conventional
. | 38 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443026",
"author": "Ben",
"timestamp": "2022-03-07T19:17:11",
"content": "Wow! Having my project on HaD is a heck of a way to start a week!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6443041",
"author": "Marcus",
"times... | 1,760,372,766.294528 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/07/a-chip-to-address-the-fundamental-usb-3-0-deficiency/ | A Chip To Bridge The USB 2 – USB 3 Divide | Arya Voronova | [
"computer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Parts",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"usb",
"USB 2.0",
"USB 3",
"usb 3.0",
"USB 3.1",
"vl670"
] | On Twitter, [whitequark] has found and highlighted an intriguing design –
a breakout board for the VL670
, accompanied by an extensive yet
very easy to digest write-up
about its usefulness and inner workings. The VL670 is a chip that addresses a surprising problem – converting USB 2.0 signals into USB 3.0.
If you have a USB 2.0 device and a host with
only USB 3.0 signals available
, this chip is for you. It might be puzzling – why is this even needed? It’s about the little-known dark secret of USB3, that anyone can deduce if they ever have to deal with a 9-pin USB 3.0 connector where one of the three differential pairs doesn’t quite make contact.
When you see a blue “3.0” port, it’s actually USB 2
and
USB 3 — two separate interfaces joined into a single connector. USB 3 uses two single-directional differential pairs, akin to PCI-E, whereas USB 2 uses a single bidirectional one, and the two interfaces on a blue connector operate basically independently of each other. There’s many implications to this that are counterintuitive if you simply take “USB 3.0” for “faster backwards-compatible USB”, and they have
painful consequences
.
For instance, USB 3 hub ICs have two separate hub entities inside – one for USB 3 and one for USB 2. Even if you have a USB 3 hub plugged into a USB 3 port, multiple USB 2 devices plugged into it still cannot break through the USB 2 uplink limit of 480 MBps. If you ever thought that a faster hub with a faster uplink would fix your USB 2 device speed problems –
USB-IF engineers, apparently, thought differently
; and you might have to find a workaround for your “many cheap SDRs and Pi 4 in a box” setup.
As a fun party trick, since
USB 3 device enumeration only uses USB 2 as fallback
, you can, in theory, connect eight devices to a four-port USB 3 hub – four USB 2 devices and four USB 3 devices. In fact,
some USB devices use USB 3 lanes exclusively
and don’t even connect to USB 2 lanes. Yes, this also implies that you might be able to connect six USB devices to a Raspberry Pi 4, and even seven if you switch the OTG port into a host mode.
So if you find yourself stuck between USB 2 and USB 3, the
VL670 is a functional solution
. But because it’s addressing a deficiency in the standard, it’s not quite compliant itself. (Not that USB standard non-compliance ever stopped anyone.)
There’s an open-source devboard that you can order parts for and build, with VL670 chips seemingly available on TaoBao. What was this chip originally intended for? Apparently, VirtualLink, a standard that quite a few people
feel glad to see dead
. The aforementioned extensive write-up
does talk about more relatable use cases
, however – for instance, it turns out that USB 3 signals are easier to galvanically isolate!
We’ve
discussed the USB 3 vs USB 2 peculiarity
in passing, but it bears establishing its implications more clearly. If you ever wondered about other shady parts of USB, you’ll want to check out the
Hacking USB Hack Chat
we had with [Kate Temkin]! | 39 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443011",
"author": "Marcus",
"timestamp": "2022-03-07T18:39:38",
"content": "> There’s many implications to this that are counterintuitive if you simply take “USB 3.0” for “faster backwards-compatible USB”Actually, you **should** be able to do that, without pain, in a perfect world... | 1,760,372,766.163816 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/07/metal-3d-printing-hack-chat/ | Metal 3D Printing Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, March 9 at noon Pacific for the
Metal 3D Printing Hack Chat
with
Agustin Cruz
!
3D printing has been an enabling technology, and the ability to create parts that never existed anywhere before has been a real game-changer. But the cheap and readily accessible FDM and SLA printers we’ve come to depend on are not without their drawbacks, chief among which is that they only make plastic parts. Wouldn’t it be great if we home-gamers had the ability to print metal parts just like they do in industry? Agustin Cruz thinks so, and he’s been hard at work on
an electron-beam sintering printer
to make that dream come true. Dealing with the technical challenges of such a printer hasn’t been easy, but then again, squeezing out melted plastic wasn’t easy at first either.
Agustin has agreed to take a little time out of his project to talk to us about his progress, and to share what he has learned about electron-beam printing. Along the way, we’ll talk about metal printing in general, and perhaps even take a look at where the whole field is going and how — and when — it’ll penetrate the hobby printing market.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, March 9 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6444368",
"author": "Bradley Woods",
"timestamp": "2022-03-10T04:52:24",
"content": "FDM Metal is actually very accessible and affordable. It’s also much more user friendly than it was a few years ago.Check outhttps://TheVirtualFoundry.com",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,766.448 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/07/usb-temperature-logger-with-some-extra-tricks/ | USB Temperature Logger With Some Extra Tricks | Dave Rowntree | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"datalogger",
"k-type thermocouple",
"ntc",
"scpi",
"stm32",
"temperature",
"usb"
] | Many of us electronics hacker types tend to have at least the same common equipment on our benches, namely a multimeter, an oscilloscope, some sort of adjustable power supply, and maybe a logic analyzer. These are great tools covering many bases, but dealing with temperature measurements is often neglected. A sudden need for such often results in just buying a either dedicated measurement unit, or some cheap eBay thermocouple board and just rolling with a few hacks. [Jana Marie Hemsing] had a need for measuring the thermal side of things, and got fed up with hacking with piles of boards, and designed herself a
proper instrument for the task
.
The result is a very tidy four-channel thermocouple frontend, feeding the data into the host computer via USB. Each of the four channels can either be a K-type input or a NTC thermistor input, decided at board assembly time, but you could just build two units with four channels of each and cover all bases. The K-type thermocouple input is based around the MAX31855 series device. While the ‘KASA’ suffixed device is probably most common, if you need to dedicate some channels to handling one of the other six or so other
common thermocouple types
, that just needs the appropriate MAX31855 variant dropping in, and you’re good to go.
For the controller, [Jana] has chosen the common STM32F0x microcontroller, which handles all the USB protocol side of things. The extra functionality added allows direct driving of a heater controller via the DRV8837 H-Bridge, with a extra few open collector outputs for other things you might want to drive. This allows the logger to function as a kind-of thermal IO device. Firmware is written in good old fashioned STM32 HAL, using the standard STM32CubeMX and the GCC toolchain. It looks like the Makefile came via the
STM32 Project Generator
route. The firmware has a neat trick up its sleeve too; with a flick of the switch on the back, the firmware can switch between outputting CSV data over a standard USB CDC link (a virtual serial port), or it can present a SCPI terminal interface, enabling integration into existing SCPI-based test flows. Nice work!
We’ve seen a few logging projects on these fair pages, like this
battery powered ESP32 logger device
. If IoT logging is more your thing,
here you go
. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442991",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2022-03-07T17:52:19",
"content": "Most may be familiar with MAX31855 used on FDM printer boards to measure the hotend temperature. Not so common are perhaps the thermocouple connectors used here which should also match the thermocouple type... | 1,760,372,766.336938 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/07/the-invisible-battlefields-of-the-russia-ukraine-war/ | The Invisible Battlefields Of The Russia-Ukraine War | Adam Zeloof | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"cybersecurity",
"russia",
"Social Media",
"ukraine"
] | Early in the morning of February 24th, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at California’s Middlebury Institute of International Studies watched Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unfold in realtime with troop movements overlaid atop high-resolution satellite imagery. This wasn’t privileged information — anybody with an internet connection could access it, if they knew where to look. He was watching a traffic jam on Google Maps slowly inch towards and across the Russia-Ukraine border.
As he watched the invasion begin along with the rest of the world, another, less-visible facet of the emerging war was beginning to unfold on an ill-defined online battlefield. Digital espionage, social media and online surveillance have become indispensable instruments in the tool chest of a modern army, and both sides of the conflict have been putting these tools to use. Combined with civilian access to information unlike the world has ever seen before, this promises to be a war like no other.
Modern Cyberwarfare
The first casualties in the online component of the war have been websites. Two weeks ago, before the invasion began en masse,
Russian cyberwarfare agents launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Ukrainian government and financial websites.
Subsequent attacks have temporarily downed the websites of Ukraine’s Security Service, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and government. A DDoS attack is a relatively straightforward way to quickly take a server offline. A network of internet-connected devices, either owned by the aggressor or infected with malware, floods a target with request, as if millions of users hit “refresh” on the same website at the same time, repeatedly. The goal is to overwhelm the server such that it isn’t able to keep up and stops replying to legitimate requests, like a user trying to access a website. Russia denied involvement with the attacks, but US and UK intelligence services have evidence they believe implicates Moscow.
Fedorov’s tweet introducing the IT Army
DDoS attacks seem to be the tool of choice for both sides,
as several Russian sites, including the Kremlin’s and the Russian Military’s websites, were taken offline by a series of similar counter-attacks last week.
It isn’t immediately clear whether or not these attacks came directly from the Ukrainian government or from a third party sympathetic to their cause. In order to recruit those who would help with such efforts, the government has
put out calls for cybersecurity experts to help defend their country’s digital territory and launch offensive counterattacks against Russia.
The first of these calls, rather strangely, came as a forum post by Yegor Aushev, the co-owner of a Kyiv-based cybersecurity firm who was said to be posting on behalf of the Defense Ministry. Later, the government launched what Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov
referred to in a tweet as the country’s “IT Army.”
This group, which is being organized via a Telegram channel, has been given lists of Russian websites and services for members to target.
The independent cybersecurity collective known as
Anonymous has also decided to stand with Ukraine against Russia.
They have taken credit for a variety of attacks already, including replacing the propaganda on a Russian news station, taking down Russian government and media websites, and leaking a database from the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia.
Ukrainian government agencies and banks have also been targeted with malware —
specifically a virus designed to erase data from hard drives.
The malicious code was identified by security firms Symantec and ESET a day before the invasion began, and Microsoft caught wind of it several hours later.
After another three hours, Microsoft’s Defender software had been patched to scan for and block the package.
Although there is no concrete data linking the program to Russia, they are widely believed to be the source. The attack seemingly comes without money-oriented motivation of similar malicious programs such as ransomware. When a computer is infected with ransomware, the user is usually greeted with a message that says something along the lines of “Send us money or all your data will be deleted.” This virus skips the middle step and simply deletes data, which implies that it was created solely to disable the infected agencies and sow confusion. To further that goal, it appears that
ransomware decoys were deployed as well
, either in order to shift focus away from the data-wiping virus or cover its tracks so that it could remain undetected for longer.
When stood up against what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine, all of this seems relatively benign — who cares that a website is down while people are dying? In times of crisis, whether a war or a natural disaster, one of the most difficult and subsequently important tasks for a government is providing its citizens with potentially life-saving information. Crippling a government’s ability to disseminate such information can, at best, increase confusion and the spread of misinformation, and at worst can cause innocent people to die. In 2015,
the Ukrainian power grid was famously compromised completely remotely by Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU)
in an attempt to sow unrest and fear, leaving about 230,000 people without power.
Surveillance and (Social) Media
While the cyber war raging behind the scenes has been largely invisible, the rest of the war is anything but. Gone are the days when those living across the world from an active conflict get their daily dose of news from the front lines each evening at 7 PM — social media means we’re constantly connected to a stream of information in near-realtime, although separating fact from fiction can prove difficult.
Take, for example, the “Ghost of Kyiv” — a mythical Ukrainian pilot said to have already shot down six Russian fighters singlehandedly. While there’s no proof that such a pilot exists (or doesn’t exist, for that matter),
a popular video of the pilot taking down another plane was proven to be fake
— it’s actually footage from the video game Dynamic Combat Simulator that was taken out of context and sensationalized on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit.
Additionally, there have been plenty of cases of willful disinformation within Moscow.
The Russian government has been extremely selective in determining what information its citizens are able to consume and how they can access it.
Russian media outlets were instructed to only report on information disseminated by official government sources, and the government has limited access to Facebook. Russian news stations have taken great care to paint the war (which is a banned word in itself) as a minor military operation — although not all Russian media outlets have capitulated to the government’s demands. Tech giants have also been pressured to suppress disinformation and propaganda, most notable from Vice Prime Minister Fedorov. He’s called upon streaming services, including Netflix and YouTube, to block Russian propaganda, and other services such as PayPal and Google to disable access within Russia. Last week, YouTube disabled monetization of Russian channels.
Fedorov’s request to Musk for Starlink service
Fedorov also reached out to Elon Musk over Twitter,
asking for Starlink internet terminals. Musk replied by enabling
Starlink’s satellite internet service
in Ukraine and shipping a truckload of terminals, which arrived days ago. It’s unclear how Fedorov plans to deploy the terminals, but it’s likely that they will be used to connect hard-to-reach areas, or restore connectivity to areas with compromised infrastructure.
As you may suspect, even the most well-intentioned social media use can prove problematic in war time. Twitter users have warned each other against showing support by posting photos of the Ukraine’s defenses online to avoid providing Russian intelligence with information about troop movements or other military actions.
The advancing Russian army viewed as a traffic jam (image from Dr. Lewis’s Twitter account)
Even just carrying a smartphone can cause issues — geolocation services make it possible for phones to be tracked, and not just by a cybersecurity expert who’s broken into Apple’s “Find My iPhone” service.
A prime example here is
the traffic jam that Dr. Lewis watched on the 24th.
It was likely caused by civilians stuck behind roadblocks as the army advanced. Similarly, large gatherings such as protests or meetings in public places could be recorded displayed on Google Maps (via the
“live busyness information”
feature) and other services. To address this and protect its users,
Google has temporarily disabled live traffic data in Ukraine.
Even so, it may be prudent to for users to think about what kinds of data their devices log and where that data gets sent.
Looking Ahead
Even though this invasion is only a few days old, it seems to have already set a new precedent for how hybrid wars are waged, a very disquieting prospect. For many of us, watching the events unfold on our phones while sitting safely across the world from the front lines, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that this is a very real conflict in which innocent lives are being lost each day.
All of us here at Hackaday hope for a swift, peaceful, and just resolution to the war. Screenwriter Burt Prelutsky put it perfectly while working on the script for an episode of
MASH
: “War isn’t hell. War is war and hell is hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse… there are no innocent bystanders in hell.” | 27 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442917",
"author": "Belga",
"timestamp": "2022-03-07T15:37:42",
"content": "Looks like python logo",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6442944",
"author": "sjm4306",
"timestamp": "2022-03-07T16:16:55",
"content": "I hop... | 1,760,372,766.401868 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/07/greedy-receivers-fcc-considers-regulating-receivers-after-altimeter-showdown/ | Greedy Receivers: FCC Considers Regulating Receivers After Altimeter Showdown | Maya Posch | [
"News"
] | [
"5g",
"altimeter",
"fcc"
] | Recently, the media was filled with articles about how turning on 5G transmissions in the C-band could make US planes fall out of the sky. While the matter was ultimately resolved without too much fuss, this conflict may have some long-term consequences, with the FCC looking to potentially address and regulate the root of the problem,
as reported
by Ars Technica.
At the heart of the whole issue is that while transmitters are regulated in terms of their power and which part of the spectrum they broadcast on, receivers are much less regulated. This means that in the case of the altimeters in airplanes for example, which use the 4.2 GHz – 4.4 GHz spectrum, some of their receivers may be sensitive to a part of the 5G C-band (3.7 GHz -3.98 GHz), despite the standard 200 MHz guard band (upped to 400 MHz in the US) between said C-band and the spectrum used by altimeters.
What the FCC is currently doing is to solicit ways in which it could regulate the performance and standards for receivers. This would then presumably not just pertain to 5G and altimeters, but also to other receivers outside of avionics. Since the FCC already did something similar back in 2003 with an inquiry, but closed it back in 2007 without any action taken, it remains to be seen whether this time will be different. One solid reason would be the wasted spectrum: a 400 MHz guard band is a very large chunk.
Thanks to [Chris Muncy] for the tip. | 94 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442836",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2022-03-07T12:14:19",
"content": "This is an FAA problem, not an FCC problem. If your receiver predictably misbehaves in a non-safety-critical application, you should send it back, leave a bad review, and if it’s a serious enough problem, su... | 1,760,372,766.817157 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/08/history-of-digital-equipment-corp-and-bonus-pdp-11-replica-build/ | History Of Digital Equipment Corp And Bonus PDP-11 Replica Build | Chris Lott | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"computer history",
"DEC",
"Digital Equipment Corporation",
"pdp-11",
"replica"
] | [RetroBytes] takes us on a
whirlwind tour of the history of the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)
, its founder Ken Olsen, and during intermission builds up a working replica of the PDP-11 from a kit. DEC was a major player in the early computer industry, cranking out a number of models that were both industrial workhorses and used in computer laboratories to develop many of the operating systems and tools whose descendants we still use today. On top of that, DEC’s innovative, employee-friendly, and lightweight company structure was generally well-liked by its employees and a welcomed departure from the typical behemoths of the day.
This video takes us from the beginnings of DEC and its roots in MIT up to the PIP-11 era, highlighting major architectures and events along the way such as the PDP-1, PDP-8, and PDP-11. [RetroBytes] says he has a DEC Alpha sitting on the sidelines, so there may be a few follow-up videos in the future — perhaps one on the VAX as well.
We’ve covered
this particular PDP-11 replica last year
, and if these replica kits are your cup of tea, check out our
coverage of kit designer [Oscar Vermeulen]’s presentation
. Have you ever used real PDP or VAX computers? Let us know your war stories in the comments below. | 58 | 34 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443561",
"author": "Severe Tire Damage",
"timestamp": "2022-03-08T16:57:09",
"content": "My first experience with a DEC computer was with a DEC-10 (soon followed by a DEC-20). Every memory is positive. These were nice machines with superlative software for the times. Being able ... | 1,760,372,766.91461 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/08/grid-batteries-on-wheels-the-complicated-logistics-of-vehicle-grid-integration/ | Grid Batteries On Wheels: The Complicated Logistics Of Vehicle-Grid Integration | Maya Posch | [
"car hacks",
"Featured",
"green hacks",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"V2G",
"vehicle-grid-integration",
"vehicle-to-grid",
"VGI"
] | At its core, the concept of vehicle-grid integration (VGI) – also called Vehicle To Grid (
V2G
) – seems a simple one. Instead of a unidirectional charger for battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), a bidirectional charger would be used. This way, whenever the BEV is connected to such a charger, power could be withdrawn from the car’s battery for use on the local electrical grid whenever there’s demand.
Many of the complications with VGI have already been discussed, including the increased wear that this puts on a BEV’s battery, the need for an inherently mobile machine to be plugged into a charger, and the risk of needing one’s BEV and finding its battery to be nearly depleted. Here the cheerful marketing from
Nissan
and that from commercial initiatives such as
Vehicle to Grid Britain
makes it sound like it’s a no-brainer once those pesky details can be worked out.
In parallel with the world of glossy marketing leaflets, researchers have been investigating VGI as a potential option for grid-level energy storage. These studies produce a far less optimistic picture that puts the entire concept of VGI into question.
The Demand Vs Supply Puzzle
In most VGI scenarios it is assumed that there are independent stakeholders, with the participation of the utility companies, VGI service providers, electric vehicle owners and possibly the government. When studying this scenario from a South Korean perspective,
Moon et al. (2021)
came to the conclusion that the economics of VGI are unlikely to work out without government subsidies. The essential problem is that with the overhead and logistics involved, it is exceedingly hard for any of the stakeholders to run a significant profit, if any at all.
What is fascinating about Moon et al.’s analysis is the description of the Korean energy market, which features both public utility companies as well as two tiers of demand response (DR). Korea’s Type I DR applies mostly to larger industrial electricity users which receive incentives to reduce their load when asked to. This is a required response, with fines if the demand is not reduced when asked. Type I DR contracts have a maximum number of hours and number of calls.
VGI stakeholders’ benefit/cost ratio without government subsidies. (Moon et al., 2021)
Type II DR is a demand-side bidding program involving interested parties submitting load reduction offers. Here too, penalties apply if the requested demand is not reduced as offered. Parties can participate in both Type I and Type II DR, but Type I takes precedence over the latter. In many ways this DR system can be considered to be a kind of negative load-following, as well as peak-shaving system. The main difference is that instead of the utilities adding more supply to the system, demand is time-shifted or reduced.
In Moon et al.’s analysis, when considering VGI in the context of this system, it is exceedingly hard for the stakeholders to break even. Increased participation in the VGI scheme through a pooled VGI service provider improves matters, but a guarantee of profit is impossible to give for the VGI service provider without government subsidies. Perhaps ironically, there’s also an increased chance of profitability when the cars involved are used less often as cars. This notion has some led to consider an alternate take on VGI, using the swappable battery systems which are already in use in some places.
Herding Batteries
Although it is very much true that cars spend a large part of the time standing around, even in the case of BEVs, this is unlikely to always be in a location where they are continuously plugged into a charger, let alone a VGI-style bidirectional type charger. Many people will have their BEV out on the driveway, or parked alongside the road. But if you pull the battery out of the car when parked, you end up with something like a battery swapping station (BSS) that also provides grid-level storage services, as proposed by
Zeng et al. (2020)
.
The convenient aspect of such a swapping-based system is that each BSS can maintain a pool of batteries, using the majority of these batteries fully for grid-balancing, while keeping a number of fully charged batteries ready for insertion into an EV. The mostly discharged battery from this EV is then added to the pool.
Battery Swapping Station workflow. (Zeng et al., 2020)
While avoiding the issues with BEV usage patterns, including their essentially random connecting to and disconnecting from the grid, the obvious issue with a BSS-centric system is that very few electric vehicles feature a swappable battery. To this day, it is a feature that is most commonly seen with e.g.
taxis in countries like Japan and China
.
Basically A Daft Idea
That VGI keeps receiving so much attention is rather astounding in light of the messaging from experts, such as
J.B. Straubel
did in 2016, back when he served as Tesla’s CTO. As covered back then
by CleanTechnica
, J.B. makes it clear that only ‘smart’ dynamic charging — charging mostly when demand wanes — makes sense. J.B. also shot down the notion that old BEV batteries can be reused for grid-level storage, noting the very different charge/discharge cycle requirements for a BEV battery versus that of a grid-level storage battery.
Dynamic charging should be easier to get BEV owners to sign up for. Charge rate is most important when traveling and stopping to recharge. When charging overnight, the only important aspect is whether the battery is full when getting into the car the next morning.
All of this seems to point back to the same issue: the conflict between trying to use the same battery for two diametrically opposite use cases. A BEV owner, when left to their own devices, has no interest in feeding power back into the grid, other than perhaps to their own home in the case of a power failure. This then leaves a financial incentive as the only reason for a BEV owner to participate in a V2G scheme.
Yet the most profitable way to benefit from a V2G scheme is to leave one’s car hooked up to a charger 24/7 and not use it as a car. At that point, however, you’re just buying the batteries. All of which serves to underline the reasons why V2G has such trouble making a solid business case, and instead keeps fumbling from trial to trial.
Smart Charging UPS-On-Wheels
When taking the available evidence into account, the case is easy to make that for utility and grid providers, the ‘smart charging’ and demand response aspects are both attractive and easy to justify. Much like with the large-scale DR schemes in South Korea, consumers might be enticed to let the utility regulate the charging speed of their BEV, especially for some compensation. For utilities, this could help with smoothing out the glut of demand that would occur when people arrive home after work, plug in their BEV charger, and turn on the airconditioning on full blast.
For BEV owners, the bidirectional charger makes some sense when it means that in the case of a power failure, the idling BEV in the garage could safely feed the power in its batteries into the house grid. This is a feature that is gradually becoming more advertised in advertisements for new BEVs. Unlike the uncertain prospect of selling BEV charging and discharging cycles to the local utility, using one’s BEV as a fancy alternative to an emergency power generator makes intuitive sense.
VGI may just not be the panacea for grid-level storage that some made it out to be. Although BEVs can perform simpler tasks like grid frequency stabilization relatively well since these tasks require a relatively small battery, it could be argued that installing a dedicated battery in the grid is more economical than hoping that enough people plug in their BEVs at the right times to keep the grid from desynchronizing and plunging part of the nation in darkness, not unlike what happened with the
Northeast blackout of 2003
.
With how complicated a national grid is to begin with it, it’s perhaps for the best that we do not seek to somehow integrate anything with a battery into it, especially when said battery can literally drive off at any moment. | 93 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443538",
"author": "robomonkey",
"timestamp": "2022-03-08T15:50:08",
"content": "The back and forth losses alone make it a daft idea. The losses incurred when charging the car batteries are rarely discussed, and when they are discussed they are dismissed as not relevant. Until th... | 1,760,372,767.050202 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/08/retrotechtacular-cheesy-1980s-news-report-on-early-internet-virus/ | Retrotechtacular: Cheesy 1980s News Report On Early Internet Virus | Drew Littrell | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"1980's",
"early internet",
"morris",
"retro",
"retrotechtacular",
"virus"
] | It was a cold autumn night in 1988. The people of Cambridge, Massachusetts lay asleep in their beds unaware of the future horror about to be unleashed from the labs of the nearby college. It was a virus, but not just any virus. This virus was a computer program whose only mission was to infect every machine it could come in contact with. Just a few deft keystrokes is all that separated law abiding citizens from the…over the top reporting in
this throwback news reel
posted by [Kahvowa].
Computer History Museum exhibit featuring the original floppy disk used to distribute the Morris Worm computer virus.
To be fair, the concept of a computer virus certainly warranted a bit of explanation for folks in the era of
Miami Vice
. The only places where people would likely run into multiple computers all hooked together was a bank or a college campus. MIT was the campus in question for this news report as it served as ground zero for the Morris Worm virus.
Named after its creator, Robert Tappan Morris, the Morris Worm was one of the first programs to replicate itself via vulnerabilities in networked computer systems. Its author intended the program to be a benign method of pointing out holes, however, it ended up copying itself onto systems multiple times to the point of crashing. Removing the virus from an infected machine often took multiple days, and the total damage of the virus was estimated to be in the millions of dollars.
