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https://hackaday.com/2022/02/06/open-hardware-dog-treat-dispenser-is-a-stepping-stone-for-behavioral-research/ | Open-Hardware Dog Treat Dispenser Is A Stepping Stone For Behavioral Research | Arya Voronova | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Science"
] | [
"behavioral science",
"food dispenser",
"open hardware",
"open source hardware",
"pet food dispenser",
"raspberry pi",
"science",
"science equipment",
"scientific equipment",
"scientific paper"
] | The principles of open-source hardware are starting to make great strides in scientific research fields. [Walker Arce] tells us about his paper co-authored with [Jeffrey R. Stevens], about
a dog treat dispenser designed with scientific researchers in mind
– indispensable for behavior research purposes, and easily reproducible so that our science can be, too. Use of Raspberry Pi, NEMA steppers and a whole lot of 3D printed parts make this build cheap (< $200 USD) and easy to repeat for any experiments involving dogs or other treat-loving animals.
Even if you’re not a scientist, you could always build one for your own pet training purposes – this design is that simple and easy to reproduce! The majority of the parts are hobbyist-grade, and chances are, you can find most of the parts for this around your workshop. Wondering how this dispenser works, and most importantly, if the dogs are satisfied with it? Check out
a short demonstration video
after the break.
Despite such dispensers being commercially available, having a new kind of dispenser designed and verified is more valuable than you’d expect – authors report that, in their experience, off-the-shelf dispensers have 20-30% error rate while theirs can boast just 4%, and they have
test results to back that up
. We can’t help but be happy that the better-performing one is available for any of us to build.
The GitHub repository
has everything you could want – from STLs and PCB files, to a Raspberry Pi SD card image and
a 14-page assembly and setup guide PDF
.
Open hardware and science
are a match made in heaven
, even if the relationship is still developing. The Hackaday community
has come together to discuss open hardware in science before
, and every now and then, open-source scientific equipment graces our pages, just like this recent assortment of
biosensing hacks using repurposed consumer-grade equipment
. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421776",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2022-02-06T16:23:24",
"content": "The 1960s through 80a shudders in horror at so much processing power wasted when a mechanical mechanism can do the same.Unless this has encrypted QR on the back of that disk to verify and track every treat,... | 1,760,372,797.959606 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/06/the-q2-a-pdp8-like-discrete-transistor-computer/ | The Q2, A PDP8-Like Discrete Transistor Computer | Dave Rowntree | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"ALU",
"Bit serial",
"mosfet",
"PDP-8",
"Q2",
"raspberry pi",
"rust"
] | [Joe Wingbermuehle] has an interest in computers-of-old, and some past experience of building computers on perfboard from discrete transistors, so this next project,
Q2, is a complete implementation of a PDP8-like microcomputer on a single PCB
. Like the
DEC PDP-8
, this is a 12-bit machine, but instead of the diode-transistor logic of the DEC, the substantially smaller Q2 uses a simple NMOS approach. Also, the DEC has core memory, but the Q2 resorts to a pair of SRAM ICs, simply because who wants to make repetitive memory structures with discrete 2N7002 transistors anyway?
SMT components for easy machine placement
Like the PDP-8, this machine uses a bit-serial ALU, which allows the circuit to be much smaller than the more usual ALU structure, at the expense of needing a clock cycle per bit per operation, i.e. a single ALU operation will take 12 clock cycles. For this machine, the instruction cycle time is either 8 or 32 clocks anyway, and at a maximum speed of 80 kHz it’s not exactly fast (and significantly slower than a PDP-8) but it is very small. Small, and perfectly formed.
The machine is constructed from 1094 transistors, with logic in an NMOS configuration, using 10 K pullup resistors. This is not a fast way to build a circuit, but it is very compact. By looking at the logic fanout, [Joe] spotted areas with large fanouts, and reduced the pull-up resistors from 10 K to 1 K. This was done in order to keep the propagation delay within bounds for the cycle time without excessive power usage. Supply current was kept to below 500 mA, allowing the board to be powered from a USB connector. Smart!
Memory is courtesy of two battery-backed 6264 SRAMs, with the four 12-bit general purpose registers built from discrete transistors. An LCD screen on board is a nice touch, augmenting the ‘front panel’ switches used for program entry and user input. A 40-pin header was added, for programming via a Raspberry Pi in case the front panel programming switches are proving a bit tedious and error prone.
Discrete transistor D-type flip flop with indicator. Latest circuit switched to 2N7002 NMOS.
In terms of
the project write-up
, there is plenty to see, with a Verilog model available,
a custom programming language
[Joe] calls Q2L, complete with a compiler and
assembler
(written in Rust!) even an
online Q2 simulator
! Lots of cool demos, like snake. Game of Life and even Pong, add some really lovely touches. Great stuff!
We’ve featured many similar projects over the years;
here’s a nice one
, a really
small 4-bit one
, and
a
really
big one
. | 39 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421745",
"author": "monsonite",
"timestamp": "2022-02-06T13:32:15",
"content": "Awesome – amazing what you can do with 1000 discrete transistors and a couple of 8K RAMs!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6421747",
"author": "... | 1,760,372,798.164357 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/06/ibm-palmtop-running-modern-modified-linux/ | IBM PalmTop Running Modern (Modified) Linux | Bryan Cockfield | [
"classic hacks",
"computer hacks"
] | [
"antique",
"aosc",
"command line",
"distribution",
"ibm",
"linux",
"palmtop",
"retro",
"retro computing",
"text",
"windows 95"
] | The handheld computing market might seem dominated by smartphones today, but before their mass adoption there were other offerings for those who needed some computing power on-the-go. If a 90s laptop was too bulky, there was always the IBM PalmTop which packed punch for its size-to-weight ratio, and for the era it was created in. [Mingcong Bai] still has one of
these antiques and decided to see if it was still usable by loading a customized Linux distribution on it
.
The PalmTop sported modest hardware even for its time with an Intel 486SL running at 33 MHz with 20 MiB of RAM. This one also makes use of a 1 GB CompactFlash card for storage and while [Mingcong Bai] notes that it is possible to run Windows 95 on it, it’s not a particularly great user experience. A Linux distribution customized for antique hardware,
AOSC/Retro
, helps solve some of these usability issues. With this it’s possible to boot into a command line and even do some limited text-based web browsing as long as the Ethernet adapter is included.
While the computer is running at its maximum capacity just to boot and perform basic system functions, it’s admirable that an antique computer such as this still works, especially given its small size and limited hardware functionality. If you’re curious about more PalmTop-style computers,
take a look at the first one ever produced: the HP-200LX
. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421692",
"author": "olaf",
"timestamp": "2022-02-06T09:18:16",
"content": "I would say, if someone like to enjoy a vintage linux experience in his pocket he should look at one of the old Sharp Zaurus. I had them as PDA in the 2000er and it was possible to do almost everything than ... | 1,760,372,798.013837 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/05/openbikesensor-measures-close-calls/ | OpenBikeSensor Measures Close Calls | Robin Kearey | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"citizen science",
"cycling",
"cycling computer"
] | Cycling is fun, healthy, and good for the environment. But unfortunately it’s not always the safest of activities, as inconsiderate drivers can be a significant hazard to cyclists. Several countries, including Germany, France, and Belgium have introduced legislation mandating a minimum passing distance of at least 1.5 meters between cars and bikes. Enforcing such a rule is tricky however, and without accurate data on average passing distances it’s hard to know how many drivers are following it.
Enter
OpenBikeSensor, an open-source hardware and community science project
designed to gather exactly this information. Currently in its prototype phase, it aims to make a simple bike-mounted sensor that measures the lateral distance to any passing vehicles. The resulting data is collected online to generate maps highlighting danger zones, which can ultimately be used by city planners to improve cycling infrastructure.
The hardware is based around a set of ultrasonic sensors that measure the lateral distance to any large object. A GPS module keeps track of the bike’s location, while an ESP32 reads out the data and stores it onto an SD card. The user interface consists of a handlebar-mounted display that shows the system’s status. There’s also a button that the user needs to press any time they are passed by a vehicle: this will trigger a measurement and log the location. Once back home, the user can connect the OpenBikeSensor to their WiFi network and download their trip data.
The initial results look promising, and any project that gets people cycling and tinkering with electronics at the same time is worth looking into. It’s not the first time we’ve seen bike-mounted sensors either: people have designed their own sensors to measure
air pollution in South America
, or simply
their own bike’s speed
or
tire pressure
. | 54 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421627",
"author": "jonmayo",
"timestamp": "2022-02-06T06:09:46",
"content": "very cool technology-wise and aesthetically pleasing in its own way.Might I propose a low-tech solution. a 1.5 meter dowel or which has a permanent market attached to it. Flexible enough to bend easily, a... | 1,760,372,798.441017 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/05/camping-for-25-thrift-store-hacks-to-keep-cozy/ | Camping For $25: Thrift Store Hacks To Keep Cozy | Ryan Flowers | [
"cooking hacks",
"Lifehacks"
] | [
"camping",
"cheap",
"diy",
"duck tape",
"on the cheap",
"repurposing",
"survival"
] | A hacker is somebody who’s always thinking creatively to solve problems, usually using what they have on hand. Sometimes that means using a 555 to build a CPU, and other times it means using a dead flashlight to start a fire. In the video below the break,
[Kelly] shows us a series of hacks
you can use while camping in the woods for a night to keep you warm, dry, and well fed!
[Kelly] started his camping trip not in the woods, but rather at a local thrift store. Instead of packing along hundreds of dollars in gear, his aim was to keep costs low. Very low. With some searching he was able to find a blanket, cooking utensils, rope, knife, tarp, and several other camp necessities for just $25.
A good campfire is a necessity of course, and [Kelly]’s full of great ways to start a fire even if all you have is a lighter with no butane or an old flashlight with dead batteries. The purpose of the video is to show how anyone can get their bush craft on even when all they have is a few dollars and a little know-how, which he generously shares. And after watching, we’re sure you’ll agree that he met his mark.
Will you raid the local second hand store before your next camping trip? After seeing this video, you just might! And while you’re there, make sure to grab the things you’ll need to
make your own camping-friendly French press
so you have some good coffee while you’re
out camping in your… uh… Corolla
? | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421619",
"author": "Steven",
"timestamp": "2022-02-06T05:13:43",
"content": "As housing prices continue to skyrocket, these sorts of skills are going to be useful for more than recreational camping trips.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,372,798.353387 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/05/twist-promises-easier-quantum-programming/ | Twist Promises Easier Quantum Programming | Al Williams | [
"Software Development"
] | [
"quantum computing",
"qubit"
] | We keep trying to learn more about quantum computers. But the truth is, the way we program quantum computers — or their simulators — today will probably not have much in common with how we program them in the future. Think about it. Programming your PC is nothing like programming the ENIAC. So we expect we’ll see more and more abstractions over the “bare metal” quantum computer. The latest of these is
Twist
, from MIT.
According to
the paper
(and the video, below), Twist expresses entangled data and processes in a way that traditional programmers can understand. The key concept is known as “purity” of expressions which helps the compiler determine if data is actually entangled with another piece of data or if any potential entanglement is extraneous. A pure expression only depends on qubits it owns, while a mixed expression may use qubits owned by other expressions.
Here’s an example of a teleportation program in Twist:
This may seem strange, but discarding a qubit has the same effect as measuring it, so discarding an intermediate result can affect an entangled result that doesn’t immediately seem related. This is similar to how, in conventional programming, you might free memory used by two different pointers. Discarding memory containing, say, an employee record while holding another pointer to the same record will cause problems if you reuse that memory later. However, with Twist, you can promise the compiler that there are no entanglements between pure expressions.
There is plenty more, of course, so read the paper. If you need a refresher on basic quantum computing principles, check out
our series
or
watch a video
. | 17 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421592",
"author": "Frankel",
"timestamp": "2022-02-06T00:22:46",
"content": "Pardon if I interject here, but how is it teleportation if I force two entangled particles into a defined state by measuring one of them? There is a probability for either outcome. So I might measure up/d... | 1,760,372,797.737402 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/05/hdd-centrifuge-puts-covid-19-testing-lab-in-a-backpack/ | HDD Centrifuge Puts COVID-19 Testing Lab In A Backpack | Dan Maloney | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"centrifuge",
"Covid-19",
"e-waster",
"hard drive",
"lamp",
"lateral flow",
"qPCR",
"SARS-CoV-2",
"testing"
] | Throughout this two-year global COVID-19 nightmare, one thing that has been sorely lacking is access to testing. “Flu-like symptoms” covers a lot of ground, and knowing if a sore throat is just a sore throat or something more is important enough that we’ve collectively plowed billions into testing. Unfortunately, the testing infrastructure remains unevenly distributed, which is a problem
this backpack SARS-CoV-2 testing lab
aims to address.
The portable lab, developed by [E. Emily Lin] and colleagues at the Queen Mary University of London, uses a technique called LAMP, for loop-mediated isothermal amplification. LAMP probably deserves an article of its own to explain the process, but suffice it to say that like PCR, LAMP amplifies nucleic acid sequences, but does so without the need for expensive thermal cycling equipment. The kit contains a microcentrifuge that’s fashioned from an e-waste hard drive, a 3D printed rotor, and an Arduino to drive the motor and control the speed. The centrifuge is designed to run on any 12 VDC source, meaning the lab can be powered by a car battery or solar panel if necessary. Readout relies on the trusty Mark I eyeball and a pH-indicating buffer that changes color depending on how much SARS-CoV-2 virus was in the sample.
Granted, the method used here still requires more skill to perform than
a simple “spit on a stick” rapid antigen test
, and it’s somewhat more subjective than the “gold standard”
quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assay
. But the method is easily learned, and the kit’s portability, simple design, and low-cost construction could make it an important tool in attacking this pandemic, or the next one.
Thanks to [Christian Himmler] for the tip. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421582",
"author": "Bsc",
"timestamp": "2022-02-05T23:41:04",
"content": "This test shows no ability to distinguish between covid and any other virus.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6422047",
"author": "combinatorylo... | 1,760,372,798.294166 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/09/mystery-effect-causing-leds-to-glow-during-reflow/ | Mystery Effect Causing LEDs To Glow During Reflow | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"capacitor",
"led",
"reflow"
] | Sometimes you notice something small that nevertheless you can’t explain. [Greg Davill] found himself in just such a situation this week when he noticed some green LEDs
glowing dimly when reflowing some boards.
Naturally, [Greg] set out to investigate.
The green LEDs were wired up as power indicators, and [Greg] suspected that the polymer caps on the board might be generating a small current somehow that was causing the LEDs to light up ever so slightly. A simple test hooked a polymer cap directly up to a multimeter. When warmed with a heat gun, the meter showed a small current “in the 5-10 uA range.”
Going further, [Greg] soldered an LED to the cap and once again heated it up, this time to 100° C. The LED glowed, continuing to do so for around 60 seconds with heat removed. The mystery also grew deeper – [Greg] noticed that this only happened with “fresh” capacitors. Once they’d been through one heat cycle, the caps would no longer light an LED when warmed up.
It’s a curious case, and has many speculating as to the causative mechanism on Twitter. Explanations from thermoelectric effects to chemical reactions inside the capacitor. If you’ve got the inside scoop on what’s going on here, don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments. Meanwhile, check out some of [Greg]’s best work –
a glowing D20 dice featuring a whopping 2400 LEDs.
[Thanks to J Peterson for the tip!] | 34 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6422890",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2022-02-09T12:29:22",
"content": "That’s the magic smoke breaking in!I wonder whoever first makes this a feature (pcb testing during reflow? self-powered reflow?)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,372,798.241009 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/09/a-guide-to-milling-pcbs-at-home/ | A Guide To Milling PCBs At Home | Chris Lott | [
"how-to"
] | [
"cam",
"CNC milling",
"EDA tools",
"Logic simulation",
"PCB home milling",
"spice simulation",
"vacuum tubes"
] | If you keep up with various retro vacuum tube projects, you probably have run across [UsagiElectric] aka [David]’s various PCBs that he makes on his own Bridgeport EZ-Track 3-axis milling machine — massively oversized for the job, as he puts it. In a recent video, [David] walks us through the steps of making a sample PCB, introducing the various tools and procedures of his workflow. He points out that these are the tools he uses, but the overall process should be similar no matter what tools you use.
Logisim
to validate logic designs
TINA-TI
, Texas Instrument’s version of the TINA SPICE simulator
DesignSpark PCB
for schematic entry and PCB layout
FlatCAM
, a computer-aided PCB manufacturing tool
For this video, [David] makes a half-adder circuit out of four vacuum tubes plus a seven-segment VFD tube to show the combined sum and carry outputs. Momentary switches are used to generate the two addends. Using this example, he proceeds to design, simulate, build and demonstrate a working circuit board. We like his use of the machined pin socket inserts for building a vacuum tube socket directly into the board.
Now this process isn’t for everyone. First of all, a Bridgeport mill is a pretty good sized, and heavy, tool. That said, these procedures should adapt well to other milling machines and engravers. We should point out that [David] is making boards mostly for vacuum tubes, where circuit trace width and spacing distances are generous. If you’re planning to make home PCBs for a 273-pin PGA chip, this isn’t the technique for you.
It seems that the bulk of [David]’s vacuum tube PCBs are single-sided, and reasonably so. They use wire links here and there to jump over traces. Adapting this process to double-sided PCBs is doable, but more complex. Are you milling double-sided boards in your lab? If so, let us know about it in the comments below. | 31 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6422853",
"author": "vib",
"timestamp": "2022-02-09T09:10:36",
"content": "“First of all, a Bridgeport mill is a pretty good sized, and heavy, tool. ”I, would, say you, have a, problem with, punctuation.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,372,797.810418 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/08/working-model-reveals-amazing-engineering-of-webbs-mirror-actuators/ | Working Model Reveals Amazing Engineering Of Webb’s Mirror Actuators | Dan Maloney | [
"Space"
] | [
"actuator",
"flexure",
"hexapod",
"james webb space telescope",
"jwst",
"mirror",
"stepper",
"stewart"
] | We end up covering a lot of space topics here on Hackaday, not because we’re huge space nerds — spoiler alert: we are — but because when you’ve got an effectively unlimited budget and a remit to make something that cannot fail, awe-inspiring engineering is often the result. The mirror actuators on the James Webb Space Telescope are a perfect example of this extreme engineering, and to understand how they work a little better, [Zachary Tong] built
a working model of these amazing machines
.
The main mirror of the JWST is made of 18 separate hexagonal sections, the position of each which must be finely tuned to make a perfect reflector. Each mirror has seven actuators that move it through seven degrees of freedom — the usual six that
a Stewart platform mechanism
provides, plus the ability to deform the mirror’s curvature slightly. [Zach]’s model actuator is reverse-engineered from
public information
(PDF) made available by the mirror contractor, Ball Aerospace. While the OEM part is made from the usual space-rated alloys and materials, the model is 3D printed and powered by a cheap stepper motor.
That simplicity belies the ingenious mechanism revealed by the model. The actuators allow for both coarse and fine adjustments over a wide range of travel. A clever tumbler mechanism means that only one motor is needed for both fine and coarse adjustments, and a flexure mechanism is used to make the fine adjustments even finer — a step size of only 8 nanometers!
Hats off to [Zach] for digging into this for us, and for
making all his files available
in case you want to print your own. You may not be building a space observatory anytime soon, but there’s plenty about these mechanisms that can inform your designs.
Thanks to [Zane Atkins] for the tip. | 30 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6422826",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2022-02-09T07:00:28",
"content": "Brilliant video.After watching it I would guess that testing all 108 stepper motors (18 mirror segments with 6 single point of failure stepper motors per mirror) was a high priority test.",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,372,798.084218 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/08/wordle-reverse-engineering-and-automated-solving/ | Wordle Reverse-Engineering And Automated Solving | Dave Rowntree | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"Absurdle",
"puzzle",
"python",
"reverse engineering",
"Wordle"
] | Simplified Absurdle decision tree for a single letter guess from a set of three possible options
We don’t know about you, but we have mixed feelings about online puzzle fads. On one hand, they are great tool to help keep one sharp, but they’re just
everywhere
. The latest social-media driven fad, Wordle, may be a little bit too prevalent for our liking, with social media timelines stuffed with updates about the thing. [Ed Locard] was getting a bit miffed with friends’ constant posts about ‘Today’s Wordle’, and was hoping they’d get back to posting pictures of their dogs instead, so did what any self-respecting hacker would do, and
wrote a python script to automate solving Wordle puzzles
, in a likely futile attempt to get them to stop posting.
Actually, [Ed] was more interested in building a solver for a related game,
Absurdle
, which is described as an adversarial variant of Wordle. This doesn’t actually select a single word, but uses your guesses so far to narrow down a large pool of possible words, keeping you guessing for longer. Which is pretty mean of it. Anyway, [Ed] came up with a tool called
Pyrdle
, (GitHub project) which is essentially a command version of Absurdle, that has the capability of also solving Wordle as a byproduct. It turns out the JS implementation of Wordle holds the entire possible wordlist, client-side, so the answer is already sitting in your browser. The real interest part of this project is the approach to automated problem solving of puzzles with a very large potential set of solutions. This makes for an interesting read, and infinitely more so than reading yet another Wordle post.
And one final note; if you’re not at all onboard with this, love Wordle, and can’t get enough, you might like to install [brackendawson]’s comically titled (command)
notfoundle
shell handler, for some puzzling feedback on your command-line slip-ups. Well, it amused us anyway.
Puzzle projects hit these pages once in a while. Here’s the
annual Xmas GCHQ puzzle
, If you’re more into physical puzzles, with an electronics focus (and can solder) check out the
DEF CON 29 puzzle badge
! | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6422775",
"author": "Magic Smoke",
"timestamp": "2022-02-09T03:17:49",
"content": "There is also an RShiny app:https://pacha.dev/blog/2022/01/14/shinywordle-a-shiny-app-to-solve-the-game-worldle-and-the-power-of-regular-expressions/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,372,798.498635 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/08/a-tuning-fork-clock-with-discreet-logic/ | A Tuning Fork Clock, With Discrete Logic | Dave Rowntree | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"electromagnetics",
"timepiece",
"tuning fork",
"upcycling",
"Vibrmatic"
] | [Willem Koopman aka Secretbatcave] was looking at a master clock he has in his collection which was quite a noisy device, but wanted to use the matching solenoid slave clock mechanism he had to hand. Willem is a fan of old-school ‘sector’ clocks, so proceeded to build his ideal time piece — Vibrmatic — exactly the way he wanted. Now, since most time keeping devices utilise a crystal oscillator — which is little more than a lump of vibrating quartz — why not
scale it up a bit and use the same principle, except with a metal tuning fork
? (some profanity, just to warn you!)
Shock-mounted tuning force oscillator
A crystal oscillator operates in a simple manner; you put some electrical energy in, it resonates at its natural frequency, you sense that resonance, and feed it back into it to keep it sustaining. With a tuning fork oscillator, the vibration forcing and the feedback are both done via induction, coils act as the bridge between the electronic and mechanical worlds.
By mounting the tuning fork onto a shock mounting, the 257 Hz drone was kept from leaking out into the case and disturbing the household. This fork was specified to be 256 Hz, but [Willem] reckons the drag of the electromagnets pushed it off frequency a bit. Which make sense, since its a mechanical system, that has extra forces acting upon it.
The sector face was CNC cut from aluminium, the graphics engraved, then polished up a bit. Finally after a spot of paint, it looks pretty smart. Some nice chunks of upcycled wood taken from some building work spoils formed the exposed enclosure. On the electronics side, after totally ignoring the frequency error, and then tripping over a bunch of problems such as harmonics in the oscillation, and an incorrectly set-up divider, a solution which seemed to work was found, but like always, there are quite a few more details to the story to be found in the build log.
We’ve seen a tuning fork clock recently, like
this 440 Hz device by [Kris Slyka]
that the project above references, and whilst we’re talking about tuning forks, here’s a project log showing the
insides of those ubiquitous 32.768 kHz
crystal units. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6422704",
"author": "limroh",
"timestamp": "2022-02-09T00:42:02",
"content": "“Vibrmatic” ???Shouldn’t this be “vibromatic”?What does either one mean and why is it a tag too?Is it the name [Willem Koopman aka Secretbatcave] gave his build? than maybe not tag worthy?",
"parent_id... | 1,760,372,799.039243 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/08/3d-printed-maglev-switches-are-so-hot-right-now/ | 3D Printed Maglev Switches Are So Hot Right Now | Tom Nardi | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed keyboard",
"hall effect sensor",
"keyboard",
"magnetic keyboard"
] | It doesn’t happen all the time, but over the years we’ve noticed that once we feature a project, a number of very similar builds often find themselves in our tip line before too long. Of course, these aren’t copycats; not enough time has passed for some competitive maker to spin up their own version. No, most of the time it’s somebody else who was working on a very similar project in isolation, and who now for the first time realizes they aren’t alone.
Thanks to this phenomenon we’re happy to report that yet another
3D printable magnetic levitation switch has come to light
. Developed by [famichu], this take on the concept is markedly different from what we’ve seen previously, which in a way makes the whole thing even more impressive. It’s one thing for multiple hackers to develop similar projects independently of each other, as the end goal often dictates the nature of the design itself. But here we’re seeing a project that took the same core concepts and ran in a different direction.
So what makes the MagLev Switch MX different from
[riskable]’s recently released void_switch
? In a word, convention. It seems that [famichu] wanted to create a magnetic switch that operated in more or less the same way a traditional Cherry MX switch does, while the void_switch represents a re-imagining of how keyboard switches should work entirely. So for example, rather than putting all the Hall effect sensors on the main PCB so there’s no need to make an electrical connection to each individual switch, each MagLev Switch MX is pinned and must be wired together to form a matrix.
Internally, [famichu] has come up with a unique arrangement wherein the Allegro A1304 linear Hall effect sensor is actually placed in between two opposing magnets that stand in for the traditional spring. When the key is depressed the sensor will pick up the magnetic flux environment changing around it, but interestingly, the schematic for the keyboard PCB would seem to indicate that the senors are not being read directly by the microcontroller. Instead, their output is being used to trigger MOSFETs on each row of the matrix.
In this design, each switch carries its own Hall sensor.
In terms of getting them printed, the MagLev Switch MX has fewer parts than the void_switch, and [famichu] recommends printing them on an MSLA machine. This greatly accelerates the printing time compared to the FDM-printed void_switch, as there’s
no time penalty for filling the entire build volume
of the printer for each run. As for customization, the Fusion 360 design files have been included in addition to the standard STL/3MF models. But for our money, nothing quite beats using OpenSCAD’s customizer capability for a project like this.
The big takeaway here is that there’s clearly more than one way to make an open source, 3D printable, magnetic MX-style switch. We’re very excited to see both projects develop further, especially since a little birdie tells us that [riskable] has taken a close look at this design and has a few notes to pass on to [famichu] based on his experiences developing the void_switch. With these two magnetic mavens collaborating, the future of bespoke input devices is looking very bright indeed.
Thanks to [Stephanie] for the tip. | 31 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6422673",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2022-02-08T22:05:56",
"content": "i was wondering how this could possibly work, since my fdm printer simply isn’t repeatable enough to get satisfactory results on a part that’s supposed to slide in a sleeve…i would have to do a lot of trim... | 1,760,372,799.541801 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/08/palm-portable-keyboard-goes-wireless/ | Palm Portable Keyboard Goes Wireless | Kristina Panos | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"Adafruit Feather",
"nRF52840",
"palm",
"Palm portable keyboard"
] | Long ago when digital portables where in their infancy, people were already loath to type on tiny keyboards, stylus or not. So Palm made a sweet little portable keyboard that would fold up and fit in your cargo pocket. And what do we have now for luxury typing on the go? Rubber roll-up jelly keebs? That’s a hard no from this scribe.
But why mess with the success of the the Palm Portable Keyboard? It just needs to be updated for our times, and
that’s exactly what [Xinming Chen] did with their PPK Bluetooth adapter
.
Inspired by
the work of [cy384] to make a USB adapter
as well as
[Christian]’s efforts with the ESP32
, [Xinming Chen] points out that this version is more power efficient, easier to program, and has a built-in Li-Po charging circuit. It also uses the hardware serial port instead of the software serial, which saves brainpower.
There’s really not much to this build, which relies on the Adafruit Feather nRF52840 and will readily work with Palm III and Palm V keyboards. Since the PPK is RS-232 and needs to be TTL, this circuit also needs a voltage level inverter which can be made with a small handful of components. We love that there’s a tiny hidden switch that engages the battery when the adapter clicks on to the connector.
The schematic, code, and STL files are all there in the repository, so go pick up one of these foldy keebs for cheap on the electronic bay while they’re still around. Watch the demo video unfold after the break.
Want an all-in-one solution for typing on the go?
Check out the history of tiny computers
. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6422641",
"author": "K",
"timestamp": "2022-02-08T20:16:27",
"content": "Hey, I have this keyboard and a palm tungsten. I believe the keyboard uses IR. I still need to turn it on and see how it works, but I think I’ll mod in a processor so I can use it as a PDA.",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,372,798.985242 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/07/lazier-web-scraping-is-better-web-scraping/ | “Lazier” Web Scraping Is Better Web Scraping | Donald Papp | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"python",
"web scraping",
"xhr"
] | Ever needed to get data from a web page? Parsing the content for data is called web scraping, and [Doug Guthrie] has a
few tips for making the process of digging data out of a web page simpler and more efficient
, complete with code examples in Python. He uses getting data from Yahoo Finance as an example, because it’s apparently a pretty common use case judging by how often questions about it pop up on Stack Overflow. The general concepts are pretty widely applicable, however.
[Doug] shows that while parsing a web page for a specific piece of data (for example, a stock price) is not difficult, there are sometimes easier and faster ways to go about it. In the case of Yahoo Finance, the web page most of us look at isn’t really the actual source of the data being displayed, it’s just a front end.
One way to more efficiently scrape data is to get to the data’s source. In the case of Yahoo Finance, the data displayed on a web page comes from a JavaScript variable that is perfectly accessible to the end user, and much easier to parse and work with. Another way is to go one level lower, and retrieve JSON-formatted data from the same place that the front-end web page does; ignoring the front end altogether and essentially treating it as an unofficial API. Either way is not only easier than parsing the end result, but faster and more reliable, to boot.
