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https://hackaday.com/2021/11/05/the-linux-x86-journey-to-main/ | The Linux X86 Journey To Main() | Al Williams | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"assembly",
"elaboration",
"linux",
"main",
"startup",
"x86"
] | Have you ever had a program crash before your
main
function executes? it is rare, but it can happen. When it does, you need to understand what happens behind the scenes between the time the operating system starts your program and your first line of code in
main
executes. Luckily [Patrick Horgan] has
a tutorial about the subject
that’s very detailed. It doesn’t cover statically linked libraries but, as he points out, if you understand what he does cover, that’s easy to figure out on your own.
The operating system, it turns out, knows nothing about main. It does, however, know about a symbol called _start. Your runtime library provides this. That code contains some stack manipulation and eventually calls
__libc_start_main
which is also provided by the library.
From there, you wind up with some trickery to manage the program’s environment and more library calls such as
__libc_init_first
and
__libc_init
do some more setup work. You’d think that would get you close, but there’s plenty more to do including setting up for
at_exit
and thunking for position-independent code, not to mention dynamically linked libraries.
This is one of those topics it will seem like you don’t really need until you do. Even if you use another language to generate executables, they all have to follow these steps somewhere. Granted, for many languages the startup is static and unlikely to require you to debug it, but it is still good to know what’s going on under the hood.
If you want a quick Linux assembly tutorial,
have at it
. If you prefer to shovel your assembly into a C source code file,
you can do that, too
. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6397037",
"author": "Ghent the Slicer",
"timestamp": "2021-11-06T02:33:08",
"content": "The info is gcc/glibc specific if you are using a different compiler/runtime library the mechanics are not the same. Much of this is dictated by the glibc ABI.The ELF loader is a piece of code th... | 1,760,372,896.258017 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/05/automation-allows-you-to-leaf-your-plants-alone/ | Automation Allows You To Leaf Your Plants Alone | Stephen Ogier | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"automated plant care",
"automatic plant watering",
"automation",
"ESP32",
"home automation",
"homeassistant",
"plants",
"soil moisture sensor",
"temperature sensor"
] | The greatest threat to a potted plant stems from its owner’s forgetfulness, but [Sasa Karanovic] has created an automation system that will keep his plants from getting too thirsty. Over the past year [Sasa] has been documenting an elegant system for monitoring and watering plants which has now blossomed into a
fully automated solution
.
If you haven’t seen the
earlier
stages
of the project, they’re definitely worth checking out. The short version is that [Sasa] has developed a watering system that uses I
2
C to communicate with soil moisture, temperature, and light sensors as well as to control solenoids that allow for individual plants to be watered as needed. An ESP32 serves as a bridge, allowing for the sensors to be read and the water to be dispensed via an HTTP interface.
In this final part, [Sasa] integrates his watering system into a home automation system. He uses a MySQL database to store logs of sensor data and watering activity, and n8n to automate measurement and watering. If something isn’t quite right, the system will even send him a Telegram notification that something is amiss.
If you think automation might be the best way to save your plants from a slow death, [Sasa] has kindly shared his excellent work on
GitHub
. Even if you don’t have a green thumb, this is still a great example of how to develop a home automation solution from scratch. If you’re more interested in television than gardening, check out [Sasa]’s
approach to replacing a remote control with a web interface
! | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6397025",
"author": "steelman",
"timestamp": "2021-11-06T01:35:25",
"content": "Interesting. Alas, there seems to be no information about the actuator part of the system: pump and valves. Electronics is hard to design and build, but the right actuators are hard hard to find and sou... | 1,760,372,896.115012 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/05/pulp-molding-a-use-for-cardboard-confetti/ | Pulp-Molding: A Use For Cardboard Confetti | Kristina Panos | [
"green hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"cardboard",
"paper pulp",
"PVA glue",
"rice paste"
] | We’re pretty sure that we don’t have to tell you how great cardboard is. You probably sing the praises yourself and use it for everything from a work surface protective layer to a prototype of your next amazing build. But if you still find yourself flush with cardboard even after all that, here’s one thing you can do with all those pieces that are too small to use for anything else–
chuck them in an old blender, whip up some cardboard pulp, and press that gunk into some 3D-printed molds
.
In addition to a step-by-step of the process, [flowalistik] offers a mold set of STL files for various useful items like a pencil holder, a box with a lid, a tray, and a coaster, as well as the Fusion 360 files in case you want to change them around. You might want to seal the coaster with something protective so that it doesn’t mold/disintegrate/bloom from condensation.
Each part consists of the walls, the wall clip that keeps them closed, but allows for de-molding and reuse, the bottom lid, and the top lid. All these prints need to be pretty high-res so that they can withstand the pressure of the clamp holding it all together. [flowalistik] recommends a layer height no larger than .03mm and a 20% infill.
The process of making the pulp itself is fairly simple, and the recipe only calls for water and some kind of binder. To start, remove all tape, coatings, staples, and anything else non-soluble from the cardboard. Cut it into bite-sized pieces your blender will enjoy, and add water and PVA glue or rice paste. Mix it up, remove the excess water by squeezing your pulp inside of a piece of cloth, and then use it to fill up your mold. You’ll want to press out the water as you go and fill it further, then finally apply the clamp. You can start de-molding parts on a schedule, starting with the clamp after about six hours. Once it’s fully dried in about two days, you can treat it like MDF and sand, cut, or even drill it. We think some of these would look pretty good with a coat of paint.
Need your objects to be more sturdy? Keep that printer warmed up —
you can use prints to cast concrete, too
. | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396996",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2021-11-05T20:30:19",
"content": "Next up, 3D printers that print using cardboard pulp.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6397009",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,372,896.361559 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/04/curious-marc-takes-on-sewing-machine-repair/ | Curious Marc Takes On Sewing Machine Repair | Adam Fabio | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"CuriousMarc",
"repair",
"sew",
"sewing",
"sewing machine"
] | Even the most talented engineers can be stymied by simple repair projects. In this case,
repairing a broken sewing machine has [CuriousMarc] all tangled up.
[Marc] is probably best known as a part of the team who
managed to restore and boot up an apollo guidance computer
, but he’s worked with
plenty of other vintage machines
.
This problem hit much closer to home. [Marc’s] daughter wanted to sew a Halloween costume. The machine would boot up fine, but when attempting to sew, it would make a bit of noise, then beep and display “The safety device has been activated”. Not very helpful.
The sewing machine in question is called “Baby Lock Decorator’s Choice” and is manufactured by Brother for Juken. [Marc] of course dug in, and quickly found himself stymied by a clamshell case that just didn’t want to come apart. This is the point where many of us would apply just a little too much force when prying and be rewarded with a broken case.
[CuriuosMarc] is thankfully the more patient sort. Rather than become [FuriousMarc], he carefully persevered to find a hidden screw holding things together. The screw could only be accessed by inserting a screwdriver through a tiny access hole on the front chassis of the machine.
With the screw out, a couple of molded clips were all that held the case sides together. After popping them, [Marc] was finally able to fix the real problem: A toothed belt that had slipped off its cog. That’s it — just a loose belt. The cryptic error code most likely was due to the machine realizing it the motor was on, but the machine wasn’t moving – which would generally indicate something stuck or tangled in the thread path.
This type of repair would be much easier if service manuals were readily available. We did a quick search for this model but didn’t find anything freely available.
Have you gotten stuck by a simple repair? Tell us about it down in the comments. | 29 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396711",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-11-04T15:25:04",
"content": "“The machine would boot up fine, but when attempting to sew, it would make a bit of noise, then beep and display “The safety device has been activated”.”The store where my wife bought hers, corrects anyone th... | 1,760,372,896.17699 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/04/weird-als-monster-battlestation-is-now-just-a-reasonably-fast-pc/ | Weird Al’s Monster Battlestation Is Now Just A Reasonably Fast PC | Chris Wilkinson | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"modem waxing",
"pentium",
"weird al"
] | Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers. If the vintage computing community ever chooses an official anthem, count my vote for
It’s All About The Pentiums
by “Weird Al” Yankovic. More than twenty years after its release, this track and its
music video (with Drew Carey!)
are still just as enjoyable as they ever were, with the track’s stinging barbs and computing references somehow only improving over time.
In the track, Weird Al takes on the role of ‘king of the nerds’ with his rock star-esque portrayal of a nameless personal computing legend, someone who de-fragments their hard drive “for thrills” and upgrades their system “at least twice a day”. The lyrics are a real goldmine for anyone that is a fan of 1990s computing, but what stands out to me is the absurd hardware that Weird Al’s character claims to own.
Absurd by 1990s standards, maybe. Not so much anymore. Even with the ongoing chip shortage and other logistic shortfalls, everyone now has the opportunity to start cruising cyberspace like Weird Al and truly become the “king of the spreadsheets”. However, would it have even been possible to reach these lofty computing goals at the time of the parody’s release? Let’s check out both of these threads.
Processor and Memory
At the time of recording
It’s All About The Pentiums
, the Intel Pentium III was dominating the home computer market, specifically the ‘Katmai’ variant, advertised with clock speeds ranging from 450 MHz to 600 MHz. At the same time, the Pentium III Xeon was also available with the ‘Tanner’ core. Even with roughly the same clock speeds, the Xeon Pentium III variants would have pipped the home-oriented Pentium III, and it’s safe to assume that Weird Al’s PC-obsessed doppelganger would have opted for the server-class CPU. After all, two megabytes of L2 cache doesn’t come cheap! Money is clearly no obstacle when he’s calling Bill ‘Money’ Gates for tech support.
The Pentium III Processor (Coppermine, 1 GHz)
Intel still markets Pentium-branded processors, and their existence can be tentatively traced back through to the original Pentium cores and P6 microarchitecture from the 90s, including the Pentium III. These are budget x86-64 processors branded with the Pentium label, so they count. The new breed of Pentiums are obviously going to eclipse its 90s ancestors due to clock speed and architecture improvements, as is clear in
these benchmarks
.
More importantly, these new Pentium-branded processors are able to realize Weird Al’s still hefty requirement for one-hundred gigabytes of RAM. The original Pentium processors were based on 32-bit computing standards, and therefore only supported a maximum of four gigabytes of RAM. The new breed of ‘Pentium’ processors support 64-bit instructions, and each processor can easily address up to 128 GB of physical memory.
Physical Address Extension (PAE) was available on Windows 2000 Datacentre Server, which increased the amount of addressable RAM for a 32-bit processor to a gargantuan 32 GB, but this is still a far cry from the 100 GB requirement — not to mention that Datacentre Server wasn’t released until 2000, and was only sold to large businesses. PAE was introduced to the Linux kernel in 1999, but still wouldn’t have been able to support 100 GB of RAM. Dang.
If Weird Al really wanted more than 4 GB of RAM
and
needed to use Pentium processors, he could have built his own supercomputer. At the time, Cornell’s Wintel-based
AC3 Velocity Cluster
technically
supported hundreds of gigabytes of RAM across its dozens of nodes. I feel like Weird Al’s character would absolutely be the type to build his own Pentium-powered computing cluster, so we’ll call this plausible.
As mentioned, putting together such a system today is relatively simple, even by ‘home’ standards. There are dozens of possible configurations using a Pentium-class processor, 128 GB of RAM and a compatible motherboard. While pairing such an underwhelming CPU with a (still) very large amount of RAM would be ridiculous, it’s absolutely possible. It’s even reasonably affordable.
Input/Output
Weird Al mentions he “installed a T1 line” to his house. With data rates at a blazing 1.554 megabits per second, this was one of the fastest ways to connect to the Internet in the late 90s, and was available over twisted-pair copper or fiber optic cabling. Weird Al wasn’t the only one that understood the virtues of a T1 line – even Comic
When I first saw this episode of
The Simpsons
, I didn’t know what a T1 line even was, but I knew I wanted one
Book Guy on the Simpsons knew he had to have it, despite the eye-watering costs.
While T1 connections have been largely displaced by modern, and far cheaper, fixed broadband and wireless, some businesses still opt for the T1 standard due to its famed reliability. So while it’s definitely, probably, maybe still possible to hook up a T1 line at home, you would be far better to use literally any modern alternative, including cellular.
The lyrics also speak of a monitor “forty inches wide”, which would have been absurdly large for the time. Most CRT-based monitors of the time period were available in sizes up to 21” or thereabouts. One of the largest CRTs ever produced was the Sony PVM-4300, which boasted an incredible 43” of screen real estate. However, this immense screen size required a similarly immense table, or indeed floor. Even the
service manual
warns “make sure the floor is strong enough”, as the 4300 weighs in at over 440 lb (over 200 kg).
Released in 1990, it’s entirely possible that Weird Al imported one of these floor-shattering CRTs from Japan for his PC battlestation , however its utility as a computer monitor was probably questionable, given it was a
video
monitor built around the television standards. It goes without saying that LED and LCD technology has brought such large computer monitors well within the realm of possibility, and many examples are presently available. As an added bonus, you don’t need a forklift to move it around.
Finally for this section, I think we all know what a ‘mizouse’ is. Let’s all agree to call it a ‘mizouse’ from now on. No? Just me?
The Savage Computing Burns
To wrap up this rambling retrospective, I’ll briefly touch on some of the jokes that Weird Al cracks about inferior computing setups during
Pentiums
.
Waxing your modem?
This is how to wax your modem, in case anyone was wondering
What, you’ve never waxed your modem before? As previously mentioned, Weird Al is set with his T1 line, which leaves the “dumbest newbies” desperately applying wax to their modems to try “make it go faster”. I’m almost certain that wax has no effect on modem speeds. Almost. Make sure to let Hackaday know via the tip line if you have heard differently.
You’re using a 286? Don’t make me laugh. Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?
‘Well,
actually
,’ this burn doesn’t really translate. The 80286 processor was more than suitable for running Windows 3.1, however Windows 95 and later versions were not compatible with the 286 due to limitations of the processor architecture. If it had been compatible, it may well have taken an unreasonably long time to boot.
Windows 95 was best paired with Pentium-class processors, however it was compatible with the 386SX CPU and faster. It was also possible to install Windows 98 on a 386 processor using an
undocumented switch during installation
, which forced the installer to ignore the minimum processor requirements.
So maybe Weird Al just misspoke, and he should have referred to the more compatible, but still frighteningly out-of-date, 386 processor, just so the punchline landed more firmly. Or, is it possible that I’m just looking at all this too closely?
Back up your whole hard drive on a floppy diskette?
This one can be unpacked quite a bit. The burn was probably referring to the ubiquitous 3.5″ 1.44 MB floppy diskette, so we’ll base our assumptions there for now. In the 1980s, hard disk drive sizes were typically in the order of 10 MB to 20 MB, with capacities steadily increasing into the 1990s and beyond. By 1999, most hard disk drives would have stored multiple gigabytes, so it’s hard to imagine a scenario where anyone would be backing up their entire hard drive to a floppy diskette at any point in time.
Or, is it? Fans of MS-DOS were still hanging on throughout the 90s and even beyond, so it’s not unreasonable to think that some luddite was still getting by with a bare-bones installation of DOS with a few mission-critical applications on their AT or XT-class computer. Without the bloat of Windows, this burn actually makes a lot of sense — after all, DOS was originally designed to be installed and booted from a floppy disk, with user applications usually stored and run from the second floppy drive. Even Windows 3.1 can be
hacked to boot and run entirely from a floppy diskette
.
Then there is the LS-120 SuperDisk, which for a time looked like it would be the ultimate replacement for the traditional floppy disk format. With a capacity of 120 MB, you’re still not going to fit a Windows 95 installation plus applications onto a diskette, but earlier versions of Windows plus applications, documents and games could absolutely fit onto one of these disks.
There’s also LS-240 drives and Zip Disk technology. But, let’s not go there, otherwise this article is going to go on forever.
You’re the biggest joke on the Internet
Not much to say here, just that this hurts way more in 2021 than it did in 1999. Leave your friendly comments below! | 92 | 36 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396674",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-11-04T14:10:03",
"content": "I shamefully relinquish my Nerd credentials…I had never heard of that Weird Al song…(sigh!)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6396772",
"author":... | 1,760,372,896.567492 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/04/mach-20-in-a-wind-tunnel-yes-its-rocket-science/ | Mach 20 In A Wind Tunnel: Yes, It’s Rocket Science | Ryan Flowers | [
"hardware",
"Misc Hacks",
"Space"
] | [
"Bernoulli's principle",
"helium",
"hypersonic wind tunnel",
"rocket science",
"wind tunnel"
] | Hypersonic speeds are defined by those exceeding Mach 5, and lately there’s been a lot of buzz about unmanned hypersonic vehicles making test flights. Vehicles returning from orbital flight also travel at hypersonic speeds as they do their best to transition back to the terrestrial realm. Before anything leaves ground though, these machines are tested in wind tunnels. [Scott Manley]’s video “
How Hypersonic Wind Tunnels Recreate Mach 20
” (embedded below) does a wonderful job of explaining the engineering behind wind tunnels for testing hypersonic vehicles.
While the earliest wind tunnels such as that used by the Wright Brothers were powered by simple fans, it is not possible for any propeller to surpass subsonic speeds. This is evidenced by there not being any propeller driven aircraft that can exceed Mach 1. Since an aircraft can’t reach those speeds with a propeller, it follows that a wind tunnel cannot be driven by propellers, fans, or any such device, and exceed Mach 1 wind speed, either. So it begs the question: Just how
do
they do it?
You might think that the answer lays in Bernoulli’s law – but it does not. You might think it involves compressing the air into smaller and smaller tubes and pipes. It doesn’t. As [Scott Manley] so expertly explains in the video below the break, it has quite a lot in common with actual rocket science.
You may be interested to know that we’ve covered some
DIY wind tunnel builds
as well as
a small desktop wind tunnel
in the past. While not hypersonic, they’re exactly what you’d want to have if you’re an aerospace hacker of any kind.
Thanks [Zane Atkins] for the tip! | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396655",
"author": "cyberteque",
"timestamp": "2021-11-04T12:57:33",
"content": "there is a Scientific American amateur scientist article on building a super sonic wind “tunnel”the test chamber is about 50mm, the wind velocity was basically a 44 gallon drum pumped down to near vacu... | 1,760,372,895.993704 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/04/focus-flower-motivates-by-squirting-water-in-your-face/ | Focus Flower Motivates By Squirting Water In Your Face | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino nano",
"motivation",
"negative reinforcement",
"pomodoro",
"solenoid",
"the pomodoro technique"
] | When you need to get some tasks done and are short on attention, it’s hard to beat a timer. But whenever you do, it feels pretty darn good. The problem is that when you don’t finish in time, what’s the punishment? There are no consequences baked into the Pomodoro Technique other than good ol’ guilt. Wouldn’t it be better if there was a bit of negative reinforcement involved?