In an attempt to anonymize himself,
Morris initially launched his worm program from a computer lab at MIT
as he was studying at Cornell at the time. It didn’t work. Morris would go onto to be the first person to receive a felony conviction under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. After the appeals process, he received a sentence a community service and a fine. After college Morris co-founded the online web store software company Viaweb that Yahoo! would acquire in 1998 for 49 million dollars. Years later in an ironic twist, Morris would return to academia as a professor at MIT’s department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Interested in some info on viruses of a different nature? Check out
this brief history on viruses
from last year. | 34 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443460",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2022-03-08T12:19:49",
"content": "Cheesy or not, the Morris worm was a very big deal at the time. Dr Dobbs Journal had a feature article IIRC titled ‘The Internet Menace’ with a striking cover illustration, and went into it in-de... | 1,760,372,767.231503 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/08/vintage-multimeter-gets-an-lcd-transplant/ | Vintage Multimeter Gets An LCD Transplant | Lewin Day | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"lcd",
"multimeter",
"repair",
"segment lcd",
"segmented lcd"
] | Hackers are often of the sentimental type, falling in love with the look and feel of quality old hardware. Of course, sometimes that older hardware needs a little TLC to keep it running in the modern world. [Lex] had a beautiful vintage multimeter that sadly had a broken screen,
and set about a nifty repair to restore it to working condition.
It’s a handsome thing.
The HSN Avometer DA116 is a handsome thing, controlled with two dials and featuring a clean two-tone aesthetic. Even the font on the PCB’s silkscreen is gloriously pretty (can anyone ID that?). However, the original LCD was non-functional. A direct replacement part was sadly unavailable. Instead, to rectify this, [Lex] first hunted down another segmented LCD screen that had the same segment layout.
However, the new screen had a completely different pinout to the original part. Thus, after taking some notes and figuring out what all the pins did, [Lex] whipped up an adapter board to carry the new screen. With some protoboard, some pin headers, and a bunch of point-to-point wiring, the new screen worked just fine, and [Lex] had a functioning vintage meter once again!
The story actually came to us on Twitter, where we invited discussion about
the best bodge wiring jobs out there.
Feel free to contribute your own stories to the conversation! If you’re in the market for more LCD hacking, be sure to
check out the excellent talk [Joey Castillo] gave at the 2021 Remoticon
. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443411",
"author": "nekoplanetd",
"timestamp": "2022-03-08T09:08:14",
"content": "The font looks like a Futura variant",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6443432",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2022-03-08T10:23:18",
"c... | 1,760,372,767.100753 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/07/remote-desktop-fun-for-your-old-macintosh/ | Remote Desktop Fun For Your Old Macintosh | Chris Wilkinson | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"apple",
"macintosh",
"macintosh plus",
"marchintosh",
"vnc"
] | Remotely accessing your computer’s desktop, files and network from anywhere has enabled remote working (i.e. ‘work from home’) for the last several decades. Modern PCs have more than enough computational grunt for Virtual Network Computing (VNC), but where does that leave our retro computing community? [Marcio Teixeira] has it covered with
MiniVNC, a brand-new remote desktop server for (very) vintage Macintosh computers
.
Now before you say anything, it’s true that ChromiVNC has existed for some time, and is a pretty decent remote desktop server for old Macs. However MiniVNC has several significant advantages, most notably, MiniVNC is fully compatible with MacTCP. Apple’s very first TCP/IP networking stack landed on the Macintosh platform with System 6. As such, MiniVNC can serve up a remote desktop on some of the oldest Mac computers, including the Macintosh Plus.
It’s hard to overstate just how cool that is – the iconic Macintosh Plus was released in 1986, runs at a pedestrian 8MHz and supports a
maximum
of 4MB memory. While much of MiniVNC was written in C++, portions of the software (including TRLE encoding) had to be handwritten in 68K assembly language to ensure decent performance. The entire focus of MiniVNC was on performance and flexibility, with accuracy coming in second, which seems like the right decision. The odd screen artifact and missed update seems to be reasonable trade-off to get this running somewhat smoothly on a Motorola 68000 processor.
‘Newer’ Macintosh computers will also work with this software. If you’re lucky to have a 68020 processor or later, the MiniVNC software will make use of extra CPU instructions to improve performance even further. Every little bit helps, as gathering screen updates on such a primitive system is very resource intensive. Nothing was simple with this project, from creating loops using callback routines to even something as simple as recording the mouse button state. The entire project is available on
GitHub with a fascinating and detailed write-up
.
The vintage computing community has declared this month as #MARCHintosh, a celebration of all things Mac. We can’t enough of our Mac hacks here, so make sure to keep sending in those tips. In the meantime check out our Macintosh coverage to date, including this
brand new SE/30 logic board
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443484",
"author": "NQ",
"timestamp": "2022-03-08T13:49:32",
"content": "It’s actually quite amazing what the 16-bit world accomplished with minimal hardware. This was largely due to concise system routines written in assembly and tight control over the output of compiled programs... | 1,760,372,767.153853 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/07/hack-your-recipes/ | Hack Your Recipes | Al Williams | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"cooking",
"markdown",
"recipe"
] | If there is one thing Hackaday readers have in common, they like to make things. Of course, we don’t all make the same things and that’s great. But, unsurprisingly, a lot of people who like to create things include the kitchen as their workspaces. Why not? We all have to eat and there’s something very nice about cooking a meal for your loved ones or even just yourself.
Cooklang
is a markdown-style language from [Brian Sunte] specifically for capturing recipes. It not only formats the recipe, but it provides an easy way for software to parse the key elements while still being human-readable. This allows you to manipulate recipes just like software, including using Git for version control, for example.
There was a time that cooking meant having big cookbooks, but now you are more likely to search the Internet. There’s only one problem. For some reason, nearly every recipe site follows the same format. Thousands of words about how much the cook’s family loves the dish, how they pick out only the most succulent tomatoes to ensure the dish will have a vibrant scarlet hue, and how much their poor granny would have loved the dish, if only she had survived the 1928 flood which is described in great detail. After 20 minutes you find out that you put the tomatoes in the blender, add a cup of water, and that’s it. Cooklang is a sort of antidote for that. You can easily write something that parses the recipe and generates, say, a shopping list or compares it to your household inventory and places an order for the remaining things from the local grocery delivery.
This made us think if we should be doing more of this. Markdown could hold directions for kits that aren’t much different from recipes. What other readable yet parsable things might be beneficial?
By the way, [Brian] eats his own dog food (that’s an idiom — we don’t think he really eats dog food) and you can find his favorite recipes online using
Cooklang
.
Maybe you can use this with a solar-powered tablet for your
apocalypse stove
. Or, perhaps you’d like a
piece of toast
? | 44 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443277",
"author": "Glycodon",
"timestamp": "2022-03-08T03:09:02",
"content": "Less hacker-y, but the app/extension “Copy Me That” is worth checking out for recipe aggregation. It parses the infinite word vomit out and formats recipes from any website imaginable in a standard forma... | 1,760,372,767.446294 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/07/the-3d-printed-car-tire-rim-finally-hits-the-road-sorta/ | The 3D Printed Car Tire Rim Finally Hits The Road, Sorta | Matthew Carlson | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"because I can",
"car tire rim",
"Stress test"
] | When you think of “car rim” you probably think stamped steel or machined alloy with a sturdy drum to withstand the arduous life of the road, not something 3D printed out of ABS. That would be crazy, right? Not to [Jón Schone] from
Proper Printing
, who’s recently released an update about his long-term quest to
outfit his older sedan with extruded rims
.
There were a few initial attempts that didn’t go as well as hoped. The main issue was layer separation as the air pressure would stretch the piece out, forming bubbles. He increased the thickness to the absolute maximum he could. A quick 3D scan of the brake caliper gave him a precise model to make sure he didn’t go too far. He also couldn’t make the rim any bigger to fit a bigger wheel to clear the caliper, as he was already maxing out his impressive 420 mm build volume from his modified Creality printer.
A helpful commenter had suggested using a threaded rod going all the way through the print as a sort of rebar. After initially discounting the idea as the thickness of the rim gets really thin to accommodate the caliper, [Jón] realized that he could bend the rods and attach the two halves that way. Armed with a paper diagram, he cut and bent the rods, inserting them into the new prints. It’s an impressive amount of filament, 2.7 kg of ABS just for one-half of the rim.
It didn’t explode while they inflated the tire and it didn’t explode while they did their best to abuse it in the small alley they had selected for testing. The car was technically no longer road legal, so we appreciate their caution in testing in other locations. In a triumphant but anti-climatic ending, the rim held up to all the abuse they threw at it.
We’ve been following this project for several months now
, and are happy to see [Jón] finally bring this one across the finish line. It sounds like there’s still some testing to be done, but on the whole, we’d call the experiment a resounding success. | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443194",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2022-03-08T00:09:54",
"content": "You wouldn’t download a car!But you might get away with just the rims.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6443211",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"times... | 1,760,372,767.368853 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/09/modern-cpus-are-smarter-than-you-might-realize/ | Modern CPUs Are Smarter Than You Might Realize | Al Williams | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"CPU architecture",
"optimization"
] | When it comes to programming, most of us write code at a level of abstraction that could be for a computer from the 1960s. Input comes in, you process it, and you produce output. Sure, a call to
strcpy
might work better on a modern CPU than on an older one, but your basic algorithms are the same. But what if there were ways to define your programs that would work better on modern hardware? That’s what a
pre-print book from [Sergey Slotin] answers.
As a simple example, consider the effects of branching on pipelining. Nearly all modern computers pipeline. That is, one instruction is fetching data while an older instruction is computing something, while an even older instruction is storing its results. The problem arises when you already have an instruction partially executed when you realize that an earlier instruction caused a branch to another part of your code. Now the pipeline has to be backed out and performance suffers while the pipeline refills. Anything that had an effect has to reverse and everything else needs to be discarded.
That’s bad for performance. Because of this, some CPUs try to predict if a branch is likely to occur or not and then speculatively fill the pipeline for the predicted case. However, you can structure your code, for example, so that it is more obvious how branching will occur or even, for some compilers, explicitly inform the compiler if the branch is likely or not.
As you might expect, techniques like this depend on your CPU and you’ll need to benchmark to show what’s really going on. The text is full of graphs of execution times and an analysis of the generated assembly code for x86 to explain the results. Even something you think is a pretty good algorithm — like binary search, for example, suffers on modern architectures and you can improve its performance with some tricks. Actually, it is interesting that the tricks work on GCC, but don’t make a difference on Clang. Again, you have to measure these things.
Probably 90% of us will never need to use any of the kind of optimization you’ll find in this book. But it is a marvelous book if you enjoy solving puzzles and analyzing complex details. Of course, if you need to squeeze those extra microseconds out of a loop or you are writing a library where performance is important, this might be just the book you are looking for. Although it doesn’t cover many different CPUs, the ideas and techniques will apply to many modern CPU architectures. You’ll just have to do the work to figure out how if you use a different CPU.
We’ve looked at pieces of this sort of thing before.
Pipelining
, for example. Sometimes, though, optimizing your
algorithm
isn’t as effective as just changing it for a better one. | 41 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443941",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2022-03-09T09:06:09",
"content": "Welcome to 1995 ‘zen of code optimisation’ by Micahel Abrash.He was writing about this for original pentiums back in 94-95.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,372,767.314408 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/08/theres-more-in-a-cardboard-box-than-what-goes-in-the-cardboard-box/ | There’s More In A Cardboard Box Than What Goes In The Cardboard Box | Ryan Flowers | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"cardboard",
"Corrugated",
"manufacturing",
"paper",
"pulp",
"shipping"
] | The cardboard box is ubiquitous in our society. We all know what makes up a cardboard box: corrugated paper products, glue, and some work. Of course cardboard boxes didn’t just show up one day, delivered out of nowhere by an overworked and underpaid driver. In the
video below the break
, [New Mind] does a deep dive into the history of the cardboard box and much more.
Starting back in the 19th century, advancements in the bulk processing of wood into pulp made paper inexpensive. From there, cardboard started to take its corrugated shape. Numerous advancements around Europe and the US happened somewhat independently of each other, and by 1906 a conglomerate was formed to get the railroads to approve cardboard for use on cargo trains.
By then though, cardboard was still in its infancy. Further advancements in design, manufacturing, and efficiency have turned the seemingly low tech cardboard box into a high tech industry that’s heavy on automation and quality control. It’ll certainly be difficult to think of cardboard boxes the same.
There also numerous ways for a hacker to re-use cardboard, be it in template making, prototyping, model making, and more. Of course, corrugation isn’t just for paper. If corrugated plastic floats your boat, you might be interested in this
boat that floats due to corrugated plastic. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443932",
"author": "Nath",
"timestamp": "2022-03-09T08:40:20",
"content": "As a youngster I worked in a cardboard making factory (cardboard making, cardboard cutting (the wooden templates with cutters are just work of arts) and offset printing) and that was the best working experie... | 1,760,372,767.626337 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/08/the-hunt-for-the-voice-of-utahs-arches/ | The Hunt For The Voice Of Utah’s Arches | Ryan Flowers | [
"Science"
] | [
"audible",
"geology",
"rock formations",
"seismic activity",
"seismometer"
] | Double O Arch. Click to hear!
In the 1990 movie The Hunt For Red October, a stealth submarine is located by what a computer thinks are seismic sounds, but when sped up, they are clearly mechanical. We won’t spoil it further on the off chance that you haven’t seen. We can’t help but wonder if [Prof. Jeff Moore] and his team at the University of Utah were inspired by the movie. Why so? Because they have taken the seismic vibrations of the beautiful arches in Utah, US and sped them up 25 times, placing them right in the range of human hearing on their
Red Rock Tones
website. Go have a quick listen. We’ll be right here.
The resulting sound bites are just beautiful, and some of them have an almost eerie underwater tone to them as if driven along by a clandestine propulsion system. But that might just be our imagination running away a bit. That’s likely the point of this scientific exercise, however- taking raw scientific data and making it accessible and somehow relevant to even non-geologists.
The Dynamics of Rock Arches All Images Courtesy Prof Jeff Moore
[Prof Moore] and his team aren’t just placing seismometers on natural rock arches for the fun of it, even though that does sound like some fun. Instead, they are studying the natural resonances of these rock formations- both the primary frequencies and the harmonics. By monitoring changes in their resonant frequencies over time, they gain an understanding of how the rock is changing- especially as it relates to the impact that humans have on these natural wonders.
What’s more, these audible representations of seismic waves are something that may be possible for the determined hacker. We’ve featured several DIY seismometers such as this
hacked USB mouse designed to detect elephants on the move
. Could it be sensitive enough for measuring seismic activity? Try it out, and let us know!
Special thanks to [Prof. Jeff Moore] for permission to use the images for this article. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443888",
"author": "p",
"timestamp": "2022-03-09T05:13:09",
"content": "I wish the recording were longer. It’s a beatiful ambient music",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6443923",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,372,767.721677 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/08/daft-punk-word-clock-goes-stronger-and-faster/ | Daft Punk Word Clock Goes Stronger And Faster | Matthew Carlson | [
"clock hacks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"CircuitPython",
"daft punk",
"mp3",
"word clock"
] | What would you call a word clock that doesn’t tell time? The concept of a word clock is that all the words needed to be used are already there and then just selected. [Ben Combee] realized there were only 18 unique words to make up the song “Harder Faster Better Stronger” and with an extra PyBadge from Supercon 2021 on hand, it seems
obvious to make a musical word clock of sorts
.
The PyBadge is a 120 MHz ATSAMD51 based board with a screen, buttons, and a case that he 3d printed. To get reasonable sound quality while still fitting with the 2MB of flash storage on the device, MP3 compression was chosen. Since there was only one speaker, it was mixed down to mono and a lower bitrate, getting the size down to just 880KB. The mp3 is processed by the audiomp3 module in circuitpython with the volume level being sent to five NeoPixels to act as a VU. Getting the timing correct was the hardest part as the lyrics needed to be separated out and the timing figured out. Using Audacity’s label track feature, he had all the words tagged in the track and could export it into a format that could be massaged into a python friendly format.
The music and the text cues becoming desynchronized became a larger issue as the file plays. Increasing the MP3 buffer helped but the real trick was to peek inside the music decoder and figure out how many samples had been decoded and cue the words based on that, rather than the time since it wasn’t as accurate. All the code and files
are up on his Hackaday.io page
if you feel the need to make your own. If you’re sticking with Daft Punk, make
sure to have your helmet ready when you rock
. Though based on this
summary of the compressibility of pop songs
, there are a few other songs with a small enough number of unique words that they too could get the word clock treatment. Video after the break. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443785",
"author": "willmore",
"timestamp": "2022-03-09T00:32:56",
"content": "The 3D printing is making my eyes bleed!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6443900",
"author": "Derek Tombrello",
"timestamp": "2022... | 1,760,372,767.674009 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/08/g4-imac-gets-an-m1-heart-transplant/ | G4 IMac Gets An M1 Heart Transplant | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"apple m1",
"M1",
"macintosh m1",
"system on chip"
] | The second-generation iMac was a big departure from the original brightly-colored release. The chunky CRT aesthetic was dead, replaced with a sleek design featuring a slim LCD monitor on a floating arm. [Connor55] recently laid his hands on such a machine,
and decided it needed a transplant of some modern M1 hardware.
There’s a lot going on in there.
The machine, as it came into his possession, lacked WiFi, and had a disc drive struggling to open its own tray, so it made a good candidate for hacking. Out came the original motherboard and drives, leaving room for a motherboard from a Mac Mini to be substituted in, with the powerful new M1 system-on-chip onboard.
First up, the screen had to be converted to use DVI input, with a guide from [Dremel Junkie]
helping out with that
. The Mac Mini motherboard was then prepped to install in the iMac’s dome-shaped housing; notably, the entire board is smaller than the stock iMac G4’s hard drive. It still took plenty of cramming, with a multitude of adapters finagled and massaged to fit inside the original housing.
It’s a very completionist build; even features like the original power button and optical drive still work. It took some fiddling, but the display and backlight operate properly as per the original functionality, too.
Apple’s tasteful industrial design has always proved popular with modders. We’ve seen similar builds before over the years, from
Intel NUCs stuffed into G4 iMacs
to
classic Macs outfitted with iPad hardware.
It’s always satisfying to see vintage hardware given a new lease of life with modern grunt! | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443793",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2022-03-09T00:55:45",
"content": "I can’t wait until the upcoming alpha release of Asahi linux. The M1 hardware is going to be an *amazing* platform to run linux on.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,372,767.770472 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/08/extreme-espresso-part-2-an-inductive-water-level-sensor/ | Extreme Espresso, Part 2: An Inductive Water Level Sensor | Dan Maloney | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"coffee",
"cosine",
"epoxy",
"espresso",
"inductive",
"linear",
"liquid level.",
"LX3320A",
"Raspberry Pi Zero",
"sine"
] | [Mark Smith] must really,
really
like his coffee, at least judging by how much effort he’s put into tricking out his espresso machine.
This inductive water tank sensor
is part of a series of innovations [Mark] has added to his high-end Rancilio Silvia machine — we assume there are those that would quibble with that characterization, but
800 bucks
is a lot to spend for a coffee maker in our books. We recently featured
a host of mods
he made to the machine as part of the “Espresso Connect” project, which includes a cool Nixie tube bar graph to indicate the water level in the machine. That display is driven by this sensor, the details of which [Mark] has now shared. The sensor straddles the wall of the 1.7-liter water tank, so no penetrations are needed. Inside the tanks is a track that guides a copper and PETG float that’s sealed with food-safe epoxy resin.
Directly adjacent to the float track on the outside of the tank is a long PCB with a couple of long, sinuous traces. These connect to an
LX3302A
inductive sensor IC, which reads the position of the copper slug inside the float. That simplifies the process greatly; [Mark] goes into great detail about the design and calibration of the sensor board, as well as hooking it into the Raspberry Pi Zero that lies at the heart of “Espresso Connect’. Altogether, the mods make for a precisely measured dose of espresso, as seen in the video below.
We’d say this was maybe a bit far to go for the perfect cup of coffee, but we sure respect the effort. And we think this inductive sensor method has a lot of non-caffeinated applications that probably bear exploration. | 27 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443671",
"author": "Misterlaneous",
"timestamp": "2022-03-08T19:54:30",
"content": "Why not just use one of the ready made level sensors that can stick onto the side of a plastic tank? Nothing extra touching the water that way.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,372,767.943161 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/08/the-light-guide-hiding-in-your-extrusion/ | The Light Guide Hiding In Your Extrusion | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider",
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"eureka",
"light guide",
"light pipe",
"optics"
] | There should be a line of jokes that start “A physicist and an engineer walk into a bar…”. In my case I’m an engineer and my housemate is a physicist, so random conversations sometimes take interesting turns. Take the other day for example, as one does when talking she picked up a piece of aluminium extrusion that was sitting on our coffee table and turned it over in her hands. It has a hole down its centre and it’s natural to peer down it, at which point her attention was caught by the appearance of a series of concentric rings of light. Our conversation turned to the mechanism which might be causing this, and along the way took us into cameras, waveguides, and optical fibres.
The light reaching us after traveling along a straight narrow tube should at a cursory glance be traveling in a straight line, and indeed when I point the extrusion out of my window and look down it I can see a small segment of the tree in the distance I’ve pointed it at. It didn’t take us long to conclude that the concentric rings were successive reflections of the light coming into the end hole from off-centre angles.
In effect, the extrusion is a pinhole camera in which the image is projected onto the inside of a cylinder stretching away from the pinhole rather than onto a flat piece of film, and we were seeing the successive reflections of the resulting distorted image as they bounced to and fro down the tube towards us. It’s likely the imperfect mirror formed by the aluminium wall allowed us to see each image, as light was being diffused in our direction. Adding a piece of tape with a small pinhole at the end accentuated this effect, with the circles becoming much more sharply defined as the projected image became less blurry.
The
Annals of the Bleeding Obvious
Total internal reflection of a HeNe laser beam in a piece of acetate. Sai2020 (
Public domain
).
So great, we’ve invented the pinhole camera, where’s our Nobel Prize? Our place in the esteemed scientific journal
Annals of the Bleeding Obvious
is evidently assured. But on the other hand, we’ve explored the mechanism used by light pipes and fibre optic communication, namely the passage of light along a waveguide through successive reflections from its internal walls.
It’s not much use with a piece of extrusion because it’s bulky and not flexible, but when the medium is switched to a piece of laser-cut acrylic the same technique can be used to great effect. Edge-lit acrylic displays are
hardly a new idea
, but in the age of the LED and perhaps more pertinently the expensive Nixie tube,
they appear to have made something of a comeback
.
Of more interest is the idea that each of those concentric rings is a successive reflection of the image projected by the pinhole. In our idle discussion around the coffee table we surmised that with some image processing or suitable lenses it could be mapped from a cylindrical reflection to a flat one in the manner of a photograph we’re all used to. Could such an image travel round curves in the light pipe and be used for remote sensing? That scientific journal just called again, we’ve just invented the endoscope.
What have you reinvented lately? | 23 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6443704",
"author": "Another engineer",
"timestamp": "2022-03-08T21:21:56",
"content": "Of course, there are tons of jokes about a mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6444243",
... | 1,760,372,767.878547 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/07/pop-goes-the-mechanical-ping-pong-sculpture/ | Pop Goes The Mechanical Ping Pong Sculpture | Matthew Carlson | [
"Art",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"art sculpture",
"ping pong ball",
"rubber bands",
"sculpture"
] | In the waiting rooms of some dentists or doctors, you might have seen a giant metal ball rolling around in a large glass case. While it sure beats looking through those magazines, the sculpture can’t have come cheap. But not all of us want to pay high-end prices for fun toys. As a more cost-effective alternative, [JBV Creative] built an awesome
3D-printed ping pong sculpture
.
The basic concept is the same as those fancy sculptures: a ball goes up, moves through some sort of impressive range of motion as it makes its way back down, and some sort of drive mechanism pushes it back to repeat the cycle anew. The design of this particular art piece is no different. A ping-pong ball falls down a funnel into a queue where balls are slowly loaded via a 12-way Geneva mechanism. An Archimedes spiral cam charges an elastic band that yeets the ball up and out of the track and sends it sailing through the air and down inside the funnel mentioned earlier. Everything on this sculpture is 3D-printed aside from the rubber bands and the ping pong balls.
What’s tricky about these sorts of things is the precision required both in printing and in design. It needs to run for hundreds if not thousands of hours and make no mistake. Making something work correctly 99% of the time is hard, but that last 1% can be almost as much work as that first 99%. [JBV Creative]’s first attempt had a catapult mechanism and he printed and tried out several scoops, but none gave the trajectory that he was looking for.
[JBV Creative] tried a plunger mechanism, but without a counterbalance weight providing the power, it just didn’t have enough oomph to launch the ball. Luckily, holes were included in the design, so it was relatively easy to adapt what had already been printed to use rubber bands instead. An additional goal was to have no visible fasteners, so everything needed to be mounted from the back. Check it out in action after the break.
It’s an incredible project that took serious thought, dedication, and in [JBV Creative]’s words, plenty of CAD twirling. It’s a great lesson in iterating and experimentation. If your talents are more soldering-based rather than CAD-based, perhaps
a circuit sculpture
is more up your alley? | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442844",
"author": "vib",
"timestamp": "2022-03-07T12:38:52",
"content": "I can see the ping, but not the pong. This is a ping-ping sculpture.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6443025",
"author": "CityZen",
"ti... | 1,760,372,767.818824 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/06/an-interview-with-reinhard-keil/ | An Interview With Reinhard Keil | Chris Lott | [
"ARM",
"Software Development"
] | [
"arm",
"C51",
"CMSIS",
"interview"
] | Over on the Embedded FM podcast, [Chris] and [Elecia] just
released their interview with [Reinhard Keil] of compiler fame
. [Reinhard] recounts the story of Keil’s growth and how it eventually became absorbed into Arm back in 2005. Along with his brother Günter, the two founded the company as
Keil Software
in the Americas, and
Keil Elektronik
in Europe. They initially made hardware products, but as the company grew, they became dissatisfied with the quality and even existence of professional firmware development tools of the day. Their focus gradually shifted to making a CP/M- and a PC-based development environment, and in 1988, they introduced the first C-compiler designed for the 8051 from the ground up.
