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https://hackaday.com/2022/01/06/legopunk-orrery-knows-just-the-right-technics/ | LEGOpunk Orrery Knows Just The Right Technics | Ryan Flowers | [
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"earth",
"lego",
"lego technic",
"moon",
"orrery",
"sun",
"Technic"
] | Is the unmistakable sound of the shuffling of LEGO pieces being dug through burned into your psyche? Did the catalog of ever more complex Technic pieces send your imagination soaring into the stratosphere and beyond? Judging by the
artful contraption in the video below the break
, we are fairly certain that [Marian] can relate to these things.
No doubt inspired by classic orreries driven by clockwork, [Marian]’s LEGO Sun-Earth-Moon orrery is instead driven by either hand cranks or by electric motors. The orrery aims to be astronomically correct. To that end, a full revolution of a hand crank produces a full day’s worth of movement.
Solar and lunar eclipses can be demonstrated, along with numerous other principals such as the tilt of the earth, moon phases, tidal locking, and more,
which can be found at the project page
.
While classical orreries predate the Victorian era, there seems to be an almost inexplicable link between orreries and the Steampunk aesthetic. But [Marian]’s orrery brought the term “LEGOpunk” to mind. Could it be? Given that there are 2305 pieces and 264 pages of instructions with 436 steps, we think so!
We’ve covered just a few orreries in the past, from this
somewhat simple laser cut orrery
to this
horrifically complex and beautiful thing here
. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412521",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2022-01-07T09:23:23",
"content": "Give your kids LEGO.When they grow up, they won’t have enough money for (other) drugs ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6412549",
"author": "Dan"... | 1,760,372,830.219584 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/06/hidden-model-railroading-taken-to-the-nth-scale/ | Hidden Model Railroading Taken To The Nth Scale | Ryan Flowers | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"epoxy resin",
"model railroad",
"N scale"
] | Most of us would be pretty happy with ourselves if we made one of those neat “epoxy river” types of art for our home. Not so with prolific maker [Peter Waldraff]. [Peter] is a skilled craftsman with a penchant for hiding model railroads in everyday furniture and fixtures. To this end, he’s created what he calls the Hidden Epoxy Railroad, which you can see in the
video below the break
.
The project starts with basic woodworking to build the frame, hinges, and the hinged epoxy river with its colored epoxy pour. Instead of stopping there, [Pete] continued by building a full N scale model railroad into the piece. The frame doubles as a backdrop complete with a beautifully painted scene with what we’re guessing is an N scale hot air balloon, too.
Of course, the skeptics among us might doubt whether the model railroad is fully hidden when closed. But one detail that Pete shared with us is that his wife never knew about the train portion of the build until their daughter pointed it out. She thought it was merely a piece of art for the dining room. Truly a great hack!
The entire build is documented on
[Pete]’s YouTube channel
,
with its own 15 part build series
. It’s definitely worth checking out. We’ve covered
one of [Pete]’s hidden railroad builds before
, so make sure you check that out, too! | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412484",
"author": "ameyring",
"timestamp": "2022-01-07T03:41:40",
"content": "Very cool!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6412502",
"author": "RÖB",
"timestamp": "2022-01-07T07:19:13",
"content": "Wot! No mention th... | 1,760,372,830.262179 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/06/7-tent-heater-provides-comfort-on-a-budget/ | $7 Tent Heater Provides Comfort On A Budget | Brian McEvoy | [
"how-to"
] | [
"Alcohol burner",
"alcohol jet burner",
"camping",
"cooking",
"cooking stove",
"heater",
"heating stove",
"Homeless",
"isopropyl",
"safety",
"stove",
"tent"
] | At Hackaday’s Minnesota office, we appreciate central heat and hot coffee because the outdoor temperature is sub-zero in Celsius
and
Fahrenheit. Not everyone here has such amenities, and families living in tents could use heater help. If you live somewhere inhospitably cold and have the resources (time being the most crucial), please consider building and donating
alcohol jet burners
.
Alcohol burners like these are great for tents because if they tip over, they self-extinguish. You can fill them with 70% rubbing alcohol and they’ll heat a small space, and if running on denatured alcohol, they can be used to cook with. They won’t do you much good outdoors unless you have significant wind protection, as the tiny jet is likely to blow out. The first time you light one, you must heat the coil with a lighter or another heater to vaporize incoming fuel, then it can sustain itself by wicking fluid up from the reservoir jar. Relighting after a tip or accidental gust only takes a spark since the copper is already hot.
If you came for a hack, note how they fill the small tubes with salt funneled through a condiment cap before bending them. Sure, there are springy pipe bending tools, but who doesn’t already have salt and tape?
Keeping humans warm
is crucial, but
heating metal takes a different approach
.
Heater Bloc's Guide for Building the Copper Coil Alcohol Heater and Safety Enclosure is now available!
Please share this zine with anyone interested in instructions on how to build a tent-safe alcohol heater.
https://t.co/iv5xKd93jo
— Heater Bloc (@HeaterBloc)
November 23, 2021
Thank you for the tip, [cyberlass] | 120 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412355",
"author": "Matt",
"timestamp": "2022-01-06T19:37:01",
"content": "Sadly, in my area the donees would rather drink the fuel rather than burn it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6412358",
"author": "Tom Hargrav... | 1,760,372,831.059369 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/06/remoticon-2021-unbinare-brings-a-reverse-engineering-toolkit-into-recycling/ | Remoticon 2021: Unbinare Brings A Reverse-Engineering Toolkit Into Recycling | Arya Voronova | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Reverse Engineering",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"oi!ster",
"recycling",
"refurbishment",
"reverse engineering",
"stm32",
"unbinare",
"unbprobe",
"unbprobebase",
"unbrk"
] | Unbinare is a small Belgian company at the forefront of hacking e-waste into something useful, collaborating with recycling and refurbishing companies. Reverse-engineering is a novel way to approach recycling, but it’s arguably one of the most promising ways that we are not trying at scale yet. At Hackaday Remoticon 2021, Maurits Fennis talked about Unbinare’s efforts in the field and presented us with a toolkit he has recently released as a part of his work, as well as described how his background as an artist has given him insights used to formulate foundational principles of Unbinare.
Unbinare’s tools are designed to work in harmony with each other, a requirement for any productive reverse-engineering effort. OI!STER is a general-purpose salvaged MCU research board, with sockets to adapt to different TQFP chip sizes. This board is Maurits’s experience in reverse-engineering condensed into a universal tool, including a myriad of connectors for different programming/debugging interfaces. We don’t know the board’s full scope, but the pictures show an STM32 chip inside the TQFP socket, abundant everywhere except your online retailer of choice. Apart from all the ways to break out the pins, OI!STER has sockets for power and clock glitching, letting you target these two omnipresent Achilles’ heels with a tool like ChipWhisperer.
No tool like OI!STER stands alone. The UNBRK is a breakout board for more permanent and tailored reverse-engineering fixtures, with traces and power planes intricately laid out for unparalleled universality for reusing all kinds of ICs. Ad-hoc probing of various signals is still a must even with a purpose-built fixture, and the UNBProbe is a testpoint probe with an optional nifty 3D-printed case, designed with usability and ease of independent assembly in mind. Once you use too many of these probes in one project, you’ll definitely want to build yourself a UNBProbeBase, a mother-board for grouping a bunch of UNBProbes together into one comfortable connector – otherwise, the cables expand to occupy all the space available to them, distracting you from today’s RE puzzle and bothering you with an unsolicited topology exercise.
Whether hacking for the purpose of recycling or simply freeing your devices to do with them what you wish, Unbinare’s tools are equal parts useful and beautiful, and this work extends to other resources like
a Wiki page
for documenting their efforts and sharing tool designs. If you’d like to keep yourself updated on their next milestones, your best bet would be
following them on Twitter
for whenever the next tool and project announcements get dropped! | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412329",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-01-06T18:44:07",
"content": "“an STM32 chip inside the TQFP socket, abundant everywhere except your online retailer of choice”Thanks for the chuckle 😆",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,372,830.648928 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/06/555-timer-contest-entry-a-digital-counter-with-nothing-but-555s/ | 555 Timer Contest Entry: A Digital Counter With Nothing But 555s | Dan Maloney | [
"contests",
"hardware"
] | [
"555",
"555 timer contest",
"8-bit counter",
"breadboard",
"JK flip-flop",
"sr latch"
] | With a 555 on the BOM, you never know what you’re going to get. With 40 of the versatile timer chips in a build, you might just get something completely unexpected, like
this 555-based eight-bit digital counter
.
This one comes to us by way of [Astronomermike], who chose to make a digital circuit with nothing but 555s and a largish handful of passives as his entry in
the current 555 Timer Contest
. The ubiquitous timer chip is not exactly the first chip that comes to mind for digital applications, but it does contain an SR latch, which only requires a little persuasion to become a JK flip flop. His initial design for the flip flop that would form the core of the circuit had a pair of 555s surrounded with a bunch of OR gates and inverters — within the rules of the contest but hardly in its spirit. Luckily, the 555 makes a fine inverter too, and along with some diode-resistor OR gates, the basic counter module was born.
The video below shows the design and build, as well as the trip down the troubleshooting rabbit hole courtesy of a bad breadboard. Each half-nibble stage of the 8-bit counter occupies a full breadboard with ten 555s; the whole 40-chip string actually works and looks pretty cool doing it.
Truth be told, this is exactly the kind of thing we had in mind when dreaming up this year’s 555 contest, so good on [Astronomermike] for thinking outside the box for this one. To see what other uses people have found for the chip that keeps on giving, or to get your entry in before the deadline on January 10, head over to
the contest page
. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412299",
"author": "daveboltman",
"timestamp": "2022-01-06T17:08:22",
"content": "Could have done that with a Raspberry Pi",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6412304",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
... | 1,760,372,830.693137 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/06/from-nanoamps-to-gigahertz-the-worlds-most-extreme-op-amps/ | From Nanoamps To Gigahertz: The World’s Most Extreme Op Amps | Robin Kearey | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"bandwidth",
"high speed",
"low power",
"op amps"
] | The operational amplifier, or op amp, is one of the most basic building blocks used in analog circuits. Ever since single-chip op amps were introduced in the 1960s, thousands of different types have been developed, some more successful than others. Ask an experienced analog designer to name a few op amps, and they’ll likely mention the LM324, the TL072, the NE5534, the LM358, and of course the granddaddy of all, the uA741.
If those part numbers don’t mean anything to you, all you need to know is that these are generic components that you can buy anywhere and that will do just fine in the most common applications. You can buy fancier op amps that improve on some spec or another, sometimes by orders of magnitude. But how far can you really push the concept of an operational amplifier? Today we’ll show you some op amps that go way beyond these typical “jellybean” components.
Before we start, let’s define what exactly we mean when we say “operational amplifier”. We’re looking for integrated op amps, meaning a single physical component, that have a differential high-impedance voltage input, a single-ended voltage output, DC coupling, and high gain meant to be used in a feedback configuration. We’re excluding anything made from discrete components, as well as less-general circuits like fixed-gain amplifiers and operational transconductance amplifiers (OTAs).
Number of Channels
Pinout of a TL084X2. The dual supply pins suggest that this is really just two TL084 chips bonded into a single 30-pin package. Image credit: Texas Instruments
The very first integrated op amps, starting with the
uA702
in 1963, incorporated just a single amplifier inside a single chip. From the 1970s however, dual and quad op amps became popular, largely aimed at designers of active filters. Duals and quads are widely available today; a few triple op amp chips are produced as well, and you can even buy the
NJM2710
, which is a hex op amp: six channels.
However, the largest number of op amps ever integrated into a single package is eight: until a few years ago you could get yourself an
EL5811
, a
TL084x2
, or even an
LM324x2
, all of which were octal op amps. The same basic circuit in each case was also available as a single, dual or quad version, so the octal op amps were really “dual quads”.
While such a thing might seem useful if you want to squeeze lots of amps in a small space, using two separate quads will give you much more flexibility when it comes to layout and routing of your circuit. We suspect that’s the reason these chips never gained much traction in the market.
Power Consumption
The NJU7700x series are ultra-low-power op amps, using less than a micro-amp. Image credit: New Japan Radio Co.
The classic uA741 consumes about 1.7 mA in a typical application. More modern designs have managed to reduce this: for instance, the
OPA171
is compatible with the ‘741, has better performance on nearly all measures (bandwidth, slew rate, noise, offset), and uses just under half a mA. Modern circuit design techniques as well as advances in semiconductor manufacturing have enabled a way better performance/power ratio than was possible in the 1960s.
Several manufacturers have introduced op amps in the ultra-low power category, which consume less than one micro-amp. An example is the
LPV801
, which uses only 450 nano-amps. But the most frugal op amp on the market today is the
NJU77000
, which draws no more than 290 nA. To put that number into perspective, a typical CR2032 coin cell has a capacity of around 220 mAh, meaning that it could theoretically power an NJU77000 for 86 years — of course, self-discharge will drain the battery long before that. The specs of this op amp are not stellar, especially when it comes to bandwidth: a maximum of 1 kHz is way too low to process anything resembling audio, but is plenty for slow-moving circuits like gas sensors.
Output Current
The Apex PA52 is a rather large “chip”, measuring about 36 x 40 mm
2
. Note the BeO warning: the package contains beryllium oxide to achieve high thermal conductivity. Image credit: Apex Microtechnology
On the other end of the spectrum are power op amps that can drive large currents into a load. The classic
L272
, which is often used as a motor driver, can deliver a full amp on each of its two channels. But technology has moved on, and today you can buy the beefy
PA50
and
PA52
from Apex Microtechnology. These massive op amps can output 40 A continuously and 80 A for short periods. And although they come as a single (rather large) component, inside they are not single chips but
hybrid modules
: a set of integrated circuits and discrete transistors directly bonded onto a common substrate.
All this power comes at a price though; at several hundred dollars a pop, these are not your garden variety op amps. In fact, if you need more current than your preferred amplifier can deliver, it might be a better idea to make an output boost circuit using discrete power transistors. One good text on this topic is
application note AN18 by Jim Williams
, which demonstrates various ways to increase an op amp’s output current, voltage swing, or both.
Supply Voltage
Danger, high voltage: the PA99 can work at up to 2.5 kV. Image credit: Apex Microtechnology
Most op amps from the earlier days could work with pretty large supply voltages: +/- 15 V was normal back in the 1970s. In today’s age of Arduinos and ESP32s, this seems excessive, and indeed many modern op amps will happily work at 3.3 V or even lower. At the other extreme however, op amps that can work at more than 100 V are also reasonably common; the
LTC6090
and the
ADHV4702
are examples that can work at 140 V and 220 V, respectively. But the real winner in this category is the
PA99
from Apex: this op amp will happily work with 2500 V across its supply pins. It can deliver 50 mA on its output and has a gain-bandwidth product of 28 MHz. Like its high-current siblings it’s an expensive chip, at about a thousand dollars, so you’re not likely to find it in any consumer products. The main market for specialized chips like this is scientific instruments and industrial equipment using piezo actuators or electrostatic deflection.
Bandwidth
Speaking about bandwidth, which op amp is the fastest? There’s not actually a single, definitive answer to that. Let’s start by looking at the open-loop frequency response of an op amp: it’s high (more than 100 dB) at low frequencies, all the way down to DC. At some frequency, the gain begins to drop, at what we call the -3 dB point; this is where the gain has reached 70% of its DC value. The gain then continues to drop by 20 dB per decade to reach zero dB at the unity-gain frequency — zero dB means a factor of one.
In practice this means that if you configure the feedback network so that the total amplifier has a gain of one, the bandwidth of this circuit will be the unity-gain frequency. If you set it to a gain of two, it will have half the bandwidth. A gain of ten will result in one tenth the bandwidth, and so on. Since the product of the gain and the bandwidth is always the same, the unity-gain frequency is also called the
gain-bandwidth product
.
Most general-purpose op amps can be used at any closed-loop gain. But this flexibility comes at a price: the unity-gain frequency has to be kept relatively low to prevent oscillation. For high-speed applications you can therefore buy op amps that have been
decompensated
. This means that the internal circuits have been adjusted to run at a higher bandwidth, but also that the op amp cannot be used in the unity-gain configuration; the datasheet will specify a minimum closed-loop gain at which the amplifier can be used. If you don’t respect this limit, then your circuit may oscillate.
The graph below shows the open-loop gain-versus-frequency plot of a fully compensated op amp and a decompensated one. Control theory tells us that we will end up with a stable closed-loop system if we close the loop at a point where the open-loop gain drops by 20 dB per decade. (Actually, it’s more complicated than that, but we won’t go into that now.) For the fully compensated op amp this is true at any gain. But for the decompensated op amp, the gain drops by 20 dB per decade only up to a point; this is
Gmin
, or the minimum gain at which the amplifier will be stable. Note that the bandwidth at this point is much higher than it would have been for the fully compensated amplifier.
Open-loop gain plot of a fully compensated op amp (green) and an otherwise identical decompensated op amp (yellow). Note that the decompensated amp never actually reaches its gain-bandwidth product: GBW2 is extrapolated from the 20 dB/dec part of the graph.
The op amp with the highest gain-bandwidth product you can buy today is the
OPA855
, at a whopping 8 GHz. However, because it is a decompensated amplifier, you have to use it at a gain of at least seven, in which case it will “only” reach 2.5 GHz. The fastest non-decompensated op amp is the
THS4304
, which can work in any configuration all the way up to its unity-gain bandwidth of 3 GHz. But before you run off and buy this chip to build a multi-GHz amplifier, remember that proper circuit layout becomes critical at such frequencies; any stray capacitance in the wrong place can upset the loop stability and turn your amplifier into an oscillator.
Slew Rate
Bandwidth isn’t the only measure of speed though. Another spec that you find in any op amp’s datasheet is its slew rate. Usually measured in Volts per microsecond (V/us), it tells you exactly how quickly the chip’s output voltage can change. A simple way to measure an op amp’s slew rate is to have it output a square wave: the slope of the output’s rising and falling edges will be equal to the slew rate.
If you apply a square wave to the input of an op amp, then the output will rise and fall at the op amp’s slew rate.
The slew rate is largely determined by the internal bias current of an op amp, and is therefore usually proportional to the supply current. Typical values range from 0.5 V/us for the uA741 to 20 V/us for the TL072. Some op amps have a clever trick inside known as slew boosting, where the bias current is temporarily increased when the op amp detects that its output can’t keep up with its input.
The highest slew rates are available in
current feedback amplifiers
(CFAs), which are similar to op amps in many ways but different enough that we don’t count them as such in this article. Compared to ordinary op amps, they have low open-loop gain, high input offset voltages and bias currents, and cannot be used in all feedback applications. They are commonly used in high-speed circuits where a high slew rate is the most important requirement.
Not surprising then, that the op amps with the highest slew rate combine features of CFAs and regular op amps, somewhat blurring the line between them. For example, the
EL5102
has a slew rate of a whopping 3500 V/us, but a meagre 66 dB of open-loop gain where most basic op amps have 100 to 120 dB. Its input bias current is quite large as well, at 2 uA typical. The
MIC920
does a bit better, but at 85 dB it’s still not a great op amp. The real winner in this category is the
PA107
, which can move its output at 3000 V/us but still reaches 140 dB of open loop gain. It also draws about 50 mA from its supply, so it’s not something to use when you’re designing for low power.
Unusual Materials
Nearly all integrated circuits you can buy today use silicon as their base material. A few high-speed circuits, including some of the high-speed op amps mentioned above, are made using silicon-germanium (SiGe), although this is just the top layer of a chip that’s otherwise pure silicon. Potentially, other semiconductors such as gallium arsenide (GaAs), gallium nitride (GaN) or even silicon carbide (SiC) could be used to manufacture op amps; however, given the significant cost difference with ordinary silicon these materials are mainly used for specialized discrete transistors and ultra-high speed integrated circuits.
The die of KTH’s silicon carbide op amp. Image credit: KTH
A few research projects have shown interesting results though: The KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in Sweden, has demonstrated
an op amp made in silicon carbide technology that can work at ultra-high temperatures up to 500 °C
. Its performance is far from stellar, but its robustness means that it should be able to work in environments as hostile as
the surface of Venus
.
Here on Earth, silicon is firmly established as the semiconductor of choice, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. But as we’ve seen, silicon is flexible enough to enable a huge variety of op amp designs for nearly any imaginable application. | 104 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412261",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2022-01-06T15:16:35",
"content": "Very interesting. I worked with 741s at school and it’s remarkable to see how far their brothers and sisters have gone.One small note. Microamps are not abbreviated “uA”, but “μA” – the prefix is the Gree... | 1,760,372,830.917985 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/06/new-part-day-the-risc-v-lichee-rv-module-and-dock/ | New Part Day: The RISC-V Lichee-RV Module And Dock | Dave Rowntree | [
"Parts"
] | [
"New Part Day",
"RISC-V",
"Sipeed"
] | Sipeed have been busy leveraging developments in the RISC-V arena, with an interesting, low-cost module they call the
Lichee RV
. It is based around the
Aliwinner D1 SoC
(which contains a
Pingtou Xuantie C906
for those following Chinese RISC-V processor development) with support for an optional NAND filesystem. This little board uses a pair of edge connectors, similar to the Raspberry Pi CM3 form factor, except it’s based around a pair M.2 connectors instead. The module has USB-C, an SPI LCD interface, as well as a TF card socket on-board, with the remaining interfaces provided on the big edge connector.
The minimalist Allwinner D1-based Lichee RV
So that brings us onto the next Sipeed board, the Lichee RV Dock which is a tiny development board for the module. This breaks out the HDMI, adds USB, a WiFi/Bluetooth module, audio driver, microphone array interface and even a 40-way GPIO connector. Everything you need to build your own embedded cloud-connected device.
Early adopters beware, though, Linux support is still in the early stages of development, apparently with Debian currently the most usable. We’ve not tested one ourselves yet, but it does look like quite useful for those projects with a small budget and not requiring the power-hungry multi-core performance of a Raspberry Pi or equivalents.
We’ve seen the
Sipeed MAix M1 AI Module hosted on a Pi Hat
a couple of years ago, as well as a
NES emulator running on the Sipeed K210
. The future for RISC-V is looking pretty good if you ask us!
Thanks [Maarten] for the tip! | 47 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412224",
"author": "anon",
"timestamp": "2022-01-06T12:43:40",
"content": "Debian was the first distribution to adopt RISC-V and port a large number of packages.However be aware that Allwinner is (still) violating GPL.Also Sipeed is not providing good documentation and steps to gen... | 1,760,372,830.778185 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/06/ham-antenna-fits-almost-anywhere/ | Ham Antenna Fits Almost Anywhere | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"antenna",
"EFHW",
"end fed half wave",
"ham radio"
] | [G3OJV] knows the pain of trying to operate a ham radio transmitter on a small lot. His recent video shows how to put up a
workable basic HF antenna in a small backyard
. The center of the system is a 49:1 unun. An unun is like a balun, but while a balun goes from balanced line to an unbalanced antenna, the unun has both sides unbalanced. You can see his explanation in the video below.
The tiny hand-size box costs well under $40 or $50 and covers the whole HF band at up to 200 W. The video shows the inside of the box which, as you’d expect, is a toroid with a few turns of wire.
The proposed antenna is an end-fed dipole fed with the unun. These are somewhat controversial with some people swearing they can’t work and others saying they are amazing. We are guessing they may not outperform a perfect antenna system, but we also know that you can have a lot of fun with almost any kind of radiator.
The element is about 33 ft long, but to make it fit, you can bend the antenna to fit your lot. Again, it is probably not optimal, but better than nothing. Erecting a wire antenna like this is easy and just requires some insulators and supporting rope or string. Using thin wire and low-profile rope, you can hide it nearly anywhere.
Does it work? Seems to in the video, at least judging by the SWR. As [G3OJV] says, why not try it before dismissing it?
We’ve seen
other options
, of course. We’ve also seen these end-fed antennas made with
tiny band traps
. | 37 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412199",
"author": "Nicolas",
"timestamp": "2022-01-06T10:39:25",
"content": "Unfortunately there is no link between SWR and Efficiency. So the conclusion “at least judging by the SWR” is not true.The simpliest example is that a pure resistive 50 ohms dummy load give a nice SWR of ... | 1,760,372,830.534321 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/05/does-this-lead-make-my-car-look-fat/ | Does This Lead Make My Car Look Fat? | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"added mass",
"added weight",
"car",
"car hacks",
"cars",
"vibration",
"vibration dampening",
"vibration damping",
"weight"
] | When looking at the performance of a vehicle, weight is one of the most important factors in the equation. Heavier vehicles take more energy to accelerate and are harder to stop. They’re also more difficult to control through the corners. Overall, anything that makes a vehicle heavier typically comes with a load of drawbacks to both performance and efficiency. You want your racecar as light as possible.
However, now and then, automakers have found reason to intentionally add large weights to vehicles. We’ll look at a couple of key examples, and discuss why this strange design decision can sometimes be just what the engineers ordered.
Vibration
Anyone who has taken a course on vibrations in university will know that adding mass typically changes things for the better as far as vibrations go. More mass reduces the natural frequency of a system. In a vehicle, if the natural frequency of a chassis or subsystem drops lower than that of excitations from things like the road, drivetrain vibrations, or the engine, vibrations felt throughout the vehicle can be reduced precipitously.
Up to around 1968, certain Porsche 911 models fitted pairs of 27 lb weights on the front bumper in order to balance the weight of the 6-cylinder engine mounted in the rear. Credit:
Parts-Wise.com
A common example is
the Porsche 912E
, which substituted a smooth-running six-cylinder engine for a clattery Volkswagen four-cylinder engine. When designing the vehicle to accept this engine, Porsche engineers decided to add a hefty 12-pound weight underneath the transmission cross member. The weight is listed as a “vibration damper,” and likely changes the natural frequency of the rear subframe enough such that it is below that of the vibrations generated by the engine. Adding twelve pounds of dead weight to a cheap, low-performance “sports” car has little noticeable negative effect, but can make a difference in the feeling of refinement, if less vibration is transmitted from the engine to the cabin.
Porsche aren’t the only ones to have pulled such a trick. Toyota
used a bolt-on weight
on certain Hilux models to reduce drivetrain vibrations, mounted to the transfer case of used to tamp down on excessive vibration. Weighing around six pounds, it was just enough to make a meaningful difference. Meanwhile, the added weight would hardly be noticed on a vehicle with a kerb weight in excess of 3480 lbs.
Volkswagen included
a similar item
, approximately 25 pounds, in the rear of mid-90s Golf Cabrio models. The “rear added mass” was apparently included to cut down on vibrations.
This technique is still used to this day, though often in a less obvious manner. Engineers work hard to reduce noise, vibration, and harshness in new models, known in the industry as “NVH.” Tacking on a big lump of metal a la the 912E is a quick way to deal with a vibration problem in an existing model. However, if you’re designing a car from the ground up, you can be tidier about your work. Frames and cross members can be designed with thicker cross sections, or extra material can be added to things like engine mounts or brackets to more subtly alter the picture. However, if a vehicle is nearing production and there’s no time to change the molds for other parts, sometimes a little bolt-on weight gets tacked on to tamp down on those nasty little vibrations.
Automakers sometimes go even further, however. Dodge has mounted active mass dampers that shake weights out of phase with the vibrations created by the engine in their RAM trucks. The shaking from these weights destructively interferes with the shaking of the engine, and when tuned properly, can cut down heavily on vibrations throughout the chassis of the vehicle.
Mass dampers have been used in motorsports too, with the Renault Formula 1 team
pioneering the technology in 2005
before it was outlawed by the sport’s governing body. In this case, the damper consisted of a 19-pound disc that could move in a vertical plane, held in place by springs, with its movement damped by oil. The disc would help absorb energy from the car hitting bumps in much the same way as tuned mass dampers help reduce oscillations felt in skyscrapers, and was considered a significant competitive advantage for the team until it was banned from competition.
Small weights like this 25 gram example are used to balance wheels and tires to avoid harmful vibrations. Credit:
Abelson
, CC-A-SA-2.5
Of course, we can’t forget that one of the most common times weight is added to a vehicle is during a wheel balance. Tires and wheels aren’t always of perfectly homogenous construction, and can have heavy spots. Rotate them up to speed, and you’ll get all kinds of horrible shakes and vibrations throughout the car. However, with the aid of a balancing machine, a few weights can be stuck on to balance all that out.
Balance
Sometimes though, large weights are added to a vehicle to aid in balance and grip. A great example is the 1957 Willys FC-150 truck, which mounts a hefty 265 pound weight over
the rear wheels
. In this case, the truck as designed has the engine and passenger cab way up front on the chassis, meaning all the weight is very forward-biased. This has the rather negative effect of making the vehicle want to lift the rear wheels under hard braking, and just generally makes the vehicle unbalanced an difficult to control. The solution was obvious: chuck a big weight on the rear to keep those wheels on the ground.
Ballast is often used on tractors to add grip or to counterweight heavy front or rear mounted implements. The same principle is sometimes used on pickup trucks to maintain traction in slippery conditions. Credit:
Mattes
, public domain
It’s a very simple solution, of course. Back in the 1950s, petty concerns like fuel economy and efficiency simply weren’t front of mind. Thus, it was easy to slap a weight on and be done with it. These days, trucks are designed with a little more finesse and are usually plenty heavy all around, so such obvious measures aren’t needed. Regardless, it’s still important for a vehicle’s weight distribution to be appropriate, whether loaded or not, to maintain good handling.
In fact, when it comes to pickup trucks, a common solution to add traction in the winter is to simply
add a dummy load in the bed
. A few hundred pounds of sand or pavers can help reduce fishtailing or spinning up the rear wheels in the snow. It comes at a cost to fuel economy, but if it keeps the truck out of a snowdrift, you’re saving plenty in towing fees to make up for it.
Similar measures are
often used on tractors
to help them pull implements and not lose grip in mushy terrain. These may be applied to frames on the front or rear of the tractor, or even directly on the wheels themselves, helping to increase the force pressing the tires into the ground for more traction. These can weigh in the thousands of pounds at the high end.
It’s Not All Bad
Wheel weights help add traction to tractors in difficult conditions. Credit:
DesignWebJae
, CC-SA-3.0
As it turns out, more weight is not always a bad thing. If a little extra weight helps cut down on annoying vibrations, or solves some tricky handling issues, it’s usually worth the trade-off.
If you’re competing in motorsport, and need the ultimate in performance, cutting out every last bit of weight makes sense. However, for daily use on the road and elsewhere, often a little extra goes a long way to solving some garden-variety engineering problems! | 64 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412002",
"author": "GameboyRMH",
"timestamp": "2022-01-05T15:19:23",
"content": "Another example is in landspeed cars. Weight negatively affects acceleration in all directions…but not top speed. So weights are often added to landspeed cars for the same reasons they’re added to trac... | 1,760,372,830.463695 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/05/dice-rolls-from-the-beginning-of-time/ | Dice Rolls From The Beginning Of Time | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Science"
] | [
"nixie tube",
"prng",
"random number generator",
"trng"
] | Generating random numbers might seem like a trivial task, that is until the numbers need to be truly random for cryptography or security reasons. When that’s the case, it turns out that these numbers are really “pseudo-random” and follow a predictable pattern. Devices that can produce truly random numbers often do it by sampling random events in the real world rather than relying on a computer to do it directly,
like this machine which simulates a dice roll by looking at the cosmic microwave background radiation
.
The cosmic microwave background radiation exists in the infrared at the farthest edges of the observable universe as a remnant of the big bang. It’s an excellent source of randomness, but tapping into it poses a bit of a challenge. For this build, [iSax] is using an old Soviet-era Geiger tube to detect the appropriate signal, and a Nixie tube to display the dice roll. After the device detects two particles from the Big Bang, the device measures the amount of time that passed between the detection of both particles and uses this number to calculate the dice roll.
While it takes a little bit longer to roll this dice than a traditional one since it has to wait to detect the right kind of particles, if you really need the randomness it can’t be beat. It certainly works as dice, but we can also see some use for generating truly random numbers for other applications as well. For some other sources of random inspiration be sure to
check out our own [Voja Antonic]’s deep dive into truly random number generation
. | 30 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411971",
"author": "Frankel",
"timestamp": "2022-01-05T12:15:46",
"content": "> cosmic microwave background as defined:> the peak wavelength is 1.063 mm>Small nitpick. This machine does not use the CMB. As the energy is not enough to excite a Geiger counter tube. This device measur... | 1,760,372,830.602933 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/05/building-a-wifi-enabled-bird-box-on-the-cheap/ | Building A WiFi-Enabled Bird Box On The Cheap | Orlando Hoilett | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"birdhouse",
"endoscope",
"IoT",
"mother nature",
"wifi"
] | [Jude] was looking for a fun DIY project for him and his son and thought that a
bird box might be a good option
. He wanted to equip the box with a WiFi camera so he could watch his little guests from his phone but didn’t find any suitable, inexpensive, commercially-available options. So with that, he built one himself.
He did, however, start with a generic bird box, which he bought online, and then
modified with his particular features of interest
. He wanted the project to be scalable so after-school programs and other kids clubs could easily implement his design within a classroom setting. He figured minimizing the woodwork would make the project easier for children.
He added a dowel to the generic bird box he bought online, but cautions that readers need to investigate if a dowel would attract invasive species in their area. He found a relatively inexpensive WiFi-enabled endoscope that he noted was far more affordable than the camera-equipped, commercially-available bird boxes he found earlier. He craftily used a plastic syringe as a waterproof spy hole that housed the endoscope, allowing him to easily slip the camera in and out of the bird box without disturbing its occupants. He noted that the 3 mL syringe had the perfect inner diameter to fit the endoscope rather snugly.