[Hardware Unknown]’s Focus Flower
never needs watering, at least not in the normal horticultural way. You will have to fill a reservoir, because this flower provides liquid motivation. No, it’s not a spirit spritzer, though we suppose you could turn it into an avant-garde vodka fountain when the novelty of water wears off, making this Pomodoro with a twist into more of a Bloody Mary. It’s a natural next step, especially if you were already into the hot sauce idea.
Operation Focus Flower is simple: just push the easy button to start the task timer, and the Arduino Nano attached will begin a countdown. Push the button again when you’re done, but if you don’t do it before the countdown is over, the plant squirts you with a steady, skin-blasting stream of water from a solenoid-driven flosser tip. An air compressor nearby is required, which blows the minimalist vibe a bit, but you could always stow that part underneath your desk.
The Focus Flower sure looks to be effective at the whole negative reinforcement thing. And it doesn’t leave you totally clueless — there’s a ring of LEDs around the base that show how much time is left. Whenever you do successfully hit the button in time, it will say ‘that was easy’ in one of 12 languages, hence all the flags. Do not miss the totally free infomercial below.
Maybe you want a more friendly way to manage your time — we understand.
Meet the Pomodachi productivity pet
.
Via
the Arduino Blog | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396667",
"author": "Dean Drover",
"timestamp": "2021-11-04T13:28:45",
"content": "Negative reinforcement is not punishment; it’s the removal of a painful stimulus. Like, let’s say you hate rain so, so much that you keep an umbrella open constantly in any kind of weather.",
"p... | 1,760,372,896.214114 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/03/vintage-computers-with-a-real-turbo/ | Vintage Computers With A Real Turbo | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"apple II",
"clock",
"cpu",
"emulator",
"fpga",
"retrocomputing",
"speed",
"Teensy 4.1",
"turbo"
] | In prior centuries, it was common practice to tie the operation of a program to a computer’s clock speed. As computers got faster and faster, the programs tied to that slower clock speed sometimes had trouble running. To patch the issue temporarily, some computers in the early 90s included a “TURBO” button which actually slowed the computer’s clock speed down in order to help older software run without breaking in often unpredictable ways. [Ted Fried] decided that he would turn this idea on its head, though,
by essentially building a TURBO button into the hardware of old computers
which would greatly increase the execution speed of these computers without causing software mayhem.
To accomplish this, he is running CPU emulators on Teensys (Teensies?), but they are configured to be a drop-in replacement for the physical CPU of several retro computers such as the Apple II, VIC-20, and Commodore 64 rather than an emulator for an entire system. It can be configured to run either in cycle-accurate mode, making it essentially identical to the computer’s original hardware, or it can be placed into an accelerated mode to take advantage of the Teensy 4.1’s 800 MHz processor, which is orders of magnitude faster than the original hardware. This allows (most of) the original hardware to still be used while running programs at wildly faster speeds without needing to worry about any programming hiccups due to the increased clock speed.
The video below demonstrates [Ted]’s creation running in an Apple II but he has several other cores for other retro computers. It’s certainly a unique way to squeeze more computing power out of these antique machines. Some Apple II computers had a 4 MHz clock which seems incredibly slow by modern standards, so the 800 MHz Teensy would have been considered wizardry by the standards of the time, but believe it or not, it’s actually necessary
to go the other direction for some applications and slow this computer down to a 1 MHz crawl
. | 42 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396573",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2021-11-04T05:41:35",
"content": "That’s an amazing idea! Definitely a why didn’t anyone think of this before, type moment. Great job!Now I find my self wondering why we’re constantly having to upgrade motherboards when upgrading CPUs. Why c... | 1,760,372,896.070428 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/03/more-software-defined-radio-projects-using-dragonos/ | More Software-Defined Radio Projects Using DragonOS | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"debian",
"detection",
"dragonos",
"frequency",
"grafana",
"influxdb",
"linux",
"logging",
"RTL-SDR",
"sdr",
"sdr4space.lite",
"software-defined radio",
"spectrum"
] | DragonOS, a Debian-based Linux distribution specifically packaged for software-defined radio functionality, roared onto the wavelengths during the beginnings of the various pandemic lockdowns last year. Since then [Aaron], the creator of the OS, has been busy adding features to the distribution as well as creating plenty of videos which show off its capabilities and also function as how-tos for people who might want to learn about software-defined radio.
The latest is a video about using this software to detect radio signals in certain specified spectrums
.
This build uses two RTL-SDR devices paired with the DragonOS software suite to automatically detect active frequencies within a specified frequency range and that aslo exceed a threshold measured above the average noise floor. The video includes the setup of the software and its use in detecting these signals, but also includes setup of influxdb and Grafana which provide logging capabilities as well. Using this setup, multiple receivers either local or over the internet can then be configured to dump all the identified frequencies, powers, and time stamps into DragonOS.
[Aaron] has also been helping developers to build the
SDR4space.lite
application which includes GPS support, so he hopes that in a future video a user will be able to easily associate location to identified frequencies. Projects like these also serve as a reminder that getting into software-defined radio is as easy as buying a $10 USB radio receiver and configuring some free software to do anything that you can imagine
like tracking ships and airplanes in real time
. | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396625",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2021-11-04T10:11:54",
"content": "Its not Debian based, its based on Ubuntu.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6396760",
"author": "Tim",
"timestamp": "2021-11-04T19:07:4... | 1,760,372,896.30399 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/03/hacking-the-mekamon-robot-to-add-new-capabilities/ | Hacking The Mekamon Robot To Add New Capabilities | Lewin Day | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"mekamon",
"Raspberry Pi 3",
"robot"
] | The Mekamon from Reach Robotics is a neat thing, a robot controlled by a phone app that walks on four legs. [Wes Freeman] decided to hack the platform, giving it a sensor package and enabling some basic autonomous behaviours
in the process.
[Wes] started out by using a packet sniffer to figure out the command system for controlling the Mekamon robot over Bluetooth. Then, he set about fitting a Raspberry Pi 3 on the ‘bot, along with a Pi Camera on a gimballed camera head.
Running OpenCV on the Raspberry Pi gives the Mekamon robot the ability to follow a colored ball placed in its field of vision. Later work involved upgrading the hardware to a Pi Compute Module 3, with its dual camera inputs allowing for the use of a stereo imaging setup.
All the parts simply ziptie on top of the original robot, with no permanent changes needed. It’s a neat way of hacking, by expanding the original capabilities without actually having to tamper within.
We’ve seen plenty of autonomous builds over the years, from
farming robots
to those designed to explore
the urban environment.
Video after the break. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396520",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2021-11-03T23:48:23",
"content": "It’s a spider puppy. (: aww.Seriously though, pretty cool project.No doubt it’s got room to expand.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6396535",
... | 1,760,372,895.95198 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/03/building-a-heavy-duty-log-splitter-one-piece-at-a-time/ | Building A Heavy-Duty Log Splitter, One Piece At A Time | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"hydraulics",
"Log splitter",
"scrap metal",
"woodworking"
] | With temperatures dropping in the Northern Hemisphere, this is the time of year when many people start processing firewood for the coming winter months. For the city folks, that means chopping a tree into logs, and then splitting those logs into something small enough to fit in your wood stove. You can do it all with hand tools, but if you’ve got big enough logs, a powered splitter is a worthy investment.
Unless of course you’re like [Workshop From Scratch], in which case you can
craft a powerful splitter from random bits of steel you’ve got laying around your impeccably outfitted shop
. Given the incredible forces some parts of the splitter will be exposed to, he really takes his time on this build to make sure everything is bulked up. Add in his legendary attention to detail, and you’ll be watching this one for awhile. Not that we’re complaining.
Fitting the adjustable blade.
Early on it seemed like [Workshop From Scratch] was putting together a fairly simple log splitter, which in the most basic form is nothing more complex than a hydraulic cylinder pushing a log against a triangular piece of metal. But then he starts layering on the special features, such as the small hydraulic cylinder that can raise and lower the splitter’s fearsome looking blade.
There’s also the ladder-like feeder mechanism, which prevents the user from having to lift the log onto the machine manually; just stop the log between the rungs, and let the hydraulics raise the ramp and send the log rolling towards the machine’s hungry maw.
In short, this splitter may be a DIY project, but it’s just as strong and well built as anything on the commercial market. In fact, it’s probably an improvement over what you’d be able to find a the big box retailer.
Which shouldn’t come as surprise
if
you’ve seen some of his previous work
. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396490",
"author": "Saabman",
"timestamp": "2021-11-03T21:43:41",
"content": "I was look at these log splitters and dream of owning one and this is a nice specimen. but the wood they seem to be splitting is significantly softer than what we get around here.A bit of red gum or yello... | 1,760,372,896.615396 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/03/fluidized-bed-in-a-pringles-can-paints-parts-inside-and-out/ | Fluidized Bed In A Pringles Can Paints Parts Inside And Out | Adam Zeloof | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"fluidized bed",
"powder coating",
"pringles"
] | Powder coating is a wonderful way to apply a smooth, colored surface to a part, whether for aesthetic reasons or corrosion protection. Traditionally, powder is applied via a air gun that sprays it towards a part while giving the grains an electrostatic charge. The part to be coated (generally metal) is hanging on a rack and given an opposite charge, and the powder readily flows to the surface and sticks well. The dry coated part is then placed in an oven which melts the powder into a solid, continuous surface. The main drawback of the process is that while simple parts with large surfaces are easy to coat, it can become difficult to get powder to flow evenly into deep crevices, or inside a hollow part such as a tube.
Enter fluidized bed powder coating — a process in which air shoots through a vat of powder, making it move like a fluid. A heated part can be dipped inside the vat, instantly melting a thin layer of powder around the part. This much simpler method is great at getting inside all those pesky crevices that traditional coating can’t touch,
and hacker [Amper] was able to build a custom fluidized bed coater in a Pringles can.
This rendition, inspired by
this video tour of Dan Gelbart’s workshop
, uses a coffee filter to evenly distribute the air flow supplied by a small compressor — [Amper] quickly learned that just sticking a tube in a bucket of powder results in more of a volcano than a nice, fluid surface. A burner heated up some pieces of metal that were then dipped them in the can, resulting in complete coverage, even inside the tiny 5 mm diameter hole down the center of a piece of 80/20 extrusion. Once [Amper] got the basic idea working, the idea scaled up into a larger machine that you can check out in the video below.
Powder coating is usually one of those processes though of as only viable in professional shops, but [Amper] along with some
other intrepid hackers have done a great job demonstrating that it can be possible for the rest of us too
. We’ve even
seen some others experiment with fluidized bed coating before
— it’s always great to see a process such as this one gradually become more and more accessible.
Thanks to [mip] for the tip! | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396502",
"author": "BobH",
"timestamp": "2021-11-03T22:22:03",
"content": "Been using the air gun version for about 10 years. It is kind of a pain to clean up after each use, but much less of a pain than a conventional wet paint gun. I still find myself using a rattle can for very ... | 1,760,372,896.657938 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/03/keep-calm-and-hack-on-the-philosophy-of-calm-technology/ | Keep Calm And Hack On: The Philosophy Of Calm Technology | Michael Shaub | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"Calm Technologies",
"design"
] | So much smart-tech is really kind of dumb. Gadgets intended to simplify our lives turn out to complicate them. It often takes too many “clicks” to accomplish simple tasks, and they end up demanding our attention. Our “better mousetraps” end up kludgy messes that are brittle instead of elegant and robust.
The answer might not be faster or newer technology, but a 30-year-old philosophy. Some great thinkers at Xerox PARC, the place where, among other things, the computer mouse was invented, developed principles they called Calm Technology.
Amber Case was
on the Cool Tools podcast
in early October talking about her new book entitled
Calm Technology
I am a long-time fan of
Cool Tools
and listen to the
podcast
often. I really enjoy the conversations around the choices of favorite tools that each guest brings, not to mention the challenge of not immediately buying everything they have spoken about so passionately. I hear the hosts Kevin Kelly and Mark Frauenfelder struggling with the same inner battle along with me each episode. Every now and then, a guest flips the script and decides not to talk about physical tools and devices but services and even concepts. Recent guest
2021 Mozilla Fellow, Amber Case
introduced me to a concept for the design of user experiences called Calm Technology, and I immediately connected with it.
What are Calm Technologies?
Let’s take a look at the principles of Calm Technologies from
calmtech.com
:
Technology should require the smallest possible amount of attention
Technology should inform and create calm
Technology should make use of the periphery
Technology should amplify the best of technology and the best of humanity
Technology can communicate, but doesn’t need to speak
Technology should work even when it fails
The right amount of technology is the minimum needed to solve the problem
Technology should respect social norms
When we surround ourselves with technology, the purpose is what matters. The “stuff” shouldn’t get in the way. I once had a boss who would say, “tell me the time, not how the watch works.” Adding multiple calm technologies into your environment shouldn’t overwhelm you or create noise since each will remain in the periphery until needed.
People should never be forced to act like machines. One place where I see that happening is with chatbots. When chatbots work well, they can create a delightful interface to get information without waiting on hold for a human assistant. I suppose the best of these experiences is when the chatbot announces itself as such and is there to allow me to act like a human, using natural language to communicate with machines. Pretending (and failing) to be human is where they cross “the best of technology and the best of humanity” line; we feel somehow wronged. This goes for notifications too. We’re hard-wired to pay attention to the faces and voices of other people, so a spoken alert is nigh impossible to ignore. Could a long status message be replaced with a simple “yes” or “no” or even an indicator that is either green or red?
Now we arrive at what are likely already core tenets in how you view the role of devices in our modern world. They shouldn’t be useless upon failure, they shouldn’t be overbearing, and they should fit into what we already expect in our lives. We have covered far too many devices that rely on a remote server or proprietary consumables to operate. These can turn an otherwise calm technology into a brick. And nobody wants to be weirded out in normal interactions; a conversation with a friend would be quite different if you pulled out your phone and started recording a video, so no wonder there is debate about the AR glasses from Snap just as there was with Google Glass. Someday that may be a new norm, but we aren’t there yet.
Where to Apply This Philosophy
If studies are right that it takes 23 minutes to regain focus after being interrupted, I likely spend very little of any given day actually being focused. Worse yet, the dopamine I get from all my notification chimes and buzzes probably has me hooked on never putting an end to them. When I look for some information, it often takes an excessive number of “clicks” that make it hard to return focus to something else.
I love the tea kettle example that CalmTech uses. When cold and while heating up, the kettle is in my periphery. There is no progress bar, as I don’t need to know when the water is 50% on the way to boiling; it’s either quiet or whistling and ready to make tea or coffee.
A smart home is fertile ground for calm technology. Many useful-sounding products like smart-plugs require a proprietary app to operate and aren’t calm or friendly to visitors to your home. But, an in-wall switch that can be operated manually and when the network is down but is enhanced by MQTT (or other smart-home protocols) is calm technology and gives you the best of both worlds.
That might sound great for future consumer products and services, but how does it relate to hacking? One avenue is the opportunity to apply these principles to devise superior calm versions of existing products. One recent example featured here is the
3D printed custom remote for the elderly
.
New experiences can use these principles to make inviting, compassionate, and successful interfaces. In design school, I heard about a new device called the
Ambient Orb
that could deliver a “news feed” in the form of a color-changing sphere. Information of your choosing, the stock market, or weather forecast could be selected to drive the color of an object that sits in your peripheral vision. These days, in an afternoon, an ESP32 and an RGB LED could reproduce that for any data stream you could imagine. Another wonderful example of calm technology is the
Juuk RFID music player for kids & the elderly
with an immediate and straightforward, tactile interface for accessing digital music with no logins, complex nested menus, or pop-up ads.
Don’t get me wrong; there’s still a place for robot arms, blinking LEDs, and flame-throwing creations. The original paper said that not all technology should be calm. For example, the authors stated that video games shouldn’t be calm technology, and they would be failures if they were.
There is a time for tech demanding your full attention, but it should be on your terms, not because of inadequate or lazy design. | 44 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396415",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2021-11-03T17:28:15",
"content": "This reminds me of the Weatherball in Flint, Michigan. It’s a huge sphere on top of a downtown bank that is lit up every night, and visible throughout a lot of the city. If it glows red, tomorrow will be w... | 1,760,372,897.182114 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/03/here-are-the-ten-finalists-for-the-hackaday-prize-wildcard-challenge/ | Here Are The Ten Finalists For The Hackaday Prize Wildcard Challenge | Tom Nardi | [
"contests",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize"
] | Each phase of the 2021 Hackaday Prize challenged designers to reimagine traditional solutions within various fields, from robotics to assistive devices. But for the Reactivate Wildcard,
the fifth and final Challenge of this year’s Prize
, this theme of
Rethink, Refresh, Rebuild
could be applied on anything the entrant wanted. Today we’re pleased to announce the ten Wildcard projects that have been selected to win $500 and move onto the finals. Who will win the top spot this year? We’ll find out during
Hackaday Remoticon
in just a few weeks!
The MetaSense project is a perfect example of how
new technology can be used to rethink what we generally consider to be a solved problem
. This project leverages multi-material 3D printing to produce conductive cells which vary their capacitance in response to physical deformation. With some clever geometry, these cells can be chained together to produce single-part devices which can stand in for traditional toggle switches, joysticks, pressure sensors, and even accelerometers.
Speaking of 3D printing, the Direct Granules Extruder project imagines a future were
desktop printers are no longer limited to using rolls of manufactured filament
. The key is a robust extruder design that can grind up plastic pellets fast enough to feed them directly into the hotend of a conventional 3D printer. This not only means a considerable operational savings, as raw plastic pellets are much cheaper than filament by weight, but would potentially allow for printing with more exotic plastic blends and even recycled materials.
Some of the projects even made us rethink what’s possible for the individual hacker. The
WiFiWart utilizes a miniature single-board Linux computer
that was designed and built from the ground up by a single person, using only free and open source software. Whether it’s that this penetration testing gadget has packed a full Linux computer and two WiFi adapters into a box the size of a phone charger, or the fact that it’s been done by a dedicated hacker with free tools, you can’t help but come away impressed with this one.