Love it or hate it, the Arm Keil suite of µVision IDE and the MDK/Cx51 compiler have been around a long time and used by embedded developers in many industries. Although a free and restricted-use version is available, the license fees prevent most folks from getting very enthusiastic about it. Pricing aside, the µVision IDE has its critics: [Jay Carlson], who used every IDE under the sun a few years ago in
his review of sub-one-dollar microcontrollers
, opined that it was nothing more than a free editor you get with C51 or MDK-ARM. On the other hand, even [Jay] concedes is that every chip he tested was officially supported by Keil and worked out of the box. Another thing that is important to some users is being able to produce consistent binaries from old projects. This isn’t important for your one-off MQTT hot tub thermometer. But if you need to recompile firmware for a fifteen-year-old railroad signaling system that has multiple certifications and regulatory approvals, using the original compiler and library versions is a huge help.
[Reinhard] goes on to discuss various tools and systems being developed at Arm by his team, such as improvements and additions to the CMSIS suite, the transition of the online Mbed compiler to the new Keil Studio Cloud, and an Arm hardware virtualization tool for cloud-based CI verification. Lest you think everything at Arm is proprietary and expensive, he points out that Arm is a major contributor to the GCC project and
the CMSIS components are open source
. Even if you aren’t interested in Arm/Keil tools, do check out the interview — it’s quite interesting and touches on several topics of general interest to all firmware developers. Or if you prefer, read the interview when
the transcript
is completed. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442911",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2022-03-07T15:22:49",
"content": "“Lest you think everything at Arm is proprietary and expensive, he points out that Arm is a major contributor to the GCC project and the CMSIS components are open source.”Plus ARM is a big proponent of sof... | 1,760,372,767.983318 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/06/nintendo-switch-runs-vita-software-with-vita2hos/ | Nintendo Switch Runs Vita Software With Vita2hos | Tom Nardi | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"homebrew",
"Nintendo Switch",
"playstation vita",
"translation layer",
"wine"
] | Good news for fans of PlayStation Vita —
a new project from [Sergi “xerpi” Granell]
allows users to run software written for Sony’s erstwhile handheld system on Nintendo’s latest money printing machine, the Switch. To be clear, there’s a very long road ahead before the vita2hos project is able to run commercial games (if ever). But it’s already able to run simple CPU-rendered Vita homebrew binaries on the Switch, demonstrating the concept is sound.
Running a Vita CHIP-8 emulator on the Switch. Credit:
Modern Vintage Gamer
On a technical level, vita2hos is not unlike WINE, which enables POSIX-compliant operating systems such as Linux, Mac OS, and BSD to run Windows programs so long as they use the same processor architecture. Since the Switch’s ARM v8 processor is capable of executing code compiled for the Vita’s ARM v7 while running in 32-bit compatibility mode, there’s no emulation necessary. The project simply needs to provide the running program with work-alike routines fast enough, and nobody is the wiser. Of course, that’s a lot easier said than done.
According to the project page, the big hurdle right now is 3D graphics support. As you could imagine, many Vita games would have been pushing the system’s graphical hardware to the limit, making it exceptionally difficult to catch all the little edge cases that will undoubtedly come up when and if the project expands to support commercial titles. But for homebrew Vita games and utilities that may not even utilize the system’s 3D hardware, adding compatibility will be much easier. For instance, it’s
already able to run [xerpi]’s own CHIP-8 emulator
.
[xerpi] provides instructions on how to install vita2hos and the Vita executable to be tested
onto an already hacked Nintendo Switch
should you want to give it a shot. But unless you’ve got experience developing for the Vita or Switch and are willing to lend a hand, you might want to sit this one out until things mature a bit.
Thanks to [NeoTechni] for the tip. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442697",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2022-03-07T04:14:47",
"content": "“CPU-rendered Vita homebrew” means the homebrew games are effectively writing to screenbuffer. Properly implementing a virtual GPU would be accomplished best using shaders. However, a more sane approach ... | 1,760,372,768.103627 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/06/hackaday-links-march-6-2022/ | Hackaday Links: March 6, 2022 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"burn",
"ESA",
"ExoMars",
"fitbit",
"fitness band",
"hackaday links",
"injury",
"mars",
"railway",
"recall",
"RISC-V",
"roscosmos",
"RT-thread",
"ukraine"
] | As if the war in Ukraine weren’t bad enough right here on Earth, it threatens
knock-on effects that could be felt as far away as Mars
. One victim of the deteriorating relationships between nations is the next phase of the ExoMars project, a joint ESA-Roscosmos mission that includes the
Rosalind Franklin
rover. The long-delayed mission was most recently set for launch in October 2022, but the ESA says that hitting the narrow launch window is now “very unlikely.” That’s a shame, since the orbital dynamics of Earth and Mars will mean that it’ll be 2024 before another
Hohmann Transfer
window opens. There are also going to be repercussions throughout the launch industry due to
Russia pulling the Soyuz launch team
out of the ESA’s spaceport in Guiana. And things have to be mighty tense aboard the ISS right about now, since the station requires periodic orbital boosting with Russian Progress rockets.
If you wear a fitness band, chances are pretty good you do so for health reasons. The idea of keeping track of your activity and vitals around the clock makes sense —
right up until your wrist bursts into flames
. At least that’s what’s reported to have happened to 174 Fitbit smartwatch users, resulting in
a recall of 1.7 million units
. The problem, unsurprisingly, is the lithium battery, overheating of which has resulted in 78 reported cases of burns. Injuries from overheating seem to be pretty rare, but Googling around for some images of injuries is pretty risky for the weak-stomached.
You’ve been warned
.
If you’re into embedded design and RT-Thread, you might want to take a look at
the contest LCSC and other companies are sponsoring
. The challenge is to come up with a design that uses the CH32V307, a 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller. Whatever you come up with needs to use RT-Thread as an OS. If you’ve got an embedded idea that you’re itching to try, this might be a good contest to try. Accepted entries all get either a CH32V307 dev board or chip, and you have until April 30 to get your entry in.
Here’s one from the “Malicious Compliance” files, with just a touch of social engineering. It’s
the story of the most ridiculous railway ever built
, and how it’s used to skirt around protectionist trade laws. The Bayside Canadian Railway is all of 200 feet (61 meters) long, and goes exactly nowhere other than from one side of a parking lot to the other in the province of New Brunswick. It has a small locomotive and exactly one flatbed car. Frozen fish from Alaska are shipped through the Panama Canal to a port in New Brunswick, loaded onto semi-trucks, and then are driven onto the flatbed rail car.
After their 45-second trip down the track, they’re driven back off the railway and across the border into Maine, thereby completing part of their journey to market on a railroad in Canada. This allows the load to qualify for an exemption to the USA’s 1920 Jones Act, which prevents foreign vessels from moving cargo between American ports. Figuring out exactly how all this makes financial sense is left as an exercise for the reader, but we suspect that it will boil down to something like, “Technically legal is the best kind of legal.” | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442680",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2022-03-07T03:03:00",
"content": "After a bit of digging I found a datasheet in English for the CH32V307 athttps://github.com/openwch/ch32v307/tree/main/DatasheetIt is a bit odd that the only datasheet available fromhttp://www.wch.cn/(the m... | 1,760,372,768.03183 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/06/retro-serial-terminal-uses-modern-chips-to-get-cp-m-machine-talking/ | Retro Serial Terminal Uses Modern Chips To Get CP/M Machine Talking | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"atmega328",
"CP/M",
"RC2014",
"retrocomputing",
"uart",
"vga",
"z80"
] | The hobbyists of the early days of the home computer era worked wonders with the comparatively primitive chips of the day, and what couldn’t be accomplished with a Z80 or a 6502 was often relegated to complex designs based on logic chips and discrete components. One wonders what these hackers could have accomplished with the modern components we take for granted.
Perhaps it would be something like
this minimal serial terminal
for the current crop of homebrew retrocomputers. The board is by [Augusto Baffa] and is used in
his Baffa-2 homebrew microcomputer
, an RC2014-esque Z80 machine that runs CP/M. This terminal board is one of many peripheral boards that plug into the Baffa-2’s backplane, but it’s one of the few that seems to have taken the shortcut of using modern microcontrollers to get its job done. The board sports a pair of ATmega328s; one handles serial communication with the Baffa-2 backplane, while the other takes care of running the VGA interface. The card also has a PS/2 keyboard interface, and supports VT-100 ANSI escapes. The video below shows it in action with a 17″ LCD monitor in the old 4:3 aspect ratio.
We like the way this terminal card gets the job done simply and easily, and we really like the look of the Baffa-2 itself. We also spied an IMSAI 8080 and an Altair 8800 in the background of the video. We’d love to know more about those. | 26 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442584",
"author": "Lee",
"timestamp": "2022-03-06T22:05:44",
"content": "Looks like Grant Searle’s circuit but uses VGA instead of composite. Still isn’t “modern”. The ATMega328 is fairly old and it uses PS\\2. If you want modern I would look at the Pi Pico VGA Terminal. Or a Pi Z... | 1,760,372,768.269274 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/06/putting-the-go-in-frisbee-golf-with-a-robot-launcher/ | Putting The ‘Go’ In Frisbee Golf With A Robot Launcher | Matthew Carlson | [
"cnc hacks",
"handhelds hacks"
] | [
"disc golf",
"frisbee",
"shane wighton",
"stuff made here"
] | If you’ve gone to a local city park lately, you might have noticed strange metal baskets on poles with chains dangling free. These baskets are spread out throughout the park seemingly at random. For the uninitiated, Frisbee golf (sometimes known as disc golf) is a confusing concept. You might not think it, but Frisbee golf can be a very big deal to some people. [Stuff Made Here] is back with a
disc launcher that he hopes will put all the disc golfers
to shame.
It’s no secret that we here at Hackaday are big fans of [Stuff Made Here], or [Shane] (he has
his own tag after all
), and for obvious reasons — the CAD design process, the careful machining and testing, and the extremely high bar that [Shane] sets for his projects. This one is no different, and it is a tale of iteration and scaling. He started out with a simple goal: break the speed record for a thrown Frisbee.
An initial design was decided upon based on high-pressure air pushing a piston to throw the Frisbee off of an arm. Initially, the arm was way too slow as the airflow was severely restricted due to air solenoids and pressure regulators. After fixing all those problems by fabricating his own solenoid and adding a secondary tank with no regulator, the arm started really moving. However, [Shane] wanted it to be able to be arm-mounted, so making sure the torque wouldn’t melt his arm bones was an important priority.
A counterbalance was added to cancel it out, but that ended up causing additional problems down the road, so the throwing arm had to be made as light as possible. The gripper mechanism had to be redesigned again and again as each time the speed was increased, a new problem arose. Turns out that small plastic discs being accelerated at many G’s tend to deform and slip out of their holders, no matter how well engineered. So [Shane] switched to a clever new design to pull the Frisbee along rather than push. It was too dangerous to really be handheld, and the only tests while he was wearing it were at very low amounts of pressure and power.
Testing it in a wide-open field at full power showed promise and while he had plenty of speed, he wasn’t able to beat the distance record. Breaking the distance record is much harder as Frisbees aren’t really designed with the sheer acceleration that [Shane] is subjecting them to, and they want to flip. Additionally, the Frisbees are lacking the spin that would keep them more stable, and what we do as humans is quite difficult to reproduce. Maybe a larger-scale version
of this disc launcher
could be made that accepts Frisbees?
It’s incredible to watch this contraption come together as each part needs to be designed and machined first by [Shane]. Video after the break. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442577",
"author": "Daniel A Elder",
"timestamp": "2022-03-06T21:27:16",
"content": "Sometimes? Dude it’s disc golf frisbee is a brand",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6442578",
"author": "Daniel Alan Elder",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,372,768.31662 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/06/vintage-mmu-repair-its-easier-with-x-rays/ | Vintage Meter Repair? It’s Easier With X-Rays | Donald Papp | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"electrolytic capacitor",
"Keithley",
"multimeter",
"repair",
"vintage",
"X-Rays"
] | Here’s an interesting and detailed
teardown and repair of a Keithley 2001 7.5 Digit multimeter
that is positively dripping with detail. It’s also not every day that we get to see someone using x-ray imaging to evaluate the extent of PCB damage caused by failed electrolytic capacitors.
Dark area is evidence of damage in the multi-layer PCB.
Sadly, this particular model is especially subject to that exact vintage electronics issue: electrolytic capacitor failure and leakage. These failures can lead to destroyed traces, and this particular unit had a number of them (in addition to a few destroyed diodes, just for good measure.) That’s where the x-ray machine comes in handy, because some of the damage is hidden inside the multi-layer PCBs.
[Shahriar], perhaps best known as [The Signal Path], narrates the entire process of fixing up the high-quality benchtop multimeter in a video, embedded below (or you can
skip directly to the x-ray machine being broken out
.) [Shahriar] was able to repair the device, thanks in part to it being in relatively good shape, and having the right tools available. Older electronics are not always so cooperative; the older a device is, the more likely one is to
run into physical and logical standards that no longer exist
. | 18 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442515",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2022-03-06T15:44:16",
"content": "Wish there was more shown of the repairs the x-ray identified, but otherwise a really well presented and informative overview of the repair, which it is always nice to see.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,768.461167 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/06/how-to-solder-to-aluminum-easily/ | How To Solder To Aluminum, Easily | Donald Papp | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"aluminum",
"mineral oil",
"oxide",
"scour",
"solder"
] | [Ted Yapo]
shared a method of easily and conveniently soldering to aluminum
, which depends on a little prep work to end up only slightly more complex than soldering to copper. A typical way to make a reliable electrical connection to aluminum is to use a screw and a wire, but [Ted] shows that it can also be done with the help of an abrasive and mineral oil.
Aluminum doesn’t solder well, and that’s because of the oxide layer that rapidly forms on the surface. [Ted]’s solution is to scour the aluminum with some mineral oil. The goal is to scrape away the oxide layer on the aluminum’s surface, while the mineral oil’s coating action prevents a new oxide layer from immediately re-forming.
After this prep, [Ted] uses a hot soldering iron and a blob of solder, heating it until it sticks. A fair bit of heat is usually needed, because aluminum is a great heat conductor and tends to be lot thicker than a typical copper ground plane. But once the aluminum is successfully tinned, just about anything can be soldered to it in a familiar way.
[Ted] does caution that mineral oil can ignite around 260 °C (500 °F), so a plan should be in place when using this method, just in case the small amount of oil catches fire.
This looks like a simple technique worth remembering, and it seems easier than soldering by
chemically depositing copper onto aluminum
. | 53 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442394",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2022-03-06T12:14:25",
"content": "thanks – that’s going in my bag of tricks, who knows when that may come in handy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6650415",
"author": "Dave",
... | 1,760,372,768.406698 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/06/diy-injection-molder-built-from-a-cheap-pneumatic-press/ | DIY Injection Molder Built From A Cheap Pneumatic Press | Dave Rowntree | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"CNC mould",
"injection molding",
"machinery",
"plastic"
] | [Kurt Schaefer] was watching YouTube videos of people making molds for injection molding purposes using what he considered to be the toy 3018 CNC machines, and looking at the results, decided he needed a piece of the action. However, once you have molds, the next obvious issue to address is lack of access to an injection molding machine. But these things are expensive. As luck would have it, you can get a nice-looking pneumatic press for less than $350, and with a little more money spent, [Kurt] found he could convert it into
a functional injection molding machine
(video, embedded below), and get some half-decent results out of it.
After ordering the press on eBay, what eventually arrived was quite a mess, having clearly been inadequately packed for its weight, and had sustained some damage in transit. Despite this, it seemed the functional bits were fine, so [Kurt] decided to press on with the build. The first obvious change is the requirement of a heated chamber to deal with the feedstock material. Using an off-the-shelf injection molding chamber by
buster beagle 3D
, only a few standoffs and a support bracket needed machining in order to complete the mechanics. A common PID controller available from the usual suppliers, with some heat bands wrapped around the chamber, dealt with the injection temperature requirements, and some 3D printed enclosures wrapped it all up neatly.
After some initial wobbles, and a couple of hacks to the design, [Kurt] got some pretty good results out of this simple setup, and it appears to be pretty tune-able and repeatable, which will help maintain the quality of those results. In short, a neat hack of easy to get parts, and perhaps a welcome addition to a hackerspace near you?
3D printed parts are available on the
Thingiverse page
, as well as a
Fusion360 CAD model
. The shopping list for parts can be found in the video description, if you want to have a go at reproducing this.
We’ve seen a few DIY injection molding attempts over the years, like this
slick plastic molding setup
. Here’s one with
3D-printed molds
, and if you just need something the right shape, you could just
injection mold with a hot glue
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442153",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2022-03-06T10:09:23",
"content": "What a fun project and what a great project video!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6442458",
"author": "Ronald Simmonds",
"timestamp": "2022-03-0... | 1,760,372,768.67373 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/05/robotic-tufting-gun-fires-off-cnc-textiles/ | Robotic Tufting Gun Fires Off CNC Textiles | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"robot arm",
"textiles",
"tufting"
] | Often used to make rugs, tufting is a process wherein a hollow needle is used to cram thread or yarn into fabric in some kind of pattern. This can be done by hand, with a gun, or with big machines. Some machines are set up to punch the same pattern quickly over and over again, and these are difficult to retool for a new pattern. Others are made to poke arbitrary patterns and change easily, but these machines move more slowly.
This
robotic tufting system
by [Owen Trueblood] is of the slow and arbitrary type. It will consist of a modified tufting gun strapped to a robot arm for CNC textile art. Tufting guns are manufactured with simple controls — a power switch, a knob to set the speed, and a trigger button to do the tufting. Once it’s affixed to the robot arm, [Owen] wants to remote control the thing.
The gun’s motor driver is nothing fancy, just a 555 using PWM to control a half H-bridge based on input from the speed control potentiometer. [Owen] replaced the motor controller with an Arduino and added an I/O port. The latter is a 3.5 mm stereo audio jack wired to GND and two of the Arduino’s pins. One is a digital input to power the gun, and the other is used as an analog speed controller based on input voltage. [Owen] is just getting started, and we’re excited to keep tabs on this project as the gun goes robotic.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen robots do textiles —
here’s a 6-axis robot arm that weaves carbon fiber
. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442015",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2022-03-06T09:05:48",
"content": "And here I thought he invented the contraption but it seems that this is an off the shelf thing we’re he altered the electronics of. How silly of me. I am truly amazed at the lack of safety on this com... | 1,760,372,768.546162 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/05/replica-minecraft-furnace-actually-powers-the-game/ | ReplicaMinecraftFurnace Actually Powers The Game | Dan Maloney | [
"Games"
] | [
"fire",
"furnace",
"IRL",
"minecraft",
"peltier",
"raspberry pi",
"thermoelectric"
] | Let’s face it, we all need a little distraction sometimes, especially lately. And for our money, there’s no better way to put your brain in park than to start up a
Minecraft
world and get to digging. The simple graphics, the open world, and the lack of agenda other than to find resources and build things are all very soothing.
But play the game long enough and you’re bound to think about what it would be like if the game world crossed over into the real world. The ironically named [Michael Pick] did just that when he managed to craft
a real
Minecraft
furnace that can actually power the game
. Of course, there are some liberties taken with the in-game crafting recipe for a furnace, which is understandable for a game that allows you to punch trees with a bare fist to cut them down.
Rather than using eight blocks of cobblestone to build his furnace, [Michael] made a wooden shell for
a commercial folding camp stove
. Insulated from the shell by a little cement board, the furnace looks pretty true to the in-game item. To generate the electricity needed to run the game, he used a pair of
thermoelectric camping generators
. With the stove filled with wood — presumably un-punched — the generators put out enough juice to at least partially charge a battery bank, which was then used to power a Raspberry Pi and 7″ monitor. His goal was to get enough power from the furnace to do a speed run in the game and find three diamonds to build a diamond pickaxe. Honestly, we’re jealous — our first diamonds never come that easy.
We’ve seen other
Minecraft
-IRL crossovers before. Fancy a ride in a minecart?
We’ve got that covered
. Or maybe you’d rather control a desk lamp from within the game?
That’s a thing, too
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6442571",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2022-03-06T20:57:15",
"content": "Would be neat to do a version of this that works more closely like the in-game one, with a top and bottom compartment for the fire and the food and a grill in between.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,768.502791 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/05/one-stepper-plus-a-whole-bunch-of-magnets-equals-a-unique-seven-segment-display/ | One Stepper Plus A Whole Bunch Of Magnets Equals A Unique Seven-Segment Display | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"hall effect",
"magnet",
"neodymium",
"polarity",
"seven segment",
"stepper"
] | Sometimes the cost of simplicity is extra complexity. It seems counterintuitive, but it seems to be true. And
this single-motor mechanical seven-segment display
seems to be a perfect example of this paradox.
On second thought, [aeropic]’s mechanism isn’t really all that mechanically complicated, but there sure was a lot of planning and ingenuity that went into it. The front has a 3D-printed bezel with the familiar segment cutouts, each of which is fitted with a pivoting segment, black on one side and white on the other.
Behind the bezel is a vertical shaft with three wheels, one behind each horizontal segment, and a pair of horizontal shafts, each with two wheels behind each vertical segment. The three shafts are geared to turn together by a single stepper in the base. Each wheel has ten magnets embedded in the outer circumference, with the polarity oriented to flip the segment in front of it to the right orientation for the current digit. It’s probably something that’s most easily understood by watching the video below.
We’ve seen quite a few of these mechanical seven-segment displays lately —
this cam-and-servo mechanism
comes to mind. We love them all, of course, but the great thing about [aeropic]’s display is how quiet it is — the stepper is mostly silent, and the segments make only a gentle clunk when they flip. It’s very satisfying. | 24 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6441010",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2022-03-06T01:04:37",
"content": "Ooh. Clever!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6441020",
"author": "Michael Eyler",
"timestamp": "2022-03-06T01:09:29",
"content": "Whoa! Th... | 1,760,372,768.735162 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/05/miniature-motorized-rc-car-is-massively-impressive/ | Miniature Motorized RC Car Is Massively Impressive | Ryan Flowers | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"attiny",
"enameled wire",
"fiber optics",
"minaturization",
"mini rc car",
"smart car",
"smd"
] | Small is often subjective. For example, a school bus is small compared to an Airbus A380. But other things are just small all on their own and need no comparison to make the point. Such is the case with this
micro RC car in the video below the break
. It’s an RC model of the Smart Car, that when compared to other vehicles on the road, is quite diminutive, both subjectively and absolutely. But the outward appearance of [diorama111]’s project only tells half the story.
Starting out as a static display model, [diorama111] fully disassembled the 1/87 scale Smart Car and got to work. Fully proportional steering is attained with a very, very small stepper motor that drives custom knuckles attached to handmade suspension. They are works of art in their own right.
Do your projects need tweezers for assembly?
Drive is supplied by another small stepper motor. If [diorama111] had stopped there, it would have been every bit as noteworthy to see a 1/87 Smart Car doing figure eights around small bottles of model paint. Instead, [diorama111] kept going! The car has working turn signals, brake lights (including the 3rd taillight in the back window!) and headlights. There is even a function for hazard lights.
The electronics are all hand built using enameled wire and SMD components on perf board, and are a study in miniaturization all their own. An ATtiny processor seems right at home in this design. We admire [diorama111]s steady hands and patience to build such a small RC car, never mind one with such fine attention paid to all the details.
If downsized hacks like this float your thimble-sized boat, you might also appreciate this
precious little PDP-11 and terminal
.
Thanks to [furby73] for the great tip! | 32 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6440614",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2022-03-05T21:45:14",
"content": "WOW!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6442573",
"author": "Derek Rowe",
"timestamp": "2022-03-06T21:12:21",
"content": "Amazing... | 1,760,372,768.805382 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/05/low-cost-two-channel-scriptable-waveform-generator/ | Low-Cost, Two-Channel Scriptable Waveform Generator | Chris Lott | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"AD9833",
"dds",
"function generator",
"low cost"
] | Microcontroller addict [Debraj] decided to make his own programmable sine wave generator, and was able to put it together for under $40 USD. Other than low-cost, his list of requirements was as follows:
Dual sine wave output, synchronized
Frequency, Amplitude, and Phase control
Low harmonics under 1 MHz
Scriptable via Python
The heart of the project is the
Analog Devices AD9833
, a complete Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) waveform generator system on a chip. If you’ve ever rolled your own DDS using discrete ICs or in an FPGA, you can appreciate the benefit of squeezing the phase accumulator, sine lookup table, DAC, and control logic all into a single ten-pin package. [Debraj] uses AD9833 modules from the usual online vendors for a few dollars each. He synchronizes the generators by disconnecting the reference crystal on the second module and driving it from the first one. The remaining specifications are met by the inherent characteristics of the DDS system, and the scriptable interface is accomplished with an Arduino controlling the AD9833 chips and two programmable gain amplifiers (
MCP6S31
). We like the confidence that [Debraj] displays by sketching the initial circuit diagram with a ball-point pen — check out the sketch and the final pictorial schematic in the video below the break.
This is a good example of combining off-the-shelf modules to quickly build a project. This approach is great for one-off builds or as a proof-of-concept test bed that can later be spun onto a custom PCB. Another reason to use modules these days is that the modules are often in-stock but the chips are unobtainable. Though it appears [Debraj]’s only needs one of these generators, it would be an easy board to layout and build — if you can buy the parts. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6440459",
"author": "vib",
"timestamp": "2022-03-05T20:28:52",
"content": "Nice tip, synching the XTAL that way. I doubt it´s possible to sync more than two devices that way without a complementary stage/buffer and i´m a bit surprised it works at all that way.",
"parent_id": nul... | 1,760,372,768.852443 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/04/al-williams-tells-all-in-the-logic-simulation-hack-chat/ | Al Williams Tells All In The Logic Simulation Hack Chat | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"ASIC",
"circuit simulation",
"digital logic",
"fpga",
"Hack Chat",
"hdl",
"verilog"
] | The list of requirements for hosting one of our weekly Hack Chats is pretty short: you’ve got to be knowledgeable, passionate, and above all else, willing to put those two quantities on display for a group of like-minded strangers. Beyond that, we’re not too picky. From industry insider to weekend hobbyist, high school dropout to double doctorate, if you’ve got something interesting to talk about, we’re ready to listen.
But in casting a such a wide net, we occasionally forget that we’ve got a considerable collection of potential hosts within our own worldwide roster of contributors. Among this cast of characters, few can boast the same incredible body of knowledge as Al Williams, who was able to pencil in some time this week to host the
Logic Simulation Hack Chat
.