How does one find these resources? [Doug] gives some great tips on how exactly to do so, including how to use a web browser’s developer tools to ferret out
XHR
requests. These methods won’t work for everything, but they are definitely worth looking into to see if they are an option. Another resource to keep in mind is
woob (web outside of browsers)
, which has an impressive list of back ends available for reading and interacting with web content. So if you need data for your program, but it’s on a web page? Don’t let that stop you! | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6422155",
"author": "rpavlik",
"timestamp": "2022-02-07T14:36:47",
"content": "Nice! I am also a fan of finding these apis where available. I figure it’s even polite, since it’s less load on their server… Now if only I could figure out how to extract the data from my local health de... | 1,760,372,798.873377 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/07/as-light-as-plastic-as-strong-as-steel/ | As Light As Plastic; As Strong As Steel | Al Williams | [
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"Chemistry",
"mit",
"polymers"
] | Chemical engineers at MIT have pulled off something that was once thought impossible. By polymerizing material in two different directions at once, they have created
a polymer that is very strong
. You can read a pre-print version of the paper over on
Arxiv
.
Polymers owe many of their useful properties to the fact that they make long chains. Molecules known as monomers join together in strings held together by covalent bonds. Polymer chains may be cross-linked which changes its properties, but it has long been thought that material that had chains going through the X and Y axis would have desirable properties, but making these reliably is a challenge.
Part of the problem is that it is hard to line up molecules, even large monomers. If one monomer in the chain rotates a bit, it will create a defect in the 2D structure and that defect will grow rapidly as you add more monomers. The new technique is relatively easy to do and is irreversible which is good because reversible chains tend to have undesirable characteristics like low chemical stability. Synthesis does require a few chemicals like melamine, calcium chloride, pyridine, and trimesic acid. Along with N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone, the mixture eventually forms a gel. The team took pieces of gel and soaked it in ethanol. With some filtering, ultrasonics, centrifuging, and washing with water and acetone, the material was ready for vacuum drying and was made into a powder.
The powder is dissolved in acid and placed on a spinning silicon wafer to form a polymerized nanofilm. Other 2D films have been produced, of course, such as graphene, but polymer films may have a number of applications. In particular, in contrast to conventional polymers, sheets of this material are impermeable to gas and liquid, which could make it very useful as a coating.
According to the MIT press release, the film’s elastic modulus is about four and six times greater than that of bulletproof glass. The amount of force required to break the material is about twice that of steel. It doesn’t sound like this material will be oozing out of our 3D printers anytime soon. But maybe one day you’ll be able to get 2D super-strong resin.
For all their faults, conventional polymers
changed the world
as we know it. Some polymers occur naturally, and
some use natural ingredients
, too. | 38 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6422087",
"author": "metalman",
"timestamp": "2022-02-07T09:57:30",
"content": "this stuff is going to be a big help in hydrogen storage and use,and could be the key to lighter ,stronger ,gas cylinders of all kinds,thinking of compsite cylinders made in braiders,and then hey!,space ... | 1,760,372,799.113175 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/06/cannonball-mold-makes-a-dandy-integrating-sphere-for-laser-measurements/ | Cannonball Mold Makes A Dandy Integrating Sphere For Laser Measurements | Dan Maloney | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"barium sulfate",
"cannonball",
"diffuser",
"integrating sphere",
"integration",
"laser",
"optical",
"PVA",
"spectrometer",
"Ulbricht"
] | It’s an age-old riddle: if you have a perfect sphere with a perfectly reflective inner surface, will light bounce around inside it forever? The answer is pretty obvious when you think it through, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t put the principle to use, as we see with
this homemade Ulbricht sphere
for optical measurements.
If you’ve never heard of an Ulbricht sphere, don’t worry — it’s also known as an integrating sphere, and that makes its function a little more apparent. As [Les Wright] explains, an integrating sphere is an optical element with a hollow spherical cavity that’s coated with a diffusely reflective coating. There are two ports in the sphere, one for admitting light — usually from a laser — and one for light to exit. The light bounces around inside the sphere and becomes perfectly diffuse, and creates a uniform beam at the exit port.
[Les]’ need for an integrating sphere comes from the desire to measure the output of some of his lasers with his Raspberry Pi-based
PySpectrometer
. Rather than shell out for an expensive commercial integrating sphere, or turn one on a lathe, [Les] turned to an unlikely source: cannonball molds. The inside of the mold was painted with an equally unlikely ultra-white paint concocted from barium sulfate and PVA glue. With a few ports machined into the mold, it works perfectly to diffuse the light from his dye lasers for proper measurements.
Lasers can be an expensive hobby, but [Les] always seems to find a way to make things more affordable and just as good. Whether it’s
homemade doorknob caps
for high-voltage power supplies or
blasting the Bayer filter off a cheap CCD camera
, he always seems to find a way. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6422074",
"author": "Hans",
"timestamp": "2022-02-07T08:51:45",
"content": "The link to ” blasting the Bayer filter off a cheap CCD camera” is wrong.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6422241",
"author": "Tom Nardi",
... | 1,760,372,798.923182 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/06/making-something-gorgeous-from-framing-lumber/ | Making Something Gorgeous From Framing Lumber | Matthew Carlson | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"framing lumber",
"nightstand",
"woodworker",
"woodworking"
] | Here at Hackaday, we typically cover things that blink, bleep, and occasionally they might even bloop. However, the name of the site is Hackaday. We’re about being clever, reusing things in new ways, and most importantly celebrating interesting projects. While not a traditional project that would grace the front page, we would argue
that this nightstand made from framing lumber clearly belongs
.
Framing lumber is infamous for being squirrely, weird, and heavily knotted. Most serious furniture makers avoid using the cheap stuff and opt for more expensive harder woods. Here in the US, the big box hardware stores carry cheap fast-grown soft pine that has significant amounts of warp and twist inherent in the wood. The process of getting it straight with right-angle corners is involved and even once it has been cut, the internal stresses inside the wood are released, rendering the board twisted and warped again over time. The timelapse process of planing, jointing, and cutting in the video has an almost therapeutic aspect to it. The results are two wonderful pieces of useful furniture that would look at home in most rooms.
The craftsmanship evident in the build is noteworthy but more impressive is the process of taking cheap and unfit materials and making something beautiful out of them. Perhaps if you’re inspired and decide to make your own nightstand this weekend,
you can add some touch-sensitive electronics to it
. Video after the break. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6422023",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2022-02-07T03:17:23",
"content": "My TV stand/computer case is made of framing lumber in the form of white pine 2x4s and “seasoned” pallet wood. I gave it a coat of watered down white paint, and it looks nice and performs perfectly. I have a... | 1,760,372,799.458582 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/06/hackaday-links-february-6-2022/ | Hackaday Links: February 6, 2022 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"adsb",
"chromebook",
"de-orbit",
"DIY Fix it yourself",
"elon",
"flight tracking",
"full self driving",
"google",
"hackaday links",
"International Space Stat",
"iss",
"Point Nemo",
"RTL-SDR",
"tesla",
"twitter",
"ukraine"
] | Last week, the news was filled with stories of Jack Sweeney and his Twitter-bot that tracks the comings and goings of various billionaires in their private jets. This caught the attention of the billionaire-iest of them all, one Elon Musk, who took exception to the 19-year-old’s feat of data integration, which draws from a number of public databases to infer
the location of Elon’s plane
. After Jack wisely laughed off Elon’s measly offer of $5,000 to take the bot down,
Elon ghosted him
— pretty childish behavior for the richest man on the planet, we have to say. But Jack might just have the last laugh, as
an Orlando-based private jet chartering company has now offered him a job
. Seems like his Twitter-bot and the resulting kerfuffle is a real resume builder, so job-seekers should take note.
Here’s hoping that you have a better retirement plan than NASA. The space agency announced its
end-of-life plans for the International Space Station
this week, the details of which will just be a run-up to the 2031 de-orbit and crash landing of any remaining debris into the lonely waters of
Point Nemo
. The agency apparently sees
the increasingly political handwriting
on the ISS’s aging and sometimes perforated walls, and acknowledges that the next phase of LEO space research will be carried out by a fleet of commercial space stations, none of which is close to existing yet. Politics aside, we’d love to dig into the technical details of the plan, and see exactly what will be salvaged from the station before its fiery demise, if anything. The exact method of de-orbiting too would be interesting — seems like the station would need quite a bit of thrust to put on the brakes, and might need the help of a sacrificial spacecraft.
“You break it, you fix it,” is a philosophy that we Hackaday types are probably more comfortable with than the general public, who tend to leave repairs of broken gear to professionals. But that philosophy seems to be at the core of
Google’s new Chromebook repair program for schools
, which encourages students to fix the Chromebooks they’re breaking in record numbers these days. Google is providing guidance for schools on setting up complete Chromebook repair facilities, including physical layout of the shop, organization of workflows, and complete repair information for at least a couple of popular brands of the stripped-down laptops. Although the repairs are limited to module-level stuff, like swapping power supplies, we still love the sound of this. Here’s hoping that something like this can trigger an interest in electronics for students that would otherwise never think to open up something as complicated as a laptop.
Back in July
, we took note of a disturbing report of an RTL-SDR enthusiast in Crimea who was arrested for treason, apparently based on his interest in tracking flights and otherwise monitoring the radio spectrum. Now, as things appear to be heating up in Ukraine again,
our friends at RTL-SDR.com are renewing their warning to radio enthusiasts
in the area that there may still be risks. Then as now, we have little interest in the politics of all this, but in light of the previous arrest, we’d say it pays to be careful with how some hobbies are perceived.
And finally, aside from the aforementioned flight-tracking dustup, it’s been a tough week for Elon and Tesla. Not only have 817,000 of the expensive electric vehicles been recalled over something as simple as
a wonky seatbelt chime
, but another 54,000 cars are also being recalled for a
software bug that causes them to ignore stop signs
in “Full Self-Driving” mode. We’re not sure if this video of
this Tesla hell-ride
has anything to do with that bug, but it sure illustrates the point that FSD isn’t really ready for prime time. Then again, as a former Boston resident, we can pretty safely say that what that Tesla was doing isn’t really that much different than the meat-based drivers there. | 41 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421989",
"author": "Raukk",
"timestamp": "2022-02-07T00:13:31",
"content": "Bonus points if the Tesla stop sign bug was caused by training data of real drivers rolling through stop signs.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "64219... | 1,760,372,799.389958 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/06/the-coolest-controller-mod-hands-down/ | The Coolest Controller Mod, Hands Down | Kristina Panos | [
"Games",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"assistive device",
"assistive technolgy",
"assistive technology",
"Dualshock4",
"one handed"
] | Video games are a great way to relax, and sometimes get your heart rate up at the same time. But unless you’re playing something like
Dance Dance Revolution
, the controls pretty much always require the use of both hands. Even the old Atari controller benefited from using the other hand for support.
But what if you don’t have the use of both hands? Or you have a repetitive stress injury? Or you just want to eat cheese curls with chopsticks while you play? [Akaki Kuumeri] has you covered with one of the hands-down greatest uses for 3D printing we’ve seen —
a PlayStation DualShock 4 controller modified for one-handed use
. If this looks familiar, it may be because [Akaki] made a PS5 controller version a while back, but who can get one of those, anyway?
Though [Akaki] does most of the demonstrating in the video below with their left hand, they were cool enough to make a right-handed version as well. In the left-handed version, the symbol buttons and right trigger are actuated with the left hand, and the right joystick is used by moving the whole controller against your leg, the table, the arm of the couch, or whatever you wish.
[Akaki] even designed some optional pieces, including a leg strap. The right-hand version of course does the D-pad instead. But what should the order of the arrow buttons be? After much contemplation, [Akaki] settled on the standard DDR configuration of ←↓↑→.
We love that the symbols are made from raw filament pressed into grooves, and think it’s totally awesome that this is made to be attached to the controller and removed with one hand. Check out the video below to see it in action with a handful of games.
Via
r/3Dprinting | 15 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421945",
"author": "Redhatter (VK4MSL)",
"timestamp": "2022-02-06T22:09:58",
"content": "> the standard DDR configuration of ←↓↑→That’s the vi cursor movement… ← (H), ↓ (J), ↑ (K), → (L).I guess the makers of DDR must be vi users.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repl... | 1,760,372,799.275917 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/06/no-arm-printer-driver-just-write-your-own/ | No ARM Printer Driver? Just Write Your Own | Matthew Carlson | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"printer",
"raspberry pi",
"tslp",
"zlp"
] | When you think of the small machines that print the sticky labels on packages, you might not expect to find a complex printer with its own programming language (ZPL). However, [Dan Pastusek] was looking around online and found a small label printer on everyone’s favorite online warehouse for a great price that suggested it supported ZPL. Unfortunately, [Dan] had big dreams for creating a Raspberry Pi-based print station and found the drivers packaged for this particular printer were not ARM compatible. Not quite content to leave it there, he began to
chip away at the layers until he had a working driver
.
ZPL, at its core, is just a language describing ASCII commands transmitted over a serial connection. So while the printer showed up as an endpoint, it wasn’t working as the filters (the part of the driver that knows how to convert from a PNG to ZPL) was x86 only. On Linux, printer drivers also have a PPD file that describes what a printer can handle in paper size and other settings. The PPD file for the little printer gave the first clue. In the ShortNickName field, it identifies itself as HPRT N41, which is a popular HP printer. So this little printer must be a clone of a printer in that family. Notably, they don’t support ZPL. Instead, the HPRT series support TSPL, another printer language developed by TSC.
This presented a problem as the shipping service that provided the labels that [Dan] was using offered labels in three formats: PNG, PDF, and ZPL. Currently, it does seem like there’s a TSPL to ZPL converter out there for use, so rather than write his own, he took a shortcut and wrote a rasterizer instead. Initially, he tried to use some sample code that he found, and while he got something to come out of the printer, it was blank. So the next test was to save the raw TSPL output from a filer and cat directly to the serial port. This worked amazingly. Next,
he wrote a converter
to take a PNG and convert them into the bitmap format the TSPL has. The converter is in Javascript as it runs as part of the webserver that manages the print station. Could it be faster in a different language? Sure. But a different language wouldn’t make the printer any faster.
With the addition of a wireless barcode scanner, it’s satisfying to see the print station up and running. Here at Hackaday, we’re no stranger to seeing folks take apart printers to
peel back the software and physical layers that make them up
. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421818",
"author": "Gautier",
"timestamp": "2022-02-06T18:20:42",
"content": "I did one ZPL driver for MSP430 twenty years back.Was pretty funny to throw graphics from an i2c flash chip to paper.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,372,799.596465 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/04/python-web-proxy-convinces-sonos-to-stream-youtube/ | Python Web Proxy Convinces Sonos To Stream YouTube | Dave Rowntree | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"flask",
"mp4",
"python",
"pytube",
"sonos",
"streaming",
"web radio player",
"youtube"
] | [Maurice-Michel Didelot] owns a Sonos smart speaker, and was lamenting the devices inability (or plain unwillingness) to stream music from online sources without using a subscription service. YouTube Music will work, but being a subscription product there is a monthly fee, which sucks since you can listen to plenty of content on YouTube for free. [Maurice] decided that the way forward was to dig into how the Sonos firmware accesses ‘web radio’ sources, and see if that could be leveraged to
stream audio from YouTube via some kind of on-the-fly stream conversion process
.
What? No MP4 support for web radio? Curses!
So let’s dig in to how [Maurice] chose to approach this. The smart speaker can be configured to add various streaming audio sources, and allows you add custom sources for those. The Sonos firmware supports a variety of audio codecs, besides MP3, but YouTube uses the MP4 format. Sonos won’t handle that from a web radio source, so what was there to do, but make a custom converter?
After a little digging, it was determined that Sonos supports
AAC encoding
(which is how MP4 encodes audio) but needs it wrapped in an ADTS (Audio Data Transport Stream
)
container. By building a reverse web-proxy application, in python using Flask, it was straightforward enough to grab the YouTube video ID from the web radio request, forward a request to YouTube using a modified version of
pytube
tweaked to not download the video, but stream it. Pytube enabled [Maurice] to extract the AAC audio ‘atoms’ from the MP4 container, and then wrap them up with ADTS and forward them onto the Sonos device, which happily thinks it’s just a plain old MP3 radio stream, even if it isn’t.
Sonos
doesn’t have the best reputation
, let’s say, but you can’t deny that there’s some pretty slick tech going on inside. Here’s a neat hack we covered last year, adding
Sonos support to an old school speaker
, and a nice
teardown of a IKEA Sonos-compatible unit
, which uses some neat design hacks.
Thanks [mip] for the tip!
Featured image by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash. | 22 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421242",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2022-02-04T22:34:39",
"content": "Yet another reasons to not buy Sonos crap: “the devices inability (or plain unwillingness) to stream music from online sources without using a subscription service.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,372,799.673298 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/04/the-fifteen-dollar-linux-computer/ | The Fifteen Dollar Linux Computer | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"Allwinner F1C100s",
"handheld",
"linux"
] | Over the years we’ve seen many small computer boards of various abilities, among them many powerful enough to be almost-useful Linux general purpose computers. We’ve also seen more than a few computers that claimed the impossible, usually an amazing spec for a tiny price tag. Here for once is a small computer that’s neither of those two;
a minimum viable Linux handheld terminal
whose $15 USD price tag is openly discussed as a target price for a large production run rather than touted as its retail price.
It’s the work of legendary former Hackaday writer [Brian Benchoff], and instead of being merely a PCB it’s a fully usable computer with case, keyboard and display. It’s based upon an Allwinner F1C100s SoC, it’s powered by AAA cells, and it sports a split rubber keyboard that likely builds on his previous experience with
the VT-69 portable RS-232 terminal
. On the back is a USB port and an SD reader, and in the centre of the front panel lies a 320 x 240 pixel display. It’s important to note that this is not intended to run a GUI, while it’s DOOM-capable it remains very much a command-line Linux tool. Perhaps most interestingly it’s claimed that all the parts are available in quantity here in the chip shortage, so maybe there’s even a chance we might see it as more than a project. We can hope.
Thanks [Sathish Guru V] for the tip. | 66 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421136",
"author": "Stripey \"KNIVES ARE TINY SWORDS, SHEEPLE\" Type (@StripeyType)",
"timestamp": "2022-02-04T19:36:37",
"content": "The folks in r/cyberdeck were *BIG MAD* that this wasn’t simply a retail product. Having to explain price breaks at tape out quantities was going to... | 1,760,372,799.776552 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/04/copyright-what-you-need-to-know/ | Copyright, What You Need To Know | Jenny List | [
"Featured",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"copyright",
"totally not legal advice"
] | Last week brought the story of a group of crypto enthusiasts
who paid well over the going rate for a rare sci-fi book
, then proposed encoding scans of all its pages in a blockchain before making and selling NFTs of them. To guarantee their rarity the book was then to be burned. Aside from the questionable imagery surrounding book burning in general, one of the sources of mirth in the story was their mistaken idea that in buying a copy of a rare book they had also acquired its copyright rather than simply paying too much for a book.
It’s an excuse for a good laugh, but it’s also an opportunity to talk about copyright as it affects our community. I’m not a lawyer and I’m not here to give legal advice. Instead this is based on the working knowledge gathered over decades working in the content publishing industries.
Your Friend…
Copyright is a subject that continually does the rounds in our community, as we talk about open-source licenses, about DRM, freedom of availability for scientific papers, or over-litigious content owners. While often seen in open-source circles as working against our interests, copyright itself is a powerful tool that provides the bedrock upon which the very notion of open-source is built.
Try to spot the point at which the words stop being mine and become Hackaday’s.
When somebody creates something, it is their physical property. Write something on a piece of paper, print it in a book, and you can sell the book. Intellectual property extends this idea of ownership beyond the physical — as well as owning the piece of paper you wrote on you also own the specific artistic manifestation of its text.
You can print as many copies of it as you like and sell them under your own terms, and most importantly you can mount a legal challenge to anyone trying to print their own copies. This is the realm or copyright that probably causes most consternation, as depending on your viewpoint it’s the most valuable aspect of copyright, as well as the most abused.
As a content creator, you automatically own the copyright on your work. That’s a powerful thing to own, but equally powerful is the ability to transfer that ownership. For example, the words flowing from my keyboard to make this piece are mine, but I’m transferring their ownership to Hackaday in return for the almighty dollar so this story’s copyright is owned by them. But it’s in that right that we find the very basis of open-source, because as well as simply assigning ownership to somebody else you can also selectively assign rights to third parties. The various open-source licenses are simply documents that provide a convenient pre-written form with which to do this.
The photo of Alison Chang that put Virgin Mobile Australia in hot water. Chewywong (
CC BY 2.0
)
We’re guessing that the choice of an open-source licence comes for many developers in terms of familiarity, if a favourite project uses a particular licence then they’ll pick it for their own. It’s worth considering carefully and taking the time to understand what the licence has in its small print though, because sometimes unintended consequences can flow from an unwise choice.
In 2007 for example
a Texan teenager was aghast to find her image in a Virgin Mobile Australia advert
, which had been used by the telco because the photographer had put it on Flickr under a Creative Commons licence without fully understanding its implications. When choosing a licence it’s important to consider your desired outcomes and ask yourself whether you wish to allow commercial use for example, or whether you require all derivative works to use the same licence.
For the former you might wish to choose a permissive licence such as those from Apache or MIT, while for the latter you might consider the GNU GPL. A couple of decades ago when the GPL was under attack it was derided by its opponents as “viral” because once something has been released under it then it can not easily be moved to a different licence without the consent of all its contributors. It should bring a smile to the face of any open-source advocate to find that an open-source licence
can be used to undermine an essential tool of intellectual property holders
.
…As Well As Your Enemy
Having established your rights over things that you create, let’s look at where most of the controversy over copyright comes from: in other people or more commonly companies asserting their rights – whether real, tenuous, or imagined, over things they own. Where does that come from, where is it dubious, and how can you avoid any difficult situations?
In the first instance, when there is a clear copyright violation it is not unreasonable for an intellectual property owner to assert that ownership with some form of challenge. The challenge can be as simple as a takedown notice or it could be a multi-million-dollar lawsuit, but it amounts to the same thing: “You are using our stuff without permission, stop it.” This is not even something that is the sole preserve of large companies, as an example it’s not uncommon for photographers to have their work stolen by newspapers and respond by submitting punitive bills.
Long-time Linux users will remember
the battles between SCO and some commercial Linux vendors
for example, a series of legal challenges that were eventually dismissed as unfounded but which cast a chill over the whole early-2000s Linux ecosystem.
Navigating The Maze Without Sinking
If copyright is so tied down, how can we navigate a path through the world without constantly being sued by anyone who feels they deserve a piece of our pie because they imagine something sounds a bit like their obscure B-side from 1974? The answer lies in an idea called fair use, and it’s this that anyone who creates content needs to be aware of. In essence, fair use can be summed up in the sentence “Here’s something you indisputably own, but I’m using it under a circumstance that either we both understand is acceptable or that legal precedent has established to be acceptable”. It’s a grey area that contains some safe harbours, but which anybody venturing into should take heed of the warning not to stretch it too far.
One particular safe harbour is referred to as the in-review safe harbour, where it’s agreed that reviews of books need to be able to extract quotes from them, reviews of movies can include stills or short clips, and Hackaday can use images you’ve taken of your projects when we write them up.
Another safe harbour lies in parody. I’m not about to write a sit-com featuring a restaurant called Bendy’s, but were I to do so I should be pretty safe. Think of almost any popular culture parody from Weird Al to
Bored of the Rings
, and you’ll find this in action to a greater or lesser extent.
Copyright is a probably-necessary evil that can work on your side, whether you want your work to be protected as your property or put out into the public domain, but it is also a minefield in which powerful content owners can flex their muscles sometimes unfairly. If you’re writing software or creating content, it probably pays for you to take a little bit of time to better familiarize yourself with the landscape.
Header: derived from work by TreasuryTag (
CC BY-SA 3.0
). | 54 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421098",
"author": "Danjovic",
"timestamp": "2022-02-04T18:33:46",
"content": "I cant hel thinking of the guys NFTnizing the movie of the book birning in flames, lol!!Nevertheless, thanks for the article!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,372,799.918132 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/04/hackaday-podcast-154-a-good-enough-cnc-stepper-motors-unrolled-smart-two-wire-leds-a-volcano-heard-around-the-world/ | Hackaday Podcast 154: A Good Enough CNC, Stepper Motors Unrolled, Smart Two-Wire LEDs, A Volcano Heard Around The World | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Join Hackaday Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Staff Writer Dan Maloney for this week’s podcast as we talk about Elliot’s “defection” to another podcast, the pros and cons of CNC builds, and making Nixie clocks better with more clicking. We’ll explore how citizen scientists are keeping a finger on the pulse of planet Earth, watch a 2D stepper go through its paces, and figure out how a minimalist addressable LED strip works. From solving a Rubik’s cube to answering the age-old question, “Does a watched pot boil?” — spoiler alert: if it’s well designed, yes — this episode has something for everyone.
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
(Less than 60 MB)
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 154 Show Notes:
News This Week:
Hackaday Invades The FLOSS Weekly Podcast
30 Days Of Terror: The Logistics Of Launching The James Webb Space Telescope
Searching for Susy Thunder
What’s that Sound?
Give it a listen,
fill out the form
, ?, and profit!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
PCB Stepper Motor Micro Robots
Designing Tiny Motors Right Into The Robot’s Circuit Board
Analog Computer Made From LEGO Predicts Tides
Harmonic Analyzer Mechanical Fourier Computer
Fourier Machine Mimics Michelson Original In Plywood
Forget Sudoku, Build Yourself A Minimalist Rubik’s Solver Robot
Relay-Driven Nixie Clock Gets You To Stop Scrolling
Reverse-Engineering A Two-Wire LED Strip Protocol
Tiny CNC Cuts The Metal
A Home CNC Built By Someone Who Knows Their Stuff
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
The Wanhao Duplicator CNC Heat Sealer
A Portable Projecting Pi For Education
Will A Kettle Filled With Alcohol Boil Dry?
Dan’s Picks:
Building Forged Carbon Fiber Wings For Radio Control Cars
Rainbow DIP Switch Is The Coolest Way To Configure Your Project
Remoticon 2021 // Colin O’Flynn Zaps Chips (And They Talk)
Can’t-Miss Articles:
How The Hunga Tonga Volcano Eruption Was Felt Around The World
Earthquake & Earth Monitoring Solutions
Why the Tonga tsunami arrived much earlier and much larger than expected
Shining A Different Light On Reality With Short-Wave Infrared Radiation | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421105",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2022-02-04T18:44:36",
"content": "Yes, the interconnections that connect all of us together ARE like a web. A world-wide web, you could say.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,799.817555 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/04/adafruit-hack-chat-helps-you-copy-that-floppy/ | Adafruit Hack Chat Helps You Copy That Floppy | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"adafruit",
"data recovery",
"digital preservation",
"floppy",
"Hack Chat"
] | You might think the era of the 3.5 inch “floppy” disk is over, and of course, you’d be right. But when has that ever stopped hackers before? Just because these disks are no longer being manufactured doesn’t mean you can’t find them, or that the appropriate drives aren’t readily available. In fact, as
[Ladyada] explained during this week’s
Floppy Interfacing Hack Chat with Adafruit
, the ongoing chip shortages mean its often easier and cheaper to track down old hardware like this than it is modern microcontrollers and other high-tech components.
What awaits the brave hacker that picks up a box of random floppies and a dusty old drive at the local thrift store? More than you might expect. As the Hack Chat goes on, it becomes increasingly obvious that these quaint pieces of antiquated technology can be rather difficult to work with. For one thing there are more formats out there than you’ve probably considered, and maddeningly, not all drives are able to read all types (even if they say they do). That means a disk which might seem like a dud on one drive could work perfectly fine in another, which is why the team at Adafruit recommend having a few on hand if you want to maximize your chances of success.
Now here comes the tricky part: unless you happen to have a 1990s vintage computer laying around, getting these drives hooked up is decidedly non-trivial. Which is why Adafruit have been researching how to interface the drives with modern microcontrollers.
This includes the Adafruit_Floppy project
, which aims to port the well known Greaseweazle and FluxEngine firmwares to affordable MCUs like the Raspberry Pi Pico. There’s also been promising developments with
bringing native floppy support to CircuitPython
, which would make reading these disks as easy as writing a few lines of code.
But wait, surely this is a solved problem? Why not just pick up a cheap USB floppy drive from the A to Z online retailer we all love to hate? Unfortunately, these gadgets are something of a mixed bag. [Ladyada] pulls one apart on camera to show that what you’re actually getting with one of these units is a new old stock laptop floppy drive hooked up to a dodgy purpose-built chip that connects to the original 26-pin flex cable and offers up a USB interface. That would be great, if it wasn’t for the fact that the chip is exceedingly selective about what kind of disks it will read. If you’re only worried about bog standard IBM-formatted disks they can work in a pinch, but like they say, you get what you pay for.
So is it all just academic? Is there really any
reason
to use a floppy disk in 2022? The fine folks at Adafruit would argue that the skills necessary to read usable data out of a stream of magnetic flux changes may very well come in handy in unexpected ways down the road. But even if not, there’s at least one good reason to cultivate the technology required to reliably read from these once ubiquitous storage devices:
archiving the data stored on these disks before they invariably succumb to so-called “bit rot”
and are potentially lost to history.
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. | 22 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421064",
"author": "Iván Stepaniuk",
"timestamp": "2022-02-04T16:31:45",
"content": "Still plenty of expensive industrial equipment around, with floppies inside dusty documentation pouches that contain the only backup of the software needed to run the machines.",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,372,799.982932 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/04/this-week-in-security-samba-wormhole-crypto-heist-and-a-bogus-cve/ | This Week In Security: Samba, Wormhole Crypto Heist, And A Bogus CVE | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"qnap",
"samba",
"This Week in Security"
] | Samba has a very serious vulnerability,
CVE-2021-44142
, that was just patched in new releases 4.13.17, 4.14.12, and 4.15.5.
Discovered by researchers at TrendMicro
, this unauthenticated RCE bug weighs in at a CVSS 9.9. The saving grace is that it requires the
fruit
VFS module to be enabled, which is used to support MacOS client and server interop. If enabled, the default settings are vulnerable. Attacks haven’t been seen in the wild yet, but go ahead and get updated, as PoC code will likely drop soon.
Crypto Down the Wormhole
One notable selling point to cryptocurrencies and Web3 are smart contracts, little computer programs running directly on the blockchain that can move funds around very quickly, without intervention. It’s quickly becoming apparent that the glaring disadvantage is these are computer programs that can move money around very quickly, without intervention. This week there was another example of smart contracts at work, when
an attacker stole $326 million worth of Ethereum
via the Wormhole bridge. A cryptocurrency bridge is a service that exists as linked smart contracts on two different blockchains. These contracts let you put a currency in on one side, and take it out on the other, effectively transferring currency to a different blockchain. Helping us make sense of what went wrong is [Kelvin Fichter], also known appropriately as
[smartcontracts]
.