Wild For Wildcard
With nearly 100 projects submitted for the Reactivate Wildcard challenge, this was clearly a theme that resonated with the Hackaday community. As always, it was extremely difficult to narrow this down to the ten finalists below:
MetaSense
Ozirma – Near Infrared Spectrometer
Minamil: Minimal CNC Mill
WiFi Wart
Direct Granules Extruder
M4-Breadstick
Flexible Circuit Wind Generator
M5Stack Color Maker
Automatic Ventilation System with CO2 Monitors
CRYPTOiNK
Whether or not they made the Finals this year,
the complete list of Reactivate Wildcard entries
contains an incredible array of fascinating concepts that are well worth browsing through. If any of them particularly catch your eye, why not strike up a conversation with the creator in the comments and see if you can’t help out? There’s always next year.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,896.803257 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/03/simplify-3d-printer-wiring-with-can-bus/ | Simplify 3D Printer Wiring With CAN Bus | Dave Rowntree | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"BL touch",
"can-bus"
] | [mark] had
an interesting idea when looking at all the wiring of a typical 3D printer; Use CAN Bus
. There are a lot of wires going to the extruder assembly, and with most designs this thing is flying around at quite some speed. You’ve got connections for powering the heater, fan power, four wires for the extruder motor, thermistor sensor wires. You get the idea. Lots of wires. Worse, they’re all moving around with the axis, and if failures occur at either end due to poor strain relief, or the conductors themselves break, then all manner of interesting failures can occur. If the hot end thermistor connection goes open circuit, usually no damage occurs but the temperature control goes out the window and your print will fail.
Now if you push the electronics needed to drive and control the extruder, directly onto the moving body itself, and hook-up to the main printer electronics with
CAN Bus
, you can do the whole moving interconnect thing with a measly four wires. Yes, you need another PCB assembly, so it adds cost, but it does also simply the electronics at the control end, so some savings can be made. [mark] has used CAN Bus due its availability with modern microcontrollers and also its designed-in robustness, thanks to its automotive and industrial heritage. When you think about it, this is a rather obvious thing to do, and we’re not sure why we’ve not see it much before.
If you want to dig into the detail, the
project GitHub
has the schematics and code ready to go. | 56 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396349",
"author": "Grizzly Adams",
"timestamp": "2021-11-03T15:34:47",
"content": "Duet3D’s Duet 3 ecosystem has had CAN bus for a while now, with multiple options for adding more axis motors, tool heads, and distribution of the CAN bus and power wires to multiple expansion boards... | 1,760,372,896.890997 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/03/python-ditches-the-gils-and-comes-ashore/ | Python Ditches The GILs And Comes Ashore | Matthew Carlson | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"MULTITHREADING",
"programming",
"python",
"software"
] | The Python world has been fractured a few times before. The infamous transition from version 2 to version 3 still affects people today, and there could be a new schism in the future. [Sam Gross] proposed a
solution to drop the Global
Interrupt
Interpreter Lock (GIL)
, which would have enormous implications for many projects that leverage the CPython internals, such as Pandas and NumPy.
The fact that Python is interpreted is a double edge sword. It means there can be different runtimes, such as Pyston, Cinder, MicroPython, PyPy, and others, that might support the whole language, a specific version, or a subset. But if you’re using Python, you’re probably running CPython. And it has something known as global interpreter lock that affects threaded code. In a nutshell, only one thread can run in the interpreter at a time. There are some ways around it, such as moving performance-critical sections to C or having multiple interpreters. However, most existing solutions come with considerable downsides.
Why Was the GIL There, and How do You Remove It?
Program state is much easier to reason about when you can guarantee that only one thread will be running at a time. Reference counting, memory allocation, method resolution order caches, and garbage collections are just some of the things that aren’t thread-safe without the GIL. [Sam] discusses this evolution in
his overview document
.
Getting free of the GIL begins by making significant changes to reference counting. To know whether the garbage collector can free an object in memory or not, it counts all of the references to that object. Currently, reference counting is non-atomic, and changing all reference counting operations to be atomic has a massive performance hit.
The proposal uses a technique known as
biased reference counting
is used to have local and shared references. Local references can leverage non-atomic operations, and the owning thread combines the local references and the shared reference to keep track of ownership. This approach works great for objects that are single-threaded or only lightly used by a few threads. Several objects, such as interned strings, True, False, and None, exist for the program’s lifetime and can be marked as immortal, reducing their reference counting overhead to zero. An object is marked immortal by leveraging the least-significant bit in the reference count field. Objects that are frequently accessed but not guaranteed to be immortal have deferred reference counting. This means that the only reference counting needed is when the reference is stored on the heap. A side effect of this change is that an object can’t be immediately reclaimed since the stack will need to be scanned for any remaining references.
[Sam] replaced the standard
pymalloc
memory allocator with
mimalloc
, a drop-in replacement for
malloc
that offers thread safety and performance. The upside of this swap is that this allocator allows the runtime to find GC-tracked objects without an explicit list. This is a significant performance boost, but it means that you can’t just swap out another
malloc-
compatible allocator and expect the same thread safety for garbage collection and collections.
Speaking of collections and dictionaries, they get tweaked slightly in this surgery. In CPython of today, their design is “thread-safe,” but it leans on the GIL. For example, they have a lock for writes but not for reads, and without the GIL to make a read atomic, a concurrent write can come in the middle of a read.
Perhaps the most surprising change was moving the interpreter from a stack-based virtual machine to a register-based virtual machine, roughly based on V8. This was needed for reference counting changes to be efficient. Functionality-wise, it operates the same, but it causes significant code churn.
What Does This Mean for the Community?
For Python extension library authors, there will be some required work on their end. For example, all C libraries will need to be re-compiled as the ABI has changed. However, the GIL APIs (such as
PyEvalReleaseThread
) are still required for marking states as attached or detached, which influences garbage collection behavior.
Initial performance benchmarks show performance matching version 3.10, and running 10% faster than 3.9 in single-threaded workloads because it incorporates some optimizations and fixes that went into 3.10 and 3.11. These are averages of single-threaded benchmarks. For multi-threaded workloads, the lack of a GIL allows it to shine, blowing past the default interpreter with an 18x speedup by running 20 threads. Not too shabby.
As for merging into mainline, the debate is ongoing among core maintainers. Some are
calling for the unrelated performance optimizations to be merged in and leave the GIL surgery behind
. There are concerns that the overhead introduced by the augmented reference counting will slow down many existing Python programs, the vast majority of which are not multi-threaded yet.
However, many prominent players and companies use Python for machine learning and ETL workloads, and would benefit significantly from this change. This proposal could be the chance for some more notable players to offer a fork of CPython that has these performance increases. Maybe it would gain enough of a following to become a serious contender against CPython? Only time will tell.
What Happens Next?
The
code is up on GitHub
as well as a
place for community discussion
. Significant amounts of testing and validation need to occur before maintainers have confidence that this significant change won’t break things. Extensions need to be re-compiled, and existing multi-threaded code needs validation, checking for masked concurrency bugs. This could take years.
But Python isn’t a static language.
Python recently got switch statements,
and it’s exciting to see Python continue to evolve and change. Hopefully it is all for the better. | 38 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396345",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2021-11-03T15:13:06",
"content": "And 99% of python users don’t even use threads.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6396368",
"author": "SnowMango",
"timestamp": "2021-... | 1,760,372,897.043753 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/03/autonomous-drone-dodges-obstacles-without-gps/ | Autonomous Drone Dodges Obstacles Without GPS | Ryan Flowers | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"autonomous aircraft",
"autonomous drone",
"gps",
"Intel RealSense",
"lidar",
"opencv",
"optical flow"
] | If you’re [Nick Rehm], you want a
drone that can plan its own routes even at low altitudes with unplanned obstacles blocking its way
. (Video, embedded below.) And or course, you build it from scratch.
Why? Getting a drone that can fly a path and even return home when the battery is low, signal is lost, or on command, is simple enough. Just go to your favorite retailer, search “gps drone” and you can get away for a shockingly low dollar amount. This is possible because GPS receivers have become cheap, small, light, and power efficient. While all of these inexpensive drones can fly a predetermined path, they usually do so by flying
over
any obstacles rather than around.
[Nick Rehm] has envisioned a quadcopter that can do all of the things a GPS-enabled drone can do,
without
the use of a GPS receiver. [Nick] makes this possible by using algorithms similar to those used by Google Maps, with data coming from a typical IMU, a camera for Computer Vision, LIDAR for altitude, and an Intel RealSense camera for detection of position and movement. A Raspberry Pi 4 running Robot Operating System runs the autonomous show, and a Teensy takes care of flight control duties.
What we really enjoy about [Nick]’s video is his clear presentation of complex technologies, and a great sense of humor about a project that has consumed untold amounts of time, patience, and duct tape.
We can’t help but wonder if DARPA will allow [Nick] to fly his drone in the
Subterranean Challenge such as the one hosted in an unfinished nuclear power plant in 2020
. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396294",
"author": "none",
"timestamp": "2021-11-03T11:51:10",
"content": "Needs proofreading.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6396313",
"author": "Ryan Flowers",
"timestamp": "2021-11-03T12:58:35",
"c... | 1,760,372,896.930993 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/03/liberating-the-esp8266-from-its-development-board/ | Liberating The ESP8266 From Its Development Board | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Parts"
] | [
"circuit design",
"custom PCB",
"esp-12f",
"ESP8266"
] | While the ESP32 is clearly a superior piece of hardware, we think you’ll agree that the ESP8266 is just too useful not to have a dozen or so kicking around the parts bin at any given time. Cheap, easy to use, and just enough capabilities to bring your projects into the wonderful world of IoT. But if you really want to get the most out of it, you’ll eventually have to skip the development board and start working with the bare module itself.
It can be a scary transition, but luckily, [Ray] has collected some notes that should prove helpful for
anyone looking use modules like the ESP-12F in their own custom PCBs
. From different tips on making sure the power-hungry modules get enough juice, to cost cutting measures that help reduce the ancillary parts needed in your circuit design, it’s a worthwhile read for new and experienced ESP8266 wranglers alike.
An auto-reset circuit with the CH340C
For example, [Ray] talks a bit about using the infamous GPIO10 pin. This pin is on the rear of the ESP8266 module, and on many development boards, it isn’t even connected. That’s because its internally hooked up to the ESP8266’s SPI flash chip, and using it can cause problems if you’re not careful. But as explained in the blog post, as long as you
make sure the flash mode is set to “dual IO” (DIO)
, then GPIO10 can be used just like any other free pin.
We also really liked the tip [Ray] shares at the end for making your boards more easily programmable. Sure you can leave an unpopulated header on the board, or fiddle with some pogo pin setup, but his edge connector approach is quite clever. Just slip the programmer on for the initial burn, and then after that you can update over the air.
There’s no denying how easy it is to throw something together with an ESP8266 development board,
but we’ve covered so many incredible projects
that have
made use of the bare module’s diminutive dimensions
that you’ll ultimately be missing out if you don’t cut out the middle-man. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396264",
"author": "zoobab",
"timestamp": "2021-11-03T09:39:54",
"content": "Liberating the ESP8266 from its proprietary wifi stack?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6396272",
"author": "vvdb.fr",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,372,897.097302 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/02/cute-little-imac-clone-runs-macos-on-a-tiny-screen/ | Cute Little IMac Clone Runs MacOS On A Tiny Screen | Robin Kearey | [
"Mac Hacks"
] | [
"hackintosh",
"imac",
"macOS"
] | Building a Hackintosh – a non-Apple computer running MacOS – has been a favorite pastime of hackers ever since Apple made the switch from PowerPC to Intel hardware. Though usually built from commodity PC parts, some have successfully installed Apple’s OS onto various kinds of Intel-based single-board computers. [iketsj] used such a board to build a cute little Hackintosh, and apparently decided that if he was going to imitate Apple’s hardware, he might as well take some clues from their industrial design. The result can be seen in the video (embedded below) where [Ike] demonstrates
a tiny iMac-like device with a 5″ LCD screen
.
The brains of this cute little all-in-one are a Lattepanda, which is a compact board containing an Intel CPU, a few GB of RAM and lots of I/O interfaces. [Ike] completed it with a 256 GB SSD, a WiFi/Bluetooth adapter and the aforementioned LCD, which displays 800×480 pixels and receives its image through the mainboard’s HDMI interface.
The case is a 3D-printed design that vaguely resembles a miniaturized iMac all-in-one computer. The back contains openings for a couple of USB connectors, a 3.5 mm headphone jack and even an Ethernet port for serious networking. A pair of speakers is neatly tucked away below the display, enabling stereo sound even without headphones.
The computer boots up MacOS Monterey just like a real iMac would, just with a much smaller display. [Ike] is the first to admit that it’s not the most practical thing in the world, but that he would go out and use it in a coffee shop “just for the lulz”. And we agree that’s a great reason to take your hacks outside.
[Ike] built a
portable Hackintosh
before, and we’ve seen some pretty impressive MacOS builds, like this
Mini iMac G4
, a beautiful
Mac Pro replica in a trash can,
and even a hackintosh built inside an actual
Mac Pro case
. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396357",
"author": "seth",
"timestamp": "2021-11-03T15:46:28",
"content": "It’s a nice case mod for an astonishingly-small intel motherboard. The more impressive aspect of this project is getting MacOS Monterrey (newest MacOS version) booted on such a non-standard hackintosh mother... | 1,760,372,896.972186 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/02/malamuds-general-index-research-gist-no-slap-on-the-wrist/ | Malamud’s General Index: Research Gist, No Slap On The Wrist | Kristina Panos | [
"Lifehacks",
"News"
] | [
"Aaron Swartz",
"index",
"information",
"paywall",
"text mining"
] | Tired of that unsettling feeling you get from looking for paywalled papers on that one site that shall not be named? Yeah, us too. But now there’s an alternative that should feel a little less illegal:
this new index of the world’s research papers over on the Internet Archive
.
It’s an index of words and short phrases (up to five words) culled from approximately 107 million research papers. The point is to make it easier for scientists to gain insights from papers that they might not otherwise have access to. The Index will also make it easier for computerized analysis of the world’s research. Call it a gist machine.
Technologist Carl Malamud created this index, which doesn’t contain the full text of any paper. Some of the researchers with early access to the Index said that it is quite helpful for text mining. The only real barrier to entry is that there is no web search portal for it — you have to download 5TB of compressed files and roll your own program. In addition to sentence fragments, the files contain 20 billion keywords and tables with the papers’ titles, authors, and DOI numbers which will help users locate the full paper if necessary.
Nature’s write-up makes a salient point
: how could Malamud have made this index without access to all of those papers, paywalled and otherwise? Malamud admits that he had to get copies of all 107 million articles in order to build the thing, and that they are safe inside an undisclosed location somewhere in the US. And he released the files under
Public Resource
, a non-profit he founded in Sebastopol, CA. But we have to wonder how different this really is from say, the Google Books N-Gram Viewer, or Google Scholar. Is the difference that Google is big enough to say they’re big enough get away with it?
If this whole thing reminds you of another defender of free information,
remember that you can (and should) remove the DRM from his e-book of collected writings
.
Via
r/technology | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396207",
"author": "Steve L",
"timestamp": "2021-11-03T02:51:26",
"content": "Hmmm…interesting legal angle. I’ve read that removing all vowels from text actually SPEEDS UP reading and comprehension for some people…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{... | 1,760,372,897.226734 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/02/tiny-open-hardware-linux-sbc-hides-in-plain-sight/ | Tiny Open Hardware Linux SBC Hides In Plain Sight | Tom Nardi | [
"Security Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"computer security",
"covert",
"penetration testing",
"WiFiWart"
] | There was a time, not quite so long ago, when a computer was a beige box that sat on your desk. Before that, computers were big enough to double as desks, and even farther back, they took up a whole room. Today? Well today it’s complicated. Single-board computers (SBCs) like the Raspberry Pi put a full desktop experience in the palm of your hand, for a price that would have been unfathomable before the smartphone revolution increased demand for high-performance ARM chips.
But compared to the
tiny open hardware Linux SBC that lives inside the WiFiWart
, even the Raspberry Pi looks massive. Developed by [Walker] as a penetration testing tool, the custom computer is housed in an enclosure designed to make it look like a traditional (if a bit large) USB phone charger. In fact, it doesn’t just
look
like a USB charger, it actually is one. The internal power supply is not only capable of converting AC into the various DC voltages required to run the miniature Linux box, but also features a USB port where you can plug in your phone to charge it.
For the infosec folks in the audience, the applications for the WiFiWart are obvious. Just plug this thing in somewhere inconspicuous, and you’ve got a foot in the door. The dual WiFi interfaces mean you can connect to a target network on one card and use the second to spin up a fake access point or exfiltrate data. Plus with a quad-core Cortex-A7 ARM processor running at 1.2 GHz and a healthy 1 GB of DDR3, you’ll have enough power to run many security tools locally.
But of course, nothing keeps you from using the WiFiWart for non-security purposes. That’s what has us particularly excited, as you can never have enough open hardware Linux boards. Especially ones this tiny. Removed from its wall charger disguise, the brains of the WiFiWart could be used for all kinds of projects. Plus, not only is the final design open source, but
[Walker] made sure to only use free and open source tools to create it
. Keeping his entire workflow open means it will be easier for the community to utilize and improve upon his initial design, which in the end, is the whole idea behind the open hardware movement and efforts such as the Hackaday Prize.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396176",
"author": "Justin",
"timestamp": "2021-11-02T23:26:51",
"content": "Is it me, or does the lower board appear to have been overheated / burned, right in the middle?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6396177",
"a... | 1,760,372,898.081692 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/02/computer-vision-lets-you-skip-songs-with-a-glance/ | Computer Vision Lets You Skip Songs With A Glance | Tom Nardi | [
"Machine Learning",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"computer vision",
"Face detection",
"gpio",
"mp3 player",
"opencv"
] | Have you ever wished you could control your home automation devices with nothing more than a withering stare? Well then you’re in luck, as
[Norbert Zare] has come up with a clever way of controlling an MP3 player with only your face
. Though as you might imagine, the technique could be applied to a whole range of home automation tasks with some minor tweaks.
At the core of this project is the Raspberry Pi, specifically the 3 B+ model, though with the computational demands of computer vision you might want to bump it up to the latest-and-greatest Pi 4. From there you need to load up OpenCV and a model trained for face detection, which as luck would have it, tends to be a fairly common application for this technology.