[Jude] doesn’t intend to have the endoscope active 24/7, so he needed a way to seal the access hole when the camera was not in use. His many years at Dyson taught him that implementing a removable, water-tight, rubber seal is not as easy as people may think. Fortunately, the rubber stopper at the tip of the syringe’s plunger was naturally a perfect removable seal and he could use it to plug the access hole when the endoscope was not in use.
The endoscope was mostly waterproof, except for the WiFi transmitter, so [Jude] needed to place that end of the device in a waterproof enclosure. He said these are often called “IP rated” enclosures and he figured these could come in handy for any number of outdoor electronics projects so we imagine this might come in handy for a lot of our readers as well.
Mother nature
has certainly inspired many projects here at Hackaday and [Jude]’s bird box is no exception. Cool project! | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411945",
"author": "A",
"timestamp": "2022-01-05T09:12:43",
"content": "I really hope the box sends out a tweet when it gets a new occupant",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6411974",
"author": "abjq",
"timestam... | 1,760,372,831.110897 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/04/improved-thermochromic-clock-uses-pcb-heaters-for-better-contrast/ | Improved Thermochromic Clock Uses PCB Heaters For Better Contrast | Dave Rowntree | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"liquid crystal",
"PCB Heater",
"thermochromic"
] | We love timepiece projects round these parts, so here we are with another unusual 7-segment clock design. Hackaday’s own [Moritz Sivers] wasn’t completely satisfied with his last thermochromic clock,
so has gone away and built another one
, solved a few of the issues, and this time designed it to be wall mounted.
The original design
had a single heater PCB using discrete resistors as heating elements. This meant that the heat from active elements spread out to adjacent areas, reducing the contrast and little making it a bit hard to read, but it did look really cool nonetheless.
This new version dispenses with the resistors, using individual segment-shaped PCBs with heater traces, which gives the segment a more even heat and limited bleeding of heat into neighbouring inactive air-gapped segments. Control is via the same
Wemos D1 Mini
ESP8266 module, driving a chain of 74HC595 shift registers and a pile of dual NMOS transistors. A DS18B20 thermometer allows the firmware to adjust for ambient temperature, giving more consistency to the colour change effect. All this is wrapped up in an aluminium frame, and the results look pretty nice if you ask us.
Both PCB designs and the Arduino firmware can be found on the
project GitHub
, so reproducing this should be straightforward enough for those so inclined, just make sure your power supply can handle at least 3 amps, as these heaters sure are power hungry!
Got a perfectly good clock, but desperately need a thermochromic temperature/humidity display?
[Moritz] has you covered
. And if this digital clock is just too simple, how about
a mad 1024-element analog thermochromic clock instead
? | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411936",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2022-01-05T07:45:58",
"content": "I like this. But maybe 3-in-1 – faster-better-cheaper?…Rather than make a rat’s-nest of wire-interconnected PCB tiles having heater traces warming a layer of thermochromic sheet painstakingly cut to match t... | 1,760,372,831.155037 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/04/lego-cup-holder-helps-you-to-stay-hydrated/ | LEGO Cup Holder Helps You To Stay Hydrated | Robin Kearey | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"drinking water",
"lego",
"load cell"
] | Eat more fruit, exercise more, drink more fluids; early January is traditionally the time to implement New Year’s resolutions. Most of the common ones simply require willpower, but if it’s staying hydrated that you’re targeting, then some help is available. [Pepijn de Vos] designed
a LEGO cup holder and an accompanying desktop app
that tell you exactly how much water you’ve had so far, making it easier to get to those eight glasses a day.
The basic idea is simple: the cup holder contains a load cell that senses the weight of your drinking vessel. If the weight decreases, then a message is sent to your PC detailing the amount lost. If the weight increases, then the glass must have been refilled and the previous weight is disregarded. This way, the app simply needs to add up all the amounts reported, without having to compensate for the weight of the empty glass.
The tricky bit was integrating a load cell into the LEGO structure. It required some fiddling with Flex System hoses to ensure the platform’s weight rested only on the load cell, while still being stable enough to safely hold a full glass of water. The load cell is read out through an amplifier and A/D converter, while the USB communication is handled by a Teensy 3.
[Pepijn] modified an existing GNOME desktop widget to display a cup icon and the total volume consumed, which seems to work pretty smoothly judging from the video embedded below. All the code and even a complete set of LEGO build instructions are available on the project’s Github page. If simply monitoring your fluid intake isn’t enough of a nudge for you, then check out
this device that floods your desk if you don’t drink enough
. | 11 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411917",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2022-01-05T05:29:06",
"content": "Can we not perpetuate the myth that it is necessary to drink eight glasses of water a day? That would be great.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6411... | 1,760,372,832.121275 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/04/uv-resin-perfects-3d-print-but-not-how-you-think/ | UV Resin Perfects 3D Print, But Not How You Think | Tom Nardi | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"filler",
"print finishing",
"props",
"smoothing parts",
"UV resin"
] | At this point, everyone knows that the print quality you’ll get from even an entry level UV resin printer far exceeds what’s possible for filament-based fused deposition modeling (FDM) machines. But there’s a trade-off: for the money, you get way more build volume by going with FDM. So until the logistics of large-format resin printers gets worked out, folks looking to make things like replica prop helmets have no choice but to put considerable time into post-processing their prints to remove the obvious layer lines.
But
thanks to this somewhat ironic trick demonstrated by [PropsNstuff]
, you can actually use UV resin to improve the finish quality of your FDM prints. The idea is to put a layer of resin over the layer lines and other imperfections of the 3D print, cure it with a handheld UV flashlight, and then sand it smooth. Essentially it’s like using resin in place of a body filler like Bondo, with the advantage here being that the resin cures in seconds.
The thick resin fills in tough spots quickly.
Now to be clear, this isn’t a new idea. Our very own
[Donald Papp] investigated the process back in 2018
, and
[Thomas Sanladerer] covered the idea in a video of his own the following year
. But the difference here is that [PropsNstuff] doesn’t just coat the whole print with resin, he takes a more methodical approach. Working in small sections, he targets areas that really need the high-build properties offered by this technique.
With the tough spots addressed, he then moves on to coating larger areas with resin. But this time, he mixes leftover resin from his SLA printer with talcum powder to make a mix that can be brushed on without running everywhere. It takes a few thin coats, but with this mix, he’s able to build up large swaths of the print without losing any surface detail.
Is it still a hassle? Absolutely. But the final result does look spectacular, so until we figure out how to build the replicators from
Star Trek
, it looks like we’ll have to make up for our technological shortcomings with the application of a little elbow grease.
Thanks to [Zane] for the tip. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411881",
"author": "JWhitten",
"timestamp": "2022-01-05T00:09:46",
"content": "We don’t know that this isn’t exactly how the Star Trek replicators do it, since everything happens behind the sliding door…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,372,832.019332 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/04/growing-spectacular-gem-like-crystals-from-rust-and-simple-ingredients/ | Growing Spectacular Gem-Like Crystals From Rust And Simple Ingredients | Dan Maloney | [
"chemistry hacks"
] | [
"crystal",
"facet",
"ferric oxide",
"iron (III) oxide",
"oxalic acid",
"potassium carbonate",
"rust"
] | When we talk about crystals around here, we’re generally talking about the quartz variety used to make oscillators more stable, or perhaps ruby crystals used to make a laser. We hardly ever talk about homegrown crystals, though, and that’s a shame once you see how easy it is to
make beautiful crystals from scratch
.
We’ve got to say that we’re impressed by the size and aesthetics of the potassium ferrioxalate crystals [Chase Lean] makes with this recipe, and
Zelda
fans will no doubt appreciate their resemblance to green rupees. The process starts with rust, or ferric oxide, which can either be purchased or made. [Chase] chose to make his rust by soaking steel wool in a solution of saltwater and peroxide and heating the resulting sludge. A small amount of ferric oxide is added to a solution of oxalic acid, a commonly used cleaning and bleaching agent. Once the rust is dissolved, potassium carbonate is slowly added to the solution, turning it a bright green.
The rest of the process happens more or less naturally, as crystals begin to form in the saturated solution. And boy, did they grow — long, prismatic lime-green crystals, with a beautiful clarity and crisp edges and facets. The crystals don’t last long under light, though — they quickly lose their clarity and become a more opaque green.
[Chase]’s crystal-growing efforts have shown up here before, when
he turned humble table salt into beautiful cubic crystals
. We find the whole crystal-growing process fascinating, and we’re looking forward to more of this in the future. | 33 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411852",
"author": "spiritplumber",
"timestamp": "2022-01-04T21:23:20",
"content": "Kane Lives!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6411854",
"author": "Prfesser",
"timestamp": "2022-01-04T21:52:11",
"content": "Copper(... | 1,760,372,831.963496 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/05/servo-plotter-needs-nothing-exotic/ | Servo Plotter Needs Nothing Exotic | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"plotter",
"servo"
] | Although the widespread use of 3D printers has made things like linear bearings and leadscrews more common, you still can’t run down to your local big-box hardware store and get them. However, you can get drawer slides and any hobby shop can sell you some RC servos. That and an Arduino can make
a simple and easy plotter
. Just ask [JimRD]. You can also watch it do its thing in the video below.
Of course, servos aren’t usually what you use in a plotter. But the slides convert the rotation of the servo into linear motion. One servo for X and one for Y is all you need. Another microservo lifts the pen up and down using a hinge you could also get from a hardware store.
Is it pretty? No. Does it do amazing artwork? No, again. But it is the kind of thing you could probably throw together from things you happen to have hanging around, especially if you are about to trash an old desk or cabinet with slides in it.
This would make a great rainy day project. We are suckers for
simple plotter projects
even though you could just mate a pen to your 3D printer or CNC machine. Those won’t fit your
whiteboard
, though. | 29 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412184",
"author": "Morberis",
"timestamp": "2022-01-06T08:50:19",
"content": "I’m sorry but unless experience is the only thing you want what’s the point in making something that doesn’t make or do anything you want? I don’t know about the rest of you but project ideas are the 1 t... | 1,760,372,832.07976 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/05/haptic-feedback-rifle-lets-you-take-aim-in-vr/ | Haptic Feedback “Rifle” Lets You Take Aim In VR | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"AR-15",
"controller",
"first person shooter",
"fps",
"haptic",
"Oculus",
"recoil",
"unity"
] | There was a time when virtual reality seemed like it would remain in the realm of science fiction at least for the foreseeable future. Then we were blessed with products like the Power Glove and Virtual Boy which seemed to make it more of a reality, if not a clunky and limited one. Now, though, virtual reality is taking more of a center stage as the technology for it improves and more and more games are released. We can see no greater proof of this than the fact that some gamers are building their own custom controllers to interact with the virtual world in more meaningful ways,
like this game controller specifically built for first-person shooter games
.
The controller is based on an airsoft gun but completely lacks the ability to fire a projectile, instead using the gun as a base for building the controller. In fact, the gun’s operation is effectively reversed in order to immerse the player into the game by using haptic feedback provided by pressurized air. The air is pumped in to what would be the front of the barrel and is discharged through the receiver when a trigger pull is detected in order to generate a recoil effect. The controller includes plenty of other features as well, including the ability to reload ammunition, change the firing mode, and track motion thanks to its pair of integrated Oculus controllers.
All of the parts for this controller are either 3D printed or readily available off-the-shelf, making this an ideal platform for customization and improvement. There’s also a demo game available from Unity which allows for a pretty easy setup for testing. While the controller looks like an excellent way to enjoy an FPS virtual reality experience, if you’re looking for a more general-purpose controller we are also starting to see
a lot of development on that end as well
. | 25 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412160",
"author": "CircularSaw",
"timestamp": "2022-01-06T04:27:47",
"content": "I guess they brace the front by the mag? I’d probably want a better foregrip",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6412168",
"author": "Stupor Chic... | 1,760,372,832.241368 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/05/blinking-cursor-turns-54-hardly-anyone-notices/ | Blinking Cursor Turns 54, Hardly Anyone Notices | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"cursor",
"history",
"retrocomputing"
] | In an interesting post on Inverse, [Sarah Wells] does a deep dive into something you probably don’t think about very often:
the blinking cursor
. You’d assume there wasn’t much to the story. Maybe a terminal manufacturer put a toggle flip flop on the cursor output and it caught on. But the true story is much deeper than that.
We were surprised that the father of the blinking cursor was one guy, [Charles Kiesling]. In a 1967 patent, he described the blinking cursor. An ex-Navy man, [Kiesling’s]
patent
names his employer at the time, Sperry Rand, where he’d worked since 1955.
According to the post, little is known of [Kiesling], one of the many unsung engineers who create everyday life. The article purports that the Apple II was the first place the general public would encounter the invention. We guess it depends on how you define the general public. The VT50 had a blinking cursor, we seem to remember, and we didn’t think it was the first, anyway. The VT05 in the video below seems to have a blinking cursor, too. And we think we remember blinking cursors on other terminals from that era for Lear-Siegler, Hazletine, and Televideo.
Regardless, the invention has stood the test of time. Humans are adept at noticing change and a blinking cursor draws your eye immediately. It works. Of course, once you have a cursor, you want to type something so you are going to need
a keyboard
. Or,
voice command
. | 27 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412143",
"author": "Doug Jackson",
"timestamp": "2022-01-06T00:52:12",
"content": "How interesting.I wonder if it was ever licenced?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6412148",
"author": "Martin",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,372,831.67283 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/05/a-simple-touch-probe-made-with-basic-tools/ | A Simple Touch Probe Made With Basic Tools | Dave Rowntree | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"diy",
"hand tools",
"measurement",
"touch probe"
] | Six points of contact detect any displacement.
LinuxCNC contributor and machining enthusiast [Andy Pugh] is certainly not afraid to try making specialised tools to see how well they work out, and this time he’s been busy
making a touch probe
(video, embedded below) for checking the accuracy of machining operations and general measuring applications.
These things are not cheap, since they are essentially ‘just’ a switch with a long probe, But, as with anything specialised and machined with tight tolerances, you can understand why they cost what they do.
After inspecting and spending some time reverse-engineering such a unit, [Andy] then proceeded to grab some PEEK bar he had lying around and chuck it into the lathe (get it?). He notes Delrin would be more cost effective for those wishing to reproduce this, but as long as you have the ability to machine it and it’s non-conductive, there are many other options you could try.
Using no special tools other than a collet block (like
this one
) all the angled holes and slots were made with ease, with the help of a specially 3D-printed mount for the vise. A nice, simple approach, we think!
[Andy] tested the repeatability of the probe, mounted over his CNC-converted Holbrook lathe, reporting a value of 1 um, which seems rather good. Centering of the probe tip within the probe body was off a bit, as you’d expect for something made practically by hand, but that is less of a problem as it would seem, as it results in a fixed offset that can be compensated for in software. Perhaps the next version will have some adjustability to dial that out manually?
The whole assembly is formed from two plastic parts, a handful of ground-finished hardened steel pins, and a big spring. The only part remotely special is an off-the-shelf probe tip. During the electrical hookup, you may notice the use of a
self-fluxing verowire pen
, which was something this scribe didn’t know existed and has already placed an order for!
The reference 3D model for the design is shared from
[Andy]’s Autodesk Drive
for your viewing pleasure.
Of course, this isn’t the first DIY touch probe we’ve seen,
here’s one for example
, and over on Hackaday.IO, here’s an attempt to make one
using a piezoelectric transducer
. | 14 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412120",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2022-01-05T22:14:23",
"content": "Here’s a 3D printed one:https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:721620",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6462294",
"author": "Greg Young",
"... | 1,760,372,831.811999 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/05/usb-power-has-never-been-easier/ | USB Power Has Never Been Easier | Brian McEvoy | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"hardware",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"5v",
"5VDC",
"connectors",
"dupont",
"power",
"power bank",
"prototyping",
"test lead",
"usb"
] | USB cables inevitably fail and sometimes one end is reincarnated to power our solderless breadboards. Of course, if the cable broke once, it is waiting to crap out again. Too many have flimsy conductors that cannot withstand any torque and buckle when you push them into a socket. [PROSCH] has a superior answer that only takes a couple of minutes to print and
up-cycles a pair of wires with DuPont connectors
. The metal tips become the leads and the plastic sheathing aligns with the rim.
The model prints with a clear plus sign on the positive terminal, so you don’t have to worry about sending the wrong polarity, and it shouldn’t be difficult to add your own features, like a hoop for pulling it out, or an indicator LED and resistor. We’d like to see one with a tiny fuse holder.
If you want your
breadboard to have old-school features
, like a base and embedded power supply, we can point you in the right direction. If you are looking to up your prototyping game to make
presentation-worthy pieces
, we have a host of ideas. | 48 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412063",
"author": "Jason",
"timestamp": "2022-01-05T19:43:24",
"content": "Isn’t the problem with doing it this way that a USB port will only put out 100mA when it doesn’t get an actual power request from the device?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,831.89026 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/05/3d-printering-one-bed-level-to-rule-them-all/ | 3D Printering: One Bed Level To Rule Them All | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"3d printing",
"marlin"
] | In an ideal world, your FDM 3D printer’s bed would be perfectly parallel with the print head’s plane of movement. We usually say that means the bed is “level”, but really it doesn’t matter if it is level in the traditional sense, as long as the head and the bed are the same distance apart at every point. Of course, in practice nothing is perfect.
The second best situation is when the bed is perfectly flat, but tilted relative to the print head. Even though this isn’t ideal, software can move the print head up and down in a linear fashion to compensate for the tilt. Things are significantly worse if the bed isn’t itself flat, and has irregular bumps up and down all over.
To combat that, some printer firmware supports probing the bed to determine its shape, and adjusts the print head up and down as it travels across the map. Of course, you can’t probe the bed at every possible point, so the printer will have to interpolate between the measured reference points.
Marlin’s
bilinear bed leveling is an example.
But if you have enough flash space and you use Marlin, you may want to try
unified bed leveling (UBL)
. This is like bilinear leveling on steroids. Unfortunately, the documentation for this mode is not as plain as you might like. Everything is out there, but it is hard to get started and information is scattered around a few pages and videos. Let’s fix that.
The Basic Idea
An inductive sensor
The idea is simple. The printer probes the bed at many spots. Ideally, you use some sensor to do this that isn’t too far away from your print head. You can have up to 225 points, although 100 or 49 are common sizes — that is, 15 x 15, 10 x 10, or 7 x 7 and the bed doesn’t have to be square. The firmware stores the probe values in EEPROM. In fact, it can store more than one mesh, which is useful if you have multiple print surfaces: you might store a mesh for a glass bed in one slot and one for a PEI bed in another, for example.
Once the probe data is in place, you shouldn’t have to probe it again, at least for a long time. However, there are a few possible issues. First, your bed might not probe exactly right in every spot. Even more likely, your probe may not be able to reach every spot on the bed that the nozzle can. Finally, things change over time. Your bed may sink a little on its mounts. The system can adapt to everything, but it is a bit complex until you get used to it.
Everything Old is New Again
Of course, bed leveling isn’t exactly new technology. Printers have had the capability to do some version of it for a long time. If your bed is perfectly flat, it might be sufficient to just tilt the virtual bed. This is common with, say, glass surfaces, where it is feasible to just figure out the slope of the X and Y tilt and apply it linearly.
The probe hovers a bit higher than the pint nozzle.
UBL is a bit different. It uses many points and interpolates linearly between each set of points. Imagine each measurement point as being part of a larger grid. As the print head moves in the grid, the printer adjusts based on the slope of the imaginary lines connecting the nearest grid point to its neighbors.
But it is more than just the many points that makes UBL different. First, UBL allows you to fine-tune points easily. Since the correction between points is just a guess, there are cases where the guess is wrong and you need to edit the point to give more or less correction to a particular spot.
There are several ramifications to this editing that might not be obvious at first glance. For one, you can set up UBL with no Z probe at all. Sure, it is a pain, but you can manually measure all the points and the printer has provisions for helping you make that measurement. Ideally, though, you’ll have a Z probe of some sort. Inductive probes are popular as are BL-Touch and its many imitators. The photo shows a typical inductive sensor.
The other thing editing can do for you is to set points that your Z probe can’t reach. Most probes have some offset from the print head and can’t reach every point the print head can. For example, if the probe is 10 mm to the right of the head and the head can only go to 0 mm, then the probe can only measure X coordinates of 10 mm or greater.
It turns out, if your bed is pretty consistent, you may not have to measure these extra points, but you can if you need to. Marlin is pretty good at guessing the missing values and even if it is wrong, it might be easier to start with the guess and then make adjustments.
One interesting side effect is that once you have a mesh, there are a variety of ways to visualize what your bed looks like. Then you might want to adjust your bed to be flatter, but if you do you will have to rebuild your mesh. I’ll show you a few ways to get a plot like this next time.
Building UBL
You should already know how to build Marlin for your machine. If not, you’ll have to start there. Once you can get Marlin to build normally, you’ll need to deal with these configuration parameters:
In
configuration.h
(with some added comments for clarity):
#define AUTO_BED_LEVELING_UBL // and turn off or remove other AUTO_BED_LEVELING_* defines
#define RESTORE_LEVELING_AFTER_G28 // pick one of these if you want Home to restore level or turn it on
//#define ENABLE_LEVELING_AFTER_G28
//#define PREHEAT_BEFORE_LEVELING // you can enable this section or just preheat manually
#if ENABLED(PREHEAT_BEFORE_LEVELING)
#define LEVELING_NOZZLE_TEMP 120 // (°C) Only applies to E0 at this time
#define LEVELING_BED_TEMP 50
#endif
#define MANUAL_PROBE_START_Z 0.2 // Manual probes will start here so if this value is large, you will waste a lot of time
#define ENABLE_LEVELING_FADE_HEIGHT // When to fade leveling effect to zero (10mm is good)
#if ENABLED(ENABLE_LEVELING_FADE_HEIGHT)
#define DEFAULT_LEVELING_FADE_HEIGHT 10.0 // (mm) Default fade height.
#endif
#define SEGMENT_LEVELED_MOVES // split moves into small pieces instead of entire grid
#define LEVELED_SEGMENT_LENGTH 5.0
// This section sets the parameters for the mesh validation pattern if you want to use it
#define G26_MESH_VALIDATION
#if ENABLED(G26_MESH_VALIDATION)
#define MESH_TEST_NOZZLE_SIZE 0.4 // (mm) Diameter of primary nozzle.
#define MESH_TEST_LAYER_HEIGHT 0.2 // (mm) Default layer height for G26.
#define MESH_TEST_HOTEND_TEMP 205 // (°C) Default nozzle temperature for G26.
#define MESH_TEST_BED_TEMP 60 // (°C) Default bed temperature for G26.
#define G26_XY_FEEDRATE 20 // (mm/s) Feedrate for G26 XY moves.
#define G26_XY_FEEDRATE_TRAVEL 100 // (mm/s) Feedrate for G26 XY travel moves.
#define G26_RETRACT_MULTIPLIER 1.0 // G26 Q (retraction) used by default between mesh test elements.
#endif
#elif ENABLED(AUTO_BED_LEVELING_UBL) // settings for UBL
//#define MESH_EDIT_GFX_OVERLAY // Display a graphics overlay while editing the mesh
#define MESH_INSET 0 // Set Mesh bounds as an inset region of the bed -- to avoid clips or other margins
// Set the # of rows/columns to use
#define GRID_MAX_POINTS_X 7 // Don't use more than 15 points per axis, implementation limited.
#define GRID_MAX_POINTS_Y GRID_MAX_POINTS_X
//#define UBL_HILBERT_CURVE // Use Hilbert distribution for less travel when probing multiple points
#define UBL_MESH_EDIT_MOVES_Z // If you turn this off, the nozzle could scrape the bed while moving between edit points
#define UBL_SAVE_ACTIVE_ON_M500 // Save the currently active mesh in the current slot on M500
//#define UBL_Z_RAISE_WHEN_OFF_MESH 2.5 // You can force a height when there is no data for a point
#define UBL_MESH_WIZARD // add a wizard for setup to the menu
// more menu setup
#define LCD_BED_LEVELING
#if ENABLED(LCD_BED_LEVELING)
#define MESH_EDIT_Z_STEP 0.025 // (mm) Step size while manually probing Z axis.
#define LCD_PROBE_Z_RANGE 4 // (mm) Z Range centered on Z_MIN_POS for LCD Z adjustment
#define MESH_EDIT_MENU // Add a menu to edit mesh points
#endif
// What do do after a Z probe
#define Z_PROBE_END_SCRIPT "G1 Z10 F12000\nG1 X15 Y200\nG1 Z10"
There are also a few settings in
configuration_adv.h
if you need to override, for example, the three-point probe corners and things like that. You can usually leave these alone. If you have an 8-bit controller, you may not have enough memory to build UBL. There are a few ways to reduce the memory footprint, but not by much. Better to upgrade to a larger board.
Next Time
Once you have the firmware built and downloaded to your printer, you are ready to go, right? Not exactly. Even though the printer now knows about UBL, you have to set it up which involves setting a Z height and measuring your first mesh. I’ll show you how that works next time. | 23 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412056",
"author": "Rick Seiden",
"timestamp": "2022-01-05T18:53:30",
"content": "Isn’t this exactly what the Prusa MK3/S/+ does? Right down to storing the meshes for different surfaces?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "64120... | 1,760,372,832.183322 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/05/laptop-empty-space-filled-with-rs485-and-poe/ | Laptop Empty Space Filled With RS485 And PoE | Arya Voronova | [
"computer hacks",
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"laptop",
"laptop hack",
"PoE",
"rs485"
] | Out of all the laptop upgrade options typically available, you wouldn’t expect this specific one. [controlmypad] decided to take a part of his RS485 device programming workflow and
put it inside of a spare laptop
he picked up for cheap. Typically, he’d occupy some desk space and lay out an unwieldy combination of a USB-RS485 dongle, a PoE power injector, a PSU for that injector, and a few cables to join it all – being extra weight in the tool bag, cluttering the workspace when laid out, and the RS485 adapter slowly wearing out the USB ports during the work-related motions. No reason that all of this couldn’t be packed inside a laptop, however.
What helps a lot is that, in many modern cheap laptops, the motherboard is fairly small, and the DVD drive plastic placeholder can be omitted without second thought. Cutting off the plastic molding from both of the adapters turns them into a nicely reusable circuit board and a small PoE module, respectively. After laborious yet careful cutting of the laptop case with a hobby knife, the PoE injector fits right in and, essentially, adds an extra RJ45 port to the laptop. From where the Hackaday.io write-up left off, it doesn’t seem like this mod got fully completed, but most of the important details are there for us to learn from. What got left out is connecting it to an internal USB port (should help that the motherboard’s schematics are available online), as well as creating 12V-24V from the laptop’s power rails. At this point, however, this mod is a big step forward usability-wise, even if it still requires an external PSU.
Laptop internal upgrade projects are rare but cherished – it’s a combination of “daring”, “inquisitive” and “meticulous” that results in people successfully hacking on a thing they certainly were not meant to hack, and have that thing serve their needs better. Apart from
all the EEE PC upgrade options
that set the bar for a generation of laptop modders, there’s a myriad of unconventional laptop modification vectors – you could do
a thorough from-scratch Type-C charging port conversion
, replace your webcam
with an FSF-endorsed open firmware WiFi dongle
, build in
a “12-axis” sensor for auto-orientation
and data-logging,
or invent a remote self-destruct mechanism
for your laptop. Those are, indeed, quite a few things you won’t typically find in the list of available options while customizing your laptop at the manufacturer website. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6412035",
"author": "Kokesz",
"timestamp": "2022-01-05T17:02:03",
"content": "Hah, for five years from now I wanted to repurpose the RJ10 phone modem connector on my Dell notebook with a mini PCIe CAN/RS485 card and some extra cable. Unfortunately I messed up the offset on the pins ... | 1,760,372,832.279776 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/04/modular-design-enables-huge-ping-pong-ball-led-displays/ | Modular Design Enables Huge Ping-Pong Ball LED Displays | Robin Kearey | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"Huge LED display",
"modular design",
"ping pong ball"
] | Ping-pong balls have many uses: apart from playing table tennis, they have been used for countless art projects, science experiments, and even to raise ships from the bottom of the ocean. As it turns out, they also come in handy as diffusers for LED pixels, allowing the construction of large-size displays without requiring large individual LEDs.
[david] designed
an LED ping-pong ball display using 3D printed components
, which allows for the construction of arbitrarily-large LED displays thanks to a strictly modular design. The basic unit is a small piece that holds a single LED module and has a cup-like structure for attaching a standard table tennis ball. Twenty-five of these basic units combine together into a panel that also contains wiring ducts. Finally, any number of these panels can be combined into a display, thanks to clips that give the structure rigidity in the out-of-plane direction.
A single panel holds 25 LEDs and comes with cable ducts. On the right is a clip for connecting multiple frames together.
Of course, simply mounting LED modules is not enough to create a display: the LEDs also need to be connected to power and data lines. [david] didn’t relish the thought of having to cut and strip 1,800 pieces of wire, and therefore devised a clever way of automating this process: he put a bunch of wires onto a piece of card stock and used a laser cutter to burn off the insulation at regular intervals. Then it was simply a matter of soldering these wires onto the LEDs and snipping off pieces along the data bus.
The finished panel is driven by a combination of a Teensy 3.2 to generate the data signals and a Raspberry Pi to process the images. You can see the rather impressive result in the video embedded below; if this inspires you to build your own, you’ll be happy to hear that the STL files and all code are available on [david]’s project page.
Massive LED displays are always fun to watch, and although this is not the first one
to use ping-pong balls as diffusers
, its modularity and open-source design makes this one perhaps the easiest to replicate. Assuming you have a good supplier of ping-pong balls, of course. | 22 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411837",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2022-01-04T20:10:05",
"content": "Does that display really draw 20A? (It could: 30*10 neopixels *0.06A = 18A)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6411842",
"author": "Daid",
... | 1,760,372,832.340438 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/04/what-you-should-know-before-buying-an-industrial-sewing-machine/ | What You Should Know Before Buying An Industrial Sewing Machine | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"clutch motor",
"industrial sewing machine",
"servo motor",
"sewing",
"sewing machine",
"upgrades"
] | I’ve been sewing off and on since I was a kid, and I really started to get into it about ten years ago. Even though I technically outgrew my little 3/4 size domestic machine pretty quickly, I kept using it because it always did whatever I asked it to. I even made my first backpack on it before deciding it was time for something bigger. Don’t ask me how I managed to not kill that machine, because I have no idea.
Left: a 3/4 size Janome 11706. Right: a full-size Singer Heavy Duty 4452.
Last year, I got a so-called heavy duty Singer that claims to have 50% more power than a standard domestic machine. This bad boy will make purses and backpacks with ease, I thought. And it does. Well, most of the time.
I found its limits when I tried to make a bag out of thick upholstery material. And honestly, when it comes down to finishing most bags — sewing the thickest and most difficult seams — the machine often lifts up from the table on the end opposite the needle.
What I really need is an industrial sewing machine. Not to replace the Singer at all, but to complement it. I can totally justify this purchase. Let me tell you why.
So, What’s the Difference?
A domestic sewing machine is kind of like the family car in that it can do a variety of things pretty well. It hauls the kids, it’s a good grocery getter, and the gas mileage is decent. You can probably get it in and out of the garage with no problem. Domestic machines, especially modern computerized ones, are all-purpose in this way. They come with anywhere from a handful to hundreds of different stitches, both functional and decorative.
A Juki industrial machine. Image via
Juki
An industrial machine is more like a semi. It’s big, it’s heavy, and it has one major purpose: being heavy duty for whatever you need it to do. The comparison ends there, however, because industrial machines run terribly fast from a dead stop, unlike semis.
Domestic machines used to be built into cabinets or hard-sided carrying cases for the most part, but today they are generally more portable. On the other hand, industrial machines are flush-built into sturdy adjustable tables, and they always have been.
The biggest consideration for getting an industrial machine is their size. An industrial will definitely take up more space than the average domestic, and it is much heavier. I’ve seen some machines with tables on casters, and some that are meant to be bolted to the floor of a factory. Either way, I’ll have to do some serious rearranging in my sewing room to make space for an industrial, including leaving myself some room to work.
Under the Hood vs. Under the Table
The motor in a domestic is about the size of my fist, and is located inside the machine. Industrials have a much larger motor that sits outside the machine and is bolted to the underside of the table. These machines are built for constant use, day in and day out.
They are set up for a single purpose
, which is often (and will be in my case) a single-needle, straight stitch with a walking foot. Others are set up to do a zig-zag stitch for stretchy seams, or a blind hem, or they might have a twin-needle and are set up to stitch the
flat felled seams
on hundreds of pairs of jeans a day.
Older industrial machines have clutch motors. They are fast, loud, and run continuously when powered on. The video below explains them rather nicely. Newer industrial machines have servo motors that offer much finer control, can sew either slowly or quickly, and are really quiet compared to clutch motors, or even the little fist-sized motors inside of domestics. However, I’ve been warned that they might not last as long as a clutch motor. To that I say meh, because a replacement is only about $100, and it should be easy to switch out old for new.
What Is It Good For?
One can do quite a bit with a domestic machine, especially if it’s an older one. Like most things from 60-70 years ago, they’re just built better. Want to make your own clothes? Unless we’re talking about denim coveralls and leather coats, you’re probably fine with a domestic.
We barely made it through this one on the Singer 4452.
Do you want to work with leather or canvas? Repair boat sails? Reupholster the seats in your Airstream? Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. You need an industrial sewing machine. While you might find a domestic that can go through thin leather or canvas, it will only become a point of frustration when your seams start to stack up. Like many other things in life, you should use the right tool for the job.
Here’s the thing about industrials: they aren’t all for heavy-duty fabrics, although that’s the sort of industrial that I’m after. I want an industrial because of the muscle, and because of the seemingly endless list of materials I could sew with a heavy-duty model. I’ve made a lot of bags from old shower curtains and tablecloths with pretty good success, but I want to do more with upholstery material and leather, both of which are heavier and harder to sew through.