Alright. I figured out the Solana x Wormhole Bridge hack. ~300 million dollars worth of ETH drained out of the Wormhole Bridge on Ethereum. Here's how it happened.
— smartcontracts (@kelvinfichter)
February 3, 2022
When the bridge makes a transfer, tokens are deposited in the smart contract on one blockchain, and a transfer message is produced. This message is like a digital checking account check, which you take to the other side of the bridge to cash. The other end of the bridge verifies the signature on the “check”, and if everything matches, your funds show up. The problem is that one one side of the bridge, the verification routine could be replaced by a dummy routine, by the end user, and the code didn’t catch it.
It’s a hot check scam. The attacker created a spoofed transfer message, provided a bogus verification routine, and the bridge accepted it as genuine. The majority of the money was transferred back across the bridge, where other user’s valid tokens were being held, and the attacker walked away with 90,000 of those ETH tokens.
The 9.8 CVE That Wasn’t
Dealing with security reports can be challenging. For example, English isn’t everyone’s first language, so when an email comes in with spelling and grammar mistakes, it would be easy to dismiss it, but sometimes those emails really are informing you of a severe problem. And then sometimes you get a report because someone has discovered Chrome’s DevTools for the first time, and doesn’t realize that local changes aren’t served to everyone else.
CVE-2022-0329 was one of those
. The package in question is the Python library,
loguru
, which boasts “Python logging made (stupidly) simple”. A serious CVE in a logging library? The internet briefly collectively braced for another
log4j
style problem. Then more people started looking at the
vulnerability report
and
bug report
, and casting doubt on the validity of the issue. So much so, that
the CVE has been revoked
. How did a non-bug get rated as such a high security issue, that GitHub was even sending out automated alerts about it?
The theoretical vulnerability was a deserialization problem, where the
pickle
library, included as a dependency of
loguru
, does not safely deserialize untrusted data. That’s a valid problem, but the report failed to demonstrate how
loguru
would allow untrusted data to be deserialized in an unsafe way.
There’s a concept at play here, the “airtight hatchway”. In any codebase or system, there will be a point where manipulating program data can lead to code execution. This is behind the airtight hatchway when performing that attack requires already having control over the program. In this case, if you can build the object that
pickle
will deserialize, you already have arbitrary code execution. That’s not to say it’s never appropriate to fix such an instance, but that’s code hardening, not fixing a vulnerability.
That’s where this went off the rails. [Delgan], the developer behind
loguru
was convinced this wasn’t a true vulnerability, but he wanted to do some code hardening around the idea, so marked the original vulnerability report as accepted. This set the automated machinery in motion, and a CVE was issued. That CVE was set as extremely serious, based on a naive understanding of the issue, maybe also an automated action. This automated frenzy continued all the way to a Github advisory, before someone finally stepped in and cut the power to the out-of-control automaton.
Windows EoP PoC
In January,
Microsoft patched CVE-2022-21882
, an Escalation of Privilege in the Win32 code of Windows. Don’t let that fool you, it’s present in 64-bit versions of Windows, too. If you’re behind on your updates, you might want to get busy, as
a Proof-of-Concept has now dropped
for this bug. This has been reported as a patch bypass, making this essentially the same
underlying problem as CVE-2021-1732
.
QNAP Forced Pushed an Update
And Users Are Ticked
QNAP and other NAS manufacturers have been forced to step up their security game, as these style devices have become yet another tempting target for ransomware thieves. So when QNAP discovered a flaw that was being exploited in the “deadbolt” malware campaign, they opted to do a force push of the update to every user that had auto-update enabled. This means that where updates would normally install, and ask for permission to reboot, this one rebooted spontaneously, maybe causing data loss in the worst case.
QNAP has given their thoughts
in a Reddit thread on the subject
, and there’s some disagreement about how exactly this worked. At least one user is quite emphatic that this feature was disabled, and the update still auto-installed. What’s going on?
There is an official answer
. In an earlier update, a new feature was added, the Recommended Version. This serves as an automatic update, but only when there’s a serious issue. This is the setting that allows forced pushes, and it defaults to on. (In fairness, it was in the patch notes.) Dealing with updates on appliances like these is always difficult, and the looming threat of ransomware makes it even stickier.
So what do you think, was QNAP just taking care of customers? Or was this akin to the notice of destruction of Arthur Dent’s house, posted in the basement in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’? Let us know in the comments, or if Discord is your thing,
the new channel dedicated to the column! | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421081",
"author": "Billly",
"timestamp": "2022-02-04T17:41:05",
"content": "Share and enjoy. Reality restored. Real men use irc btw.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6422061",
"author": "Sandra",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,372,800.023682 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/04/a-64-bit-raspberry-pi-os-at-last/ | A 64-Bit Raspberry Pi OS At Last | Jenny List | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"64bit",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi OS",
"Raspbian"
] | Long-term Raspberry Pi watchers will have seen a lot of OS upgrades in their time, from the first Debian Squeeze previews through the Raspbian years to the current Raspberry Pi OS. Their latest OS version is something different though, and could be one of the most important releases in the platform’s history so far, as finally
there’s an official release of a 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS
.
Would-be 64-bit Pi users have of course had the chance to run 64-bit GNU/Linux operating system builds from other distributions for nearly as long as there have been Pi models with 64-bit processors, but until now the official distribution has only been available as a 32-bit build. In their blog post they outline their reasons for this move in terms of compatibility and performance, and indeed we look forward to giving it a try.
Aside from being a more appropriate OS for a 64-bit Pi, this marks an interesting moment for the folks from Cambridge in that it is the first distribution that won’t run on all Pi models. Instead it requires a Pi 3 or better, which is to say the Pi 3, Zero 2 W, Pi 4, Pi 400, and the more powerful Compute Modules. All models with earlier processors including the original Pi, Pi Zero, and we think the dual-core Pi 2 require a 32-bit version, and while the Pi Zero, B+ and A+ featuring the original CPU are still in production this marks an inevitable move to 64-bit in a similar fashion to that experienced by the PC industry a decade or more ago.
As far as we know the Zero is still flying off the shelves, but this move towards an OS that will leave it behind is the expected signal that eventually there will be a Pi line-up without the original chip being present. We’re sure the 32-bit Pi will be supported for years to come, but it should be clear that the Pi’s future lies firmly in the 64-bit arena. They’ve retained their position as the board to watch oddly not by always making the most impressive hardware but by having the most well-supported operating system, and this will help them retain that advantage by ensuring that OS stays relevant.
On the subject of the future course of the Pi ship, our analysis that
the Compute Module 4 is their most exciting piece of hardware
still stands. | 42 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420996",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2022-02-04T12:12:56",
"content": "how much difference will it make in performance?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6420997",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2022-02-0... | 1,760,372,800.097122 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/04/modular-synth-pairs-perfectly-with-the-apple-ii/ | Modular Synth Pairs Perfectly With The Apple II | Chris Wilkinson | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"apple II",
"dac",
"modular synth",
"synth",
"vintage computer"
] | We have a soft spot for synthesizers – seriously, who doesn’t? So when [Joshua Coleman]
combined his retro-looking DIY modular synth with the equally retro Apple II computer
, we just had to share it with you.
The two machines are paired using a vintage digital-to-analog logic controller pack. This DAC was originally used to control model trains using your Apple II – something that we now desperately need to see in action. The pack can output voltages between 0 and 2.55 V at 8-bit resolution (or 256 steps), which is plenty for a retro synth.
With the card installed in Slot 7 of the Apple II and the DAC wired through to the synth’s
CV/gate
, it’s then a trivial matter of writing POKE statements in Applesoft BASIC to control the synth. The video after the break demonstrates playing a simple melody, as well as how one might use the Apple II keyboard to ‘play’ the synth in real time.
If you’re interested in building your own, the video below has all the information needed, as well as helpful advice on where to find a DAC for your preferred model of vintage computer. If all that doesn’t tickle your musical fancy, make sure to check out our coverage on the
Game Boy MIDI synth
, or perhaps
this peculiar synth and visualizer combo
. | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6421036",
"author": "Christian Knopp",
"timestamp": "2022-02-04T15:03:31",
"content": "I miss Apple II BASIC. 😪I wish I could learn Python or such as easily as I did that language during my early teens…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,372,800.37225 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/conveyor-belt-printer-mod-is-nearly-all-printed/ | Conveyor Belt Printer Mod Is Nearly All Printed | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"infinite build volume"
] | [Call Me Swal] wanted to experiment with large 3D prints. So he took a Hornet 3D printer and
designed a lot of 3D parts
to convert it into an “infinite” conveyor belt printer. It looks like — as you can see in the video below — that all the parts are 3D printed but you will still need to buy material for the actual belt.
Of course, you may not have a Hornet, but the idea would be applicable to just about any similar printer. You’d have to, of course, adapt or redesign the parts.
If you haven’t encountered belt printers before, you might think it is as simple as putting a conveyor belt in place of the heated bed. Some early belt printers worked that way, and they were mainly meant for printing normal parts and then dumping them into a bin so you could print again without operator intervention.
However, these newer belt printers combine the belt with a print head canted at an angle. This allows you to print very large prints — at least in one axis. Each layer, then, is a slanted slice of the built volume instead of a slice parallel with the build surface.
That’s important. Suppose you want to print a 2 meter-long sword and the actual conveyer belt surface was 25 centimeters square. Printing the outline of a traditional layer would require the print head to trace the entire 2 meter length. The outline would collapse as soon as it left the bed. There would be no way to bring it back on the bed to continue printing in that area, plus the filament would surely just be a pile on the floor.
With the angled layers, each 45 degree slice of the sword is complete before the belt moves forward. Presumably, the sword is self-supporting as it is complete and the parts hanging off the bed never have to return for more printing.
Obviously, some parts won’t work like this, but for the ones that do, there are some interesting mechanical properties to having the plastic deposited at an angle, as the video explains.
This
isn’t the first conversion
we’ve seen. We’ve even seen
belts combined with arms
to make a very fast printer. | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420954",
"author": "Rumble_in_the_Jungle",
"timestamp": "2022-02-04T09:30:28",
"content": "Does the patent already expired?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6421022",
"author": "Tenaja",
"timestamp": "2022-02-0... | 1,760,372,800.212666 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/retrotechtacular-understanding-the-strength-of-structural-shapes/ | Retrotechtacular: Understanding The Strength Of Structural Shapes | Ryan Flowers | [
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"3d printing",
"aluminum",
"mechanical engineering",
"plastic",
"shapes",
"steel",
"structural engineering"
] | Strength. Rigidity. Dependability. The ability to bear weight without buckling. These are all things that we look for when we build a mechanical structure. And in today’s Retrotechtacular we take a closer look at the answer to a question: “What’s in A Shape?”
As it turns out, quite a lot. In a wonderful film by the prolific
Jam Handy Organization
in the 1940’s, we take a scientific look at how shape affects the load bearing capacity of a beam. A single sided piece of metal, angle iron, C-channel, and boxed tubing all made of the same thickness metal are compared to see not just just how much load they can take, but also how they fail.
The concepts are then given practical application in things that we still deal with on a daily basis: Bridges, cars, aircraft, and buildings. Aircraft spars, bridge beams, car frames, and building girders all benefit from the engineering discussed in this time capsule of film.
None of the concepts in this video are suddenly out of date, because while our understanding of engineering has certainly progressed since this film was made, these basic concepts remain the same. As such, they will apply to any structural or mechanical devices that we make, be it 3d printed, CNC routed, welded, glued, vacuum formed, zip tied, duct taped, bailing wired, or hot glued.
Keep your eyes open for a wonderful sights and sounds of a rare
Boeing 314 Clipper
landing on water and a
1920’s Buffalo Springfield Steam Roller
demonstrating how wonderful the film’s sponsor, Chevrolet, makes their automobile frames.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ob2tVP5miE | 13 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420935",
"author": "three_d_dave",
"timestamp": "2022-02-04T07:07:43",
"content": "Starting at 3:28: In technical terms the 8 lead weights put too much stress on it – stress being the force per area, a factor complicated with bending. The top elements are under tensile stress and t... | 1,760,372,800.155352 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/3d-printing-goes-near-infrared/ | 3D Printing Goes Near Infrared | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"cyanine dye",
"Near Infrared"
] | Researchers at the University of Texas have been experimenting with optical 3D printing using near infrared (NIR) light instead of the more traditional ultraviolet. They claim to
have a proof of concept
and, apparently, using NIR has many advantages. The actual paper is paywalled, but there are several good summaries, including one from [3D Printing Industry].
UV light degrades certain materials and easily scatters in some media. However, decreasing the wavelength of light used in 3D printing has its own problems, notably less resolution and slower curing speed. To combat this, the researchers used an NIR-absorbant cyanine dye that exhibits rapid photocuring. The team reports times of 60 seconds per layer and resolution as high as 300 micrometers. Nanoparticles in the resin allow tuning of the part’s appearance and properties.
For now, the work is considered proof of concept, but it wouldn’t be hard to attempt work in this area in a hobby-grade workshop. Perhaps the most difficult part would be incorporating nanoparticles into the resin. Light in the 400 to 780 nanometer range mentioned by the team isn’t that hard to produce. LEDs are available, for example in that entire range; 400 nm is a violet color and 780 is decidedly red.
Last time we looked at NIR,
there was coffee brewing
. Turns out for many applications,
seeing NIR
is more interesting than generating it. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420713",
"author": "steelman",
"timestamp": "2022-02-04T00:11:02",
"content": "decreasing the wavelength of light used in 3D printing has its own problems, notably less resolution and slower curing speedNow, that sounds slightly bogus. Resolution of resin prints is indeed high but ... | 1,760,372,800.436702 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/getting-root-on-linux-amplifier-adds-new-inputs/ | Getting Root On Linux Amplifier Adds New Inputs | Tom Nardi | [
"home entertainment hacks",
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"alsa",
"amplifier",
"Embedded Linux",
"smart speaker",
"sound bar"
] | We remember when getting Linux on your average desktop computer was a tricky enough endeavor that only those with the most luxurious of graybeards would even attempt it. A “Linux box” in those heady days was more than likely an outdated machine salvaged from the dumpster, side panel forever removed, cranking away in a basement or garage. Fast forward today, and Linux is literally everywhere: from smartphones and luxury cars, to TVs and refrigerators. Ironically it’s
still
not on most desktop computers, but that’s a discussion for another time.
So when [Michael Nothhard] sent in the fascinating account of how he
hacked his Linux-powered Bluesound Powernode N150 amplifier to unlock more inputs
, the
least
surprising element was that there was a “smart amplifier” out there running the free and open source operating system. What piqued our interest was that he was able to bust his way in with relative ease and enable some impressive new capabilities that the manufacturer would probably have rather been kept under wraps.
Configuring the CM6206’s audio settings.
[Michael] explains that the N150 has a USB port on the back side of it, and that officially, it only works with mass storage devices and a handful of approved peripherals such as a Bluetooth dongle. But as he was hoping to connect some more devices to the input-limited amplifier, he wondered if he could get a USB audio adapter recognized by the OS.
After using a known exploit to get root access
, he started poking around at the underlying Linux system to see what kind of trickery the developers had done.
Based on a fairly common C-Media CM6206 chipset, the StarTech 7.1 USB audio adapter was picked up by the kernel without an issue. But to actually get it working with the amplifier’s stock software, he then needed to add a new <capture> entry to the system’s
sovi_info.xml
configuration file and make some changes to its default ALSA settings. With the appropriate files modified, the new USB audio input device popped up under the official Bluesound smartphone application.
At the end of the write-up [Michael] notes that you’ll need to jump through a few additional hoops to make sure that an upstream firmware update doesn’t wipe all your hard work. Luckily it sounds like backing up the configuration and returning it to the newly flashed Powernode is easy enough. We’ve certainly seen
more elaborate methods of gaining control
of one’s sound system over the years. | 26 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420644",
"author": "tomás zerolo",
"timestamp": "2022-02-03T21:05:58",
"content": "“After using a known exploit to get root access …”Having to resort to an exploit is already iffy: is the company complying with the GPL?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,800.541635 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/keep-track-of-toilet-paper-usage-with-this-iot-roll-holder/ | Keep Track Of Toilet Paper Usage With This IoT Roll Holder | Dan Maloney | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"hall effect",
"IoT",
"NodeMCU",
"thingspeak",
"toilet paper"
] | Remember the Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 2020? We sure do, and it looks like our old friend [Vije Miller] does as well, while seemingly harboring a somewhat morbid fascination about how much paper every bathroom visitor is consuming. And to that end, we present
his IoT toilet sheet tracker
.
His 3D printed roll holder has a Hall effect sensor that counts revolutions of the roll and sends it to a NodeMCU. The number of sheets per roll is entered when the roll is changed, so some simple math yields the number of sheets each yank consumes. Or at least a decent estimate — [Vije] admits that there’s some rounding necessary. The best part of the build is the connection to Thingspeak, where sheet usage is plotted and displayed. Go ahead and check it out if you dare; at the time of writing, there was an alarming spike in sheet usage — a sudden need for 68 sheets where the baseline usage is in single digits. We shudder to think what might have precipitated that. The video below is — well, let’s just say there’s a video.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen bathroom-based projects from [Vije Miller]. A few years back there was
an attempt to freshen the air with plasma
, and
his IoT shower valve controller
probably never scalded anyone accidentally.
Thanks to [Fiona Grutza] for the tip.
[via
r/arduino
] | 51 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420620",
"author": "SteveS",
"timestamp": "2022-02-03T19:40:32",
"content": "What do I have to pay for you to not show this to the facilities department where I work?I can just see the memos now….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,372,800.628185 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/remoticon-2021-colin-oflynn-zaps-chips-and-they-talk/ | Remoticon 2021 // Colin O’Flynn Zaps Chips (And They Talk) | Jenny List | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"hardware",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Remoticon",
"ChipShouter",
"ChipWhisperer",
"EM injection",
"fault injection",
"power analysis"
] | One of the many fascinating fields that’s covered by Hackaday’s remit lies in the world of hardware security, working with physical electronic hardware to reveal inner secrets concealed in its firmware. Colin O’Flynn is the originator of the
ChipWhisperer
open-source analysis and fault injection board, and he is a master of the art of glitching chips. We were lucky enough to be able to welcome him to speak at last year’s Remoticon on-line conference, and now you can watch the video of his talk below the break. If you need to learn how to break RSA encryption with something like a disposable camera flash, this is the talk for you.
This talk is an introduction to signal sniffing and fault injection techniques. It’s well-presented and not presented as some unattainable wizardry, and as his power analysis demo shows a clearly different trace on the correct first letter of a password attack the viewer is left with an understanding of what’s going on rather than hoping for inspiration in a stream of the incomprehensible. The learning potential of being in full control of both instrument and target is evident, and continues as the talk moves onto fault injection with an introduction to power supply glitching as a technique to influence code execution.
Schematic of an EM injector built from a camera flash.
His final trick is to take a look at glitching by EM injection using an electromagnetic pulse. Here he takes us into a much lower-tech direction, as while he shows us his
ChipShouter
product the main thrust of the segment comes in demonstrating a much more rudimentary but cheaper EM injector built from the parts of a disposable camera flash. From an electronic design perspective the interesting part comes in the probe and its trigger, an IGBT is used to pulse a small coil mounted on an SMA plug. Here the target is a Raspberry Pi running repeated RSA signing test code, and even the simpler EM injector is able to crash it and extract the keys. He wraps up with a few smaller examples of the same technique on microcontrollers, and even mentions that the same technique can yield results from such rudimentary tools as an electrostatic gas lighter.
Whether this talk inspires you to break out the piezo lighers, cobble together a simple glitching rig yourself, to invest in a ChipWhisper, or none of the above, Colin’s talk sheds some light on another of our community’s Dark Arts. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420608",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2022-02-03T18:37:44",
"content": "One improvement for sending a glitching pulse is to have feedback from the device and a variable delay. So you can say, cycle the power and then send a pulse at a specific time during boot and then if you ... | 1,760,372,800.479631 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/02/the-wanhao-duplicator-cnc-heat-sealer/ | The Wanhao Duplicator CNCHeat Sealer | Dave Rowntree | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"fusing",
"gcode",
"heat exchanger",
"indenting",
"plastic",
"polyolefin"
] | One custom, compliant heat exchanger, coming right up!
[Thane Hunt] needed to find a way to make a variety of different heat-seal patterns on a fluid heat exchanger made from polyolefin film, and didn’t want all the lead time and expense of a traditional sealing press machined from a steel plate. Pattern prototyping meant that the usual approach would not allow sufficient iteration speed and decided to take a CNC approach. Now, who can think of a common tool, capable of positioning in the X-Y plane, with a drivable Z axis and a controlled heat source? Of course, nowadays the answer is the common-or-garden FDM 3D printer. As luck would have it,
[Thane] had an older machine to experiment with
, so with a little bit of nozzle sanding, and a sheet of rubber on the bed, it was good to go!
Custom seal path made in Onshape
Now, heat sealing is usually done in a heated press, with a former tool, which holds the material in place and gives a flat, even seal. Obviously this CNC approach isn’t going to achieve perfect results, but for proof-of-concept, it is just fine. A sacrificial nozzle was located (but as [Thane] admits, a length of M6 would do, in a pinch) and sanded flat, and parallel to the bed, to give a 3mm diameter contact patch. A silicone rubber sheet was placed on the bed, and the polyolefin film on top. The silicone helped to hold the bottom sheet in place, and gives some Z-axis compliancy to prevent overloading the motor driver. Ideally, the printer would have been modified further to move this compliancy into the Z axis or the effector end, but that was more work. With some clever 3D modelling, Cura was manipulated to generate the desired g-code (a series of Z axis plunges along a path) and a custom heated indenter was born!
This isn’t the first such use of a 3D printer we’ve seen, here’s
an earlier failure
, and like everything, there’s more than one way to do it – here’s a method of
making inflatable bladders with a defocused CO
2
laser
.
(warning! Two minutes of a 3D printer head-banging into the bed!) | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420327",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2022-02-02T22:06:37",
"content": "My first through is that this might be useful for quickly prototyping/building flexible/soft robotics components. Likehttps://hackaday.com/blog/?s=soft+roboticsIt wouldn’t be as “3D” as casting methods, but... | 1,760,372,800.766959 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/02/defective-3d-printing-for-great-strength/ | Defective 3D Printing For Great Strength | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"high pressure",
"material science",
"metal 3d printing",
"titanium"
] | Most of us want our 3D prints to be perfect. But at Cornell University, they’ve been experimenting with deliberately introducing defects into printed titanium. Why? Because using a post-print treatment of heat and pressure they can
turn those defects into assets
, leading to a stronger and more ductile printed part.
The most common ways to print metal use powders melted together, and these lead to tiny pores in the material that weaken the final product. Using Ti-6Al-4V, the researchers deliberately made a poor print that had more than the usual amount of defects. Then they applied extreme heat and pressure to the resulting piece. The pressure caused the pores to close up, and changed the material’s internal structure to be more like a composite.
Reports are that the pieces treated in this way have superior properties to parts made by casting and forging, much less 3D printed parts. In addition, the printing process usually creates parts that are stronger in some directions than others. The post processing breaks that directionality and the finished parts have equal strength in all directions.
The hot isostatic pressing (HIP) process isn’t new — it is commonly used in metal and ceramic processing — so this method shouldn’t require anything more exotic than that. Granted, even cheap presses from China start around $7,000 and go way up from there, but if you are 3D printing titanium, that might not be such a big expenditure. The only downside seems to be that if the process leaves any defects partially processed, it can lead to fatigue failures later.
We wonder if this development will impact
all the car parts being printed in titanium
lately. If you need something to print in titanium, consider
hacking your rib cage
. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420303",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2022-02-02T20:21:46",
"content": "Anyone capable of being able to afford applying “extreme heat and pressure” to titanium doesn’t really have to worry about costs. This has “aerospace and military applications” written all over it.",
... | 1,760,372,800.671247 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/02/know-audio-a-mess-of-cables/ | Know Audio: A Mess Of Cables | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"home entertainment hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"audio",
"audio cable",
"cables",
"oxygen free"
] | We’ve now spent several months in this series journeying through the world of audio, and along the way we’ve looked at the various parts of a Hi-Fi system from the speaker backwards to the source. It’s been an enjoyable ride full of technical detail and examining Hi-Fi myths in equal measure, but now it’s time to descend into one of the simplest yet most controversial areas of audio reproduction. Every audio component, whether digital or analogue, must be connected into whatever system it is part of, and this is the job of audio cables, sometimes referred to as interconnects. They are probably the single component most susceptible to tenuous claims about their performance, with audiophiles prepared to spend vast sums on cables claimed to deliver that extra bit of listening performance. Is there something in it, or are they all the same bits of wire with the expensive ones being a scam? Time to take a look.
What Makes A Nearly Good Cable
In a typical domestic audio system with digital and analogue signals you might expect to find two types of cable, electrical interconnects that could carry either analogue or digital signals, and optical ones for digital signals. We’re here to talk about the electrical cables here as they’re the ones used for analogue signals, so lets start with a little transmission line theory.
This is what happens when I hook a bike light up to a DC power supply.
Perhaps one of the first electrical circuits you ever constructed had a battery and a flashlight bulb connected with a length of two-core flex. When you touched the wire to the battery terminals the bulb lit up, and when you released it the light was extinguished. It was a DC circuit with two states, off and on, and that’s all there was to it. But if you were to hook up a storage oscilloscope to the wire as you hooked up the bulb you might notice something interesting. Instead of jumping from off to on in an instantaneous transition, in fact the voltage would curve upwards over a few microseconds. The DC circuit suddenly doesn’t look as perfectly bi-state as first thought, so what’s going on?
The voltage curves upwards because the wires and bulb are not perfect. They have a small amount of resistance, inductance, and capacitance, referred to as parasitics, and it’s the interaction between these that causes the voltage to rise over a short time rather than immediately. It’s
nearly
immediate so it’s fine for a flashlight, but as soon as similar wires are used to carry a signal this parasitic RCL circuit will start to affect it. Early telegraph and telephone engineers faced this problem as their wires stretched hundreds of miles and thus had significant R, C, and L values that gave the effect of a low-pass filter. Their attempts to understand the phenomenon gave rise to what we now refer to as transmission line theory, with which anybody who’s worked with RF should be intimately familiar.
Equivalent circuit of a transmission line, showing the various parasitic components present. Omegatron (
CC BY-SA 3.0
)
Having said that, an audio interconnect is a transmission line in which consideration should be given to parasitic R, C, and L values, I am now going to turn that entirely on its head and say that within reason the transmission line performace of the interconnect as we’d understand it for radio circuits doesn’t matter much at audio frequencies. The reason comes down to the short length of an audio interconnect, which at something in the order of a couple of feet (or a meter) has parasitic values that are so tiny as to make little difference as a low pass filter. When this is compared to the wavelength at audio frequencies — 300 km at 1 kHz — it is insignificant.
Going back to our flashlight bulb, the current in those wires from the battery was DC, always flowing in the same direction. If we imagine them as single strand thick copper wires, we can further imagine the current within them as though it was water flow in an idealised plumbing system, with the flow evenly distributed across its cross-section. We know that electrical current creates magnetic fields, so the wires powering our bulb will be surrounded by a static field as long as the DC current flows.
The skin effect illustrated by a current density plot on a cross section of a conductor. δ refers to the skin depth, in which the majority of the current flows. Biezl,
Public domain
.
With an AC current such as an audio signal, the magnetic field is different. As the current changes so does the field, and since changing magnetic fields induce currents in nearby conductors it will induce extra currents in the wire. These don’t flow conveniently as linear currents along the conductor’s length, but as circular so-called eddy currents within it. Because part of the circular current flows forward and part backwards, towards the centre of the conductor the eddy currents cancel out the forward current.
This gives rise to the so-called skin effect, in which AC currents flow predominantly towards the outside of a conductor, and harking back to the earlier paragraph this can produce the result of increasing significantly that parasitic resistance at AC audio frequencies. For an audio interconnect this can adversely affect its quality, so it’s usual for audio cables to increase their surface area as much as possible by having many small strands of wire instead of a single larger one. In case that’s not enough, higher quality cables ensure the lowest resistance on the surface of the wire strands by silver- or gold-plating the copper.
Exploding Some Cable Myths
Direction arrows on a speaker cable. Richard Corfield, with permission.
So we’ve established that a good audio cable should have minimal parasitic resistance, inductance, and capacitance. Due to its relatively short length its performance as a transmission line in the RF sense is largely irrelevant, and the skin effect can be reduced by using a multi-stranded cable. But there are some other things to consider when buying a decent cable, and they are perhaps the most interesting because here we enter the world of audiophile woo. If you look at cables in an audiophile catalogue you’ll see terms such as “Oxygen-free”, and “directional”, what do they mean?
Oxygen-free copper is a very high-grade form of refined copper. It has a very slightly better conductivity than regular copper because of the removal of impurities, and thus audiophiles claim that it delivers noticeably better quality. The reality is that the length of an audio interconnect is so small that the marginally better conductivity is not significant in its performance. Applications that require longer cables in the order of hundreds of metres could see a benefit so we’d expect to find it in scientific instrumentation for large projects such as CERN, but for short audio interconnects it’s simply a marketing tool.
If you buy a decent interconnect it’ll probably use oxygen-free copper, but its performance will come from using a large cross-section of fine and maybe silver-plated wires and not from the extra-pure copper. Directional cables are another matter, you will find many audio cables with little arrows on them indicating the direction in which the current should flow. A web search will reveal a variety of explanations for this that usually settle upon the parasitic diode action between individual grains in the mass of copper, and some of them even suggest that directionality will grow with use. It makes yet another great marketing tool for gullible audiophiles, but unlike the conductivity of oxygen-free copper it has no basis in truth. Audio cables or indeed any other cables simply are not directional, they work just as well whichever way round they are plugged in. Sorry audiophiles, you’ve been had.
Any Idiot Cable Can Count To One
Gold USB cables:
not what they seem
.
So far we’ve only looked at analogue audio cables in this piece, but of course they aren’t the only cables sold to audiophiles. You can buy “special” IEC mains cables at outrageous prices for example, or audiophile quality digital cables for Ethernet, USB, TOSlink, or HDMI.
A mains cable is just a mains cable as long as it has conductors rated for the appropriate current. Digital cables are
almost
as straightforward.
Along with digital cable myths is one element of truth, but it’s not one that should cost you hundreds of dollars. Digital cables are unlike analogue audio cables in that the bitrate comes at a much higher frequency than that of the signal encoded in the bits. Thus their transmission line performance becomes a significant issue, and occasionally this can show up in a choice of cable.