Or at least, that was the idea. In reality the Chat covered a wide range of topics, and was peppered with fascinating anecdotes pulled from Al’s decades of experience in the field. Though to be fair, we expected no less. He was building hardware before many of us were born, and can take credit for designs that have been at the bottom of the ocean as well as launched into orbit. He’s been writing about it just as long too, with articles of his appearing in iconic print magazines such as
Dr. Dobb’s Journal
.
Al has seen and done so much that he still surprises us with the occasional nugget, and we’ve been working with him for years. It was only a week or two back that he started a story with “Back when I used to manage a gas pipeline…” in the middle of a conversation about utility metering.
Of course, that’s not to say some technical discussion didn’t sneak in there from time to time. Sure Al’s recollection of how they used to literally crawl over the schematics for the 68000 back at Motorola might stick out as a particular high point, but he also explains his personal preference for vendor-specific software tools over their more generic open source counterparts. He also draws comparisons between hardware description languages (HDLs) like Verilog and parametric CAD tools such as OpenSCAD in the way that they help model complex relationships in ways that can’t be easily done by more traditional means.
At one point the conversation lingers on the design and production of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and how they compare to field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Traditionally ASICs have been out of reach for the hobbyist, but with the recent collaboration between Google and SkyWater Technology to create an open source process design kit (PDK), they’re now within the capabilities of a dedicated individual.
Matt Venn spoke on the topic during Remoticon 2021
, and it’s good to see more folks in the community openly discussing the possibilities of custom silicon designed by hackers.
From there, things start really getting wild. From dreaming of virtual reality circuit simulators that let you fly amongst your creations like in
Tron
, to salivating over high-end technologies such as reflective memory, this Chat really runs the gamut. But then, that’s sort of why we hold them in the first place. Whether you actively participate or are just along for the ride, the Hack Chat gives everyone in the community a chance to gather around a virtual water cooler with fascinating characters that you won’t find anywhere else.
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. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439905",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2022-03-04T19:54:13",
"content": "It’s nice when you’re working at the level of manufacturing your own ICs. You can treat logic as an abstraction which translates to a library of building blocks, which is automatically generated into silicon... | 1,760,372,768.897285 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/04/hackaday-podcast-158-phased-array-physics-crts-two-ways-a-micro-microcontroller-and-a-surgically-implanted-red-herring/ | Hackaday Podcast 158: Phased Array Physics, CRTs Two Ways, A Micro Microcontroller, And A Surgically Implanted Red Herring | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Join Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Staff Writer Dan Maloney as they take a look at the week’s top stories, taken straight off the pages of Hackaday. What happens when you stuff modern parts into a 90’s novelty PC case? Nothing good, but everything awesome! Is there any way to prevent PCB soil moisture sensors from being destroyed by, you know, soil moisture? How small is too small for a microcontroller, and who needs documentation anyway? We also cast a jaundiced eye — err, ear — at an electronic cheating scandal, and if you’ve ever wondered how phased arrays and beam steering work, gazing into a pan of water might just answer your questions. We also share all our soldering war stories, and hey — what’s with all these CRT projects anyway?
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Direct Download
(52 MB, but sounds like at least 58 MB!)
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 158 Show Notes:
News This Week:
Turning plastic gloves into hot sauce – YouTube
Big Chemistry: From Gasoline To Wintergreen
What’s that Sound?
How are you with old school arcade games?
Test your memory, or your RetroPie collection, this week
!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
New Part Day: Smallest ARM MCU Uproots Competition, Needs Research
No Caffeine, No Problem: A Hand-Soldered Chip-Scale Package
Pulling Off A CRT Transplant Doesn’t Have To Be Tricky!
Bend It Like (Sonar) Beacon With A Phased Array
Shader – Shadertoy BETA
On Point: The Yagi Antenna
Hackaday Supercon – HunterScott : Why Phased Arrays are Cool and How to Build One
90s PC With Modern Parts Throws Many Off Track
Soil Moisture Sensor Coating Lessons Learned The Hard Way
Vinduino, a wine grower’s water-saving project
Surgically Implanted Bluetooth Devices Don’t Help Would-Be Exam Cheats
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
3D Printed Mechanical Contraption Shows Live Weather Forecast
Old Portable TV Becomes Unique CRT Cyberdeck
DIY Super-Bright Outdoor TV With Watercooling
Dan’s Picks:
Better Kerf Cuts With A CNC Bit
Split Flap Display Tells Us The Word
Need To Probe Circuits? Remember About Clothespins!
Can’t-Miss Articles:
You Can Find Military Radars On Publicly-Available Satellite Data
Ask Hackaday: What’s Your Worst Soldering Job?
Key To Soldering: Pace Yourself
A Conversation with René Martinez – Tales from the Road | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439836",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2022-03-04T17:23:36",
"content": "Phased arrays can do so much.https://techxplore.com/news/2022-02-wallet-sized-device-focuses-terahertz-energy.html",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,768.933708 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/04/are-apple-trying-to-patent-the-home-computer-45-years-too-late/ | Are Apple Trying To Patent The Home Computer 45 Years Too Late? | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"all-in-one",
"apple",
"raspberry pi 400"
] | In our recent piece marking the 10th anniversary of the Raspberry Pi, we praised their all-in-one Raspberry Pi 400 computer for having so far succeeded in attracting no competing products. It seems that assessment might be premature, because it emerges that Apple have filed a patent application for “
A computer in an input device
” that looks very much like the Pi 400. In fact we’d go further than that, it looks very much like any of a number of classic home computers from back in the day, to the extent that we’re left wondering what exactly Apple think is novel enough to patent.
Looks pretty similar to us.
Reading the patent it appears to be a transparent catch-all for all-in-one computers, with the possible exception of “
A singular input/output port
“, meaning that the only port on the device would be a single USB-C port that could take power, communicate with peripherals, and drive the display. Either way, this seems an extremely weak claim of novelty, if only because we think that a few of the more recent Android phones with keyboards might constitute prior art.
We’re sure that Apple’s lawyers will have their arguments at the ready, but we can’t help wondering whether they’ve fallen for the old joke about Apple fanboys claiming the company invented something when in fact they’ve finally adopted it years after the competition.
Thinking back to the glory days of 8-bit computers for a moment, we’re curious which was the first to sport a form factor little larger than its keyboard. Apple’s own Apple ][ wouldn’t count because the bulk of the machine is behind the keyboard, but for example machines such as Commodore’s VIC-20 or Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum could be said to be all-in-one keyboard computers. Can anyone provide an all-in-one model that predates those two?
You can read
our Raspberry Pi 400 review
if the all-in-one interests you.
Via
Extreme Tech
. | 64 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439797",
"author": "KDawg",
"timestamp": "2022-03-04T16:03:39",
"content": "Tandy TRS-80",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6439934",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2022-03-04T21:09:30",
"content": "I love ... | 1,760,372,770.790522 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/04/this-week-in-security-ukraine-nvidia-and-conti/ | This Week In Security: Ukraine, Nvidia, And Conti | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Conti",
"NVIDIA",
"This Week in Security",
"ukraine"
] | The geopolitics surrounding the invasion of Ukraine are outside the scope of this column, but the cybersecurity ramifications are certainly fitting fodder. The challenge here is that almost everything of note that has happened in the last week has been initially linked to the conflict, but in several cases, the reported link hasn’t withstood scrutiny. We do know that
the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine put out a call
on Twitter for “cyber specialists” to go after a list of Russian businesses and state agencies. Many of the sites on the list did go down for some time, the digital equivalent of
tearing down a poster
. In response, the largest Russian ISP stopped announcing BGP routes to some of the targeted sites, effectively ending any attacks against them from the outside.
A smattering of similar events have unfolded over the last week, like electric car charging stations in Russia refusing to charge, and displaying a political message, “GLORY TO UKRAINE”. Not all the attacks have been so trivial. Researchers at
Eset have identified HermeticWiper
, a bit of malware with no other purpose but to destroy data. It has been found on hundreds of high-value targets, likely causing much damage. It is likely the same malware that Microsoft has
dubbed FoxBlade, and published details about their response
.
Conti Leaks
In very related news, the Conti ransomware gang announced that they would retaliate against Western cyberattacks against Russia or Russian-speaking regions. Their statement is reproduced in full here.
As a response to Western warmongering and American threats to use cyber warfare against the citizens of the Russian Federation, the Conti Team is officially announcing that we will use our full capacity to deliver retaliatory measures in case the Western warmongers attempt to target critical infrastructure in Russia or any Russian-speaking region of the world. We do not ally with any government and we condemn the ongoing war. However, since the West is known to wage its wars primarily by targeting civilians, we will use our resources in order to strike back if the well being and safety of peaceful citizens will be at stake due to American cyber aggression.
This has naturally attracted some strong criticism,
most interestingly from the twitter account
, @ContiLeaks. Just as the name suggests, this account is publishing internal chat logs between Conti members. There are two prevailing theories. The first is that these leaks are by a former member of Conti, a Ukranian, who takes great offense at their stated support of Russia. The
other theory is reported by [KrebsOnSecurity]
, that this is a Ukranian security researcher, but not one that has previous affiliation with Conti. This leads to plenty of questions, like how the logs were accessed. Either way, we get quite an interesting look into the Conti infrastructure.
The Conti ransomware leaks have unveiled Conti's primary Bitcoin address.
From April 21st, 2017 – February 28th, 2022 Conti has received 65,498.197 BTC
That is 2,707,466,220.29 USD.
pic.twitter.com/sUdRnkLsoo
— vx-underground (@vxunderground)
February 28, 2022
A part inside look is the primary Bitcoin address used by Conti. In total, there have been 65.5 thousand bitcoins moved through that address. The current market value of that is an astounding 2.7 Billion US dollars. For further information and analysis,
Krebs has been doing good work
pores through the logs looking for nuggets.
Nvidia
And now to things that were initially thought to be related to Ukraine, but have turned out not to be.
Nvidia had a major breach
, and the actors responsible claim to have about a terabyte of proprietary data. This group, [Lapsus$] has made a pair of interesting demands.
The first is to unhobble cryptocurrency mining on Nvidia cards. In an attempt to keep video cards in stock so gamers can purchase them, Nvidia has opted to artificially slow their performance in mining Bitcoin and other currencies. The second demand, announced a few days later, is that Nvidia should completely open-source their GPU drivers. This demand, by the way, is essentially impossible. There is a web of patents, NDAs, and third party code tied up in a proprietary driver as complex as a GPU driver, and much of it is out of Nvidia’s hands. For reference, when AMD decided to create an open source Linux driver for their GPUs, the solution was to re-write the entire driver from scratch.
On the other hand, the given deadline is Friday — the day this column publishes. If the attackers have the trove of data they claim, and actually release it all, it will be quite the blow to Nvidia. Quite humorously, there is
a believable claim that Nvidia employees
took advantage of the VPN used to exfiltrate data, and installed a ransomware client on the attacker’s machine. There’s some delicious irony in computer criminals being so outraged at getting hacked.
You Messed Up. What Now?
If you haven’t been here yet, just wait. We all mess up eventually, and leave a service exposed, or reuse a password that’s been compromised, or install a sketchy Docker image. My biggest blunder of this sort was accidentally forwarding port 22 from the outside world to a test machine, with a really simple root password. Yikes! When you realize there’s a problem, what next?
The folks at Sysdig wanted to address this.
They simulated a mistake
, leaving the Docker API world-accessible, and scored a malicious docker image someone helpfully installed for them. A
docker save
serves to back up the image for analysis, backing it up as a .tar file.
binwalk -e -M
does a recursive extraction of the contents of the suspect .tar, resulting in a root filesystem among other information. Combining this with
docker inspect
to find the startup command, you can begin to get an idea of what the image does. In this case, it leads to a binary in the image.
The first step in unknown binary analysis is
strings
, a very useful utility that spits out the ASCII strings found in a binary file. Here, it’s enough to reveal the game, as the binary runs a series of shell commands that runs
xmrig
, a Monero miner. Given that these researchers are employed by Sysdig, they show some nifty tricks using the
sysdig
command as well, like running a filter to see what other files in the image the malware was accessing. It seems that it scours the Apache logs looking for IP addresses, and then looks for open Docker APIs on those hosts, too. This gives an important clue, as to what kind of lateral movement was likely done. If this were a real scenario, any other system running Docker would have to be suspect as well.
Bits and Bytes
Remember the world before Let’s Encrypt? HTTPS certs either cost money or were a pain to get if free. If you were a corporation, then Extended Validation was the holy grail. It cost an arm and a leg, but you get the green Extended Validation badge in the web browser’s URL. The world is a different place now, and while you can technically still purchase an EV certificate, no major browser shows the EV badge any longer. This doesn’t stop certificate authorities from trying to sell EV certs, even if they have to use outdated information and imagery to do so. The lengths that Digicert went to struck [Troy Hunt] as borderline dishonest, and
he’s published an epic disassembly
of the entire idea of EV certificates, and Digicert’s misleading marketing about them.
Ah, the Metaverse — Web 3.0, the Next Big Thing. Take NFTs, put them in virtual spaces, and invite the VR goggled to play in the shared sandbox. This time, we’ll make it perfectly secure, too, right? Of course not.
Guardio Security brings a report
about the same old tricks being used to compromise wallets managed by the MetaMask browser extension. The trick? Perfectly recreating the expected login screen, then buying ads on search engines pointing to the fake page. To the unwary, or just someone in a hurry, it’s quite difficult to tell that it’s a fake. Even the newest of ideas can fall to the oldest of tricks.
The TeaBot trojan has learned a new trick
. This remote access trojan was first discovered last year, spreading through SMS spam. It’s now being snuck onto phones through legitimate-seeming apps on the Google Play store. The trick is that a dropper application will install, and then immediately ask for permission to install an app with the same name. This second app is the malicious one, but because of the name re-use it looks enough like a basic permissions request to sneak through. The dropper discussed by the article had over 10,000 downloads, and was well reviewed. It’s likely a repackage of an open source app, just with a nasty surprise. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439781",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2022-03-04T15:16:18",
"content": "“The second demand, announced a few days later, is that Nvidia should completely open-source their GPU drivers. This demand, by the way, is essentially impossible. ”How about open documentation of all of... | 1,760,372,770.527717 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/04/the-battlefield-thats-5-khz-wide/ | The Battlefield That’s 5 KHz Wide | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"numbers station",
"pirate radio",
"ukraine"
] | The airwaves are full of news from the battle in Ukraine, with TV and radio journalists providing coverage at all hours. But for those with a bit of patience there’s something else from the conflict that can be found with a radio receiver,
the battle over 5 kHz of spectrum starting at 4625 kHz
. This has for many years been the location on the dial for “
the Buzzer
“, a Russian military transmitter whose nickname describes its monotonous on/off buzzing transmission perfectly. As the current Ukrainian situation has taken shape it has become a minor battleground, and the Buzzer now shares its frequency with a variety of other stations broadcasting music, spectrograms, and other radio junk intended to disrupt it.
The air raid siren produces a particularly distinctive spectrogram.
For the curious this can be watched unfolding on a spectrogram or through headphones by anyone within range who has an HF receiver, or for everyone else, with a WebSDR. In Western Europe it’s best listened to in hours of darkness, we suggest you consult the
webSDR.org
list to see which has the best signal. We’ve heard it on receivers in
Poland
,
Russia
, and the ever-reliable
uTwente WebSDR
in the Netherlands. Over the time we’ve been monitoring it we’ve heard overlaying speech, and music varying from the Soviet and American anthems through dance music and K-pop to 1960s British rock and of course Boney M’s
Rasputin,
with a few slightly macabre choices such as
Final Countdown
and an air raid siren. We’ve even heard TV intros from the
Benny Hill Show,
the
A-Team
and
Mission Impossible
, so whoever is doing this has a wide taste.
Alongside the music at about 4628kHz meanwhile we’ve watched a series of spectrogram messages scroll past in Ukrainian, Russian, and English, ranging from “Stop war” to lewd suggestions about the Russian President. It’s fair to say that none of these transmissions have obscured the Buzzer, but they have had the effect of significantly increasing the noise on the channel.
To have a listen yourself, point a receiver within range at the appropriate time of day towards 4625 kHz and select USB demodulation and a 5 kHz bandwidth. Meanwhile, for some background on the Cold War HF relics,
have a read about numbers stations
. | 36 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439723",
"author": "steelman",
"timestamp": "2022-03-04T12:12:32",
"content": "The airwaves are full of news from the battle in UkraineMaybe that’s my rusty non-native English, but I suppose there is more of us here, that thinkwaris a more accurate term. (Or at least plural form). ... | 1,760,372,770.86641 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/04/avoid-repetitive-strain-injury-with-machine-learning-and-pikachu/ | Avoid Repetitive Strain Injury With Machine Learning – And Pikachu | Robin Kearey | [
"computer hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"artificial neural network",
"repetitive strain injury",
"tensorflow",
"wio terminal"
] | The humble mouse has been an essential part of the desktop computing experience ever since the original Apple Macintosh popularized it in 1984. While mice enabled user-friendly GUIs, thus making computers accessible to more people than ever, they also caused a significant increase in repetitive strain injuries (RSI). Mainly caused by poor posture and stress, RSI can lead to pain, numbness and tingling sensations in the hand and arm, which the user might only notice when it’s too late.
Hoping to catch signs of RSI before it manifests itself, [kutluhan_aktar] built
a device that allows him to track mouse fatigue
. It does so through two sensors: one that measures galvanic skin response (GSR) and another that performs electromyography (EMG). Together, these two measurements should give an indication of the amount of muscle soreness. The sensor readout circuits are connected to a Wio Terminal, a small ARM Cortex-M4 development board with a 2.4″ LCD.
However, calculating muscle soreness is not as simple as just adding a few numbers together; in fact the link between the sensor data and the muscles’ state of health is complicated enough that [kutluhan] decided to train a TensorFlow artificial neural network (ANN), taking into account observed stress levels collected in real life. The network ran on the Wio while he used the mouse, pressing buttons to indicate the amount of stress he experienced. After a few rounds of training he ended up with a network that reached an accuracy of more than 80%.
[kutluhan] also designed a rather neat 3D printed enclosure to house the sensor readout boards as well as a battery to power the Wio Terminal. Naturally, the case was graced by a 3D rendition of Pikachu on top (get it? a mouse Pokémon that can paralyze its opponents!). We’ve seen [kutluhan]’s fondness for Pokémon-themed projects in his earlier
Jigglypuff CO2 sensor
.
Although the setup with multiple sensors doesn’t seem too practical for everyday use, the Mouse Fatigue Estimator might be a useful tool to train yourself to keep good posture and avoid stress while using a mouse. If you also use a keyboard (and who doesn’t?), make sure
you’re using that correctly as well
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439913",
"author": "Maave",
"timestamp": "2022-03-04T20:15:47",
"content": "Very cool. I didn’t know this kind of measurement was even possible",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,770.683591 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/03/antique-beat-box-showcases-1950s-engineering-prowess/ | Antique Beat Box Showcases 1950’s Engineering Prowess | Ryan Flowers | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"Antique electronics",
"drum machine",
"electromechanical",
"music hacks",
"tubes",
"valves",
"wurlitzer"
] | Before you could just put a drum machine app on your phone, or fire up Garage Band, there were breakthroughs like the Roland 808 drum machine. But that’s not where it all started. In 1959 a company called Wurlitzer (known for things like juke boxes, pianos, and giant pipe organs) produced a new device that had musicians worried it would put drummers out of a job: The 1959 Wurlitzer Sideman. And
in the video below the break
, we have the joy of watching [LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER] open up, explain, and
play
one of these marvelous machines.
Can you spot the early circuit sculpture?
It’s noteworthy that in 1959, almost none of the advancements we take for granted had made it out of the laboratory. Transistors? Nope. Integrated Circuits? Definitely not. What does that leave us with? Vacuum tubes (Valves for those across the pond), resistors, capacitors, relays, and… motors? Yep. Motors.
The unit is artfully constructed, and we mean that quite literally- the build was clearly done with care and it is easy to see an early example of circuit sculpture around the 3 minute mark. Electromechanical mechanisms take on tasks that we’d probably use a 555 for these days, but for any of you working on mechanical projects, take note: Wurlitzer really knew what they were doing, and there are some excellent examples of mechanical and electrical engineering throughout this primordial beat box.
If you move to the beat of interesting drum machines, you might enjoy this
Teensy based Open Source drum machine that you can build
. No tubes required! | 35 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439600",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2022-03-04T06:59:52",
"content": "I could not find a schematic for the thing. How does it generate the plops and beebs for the sounds? They say resonant filters, but with just one triode per voice?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,372,770.938558 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/03/hardware-hacking-101-needs-matching-toolkit/ | Hardware Hacking 101 Needs Matching Toolkit | Donald Papp | [
"hardware",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"hardware hacking",
"toolkit"
] | One doesn’t always have the luxury of sipping tea comfortably while hacking a piece of hardware at a fully-equipped workbench, where every tool is within reach. To address this, [Zokol] shares an early look at a
hardware hacking toolkit-in-progress
, whose purpose is to make hacking sessions as productive as possible while keeping size and weight within reasonable limits. There isn’t a part list yet, but there are some good tips on creating your own.
To put together an effective hardware hacking toolkit, one must carefully consider what kinds of tasks need to be performed, and in what order. Once a basic workflow is identified, one can put together a set of complementary hardware tools and resources to meet the expected needs. The goal is to have the tools to go as far as one can in a single session, and identify any specialized equipment that will be needed later. That way, follow-up sessions can be as effective as possible.
Since hardware hacking is all about inspecting (and possibly modifying the behavior of) electronic devices, [Zokol] observes that step one is always to begin with external interfaces. That means common cables and adapters should all be part of a hardware hacking toolkit, otherwise the session might end awfully early. The next step is to open the device, so common tools and ways to deal with things like adhesives are needed. After that, diagnostic tools like multimeters come into play, with tools becoming more specialized as investigation proceeds. It’s a very sensible way to approach the problem of what to bring (and not bring) in a hardware hacking toolkit, and we can’t wait to see what the final version looks like.
Hardware hacking sometimes involves hardware that can’t be opened without damaging it. The Google Stadia controller is one such piece of hardware, and [Zokol] addressed the problem of how to
permanently disable the microphone by figuring out exactly where to drill a hole
. | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439563",
"author": "pelrun",
"timestamp": "2022-03-04T05:51:29",
"content": "I’ve got all the tools I need… what I need to know is where to find those tool organiser bags shown in the photo!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "64... | 1,760,372,770.592496 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/03/cad-up-some-shoes-but-dont-start-from-scratch/ | CAD Up Some Shoes, But Don’t Start From Scratch | Donald Papp | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"cad",
"digital design",
"footwear",
"shoe"
] | Nothing helps a project get off the ground better than a good set of resources, and that’s what led [DaveMakesStuff] to release his
Digital Shoe Design Kit
, which is a set of 3D models ready to customize into a basic running shoe.
This is exactly what is needed for people who are interested in designing a custom shoe, but perhaps not interested in modeling every element entirely from scratch. [DaveMakesStuff]’s resources allows one to mix outsoles, midsoles, uppers, and other basic shoe elements into a finished model, ready to be resized or even 3D printed if desired. The files are all in
stl
format, but resizing
stl
files is trivial, and more advanced editing is possible with mesh sculpting programs like
Blender
.
If the gears in your head are starting to turn and you are wondering whether it is feasible to 3D scan your feet for some experiments in DIY custom footwear, take a few minutes and read up on
3D scanning and what to expect from the process
to hit the ground running. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439380",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2022-03-04T00:37:26",
"content": "What does he print with, can you wear them? (Just as a beta test, see if they feel as good as you thought they would?)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_... | 1,760,372,770.644428 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/03/internal-combustion-torque-monster-has-great-impact/ | Internal Combustion Torque Monster Has Great Impact | Ryan Flowers | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"binford 8100",
"high torque",
"impact driver",
"impact wrench",
"tool",
"torque"
] | Once the domain of automotive repair shops and serious hobbyists with air compressors, the impact driver so famously used to remove and install wheel lug nuts and other Big Fasteners with just a squeeze of the trigger is more accessible than ever. Thanks to Lithium Ion batteries and powerful and compact brushless motors, you can now buy a reasonably powerful and torquey impact driver for a relatively low price- no air compressor needed! But what if you relish the thought of
a noisy, unwieldy and unnecessarily loud torque monster
? Then the video below the break by [Torque Test Channel] is just what you need!
Now, this is Hackaday, so we don’t have to go into detail about why a person might want to rip out the electric motor and adapt a 60cc 2 stroke engine in its place.
Of course
that’s the obvious choice. But [Torque Test Channel] isn’t just mucking about for the fun of it. No, they’re having their fun, experimenting with internal combustion engines in odd places before they are banned by 2024 in California. Now, we’re not sure if the ban includes these exact types of engines- but who needs details when you have an impact driver that can change semi tires like a NASCAR pit crew.
Looking like an overpowered weapon from a first person shoot’em up game, [Torque Test Channel]’s modified Milwaukee tests well after some modifications. Be sure to watch the video to see how it performs against an electric tool that’s even larger than itself. There are graphs, charts, and an explanation of what can be done to make
even more
power in the future. We’re looking forward to it!
What’s that you say? You don’t have a two stroke engine sitting around waiting to be swapped into ridiculous gadgets? Look no further than your
local fridge compressor
and be ready to burn some hours getting it running. | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439268",
"author": "ian 42",
"timestamp": "2022-03-03T21:30:03",
"content": "doesn’t seem very practical – of course that is no reason not to do it… I still have my air compressor one, it is surprising how much power it has..",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": ... | 1,760,372,771.16872 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/03/compressed-air-jumping-shoes-are-not-for-the-faint-hearted/ | Compressed Air Jumping Shoes Are Not For The Faint-Hearted | Dave Rowntree | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"compressed air",
"piston"
] | [Ian Charnas] has taken a short break from building things that might injure himself, by
building something that could injure somebody else instead
. (Video, embedded below) Well, hopefully not anyway. After working with YouTuber [Tyler Csatari] on a few ideas, [Tyler] was insistent on getting some power-assisted jumping shoes, so [Ian] set to work mounting some compressed-air powered pistons to a pair of walking shoes. With a large backpack housing the 200 PSI air cylinder, control valves and timers. The whole affair looks solidly constructed, if a little ungainly, but does seem to work surprisingly well.