Advantages
Durability
. Industrial machines are built to run all the time for many years. Who wouldn’t want that?
Speed
. Whether clutch or servo motor, these machines are
fast
. Some go as high as 5,000 RPM.
Permanence
. There’s no putting the machine away when you’re not using it. This is heavy equipment!
Automatic features
. Some industrials will cut the threads for you (yes, please!).
Quiet
, if it has a servo motor.
Upgrade-able
. Love the machine, but hate the table? Should be a one-for-one swap. Same with the motor —
it might even use the same mounting holes as the original
.
Disadvantages
Limited feature set
. But this is what I want. I have my Singer domestics to do the fancy stitches.
Heavy
, hard to move, with a larger footprint. It’ll be rough rearranging my room, but it’s worth it.
Noisy
, if it has a clutch motor. I would love the chance to upgrade to a servo motor and hear the difference.
Threading
. Setting up the threads will be different from a domestic, and perhaps less straightforward.
Energy-efficiency
. Clutch motors are less energy-efficient than servo motors because they run all the time.
Old Machines: Maintenance and Upgrades
A Mitsubishi DU-105 industrial sewing machine. Image via
Leather Worker
If you’re like me (and I think you might be), you’re attracted to older machines the same way you might be drawn to, say, a 60s car rather than a 90s car for your first project. You figure, I’ll pay less than I would for a new one, it’s almost guaranteed to be more rugged, and I won’t freak out about every little scratch and ding like I would if I bought a new one.
On the other hand, a new one is new. It will come with all of its intended accessories and possibly a warranty of some kind. Its modernity will mean a better resale value if you decide that what you really want is a post-bed industrial machine so you can try your hand at making shoes.
If you can find an old mid-century industrial machine, you’re more than likely going to get your money’s worth. After cleaning, oiling, and greasing it, you’ll probably want to upgrade a few things like the built-in light, the foot pedal’s connection to the motor, and even the motor itself. And your machine might need something small but important, like a new belt.
No Soul In a New Machine?
I’m not saying that. But don’t be shy about seeking out an older machine on Craiglist or something similar if you’re not afraid of a little bit of upfront work. By older, I mean 1950s or 1960s. If you do want a new industrial, they’re not hard to find. You can get a new Juki from the Bezos Barn for under a grand, or a Sailrite from their site for about twice that much. There’s probably a sewing machine dealer in your town where you could go and try them out. And even if you can’t do that, there are plenty of bag makers and leather workers out there who have made
videos about their machines
and why they got them, so watch a couple of those before you decide what’s best for you. That’s what I’m doing.
Banner Image: “
Sewing Machine on Table
”
by dejankrsmanovic,
CC BY 2.0
Thumbnail: “
Industrial sewing machine
”
by David Hilowitz,
CC BY 2.0 | 48 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411818",
"author": "Wallace+Owen",
"timestamp": "2022-01-04T19:09:00",
"content": "Great article. I’ve got an Elnita (Taiwanese) and a Morse Super Fotomatic (Japan).The Elnita is a copy of the swiss Elna, and is a bit weak. But the Morse is a tank.My question: Are the industrial... | 1,760,372,832.603963 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/04/the-cucumber-house-that-lego-built/ | The Cucumber House That LEGO Built | Jenny List | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"cucumber",
"lego",
"lego factory",
"log cabin"
] | How far are you prepared to go to build a novelty seasonal ornament? Maybe a gingerbread house, or perhaps a bit of 3D printed glitter to hang on your Christmas tree. For [The Brick Wall], none of this was enough. Instead what was needed was
a complete LEGO automated factory that builds a log cabin
, from the unlikely raw material of cucumbers.
What has been created is the LEGO equivalent of a timber mill, with the various machines served by an overhead gantry crane. The cucumbers are trimmed to square, before being transferred to a saw which cuts out the notches for the interlocking corners. Another saw line chops the sections around door and windows to length, and finally the roof planks are cut in a vertical saw. The video below is reported as taking 83 days to complete from planning to filming, and 18 cucumbers to build the house. We’re not sure the cucumber will become a regular building material, but we salute the effort involved here.
Though this may be one of the biggest we’ve seen,
we’ve featured many LEGO machines making things before
. | 19 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411787",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-01-04T16:40:10",
"content": "If it took 83 days to build the cabin from 18 cucumbers, how did they keep them from spoiling?B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,372,832.503247 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/04/painted-over-but-not-forgotten-restoring-lost-paintings-with-radiation-and-mathematics/ | Painted Over But Not Forgotten: Restoring Lost Paintings With Radiation And Mathematics | Maya Posch | [
"Art",
"Featured",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"art reconstructing",
"computed laminography",
"x-ray diffraction",
"x-ray fluorescence"
] | An intrinsic property of paintings, that makes them both wonderful and very annoying, is the fact that they are physical objects. Sometimes they survive across the ages as amazing artifacts of their era, but they are also susceptible to being lost and even destroyed. Sometimes this destruction is deliberate, such as when a painting is painted over.
Artists reuse canvas all the time — painting over what was already there. Sometimes they might be coerced by a client into altering a painting, or removing entire elements from a scene. Fortunately, nowadays we have many techniques, involving x-rays and infrared radiation, that can analyze paintings to determine not only the composition of what we can see with the naked eye, but also that what lies underneath.
In some cases, we can then reconstruct what was previously hidden, returning to physical reality paintings and sketches which haven’t seen the light of day for sometimes centuries.
Paintings are like onions
Painting is an additive method, which means that, starting with a blank canvas or other surface, paint is applied in one or more layers, which may overlap with other layers. When painting over an existing painting, the new paint tends to be applied on top of these existing layers. While this may obscure what was originally there from the human eye, it is possible to non-destructively peel back these layers, and analyze them individually.
The main methods to do this use x-rays and infrared. For decades, this meant using either creating an x-ray image from the entire painting, or illuminating the work with infrared light and capturing the reflected image. While this provides some level of detail that the naked eye cannot see, these methods cannot distinguish between layers of paint, nor details such as specific types of lead-based paints. Newer, more sophisticated methods can provide this kind of information.
A good overview of these methods comes from a paper by
Stijn Legrand et al.
(2014), as published in
Heritage Science
. Using the example of a 15th century
triptych
(folding three panel altar painting), it is demonstrated how this particular work saw multiple revisions over the years. These alterations primarily involved adding more of the family’s children, and moving existing figures around the painting to make space, which covered up the already painted-in background. Some of the female characters’ dresses were made more modest later as well, presumably after one of the daughters became a nun.
The Moreel Triptych, 1485, H. Memling (Groeninge Museum, Bruges, Belgium). (A) Photograph; (B) the M6 MA-XRF scanning in front of the right panel; (C-E) MA-XRF images of part of the left panel, showing Mrs. Moreel and her daughters (ca 60×40 cm2); (F) close-up of the right panel, showing W. Moreel and his sons (ca 40×40 cm2); (G-H) corresponding MA-XRF images; (I) scheme clarifying the shift of the position of the eldest son; step size: 1 mm in both directions; dwell time: 0.5 s/pixel. (Credit: Stijn Legrand et al., 2014)
This information was gleaned from a macroscopic X-ray fluorescence (MA-XRF) scan, which uses X-rays to ionize the material. The radiation that is emitted from the material after being thus ionized is indicative of which elementary elements, like lead, are present, and in which quantities. As each type and color of paint is made up out of different mixtures of these elements, this allows us to see hidden layers as a kind of ghost image despite MA-XRF not being layer sensitive.
While exceedingly useful, there is a way to also get the exact composition of the paints used: macroscopic X-ray diffraction (MA-XDR). Instead of tracking the fluorescence using a sensor placed behind the painting, this method puts a sensor at an angle with the front, alongside the X-ray source:
Prototype MA-XRD setup at the University of Antwerp. A) Photograph showing the micro-focus X-ray tube source (S), equipped with a double curved mirror M and detector for recording transmission XRD (D1) and XRF (D2) data: these components are positioned close to a painting mounted on a motorized stage; B) MA-XRD and C) MA-XRF images obtained by scanning a detail of the painting shown in D): scan size: 78×75 mm2, image step size: 0.5 mm in both directions, Dwell time: 2 s/pixel. Adapted from [Vanmeert F, Janssens K, De Nolf W, Legrand S, Van der Snickt G, Dik J: Scanning Macroscopic X-ray powder diffraction imaging (MA-XRPD): transfer from the synchrotron to the laboratory, submitted]. (Source: Stijn Legrand et al., 2014)
Using a combination of XRF and XRD, it is possibly to not only make out successive paint layers, but also determine the exact chemistry of many of these, allowing for the distinction between the many lead-based pigments used over the past centuries. In addition, infrared radiation — near-IR and mid-IR in a hyperspectral configuration — is often used to get additional details that may be missed by the X-ray-based methods.
Peeling Back Layers
But let’s go deeper. What all of the previously mentioned X-ray and IR-based methods have in common is that they do not distinguish between the individual layers of the painting. But just as you can take X-rays of people from multiple angles, you can also use Computed Tomography (CT) scans on art.
For a traditional CT scan it is of course essential that either the scanner or object rotates so that radiographs can be made of as many angles as possible. While this works well for basically round human bodies and similar shapes, flat objects like paintings and panels of composite materials cannot be scanned in this manner. Here we see that over the past years there’s been a flurry of research from both the art and materials research fields into ways to adapt traditional CT scans into a form that will work with these flat objects. This gets us to Computed Laminography (CL).
Charles E. Wood et al.
(2019,
PDF
) report on two different ways to perform CL on carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) sections. The goal here is to detect defects in the composite material, such as air bubbles and fractures. Using both a hexapod and robotic arm setup, CL scans were made, following both a raster and a limited angle scan pattern (as opposed to the full rotation of CT). The data was then assembled into the computed model using the Simultaneous Iterative Reconstruction Technique (SIRT)
iterative reconstruction
algorithm.
The path of the source and detector during the scan in the
object’s frame of reference xyz. (Source: S.L.Fisher et al., 2019)
While this gave usable results, the imprecise positioning and reduced angles introduced artifacts in the final model.
S. L. Fisher et al.
(2019) reference Wood et al. in a study on an approach using CT scanning equipment as found in laboratories and using a single rotation axis for the subject.
This approach seems to get around many of the limitations of both CT and many of the CL configurations. By allowing for full rotation of the object being scanned, this allows for essentially the full range of angles, while simultaneously offering a stable platform without the positional difficulties encountered by Wood et al.
Although still just a proof-of-concept study, the approach shown by Fisher et al. shows that there are fairly straightforward ways to implement CL, without the use of expensive equipment or a complicated scanning setup.
Restoring That Which was Lost
XRR and IRR of Dieu n’est pas un saint, in landscape orientation, revealing a truncated female nude (from above the head to the lower breast) beneath the current picture. (Credit: Catherine Defeyt et al., 2018)
Over the years, methods like these have been used by art conservators and others to not only understand the physical make-up of a painting, but also the techniques used. With CL in particular, it becomes possible to see the brush strokes and layering used to achieve particular effects. By using XRD to analyze the specific pigment used in an overpainted section, it is possible to even reconstruct the exact color of that section. This was essential with the reconstruction of
La pose enchantée
by René Magritte (1898–1967), as documented by
Catherine Defeyt et al.
(2018)
Created in 1927, this painting vanished around 1932. It was known that Magritte’s financial situation led him to often reuse old works. By examining other works by this artist, it was found during X-ray and IR-based scans that this vanished painting had in fact been cut up and used for new works.
Reconstructing this work involved scanning existing paintings to find the individual pieces, matching this up with a monochrome photo of the work taken before it was cut up and using XRF to determine the pigments used for the original painting layers. This information was then combined to reconstruct what the original, full-color painting would have looked like. Even though this will not bring back the original work, it does give us an in-depth look at its original appearance.
Keeping It Real
In the world of art, everything is about authenticity. This becomes quite evident every time a ‘previously unknown’ or ‘assumed lost’ work of some master surfaces and the debate about whether it’s really by this painter begins. An interesting aspect of this is whether a reconstructed, physical version of a previously lost copy has anything in common with the original. With recent reports of for example a lost Picasso being reconstructed
using a neural network
trained on other works by Picasso, it’s perhaps best to see these as reproductions.
A few years ago the Smithsonian Magazine covered the reconstruction of
seven lost masterpieces
. This effort used any existing photographic and eyewitness evidence along with knowledge about the painter’s techniques to paint these works anew. Even though we know that these works are as close to the original as possible, we also know that they were not truly painted by Van Gogh, Monet or any of the other masters.
Even so, there is a lot to be said for having a physical copy of a piece of history that was once assumed to be lost forever, no matter for how long the debate about where the true value of an art piece lies. | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411776",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-01-04T16:14:20",
"content": "Thank you for the interesting work being done in the study off old art.I also remember how the progression of written historical documents is being lost through the use of word... | 1,760,372,833.171315 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/04/angel-investor-gives-open-source-pnp-a-massive-boost/ | Angel Investor Gives Open Source PnP A Massive Boost | Dave Rowntree | [
"News",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"angel investor",
"component feeder",
"machine tools",
"OpenPnP",
"pick and place",
"pick and place machines"
] | We love it when an Open Source hardware project grows up and turns into a sustainable business, bootstrapped with nothing but hard work and great ideas, but it’s a really tough prospect to do it using your own money, ploughing the profits from any sales back into development and not taking a dime in wages whilst you do so. People obviously need an income to live off, and that time spent working on a startup is time you can’t spend earning your keep. So it’s with great pleasure that we can bring you the latest
news from [Stephen Hawes] and his pick-and-place machine plans
. In the year since we last checked in with the project, development has continued at a steady pace, with the guys quickly outgrowing the garage workspace, whilst they prepare PnP machine kits ready for sale.
The big news is that [Joel Spolsky], co-founder of Stack Exchange, creator of Kanban management tool, Trello, and angel investor, has made a sizable ($100K USD) investment in the company which has allowed them to take on a 3,000+ sq. ft office space, and given them the funds for stock and all that boring business overhead stuff. [Stephen] takes time to explain that [Joel] will not have any control of the company, and all
hardware and software will remain fully Open Source.
For those interested [Joel] implemented his investment as a
SAFE note
(Simple Agreement for Future Equity) and as such, [Joel] will only make a return in the form of a small share allocation, if they hit the big-time in the future. Can’t really say fairer than that!
[Stephen] did recently
receive a ‘cease and desist’ notice
regarding his use of the ‘Index’ name for the project, since that is already a trademarked term, defended by somebody else, the project will need change name very soon. A minor setback, but it is a bit annoying that a chunk of that investment now has to go to a lawyer to make sure that the name they do eventually choose isn’t already taken and is safe to use.
In terms of the machine itself, it is now is fully operating, with multiple automatic tape feeders, featuring up and down-facing machine vision, and all that
OpenPnP
goodness. It has even been demonstrated placing parts for its own custom motherboard PCB, reprap style. Nice!
We wish [Stephen] and partner [Lucian] all the success they deserve, and hope they get those kits out there, because there are people around these parts that need an affordable, hackable, desktop PnP machine ASAP, this scribe included!
Here’s the
earlier story covering the machine
, but it’s not the only Open Source PnP machine we’ve seen – here’s
another one from a few years ago
. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411743",
"author": "boj Ko (@bojKo89595782)",
"timestamp": "2022-01-04T13:28:27",
"content": "Guys NEVER GIVE UP!!!!Equipment and access to education on the use of open source equipment is the way to develop not only us guys – and our community, but also a direct fight against mark... | 1,760,372,832.801881 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/04/a-gorgeous-desk-with-amd-inside/ | A Gorgeous Desk With AMD Inside | Matthew Carlson | [
"computer hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"desk",
"pc",
"woodworking"
] | We’re the first to admit that we don’t see much woodworking here at Hackaday. But
this desk with a PC inside from [John Heisz] is just too gorgeous not to share
.
The build is mostly cherry veneered half-inch plywood and real cherry. There are dozens of angles and complex pieces that all fit together in a valuable and powerful desk. The centerpiece of the desk is the air intake grill with a 2019 Apple Mac Pro-like finish. [John] mentions that he previously did it by hand with just a parked drill bit and some patience, but he vastly prefers the automated way. Two cubbies flank the center vent, made from plywood with cherry veneers glued on. A USB hub is hidden at the back in one of the cubbies, exposing all the I/O for the AMD-powered desktop PC hidden inside. The top of the desk is hinged to allow easy access to the PC. [John] asserts that he made the coolest desk in the known universe. We don’t know if we can say it’s
the
coolest, but we certainly appreciate the process and expertise that made it.
After you’ve finished your new desk build inspired by [John]’s project, perhaps you might be interested in
a levitating turbine desk toy
to seal the deal. Video after the break. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411724",
"author": "byi",
"timestamp": "2022-01-04T10:05:00",
"content": "What matters is not how pretty your desk is but what useful work you can do with hardware on it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6411765",
"aut... | 1,760,372,833.030719 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/03/lte-modem-transplant-for-a-tesla-imported-into-europe/ | LTE Modem Transplant For A Tesla Imported Into Europe | Arya Voronova | [
"car hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"3g modem",
"cellular modem",
"LTE",
"Tesla Model 3",
"Tesla Model S",
"Tesla Motors",
"Tesla S",
"Tesla the car"
] | When modern connected cars cross continents, novel compatibility problems crop up. [Oleg Kutkov], being an experienced engineer, didn’t fret when an USA-tailored LTE modem worked poorly on his Tesla fresh off its USA-Europe import journey, and
walks us through his journey
of replacing the modem with another Tesla modem module that’s compatible with European LTE bands.
[Oleg]’s post goes through different parts on the board and shows you how they’re needed in the bigger picture of the Tesla’s Media Computer Unit (MCU), even removing the LTE modem’s shield to describe the ICs underneath it, iFixit teardown diagram style! A notable highlight would be an SIM-on-chip, essentially, a SIM card in an oh-so-popular DFN package, and thankfully, replacing it with a socket for a regular SIM card on some extender wires has proven fruitful. The resulting Tesla can now enjoy Internet connectivity at speeds beyond those provided by EDGE. The write-up should be a great guide for others Tesla owners facing the same problem, but it also helps us make electric cars be less alike black boxes in our collective awareness.
Not all consequences of Tesla design decisions are this minor; for instance, this year, we’ve described
a popular eMMC failure mode of Tesla cars
and how
Tesla failed to address it
. Thankfully, Tesla cars are becoming more of a hacker community target, whether it’s
building a computer-vision-assisted robot
to plug in a charging cable,
getting it repaired
for a fraction of the dealership cost, or
even assembling your own Tesla
from salvage parts! | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411711",
"author": "Karl Ramboz",
"timestamp": "2022-01-04T06:32:58",
"content": "I would highly value an electric car that has equivalent functionality to a base model compact car made in the 1990’s. Extras should be aftermarket. I wonder what price Tesla could sell that type of... | 1,760,372,832.949859 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/03/need-a-small-cheap-ammeter-blinkenlights-to-the-rescue/ | Need A Small, Cheap Ammeter? Blinkenlights To The Rescue! | Ryan Flowers | [
"LED Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Ammeter",
"blinkenlights",
"blinking led",
"flashing led",
"fled"
] | You know how it is. You’ve got that new project running, and while it doesn’t consume much power, it also doesn’t give much indication of whether it’s functioning or just sitting there with a dead battery. What you need is an ammeter to check power consumption, even from across the room. And it just so happens that [Manuka] has
Just The Circuit You Need
, complete with a demonstration in the
video after the break
!
Oh sure, you could grab a cheap ammeter at your favorite tool import store or site, but those are bulky and take batteries. You could put in an LED that gets dimmer as voltage drops. But wait- is that the sun shining on it? or is it on? Or has something gone awry and it’s consuming
too much
power?
What [Manuka] gives us is a circuit that is designed to be built into your project or project’s power supply. Using only an ultra-bright white LED, red blinking LED, PNP transistor, and a diode, the circuit gives a strong visual indication of current consumption by blinking brighter and more frequently as current increases. With a bit of calibration, accurate measurements can be obtained. All of this is made possible by using the Flashing LED as a driver for the ultra-bright LED, which is a pretty slick hack!
Flashing LEDs have a great number of uses, like
protecting your family from lions
. Yes, really. Got a cool tip for flashing LEDs, blinkenlights, 555’s, or any odd thing that strikes your hackers fancy?
Let the tip line know
! | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411579",
"author": "kwikius",
"timestamp": "2022-01-03T17:37:39",
"content": "Interesting. Looks to work well. It would help to have a part number for the FLED . The instructable just refers to the FLED as a mysterious underdocumented magic black box.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,832.98444 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/03/edge-mounted-meters-give-this-retro-frequency-counter-six-decades-of-display/ | Edge-Mounted Meters Give This Retro Frequency Counter Six Decades Of Display | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Teardown"
] | [
"decade",
"electronic counter",
"frequency counter",
"germanium",
"moving coil",
"ocxo",
"oven controlled crystal oscillator"
] | With regard to retro test gear, one’s thoughts tend to those Nixie-adorned instruments of yore, or the boat-anchor oscilloscopes that came with their own carts simply because there was no other way to move the things. But there were other looks for test gear back in the day, as
this frequency counter with a readout using moving-coil meters
shows.
We have to admit to never seeing anything like [Charles Ouweland]’s Van Der Heem 9908 electronic counter before. The Netherlands-based company, which was later acquired by Philips, built this six-digit, 1-MHz counter sometime in the 1950s. The display uses six separate edge-mounted panel meters numbered 0 through 9 to show the frequency of the incoming signal. The video below has a demo of what the instrument can do; we don’t know if it was restored at some point, but it still works and it’s actually pretty accurate. Later in the video, he gives a tour of the insides, which is the real treat — the case opens like a briefcase and contains over 20 separate PCBs with a bunch of germanium transistors, all stitched together with point-to-point wiring.
We appreciate the look inside this unique piece of test equipment history. It almost seems like something that would have been on the bench while
this Apollo-era IO tester
was being prototyped. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411549",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2022-01-03T15:18:01",
"content": "It’s a digital frequency counter, as accurate as the time base is.This isn’t a “frequency meter” where pulses are accumulated. It’s a digital counter using analog meters for readouts. The meters o... | 1,760,372,832.743118 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/02/getting-back-that-youtube-dislike-button/ | Getting Back That YouTube Dislike Button | Jonathan Bennett | [
"News"
] | [
"Dislike",
"Linus Tech Tips",
"youtube"
] | Ah, Google. Very few companies have mastered the art of creating amazing technology and products, and then so effectively abandoning and mishandling them. Case in point, YouTube. Citing “dislike attacks”, which are coordinated down-voting of particular videos, YouTube opted to hide the dislike counter on all videos. It could be pointed out that dislikes still impact the recommendation algorithm the same way they always have, and that creators still see their dislike counts on their own dashboard.
There might be something to the idea that YouTube doesn’t like the notoriety of their Rewind videos leading the dislike count, with 2018 at nearly 20 million. There may even be validity in the theory that corporate partners don’t like visible dislike numbers on their videos. Regardless, YouTube made the change, and people hate it. Their platform, so nothing you can do about it, right?
“Life, uh, uh, finds a way,” to quote my favorite fictional mathematician. Yes, a hacker, one of us, has figured out a workaround. [Dmitrii Selivanov] has put together
the “Return YouTube Dislike” browser extension
, which does a couple of things. First, it is pulling archived data about videos, taking advantage of the gap in time between the official announcement, and the removal of the dislike API.
But for new videos? That’s where things are harder. If you install the extension, your video likes and dislikes are tracked, and the combined user data is used to extrapolate an estimated dislike count on any given video. [Dimitrii] is also working on a way to allow individual channels to share their stats with the project, to give more official numbers for their videos.
The extension is open source, and the Chrome web store shows over a million users. Linus Tech Tips, along with a bunch of other channels, have covered this, so check out their videos for more.
Impressed by this bit of browser hacking? You can make an
entire office suite in the browser
as well! | 40 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411480",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2022-01-03T06:25:03",
"content": "That’s kinda like how Youtube should be structured anyways. The platform can’t also be the critic of the quality of its own content – that’s like a restaurant choosing which reviews appear in the media. In o... | 1,760,372,833.252854 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/02/keeping-the-philippines-surface-waters-clean-with-kabooms/ | Keeping The Philippines’ Surface Waters Clean With Kabooms | Maya Posch | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"Atwater Kent 55C",
"plastic pollution"
] | [Rich] over at
Tropical Ocean Cleanup
on YouTube has been working hard to prevent plastic waste from getting into the waters around the Philippines. Even as a mostly one-man crew, he’s collecting large sums of plastic waste using a boom system which he fittingly made out of waste: old tires and empty plastic bottles. This Kaboom system is a low-cost method of capturing any waste so that it can be collected and properly disposed of. In addition [Rich] also installs containers where locals can dispose of their plastic trash.
The Kaboom system is detailed by [Rich] in
this video
(also linked after the break). As a shoestring budget project, it relies heavily on donations and local support to install more of these booms. It is however a highly effective way to prevent such common plastic waste from making it into the oceans in the first place. Having these booms made out of waste items that are commonly found where humans roam should make this a snap.
Ideally, local governments would be installing such capturing systems and easy waste disposal options, but sometimes it seems grassroots efforts like these are what will bring the fastest change.
Curious about what to do with all that plastic waste once you collect and
identify
it? How about
making some plastic bricks
? | 34 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411470",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2022-01-03T04:28:03",
"content": "How about, oh, I don’t know, not throwing your trash onto the street or into a river?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6411472",
"author": "D... | 1,760,372,833.101248 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/02/hackaday-links-january-2-2022/ | Hackaday Links: January 2, 2022 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"Asus",
"EUV",
"extreme ultraviolet",
"floppy",
"hackaday links",
"james webb space telescope",
"jumper wire",
"jwst",
"mosfet",
"retrocomputing",
"Z690"
] | That sound you may have heard in the wee hours of Christmas morning had nothing to do with Santa; rather, it was the sound of a million astronomers collectively letting out their breath around the world as the James Webb Space Telescope survived its fiery ride to space. And not only did it survive, but the ESA launch team did such a good job putting the Ariane rocket on course that
NASA predicts the observatory now has enough fuel to more than double its planned ten-year mission
. Everything about the deployment process seems to be going well, too, with all the operations —
including the critical unfurling of the massive and delicate
sunshield — coming off without a hitch. Next up: tensioning of the multiple layers of the sunshield. If you want to play along at home,
NASA has a nice site set up
to track where JWST is and what its current status is, including temperatures at various points on the telescope.
We got a tip from Mark about some dodgy jumper wires that we thought we should share. Low-quality jumpers aren’t really a new problem, but they can really put a damper on the fun of prototyping. The ones that Mark found could be downright dangerous. He got them with a recent dev board purchase; outwardly, they appear fine, at least at first. Upon closer inspection, though, the conductors have turned to powder inside the insulation. Even the insulation is awful, since it discolors when even slightly flexed. He suspects conductors are actually copper-plated aluminum; check out his pictures below and maybe look through your collection for similarly afflicted jumpers.
Speaking of dodgy hardware, if you love the smell of melting MOSFETs in the morning, then have we got a deal for you. It seems that a non-zero number of Asus Z690 Hero PC motherboards have suffered
a fiery demise
lately, stirring complaints and discontent. This led some curious types to look for the root cause, which led to the theory that
an electrolytic cap had been installed with the wrong polarity
on the dead boards. Asus confirmed the diagnosis, and is doing the right thing as they are “working with the relevant government agencies on a replacement program.” So if you’ve got one of these motherboards, you might want to watch the video below and see how the caps were installed.
If you’re in the mood for some engineering eye-candy, check out
the latest video from Asianometry
. They’ve got a finger on the pulse of the semiconductor industry, with particular attention paid to the engineering involved in making the chips we all have come to depend on. The video below goes into detail on the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source that fabrication machine maker ASML is developing for the next generation of chip making. The goal is to produce light with a mind-bending wavelength of only 13.5 nanometers. We won’t spoil the details, but suffice it to say that hitting microscopic droplets of tin with not one but two lasers is a bit of a challenge.
And finally, bad luck for 38 people in Tokyo who were part of a data breach by the city’s Metropolitan Police Department. Or rather, good luck since the data breach was caused by
the loss of two floppy disks
containing their information. The police say that there haven’t been any reports of misuse of the data yet, which is really not surprising since PCs with floppy drives are a little thin on the ground these days. You’d think that this would mean the floppies were left over from the 90s or early 2000s, but no — the police say they received the disks in December of 2019 and February of 2021. We’d love to know why they’re still using floppies for something like this, although it probably boils down to yet another case of
“if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411451",
"author": "cliff claven",
"timestamp": "2022-01-03T00:27:05",
"content": "Re: the jumpersCCA (copper coated aluminum) is a not uncommon substitution, unfortunately. There’s nothing wrong with CCA, in and of itself, but it must be used appropriately. Gauge size must be larg... | 1,760,372,833.307889 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/02/swiss-army-knife-of-power-tool-carts/ | Swiss Army Knife Of Power Tool Carts | Dave Rowntree | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cart",
"dust extraction",
"mitre saw",
"Planar",
"portable",
"table saw",
"wood",
"woodworking"
] | When you’re into woodworking in a serious way, you’re going to eventually want some power tools. With such efficiency of operation, things can go pear-shaped quickly, with wood dust getting absolutely everywhere. It’s not always practical (or desirable) to work outdoors, and many of us only have small workshops to do our making in. But woodworking tools eat space quickly. Centralized extraction is one solution, but all that fixed rigid ducting forces one to fix the tool locations, which isn’t always a good thing. Moveable tool carts are nothing new, we’ve seen many solutions over the years, but this
build by [Peter Waldraff] is rather slick
(video embedded below,) includes some really nice features in a very compact — and critically — moveable format.
By repurposing older cabinets, [Peter] demonstrates some real upcycling, with little going to waste and the end result looks great too! There is a centralized M-Class (we guess) dust extractor with a removable vacuum pipe which is easily removed to hook up to the smaller hand-held tools. These are hidden in a section near the flip-up planer, ready for action. An auto-start switch for the small dust extractor is wired-in to the smaller tools to add a little ease of use while reducing the likelihood of forgetting to switch it on. We’ve all done that.
For the semi-fixed larger tools, such as the miter and table saws, a separate, higher flow rate moveable dust extractor can be wheeled over and hooked up to the integrated plenum chamber, which grabs the higher volume of dust and chips produced.
A nice touch was to mount the miter saw section on sliding rails. This allows the whole assembly to slide sideways a little, giving more available width at the table saw for ripping wider sheets. With another little tweak of some latches, the whole miter section can flip over, providing even more access to the table saw, or just a small workbench! Cracking stuff!
Need some help getting good with wood, [Eric Strebel] has
some great tips for you
! And if you’re needs are simpler and smaller, much much smaller, here’s a
finger-sized plane for you
. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411426",
"author": "steelman",
"timestamp": "2022-01-02T21:21:07",
"content": "When you’re into woodworking in a serious way, you’re going to eventually want some power tools.That may not be entirely true.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,372,833.352557 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/02/teensy-4-pushed-to-the-limit-with-1-ghz-overclock/ | Teensy 4 Pushed To The Limit With 1 GHz Overclock | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"heatsink",
"laptop cooling",
"overclock",
"Teensy 4",
"Teensy 4.1"
] | Do you need a microcontroller that runs at 1 GHz? No, probably not. But that didn’t stop [Visual Micro] from trying,
and the results are pretty interesting
. Not only did the plucky little chip not cook itself, it actually seemed to run fairly well; with the already powerful microcontroller getting a considerable boost in performance.
According to [Visual Micro] the Teensy 4.1, which normally has its ARM Cortex-M7 clocked at 600 MHz, can run at up to 800 MHz without any additional cooling. But beyond that, you’ll want to invite some extra surface area to the party. It’s easy enough to cut a chunk out of an old CPU/GPU cooler and stick it on with a dab of thermal compound, but of course there’s no shortage of commercially available heatsinks at this size that you could pick up cheap.
Cutting a custom heatsink.
With the heatsink installed, [Visual Micro] shows the Teensy running at around 62 °C during a benchmark. If that’s a little hot for your liking, they also experimented with an old laptop cooler which knocked the chip down to an impressive 38 °C while under load. It doesn’t look like a particularly practical setup to us, but at least the option is there.
[Visual Micro] unfortunately doesn’t go into a lot of detail about the benchmark results, but from what’s shown, it appears the overclock netted considerable gains. A chart shows that in the time it took a stock Teensy to calculate 15.2 million prime numbers, the overclocked chip managed to blow through 21.1 million. The timescale for this test is not immediately clear, but the improvement is obvious.
Even at the stock 600 MHz,
the Teensy 4 is a very powerful MCU
. Especially after the
4.1 refresh brought in support for additional peripherals and more RAM
. But we suppose some people are never satisfied. Got a project in mind that could benefit from an overclocked Teensy?
We’d love to hear about it
.
Thanks to [Zane] for the tip. | 29 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411400",
"author": "LordNothing",
"timestamp": "2022-01-02T18:09:58",
"content": "please continue to justify my belief that the teensy is too op for most applications.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6411402",
"author... | 1,760,372,833.595829 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/01/genius-or-cursed-this-usb-c-connector-is-flexible/ | Genius Or Cursed, This USB-C Connector Is Flexible | Jenny List | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"flexible PCB",
"peripherals",
"USB C"
] | USB connectors have lent themselves to creative interpretations of their mechanical specifications ever since the first experimenter made a PCB fit into a USB-A socket. The USB-C standard with its smaller connector has so far mostly escaped this trend, though this might be about to change thanks to the work of [Sam Ettinger]. His own description of
his USB-C connector using a flexible PCB and a BGA-packaged ATTiny84A microcontroller
is “cursed”, but we can’t decide whether or not it should also be called “genius”.