Find the cheapest sub-$5 HDMI cable on the market and the chances are it’ll work with a 1080p signal but not a 4K one, this is because its transmission line bandwidth isn’t up to the extra demands of 4K bitstreams. But before that $1,000 HDMI cable comes off the shelf, try a $10 one to replace the $2 one, and you might be pleasantly surprised.
Even the cheapest HDMI cable can carry multiple gigabits per second, and laughs at your digital audio bitrate way down in the megabits. And as long as the ones and zeros make it intact to the other end of the cable, there’s no sense in spending more money — there is no such thing as a better sounding one or zero.
There may be some audiophiles reading this piece and becoming irate, because clearly I don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to directionality or oxygen-free copper, and especially with $1,000 mains leads or Ethernet cables. To them I’ll make this offer: there’s a pint of
Old Hooky
in an Oxford pub for the first person to prove me wrong. But the standard of proof is quite high, I’ll accept none of that “The oxygen-free gold-plated USB cable gives a rich chocolatey tone to the broader soundstage” mumbo-jumbo. Instead I’ll take side-by-side tests with a high-end professional audio analyser. Let’s see what the Audio Precision says about it, shall we? I hate to deny the most excellent Hook Norton Brewery a sale, but something tells me I won’t be buying that pint any time soon.
We’ll be back with another in this series, and having comprehensively explored the components of a domestic audio system it’s now time to look at it in another way. How can we measure audio performance? | 101 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420263",
"author": "Christoph",
"timestamp": "2022-02-02T18:19:16",
"content": "Isn’t the skin effect a cable myth as well for audio frequencies? What portion of the wire impedance at 20kHz is actually caused by the skin effect? Not much, I think.",
"parent_id": null,
"de... | 1,760,372,800.913147 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/02/hackaday-invades-the-floss-weekly-podcast/ | Hackaday Invades TheFLOSS WeeklyPodcast | Tom Nardi | [
"News",
"Software Development"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast",
"live stream",
"open source software"
] | Regular Hackaday readers will know that we’re big supporters of free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) around these parts. There’s an excellent chance you are too, as so many of the incredible projects you send our way make it a habit to share their innermost details, from firmware source code to the OpenSCAD files that generate its 3D printed components. So when our recently minted Editor in Chief [Elliot Williams] was invited to join
This Week in Tech’s
FLOSS Weekly
podcast
, he jumped at the chance to represent our little corner of the Internet to the wider world of open source aficionados. (Ed:
The final version is now live
! How did we get episode 666?!)
Hosted by [Doc Searls],
FLOSS Weekly
is known for its in-depth interviews with “the most interesting and important people in the Open Source and Free Software community”, so we hope the incursion by hacker rabble such as ourselves doesn’t taint their brand too much.
It’s live streamed every Wednesday at 12:30 PM Eastern / 9:30 AM Pacific / 17:30 UTC, which means that by the time this post hits the main page of the site,
you’ve still got time to tune in
. For those of you with gainful employment who can’t slack off for an hour or so in the middle of the workweek, the recorded version will be available afterwards for your time-shifted viewing and or listening pleasure.
[Elliot] will be joined by Hackaday writer and regular co-host of
FLOSS Weekly
[Jonathan Bennett], making this something of a Jolly Wrencher double-feature. [Jonathan] has been providing readers with a regular peek into the
other
type of hacking with his fantastic
This Week in Security
column
, and is himself a devout FOSS supporter with a particular passion for GNU/Linux. We’re excited to listen in as the trio riffs on open source at the crossroads of hardware and software, not just because it promises to be an entertaining bit of programming, but because it’s a great opportunity to introduce the world of Hackaday to the wider open source audience. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,800.708645 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/02/underwater-tanks-turn-energy-storage-upside-down/ | Underwater Tanks Turn Energy Storage Upside-Down | Lewin Day | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"green hacks",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"pumped hydro",
"pumped storage",
"stensea",
"storage",
"underwater pumped hydro",
"underwater storage"
] | Pumped hydro storage is one of the oldest grid storage technologies, and one of the most widely deployed, too. The concept is simple – use excess energy to pump a lot of water up high, then run it back through a turbine when you want to get the energy back later.
With the rise in renewable energy deployments around the world, there is much interest in finding ways to store energy from these often-intermittent sources. Traditional pumped hydro can help, but there is only so much suitable land to work with.
However, there could be a solution, and it lurks deep under the waves. Yes, we’re talking about underwater pumped hydro storage!
It’s All Down Below
Most concepts for underwater pumped hydro storage rely on concrete spheres as pressure vessels, for their simple construction and good pressure-bearing properties. Credit:
Fraunhofer IEE
The basic concept of an underwater pumped hydro storage system is not dissimilar from that of its land-based cousin. The difference is all in the details of how you make electricity by pumping water around when you’re already under the sea.
The general idea is to have a closed vessel sitting on the seafloor. Surplus energy is then used to pump water out of this vessel, leaving the inside at a near-vacuum. When it’s desired to recover energy from the system, water can be allowed to flow back into the vessel under the pressure generated by the seawater above. As the vessel is filled, the water flowing in turns a turbine, generating electricity in just the same way as a traditional pumped hydro system.
The utility of such a design may not be obvious at first. However, there are several benefits to such a system. Primary among them is that such systems can easily be colocated with off-shore wind farms, prized for their power generation, but with sporadic output. Running underwater also allows the system to take advantage of the great pressure exerted by the sea above. For each 10 meters of depth, pressure increases by roughly one atmosphere (1 bar), and with a system designed to operate with vessels at near-vacuum when fully “charged”, there’s a huge differential to take advantage of. Some designs proposing to operate at pressures in excess of 75 bar. Efficiency of such systems is expected to lie around 70-80%, around the same as traditional pumped hydro storage.
The
StEnSea project
‘s 3-meter diameter test sphere.
The underwater design also eliminates the issue of evaporation, which saps water, and thus energy, from pumped hydro reservoirs. Installation is readily scalable, too. Each underwater reservoir only needs an electrical connection to the grid, and nothing more. Simply installing more reservoirs underwater with the appropriate electrical infrastructure will easily scale up the capacity of such an installation.
There’s also the simple advantage that there’s no need to find big mountains or valleys in which to build reservoirs, and no risk of those reservoirs bursting and destroying local cities in the surrounding area. Instead, seldom-used areas of seafloor are readily available, with very few housing developments or existing businesses down there to frustrate the building approvals process.
Early Days Yet
The most notable effort in this area is
the Stored Energy at Sea project
, also known as StEnSea for short. The brainchild of Dr. Horst Schmidt-Böcking and Dr. Gerhard Luther back in 2011, the basic idea lead to a grand concept of 30-meter diameter spheres on the ocean floor. These would be complete with integrated turbine pumps to empty them of water, while also generating electricity as it flows back in.
A 1:10th scale test of the full-scale concept went ahead in 2016. This involved the construction of a 3 m diameter concrete sphere, which would serve as the primary storage vessel. Sunk down to a depth of 100 meters in Lake Constance, Germany, the vessel was tested extensively for four weeks to determine the viability of underwater pumped hydro storage. The test was successful overall, with the engineering team able to operate the sphere, storing energy and recovering it later.
The results of the study, combined with other research, indicated to the team that the idea was feasible at depths of around 700 meters. Pressures at this depth are on the order of 70 bar, and serve to help the system generate large amounts of energy while still remaining in a safe zone regarding material strength concerns and the practicality of installation. It’s expected at this depth, a single sphere could store a full 20 MWh of electricity, paried with a turbine capable of generating 5 MW for a discharge time of four hours.
With multiple spheres ganged up in an off-shore installation, estimated storage costs when up and running would come down as low as a few cents per kWh, likely cheaper than comparable compressed air solutions, with construction costs coming in around $1,300 to $1,600 per kW of power output. The actual financial viability of such an operation, however, depends on the arbitrage price of energy in the market; one study suggests that a system of 80 such giant spheres, operating with a combined output of 400 MW,
would be viable in ranges from 4 to 20 Euro cents per kWh.
Other efforts exist, too. Both
MIT
and a startup known as
Subhydro
have also explored the idea, similarly based around hollow concrete spheres on the ocean floor. The numbers arrived at by these teams, regarding depths, efficiencies, and power outputs are within the ballpark of those quoted by StEnSea, suggesting the basic engineering behind the concept is sound.
The Ocean Grazer concept uses a bladder paired with a buried concrete vessel in order to run a closed system. Credit: Ocean Grazer
Meanwhile, a Dutch start-up
by the name of Ocean Grazer
is exploring a twist on the StEnSea concept. Instead of giant spheres, a concrete tube buried in the seabed is to be used as the pressure vessel. Additionally, rather than pumping water from the vessel out into the open ocean, it will instead pump its water into a sealed bladder. This still allows the system to take advantage of the pressure differential at the seafloor, but negates potential issues with a pump being fouled by marine flora and fauna, as it operates as a sealed system. Ocean Grazer has pivoted to the design having explored other renewable energy technologies such as wave power generation in the past. The company expects that
one reservoir
, with a capacity of 20 million liters of water, could store up to 10 MWh of energy.
The Ocean Grazer project, which won an award
at CES 2022
, is perhaps receiving the greatest press for underwater pumped hydro at the moment. Despite this, and the other projects that have bubbled under for the last decade, the technology still largely lives on paper and a large-scale installation seems to be a long way away. Regardless, the fundamentals are there, so if energy storage does suddenly become more important, or, let’s be honest – much more profitable – much of the required basic engineering has already been done. Implementing a major installation may just require the right economic conditions to happen in only a few short years! | 129 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420207",
"author": "Col_Panek",
"timestamp": "2022-02-02T15:15:07",
"content": "I just had a sump pump crap out, so I’m negative on anything that combines water, electricity, and plumbing. Burying it is even worse.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,801.074402 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/02/building-forged-carbon-fiber-wings-for-radio-control-cars/ | Building Forged Carbon Fiber Wings For Radio Control Cars | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"carbon fiber",
"chopped carbon",
"forged carbon",
"molds"
] | When it comes to building decent aerodynamic devices, you want to focus on getting your geometry accurate, and making sure your parts are strong enough to deal with the force they’re generating. This build from [Engineering After Hours] delivers on those fronts,
consisting of a high-downforce wing for a small RC car.
The video points out that, at best, even a decent RC car will have pretty crappy aerodynamic parts from the factory, with a lift-to-drag (L/D)ratio of 2-3:1 at best. This means that, while they may create some small amount of downforce, they’re also creating plenty of drag at the same time.
The dual-element wing designed here is much more efficient, hitting an L/D ratio in the vicinity of 17:1 – a huge improvement. Even a casual eye can note that the design looks a lot more like something you’d see on a full-size car, versus some of the whackier designs seen on toys.
The wing is built with a forged carbon fiber process using 3D-printed molds, to give the wing plenty of strength. Given that it’s built for an RC car that can do over 100 mph, making sure the wing is stiff enough to perform at speed is key.
[Engineering After Hours] does a great job of showing how to prepare the molds, fill them with carbon fiber, and pour the resin, and discusses plenty of useful tips on how to achieve good results with the forged carbon process.
The result is an incredibly impressive rear wing with aerodynamic performance to match its good looks. It may be more complicated than 3D printing, but the results of the work are that much tougher.
We’ve seen other aero experiments from [Engineering After Hours] before, too
. Video after the break. | 6 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420237",
"author": "kwikius",
"timestamp": "2022-02-02T16:50:42",
"content": "FRP ( Fibre Reinforced Plastic) is a wonder material from a pure engineering point of view, making it easy to create high performance designs, but at a huge cost to the environment, and so these days I f... | 1,760,372,801.177109 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/02/a-portable-projecting-pi-for-education/ | A Portable Projecting Pi For Education | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"cyberdeck",
"education",
"projector",
"raspberry pi"
] | We cover a lot of cyberdeck projects here at Hackaday, custom portable computers often built around the Raspberry Pi. It’s not often that we cover a computer that perfectly achieves and exceeds what a cyberdeck is trying to do without being a cyberdeck in any way, but
that’s what [
Subir Bhaduri
] has done
. In addressing the need for Indian schoolchildren to catch up on two years of COVID-disrupted schooling he’s created the pπ, a Raspberry Pi, projector, and keyboard all-in-one computer in a neat sheet-metal case that looks as though it might be just another set of spanners or similar. At a stroke he’s effortlessly achieved the
ultimate
cyberdeck, because this machine is no sci-fi prop, instead it has a defined use which it fulfills admirably.
All the files to build your own can be found in
a GitLab repository
. The case is laser-cut sheet metal, and he’s put in a cost breakdown which comes out at a relatively healthy 17200 Indian rupees, or around 230 US dollars. We hope that it serves its purpose well and provides a rugged and reliable teaching aid for a generation from whom COVID has taken so much. You can see more in the video below the break. | 16 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420144",
"author": "none",
"timestamp": "2022-02-02T09:26:13",
"content": "The pee-pie? Pie-Pie? The pee-pee?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6420271",
"author": "Yimin Rong",
"timestamp": "2022-02-02T18:44:09... | 1,760,372,801.125744 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/supersized-power-bank-built-from-an-ev-battery/ | Supersized Power Bank Built From An EV Battery | Jenny List | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"inverter",
"large scale",
"power bank"
] | Perhaps one day in the future when our portable electronics are powered by inexhaustible dilithium crystals, we’ll look back fondly on the 2020s when we carried around power banks to revive our flagging tech. Oh how we laughed as we reached for those handy plastic bricks only to find them drained already of juice, we’ll say. [Handy Geng] won’t be joining us though, because he’s made
the ultimate power bank
, a 27,000 AH leviathan that uses an electric car battery for storage and supplies mains power through a brace of sockets on its end.
The vehicle battery is mounted on a wheeled trolley along with what appears to be either the in-car charging unit or a mains inverter. The whole thing is styled to look like a huge version of a pocket power bank, with a curved sheet metal shell and white hardboard end panels. The demonstration pushes the comedy further, as after charging a huge pile of phones he replenishes an electric scooter before settling sown by a chilly-looking river for a spot of fishing — along with his washing machine, TV, and electric hotpot for a spot of cooking. We appreciate the joke, and
as we know him of old
we’re looking forward to more.
Thanks [Fosselius] for the tip. | 25 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420592",
"author": "MrSVCD",
"timestamp": "2022-02-03T17:01:34",
"content": "How many watts? There is quite a difference between 48v 27kAh and 400v 27kAh.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6420595",
"author": "DKE",
... | 1,760,372,801.409345 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/shining-a-different-light-on-reality-with-short-wave-infrared-radiation/ | Shining A Different Light On Reality With Short-Wave Infrared Radiation | Maya Posch | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"hardware",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"short-wave infrared",
"SWIR"
] | As great as cameras that operate in the visual light spectrum are, they omit a lot of the information that can be gleaned from other wavelengths. There is also the minor issue that visibility is often impacted, such as when it’s raining, or foggy. When this happens, applications such as self-driving cars which rely on this, have a major issue. Through the use of sensors that are sensitive to other wavelengths, we can however avoid many of these issues.
Short-wave infrared radiation (SWIR) is roughly the part of the electromagnetic spectrum between 1.4 μm – 3 μm, or 100 THz – 214 THz. This places it between visible light and microwaves, and above long-wave IR at 20 THz – 37 THz. LWIR is what thermal cameras use, with LWIR also emitted by warm objects, such as the human body.
SWIR is largely unaffected by water in the atmosphere, while also passing through materials that are opaque to visible light. This allowing SWIR to be used for the analysis and inspection of everything from PCBs and fruit to works of art to capture details that are otherwise invisible or very hard to see.
Unfortunately, much like thermal camera sensors, SWIR sensors are rather expensive. Or they were, until quite recently, with the emergence of quantum-dot-based sensors that significantly decrease the costs of these sensors.
Capturing Short Waves
The sensors that allows us to capture infrared radiation in general consist of a rectangular array of pixels, called a focal-plane array (FPA), also known as a staring array. This is similar to the FPAs used with other wavelengths, such as the CMOS (
APS
) and
CCD
sensors used with visible light. These FPAs are usually made of silicon, as silicon-based sensors are sensitive in the visible and part of the near-infrared spectrum.
For wavelengths beyond near infrared, more exotic materials and processes are generally required. The material for an SWIR sensor needs not only to be sensitive in that wavelength, but also to have sufficient electron mobility so that a charge can be transferred rapidly and efficiently enough to be of use in a sensor. This is where, at the moment, gallium indium arsenide (
GaInAs
) is most popular. (Also interchangeably referred to as InGaAs in scientific literature.)
GaInAs was
first reported
to have been successfully grown on an InP substrate by
Duchemin et al. (1981)
in 1980 using
metalorganic chemical vapor deposition
, which today is still the primary method of creating GaInAs sensor structures. After the vapor deposition phase, these GaInAs dies are meticulously bonded to a silicon-based interface, making it a relatively slow, labor-intensive and thus expensive process.
HgCdTe-based HAWAII sensor module with 2k x 2k pixel resolution, as installed in the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Which is not to say that it’s impossible to bump the price tag up even further. When the NIR sensors for the James Webb Space Telescope were developed, it was found that
GaInAs sensors were too noisy
and with high dark current. This led to the use of HgCdTe (mercury cadmium telluride) instead, with each sensor grown and assembled similarly to a GaInAs sensor, just with an astronomical price tag of around a quarter million US dollars each.
This points out a weakness of GaInAs-based sensors: in order to reduce the noise in the signal from thermal radiation, they are generally cooled down using a cryogenic cooler or similar solution. This adds significantly to the cost and complexity of operating these sensors.
The main take-away from this is that it demonstrates that there are multiple materials one can select and tune to a specific part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Which one works depends hereby on one’s requirements, as well as budget. As amazing as SWIR sensors would be to use with e.g. industrial production lines for QA and autonomous or driving-assisted cars to get around visual limitations in less than ideal weather, GaInAs-based sensors at thousands of dollars a piece are far too expensive to use in such applications.
The Right Trade-Offs
It would seem fairly obvious that for generic, affordable SWIR sensors we don’t need to match the exact sensitivity and speed requirements of a GaInAs-based sensor, as long as the trade-offs in terms of capture speed and sensitivity match the budgetary gains. This is why lead sulfide (PbS) based colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) have received significant attention, as these promise acceptable photosensitivity in the SWIR spectrum courtesy of the ability of QDs to be tuned rather precisely to the target spectrum.
A major issue with PbS CQDs is their long-term stabilization (passivation), with
Kwon et al. (2020)
reporting in
Nano Convergence
on the addition of cadmium sulfide (CdS) to stabilize PbS QDs for use as SWIR sensors. The resulting CQDs successfully operated for over 182 hours. The major advantage of CQDs like these over GaInAs-based sensors is that they are significantly easier and faster to synthesize, while also simplifying the integration into a functional sensor.
Instead of a vapor deposition step, the QDs are produced in a similar fashion as the QDs used in certain display technologies, with the QDs synthesized using solutions and equipment found in any well-equipped chemistry laboratory – as also described in detail by Kwon et al. – after which the resulting solution can be applied as a thin-film coating on the target substrate.
Summary of HLB-stabilized SWIR-sensitive colloidal quantum dot sensor. (Vafaie et al., 2020)
Also recently,
Vafaie et al.
(2020,
PDF
) from the University of Toronto described PbS CQDs using high-level bromine passivation, creating SWIR QDs that have not only an external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 80% at 1,550 nm (comparable to GaInAs), but also a 10 ns response time. They reported 12 hours of stable, continuous operation under ambient air.
Mind The Production Gap
Before an amazing new technology can escape from the laboratory and find its way into factories, a production process that lends itself well to mass-production has to be developed. As noted, this is where a technology like GaInAs never made it past small-scale production, but PbS CQD-based SWIR sensors appear to be doing much better.
At this point
SWIR Vision Systems
,
Emberion
,
ST Microelectronics
, as well as
Imec
have presented products using these sensors, or prototype SWIR sensors based on PbS CQDs. In January of 2022 it was
announced
that Hitachi Astemo as an automotive supplier will be evaluating Israeli
TriEye’s Raven
SWIR sensors. Being early days, it is clear that for at least a while these SWIR sensors will remain out of reach of the average hobbyist and small-scale manufacturer.
According to Imec, they expect that their SWIR sensors will ‘one day’ be manufactured for as little as €10 to €100. Compared to existing GaInAs-based solutions this would be amazing value, and put it within reach of even hobbyists once released onto the general market. This may lead one to wonder just what it is that cheap SWIR sensors would be useful for.
Inspect, Analyze, Navigate
SWIR is extremely useful for contributing details that the visual part of the spectrum cannot provide, such as the
mineral content
in geological formations, which is essential information for NASA’s
Earth Observatory
project obtained using its satellites. Yet the same could be done by e.g. geologists, whether on the ground or via airplane or drone to assist surveys.
Comparing the differences between 3 shortwave infrared bands highlights the mineral geology surrounding China’s Piqiang Fault. (NASA image by Robert Simmon with ASTER data.)
Under SWIR illumination it is also
easy to see
e.g. bruising in fruit, sketches hidden below the paint on a canvas, and the amount of fluid or powder left in containers that are otherwise opaque. Similarly, it is possible to see through much of PCBs and silicon, making it useful for (automated) inspections to add to existing inspection workflows.
Because SWIR is not seen by the human eye and yet reflected much like visible light, it can be used for navigation. Unlike visible light cameras, or even regular IR cameras on drones, SWIR cameras are unaffected by even the heaviest fog and rain. This is also an extremely useful property for security and wild-life cameras.
With for how many decades SWIR imaging has essentially been out of reach of the average person, it might take some time for the advantages offered to become fully obvious. Even so, when we consider the regular use that thermal cameras find today by hobbyists and professionals alike, it’s not hard to imagine SWIR cameras finding even more uses, as an alternative to both night vision (‘IR’) cameras and as an invaluable analysis tool, whether it’s sorting fruit or analyzing mineral samples.
Hopefully before long we will see CQD-based SWIR sensors become generally available. Having the current generation see use in automotive and similar markets will likely help significantly with driving down the manufacturing costs. Until then it’s still a waiting game, even as we should see these new sensors appearing in more and more devices around us.
[Heading image: As apples travel down the conveyor belt, they are scanned using InGaAs and CMOS cameras. The InGaAs camera will show defects beginning to form under the skin that a human eye cannot see; the CMOS camera will show visible defects. (Credit:
Hamamatsu
)] | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420582",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2022-02-03T15:31:18",
"content": "This reminds me of the first time I took the filters of of a webcam and realized that coca-cola was transparent in certain wavelengths.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,801.344797 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/arduino-activated-automotive-aerodynamic-apparatus-is-spoiler-alert/ | Arduino Activated Automotive Aerodynamic Apparatus Is… (Spoiler Alert!) | Ryan Flowers | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"car hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"automotive",
"IMU",
"servos",
"Spoiler",
"suction cups"
] | Sometimes a great hack is great for no other reason than that it’s
fun
, and [Michael Rechtin]’s
DIY Active Aero Spoiler and Air Brake
certainly qualifies as a fun hack. This is a mod designed to live in a world where looks are everything, stickers add horsepower, and a good sound system is more important than good wheel alignment. Why is that? Because like the switch that exists only to activate the mechanism that turns it off, the DIY Active Aero Spoiler and Air Brake seen below is almost completely useless. So to understand its allure, we must understand its inspiration.
For a few decades now, luxury sports car manufacturers have been adding active aerodynamic components to their vehicles. For example, several Porsche models feature adaptive spoilers that adjust to driving conditions. Super cars such as the Bugatti Veyron have spoilers that flip up at high angles during braking to increase drag and reduce braking distance. All of these features are sadly missing from the average two or four door family-car-turned-wannabe-track-fiend.
Until now!
[Michael] has created a new active spoiler for every mall-bound muffler-challenged hand me down. The build starts with a CNC cut foam wing which is covered with fiberglass, Bondo (an automotive
necessity
) and some faux carbon fiber for that go-fast feel. An Arduino, IMU, two servos, and a battery pack detect deceleration and automatically increase the spoiler angle just like the big boys, but without needing any integration into the vehicles systems. Or bolts, for that matter.
It’s unlikely that the braking force is enough to slow down the vehicle though, given that it’s not enough to pop the suction cups holding it to the trunk lid. But does it have the “wow” factor that it was designed to induce? Spoiler Alert: It does!
As it turns out, this isn’t the first adjustable spoiler featured here at Hackaday, and this
adjustable spoiler on a car that’s made for actual racing
is quite interesting.
Thanks to [Zane] for the tip on this project! | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420541",
"author": "volt-k",
"timestamp": "2022-02-03T12:50:02",
"content": "Suction cups, seriously? Sorry but it’s super unsafe, imagine driving behind him on a motorway and this thing detaches and hits your windshield at 70mph.(Yes I’m fun at parties)",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,801.454789 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/03/pcb-stepper-motor-micro-robots/ | PCB Stepper Motor Micro Robots | Chris Lott | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"micro robotics",
"PCB stepper",
"stepper motor"
] | [Kevin Lynagh] is interested in tiny PCB stepper motors, and after reviewing the various projects and patents to-date, decided to
give it a try himself
. These are basically a stepper motor that’s been unrolled and made flat — traces on the PCB act as the coils and tiny magnetic “robots” act as the rotor.
If you want to try this concept yourself, [Kevin]’s post contains an excellent survey of prior art and projects, as well as exploring the theory behind how these things work. He has taken a deep dive in to the theory, deep enough to grasp what’s going on and to build some preliminary prototypes with a bit of confidence. First off was just a hand-wound flat coil as a proof-of-concept. Next was a PCB version that worked almost exactly as planned, although he confesses to burning out a motor driver circuit before stepping back and making some calculations.
We covered
one such project back in 2014
and wrote about a
Hackaday.io magnetic robot project from reader [bobricius] in 2018
. Have you ever used this technology for anything besides a demonstration? Let us know in the comments below.
Thanks to [Adrian] for sending us the tip. | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420510",
"author": "none",
"timestamp": "2022-02-03T09:59:38",
"content": "Excellent work/post by [Kevin Lynagh]!> We covered one such project back in 2014Two, actually. And maybe more – see Kevin Lynagh’s long list of references. Or search this site. Your site.Off-topic: time fli... | 1,760,372,801.509551 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/02/forget-sudoku-build-yourself-a-minimalist-rubiks-solver-robot/ | Forget Sudoku, Build Yourself A Minimalist Rubik’s Solver Robot | Dave Rowntree | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"opencv",
"raspberry pi",
"robot",
"rubiks cube solving",
"servo"
] | Some people like crossword puzzles, some are serious sudoku ninjas, but [Andrea Favero] likes to keep himself sharp, by learning coding and solving control problems, and that is something we can definitely relate to. When learning a new platform, it’s a very good idea to have a substantial project or goal in mind, and learn what is needed on the way there. [Andrea] chose to build an autonomous Rubik’s cube solver, and was
kind enough to document exactly how how to do it
, and we’re glad of it!
The result of the openCV processing chain
Working in python with OpenCV, [Andrea] uses
the methodology by [Oussama Barkouki]
to process each face image and convert it into a table of the colours of individual facelets. The basics of that, are first to convert the image to grayscale, then use a
gaussian blur
to denoise the image. Edges are identified using the
canny
algorithm, the result of which is then
dilated
and passed into a
contour detector
. The contours are sent into a cunning filter that identifies square contours, and those the wrong size are filtered off. What you’re left with are the outlines of the actual coloured facelets. Once you have a list of squares, these can be used to form image masks, and thence select the average colour from each square. The colour is then quantised and stored as a labelled colour from the standard
Western Rubik’s cube colour scheme
. Finally, once all face images are captured and facelets colours identified, the data are passed into a
Rubik’s cube solving algorithm
developed by [Hegbert Kociemba,] a guide to which is available on the
speedsolving site
. The result of the solving step is a sequence of descrambling moves, in the
move notation
developed by [
David Singmaster
]. Fascinating stuff, if you ask us!
Modular hardware approach – no custom PCBs
All of the above can be prototyped on a PC, but [Andrea] wanted to learn about Raspberry Pis. Part of the fun was
installing and configuring a Pi4
, with all the necessary dependencies. The hardware was constructed from plywood, and a load of 3D printing. (All STLs are available in the first link) Following the (incredibly detailed)
build guide
should be straightforward enough. A Pi4/2Gb model with PiCamera was found sufficient (good luck finding one! Maybe try
rpilocator
?) with a stepper motor for cube rotation, and a pair of servos, one for operating the lid/camera mount, and a second to
kick
the cube around a second axis. The beauty of this simple, elegant approach is that it can handle a standard unmodified cube (ok, a slightly sanded one) — unlike some of the crazy speed-solving builds we’ve seen — it isn’t
the fastest cube solver we’ve seen
, but it is one of the coolest.
Want to see a cube solve itself? (kind of)
here you go
. And let’s finish on a, topical subject, with a
coronavirus inspired ‘cube hack
, just because they could. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420483",
"author": "rthrth56h",
"timestamp": "2022-02-03T08:23:37",
"content": "solver is no necessaryi need randomlisy cube, i need true random cube for solving myself",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6420515",
"author": "a... | 1,760,372,801.563532 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/02/3d-printed-circular-prototype-performance-prop-captivates-circus-spectators/ | 3D Printed Circular Prototype Performance Prop Captivates Circus Spectators | Ryan Flowers | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"circus",
"metal working",
"performance",
"prototyping"
] | When mathematically inspired maker [Henry Segerman] conspired with circus performer and acrobat [Marcus Paoletti] to advance the craft of acrobatics in round metal objects (such as cyr wheels and German Wheels), they came up with a fascinating concept that has taken shape in what [Henry] calls the
Tao-Line
.
Similar performance devices go in a straight line or can be turned on edge, but the Tao-Line is far more nimble. This is because the Tao-Line is not a continuous cylinder, but rather is made up of numerous circular shapes that allow the Tao-Line to be turned and inverted at different points in its rotation.
While a circus prop might not be your average Hackaday fare, it’s noteworthy because the Tao-Line started off as a 3D printed prototype, which was then turned into the metal fabrication you see in the
video below the break
. It’s an excellent example of how modeling complex shapes as a physical product- not just a 3D model on the screen- can be helpful in the overall design and construction of the full scale piece.