With a relatively simple Python script, [Norbert] is able to determine when OpenCV detects he’s looking directly into the camera and fire off one of the Pi’s GPIO pins that’s been connected to the “Skip” button on a physical MP3 player. That’s right, you read that correctly. He’s using a dedicated MP3 player in the year 2021.
In all seriousness, we’re not really sure why [Norbert] went this route compared to simply playing the music on the Pi and controlling it through software, but this does serve as a good example of how you can interface with physical devices if need be. In any event, using the Python script he’s provided, you could easily modify the setup to control other tasks, virtual or otherwise.
While face recognition can be a scary thing out in the wild
, we do think it has some interesting applications within the home, so long as the user is the one who is in control of where their data ends up. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396161",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2021-11-02T21:54:00",
"content": "Is dinner cooked yet?Oven turns off.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6396163",
"author": "Dan",
"timestamp": "2021-11-02T21:54:58",
... | 1,760,372,897.27756 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/02/flying-blind-taking-flight-simulation-to-a-new-level-in-accessibility/ | Flying Blind: Taking Flight Simulation To A New Level In Accessibility | Ryan Flowers | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"accessibility",
"blind",
"blindness",
"flight simulator",
"screen reader",
"visually impaired"
] | Software developers [Andy Borka] and [Jason Fayre] have a love for aviation. They are also both totally blind. They’ve developed software called
Talking Flight Monitor
, and it has made flight simulation possible for anyone with impaired vision or blindness, as you can experience in
the blurry video below the break
. What draws them to aviation and flight simulators?
This fascination with flight is not limited to the sighted, and who wouldn’t want to experience what it’s like to be in cockpit of a modern airliner? I still recall the awe that I felt when at 9 years old, I glanced the flight deck of a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 as I boarded the aircraft. The array of lights, buttons, switches, and gauges dazzled me for years to come. I wanted to know how all of it worked. I wanted to
be
a pilot. A few years later I discovered Flight Simulator 4 on a 286, and I was hooked for life.
For the vision impaired this presents a problem. Flight simulators are by nature extremely visual, and they lack the text based interface that would allow a screen reader to help a visually impaired person make use of the simulator. Enter
Talking Flight Monitor
.
[Andy] and [Jason] have worked with
PMDG Simulations
to create text friendly interfaces for the 737 and 777 produced by PMDG. These ultra-realistic aircraft are available for the Prepar3D flight Simulator, and they result in a combination that blurs the line between Flight Simulator and Flight Training. By modifying these aircraft with accessible control panels, Talking Flight Monitor allows a completely blind flight simulator user to take off, navigate, and even
land
without ever seeing the screen.
Talking Flight Monitor makes flight possible using over 70 keyboard shortcuts. Both autopilot control and full manual control of the aircraft simulation are possible. Compatibility with standard simulation software is maintained in such a way that tutorials for programming flight computers not controlled by Talking Flight Monitor will still work. It even includes its own voice, so it does not require a screen reader to use.
Our hats are off to [Andy] and [Jason] for their hard work, diligence, and true application of the Hacker spirit. Thanks to [Mike Stone] for this most excellent tip.
[Note: The images in this post are produced by a community of blind flight simulator users who are not concerned with visual quality. They have been intentionally left blurry.] | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396148",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-11-02T19:51:30",
"content": "“Take my love, take my land,Take me where I cannot stand.I don’t care, I’m still free,You can’t take the sky from me.”-Joss Whedonsource:https://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/fireflylyrics.html",
"paren... | 1,760,372,897.327329 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/02/how-to-get-into-cars-endurance-racing-builds/ | How To Get Into Cars: Endurance Racing Builds | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"24 hours of lemons",
"endurance",
"endurance racing",
"motor sport",
"motor sports",
"motorsport",
"motorsports"
] | Many an automotive enthusiast finds themselves at a track day eventually. Typically, this involves competing against the clock to better one’s laptimes in short sessions throughout the day. Such events are fun, but it often creates a perishing thirst for a greater level of competition.
Regularity and endurance events are often the next step up for a lot of people. These events involve long runs at race pace that stress a car to (or beyond!) the breaking point. Careful preparation is required if one is to see out the race to the chequered flag. Let’s break down what you’ll need to consider.
Basic Racing Stuff
This Miata engine has been
fitted with twin carbs
, providing a small boost of power and throttle response over the restrictive stock intake. Subtle mods like these can help make a car quicker without overstressing the engine too much for endurance racing. Credit Lewin Day
Obviously, if you’re looking to race, you want a car that’s got good power, great handling, and also meets all the safety requirements of your chosen competition. Sometimes, you’ll have to compromise though. Organised racing events typically have strict rules on what modifications are allowed. Some require cars to be near-stock, or only allow basic engine and suspension mods. Others, like the popular
24 Hours of Lemons endurance races
, are budget-based.
If you want more power, consider our previous entries in this series. We’ve covered souping up your engine, whether you want to go
naturally-aspirated
or if you’re looking at
a forced-induction setup.
However, play carefully in this area. If you want your engine to last in an endurance race, overstressing it to get more power could be the wrong move.
Meanwhile, when it comes to handling,
look at our guide
to getting the right parts and the right setup for your needs. Also, if you’re on a quicker circuit with some high-speed corners, or you’re just getting really serious, start thinking about
aerodynamics as well.
This car is fitted with a roll cage, including door bars to protect against side impacts. This is often required to compete in many endurance racing events. Credit:
Lloyd Dirks, public domain
Safety-wise, it’s going to be very dependent on the event you enter. If it’s a regularity event where you’re technically competing against the clock, you can sometimes get away with a fire extinguisher and a helmet. However, any event with real door-to-door racing will likely require a full cage and racing seats and harnesses on top of that.
A DIY roll cage is possible if you’re a professional metal worker, but as these are life-saving devices, scrutineers won’t hesitate to fail a car that doesn’t meet the absolute letter of the law. If you haven’t been trained by someone that’s got years of experience building cages, it’s probably best you leave it to the pros.
Seat installs and other requirements can sometimes be handled by the DIY builder, but follow the requirements religiously. It’s not just about checking boxes, it’s about making sure you survive any incidents on track – whether they’re you’re own fault or not!
Cooling, Cooling, Cooling
The average road car is tested to extreme limits before it goes on sale. Automakers will drive them all over the world, in freezing cold and burning hot conditions. However, those tests are often done at road or highway speeds. They’re still a far cry away from the punishment of repeated full-throttle acceleration and hard braking seen on the track. Endurance racing only ratchets up the intensity, with stints of tens of laps often proving too much for a unprepared vehicle.
Oil coolers can be crucial to keeping precious fluids in their proper temperature range. They are often used for engine oil, transmission fluid, and differential oil on endurance race cars.
The first thing you’ll want to look at is cooling the engine. If you’re building a race car out of an older vehicle, you may find the cooling system is in a poor state of repair, clogged up with goo or otherwise working poorly. Step one is often to service the car properly and make sure it’s in good shape.
From there, you may find that a bigger radiator will help, particularly if you’re competing in hot conditions. This can sometimes require some sheet metal persuasion to fit, but can make a big difference in the system’s cooling capacity. Other mods to help include creating ducting to funnel more cold air to the radiator, or cutting vents to help hot air leave the engine bay.
Note the vents on the bonnet on this Lancia Delta Integrale, which aid with keeping underhood temps lower. Credit:
Tommi Nummelin
An engine oil cooler is often the next mod, which can do wonders for keeping an engine going under punishing conditions. Engine oil tends to break down at excessive temperatures, so controlling this is key to surviving an endurance event. An oil cooler consists of a small heat exchanger, often air-to-air, through which oil passes to cool off. However, be careful with installing these. Mess up the plumbing or leave a fitting loose, and it’s all too easy to dump all the oil out of the engine without realizing. Run an engine on no oil and you’ll have a boat anchor in a matter of seconds.
The other major area you’ll want to consider cooling is the transmission, particularly in the case of vehicles with an automatic gearbox. Your average road car transmission isn’t designed to handle full-throttle pulls every few seconds as you whip the car down the straights. Installing an extra or larger transmission cooler can help improve the chances your auto box will survive a full racing distance.
Brakes
Again, this is an area where road car parts can quickly let you down. Do a few hard stops in a road car from just 60 km/h, and you’ll quickly start to see them smoking. Slowing even a light 2500 lb car down puts a huge amount of energy into the brakes, and on a race track, you’re doing that at multiple corners every lap.
Brake rotors for performance applications are often drilled for better heat transfer and venting of gases and brake dust. Credit:
Friedrich Haag
Overheat your brakes, and they’ll start to lose their stopping power, which is referred to as “brake fade”. As they get too hot, you’ll find the brake pedal starts feeling soft and sinks lower to the floor. This happens mostly because brake fluid absorbs water from the atmosphere over time. When the brakes get too hot, that water turns to steam, and steam is compressible, unlike liquid brake fluid. Thus, when you push the pedal, some of that force is compressing the steam instead of driving the pads into the rotors to slow you down.
Even worse, getting your brakes too hot can “glaze” the surface of the brake pads, reducing their frictional coefficient and making stopping harder. Alternatively, you might get the rotors red hot, and find they’ve warped after cooling, particularly if you hit any puddles after coming off the track.
In order to prevent these issues, there are several things that can be done. First is maintenance. Fresh brake fluid contains less water, so better withstands heavy track usage without going spongy. Fresh brake pads also stop better than heavily worn ones.
However, if you’re finding your brakes are overheating regularly anyway, you may need to upgrade. The first stage is often getting a set of racing brake pads that work better at higher temperatures. These can be worse for road use when they’re cold, however, so tread carefully.
From there, drilled and slotted rotors which can have better heat transfer capabilities. The slots can also help abrade away any glazing on the pad surface. These holes and slots also help brake dust and hot gases flow away, keeping the rotors and pads cooler and free of detritus that reduces braking power.
Fresh air from a set of brake ducts
can also be of great help
. Creating some ducts to feed cold air into the front brakes can make a major difference to brake temperatures, improving braking and making components like pads last much longer. Rear brakes are often less of a problem except on heavier or faster cars, as the front brakes do most of the work.
Going further, bigger rotors calipers and pads all have more thermal mass and thus can take more abuse on the racetrack without heating up so much. Oftentimes, budget racers will substitute larger brakes from other models onto a race car in order to provide this benefit on the cheap. Otherwise, “big brake kits” are commonly available from many brands to massively upgrade the stopping power of most vehicles. Bring your wallet though, because these quickly get expensive.
Fuel Systems
Refueling stops are a great time to change drivers in an endurance race to preserve your energy levels and take a rest. Credit:
Daderot, public domain
The fuel system is another area that is often heavily-dependent on the regulations in a given racing event. However, in the basest of terms, the less often you have to enter the pits to refuel, the more laps you’ll rack up in a given time, putting you ahead of the competition.
Thus, bigger fuel tanks can be of great benefit to an endurance racing car. It’s often an expensive proposition though. Many series demand that any fuel vessels other than the stock OEM tank must meet strict regulations for racing fuel cells. These can cost thousands of dollars, as they’re built to withstand crashes and rollovers without turning the car and driver into a flaming fireball. If you can afford it, great! But make sure the installation is done to the letter, as even a small fuel leak can cause a deadly fire.
Human Factors
Endurance racing isn’t just about the cars, it’s a trial for the humans too. The strain of driving a racing car on track, both mentally and physically, is often underestimated. Lapping a car at high speed for hours on end taxes the body immensely. There’s a reason why top racing drivers do hours of training almost every day of the week.
If you’re just starting out in track events, it’s not a bad thing if you have to pit every 10-20 laps or so for more fuel. You’ll get a break from the hot, noisy and frantic track environment. Your brain can rest from constantly running its motion programs to stay on the track and dodge all the other cars out there. Your muscles will appreciate the pause too.
If you’re not a professional racing driver, swap drivers at pit stops early and often. Staying out there for hours won’t impress anyone if you end up putting your car, or someone else’s, into the wall.
Push yourself too far, and it’s easy to make a mistake that can hurt yourself or others. Keeping your mind and body operating in its peak range will mean a safer and more enjoyable race for yourself and everyone else on track.
Great Times To Be Had
Events like the 24 Hours of Lemons have created a huge community around endurance racing. Credit:
SecretName101
Endurance races are often cited as some of the greatest events in the amateur motorsports calendar. When you’re not in the car, there’s plenty of time to hang out with your fellow drivers and crew, as well as make friends with other teams in the paddock. There’s often great victories to be earned against the odds, too, battling with your fellow wrenchers to get your car back in the race when a hose has failed or a gasket expired.
If you build your car well, or at least know how to fix it when it breaks, you could have an amazing time out on the endurance racing circuit. Know your limits and those of the car, prepare accordingly, and go and enjoy one of the greatest pastimes in all of motorsport! | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396131",
"author": "Ale",
"timestamp": "2021-11-02T17:25:58",
"content": "The FAQ of the lemon’s site is a lot of fun ! “Don’t you have friends dumb enough to join you… ” hahahaI wonder if something like that is done in Germany, this is most probably forbidden too, I mean here is e... | 1,760,372,897.497032 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/02/hardware-project-becomes-successful-product-for-solo-developer/ | Hardware Project Becomes Successful Product For Solo Developer | Donald Papp | [
"hardware",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"business",
"kvm",
"product",
"product development",
"raspberry pi",
"remote access"
] | [Michael Lynch] has been a solo developer for over three years now, and has been
carefully cataloguing his attempts at generating revenue for himself
ever since making the jump to being self-employed. Success is not just hard work; it is partly knowing when the pull the plug on an idea, and [Micheal] has been very open about his adventures in this area. He shares the good news about a DIY project of his that ended up becoming a successful product, complete with dollar amounts and frank observations.
About a year ago, we covered
a project he shared called
TinyPilot
, which is an effective KVM-over-IP device, accessible over the web, that could be built with about $100 worth of parts. [Micheal] found it to be a fun and useful project, and decided to see if he could sell kits. However, he admits he didn’t have high expectations, and his thoughts are probably pretty familiar to most hardware types:
I questioned whether there was a market for this. Why would anyone buy this device from me? It was just a collection of widely available hardware components.
Well, it turns out that he was onto something, and the demand for his device became immediately clear. He’s since given
TinyPilot
more features, an attractive case, and even provides a support plan for commercial customers. This is an excellent reminder that sometimes, what is being sold isn’t the collection of parts itself. Sometimes, what’s being sold is a solution to a problem people have, and those people are time-poor and willing to pay for something that just works.
It’s great to see [Michael] find some success as a solo developer, but
his yearly wrap-up
covers much more than just the success of
TinyPilot
as a product, so be sure to check it out if you’re at all interested in the journey of working for yourself. | 26 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396090",
"author": "Jeremy S Cook",
"timestamp": "2021-11-02T15:33:43",
"content": "That’s awesome that he cataloged his successes and failures. I suppose we could all do a better job of that!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "63... | 1,760,372,897.731558 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/02/30-days-of-terror-the-logistics-of-launching-the-james-webb-space-telescope/ | 30 Days Of Terror: The Logistics Of Launching The James Webb Space Telescope | Dan Maloney | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"News",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"Ariane",
"deployment",
"james webb space telescope",
"jwst",
"lanuch",
"rocket",
"space",
"telescope"
] | Back during the 2019 Superconference in Pasadena, I had the chance to go to Northrop Grumman’s Redondo Beach campus to get a look at the James Webb Space Telescope. There is the high-bay class 10,000+ cleanroom in building M8, my wife and I along with fellow space nerd Tom Nardi got a chance to look upon what is likely the most expensive single object ever made. The $10 billion dollar space observatory was undergoing what we thought were its final tests before being packaged up and sent on its way to its forever home at the L2 Lagrange point.
Sadly, thanks to technical difficulties and the COVID-19 pandemic, it would be another two years before JWST was actually ready to ship — not a new story for the project,
Mike Szczys toured the same facility back in 2015
. But the good news is that it finally has shipped, taking the very, very slow first steps on its journey to space.
Both the terrestrial leg of the trip and the trip through 1.5 million kilometers of space are fraught with peril, of a different kind, of course, but still with plenty of chances for mission-impacting events. Here’s a look at what the priceless and long-awaited observatory will face along the way, and how its minders will endure the “30 days of terror” that lie ahead.
Land, Sea, and Air
It may seem self-obvious, but the James Webb Space Telescope is big. Pictures do a poor job of capturing the scale of the thing, and even when they show people working on it, it does little to compare to the experience of standing there looking at the thing. The JWST is large in a way that no other object I’ve been near has felt. It towers over you, an ungainly thing even in the semi-folded state we saw it in. And looking at the size and complexity of the structure, and especially its apparent fragility, anyone with any engineering curiosity is left wondering how the heck they’re going to manage to safely move that thing.
A full scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope
Of course, JWST is designed to be moved, and to fit inside the 5.4-meter fairing of the Ariane rocket that will take it to orbit. But before it gets integrated onto its rocket, the telescope had to be folded into its custom-built shipping container. The Space Telescope Transporter for Air, Road, and Seas (STTARS) is basically a mobile cleanroom designed to hold Webb in the same folded configuration it will be in for its trip to space.
STTARS had been used to transport Webb several times before as it was shuttled around to various NASA facilities for testing and assembly, but on September 24, 2021, Webb began its last journey in STTARS. After being packaged up, the shipping container was loaded onto a special oversized-load tractor-trailer. In the wee hours of the morning, steel-nerved driver George Ardelean piloted the unwieldy load 26 miles (42 km) through the streets and freeways of Los Angeles to Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, where its ride for the next leg of its journey, the cargo vessel MN Colibri, awaited.
On September 26, the MN Colibri pushed off from the dock and made its way south and east, bound for the European Space Agency’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. It was attended by a team of NASA engineers who monitored the health of the spacecraft during its 16-day trip, which included a passage through the Panama Canal. Upon arrival at Kourous, Webb was trucked to the ESA’s integration facility, where it was unpacked from STTARS and transferred to another cleanroom for final testing, fueling, and integration with the Ariane 5 launch vehicle.
30 Days of Terror
Assuming all goes well with testing and integration, Webb is scheduled to launch on December 18, 2021, at 7:20 EST. The launch begins a roughly one-month voyage to the observatory’s home at Lagrange point L2, during which time any of 300 single-point failure items could scuttle the mission. Like the
“Seven Minutes of Terror”
that Mars landing missions face, Webb’s minders will face 30 days of uncertainty and occasionally nail-biting suspense.