Key to this inspired piece of connector fabrication is the realization that the thickness of BGA and flex PCB together comes to the required 0.7 mm. The BGA provides the necessary stiffness, and though it’s a one-sided connector it fits the space perfectly. There are several demo boards as proofs-of-concept, and the whole lot can be found
in a GitHub repository
.
We can see this technique finding a use in all kinds of diminutive USB-C projects, however cursed or genius it may be. We like to see projects that push the edges of what can be done with the medium,
with a nod to a previous cursed USB-C device
. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411159",
"author": "vib",
"timestamp": "2022-01-01T18:26:09",
"content": "next step, have it run Doom on a flexible OLED poking out of the connector",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6411187",
"author": "Dan",
"... | 1,760,372,833.731907 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/01/blackberry-will-run-out-of-juice-on-january-4th/ | Blackberry Will Run Out Of Juice On January 4th | Kristina Panos | [
"blackberry hacks",
"News"
] | [
"blackberry",
"blackberry OS",
"EOL",
"phones with keyboards"
] | Happy New Year,
though it may not be for Blackberry fans
. The company that has so often had their products compared to a certain addictive substance recently
announced that they are ending support for Blackberry OS and Blackberry 10 devices
.
What does this mean? While they won’t be bricking phones outright, they might as well be. On January 4th, Blackberry will be shutting off all the key services — data, SMS, phone calls, and 911 support. In official terms, they are ending network provisioning for these older devices, meaning that they won’t be able to join any cellular or WiFi networks.
Unless you’re old enough to remember, it may seem strange that these half-screen, half-keyboard machines once dominated the mobile market. But back then, the people who used them were texting wizards who had broken free from the chains of the T9 keyboard.
Though this news may not mean much except to a select few, it’s still sad to see the Blackberry era come to a true end. We never had one ourselves during the heyday, though we did pick up a cheap used model to carry around as a tiny mobile writing device and calendar. We sure do miss phones with real keyboards though, and would love to see them come back.
At least the keyboards themselves get love in the hacker community
.
[Main and thumbnail images via
Digital Trends
] | 47 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411134",
"author": "Myself",
"timestamp": "2022-01-01T15:46:03",
"content": "???or wifi networks???That’s peculiar. I’ve had a scrapberry around for years that I used for some time as a local wifi-connected display, just auto-refreshing a webpage from my weather station. Wifi shoul... | 1,760,372,833.677779 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/01/virtual-eurorack-based-cpu-computes-to-the-beat-of-a-different-drum-module/ | Virtual Eurorack Based CPU Computes To The Beat Of A Different Drum Module | Ryan Flowers | [
"computer hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"adder",
"ALU",
"cpu hack",
"eurorack",
"registers",
"virtual cpu"
] | In Arthur C. Clarke’s 1972 story “Dial F for Frankenstein”, the worlds first global network of phone exchanges was created by satellite link, and events happened that caused the characters in the story to wonder if the interconnected mesh of machinery had somehow become sentient. And that’s what we wondered when we saw
this latest virtual CPU construction
built by GitHub user [katef] and made from a virtual analog synthesizer software called VCV Rack.
Analogous to a Redstone computer in Minecraft, there’s no physical hardware involved. But instead of making crazy synth sounds for a music project, [katef] has built a functioning CPU complete with an Arithmetic Logic Unit, an adder, and other various things you’ll find in a real CPU such as registers and a clock.
While no mention is made of whether the construct is sentient, [katef] fully documented the build on their
GitHub
page, and so go check that out for animated pictures, links to more information, and more. It’s quite impressive, if not just a little bonkers. But most good hacks are, right?
We love unique CPU builds, and you might get a kick out of this one made from- that’s right-
555 timers
. Thanks to [Myself] on the
Hackaday Discord server
for the tip, and be sure to send in your favorite outrageous projects to the
Hackaday tip line
! | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411135",
"author": "Piotrsko",
"timestamp": "2022-01-01T15:50:09",
"content": "Well, firstly, you need to define sentient.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6411241",
"author": "Forrest",
"timestamp": "2022-01-02T00:32:42... | 1,760,372,833.525846 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/01/attack-of-the-eighty-foot-string-shooter/ | Attack Of The Eighty-Foot String Shooter | Brian McEvoy | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle",
"bike",
"demonstration",
"physics",
"scrap parts",
"string shooter",
"toy",
"welding"
] | String shooters are exciting because they adhere to the laws of physics in that peculiar way that makes us ask, “How?” and “Why?” After a bit of poking and prodding, maybe some light rope burn, we probably have a few ideas on how we’d make our own. [Nick Belsten] and [Joey Rain] saw some desktop models and thought, “Let’s make that puppy
eighty feet long!
” Video also embedded after the break.
Instead of hobby motors, flashlight batteries, and toy car wheels, they choose a washing machine motor and bike tires, then plug into an extension cord. The three-minute video isn’t a how-to build because once you start welding this kind of hardware together, you are already flying by the seat of your pants. You will see a front yard with people delighting in the absurdity of launching rope
continuously
over the treetops. There’s plenty of room for observing a
wave traveling
along the cord or polishing your fingernails in a hurry.
We want to make
string shooters for the office
and add our personal flavor, like lights or colored string so they’re safe to touch. If you have a unique twist on any physics experiments,
drop us a line
, but for insurance reasons, we’ll add that you should not make a chainsaw without a guide bar, aka, the forbidden
chain-saber
. | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411086",
"author": "Tweepy",
"timestamp": "2022-01-01T09:10:18",
"content": "Awesome video of how space launch loop would work! (the only way to power space launch from earth, renewable!)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,372,834.140743 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/31/facial-recognition-for-covid-19-tracking-in-seoul/ | Facial Recognition For Covid-19 Tracking In Seoul | Chris Lott | [
"News"
] | [
"covid tracing",
"facial recognition",
"facial tracking",
"personal privacy",
"seoul"
] | The city of Bucheon, population 830,000, is a satellite city southwest of Seoul and part of the greater metropolitan area and the site of a
pilot program to apply AI facial recognition and tracking technologies
to aid Covid-19 epidemiological investigators. South Korea has been generally praised for its rapid response to coronavirus patient tracking since the beginning of the outbreak. People entering public facilities enter their information on a roster or scan a QR code. Epidemiologists tracking outbreaks use a variety of data available to them, including these logs, electronic transaction data, mobile phone location logs, CCTV footage, and interviews. But the workload can be overwhelming, and there are only a fixed number of workers with the required training available, despite efforts to hire more.
As contract tracing has been done to-date, it takes one investigator up to an hour to trace the movements of one patient. When the system goes online in January, it should be able to trace one patient in less than a minute, handling up to ten traces simultaneously. Project officials say there is no plan for this system to expand to the rest of Seoul, nor nationwide. But with the growing virus caseloads and continued difficulties hiring and training investigators, it’s not unexpected that officials will be turning to these technologies more and more to keep up with the increasing workload.
Like the controversy surrounding the recent
facial recognition project at Incheon International Airport
, people are becoming concerned about the privacy implications and the specter of a Big Brother government that tracks each and every move of its citizens — a valid fear, given the state of technology today. The project planners note that the data is being legally collected and its usage subject to strict rules. Korean privacy law requires consent for the collecting and storage of biometric data. But there are exceptions for situations such as disease control and prevention.
Even if all the privacy concerns are solves, we wonder just how effective these AI systems will be for tracking people wearing masks. This is not an issue unique to South Korea or even Asia. Many countries around the world are turning to such technologies (
see this article from the Columbia School of Law
) and are having similar struggles striking the balance between privacy and public health requirements.
[Banner image: “
facial-recognition-1
” by Electronic_Frontier_Foundation. Thanks for all you do!] | 32 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411074",
"author": "Techni+Myoko",
"timestamp": "2022-01-01T06:43:31",
"content": "“Even if all the privacy concerns are solves”*solved, and they won’t be.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6411076",
"author": "Drone",
"t... | 1,760,372,833.828833 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/31/buggy-circuit-sculpture-based-on-a-tuning-indicator-tube/ | “Buggy” Circuit Sculpture Based On A Tuning Indicator Tube | Robin Kearey | [
"Art"
] | [
"Circuit Sculpture",
"EM34",
"indicator tube",
"magic eye tube"
] | If you’ve ever used an old tube radio, you might be familiar with that mysterious little green display that helps you to tune exactly to a station. That display is called a tuning indicator, or magic eye tube; in essence it’s a minimalistic cathode ray tube that can sweep its electron beam along only one axis. It thereby outputs a kind of bar graph that varies with the input voltage.
With few modern uses other than being pretty, it only makes sense that these tubes find their way into works of art: [Patrice] used one to make
an insect-like piece of circuit sculpture
. The tube he used is an EM34, which is one of the most common indicator tubes around and has a circular, iris-like display area. This becomes a large eye, peering forward from the bug’s body. The legs are made from 1.5 mm thick brass wire, while a DC/DC converter generates the 210 Volts DC needed to operate the tube.
An interesting “touch” is the addition of two antennae that are hooked up in such a way that the tube’s image changes when you push them; this interactivity makes the bug come alive a little bit. Speaking of touch, we think it would be prudent to put some insulation around the 210 V wires; even though the bug is battery-powered, touching the high voltage and ground wires simultaneously would deliver a nasty shock.
Nevertheless, the bare-wire retro design looks beautiful and would make a great ornament for any electronics-lover’s office. We’ve seen magic eye tubes being used for various purposes: you can
turn them into a spectrum analyzer
,
measure capacitors with them
, or simply
use them as a bar-graph display
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411079",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2022-01-01T07:40:29",
"content": "New Old Stock (NOS) magic-eye tubes are still easy to get, around $5-$15 bucks per tube. There are even kits with the driving circuitry included.[1] See [2] for an entire Web site dedicated to magic-eye tub... | 1,760,372,833.866743 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/31/battery-less-bike-computer-gets-power-and-data-from-the-wheels/ | Battery-less Bike Computer Gets Power And Data From The Wheels | Dan Maloney | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"altimeter",
"barometer",
"cyclocomputer",
"dynamo",
"generator",
"hub dynamo",
"msp430"
] | Bicycle generator technology has advanced far beyond the bottle dynamos of years past, which as often as not would introduce enough drag when engaged to stall the bike. Granted, it’s not as much of a current draw as a big old incandescent headlight, but
this wheel-powered cyclocomputer
is a great example of harvesting both power and data from the rotation of a bike’s wheel.
While there are plenty of cyclocomputers available commercially, [Lukas] was looking for some specific features. His main goal was something usable at night, which means a backlit display, ruling out the usually coin-cell power sources. His bike’s hub dynamo offered interesting possibilities — not only does it provide AC power, but its output frequency is proportional to the bike’s speed. This allows him to derive speed, distance, RPM, time-in-motion, and other parameters to display on the 1×8 character LCD display. There’s some clever circuitry needed to condition the output of the hub dynamo, and a 1.5 farad supercapacitor keeps the unit powered for about four days when the bike isn’t in motion.
As for measuring the frequency of the dynamo’s output, [Lukas] simply used a digital input on the MSP430 microcontroller, with a little signal conditioning of course. He also added a barometer chip for altitude data, plus an ambient light sensor to control the LCD backlight. Everything lives in a clever 3D-printed case with a minimalist but thoughtful design that docks and undocks from the bike easily; [Lukas] assures us that a waterproof version of the case is in the works.
We really appreciate the elegance of this design, and the way it uses the data that’s embedded in the power supply. While [Lukas] appears to have used a commercially available generator, we’ve seen other examples of home-brew hub dynamos before — even
one that offers regenerative braking
. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411040",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2022-01-01T03:06:26",
"content": "Hmm… cyclocomputers are much lighter than their predecessors, the cyclotron. ;)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6413402",
"author": "Cipri T... | 1,760,372,833.908569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/03/diy-onewheel-on-the-cheap/ | Open Source Openwheel | Ryan Flowers | [
"News"
] | [] | The story is one we’ve all lived: We see a piece of commercial technology and we
want
it, but the price tag makes us wonder if it isn’t made with gold pressed latinum. The object of [Zach]’s desire? A single wheel powered skateboard sold by a company called Onewheel. But as you can see in the
video below the break
, and
his excellent website
, Zach took the wallet-light but time-heavy approach and built his own prototype he calls the Openwheel.
Starting with a single powered wheel, [Zach] used aluminum, very large 3D printed pieces, and a really slick off the shelf controller package to control the Openwheel. Balance is handled by the controller, while a massive 48 V LiPo battery is fed through a beefy electronic speed controller that allows advanced features like regenerative braking.
We won’t spoil the results, but [Zach]’s Openwheel came out very nice, even exceeding some specifications of the commercial unit. You’ll want to watch his YouTube series about the build to get an idea of all the work that goes into such a device even as a prototype.
If tank track tread is more your jam, check out this
tank track skateboard
that we featured some time back! | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411694",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2022-01-04T03:47:15",
"content": "Oh what fun it is to ride an open source openwheel! Hey!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6411730",
"author": "[... | 1,760,372,834.084062 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/03/the-benefits-of-critiquing-your-own-pcb-designs/ | The Benefits Of Critiquing Your Own PCB Designs | Maya Posch | [
"hardware"
] | [
"PCB design",
"retrospective"
] | In a recent retrospective video, [Phil] from Phil’s Lab
goes through a number of his early PCB designs
, to critique and comment on what he likes and doesn’t like in these designs. Even though it’s only been a few a few years, he founds plenty that’s wrong. From poor and inconsistent formatting in the schematic, to sloppy and outright broken PCB layouts. It’s a fascinating look at years of lessons learned.
[Phil] comments on the importance of clear labeling and organization of sections and pages in the schematic to make it obvious what the function of a block is. Other lessons include the labeling of nets to make PCB routing a lot easier, making good use of PCB planes, getting all relevant information on components and layout in the schematic as a comment, and connecting decoupling capacitors to their relevant pins.
Although we tend to forget about older projects, it can be very interesting to take a look at them now and then, to see (hopefully) our progress over the years. In the case of [Phil] it’s fascinating to see the transition from a basic two-sided board with THT components to multi-layer boards with STM32 MCUs. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411681",
"author": "splud",
"timestamp": "2022-01-04T01:52:23",
"content": "Also, examining others’ PCB designs for interesting approaches to doing things, or asking “why is this done this way?”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,372,833.948875 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/03/homemade-scrapyard-security-mech-gives-uncle-super-powers/ | Homemade Scrapyard Security Mech Gives Uncle Super Powers | Dave Rowntree | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"e-waste recycling",
"mechanoid",
"security",
"whimsical"
] | [Handy Geng] is back again with another bonkers build, that we just can’t not cover. His Uncle came to visit the workshop one day and said he’d love to go there every day, and could even watch over it when [Handy Geng] was away. But being an older chap and needing a stick to get around, he would not be much use if ‘bad guys’ decided to pay a visit. The obvious solution was to build a
ride-on security mech which Uncle could ride on
, (video, embedded below) and use to defend the shop from bandits.
The build starts with him unloading a large pair of tracked wheel units from his truck, which caused a chuckle around these parts when we tried to imagine the scrap yard he’d just visited! The build video is more of a spot-weld-come-assembly log, with the less interesting sub assembly construction omitted. If he’d included all the details, this video would have been hours long. Though, we’d probably watch that anyway.
Features of the final construction include, but not limited to, dual motors for on-the-spot turns, night-time patrol lights, dual pneumatic fists for attack mode, dual water cannons for a more gentle approach and rear facing speakers blasting out Chinese opera for the ultimate deterrent. Practical touches include an integrated glasses case for the ready-readers, and a walking cane holder, so the mech was Uncle-ready. He seemed impressed from the grin on his face!
Thanks [Fosselius] for the tip! | 26 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411628",
"author": "Miroslav",
"timestamp": "2022-01-03T22:05:27",
"content": "Nice work. Reminds me of the final boss in Wolfenstein 3D (1992). Who played, will know … :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6411640",
"au... | 1,760,372,834.198251 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/03/matrix-digital-rain-on-the-ibm-pc-with-a-high-persistence-monitor/ | Matrix Digital Rain On The IBM PC With A High Persistence Monitor | Dave Rowntree | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"high-persistence phosphor",
"IBM 5150",
"IBM 5151",
"PCjs",
"the matrix"
] | Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last 20-odd years, you will have come across The Matrix series of movies, and the cool green ‘digital rain’ effect used frequently. This inspired [Oli Wright] to wonder what it would look like if instead of running the animation on a modern display, using a digitally produced phosphor persistence effect, it was implemented on
some retro PC hardware, using an actual high-persistence phosphor Green Monochrome monitor
. (Video embedded, below) As luck would have it, [Oli] owns a 40-year-old
IBM PC 5150
as well as the matching
IBM 5151 monitor
, so it was a simple matter to implement the effect in 8088 assembler to create falling sequences of characters. The final binary is less than 256 bytes!
The IBM 5151’s long display persistence was intended to reduce the visibility of display flicker due to the low scan rate, but has the unfortunate side effect of smearing horribly when the image changes. This is exactly what [Oli] needed to implement this effect and we think it looks jolly fine.
[Oli] made use of the excellent
PCjs browser-based emulator
written by [Jeff Parsons] to demonstrate what the software is doing, without the effect being evident. If you like, you can try it out for yourselves, as the assembly listing is available on the
project GitHub
.
Of course, we’ve covered the digital rain effect many. many times before, for example, with
this Arduino Library
, and here’s a
custom PC case side panel
from way back in December 2021, if you can remember those days. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411603",
"author": "abjq",
"timestamp": "2022-01-03T19:45:21",
"content": "I still have a pair of these so I’m going to HAVE to run this. Just hoping the 256-byte .com file doesn’t include a virus!!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment... | 1,760,372,834.388605 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/03/tft35-dual-mode-3d-print-control-hands-on/ | TFT35 Dual Mode 3D Print Control – Hands On | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Reviews",
"Slider"
] | [
"3d printer",
"marlin",
"tft"
] | I was rebuilding one of my 3D printers — again — and decided I needed a display upgrade. A color screen is nice, but there are some limitations. I also found there are ways around these limitations, so I wanted to share my thoughts on a dual-mode color touch screen LCD controller for your 3D printer. The screen in question is a TFT35 from BigTree Tech. It is similar to an MKS screen, but it can operate in two different modes, as you will see.
A few years ago, I picked up an Anet A8 which was very inexpensive, especially on sale. Not the best printer, though, because it has that cheap acrylic frame. No problem. A box full of aluminum extrusion later, the printer was reborn. Over time, I’ve completely reworked the extrusion system and the Y-axis, leaving only the motors, bearings, and the controller/display as the original.
That last part was what bothered me. The Anet board is actually pretty capable for a small cheap board. But it is just what the printer needs and nothing more. If you wanted to hack the printer there was very little memory left and only one spare pin for I/O. So it was time to replace the board and why not the controller, too?
The more-or-less standard display for Marlin.
The A8 has an LCD2004. That means it has a 20×4 LCD. Instead of an encoder knob, there are five buttons: basically up, down, left, right, and enter. Most printers now have an LCD12864 which, as you can probably guess, is a 128×64 LCD and they use an encoder knob for direction that you can push for the enter key.
Along Came a Spider
I happened to have one of these lying around so when I installed a new motherboard — a Fysetc Spider if you are curious — I also wired in the new LCD. I had to recompile Marlin, of course, but that’s easy. It all worked, it just looked a little bland.
The TFT35 in touch mode.
There’s another way to control a printer, and it’s one you may have thought of before. Since the printer accepts commands via a serial port, you could take a computer like a Raspberry Pi with a nice LCD and just have it issue commands to the serial port. Bonus points if the board has more than one serial port so you can still hook up a PC or a Raspberry Pi running Octoprint or similar. Turns out, you don’t have to build this. The MKS touchscreen uses an ARM chip (it isn’t a Pi, though) and has a touch screen that you can use to control the printer. These come in different sizes and are usually called something like TFT35 for 3.5 inch display.
The advantage isn’t just appearance. Having a bunch of touch screen buttons makes many things easier. For example, if the printer is at (0,0) and you want to jog the head to (100,200), that ends up being a lot of button pushes in Marlin. With the touch display, you can bring up a navigation screen that makes it easy. Or, you can bring up an entire terminal and enter G-code. When you press Send, it shows the results of the command, if any. You can set a temperature with the knob, on-screen buttons, or press the number and type in what you want with a virtual keypad.
Easy jogging with lots of buttons.
Send G Code from the terminal.
The terminal displays data in pages.
Split Personality
These displays are colorful and nice, but there are a few things they can’t do. Marlin has some wizards and user interaction that insist on a proper, local LCD. But the Marlin code thinks the MKS display is a remote host computer, connected over serial. Displays that can act like both types of LCDs are a sweet hack, and here’s the part that was never clear to me before: these displays can switch modes during printer operation. In other words, it is not a case of selecting a mode and rebooting everything. You can be looking at the colorful touchscreen, then switch over to the stock display while printing and then switch back any time you want. The best of both worlds.
On the face of it, the display looks like an MKS TFT. You have colorful menus and a touch screen. The connection for that is a simple two-wire serial port, along with — of course — power, ground, and an optional reset connection. They provide a cable you can use or modify to connect to your setup. There is also an EXT3 port for boards that have that connector.
If all you want is an MKS display, you are done. Since the display looks like a host computer, you don’t even have to recompile Marlin if the serial port you used was active. In my case, the second serial port wasn’t set up, so I had to recompile, but I do that often enough, anyway.
However, if you wire the normal EXT1 and EXT2 ribbon cables to your printer, the display can emulate a normal 128×64 LCD. If you are already set up to use one of these displays, you should not need to recompile Marlin to use this display. However, if you are set up for a different type of display, you’ll need to tell Marlin to use the normal “REPRAP DISCOUNT GRAPHICS CONTROLLER.”
Poor Marketing
Here’s what I never understood about the device. Looking at the write-up about it on different vendor sites like Amazon, Banggood, or AliExpress, it sounded like you could use the screen in either mode as a static configuration choice. In other words, you might wire up EXT1 and EXT2 and then use the emulated mode until you decided to switch over to serial at some future date. But that’s not how it works. You can connect all the cables and switch back and forth between display systems on the fly.
That’s huge. It means you can have a nice user interface that lets you control the printer, print from an SD card or USB stick, and even make customizations to the menu with the source code provided on GitHub or with a simple configuration file edit. (And, yes, you can add custom menu items simply.) But when you need to do something very specific to Marlin, or a new feature shows up that the LCD doesn’t know about yet, you can simply switch to the Marlin display mode. Then you can switch back.
Select your mode with a touch or the encoder button.
The process to switch is simple. Just hold down the encoder knob or push the screen for a few seconds. A screen will show up allowing you to pick the Marlin mode or the BTT mode. Just touch the one you want. In Marlin mode, the touchscreen does nothing except switch modes, so you might want to use that method. If you hold the encoder down in Marlin mode, the printer will also see the repeated enter keys until the LCD pops up the selection screen.
If you use a bezel, be careful. If you tighten a case down enough to make the touch screen think you are pressing the screen, you’ll get stuck in the selection mode, which makes sense. Just don’t overtighten the LCD!
Installation
Installing the LCD was straightforward save a few problems. For some reason, the pin 1 designation for EXP1 and EXP2 are not consistent among vendors. A Geeetech display worked fine with the Spider board, but the TFT35 didn’t want to come up in Marlin mode at all. I applied power at the serial port and the board appeared hung. The answer was to snip off the alignment tabs on the ribbon cables and flip them 180 degrees.
The serial port was also a mystery. With so little documentation on anything, I just soldered the power and ground wires and then hand twisted RX and TX so I could swap them until it worked. As I expected, the cable needed a cross on those lines to work. You also have to match the display’s baud rate to the port you are using.
After that, it all worked fine. The EXP1 and EXP2 connectors do connect to the board’s reset, so you don’t need to wire the serial port’s reset pin if you have those connected. However, I did notice that switching the mainboard to DFU mode will sometimes fail with the display plugged in. Reflashing the display requires an SD card that flashes a binary file and then reboots and loads fonts and icons. If it is connected to the Spider, it sometimes hangs when trying to reboot during an update. It also works sometimes, though, so I suspect it is just loading on the reset line. In any event, popping the connectors will make it work if you don’t want to try repeatedly.
The display has a number of other ports, but you probably shouldn’t use them. For example, there’s a port for a filament runout sensor. But if you connect it there, it will only work if you are printing using an SD card or USB stick in the display. A better option is to connect it to your printer and tell Marlin to notify the host if a filament break occurs. This will work with the display or something like Octoprint.
In theory, you should be able to connect Octoprint itself through one of the extra serial ports. However, I never got this to fully work. The subordinate port seems to work pretty well, but it never sends Octoprint acknowledgments so Octoprint waits forever or until you force it to continue — use the Fake Acknowledgment button in the terminal. Since the Spider has multiple serial ports, it isn’t a big deal, but in theory, the TFT should work a little better if it can intercept and filter the data stream between the printer and the host software. In practice, I don’t really notice any problems. Some Octoprint plugins like DisplayLayer can send status information to the TFT, anyway.
The Verdict
Marlin mode is available at any time.
The truth is, I don’t switch over to Marlin mode very often, but it is nice to have it if I want it, and you can even change the colors to suit you. I really wanted the passthrough mode to work but couldn’t figure out what was going on without digging into the source code, and that might be a project for another day.
Another note: Using the jog keys sets the printer to relative mode. If you are used to popping codes into a terminal, you might want to get used to issuing a G90 before you send a move because the TFT will change it to relative anytime you do a jog.
These displays are inexpensive and easy to interface and since they can still work as a classic display, there’s no reason not to do this easy upgrade. There are plenty of mounting options you can print, of course. The finished result looks great and doing things like moving in both X and Y are much easier with the new display. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411591",
"author": "critter42",
"timestamp": "2022-01-03T18:55:15",
"content": "Gotta ask – did you pick the A8 up in a FIRE SALE? (Buh-dump-bump *tiss*)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6411756",
"author": "Elliot Wil... | 1,760,372,834.277544 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/03/another-homebrew-linux-board-success-story/ | Another Homebrew Linux Board Success Story | Tom Nardi | [
"computer hacks",
"Linux Hacks"
] | [
"SBC",
"single board computer",
"system on chip"
] | It’s truly incredible what the hobbyist is now capable of. While it would have seemed all but impossible a few years ago, we’re happy to report that yet another dedicated hardware hacker has managed to spin up their own custom Linux single-board computer.
Creator [Ian Kilgore] tells us the only goal when developing CATFOOD
(yes, that’s the name) was to gain confidence with at-home board production, so it looks like a success to us.
To those who’ve been keeping an eye on this sort of thing, it will probably come as no surprise to hear [Ian] was inspired by the work of [Jay Carlson], who arguably kicked off this whole trend when
he put together a bevy of homebrew Linux boards
in an effort to compare different System-in-Package ICs. His incredibly detailed write-up of the experience and lessons learned along the way has emboldened other brave souls to take up the challenge.
The USB-C powered board uses an ARM i.MX 6ULL processor and features DDR3, NAND flash, and an Ethernet interface. That last one was the biggest deviation from the reference design, which meant it took a little fiddling to get right. For anyone playing along at home, [Ian] collected up the lessons learned while developing CATFOOD, bringing the whole learning experience full circle.
If you’re interested in more homebrew Linux SBCs, we’d
highly recommend reading up on the WiFiWart developed by [Walker]
. Over the course of about six months, we got to
watch the open hardware board go from concept
to a diminutive first prototype. | 26 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411576",
"author": "Etienne",
"timestamp": "2022-01-03T17:07:20",
"content": "Power over Ethernet is common now with homes having switches for video cameras and wifi AP.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6411583",
"auth... | 1,760,372,834.343384 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/03/2021-as-the-hardware-world-turns/ | 2021: As The Hardware World Turns | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"Covid-19",
"james webb space telescope",
"mars rover",
"Paspberry Pi Pico",
"right to repair",
"Year in Review"
] | Well, that didn’t go quite as we expected, did it? Wind the clock back 365 days, and the world seemed to be breathing a collective sigh of relief after making it through 2020 in one piece. Folks started getting their COVID-19 vaccines, and in-person events started tentatively putting new dates on the calendar. After a rough year, it seemed like there was finally some light at the end of the tunnel.
Turns out, it was just a another train. New variants of everyone’s favorite acute respiratory syndrome have kept the pandemic rolling, and in many parts of the world, the last month or so has seen more new cases of the virus than at any point during 2020. This is the part of the
Twilight Zone
episode were we realize that not only have we not escaped the danger, we didn’t even understand the scope of it to begin with.
Case in point, the chip shortages. We can’t blame it entirely on the pandemic, but it certainly hasn’t helped matters. From video game systems to cars, production has crawled to a standstill as manufacturers fight to get their hands on integrated circuits that were once plentiful. It’s not just a problem for industry either, things have gotten so bad that there’s a good chance most of the people reading this have found themselves unable to get their hands on a part or two these last few months. If you were working on a hobby project, it’s a temporary annoyance. But for those who planned on finally bringing their latest big idea to market, we’ve heard tales of heartbreaking delays and costly redesigns.
It would be easy to look at the last twelve months and see nothing but disappointment, but that’s hardly the attitude you want to have at the beginning of the year. So let’s take the high road, and look back on some of the highlights from 2021 as we turn a hopeful eye towards the future.
James Webb Takes Flight
I know what you’re thinking, and you aren’t wrong. Even though the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, humanity’s newest and most powerful tool for unraveling the mysteries of the universe, might have gone off without a hitch on Christmas day; it doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods yet. There are still plenty of things that can go wrong before the roughly ten-billion US dollar observatory arrives at Earth-sun Lagrange point 2 (L2) and begins observations, but for now, let’s just take the win.
After all, there’s some who wondered if the thing would ever get off the ground. Preliminary work for the infrared observatory that would succeed the Hubble Space Telescope started all the way back in the early 1990s, with an expected launch date of 2007. But thanks in part to NASA’s ever shifting goals, the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) project suffered through a string of delays and redesigns over the decades. In the end, what was originally envisioned as a relatively low-cost mission ballooned into one of the most expensive pieces of scientific equipment ever built.
So what do we get for the money? If everything goes well, a telescope that can observe objects older and more distant than anything scientists have ever seen before. The observatory will let us peer back over 13.5 billion years ago, to the formation of the earliest stars and galaxies. It may also help us learn more about worlds closer to home, as the powerful observatory can also be used to characterize the atmosphere of potentially habitable planets outside our solar system.
Of course, the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope was just one of many space highlights this year. The
Perseverance
Mars rover made a safe landing in February, and it’s coaxial helicopter stowaway
Ingenuity
became the first extraterrestrial aircraft
soon after. The International Space Station
is still producing exciting science
, and for better or for worse,
2021 marks the year that civilian spaceflight became routine
.
Whose Hardware is It, Anyway?
Among our top stories of 2021, several dealt with the Orwellian control that manufacturers now have over modern consumer gadgets. It seemed like not a month went by that we weren’t reminded of the risk we take by connecting all of our hardware to the Internet when somebody else has the keys: Samsung
remotely bricked smart TVs they believed to be stolen
, Cricut made
a disastrous attempt at fleecing their long-time users
, and the
Home Depot announced plans to start selling power tools with a built-in kill switch
. Sure, some of these actions were designed to crack down on the trafficking of stolen goods. But it doesn’t take much of an imagination to see how dangerous it is for the manufacturer to be the sole arbiter of what counts as legitimate use of their products. Today it’s the thieves, tomorrow it’s the firmware hackers.
On the surface, these developments might seem like an odd addition to our “Best Of” list for 2021. But while the news itself may be distressing, the response is really what gives us hope. These weren’t just some of the most read stories of the last year, they were also among the most commented on. While the manufacturers involved would no doubt preferred these stories to have slipped by quietly in the night, the Hackaday community made sure a bright light was cast on each and every one.
While some would argue it seems we’re not far off from that steamy dystopian cyberpunk future the media has been promising us for decades, you don’t have to be some outlaw console cowboy to fight back against greedy corporations. You can do your part simply by sharing stories like these and getting a dialog going with your friends and colleagues. The only thing these companies truly fear is losing money, and if there’s enough rabble online about their latest anti-consumer power play, they’ll often back off.
A Whole Lot of Pi News
Regular readers know that the Raspberry Pi has dominated the headlines here at Hackaday pretty much its inception. But this year was a bit different. Oh sure we had plenty of folks sending in things they built with the latest-and-greatest offerings from the Raspberry Pi Foundation, but the real interesting part was just how many offerings that involved for 2021.
Things started off with a surprising newcomer in January,
the Raspberry Pi Pico
. After years of building Linux single-board computers out of what’s essentially old smartphone hardware, the Pico represented not only the Pi Foundation’s first entry into the microcontroller market, but their first piece of custom silicon. It wasn’t long before we saw the chip in question, the RP2040, start popping up in products from other maker-oriented companies like Adafruit and Seeed. By summer the
average consumer could even buy them in single unit quantities
, and as expected,
projects based on this powerful new MCU started trickling into the tips line
.
In October,
we finally saw an update to the Raspberry Pi Zero
. The smallest and cheapest of the mainline Pi boards had been languishing for some time, with its most recent refresh in 2017 only adding WiFi and Bluetooth. While some were disappointed that the new Zero 2 kept the same 512 MB of RAM, the quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 CPU was a considerable improvement over the poky single-core chip it replaced.
Throughout the year, we also saw a lot of exciting development around the Compute Module 4. The CM4 might have dropped at the end of 2020, but it took several months for hackers and makers to wrap their collective heads around its wildly different form factor and greatly expanded capabilities.
Now that the community is up to speed
, we’ve
seen a flood of impressive projects
exploring the
possibilities offered by this uniquely capable board
.