If you’re looking to build something that’s under the big top but not quite so over the top, you might enjoy
this mixed-media digital clock
. Thanks to [Keith] for the great tip. Be sure to submit send your cool finds via the
Tip Line
! | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420450",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2022-02-03T03:57:14",
"content": "It’s about 10 times more impressive at 2X playback speed. Also, that bar that sticks out at chest level has got to be removed. Someone’s going to impale themselves on that for sure.It looks like the shape wa... | 1,760,372,801.610987 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/02/keep-track-of-your-google-calendar-with-this-custom-build/ | Keep Track Of Your Google Calendar With This Custom Build | Lewin Day | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"calendar",
"google calendar",
"ws2812"
] | Keeping track of your appointments on Google Calendar is easy enough if you’re holding a phone or sitting at a computer, but sometimes you just want to know what’s going on at a glance.
This desktop calendar build from [andrei.erdei] does just that with plenty of helpful LEDs.
The attract mode is very cool, even if it doesn’t display any actual information.
The design is simple, using WS2812 LEDs to backlight numbers to indicate whether they are weekdays, weekends, anniversaries, holidays, or any other dates of importance. The numerical layout is a nifty perpetual design allowing the display to easily accommodate the structure of any month, even those neat and tidy ones that start on Monday.
The design relies on an ESP-01 to communicate with Google Calendar and display the relevant data. It’s all wrapped up in a 3D printed case, with the printed paper template backlit from behind some smoked acrylic giving a surprisingly professional-looking finish.
If you’re tired of picking up your phone for every last thing, this design could be just what you’re after for keeping track of your appointments. Alternatively,
you could always go the hard copy route
. Video after the break. | 9 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420409",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2022-02-03T01:29:10",
"content": "Meh. Never rely on a google product, even if you pay for it. Google pulls products when they don’t contribute sufficiently to raising funds, so relying on them is a foolhardy move. Cloud “apps” are unre... | 1,760,372,801.685592 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/01/linux-arcade-cab-gives-up-its-secrets-too-easily/ | Linux Arcade Cab Gives Up Its Secrets Too Easily | Dave Rowntree | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"Das U-Boot",
"depthcharge",
"Embedded Linux",
"flash storage",
"retro arcade",
"reverse engineering",
"spi"
] | Sometimes reverse engineering embedded systems can be a right old faff, with you needing to resort to all kinds of tricks such as power glitching in order to poke a tiny hole in the armour, giving you an way in. And, sometimes the door is just plain wide open. This
detailed exploration of an off-the-shelf retro arcade machine
, is definitely in that second camp, for an unknown reason. [Matthew Alt] of VoidStar Security, took a detailed look into how this unit works, which reads as a great introduction to how embedded Linux is constructed on these minimal systems.
Could this debug serial port be more obvious?
The hardware is the usual bartop cabinet, with dual controls and an LCD display, with just enough inside a metal enclosure to drive the show. Inside this, the main PCB has the expected minimal ARM-based application processor with its supporting circuit. The processor is the
Rockchip RK3128
, sporting a quad-core ARM Neon and a Mali400 GPU, but the main selling point is the excellent Linux support. You’ll likely see this chip or its relatives powering cheap Android TV boxes, and it’s the core of this
nice looking ‘mini PC’ platform
from firefly. Maybe something to consider seeing as though Raspberry Pis are currently so hard to come by?
Anyway, we digress a little, [Matthew] breaks it down for us in a very methodical way, first by identifying the main ICs and downloading the appropriate datasheets. Next he moves on to connectors, locating an internal non-user-facing USB micro port, which is definitely going to be of interest. Finally, the rather obvious un-populated 3-pin header is clearly identified as a serial port. This was captured using a Saleae clone, to verify it indeed was a UART interface and measure the baud rate. After doing that, he hooked it into a Raspberry Pi UART and by attaching the standard screen utility to the serial device, lo-and-behold, a boot log and a root prompt! This thing really is barn-door wide-open.
Is that a root prompt you have for me? Oh why yes it is!
Simply by plugging in a USB stick, the entire flash memory was copied over, partitions and all, giving a full backup in case subsequent hacking messed things up. Being based on
U-Boot
, it was a trivial matter of just keying in ‘Ctrl-C’ at boot time, and he was dropped straight into the U-Boot command line, and all configuration could be easily read out. By using U-Boot to low-level dump the SPI flash to an external USB device, via a RAM copy, he proved he could do the reverse and write the same image back to flash without breaking something, so it was now possible to reverse engineer the software, make changes and write it back.
Automation of the process was done using Depthcharge
on the Raspberry Pi, which was also good to read about. We will keep an eye on the blog for what he does with it next!
As we’ve covered earlier,
embedded Linux really is everywhere
, and once you’ve got hardware access and some software support,
hacking in new tricks is not so hard either
. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420120",
"author": "Hyratel",
"timestamp": "2022-02-02T06:42:00",
"content": "considering the maker of these cabs is probably made up of The Kind Of People That Read HackADay, the openness and lack of pitfall security features may be fully intentional! Reinforced by the presence of... | 1,760,372,801.772384 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/01/will-a-kettle-filled-with-alcohol-boil-dry/ | Will A Kettle Filled With Alcohol Boil Dry? | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"alcohol",
"boiling",
"ethanol",
"kettle"
] | The average home kettle is set up to switch off automatically when water reaches its boiling point. But would a kettle filled with alcohol, which has a significantly lower boiling point, actually turn off?
[Steve Mould] set out to find out.
The prediction was that a kettle full of 40% strength vodka would boil dry, as the vodka would evaporate before it actually got to a hot enough temperature to cause the kettle’s cutout mechanism to kick in. The experiment was done outside to minimise the dangers from the ethanol vapor. As it turns out, the vapor from the boiling vodka is about 80% ethanol and just 20% water, so eventually the mixture left in the kettle is mostly water and it boils hot enough to trigger the cutout mechanism.
However, the experiment doesn’t end there. Trying again with 99% ethanol, when the fluid started boiling, the kettle switched off even more quickly. So what’s going on?
The kettle in question uses a bimetallic strip, which trips the switch off in the base of the kettle when it gets too hot. There’s also a tube inside the kettle that carries vapor from the internal cavity and lets it pass over the bimetallic strip. When the liquid inside the kettle boils, it forces hot vapor through the tube, out of the kettle and over the bimetallic strip.
This strip triggers at a temperature significantly lower than the boiling point of water; indeed, as long as the liquid in the kettle is fairly hot and is boiling enough to force vapor out the tube, the kettle will switch off. [Steve] points out that it’s a good mechanism, as this mechanism allows the kettle to respond to boiling itself, rather than the arbitrary 100 C point which water technically only boils at when one is at sea level.
It’s an interesting look at a safety system baked into something many of us use every day without even thinking. It’s not the first time we’ve seen
[Steve] dive deep into the world of tea-making apparatus, either
. Video after the break. | 31 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420095",
"author": "tekkieneet",
"timestamp": "2022-02-02T03:19:52",
"content": "They probably have to do it this way as the strip won’t need calibration – added labor cost. Its temperature accuracy probably isn’t that great without calibration.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth... | 1,760,372,803.550195 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/01/rainbow-dip-switch-is-the-coolest-way-to-configure-your-project/ | Rainbow DIP Switch Is The Coolest Way To Configure Your Project | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"dip switch",
"rainbow",
"usb"
] | Oftentimes, when programming, we’ll put configuration switches into a config file in order to control the behaviour of our code. However, having to regularly open a text editor to make changes can be a pain.
This colorful little DIP switch dongle
from [Glen Aikins] makes for a fun alternative solution.
Do want.
The build is simple, relying on a rainbow-colored 8-pin DIP switch as the core of the project. A PIC16F1459 then reads the position of the switches, with the 8-bit microcontroller doing the job of speaking USB to the host machine. The device enumerates as a USB HID device, and reports to the host machine when queried as to the state of its 8 switches. [Glen] used a basic C# app to show a digital representation of the switches on screen changing as per the real physical DIP switch plugged into the machine.
It’s a great tool for controlling up to 8 different parameters in a program you might be working on, without having to dive into your editor to change the relevant parts. Also, it bears noting that the rainbow design is simply very fetching and a cool thing to have plugged into your computer. It’s a more serious device than
[Glen’s] hilarious 4-byte “solid state drive” that we saw recently
, but we love them both all the same! | 28 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420063",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2022-02-02T00:09:46",
"content": "So yiu can have rainbow rom with some of these DIP switches, and the project from lastweek?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6420065",
"auth... | 1,760,372,803.710352 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/01/custom-macintosh-with-a-real-486/ | Custom Macintosh With A Real 486 | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Mac Hacks"
] | [
"486",
"apple",
"Computing",
"dos",
"freedos",
"gaming",
"mac",
"macintosh",
"retro",
"vmac"
] | Older Apple computers can often be something of a collector’s item, with the oldest fetching an enormously high price in auctions. The ones from the late ’80s and early ’90s don’t sell for quite as much yet, but it’s possible that museums and collectors of the future will one day be clamoring for those as well. For that reason, it’s generally frowned upon to hack or modify original hardware. Luckily,
this replica of an Apple Macintosh didn’t harm any original hardware yet still manages to run software on bare metal
.
The computer is built around a single-board computer, but this SBC isn’t like the modern ARM machines that have become so ubiquitous. It’s a 133MHz AMD 486 which means that it can run FreeDOS and all of the classic DOS PC games of that era without emulation. In order to run Apple’s legacy operating system, however, it does require the use of the vMac emulator, but the 486 is quite capable of handling the extra layer of abstraction. The computer also sports a real SoundBlaster ISA sound card, uses a microSD card for its hard drive, and uses an 800×600 LCD screen.
As a replica, this computer is remarkably faithful to the original and even though it doesn’t ship with a Motorola 68000 it’s still fun to find retro PC gamers that are able to run their games on original hardware rather than emulation. It reminds us of
another retro 486 that is capable of running old games on new hardware
without an emulator as well. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420044",
"author": "Eric Chapin",
"timestamp": "2022-02-01T22:23:44",
"content": "I have a Macintosh Quadra 650 that’s all original with a 486 add on card. The 486DX2 with sound blaster option was originally from a Power Mac 6100, I fashioned an extension PCB so I could properly pl... | 1,760,372,803.643552 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/01/renaissance-style-drone-would-make-da-vinci-proud-four-times-over/ | Renaissance-Style Drone Would Make Da Vinci Proud Four Times Over | Dan Maloney | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"archimedes",
"da vinci",
"propellor",
"quad",
"quadcopter",
"screw",
"uav"
] | For as much of a genius as Leonardo da Vinci obviously was, modern eyes looking upon his notebooks from the 1400s tend to see his designs as somewhat quaint. After all, his concept of a vehicle armored with wood would probably only have survived the archers and pikemen of a Renaissance battlefield, and his curious helicopter driven by an Archimedes screw would certainly never fly, right?
Don’t tell that to [Austin Prete] and his team from the University of Maryland, who’ve built
a da Vinci-style quadcopter that actually flies
. Called the “Crimson Spin”, the quad is based on a standard airframe and electronics. Details are sparse — the group just presented the work at a vertical flight conference — but it appears the usual plastic props are replaced with lightweight screws made from wire and some sort of transparent plastic membrane. Opposing pairs of screws have the opposite handedness, which gives the quad yaw control. There’s a video embedded in the link above that shows the quad being tested both indoors and out, and performing surprisingly well. We’d imagine that Crimson Spin might not do so well on a windy day, given the large wind cross-section those screws present, but the fact it got off the ground at all is cool enough. It kind of makes you wonder where we’d be today if da Vinci had access to BLDCs.
For as fanciful as da Vinci’s designs can be, we’ve seen a fair number of attempts to recreate them in modern materials.
His cryptex
is a perennial favorite for hackers, and
his bizarre piano-esque “viola organista”
has been attempted at least once.
Thanks to [Peter Ryseck] for this tip. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420061",
"author": "Trey",
"timestamp": "2022-02-01T23:45:04",
"content": "It probably would have been easier to 3D print these props.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6420084",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestam... | 1,760,372,803.334129 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/01/did-you-know-that-the-raspberry-pi-4-has-more-spi-i2c-uart-ports/ | Did You Know That The Raspberry Pi 4 Has More SPI, I2C, UART Ports? | Arya Voronova | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Slider"
] | [
"compute module",
"compute module 4",
"i2c",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi 4",
"Raspberry Pi Compute Module",
"spi",
"uart"
] | We’ve gotten used to the GPIO-available functions of Raspberry Pi computers remaining largely the same over the years, which is why it might have flown a little bit under the radar: the Raspberry Pi 4 has
six SPI controllers
,
six I2C controllers, and six UARTs
– all on its 40-pin header. You can’t make use of all of these at once, but with up to four different connections wired to a single pin you can carve out a pretty powerful combination of peripherals for your next robotics, automation or cat herding project.
The datasheet for these peripherals
is pleasant to go through, with all the register maps nicely laid out – even if you don’t plan to work with the register mappings yourself, the maintainers of your preferred hardware enablement libraries will have an easier time! And, of course, these peripherals are present on the Compute Module 4, too. It might feel like such a deluge of interfaces is excessive, however, it lets you achieve some pretty cool stuff that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
Having multiple I2C interfaces helps
deal with various I2C-specific problems
, such as address conflicts, throughput issues, and mixing devices that support different maximum speeds, which means you no longer need fancy mux chips to run five
low-resolution Melexis thermal camera sensors
at once. (Oh, and the I2C clock stretching bug has been fixed!) SPI interfaces are used for devices with high bandwidth, and with a few separate SPI ports, you could run multiple relatively high-resolution displays at once,
No-Nixie Nixie clock style.
As for UARTs, the Raspberry Pi’s one-and-a-half UART interface has long been an issue in robotics and home automation applications. With a slew of devices like radio receivers/transmitters,
LIDARs
and resilient RS485 multi-drop interfaces available in UART form, it’s nice that you no longer have to sacrifice Bluetooth or a debug console to get some fancy sensors wired up to your robot’s brain. You can enable up to six UARTs.
How To Use These Interfaces?
Enabling these interfaces seems to be straightforward, and people on Raspberry Pi forums and other places have been test-driving them for their own endeavors. All three kinds of interfaces can be enabled using
dtoverlay
lines in
config.txt
. For SPI, the [MaSt] blog
helpfully provides some examples
:
# enabling SPI6 with two CS pins - one on GPIO16 and other on GPIO26
dtoverlay=spi6-2cs,cs0_pin=16,cs1_pin=26
For I2C and UART, Raspberry Pi forum threads provided a few examples.
I2C example
:
# Enabling I2C3, with SDA on GPIO4 and SCL on GPIO5
dtoverlay=i2c3,pins_4_5
UART example
:
# Enabling UART, with RTS and CTS pins (omit the 'ctsrts' part to disable them)
dtoverlay=uart3,ctsrts
From here, these interfaces will appear as you’d expect them, as
/dev/spi6
,
/dev/i2c-3
and
/dev/ttyAMA*
respectively. (The serial ports don’t have aliases yet, so you’ll get one more
/dev/ttyAMA
port added to existing ones.)
We were surprised to learn about these new peripherals, and maybe you were too? We can’t wait to see what you’ll do with them.
Main image remixed from Raspberry Pi 4 GPIO pinout diagram
by [Les Pounder]
. | 35 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419992",
"author": "Twisty Plastic",
"timestamp": "2022-02-01T18:20:01",
"content": "Meh. Needs a true LPT port still.Just think of the possibilities for controlling old CNC machines.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6419994",... | 1,760,372,803.405087 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/01/analog-computer-made-from-lego-predicts-tides/ | Analog Computer Made From LEGO Predicts Tides | Robin Kearey | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"analog computer",
"lego",
"tide-predicting machine"
] | Although the tides in the ocean are caused by the motion of the Sun and the Moon, both of which are easy to observe, accurately predicting the tide more than a few days in advance turns out to be rather difficult. The math behind the tidal movement is so complex that some of the earliest analog computers were built specifically to perform tide calculations. Sir William Thomson (better known as Lord Kelvin) designed one such “tide-predicting machine”, an impressive arrangement of gears and pulleys, back in the late 19th century.
[Pepijn de Vos] built
a modern interpretation of Thomson’s machine out of LEGO parts
, and it’s no less impressive than the original. A total of 96 LEGO gears move perfectly in sync to the ocean’s natural rhythms, while a set of pulleys connect four banks of gears together to create the sum of the constituent frequencies. An ultrasonic sensor reads the output value and sends the result back to a PC.
One interesting problem that [Pepijn] ran into, and which he explains in great detail on his blog, is that LEGO gears can only provide a very limited set of gear ratios. In order to match the tide calculations to any kind of precision, he needed to connect many gears in series without creating too much friction and backlash in the mechanism. Optimizing this setup was a non-trivial task that required a significant amount of computing power by itself.
As you can see in the video embedded below, the machine makes beautifully smooth movements, which correspond quite accurately to the actual motion of tides. If you’re interested in the science behind analog tide predictors, we’ve got
an in-depth article about just that
. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6420006",
"author": "Rog77",
"timestamp": "2022-02-01T19:23:37",
"content": "I liked the use of SA in the optimisation, second time I’ve seen it used on projects posted here in the last couple of weeks, “non-trivial” seems like an understatement.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth"... | 1,760,372,803.588879 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/01/how-the-hunga-tonga-volcano-eruption-was-felt-around-the-world/ | How The Hunga Tonga Volcano Eruption Was Felt Around The World | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"citizen science",
"environment",
"hunga tonga",
"pressure wave",
"satellite imagery",
"volcano",
"weather station"
] | On the 14th of January, 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano began a gigantic eruption that would go on to peak in ferocity the next day. The uninhabited island volcano would quickly make headlines as the country of Tonga was cut off the world and tsunamis bore out from the eurption zone.
In a volcanic event of this size, the effects can be felt around the world. With modern instruments, they can be properly understood too. Let’s take a look at how the effects of the Hunga Tonga eruption were captured and measured across the globe.
Far-Flung Effects
The state of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai island in April 2021. Credit: NASA
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic island that erupted in January bears two names because it was originally two separate islands that had become connected by volcanic activity
back in 2015
, so you know this is a geologically active region. However, the eruption this time was so ferociously powerful that the island was almost entirely destroyed, with satellite images taken in the aftermath shown only a small segment of high ground remains in the area.
In the wake of the event, NASA reported that the eruption was
hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb
dropped on Hiroshima in World War II, roughly the equivalent of 4-18 megatons of TNT. Ash was sent high into the atmsophere, potentially up to a height of 50 kilometers, to the point where the cloud could readily be photographed by astronauts on the ISS.
Sensors Everywhere
The pressure wave from the Tonga eruption as captured by the NOAA’s GOES-WEST satellite’s infrared radiance data. Animation credit: Mathew A Barlow, University of Massachusetts Lowell,
usage approved with attribution
However, one needn’t have the instruments and infrastructure of a national space program to detect such a large event. One [Edward Jensen] reports that
his own weather station in Phoenix, Arizona
captured a pressure anomaly from the eruption, as did other amateur weather installations in the area. This could be dismissed as an anomaly, of course, but the data checks out.
In fact, with pressure altimeter readings from national meteorological networks collated by [Daryl Herzmann], one can clearly see the pressure wave from the eruption passing over the continental United States
on the afternoon of January 15
. The National Weather Service also concurs with their own analysis, showing how the pressure wave reached stations
as far-flung as Salt Lake City, Utah and Glasgow, Montana.
Effects weren’t just seen in wiggling graphs of weather data either; the volcano was credited with
lifting the fog in Seattle
as the pressure wave passed by.
Ash from the eruption was lofted high into the atmosphere. This photo of the eruption was taken from the International Space Station. Credit:
NASA
Distributed networks of sensors are particularly useful for tracking events like these; we’ve attempted to use similar methods ourselves to investigate nuclear incidents,
albeit without success
. Incidentally, though, the powerful blast of the Hunga Tonga eruption was picked up
at all 53 infrasound monitoring stations
maintained by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation, highlighting that the event really was on the scale of a nuclear detonation.
Earthquake sensors were able to pick up the rumblings from the eruption, as you’d expect. The US Geological Survey released images
on Twitter
showing how seismographs at Mount Hood, Oregon recorded the event. Meanwhile, tsunami warning systems were triggered
around the Pacific.
Studies suggest that while tusnami waves were detected on many shores far from Tonga itself, such as in Peru and Japan, these were likely generated by the
interaction of the atmospheric pressure wave with the water
, rather than being generated by earthquake events themselves.
Data captured by the ESA’s Copernicus Sentinel-5P pollution monitoring satellite showed sulfur dioxide released from the eruption passing over Australia in the days after the event. Credit:
ESA
, CC BY-SA 3.0
Outside of the waves from the event, other lingering effects from the volcanic activity have spread around the world. The Copernicus Sentinel-5P mission captured
a giant sulfur dioxide plume
from the eruption which had floated its way over to Australia by the 18th of January. The satellite is dedicated to pollution monitoring, and is designed to track aerosols and trace gases in the atmosphere. Thus, it was the perfect tool for monitoring the progression of the gas cloud as it travelled 7000 km in just a few short days after the eruption.
Did You Hear That?
Perhaps most amazing, though, are the reports that the volcanic event could be heard as far away as Alaska, almost 10,000 km from the epicenter of the eruption.
In a report from
Alaska Public
,
residents talk about being woken on Saturday morning to loud booming noises. Travelling at the speed of sound – around 1225 km/h at sea level – the noises were heard around eight hours after the eruption kicked off.
For an eruption like this, detectable on a global scale, the Hunga Tonga event wasn’t nearly as bad as it would have been if the island were inhabited. Sadly, still five deaths and eighteen injuries have been reported in the aftermath, with many still missing. Communications were cut due to a damaged undersea cable, and ash covered much of the surrounding area. Thankfully, aid was quickly deployed from surrounding countries.
Being forewarned would be better than cleaning up after the fact, though, and volcano eruption prediction is still an open research question. The hope is that data gathered in situations like these will better educate us and help us better mitigate the damage from similar events in future.
[Banner image:
NASA Earth Observatory
footage. Go check out their animated GIF!] | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419917",
"author": "Heinz-Bernd Eggenstein",
"timestamp": "2022-02-01T15:37:19",
"content": "The event was also observed with relatively inexpensive citizen-sciene infrasound sensors like the “Raspberry BOOM” (by the same company that makes the “Raspberry Shake” citizen science sei... | 1,760,372,803.982458 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/01/radio-amateurs-skywatchers-rejoice-sat-operators-worry-solar-storm-incoming/ | Radio Amateurs & Skywatchers Rejoice, Sat Operators Worry: Solar Storm Incoming | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Science",
"Space"
] | [
"aurora",
"solar storm",
"space weather"
] | How do you look back over your life and divide it up? Maybe by decades, cultural moments, or geopolitical events. For radio amateurs with older callsigns there’s a temptation to do so by solar cycles, as the roughly 11-year period of the Sun’s activity had a huge effect on radio propagation through the charge it creates in the upper atmosphere. We’re now in solar cycle 25, numbered since the 18th century when the science of solar observation began, and as never before we’re surrounded by information from experts such as [Dr. Tamitha Skov], the so-called [Space Weather Woman]. When she says something is on the way we listen, so a recent Tweet
predicting a direct hit from a solar storm with a good probability of auroras in lower latitudes
is very much worth sharing.
We must extend our commiserations to readers in equatorial climes and ever through the lower half of the USA, southern Europe, the Middle East, India, Japan, and China. You won’t see the aurora we’ll catch in Europe along with our friends in New Zealand, Canada, Russia, and northern USA. But even then to those of us at moderate latitudes an aurora is a pretty rare event, so we’re hoping for clear skies on the 2nd of February and would advise you to look out too if you’re in the likely zone even if they won’t be quite as impressive as those in our header picture. Meanwhile radio amateurs everywhere don’t have to see pretty lights in the sky to reap the benefits in terms of propagation, so happy DX hunting! The Tweet is embedded below the break, so you can play the timeline for yourselves.
Direct Hit! NASA, NOAA & MetOffice predictions agree the
#solarstorm
launched Jan 29 will hit Earth by early Feb 2! This one is slow so expect
#aurora
only as far south as Netherlands, north USA, & up to north New Zealand & Tasmania.
#GPS
& HF
#radio
issues on Earth's nightside!
pic.twitter.com/Uua1LGMgJR
— Dr. Tamitha Skov (@TamithaSkov)
January 31, 2022
Header image: United States Air Force, Senior Airman Joshua Strang,
Public domain
. | 23 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419887",
"author": "metalman",
"timestamp": "2022-02-01T13:57:09",
"content": "ice core data is revealing strong evidence of past solar stormsthat are orders of magnitude larger than anything observedin modern times,ie 1600’s to present.we still have no idea ofhow large a solar sto... | 1,760,372,803.923646 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/01/simple-setup-answers-complex-question-on-the-physics-of-solids/ | Simple Setup Answers Complex Question On The Physics Of Solids | Dan Maloney | [
"Science"
] | [
"material science",
"physics",
"piezo",
"propagation",
"sound",
"speed of sound"
] | Thought experiments can be extremely powerful; after all, pretty much everything that [Einstein] came up with was based on thought experiments. But when a thought experiment turns into a real experiment, that’s when things can get really interesting, and where unexpected insights crop up.
Take [AlphaPhoenix]’s simple question:
“Are solid objects really solid?”
On the face of it, this seems like a silly and trivial question, but the thought experiment he presents reveals more. He posits that pushing on one end of a solid metal rod a meter or so in length will result in motion at the other end of the rod pretty much instantly. But what if we scale that rod up considerably — say, to one light-second in length. Is a displacement at one end of the rob instantly apparent at the other end? It’s a bit of a mind-boggler.
To answer the question, [AlphaPhoneix] set up a simple experiment with the aforementioned steel rod — the shorter one, of course. The test setup was pretty clever: a piezoelectric sensor at one end of the bar, and a hammer wired to a battery at the other end, to sense when the hammer made contact with the bar. Both sensors were connected to an oscilloscope to set up to capture the pulses and measure the time. It turned out that the test setup was quite a challenge to get right, and troubleshooting the rig took him down a rabbit hole that was just as interesting as answering the original question. We won’t spoil the ending, but suffice it to say we were pleased that our first instinct turned out to be correct, even if for the wrong reasons.
If you haven’t checked out [AlphaPhoenix] yet, you really should. With a doctorate in material science, he’s got an interesting outlook on things, like
calculating pi using raindrops
or
keeping the “ultra” in ultra-high vacuum
. | 17 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419812",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2022-02-01T09:31:26",
"content": "This physics is the basis of a high strain-rate testing device called the “Hopkinson bar”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-Hopkinson_pressure_bar(Which might well be mentioned in the video, I haven’t ... | 1,760,372,803.767646 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/31/open-hardware-5v-ups-improves-on-cheap-powerbank-design/ | Open Hardware 5V UPS Improves On Cheap Powerbank Design | Arya Voronova | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"open hardware",
"open source hardware",
"tp5400",
"Uninterruptible Power Supply",
"ups"
] | Often, we need to power a 5V-craving project of ours on the go. So did [Burgduino], and, unhappy with solutions available,
designed their own 5V UPS!
It takes a cheap powerbank design and augments it with a few parts vital for its UPS purposes.
You might be tempted to reach for a powerbank when facing such a problem, but most of them have a fatal flaw, and you can’t easily tell a flawed one apart from a functioning one before you buy it. This flaw is lack of load sharing – ability to continue powering the output when a charger is inserted. Most store-bought powerbanks just shut the output off, which precludes a project running 24/7 without powering it down, and can cause adverse consequences when something like a Raspberry Pi is involved.
Understandably, [Burgduino] wasn’t okay with that. Their UPS is based on the TP5400, a combined LiIon charging and boost chip, used a lot in simple powerbanks, but not capable of load sharing. For that, an extra LM66100 chip – an “ideal diode” controller is used. You might scoff at it being a Texas Instruments part, but it does seem to be widely available and only a tad more expensive than the TP5400 itself! The design
is open hardware
, with PCB files available on EasyEDA and the BOM clearly laid out for easy LCSC ordering.
We the hackers might struggle to keep our portable Pi projects powered,
employing supercapacitors
and
modifying badly designed Chinese boards
. However, once we find a proper toolkit for our purposes, battery-powered projects tend to open new frontiers – you might even go beyond your Pi and
upgrade your router with an UPS addon
! Of course, it’s not always smooth sailing, and sometimes seemingly portability-friendly devices
can surprise you with their design quirks
. | 35 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419775",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2022-02-01T06:10:57",
"content": "Pardon the ignorance but why would I scoff at a TI part. Chip shortage?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6419826",
"author": "Arya Voronova",
... | 1,760,372,803.472008 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/31/time-and-accuracy-in-las-atmegas/ | Time And Accuracy In Las ATMegas | Arya Voronova | [
"how-to",
"Microcontrollers",
"Skills",
"Software Development"
] | [
"accuracy",
"atmega",
"atmega328p",
"clock calibration",
"interrupts",
"precision",
"timers"
] | Do you ever have to ensure that an exact amount of time passes between two tasks in your microcontroller code? Do you know what’s the difference between precision and accuracy? Today, [Jim Mack]
tells us about pushing timers and interrupts to their limits
when it comes to managing time, while keeping it applicable to an ever-popular ATMega328P target! Every now and then, someone decides to push the frontiers of what’s possible on a given platform, and today’s rules is coding within constraints of an Arduino environment. However, you should check [Jim]’s post out even if you use Arduino as a swearword – purely for all of the theoretical insights laid out, accompanied by hardware-accurate examples!
This will be useful to any hacker looking to implement, say, motor encoder readings, signal frequency calculations, or build a gadget processing or modifying audio in real time. To give you a sample of this article, [Jim] starts by introducing us to distinctions between precision and accuracy, and then presents us with a seemingly simple task – creating exactly 2400 interrupts a second. As much as it might look straightforward, problems quickly arise when clock crystal frequency doesn’t cleanly divide by the sampling frequency that you have to pick for your application! This is just a taste of all the examples of hidden complexity presented, and they’re accompanied with solutions you can use when you eventually encounter one of these examples in your hacker pursuits. In the end, [Jim] concludes with links to other sources you can study if you ever need to dig deeper into this topic.