After some initial calculations of how much force each piston could exert before risking leg injury, he found that whilst it did work, to an extent, the pressure required was beyond the capability of the compressor they had on hand. After a shopping trip, a bigger compressor was located, but that still needed a modification to get anywhere near its maximum 200 psi rating. The thing is, that modification was to bypass the regulator and the safety valve, and this is definitely something you don’t want to be making a habit of. Compressed air systems like this can hold quite a bit of an explosion potential if pushed beyond reasonable limits, and care needs to be taken to keep things within safe bounds.
Cost-wise, [Ian] does mention a figure of around $3,000 USD making it a bit of a pricey project, but hey a YouTuber’s paying the bill, so it must just be a drop in the ocean for them?
Just to illustrate how useful compressed air is as a method of storing energy, here’s a
compressed-air powered helicopter
, and a
3D printed wankel rotary engine
, which must’ve been tough to dial in and get working! | 30 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439190",
"author": "The+Gambler",
"timestamp": "2022-03-03T19:51:18",
"content": "for an engineer he is an idiot at measuring. you do not measure leg lift you measure the height you can reach up and touch when standing. then the max height you can touch when jumping. these “jump... | 1,760,372,771.001517 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/03/remoticon-2021-jay-bowles-takes-a-dip-into-the-plasmaverse/ | Remoticon 2021 // Jay Bowles Dips Into The Plasmaverse | Lewin Day | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Remoticon",
"electricity",
"hackaday",
"high voltage",
"hv",
"physics",
"plasma",
"plasma physics",
"Remoticon",
"science",
"talk",
"talks"
] | Every hacker out there is familiar with the zaps and sizzles of the Tesla coil, or the crash and thunder of lighting strikes on our hallowed Earth. These phenomena all involve the physics of plasma, a subject near and dear to Jay Bowles’s heart. Thus, he graced Remoticon 2021 with a enlightening talk taking us on a
Dip Into the Plasmaverse
.
Jay’s passion for the topic is obvious, having fallen in love with high voltage physics as a teenager. He appreciated how tangible the science was, whether it’s the glow of neon lighting or the heating magic of the common microwave. His talk covers the experiments and science that he’s studied over the past 17 years and in the course of running his
Plasma Channel
YouTube channel.
Physics!
The talk serves as a great dive into the world of HV experimentation, with Jay featuring three exotic applications of high voltage science.
The first demonstration is of human electrostatic levitation. This requires a very high static voltage of -60,000 V applied to the body via a Cockroft-Walton voltage multiplier, while Jay is isolated from the ground on a stool. Jay reminds the audience that high voltage itself is not by itself lethal to the body, highlighting the role current has to play. A bottom plate is then used, set at ground potential to enable the effect.
With the voltage applied, a lightweight foil “boat” will levitate above the plate and below Jay’s hand. It’s a quasistable system, and a difficult thing to maintain, but the experiment works and the aluminium foil floats in the air. [Jay] then goes through the science behind it all, discussing the charge relationships and the other physical effects at play. The detail is key, which explains not just how the foil floats, but how it remains in place without shooting off in one direction.
It only gets more exotic, with Jay repurposing the voltage multiplier and stool to bend a flame electrostatically. This is possible as fire contains many positive and negative ions which can be influenced by electric fields. It’s an effect that he discovered by accident, having left a burning candle near a high-voltage multiplier, and noticed the flame bending towards the high voltage source.
High voltages can literally split a flame in two.
With his body charged to high voltage once more, Jay is able to “pull” the flame towards his left or right hand, with the demo proving difficult as he twice pulled the flame entirely off the wick, extinguishing the candle. It’s a dangerous experiment in some ways too, as it involves literally attracting fire towards the body. In
more controlled conditions
, Jay has been able to achieve some impressive feats with this trick, bending and tugging large flames to his will, even “splitting” a candle flame in two directions.
The last demonstration involves a device called an atmospheric corona motor. Rather than the “high” current used by magnetic motors, it relies on high voltage instead, running at extremely low currents. The design relies on electrostatic charges to turn a rotor rather than electromagnetic fields, and Jay explains how it all works and compares it to the operation of a traditional gravity-driven waterwheel. He also points out how the motor can be driven by static electricity extracted from the atmosphere itself, with the help of a balloon or drone to carry a wire high into the air.
Overall, the talk serves as a wonderful dip into the Plasmaverse, just as the title promises. Jay’s demonstrations and explanations are a great primer to get any hacker thinking about the possibilities of working with high voltage plasma science. All that’s left is to get experimenting on your own! | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,771.210616 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/03/spaceship-repair-ctf-covers-hardware-hacker-essentials/ | Spaceship Repair CTF Covers Hardware Hacker Essentials | Arya Voronova | [
"cons",
"Reverse Engineering",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"555",
"555 timer",
"ctf",
"kernelcon",
"security conference",
"spaceship"
] | At even vaguely infosec-related conferences, CTFs are a staple. For KernelCon 2021, [Tyler Rosonke]
resolved to create a challenge
breaking the traditions, entertaining and teaching people in a different way, while satisfying the constraints of that year’s remote participation plans. His imagination went wild in all the right places, and a beautifully executed multi-step hardware challenge was built – only in two copies!
Story behind the challenge? Your broken spaceship has to be repaired so that you can escape the planet you’re stuck on. The idea was to get a skilled, seasoned hacker solving challenges for our learning and amusement – and that turned out to be none other than
[Joe “Kingpin” Grand]
!
The modules themselves are what caught our attention. Designed to cover a wide array of hardware hacker skills, they cover soldering, signal sniffing, logic gates, EEPROM dumping and more – and you have to apply all of these successfully for liftoff. If you thought “there’s gotta be a 555 involved”, you weren’t wrong, either, there’s a module where you have to reconfigure a circuit with one!
KernelCon
is a volunteer-driven infosec conference in Omaha, and its 2022 installment starts in a month – we can’t wait to see what it brings! Anyone doing hardware CTFs will have something to learn from their stories, it seems. The hacking session, from start to finish, was recorded for our viewing pleasure; linked below as an hour and a half video, it should be a great background for your own evening of reverse-engineering for leisure!
This isn’t the first time we’ve covered [Tyler]’s handiwork, either. In 2020, he programmed a batch of KernelCon badges
while employing clothespins as ISP clips
. Security conferences have most certainly learned just how much fun you can have with hardware, and if you ever need a case study for that,
our review of 2019 CypherCon
won’t leave you hanging. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439060",
"author": "fiddlingjunky",
"timestamp": "2022-03-03T16:54:48",
"content": "Took me some digging through the ctf tag to figure out it stood for capture the flag.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6439065",
"auth... | 1,760,372,771.276328 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/03/ion-thrusters-not-just-for-tie-fighters-anymore/ | Ion Thrusters: Not Just For TIE Fighters Anymore | Lewin Day | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"engineering",
"ion engine",
"nasa",
"probe",
"science",
"space",
"thrust"
] | Spacecraft rocket engines come in a variety of forms and use a variety of fuels, but most rely on chemical reactions to blast propellants out of a nozzle, with the reaction force driving the spacecraft in the opposite direction. These rockets offer high thrust, but they are relatively fuel inefficient and thus, if you want a large change in velocity, you need to carry a lot of heavy fuel. Getting that fuel into orbit is costly, too!
Ion thrusters, in their various forms, offer an alternative solution – miniscule thrust, but high fuel efficiency. This tiny push won’t get you off the ground on Earth. However, when applied over a great deal of time in the vacuum of space, it can lead to a huge change in velocity, or delta V.
This manner of operation means that an ion thruster and a small mass of fuel can theoretically create a much larger delta-V than chemical rockets, perfect for long-range space missions to Mars and other applications, too. Let’s take a look at how ion thrusters work, and some of their interesting applications in the world of spacecraft!
It’s All About Specific Impulse
Chemical rocket engines provide huge thrust but are thirsty when it comes to fuel.
Ion engines won’t get you out of Earth’s gravity well, nor do they work in the atmosphere, but become useful when you’re in the vacuum of space. Credit: NASA, public domain
Before we dive into the world of ion thrusters, it’s important to understand the concept of specific impulse and fuel efficiency for rocket thrusters of all kinds. Specific impulse measures how effectively a rocket engine creates thrust from the mass it throws out the back, whether by chemical or any other means. The higher the specific impulse of a rocket thruster, the more thrust it generates per mass of fuel.
Impulse is the integral of force over time, measured in Newton-seconds. Specific impulse, where we look at impulse per weight of propellant, is thus measured in Newton-seconds divided by Newtons, or simply seconds. It’s a little confusing to wrap your head around, but for the newly initiated, just keep in mind that higher numbers of specific impulse stand for greater fuel efficiency.
For comparison’s sake, the Space Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Boosters get a specific impulse of just 250 seconds, while liquid oxygen-liquid hydrogen rocket engines may reach closer to 450 seconds. Electrostatic ion thrusters are almost an order of magnitude better, on the order of 2,000-3,000 seconds, with some reaching closer to 10,000 seconds in experiments, while the experimental VASIMR electromagnetic ion thruster predicts a specific impulse up to 12,000 seconds.
This better fuel efficiency has real implications for space travel. It means that an ion thruster can achieve a given change in velocity for a space craft with far less fuel – an order of magnitude less, in some regards.
In an application regarding orbit-keeping for the ISS,
one calculation suggested an ion thruster could reduce the space station’s annual fuel use from 7,500 kg to just 300 kg. This has flow on effects, where launch vehicles carrying that fuel to the space station need less fuel themselves to boost it into orbit, improving efficiency across the board.
How Thrust Via Electricity Works
Ion thrusters come in a variety of forms, but the basic principle is a simple one: electricity is used to accelerate ions to a high velocity, forcing them out of the thruster, thus resulting in a reaction force which propels the spacecraft itself. A neutral gas is used as fuel, which is ionized by stripping electrons from the atoms, resulting in a supply of positive ions that can readily be accelerated by electrostatic or electromagnetic means to generate thrust. Xenon, krypton, or argon are common choices for these thrusters, though other materials, like magnesium, zinc, and iodine have been experimented with in some designs. The vast majority of ion thrusters rely on gaseous propellants, however.
Electrostatic Thrusters
A schematic of an gridded electrostatic ion thruster. Wear on the grids over time limits the life of these thrusters. Credit: NASA
Electrostatic ion thrusters use a variety of methods to accelerate ions to generate thrust. Gridded electrostatic ion thrusters are one of the more popular designs, where the propellant gas is bombarded with electrons to form an ionized plasma. A set of gridded electrodes are then charged with a potential difference, accelerating the positive ions out of the thruster. A separate cathode then discharges low-energy electrons into the exhaust stream of the thruster to ensure the spacecraft doesn’t end up with a net negative charge.
Hall Effect thrusters replace the gridded electrodes with a gas-distributing anode and a magnetically-confined electron cloud acting as the cathode itself. The heavier positive ions are accelerated out of the thruster, while the more lightweight electrons remain confined in the magnetic field. Similarly, a external cathode is used to neutralize the exhaust stream as in the gridded thruster designs.
A schematic of a Hall Effect thruster. Hundreds of such thrusters were used for stationkeeping in Soviet satellites in the 20th century. Credit: Finlay McWalter, public domain
These designs have seen significant use in real-world missions. One of the earliest applications
was in Soviet satellites
, which used Hall Effect thrusters instead of chemical rockets for station keeping. This is where satellites need to periodically apply thrust over time to counteract the subtle atmospheric drag they experience. The miniscule thrust provided by the Hall Effect thrusters is fine for this purpose, applied over a long period for a significant overall change in velocity. Power draw of these thrusters was on the order of 1.35 kW, generating 83 mN of thrust for a specific impulse of around 1,500-3,000 seconds.
A more recent application of the technology is on the Chinese Tiangong space station,
which uses four Hall Effect thrusters to maintain its orbit over time.
NASA also hopes to fly the technology
on the upcoming Psyche spacecraft
, which will use four SPT-140 Hall Effect thrusters. Loaded with 922 kg of xenon propellant, engineers have estimated that 15 times as much propellant would be required if Psyche relied on chemical rockets instead.
An SPT-140 Hall Effect thruster under testing. Four of these thrusters will be installed on NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. Credit: NASA, public domain
Gridded ion thrusters have seen plenty of use, too. NASA’s NSTAR ion engine was installed on the
Deep Space 1 probe
, which was sent out to fly by a comet and asteroid in the late 1990s. The gridded ion engine put out just 92 mN of thrust for 2.1 kW of power, but its high specific impulse of 1,000-3,000 seconds enabled significant mass savings compared to a chemical rocket solution for its interplanetary journey. The ion thruster, fueled by xenon gas, ran for a total of 16,265 hours during the mission, providing a total change in velocity (delta-V) of 4.3 kilometers per second, the largest for any spacecraft relying on its own onboard propulsion system.
Other deep space missions have also relied on the technology.
JAXA’s Hayabusa probe
relied on an ion thruster to help it rendezvous with the Itokawa asteroid. NASA’s Dawn mission also used the technology, being fitted with three of the same xenon ion thrusters used on the Deep Space 1 program, though only firing one at a time in practice. NASA was more than willing to point out the low thrust available from the propulsion system,
noting that 0-60 mph would take four days
, which compares poorly to the 3.5 seconds achieved by the average modern Ferrari.
Electromagnetic Thrusters
A prototype magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) tested by NASA. Credit: NASA, public domain
Electromagnetic ion thrusters generate their thrust from neutral plasma, ostensibly consisting of equal numbers of positive ions and negative electrons, and are often referred to as “plasma thrusters” in literature. They come in a variety of designs, most of which use radio energy to ionize gas in a chamber. A magnetic field is then generated to accelerate the overall-neutral plasma out of the thruster. These designs often have the benefit that they don’t need special neutraliziation electrodes to correct the charge imbalance of the exhaust, nor do they use electrodes in the gas stream to accelerate the ions, reducing a source of wear in comparison to electrostatic designs.
One of the most well-developed examples is the VASIMR VX-200 thruster, which has been in development since 2008 in various forms by the Ad Astra Rocket Company. The aim is to operate the thruster at a power level of 100 kW for 100 hours, to indicate how the thruster can generate a huge delta-V for long-term missions. In July 2021, the company
reached a milestone
of 82.5 kW for 28 hours. The thruster performs with an exhaust velocity on the order of 50 km/s, with a specific impulse of around 5,000 seconds.
Electromagnetic designs often promise larger thrusts than electrostatic thrusters, though most are still in the research stage. Issues with such designs include issues of high power draw and problems of dealing with waste heat. If these could be overcome, designs like a scaled-up VASIMIR electromagnetic thruster could propel a spacecraft from Earth to Mars
in just 39 days
, compared to the six month journey of a conventional chemical rocket. The only thing is, you’d need a power supply capable of delivering somewhere in the realm of 10 to 20 megawatts of power, and fit that in a spacecraft.
Looking To The Future
Ion thrusters in their various forms are in some ways a technology that haven’t yet proven their full capability. They’ve already done great things, taking small space probes to far-flung destinations while requiring far less fuel along the way. However, we’re still a long way from using them to help us get humans to destinations beyond our own orbit. There’s plenty of development still to happen before you’re riding an ion-powered craft on your future space holiday, but in 50 or a 100 years or so, an ion craft might just be the hot ticket to Mars! | 42 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438990",
"author": "hardsoftlucid",
"timestamp": "2022-03-03T15:29:48",
"content": "People accosiate ion propulsion with outer space. But designed right it can actaully work here to, its difficult but whatch this inventor:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50LCcakrzb8",
"parent_id... | 1,760,372,771.44788 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/05/how-small-is-too-small/ | How Small Is Too Small? | Elliot Williams | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Rants"
] | [
"bga",
"diy",
"microscope",
"pcb",
"small parts"
] | Not a rhetorical question! This week we consider the most micro microcontroller:
the HC32L110
. It’s the new title holder of the smallest ARM Cortex M0+ part. But could you actually use it?
MCU is the black thing that’s smaller than the capacitor.
I remember way back, when I first learned to solder surface-mount components. It was fiddly at first, but nowadays I don’t use through-hole components unless someone’s twisting my arm. And I still do my soldering myself — down to 0603 really isn’t all that bad with an iron, and below that, there’s always the heat plate. My heat plate has also gotten me through the two times I’ve actually needed to put down a ball-grid-array part. It wasn’t as bad as I had feared, honestly.
So maybe it’s time for me to take the BGA plunge and design a board or two just to get more familiar with the tech. I probably won’t dive straight into the deep end, like the featured chip here with 0.35 mm ball pitch, but rather stick with something that the cheap PCB services can easily handle. My experience tells me that the best way to learn something is just to test it out.
Now, off to go part shopping in the middle of a chip crisis! Wish me luck.
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
! | 29 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6440212",
"author": "Jim",
"timestamp": "2022-03-05T15:16:43",
"content": "Wrong. It’s an ‘RCH’.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6440296",
"author": "SwAkE",
"timestamp": "2022-03-05T17:32:14",
"conten... | 1,760,372,771.913053 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/05/depraz-mouse-clone-has-a-usb-tail/ | Depraz Mouse Clone Has A USB Tail | Kristina Panos | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"computer mouse",
"depraz",
"depraz mouse"
] | In 1980, Logitech started selling a round, three-button input device known the Depraz mouse or Swiss mouse, which was made by — you guessed it — a Swiss company called Depraz. At the time, Logitech was primarily a software development outfit, but the success they saw in selling the Depraz mouse led them to leave logic and looping behind in order to pursue peripherals permanently.
[John Floren] recently decided to make
a modern clone called the Bellwether mouse
. You may remember that [John]
previously restored a vintage Depraz
to working condition. The only problem is that ‘working condition’ for a 40-year-old mouse is underwhelming on a modern computer.
The Bellwether mouse sports a high-end Pixart PMW3389 sensor and uses a PIC16F1454 for the controller. The most complicated part was dealing with voltage levels, because the PIC wants 5 V and the sensor only 2 V. The firmware is a mix of Microchip’s USB HID demo code and [Daniel Kao]’s Arduino code for the PWM3389 sensor.
Unlike the original Depraz’s male DE-9 connector, this updated version connects via USB. We like that [John] learned FreeCAD in order to make the body, and especially that he glued fishing weights to the underside for more heft. Check it out in action after the break. We were most curious about those switches, which at first glance look like they could be keyswitches with DSA keycaps. But no, they’re just some
cool switches from the depths of Digi-Key
.
Want to print yourself something more ergonomic? Perhaps you’ll click with
Ploopy, the open-source trackball
. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6440252",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
"timestamp": "2022-03-05T16:22:55",
"content": "Crazy that those switches are still in production, or some old stock is still available.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6440276",
"... | 1,760,372,771.840183 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/05/an-infinity-gem-that-didnt-make-the-cut-the-flavor-stone/ | An Infinity Gem That Didn’t Make The Cut, The Flavor Stone | Matthew Carlson | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"crystals",
"facet",
"msg"
] | MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) is a flavor enhancer used to add a meaty/savory (often called umami) flavor to a dish. You might even have some in your pantry (though more likely it is in something that is in your pantry). What you might not know is
that you can grow it into a large crystal
.
[Chase] does an excellent job walking through the details of the process.
MSG
is one of the many common household substances that can grow into a crystal such as table salt, alum, fertilizer, sugar, or Epsom salt to name a few. The idea is quite simple — just create a supersaturated solution with your desired crystal material and then suspend a string in it; but the execution has some nuance. To create a medium that’s super saturated, heat some water and mix in equal parts of MSG. Then let it cool once it has all dissolved and split it into two parts, one big and one small. You need to create a seed crystal, so place the small solution in a shallow dish and let a crystal percolate out over the new few days. You attach one of the seed crystals that grow to a string and suspend it in your solution. There are several gotchas around how to properly harvest the crystals but [Chase] enumerates them for you.
We’ve covered [Chase’s] efforts before
when he grew crystals out of Rust
. He is on a quest to grow all five flavor stones: salty, sweet, sour, umami, and bitter and we wish him all the best. What we would also love to see is the whole process of MSG from start to finish, making your own MSG. | 26 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6440126",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2022-03-05T09:19:15",
"content": "Please re-read your second sentence. I don’t think you intended to just repeat yourself. Maybe “more likely it is IN something in your pantry”, I’m guessing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,372,772.311837 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/04/bringing-imessage-to-the-mac/ | Bringing IMessage To The Mac | Matthew Carlson | [
"Mac Hacks",
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"coprocessor",
"mac Classic",
"Mac OS",
"macintosh"
] | If you’ve invested in the Apple ecosystem, the joys of iMessage likely illuminate your life. Your phone and desktop and laptop all sync your messages. But what if your desktop is running Mac OS 9 or System 2? This is where [CamHenlin’s]
MessagesForMacintosh comes in
.
Unfortunately, it does require a more modern Mac to act as an access point into the wider iMessage network. The modern Mac sets up a GraphQL database that can be accessed. Then a serial cable connects your “retro daily driver” to a translation layer that converts the serial commands into GraphQL commands. This could be something simple and network-connected like an ESP32 or a program running on your iMessage Mac. [CamHenlin] has a second Mac mini in his demo, seen above.
[CamHenlin] leverages his library known as CoprocessorJS. It allows older machines to hand off complex workloads to more modern machines, allowing modern machines to act as a coprocessor. Getting a single binary to run across many different versions of Mac OS and System is tricky and there were a few tricks involved.
Retro68 is a C++17 compiler
that targets PowerPC and 68k architectures. Additionally,
Nuklear Quickdraw
is used to provide a GUI in a performant manner.
It is always a joy to see older hardware do new tricks, often with the help of a bit of modern hardware. Connecting your
Mac to the internet can be as easy as Pi
. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6440104",
"author": "Judy",
"timestamp": "2022-03-05T07:03:24",
"content": "Oh. So kinda like kde connect but without every other feature.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6440128",
"author": "Scaramouche",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,372,771.79154 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/04/glassblowing-for-the-lab/ | Glassblowing For The Lab | Al Williams | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"gas discharge",
"glass",
"glass blowing",
"glassblowing"
] | There was a time when ordering some glassware from a distributor meant making a sizable minimum order, sending a check in the mail and waiting weeks for a box full of — hopefully intact — glassware to arrive. In those days, blowing your own glassware from glass tubes was fairly common and [Wheeler Scientific] has been doing a series on just how to do that. Even if you aren’t interested in building a chemistry lab, you might find the latest episode on
making a gas discharge tube
worth a watch. There are several videos and you can see a few of them below.
Of course, blowing glass is literally playing with fire, so be careful. Most important rule? Don’t inhale. Then again, for a lot of things, blowing glass doesn’t involve you actually blowing, but it is more like bending and shaping and — technically — what he shows is lampwork, not actual glassblowing, but that’s a technicality.
You need a torch, of course, and the one in the videos is a propane-fueled torch with an oxygen tank as well. Making a gas discharge tube also requires a little extra hardware including a cylinder of argon and a two-stage vacuum pump. You also need a way to excite the tube, but since you probably already have a tesla coil, that won’t be a problem.
There are other videos if you want to handcraft test tubes and a few other items. We are waiting to see what comes next. If your glassblowing interest is more artistic, check out
[Jimmy the Torch]
. Just be careful. Glassblowing can be a gateway drug to making
your own tubes
. | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6440076",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2022-03-05T04:10:38",
"content": "Glassblowing seems like one of those things you get hyped up about doing until you actually try it and then you realize you are out of your depth. Honestly, I would be far more comfortable with something ... | 1,760,372,771.744354 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/04/automated-chess-board-plays-you/ | Automated Chess Board Plays You | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Games"
] | [
"arduino",
"chess",
"chess computer"
] | If you’ve ever played chess or even checkers, you’ve probably thought about making a board that lets a computer play you without having to enter your moves and look at the board on a screen. [Greg06] not only thought about it, but
he built it
.
The board looks great and uses foamboard which makes it easy to reproduce. Each piece has a small magnet within and an electromagnet on an XY motion system can selectively pick up and move pieces. In addition, a reed switch under each square can tell if a square is occupied or not.
This system is pretty simple, but it is effective. After all, you know the position of the pieces at the start. So if a bishop leaves a square and a new square gets a piece, you can assume it is the bishop. There is no need to actually distinguish the pieces.
An LCD and some buttons act as a chess clock, and note if a move is illegal. The Arduino has a pretty basic chess algorithm known as Micro Max that runs on the Arduino, but we wondered if you couldn’t connect to a remote computer to get more sophisticated gameplay or even interface to the Internet to play remote humans, something
we’ve seen before
. You could even adapt it for other
input methods
. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439998",
"author": "Thrasher",
"timestamp": "2022-03-05T00:11:49",
"content": "So it lets “a computer play you without having to enter your moves.” Tricksy it is, Preciouss!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6440032",
"auth... | 1,760,372,771.9594 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/04/hydrofoils-love-this-one-simple-trick/ | Hydrofoils Love This One Simple Trick | Matthew Carlson | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"active hyrdrofoil",
"ardupilot",
"hydrofoil"
] | Earlier in the year, [rctestflight] created an active hydrofoil RC craft but found the actual performance very lacking. Luckily for him and for us, he continued to tweak it and one
tweak suddenly turned it from a nightmare to a dream
.
That tweak was adding
ArduPilot’s airplane model
. The design had three servos, which each actuated the angle of a foil underneath one of the three pontoons. The ship propelled itself via some propellers mounted near the top. If you know much about ArduPilot, you notice that active hydrofoil boat doesn’t show up on
the list of supported platforms
, and you’re right. [rctestflight] points out that the three servos actually function as a plane underwater. The front two are ailerons and the back one is an elevator, all things that ArduPilot knows how to handle with a tightly controlled loop except for one thing; there’s no altitude data.
So he stole a trick
he developed earlier for his ground effect plane
and used a distance sensor to let ArduPilot know how to adjust things. He used a sonar sensor instead of lidar as it works better with water and he was pleasantly surprised when he took it out on the lake and it just worked wonderfully. The original goal with the active stabilization was to have the efoil immune to choppy waters, and we’re sad to say that it didn’t quite reach that lofty target. The single sonar sensor follows the wave in front of it beautifully but can’t handle the complex waves being thrown at it. Perhaps some sort of sensor fusion algorithm could provide the necessary data to be truly resilient. But we love watching the foil glide across the water and it is hard to remember that it’s actively flying rather than just floating that way.