If all this development around the Pi brand has got you excited, 2022 might bring you the chance to get in on the action directly. Back in November we heard whispers that the company may be planning on going public this year,
allowing hackers and makers to own their own little slice of the Pi
.
Righteous Repairs
Perhaps it’s the chip shortage making it harder and more expensive to buy new gear, or maybe it’s the fact that folks are still largely stuck inside as the pandemic keeps social gatherings to a minimum. Whatever the reason, there was a noticeable uptick of repairs being sent into the tips line in 2021, and we couldn’t be happier.
We got to hear about
uncommon pieces of gear being saved from the scrap yard
, and
modern techniques reviving century-old pieces of equipment
. Dedicated troubleshooting
showed that even the smallest of failures can bring a complex machine to a standstill
, while enterprising users gave
orphaned IoT devices a new lease on life
.
We here at Hackaday believe strongly in the right to repair
, whether it’s a John Deere tractor or last year’s smart TV. Success stories like these aren’t just inspirational, they’re important reminders of what’s at stake when manufacturers go out of their way to make it more difficult for the individual or even a third party to perform repairs.
Hackaday Forever
Finally, this is a good a time as any to reflect on the health of Hackaday itself. Regular readers will no doubt have noticed that this year saw several new writers added to our number, each bringing their own unique mix of interests to the table.
In November we held our second Remoticon
, and while meeting in person would certainly have been preferable, this year’s virtual event was a smash hit that made the most out of the situation. Our podcast continues to gain popularity, providing greater insight into the world of Hackaday for existing fans while simultaneously helping spread our content to a whole new audience. We’ve even jumped on the bandwagon and
created an official Hackaday Discord server
, providing yet another way to keep our finger on the pulse of the community.
But certainly the biggest change for 2021 came in December, when
Mike Szczys announced he’d be stepping down as Hackaday’s Editor-in-Chief
to pursue a new chapter in his career. A fixture in the Hackaday community since 2009, Mike helped guide the site through several major transitions over the years. Upon taking over day-to-day management in 2013, he instituted many of the changes that ultimately molded the site into what it is today.
To pretend Mike’s absence won’t be felt would be an insult to his legacy. But newly gazetted Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams is more than up to the task of guiding Hackaday through the next chapter of its long and storied history. There’s a steady hand on the wheel, and the Hackaday you know and love isn’t going anywhere. That said, we do have some new ideas that we think will help grow the Hackaday community in 2022 and beyond. Here’s hoping you’ll join us for the ride. | 15 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411566",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2022-01-03T16:03:07",
"content": "The problem we are up against isn’t COVID-19 variants, it’s anti-intellectualism putting experts and YouTube/radio/news talking heads on the same level resulting in low vaccination rates. Fortunately, the... | 1,760,372,834.444013 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/31/this-week-in-security-the-log4j-that-wont-go-away-webos-and-more/ | This Week In Security: The Log4j That Won’t Go Away, WebOS, And More | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News"
] | [
"Active Directory",
"Log4j",
"This Week in Security",
"webos"
] | In the past two weeks, Log4j has continued to drive security news, with more vulnerable platforms being found, and additional CVEs coming out. First up is work done by TrendMicro,
looking at electric vehicles and chargers
. They found a log4j attack in one of the published charger frameworks, and also managed to observe evidence of vulnerability in the Tesla In-Vehicle Infotainment system. It isn’t a stretch to imagine a piece of malware that could run on both a charger, and an EV. And since those systems talk to each other, they could spread the virus through cars moving from charger to charger.
Log4j is now
up to 2.17.1
, as
there is yet another RCE to fix
, CVE-2021-44832. This one is only scored a 6.6 on the CVSS scale, as opposed to the original, which weighed in at a 10. 44832 requires the attacker to first exert control over the Log4j configuration, making exploitation much more difficult. This string of follow-on vulnerabilities demonstrates a well-known pattern, where a high profile vulnerability attracts the attention of researchers, who find other problems in the same code.
There are now reports of Log4j being used in Conti ransomware campaigns. Additionally, a Marai-based
worm has been observed
. This self-propagating attack seems to be targeting Tomcat servers, among others.
WebOS Falls to a Snapshot
[David Buchanan] acknowledges that while this is an interesting exploit, there isn’t much utility to it at this point. That could change, but let’s look at the flaw for now. Snapshots are a cool feature in the V8 JavaScript engine. When you navigate to a web page, the JavaScript context for that page has to be generated in memory, including loading all the libraries called by the page. That doesn’t take too long on a desktop, but on an embedded device or a cell phone loading a local interface, this initialization step can represent a large percentage of the time needed to draw the requested page. Snapshots are a great hack, where the context is initialized, and then saved. When the interface is later opened, the V8 engine can be called with that file, and the context is pre-initialized, making the launch of the app or interface appreciably faster. The only catch is that V8 expects snapshots to only be loaded from a trusted source.
On to the WebOS platform itself. Individual apps are sandboxed, but web apps run their code in the context of the WebAppMgr (WAM), their browser based on Chromium/V8. While the individual apps are sandboxed, WAM is not. The kicker is that a web app can specify its own snapshot to load into V8. Loading a corrupted snapshot gave [David] JS type confusion, and an arbitrary read/write primitive as a result. From there, breaking out of running JS and into actual shellcode was fairly easy. This RCE runs as the “wam” user, but this is a mildly privileged account. Notably, wam has access to
/dev/mem
— direct access to system memory. Escalation to root is nearly trivial.
[David] has
published the full PoC
, noting that LG notoriously underpays for bug bounties. I do disagree with his assertion that this attack entirely relies on side-loading a malicious app, for the simple reason that LG does run their Content Store for this platform. A malicious developer may be able to bypass any malware detection routines that LG uses to vet apps. Malicious apps on the app store is certainly nothing new, after all. The worst part of this exploit is that it’s difficult to put one’s finger on where the vulnerability lies.
Four-Bug Team in Teams
[FABIAN BRÄUNLEIN] found some
interesting unintended behavior in Microsoft Teams’ link preview
feature. The first issue is an Server Side Request Forgery. The link preview is generated at the Teams server side, and by definition requires opening the page to generate the preview. The problem is the lack of filtering — linking to 127.0.0.1:80 generates a preview of what is located on the Teams server’s localhost.
Up next is a simple link spoofing technique. This one uses a tool like Burp to change the data sent by the Teams client. Part of the message that gets sent when embedding a link is the URL to call for preview generation. No further validation is done, so it’s possible to generate a preview from a benign URL, while the actual link goes to an arbitrary page. The third problem is related, as the link to the thumbnail itself is also in this message, and can be tampered with. The interesting use-case here is that an attacker could set this to a URL that they control, and extract information from a target, namely the public IP address. Now this is blocked by the target’s client on most platforms, but on Android the checks were missing.
And finally, also an Android-only issue, an attacker can send a “Message of Death”, essentially a message malformed that crashes the app just by trying to render the preview. This one crashes the app every time the user tries to access the chat, effectively locking the user out of the app altogether. Now these aren’t earth-shattering issues, but Microsoft’s collective shrug in response is… underwhelming. They have stealth-patched the IP address leak, but it’s apparently still possible to spoof link previews, as well as crash the Android app.
PBX Backdoors
Researchers at RedTeam Pentesting took a look at a PBX designed by Auerswald, a German manufacturer of telecom equipment. What caught their eye was an advertised service, where Auerswald could perform an admin password reset for a customer locked out of their equipment. This is a textbook backdoor, and
definitely warranted investigation
.
If only it was this kind of backdoor:
https://xkcd.com/806/
Their approach, rather than attacking the hardware directly, was to grab the latest firmware package from Auerswald’s web site, and analyze that. Use of the
file
,
gunzip
, and
dumpimage
utilities gave them the root filesystem they needed. Working through the web of config files, they settled on the webserver binary that probably contained the password reset backdoor. Just a note, it’s very typical for embedded devices to include all their user interface and configuration logic in a single httpd binary.
Given a binary, they turned to what has quickly become the favorite tool of security researchers everywhere, Ghidra. They had one more hint, the “sub-admin” user, so searched for that string using Ghidra. Paydirt. Drilling down through functions, the hardcoded username “Schandelah” was there. A bit more sleuthing came up with the password function. For each of these PBXs, the backdoor password is the first 7 characters of the MD5 hash of, the unit’s serial number + “r2d2” + the current date.
Just for fun, the researchers used Ghidra to search for other uses of the backdoor password function. Turns out, if the admin user is specified, and the password doesn’t match the user-configured password, it’s compared to this algorithm. If it matches? You’re logged in as admin on the hardware. This is obviously more useful than resetting the admin password, as it allows access without any obvious changes to the system. The
whole article
is a great tutorial on using Ghidra for this sort of research.
Auerswald very quickly pushed out firmware changes to correct the problems identified. A backdoor like this one, that is publicly disclosed, is not nearly the legal and ethical landmine like some of the others we’ve discussed here. There is still a problem with the implementation — a password reset should also reset the device to factory settings and delete user data. Anything less is inviting major data disclosure.
SAM Spoofing
This Windows Active Directory
privilege escalation vulnerability
is fascinating for its simplicity. It’s a combination of CVE-2021-42287 and CVE-2021-42278. Windows active directory has two distinct kinds of accounts, user and machine accounts. Machine accounts are used to bring specific hardware into the domain, and typically end with the dollar sign (MyMachine1$). By default, a user can create machine accounts, as well as rename those accounts. The first problem is that a user could create and then rename a machine account as the same as a domain controller, just without that final dollar sign. For example, I could create
MyMachine1$
, then rename it to
DomainController1
.
DomainController1$
would still exist, and the domain would see those as separate machine accounts.
Modern Windows Domains use Kerberos under the hood, and Kerberos uses the ticket paradigm. An account can request a Ticket Granting Ticket (TGT) that acts as a temporary authentication token. Think of it as a password replacement, that can be automatically sent with requests. The attack is to request a TGT for the renamed machine account, and then rename that account once again, back to
MyMachine1
. The key is that the attacker still has a valid ticket for the
DomainController1
account, even though an account no longer exists with that exact name. Next, the attacker requests a session key from the Key Distribution Center (KDC) using this TGT. The KDC notes that the requesting account doesn’t exist, and helpfully appends the dollar sign and runs the check again. It sees the valid TGT for
DomainController1
, and returns a session key authorizing the attacker as
DomainController1$
, which happens to be a domain admin account.
Chrome’s Aging Pains
It’s said that we didn’t get a Windows 9, because too many old apps were written with regex that would prevent execution, complaining that the application wouldn’t run on Windows 95 or 98. Chrome is trying to prevent a similar problem, as
Google’s developers see version 100 on the horizon
. This sort of thing has bitten web browser before, notably
when Opera released version 10
, further breaking the user-agent string in the process.
Firefox is getting in on the fun as well
, and both browsers’ developers have a request of you: Browse the web with a spoofed user-agent string, and let them know what breaks as a result of version 100. This would be a good opportunity to test your own sites, too. Let us know if you see any particularly odd results. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411018",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
"timestamp": "2021-12-31T21:51:33",
"content": "Schandelah? Schande translates from German as “shame”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6411519",
"author": "Ewald",
"timesta... | 1,760,372,836.276218 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/31/3d-printering-adding-a-web-interface-where-there-was-none-before/ | 3D Printering: Adding A Web Interface Where There Was None Before | Dave Rowntree | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"Arduino-esp32",
"ESP32",
"firmware",
"websockets",
"wi-fi"
] | [Renzo Mischianti] got himself a Chinese 3D printer, specifically a FlyingBear Ghost 5. (Cracking name, huh?) He was more than a little irritated with the fact that whilst the controller, an MKS Robin Nano, did have a integrated Wi-FI module, it provided no browser-based interface for monitoring and control purposes. This seemed a bit short-sighted in this day and age, to say the least. Not being at all happy with that situation, [Renzo] proceeded to write
dedicated Wi-Fi firmware using websockets,
but not without fully documenting his journey in a detailed series of the blog posts.
The resulting BeePrint web interface supports all the usual functions you would expect when managing a printer, everything from monitoring warm-up at the prep stage, to keeping tabs on the potential spaghetti monster via the connected IP camera. All good stuff. [Renzo] used an
ESP32-cam
, which is a low-cost 2 MP unit from our friends at Olimex, but we suspect it wouldn’t vastly difficult to add your own IP camera into the mix.
[Renzo] has a
YT channel
detailing quite a few other projects, which is definitely worth some viewing time in our opinion.
We’ve been covering 3D printer hacking since the dinosaurs were roaming.
This is the oldest, and still one of the strangest, posts that we could find
in a quick search. Anyone care to find something older? | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410995",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-12-31T18:49:42",
"content": "“whilst the controller, an MKS Robin Nano, did have a integrated Wi-FI module, it provided no web-based interface for monitoring and control purposes”Software as a service?",
... | 1,760,372,836.138334 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/31/hackaday-podcast-wishes-you-happy-new-year/ | Hackaday Podcast Wishes You Happy New Year | Elliot Williams | [
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast",
"happy new year"
] | Our two-week-long winter hibernation continues on the Podcast, but we’ll be coming at you next week with guest host Tom Nardi. We’ve got two weeks full of hacks to cover, and Tom is working on a Best Hacks of 2021 piece, so we’ll be starting off 2022 with a bang.
Happy New Year!
Direct download
(5 MB)
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,836.579862 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/31/a-tidy-cyberdeck-that-you-could-take-anywhere/ | A Tidy Cyberdeck That You Could Take Anywhere. | Jenny List | [
"Cyberdecks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"cyberdeck",
"portable",
"raspberry pi"
] | The cyberdeck trend has evolved to a relatively straightforward formula: take a desktop computer and strip it to its barest essentials of screen, PCB, and input device, before clothing it in a suitably post-apocalyptic or industrial exterior. Sometimes these can result in a stylish prop straight from a movie set, and happily for [Patrick De Angelis]
his Raspberry Pi based cyberdeck
(Italian,
Google Translate link
) fits this description, taking the well-worn path of putting a Raspberry Pi and screen into a ruggedised flight case. Its very unremarkability is the key to its success, using a carefully-selected wired keyboard and trackpad combo neatly dodges the usual slightly messy arrangements of microcontroller boards.
If this cyberdeck has a special feature it’s in the extra wireless interfaces and the stack of antennas on its right-hand side. The Pi touchscreen is a little small for the case and perhaps we’d have mounted it centrally, but otherwise this is a box we could imagine opening somewhere in the abandoned ruins of a once-proud Radio Shack store for a little post-apocalyptic Hackaday editing. After all, your favourite online tech news resource
doesn’t stop because the power’s gone out
! | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410989",
"author": "Brenda",
"timestamp": "2021-12-31T17:57:09",
"content": "I like it!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6OCizr9MwIThose cases are handy. I am using one for a motor controller.Take Care,BrendaEM",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,372,836.096135 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/31/the-no-mcu-fan-controller/ | The No-MCU Fan Controller | Jenny List | [
"hardware"
] | [
"comparator",
"fan controller",
"lm35"
] | The default for any control project here in 2019 was to reach for a microcontroller. Such are their low cost and ubiquity that they can be used to replicate what might once have needed some extra circuitry, with the minimum of parts. But here we are at the end of 2021, and of course microcontrollers are hard to come by in a semiconductor shortage. [Hesam Moshiri] has a project that takes us back to a simpler time,
a temperature controlled fan the way they used to be made, without a microcontroller in sight
.
Old hands will no doubt guess where this design is heading, there is an LM35 temperature sensor producing a voltage proportional to its temperature, and half of an LM358 which forms a comparator against a static voltage from a divider. The LM358’s output drives a MOSFET which in turn switches on or off the fan motor. This type of circuit used to be the daily fare of simple control electronics in the days when a microcontroller represented a significant expense, and it’s still a handy circuit to be reminded of.
Have you forgotten sensors such as the LM35 in a world of on-board sensors?
Time to refresh your sensing memory
. | 33 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410916",
"author": "Tweepy",
"timestamp": "2021-12-31T09:14:44",
"content": "Nice simple analog stuff, but would have been better with a 555 (either with 4 pins PWM controlled fan or direct driving), as ON/OFF fans tend to be fairly irritating for humans around.",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,372,836.232776 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/30/threaded-wires-save-phone-numbers/ | Threaded Wires Save Phone Numbers | Chris Lott | [
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"autodialer",
"rope memory",
"Soviet electronics",
"telephone"
] | If you thought programming your 1990s VCR was rough, wait until you see this
Russian telephone autodialer that [Mike] took apart over on the
mikeselectricalstuff
YouTube channel
(video below the break). [Mike] got this 1980s Soviet-era machine a few years ago, and finally got around to breaking into it to learning what makes it tick. The autodialer plugs into the phone line, much like an old-school answering machine. It provides the user with 40 pre-set telephone numbers, arranged in two banks of 20, and a speaker to monitor the connection process. It uses pulse dialing — no touch tones. What’s surprising is how you program the numbers. Given that this was build in the 1980s Soviet Union, he wasn’t expecting a microcontroller. But he wasn’t expecting transformer core “rope” memory, either.
The phone normally sits on a platform on the left side of the machine. Raising up the platform exposes a bank of toroidal cores, arranged in seven rows of four. Each row corresponds to a dialed digit, and the four cores used to encode a single digit. At the top and bottom of the programming board are two 40-pin connectors, each pin corresponding to one of the preset phone numbers. A bunch of patch wires would have been provided, and you program each number by threading a long wire through the appropriate cores, connecting it at the top and bottom connectors much like a modern solderless breadboard. It’s also interesting to see the components and construction technique of this circuit board. For example, the diodes have the strip on the Anode end, not the cathode as we’re normally used to today. The transistor cans are mounted upside down like dead spiders.
Scanned Schematics (click to see full size)
Mike tries to decipher the schematics and pokes around enough to get the gist of how it works. This design is an interesting solution to the problem of building an autodialer in that era. If you want to learn more about core memory, here’s an article we wrote about
deciphering an Apollo rope memory module
, perhaps one of the most well-known examples of this technology. We also covered a couple of projects using rope memory techniques but on a small scale,
here
and
here
. | 23 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410892",
"author": "Voltron",
"timestamp": "2021-12-31T07:01:44",
"content": "Wow, that’s ingenious. I love seeing soviet technology.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6410974",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,372,836.383361 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/30/customisable-micro-coded-controller-helps-with-in-circuit-debugging/ | Customisable Micro-Coded Controller Helps With In-Circuit Debugging | Dave Rowntree | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"debugging",
"microcode",
"microcomputer",
"sequencer"
] | Over on Hackaday.io, [Zoltan Pekic] has been busy building a stack of tools for assisting with verifying and debugging retro computing applications. He presents his take on
using Intel hex files for customised in-circuit testing
, which is based upon simple microcoded sequencers, which are generated automatically from a high level description.
The idea is that it is very useful to be able to use an FPGA development board to emulate the memory bus component of the CPU, allowing direct memory access for design validation purposes. This approach will also allow the production of a test rig to perform board level verification.
The microcode compiler (MCC)
generates all the VHDL, and support files needed to target a Xilinx FPGA based dev board, but is generic enough to enable targeting other platforms with a little adaptation.
Another interesting use case enables in-circuit tracing of buggy memory accesses, with the microcode sequencer decoding the accesses and dumping the relevant information out to either a serial port, or even direct to an embedded VGA controller, hardware allowing.
This automated approach to generating customisable microcoded hardware is a very nice trick to have in your bag, and even if it only helps in certain circumstances, [Zoltan] notes that it at least serves as an interesting example of the architecture of computers from history, if not much else.
Source for the example 8085 project can be found on the
project GitHub
, and the toolchain source can found
here also
.
For an interesting practical use of microding to implement emulations of historical hardware, checkout this neat
switchable reproduction calculator project
. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,836.170106 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/02/taking-water-cooler-ux-into-your-own-hands-with-ghidra/ | Taking Water Cooler UX Into Your Own Hands With Ghidra | Arya Voronova | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Reverse Engineering"
] | [
"Ghidra",
"pic",
"PIC 18 MCU",
"PIC microcontroller",
"pic18",
"pickit3",
"reverse engineering",
"water cooler"
] | Readers not aware of what Ghidra is might imagine some kind of aftermarket water cooler firmware or mainboard – a usual hacker practice with reflow ovens. What [Robbe Derks] did is no less impressive and inspiring: A
water cooler firmware mod
that adds hands-free water dispensing, without requiring any hardware mods or writing an alternative firmware from scratch.
Having disassembled the cooler, [Robbe] found a PIC18F6527 on the mainboard, and surprisingly, it didn’t have firmware readback protection. Even lack of a PICkit didn’t stop him – he
just
used an Arduino to dump the firmware, with
the dumper code shared for us to reuse
, and the resulting dumps available in the same repository.
From there, he involved Ghidra to disassemble the code, while documenting the process in a way we can all learn from, and showing off the nifty tricks Ghidra has up its sleeves. Careful planning had to be done to decide which functions to hook and when, where to locate all the extra logic so that there’s no undesirable interference between it and the main firmware, and an extra step taken to decompile the freshly-patched binary to verify that it looks workable before actually flashing the cooler with it.
The end result is a water cooler that works exactly as it ought to have worked, perhaps, if the people defining its user interaction principles were allowed to make it complex enough. We could argue whether this should have been a stock function at all, but either way, it is nice to know that we the hackers still have some of the power to make our appliances friendly — even when they don’t come with an OS. Certainly, every single one of us can think of an appliance long overdue for a usability boost like this. What are your examples?
We’ve covered quite a few Ghidra-involving hacks, but it never feels like we’ve had enough. What about
patching an air quality meter to use Fahrenheit
? Or another highly educational write-up
on cracking GBA games
? Perhaps,
liberating a Linux-powered 4G router
to reconfigure it beyond vendor-defined boundaries? If you have your own goal in mind and are looking to start your firmware reverse-engineering journey, we can say with certainty that you can’t go wrong
with our HackadayU course on Ghidra
. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411356",
"author": "kwikius",
"timestamp": "2022-01-02T15:34:55",
"content": "Excellent stuff. This has to be my favorite style of article on Hackaday. I have to admit to never having disassembled someone’s firmware, but reading about the process of how to do it and then modify it ... | 1,760,372,836.323096 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/02/an-openscad-library-for-all-your-cnc-cutting-needs/ | An OpenSCAD Library For All Your CNC Cutting Needs | Tom Nardi | [
"cnc hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"Laser cutting",
"openscad"
] | While there’s always the edge case, there’s a strong likelihood that if you’re using OpenSCAD, you’re probably working on a CAD model that you intend to 3D print at some point. Of course that’s not to say this is
all
you can do in OpenSCAD, but it’s arguably what it does best. If you wanted to make artistic models, or maybe render what your new kitchen will look like, there are other tools better suited to such tasks.
But thanks to
lasercut.scad
, a
library that [Brendan Sleight] has been working on for the last several years
, we might have to reconsider our preconceived dimensional notions. Instead of designing parts for 3D printing, his library is all about creating parts intended for subtractive manufacturing. Originally (as the name implies) it was geared towards laser cutting, but the project has since evolved to support CNC routers, vinyl cutters, and pretty much anything else that can follow a DXF file.
This “clip” joint is great for acrylic.
The library has functions for creating the standard tricks used to build things from laser-cut pieces, like finger joints, captive nuts, and assembly tabs. If it was something you once saw holding together an old wooden 3D printer kit back in the day, you can probably recreate it with
lasercut.scad
. It even supports a pretty wild piece of rotational joinery, courtesy of [Martin Raynsford].
Don’t have a way of concentrating a sufficient number of angry photons at your workpiece? No worries. The library has since been adapted to take into account a parametric kerf width, which lets you dial in how much of a bite your particular tool will take from the material when it does the business. There are even special functions for dealing with very thin cuts, which [Brendan] demonstrates by assembling a box from sheet vinyl.
Of course, those who’ve used OpenSCAD will know there’s not an “Export for CNC” button anywhere in the stock interface. So to actually take your design and produce a file your cutter can understand, [Brendan] has included a Bash script that will run the necessary OpenSCAD incantations to produce a 2D DXF file.
[Brendan] decided to send this one in after he saw the
aluminum enclosure OpenSCAD library we covered recently
. If you’ve got your own pet project that bends some piece of hardware or software to your will,
don’t be shy to let us know
. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411327",
"author": "Jason Belec",
"timestamp": "2022-01-02T13:11:07",
"content": "Very cool. Will look into this further for some upcoming work.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6411334",
"author": "Djjg",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,372,836.04133 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/02/an-astronomical-mechanical-clock-in-more-ways-than-one/ | An Astronomical Mechanical Clock, In More Ways Than One | Dan Maloney | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"clockmaking",
"equation of time",
"horology",
"orrery",
"sidereal",
"tellurion",
"timepiece"
] | If the workings of a mechanical timepiece give you a thrill, prepare to be blown away by
this over-the-top astronomical clock
.
The horological masterpiece, which was designed by [Mark Frank] as his “dream clock”, is a riot of brass, bronze, and steel — 1,200 pounds (544 kg) of it, in fact, at least in the raw materials pile. Work on the timepiece began in 2006, with a full-scale mockup executed in wood by Buchannan of Chelmsford, the Australian fabricator that [Mark] commissioned to make his design a reality. We have a hard time explaining the design, which has just about every horological trick incorporated into it.
[Mark] describes the clock as “a four train, quarter striking movement with the fourth train driving the astronomical systems,” which sounds far simpler than the finished product is. It includes 52 “complications,” including a 400-year perpetual calendar, tide clock, solar and lunar eclipse prediction, a planisphere to show the constellations, and even a thermometer. And, as if those weren’t enough, the clock sports both a
tellurion
to keep track of the Sun-Earth-Moon system and a full
orrery
out to the orbit of Saturn, including all the major moons. The video below shows the only recently finished masterpiece in operation.
[Mark]’s dream clock has been under construction for the better part of two decades, and we applaud not just his design but his patience. The skeletonized construction reminds us of the Clickspring clock from a few years back; now seems like a great time to go back and
binge-watch that whole series
again.
Thanks to [J. Peterson] for the tip. | 29 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411299",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2022-01-02T09:48:02",
"content": "Amazing! But… no cuckoo? ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6411305",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2022-01-02T10:21:21",
"content": "W... | 1,760,372,836.54727 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/01/teaching-a-dc-servo-motor-to-act-like-a-stepper/ | Teaching A DC Servo Motor To Act Like A Stepper | Dave Rowntree | [
"hardware"
] | [
"closed loop",
"dc motor",
"geared motor",
"stepper motor",
"stm32"
] | [Frank Herrmann] had an interesting idea to turn a
geared DC motor into a servo motor assembly
, but with a stepper motor-like interface. By stacking some small PCBs behind the motor body, it was possible to squeeze a DRV8837 DC motor driver and a pair of hall effect sensors on
the first PCB layer
, with the magnetic encoder nestled tightly behind it. Pin headers at the edge of the PCB connect to
a second PCB
bearing the microcontroller, which is based on the cheap STM32L432. The second PCB also holds an associated LDO and debug LED. Together, this handful of parts provide all that is needed to read the encoder, control the motor rotation and listen on the ‘stepper motor driver’ interface pins hooked up to the motion controller upstream. The Arduino source for this can be found on the
project GitHub
.
Whilst [Frank] mentions that this assembly has a weight and torque advantage over a NEMA 17 sized stepper motor, but we see no hard data on accuracy and repeatability which would be important for precise operations like 3D printing.
This project is part of a larger goal to make a complete 3D printer based around these ‘DC motor stepper motors’ which we will watch with interest.
While we’re on the subject of closed-loop control of DC motors,
here’s another attempt to do the same
, without the integration. If these are too small for you, then you always
repurpose some windscreen washer motors
. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411275",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2022-01-02T06:47:04",
"content": "Those cheap gear motors usually have a huge amount of backlash.One funny way to compensate would be to somehow connect two of the cheap motors and drive them in opposite directions. That way they would provid... | 1,760,372,836.626873 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/01/neopixel-punk-console-drives-ws2812s-using-555-timers/ | NeoPixel Punk Console Drives WS2812s Using 555 Timers | Robin Kearey | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"555",
"74HCxx",
"ws2812"
] | NeoPixels, a type of LED strip with individually addressable pixels, are a firm favorite among creators of intricate light effects. They are popular for their versatility and the ease with which you can daisy-chain them. Although the protocol to drive these little LEDs can be rather tricky to implement due to tight signal timing constraints.
However, [Adrian Studer] proved that driving WS2812-based LED strips like the NeoPixel series doesn’t necessarily require hand-optimized assembly code. In fact, it doesn’t require any code at all.
He built the NeoPixel Punk Console
, a device that creates a light show without even using a microcontroller. Just a handful of 555 timers and some 74HC series logic work together to produce pulses with approximately correct timings.
Operating the device is as easy as tweaking a few potentiometers, just like its namesake the
Atari Punk Console
. It’s quite a random process though, and it might be impossible to re-create a pattern that you liked. Also, the LEDs mostly light up in primary colors at full power, though [Adrian] plans to make an improved version that drives the red, green, and blue subpixels separately. But the fact that all of this is implemented by just a bunch of 555 timers makes it a rather impressive hack by any standard.
We’ve seen more than a few ways of driving NeoPixels or similar WS2812-based LED strips, though all of them use a microprocessor of some sort; you can fire up
a classic 6502
, use
SPI and DMA on a PIC32
, or just plug in
a single ARM Cortex M0+
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411263",
"author": "Gösta",
"timestamp": "2022-01-02T03:09:30",
"content": "Awesome hack!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6411293",
"author": "smerrett79",
"timestamp": "2022-01-02T08:12:36",
"content": "It’s like a... | 1,760,372,836.738749 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/01/ski-lift-design-does-the-impossible/ | Ski Lift Design Does The Impossible | Ryan Flowers | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"idler",
"mechanical engineering",
"pulley",
"ski",
"ski lift",
"skiing",
"winter"
] | Tis The Season, for those who are so inclined, to loft themselves to the top of a steep snow-covered hill and then go downhill, really fast. And if something gets in their way, turn. Whether they be on skis, a snowboard, or some other means, getting down usually involves using gravity. Getting up, on the other hand, usually involves a ski lift. And in the
video by [kalsan15]
after the break, we learn how technology has stepped in to make even the most inaccessible slopes just a lift ride away.
A ski lift that can only turn left.
In its most simple form, a ski lift is two pulleys connected by a steel cable. The pulley at the bottom of the hill is powered, and the pulley at the top of the hill serves as an idler. Attached to the steel cable are some means for a person to either sit down or grab a handle and be hoisted to the top of the hill.
Such a simple arrangement works fine if the geography allows for it, but what if there are turns, or there need to be multiple idlers to keep the wire taut but also close to the ground? Again, the most basic ski lifts have limitations. If the cable turns left around the idler, then the attachment for the handle or chair
has
to be on the right, making a right turn around the idler an impossibility.
How then can this problem be solved? We won’t spoil the outcome, but we recommend checking out
[kalsan15]’s video
for an excellent description of the problem and the solution that’ll leave you wondering “Why didn’t I think of that!?”
If you don’t find this hacky enough, then take a moment to learn how you too can not just
make a gas-powered ski lift for your cabin in the woods
, but then ride your slope down on your
DIY Ski Bike! | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411246",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2022-01-02T01:05:20",
"content": "There’s so little actually holding you to the wire.It makes me wonder if they would have more luck using strong magnets.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,372,836.923283 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2022/01/01/cool-the-shop-with-a-thermal-battery-based-system/ | Cool The Shop With A Thermal Battery-Based System | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"thermal battery",
"water cooling"
] | Having any kind of shop is pretty great, no matter how large it may be or where it’s located. If the shop is in an outbuilding, you get to make more noise. On the other hand, it will probably get pretty darn hot in the summer without some kind of cooling system, especially if you don’t have a window for a breeze (or a window A/C unit).
[Curtis in Seattle]
built an awesome thermal battery-based cooling system
for his shop. The battery part consists of five 55-gallon drums full of tap water that are connected in series and buried a foot underground, about two feet out from the wall. There are two radiators filled with water and strapped to 20″ box fans — one inside the shop, which sends heat from the shop into the water, and another outside that transfers heat out of the water and into the cool night air. Most summer days, the 800-square-foot shop stays at a cool 71°F (21.7°C).
We love that the controls are housed in an old film projector. Inside there’s an Arduino Uno running the show and taking input from four DS18B20 one-wire temperature sensors for measuring indoor, outdoor, battery, and ground temperatures. There are four modes accessible through the LCD menu — idle, cool the shop, recharge mode, and a freeze mode in case the outside temperature plummets. Why didn’t [Curtis in Seattle] use anti-freeze? It’s too expensive, plus it doesn’t usually get that cold. (Although we hear that Seattle got several inches of snow for Christmas.) Check it out after the break.
If you can’t just go burying a bunch of 55-gallon drums in the ground where you live,
consider building a swamp cooler out of LEGO
.
Thanks for the tip, [Zane Atkins]! | 64 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6411191",
"author": "Marcus",
"timestamp": "2022-01-01T21:27:56",
"content": "For the non-US-Americans (or for those who don’t know the specific heat capacity of water in kilopondmeters per fl oz from the top of their head)· 55 Gallons = 250 l· 5 of these drums thus contain 1250 kg ... | 1,760,372,836.860714 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/30/cd-player-powered-555-piano-goes-accordion-to-plan/ | CD Player Powered 555 Piano Goes Accordion To Plan | Ryan Flowers | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"555",
"accordion",
"cd player",
"DVD player",
"generator",
"punk"
] | Ah yes, the 555 piano project. Be it the Atari Punk Console, or some other 555 based synthesizer, Hackers just love to hear what the 555 can do when attached to a few passives and a speaker. It’s a sound to behold. But for [Berna], that wasn’t quite enough! Below the break, you can
see his creation
, called the Acordeonador.