Keeping our projects true to the passage of time can be an issue, and we’ve been at it for ages –
calibrating your RC oscillator
is a rite of passage for any ATTiny project. If you ever decide to have an interrupt peripheral help you with timing issues, we’ve gone in-depth on that topic in the past, with a three-part series describing
the benefits
,
the drawbacks
and
the edgecases
of interrupts. Going for a more modern target? Our piece on
using interrupts with STM32
is a great path for trying out tools of the modern age. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419762",
"author": "eriklscott",
"timestamp": "2022-02-01T04:46:22",
"content": "Nice work on the title. :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6419799",
"author": "Anonymouso",
"timestamp": "2022-02-01T08:11:27",
"con... | 1,760,372,804.020525 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/31/reverse-engineering-a-two-wire-led-strip-protocol/ | Reverse-Engineering A Two-Wire LED Strip Protocol | Robin Kearey | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"LED string",
"power line signal",
"two-wire communication"
] | Although Christmas may be several weeks behind us, various colorful LED contraptions can nowadays be found in our houses at any time of year. [Tim] got his hands on an LED curtain that came with a remote control that allows the user to set not only the color of the LEDs as a whole but also to run simple animations. But these were not your standard WS2812B strips with data lines: all the LEDs were simply connected in parallel with just two wires, so how was this even possible?
The LED string protocol is very simple, with one address field and one data field.
[Tim] hooked up his oscilloscope to the LED strings to find out how they worked,
detailing the results in a comprehensive blog post
. As it turns out, the controller briefly shorts the LED strip’s supply voltage to generate data bits, similar to the way old pulse-dialing phones worked. A tiny chip integrated into each LED picks up these pulses, but retains its internal state thanks to a capacitor that keeps the chip powered when the supply line goes low.
After reverse-engineering the protocol, [Tim]
went on to implement a similar design
using an ATMega328P as a controller and an ATtiny10 as the LED driver. With just a few lines of code and a 100 nF buffer capacitor across the ATtiny’s power pins, [Tim] was able to turn an LED on and off by sending pulses through the supply lines. Some work still needs to be done to fully implement a protocol as used in the LED strings, but as a proof-of-concept it shows that this kind of power-line communication is possible with standard components.
We’ve seen projects
that send signals down a two-wire LED chain
before, although as an add-on to a more ordinary LED strip. [Tim] is not the first to reverse-engineer
poorly documented LED strip protocols
, but probably won’t be the last either. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419697",
"author": "I",
"timestamp": "2022-02-01T00:12:29",
"content": "Not surprising to see this kind of thing in the wild, it’s been around a long time! A few years back I used a powerline-based ethernet plug that had 2 units which you’d connect to 2 outlets in a house to make a... | 1,760,372,804.081052 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/31/reusing-proprietary-wireless-sockets-without-wireless-hacking/ | Reusing Proprietary Wireless Sockets Without Wireless Hacking | Arya Voronova | [
"home hacks",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"analog switch",
"hackaday.io",
"home automation",
"reverse engineering",
"rf remote control",
"smart home",
"wireless outlet"
] | Bending various proprietary devices to our will is a hacker’s rite of passage. When it comes to proprietary wall sockets, we’d often reverse-engineer and emulate their protocol – but you can absolutely take a shortcut and, like [oaox],
spoof the button presses on the original remote
! Buttons on such remotes tend to be multiplexed and read as a key matrix (provided there’s more than four of them), so you can’t just pull one of the pads to ground and expect to not confuse the microcontroller inside the remote. While reading a key matrix, the controller will typically drive rows one-by-one and read column states, and a row or column driven externally will result in the code perceiving an entire group of keys as “pressed” – however, a digitally-driven “switch” doesn’t have this issue!
One way to achieve this would be to use a transistor, but [oaox] played it safe and went for a 4066 analog multiplexer, which has a higher chance of working with any remote no matter the button configuration, for instance, even when the buttons are wired as part of a resistor network. As a bonus, the remote will still work, and you will still be able to use its buttons for the original purpose – as long as you keep your wiring job neat! When compared to reverse-engineering the protocol and using a wireless transmitter, this also has the benefit of being able to consistently work with even non-realtime devices like Raspberry Pi, and other devices that run an OS and aren’t able to guarantee consistent operation when driving a cheap GPIO-operated RF transmitter.
In the past,
we’ve seen people trying to tackle this exact issue
, resorting to RF protocol hacking in the end. We’ve talked
about analog multiplexers and switches
in the past, if you’d like figure out more ways to apply them to solve your hacking problems! Taking projects like these as your starting point, it’s not too far until you’re able to
replace the drift-y joysticks on your Nintendo Switch with touchpads
! | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419651",
"author": "kevinski",
"timestamp": "2022-01-31T21:18:08",
"content": "Most of these 315/433Mhz work with a rflink gateway (https://www.rflink.nl/devlist.php)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6419657",
"author": "Alp... | 1,760,372,804.239619 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/30/gpu-ram-upgrades-are-closer-than-you-think/ | GPU RAM Upgrades Are Closer Than You Think | Arya Voronova | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"BGA soldering",
"gpu",
"memory upgrade",
"ram",
"vram"
] | We’re all used to swapping RAM in our desktops and laptops. What about a GPU, though? [dosdude1] teaches us that soldered-on RAM is
merely a frontier to be conquered
. Of course, there’s gotta be a good reason to undertake such an effort – in his case, he couldn’t find the specific type of Nvidia GT640 that could be flashed with an Apple BIOS to have his Xserve machine output the Apple boot screen properly. All he could find were 1GB versions, and the Apple BIOS could only be flashed onto a 2GB version. Getting 2GB worth of DDR chips on Aliexpress was way too tempting!
The video goes through the entire replacement process, to the point where you could repeat it yourself — as long as you have access to a preheater, which is a must for reworking relatively large PCBs, as well as a set of regular tools for replacing BGA chips. In the end, the card booted up, and, flashed with a new BIOS, successfully displayed the Apple bootup logo that would normally be missing without the special Apple VBIOS sauce. If you ever want to try such a repair, now you have one less excuse — and, with the GT640 being a relatively old card, you don’t even risk all that much!
This is not the first soldered-in RAM replacement journey we’ve covered recently — here’s our write-up about
[Greg Davill] upgrading soldered-in RAM on his Dell XPS
! You can upgrade CPUs this way, too. While it’s standard procedure in sufficiently advanced laptop repair shops, even hobbyists can manage it with proper equipment and a good amount of luck, as
this EEE PC CPU upgrade illustrates
. BGA work and Apple computers getting a second life go hand in hand — just two years ago, we covered this
BGA-drilling hack to bypass a dead GPU in a Macbook
, and before that, a
Macbook water damage revival story
. | 34 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419210",
"author": "Nicci",
"timestamp": "2022-01-31T06:14:31",
"content": "I wish the same could be done on laptops with soldered RAM, like the Macbooks. I like my M1 Air but the 8GB Ram isn’t going to be enough in just a few years.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,372,804.150051 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/30/retro-gaming-with-retro-joysticks/ | Retro Gaming With Retro Joysticks | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"adapter",
"controller",
"dos",
"gameport",
"gaming",
"Joystick",
"pc",
"sound card",
"usb",
"wheel"
] | One of the biggest reasons for playing older video games on original hardware is that emulators and modern controllers can’t replicate the exact feel of how those games would have been originally experienced. This is true of old PC games as well, so if you want to use your original Sidewinder steering wheel or antique Logitech joystick, you’ll need something like [Necroware]’s
GamePort adapter to get them to communicate with modern hardware
.
In a time before USB was the standard, the way to connect controllers to PCs was through the GamePort, typically found on the sound card. This has long since disappeared from modern controllers, so the USB interface [Necroware] built relies on an Arduino to do the translating. Specifically, the adapter is designed as a generic adapter for several different analog joysticks, and a series of DIP switches on the adapter select the appropriate mode. Check it out in the video after the break. The adapter is also capable of automatically calibrating the joysticks, which is necessary as the passive components in the controllers often don’t behave the same way now as they did when they were new.
Plenty of us have joysticks and steering wheels from this era stored away somewhere, so if you want to experience Flight Simulator 5.0 like it would have been experienced in 1993, all it takes is an Arduino. And, if you want to run these programs on bare metal rather than in an emulator, it is actually possible to
build a new Intel 486 gaming PC
, which operates almost exactly like a PC from the 90s would have. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419255",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
"timestamp": "2022-01-31T07:50:30",
"content": "Variations of PC gameport to USB adapters have been around for a while, including ones that support oddball sticks like the Sidewinder 3D. But none of them support any force feedback because nobody... | 1,760,372,804.197884 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/30/hackaday-links-january-30-2022/ | Hackaday Links: January 30, 2022 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"adsb",
"crypto",
"death star",
"Elon Musk",
"fault injection",
"flight tracking",
"hackaday links",
"james webb space telescope",
"jwst",
"L2",
"Lagrange",
"libration",
"Mimas",
"roomba",
"Saturn",
"trezor",
"wallet"
] | After all the fuss and bother along the way, it seems a bit anticlimactic now that
the James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at its forever home
orbiting around L2. The observatory finished its trip on schedule, arriving on January 24 in its fully deployed state, after a one-month journey and a couple of hundred single-point failure deployments. The next phase of the mission is commissioning, and is a somewhat more sedate and far less perilous process of tweaking and trimming the optical systems, and getting the telescope and its sensors down to operating temperature. The commissioning phase will take five or six months, so don’t count on any new desktop photos until summer at the earliest. Until then, enjoy the video below which answers some of the questions we had about what Webb can actually see — here’s hoping there’s not much interesting to see approximately in the plane of the ecliptic.
In other solar system news, it turns out that one of the minor moons of Saturn may be more than meets the eye. Data captured by the Cassini mission flyby of Mimas shows
the 400-km diameter moon probably has an internal ocean of liquid water
. Astronomers have known about Mimas since William Herschel discovered it in 1789, and had assumed it was a giant ball of ice. But if it does turn out to have an internal ocean, it suddenly becomes another place to look for extraterrestrial life. But there’s just something familiar about
the way this small moon looks
that we just can’t put our finger on. Eh — probably nothing to worry about.
We got tipped off through
The Analog
to a fascinating video by Joe Grand detailing
how he hacked a hardware wallet
containing about $2 million of cryptocurrency. It’s a great case study in the art and science of fault injection, which was the approach Joe took to getting at the forgotten password for the Trezor hardware wallet. There are plenty of lessons here, both from the user side (don’t forget your password) and from the hacking side (patience is a virtue). Did he succeed, or did he end up frying the wallet? Watch and learn.
From the “It’s all fun and games until a multi-billionaire is slightly inconvenienced” files, we see that
Elon Musk doesn’t like the fact that the comings and goings of his private jet are easily seen
. This is thanks to a Twitter bot called
@ElonJet
, one of 15 similar billionaire-trackers written by 19-year-old Jack Sweeney. The bot scrapes ADSB data and correlates it with anonymized flight-plan data, and with a little logic applied to altitude data, figures out when and when Elon’s plane takes off and lands. Elon apparently Tweeted his objections to the tracker directly to Jack, saying that he didn’t want to become a target for “nutcases.” And then the world’s richest man made his takedown offer — $5,000. Jack is wisely holding out for at least another order of magnitude, or a Model 3 — whichever comes first. Don’t hold your breath, Jack.
Hams have a long history of using whatever is on hand to get on the air, but
reusing COVID-19 rapid tests as antenna insulators
may be pushing things a bit. Sure, the world is awash in plastic waste, and the used
lateral-flow tests
are just about the right size and shape for the job, but we’d say something soaked in saliva should probably be safely disposed of rather than reused.
And finally, when you stay in a hotel where a Hackaday editor has previously lodged, you’ve got to expect
this kind of thing to happen
. Jenny List shared this story from the Travelodge in Cambridge, where she stayed for the
London Unconference in 2017
, “in the before times” as she put it. According to reports, a robotic vacuum cleaner ran amok and made an escape from the hotel, having somehow failed to notice the flooring transition at the entrance that usually thwarts it. Now, we concede that it’s been more than four years since she stayed there, but it’s at least reasonable to ask if there’s a connection between Jenny’s visit and this obvious exploit of hardware hackery. We’re not throwing stones here, but the dead giveaway is that the hotel’s assistant manager offered “a drink at the bar” for the safe return of the robot. Sounds like Jenny might have been going for the long con here. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419091",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2022-01-31T00:23:30",
"content": "I was watching the Webb video and thinking the whole time what it is showing is technically wrong it is orbiting around L2, the video shows a dumbed down version where it’s solar panels are in constant shad... | 1,760,372,804.497439 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/30/laundry-bot-tackles-the-tedium-of-t-shirt-folding/ | Laundry Bot Tackles The Tedium Of T-Shirt Folding | Dan Maloney | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"domestic",
"folding",
"laundry",
"robot",
"shirt",
"t-shirt"
] | Roomba aside, domestic robots are still in search of the killer app they need to really take off. For the other kind of home automation to succeed, designers are going to have to find the most odious domestic task and make it go away at the push of the button.
A T-shirt folding robot
is probably a good first step.
First and foremost, hats off to [
Stefano Pontoglio
] for his copious documentation on this project. Not only are complete instructions for building the laundry bot listed, but there’s also a full use-case analysis and even a complete exploration of prior art in the space. [Stefano]’s exhaustive analysis led to a set of stepper-actuated panels, laser-cut from thin plywood, and arranged to make the series of folds needed to take a T-shirt from flat to folded in just a few seconds.
The video below shows the folder in action, and while it’s not especially fast right now, we’ll chalk that up to still being under development. We can see a few areas for improvement; making the panels from acrylic might make the folded shirt slide off the bot better, and pneumatic actuators might make for quicker movements and sharper folds.
The challenges to real-world laundry folding
are real, but this is a great start, and we’ll be on the lookout for improvements. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419061",
"author": "Bryce Schroeder",
"timestamp": "2022-01-30T21:39:55",
"content": "Or you could just put the shirt in a bin of clean t-shirts, and after wearing it for ten minutes it will be indistinguishable from one that was carefully folder, assuming you used fabric softener ... | 1,760,372,804.683783 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/30/esp32-and-raspberry-pi-take-over-game-boy-lcd/ | ESP32 And Raspberry Pi Take Over Game Boy LCD | Tom Nardi | [
"Games",
"Microcontrollers",
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"handheld",
"i2c",
"lcd driver",
"video capture"
] | The Nintendo Game Boy and its many permutations represent one of the most well-known and successful gaming platforms ever produced. There was a decades-long stretch of time where the most popular kid in the lunch room was the one who brought in their Game Boy so the rest of the class could huddle around and check out the latest
Pokemon
title.
But those days are long gone, and now these once-coveted handhelds can be had for a song on the second-hand market. Which makes it the perfect time to check out this project [kgsws] released recently that allows you to
interface the Game Boy LCD with the ESP32
or the Raspberry Pi. In the most basic of applications, it lets you push video from your Linux computer out to the Game Boy LCD over WiFi. But as the video below illustrates, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
With the ESP32 wired between the handheld’s LCD and main PCB, the microcontroller can also act as a capture device using I2S camera mode. Compared to what ends up showing on the handheld’s LCD, the recorded gameplay [kgsws] shows off looks fantastic. Visuals are crisp and fluid, and naturally devoid of the Game Boy’s iconic (if slightly nauseating) greenish tint.
The project also includes the capability to control an array of Game Boy LCDs, which allows for some interesting possibilities. The image can be stretched to cover multiple displays, which [kgsws] demonstrates by playing a game on 3 x 3 grid of salvaged panels, but each LCD also can be controlled individually as is the case with the large digital clock seen above.
Whether you’re looking for a way to
capture gameplay on the real hardware
, or
want to run RetroPie on a real Game Boy screen
, we’re excited to see what folks come up with using this project. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,804.723472 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/30/power-for-nothing-and-your-kicks-for-free/ | Power For Nothing And Your Kicks For Free | Al Williams | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"energy harvesting",
"thermocouple"
] | We all know that you can convert heat into electricity. Usually, you do that with some form of steam, but there are other methods, too, including thermocouples. If you’ve ever seen something producing waste heat, you’ll appreciate Penn State’s work
to harvest power from hot pipes
. The idea is simple in theory: create a flexible thermoelectric generator that can wrap around hot pipes or other surfaces to gather otherwise lost heat. The full (paywalled) paper
is also available
.
The devices can produce up to 150% more power per unit area compared to other thermoelectric generators. A three-square-inch test device produced over 50 watts. Scale that up to an industrial pipe hundreds of feet long, and you could create some serious power. To accomplish this, the scientists used strips of six thermocouples and connected them for a total of 72 thermocouples. Liquid metal between layers improved the device’s performance.
This isn’t a totally new idea. Russia was famous for making radios in the 1950s that operated using a generator that went around
the flue of a kerosene lamp
. Since the Russians were pulling this off in the 1950s, converting heat into electricity
is obviously nothing new
. Of course,
your body creates heat
, too, so why not use that? | 68 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418814",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2022-01-30T15:06:12",
"content": "would anyone know if thermocouples as used in this article would be available from uncle jeff or ebay?Typically thermocouples are tiny things, used to measure temperature.Just to do a back-of-napkin break-ev... | 1,760,372,804.598153 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/30/relay-driven-nixie-clock-gets-you-to-stop-scrolling/ | Relay-Driven Nixie Clock Gets You To Stop Scrolling | Arya Voronova | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"nixie",
"nixie clock",
"nixie tube",
"nixie tube clock",
"nixie tubes",
"relay"
] | We don’t often get a Tips line submission where the “Subject” line auto-translates as “Yoshi Yoshi Yoshi”, linking to
a short video by [Yasunari Industries]
(embedded below). For many, it might be hard to tell what this is at a first glance – however, if the myriad of relays clacking won’t draw your attention, the four Nixie digits on the top definitely will! The gorgeous black PCB has two buttons on the bottom, incrementing hour and minute hours respectively, and observant readers will notice how the LEDs near the relays respond to binary-coded-decimal representation of the digits being shown. This appears to be a relay-based clock with Nixie tubes for digit outputs, and on a scale from “practical” to “eye candy”, it firmly points towards the latter!
The project’s description is quite laconic, but it’s fun to try to figure out what is what based off the few pictures available. The top part with the Nixies and the PIR sensor (presumably for conserving the Nixie tube resources) is V-scored, and a small jumper PCB on the back connects the Nixie module to the relay board – likely, we might see these boards reassembled in a different form-factor, or perhaps find their way into [Yasunari Industries]’ different projects altogether! We can see a Digispark board in the bottom right corner, and wonder if, with addition of that, this board is able to function as a standalone clock — hopefully it does, because that’s one gorgeous addition. And, of course, it all couldn’t happen without help of a bunch of red wires on the back of the board – the author says that some segments were reversed, and the high-voltage PSU section of the board was mis-wired.
Nixie tubes have a dedicated fan base over here, and we keep covering projects that find yet unexplored ways to use Nixies, such as
a circular FFT display
, or
a high-speed camera calibration fixture
. Sometimes, Nixie tubes feel like this special sauce you can add to your creation, which explains their popularity in all kinds of barely even counting-adjacent projects, like
this TODO indicator
. And when we run out of Nixies, we find ways to imitate them – whether it’s
with tiny IPS displays
, or
with layered laser-cut acrylic
!
ヨシヨシヨシッ‼︎
pic.twitter.com/ORfiqJKJ7t
— やすなり工業 (@YSNR_YSD)
January 4, 2022 | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418813",
"author": "Charles Guerin",
"timestamp": "2022-01-30T14:58:03",
"content": "Kind of a satisfying “natural” haptic there with relays",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,804.637473 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/31/another-neat-general-purpose-soldering-iron-driver/ | Another Neat General Purpose Soldering Iron Driver | Dave Rowntree | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"hal",
"soldering",
"stm32",
"stm32g0"
] | Over on Hackaday.io, user [Tomasz Jastrzebski] has designed a tidy-looking
custom controller for driving temperature-controlled soldering irons
. The design is intended to be general purpose, capable of operating with irons rated for different voltages and probe type, be they thermocouple- or thermistor-based. Rather than integrating a power supply, this is handled by an external unit, giving the possibility of feeding this from a variety of sources that are not necessarily tied to the grid.
Hardware-wise, we’ve got the ubiquitous STM32 microcontroller in charge of the show, with a nice front end based on the
INA823 instrumentation amplifier
, referenced to a
REF2030 precision voltage source
. The input stage is configured as a versatile Wheatstone bridge input circuit, giving plenty of scope for tweaking.
There are a few extra features in the design that aren’t necessarily needed for a soldering iron driver, such as RTC support, complete with supercapacitor backup, but then this doesn’t have to drive a soldering iron, it could drive any DC heater with temperature feedback. With a change in firmware, this could serve other tasks. One potential feature that springs to mind — have the unit automatically power down at a certain time of day in case it was left on accidentally.
The schematic has a lot of relevant detail — in that many parts have a good list of alternatives, presumably because of the semiconductor shortages — which is a good habit to get into if you ask us. Many of us involved with manufacturing have been doing this for years, as it makes sense to give the assembly house the extra options, but this really is basically mandatory practice now.
Firmware for the
STM32G0
series microcontroller is based on the STM32 HAL, keeping it simple, with a
Visual Studio Code
project provided for your convenience. All hardware (KiCAD) and firmware can be found on the
project GitHub.
We’ve seen a few projects like this over the years, like this
Really Universal Soldering Controller
, a
custom controller for JBC irons
, and this
great portable Arduino-based unit
. | 26 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419631",
"author": "8bitwiz",
"timestamp": "2022-01-31T19:45:23",
"content": "Automatic power-down? My solution is an outdoor Christmas lights timer, which costs ~$11 at Home Depot. Just add a small piece of opaque tape over the photocell, and set it to 2-hour mode. I’ve forgotten ... | 1,760,372,804.786982 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/31/3d-printering-water-cooled-hotends/ | 3D Printering: Water-Cooled Hotends | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"3d printer",
"3d printing",
"liquid cooling",
"water cooling"
] | There’s an old joke about the Thermos bottle that keeps things hot and cold, so someone loaded it with soup and ice cream. That joke is a little close to home when it comes to FDM 3D printers.
You want to melt plastic, of course, or things won’t print, so you need heat. But if the plastic filament gets hot too early, it will get soft, expand, and jam. Heat crawling up the hot end like this is known as heat creep and there are a variety of ways that hot ends try to cope with the need to be hot and cold at the same time. Most hotends today are air-cooled with a small fan. But water-cooled hotends have been around for a while and are showing up more and more. Is it a gimmick? Are you using, planning to use, or have used (and abandoned) water cooling on your hot end?
Heat Break
The most common method is to use a heat-break between the heating block and the rest of the filament path. The heat-break is designed to transfer as little heat as necessary, and it usually screws into a large heat sink that has a fan running over it. What heat makes it across the break should blow away with the fan cooling.
From
Thomas Sanladerer’s review
of the Copperhead hotend. Heat break in the middle.
High tech solutions include making heat-breaks out of titanium or even two dissimilar metals, all with the aim of transferring less heat into the cooler part of the hot end. More modern hot ends use support structures so the heatbreak doesn’t need mechanical rigidity, and they can make very thin-walled heatbreaks that don’t transmit much heat. Surely, then, this is case closed, right? Maybe not.
While it is true that a standard heat-break and a fan can do the job for common 3D printing tasks, there can be problems. First, if you want to print fast — time is money, after all — you need more power to melt more filament per second. If a heatbreak transfers 10% of the heat, this increases demands on the upstream cooling. Some engineering materials want to print at higher temperatures, so you can have the same problem there as well. If you want to heat the entire print chamber, which can help with certain printing materials, that can also cause problems since the ambient air is now hotter. Blowing hot air around isn’t going to cool as effectively. Not to mention, fans that can operate at high temperatures are notoriously expensive.
There are other downsides to fans. Over a long print, a marginal system might eventually let enough heat creep up. Then there’s the noise of a fan blowing during operation. True, you probably have other fans and noisy parts, but it is still one more noise source. With water cooling, you can move the radiator outside a heated enclosure and use larger, slower, and quieter fans while getting more cooling right where you want it.
Water Water Everywhere: Nothing New?
High-performance computers have long relied on liquid cooling. A heat exchange block has an inlet and outlet for a liquid that absorbs heat better than air. A pump circulates the liquid and another heat exchanger allows the liquid to cool before it is pumped back to the hot part of the loop. Why not apply that to 3D printing hotends?
Why not, indeed. There are several entries in the field, going back a few years. None of these have become super popular for general use. We’ve also seen renewed interest and products lately. If you want to do it yourself, we’ve looked at a very easy way to
water-cool
an E3D-style hot end.
It is somewhat surprising how long ago these first started to appear. The Titan Aqua from E3D was hardly the first entry in the field and its intro video is from December 2017.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn5wdQac7Xg
[DIY3DTECH] looked at a cheap eBay-sourced water-cooled hotend about a year later, although we didn’t find a follow-up video, so we wonder if it sat on the shelf or if it just sprung numerous leaks. Dyze Design had water cooling back in 2015. So it isn’t new, it just isn’t that widespread. At least, not today.
Modern Times
Even the newer hotends can participate. Slice Engineering has a liquid version of their Mosquito hotend. Trianglelab has the Arethusa, and there are still custom projects like the one in the video below.
Of course, adding a heat exchange block and a quantity of water can add weight to a hotend and that’s not desirable. However, in practice, the tubing and fittings don’t weigh much and there shouldn’t be that much water inside the heat block at any given time. However, if you are doing your own design, you should be mindful of adding too much weight.
The other problem you may worry about is leakage. Today, a failed extruder fan might lead to a jam. But spewing water all over your printer is probably going to be worse. You want to use connectors that are unlikely to fail. In addition, you might think about the liquid you use. Any additives or chemicals in the liquid should probably survive contact with your nozzle without disastrous effect.
As we’ve seen before, homebrewing a liquid-cooled hotend
doesn’t have to be a big undertaking
. Most hotends already have some heatsink so you only need to flow water over it. The video below shows a self-described “janky” method, but it proves the point: this can be a fairly simple modification to many printers. On the other end of the spectrum, the
Blackbox
printer uses it right out of the gate — no modification required.
Your Turn
Do you have any interest in water cooling your 3D printer? Or have you done it? How did it work for you? Let us know in the comments.
If water is too simple for you, and
cooling with oil
isn’t messy enough, we’ve also seen people opt for
peltier devices to cool their hot ends
. There are a few problems with this, though. First, they do take a lot of power. Also, while one side gets cold, the other side gets at least as hot, and that heat has to go somewhere. So now you might be back to a fan or — yep — water cooling. | 33 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419617",
"author": "Bleugh",
"timestamp": "2022-01-31T18:54:32",
"content": "Bigtreetech have also made the H2 water cooled extruder thing! – What a time to be alive",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6419622",
"author": "Chri... | 1,760,372,805.166935 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/31/floppy-interfacing-hack-chat-with-adafruit/ | Floppy Interfacing Hack Chat With Adafruit | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"CircuitPython",
"disk",
"floppy",
"flux",
"Hack Chat",
"MFM",
"microcontroller",
"modified frequency modulation",
"sector",
"track"
] | Join us on Wednesday, February 2 at noon Pacific for the
Floppy Interfacing Hack Chat
with Adafruit’s
Limor “Ladyada” Fried
and
Phillip Torrone
!
When a tiny fleck of plastic-covered silicon can provide enough capacity to store a fair percentage of humanity’s collected knowledge, it may seem like a waste of time to be fooling around with archaic storage technology like floppy disks. With several orders of magnitude less storage capacity than something like even the cheapest SD card or thumb drive, and access speeds that clock in somewhere between cold molasses and horse and buggy, floppy drives really don’t seem like they have any place on the modern hacker’s bench.
Or do they? Learning the ins and out of interfacing floppy drives with modern microcontrollers is at least an exercise in hardware hacking that can pay dividends in other projects. A floppy drive is, after all, a pretty complex little device, filled with electromechanical goodies that need to be controlled in a microcontroller environment. And teasing data from a stream of magnetic flux changes ends up needing some neat hacks that might just serve you well down the line.
So don’t dismiss the humble floppy drive as a source for hacking possibilities. The folks at Adafruit sure haven’t, as they’ve been working diligently to get
native floppy disk support built right into CircuitPython
. To walk us through how they got where they are now, Ladyada and PT will drop by the Hack Chat. Be sure to come with your burning questions on flux transitions, MFM decoding, interface timing issues, and other arcana of spinning rust drives.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, February 2 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. | 44 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419585",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2022-01-31T17:10:28",
"content": "I always had floppy drives from my first in 1984 to 2016. I even have a couple of USB flopoy drives around, just in case, though I’ve never used them.Other than nostalgia, or reading old floppies, ... | 1,760,372,805.091011 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/31/diy-acoustic-panels-or-modern-artwork-cant-tell/ | DIY Acoustic Panels Or Modern Artwork? Can’t Tell | Arya Voronova | [
"Art",
"home entertainment hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"acoustic panels",
"reverb",
"sound",
"sound deadening",
"soundproofing",
"studio"
] | The acoustic properties of a room have a surprising impact when you want to use a microphone. [RayP24]’s son was trying to make his bedroom into a better recording studio, and for [Ray],
that turned into an artfully-executed wall panel project
. Fortunately, the process is documented so we all can learn from it. When it comes to acoustics, you can often get a whole lot of improvement from surprisingly few changes. And, as this project demonstrates, you can make it look like a decorative piece to boot.
When arranged and placed on the wall, these panels look like an art piece, a decoration you could get from a somewhat fancy store. If you show them to someone, they might not believe that they also serve as a functioning home acoustics improvement, dampening the sound quite well for audio recording needs. The panels are built out of individual circles, cut out in a way that uses as much of a 3/16″ (5mm) plywood sheet as possible, with hollow circles serving as frames to attach foam-backed fabric. In the Instructables post, [Ray] talks quite a bit about how you can assemble your own and what liberties you can take. There’s also a short video accompanying this project, which you can see after the break. This project is begging to be recreated.
There’s a sizeable amount of hacking-meets-home improvement-meets-home acoustics projects out there, especially lately, when so many people are stuck at home for one reason or another. Just a few months ago, we covered another marvelous
“art piece turned reverb killer” project
operating by a slightly different principle, and also going a bit more into the theory. Perhaps in a few years, we will no longer have to build panels or structures for our soundproofing needs, as
purpose-grown mycelium shapes will do that for us
. And once it becomes a question of where to hang your newly-built acoustic panels,
this simple guide
is a good place to start. | 25 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419508",
"author": "steelman",
"timestamp": "2022-01-31T16:04:28",
"content": "3/4″ (5mm) plywood sheet3/4″ is ~18 mm, 5mm is ~1/4″.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6419532",
"author": "fiddlingjunky",
"timest... | 1,760,372,804.926873 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/31/save-money-and-have-fun-using-ieee-488/ | Save Money And Have Fun Using IEEE-488 | Chris Lott | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Misc Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"gpib",
"history",
"HP-IB",
"ieee-488",
"low-cost lab equipment",
"test equipment"
] | A few months ago, I was discussing the control of GPIB equipment with a colleague. Based on only on my gut feeling and the briefest of research, I told him that the pricey and proprietary GPIB controller solutions could easily be replaced by open-source tools and Linux. In the many weeks that followed, I almost abandoned my stance several times out of frustration. With some perseverance, breaking the problems into bite-sized chunks, and lots of online searching to learn from other people’s experiences, my plan eventually succeeded. I haven’t abandoned my original stance entirely, I’ve taken a few steps back and added some qualifiers.