Others have
tried and failed to 3D print a hydrofoil
while
others have succeeded
. We love that [rctestflight] came back to finish the fight and came away a champion. Video after the break. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6439945",
"author": "SPD",
"timestamp": "2022-03-04T21:34:56",
"content": "Whats that on 9:30? Seal?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6440054",
"author": "Fyllyx",
"timestamp": "2022-03-05T02:46:08",
"co... | 1,760,372,772.065215 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/03/the-antonov-an-225-seems-to-have-been-destroyed-after-all/ | The Antonov An-225 Seems To Have Been Destroyed After All | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"Antonov",
"Antonov AN225",
"Mriya",
"ukraine"
] | Something that probably unites most Hackaday readers is a love of machines, particularly unique or interesting ones. In the world of aircraft for example, we’ve run several stories about those which push the edges of the size envelope, be they the Hughes Hercules troop carrier, the Scaled Composites Stratolifter space launcher, or the Antonov An-225 Mriya cargo plane. This last machine has been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the last few days, with reports emerging that
it may have been destroyed in the fighting around its base
at Hostomel near Kyiv. There has been some uncertainty around this news as it has alternately been claimed to have been destroyed or to have miraculously survived, but now
a set of photographs have emerged
showing what appears to be the An-225 burning in its damaged hangar.
The An-225 is a unique aircraft not only in the sense that there is no other model quite like it, but also because it was manufactured for the special purpose of being the transport carrier of the
Soviet Union’s Buran space shuttle
, and thus only one airframe was completed. Its characteristic twin tail served to avoid the turbulence that would have resulted from a Buran mounted on top of its enormous fuselage, and the six engine configuration required to move such a behemoth was in part the clue to identifying it in the photograph. Those readers who were lucky enough to see it take off or land in person will attest to its impressive physical presence, while the rest of us remain sad to have missed that chance.
It seems crass to talk about the destruction of an aircraft when compared to the scale of the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine, but we think perhaps our British and French readers who grew up with Concorde in the sky will understand the power of such a machine as a source of pride. We hope that the Antonov company will return to the design of huge cargo aircraft in peacetime, and Ukranians can again have pride in a monster aircraft that the rest of us will drive for miles just to watch taking off or landing.
The issue of which aircraft is the world’s largest can be a complex one,
as we’ve explored in the past
.
Header image: Vasiliy Koba,
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 49 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438870",
"author": "hammarbytp",
"timestamp": "2022-03-03T12:17:03",
"content": "I was lucky to see the AN-225 a few times at a local airport. I thought the AN-140 was impressive, but this was awesome!!!Just one more casualty of this ongoing tragedy.",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,372,772.148488 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/03/mortal-kombat-rom-hack-kontinues-arcade-legacy/ | Mortal KombatROM Hack Kontinues Arcade Legacy | Drew Littrell | [
"Games"
] | [
"mega drive",
"Mortal Kombat",
"ROM hack",
"rom hacks",
"sega",
"sega genesis"
] | September 13th 1993, colloquially known as Mortal Monday, became a dividing line in the battle for 16-bit supremacy. The mega popular arcade game
Mortal Kombat
was ported to Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis consoles, and every fanboy and fangirl had an opinion on which version truly brought the hits.
Nintendo’s version opted to remove the blood and gore in an attempt to preserve the company’s family-friendly image, while Sega’s offering merely locked the game’s more violent content behind a cheat code that so many fans learned by heart: ABACABB. Nintendo’s decision to censor
Mortal Kombat
on their console pushed public opinion in favor of the Sega Genesis version being superior, though it was clear that corners were cut in order to squeeze it onto a cartridge. Recently
a group of developers led by [Paulo] sought to restore the Genesis version to its full potential
with a ROM hack they’re calling
Mortal Kombat Arcade Edition
.
Mortal Kombat Arcade Edition
is the sort of ROM hack where every facet of the game has been retouched. All sorts of sound effects and animations that were omitted in the 1993 translation to the Genesis have now been restored in higher quality. Every fighter’s look was remastered to more closely match the arcade presentation complete with move timing tweaks. Secret characters like Reptile, Noob Saibot, and Ermac are all playable, plus all the character bios from the arcade game’s attract mode make an appearance. An SRAM save feature was implemented in order to save high scores, and for an additional dose of authenticity there’s even a “DIP switch” configuration screen where you can set it to free play.
This ROM hack comes as an IPS patch that can be applied to a legitimate dump of the user’s Sega Genesis or Mega Drive cartridge. The site hosting the
Mortal Kombat Arcade Edition
patch features an online IPS patching tool called Rom Patcher JS that makes the patching process more convenient for those attached to their browser. The patched ROM can then be enjoyed in the user’s favorite emulator of choice, though running it on original hardware via a ROM cart is also possible (even encouraged). Considering the limitations of the Sega Genesis’ color palette the revamped look of
Mortal Kombat Arcade Edition
is all the more impressive. It just goes to show you that Genesis still does!
Not ready to FINISH HIM? Check out
this countertop arcade build
featuring some
Mortal Kombat II
art, or
marvel at the incredible effort that went into creating
the
Knights of the Round
ROM hack known as
Warlock’s Tower
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438958",
"author": "daveboltman",
"timestamp": "2022-03-03T14:47:34",
"content": "Did “ABACABB” have anything to do with the Genesis song of (almost) the same name?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacab_(song)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,772.017938 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/02/return-of-scsi/ | The Return Of SCSI | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"amiga",
"retrocomputing",
"scsi"
] | There was a time when high-performance disk drives used SCSI — the Small Computer System Interface — and everything else was kid stuff. Now, advanced forms of SCSI are still around but there are other high-performing disk interfaces, too. But some old gear really loves their classic SCSI ports, and [Adrian] decided to try
hooking some of them up to some modern computers
. You can see how he did in the video below.
The key to the attempt is a USB to SCSI adapter which was unusual but not unheard of, and [Adrian] came across one from 1999. Of course, you have to wonder if a modern computer will support the device or will be able to load the drivers from the old CD.
One of the problems with these adapters is that SCSI was a high-performance bus for its day, and the corresponding USB speed was not so much. Parallel SCSI used differential signaling and could reach up to 320 MB/s. Ordinary USB weighs in at 1.5 MB/s. USB 2 did a little better, but it would take USB 3 to eclipse the old SCSI data rate. Of course, SCSI went serial like USB and modern serial-attached SCSI can blow the doors off even the fastest USB devices.
We doubt you really need to use a SCSI device as an everyday thing, but you might want to or need to read one that shows up. Plus it is just a really interesting look into the way things were. Finding the drivers were, as you’d expect, a real pain. Turns out, he probably didn’t need to bother as Windows knows how to treat it as a storage device but he didn’t figure that out right away.
Android didn’t seem to work as well, although that may have been because the phone didn’t recognize the disk format. | 68 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438645",
"author": "Jorge Arabito",
"timestamp": "2022-03-03T06:15:10",
"content": "It can be an excellent solution to connect an old but good SCsi photo scanner to a modern computer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6443963",... | 1,760,372,772.251537 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/02/3d-printed-shoes-make-bigfoot-tracks/ | 3D Printed Shoes Make Bigfoot Tracks | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"flexible filament",
"shoe",
"shoes",
"tpe"
] | [Stephan Henrich] is probably going to set off a wave of bigfoot sightings if his new shoe, the
Cryptide sneaker
takes off. The shoe is completely 3D printed in flexible TPE using a laser sintering printer from Sintratec. The shoe takes a name from cryptozoology and, in fact, would leave a puzzling footprint due to its articulated toes and scaly-looking sole.
Judging from the look of the sole, it should be pretty cushy and we presume if you were 3D printing these, you’d scan or precisely measure the intended foot for a perfect fit. You can see a video about the shoe below.
The entire shoe is made from a single material, but different parts of the shoes have different degrees of stiffness created by varying the thickness of the TPE. Apparently, Sintratec is really into shoes since they also are showcasing the
Earth Moc
by [Daniel Shirley]. We wondered why they didn’t print a second shoe for the guy at the start of that video.
We aren’t sure the shoe’s topology would be workable with a typical printer you might find in your garage. But if you do print up some footwear, be sure to
let us know
. Not that we haven’t seen some
3D printed sneakers
, mind you.
Shoe accouterments
, though, seem easier to print. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438595",
"author": "Scoldog",
"timestamp": "2022-03-03T04:55:45",
"content": "Can they replicate the weight involved in Sasquatch prints",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6438793",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,372,772.3652 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/02/soil-moisture-sensor-coating-lessons-learned-the-hard-way/ | Soil Moisture Sensor Coating Lessons Learned The Hard Way | Arya Voronova | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"automated plant care",
"capacitive sensor",
"gardening",
"moisture sensor",
"plant care",
"plants",
"soil moisture sensor",
"soil sensor",
"water"
] | Ever wanted to measure soil moisture? Common “soil moisture meter module arduino raspberry compatible free shipping” PCBs might deceive you with their ascetic looks. Today, [Raphael (@rbaron_)]
is here to teach us
(Twitter,
unrolled
) what it takes to build a soil-embedded sensor that can actually survive contact with a plant.
As the picture might hint, waterproofing is of paramount importance, and soldermask doesn’t quite cut it. Raphael describes his journey of figuring out approaches and coatings that would last, starting from simply using nail polish, and ending with the current option – a rotisserie-like device that rotates sensors as the coating applied to them dries, mitigating a certain kind of structural failure observed long-term. With plenty of illustrative pictures and even a video of the rotisserie device in action, you’ll quickly learn things that took time and effort for Raphael to figure out.
This isn’t the first time Raphael shares some design battlefield stories and lessons with us – he has taught us about
overall capacitive moisture sensor principles
, too! If that interests you,
we’ve covered quite a few moisture sensor designs
, from
cheap but hardy two-nails designs
to
flip-dot-equipped
ones, and some of us take the commercial designs
and upgrade them!
We thank [Chaos] for sharing this with us!
When I started working on my soil moisture sensor, I had little idea about how harsh an environment the soil really is. In this 🧵, cool failure modes & solutions when sticking electronics in the ground:
pic.twitter.com/ROGvLSPgk9
— Raphael (@rbaron_)
February 9, 2022 | 35 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438475",
"author": "Paul LeBlanc",
"timestamp": "2022-03-03T01:08:10",
"content": ">> their ascetic looksascetic/əˈsedik/adjectivecharacterized by or suggesting the practice of severe self-discipline and abstention from all forms of indulgence, typically for religious reasons.“an ... | 1,760,372,772.813886 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/02/electric-jet-engine-uses-3d-printed-compressor-skips-the-turbine-altogether/ | Electric Jet Engine Uses 3D Printed Compressor, Skips The Turbine Altogether. | Ryan Flowers | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"electric trubine",
"jet engine",
"turbojet"
] | Turbojet engines are an incredible piece of 20th century engineering that except for some edge cases, have mostly been replaced by Turbofans. Still, even the most basic early designs were groundbreaking in their time. Material science was applied to make them more reliable, more powerful, and lighter. But all of those incredible advances go completely out the window when you’re [Joel] of [Integza], and you prefer to build your internal combustion engines using repurposed butane canisters and 3d printed parts as you see in the
video below the break
.
Emoscopes,
CC BY-SA 3.0
via Wikimedia Commons
To understand [Integza]’s engine, a quick explanation of Turbojet engines is helpful. Just like any other internal combustion engine, air is compressed, fuel is burned, and the reaction produces work. In a turbojet, a compressor compresses air. Fuel is added in a combustor and ignited, and the expanding exhaust drives a turbine that in turn drives the compressor since both are attached to the same shaft. Exhaust whose energy isn’t spent in turning the turbine is expelled and produces thrust, which propels the engine and the vehicle it’s attached to in the opposite direction. Simple, right? Right! Until the 3d printer comes in.
Sadly for 3d printed parts, they are made of plastic. Last we checked, plastic isn’t metal, and so 3d printing a turbine to give the extremely hot exhaust something turn just isn’t going to work. But what if you just skipped the whole turbine part, and powered the compressor with an electric motor? And instead of using an axial compressor with tons of tiny blades that would likely be impossible to 3d print with enough strength, you went with a sturdy, easy to print centrifugal compressor? Of course, that’s exactly what [Integza] did, or we wouldn’t be talking about it. The results are fantastic, especially considering that the entire machine was built with 3d printing and a home made spot welder.
If you want to build a full jet turbine, we won’t say it’s easy, but you might appreciate this
jet turbine whose components include a toilet paper holder
as proof that once a technology is understood, it can be built in the worst ways possible and still work. Sort of. | 52 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438374",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
"timestamp": "2022-03-02T21:12:17",
"content": "3D printed turbojet with what looks like a refractory cement casing. Turbine wheel and shaft are metal.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X_ctwt8PT4Either that one or another one used a PLA 3D printe... | 1,760,372,772.677065 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/02/learn-to-play-guitar-digitally/ | Learn To Play Guitar, Digitally | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"capacitive",
"guitar",
"led",
"midi",
"music",
"switch",
"synthesizer",
"touch",
"wireless"
] | Learning to play a musical instrument takes a major time commitment. If you happened to be stuck inside your home at any point in the last two years, though, you may have had the opportunity that [Dmitriy] had to pick up a guitar and learn to play. Rather than stick with a traditional guitar, though, [Dmitriy] opted to
build his own digital guitar
which is packed with all kinds of features you won’t find in any Fender or Gibson.
The physical body of this unique instrument is entirely designed by [Dmitriy] out of 3D printed parts, and uses capacitive touch sensors for each of the notes on what would have been the guitar’s fretboard. The strings are also replaced with a set of six switches that can be strummed like a regular guitar, and are used to register when to play a note. After a few prototypes, everything was wired onto a custom PCB. The software side of this project is impressive as well; it involved creating custom firmware to register all of the button presses and transmit the information to a MIDI controller so that the guitar can communicate digitally with anything that supports MIDI.
To finish off the project, [Dmitriy] also added a wireless device as well as some other bonus features like an accelerometer, which can be used to augment the sound of the guitar in any way he can think of to program them. It’s one of the most innovative guitars we’ve seen since
the prototype Noli smart guitar
was unveiled last year, and this one is also on its way from
prototype to market
right now. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438343",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2022-03-02T20:11:16",
"content": "I tried a MIDI guitar back in the ‘90s… it was shockingly bad. So bad, that even though I wasn’t a guitarist then, I could see many things wrong with it.This actually looks and sounds good, though I suspect i... | 1,760,372,772.583925 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/02/you-can-find-military-radars-on-publicly-available-satellite-data/ | You Can Find Military Radars On Publicly-Available Satellite Data | Lewin Day | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Misc Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"bellingcat",
"ESA",
"european space agency",
"radar",
"satellite",
"Synthetic aperture radar"
] | When it comes to hunting down military radar installations and associated hardware, we typically think of equipment that is firmly in the price bracket of nation states and their military forces. Whether it’s early warning radar, those used for air defence, or for naval purposes, you’d think it was relatively difficult to intercept or track these emissions.
However, a new tool built by geocomputation lecturer Ollie Ballinger shows this isn’t the case. In fact, openly-available data captured via satellite
can be used to find all manner of military radar emitters
. Let’s explore how!
Open Data Reveals Surprising Things
A diagram indicating how interference from military radars shows up on SAR satellite images. Credit: Ollie Ballinger, used with permission
The discovery that openly-available satellite data could reveal the locations of military radars came from the work of Harel Dan, a geospatial engineer from Israel. Dan was looking at data captured by the synthetic aperture radar of the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellites. After accidentally maximising the display of noise and interference on the synthetic images, he noticed strange bands appearing in various spots in the Middle East, and investigation into the cause began.
The Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B satellites, operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), carry
synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
instruments operating in the C-band, the spectrum taking in frequencies from 4.0 to 8.0 GHz. The SAR essentially uses the motion of the spacecraft to create a large “synthetic” antenna aperture for capturing radar images of the ground. The technique allows the SAR to image the ground as if it had a much larger antenna than it actually does, thanks to the spacecraft’s motion. It gives the SAR a far higher spatial resolution than is possible using a traditional scanning beam radar.
SAR images captured from two satellites can be overlaid to narrow the area in which a interfering radar emitter could be located. Credit: Ollie Ballinger, used with permission
The SAR imaging systems on board the Sentinel satellites operate within the same frequency range as many military radars. As the satellites passed overhead, sending out radar signals to the ground and picking up the returns, they were also picking up emissions from military radar systems, which were showing up as bright blue and red bands on the SAR radar pictures.
As it turns out, Dan was seeing interference caused by MIM-104 Patriot PAC-2 aerial defence systems installed in various Middle Eastern states. Given that the ESA makes all data from the Sentinel satellites publicly available, this meant that anyone with a mind to delve into the data could see this interference as well.
The Sentinel satellites typically operate in a mode where they image strips of land 250 km long and 5 km wide with their radar apparatus. When a military radar system is in operation in one such swathe of land, it creates a bright streak across the entire 250 km x 5 km strip. When images from Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B are overlaid, it’s possible to see a point where two stripes affected by interference cross each other. This can narrow down the area in which the radar system could be located – in the overlap between the two interference stripes.
Interference bands caused by radar systems in Sweden. Source: Radar Interference Tracker
Armed with the knowledge of this phenomena, Ollie Ballinger set about building a tool to more easily allow researchers to look for radars using publicly-available data from the Sentinel-1 satellites –
the Radar Interference Tracker (RIT).
It can reveal interference picked up from a wide range of military radars, from US-built Patriot systems, to the Japanese FCS-3, Chinese Type-381, and even the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system. If these systems have their radar switched on when a Sentinel-1 satellite passes overhead, they should be visible on the RIT.
A particularly strong interference band is readily visible in Qatar. Source: Radar Interference Tracker
The tool lets users look at data from given points in time, helping researchers find out when and where military radar systems were switched on. Graphs of interference picked up by the satellites over time help find relevant time periods quickly.
It bears noting that the RIT is not a conclusive intelligence tool all on its own. Often, interference found on these images must be corroborated with other optical satellite imaging data or other intelligence reports to confirm movements of military hardware. A further issue is that the satellites take several days to revisit a given area; if a radar is turned on and back off in between satellite passes, it won’t show up in the data. However, the RIT can still prove useful for quickly identifying areas of interest with regards to military radar hardware.
It’s great to see the ESA sharing satellite data for anyone to use, and it’s also wonderful to see open-source tools improving what can be done with said data. Those interested in the RIT can even dive into the code themselves
on Github
. It goes to show what can be done by the broader community when information is made available to all!
(Editor’s Note: This article was conceived and written before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.) | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438294",
"author": "mjrippe",
"timestamp": "2022-03-02T18:21:55",
"content": "Timely and amazing! Though possibly a security risk as enemies could use it to “fly under the radar”, or around it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,372,772.738485 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/02/need-a-logic-analyzer-use-your-pico/ | Need A Logic Analyzer? Use Your Pico! | Arya Voronova | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"logic analyzer",
"pi pico",
"pico",
"pulseview",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"sigrok"
] | There’s a slew of hardware hacker problems that a logic analyzer is in a perfect position to solve. Whether you’re trying to understand why an SPI LCD screen doesn’t initialize, what’s up with your I2C bus, or determine the speed of an UART connection, you’ll really want to have a logic analyzer on hand. People have been using a Pi Pico as a logic analyzer in a pinch, and now [pico-coder]
has shared a sigrok driver
that adds proper support for a Pico to beloved tools like Pulseview.
The specs offered are impressive. Compared to the $10 “Saleae” clone analyzers we are so used to, this thing boasts 21 digital channels with up to 120 MHz capture speed, 3 ADC channels at up to 500 KHz, and hardware-based triggers. The GitHub repository linked above stores the driver files out-of-tree,
but provides build instructions
together with an easily flash-able
uf2
firmware. It’s likely that you’ll soon see this driver in a stock Pulseview installation, however, given the submitter-friendly attitude we’ve witnessed on the sigrok mailing list. However, if you need a logic analyzer ASAP, you should follow
the caringly offered quickstart guide
.
We’ve covered Pulseview being used in combination with cheap accessible analyzers before —
a must-watch if you need to get yourself up to speed
on the value they provide to a hobbyist. If an oscilloscope is what you need and a smartphone is what you have, perhaps you’ll enjoy
the Scoppy firmware for the Pico
.
We thank [mip] for sharing this with us! | 24 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438272",
"author": "fiddlingjunky",
"timestamp": "2022-03-02T16:45:40",
"content": "Cool, I have a pico banging around that I’ll probably utilize for this once it gets folded into Pulseview’s master tree.One thing to keep in mind is the RP2040/Pi Pico does have a hardware bug (slig... | 1,760,372,772.974057 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/02/review-devterm-linux-handheld-has-retro-future-vibe/ | Review: DevTerm Linux Handheld Has Retro-Future Vibe | Donald Papp | [
"Featured",
"handhelds hacks",
"Reviews",
"Slider"
] | [
"clockworkpi",
"cyberdeck",
"devterm",
"handheld",
"linux",
"modular"
] | It’s not every day that an open-source, portable Linux handheld computer gets announced, so I couldn’t resist placing an order for the
DevTerm by ClockworkPi
back when
we first learned about the stylish little terminal
, which includes a 1280 x 480 screen (double-wide VGA) and a modular little thermal printer.
Of course, the global semiconductor shortage combined with shipping slowdowns led to delays, but things did ultimately come together for the project. I’ve always been a sucker for small-format machines, especially ones that come as a well-designed kit, and that means I can tell you all about what it was like to put it together and turn it on. There’s a lot to look at, so let’s get started.
A Well-Designed Kit
Assembly of the DevTerm makes for a good weekend or afternoon project. Clever design of interlocking pieces and connectors means there is no soldering required, and assembly mainly consists of clicking together hardware modules and plastic pieces according to the manual. Anyone with experience assembling plastic model kits will get a hit of nostalgia from cutting plastic parts off their sprues, and snapping them together.
Illustrations in the manual are good, and genuinely clever mechanical design makes for a very friendly assembly process. The use of self-centering parts, and pegs that themselves become self-aligning bosses, is pretty slick. No tools are required, and with the exception of two small screws for securing the processor module, there are in fact no hardware fasteners at all.
Of course, some parts are delicate and not entirely foolproof, but anyone with experience in electronics assembly should have no problem whatsoever putting it together.
Plastic parts on sprues make up most of the parts.
Nostalgia for those who have assembled plastic kits.
Assembly document is clear and detailed.
The design uses (nearly) no hardware fasteners, and parts self-locate.
The only elements that aren’t included are two 18650 cells for power, and 58 mm wide thermal paper rolls for the printer. A small phillips head screwdriver will be needed for the two small screws that secure the computing module into its socket.
Modular Components
Besides the screen and printer, inside the DevTerm there are four major assemblies; each connects to others with no need to solder anything. The keyboard with mini trackball is completely self-contained and connects via pogo pins. The main board holds the CPU. The EXT board has a fan and also provides I/O ports: USB, USB-C, Micro HDMI, and audio. The remaining board handles power management and hosts two 18650 cells — the USB-C port, by the way, is used exclusively for charging. There’s even some space left inside for customization or other add-ons.
The modules are all self-contained assemblies.
The modules use connectors, no soldering required.
I/O ports are all on the side. Power is at the front.
This modularity pays off. For example, it helps make it possible for the DevTerm to offer a few different options for processors and memory sizes, including one based around the
Raspberry Pi CM3+ Lite
, which is the guts of a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ in a form factor intended for integration into other hardware.
The
GitHub repository for the DevTerm
has schematics, code, and reference info like board outlines; there are no design files in the sense of CAD formats, but those might be coming in the future. The product page mentions that CAD files for customizing or 3D printing one’s own parts are available from the GitHub repository, but at this writing they aren’t there yet.
Using the DevTerm
The OS image included on the memory card works great for checking that everything boots, but be sure to upgrade to the latest OS image before doing too much troubleshooting.
When powered up, the DevTerm boots directly into a desktop environment, and one of the first things I wanted to do was configure a WiFi connection and enable an SSH server. The welcome screen told me exactly how to do that — but the early version of the OS my DevTerm shipped with had a small typo which meant that following the directions exactly resulted in an error, which helped deliver a genuine Linux DIY experience. A few other things also didn’t seem quite right, but a software update did a lot to fix that up.
The default behavior of the mini trackball was especially frustrating, as it moved the pointer only a tiny bit with each swipe of a finger. In addition, the trackball doesn’t seem to respond well to diagonal movement. Thankfully,
user [guu] has rewritten the firmware for the keyboard
and I highly recommend the updated version, which improves the trackball response considerably. The keyboard module can be programmed with new firmware from a shell on the DevTerm itself, but it is a much better idea to do it from an
ssh
session, because the physical keyboard can become unresponsive in the process.
Updating my DevTerm A04 to the latest OS release
fixed most of the issues I noticed out of the box — such as no sound coming from the speakers, leading me to wonder if I had installed them correctly — so I recommend ensuring that the OS is updated before diving too far into troubleshooting any particular issue.
Keyboard and Mini Trackball
The keyboard module includes a mini trackball and three separate mouse buttons, and clicking the trackball performs a left-click by default. The layout has a nice look to it, with the trackball centered at the top of the keyboard, and three mouse buttons centered under the space bar.
ClockworkPi’s “65% keyboard” has a classic key layout, and I found the DevTerm to be easiest to type on when I held it with both hands and typed with my thumbs, as though it were an oversized Blackberry. Laying the DevTerm down on a tabletop is also an option; this puts the keyboard at an angle that invites more traditional finger typing, but I found the keys a bit small to do this comfortably.
There is no touchscreen, so navigating a GUI means using the trackball, or using keyboard shortcuts. Fiddling a mini trackball located in the center of the device — with mouse buttons at the bottom edge — is something I found a bit awkward at best. Functionally, the DevTerm’s keyboard and trackball combo provides all the right tools one may need in a space efficient and balanced layout; it’s just not the most ergonomic in terms of usability.
Remote Access is More Comfortable Access
One isn’t always using the DevTerm as a portable machine. When configuring or otherwise doing setup, logging in with an
ssh
session is a better way to go than dealing with the built-in keyboard.