A portmanteau of the Spanish words for “Accordion” and Generator”, the Acordeonador does what no project we’ve seen so far can do: It turns a CD drive into a generator for a 555 based synthesizer.
To give the Acordeonador a more analog feeling, a large 4700uf electrolytic capacitor stores just enough energy to make the music generation more than an on/off affair. It’s a great effect, and it works well! Not being one to leave any details out, [Berna] prototyped the build on perf board and then covered the board in what appears to be an wood grained contact paper, giving it that 1970’s dual keyboard electric organ feel.
It really just goes to prove that a 555 project can be the source of a great time! Hackaday is rife with 555 projects, but if you enjoy this, be sure to check out
The Most Important Device In the Universe
, which is of course powered by a 555. | 8 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410823",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-12-31T00:39:00",
"content": "Okay, if this is an entry in the 555 Contest, I may as well quit now! B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6410826",
... | 1,760,372,837.096692 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/30/taking-a-close-look-at-hawkeyes-workbench/ | Taking A Close Look At Hawkeye’s Workbench | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"disney",
"Hacking in the media",
"marvel",
"sci-fi",
"workbench"
] | We don’t have to tell you that the representation hackers and makers get in popular media is usually pretty poor. At this point, we’ve all come to accept that Hollywood is only interested in perpetuating negative stereotypes about hackers. But in scenes where the plot calls for a character to be working on an electronic device, it often seems like the prop department just sticks a soldering iron in the actor’s hand and calls it a day.
Of course, there are some exceptions. In the final episode of Marvel’s
Hawkeye
, the titular character is shown building some custom gear in a work area that looks suspiciously like somewhere actual work might get done. The set design was impressive enough that
[Giovanni Bernardo] decided to pause the show and try to identify some of the tools and gadgets
that litter the character’s refreshingly chaotic bench.
Now to be clear, we haven’t personally seen the latest Marvel spectacle from the House of Mouse, and it’s entirely possible that the illusion falls apart when taken as a whole. But from what we’re seeing here, it certainly looks like whoever did the set dressing for
Hawkeye
seems to have made an effort to recreate the hackerspace chic. We’ve got a multimeter within arm’s reach, the classic magnifying glass third arm, a Wiha screwdriver about to roll out of frame, and even some JB-Weld. If this looks eerily like what’s currently on your own bench, don’t worry, you’re not alone.
On the wider shot, we can see that the attention to detail wasn’t limited to the close-up. From the tools hanging on the pegboard to the shelves filled with rows of neatly labeled bins, we totally buy this as a functional workspace. It’s quite a bit neater than where we currently do our tinkering, but that’s more of a personal problem than anything. As we’ve seen, there are
certainly people in this community who take their organization seriously
.
Portrayals of science or technology in the media often leave a lot to be desired, which is why
it’s so important to praise productions that put in the effort to get things right
. With a little luck, maybe it will get through to the right people and raise the bar a bit. But even if it doesn’t change anything, we can at least
give the folks behind the scenes some well-deserved recognition
. | 51 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410778",
"author": "dudefromthenorth",
"timestamp": "2021-12-30T21:48:01",
"content": "#4 is a neon bulb tester.#5 looks like silver solder.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6410783",
"author": "dudefromthenorth",
... | 1,760,372,837.050124 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/30/electric-wheelchair-dump-truck-hack-really-hauls/ | Electric Wheelchair Dump Truck Hack Really Hauls | Ryan Flowers | [
"hardware"
] | [
"24v",
"electric wheelchair",
"electromechanical",
"h-bridge",
"hydraulic pump",
"hydraulic ram",
"mechanical",
"relay",
"relays"
] | Have you ever looked at a derelict electric wheelchair and thought “I bet I could make something great with that!” Of course you have- this is Hackaday, after all! And so did [Made in Poland], who managed to get a hold of a broken down electric wheelchair and
put the full utility of his well equipped metalworking shop to work
. The results? Lets just say it hauls.
What we really enjoyed about the build was that there wasn’t much that couldn’t be done by an average garage hacker with a drill press, angle grinder, and a stick welder. While it’s definitely nicer to have a lathe and a high quality welding table, plasma cutter, and everything in between, nothing that [Made in Poland] did in the video is such high precision that it would require those extensive tools. There may be some parts that would be
a lot more difficult
, or lower precision, but still functional.
Another aspect of the build is of course the control circuitry and user interface. Keeping the skid steer and castor approach meant that each motor would need to be controllable independently. To achieve this, [Made in Poland] put together a purely electromechanical drive controlled with momentary rocker switches and automotive relays to form a simple H-Bridge for each motor.
Of course you just have to watch until the end, because it really proves that a man will do
anything
to get out of hauling wood around! Old electric wheelchairs can also make
a great base for big robots
, as it turns out. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410803",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-12-30T23:18:02",
"content": "I would have loved to have done something like that with my (late) father-in-law’s scooter.But, no time or space to do it, so it was donated.",
"parent_id": null,
"dept... | 1,760,372,836.964034 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/30/remoticon-2021-uri-shaked-reverses-the-esp32-wifi/ | Remoticon 2021: Uri Shaked Reverses The ESP32 WiFi | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Remoticon",
"ESP32",
"reverse engineering",
"simulation",
"wifi",
"wokwi"
] | You know how when you’re working on a project, other side quests pop up left and right? You can choose to handle them briefly and summarily, or you can dive into them as projects in their own right. Well, Uri Shaked is the author of
Wokwi
, an online Arduino simulator that allows you to test our your code on emulated hardware. (It’s very, very cool.) Back in the day, Arduino meant AVR, and he put in some awesome effort on
reverse engineering that chip
in order to emulate it successfully. But then “Arduino” means so much more than just AVR these days, so Uri had to tackle the STM32 ARM chips and
even the recent RP2040
.
Arduino runs on the ESP32, too, so Uri put on his reverse engineering hat (literally) and took aim at that chip as well. But the ESP32 is a
ton
more complicated than any of these other microcontrollers, being based not only on the slightly niche Xtensa chip, but also having onboard WiFi and its associated binary firmware. Reverse engineering the ESP32’s WiFi is the side-quest that Uri embarks on, totally crushes, and
documents for us in this standout Remoticon 2021 talk
.
Peeking and Poking
The ESP32 treats the WiFi as a memory-mapped peripheral, like you’re probably used to on microcontrollers. For GPIO pins, for instance, memory mapping means that you can write a 1 or 0 into a particular bit of memory, and it will turn an external LED on or off. Read from that memory location, and you can tell if someone is pushing a button. For WiFi, it’s basically the same thing, only it’s mostly completely undocumented where the memory addresses are and what they’re for. Uri’s approach uses a debugger to the JTAG on the physical hardware, a Ghidra plugin to help him work on the binaries, and his own ESP32 simulator to ferret all of this out.
First off, he flashed one of the simple ESP-IDF WiFi “hello world” programs into his simulator, turned logging verbosity up to eleven, and ran it until it crashed. Which it did quickly, because his simulator didn’t have any of the WiFi hardware emulated yet. With GDB, the debugger, he could figure out which function in particular crashed. Then he took that function apart.
Straight off the bat, he got lucky. A function, helpfully called
hal_mac_deinit()
didn’t seem to do much except write particular values to a fixed memory address, and wait for a particular response. He then programmed his simulator to give that response, which made the program crash a little bit further downstream. Success! What does the memory address in question map to? The datasheet says “Reserved” but it didn’t take too large a leap of faith to assume that it’s some kind of WiFi control register.
The rest of the talk has Uri explaining this repeated ping-ponging between a crashed program on his simulator, using Ghidra and GDB to figure out what the crashed code does, and then to integrating the desired behavior into his simulator until that bit of code worked. What’s truly amazing is that this ends up with a simulation of how the ESP32’s WiFi works on the inside that’s so good that he can run Python MQTT libraries on the simulated device, and it works
exactly
as if it were running on the native hardware. Amazing!
This is a great talk, providing a high-level overview of reverse engineering using emulation as a key tool. It’s a great technique, and we’re stoked to have been able to look over Uri’s metaphorical shoulders. Check it out! | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410715",
"author": "Frankel",
"timestamp": "2021-12-30T18:28:37",
"content": "Also didn’t like the ALL CAPS headlines. Took me a while to figure out it is not Uniform Resource Identifier.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "64107... | 1,760,372,837.139067 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/30/when-a-ball-robot-becomes-two-wheels/ | When A Ball Robot Becomes Two Wheels | Jenny List | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"ballbot",
"gimbal motor",
"spherical robot"
] | It’s now about six years since
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
first showed us the little spherical robot BB-8, but it’s fair to say that along the way we’ve not lost our collective fascination for rolling-ball robots. There have been plenty of attempts to make a fully-rolling device, but perhaps [Derek Lieber] has a better take on it
by turning a spherical robot into a two-wheeled roller by the addition of a pair of tyres
. Inspired by a Samsung prototype that never made it to market, it works by the wheels working against the machine’s low centre of gravity, and using a tilt sensor to control speed.
The ball chassis is a 3D printed shell, into which after much experimentation with motors, the final version put a pair of gimbal motors with a set of magnetic position sensors. Inside is an Arduino Mega and a custom motor driver board sporting an LM6234, with an XBee radio for remote control. Meanwhile the power comes from a set of three LiPo cells, and there is some extra lead ballast in the bottom to keep the whole thing balanced.
We’ve seen more conventional takes on a spherical robot in the past
, but we’re particularly keen on this one, and excited to see where the future takes it. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410673",
"author": "monsonite",
"timestamp": "2021-12-30T16:34:49",
"content": "Stairs or inclines might be a problem…….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6410680",
"author": "darthvader",
"timestamp": "2021-12-... | 1,760,372,837.186781 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/30/new-cars-will-nickle-and-dime-you-its-automotive-as-a-service/ | New Cars Will Nickel-and-Dime You – It’s Automotive As A Service | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"automotive as a service",
"bmw",
"car net",
"features on demand",
"functions on demand",
"mercedes",
"mercedes benz",
"nissan",
"subscription",
"subscription fee",
"subscription service",
"toyota",
"volkswagen"
] | Every few years, someone pushing a startup to investors comes up with an acronym or buzzword which rapidly becomes the new hotness in those circles. One of the most pernicious is “as a Service,” which takes regular things and finds a way to charge you a regular fee to use them.
Automotive companies just absolutely loved the sound of this, and the industry is rapidly moving to implement subscription services across the board. Even if there’s hardware in your car for a given feature, you might find you now need to pay a monthly fee to use it. Let’s explore how this came about, and talk about which cars are affected. You might be surprised to find yours already on the list.
Subscription Required
Many cars now come with smartphone apps full of additional features. Credit: Audi
A long time ago, before the world went mad, you could option out your car with all kinds of nice equipment when you ordered it from the dealership. You’d pay a bit extra, of course, but some nice people at the factory would bolt in the extra gear, and you’d enjoy the extra nice little touches that you’d paid for.
It was a simple system, and it made sense. Things like heated seats or stereo upgrades really needed to be installed at the factory; going back to the dealer later for more upgrades would be complicated and a relatively unattractive option.
These days, many cars are connected to the Internet around the clock via their own built-in cellular modules. These serve all kinds of purposes, from safety monitoring to allowing the automaker to roll out software updates as needed over the air.
However, this connectivity also created a new opportunity. Automakers could now remotely turn features in the car on and off from the comfort of their ivory towers. Thus was born a new opportunity for monetization. Pay the car company a toll, else you can’t have nice things.
It’s Already Happening
Toyota has already implemented subscription services in many of its vehicles. Credit:
via Toyota
This may sound like a problem brewing for the future, but sadly it is already very much our present reality. The big breakout story this year has been that many customers have not realized that they’re already driving cars subject to subscription-only features.
As reported by
The Drive
,
many Toyota customers have only just realised that the key fob remote start feature in their vehicles is only enabled if they maintain a subscription to Toyota’s Connected Services. The issue has been masked thus far, as it only effects cars built from 2018 onwards, and Toyota provides most drivers with a free 3-year subscription, extended to 10 years for those that spring for the Premium Audio package.
However, after that period is over, if no ongoing subscription is paid for, the car’s remote start feature will cease to work. It matters not that the key fob and the vehicle can still communicate fine, nor that all the hardware is still in place. The feature will cease to work unless the fees are paid.
Obviously, there’s an argument to be made that automakers should be able to cover ongoing costs of maintaining cellular connections to vehicles. For things like remote start apps using the Internet, and other cellular-enabled features, it’s understandable why fees would be required. However, in this case, key fob remote start requires no cellular connection at all. Thus, charging a fee for this feature is solely a revenue-generating measure. Amazingly, Toyota have begun
“reviewing” the situation
after blowback received when the story broke.
Interestingly, some Toyota models built prior to November 12, 2018, can no longer maintain a cellular connection in the United States due to pending 3G network shutdowns. In these cases, Toyota has “enhanced” the vehicles to no longer require a cellular subscription for the remote keyfob start feature. It’s unsurprising, as Toyota no longer has a way to communicate subscription status with these cars now offline. It’s a goodwill move; Toyota could have just as easily done nothing as the cars fell off the network, and let the feature die forever.
A Widespread Problem
Full-travel rear-wheel steering requires a subscription in the new Mercedes-AMG EQS 53 4MATIC+. Credit: Mercedes-Benz
The problem isn’t unique to Toyota, though. Tesla have been particularly keen on similar antics, famously disabling features on a used car that the previous owner already paid for. In this case, the features weren’t even subscription based, but subject to a one-time payment. Tesla cared not,
and disabled the features anyway.
This left the new owner of the used car significantly out of pocket, as they had paid for a car advertised as having certain features that evaporated once they took ownership.
Luxury brands have jumped on the bandwagon, too. The new EQS luxury electric sedan from Mercedes-Benz comes with rear-wheel steering. However, it’ll only steer up to 4.5 degrees unless you pony up some extra cash.
As reported by
Autoblog,
if you want the full ten degrees of operation from the system, you’ll have to pay an annual fee of €489 euros. The hardware to do the full level of steering is in every car; Mercedes has just decided that for the German market at least, you’ll have to pay extra to get the most out of it.
BMW and Audi are getting involved too with their own takes on functions-on-demand. BMW are trialling an annual fee system for remote start and a integrated dash camera, while also contemplating asking drivers to regularly fork out for simple things
like heated seats and steering wheels
that are already built into the car. Audi, meanwhile, will offer higher-speed data connections as well as improved vehicle lighting operation for those who sign up
for a regular payment
.
Many other automakers are already running subscription services, too. Whether its for navigation system updates and traffic information, or for driver assist systems like GM’s Super Cruise, they’re all out there tying vehicle functionality to a regular monthly fee.
Outside of automakers, even accessory companies are keen to get a regular dollars flowing in. In perhaps the most horrifying example, the Klim motorcycle safety airbag system
will not inflate in a crash
unless owners are paid up on their subscription. Gut-wrenching stuff.
The Why
Volkswagen’s Car-Net system requires a monthly subscription fee to enable certain features like live traffic updates, but is usually granted free for the first five years of vehicle ownership. Credit: Volkswagen
It’s not difficult to understand why this came about. From a business perspective, finding a way to get regular money flowing out of existing customers is a hugely-attractive proposition. Rather than seeing a customer once every few years when they buy a new car, and hoping they stay faithful, instead, that person can contribute each month to the company’s bottom line. If a car is owned long enough, too, the sum of the subscription fees could far exceed what the company would have originally charged for the option to be installed in the first place.
Automakers will argue that what they’re offering is flexibility. Customers will only have to pay for what they want and need, and they can purchase extra features as and when they want to use them.
However, what they’re also introducing is annoyance. The late Internet era has already weighed down the average person with a huge number of recurring credit card payments, for everything from phone plans to streaming services. Adding on yet another isn’t helping anyone, and is costing consumers more money.
Even worse, it complicates things for used buyers. Test drive a car, and it might have all the bells and whistles -until you sign it into your name and log in to the infotainment system. Then suddenly you’re getting slugged each month with an additional cost on top of the loan repayments just to keep the seats warm. It’s enough to give anyone a headache.
There’s also the spectre of a car losing its features for good once connected services are turned off. Whether it’s older cellular networks being shut down or a company going out of business in a given country, it matters not. Without a regular signal from the mothership, the features disappear. Some, like Toyota, may elect to unlock features in cars in these situations, but there are absolutely no guarantees.
The idea of features-on-demand seems to be very much slanted in favor of the automakers. The industry seeks to gain a whole new income stream at the cost of much consumer frustration. On the other hand, if people can force Toyota to stand down on the keyfobs, maybe we can do it with the other automakers as well.
Whether a consumer movement is successful or not, one suspects that a cottage industry of crackers may spring up to unlock features without paying onerous ongoing fees. We can all look forward to
grooving to the cracktros
while we unlock the Advanced Windscreen Wiper package for winter, at the cost of occasionally bricking the car with a bad patch. Come what may. | 230 | 43 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410646",
"author": "Reality+Bites",
"timestamp": "2021-12-30T15:12:41",
"content": "In the automotive world “Service” is just another word for Screw.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6410937",
"author": "nospam",
... | 1,760,372,837.747771 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/30/esp32-pretends-to-be-gpu-gives-you-a-ransomware-scare/ | ESP32 Pretends To Be GPU; Gives You A Ransomware Scare | Arya Voronova | [
"computer hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"Lilygo",
"ransomware",
"vga",
"VGA generation"
] | Sometimes a piece of hardware meets a prank idea, and that’s how the fun Hackaday articles are born. [AnotherMaker]
shows us some harmless entertainment
at the expense of an IT enthusiast in your life – programming an ESP32-powered devboard with a VGA output to show an ever-feared “all your files are encrypted” screen on a monitor connected to it. The ASCII text in its 8-bit glory helps sell this prank, making it look exactly like a BIOS-hijacking piece of malware it claims to be; akin to UIs of the past that skilled hackers would whip up in x86 assembly. The devboard’s integration into a PCI card backplate is a cherry on top, a way to seamlessly integrate this into a PC case, making it look not particularly different from an old graphics card. In such a configuration, we don’t doubt that this would be a head-scratcher to a certain kind of an IT department worker.
If you already have someone in mind as a target for this prank, you’re in luck, since [AnotherMaker]
has shared his source code
, too, and all you need is a ESP32 with a VGA port set up. You can get the same devboard, or you can even solder it all together with an ESP32 breakout and resistors, if you’re on a time or money budget, since
the schematics for the LilyGO devboard are public.
Not all devboards gets such a fun application, but it’s always fun to see when someone thinks of one – a perfect prank scenario that calls for a very specific devboard.
Wondering how it’s even possible to output VGA from the ESP32? We’ve covered this in the past – like
this R&D project
done by [bitluni], who then went ahead and expanded on it by
connecting
six
displays at once
. If you’ve connected your ESP32 to a VGA port and ran some test sketches,
a UI library
will help you upgrade your idea into a ready project in no time. | 27 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410608",
"author": "none",
"timestamp": "2021-12-30T12:11:35",
"content": "I haven’t used VGA in 15 years.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6410621",
"author": "Eric Chapin",
"timestamp": "2021-12-30T13:34:20",... | 1,760,372,837.242898 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/30/3d-printed-model-roller-coaster-accurately-simulates-the-real-thing/ | 3D Printed Model Roller Coaster Accurately Simulates The Real Thing | Robin Kearey | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"diy roller coaster",
"miniature",
"model",
"physics simulation"
] | While they don’t give the physical thrill of a real one, model roller coasters are always fun to watch. However, they actually make a poor analog of a full-sized ride, as gravitational force and aerodynamic drag don’t scale down in the same way, model roller coasters usually move way faster than the same design would in the real world. [Jon Mendenhall] fixed this deficiency by designing
a model roller coaster that accurately simulates a full-sized ride
.
The track and cart are all made of 3D printed pieces, which altogether took about 400 hours to print. The main trick to the system’s unique motion is that the cart is motorized: a brushless DC motor moves it along the track using a rack-and-pinion system. This means that technically this model isn’t a roller coaster, since the cart never makes a gravity-powered drop; it’s actually a small rack railway, powered by a lithium-ion battery carried on board the cart. An ESP32 drives the motor, receiving its commands through WiFi, while the complete setup is controlled by a Raspberry Pi that runs the cart through a predetermined sequence.
The design of the track was inspired by the
Fury 325
roller coaster and simulated in
NoLimits 2
. [Jon] wrote his own software to generate all the pieces to be printed based on outputs from the simulator. This included all the track pieces as well as the large A-frames holding it up; some of these were too long to fit in [Jon]’s 3D printers and had to be built from smaller pieces. The physics simulation also provided the inputs to the controller in the form of a script that contains the proper speed and acceleration at each point along the track.
The end result looks rather slow compared to other model roller coasters, but actually feels realistic if you imagine yourself inside the cart. While it’s not the first
3D printed roller coaster
we’ve seen, it’s probably the only one that accurately simulates the real thing. If you’re more interested in a roller coaster’s safety systems,
we’ve featured them too
. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410596",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2021-12-30T11:11:00",
"content": "Can we fit a camera in there? It might look sedate from the outside, but would the video from a scaled rider’s point of view seem realistic?Very cool.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,372,837.290969 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/29/peering-into-the-murky-depths-of-alder-lake/ | Peering Into The Murky Depths Of Alder Lake | Matthew Carlson | [
"ARM",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"alderlake",
"gracemont",
"intel"
] | The winds of change are in the air for CPUs. Intel has long lorded over the computing world, and they remain a force to contend with, but many challengers gather at their gates. AMD, ARM, IBM, and other X86 designs sense a moment of weakness. In response, Intel released their Alder Lake platform with high-performance and high-efficiency cores, known as Golden Cove and Gracemont, respectively. [Clamchowder] and [cheese] have written up
as many details as they were able to suss out about Gracemont
.
ARM has done a multi-multi core design (
big.LITTLE
) for several years where they have a mix of high-power, high-performance cores and smaller, low-power cores. This allows the scheduler to make tradeoffs between power and performance. Typically the smaller cores in an ARM design are simpler in-order processors, having more in common with a microcontroller than with a full-scale desktop core. Many people have made an obvious comparison with the apparent similarities between ARM’s approach and Intel’s new offerings as Gracemont is based on Intel’s old Atom core, a low-power single issue, in-order processor.
[Clamchowder] and [cheese] were able to demonstrate that the Gracemont core in Alder Lake is nothing like Atoms of old or the tiny processors in ARM’s big.LITTLE. It is a multi-fetch, multi-issue, out-of-order processor. Given that it is so similar to the much more powerful Golden Cove processor, it gives us the chance to look into Intel’s tradeoffs to make a higher efficiency core. All of this information comes from significant guesswork and testing, slowly zeroing in on the sizes of different caches and the architecture of the branch prediction system.
It’s a fascinating read on the interworkings of a chip with real attention to detail. But, if you’re interested in peering even deeper,
we covered extracting an actual gate from a processor.
Thanks [Carson Bunker] for sending this one in! | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410573",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2021-12-30T07:03:48",
"content": "It was a smart move by Intel to buy the Centaur Technology division from VIA Technologies for a very cheap $125 million, taking them off the table and blocking, if they want – which I’m sure they do, all ac... | 1,760,372,837.393326 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/29/robot-delivery-to-your-door/ | Robot Delivery To Your Door | Chris Lott | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"autonomous delivery",
"drones",
"robot delivery"
] | While online shopping was already very popular in South Korea, it has become even more so as people stay home more during the pandemic. Several robotic delivery services have launched around the city, such as
7-Eleven using the Neubie robot by Neubility
, the
GS25 convenience store using LG’s CLOi ServeBot
, and the
Baemin food delivery service using the Delidrive robot
.
Love it or hate it, in the dense population of big cities like Seoul the vast majority of people live in apartment complexes. This lends itself well to these robot delivery projects. In fact, many of these pilot projects are only available in one apartment complex, which can consist of ten to twenty 15+ story buildings. Training your robot to navigate the sidewalks, operating the doors, calling the elevators, and buzzing the customer’s home intercom is an easier task when dealing with only one campus.
Some projects are more ambitious, like another
Neubility system operating on the Yonsei University Songdo City campus
. You can order fried chicken and have it delivered by a Neubie robot, which comes to your address along the sidewalk at a brisk 5 to 6 km/h. There are some issues, however. First of all, government regulations haven’t quite kept up with the technology. These services are basically operating case-by-case, temporary waiver basis. They are not allowed to operate on the streets, and when driving on the sidewalks they have to avoid bumping into people.
We wrote about a prototype
RC truck delivery system
last year, and covered
Amazon drones
and
Automating Freight Delivery
as well. These all show promise, but are not mainstream yet. The vast majority of your orders are still delivered by a person. Will these automated delivery services eventually replace humans? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. | 21 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410561",
"author": "spiritplumber",
"timestamp": "2021-12-30T05:07:52",
"content": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi4jZKqZ8v8We’ve been doing this (and sending videos and schematics to HaD!) since 2010, by the way. Remember us?https://www.robots-everywhere.com/re_wiki/pub/web/Mai... | 1,760,372,837.809488 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/29/snap-together-macropad-does-it-without-solder/ | Snap-Together Macropad Does It Without Solder | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed everything",
"arduino",
"hot swap",
"hot swap sockets",
"macropad"
] | Maybe we’re biased, but we think everyone has a use for a macropad. It’s just a matter of time before a highly personalized set of speed controls starts to sound like a great time-saving device to have around.
Trouble is, macropads are usually kind of expensive to buy outright, and not everyone feels comfortable building keyboards. Okay, so what if you didn’t even have to solder anything? That’s the idea behind
[Jan Lunge]’s hand-wired macropad
.
You will still want to open a window for ventilation if you build this one, because this macropad requires a lot of 3D printing. What it doesn’t require is glue or screws, because everything snaps together.
Of course, the star of this build is [Jan]’s hot swap socket design. We especially love the little clip that holds the column wires in place while also providing a spacer between those and the row wires. Everything is connected up to a Pro Micro with non-insulated wire and held in place with bends at the ends and the magic of tension. Be sure to check out the build video after the break.
Thirsty for more than a six pack of switches? This design is easy to scale up until you run out of microcontroller inputs. At that point, you might want to
add screens to keep track of all your macros
.
Thanks for the tip, [BaldPower]! | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410550",
"author": "TacticalNinja",
"timestamp": "2021-12-30T03:27:06",
"content": "Bit of suggestion for fixing the wire to the microcontroller pin hole: Instead of making a hook that would greatly rely on the springiness and tension of the wire, you could make a sort of “plug” sh... | 1,760,372,837.85775 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/29/build-your-own-high-temp-oven-thermometer/ | Build Your Own High-Temp Oven Thermometer | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"Digispark",
"k-type thermocouple",
"thermocouple",
"thermometer"
] | Looking to keep an eye on the temperature inside his wood-fired pizza oven, [Giovanni Bernardo] decided to skip the commercial offerings and
build his own high-temperature thermometer using a type-K thermocouple
. The end result is a no-nonsense handheld unit with a surprisingly low part count that, at least in theory, can read temperatures as high as 1023.75°C. Though we hope he’ll be pulling the pizza out long before that.
Inside the 3D printed case we find just a handful of components. The 0.91″ OLED display mounted in the front panel is wired to a Digispark ATtiny85 development board, which in turn is connected to a MAX6675 breakout board. This takes the input from the thermocouple probe and converts it into a digital signal that can be read over SPI with an Arduino library from Adafruit. Rather than going through the added complication of adding a rechargeable pack, [Giovanni] is running this thermometer from a standard 9 V battery thanks to the 5 V regulator built into the Digispark.
We especially appreciate the attention to detail [Giovanni] put into his case design. Each component is nestled into a perfectly formed pocket in the bottom of the box, and
he’s even gone through the trouble of using heat-set inserts
for the front panel screw holes. It would have been quicker and easier to just model up a basic box and hot glue his components in place, but he took the long way around and we respect that.
This project is another example of an interesting principle we’ve observed over the years. Put simply, if somebody is
going through this much trouble to check an object’s temperature
, there’s a
higher than average chance they intend on eating it at some point
. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410519",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2021-12-29T21:52:05",
"content": "Quiescent drain of just the *regulator* in the Digispark is a ridiculous 4 mA, and that OLED display sucks at least that much too. This will hardly last a day on that battery.I built almost the same thing f... | 1,760,372,837.906077 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/29/foam-surfboard-from-scratch/ | Foam Surfboard From Scratch | Matthew Carlson | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"foam",
"surfboard",
"XPS"
] | Have you ever wanted to make your own surfboard, but felt held back by a lack of tools, materials, or the cost of it? Drawing almost entirely from what can be found at a well-known home improvement retailer, [AndrewW1997]
details the steps needed to craft your board
.
In his guide, he details the difference between XPS (expanded polystyrene) and EPS (extruded polystyrene) and how each product’s closed cell and open cell nature affects the final board. Starting with two pink sheets of XPS, he laminated them together with glue to form his blank. A stringer is a long piece of wood in the middle of the surfboard that provides additional flex and strength. Some flooring plywood curved with a jigsaw provides the shape needed. Unfortunately, the blank needs to be split in half to install the stringer. However, he has a trick for gluing the blank back together without it buckling, and that trick is ratchet straps.
He cuts the foam into roughly the right shape with a hot wire. Clean up is done with sanding blocks, a plane, and a level. The next step is laminating the board with epoxy and fiberglass. Next, [Andrew] details a few considerations around the process and gets to glassing. Sanding up to 2000 grit and some polishing compound make the board gorgeous. After a bit of final curing time, you’re ready to ride some waves.
There’s a
handy playlist on YouTube detailing the process so you can follow along
. Once you’ve finished your surfboard,
perhaps your next project will be to power it up with a jet drive
. Video after the break. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410618",
"author": "Todd3465",
"timestamp": "2021-12-30T13:07:18",
"content": "Definitions of XPS and EPS are reversed here I believe. XPS = Extruded, EPS = Expanded The original article linked to is correct I believe",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},... | 1,760,372,837.945432 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/29/astronaut-food-is-light-years-beyond-tang-and-freeze-dried-ice-cream/ | Astronaut Food Is Light Years Beyond Tang And Freeze-Dried Ice Cream | Kristina Panos | [
"cooking hacks",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"apollo",
"Apollo program",
"astronaut ice cream",
"MRE",
"Tang",
"thermostabilized turkey"
] | When it comes down to it, we humans have two major concerns when venturing away from home for an extended period of time: what we’ll eat, and where we will sleep. Depending on the mode of travel, you might take some snacks along, or else rely on restaurants and/or the pantry of your possible hosts. Until the day we can reliably grow many types of food in space, or that Milliways, that five-star eatery at the end of the universe is operational, astronauts and other space-bound travelers will have to bring most of their food with them.
Cubes and Tubes
Space food has its roots in military rations, which in the United States were devised during the Revolutionary War. Both the variety and delivery methods of food have changed significantly since the beginning of the space program. While the menu may have at first been limited to tubes of nutrient-rich goo, bite-sized cubes and freeze-dried powdered beverages, the fare is more far-out these days. Astronauts on the ISS even enjoy tortillas, fresh fruits, and vegetables thanks to resupply missions, though they have to eat some of these types of foods quickly.
The average astronaut has also changed quite a bit, too. At first, they were all young and super-fit ex-military men, but nowadays they are more likely to be middle-aged science-y types and women. All three of these groups have different nutritional needs when faced with the rigors of living and working in space.
Space Erases Taste, and Things Don’t Stay In Place
A tray of space foods outfitted for zero-gravity with springs, magnets, and Velcro to keep things in place. Public Domain via
Wikipedia
Aside from the occasional bout of gastrointestinal distress, many of us take for granted the ease with which we eat and digest food here on Earth. Early on, scientists were unsure whether astronauts would be able to digest and absorb nutrients, or even swallow food at all in zero or microgravity.
The point is to keep the astronauts alive, obviously, but also to provide good nutrition through their favored foods whenever possible. The problem with space is that there is no gravity to pull bodily fluids downward, so everything flows evenly throughout the head and torso. This results in a congested head feeling,
complete with a diminished sense of taste
.
They knew at the outset that space foods and beverages had to check a few boxes; everything must be lightweight, palatable, nutritious, and not particularly perishable. It also has to survive the trip into space, including the temperature changes, vibrations, and various gases along the way.
In addition to physiological considerations, there are zero-gravitational considerations for preparing the food, packaging it, and then actually eating the stuff without it floating everywhere and gumming up the instruments.
Of Tubes and Tang
John Glenn’s tube of beef and vegetable goo from Friendship 7. Image via
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
One of Yuri Gagarin’s assignments aboard
Vostok 1
was to try eating something so that the Soviet scientists could study the effects on the first human to eat in space. Yuri slurped from three tubes using a straw: two of them had puréed meat, and the third was full of chocolate sauce. Later that year on
Vostok 2
, Gherman Titov earned the title of first person to vomit in space, making it clear that better nutrition was necessary.
John Glenn was the first American to eat in space while aboard
Friendship 7
in 1962, and he did so armed with a metal tube of pureed beef and vegetables and another full of applesauce. Here’s a fun fact:
Tang was not invented for astronauts
. It was available to consumers a few years before Mr. Glenn famously drank some in space, however it did not sell well until that event. You might say that sales skyrocketed afterward.
Just Add Water
Freeze-dried foods were introduced during the Gemini program to supplement the dehydrated and bite-sized offerings. These were coated with either oil or gelatin to keep them from crumbling. Everything was vacuum-packed into four-ply laminated packages with a port at one end for injecting water sourced from the hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells.
A replica corned beef on rye in resin, on display at the Gus Grissom Memorial Museum in Indiana. Image via
Popular Mechanics
A typical Gemini meal included a beef sandwich, peaches, strawberry cereal cubes, and a packet of beef and gravy. In spite of this tempting fare,
astronaut John Young snuck a corned beef on rye aboard to surprise Gus Grissom
, who loved them.