During the eight-minute ride to space, Webb will be subjected to the usual indignities of spaceflight, against which it was thoroughly tested. Starting at about the 30-minute mark, the first milestone — deployment of the observatory’s solar panels — will occur. It’s the first of 50 deployments, and is a critical step since the telescope needs the power from those panels; it has no other source of power onboard. With the solar array deployed and tested, the high-gain antenna will be deployed and tested.
About 12 hours into the mission, Webb will fire its engines to set it on course for L2. Three days later, the sunshield pallets that are stowed along the front and back sides of the main mirror will fold down to their final position. Once that’s complete, the mast holding the main mirror will be jacked up to clear the sunshield. Even though the sunshields will still be folded at this point, they still present a significant surface area to the solar wind, so trim tabs at the end of each pallet are deployed to help adjust for the pressure.
Shields Up!
Full deployment of the sunshield is without a doubt the sketchiest part of the whole process. The sunshield consists of five separate metalized Kapton sheets, each the size of three tennis courts. Each one must be unrolled, extended to its full size, tightened, and spaced out vertically for the sunshield to do its job. This takes the coordinated action of 140 release mechanisms, 70 hinges, eight deployment motors, about 400 pullies, and nearly 400 meters of cable to accomplish, not to mention the sensors, wiring harnesses, and computers to control everything. It’ll take the better part of two days to complete the sunshield deployment.
Once the sunshield is deployed and tensioned, the optical deployment will begin, about 10 days into the mission. The process begins with the secondary mirror, which rides on a triangular boom that is folded against the center section of the main mirror. This makes way for the main mirror’s two side wings, each holding three of the 18 total hexagonal gold-plated beryllium mirrors.
A number of other steps, such as radiator deployments, cryocooler startup, and system checks are also accomplished during deployment, but the spacecraft will be in operational configuration by about day 14 of the mission. This is the best-case scenario, of course — mission operators have another two weeks or so to get everything just right before Webb arrives on-station and assumes its halo orbit around L2. Controllers will still have a bunch of work to do, including bringing the instruments down to operational temperature, and carefully tuning the main mirror. Each segment of the mirror is fitted with servos that can slightly deform its surface; the servos were clearly visible on the sample mirror section that was on display at the Northrop Grumman plant, and the entire thing was a marvel of engineering. Operators will carefully align each segment of the main mirror, along with the secondary mirror and the fine steering mirror located at the center of the main mirror, to form as perfect an optical system as possible.
Every single one of the steps along the way between Redondo Beach and L2 is critical to the success of the James Webb Space Telescope. The fact that mission planners and engineers have successfully knocked off the first 5,800 miles (9,300 km) of the trip without any major incidents is reassuring, but there’s a long way to go yet. Here’s hoping that Webb’s team handles the next million miles with equal aplomb, and that the much-delayed and much-anticipated instrument begins delivering on its promise for world-class science, and a peek back to the beginning of the universe.
[Featured images:
NASA
] | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396068",
"author": "Astro Jetson",
"timestamp": "2021-11-02T14:19:31",
"content": "Cool birthday present on 18 December for the 21 million that share that birthday with my son J. Looking forward to the launch, and of the next decade stacks of photos from deep space.",
"parent... | 1,760,372,897.666016 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/02/hedgehog-gesture-sensor-built-with-cheap-time-of-flight-modules/ | Hedgehog Gesture Sensor Built With Cheap Time-of-Flight Modules | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"gesture",
"gesture control"
] | Time-of-flight sensors used to be expensive obscurities, capable of measuring the travel time of photons themselves and often used for tracking purposes. However, the technology is cheaper now, such that [jean.perardel] has used TOF sensors to build a useful and affordable
gesture-tracking system.
The system relies on four VL53L1X time of flight sensors, which have a 16×16 scanning array and communicate over the I2C bus. Controlling the show is an Arduino MKR1010, though the project should be achievable with a range of other microcontrollers, too.
The device is built into a cute hedgehog-like form factor, with an LCD screen acting as the face. It displays facial expressions which show how the system is interpreting and responding to gestures. It gives the project lots of personality, which makes using the system more fun. Gestures from the system can be used to send keystrokes over USB, control relays or servos, or even fire IR signals to control TVs and other hardware.
It actually seems like a useful gesture control interface, one that could become a useful part of a workstation setup. We’ve seen gesture controls put to other uses too,
like controlling robot arms
. Video after the break. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396029",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2021-11-02T11:14:02",
"content": "I’m looking forward to when the VL53L1X drop in price to that of LED’s.But the flip side of the coin will be google with mobile 3D scanners (one long diagonal strip either side of their next generation of s... | 1,760,372,897.769244 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/02/janksy-robot-paints-murals-one-dot-at-a-time/ | Janksy Robot Paints Murals One Dot At A Time | Adam Fabio | [
"Art",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [] | [Stuff Made Here] has a new shop, with a huge blank wall. A blank white wall just wouldn’t do, so rather than paint the wall himself, he designed a
robot to do it for him
. (Video, embedded below.)
The result is Janksy. A huge machine made of metal, wood, and 3D printed parts. Janksy is an ingenious design in that it has two sets of X and Y axis. A large, slow-moving system of rails and cables positions the robot roughly in the right area of the wall. From there a much smaller, but faster and more precise motion system makes the final moves.
The “business end” of Janksy is of course a paint sprayer; in this case a Harbor Freight model. The medium of choice is acrylic paint, as Janksy will be painting for several days, and didn’t want to gas himself with the volatile solvents of more traditional paints.
Janksy mainly sprays dots of paint. Up close you’ll only see the dots, but step back a bit and a full image takes shape. It’s a technique called
Pointillism
, which puts Janksy in the company of artists like Georges Seurat and
Vincent van Gogh.
While human artists mix colors to produce the hue they want, robots can’t easily do that. [Stuff Made Here] spends quite a bit of time explaining basic color theory, and how dots of cyan, magenta, and yellow will combine in the eye to produce colors – much the way a monitor uses pixels of red, green, and blue light.
After all this work, you might be wondering what [Stuff Made Here] would want on his wall. Well, let’s just say that he loves his wife, even though his pranks on here often elicit an exasperated glare. Watch the video after the break for the full story.
You don’t have to build a huge drawing robot though – we’ve seen some
great plotters on a much smaller scale
, including
one that will play tic-tac-toe
. | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396006",
"author": "janci",
"timestamp": "2021-11-02T09:12:48",
"content": "The counterweight trick to balance the reactive forces is neat.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6396027",
"author": "Carl Confusion",
"timestam... | 1,760,372,897.825697 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/01/modded-gba-sp-does-its-best-switch-impression/ | Modded GBA SP Does Its Best Switch Impression | Tom Nardi | [
"Games",
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks"
] | [
"game boy advance",
"GBA SP",
"mod",
"Nintendo Switch"
] | The whole idea behind the Nintendo Switch is that the system isn’t just a handheld, but can be converted into a more traditional home game console when placed into its dock. The wireless controllers even pop off the sides so you can kick back on the couch and enjoy your big-screen gaming from a distance. Judging by how many units Nintendo has sold of their latest system, it’s clearly a winning combination.
Which is probably why [Tito] of
Macho Nacho
and his friend [Kyle Brinkerhoff] decided to
recreate some of the Switch’s core features using one of Nintendo’s older handhelds, the Game Boy Advance SP
. There was already a video-out mod kit on the market for the GBA SP that would let them play games on the TV, but the team still had to figure out how to make a dock for the 18 year old handheld, plus get it working with the official Switch Joy-Cons.
Wiring the custom PCB into the GBA SP
Lucky, this crew is no stranger to developing impressive GBA SP add-ons. Last month they took the wraps off of an expanded 3D printed rear panel for the system that housed a number of upgrades, such as an expanded battery pack and support for Bluetooth audio.
This mod uses a similarly expanded “trunk” for the GBA, but this time it’s to hold the rails the Joy-Cons mount to, as well as the electronics required to get the modern controllers talking to the Game Boy. Namely, a Raspberry Pi Zero and a custom PCB designed by [Kyle] that uses a dozen transistors to pull the system’s control inputs low when the Pi’s GPIO pins go high.
[Tito] doesn’t seem to mention it in the video below, but we’re assuming the dock component of this project is just a 3D printed box with a connector sticking up for the GBA SP’s link cable port, since that’s where the TV-out modification outputs its video. Incidentally that means you don’t really need the dock itself, but it certainly looks cool.
At the end of the video [Tito] goes over a few of the rough edges of the current build, including the rather lengthy pairing process to get the Joy-Cons talking to the Raspberry Pi. But ultimately, he says that not only does the system feel good in his hands,
but playing those classic games on the big screen
has been a nice change of pace. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6396005",
"author": "Will",
"timestamp": "2021-11-02T09:02:57",
"content": "Would be awesome to just replace the gba pcb with the pi zero 2 at this point. Psp, nds emulation should be smooth",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "63960... | 1,760,372,897.871039 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/01/supersonic-baseball-hitting-a-gallon-of-mayo-is-great-flow-visualization/ | Supersonic Baseball Hitting A Gallon Of Mayo Is Great Flow Visualization | Lewin Day | [
"Science"
] | [
"air cannon",
"baseball",
"baseballs",
"high speed video",
"slomo",
"slow mo",
"slow motion",
"slowmo"
] | Those of us who enjoy seeing mechanical carnage have been blessed by the rise of video sharing services and high speed cameras. Oftentimes, these slow motion videos are heavy on destruction and light on science. However, this video from [Smarter Every Day] is worth watching, purely for the fluid mechanics at play when
a supersonic baseball hits a 1-gallon jar of mayo.
The experiment uses the baseball cannon that [Destin] of [Smarter Every Day]
built last year
. Ostensibly, the broader aim of the video is to characterize the baseball cannon’s performance. Shots are fired with varying pressures applied to the air tank and vacuum levels applied to the barrel, and the data charted.
However, the real glory starts 18:25 into the video, where a baseball is fired into the gigantic jar of mayo. The jar is vaporized in an instant from the sheer power of the collision, with the mayo becoming a potent-smelling aerosol in a flash.
Amazingly, the slow-motion camera reveals all manner of interesting phenomena. There’s a flash of flame as the ball hits the jar, suggesting compression ignition happened at impact with the jar’s label. A shadow from the shockwave ahead of the ball can be seen in the video, and particles in the cloud of mayo can be seen changing direction as the trailing shock catches up.
The slow-motion footage deserves to be shown in flow-visualization classes, not only because it’s awesome, but because it’s a great demonstration of supersonic flow phenomena. Video after the break. | 22 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395981",
"author": "Chris Knight",
"timestamp": "2021-11-02T04:48:48",
"content": "As I said on the Youtube video, there’s a distinct need for a non-Newtonian fluid as a target. Mayo just wrong…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,372,897.926169 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/01/waterjet-powered-speedboat-for-fun-and-research/ | Waterjet-Powered Speedboat For Fun And Research | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"3d printed",
"autonomous",
"boat",
"catamaran",
"education",
"impeller",
"jet",
"platform",
"remote control",
"research",
"robotic",
"water jet"
] | There are a lot of cliches about the perils of boat ownership. “The best two days of a boat owner’s life are the day they buy their boat, and the day they sell it” immediately springs to mind, for example, but there is a loophole to an otherwise bottomless pit of boat ownership: building a small robotic speedboat instead of owning the full-size version. Not only will you save loads of money and frustration,
but you can also use your 3D-printed boat as a base for educational and research projects
.
The autonomous speedboats have a modular hull design to make them easy to 3D print, and they use a waterjet for propulsion which improves their reliability in shallow waters and reduces the likelihood that they will get tangled on anything or injure an animal or human. The platform is specifically designed to be able to house any of a wide array of sensors to enable people to easily perform automated tasks in bodies of water such as monitoring for pollution, search-and-rescue, and various inspections. A monohull version with a single jet was prototyped first, but eventually a twin-hulled catamaran with two jets was produced which improved the stability and reliability of the platform.
All of the files needed to get started with your own autonomous (or remote-controlled) speedboat are available on the project’s page. The creators are hopeful that this platform suits a wide variety of needs and that a community is created of technology enthusiasts, engineers, and researchers working on autonomous marine robotic platforms. If you’d prefer to ditch the motor, though, we have seen a few
autonomous sailboats used for research purposes
as well.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395968",
"author": "The Gambler",
"timestamp": "2021-11-02T02:41:15",
"content": "neat project thanks i’ve not seen that one.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,897.963739 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/01/building-a-bicycle-dash-cam-with-advanced-capabilites/ | Building A Bicycle Dash Cam With Advanced Capabilites | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"bicycle",
"bicycle safety",
"bike",
"bike safety",
"DashCam",
"rear view camera",
"safety"
] | Riding a bicycle is a wonderful and healthy way to get around. However, just like with any other vehicle on the road, it can be useful to have a camera to record what goes on in traffic.
[Richard Audette] built just such a rig.
The original setup relies on a Raspberry Pi 3, which takes a photo every 10 seconds using the attached Pi Camera. It then processes these photos using OpenALPR, which is a piece of software for reading licence plates. Licence plates detected while cycling can be stored on the Raspberry Pi for later, something which could be useful in the event of an accident.
However, [Richard] has developed the concept further since then. The revised dashcam adds blind spot detection for added safety, and uses a Luxonis OAK-D camera which provides stereo depth data and has AI acceleration onboard. It’s paired with a laptop carried in a backpack instead of a Raspberry Pi, and can stream video to a smartphone sitting on the handlebars as a sort of rear-view mirror.
Anyone who has commuted on a bicycle will instantly see the value in work like [Richard]’s. Just avoiding one accident from a car coming from behind would be of huge value, and we’re almost surprised we don’t see more bicycle rear view kits in the wild.
Alternatively, if you just want to scan your surroundings as you ride,
consider building a landscape scanner instead
. Video after the break. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395889",
"author": "alex eames",
"timestamp": "2021-11-01T20:11:11",
"content": "I did one a few years back. Live blogged it for a week during development. Was quite fun. I had a small screen on the handlebars which connected to front and rear Pi zero cameras. No need for streaming... | 1,760,372,898.02026 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/01/smoothing-out-foam-parts-with-lots-of-gesso/ | Smoothing Out Foam Parts With Lots Of Gesso | Tom Nardi | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"finishing",
"gesso",
"part smoothing",
"primer",
"sanding"
] | Whether you’re building a product mock-up or a lightweight enclosure, carving your parts out of hard foam is a fast way to get the job done. Unfortunately, the end result can have a bit of a rough finish; a problem if you’re looking to attract investors or get some nice shots so you can send your handiwork into Hackaday.
If you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to make a carved piece of foam look like it
isn’t
a carved piece of foam,
this tip from prolific maker [Eric Strebel] could really come in handy
. Rather than using some spray-on primer or epoxy coating, things that can be difficult to work with when you’re confined to a small home workspace, he recommends sealing it up with several coats of gesso.
The gesso fills in the tiny voids in the foam’s surface.
For the less artistically inclined in the audience, gesso is essentially a paint that’s been combined with chalk or gypsum to make it thicker. Gesso is generally used to prepare an absorbent surface (such as wood or canvas) before applying paint. In this case, [Eric] is using it to build up the surface of the foam and seal up all the open pores.
The downside is that the gesso requires several coats to really build up. [Eric] puts six coats on in this demonstration before he starts to thin it out a bit with water. At that point, each successive coat is sanded with increasingly higher grits. After nine coats, he does his finish sanding with 600 grit paper, and the results look fantastic.
To add some color [Eric] dyed the piece and then used a toothbrush to flick on some black and white paint, creating a very convincing granite-like finish. Unfortunately, his attempt to brush on a water-based sealer caused this finish to run, and he had to take it all off. In the end, he had to resort to using spray paint to finish the piece, but at least it was a simple rattle can.
This isn’t the first time [Eric] has experimented with alternative priming techniques.
He’s a big fan of two-component primer in a can
, which lets you lay down a professional finish without the expense and complication of using a spray gun. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395877",
"author": "Steven Clark",
"timestamp": "2021-11-01T19:57:10",
"content": "In cosplay circles Mod Podge is the substance of choice for sealing EVA foam so it might work here too. Although I’m guessing the flexibility would go to waste.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth":... | 1,760,372,898.142662 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/01/shall-we-play-a-game/ | Shall We Play A Game? | Mike Szczys | [
"cons"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Remoticon",
"Hacker Trivia"
] | A game show just for hackers like you is coming to
the Hackaday Remoticon
for the first time this year. Everyone is invited to take part in Hacker Trivia on Friday November 19th at 5 pm Pacific time.
Think of this as a very specialized type of bar trivia. You’re welcome to grab some friends and form a team, or play as a solo act. The biggest difference here is that all of the questions have been drawn up by the wonderful people who write the articles you read every day on Hackaday. To say there is a geeky flair to this is a gross understatement.
Lewin and Justin during last week’s Hacker Trivia test run with the writing crew as contestants.
Your host for Hacker Trivia is Lewin Day. A staff writer for Hackaday, Lewin has for years dreamed of wearing powder-blue velvet suits, holding note cards full of esoteric questions, while speaking into an oddly-shaped microphone.
We managed to convince him to update the look to that of a modern game show host, and he didn’t disappoint with plans to broadcast from a secret location in Adelaide, Australia along with his producer, Justin McArthur. We’ve made it through a practice run, and I assure you, the game is delightful!
You can tune in live to Hacker Trivia to play along, but we want to make sure that you don’t forget.
Sign up for a free ticket to Hackaday Remoticon
and we’ll send you a reminder, along with information on how to take part in the online Bring-a-Hack social hour that follows the game show. Beyond these social events, Remoticon also has three keynote speakers, sixteen talk presenters, the Hackaday Prize ceremony, and a Saturday evening party. There’s even a conference ticket purchase option that includes a T-shirt. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395840",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-11-01T18:06:35",
"content": "“The biggest difference here is that all of the questions have been drawn up by the wonderful people who write the articles you read every day on Hackaday. To say there is a geeky flair to this is a gross und... | 1,760,372,898.223004 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/01/magnesium-where-it-comes-from-and-why-were-running-out/ | Magnesium: Where It Comes From And Why We’re Running Out | Adam Zeloof | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Current Events",
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"aerospace",
"aluminum",
"auto industry",
"magnesium",
"materials science",
"supply"
] | Okay, we’re not running out. We actually have tons of the stuff. But there
is
a global supply chain crisis. Most of the world’s magnesium is processed in China and several months ago, they just… stopped. In an effort to hit energy consumption quotas, the government of the city of Yulin (where most of the country’s magnesium production takes place)
ordered 70% of the smelters to shut down entirely, and the remainder to slash their output by 50%
. So, while magnesium remains one of the most abundant elements on the planet, we’re readily running out of processed metal that we can use in manufacturing.