Another alternative is setting up remote desktop access, so that the DevTerm can be used in all its widescreen 1280 x 480 double-VGA glory, from the comfort of one’s desktop.
To do that as quickly as possible, I installed the
vino
package on the DevTerm, and used TightVNC viewer from my desktop to establish a remote session.
Vino is a VNC server for the GNOME desktop environment, and
TightVNC viewer
is available for a wide variety of systems.
sudo apt install vino
will get the VNC server installed (listening on default TCP port 5900), and while I don’t actually recommend this for everyone, following it up with
gsettings set org.gnome.Vino require-encryption false
will enforce precisely zero authentication or security whatsoever on the connection, allowing one to access the DevTerm desktop with nothing more than the machine’s IP address.
Not the best security-minded decision, but it did allow me to avoid the trackball and keyboard in no time flat, which has a value all its own in a pinch.
Tiny Thermal Printing
The thermal printer is an unexpected feature, and the paper spool is held in a separate, removeable assembly. In fact, the printer functionality is entirely modular. The printing hardware inside the DevTerm is situated directly behind an expansion port feature into which the paper reservoir is inserted when printing. This assembly could be removed entirely and the space repurposed, if so desired.
Functionally, the small printer works perfectly well and I was able to do test prints with no trouble — as long as my batteries had a healthy charge. Printing with low battery power resulted in an ungraceful brownout, so avoid that situation. That’s probably worth keeping in mind with regards to any modifications, too.
Printer test page in its diminutive, low-res glory. Click to enlarge.
Removable paper spool, shown here with protective cap.
Expansion port, for paper holder. (DevTerm is on a 3D printed stand.)
Print quality and resolution is much like any receipt printer, so moderate your expectations if you have any. Is the little printer a gimmick? Maybe, but it’s sure a nifty option and can be used as a sort of reference design, should one wish to refit the DevTerm with some other custom hardware in its place.
A Hackable, Handheld Linux Experience
Clockworkpi have clearly put effort into giving the DevTerm a hackable nature; the connectors between modules are easy to access, and there is spare room on the boards as well as some extra room inside the case. In particular, the thermal printer module has a generous amount of extra room behind it. There’s definitely space for some wiring and custom hardware, should one wish to break out a soldering iron. The modular nature of the main assemblies also seems designed to invite easy modification, which helps make it an attractive starting point for a cyberdeck build.
While 3D models of the physical bits are not currently available on the project’s GitHub, an enterprising soul has nevertheless created
a 3D printable DevTerm stand
that cradles the device and puts it at a useful and space-saving angle. When 3D models of parts make it to the GitHub repository, that’ll make things a lot easier.
What do you think about the design choices this Linux handheld took? Got any ideas for hot hardware mods? As mentioned, the print module (and the expansion slot that goes with it) could be easily repurposed; I’m a bit partial to
Tom Nardi’s idea of USB devices in cartridge format
, personally. Got any other ideas? Let us know in the comments! | 32 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438255",
"author": "PypeBros",
"timestamp": "2022-03-02T15:13:54",
"content": "That device is crying for a mod where the round side things would be encoders scrolling text instead of just holding things together.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,772.904323 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/02/where-do-you-want-to-go-today-perhaps-to-a-linux-with-a-familiar-interface/ | Where Do You Want To Go Today? Perhaps To A Linux With A Familiar Interface? | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"gui",
"windows",
"windows 95"
] | Sometimes we cover works of extreme technological merit here at Hackaday, other times we cover interesting projects that while they might not lie at the bleeding edge are interesting enough that they deserve a wider audience. Sometimes though, we bring you something in this field simply because it amuses us and we think it will you too. Such is the case with [Bryan Lunduke]’s look at
making a Linux desktop look like Windows 95
. And lest you think that it might be yet another skin to make Windows users transition to Linux a bit easier, the aim and result is to make it look
exactly
like Microsoft’s mid-90s desktop.
Underneath it all is the relatively familiar xUbuntu distribution, with a deliciously troll-worthy project called
Chicago95
atop it. This takes some existing Windows 95 theme and icon projects, and adds GTK themes, an MS-DOS shell theme, the ability to install those cheesy ’90s Plus! themes, and a Microsoft Office 95 theme for LibreOffice. It really does deliver an experience very close to the Redmond original.
So, what’s the point here in 2022? In the first instance it’s an excellent opportunity to troll open-source enthusiast friends with a crusty laptop seemingly running ’95 and showing YouTube videos on Netscape Navigator 3. But beyond the jokes there is a serious use for it. There may be many criticisms that can be leveled at Windows 95, but it’s safe to say that its GUI was a significant success whose echoes can be found in many desktops here in 2022. There are a huge number of people in the world who are completely at home in a Windows 95 environment who might struggle with a Linux desktop, and this gives them a way to be immediately productive. Would you give your grandmother a Linux box with this desktop? | 72 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438196",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2022-03-02T12:32:17",
"content": "Ain’t this Windows10 constantly updating rubbish :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6438198",
"author": "Feinfinger (with diabolic laughter)... | 1,760,372,773.090206 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/02/split-flap-display-tells-us-the-word/ | Split Flap Display Tells Us The Word | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"classic hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"arduino",
"characters",
"cnc",
"display",
"modular",
"split flap"
] | LED and LCD displays are a technological marvel. They’ve brought the price of televisions and monitors down to unheard-of levels since the days of CRTs, but this upside arguably comes with an aesthetic cost. When everything is covered in bland computer screens, the world tends to look a lot more monotonous. Not so several decades ago when there were many sharply contrasting ways of displaying information. One example of this different time comes to us by way of
this split-flap display that [Erich] has been recreating
.
Split-flap displays work by printing letters or numbers on a series of flaps that are attached to a spindle with a stepper motor. Each step of the motor turns the display by one character. They can be noisy and do require a large amount of maintenance compared to modern displays, but have some advantages as well. [Erich]’s version is built out of new acrylic and MDF, and uses an Arduino as the control board. A 3D printer and CNC machine keep the tolerances tight enough for the display to work smoothly and also enable him to expand the display as needed since each character display is fairly modular.
Right now, [Erich]’s display has 20 characters on two different rows and definitely brings us back to the bygone era where displays of this style would have been prominent in airports and train stations. This display
uses a lot of the basics from another split flap display that we featured a few years ago
but has some improvements. And, if you’d prefer
restorations of old displays
rather than modern incarnations, we have you covered there as well.
Thanks to [Bob] for the tip! | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438170",
"author": "RÖB",
"timestamp": "2022-03-02T10:12:53",
"content": "Quote [Bryan Cockfield] : “They can be noisy and do require a large amount of maintenance compared to modern displays …”Maybe some needed maintenance but the slip flap clocks worked forever with zero mainten... | 1,760,372,773.202608 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/01/playstation-4-controller-gets-a-usb-c-upgrade/ | PlayStation 4 Controller Gets A USB-C Upgrade | Lewin Day | [
"Playstation Hacks"
] | [
"micro-USB",
"microusb",
"playstation 4",
"ps4",
"USB C"
] | Micro USB was once the connector of choice for applications where USB-A was too big, but now USB-C has come to dominate all. It’s becoming standard across the board for many peripherals, and [Ian] recently decided that he wanted to upgrade his PS4 controller to the newer standard.
Hacking ensued.
The hack consists of a small breakout board that enables a USB-C connector to be fitted into the PS4 controller in place of the original micro USB port. [Ian] explains what needs to be done to complete the mod, which first involves disassembling the controller carefully to avoid damage. The original microUSB breakout board can then be removed, and fitted with one of a selection of replacement boards available
on Github
to suit various revisions of PS4 controller. A little filing is then required to allow the new connector to fit in the controller case, and [Ian] notes that using an 0.8mm thick PCB is key to enabling the new breakout board to fit inside the shell.
It’s a neat hack that makes charging PS4 controllers way easier in the modern environment without having to keep legacy micro USB cables around. We’ve actually seen similar hacks
done to iPhones, too
, among other hardware. Video after the break.
[Thanks to Chandler L for the tip!] | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438125",
"author": "Entropia",
"timestamp": "2022-03-02T06:25:10",
"content": "Micro USB was never an alternative to USB A. USB A is host connector, B is device connector. Micro USB is just a smaller USB B connector.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{... | 1,760,372,773.156079 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/01/new-part-day-smallest-arm-mcu-uproots-competition-needs-research/ | New Part Day: Smallest ARM MCU Uproots Competition, Needs Research | Arya Voronova | [
"ARM",
"Microcontrollers",
"Parts"
] | [
"arm cortex m0",
"ARM M0+",
"ATtiny20",
"bga",
"chip on board",
"Chip Scale Package",
"cortex m0",
"HC32L110",
"huada",
"New Part Day",
"wlcsp"
] | We’ve been contacted by [Cedric], telling us about
the smallest ARM MCU he’s ever seen
– Huada
HC32L110
. For those of us into miniature products, this Cortex-M0+ package packs a punch
(PDF datasheet)
, with low-power, high capabilities and rich peripherals packed into an 1.6mm x 1.4mm piece of solderable silicon.
This is matchstick head scale computing, with way more power than we previously could access at such a scale, waiting to be wrangled.
Compared to an 8-bit ATTiny20
also available in WLCSP package, this is a notable increase in specs, with a way more powerful CPU, 16 times as much RAM and 8-16 times the flash! Not to mention that
it’s $1 a piece in QTY1
, which is about what an ATTiny20 goes for. Being a 0.35mm pitch 16-pin BGA, your typical board house might not be quite happy with you, but once you get a board fabbed and delivered from a fab worth their salt, a bit of stenciling and reflow will get you to a devboard in no time.
Drawbacks? No English datasheet or Arduino port, and the 67-page PDF we found doesn’t have some things like register mappings. LILYGO
promised
that they will start selling the devboards soon, but we’re sure it wouldn’t be hard for us to develop our own. From there, we’d hope for
an ESP8266-like effect
– missing information pieced together, translated and made accessible, bit by bit.
When it comes to soldering such small packages, we highly recommend reflow. However, if you decide to
go the magnet wire route
, we wouldn’t dare object – just make sure to send us pictures. After all, seems like miniature microcontrollers like ATTiny20 are attractive enough of a proposition that
people will pick the craziest route possible
just to play with one. They say, the madness of the brave is the wisdom of life.
We thank
[Cedric]
for sharing this with us! | 38 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438086",
"author": "scott.tx",
"timestamp": "2022-03-02T03:25:21",
"content": "it was so small I didnt even see it. I kept looking at the voltage regulator thinking it sure doesnt have a lot of ports. doh!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,372,773.276334 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/28/logic-simulation-hack-chat-with-al-williams/ | Logic Simulation Hack Chat With Al Williams | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, March 2 at noon Pacific for the
Logic Simulation Hack Chat
with
Al Williams
!
Many of us probably remember — some fondly, some less so — our first encounter with a truth table. The little grid of ones and zeros seemed simple enough, but it held real power in its tabular representation of the output of a logic circuit for a given set of inputs. It’s what makes more complex logic circuits possible, but only up to a point — add enough gates, flip flops, and counters, and keeping track of what’s high and what’s low becomes problematic with just pencil and paper.
If you’ve reached the point where keeping your digital design in your head doesn’t work anymore, or if you never could keep your NANDs and NORs straight, then you’re ready for a digital logic simulator. Applications like
Falstad
and
LogiSim
let you build a design using everything from discrete logic gates to complete assemblies like adders, counters, and even arithmetic logic units. Add in some passives like capacitors and inductors, and a logic simulator may be the only tool you need to bring a design to life in the virtual world before ever touching a breadboard.
To help us figure out where logic simulators fit in our design processes, Hackaday Staff Writer Al Williams will hop onto the Hack Chat with us. Al ran a very successful
FPGA Bootcamp
series back in 2018, which included a review of digital logic using Falstad. He’ll expand on that in this Hack Chat, so come along with your questions and comments. You won’t want to miss this one!
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, March 2 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6436475",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2022-02-28T17:37:14",
"content": "Until today, I always thought it was A.I. Williams",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6436729",
"author": "Steven",
"timestamp": "2022-02... | 1,760,372,773.32751 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/28/boring-belt-sander-is-rc-racer-in-disguise/ | Boring Belt Sander Is RC Racer In Disguise | Chris Wilkinson | [
"classic hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"belt sander",
"radio controlled car",
"rc",
"remote control",
"ryobi"
] | As a child, [
David Windestal
] already knew that a belt sander was the perfect motor for a banging radio-controlled car. Many years later, the
realization of that dream is everything he could have hoped for
.
The core of this project is a battery-powered belt sander by a well known manufacturer of gnarly yellow power tools. With an eye for using bespoke 3D printed parts, the conversion appeared straightforward – slap on (or snap on) a pre-loved steering mechanism, add a servo for controlling the sander’s trigger, and that’s pretty much job done. Naturally the intention was to use sandpaper as tread, which is acceptable for outdoor use but not exactly ideal for indoors. A thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) tread was designed and printed for playtime on the living room floor, where sandpaper may be frowned upon.
The finished product is a mean looking toy with plenty of power. What we really like most about this hack is the commitment to the aesthetics. It’s seriously impressive to see a belt sander so convincingly transformed into a three-wheeler radio-controlled car. The final iteration is also completely reversible, meaning that your belt sander can keep on sanding two by fours on the job site. All the printed parts snap snug into place and are mostly indistinguishable from the stock sander.
Speaking of reversible, there were just a couple of issues with the initial design, if you catch our drift. We won’t spoil what happens, but make sure to watch the video after the break for the full story.
If this hack has whet your appetite for more quirky tool hacks, make sure to check out our coverage of the
angle grinder turned slimline belt sander.
Or if you can’t get enough of RC, then check out this
remote controlled car with active suspension
. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6436248",
"author": "SgtStens",
"timestamp": "2022-02-28T16:28:28",
"content": "Well done hack, really cool end product, and good description of the design process. Awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6444761",
"... | 1,760,372,773.425224 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/28/its-official-the-raspberry-pi-is-now-10/ | It’s Official! The Raspberry Pi Is Now 10! | Jenny List | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Slider"
] | [
"10th anniversary",
"raspberry pi",
"SBC"
] | In any given field there are epoch-defining moments, those events after which nothing was quite the same as it had been before. It’s been a decade since the launch of the first Raspberry Pi single board computer. This was by no means the first inexpensive computer board, nor was it the first to support the GNU/Linux operating system, but it was among the first to promise a combination of those two. Coupled with support from a crop of British 8-bit alumni meant that from when it first gained publicity in early 2011 it garnered a huge buildup of interest.
We were first teased with a USB stick style prototype, which morphed into a much larger Raspberry Pi alpha board and finally into pre-production boards much closer to the model launched at the end of February ten years ago.
How To Disappoint Every Single British Geek At 6 AM
An array of Pi prototype boards pictured on display at the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory.
Pedants will claim that the 10th birthday of the Pi is technically not yet upon us because those first Model B boards went on sale on the 29th of February 2012, a leap day. The two distributors, RS and Farnell, were both putting them on sale with the expectation of selling around 10,000 units — a prediction that proved woefully inadequate, with both websites collapsing under the weight of would-be Pi-purchasers within seconds of opening up at 6 AM.
I was ready to order at 6 AM, and was only able to order mine halfway through the day. That short wait would be just the beginning — because they received so many more orders than anticipated, the bulk of the orders weren’t fulfilled until May. Nobody had imagined how wildly successful the Pi boards would become.
My 2012 Chinese-manufactured Raspberry Pi Model B. The heatsinks are my addition.
I still have my first Model B from 2012, it’s an early 256 MB Chinese-made model without a CE mark and with a pair of stick-on copper heatsinks that I added. Later that year, production would be moved to the Sony plant in South Wales, and a few revisions including a pair of mounting holes would be made to the original form factor with the 26-pin expansion connector and RCA video socket.
I remember unpacking it, and the novelty of being able to bring up an LXDE desktop on my TV and surf the Web with the Midori browser that featured in those first OS distributions. After a spate of experimenting with the capabilities of its GPIOs, I put it to work on my big project of the day: continuous gathering and processing of language data.
It replaced an old laptop for this task, and even though it wasn’t quite as fast, the benefits of having a headless Debian box using only 2 W continuously were immediately apparent. It was soon joined in this task by a Welsh-made Model B, and together these two would spend the next several years on my windowsill building a searchable English-language news corpus. In this paragraph we’re touching on the root of what made the Pi special, because while I was crunching language data so many others were doing all sorts of interesting projects; this thing was and is an infinitely versatile platform with a tiny price and power budget.
Ten Thousand Boards Becomes A Global Phenomenon
Even I got a piece of the add-on board action, this PCB is my HF radio receiver kit for the Raspberry PI.
The rest of the Pi story will be familiar to many readers. After a major overhaul of the form factor in 2014 for the B+ there have been a succession of ever more powerful flagship products in the Pi range, alongside the Compute modules, the diminutive Zero range, the RP2040 microcontroller and Pico board, and the accessories such as the cameras or the touch screen.
Alongside all this, a thriving ecosystem of third-party add-on boards and accessories evolved, and of course a host of copycats. They made a UNIX workstation into a few-dollar component (taking
a minor liberty with the description of UNIX
), and we’ve made hay with it. There’s the Raspberry Pi potted history in a few paragraphs, but there’s more to their last decade to think about. Perhaps it’s worth standing back and assessing where the Pi people have got it right, and where they maybe could have done a little better.
What Did They Get Right?
This is one of the nicest Pi clones I’ve seen, the Asus Tinker Board. It’s arguably better than a Pi 3, but you don’t see much of it because of very poor software support.
Despite the astounding success of the Raspberry Pi range, the boards themselves have never been the most capable hardware on paper. The original used a SoC from a set-top box that was more like a powerful graphics chip with an incidental application processor. Broadcom’s reluctance to expose their family silver meant we never really got the most from the graphics chip, and thus even with updated SoCs in more recent Pi revisions it’s always been an easy win for competitors to stuff a board with a fast tablet or phone SoC and claim it as a Pi-beater.
The seed of the Raspberry Pi’s success lies not in the hardware itself, but in the effort they put into supporting their software distribution and the community surrounding it. When you buy the competition you in many cases get a flaky distribution with a kernel version hacked to work with the chip manufacturer’s binary blob for the SoC, and that version is never updated. The Pi people by contrast have put the effort into keeping their software distribution updated with new kernel versions, and the fact that an up-to-date 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS still runs on my 2012 Model B is what has kept them at the top of the tree.
And How Did They Mess Up?
My main gripe with the Raspberries is that they can be opaque when it comes to the needs of their hardware developer community. We clearly want something more than their sketchy
partial schematics
, and a clear communication channel for the smaller peripheral manufacturers would cost them relatively little in the way of resources and would make the lives of the small-time hardware developers so much easier.
I remember in 2015, when I was running my kit operation, seeing another small producer of add-ons quit the Pi business and go back to the Arduino world when the new Pi Zero’s form factor had evidently already been shared with only a select few of the larger producers, leaving those suppliers with launch products for the Zero while the rest of the field had bet the farm on the Model B form factor. If I had Eben Upton’s ear on this subject, I’d suggest that a formal hardware developer’s program for their second decade could be of immense benefit to both Raspberry Pi and their community.
Where Next When You’ve Got It All?
The Raspberry Pi for which the competition have no answer.
Having taken stock of their first decade, where next for the main Raspberry Pi product lines? The flagship single-board computers are the archetypal Raspberry Pi and there seems no sign of their popularity abating, but in a sense they are the victim of their own success.
Most every new board since 2014 has been essentially an upgraded version of the same product. While the latest Pi 4 is a quick and capable board, it suffers from becoming a genericised piece of hardware. The move to a 64-bit OS should slowly draw a line between the newer and older boards, but since the 32-bit products are slated to feature on the Pi Zero well into the middle years of the decade, this may take a while to happen.
Perhaps it’s the wild-cards in the pack that show the most potential. The Pi 400 all-in-one computer is a genuinely different product to which the competition have no answer. It’s a usable desktop machine, and future versions with faster SoCs and more memory can only make it more so. The Compute Module 4
feels like the more exciting Raspberry Pi
, and given that it offers the opportunity for a designer to spin their own individual take on a Pi, it’s not difficult to see why. We have a pretty good idea what the Model B form factor will look like in the future, but we can not forsee where individual designers will go with the corresponding Compute Modules. We’re looking at you to create the landmark Raspberry Pi-based products of the next decade.
The last ten years for the Raspberry Pi have successfully delivered a succession of super-cheap Linux boards, spawned an ecosystem, and maintained one of the best supported software communities in its class. Their missteps have been relatively few and their successes many, but can they keep it up? If they don’t lose sight of their customers and keep that software support up-to-date, we think so. Check back in ten years for another decade of Raspberry Pi news! | 100 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6436043",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2022-02-28T15:21:02",
"content": "…and it still plays awful video.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6436073",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2022-02-28T15:36:00",
... | 1,760,372,773.669776 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/28/autonomous-mower-hits-snag/ | Autonomous Mower Hits Snag | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"autonomous",
"cutting",
"gearbox",
"lawn",
"mower",
"robot",
"rover"
] | Interfacing technology and electronics with the real world is often fairly tricky. Complexity and edge cases work their way in to every corner of a project like this; just ask anyone who has ever tried to operate a rover on Mars, make a hydroponics garden, or build almost any robotics project. Even those of us who simply own a consumer-grade printer are flummoxed by the ways in which they can fail when manipulating single sheets of paper.
This robotic lawnmower is no exception
, driving its creator [TK] to extremes to get it to mow his lawn.
[TK] actually had a platform for his autonomous mower ready to go thanks to a previous build using this solar-powered robot to explore the Australian outback. Adding another motor to handle the grass trimming seemed simple at first and he set about wiring it all up and interfacing it to the robot. After the first iteration he found the robot was moving too fast to effectively cut the grass, so he added a more powerful cutting motor and a gearbox to help the mower crawl more slowly over the lawn. Disaster struck when his 3D printed mount for the steel cutting blades shattered, but with [TK] uninjured he pushed on with more improvements.
As it stands right now, the mower can effectively cut the grass moving forward even with the plastic-only cutting blades that [TK] is using now for safety reasons. The mower stripped its reverse gear so there still are some improvements to make before this robot is autonomously cutting the lawn without supervision.
Normally we see lawnmowers retrofitted with robotics
rather than robotics retrofitted with a lawnmower, but we’re excited to see any approach that lets us worry about one less household chore.
Thanks to [Rob] for the tip! | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6435980",
"author": "Will",
"timestamp": "2022-02-28T12:39:17",
"content": "“Disaster struck when his 3D printed mount for the steel cutting blades shattered”Some things I would never trust with aq plastic 3D print…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{... | 1,760,372,773.376189 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/28/mask-sanitization-that-anyone-can-build/ | Mask Sanitization That Anyone Can Build | Arya Voronova | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"decontamination",
"disinfect",
"disinfecting",
"disinfection",
"face mask",
"hydrogen peroxide",
"N95 mask",
"PPE",
"sanitization"
] | We’ve seen a wide variety of mask sanitization solutions, and now, [spiritplumber] from [Robots Everywhere]
brings us a frugal and ingenious design
– one that you barely even need tools for. This project might look rough around the edges but looks were never a prerequisite, and as a hacker worth their salt will recognize – this is an answer to “how to design a mask disinfector that anyone can build”.
Local shortages of masks have been threatening communities here and there, doubly so if you need a specific kind of mask that might be out of stock. This design could apply to a whole lot of other things where sterilization is desired, too – improving upon concepts, after all, is our favourite pastime.
The design is simple – a battery-powered motor rotating a mask inside a vat of concentrated H2O2, turned into mist by a cheap ultrasonic misting gadget. As the “turntable” rotates a your PPE of choice, making sure that every crevice is graced with cleaning touch of peroxide, it also causes the H2O2 mist to circulate. Fulfilling most important requirements for a proper sanitization system that more complex devices have been struggling with, this approach has certainly earned its place under the sun.
[Robots Everywhere]
have shared a small library of their DIY PPE resources
with all of us, and that’s not all they work on – recently, we’ve seen their
aeroponics project rejuvenating garlic
.
Using hydrogen peroxide vapour for PPE sanitization is a well-tested approach by now, as we’ve
seen it deployed back in 2020 on a larger scale
as part of an FDA-approved design. And if you only have 3% peroxide at hand,
might as well try concentrating it further
! | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6436275",
"author": "Pineapple",
"timestamp": "2022-02-28T16:36:57",
"content": "H2O2 in a clear tank with ultra sonic vibrating all the O2 out.H2O2 is very unstable. It’ll react to light and turn in H2O and O2. Shaking a bottle of H2O2 will do the same.It lost is anti-bacterial p... | 1,760,372,773.718823 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/27/simple-dram-tester-built-with-spare-parts/ | Simple DRAM Tester Built With Spare Parts | Chris Wilkinson | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"amiga",
"Apple 2",
"commodore",
"dram",
"tester",
"ZX Spectrum"
] | Some of the most popular vintage computers are now more than forty years old, and their memory just ain’t how it used to be. Identifying bad memory chips can quickly become a chore, so [Jan Beta] spent some time
putting together a cheap DRAM tester
out of spare parts.
This little tester can be used with 4164 and 41256 DRAM memory chips. 4164 DRAM was used in several popular home computers throughout the 1970s and 1980s, including the Apple ][ series, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and many more. Likewise, the 41256 was used in the Commodore Amiga. These computers are incredibly popular in the vintage computing community, and its not uncommon to find bad memory in any of them.
With an Arduino at its core, this DRAM tester uses the most basic of electronic components, and any modest tinkerer should have pretty much everything in stock.
The original project can be found here
, including the Arduino code. Just pop the suspect chip into the ZIF socket, hit the reset switch, and wait for the LED – green is good, and red means it’s toast.
It’s a great sanity check for when you’re neck deep in suspect DRAM. A failed test is a sure sign that the chip is bad, however the tester does occasionally report a false pass. Not every issue can be identified with such a simple tester, however it’s great at weeding out the chips that are definitely dead.