As you might imagine, bread crumbs started floating as soon as he pulled it out of his space suit pocket, so he put it away soon after. This incident did not go unnoticed by NASA, who gave Young a slap on the wrist and then tightened up the list of what astronauts could bring along with them.
The 1966 film embedded below was shot at Natick Army Laboratory, who developed food for the Apollo program. It explores the establishment of a baseline for nutrition through rigorous testing that researchers hoped was an exaggeration of what astronauts would experience during space travel.
Chow Time On the Apollo
A packet of thermostabilized turkey and gravy. Image via
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
The Apollo program saw significant changes in food packaging and near-constant menu expansion in an effort to keep the astronauts healthy and happy. User feedback was a major catalyst for change. All of the astronauts’ meals were almost identical on the early missions, but by the time they launched Apollo 17, the meals were highly individualized for each person.
Making Spirits Bright
Occasionally, they would even get a special treat. On Christmas Eve 1968, the Apollo 8 astronauts were surprised to find pouches of thermostabilized turkey with gravy and cranberry sauce that didn’t have to be reconstituted. And for the first time, they ate with spoons. The resulting boost in morale made this weight increase justifiable for future missions, and the wetpack was born.
It was around this time that NASA really started to consider individual preferences when devising recipes. A woman named Rita Rapp developed a
spoon-bowl package
that allowed astronauts to enjoy a more Earth-like eating experience.
Here is a complete overview of the Apollo Food Technology program
, which was the inspiration for this post. It has detailed information about all the foods the astronauts ate during the Apollo program, including full menus from each mission. It is also a nice exploration of the development of space-worthy foodstuffs and the constraints of same.
Skylab’s the Limit
Skylab, the first US space station that was built out of Apollo parts, sounds like it was the height of weightless dining luxury. There was a galley, a table, and each crew member’s tray contained heating elements.
There weren’t too many dehydrated foods on Skylab,
Each place at Skylab’s table contained heating elements. Image via
Google Arts & Culture
because it ran on solar cells instead of water-producing fuel cells. Many of the foods were stored in plastic pouches and aluminum cans with pop tops.
Skylab also had a small refrigerator/freezer and for the first time, astronauts ate real ice cream. By the way, freeze-dried ice cream isn’t real astronaut food. Although the stuff was developed for NASA and even appears in
the Apollo 7 press kit
(PDF, page 83),
it has never flown into space
, only off of the shelves of gift shops.
Eating Aboard the ISS
As astronauts spend longer and longer periods in space, the need for tasty and nutritious food only grows more important. Today, astronauts visit the NASA test kitchen first to help plan the menus before their trip to space. They enjoy everything from fresh fruits to spaghetti to beef jerky depending on preference. However, since the food continues to taste bland because of the congestion caused by weightlessness, the most popular items in the pantry are the salt, the pepper, and the hot sauce.
In the video below, astronaut Chris Hadfield makes a peanut butter and honey sandwich in space. If you’re still hungry for more,
check out this longer video about eating aboard the ISS in general
.
The ISS doesn’t get absolutely everything delivered, food-wise. Since 2002, they’ve been growing food inside a couple of small greenhouses. Not only does this supplement their diet, science gains insight into how food can be grown in space.
And then there’s forbidden food made in space.
Remember when they had to bake cookies and send them back to Earth without eating any? | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410483",
"author": "Alex99a",
"timestamp": "2021-12-29T19:02:52",
"content": "Gemini fuel cells did not produce potable water. The water from the Gemini fuel cells was the color of strong tea and had an odor and floating particles the crew called “furries”. Gemini crew used a separ... | 1,760,372,837.993929 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/29/modern-toilet-generates-energy/ | Modern Toilet Generates Energy | Chris Lott | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"fertilizer",
"fuel cell",
"methane",
"methane production",
"waste"
] | Environmental Engineering [Prof Jaeweon Cho] at South Korea’s Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology specializes in water and waste management. He has developed an
energy-generating toilet called BeeVi
(pronounced
beevee
) that recycles your waste in three ways. Liquid waste is processed in a microbial reaction tank to make a liquid fertilizer. Solid waste is pumped into an anaerobic digestion tank, which results in methane gas used to power a silicone oxide fuel cell to make electricity. The remaining solids are composted to make fertilizer. The daily waste from one person is about 500 g, which can generate about 50 L of methane.
The BeeVi toilets, located on the UNIST campus, pay students in a digital currently called Ggools, or Honey Money in English. Each deposit earns 10 Ggools, which can be used to purchase coffee, instant noodles, and other items (one Ggool is equivalent to about $3.00 value). The output from this pilot project is used to partially power the building on campus, and to fertilize gardens on the grounds. If you want to learn more,
here is a video lecture by [Prof Cho] (in English)
.
Waste management is an area of research around the world. The Gates Foundation
has been funding research into this field for ten years
, and has held a number of expos over the years highlighting innovative solutions, most recently being
the 2018
Reinvent the Toilet Expo
in Beijing
. We wrote
a piece about the future of toilets
last year as well. | 44 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410443",
"author": "Jerry",
"timestamp": "2021-12-29T16:36:47",
"content": "Sadly, this is old news. Los Angeles County has been using sewer solids to create methane, and burning it in turbines to offset the sewer plant operating costs. If ever toilet in LA used this tech, the coun... | 1,760,372,838.074729 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/29/the-current-state-of-play-in-autonomous-cars/ | The Current State Of Play In Autonomous Cars | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"autonomous car",
"autonomous driving",
"car",
"car hacks",
"cars",
"self-driving",
"self-driving technolgoy",
"self-driving technology"
] | Bluster around the advent of self-driving cars has become a constant in the automotive world in recent years. Much is promised by all comers, but real-world results – and customer-ready technologies – remain scarce on the street.
Today, we’ll dive in and take a look at the current state of play. What makes a self-driving car, how close are the main players, and what can we expect to come around the corner?
Levels of Autonomy
A graphic breaking down the various levels of driving automation, as defined by the SAE. Credit: SAE
The phrase “self-driving car” may seem straightforward, but it can mean many different things to different people. Technological limitations also play a part, and so the Society of Automotive Engineers stepped up to create classifications that make clear what any given autonomous or semi-autonomous car is capable of.
Below is a full breakdown, but if you’re in a hurry, think of it like this. Level 0 cars have no automation, while basic things like adaptive cruise come under level 1. Level 2 self-driving systems can handle steering and throttle commands for you, but you’re expected to remain vigilant at all times for hazards. Level 3 systems take things up a notch, letting you take your eyes off the road while the car drives itself in the designated areas and conditions. Level 4 systems introduce the ability for the car to handle getting itself to safety in the event of an issue. Level 2, 3 and 4 systems are all conditional, only working in certain areas or under certain traffic or weather conditions. Meanwhile, Level 5 vehicles remove limitations entirely, and can basically drive themselves anywhere a human could.
Where We’re At
As it stands, the majority of new cars on the market are available with some form of Level 1 automation, usually cruise control or perhaps some basic lanekeeping assist. Typically, however, talk of self driving covers the proliferation of level 2 systems now in the marketplace. Tesla, GM, and Ford are some of the big players in this space already shipping product to market. Meanwhile, Honda and Mercedes have pushed ahead with Level 3 systems on the market and just around the corner respectively. Meanwhile, Waymo is aiming even higher.
Tesla
Keeping hands on the wheel is required when using Tesla’s Autopilot system, but many have found workarounds to cheat this.
Tesla’s Autopilot and “Full Self Driving” systems have been roundly criticized for the manner in which they have been marketed. The systems fall strictly under the Level 2 category, as the driver is expected to maintain a continuous look out for hazards and be prepared to take over at any moment.
Sadly, not everyone takes this seriously, and there have been fatal crashes in Teslas running Autopilot where
nobody was in the driver’s seat.
Water bottles
and other devices are often used to trick the system into thinking someone is still holding the wheel. As of April 2021, at least 20 deaths have occurred in Tesla’s driving under Autopilot, with the system known for
driving directly into obstacles at speed.
Tesla has also made the controversial decision to start phasing out radar on its vehicles. The company plans to use cameras
as the sole sensor
for its self-driving systems, with one argument being that humans have made do with only our eyes thus far.
Tesla has pushed forward with the technology, though, releasing its
“Full Self Driving” beta
to limited public testing last year. The system can now handle driving on highways and on surface streets. It also has the ability to work with the navigation system, guiding the car from highway on-ramp to off-ramp and handling interchanges and taking necessary exits along the way.
Regardless of the updates, Tesla’s system is level 2 and still requires constant vigilance from the driver, and hands on the wheel.
Calls have been made
to rebrand or restrict the system, with plenty of footage available online of the system failing to recognise
obvious obstacles in its path (language warning)
.
GM
GM’s system lets you take your hands of the wheel, but requires you to keep your eyes on the road. Credit: Cadillac
GM has been selling vehicles equipped with its level 2 Super Cruise self-driving system for some time,
lauded as safer
than Tesla’s offerings by
Consumer Reports.
The system directly monitors the driver with a camera to assure attentiveness, and the latest versions coming in 2022 allow for
fully-automated lane changes
and even support for towing. The system allows the driver to go hands-free, but attention must still be paid to the road else the system will be disabled and hand control back to the driver.
Super Cruise can be used on over 200,000 miles of divided highways across the USA. However, unlike Tesla’s offering, GM’s cars won’t be driving themselves on city streets until the release of
Ultra Cruise
in a few years time. The aim is to cover 2 million miles of US and Canadian roads at launch, with the Ultra Cruise system relying on lidar and radar sensors as well as cameras to achieve safe driving in urban environments.
Ford
Ford’s upcoming BlueCruise system has only just hit the market, with a similar level of functionality to GM’s early Super Cruise system. The system
lags behind
Ford’s main American rival, as BlueCruise is only available for use on 130,000 miles of US highways. It also lacks the more advanced features such as automatic lane changes that GM has included in later revisions of its software.
BlueCruise also lacks user interface features like the steering wheel light bar of GM’s system, which improves clarity as to the system’s current state of operation. Fundamentally though, it’s a first step from the Blue Oval with more sure to come in following updates. As it stands, it’s a basic system that combines lane keeping and adaptive cruise control but doesn’t yet deliver much more than that.
Mercedes and Honda
The Drive Pilot system from Mercedes will allow drivers to take their eyes off the road. It’s one of the first true Level 3 systems available. Credit: Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes and Honda are the first two companies to deliver Level 3 systems to market. These allow the driver to kick back while activated, though outside of geofenced areas or in anomalous situations, they can be asked to take over in a timely fashion.
Honda’s system was first to launch, and has been available on the Honda Legend since earlier this year. The company’s SENSING Elite technology enables the Traffic Jam Pilot feature, which takes over driving tasks in heavy traffic on an expressway. Under these limited conditions, the driver can watch videos on the navigation screen or undertake other tasks without having to pay attention to the road ahead.
Mercedes will deliver its Drive Pilot system next year, initially enabled for 13,191 kilometers of German motorways. The system will similarly work during high-density traffic, up to a legally-permitted maximum of 60 km/h. The driver can then enjoy “secondary activities” such as browsing the internet or watching a movie.
Both systems rely on a combination of sensors, with Mercedes particularly noting the use of lidar, radar and cameras in their system. In both cases, drivers must remain ready to take over if the system requests, but they are not required to maintain the constant vigilance required with level 2 systems. This feat is particularly achieved by limiting the systems to operation in the more-predictable environment of a congested motorway.
Waymo
As a technology company rather than an automaker, Waymo has had little incentive to rush a product to market. The company has in fact abandoned development of Level 2 and Level 3 systems due to the commonly-cited issues with vigilance tasks. Even in the case of the company’s Level 3 efforts, it had issues with
staff falling asleep
during testing, due largely to the fact they had little to do with the car driving itself. Where Tesla has forged ahead with such systems, throwing caution to the wind and attracting
an NHTSA investigation.
CEO John Krafcik noted that Waymo decided such a system would draw too much liability.
Instead, the company is forging ahead with a system that will reach Level 4 or better, aiming to eliminate the contentious issue of driver handoffs. As of 2017, the company ran a system in its modified Chrysler Pacifica fleet that had a very simple interface. A button could be pressed to start travelling, and another would instruct the car to pull over safely.
The company has since started providing
a driverless robotaxi service
to a limited clientele as it tests its driverless vehicles. The company’s cars regularly take trips with nobody behind the wheel, though humans monitor the trips from a remote command center to help out in the case the cars get confused or face issues. The cars operate in specific geofenced areas during the development period, with the technology still a long way from ready for roll-out in all road situations.
Summary
The Gartner hype cycle. Credit: JeremyKemp,
CC-BY-SA-3.0
As it stands, self-driving technology will be sitting around the Trough of Disillusionment for many. Despite what we were all promised, self-driving systems remain heavily limited at this stage.
However, the tech is slowly climbing towards the point where it can be genuinely useful. Efforts like those from Mercedes and Honda already relieve the driver of the painful vigilance task and let them take their mind off driving, the primary goal of the technology from the outset. Other systems do little more than try and keep a car between lane lines while requiring the human to continually scan for hazards.
It will be sometime before the technology reaches maturity and we’re letting our driverless cars whisk us away without a second thought. Meanwhile, thousands of engineers are working hard every day to make that a reality. | 54 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410435",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2021-12-29T15:28:12",
"content": ">self-driving technology will be sitting around the Trough of Disillusionment for manyHow about those commenters who keep proselytizing that it’s “already safer” years ago despite the complete lack of eviden... | 1,760,372,838.234227 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/29/rats-learn-to-play-doom-in-this-automated-vr-arena/ | Rats Learn To PlayDOOMIn This Automated VR Arena | Dan Maloney | [
"Games"
] | [
"doom",
"omnidirectional",
"operant conditioning",
"rat",
"rodent",
"treadmill",
"vr",
"Will It Doom?"
] | When we run an article with “DOOM” in the title, it’s typically another example of getting the venerable game running on some minimalist platform.
This DOOM-based VR rig for rats
, though, is less about hacking DOOM, and more about hacking the rats.
What started as a side project for [Viktor Tóth] has evolved into quite a complex apparatus. At the center of the rig is an omnidirectional treadmill comprised of a polystyrene ball about the size of a bowling ball. The ball is free to rotate, with sensors detecting rotation in two axes — it’s basically a big electromechanical mouse upside down. The rat rides at the top of the ball, wearing a harness to keep it from slipping off. A large curved monitor sits right in front of the rat to display the virtual environment, which is a custom DOOM map.
With the VR rig built, [Viktor] worked on automating the training. A treat dispenser provides the proper motivation, while powered drive wheels engage with the ball to nudge the rat if it gets stuck in the virtual world. [Viktor] says he has trained three rats — [Romero], [Carmack], and [Tom] — to walk down a straight hallway using this automated method. As for the meat of the game — shooting monsters — [Viktor] has that covered too, with a sensor that detects when a rat rears up on its hind legs to register a shot.
Total training time to get the rats to the point seen in the video was about six weeks, and [Viktor] reports the whole thing cost him about $2000. That’s a lot of time and money, but the results are pretty interesting. If you’re more interested in minimalist DOOM builds, we understand — check out
DOOM on a lightbulb
, or
a thermostat
, or
even a GPS
.
[via
IGN
]
Thanks to [my son Tom] for the tip! | 29 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410407",
"author": "Doubleyou",
"timestamp": "2021-12-29T13:00:11",
"content": "I have four rats, so am very aware how intelligent they can be, especially if food is involved.Awesome setup and the experiment does not seem too stressful for the rat.However I am not sure, if the rat ... | 1,760,372,838.135438 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/29/the-three-cent-motor-controller/ | The Three Cent Motor Controller | Jenny List | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"motor controller",
"Padauk",
"position sensor"
] | If you follow the world of small microcontrollers you will certainly be familiar with the usual fare of Atmel, ARM Cortex, PIC, and others. But these aren’t the smallest or cheapest devices, below them is an entire category of grain-of-dust microcontrollers with minimal capabilities and at rock bottom prices. Maybe the most well known are the Padauk series of chips, whose PIC12-like architecture can be had for literal pennies. These are the famous 3 cent microcontrollers, but despite their fame they have a bit of a reputation in our community for being difficult to work with. [Ben Lim] dispels some of those ideas,
by Padauk-enabling a motor and encoder from a printer to make a three cent motor controller
.
The Padauk doesn’t have on-chip peripherals such as SPI, instead its IDE provides bit-banging code to do the job. This and some PID motor controller code makes for a straightforward task on the little chip, and with the help of a probably considerably more expensive MAX14870 it can drive the motor. For the curious,
the code can be found in a Git Hub repository
. There may be more accomplished motor controllers to be found, but we doubt you’ll find one with a cheaper microcontroller.
Want to know what the fuss is about with the Padauk?
Our colleague [Maya Posch] has you covered
. | 20 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410391",
"author": "adam strick",
"timestamp": "2021-12-29T10:12:07",
"content": "This is a fantastic tip",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6410392",
"author": "nqtronix",
"timestamp": "2021-12-29T10:16:54",
"content"... | 1,760,372,838.284046 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/28/1950s-vacuum-tube-computer-replica-communicates-through-usb/ | 1950s Vacuum Tube Computer Replica Communicates Through USB | Robin Kearey | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"adding machine",
"nixdorf",
"vacuum tube computer"
] | When we talk about a “computer” today, we generally picture an electronic machine that can perform various kinds of mathematical operations, manage its program flow, move data from one place to another, and string all these functions together to perform some useful task. But once upon a time there were machines that could perform only a subset of these functions; these might be classified somewhere between computers and calculators.
One such machine was the Elektronensaldierer ES 24, built in 1955 by German computer pioneer Heinz Nixdorf. Its name translates as “electronic balancer”, with “balance” in the accounting sense meaning the difference of assets and liabilities. Designed to interface with a punch card machine from French manufacturer Bull, it contained several hundred vacuum tubes and could be used to add and subtract numbers stored on those punch cards.
[Henry Westphal] decided to make
a modern copy of the ES 24
(
translated
), based on Nixdorf’s original schematics, for display in the HNF computer museum in Paderborn. The result is a huge display containing 204 tubes as well as a massive power supply. Like the 1955 original it can add incoming numbers and output the result as a twelve-digit decimal number. To make its inner workings visible, [Henry] also added a status light to each tube, showing whether it is storing a “0” or a “1”. This makes for a beautiful
Blinkenlights
display that shows the bits moving through the machine’s inner circuits.
Unlike the original, the new ES 24 comes with a USB interface, enabling it to communicate with a modern PC and allowing museum visitors to operate the machine using a touchscreen. Beneath the USB port however, the interface is identical to the original, so if you were to bring along your Bull punch card machine you should be able to connect it to the new
Elektronensaldierer
.
In the video embedded below (in German), museum curator David Woitkowski demonstrates the new machine. It’s not the only vacuum tube computer on display in a museum;
the Colossus replica in Bletchley Park
is also very much worth seeing. That exhibit even inspired the design of
an entirely new vacuum tube computer
. Thanks to [Jörg] for the tip. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410363",
"author": "x14km2d",
"timestamp": "2021-12-29T06:39:00",
"content": "The video is super interesting, for a German, because the automatic translation of Youtube is terrible. Especially with old or technical terms the translation seems to have strong problems.",
"parent_... | 1,760,372,838.333608 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/28/uv-printing-pcbs/ | UV Printing PCBs | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"pcb",
"printed circuit boards"
] | We always enjoy [Thomas Sanladerer’s] 3D printing videos. But his latest isn’t only about 3D printing. He shows how he uses a DLP printer — which has UV light, after all — to
expose PC board blanks
with great results. Honestly, once we heard the idea, we immediately saw how that could work it is surprising more people aren’t taking advantage of their DLP printers like that. Of course, [Thomas] does his usual thorough treatment of the topic.
Really, this isn’t exactly 3D printing even though it uses a 3D printer. Exposing boards with UV light and artwork is an old process that has been around for years, usually using transparency film and a UV light source. With a printer, you can create artwork digitally and the UV light source is already there.
We liked his test strip method for dialing in the exposure time. Reminded us of our old darkroom days. He also tried using resin as a resist on a bare copper board but that didn’t seem to work as well as you would hope.
The first method, though, makes it painless to get the artwork on the PC board — even easier than laser toner transfer or direct
laser exposing it
. However, you still have to do the chemical steps and our least favorite part, drilling the holes. Maybe a good argument to stick with surface mount.
We love and respect the desire to do things for yourself and if you own a 3D printer, you probably do too. But unless you are in a big hurry, PCBs are cheap to have professionally done now (as we
once predicted
) and it really doesn’t make sense to create them at home, especially since it is hard to replicate plated holes, solder mask, and it is extra work to silkscreen the boards, too.
Still, if you need a quick-turn prototype or you just want the satisfaction of making your own PCB, don’t forget that your DLP printer is a ready-made UV exposure system. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410365",
"author": "vex",
"timestamp": "2021-12-29T06:56:43",
"content": "This is an LCD 3D printer, no DLP inside!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6410369",
"author": "Daniel",
"timestamp": "2021-12-29T07:13:10",
... | 1,760,372,838.613069 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/28/clear-off-the-coffee-table-its-pinball-time/ | Clear Off The Coffee Table, It’s Pinball Time | Kristina Panos | [
"Games"
] | [
"coffee table",
"fpga",
"linear actuators",
"pinball",
"pinball machine"
] | Like many of us, [BuildXYZ] has always wanted to own a pinball machine, but doesn’t have the space to justify buying such a big and heavy toy. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. [BuildXYZ] figured that
if they could build a pinball machine into a coffee table form factor
, they’d be at least halfway to justification.
[BuildXYZ] didn’t choose just any pin. After doing a bunch of research, they settled on 1981’s Bally Centaur because it’s an early solid-state machine, and it’s one of the best. It has no secondary playfield levels to deal with, making it much easier to do this project.
Where do we even start to describe this beautiful labor of love? There are too many details to list, but know that it seems to be equal amounts of restoration work and custom work that brought this table together. The build video after the break is definitely worth your time, and you’ll gain a much better appreciation of the amount of time that went into this, from the custom score decoder chip built on an FPGA to the 3D printed replacement drop targets and new acrylic bits to replace the yellowing ones from the playfield.
[BuildXYZ] started by building a pintisserie, which is exactly what it sounds like — a rotating barbecue spit for a pinball machine’s guts that makes it a breeze to work on. This maintenance-friendliness reappears in the new cabinet design, where the circuit boards are screwed to a pair of drawers.
No, you don’t have to play it flat. But you do have to clear off the top before pressing Start, because a pair of mini industrial linear actuators raise the back end by 5-7° depending on the setting. We were a little sad about the lack of plunger, but [BuildXYZ] is right — it would knock at your kneecaps. On the bright side, [BuildXYZ] reused the ‘free ball’ solenoid as the ball launcher, which is driven by that shiny metal button. Again, be sure to check it out after the break.
Honestly, we haven’t seen this much work go into a pinball machine since
this one, built entirely from K’nex
. | 10 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410322",
"author": "adrian godwin",
"timestamp": "2021-12-29T00:10:20",
"content": "Aaaaargh ! What did you do with the backglass ?!! It’s not just for the scores – it has the most important part of the artwork.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,838.87069 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/28/enter-the-matrix-with-this-custom-pc-side-panel/ | Enter The Matrix With This Custom PC Side Panel | Tom Nardi | [
"computer hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"Case mod",
"digital rain",
"matrix",
"pc case"
] | With a new
Matrix
movie out now, it’s hardly a surprise that we’re starting to see more and more projects centered around the franchise’s iconic “Digital Rain” effect. A few particularly unique examples have floated to the top of this virtual tsunami of green-tinted sushi recipes,
such as this very slick RGB LED PC side panel built by [Will Donaldson]
.
In place of the normal clear window in his PC case, [Will] has mounted a black acrylic sheet that has had all of the “code” characters laser-cut from it. Behind that is an array of WS2812B LED strips, nestled into vertically aligned channels that keep the light from bleeding out horizontally. A sheet of frosted plastic is sandwiched between the two, which helps diffuse the light so the individual LEDs aren’t as visible.
All of the LEDs are connected to a NodeMCU ESP8266 by way of a 74AHCT125 level-shifter, though [Will] notes you could certainly use a different microcontroller with some tweaks to the code. As it stands, the user selects from various lighting patterns using two potentiometers and a button that have been mounted next to the panel. But if you were so inclined, it certainly wouldn’t take much to adapt the firmware so that the lighting effects could be triggered from the PC.
The sticklers will note that this means the characters can’t actually change or move, but as you can see in the video below, it still looks quite impressive when the LEDs get going behind them. If you’re looking to recreate the look on a considerably smaller scale, check out this
Arduino library that can make it rain on a TFT display with just a few lines of code
. | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410300",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2021-12-28T22:10:26",
"content": "This too shall pass.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6410305",
"author": "Urgon",
"timestamp": "2021-12-28T23:06:22",
"content... | 1,760,372,838.77591 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/28/diy-infrared-calculator-printer/ | DIY Infrared Calculator Printer | Chris Lott | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"calculators",
"IR printer",
"irda",
"Redeye",
"SIR"
] | [Ziggurat29] had been playing around with infrared protocols, and realized he had a spare point-of-sale printer kicking around in his junk box. So he decided to
whip up his own calculator infrared printer
by bolting on an STM32 Blue Pill module and an IR receiver. [Ziggurat29] initially thought such a homemade printer would be cheaper than a commercial HP 82240 IR printer, even a used one. In hindsight, these point-of-sale printers can be pricey. If you don’t have one laying around, it may be cheaper to buy one, but not as fun as building it yourself.
It used to be commonplace for calculators to have a printing mechanism — even entirely mechanical adding machines often had them. As electronic calculators became the norm, the printer began to fade away. Back in 1987, HP introduced a portable calculator printer, the HP 82240A (
see HP Journal Oct 1987
). The calculator could print using a one-way infrared protocol which came to be known as Redeye. This made good sense, since not every one needs a printing calculator. As well, if you had one of these printers, it could be used with multiple calculators. Later in 1991, HP added a bi-directional infrared link called SIR beginning with the HP 48SX calculator (
see HP Journal Jun 1991
), allowing calculators to communicate with each other or with an IR-equipped PC. Finally HP and other companies teamed up in 1995 to create the IrDA standards you are probably more familiar with. But a bunch of Redeye and SIR devices are still floating around, and even some modern calculators like SwissMicros offerings can still output to these printers.
If you want to make your own IR printer,
be sure to check out [ziggurat29]’s Hackaday.io project
. Also [Martin Hepperle] has an
excellent writeup on an Arduino-based project on his site
. We also covered a reverse project
way back in 2011, an adaptor that prints over IR from wired serial signals
. Have you found a printing calculator, or a standalone printer like this, to be useful in your workflow? Let us know in the comments below. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410271",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-12-28T20:00:42",
"content": "“[Ziggurat29] initially thought such a homemade printer would be cheaper than a commercial HP 82240 IR printer, even a used one. In hindsight, these point-of-sale printers can ... | 1,760,372,838.824204 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/28/linux-fu-dont-share-well-with-others/ | Linux Fu: Don’t Share Well With Others | Al Williams | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"linux"
] | In kindergarten, you learn that you should share. But for computer security, sharing is often a bad thing. The Linux kernel introduced the concept of namespaces starting with version 2.6.24. That’s been a few years ago, but namespaces are not used by many even though the tools exist to manipulate them. Granted, you don’t always need namespaces, but it is one of those things that when you do need it, the capability is priceless. In a nutshell, namespaces let you give a process its own private resources and — more importantly — prevents a process from seeing resources in other namespaces.
Turns out, you use namespaces all the time because every process you run lives in some set of namespaces. I say set, because there are a number of namespaces for different resources. For example, you can set a different network namespace to give a process its own set of networking items including routing tables, firewall rules, and everything else network-related.
So let’s have a look at how Linux doesn’t share names.
The possible namespaces are:
Mount – File system mounts. It is possible to share mounts with other namespaces, but you have to do so explicitly.
UTS – This namespace controls things like hostname and domain name.
IPC – A program with a separate IPC namespace will have its own message queues, semaphores, shared memory, and other interprocess communications items.
Network – Processes in the namespace will have their own networking stacks and related configurations.
PID – Processes in a PID namespace can’t see other processes outside the namespace.
Cgroup – A namespace that provides a virtualized view of the cgroup mounts for CPU management.
User – Individual users, groups, etc.
Obviously, some of these are more useful than others. It is easy to see, however, that if you had a system of cooperating programs, you might find it attractive to create a private space for IPC or networking between them.
Go to Shell
If you want to experiment with namespaces from the shell, you can use
unshare
. The name might seem odd, but the command takes its name from the fact that a new process typically shares the namespaces of its parent. The
unshare
command lets you create new namespaces.
One key feature or quirk of
unshare
is that, by default, it runs a program with the new namespaces created, but it does not associate that program with these namespaces. Instead, the new namespaces go to any children that program creates. You can add a –fork option to make it work more as you’d expect.
For example, let’s start a new shell in its own private Idaho:
sudo unshare --pid --fork --mount-proc /bin/bash
ps alx</pre>
If you try that command without a separate namespace, you’ll get a long list of processes. But the output inside our new namespace is much less bulky:
F UID PID PPID PRI NI VSZ RSS WCHAN STAT TTY TIME COMMAND
4 0 1 0 20 0 10820 4376 - S pts/6 0:00 /bin/bash
0 0 9 1 20 0 12048 1168 - R+ pts/6 0:00 ps alx
You do have to think a bit about how the different utilities work. For example,
ps
reads from
/proc
so if we didn’t provide
--mount-proc
, it would still display all the main processes. (Try it.) You wouldn’t be able to interact with them, but since you can read
/proc
, you’d still see them. The
--mount-proc
flag is really just a shorthand for
--mount
(to get a new mount namespace) and then doing a mount of the
proc
filesystem.
Omitting the
fork
option will cause strange shell behavior because the shell usually spins off new processes which will now be a different namespace than your main process.
If you add a filename to most of the arguments (like
--pid
or
--mount
) you can create a persistent namespace that you share among processes. You can also use virtual ethernet adapters (type veth) or a network bridge to expose a network in one namespace to another.
Mounts and More Options
Another useful isolation is in the mount table. Linux handles mounts a bit differently. You can make mounts propagate in several ways. If you want total privacy, you can do that, but you can also share within a group, or track changes in other groups but not propagate your own changes. You can read more
on the man page
.
One interesting thing is that since the namespaces are isolated, it is possible for a normal user to have quasi-root privileges in the new namespaces. The
--map-root-user
allows for this and also turns on an option to deny users calling
setgroups
which could allow them to get elevated permissions.
There’s more, of course. If you have
util-linux
installed, just ask for the
unshare
man page to read more. If you want to use these things in a program, which is probably easier to imagine, there is an
unshare
system call. Use
man 2 unshare
to see the details. Note that you can exercise even more control with the system call. For example, you can disassociate the file system. It is closely tied to the
clone
system call which is sort of a super version of
fork
.
You might find it interesting that all the namespace data for a process show up in
/proc
. For example, try:
sudo ls -l /proc/$$/ns/*
You’ll see specialized symlinks with information about the different namespaces for the current process. For example:
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alw alw 0 Dec 8 07:29 /proc/2182630/ns/cgroup -> 'cgroup:[4026531835]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alw alw 0 Dec 8 07:29 /proc/2182630/ns/ipc -> 'ipc:[4026531839]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alw alw 0 Dec 8 07:29 /proc/2182630/ns/mnt -> 'mnt:[4026531840]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alw alw 0 Dec 8 07:29 /proc/2182630/ns/net -> 'net:[4026531992]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alw alw 0 Dec 8 07:29 /proc/2182630/ns/pid -> 'pid:[4026531836]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alw alw 0 Dec 8 07:29 /proc/2182630/ns/pid_for_children -> 'pid:[4026531836]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alw alw 0 Dec 8 07:29 /proc/2182630/ns/time -> 'time:[4026531834]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alw alw 0 Dec 8 07:29 /proc/2182630/ns/time_for_children -> 'time:[4026531834]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alw alw 0 Dec 8 07:29 /proc/2182630/ns/user -> 'user:[4026531837]'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alw alw 0 Dec 8 07:29 /proc/2182630/ns/uts -> 'uts:[4026531838]'
This is one of those Linux-isms that is somewhat obscure but can be very useful when you need it. Even if you don’t need it right now, it is worth understanding because it just might solve your next development challenge. Sure, you could run your program in its own virtual machine, but that’s a pretty heavy option compared to simply isolating what you want in a clean and simple way. Even from a shell script. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410256",
"author": "X",
"timestamp": "2021-12-28T18:59:11",
"content": "Between unshare and chroot and docker it seems like there are three hacks and no good answers.This is high security stuff and should be well thought out and well architected but this is just a mess. Mountains o... | 1,760,372,838.569839 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/28/the-pinouts-book-is-here-and-its-just-what-you-need/ | The Pinouts BookIs Here, And It’s Just What You Need | Tom Nardi | [
"hardware"
] | [
"book",
"N-O-D-E",
"node",
"pinouts",
"Technical documentation"
] | Updates from the enigmatic [NODE] are unfortunately few and far between these days. In fact his latest post is only the second time we’ve heard from the hacker in 2021. But as we’ve come to expect from his white-on-sorta-black releases, it certainly doesn’t disappoint.
Just in time to ring in whatever holiday you may celebrate,
[NODE] has unveiled
The Pinouts Book
. A project he’s been working on for some time now with colleague [Baptiste], the free PDF download contains over 300 pages of high-contrast hardware diagrams and their respective pinouts. It’s about as straightforward as you can get, beyond the dedication page in the beginning, there’s not a word of fluff in the entire document. This is a work of hacker minimalism at its best, and we’re all about it.