The magnesium-alloy body of a Nikon d850. Courtesy of
Nikon
But, how do we actually use magnesium in manufacturing anyway? Well, some things are just made from it. It can be mixed with other elements to be made into strong, lightweight alloys that are readily machined and cast. These alloys make up all manner of stuff from race car wheels to camera bodies (and the chassis of the laptop I’m typing this article on). These more direct uses aside, there’s another, larger draw for magnesium that isn’t immediately apparent: aluminum production.
But wait, aluminum, like magnesium is an element. So why would we need magnesium to make it? Rest assured, there’s no alchemy involved- just alloying. Much like magnesium, aluminum is rarely used in its raw form — it’s mixed with other elements to give it desirable properties such as high strength, ductility, toughness, etc. And, as you may have already guessed, most of these alloys require magnesium. Now we’re beginning to paint a larger, scarier picture (and we just missed Halloween!) — a disruption to the world’s aluminum supply.
Where Magnesium Comes From
A nice chunk of crystalized magnesium. Courtesy of CSIRO,
CC BY 3.0
, via Wikimedia Commons
Before we get into all the gloom and doom, let’s start with a look at where we actually get Magnesium from. We’ve already established that we can’t just pull a chunk of it out of the ground and throw it on a CNC, but what happened to it on its journey from the dirt to the body of my camera?
Well, first off, its journey doesn’t always start in the dirt
. Some of it comes from the ocean. It turns out that sea salt brine is a great source of magnesium chloride. To extract the magnesium, water is evaporated to form magnesium chloride anhydrous, which as you may have guessed is just a fancy term for, well, dry magnesium chloride. It’s then heated until it melts and electric current is passed through the molten salt, ripping the magnesium and chlorine ions apart. I think we need to pause a moment here to consider how *ahem* metal this sounds — electrocuting lava to break it down into metallic magnesium and gaseous chlorine!
Magnesium can also be extracted from Magnesite (mostly found in Russia, North Korea, and China) and Dolomite (found worldwide, and commonly mined in the US, Canada, and Switzerland, among other nations) ore. The ores are mined, and then crushed into dust and heated before being mixed with seawater. This separates out magnesium hydroxide from the rest of the bits of rock. The magnesium hydroxide can be heated along with some chlorine to yield magnesium chloride, and that can be processed with the seawater method above.
The last method we’ll discuss is the least efficient, and ironically, the most commonly used. Known as
the Pidgeon Process
and named after it’s inventor, Dr. Lloyd Pidgeon, the process consumes more energy and requires more manual labor to produce the same mass of magnesium as the others. It’s the dominant process used for magnesium production in China, where energy and labor are both cheap. It involves the reduction (time to think back to those redox reactions from chemistry class) of calcined dolomite pellets in a furnace under a vacuum. Eventually, metallic magnesium begins to crystalize, and can subsequently be melted down into an ingot. This process generally requires workers to manually empty and refill the magnesium tanks at the end of each cycle (which lasts approximately eleven hours).
Metal Mix-Ins
Now that we’ve got our piping-hot magnesium ingot, let’s take a moment to talk about alloys a bit more in-depth. An alloy is a solution of different elements, usually mixed together while molten and allowed to cool into bars of the metals we know and love. Almost all metals we use in engineering are alloys; it’s exceedingly rare to use one in its pure elemental form. The only two examples that come to mind immediately are copper (which is sometimes used in its elemental form for electrical and thermal conductors) and titanium, which can be sold and used in sheets and bars as “CP” or Commercially Pure. In most cases though, we want to add a little something special to help give the metal desired properties.
A micrograph of precipitates (dark regions) in an aluminum-copper alloy. Courtesy of
University of Cambridge
There are a ton of magnesium alloys out there, and I’m not going to bore you by just listing them all, but we can at least talk about a few of the common metals added to form them (known as alloying elements). Aluminum zirconium, zinc, and thorium are common mix-ins. They allow the alloy to be precipitation hardened — a heat treating process that forms microscopic regions called precipitates that impede the motion of metal grains, effectively making the whole piece of metal harder. Other common alloying elements are tin (which makes the magnesium more castable) and manganese (which can improve resistance to corrosion, something that magnesium is very susceptible to).
When magnesium is added to aluminum, it improves the strength of the material. This allows engineers to design lightweight, high-strength parts. In fact, almost all common aluminum alloys contain magnesium — and it’s a must for alloys favored by the automotive and aerospace industries.
Supply Chain Woes
We’ve established just how much we need magnesium, so what happens when we can’t get it? If the factories in China stay shut down for much longer, that’s a reality we may be facing. Auto makers will do what they can to get their hands on suitable aluminum, but there may not be enough to go around and some experts believe that this could cause car assembly lines to grind to a halt until the upstream supply chain is back in order.
It isn’t only cars that would be in short supply. Consumer electronics production could suffer as well (as if the global chip shortage wasn’t already enough). The ramifications will be far-reaching and you’re likely to feel them even if you aren’t planning on buying a new car or laptop next year.
Magnesium and aluminum prices have been increasing
, and even smaller fabrication shops have started stocking up on materials that they worry won’t be available in a few months. It may be a good time to think about alternatives for that machined aluminum enclosure you were going to design for your latest project. | 94 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395811",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2021-11-01T17:13:30",
"content": "Turns out the PV panels are not so sustainable.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6395846",
"author": "Dr.McRando",
"timestamp": "2021... | 1,760,372,898.554659 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/01/retro-memory-hack-chat/ | Retro Memory Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"Hack Chat"
] | Join us on Wednesday, November 3 at noon Pacific for the
Retro Memory Hack Chat
with Andy Geppert!
With how cheap and easy-to-integrate modern memory chips have become, it’s easy to lose track of the fact that it wasn’t too long ago that memory was the limiting factor in most computer designs. Before the advent of silicon memory, engineers had to make do with all sorts of weird and wonderful technologies just to provide a few precious bytes of memory. Things like intricate webs of wires spangled with ferrite cores, strange acoustic delay lines, and even magnetic bubbles were all tried at one time or another. They worked, at least well enough to get us to the Moon, but none would prove viable in the face of advancements in silicon memory.
That doesn’t mean that retro memory technology doesn’t have a place anymore. Some hobbyists, like Andy Geppert, are keeping the retro memory flame alive. His
Core 64 project
puts a core memory module in the palm of your hand, and even lets you “draw” directly to memory with a magnet. Andy learned a few tricks along the way to that accomplishment, and wants us all to appreciate the anachronistic charm of retro memory technologies. Stop by the Hack Chat to talk about your memories of memory, or to just learn what it used to take to store a little bit of data.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, November 3 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395794",
"author": "Bob A.",
"timestamp": "2021-11-01T16:20:56",
"content": "My all time favorite obsolete memory type is the William’s tube, an electrostatic memory that stored bits as tiny charges on the face plate of a cathode ray tube. In the pioneer days of computing (1940’s t... | 1,760,372,898.330373 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/01/an-emulator-for-obp-the-spaceflight-computer-from-the-1960s/ | An Emulator For OBP, The Spaceflight Computer From The 1960s | Donald Papp | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Space"
] | [
"assembly",
"emulator",
"nasa",
"natural language",
"OBP",
"retrocomputing",
"vintage",
"vintage hardware"
] | [David Given] frequently dives into retrocomputing, and we don’t just mean he refurbishes old computers. We mean things like
creating a simulator and assembler for the OBP spaceflight computer
, which was used in the OAO-3 Copernicus space telescope, pictured above. Far from being a niche and forgotten piece of technology, the On-Board Processor (OBP) was used in several spacecraft and succeeded by the Advanced On-board Processor (AOP), which in turn led to the NASA Standard Spaceflight Computer (NSSC-1), used in the
Hubble Space Telescope
. The OBP was also created entirely from NOR gates, which is pretty neat.
One thing [David] learned in the process is that while this vintage piece of design has its idiosyncrasies, in general, the architecture has many useful features and is pleasant to work with. It is a bit slow, however. It runs at a mere 250 kHz and many instructions take several cycles to complete.
Sample of the natural-language-looking programming syntax for the assembler. (Example from page 68 of the
instruction set manual for the OBP
.)
One curious thing about the original assembler was documentation showing it was intended to be programmed in a natural-language-looking syntax, of which an example is shown here. To process this, the assembler simply mapped key phrases to specific assembly instructions. As [David] points out, this is an idea that seems to come and go (and indeed the OBP’s successor AOP makes no mention whatsoever of it, so clearly it “went”.) Since a programmer must adhere to a very rigid syntax and structure anyway to make anything work, one might as well just skip dealing with it and write assembly instructions directly, which at least have the benefit of being utterly unambiguous.
We’re not sure who’s up to this level of detail, but embedded below is a video of [David] coding the assembler and OBP emulator, just in case anyone has both an insatiable vintage thirst and a spare eight-and-a-half hours. If you’d prefer just the files, check out
the project’s GitHub repository
. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395763",
"author": "Zap Brannigan",
"timestamp": "2021-11-01T15:09:01",
"content": "Little known fact, Señor Given (along with John Glen) where the primary inspirations for Clint Eastwood’s character in the movie Space Cowboys.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,372,898.387455 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/01/the-pi-zero-2-w-is-the-most-efficient-pi/ | The Pi Zero 2 W Is The Most Efficient Pi | Elliot Williams | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Reviews",
"Slider"
] | [
"battery operated",
"new parts",
"portable raspberry pi",
"power measurement",
"Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W",
"zombie current"
] | Last week we saw the announcement of
the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
, which is basically an improved quad-core version of the Pi Zero — more comparable in speed to the Pi 3B+, but in the smaller Zero form factor. One remarkable aspect of the board is the Raspberry-designed RP3A0 system-in-package, which includes the four CPUs and 512 MB of RAM all on the same chip. While 512 MB of memory is not extravagant by today’s standards, it’s
workable
. But this custom chip has a secret: it lets the board run on reasonably low power.
When you’re using a Pi Zero, odds are that you’re making a small project, and maybe even one that’s going to run on batteries. The old Pi Zero was great for these self-contained, probably headless, embedded projects: sipping the milliamps slowly. But the cost was significantly slower computation than its bigger brothers. That’s the gap that the Pi Zero 2 W is trying to fill. Can it pull this trick off? Can it run faster, without burning up the batteries? Raspberry Pi sent Hackaday a review unit that I’ve been running through the paces all weekend. We’ll see some benchmarks, measure the power consumption, and find out how the new board does.
The answer turns out to be a qualified “yes”. If you look at mixed CPU-and-memory tasks, the extra efficiency of the RP3A0 lets the Pi Zero 2 W run faster
per watt
than any of the other Raspberry boards we tested. Most of the time, it runs almost like a Raspberry Pi 3B+, but uses significantly less power.
Along the way, we found some interesting patterns in Raspberry Pi power usage. Indeed, the clickbait title for this article could be “We Soldered a Resistor Inline with Raspberry Pis, and You Won’t Believe What Happened Next”, only that wouldn’t really be clickbait. How many milliamps do you think a Raspberry Pi 4B draws, when it’s
shut down
? You’re not going to believe it.
Testing Performance and Power Draw
When it comes to picking a tiny Linux computer to embed in your project, you’ve got a lot more choice today than you did a few years ago. Even if you plan to stay within the comfortable world of the Raspberry Pi computers, you’re looking at the older
Pi 3B+
, the tiny
Pi Zero
, the powerhouse Pi 4B in a variety of configurations, and as of last week, the
Pi Zero 2 W
.
I ran all of the Raspberries through two fairly standard torture tests, all the while connected to a power supply with a 0.100 Ω precision resistor inline, and recorded the voltage drop across the resistor, and thus the current that the computers were drawing. The values here are averaged across 50 seconds by my oscilloscope, which accurately accounts for short spikes in current, while providing a good long-run average. All of the Pis were run headless, connected via WiFi and SSH, with no other wires going in or out other than the USB power. These are therefore minimum figures for WiFi-using Pi — if you run USB peripherals, don’t forget to factor them into your power budget.
Test number one is
stress-ng
which simply hammers all of the available CPU cores with matrix inversion problems. This is great for heat-stressing computers, but also for testing out their maximum CPU-driven power draw. All of the Pis here have four cores except for the original Pi Zero, which has only one. What you can see here is that as you move up in CPU capability, you burn more electrons. The Pi Zero 2 has four cores, but runs at a stock 1 GHz, while the 3B+ runs at 1.4 GHz and the 4B at 1.5 GHz. More computing, more power.
Test number two is
sbc-bench
which includes a memory bandwidth test (tinymemtest), a mixed-use CPU benchmark (7-zip), and a test of cryptographic acceleration (OpenSSL). Unfortunately, none of the Raspberry Pis use hardware cryptographic acceleration, so the OpenSSL test ends up being almost identical to the 7-zip test — a test of mixed CPU and memory power — and I’m skipping the results here to save space.
For ease of interpretation, I’m using the sum of the two memory sub-tests as the result for TinyMemBench, and the 7-zip test results are an average of the three runs. For all of these, higher numbers are better: memory written faster and more files zipped. This is where things get interesting.
Looking first at the memory bandwidth scores, the 4B is way out ahead, and the old Pi Zero is bringing up the rear, but the 3B+ and the Zero 2 are basically neck-in-neck. What’s interesting, however, is the power used in the memory test. The Zero 2 W scores significantly better than the 3B+ and the 4B. It’s simply more efficient, although if you divide through to get memory bandwidth per watt of power, the old Pi Zero stands out.
More megabits per second is better
At the cost of more power
The Pi Zero is surprisingly efficient with memory
Turn then to the 7-zip test, a proxy for general purpose computing. Here again, the four-core Pis all dramatically outperform the pokey Pi Zero. The Pi 4 is the fastest by far, and
with proper cooling it can be pushed to ridiculous performance
. But as any of you who’ve worked with Raspberry Pis and batteries know, the larger form-factor Raspberry Pi computers consume a lot more power to get the job done.
But look at the gap between the Pi Zero 2’s performance and the Pi 3B+. They’re very close! And look at the same gap in terms of power used — it’s huge. This right here is the Pi Zero 2’s greatest selling point. Almost 3B+ computational performance while using only marginally more power than the old Pi Zero. If you divide these two results to get a measure of zipped files per watt, which I’m calling computational “grunt” per watt, the Zero 2 is far ahead.
Almost as fast as the Pi 3B+
With a lot less power used.
Pi Zero 2 W is outstandingly efficient
If you’re looking for a replacement for a slow Raspberry Pi Zero in some portable project, it really looks like the Pi Zero 2 fits the bill perfectly.
Idle Current and Zombie Current
Some projects only need to do a little bit of work, and then can shut down or slow down during times of inactivity to use less total power over the course of a day. With an eye toward power saving, I had a look at how all of the boards performed when they weren’t doing anything, and here one of the answers was very surprising.
Unless you’re crunching serious numbers or running a busy web server on your Raspberry Pi, chances are that it will be sitting idle most of the time, and that its idle current draw will actually dominate the total power consumption. Here, we can see that the Pi Zero 2 has a lot more in common with the old Pi Zero than with the other two boards. Doing nothing more than keeping WiFi running, the Zeros use less than a third of the power consumed by their bigger siblings. That’s a big deal.
I also wanted to investigate what would happen if you could turn WiFi off, or shut the system down entirely, analogous to power-saving tricks that we use with smaller microcontrollers all the time. To test this, I ran a routine from an idle state that shut the WiFi off, waited 10 seconds, and then shut the system down. I was surprised by two things. One, the power consumed by WiFi in standby isn’t really that significant — you can see it activating periodically during the idle phase.
Second, the current draw of a shut-down system varied dramatically across the boards. I’m calling this current “zombie current” because this is the current drawn by the board when the CPU brain is shut off entirely. To be absolutely certain that I was measuring zombie current correctly, I unplugged the boards about ten seconds after shutdown. These are the traces that you see here, plotted for each system. There are four phases: idle, idle with no WiFi, shut down / zombie, and finally physically pulling the plug.
Pi Zero
Pi Zero 2
Pi 3B+
Pi 4B
The Pi 4 draws around 240 mA when it is shut down, or 1.2 W! The Pi 3 draws around 90 mA, or 0.45 W. For comparison, the Pi Zero 2’s idle current is similar to the Pi 3’s zombie current. The Pi Zero 2 has a much-closer-to-negligible 45 mA zombie draw, and the original Pi Zero pulls even less.
The point here is that while it’s not surprising that the power required to idle would increase for the more powerful CPUs, the extent of both the variation in idle and zombie current really dictates which boards to use in a battery powered project. Watch out!
Size and Power Isn’t Everything
In that respect, with the processing power of the Pi 3B, significantly better power management all around, and coming in at half the price, the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is incredibly attractive for anything that needs to sip the juice but also needs to pack some punch. The old Pi Zero shined in small, headless projects, and it was the only real choice for battery-driven projects. The Pi Zero 2 definitely looks like a worthy successor, adding a lot more CPU power for not all that much electrical power.
Still, I don’t think that the Pi Zero 2 will replace the 3B+, its closest competitor, for the simple reason that the Pi 3 has more memory and much more versatile connectivity straight out of the box. If your project involves more than a few USB devices, or wired Ethernet, or “normal” HDMI connections, adding all of these extra parts can make a Zero-based setup almost as bulky as a B. And when it comes down to pure grunt, power-budget be damned, the Pi 4 is clearly still the winner.
But by combining four cores tightly with on-chip memory, the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is definitely the most energy-efficient Pi. | 115 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395750",
"author": "josephsleary",
"timestamp": "2021-11-01T14:13:49",
"content": "1stNice. Wish I could get one from Microcenter",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6395765",
"author": "FlaxWombat",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,372,898.930662 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/01/dc-ups-keeps-the-internet-up/ | DC UPS Keeps The Internet Up | Al Williams | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"dc ups",
"ups"
] | We occasionally get annoyed that so much gear takes the ubiquitous “wall wart” these days. But one advantage is that the devices operate on DC voltage. [TechRally] takes advantage of this to create an
automatic DC UPS
with dual outputs to power a router and modem in the event of a power outage. You can see two videos about the project below.
Some may say it would be better to use conventional UPS, but think about it. That UPS has a battery in it that gets converted to AC so the wall wart can convert it back to DC. Each conversion loses some energy, of course, and in the case of a cheap wall wart, you may even lose quite a bit.