What is GPIB?
Example of HP-IB block diagram from the 1970s, from hp9845.net
Back in the 1960s, if test equipment was interconnected at all, there weren’t any agreed-upon methods for doing so. By the late 60s, the situation was made somewhat better by card-cage controller systems. These held a number of interface cards, one per instrument, presenting a common interface on the backplane. Although this approach was workable, the HP engineers realized they could significantly improve the concept to include these “bridging circuit boards” within the instruments and replacing the card cage backplane with passive cables. Thus began the development of what became the Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus (HP-IB). The
October 1972 issue of the HP Journal
introduced HP-IB with two main articles: A
Practical Interface System for Electronic Instruments
and
A Common Digital Interface for Programmable Instruments: The Evolution of a System
.
To overcome many of the problems experienced in interconnecting instruments and digital devices, a new interface system has been defined. This system gives new ease and flexibility in system interconnections. Interconnecting instruments for use on the lab bench, as well as in large systems, now becomes practical from the economic point of view.
HP subsequently contributed HP-IB to the IEC, where it became an international standard. Within a few years it become what we know today as the
GPIB (General Purpose Interface Bus) or IEEE-488
, first formalized in 1975.
The Task At Hand
Why did I need to use a 50-year old communications interface? Since GPIB was the de-facto interface for so many years, a lot of used test equipment can be found on the second-hand market for very reasonable prices, much cheaper than their modern counterparts. Also, the more pieces of test equipment ending up on lab benches means less of them end up in the recycling system or landfills. But I don’t need these justifications — the enjoyment and nostalgic feeling of this old gear is reason enough for me.
Diagram of a typical digipot, the TPL0501 (from Digikey Article Library)
But why would you want to talk to your test equipment over a computer interface in the first place? In my case, I had a project where I needed to calibrate the resistance of a digipot at each of its programmable wiper positions. This would let me create a calibration algorithm based on measured data, where you could input the desired ohmic value and obtain the corresponding wiper register value. Sure, I could make these measurements by hand, but with 256 wiper positions, that would get tedious real fast. If you want to learn more about digipots, check out this
article from the Digikey’s library
on the fundamentals of digital potentiometers and how to use them.
Used Keithley 195A Bench DMM from c.1982
I scored a used Keithley 195A digital multimeter from the early 1980s. This is a 5-1/2 digit bench DMM, and my unit has the Model 1950 AC/Amps option installed.
Plan of Action
While searching around, I found a
thesis paper (German)
by [Thomas Klima] on using an easy-to-build GPIB interface shield on a Raspberry Pi or a Pi Zero to communicate with lab instruments. His project is open source and well documented on GitHub pages (Raspberry Pi version here and Pi Zero version here) his
elektronomikon website
.
It is a simple circuit, supporting my gut-feeling assertion that GPIB is not that complicated and you could probably bit-bang it with an 8051. I assembled the project, and I had a Raspberry Pi Zero-W all ready to go.
GPIB Interface Module Installed on Rear of DMM
GPIB + Raspberry Pi Zero Interface Module
Software wise, the shield utilizes the existing Linux kernel module
linux-gpib
. It looked easy to install and get running on the Pi in short order. After a couple of hours installing
PyVisa
and some instrument-specific libraries, I should be automatically recording data with Python scripts in less than a day. Alas, reality doesn’t always match our expectations.
GPIB Architecture
Bob “Mr Fancy Pants” Stern Operating a Rack of HP-IB Equipment in 1980
A little background perspective will be helpful in understanding the concept of GPIB. If we visited an electronics lab in the 60s, using a computer to control repetitive test sequences was the exception rather than the rule. Instead, you might see magnetic tape, paper tape, magnetic cards, or even cards onto which commands were marked in pencil. And for some setups computer control might not even be needed. For example, a temperature sensor might directly plot on a strip chart recorder or save values on a magnetic tape drive. If you remember that this is the world in which the HP engineers were immersed, the architecture makes sense.
OMR for the HP-3260A Marked Card Programmer (from Prof Jones’s Punch Card Collection, Univ of Iowa)
The GPIB is a flexible interconnection bus using 15 signals: 8 bit data bus and 7 bits of control lines. Any device on the bus can be a passive listener or an active talker. A talker can speak to multiple devices at the same time, and devices can raise an interrupt if they have an event that needs to be serviced. Devices are interconnected using cabling and connectors which were small for their day, but are a nuisance compared to today’s USB, Ethernet, and serial cabling. The 24-pin Centronics connector allows for easy daisy chaining of devices, but is a hefty beast — in a pinch, you could use a GPIB cable effectively as nunchucks.
GPIB Cables Can Serve as Nunchucks in a Pinch
The traditional use of GPIB was a central control computer connected a chain or star cluster of test gear. This has historically influenced the available GPIB interface hardware. For decades, ISA and later PCI interface cards were installed in computers, or the GPIB interface might be integrated if you were using an HP computer. They tended to be a bit expensive, but since one interface board controlled all the instruments, you only needed one card in a given test setup. National Instruments has became the leader in the GPIB world of both interface cards and supporting drivers and software, but their proprietary software and reputation for steep prices is a bit off-putting for many small companies and home labs.
You can certainly implement an automatic test setup entirely using GPIB cabling, 1970s-style. Many such legacy systems still exist, in fact, and still have to maintained. But more than likely, our use of GPIB these days would be to adapt one or two instruments so they can be used in your non-GPIB test setup, be that LAN, USB, serial, or some combination thereof. This turns the economics of the situation upside down, and is why low-cost GPIB adaptors for just one instrument are sought after.
GPIB PCI Card from National Instruments
GPIB USB Interface Module from Keysight
Let the Problems Begin
The Pi Zero-W has built-in WiFi — in fact, that’s the only LAN connection unless you connect up external circuitry. But I couldn’t get it to connect to my WiFi router. For the longest time, I thought this was an operator error. I have quite a few Raspberry Pi 3s and 4s using WiFi mode with no issues. As I started troubleshooting the problem, I learned that the network management tools in Debian / Raspberry Pi OS have changed over the years. There are many tutorials showing different ways configure things, some of them being obsolete.
A headless Pi Zero-W was really dead without any LAN connection, so I assembled a rat’s nest of USB cabling and an HDMI adaptor so I could at least get a prompt, and ordered a couple of USB-LAN adaptors to get me online temporarily. Hours and hours of searching and testing ideas, I finally found a couple of obscure posts which suggested that the Pi Zero-W’s radio had problems connecting in some countries — South Korea was on that list.
Indeed this was the issue. I could temporarily change my router’s WiFi country to the USA, and the Pi Zero-W would connect just fine. I couldn’t leave it like that, so I switched back to South Korea and continued using wired LAN cabling for my immediate work. This particular problem does have a good ending, however. On the
Raspberry Pi forums
, one of their engineers was able to confirm the bug, and submitted a change request to Cypress Semiconductors. Some weeks later, we got a proposed updated firmware to test. It solved the problem and hopefully will be added in an upcoming release.
Router Goes Crazy
At this point, I have a couple of Pi Zeroes, a Pi 4B, and a few USB-LAN adaptors all working. Since these USB-LAN adaptors can move around — an adaptor could be on computer ABC today and on computer XYZ tomorrow — I carefully labeled each adaptor and entered its particulars into the /etc/hosts and /etc/ethers files on my router. And my network promptly died. This was tough to solve, because surprise, extracting information from the router is awkward when the network is frozen. I finally figured out that I had mistakenly crossed up two entries for the USB-LAN adaptors in the router’s tables, and this drove OpenWRT crazy.
USB-LAN Interfaces Get MAC Address Labels
This took so long to find and solve, my solution was a bit overboard in hindsight. First of all, I completely wiped the router and re-installed the firmware from scratch. I also took the time to better organize my hostname and static lease data. I found
this Gist
from [Krzysztof Burghardt] that converts your
/etc/hosts
and
/etc/ethers
into OpenWRT’s
/etc/config/dhcp
file, and tweaked it to suit my needs. I bought a second backup router that I can quickly swap over if this happens again. And last, but not least, I broke down and bought a label printer to clearly mark these USB-LAN adaptors with their MAC addresses.
Ready to Go
Let’s Measure!
Finally, I’m ready to do real work on my project. Ignore the flying leads in the background are just for fun – they go to an Analog Discovery 2 logic analyzer to observe the GPIB signals. The wristwatch is a nod to my laziness — I put an old smartphone on a tripod to watch the meter in the lab, and monitored it from my office desktop PC while testing Python scripts. Every once in awhile the video would lock up, and I used the second hand as a sign of whether things were running smoothly or not. In part two of this saga, I’ll wrap up the measurement story, give some more information on GPIB and its revisions, and show graphs from my automated test setup. | 32 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419442",
"author": "Slacker24l7",
"timestamp": "2022-01-31T15:09:58",
"content": "I did this at one of my jobs.Replacing gpib interfaces with usb. Its not that big of a deal as long as its well documented",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,372,804.868738 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/31/this-parametric-project-box-generator-is-super-easy/ | This Parametric Project Box Generator Is Super Easy | Dave Rowntree | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"openscad",
"pcb"
] | When it comes to taking an idea from concept to prototype reality, depending on the type of project, there can be quite a few sub-tasks along the way. Take for example, your latest electronic widget design. You’ve finished the schematic, and the PCB layout is a work of art (if you do say so yourself) but having that kicking around on the desk unprotected with wires dangling is not the end game. Now you’ve got to make an enclosure of some kind, and I don’t know about you, but this is the bit where this scribe struggles a little to get something to fit nice. Even if you’ve got the latest 3D printer dialed in to within a gnat’s whisker of perfection, you’ve still got to come up with the design, and those dimensions need to be really accurate. So, for those of us who are great at the PCB, but suck at the enclosure, [Willem Aandewiel] has been busy making the tool just for you, with his
PCB-orientated Yet Another Parametric Projectbox generator (YAPP.)
Defining the PCB mounting points w.r.t. the PCB outline
Without hesitation you can head over to the
YAPP GitHub
, grab that sweet OpenSCAD code, and get cracking with the demos. Provided for your convenience are a number of examples for enclosing some common items, such as Arduinos and ESP32 modules, so you can use those as a springboard to get your own code in place. YAPP works based off the PCB — by specifying programmatically since this is OpenSCAD — outer dimensions, mounting post locations first. Next you define openings in the six faces of the box, and the tool happily spits out a platter with the base and lid ready to drop into Cura (or your slicer of choice) What could be easier?
End face cutouts
And before you start on non-rectangular designs, this is a rectangular box generator for rectangular PCBs. That is all this is designed for, and as far as we can tell, it does that one job well.
Of course, this is by no means the first enclosure generator to grace these pages, far from it.
Here’s one for starters.
If you’re here for tips to help make better designs,
check this out
, and finally 3DHubs also
has a nice guide for you
. Happy printing! | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419377",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2022-01-31T12:46:35",
"content": "I tried it and it seems a very nice box generator.A few things though, one is that the author’s familiarity with his own project =/= anyone else’s familiarity. There is no discussion on the Githu... | 1,760,372,805.220696 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/31/factory-defect-ic-revived-with-sandpaper-and-microsoldering/ | Factory Defect IC Revived With Sandpaper And Microsoldering | Arya Voronova | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"bodge",
"die",
"ic",
"integrated circuit",
"leadframe"
] | We might be amidst a chip shortage, but if you enjoy reverse-engineering, there’s never a shortage of intriguing old chips to dig into – and the 2513N 5×7 character ROM is one such chip.
Amidst a long thread probing a few of these
(Twitter,
ThreadReader link
), [TubeTime] has realized that two address lines were shorted inside of the package. A Twitter dopamine-fueled quest for truth has led him to try his hand at making the chip work anyway. Trying to clear the short with an external PSU led to a bond wire popping instead, as evidenced by the ESD diode connection disappearing.
A dozen minutes of sandpaper work resulted in the bare die exposed, making quick work of the bond wires as a side effect. Apparently, having the bond pads a bit too close has resulted in a factory defect where two of the pads merged together. No wonder the PSU wouldn’t take that on! Some X-acto work later, the short was cleared. But without the bond wires, how would [TubeTime] connect to it?
This is where the work pictured comes in
. Soldering to the remains of the bond wires has proven to be fruitful, reviving the chip enough to continue investigating, even if, it appears, it was never functional to begin with. The thread continued on with comparing ROMs from a few different chips [TubeTime] had on hand and inferences on what could’ve happened that led to this IC going out in the wild.
Such soldering experiments are always fun to try and pull off! We rarely see soldering on such a small scale, as thankfully, it’s not always needed, but it’s a joy to witness when someone does IC or
PCB microsurgery to fix factory defects
that render our devices inoperable before they were even shipped. Each time that a fellow hacker dares to grind the IC epoxy layers down and
save a game console
or
an unidentified complex board
, the world gets a little brighter. And if you aren’t forced to do it for repair reasons, you can always
try it in an attempt to build the smallest NES
in existence!
this probably won't work but it is worth a shot.
pic.twitter.com/Lv6maiEEtC
— Tube☃Time (@TubeTimeUS)
January 22, 2022 | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6419283",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2022-01-31T09:13:42",
"content": "There! I fixed it!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6421910",
"author": "Fred",
"timestamp": "2022-02-06T21:16:22",
"content"... | 1,760,372,805.273212 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/30/crows-trade-cigarettes-for-food/ | Crows Trade Cigarettes For Food | Chris Lott | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"animal training",
"birds",
"crow",
"litter"
] | Over in the Swedish city of Södertälje, about 30 km southwest of Stockholm, a pilot program is being explored which will
enlist crows to clean up discarded cigarette butts
. Butts account for over 60% of litter in Sweden, and the per-butt cleanup cost falls between 0.8 and 2 Swedish kronor each. The company behind the project, Corvid Cleaning, estimates the cost will be around 0.2 kronor. If the birds picked up all the butts, that would be a substantial savings, but in reality, the current manual cleaning will still be needed. Total savings to the city will depend on the ratio of bird-collected vs. people-collected butts. Of course, if people would throw their butts in ashcans or carry pocket ashtrays like those popular in Japan, this would be a non-starter.
Crows were selected because they are considered one of the most intelligent bird — they’re easy to teach, and they communicate with each other. All crows participating in the project are volunteers, and are paid by the butt with a morsel of food dispensed from a machine. We’re reminded of
B. F. Skinner’s pigeon-guided missile projects
from the 40s and 50s, although cleaning up litter for food should result in a happier outcome for all parties concerned.
This kind of project has been tried before, for example, in a
French park back in 2018
. And we covered a
2020 project by [Hans] who was training magpies to do similar duty
. Are you aware of any of these projects that went past the pilot phase and are in operation? Let us know in the comments below. | 47 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418755",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2022-01-30T09:14:47",
"content": "Stopping smoking (or even switching to vaping) would also reduce cigarette butt litter… just saying…But seriously, good project, hope it takes off and that the crows aren’t affected by the nicotine or tar in ... | 1,760,372,805.35847 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/29/meowing-box-will-befuddle-your-friends/ | Meowing Box Will Befuddle Your Friends | Lewin Day | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino mini",
"cat",
"feline",
"prank"
] | If you don’t own a cat, hearing the sound of one meowing from somewhere in the house probably comes as quite a shock.
The Cat Prank box built by [Reuben] promises to deliver such hilarity with aplomb.
The idea is simple: hide the Cat Prank box in a cupboard or other space in a friend’s house, and it will meow from its secret location. When found, either the light sensor or motion sensor will trigger the yowling of an angry feline, with hopefully startling effects.
An Arduino Mini is the brains of the operation, paired with an XY-V17B sound module which plays the required animal wailings. There’s also a 433 MHz radio module that lets the prankster trigger meowing via remote control.
Code is available
for those wishing to build their own. We’d love to see a mod with a time delay built in, so the device could be hidden and left to start meowing at some later date when the prankster is far away.
Similar work has graced these pages before,
like the devilishly fiendish OpenKobold design.
Just make sure your friends are receptive to such jokes before you go ahead and invest time and hardware in the prank! | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418738",
"author": "Redhatter (VK4MSL)",
"timestamp": "2022-01-30T06:15:21",
"content": "Where’s the fun in that?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6418999",
"author": "Tom Hargrave",
"timestamp": "2022-01-30T18... | 1,760,372,805.525996 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/29/commodore-promotional-film-from-1984-enhanced/ | Commodore Promotional Film From 1984 Enhanced | Chris Lott | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"commodore",
"documentary",
"factory tour",
"restoration"
] | Over on Retro Recipe’s YouTube channel, [Perifractic] has been busy restoring an old promotional video of how Commodore computers were made back in 1984 (
video below the break
). He cleaned up the
old VHS-quality version that’s been around for years
, translated the German to English, and trimmed some bits here and there. The result is a fascinating look into the MOS factory, Commodore’s German factory, and a few other facilities around the globe. The film shows the chip design engineers in action, wafer manufacturing, chip dicing, and some serious micro-probing of bare die. We also see PCB production, and final assembly, test and burn-in of Commodore PET and C64s in Germany.
Check out the video description, where [Perifractic] goes over the processes he used to clean up video and audio using machine learning. If restoration interests you, check out the
piece we wrote about these techniques to restore old photographs last year
. Are there any similar factory tour films, restored or not, lurking around the web? Let us know in the comments below. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418721",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2022-01-30T03:04:26",
"content": "I saw that earlier. Amusing the tone and attitude about computers back then.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6418732",
"author": "Eric Chapin",
... | 1,760,372,805.402772 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/29/planar-pcb-coils-as-an-alternative-to-winding-transformers/ | Planar PCB Coils As An Alternative To Winding Transformers | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"pcb",
"PCB inductor",
"PCB transformer"
] | Those readers who have experimented with winding their own inductors will know that it’s not an easy task, and when those inductors are handling high voltages it can be especially tricky to maintain adequate insulation between layers of windings. [Open Frime TV] has a video addressing this in a novel way, by creating the windings for a switch-mode power supply transformer
using stacked PCB coils instead of wire
(Russian language; you’ll have to enable YouTube’s subtitle auto-translation).
The video below the break makes for a handy primer on PCB coil construction, reminding the viewer that the turns need all to lie in the same direction as well as the importance of insulation between windings. There’s a discussion of the properties of a PCB coil in relation to the switching frequency, and once the transformer has been assembled, we see it hooked up to a power supply board for a test. What happens next may be familiar to seasoned transformer-winders; nothing works, and the transformer gets hot. In making the PCB he’s left some copper on each board which amounts to a shorted turn — cutting these allows the transformer to work perfectly.
This technique might not be the solution to all transformer woes, but makes for an interesting option if your work takes you in the direction of winding transformers. If PCB coils take your interest,
how about a Tesla coil using them
? | 35 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418696",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2022-01-30T00:59:11",
"content": "There is an company in israel (just can’t think of their name of the top of my head) that produces planar transformers to order. The windings are stamped/laser cut out of sheet metal. They make some gre... | 1,760,372,805.477614 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/29/apollo-guidance-computer-gets-the-rust-treatment/ | Apollo Guidance Computer Gets The Rust Treatment | Tom Nardi | [
"Software Development",
"Space"
] | [
"agc",
"Apollo Guidance Computer",
"emulator",
"rust"
] | Seems like all the cool kids are rewriting legacy C programs in Rust these days, so we suppose it was only a matter of time before somebody decided to combine the memory-safe language with some of the most historically significant software ever written by way of
a new Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) emulator
. Written by [Felipe], the Apache/MIT licensed emulator can run either ROM files made from the computer’s original rope core memory, or your own code written in AGC4 assembly language.
It’s worth noting that the emulator, called
ragc
, needs a bit of help before it can deliver that authentic Moon landing experience. Specifically, the code only emulates the AGC itself and stops short of recreating the iconic display and keyboard (DSKY) module. To interact with the programs running on the virtual AGC you’ll need to also install yaDSKY2, an open source project that graphically recreates the panel Apollo astronauts actually used to enter commands and get data from the computer.
Of course, the next step would be to hack in support for talking to one of the
physical recreations of the DSKY
that
have graced these pages over the years
. Given the limitations of the AGC, we’d stop short of calling such an arrangement useful, but it would certainly make for a great conversation starter at the hackerspace.
Thanks for the tip, [CJ]. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418673",
"author": "limpkin",
"timestamp": "2022-01-29T21:12:34",
"content": "I’d be very curious to hear from people doing active development in bare metal rust.I recently spent a week learning rust to potentially use it for quite a complex project.Unfortunately, even though the c... | 1,760,372,805.569715 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/29/blast-chips-with-this-bbq-lighter-fault-injection-tool/ | Blast Chips With This BBQ Lighter Fault Injection Tool | Dan Maloney | [
"Security Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"EMFI",
"fault injection",
"ferrite",
"glitching",
"ignitor",
"piezoelectric",
"reverse engineering",
"toroid"
] | Looking to get into fault injection for your reverse engineering projects, but don’t have the cash to lay out for the necessary hardware? Fear not, for the
tools to glitch a chip may be as close as the nearest barbecue grill
.
If you don’t know what chip glitching is, perhaps a primer is in order. Glitching, more formally known as electromagnetic fault injection (EMFI), or simply fault injection, is a technique that uses a pulse of electromagnetic energy to induce a fault in a running microcontroller or microprocessor. If the pulse occurs at
just
the right time, it may force the processor to skip an instruction, leaving the system in a potentially exploitable state.
EMFI tools are commercially available — we even recently featured
a kit to build your own
— but [rqu]’s homebrew version is decidedly simpler and cheaper than just about anything else. It consists of a piezoelectric gas grill igniter, a little bit of enameled magnet wire, and half of a small toroidal ferrite core. The core fragment gets a few turns of wire, which then gets soldered to the terminals on the igniter. Pressing the button generates a high-voltage pulse, which gets turned into an electromagnetic pulse by the coil. There’s a video of the tool in use in the Twitter thread, showing it easily glitching a PIC running a simple loop program.
To be sure, a tool as simple as this won’t do the trick in every situation, but it’s a cheap way to start exploring the potential of fault injection.
Thanks to [Jonas] for the tip. | 16 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418659",
"author": "That kid",
"timestamp": "2022-01-29T18:12:28",
"content": "Use a solenoid to fire the igniter and a 555, you should be able to have timing control",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6419405",
"author"... | 1,760,372,805.623073 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/29/code-wrong-expand-your-mind/ | Code Wrong: Expand Your Mind | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"BrainF*ck",
"esoteric language",
"programming",
"software"
] | The really nice thing about doing something the “wrong” way is that there’s just so much variety! If you’re doing something the right way, the fastest way, or the optimal way, well, there’s just one way. But if you’re going to do it wrong, you’ve got a lot more design room.
Case in point:
esoteric programming languages
. The variety is stunning. There are languages
intended
to be unreadable, or to sound like Shakespearean sonnets, or cooking recipes, or hair-rock ballads. Some of the earliest esoteric languages were just jokes: compilations of all of the hassles of “real” programming languages of the time, but yet made to function. Some represent instructions as a grid of colored pixels. Some represent the code in a fashion that’s tantamount to encryption, and the only way to program them is by brute forcing the code space. Others, including the notorious Brainf*ck are actually not half as bad as their rap — it’s a very direct implementation of a Turing machine.
So you have a set of languages that are designed to be maximally unlike each other, or traditional programming languages, and yet still be able to do the work of instructing a computer to do what you want. And if you squint your eyes just right, and look at as many of them all together as you can, what emerges out of this blobby intersection of oddball languages is the
essence
of computing. Each language tries to be as wrong as possible, so what they have in common can only be the unavoidable core of coding.
While it might be interesting to compare an contrast Java and C++, or Python, nearly every serious programming language has so much in common that it’s just not as instructive. They are all doing it mostly right, and that means that they’re mostly about the human factors. Yawn. To really figure out what’s
fundamental
to computing, you have to get it wrong.
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
.
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You should sign up
! | 24 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418631",
"author": "Severe Tire Damage",
"timestamp": "2022-01-29T15:37:48",
"content": "My short response to this is —- HaskellFor years I have worked with standard imperative languages like C, ruby, perl, python and they are really all the same, taking or leaving the object orien... | 1,760,372,805.722882 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/29/3d-printer-showdown-350-consumer-vs-73000-pro-machine/ | 3D Printer Showdown: $350 Consumer Vs $73,000 Pro Machine | Al Williams | [
"Reviews"
] | [
"3D resin printer",
"comparison",
"laser",
"masked SLA",
"MSLA",
"resin"
] | The quality of consumer-grade 3D printing has gone way up in recent years. Resin printers, in particular, can produce amazing results and they get less expensive every day. [Squidmar] took a miniature design and printed it (or had it printed) on some cheap resin printers and a 65,000 Euro DWS029. How much difference could there be? You can see for yourself in the video below.
We were surprised at the specs for the more expensive machine. It does use a solid-state laser, but for that cost, the build volume is relatively small — around 15 x 15 x 10 cm. There were actually five prints created on four printers. Three were on what we think of as normal printers, one was on the 65,000 Euro machine, and the fifth print was on a 10,000 Euro printer that didn’t look much different from the less expensive ones.
Of course, there is more to the process than just the printer. The resin you use also impacts the final object. The printers tested included a Phrozen 4K Mini, a Phrozen 8K Mini, a Solos Pro, and the DWS 029D. The exact resins or materials used was hard to tell in each case, so that may have something to do with the comparisons, too.
Do you get what you pay for? Hard to say. The 8K and Solos were neck-and-neck with some features better on one printer and some better on the other. The DWS029D did perform better, but was it really worth the increase in price? Guess it depends on your sensitivity. The 8K printer did a very credible job for a fraction of the cost. Of course, some of that could have been a result of the materials used, too, but it does seem likely that a very expensive dental printer ought to do better than a hobby-grade machine. But it doesn’t seem to do much better.
The DWS printer uses a laser, while most hobby printers use UV light with an LCD mask. We’ve seen low-end resin printers on closeout for around $100 and you can get something pretty nice in the
$200 neighborhood
. In between these two extremes are
printers that use Digital Light Processing (DLP)
. | 35 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418618",
"author": "Rumble_in_the_Jungle",
"timestamp": "2022-01-29T13:07:10",
"content": "Photos without scale bar or other reference are useless. This can be 2m high statue or 50um nipples, how to tell?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"co... | 1,760,372,805.808873 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/29/radio-control-joby-aircraft-uses-six-tiltrotors-to-fly/ | Radio Control Joby Aircraft Uses Six Tiltrotors To Fly | Lewin Day | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"electric plane",
"eVTOL",
"radio control",
"rc",
"vtol"
] | eVTOL (Electric Vertical Take-off and Landing) craft are some of the more exciting air vehicles being developed lately. They aim to combine the maneuverability and landing benefits of helicopters with the environmental benefits of electric drive, and are often touted as the only way air taxis could ever be practical. The aircraft from Joby Aviation are some of the most advanced in this space, and [Peter Ryseck] set about building a radio-controlled model
that flies in the same way.
The design is inspired by the Joby eVTOL test vehicle.
The result is mighty complex, with six tilt rotors controlled via servos for the utmost in maneuverability. These allow the vehicle to take off vertically, while allowing the rotors to tilt horizontally for better efficiency in forward flight, as seen on the
Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey.
The build uses a 3D-printed chassis which made implementing all the tilt rotor mounts and mechanisms as straightforward as possible. A Teensy flight controller is responsible for controlling the craft, running the
dRehmFlight VTOL firmware.
The assembled craft only weighs 320 grams including battery; an impressive achievement given the extra motors and servos used relative to a regular quadcopter build.
With some tuning, hovering flight proved relatively easy to achieve. The inner four motors are used like a traditional quadcopter in this mode, constantly varying RPM to keep the craft stable. The outer two motors are then pivoted as needed for additional control authority.
In forward flight, pitch is controlled by adjusting the angle of the central four motors. Roll is achieved by tilting the rotors on either side of the plane’s central axis, and yaw control is provided by differential thrust. In the transitional period between modes, simple interpolation is used between both modes until transition is complete.
Outdoor flight testing showed the vehicle is readily capable of graceful forward flight much like a conventional fixed wing plane. In the hover mode, it just looks like any other multirotor. Overall, it’s a great demonstration of what it takes to build a successful tilt rotor craft.
We’ve seen tilt rotor UAVs before
, and they’re as cool as they are complicated to build. Video after the break. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418644",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2022-01-29T16:30:37",
"content": "wow, putting rotors on the tail surface of a forward-motion airplane. far out! who needs ‘control surfaces’?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6419206... | 1,760,372,805.938876 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/28/the-air-multiplier-fan-principle-applied-to-a-jet-engine/ | The Air Multiplier Fan Principle, Applied To A Jet Engine | Jenny List | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"air multiplier",
"fan",
"jet engine"
] | Many readers will be familiar with the Dyson Air Multiplier, an ingenious bladeless fan design in which a compressor pushes jets of air from the inside edge of a large ring. This fast-moving air draws the surrounding air through the ring, giving the effect of a large conventional fan without any visible moving parts and in a small package. It’s left to [Integza] to take this idea and see it as the compressor for a jet engine, and
though the prototype you see in the video below
is fragile and prone to melting, it shows some promise.
His design copies the layout of a Dyson with the compressor underneath the ring, with a gas injector and igniter immediately above it. The burning gas-air mixture passes through the jets and draws the extra air through the ring, eventually forming a roaring jet engine flame exhaust behind it. Unfortunately the choice of 3D print for the prototype leads to very short run times before melting, but it’s possible to see it working during that brief window. Future work will involve a non-combustible construction, but his early efforts were unsatisfactory.
It’s clear that he hasn’t created the equivalent of a conventional turbojet. Since it appears that its operation happens when the flame has passed into the center of the ring, it has more in common with a ramjet that gains its required air velocity with the help of extra energy from an external compressor. Whether he’s created an interesting toy or a useful idea remains to be answered, but it’s certainly an entertaining video to watch.
Meanwhile,
this isn’t the first project we’ve seen inspired by the Air Multiplier
.