From audio/video connectors all the way to development boards and single-board computers,
The Pinouts Book
sticks to the same format of a diagram and accompanying chart, making it exceptionally easy to find what you’re looking for. If you need more information than this streamlined layout can provide, each entry includes a link to a dedicated page on the
book’s companion website.
This will redirect you to supplemental data such as the manufacturer’s website, the part’s full datasheet, etc.
According to [NODE], the original plan for the Creative Commons BY-SA licensed work was to release it as a physical book, but the project ballooned up to such a scale that they realized it would be much easier to navigate and use as a digital document. While we don’t disagree, a physical release would certainly look lovely on our bookshelf. In the meantime, those who want to support the effort financially can purchase shirts emblazoned with diagrams pulled straight from the book’s pages.
We’ve long believed that a large-format electronic paper device
would be an ideal gadget for the hacker’s workbench, as it allows for browsing through schematics and datasheets with a minimum of eye strain. Now we can also add a copy of
The Pinouts Book
to the list of things
we’d install on our hacker-friendly e-ink compendium
.
Thanks to [karnathe] on the
Hackaday Discord server
for tipping us off to this one. | 42 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410226",
"author": "metalman",
"timestamp": "2021-12-28T16:42:06",
"content": "Humbled and thankfull.I would like to make similar contrebutionsat some time in my own field someday.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6410227",
... | 1,760,372,839.087169 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/28/quantum-atomic-interferometer-for-precision-motion-sensing/ | Quantum Atomic Interferometer For Precision Motion Sensing | Dave Rowntree | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"atomic interferometer",
"getter",
"gyrometer",
"laser",
"optical",
"quantum accelerometer",
"rubidium",
"vacuum"
] | The current state of the art of embedded motion sensing is based around micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) devices. These miracles of microfabrication use tiny silicon structures, configured to detect acceleration and rotational velocity in three dimensions. Accumulate these accelerations and rotations, and you’ve got a device that can find its orientation and track movement without any external waypoints. This is the basis of the technique of dead reckoning.
Why do we care about dead reckoning anyway? Surely GPS and related positioning systems are good enough? Above ground GPS is usually good enough, but underwater and underground this simply won’t work. Even heading indoors has a dramatic effect on the GPS signal strength, so yes, we need another way for some applications.
Right now, the current state of the art in portable sensors are MEMS devices, and you can get them for the cost of a hamburger. But if you want the ultimate in accuracy, you’ll want a quantum atomic interferometer. What that is, and how it will be possible to make one small enough to be useful, is half of the story. But first, let’s talk MEMS.
Fusion of The Sensors
Given an initial position and accumulated accelerations in 3D, it is possible to track position, for a short while at least. According to this (outdated)
Cambridge University report on Inertial navigation systems
, with a MEMS-based inertial tracking system, positional error can exceed 150 meters in under a minute, because the errors don’t average out, they accumulate.
Improvements can be made by fusing data from other sensors into the navigation model. It all depends on where you are; here on earth such additional data inputs could be taken from a magnetometer, and also an altimeter. It has been shown that adding the magnetometer data alone can reduce that 150 meter error to only 5 meters. The study is a few years old, but we expect it to be about right, as progress with MEMS technology has not improved all that much.
Want to see how good or bad inertial navigation is in real life? A fantastic device for doing all this complicated multi-sensor fusion stuff is the
Bosch BNO055
, for which Adafruit have helpfully
popped on a module
. You just might want to brush up on
quaternions
before you do, mind.
All these measurements will exhibit an error, which will have some particular statistical distribution. One technique to mitigate this error is by using
Kalman filtering
, which is used heavily by inertial navigation systems. A Kalman filter enables a better understanding of the unknowns in a model, and essentially adjusts itself over time, to allow more influence from measurement points with the least uncertainty. The result is hopefully a better positional fix and an idea of which way you’re currently pointing. But, you still can’t get away with it for long, the error is still there, and it will still accumulate given enough time. Current research seems to suggest an error figure of about 5% of total distance travelled, best case. Longer term, sub-meter inertial navigation is the goal, and we aren’t there yet.
MEMS Sensors: Sources of Error
A MEMS Gyro uses a resonating mass inside an isolated frame
The MEMS gyro is a dynamic device, in that it consists of a tiny vibrating structure that detects angular rotation rate by leveraging the coriolis effect. A mechanical shift is induced orthogonal to the vibration direction, which is sensed as a small change in capacitance.
Gyro sensors typically exhibit two main kinds of error; a rate bias and an angle random walk error, the latter is due to thermo-mechanical white noise and flicker noise in the signal chain electronics. The random walk error grows with time, which is what contributes mostly to the overall absolute orientation error. The rate bias however can be measured long-term and largely cancelled out. There are some other so-called calibration effects that affect stability and will also contribute error terms that are harder to compensate for.
A MEMS accelerometer is much simpler
The MEMS accelerometer has a more static structure, and is essentially a sprung element which deflects in one axis to due to acceleration. This mechanical shift is also picked up as a tiny change in capacitance. Again, we have the same two main sources of error; acceleration bias error and velocity random walk error. The bias error now is more complicated, because on this planet we have gravity, and in order to cancel out the bias error, we need to know the orientation of the sensor. Luckily with a multi-sensor fusion system, the orientation can be measured and this bias can be compensated. The velocity random walk error is again due to thermo-mechanical effects and accumulates with time. Also, as with the gyro, there are additional error factors that add to problem.
Other sensors used for inertial navigation systems will all have their own sources of error, and add to the complexity of the problem. There are optical gyros available, for example the
ring laser gyro,
and more esoteric devices, but these are not necessarily easy to make really small. For example, the ring laser gyro is less accurate the smaller you make it due to the limit in the maximum beam path length. This is why current research is taking a very different approach to this type of sensing; namely the
atom interferometer
.
Atom Interferometry
Back in 1924 French physicist Louis de Broglie proposed that matter behaves like a wave, with a wavelength equal to the Planck constant divided by its momentum. This meant that just like light, matter waves can be diffracted and produce interference patterns. In this case matter waves are manipulated with lasers, which leads us into the fun part. Remember though, that unlike light, atoms are massive and such, gravity has an influence, as we shall see.
Six intersecting orthogonal laser beams and a pair of anti-Helmholtz coils form a magneto-optical trap
Most atom interferometer experiments seem to operate similarly, in that they all depend upon a high vacuum pressure vessel, and utilise a magneto-optical trap to cool and slow down a stream of rubidium atoms produced from some source. This device uses six intersecting, circularly polarised laser beams, aimed at the centre of the device, with a pair of anti-Helmholtz coils at the top and bottom.
A
Helmholtz coil
is configured to generate a uniform magnetic field, using a single pair of coils, with current flowing in the same direction. The anti-Helmholtz coil (aka Maxwell gradient coil) simply flips one of the coils over, to produce a magnetic field gradient, with a field zero at the centre. Exactly what we need to trap those pesky little atoms.
The photons from the containment lasers give the atoms a little kick in momentum, and due to the Zeeman effect, the specially-shaped magnetic field ensures that atoms are more likely to get pushed back towards the optical null in the centre of the trap. On average the atoms in the trap centre slow down enough to reach temperatures of a few
micro
-kelvin. Which is jolly chilly.
The next bit is where things get a bit freaky. The trap is turned off, and immediately each of the suitably frigid atoms is hit with a specially prepared laser pulse, formed by a pair of opposing lasers, either Raman or Bragg transitions are effected, depending on the properties of the laser pulses. The atoms are forced into a quantum superposition of being both hit and not hit by the pulse. This causes the atoms to change momentum and state. (And not, simultaneously, it’s superposition of states, right?) The atom cloud diverges and depending on the motion of the cell, interferes with itself as it expands out from trap centre.
When a low power laser illuminates the atom cloud, the superposition collapses and the interference pattern is observed on a suitably placed CCD. By decoding this pattern it is possible to
infer angular velocity as well as acceleration
, with incredible accuracy that will open up new applications both on earth and beyond.
NASA are interested for one
. For more detail on atom interferometry, checkout this
introduction from Berkeley Physics
.
Practicality
All of this is of little use as a navigation device if you can’t get it out of the lab and shrink it down in size, make it reliable and make it cheap. Sounds easy, right? Let’s look at the requirements for an atomic gyroscope: you need a pressure vessel with optically pure windows, usually sapphire, that can maintain a pressure of less than 10
-7
torr with very low contamination. You also need the lasers themselves, with associated filters and control electronics. All of those things can be miniaturized, even down to chip size, but maintaining that vacuum is a big challenge. The usual way to get down to such low vacuum pressure is with a
turbomolecular pump
, in combination by an
ion pump
. Making these smaller has proved problematic.
A Passive Pumped Vacuum Package
Now there is a possibility of removing the need for that complex and bulky vacuum system. A team from Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Oklahoma,
have developed a technique for achieving the ultra-high vacuum (UHV) needed for inertial guidance atomic gyroscope applications
, without the need for turbo pumps, ion pumps or any pumps at all. OK, that last bit isn’t strictly true, as they needed to get the vacuum to the desired level first and the standard techniques were needed for that, but once the initial conditions were achieved, the pressure vessel could be sealed off permanently, and the pumps removed.
Typical Zirconium sintered getter via saesgetters.com
The system relies on chemisorption using
sintered porous getters,
which are a kind of non-evaporable getter (NEG). These simple passive devices are formed from a sintered porous structure of zirconium powder and other materials, wrapped around an electrical heating element. When manufactured they are exposed to air, forming a passivating coating and protecting them from contamination. When installed in a vacuum chamber, the getter is activated by heating it up during the pump-down process. This diffuses the passivation layer into the bulk of the structure and provides an activated surface ready for adsorbing any contaminants during pump-down and afterwards when the chamber is sealed off. Getters are pretty common in many household vacuum vessel devices, from incandescent light bulbs, to radio valves, but the getters used here are a little bit more specialised than those of old, and capable of grabbing more atoms over a longer period and keep them contained.
The whole point here is that in order to have a small pure group of super cool rubidium atoms to poke with lasers, you first need to not have any other atoms kicking around, getting in the way. Such getters are super important for grabbing rogue atoms and maintaining this purity.
Outgassing is a problem with ultra-high vacuum devices. Contaminant gasses present in the structure of the housing diffuse out into the pressure vessel, contaminating the vacuum. Another related issue is that of permeation from the outside of the vessel. NEG devices work on chemical principles, so any helium that manages to diffuse into the vacuum from outside the enclosure will not react with the getter, and will contaminate the vacuum. Both of these problems were minimised by careful selection of materials. The frame was made from pure titanium, which had a low hydrogen content, with the windows made from sapphire, which apparently has no measurable helium permeability. These two materials have closely matched thermal expansion coefficients, which helps to maintain the vacuum seal and reduce stress on the structure as the temperature drops.
The team found that once pumped-down and sealed the ‘passively pumped’ vessel could maintain the 10e-9 torr vacuum pressure needed for over 200 days, and that means if all the other components could be successfully miniaturised, there is now a path to producing the first small and therefore portable MOT, and with it an atom interferometer capable of inertial guidance applications. Of course, since the application here is essentially an accelerometer, it can be used as a super-sensitive gravimeter which would be useful for ground surveying for sectors such as oil and mineral exploration as well as for geological research. | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410224",
"author": "Piotrsko",
"timestamp": "2021-12-28T16:24:45",
"content": "Whose hamburger? Big difference between a designer burger at an expensive bistro versus a happy meal",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6410236",
... | 1,760,372,838.971681 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/28/laser-doping-his-way-to-homemade-silicon-chips/ | Laser Doping His Way To Homemade Silicon Chips | Dan Maloney | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"Boron",
"dopant",
"dope",
"doping",
"fiber laser",
"laser",
"phosphorus",
"silicon",
"wafer"
] | It’s a pity that more electronics enthusiasts haven’t taken the hobby to its ultimate level: making your own semiconductors. There are plenty of good reasons for that: chief among them is the huge expense involved in obtaining the necessary equipment. But for the sufficiently clever, there are ways around that.
[Zachary Tong] is dipping his toes into the DIY semiconductor world, and further to the goal of keeping costs to a hobbyist scale, is
experimenting with laser doping of silicon
. Doping is the process of adding impurities to silicon wafers in a controlled manner to alter the electrical properties of the semiconductor. [Zach]’s doping method is a more localized version of the simple thermal diffusion method, which drives a dopant like phosphorus into silicon using high temperatures, but instead of using a tube furnace, he’s using a fiber laser.
The video below shows his two-step process, which first blasts the silicon oxide layer off the wafer before doping with the laser shining through a bath of phosphoric acid. The process is admittedly fussy, and the results were mixed at best. [Zach]’s testing seems to suggest that some doping occurred, and it even looks like he managed to make something reasonably diode-like using the method.
Although the jury is still out on [Zach]’s method, we thought the effort was the important bit here. Granted, not everyone has a fiber laser kicking around to replicate his results, but it’s always good to see progress in the DIY semiconductor field. Here’s hoping [Zach]’s work, along with
the stuff that [Sam Zeloof] is doing
, kicks off a spate of garage semiconductor fabs.
Thanks to [BaldPower] for the tip! | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410201",
"author": "Peter+Burkimsher",
"timestamp": "2021-12-28T13:37:51",
"content": "Would it be possible to use this technology to use laser doping to etch a diffraction grating for photonic experimens?I’m specifically interested in trying to make a 0.3 µm filter for UV light, f... | 1,760,372,838.91436 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/28/turing-ring-is-compact/ | Turing Ring Is Compact | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"arduino nano",
"neopixel",
"turning machine"
] | One of the problems with a classic Turing machine is the tape must be infinitely long. [Mark’s]
Turing Ring
still doesn’t have an infinite tape, but it does make it circular to save space. That along with a very clever and capable UI makes this one of the most usable Turing machines we’ve seen. You can see a demo in the video below.
The device uses an Arduino Nano, a Neopixel ring, an encoder, and a laser-cut enclosure that looks great. The minimal UI has several modes and the video below takes you through all of them.
You can even store tapes to EEPROM or the serial port, so that’s even more practical. Of course, you might wonder what practicality is a Turing machine? The honest answer is not much, but on the bright side, this one also has a clock mode so even when you aren’t explaining how a Turing machine works, it will make a good conversation piece.
We were impressed with the lettering on the case in addition to the simplicity of the user interface. [Mark] had won the LED ring in a competition so the total cost of this — to him — was low, but it wouldn’t be too much even if you bought all the pieces.
This one is certainly more compact than
the last Turing machine
we looked at. If you need a refresher on Turing machines and why they matter, here’s
some reading for you
. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410258",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2021-12-28T19:03:18",
"content": "I guess there’s not much to stop you from making this ring into a coil and having virtual loops in software, to essentially have a tape length that’s only limited by the available memory. Add a terabyte or... | 1,760,372,839.004849 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/27/custom-christmas-light-controller-blocks-blinks/ | Custom Christmas Light Controller Blocks Blinks | Tom Nardi | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"555 timer",
"74HC74D",
"h-bridge",
"power supply",
"square wave"
] | Finding that his recently purchased LED Christmas lights defaulted to an annoying blinking pattern that took a ridiculous
seven
button presses to disable each time they were powered up, [Matthew Millman] decided to
build a new power supply that keeps things nice and simple
. In his words, the goal was to enable “all lights on, no blinking or patterns of any sort”.
Connecting the existing power supply to his oscilloscope, [Matthew] found the stock “steady on” setting was a 72 VAC peak-to-peak square wave at about 500 Hz. To recreate this, he essentially needed to find a 36 VDC power supply and swap the polarity back and forth at the same frequency. In the end the closest thing he could find in the parts bin was a HP printer power supply that put out 30 volts, so the lights aren’t quite as bright as they were before, but at least they aren’t blinking.
To turn that into a pair of AC square waves, the power supply is connected to a common L298 H-Bridge module. You might expect a microcontroller to show up at this point, but [Matthew] went old school, and created his two alternating 500 Hz square waves with a 555 timer and a 74HC74D dual flip-flop.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have the time to get a custom PCB made before Santa’s big night. Though as he points out,
since legitimate L298s are backordered
well into next year anyway, having the board in hand wouldn’t have helped much. The end result is that the circuit has to live on a breadboard for the current holiday season, but hopefully around this time next year we’ll get a chance to see the final product. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410168",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2021-12-28T07:01:37",
"content": "@Tom Nardi said: “[Matthew] found the stock “steady on” setting was a 72 VAC peak-to-peak square wave at about 500 Hz. To recreate this, he essentially needed to find a 32 VDC power supply and swap the pola... | 1,760,372,839.132937 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/27/voice-command-made-mostly-easy/ | Voice Command Made Mostly Easy | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"speech recognition",
"voice",
"voice command",
"voice recognition"
] | Speech commands are all the rage on everything from digital assistants to cars. Adding it to your own projects is a lot of work, right? Maybe not. [Electronoobs] shows a
speech board
that lets you easily integrate 255 voice commands via serial communications with a host computer. You can see the review in the video below.
He had actually used a similar board before, but that version was a few years ago, and the new module has, of course, many new features. As of version 3.1, the board can handle 255 commands in a more flexible way than the older versions.
Although the board can handle 255 commands, it only listens for 7 of those at one time, which is an odd limitation. However, the older board had even stricter limits where you could only listen to one of three groups and each group had 5 commands. With the new board, you can pick any 7 of the 255 commands to be active at once. You can then replace some of the 7 with other commands based on context. For example, you might listen for a main menu command and, based on that selection, listen for a different set of second-level commands.s
The interface is either serial or I
2
C. We couldn’t help but think that if you could listen to 12 or 15 commands at once, you could have a set for listening to numbers which might be handy. Maybe version 4?
You train the commands using a microphone with an interactive wizard-like setup. The eventual target for this is a robot, but for now [Electronoobs] is just lighting up LEDs on command. But it looks very easy to use for whatever purpose as long as you can work out the limit of 7 commands.
It is harder to do, but you can make an Arduino
process speech by itself
. Even easier, with a
bigger processor
. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410144",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2021-12-28T03:47:44",
"content": "I remember reading about the old version thinking it was pretty interesting. In theory it might be possible to add a sort of bootstrap operating system, so you can use voice commands to program further voi... | 1,760,372,839.184599 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/27/single-bit-computer-from-vacuum-tubes/ | Single Bit Computer From Vacuum Tubes | Chris Lott | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"MC14500",
"microcontroller",
"vacuum tube computer"
] | Culminating a year-long project, [Usagi Electric] aka [David] has just wrapped up his
single-bit vacuum tube computer
. It is based on the
Motorola MC14500 1-bit industrial controller
, but since [David] changed the basic logic unit into an arithmetic-logic unit, he’s dubbing it the
UE14500
. Built on a wooden panel about 2.5 x 3 rabbit lengths excluding power supply. [David] admits he has cheated a little bit, in that he’s using two silicon diodes instead of a 6AL5 dual diode tube in his universal NOR gate on which the computer is based — but in his defense he notes that plenty of vacuum tube computers of the era used silicon diodes.
The tube he uses in the NOR gates is the 6AU6 miniature pentode, which he selected because of its availability, price, and suitability for low voltage. [David] runs this computer with two power supplies of +24 and -12 VDC, rather than the hundreds of volts typically used in vacuum tube designs. The modules are constructed on single-sided copper-clad PCB panels etched using a milling machine. The video below the break wraps up the 22-part series, where he fixes a few power supply issues and builds a remote front panel for I/O, and gives a demo of the computer in operation. Alas, this only completes one fourth of the project, as there are three more building blocks to build before the whole system is complete — Program Control (magnetic tape), RAM Memory bank, and a serial input/output module. We look forward to seeing the whole system up and running in the future.
We just wrote about
the MC14500 a few days ago
, and we’ve also covered [David]’s
vacuum tube implementation of a 555 timer
among other of his vacuum tube projects, several of which are featured on
his Hackaday.io page
. | 53 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410107",
"author": "spiritplumber",
"timestamp": "2021-12-28T00:20:44",
"content": "bnuuy",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6410108",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-12-28T00:... | 1,760,372,839.487673 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/27/taste-the-television-tttv/ | Taste The Television: TTTV | Chris Lott | [
"chemistry hacks",
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"Taste the TV",
"taste-o-vision",
"television",
"TTTV"
] | Associate Professor [Homei Miyashita] from Meiji University’s School of Science and Technology in Tokyo has developed
a new technology for reproducing taste on a television or monitor
, a system called
Taste the TV
(TTTV). The team of researchers used taste sensors to sample a variety of foods, and came up with a palette of 10 different aerosol flavors which can be combined in various ratios. The taste is generated in a staging area at the top of the screen onto a thin plastic film, which is then scrolled down into position.
Possible applications shown in the video below the break include cooking programs, restaurant menus, and wine tasting events. We’re not quite sure how popular this would be to consumers. Tele-tasting a cooking show with friends would be inconvenient, if not unsanitary. We’re also not aware that current video interface protocols such as HDMI or ATSC include any provisions for senses other than sight and sound. If you have access to scholarly journals, [Prof Miyashita] research paper on TTTV is available in the
34th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
.
We’ve written about a couple of taste-generating projects before, see
here
and
here
. | 18 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410074",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-12-27T21:42:46",
"content": "So now we will get to taste all of the crappy programs.Yecch!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6410076",
"author": "An... | 1,760,372,839.401608 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/27/whipping-together-a-little-ray-tracer-racer/ | Whipping Together A Little Ray Tracer Racer | Matthew Carlson | [
"Games",
"Software Development"
] | [
"racing",
"Raytracing",
"rtx",
"rust"
] | When you hear raytracing, you might think of complex dark algorithms that to stare too long at their source code invites the beginning of madness. And you’re technically not far off from the truth, but [h3r2tic] put a
small open-source ray tracing game demo up on GitHub
. The actual rust code powering the game is relatively short (just four files), with the longest file being the physics file. But, of course, there is a small mountain of code under this sample in the form of libraries.
Kajiya
,
physx-rs
, and
dolly
are the three libraries that make this little demo possible. Kajiya, in particular, is what makes raytracing possible as it uses the newer RTX features (so only more recent Nvidia and AMD cards are supported) and Vulkan bindings. But, of course, it isn’t wholly ray-traced as we are still several years out from proper real-time raytracing. Nevertheless, the blend between raytracing and traditional rasterization looks incredible. The most important thing about this simple tiny sample isn’t the game itself but what it stands for. It shows how easy it is to create a sample like this. Even just five years, creating a demo like this required massive effort and expertise.
Visually, it is stunning to look at. While the reflections are most apparent, the takeaway from this is the ease that real-time global illumination brings. A quick look through the code shows that there are very few lights in the scene, despite looking well lit with soft shadows. Traditional video games spend a significant amount of development time lighting a scene, placing additional lights, and tweaking them to make up for all the shortcuts that lighting has to take in a rasterized environment. As more and more games are built with raytracing in mind rather than tacked on at the end, we can ditch the small crumbling mountain of hacks that we are forced to use in games today and just rely on the rays to accurately light a scene.
If using a library for your raytracing seems too easy, perhaps
you’d like to take on the challenge of raytracing in excel
. Video after the break. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410130",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2021-12-28T01:35:23",
"content": "Too bad RTX video cards are basically unobtanium. (sigh)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6410470",
"author": "Knobby McFeck",
"... | 1,760,372,839.547011 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/27/its-printable-its-programmable-its-e-coli/ | It’s Printable, It’s Programmable, It’s E. Coli | Kristina Panos | [
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"biopolymer",
"E coli",
"fibrin",
"ink",
"microbes",
"microbial ink",
"printable bacteria"
] | Well, whaddya know? It seems that E. coli, the bane of Romaine and spinach everywhere, has at least one practical use.
Researchers at Harvard have created a kind of 3D-printable ink that is alive and made entirely of microbes produced by E. coli
. Although this is not the first so-called living ink, it does hold the title of the first living ink that doesn’t need any additional polymers to provide structure.
Passing the pillar test up to 16mm. Image via
Nature
Because the ink is alive, it is technically programmable in the sense that it can self-assemble proteins into nanofibers, and further assemble those into nanofiber networks that comprise hydrogels.
One of the researchers compared the ink to a seed, which has everything it needs to eventually grow into a glorious tree. In this way, the ink could be used as a renewable building material both on Earth and in space. Though the ink does not continue to grow after being printed, the resulting structure would be a living system that could theoretically heal itself.
The ink creation process begins when the researchers induce genetically-engineered bacteria cultures to grow the ink, which is also made of living cells. The ink is then harvested and becomes gelatin-like, holding its shape well enough to go through a 3D printer. It even passes the bridging test, supporting its own weight between pillars placed up to 16 mm apart. (We’d like to see a Benchie.)
Microbial Mechanics
Is it weird to work with microbes? Not really. They are already a part of vitamins and some perfumes, and other types of microbes are out there maturing into biodegradable plastics. E. coli has been used before to create a hydrogel capable of growing and regeneration, but it wasn’t viscous enough to pass through a printer. So they genetically engineered the E. coli to produce a natural polymer from fibrin, which is a blood-clotting polymer possessed by humans and animals alike. The polymer created by the bacteria is designed to link together into a network, which one researcher likened to a heavy-duty cargo net.
This all-microbe E. ink is still being developed. So far, it is already quite an improvement over what was viable only five years ago. Why 3D prints with E. coli? The ink showed promise as a drug delivery system, for example. In a test, the ink was shown to release an anti-cancer drug called azurin after being exposed to a certain chemical. One of those functions might be cleaning up the environment. In another test, the ink was proven to sequester the toxin BPA from its surroundings.
Though this all sounds great, the ink is still in development and has a way to go. For one thing, it doesn’t withstand drying out, but that may not be an obstacle if the ink is combined with tissue engineering. However, if we’re going to use it as a self-regenerating material for building habitats on Earth and in space, it will have to become more stable.
Via [
New York Times
] | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410037",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-12-27T18:08:53",
"content": "What could possibly go wrong?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6410049",
"author": "Feinfinger (with diabolic la... | 1,760,372,839.596161 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/27/rc3-2021-now-here-nowhere/ | RC3 2021: Now Here, Nowhere | Elliot Williams | [
"cons",
"News"
] | [
"Chaos Computer Club",
"rC3"
] | The annual meeting of the Chaos Computer Club, Germany’s giant hacker group,
is online again this year
. While those of us here are sad that we don’t get to see our hacker friends in person, our loss is your gain — the whole thing is online for the entire world to enjoy.
This year’s Congress has gone entirely decentralized, with many local clubs hosting their own video streams and “stages”. Instead of four tracks, there are now six or seven tracks of talks going on simultaneously, so prepare to be overwhelmed by choice. You can find the
overall schedule here
, so if you see anything you’d like to watch, you’ll know when to tune in.
Like last year, there is also a
parallel 2D simulation world
, like
Zelda
with videoconferencing, but for which you’ll need a ticket, and they’re sold out. (Check out
the demo video
if you want to see what that’s about.) And what would a conference be without
t-shirts
,
armbands
, and even a
sticker exchange
? Or course, it all has to be done by mail, but you do what you can.
We’ll be keeping our eyes on the talks, and let you know if we see anything good. If you do the same, let us know in the comments! | 6 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6410033",
"author": "The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-12-27T18:02:08",
"content": "The 2D Parallel World seems interesting.Did it have an audio track?(I heard nothing)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "64... | 1,760,372,839.633937 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/12/27/the-label-says-hdmi-2-1-but-that-doesnt-mean-youll-get-it/ | The Label Says HDMI 2.1 But That Doesn’t Mean You’ll Get It | Lewin Day | [
"Business",
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"home entertainment hacks",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"hdmi",
"HDMI 2.0",
"HDMI 2.1",
"HDMI Licencing Authority",
"hdr",
"news",
"standards"
] | Technology moves quickly these days as consumers continue to demand more data and more pixels. We see regular updates to standards for USB and RAM continually coming down the pipeline as the quest for greater performance goes on.
HDMI 2.1 is the latest version of the popular audio-visual interface, and promises a raft of new features and greater performance than preceding versions of the standard. As it turns out, though, buying a new monitor or TV with an HDMI 2.1 logo on the box doesn’t mean you’ll get any of those new features,
as discovered by TFT Central.
The New Hotness
If you’re intending to use HDMI 2.1 for higher-bandwidth video modes and certain other features, you’ll need a Ultra High Speed cable in order to guarantee proper operation. Credit:
HDMI.org
HDMI 2.1 aimed to deliver multiple upgrades to the standard. The new Fixed Rate Link (FRL) signalling mode is the headline piece, providing up to 48 Gbps bandwidth, a major upgrade over the 18 Gbps possible in HDMI 2.0 using Transition Minimised Differential Signalling, or TMDS. TMDS remains a part of HDMI 2.1 for backwards compatibility, but FRL is key to enabling the higher resolutions, frame rates, and color depths possible with HDMI 2.1.
Thanks to FRL, the new standard allows for the display of 4K, 8K, and even 10K content at up to 120 Hz refresh rates. Display Stream Compression is used to enable the absolute highest resolutions and frame rates, but HDMI 2.1 supports uncompressed transport of video at up to 120 Hz for 4K or 60 Hz for 8K. The added bandwidth is also useful for running high-resolution video at greater color depths, such as displaying 4K video at 60 Hz with 10 bit per channel color.
Also new is the Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) technology, which helps reduce tearing when gaming or watching video from other sources where frame rates vary. Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) also allows displays to detect if a video input is from something like a game console. In this situation, the display can then automatically switch to a low-latency display mode with minimal image processing to cut down on visual lag.
A handful of other features were included too, like Quick Media Switching to reduce the time blank screens are displayed when swapping from one piece of content to another. There’s also special Dynamic HDR technology which can send data for color control on a frame-by frame basis.
Overall, HDMI 2.1 offers significant improvements in terms of resolutions and frame rates that are now possible, and this is paired with a raft of updates that promise better image quality and cut down on lag.
Dynamic HDR technology in HDMI 2.1 lets color settings be altered from scene to scene or even frame-by-frame to let content creators get the most vibrancy possible. Credit:
HDMI.org
Not Necessarily Included
A table showing the feature set of each version of the HDMI standard. However, note that devices labelled as “HDMI 2.1” may not actually support any of the additional listed features. Credit:
HDMI.org
The problem with the new standard became clear with the release of a Xiaomi monitor which touted itself as HDMI 2.1 compatible. Despite what it says on the box, however, the monitor included absolutely nothing from the new HDMI standard. No higher resolutions or frame rates were available, nor the useful VRR or ALLM features either. Instead, everything the monitor could do basically fell under the HDMI 2.0 standard.
Amazingly, this is the appropriate thing to do according to the HDMI Licensing Authority. In response to queries from TFT Central, the organization indicated that HDMI 2.0 no longer exists and that devices could no longer be certified as such. Instead, HDMI 2.0 functionality is considered a subset of HDMI 2.1, and new devices must be labelled with the HDMI 2.1 moniker. All the new features of HDMI 2.1 are considered “optional,” and it is up to consumers to check with manufacturers and resellers as to the actual specific features included in the device.
Other embarrassments have occurred too. Yamaha has had to supply replacement boards for “HDMI 2.1” receivers that were unable to handle the full 48 Gbps bandwidth of the standard, leading to black screens when customers attempted to use them with high-resolution, high-framerate sources.
Even with the upgrade
, the hardware still only supports 24 Gbps bandwidth, leaving them unable to provide the full benefits of HDMI 2.1 functionality. Other manufacturers
have faced similar woes
, surprisingly not testing their hardware in all display modes prior to launch.
The result?
Forum posts
full of alphabet soup like “4K+120Hz+10-bit+HDR+RGB+VRR” and “8K+60Hz+10-bit+HDR+4.2.0+VRR” as people desperately try to communicate the precise feature sets available in given hardware. If only there was some overarching standard that unambiguously indicated what a given piece of hardware could actually support!
A Poor State of Affairs
Confusion around the functionality included in new standards is not a new thing; USB has had its own fair share of troubles
in recent years
. However, the USB-IF at least managed to make the names of its standards mean something; there’s just too many of them,
and it gets really confusing
.
As for HDMI though, the decisions made muddy the waters by not deciding. It’s difficult to understand why the HDMI Licensing Authority could not have kept handing out HDMI 2.0 certifications for devices that didn’t implement anything from HDMI 2.1.
In any case, the organization has made it clear that this is the way forward.
Speaking to The Verge
, spokesperson for HDMI.org Douglas Wright confirmed that devices can not be certified for the HDMI 2.0 standard any longer. As for the confusion sown into the marketplace, Wright simply responded that “We are all dependent on manufacturers and resellers correctly stating which features their devices support.”
So, what is one to do when shopping for a new monitor, television, or games console? Simply checking if the device has “HDMI 2.1” will not be enough to guarantee you any particular level of functionality. Instead, you’ll have to make yourself familiar with the specific features of the standard that are important to you, as well as the resolutions, frame rates, and color depths that you intend to run your hardware at. Then, you’ll have to hope that manufacturers and resellers actually publish detailed specifications so you can check you’re getting what you really want.
It seems like an unnecessarily painful state of affairs, but sadly that’s just the way it is. One can speculate that it was commercial pressure that drove the decision, with neither TV manufacturers nor retailers wanting to be stuck with “old” HDMI 2.0 stock on the shelf in the face of newer models that “support” a new standard. Alternatively, there may be some other arcane reasoning that we’re yet to understand. As it is, though, make sure you’re checking carefully when you’re next purchasing hardware, lest you get home and hook everything up, only to be disappointed. | 48 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6409998",
"author": "Blodgar",
"timestamp": "2021-12-27T15:15:01",
"content": "Caveat Emptor! Or as the manufacturers and standards group are implying, “Chuck you, Farley! “",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6410317",
"a... | 1,760,372,839.787193 |
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