The project contains eight 18650 batteries, an off-the-shelf charge controller, and power converters. Could you do a more efficient custom design? Maybe, but the use of these inexpensive and commonly available modules makes it quick and easy to pull something like this together.
No one would mistake this UPS for a commercial unit, but it does have a certain hacker aesthetic. We wouldn’t carry it through an airport, though. With those digital displays and all the wiring, it looks like a bad TV show’s bomb prop.
If you don’t care about the automatic switchover, we hear that 5V will power a lot of equipment these days and that makes battery operation as simple as
stripping a USB cable
. This could probably drive some other gear like a connected Raspberry Pi. Or, you could do that job with
some supercaps
. | 33 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395721",
"author": "MoFoQ",
"timestamp": "2021-11-01T11:05:33",
"content": "OpenUPS or microUPS come to mind (originally existed for car computing needs)https://www.mini-box.com/micro-UPS-load-sharingPop in a few cells and viola:https://www.mini-box.com/OpenUPS2?sc=8&category=1264"... | 1,760,372,898.765066 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/01/hacking-an-obsolete-yet-modern-calculator/ | Hacking An Obsolete Yet Modern Calculator | Bryan Cockfield | [
"computer hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"calculator",
"retro",
"texas instruments",
"ti",
"ti-84",
"ticalc.org",
"z80",
"zshell"
] | The gold standard for graphing calculators, at least in the US, are the Texas Instruments TI-84 series. Some black sheep may have other types, but largely due to standardized testing these calculators dominate the market. Also because of standardized testing, these calculators have remained essentially unchanged for decades. While this isn’t great for getting value for money, it
does mean that generations of students have been able to hack on these calculators to do all kinds of interesting things as [George Hilliard] outlines
.
Even before the creation of these graphing calculators, the z80 processor behind them was first produced over four decades ago and was ubiquitous in the computer scene at the time, which also lends to its hackability. There’s plenty to catch up on here, too, from custom TI games that trick the two-tone display into grayscale to Game Boy emulators that can play Zelda since the TI and Game Boy share the same processors. There are also several methods of running native code or otherwise “jailbreaking” these devices to run arbitrary code.
It looks like the world of TI hacking is alive and well now, and with several decades of projects to browse
there’s always something new to find
. As it stands, there may be more decades of these types of projects to come, since neither TI nor the various testing standardization companies and government agencies show any signs of changing any time soon.
Thanks to [Adrian] for the tip! | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395715",
"author": "rpavlik",
"timestamp": "2021-11-01T10:49:29",
"content": "So annoying that new models require “jailbreaking” to run assembly code. That’s a pretty recent addition and not an improvement. On the other hand, they do also make one now that has CircuitPython integra... | 1,760,372,898.594842 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/31/cherry-pomodoro-timer-forces-you-to-follow/ | Cherry Pomodoro Timer Forces You To Follow | Kristina Panos | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"attiny85",
"Digispark",
"oled screen",
"pomodoro",
"the pomodoro technique",
"time management"
] | If you have trouble staying focused and getting work done, the Pomodoro Technique of working in 25-minute intervals with 5-minute breaks is pretty hard to beat. The only problem is that it requires a lot of input from the user, and all that timer-setting can get in the way of actually getting down to business. The absolute worst is when you find yourself working hard, but see that forgot to set the damn timer (ask us how we know). In essence, the tomato itself can only do so much — you have to actually use it and honor the timer, put in the work, and believe in the system.
But what if you didn’t have to do as much?
With [Erfan Sn]’s design, all you have to do is plug it in to a USB port
and the countdown starts automatically. Not only does this Pomodoro timer force you to get with the program, it also makes you take breaks from the screen by putting the computer into sleep mode when the 25 minutes (or whatever time you set in the software) are up. This thing even keeps track of your Pomodoro count.
At the heart of this build is the Digispark ATtiny85 dev board, which has a handy onboard USB plug. It can be built with or without the OLED screen, which is good if you are easily distracted by the timer itself. This cherry tomato only costs about $10 to make, it’s tiny, and you can take it anywhere.
As you will see in the gifs on GitHub, [Erfan Sn] has it plugged into a female USB-A to male USB-C, which is probably better for the computer long-term, what with all the plugging and unplugging. When we make ours, we’ll probably plug it into a hub that has power switches for each port.
If all of this sounds like too much work,
check out this build that senses whether or not you’re in the chair
. | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395697",
"author": "RobHeffo",
"timestamp": "2021-11-01T08:23:18",
"content": "I think a software solution that switches you between productive and break desktops automatically would be better with less stress on the USB ports.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies"... | 1,760,372,898.988094 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/31/building-a-kinetic-sand-art-table/ | Building A Kinetic Sand Art Table | Lewin Day | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"kinetic art",
"kinetic sand",
"kinetic sculpture",
"sand",
"sand sculpture"
] | Many of us have marveled at art installations that feature marbles quietly and ceaselessly tracing out beautiful patterns in sand. [DIY Machines] is here to show us that it’s entirely possible
to build one yourself at home!
The basic mechanism is simple enough. The table uses a Cartesian motion platform to move a magnet underneath a table. On top of the table, a metal sphere attached to the magnet moves through craft sand to draw attractive patterns. An Arduino and Raspberry Pi work together to command the stepper motors to create various patterns in the sand.
Low-cost pine is used to build most of the table, with oak used for the attractive bare wooden top. RGB LEDs surround the sand surface in order to light the scene, with options for mad disco lighting or simple white light for a subtler look. Other nice touches include sitting the craft sand atop a layer of faux leather, so the ball moving through the sand doesn’t make annoying crunching sounds as the ball moves.
It’s a great build that focuses on the smaller details like noise that can make a big difference to the final experience.
We’ve seen similar projects before, too
. Video after the break. | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395679",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2021-11-01T04:10:25",
"content": "If you really want easy, use an off-the-shelf 3D printer controller board, corexy belt arrangement, and Sandify to generate gcode patterns. No programming is needed. The controller thinks the table is a... | 1,760,372,899.040118 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/31/hackaday-links-october-31-2021/ | Hackaday Links: October 31, 2021 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"crypto",
"dynamo",
"fabrication",
"fisher-price",
"hackaday links",
"metal buying",
"phone",
"raspberry pi",
"sputnik",
"spy radio",
"steel",
"supply chain",
"toy"
] | Global supply chain issues are beginning to hit closer to home for the hacker community, as Raspberry Pi has
announced their first-ever price increase on their flagship Pi 4
. The move essentially undoes the price drop on the 2GB version of the Pi 4 that was announced in February, and sets the price back up from $35 to $45. Also rolled back is the discontinuation of the 1GB version, which will now be available at the $35 price point. The announcements come from Eben Upton himself, who insists the price increase is only temporary. We applaud his optimism, but take it with a grain of salt since he also said that 2021 production across the board will stay at the seven million-unit level, which is what they produced in 2020. That seems to speak to deeper issues within the supply chain, but more immediately, it’s likely that the supply of Pi products will be pinched enough that you’ll end up paying above sticker price just to get the boards you need. Hope everyone is stocked up.
On the topic of supply chain issues and their threat to Christmas gift-giving, here’s one product we hope is stranded in a container off Long Beach or better still, bobbing along in the Strait of Juan De Fuca:
a toddler’s toy telephone that actually makes and receives calls
. Anyone born in the last 60 years probably had one of the Fisher-Price Chatter telephone, a toy that in its original form looked like a desk telephone on wheels that was dragged behind the child, popping along and providing endless hours of clicky amusement as kids twisted the dial and lifted the receiver. Come to think of it, the Chatter telephone may be as close to a dial phone as anyone born since 1990 may have come. Anyway, some genius stuck a Bluetooth module into the classic phone to let it hook up to an app on an actual phone, allowing kids (or more likely their nostalgia-soaked parents) to make and receive calls. It’s actually priced at a reasonable $60, so there might be some hacking potential here.
Also tangential to supply chains, we stumbled across
a video guide to buying steel
that might interest readers. Anyone who has seen the displays of steel and other metals at the usual big-box retailers might wonder what the fuss is, but buying steel that way or ordering online is a great way to bust a project’s budget. Fabricator and artist Doug Boyd insists that finding a local steel supplier is the best bang for your buck, and has a bunch of helpful tips for not sounding like a casual when you’re ordering. It’s all good advice, and would have helped us from looking foolish a time or two at the metal yard; just knowing that pipe is measured by inside diameter while tubing is measured by outside dimensions is worth the price of admission alone.
With all the money you save on steel and by not buying Raspberry Pis, perhaps you’ll have a couple of hundred thousand Euros lying around to bid on
this authentic 1957 Sputnik I satellite
. The full-scale model of Earth’s first artificial satellite —
manhole covers
excluded — was a non-flown test article, but externally faithful to the flown hardware that kicked off the first Space Race. The prospectus says that it has a transmitter and a “modern power supply”; it’s not clear if the transmitter was originally part of the test article or added later. The opening bid is €85,000 and is expected to climb considerably.
And finally, there’s something fascinating about “spy radios,” especially those from the Cold War era and before, when being caught with one in your possession was probably going to turn out to be a very bad day. One such radio is
the Radio Orange “Acorn” receiver
, which is in the collection of the Crypto Museum. The radio was used by the Dutch government to transmit news and information into the occupied Netherlands from their exile in London. Built to pass for a jewelry box, the case for the radio was made from an old cigar box and is a marvel of 1940s miniaturization. The radio used three acorn-style vacuum tubes and was powered by mains current; another version of the Radio Orange receiver was powered by a bike dynamo or even a water-powered turbine, which could be run from a tap or garden hose. The video below shows the water-powered version in action, but the racket it made must have been problematic for its users, especially given the stakes. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395636",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-31T23:21:03",
"content": "Don’t forget, bed frames can be used as a source of angle iron. Some can be found curbside, and some bedding/mattress stores will let you have an old one from their pile of trade-ins.",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,372,899.096983 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/31/extracting-data-from-smart-scale-gives-rube-goldberg-a-run-for-his-money/ | Extracting Data From Smart Scale Gives Rube Goldberg A Run For His Money | Donald Papp | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"fitness",
"ocr",
"rube goldberg",
"screen scraping",
"screenshot",
"smart scale",
"tesseract-ocr"
] | [Kevin Norman] got himself a smart body scale with the intention of logging data for his own analysis, but discovered that
extracting data from the device was anything but easy
. It turns out that the only way to access data from his scale is by viewing it in a mobile app. Screen-scraping is a time-honored method of pulling data from uncooperative systems, so [Kevin] committed to regularly taking a full-height screenshot from the app and using optical character recognition (OCR) to get the numbers, but making that work was a surprisingly long process full of dead ends.
First of all, while OCR can be reliable, it needs the right conditions. One thing that ended up being a big problem was the way the app appends units (kg, %) after the numbers. Not only are they tucked in very close, but they’re about half the height of the numbers themselves. It turns out that mixing and matching character height, in addition to snugging them up against one another, is something tailor-made to give OCR reliability problems.
The solution for this particular issue came from an unexpected angle. [Kevin] was using
an open-source OCR program called Tesseract
, and joined an IRC community
#tesseract
to ask for advice after exhausting his own options. The bemused members of the online community informed [Kevin] that they had nothing to do with OCR;
#tesseract
was actually a community for an open-source 3D FPS shooter
of the same name
. But as luck would have it, one of the members actually had OCR experience and suggested the winning approach: pre-process the image with
OpenCV
, using
cv2.findContours()
to detect and create a bounding box around each element. If an element is taller than a decimal point but shorter than everything else, throw it out. With that done, there were still a few more tweaks required, but the finish line was finally in sight.
Now [Kevin] can use the scale in the morning, take a screenshot, and in less than half a minute the results are imported into a database and visualizations generated. The resulting workflow might look like something
Rube Goldberg
would approve of, but it works! | 20 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395609",
"author": "japhethite",
"timestamp": "2021-10-31T20:36:59",
"content": "why won’t he used bluetooth and rpi or something? it is easy to get data from btle devices",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6395610",
"author":... | 1,760,372,899.157568 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/31/raspberry-pi-reads-what-it-sees-delights-children/ | Raspberry Pi Reads What It Sees, Delights Children | Donald Papp | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"eSpeak",
"ocr",
"raspberry pi",
"text to speech"
] | [Geyes30]’s Raspberry Pi project does one thing:
it finds arbitrary text in the camera’s view and reads it out loud
. Does it do so flawlessly? Not really. Was it at least effortless to put together? Also no, but it does wonderfully illustrate the process of gluing together different bits of functionality to make something new. Also, [geyes30]’s kids find it fascinating, and that’s a win all on its own.
The device is made from a Raspberry Pi and camera and works by sending a still image from the camera to an optical character recognition (OCR) program, which converts any visible text in the image to its ASCII representation. The recognized text is then piped to the
espeak
engine and spoken aloud. Getting all the tools to play nicely took a bit of work, but [geyes30] documented everything so well that even a novice should be able to get the project up and running in an afternoon.
Sometimes a function like text-to-speech is an end result in and of itself. This was also true of another similar project:
Magic Mirror, whose purpose was to tirelessly indulge children’s curiosity about language
.
Seeing other projects come to life and learning about new tools is a great way to get new ideas, and documenting them helps cross-pollinate among creative types. Did something inspire you recently, or have you documented your own project? We want to hear about it and so do others, so
let us know via the tips line
! | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395574",
"author": "a Jaded Hobo",
"timestamp": "2021-10-31T17:46:13",
"content": "Could be done with an Amiga 30 years ago :p",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6395644",
"author": "resident",
"timestamp": "2021... | 1,760,372,899.207108 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/31/a-builders-guide-for-the-perfect-solid-state-tesla-coil/ | A Builders Guide For The Perfect Solid-State Tesla Coil | Dave Rowntree | [
"hardware",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"guide",
"igbt",
"plasma",
"Solid State Tesla Coil",
"tesla coil"
] | [Zach Armstrong] presents for your viewing pleasure a simple guide to
building a solid-state Tesla coil
. The design is based around a self-resonant setup using the
UCC2742x
gate driver IC, which is used in a transformer-coupled full-wave configuration for delivering maximum power from the line input. The self-resonant bit is implemented by using a small antenna nearby the coil to pick up the EM field, and by suitably clamping and squaring it up, it is fed back into the gate driver to close the feedback loop. Such a setup within reason allows the circuit to oscillate with a wide range of Tesla coil designs, and track any small changes, minimizing the need for fiddly manual tuning that is the usual path you follow building these things.
Since the primary is driven with
IGBTs
, bigger is better. If the coil is too small, the resonant frequency would surpass the recommended 400 kHz, which could damage the IGBTs since they can’t switch much faster with the relatively large currents needed. An important part of designing Tesla coil driver circuits is matching the primary coil to the driver. You could do worse than checkout
JavaTC
to help with the calculations, as this is an area of the design where mistakes often result in destructive failure. The secondary coil design is simpler, where a little experimentation is needed to get the appropriate degree of coil coupling. Too much coupling is unhelpful, as you’ll just get breakdown between the two sides. Too little coupling and efficiency is compromised. This is why you often see a Tesla coil with a sizeable gap between the primary and secondary coils. There is a science to this magic!
Pretty Lithium Carbonate plasma
A 555 timer wired to produce adjustable pulses feeds into the driver enable to allow easily changing the discharge properties. This enables it to produce discharges that look a bit like a Van De Graaff discharge at one extreme, and produce some lovely plasma ‘fire’ at the other.
We’ve covered Tesla coils from many angles over the years, recently this
plasma tweeter made sweet sounds
, and somehow we missed an
insanely dangerous Tesla build by [StyroPyro]
just checkout that rotary spark gap – from a distance. | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395563",
"author": "Greg Garriss",
"timestamp": "2021-10-31T16:44:34",
"content": "Happy Halloween!! I built my first TC as a kid in the late 60s with glass plate capacitors and a couple of neon sign transformers and have helped build a dozen or so since. Time to build another one!... | 1,760,372,899.267324 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/31/dantes-inferno-arcade-reveals-your-true-fate/ | Dante’s Inferno Arcade Reveals Your True Fate | Lewin Day | [
"Games"
] | [
"arcade game",
"dante",
"dante's inferno",
"love tester"
] | Many of us are vaguely familiar with the levels of hell described in Dante’s epic poem from the 14th century, even if we’ve never visited ourselves. It’s natural to wonder in which circle of hell one might end up, but that’s a question that [scubabear’s] arcade build
seeks to answer.
The artwork is vibrant and enticing.
The stand-up cabinet was built for The Magic Castle, Hollywood’s exclusive private club for the magic set. The design is loosely inspired by old-fashioned love testers, the sort of which you might have seen in
that Simpsons episode.
The club has traditionally issued members with unique RFID tags in keychains, which can be used to trigger special objects in the facility. In this case, when a member scans their keychain and places their hand on a handprint, the machine starts up.
The hand is detected by an Adafruit touch sensor board, and the machine begins determining the fate of the member while playing a short musical interlude. Once calculated by the Raspberry Pi within, the user’s name is read out based on the RFID data, and their destiny is read aloud. They’re then given a receipt stating their destination in hell, along with a quote from Dante’s
Inferno.
It’s a fun game and one that we’d love to try out if we find ourselves visiting The Magic Castle one spooky day. It’s made all the better by the sheer quality of the cabinet and the associated illustrations from [Jeremy Owen.]
For those keen to do something similar, [scubabear] hasn’t skimped on the details of the construction nor the electronics that make it all work. We’ve seen other great builds too, from the
carefully crafted
to the
glowiest you’ve ever seen.
Video after the break. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395538",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-31T14:24:29",
"content": "I recall the Magic Castle was featured in Bill Bixby’s TV series “The Magician”,",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6395540",
"author": "Ren",
... | 1,760,372,899.318505 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/31/a-fascinating-plot-twist-as-researchers-recreate-classic-primordial-soup-experiment/ | A Fascinating Plot Twist As Researchers Recreate Classic “Primordial Soup” Experiment | Dan Maloney | [
"chemistry hacks",
"News"
] | [
"abiogenesis",
"amino acids",
"ammonia",
"borosilicate",
"catalyst",
"Chemistry",
"methane",
"Miller-Urey"
] | Science is built on reproducibility; if someone else can replicate your results, chances are pretty good that you’re looking at the truth. And there’s no statute of limitations on reproducibility; even experiments from 70 years ago are fair game for a fresh look. A great example is
this recent reboot of the 1952 Miller-Urey “primordial soup” experiment
which ended up with some fascinating results.