If you’re not short on cash, then the
Chip Tester Pro
may be more to your liking, however it’s hard to beat the simplicity and thriftiness of building your own simple tester from spare parts. If you’re a little more adventurous, this
in-circuit debugger
could come in handy. | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6435878",
"author": "Mr David Mark Pye",
"timestamp": "2022-02-28T07:09:20",
"content": "Thought this was about whiskey at first 🤣",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6435946",
"author": "Grumpy Old Coot",
"timest... | 1,760,372,773.769282 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/27/neon-ukraine-and-the-global-semiconductor-industry/ | Neon, Ukraine, And The Global Semiconductor Industry | Jenny List | [
"chemistry hacks",
"News"
] | [
"inert gas",
"neon",
"ukraine"
] | On our news feeds and TV channels at the moment are many stories concerning the war in Ukraine, and among them is one which may have an effect on the high-tech industries. It seems that a significant percentage of the world’s neon gas is produced in Ukrainian factories, and there is concern among pundits and electronics manufacturers that
a disruption of this supply could be a further problem
for an industry already reeling from the COVID-related chip shortage. It’s thus worth taking a quick look at the neon business from an engineering perspective to perhaps make sense of some of those concerns.
As most readers will know from their high school chemistry lessons, neon is one of the so-called inert gasses, sitting in the column at the extreme right of the Periodic table. It occurs in nature as a small percentage of the air we breathe and is extracted from the air by fractional distillation of the liquid phase. The important point from the above sentences is that the same neon is all around us in the air as there is in Ukraine, in other words, there is no strategic neon mine in the Ukrainian countryside about to be overrun by the Russian invaders.
So why do we source so much neon from Ukraine, if we’re constantly breathing the stuff in and out everywhere else in the world? Since the air separation industry is alive and well worldwide for the production of liquid nitrogen and oxygen as well as the slightly more numerous inert gasses, we’re guessing that the answer lies in economics. It’s a bit harder to extract neon from air than it is argon because there is less of it in the air. Since it can be brought for a reasonable cost from the Ukrainians who have made it their business to extract it, there is little benefit in American or Western European companies trying to compete. Our take is that if the supply of Ukrainian neon is interrupted there may be a short period of neon scarcity. After that, air extraction companies will quite speedily install whatever extra plant they need in order to service the demand. If that’s your area of expertise, we’d love to hear from you in the comments.
Here at Hackaday we are saddened beyond words at what has happened in Ukraine, and we hope our Ukrainian readers and those Ukrainian hackers whose work we’ve featured make it through safely. We sincerely hope that this madness can be ended and that we can mention the country in the context of cool hacks again rather than war.
If you are interested in the strategic value of inert gasses,
have a read about the global helium supply
.
Header image: Lestat (Jan Mehlich),
CC BY-SA 3.0
. | 34 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6435832",
"author": "Big Alien Robot",
"timestamp": "2022-02-28T03:30:42",
"content": "Not for nothin- I hope the readers, hackers, and everyone else including the folks who I dont agree with on anything make it through this. No one deserves this. Slava Ukraini!",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,372,773.838539 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/01/desoldering-without-hot-air-piece-of-wire-edition/ | Desoldering Without Hot Air: Piece Of Wire Edition | Arya Voronova | [
"Lifehacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"desolder",
"desoldering",
"desoldering tools",
"micro-USB",
"soldering",
"tqfp"
] | Quite a few hackers nowadays share their tips and tricks on Twitter – it’s easy to do so, and provided either an existing audience or a bit of effort to get one, you’ll get at least a few notifications telling you that people appreciated what you had to share. Today, we’re covering two desoldering hacks highlighted there that will be useful some day, exactly when you need them. Both of them use a piece of wire and, in a way, extend the reach of your soldering iron’s tip. Copper wire would work better because of superior thermal conductivity, but other types of solid core wire will work in a pinch.
First hack is brought to us by [Erin Rose] –
desoldering a microUSB socket
. You need to heat up the entire shield and the pins at the same time, which the wire acts as a thermal gateway for. As long as there are melted solder bridges from sections of the wire to all the copper-to-part connection points, it should be easy to pump enough heat into the solder joints for all of them to eventually melt and give in at once.
Second hack is brought to us by [arturo182]. A piece of thick wire acts, again, as a heat conductor to
desolder a 0.5mm pitch TQFP-100 package IC
. You have to bend the wire into a correct shape, so that it’s as close to the pins of the TQFP as possible. In this situation, the wire performs two functions: first, transferring the heat from the iron’s tip to different points along the wire, then, as a barrier that helps solder not escape too far away from the pins. Copious amounts of flux likely desired for this one!
Hopefully, this comes handy if you ever need to replace an all-SMD part ASAP but don’t have a hot air gun or a hotplate handy. After getting this concept down to an art, we are sure you won’t limit yourself to TQFP parts and MicroUSB sockets. We’ve talked about
desoldering practices
before as part of our newsletter, and
using lots of melted solder
for part removal is not a foreign concept to us, either.
An interesting technique for desoldering QFP without hot air!
pic.twitter.com/50ynzkrJXb
— arturo182 (@arturo182)
January 2, 2021 | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6438014",
"author": "aki009",
"timestamp": "2022-03-02T00:20:18",
"content": "My solution is mixing in some tin-lead solder that drops the melting point. Then wick away what I can, especially on the through-hole feet. And plentiful flux. That way there’s a lot less thermal mass to o... | 1,760,372,773.88341 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/01/big-led-matrix-becomes-tiny-led-matrix-thanks-to-fiber-optics/ | Big LED Matrix Becomes Tiny LED Matrix Thanks To Fiber Optics | Dan Maloney | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"acrylic",
"fiber optics",
"led",
"light pipe",
"matrix",
"neopixel",
"pico",
"PMMA",
"raspberry pi",
"rgb",
"ws2812b"
] | Everyone loves LED matrices, and even if you can’t find what you like commercially, it’s pretty easy to make just what you want. Need it big? No problem; just order a big PCB and some WS2812s. Need something tiny? There are ridiculously small LEDs that will test your SMD skills, as well as your vision.
But what if you want a small matrix that’s actually a big matrix in disguise? For that, you’ll want to follow [elliotmade]’s lead and
incorporate fiber optics into your LED matrix
. The build starts with a 16×16 matrix of WS2812B addressable LEDs, with fairly tight spacing but still 160 mm on a side. The flexible matrix was sandwiched between a metal backing plate and a plastic bezel with holes directly over each LED. Each hole accepts one end of a generous length of flexible 1.5-mm acrylic light pipe material; the other end plugs into a block of aluminum with a 35 by 7 matrix of similar holes. The small block is supported above the baseplate by standoffs, but it looks like the graceful bundle of fibers is holding up the smaller display.
A Raspberry Pi Pico running a CircutPython program does the job of controlling the LEDs, and as you can see in the video below, the effect is quite lovely. Just enough light leaks out from the fibers to make a fascinating show in the background while the small display does its thing. We’ve seen a few
practical uses for such a thing
, but we’re OK with this just being pretty. It does give one ideas about adding fiber optics to circuit sculptures, though. | 11 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6437945",
"author": "raxxen",
"timestamp": "2022-03-01T21:17:54",
"content": "That’s beautiful. I love the way the ouptut LED’s are offset from the fibres so you get really neat patterns in the background.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comm... | 1,760,372,773.935589 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/01/sprockets-and-chains-drive-this-unique-mechanical-digital-clock/ | Sprockets And Chains Drive This Unique Mechanical Digital Clock | Dan Maloney | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"chain",
"clock",
"roller chain",
"sprocket"
] | When it comes to mechanical timepieces, we’re used to seeing mechanisms stuffed with tiny gears and wheel, often of marvelous complexity and precision. What we’re perhaps less used to seeing is
a clock that uses chains and sprockets
, and that looks more like what you’d find on a bicycle on your typical bicycle.
We can’t recall seeing anything quite like [SPE]’s “Time Machine” before. It’s one of those builds that explains itself by watching it work, so check out the video below and you’ll see where this one is going. The clock has three loops of roller link chain, each of which has a series of numbers welded to the links. The loops of chain are advanced around sprockets by a trio of geared-down motors, with the numbers standing up straight at the top of each loop. A microcontroller keeps track of the time and starts the clock advancing every minute, but a series of microswitches that are activated by the passing chain do all the rest of the control — sounds like a perfect time to say, “Could have used a 555,” but we still think it’s great the way it is.
Surprisingly, [SPE]’s clock seems like it wouldn’t be that hard to live with. Many unique electromechanical clocks that we feature, like
a clock that’s nothing but hands
or
The Time Twister
, are a little on the noisy side. While “Time Machine” isn’t exactly silent, its whirring isn’t terrible, and even though its clicks are a little loud, they’ve got a satisfying mechanical sound to them. | 17 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6437902",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2022-03-01T19:45:43",
"content": "Very nice, and kudos for not hiding the sounds of it working with objectionable music.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6437937",
"author": "smellsofbi... | 1,760,372,773.998795 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/01/human-power-past-and-future/ | Human Power, Past And Future | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"energy harvesting",
"human powered machines",
"Wearables"
] | We will assume you’ve seen The Matrix — it was from 1999, after all. The surprise, at the end, was that humans were being used as human batteries to power a civilization of intelligent machines. But aside from just putting out some heat, the idea does have some precedent. After all, humans powered machines like mills, sewing machines, and pumps for centuries before there were good alternatives.
History
Reconstruction of a squadron of ancient Greek galley ships.
Early machines used hand cranks, treadwheels, treadles, and even pedal power to harness energy from humans. Consider, for example, an ancient galley ship with many oarsmen providing an engine. This wasn’t a great use of human power. An oarsman on a galley used his arms and back but didn’t much use his legs. The legs, though, have larger muscles and are often stronger. A pedal boat or
racing shell
would have been much more efficient, but without mass production of strong metal parts, it would have been difficult to build and maintain such machines in ancient times.
There was a time when pedals or treadles operated lots of machines from sewing machines to lathes. There were even old radios able to transmit and receive with no external power thanks to pedals as late as the 1940s.
This pedal-powered radio transceiver found use in a lighthouse around 1946.
Today most of what we pedal are bicycles, and most often as a leisure activity. We also use treadmills, but we use them for a different purpose than generating motion through human power. In fact, most treadmills today move using a motor so you can feel like you are running without going anywhere.
Prisons
That was almost the case back in Victorian England where prisoners sentenced to hard labor were made to run on a treadmill as a form of punishment. In 1818 it was decided that prisoners sentenced to hard labor should have to labor all the time, so they were put on treadmills that did nothing. There were also crank machines that are just what they sound like: a machine with a crank that does nothing.
By 1895 there were 39 treadmills and 29 cranks in use around England. Some prisons eventually adopted the wasted labor to mill grain or pump water, but many were just “grinding the wind” serving no purpose but to punish the inmate.
Prisoners endlessly climb the “stairs” formed by a wheel in Pentonville Prison around 1895.
The United States also toyed with penal treadmills around 1822, but they were never very popular. Typically, these treadmills were set up as wheels configured as endless staircases and had partitions to prevent prisoners from communicating with adjacent prisoners. A fifteen-minute stint on the wheel earned a five-minute break and this went on for up to six hours a day.
Modern Times
Since the rise of electric motors — not to mention changing conditions in prisons — there hasn’t been much interest in using humans to power machines. Pedaling or using a treadmill today is likely to be for exercise or pleasure and not to provide power. What’s worse is that when a modern machine does try to harvest manual energy, it usually does so to generate electricity which is typically not a very efficient thing to do.
Of course, sometimes you really need electricity. For example, a crank flashlight, phone charger, or emergency radio needs electricity. But if you are trying to, say, pump water, you are better off using the energy directly to do the work than generating electricity and then tasking an electric motor to get the job done.
What Tomorrow May Bring
However, we are seeing a trend lately of electronics that use less and less power. Even tiny watch batteries now last nearly as long as their shelf life thanks to devices that have great power economy and improved battery management systems. As devices sip less power, opportunities to power them from the human body increase.
Granted, the
nPower PEG
seems to have vanished. The
Pavegen
system that generates electricity from people walking on a special floor doesn’t seem to generate very much power and is mostly used for tracking footsteps more than producing energy.
But harvesting energy from humans could provide energy for micropowered devices, especially wearable or medical devices. Body heat is an obvious candidate, or — borrowing from Pavegen — some type of generator in your shoe. A few
experimental medical devices use blood sugar
as fuel. For decades, self-winding wristwatches captured your arm’s motion to keep the clockwork running. Maybe a future smartwatch will boost its battery life using the same method.
To make that practical, you need
ultra low power electronics
. While we
know a few tricks
, we probably need to get at least another order of magnitude lower to make human-powered wearable devices more than a novelty.
[Banner image:
“Pedal power”
by
KylaBorg,
CC BY 2.0
] | 54 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6437874",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2022-03-01T18:26:19",
"content": "Would be nice, along with solar, wind, if people could get say a treadmill that would also store its energy somewhere. Also when I was young lots of things were manual, like can openers, tools and other com... | 1,760,372,774.234302 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/01/diy-super-bright-outdoor-tv-with-watercooling/ | DIY Super-Bright Outdoor TV With Watercooling | Danie Conradie | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"4k monitor",
"LCD TV",
"outdoor display"
] | Watching TV or playing a console game is usually not an outdoor activity, helped by the fact that you can’t see anything on your average TV in direct sunlight. However, with some basic fabrication skills, [Matt] from [DIY Perks] demonstrates how to
upgrade an LCD TV to be viewable in the brightest conditions
by upgrading its backlight, and adding a simple water-cooling system in the process. Full build video after the break.
An LCD panel doesn’t produce any light but acts as a filter for the backlight behind it, which is just a widely spaced array of white LEDs. The core of the build is upgrading the backlight, so [Matt] picked up a large 4K TV with a partially faulty backlight for a very affordable price. The new backlight consists of a set of high-brightness LED panels, screwed to a sheet of aluminum. The LEDs generate a lot of heat, so [Matt] cools the back of the aluminum sheet with a budget-friendly water cooling system built from a car radiator, small water pump, and some clear plastic tubing. Everything is housed in an industrial-looking enclosure made from aluminum sheet, aluminum extrusions, and an acrylic back panel. To protect the LCD panel, it’s glued to a sheet of tempered glass from an old coffee table.
The final product performs very well, even in direct sunlight, and is also weatherproof. [DIY Perks] is known for projects that work as well as they look, like his
triple-screen luggable PC
or massive
bellow-cooled PC
. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6437834",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2022-03-01T16:47:07",
"content": "Nice! But damn that must be one heavy TV.Reminds me of DIY projectors build from a naked LCD panel on an overhead projector (why are those not abbreviated with OHP in English?!).",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,774.113298 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/01/researchers-build-neural-networks-with-actual-neurons/ | Researchers Build Neural Networks With Actual Neurons | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"artificial intelligence",
"artificial neural network",
"biological neural network",
"neural network"
] | Neural networks have become a hot topic over the last decade, put to work on jobs from recognizing image content to generating text and even playing video games. However, these artificial neural networks are essentially just piles of maths inside a computer, and while they are capable of great things, the technology hasn’t yet shown the capability to produce genuine intelligence.
Cortical Labs, based down in Melbourne, Australia, has a different approach. Rather than rely solely on silicon, their work involves growing real biological neurons on electrode arrays, allowing them to be interfaced with digital systems. Their latest work has shown promise that these real biological neural networks can be made to learn, according to
a pre-print paper
that is yet to go through peer review.
Wetware
Scanning electron microscope pictures of neurons grown on a microelectrode array. Credit: Cortical Labs
The broad aim of the work is to harness biological neurons for their computational power, in an attempt to create “synthetic biological intelligence”. The general idea is that biological neurons have far more complexity and capability than any neural networks simulated in software. Thus, if one wishes to create a viable intelligence from scratch, it makes more sense to use biological neurons rather than messing about with human-created simulations of such.
The team behind the project investigated neural networks grown from both mouse and human cells. Mouse cortical cells were harvested from embryos for the purpose, while in the human cell case, pluripotent stem cells were used and differentiated into cortical neurons for the purpose of testing. These cells were plated onto a high-density multielectrode array from
Maxwell Biosystems
.
Once deposited and properly cultured in the lab, the cells formed “densely-interconnected dendritic networks” across the surface of the electrode array. These could then be stimulated electronically via the electrode array, and the responses of the neurons read back in turn. The result was a system nicknamed
DishBrain
, for the simple fact that it consists of neural matter essentially living in a petri dish.
DishBrain
was put to the test in a simulated game environment reminiscent of the game
Pong
. The biological neural network (BNN) has a series of electrodes that were stimulated based on the game state, providing the cells with sensory input. Other electrodes were then assigned to control the up and down movement of the paddle in the game.
A variety of feedback approaches were then used to see if the neural network could be taught to control the game intelligently. The primary idea was based around the Free Energy Principle, in which biological systems aim to act to maintain a world state that matches their own internal models. Thus, the “Stimulus” condition feedback loop was designed to provide unpredictable random feedback when the ball was missed by the paddle, and predictable feedback when the paddle hit the ball properly. This method was then contrasted against a silent mode where stimulus was entirely cut when the paddle hit the ball, and a no-feedback mode where no special stimulus was provided relative to the gamestate. A rest mode was also used to get a baseline reading of activity when unstimulated.
Analysis of data showing the performance of the neural network in various stimulus modes when interacting with a
Pong
-like environment. Credit: Cortical Labs
The results showed that, initially, there was little difference in game performance between the different modes, with the Stimulus condition performing slightly worse. However, after the first five minutes, statistics showed that under the Stimulus condition, the neural network maintained longer rallies of hitting the ball repeatedly, and was less likely to miss the initial serve, compared to the silent and no-feedback modes. In fact, the Stimulus condition was also the only condition in which the network showed improved performance over time, suggesting evidence of a learning effect. In comparison, the silent and no-feedback modes maintained a relatively flat performance level throughout a full 20-minute test.
The research, yet to be peer reviewed, shows much promise in several areas. Not only is it more evidence that we can successfully grow and interface with neuronal cells, it also provides a platform for a better understanding of how our brains work, on both a conceptual and physical level. If the results are confirmed to be valid, it suggests that the research team essentially managed to grow a very simple brain in a vat, and trained it to control a video game. Professional e-sports players should be on warning! (OK, maybe not yet.)
The paper makes for dense reading, but it shows that there is real potential for biological neurons to be trained to intelligently complete tasks in concert with digital interfaces. While it’s early days yet, in a few decades, you might be topping up your self-driving car with a vial of neuronal growth medium to ensure you can safely make it across the country on your roadtrip without it accidentally merging into traffic. Humanity is just learning how to interface with real biological brains, and it may be that we master that before we succeed in creating our own from scratch! | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6437796",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2022-03-01T15:18:20",
"content": "What could possibly go wrong with putting 1000 kg (~157 stone) of wetware in a box, because you know right well that is what someone at DARPA is thinking.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,372,774.061237 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/01/squeezing-a-wordle-clone-onto-the-game-boy/ | Squeezing AWordleClone Onto The Game Boy | Jenny List | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks"
] | [
"compression",
"game boy",
"Wordle"
] | The popular word game
Wordle
is both an addictive brain teaser for some and a perpetual social media annoyance for others. Its runaway success has spawned a host of clones, among them one created for the Nintendo Game Boy with a reduced vocabulary. [Alexander Pruss]
took on the challenge of improving it
by fitting the entire 12972-strong 5-letter-word vocabulary as well as the 2315-word answer list into a 32K cartridge along with the code. The challenge in compression on a platform of such meager resources is to devise an algorithm which does not require more computing power or memory than the device has at its disposal. His solution is both elegant and easy to understand.
Starting by dividing the words into lists by first letter such that he can ignore the letter, he can reduce each word to 20 bits as four 5-bit letters. The clever part comes when he organises the words alphabetically, meaning that the 20-bit numbers representing each word are in numerical order.
Thus instead of storing the full number he could store the difference between it and its predecessor. With a few extra tweaks he was able to get the full list down to an impressive 20186 bytes, but was still faced with not enough space. Turning to the
Wordle
code he found that a library function call could be switched to an alternative with a much more efficient footprint, resulting in a new ROM with all words in place
and ready to play
.
Of course our community have applied their minds to
Wordle
and we’ve featured more than one hack based upon it.
Mostly they have involved automated solving
, so this retro gaming version breaks new ground.
Header image: Sammlung der Medien und Wissenschaft,
CC BY 4.0
. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6437783",
"author": "Marijn Muhlenbruch",
"timestamp": "2022-03-01T14:56:40",
"content": "/Users/marijnmuhlenbruch/Desktop/Screenshot 2022-03-01 at 15.44.01.pngFor the life of me I can not find the answer to this Game Boy wordle. A little help?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,372,774.286692 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/03/01/a-custom-radio-and-telephone-system-for-glider-winch-operators/ | A Custom Radio And Telephone System For Glider Winch Operators | Robin Kearey | [
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"analog phone",
"audio mixer",
"glider",
"winch"
] | While gliding might be the most calm and peaceful way of moving through the air, launching a glider is a rather noisy and violent process. Although electric winches do exist, most airfields use big V8-powered machines to get their gliders airborne. [Peter Turczak] noticed that the winch operators at his airfield often had to juggle multiple communication channels while pressing buttons and moving levers, all with the deafening roar of a combustion engine right next to them. To make their life easier, he built
a single communication device that combines multiple radio inputs and an analog telephone
.
The inside of the cabinet. Note the classic phone ringer
The main user interface is a sturdy headset that dampens engine noise significantly. This headset is connected to a cabinet that contains several modules connecting to different audio sources: an analog telephone line, an aircraft radio receiver, a PMR handheld radio, and even a music source in case the other lines are quiet. The system contains automatic switchover circuits based on a priority system, ensuring that important messages are never missed.
The electronic design is based on classic analog components like NE5532 and TL084 op amps, all mounted on small, custom-made PCBs. Audio transformers are used to avoid ground loops between the various signal sources while relays mute sources that are not prioritized. To ensure seamless compatibility with the telephone network, [Peter] used components from old desk phones, including line transformers, a DTMF keypad and even a mechanical ringer. His blog post is full of details that will be of interest to anyone working with op amps and audio, such as how to stabilize an amplifier that has significant wiring capacitance on its input.
At heart this whole project is “just” an audio mixer, although optimized for a very specific purpose. But designing even a simple mixer is by no means an easy task,
as we reported a few years back
. If you’re more into winches, you’ll be delighted to find that smaller ones can also be
used for sledding
and even
wakeboarding
. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6437654",
"author": "Tom G",
"timestamp": "2022-03-01T09:19:05",
"content": "Glider winch launches are noisy for only one person. Nobody else with any sense will be anywhere near the launch cable; everybody else is a mile away :)Do try gliding. In a single flight you can fly alongsi... | 1,760,372,774.546374 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/28/from-hoverboard-to-scooter/ | From Hoverboard To Scooter | Matthew Carlson | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"Cutting and Machining",
"e-scooter",
"electric scooter",
"hoverboard"
] | I’m sure anyone who had seen Back To The Future was more than a little disappointed when “hoverboards” started appearing on the scene. They didn’t float and they looked fairly ridiculous for anyone over 12. But they have the huge advantage of being cheap and easy to find. [Made By Madman] breaks down a hoverboard for parts
to make an incredible custom electric scooter
.
The first step after breaking things down for parts was to break the wheel hub motors. He pulled out the axle and started machining a new one using the lathe and a milling machine. A quick temper later, he had a sturdy steel axle. An adapter for a disc brake was milled that could attach to the wheel. The TIG welder came out to weld up a box out of some aluminum to hold the electronics. The wheel had a bracket welded on with a spring shock absorber to help smooth the ride. The fork was machined on the lathe and belt sander, but actual shocks came from an old bicycle. To attach the fork to the frame, [Madman] bends a piece of bar stock into shape; like a madman. The handlebars were taken from the bicycle and the fork was extended up to an adult height.
A quick test ride in the alley showed that the back shock wasn’t strong enough, so he swapped it with a strong one. All the parts got a powder coat. Electronics wise, it has a standard speed controller and a custom battery made from 18650 cells wired up in a 13s6p configuration and bundled together into a package. After a significant amount of wiring, he took it for a test drove and we love seeing him zip around the streets in the snow.
So many parts here are machined to press-fit tolerances and then welded on. The skill, videography, and effort that went into this were just incredible. If you’re feeling inspired and don’t have a lathe on hand, perhaps
this 3d printed scooter might be a bit more your speed
. Video after the break. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6437688",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2022-03-01T10:43:15",
"content": "Sweet Jeebus. It’s the Project Binky of scooters.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6438231",
"author": "Belo",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,372,774.42334 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/28/hvtpi-primer-and-toolkit-equips-you-for-bom-substitutions/ | HVTPI Primer And Toolkit Equips You For BOM Substitutions | Arya Voronova | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Atmel TPI",
"attiny",
"attiny10",
"ATtiny4",
"ATtiny5",
"ATtiny9",
"hvtpi",
"in system programming",
"isp",
"TPI",
"usbasp"
] | Novel programming interfaces for MCUs might catch us by surprise, but then we inevitably get up to speed with the changes required.
Today’s bastion is HVTPI
– a “12V reset” addition to the TPI we’ve just started getting used to, and [Sam Ettinger] has shared a simple circuit to teach us all about it, along with PCB files and detailed explanations of how it all works.
HVTPI is an add-on on top of TPI, for which, as Sam explains, you need to hold RST at 12V when TPI would have it be low logic level, and leave it at Vtarget otherwise. For that, he has designed a variety of interposer boards of various complexity and requirements;
explaining the choices behind each one
and clearing up any misunderstandings that might occur on your way. All of the board files (and the TPI write-up copy)
are caringly shared with us
in a git repository, too! As a result,
if you have an USB-ASP
or
an Arduino
available, now you also have everything to do HVTPI, thanks to Sam’s work and explanations.
We’ve
been covering Sam’s exploits before
, and can’t help but be grateful for the stop-and-explain detour along the way. HVTPI being used on very small ATTiny parts, we wonder if something new in the vein of
his recent FPC board able to fit and function entirely within a Type-C cable end
!
With chip shortages, investigating programming interfaces for small and obscure yet in-stock microcontrollers has been, quite literally, paying off, and if you got some projects that need a MCU but won’t consume a whole lot of resources, it could be time to
give an ATTiny10 a go
. What’s the worst that can happen – you make
the smallest chiptunes ever
? | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6437544",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2022-03-01T03:51:03",
"content": "Info:TPI stands for Tiny Programming Interface and it is Atmel specific.HVTPI is High-Voltage TPI",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6437548",
"autho... | 1,760,372,774.385845 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.