Thanks [Baldpower] for the tip. | 26 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418582",
"author": "Matthew Hajicek",
"timestamp": "2022-01-29T06:12:34",
"content": "Seems a good use for sinterable metal filament.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6418585",
"author": "Mike Massen, Perth, Western Australi... | 1,760,372,805.885804 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/28/acoustic-switching-transistors-a-new-kind-of-electronics/ | Acoustic Switching Transistors: A New Kind Of Electronics? | Al Williams | [
"News"
] | [
"topological",
"topological transistor",
"ultrasonic"
] | Have you ever heard of topological insulators? These are exotic materials where electricity flows only on the surface with very little loss. Now, according to IEEE Spectrum, scientists at Harvard have used the same concept to create
a transistor for sound waves
and it may be a new branch of electronics. The actual paper is
available
if you want some light reading.
Apparently, topological insulators protect electrons moving along their surfaces and edges, something that won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics. Photons can also be protected topologically so they move with very little loss across the materials. Making electrons flow in this manner is an attractive proposition, but there are challenges, especially when creating a device that can switch the flow of electrons on and off as you might with a transistor in and out of saturation. Sound waves, however, are much easier to work with.
The device is large for what we think of as a transistor and consists of an airtight box containing a honeycomb of steel pillars and a plate made of a material that can expand and contract quite a bit with temperature. The pillars on one side of the plate are a bit larger than the ones on the other side. That along with the spacing of the pillars forms a topology that can allow sound to travel through the pillars or not. What determines the state of the transistor? Heat. The base plate has to have a very large thermal expansion coefficient and the device uses a shape memory alloy to meet that need.
At 20C, ultrasonic sound waves will not pass through the transistors. Heating the device to 90C allows the sound to travel through, however. Another device can convert ultrasound into heat forming what they call an acoustic transistor. That is, a sound wave coming in can control sound passing through the device. Photonic versions of this transistor seem to be possible, but electrons don’t behave in the same way, although researchers are trying to find a way to apply the same idea to conventional electronics.
Although the paper calls the device a transistor, it is more of a switch than a true transistor as far as we can tell. That’s still useful, probably. What would you do with a heat-controlled ultrasonic transistor? Beats us. The Spectrum article mentions possible applications in noise reduction, ultrasound imaging, and echolocation, among others.
As we’ve pointed out before, almost any kind of switch can be
a logic gate
. You can even simulate old-fashioned
relay mux logic
, which would probably work well with the acoustic technology. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418577",
"author": "Cmh62",
"timestamp": "2022-01-29T04:36:42",
"content": "Seems like they’ve pretty much all been covered … at least evidently. ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6418623",
"author": "Ostracus",
... | 1,760,372,806.10282 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/28/long-range-burglar-alarm-relies-on-lora-modules/ | Long Range Burglar Alarm Relies On LoRa Modules | Lewin Day | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"alarm",
"burglar alarm",
"ESP32",
"LoRa",
"security"
] | [Elite Worm] had a problem; there had been two minor burglaries from a storage unit. The unit had thick concrete walls, cellular signal was poor down there, and permanent wiring wasn’t possible. He thus set about working on a burglar alarm that would
fit his unique requirements
.
An ESP32 is the heart of the operation, paired with a long-range LoRa radio module running at 868 MHz. This lower frequency has much better penetration when it comes to thick walls compared to higher-frequency technologies like 4G, 5G or WiFi. With a little coil antenna sticking out the top of the 3D-printed enclosure, the device was readily able to communicate back to [Elite Worm] when the storage unit was accessed illegitimately.
With an eye to security, the device doesn’t just warn of door open events. If signal is lost from the remote transmitter in the storage unit, perhaps due to an advanced adversary cutting the power, the alarm will also be raised. There’s still some work to be done on the transmitter side, though, as [Elite Worm] needs to make sure the door sensor is reliable under all conditions.
Many put their hardware skills to work in service of security,
and we regularly see proprietary alarm systems modified by enterprising hackers
. Video after the break. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418537",
"author": "BillB",
"timestamp": "2022-01-29T00:24:56",
"content": "Very cool project, LolRa seems a great fit for distant low power sensors.Anyone familiar with hacking proprietary LoRa widgets? I got a Yolink lora gateway and the company has been promising MQTT to allow ... | 1,760,372,806.158184 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/28/3d-printed-jig-makes-custom-springs-a-snap/ | 3D Printed Jig Makes Custom Springs A Snap | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed tool",
"hand tools",
"spring"
] | We’ve often heard it said that springs come in in all shapes and sizes…except for the one you need. In light of this, the hardware hacker would do well to keep the tools and knowledge required to make a custom spring close at hand when building something that moves. Luckily, all it really take is some stiff metal wire, a rod, and patience.
Unless you’ve got a 3D printer, that is. In which case, we’d suggest you
print out this very clever “Spring Factory” designed by [Vincent Baillet]
. The simple tool, consisting of just two parts, makes it easier and faster to make consistent DIY springs when compared to traditional methods. Rather than trying to eyeball the spacing of the coil as you wind the wire around the mandrel, this design does it for you.
As seen in the video, springs made with this tool look very professional. Not only does the threaded mandrel keep the spacing between coils even, it also makes sure all the springs you produce are identical. This can be especially important with projects that need to use multiple matching springs. [Vincent] says his handy tool works with piano wire from 0.8 to 1.2 mm, and slightly thicker if plain steel.
Of course, the obvious flaw in a tool like this is that it can only be used to make springs of a specific diameter. Changing the length is easy enough, just use more or less wire. But to make a thinner or thicker spring, you’d need a different size of mandrel. It seems that [Vincent] has only released the gadget in this approximately 9 mm diameter so far, but here’s hoping a few more sizes get added to the mix before too long.
Looking for something a bit more advanced? This
Arduino-powered wire bender
is capable of making some very impressive custom springs, among other things.
Thanks to [Mario] for the tip. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418466",
"author": "cliff claven",
"timestamp": "2022-01-28T22:14:23",
"content": "Given how many springs I have turned out on the lathe over the years, and how many I have made up on commercial all-thread, I appreciate this design a lot. I have a spring winder (commercial for smal... | 1,760,372,806.355476 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/28/custom-piano-tickles-the-ivories/ | Custom Piano Tickles The Ivories | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"controller",
"custom",
"keyboard",
"microcontroller",
"music",
"piano",
"stm32",
"synthesizer",
"wood"
] | The core ethos of “hacking” is usually interpreted as modifying something for a use that it wasn’t originally built for. Plenty of builds are modifications or improvements on existing technology, but sometimes that just isn’t enough. Sometimes we have to go all the way down and build something completely from scratch, and
[Balthasar]’s recent piano-like musical instrument
fits squarely into this category.
This electronic keyboard is completely designed and built from scratch, including the structure of the instrument and the keys themselves. [Balthasar] made each one by hand out of wood and then built an action mechanism for them to register presses. While they don’t detect velocity or pressure, the instrument is capable of defining the waveform and envelope for any note, is able to play multiple notes per key, and is able to change individual octaves. This is thanks to a custom 6×12 matrix connected to a STM32 microcontroller. Part of the reason [Balthasar] chose this microcontroller is that it can do some of the calculations needed to produce music in a single clock cycle, which is an impressive and under-reported feature for the platform.
With everything built and wired together, the keyboard is shockingly versatile. With the custom matrix it is easy to switch individual octaves on the piano to any range programmable, making the 61-key piano capable of sounding like a full 88-key piano. Any sound can be programmed in as well, further increasing its versatility, which is all the more impressive for being built from the ground up. While this build focuses more on the electronics of a keyboard, we have seen other builds which
replicate the physical action of a traditional acoustic piano
as well. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418541",
"author": "Steve L",
"timestamp": "2022-01-29T00:40:30",
"content": "Building your own keyboard = extremely hard core. Impressive, especially without sophisticated woodworking tools. And THEN, there’s the electronics…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,372,806.228018 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/28/shelf-actualization/ | Shelf Actualization | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Rants",
"Robots Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"robot",
"robots"
] | If you are old enough, you may remember that, for a time, almost every year was the year that home video was going to take off. Except it never was, until VHS tape machines appeared. We saw something similar with personal computers. Nowadays, we keep hearing about the home robot, but it never seems to fully materialize or catch on. If you think about it, it could be a problem of expectations.
What we all want is C3PO or Rosie the Robot that can do all the things we don’t want to do. What we usually get is something far less than that. You either get something hideously expensive that does a few tasks or something cheap that is little more than a toy.
Labrador Systems
is trying to hit the middle ground. While no one would confuse their Caddie and Retriever robots with C3PO, they are useful but also simple, presumably to keep the cost down which are expected to cost about $1,500. The robots have been described as “self-driving shelves.” You can watch a video about the devices below.
Next Stop
Essentially, the robot learns a number of stops and can move between stops using voice commands or an app. One of the robots can move up and down and pick up trays. The other just moves from point to point carrying whatever you put on it as long as it weighs less than 25 pounds.
The robots can avoid obstacles using IR and optical sensors, so they aren’t just running a preprogrammed course. They also take care of charging themselves.
It might seem like a first-world problem to want a robot to carry two cups of coffee from the kitchen to the living room. However, for the elderly or people with limited mobility due to injury or illness, having a robot helper could be a big boost to their quality of life. Sure, you can get a human helper, but that’s become an expensive proposition. A $1,500 robot that works all day, every day is a bargain.
Faster Food
Rolling shelf robots might really take off in the service industry. For example, people generally don’t want to work in fast food. That’s why there’s typically a huge turnover and you don’t really expect to see a motivated kid at the burger joint register who’s building a career. We’ve already seen robots that can work the grill. Now,
rolling shelves are serving food to customers
, too.
This isn’t a one-off stunt, either. That particular restaurant is in Boston, but they are doing something similar in Dallas, too.
Not C3PO
We have no doubt that we will get to C3PO if not Commander Data, but for today it does seem like the smart money is to pick something annoying but somewhat easy and focus on that. Industrial robot arms, for example, have been very successful. Robot vacuums are hardly brainy, but they do what they do well enough and are popular. You even see industrial versions plying the aisles at many big box stores. It wouldn’t be entirely strange to see the same thing bringing you your burger.
Sci-Fi Aside: What About the Jobs?
Science fiction has worried about what will happen to jobs when computers or robots take them all over. A lot of future fiction posits a system where money isn’t a thing or there is some universal basic income. Maybe robots will actually be what gets us there.
Imagine if corporations could not own robots legally. Instead, they would lease them from workers. When you are born you are assigned a robot. Not that you’d take possession of it any more than a futures trader that buys pork bellies expects to receive a truckload of bacon. The lease on the robot pays for maintenance, replacement insurance, and your basic income. You can save some money and buy more robots or more valuable robots to generate more income. It would be like the stock market, in a way.
On the other hand, maybe robots can do the jobs no one wants to do. Humans could be free to invent, create, solve problems, and be there for other people — all things robots are not great at doing, at least in the foreseeable future.
Or maybe that’s a lot of utopia for a rolling shelf to carry, but we’ve got to start somewhere. So what else is out there waiting for us to automate? Think small. Think ordinary. What’s stopping you? | 54 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418356",
"author": "deshipu",
"timestamp": "2022-01-28T18:21:22",
"content": "What made VHS take off, and later on, broadband Internet, and some of the VR stuff, is porn. I sincerely hope it will never work for robots, though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,372,806.464326 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/28/hackaday-podcast-153-a-555-teardown-to-die-for-tetrabyte-is-not-a-typo-diy-injection-molding-and-using-all-the-parts-of-the-trash-printer/ | Hackaday Podcast 153: A 555 Teardown To Die For, Tetrabyte Is Not A Typo, DIY Injection Molding, And Using All The Parts Of The Trash Printer | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Join Hackaday Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Managing Editor Tom Nardi on another whirlwind tour of the week’s top stories, hacks, and projects. We start off with some breaking Linux security news, and then marvel over impeccably designed pieces of hardware ranging from a thrifty Z table for the K40 laser cutter to a powerful homebrew injection molding rig. The finer technical points of a USB device that only stores 4 bytes at a time will be discussed, and after taking an interactive tour through the internals of the 555 timer, we come away even more impressed by the iconic 50 year old chip. We’ll wrap things up by speculating wildly about all the bad things that can happen to floating solar panels, and then recite some poetry that you can compile into a functional computer program should you feel so inclined.
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
(58 MB)
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
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Spotify
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Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 153 Show Notes:
News This Week:
Major Bug Grants Root For All Major Linux Distributions
What’s that Sound?
This week’s sound was Atari Punk console. Congratulations to [Justinh24]!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Laser Z-Axis Table Comes Into Focus
Reverse Engineering: Trash Printer Gives Up Its Control Panel Secrets
Tiny Homemade Injection Molder
Injection Molding iPhone Cases From Trash
DIY “Solid State Drive” Puts Four Bytes In Your Pocket
555 Teardown Isn’t Just A Good Time, It’s To Die For
Web-Centric Gabuino Has Compiler, Will Travel
Teaching A Pocket Logic Analyzer (Many) New Tricks
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
Online Tool Turns STLs Into 3D ASCII Art
All About Mecanum
One-piece Geared Hinge Can Take The Weight
Tom’s Picks:
Domesticating Old Server Hardware In The Age Of Shortages
Sending Pics To Grandma, No Smartphone Needed
Detecting Alpha Particles Using Copper Wire And High Voltage
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Floating Solar Farms Are Taking The World’s Reservoirs By Storm
Strange Computer Languages: A Hacker’s Field Guide
The Art of Code – YouTube | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,806.281169 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/28/mystery-wwii-navy-gear-with-magic-eye/ | Mystery WWII Navy Gear With Magic Eye | Chris Lott | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"magic eye tube",
"mystery",
"vacuum tubes",
"wwii",
"wwii surplus"
] | There’s an unknown piece of military electronic gear being investigated over on [Usagi Electric]’s YouTube channel (see video below the break). The few markings and labels on the box aren’t terribly helpful, but along with the construction and parts, seem to identify it as relating to the US Navy from the WWII era. Its central feature is a seeing-eye tube and an adjustment knob. [David] does a bit of reverse engineering on the circuit, and is able to fire it up and get it working, magic eye squinting and all.
But there’s still the unanswered question, what was this thing supposed to do? Besides power, it only has one input signal. There are no outputs, except the “data” presented visually by the magic eye tube. Commenters have suggested it was used with sonar equipment, calibration tool, RTTY tuning aid, light exposure meter, etc. But if you dust off your copy of
Navships 900,017 “Radar Systems Fundamentals” from 1944
and turn to page 249, there’s a section entitled Tuning Indicator that describes this circuit, almost.
This suggests these magic eyes were simply being used as a sensitive voltmeter since they were much less expensive than a mechanical meter. Even if this is the function of the box, there is still the mystery of
what
it was tuning. Share your thoughts on this in the comments below, especially if you have seen one in the wild. | 34 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418328",
"author": "tyjtyty",
"timestamp": "2022-01-28T16:56:01",
"content": "hal with assistent like mycroft ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6418340",
"author": "Jim",
"timestamp": "2022-01-28T17:36:39",
... | 1,760,372,806.53865 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/28/this-week-in-security-geopolitical-hacktivism-antivirus-mining-and-linux-malware/ | This Week In Security: Geopolitical Hacktivism, Antivirus Mining, And Linux Malware | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Cryptominer",
"PwnKit",
"This Week in Security"
] | The CIA
Hacktivists have launched
a sort of ransomware campaign against the Belarusian rail system
, but instead of cryptocurrency, they want the release of political prisoners and removal of Russian soldiers. This could be called an example of cyber-terrorism, though there is a reasonable theory that this is a state-sponsored hack, masquerading as hacktivism. What does seem certain is that something has interrupted rail transit, and a group on Twitter
has produced convincing proof of a breach
.
Your Antivirus Now Includes a CryptoMiner
Don’t look now, but your latest update of
Norton 360
or
Avira
may have installed a cryptocurrency mining module. The silver lining is that some sanity has been retained, and you have to opt-in to the crypto scheme before your machine starts spending its spare cycles on mining. For users who do, they’re put into a mining pool, making for small payouts for most hardware. Norton, naturally, takes a 15% fee off the top for their trouble.
The State of Linux Malware
There used to be an adage that Linux machines don’t get malware. That’s never really been quite true, but the continued conquest of the server landscape has had the side effect of making Linux malware an even greater danger. Crowdstrike has seen
a 35% increase in Linux malware in 2021
, with three distinct categories leading the charge: XorDDoS, Mozi, and Mirai.
PwnKit
And speaking of Linux, a pretty severe
Linux vulnerability was just announced
, and
a working exploit has already been released
. The problem is a simple one in the
Polkit
binary, which for this purpose, can be thought of as a
sudo
alternative. The important part is that it’s a setuid binary, one that elevates its own privileges to root when executed by an unprivileged user. “Now wait,” I hear you say, “That sounds like a terrible security problem!” It can be, when it goes wrong. But the simple truth is that there are times when a user needs to perform an action that would otherwise require root privileges. A simple example,
ping
, needs to open a raw network socket in order to function. These binaries are carefully designed to only allow limited actions, but sometimes a bug allows escaping this “sandbox”.
So what’s the story with
pkexec
? NULL
argv
. OK, Linux programming 101 time. When a program is launched on Linux, it’s passed two parameters, normally named
argc
and
argv
. These are an integer, and an array of char pointers respectively. If you’re not a programmer, then think of this as the number of arguments, and the list of arguments. This information is used to parse and handle command line options inside the program.
argc
is always at least one, and
argv[0]
will always contain the name of the binary as executed. Except, that isn’t always the case. There’s another way to launch binaries, using the
execve()
function. That function allows the programmer to specify the list of arguments directly, including argument 0.
So what happens if that list is just NULL? If a program was written to account for this possibility, like
sudo
, then all is well.
pkexec
, however, doesn’t include a check for an empty
argv
or an
argc
of 0. It acts as if there is an argument to read, and the way the program initialization happens in memory, it actually accesses the first environment variable instead, and treats it like an argument. It checks the system PATH for a matching binary, and rewrites what it thinks is it’s argument list, but is actually the environment variable. This means that uncontrolled text can be injected as an environment variable in
pkexec
, the setuid program.
That’s interesting, but not immediately useful, because
pkexec
clears it’s environment variables soon after the injection happens. So what sneaky trick could we use to actually exploit this? Throwing an error message.
pkexec
will use the
gconv
shared library to print an error message, and it starts by looking for the
gconv-modules
configuration file. This file defines which specific library files to open. The environment variable
GCONV_PATH
can be used to specify an alternate config file, but this environment variable is blocked when running a setuid binary. Ah, but we have a way to inject an environment variable after this happens. That’s the exploit. Prepare a
payload.so
that contains our arbitrary code, a fake
gconv-modules
file that points to the payload, and then use the NULL argv trick to inject the
GCONV_PATH
environment variable. Whoami? Root.
There’s a couple fascinating twists to this story. First,
[Ryan Mallon] came painfully close to discovering this vulnerability
in 2013. And secondly, way back in 2007,
[Michael Kerrisk] reported the NULL
argv
quirk as a Linux kernel bug
.
Attacking Random Passwords
The most secure password is one that’s randomly generated, right? Yes, but what if that random generator isn’t quite as random as it seems? Now we’re not talking about intentional backdoors this time, but the seemingly
insignificant patterns that sometimes make a big difference
. The enigma machine, after all, was cracked in part because it would never encode a letter as itself. [Hans Lakhan] from TrustedSec took a look at a million passwords generated by LastPass, and tried to generalize something useful from the data. Most of these passwords have either 1 or 2 digits. Note this isn’t a weakness in the algorithm, but simply the expected result of the available characters. Would there be an advantage to brute-forcing passwords with the rule that each guess must contain either one or two digits? It would certainly decrease the attack space, but it would also miss passwords that don’t fit the pattern. Would the trade-off be worth it?
The answer isn’t clear-cut. In certain circumstances, there is a slight advantage to gain from using the suggested rules. But that advantage disappears as the brute-force process continues. Either way, it’s a fascinating attempt at applying statistics to password cracking.
WordPress and Backdoor-ed Themes
One of the larger producer of WordPress themes and plugins, AccessPress, suffered a breach of their website that took an ugly turn. The problem was discovered by researchers at Jetpack, who were doing a post-mortem of different compromised site, and
found malware embedded in an AccessPress theme
. The initial breach happened in September 2021, so be suspicious of any content from AccessPress if downloaded between September and mid-October 2021. Note that if installed from the WordPress.org directory, these themes were safe. A list of known infected plugins and themes are available at the link above, as well as other indicators of compromise.
Bits and Bytes
There’s yet another secret token that’s being accidentally disclosed in source code, the Twitter access token. Github already does automated scanning for credentials accidentally included in repositories, but this doesn’t include Twitter tokens. [IncognitaTech] wrote a quick scanner, and
found approximately 9,500
valid tokens.(Insert over 9000 meme here.) How to inform so many people of the problem? Create a bot, make a tweet, and then use the tokens to retweet. That’s sure to capture some attention.
If you don't remember retweeting this, it means that you have leaked your Twitter Access Token in a public GitHub repository. Not the best practice, right?
For details, read our latest article:
https://t.co/6WBC6DRNDS
#InfoSec
#CyberSecurity
#GitHub
— PinataHub_Bot (@PinataHub_Bot)
January 24, 2022
Sonicwall SMA 100 series hardware
has a series of vulnerabilities that have now been patched and disclosed
. The worst is an unauthenticated buffer overflow, rating a CVSS of 9.8. These devices are relatively popular for small businesses, so keep your eyes open for potentially vulnerable hardware, and get them patched if you can.
Crypto.com
suffered a breach on January 17th
. They initially downplayed the incident, but have since
released a statement with further details
. The attack was a two-factor-authentication bypass, allowing an attacker to initiate transactions without successfully completing the normally required 2FA process. They make the claim that they caught the problem early enough to prevent any actual loss of currency, which is actually rather impressive.
Google Chrome has released an update, and this one includes
fixes for some expensive bugs
. Six separate reports earned researchers more than $10,000 a piece, with the top two a sweet $20K. These six, as well as a seventh bug reported internally, all appear to have the potential to be quite serious, so go update!
And finally, in the things-that-won’t-end-well category, the UK is flirting with the idea of
regulating security researchers
, making security research a registered trade. The most worrying part of this scheme is the idea that any unregistered researcher might be subject to criminal charges in certain circumstances. This seems like a terrible idea for obvious reasons. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418301",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2022-01-28T15:08:20",
"content": "Thank god I never update my antivirus, only the database.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6418309",
"author": "tekkieneet",
"timestamp": "2022... | 1,760,372,806.596331 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/28/hacking-a-proper-dash-into-the-tesla-model-3/ | Hacking A Proper Dash Into The Tesla Model 3 | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"canbus",
"car",
"car hacks",
"dash",
"tesla"
] | The Tesla Model 3 and Model Y are popular electric vehicles that dispense with some of the usual provisions you’d expect in a typical car. Namely, there’s no dash cluster in front of the driver; instead, all information is solely displayed on the center console screen. [Nick Nguyen] wasn’t a fan of this setup, and decided to
hack together a dash cluster of his own.
The CANdash works in a simple fashion, snooping the Tesla’s CAN bus for all the information relevant to the vehicle’s operation. It’s capable of displaying everything from speed to the remaining range in the battery, while also allowing the user to keep an eye on things like coolant temperatures and whether the
Tesla Autopilot system
is currently available.
The build relies on a CANserver, an ESP32-based device specifically built for hooking up to the CAN bus on Tesla vehicles and sharing the data externally. The data can then be piped wirelessly to an Android phone running CANdash to display all the desired information. With the help of an aftermarket dash clip or a 3D printed custom mount, the phone can then be placed behind the steering wheel to display data in the usual location.
It’s a simple, straightforward hack that gives Tesla owners a useful feature that they’re otherwise missing from the factory. The US automakers cars are proving to be fertile ground for hackers and DIYers, with one man recently saving thousands on a battery swap
with a simple mod
. Video after the break. | 60 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418247",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2022-01-28T12:07:58",
"content": "At least it doesn’t freezes like the original does :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6418472",
"author": "London",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,372,806.750624 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/28/tiny-cnc-cuts-the-metal/ | Tiny CNC Cuts The Metal | Al Williams | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"aluminum extrusion",
"cnc",
"CNC router",
"router"
] | We’re no strangers to [Ivan]’s work and this time he’s building a relatively small
CNC machine
using extrusion, 3D printed parts, and a Makita router. The plans are available at a small cost, but just watching the accelerated build is fascinating.
You might think you could just attach something to an existing 3D printer frame that cuts like a Dremel tool. You can do that, but for most purposes, you need something stiffer than most desktop printers. You can see how solid this build is with multiple extrusions forming the base and very rigid axes.
Judging from the video, the machine made short work of some aluminum plate. Of course, some of that is in the choice of tool, but it appears the machine is stable enough to hold the workpiece and the tool stable to allow this sort of service. [Ivan] says the machine cost him about 600 Euro ($670 USD) and you need a printer that can create parts as large as 180 x 180 mm.
There are quite a few similar mostly 3D printed machines on
Thingiverse
, including some that have been through
multiple versions
. If you have an old 3D printer sitting around for parts, you may have nearly everything you need if you add some printed parts, presumably from your new printer.
We’ve seen plenty of
CNC builds
if you want to pick and choose your own design. Depending on your expectations, it
doesn’t have to be an expensive project
. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418225",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2022-01-28T09:20:09",
"content": "“Judging from the video, the machine made short work of some aluminum plate.”Euhm, not really.I’m guessing that machine was making lots of noise for more then an hour to get that part made out of aluminum... | 1,760,372,806.656498 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/27/kinetic-art-installation-brings-all-the-worlds-lightning-to-one-place/ | Kinetic Art Installation Brings All The World’s Lightning To One Place | Robin Kearey | [
"Art"
] | [
"art",
"kinetic art",
"lightning",
"piezo"
] | Lightning is a force to be reckoned with: ever since ancient times, humans have been in awe of the lethal power of lightning strikes and the deafening roar of thunder. Quite reasonably, they ascribed these events to acts of angry gods; today, modern science provides a more down-to-earth explanation of the physics involved, and a world-wide network of sensors generates a real-time record of lightning strikes around the globe.
[Dmitry Morozov]’s
latest kinetic art installation called
Adad
is driven by this stream of data. Named after a Mesopotamian god of thunder, it consists of a set of arms that suddenly jerk upwards when a lightning strike is detected anywhere in the world. When an arm falls down again, it strikes a piezo crystal, which generates an electric charge that triggers a bright flash of light as well as a sound effect. Those crystals are pieces of potassium sodium tartrate (also known as Rochelle salt) and were grown specifically for this project. They are housed in plexiglass holders which also provide electrical connections.
Adad
‘s spider-like design, its eerie sounds as well as the sudden pops and flashes make this a rather unsettling yet beautiful display of Nature’s violence. And it’s a piece of beauty from an engineering point of view as well: sleek aluminium tubes, servo-driven motion and those transparent crystal holders, all controlled by an Arduino that receives live lightning data through an internet connection.
We’ve seen several types of lightning detectors, usually based on a
standard radio receiver
or
a specialized chip
. If you’re interested in growing your own piezo crystals,
we’ve covered that too
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418410",
"author": "Dry Punt",
"timestamp": "2022-01-28T19:21:14",
"content": "It looks like the last thing someone sees in a sci-fi horror movie. That’s what makes it awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6418473",
"au... | 1,760,372,806.833011 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/27/thats-no-moon-its-an-algae-robot/ | That’s No Moon… It’s An Algae Robot | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Robots Hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"algae",
"robot",
"underwater"
] | When you think of a robot, you probably don’t think of a ball of underwater algae. But a team of university researchers used a 3D-printed exoskeleton and a ball of marimo algae to produce
a moving underwater sensor platform
. It is really at a proof-of-concept stage, but it seems as though it would be possible to make practical use of the technology.
Marimo are relatively rare balls of algae that occur in some parts of the world. A robot powered by algae runs on sunlight and could be electromagnetically quiet.
The researchers encased the algae in a PLA exoskeleton. As the balls conduct photosynthesis, they generate gas bubbles. By controlling where the light strikes the algae, gas bubbles form in one area and this drives the surrounding ball in the opposite direction. If the ball had a way to control the direction of light, it would be possible to steer the robot.
The researchers also put barriers in the way of the robots. When they get stuck the gas bubbles are unable to vent from the exoskeleton. This forces water out making the whole assembly more buoyant. This causes the rover to rise and as the gas is free to release, the robot will sink again.
In its current form, the rover is inexpensive to create and has applications as a sensor platform where speed isn’t an issue but longevity is.
We love
underwater robots
. It seems like the coolest ones
look like nature
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418159",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2022-01-28T03:32:04",
"content": "Marimo are quite popular pets for children in Japan. You can buy one for 100 yen (less than a dollar). They don’t really do anything other than sit in a small bowl of water, so I never really saw the draw.",... | 1,760,372,806.793578 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/27/jukebox-electromechanical-automation-explained/ | Jukebox Electromechanical Automation Explained | Chris Lott | [
"Netbook Hacks"
] | [
"electromechanical",
"jukebox",
"sequencer",
"vinyl records"
] | If you ever been curious how old-school jukeboxes work, it’s all electromechanical and no computers. In a pair of videos, [Technology Connections] takes us
through a detailed dive into the operation of a 1970 Wurlitzer Statesman model 3400
that he bought with his allowance when he was in middle school. This box can play records at either 33-1/3 or 45 RPM from a carousel of 100 discs, therefore having a selection of 200 songs. This would have been one of the later models, as Wurlitzer’s jukebox business was in decline and they sold the business in 1973.
This may be the ugliest jukebox ever produced.
This jukebox is actually what turned me into the weirdo that I am today.
External appearances aside, it’s the innards of this mechanical wonder that steal the show. The mechanism is known as the
Wurlamatic
, invented by Frank B.
Lumney
and Ronald P.
Eberhardt
in 1967. Check out the patent
US3690680A
document for some wonderful diagrams and schematics that are artwork unto themselves.
[Technology Connections] explains how the whole thing works, and your brain will be spinning when he’s done. It’s amazing how everything is precisely orchestrated, and even more amazing that people were able to maintain and troubleshoot these contraptions. He says there may be a third installment, so stay tuned. If you like these things, check out this writeup we did about a
restoration of a diner table-top Seeburg jukebox back in 2018
. Have you ever worked on one of these electromechanical sequencers? If so, tell us about it in the comments below. | 19 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6418079",
"author": "LobsterBoix",
"timestamp": "2022-01-28T00:34:09",
"content": "Technology Connections has always been one of my favs, cant wait to sink into these videos tonight!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6419097",
... | 1,760,372,806.894729 |
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