At the heart of the Miller-Urey experiment was a classic chicken-and-the-egg paradox: complex organic molecules like amino acids and nucleic acids are the necessary building blocks of life, but how did they arise on Earth before there was life? To answer that, Stanley Miller, who in 1952 was a graduate student of Harold Urey, devised an experiment to see if complex molecules could be formed from simpler substances under conditions assumed to have been present early in the planet’s life. Miller assembled a complicated glass apparatus, filled it with water vapor and gasses such as ammonia, hydrogen, and methane, and zapped it with an electric arc to simulate lightning. He found that a rich broth of amino acids accumulated in the reaction vessel; when analyzed, the sludge was found to contain five of the 20 amino acids.
The Miller-Urey experiment has been repeated over and over again with similar results, but a recent reboot took a different tack and looked at how the laboratory apparatus itself may have influenced the results. Joaquin Criado-Reyes and colleagues found that when run in a Teflon flask, the experiment produced far fewer organic compounds. Interestingly, adding chips of borosilicate glass to the Teflon reaction chamber restored the richness of the resulting broth, suggesting that the silicates in the glassware may have played a catalytic role in creating the organic soup. They also hypothesize that the highly alkaline reaction conditions could create microscopic pits in the walls of the glassware, which would serve as reaction centers to speed up the formation of organics.
This is a great example of a finding that seems to knock a hole in a theory but actually ends up supporting it. On the face of it, one could argue that Miller and Urey were wrong since they only produced organics thanks to contamination from their glassware. And it appears to be true that silicates are necessary for the abiotic generation of organic molecules. But if there was one thing that the early Earth was rich in, it was silicates, in the form of clay, silt, sand, rocks, and dust. So this experiment lends support to the abiotic origin of organic molecules on Earth, and perhaps on other rocky worlds as well.
[Featured image credit: Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS, via
Science History Institute
] | 46 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395485",
"author": "Rob Ward",
"timestamp": "2021-10-31T08:42:00",
"content": "Add in about a billion years for some form of replicating amino acid replicating itself to take off in the soup, life has begun. When it randomly starts to change (mutations) to generate the ability to g... | 1,760,372,899.449107 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/30/a-hackable-keyboard-that-even-has-screens/ | A Hackable Keyboard That Even Has Screens | Lewin Day | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"key switch",
"key switches",
"keyboard",
"mechanical keyboard",
"oled"
] | There are a huge number of available keyboards out in the world these days, catering to all of the plainest and the most advanced desires. However, if you want something that’s
just right,
sometimes it pays to build your own.
[Zach] did just that.
One of the key features of [Zach]’s build is that it diverges away from the Cherry MX switch form factor. The design uses low-profile switches instead, which help with keeping the keyboard low enough to avoid it causing wrist problems. The keyboard also uses IO expanders to hook up all the key switches, helping to reduce the incidence of ghost keys. The board can also be split in half, allowing it to be repurposed as a smaller macropad when desired.
It’s all wrapped up in a cool 3D printed case, and there are even three OLED displays on the right-hand side. They’re soldered to the PCB on special cutouts that allow the displays to flex and trigger tactile switches, acting as giant pressable buttons.
[Zach] does a great job explaining all the nifty engineering decisions he made to cram maximum functionality into the design. We’ve seen some other great
DIY ergonomic designs too.
Video after the break. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395486",
"author": "Jump cut",
"timestamp": "2021-10-31T08:48:11",
"content": "Beautiful! A certain cyberpunk lofi aesthetic that I love. I’d love it if this could be bought as a kit. Zach makes it look like this could even be assembled by a beginner custom keyboard hobbyist like m... | 1,760,372,899.357197 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/30/handwriting-robots-are-sending-snail-mail/ | Handwriting Robots Are Sending Snail Mail | Matthew Carlson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"axidraw",
"handwriting",
"ink",
"plotter"
] | As a kid, you might remember taking a whole fistful of markers or crayons, gently lining them all up for maximum contact, mashing them into the paper, and marveling at the colorful multitude of lines. It seemed like an easy way to write many times more things with less effort. While not quite the same idea but in a similar vein, [Aaron Francis] shared an experience of
creating handwriting robots to write thousands of letters
.
Why did [Aaron] need to write thousands of letters? Direct mailing, of course! If you were sending someone a letter, if it looked handwritten they’re much more likely to open it. What better way to make it look handwritten than to use a pen rather than a printer? They started off with Axidraw, a simple plotter made by EMSL. Old laptops controlled a few plotters and they started to make progress. As with most things, scale became tricky. Adding more plotters just means more paper to replace and machines to restart. An automated system of replacing paper is fiendishly difficult so they went for a batching system. A sheet of plywood that can hold dozens of sheets of paper became the basis of a new mega-plotter. 3D printers and laser cutters helped make adapters and homing teeth. A Raspberry Pi replaced the old laptops and they scaled up to a few machines.
All in all, a pretty impressive build. If you’re looking to dip your toes into the plotting water, this
pen plotter is about as simple as you can get. | 40 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395434",
"author": "anon",
"timestamp": "2021-10-31T02:25:06",
"content": "The world does not need more spam / spammers. That they are killing trees to send their spam makes it even worse.Perhaps they can pivot to something more useful, like a service that provides “hand written” ... | 1,760,372,899.726943 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/30/this-smart-watch-keeps-an-eye-on-ambient-co2-levels/ | This Smart Watch Keeps An Eye On Ambient CO2 Levels | Lewin Day | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"co2",
"smart watch",
"smartwatch",
"watch"
] | Human respiration takes in oxygen and in turn, we exhale carbon dioxide. Thus, an uptick of carbon dioxide levels around us can indicate we’re in the presence of other humans, and also, perhaps, the pathogens they carry. To explore this phenomenon, [C Scott Ananian] developed a mod for the Watchy open-source smartwatch, which lets it
detect carbon dioxide.
The idea behind the build is simple. If you’re around increased CO2 levels, it may be because you’re surrounded by people, and thus more likely to be exposed to COVID-19. To detect CO2, the watch relies on a Sensiron SCD40 or SCD41 sensor. This is read by the Watchy’s ESP32 microcontroller, and results are graphed on the watch’s e-Paper display.
The Watchy
is also given a nice new aluminum case to fit the additional hardware.
It’s cool having a graph on your wrist of the ambient concentration of CO2, and at the very least, it could make a good talking point next time you’re at a particularly boring party. You’ll also be more than ready to advise other partygoers if the carbon dioxide level is reaching dangerous levels.
We’ve seen similar builds before
, which are useful not only for pandemic safety but also for monitoring if you have any leaks
from CO2 storage in the house.
If you’ve been working on your own ways to track dangerous gases, be sure to
drop us a line! | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395396",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-30T23:13:29",
"content": "I like the “industrial” look of it, but wonder if the wristband is uncomfortable.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6395401",
"author": "C. Scott... | 1,760,372,901.286941 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/30/modified-toggle-switches-grace-hyper-detailed-cockpit-simulator-panels/ | Modified Toggle Switches Grace Hyper-Detailed Cockpit Simulator Panels | Dan Maloney | [
"Games",
"hardware"
] | [
"A-10",
"cockpit",
"electromagentic",
"simulator",
"switch",
"Thunderbolt II",
"toggle",
"warthog"
] | In the world of the cockpit simulator hobby, no detail is too small to obsess over. Getting the look and feel of each and every cockpit control just right is important, and often means shelling out for cockpit-accurate parts. But not always, as
these DIY magnetically captured toggle switches
show.
Chances are good you’ve seen [The Warthog Project]’s fantastically detailed A-10 Thunderbolt II cockpit simulator before;
we’ve featured it recently
, and videos from the ongoing build pop up regularly in our feeds. The sim addresses the tiniest of details, including the use of special toggle switches that lock into place automatically using electromagnets. They’re commercially available, but only for those with very deep pockets — depending on the supplier, up to several thousand dollars
per unit!
The homebrew substitute is mercifully cheap and easy to build, though — a momentary DPST toggle switch is partially gutted, with a length of nail substituted for one of its poles. The nail sticks out of the back of the switch, where a bracket holds a small electromagnet. When energized, the electromagnet holds the nail firmly when the switch is toggled on; the simulated pilot can still manually toggle the switch off, or it can be released automatically by de-energizing the coil. Each switch cost less than $20 to make, including the MOSFETs needed to drive the coils and the Arduino to provide the logic. The panels they adorn look fantastic, and the switches add a level of functional detail that’s just right for the whole build.
Thanks for the tip, [Mark]. | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395376",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-30T20:52:59",
"content": "Grace HyperGrace Hopper?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6395488",
"author": "Jump cut",
"timestamp": "2021-10-31T08:55:09",
"c... | 1,760,372,901.583455 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/29/muggle-uses-e-paper-for-daily-prophet-replica/ | Muggle Uses E-Paper For Daily Prophet Replica | Chris Wilkinson | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"e-paper",
"ESP32",
"harry potter",
"newspaper",
"Teensy"
] | News from the wizarding world is a little hard to come by for common muggles, but [Deep Tronix] has brought us one step closer to our magical counterparts with their
electronic replica of the Daily Prophet newspaper
.
Those familiar with the Harry Potter series will no doubt be familiar with the Daily Prophet. In the films, the newspaper is especially eye-catching with its spooky animated images, a reflection of the magic present throughout the wizarding world. This was achieved with post-production special effects for the films, but this fan-made front page of the Prophet brings the concept to life using e-paper technology and a few other interesting gadgets, all hidden away in a picture frame.
As mentioned, the heart of this project is the e-paper display and a Teensy microcontroller. While e-paper displays are excellent for displaying static text and simple graphics, they are usually not suitable for moving images due to suffering from a form of ‘burn in’, which can leave errant pixels on the screen. This means that e-paper technology typically has a relatively low frame rate for video. [Deep Tronix] has used a custom dithering library to somewhat mitigate this issue, and the results are impressive. Moving images are loaded from an external SD card, processed, and then displayed on the e-paper display, which is almost indistinguishable from the newspaper print that surrounds it.
The seemingly magical newspaper also has a face detection feature, which is enabled by a hidden camera and the venerable ESP32 microcontroller. This system integrates with the Teensy to record and then display the reader’s face on the e-paper display. A neat trick, which is made all the more eerie when these faces are later displayed at random.
We’ve seen Daily Prophet replicas before
using more traditional display technology, however the move to an e-paper display goes a long way to improving the overall aesthetics, despite the lower frame rates. With Halloween just around the corner, you might just end up tricking a few people with this clever prop –
check out all the build details here
. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395138",
"author": "Klausman",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T20:28:47",
"content": "Wow! That thing is awesome!Maybe shorter breaks and flashes between the animations, but awesome idea!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6395150",
... | 1,760,372,901.876457 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/29/all-aboard-the-railroad-keyboard-is-now-serving-open-sourceville/ | All Aboard! The Railroad Keyboard Is Now Serving Open Sourceville | Kristina Panos | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"custom keyboard",
"ISO Enter",
"olkb",
"ortholinear"
] | Sometimes you don’t know what you want until you see it, and that goes for keyboard designs as much as it does the dessert cart.
The Railroad is [DiplomacyPunIn10Did]’s first keyboard design, believe it or not
. And, well, we like what we see. Good thing it’s open-source, eh?
While we personally don’t normally go for straight-up ortholinear keyboards, this one looks split enough to be comfortable. We love that there is both an ISO Enter and a regular-sized Return, although we might put another Enter on the left side if it were our keyboard. That’s the beauty of this whole open-source keyboard thing, though. I could assign any number of those animal-capped keys to Enter. Another plus is that The Railroad uses semi-normal keycap sets, with none of this 1.25u nonsense of certain split keyboards.
All the files and the BOM are available on GitHub under a Creative Commons license
. This represents JLCPCB’s max length, by the way. [DiplomacyPunIn10Did] wanted to add a num pad, but it would have made it too long. Since the pictures are so big, we put our hands up to the screen to test it out. Those innermost 1u thumb keys look like they’re placed just far enough in toward the space bars that they wouldn’t cause strain, but it’s hard to know for sure without trying a real one. (Darn you, global shortages and shipping delays!)
Yep, there are all kinds of ways to make a keyboard your own.
We’ve even seen an all-wood keyboard that uses Scrabble tiles for keycaps
. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395106",
"author": "peter",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T18:37:34",
"content": "With a little reworking, you could make the F key section into a numpad with a layer button somewhere to enable it",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6395... | 1,760,372,901.63699 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/29/how-practical-is-harvesting-water-from-the-air/ | How Practical Is Harvesting Water From The Air? | Lewin Day | [
"Engineering",
"Science"
] | [] | Water is one of the most precious substances required to sustain human life. Unfortunately, in some areas like California, it’s starting to run out.
The ongoing drought has some people looking towards alternative solutions, such as sucking water out of the very air itself. In particular, a company called Tsunami Products has been making waves in the press with its atmospheric water generators, touting them as a solution for troubled drought-stricken areas,
as reported by
AP News
.
Today, we’ll look at how these machine capture water, and whether or not they can help in areas short on water.
A Condensed Explanation
Systems such as those built by companies like Tsunami Products are referred to as atmospheric water generators of the cooling condensation type. They work on much the same principle as a modern air conditioner, relying on a refrigeration circuit. The refrigeration circuit is used to create a cold surface upon which water from the air condenses and is collected. From there, the water is filtered and purified to remove any viruses, bacteria, or other contaminants that may have been captured from the air.
A Tsunami 500 unit pictured next to a human being for size.
It seems straightforward enough; the basic principle at play is quite simple. Collect water that condenses on a cool surface, filter it, and drink it! However, there’s a reason that we don’t typically look to the air itself as a source of water. That’s because of the energy cost, which is, in a word, significant. Essentially, running such a machine is functionally equivalent to running a large air conditioner.
For example, the smallest unit offered by Tsunami Products is the
Tsunami 500
, which costs on the order of $30,000 and is reportedly capable of delivering up to 204 gallons (773 liters) of water per day. That’s a lot of water, approximately enough to cover the daily needs of two Americans – 82 gallons of water each. To capture that water, the Tsunami 500 uses an astonishing 5.8-7.5 kilowatts, depending on ambient conditions of temperature and relative humidity. Multiply that out over 24 hours, and that water came at the cost of 139.2-180 kilowatt-hours. Looking at the best case, that’s around 0.68 kilowatt-hours per gallon. In comparison, desalinating seawater, which is already considered energy-intensive, can be done for just 0.0113 kilowatt-hours per gallon.
What if We Use Renewable Energy?
For those with solar panels and battery storage, the energy cost may not seem like a problem. However, for those stuck paying grid prices, such an installation in drought-struck California would cost on the order of $27-36 a day to run, given the current energy price of around 20 cents per kilowatt-hour. It’s a huge price to pay for water, given the average bill in California currently sits
at just $65 a month
.
The key really is pairing such technology with solar power, in order to avoid contributing further to the climate change problem that causes hot weather and droughts in the first place. Bay Area man Don Johnson lives in the city of Benicia, and bought himself a Tsunami 500 in order to supply his garden’s water needs. However, he found that the machine was able to generate more than enough water to cover both his garden and his household usage. With the benefit of a large solar install on his roof, Johnson hasn’t had to deal with excessive power bills when running the system.
Data on expected water yields in different environmental conditions for a Tsuanmi 500 device. Note that lower temperature and relative humidity causes a significant drop in production.
Such products are marketed as a useful way of generating water in places where there simply is none, outside of the humidity in the air itself. They can indeed do that, however conditions have to be right. There has to be plenty of humidity in the air, and temperatures can’t be too low.
According to Kevin Collins
, president of Tsunami Products, the unit is ideal for areas within 10 to 15 degrees either side of the equator. “If you’re in the Los Angeles area, San Francisco, or San Diego, those areas have climates that typically don’t freeze,” says Collins, adding “…we can make water at anything above 50 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Can Existing AC Be Optimized for This?
Given the huge cost, it’s unsurprising that this technology is not yet mainstream. Tsunami Products reportedly sold just 20 units in 18 months prior to coverage by AP News. Since then, the company has reported a torrent of interest, and hopes to close on 50 orders by year’s end. Given the anxieties created by drought, it’s perhaps unsurprising that those with the means are jumping at the chance to secure their own water supply.
It does, however, raise the idea that perhaps the technology could be used in a more sustainable fashion. Anyone that’s seen water dripping off an air conditioner unit will be familiar with the principles at play. There’s perhaps scope to investigate capturing condensation from large air conditioning units in commercial and industrial installations, where it could be purified for use on-site. This could potentially reduce water use without increasing power usage, as it relies on the existing air conditioning system as it’s already employed. It’s something unlikely to work on the smaller home scale, due to the lower amounts of water such a system would harvest. However, for larger installations, it could prove beneficial.
Overall, however, water production from humid air remains an energy-intensive, and thus costly, exercise. While atmospheric water capture may find some applications in off-grid areas and with cashed-up homeowners, it’s in no way likely to serve as a widespread solution to the water woes of California and other drought-stricken areas. More traditional methods of saving and capturing water will have to be employed. | 117 | 35 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395063",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T17:05:09",
"content": "Do these require a special kind of droid to talk to them?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6395066",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,372,901.830864 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/29/hackaday-podcast-142-65-days-of-airtime-racecars-staring-at-the-ceiling-a-pushy-white-cane-and-soapy-water-rockets/ | Hackaday Podcast 142: 65 Days Of Airtime, Racecars Staring At The Ceiling, A Pushy White Cane, And Soapy Water Rockets | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys flap their gums about all the great hacks of the week. Something as simple as a wheel can be totally revolutionary, as we saw with a white cane mod for the visually impaired which adds an omniwheel that knows where it’s going. We enjoyed the collection of great hacks from all over the community that went into a multi-two-liter water rocket build. You’ll hear Elliot and Mike’s great debate about the origin of comments in computer code. And we spend plenty of time joking around about the worlds longest airplane flight (it was in a tiny Cessna and lasted over two months!)
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Direct download
(55 MB)
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 142 Show Notes:
What’s that Sound?
That sound was
the Swish Rhapsody number station
[Bobert] was randomly drawn from 24 correct responses and wins the shirt!
New This Week:
Mastering Memory For Microcontrollers: Elecia White To Deliver Remoticon Keynote
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Fast Indoor Robot Watches Ceiling Lights, Instead Of The Road
Star Trackers: Telling Up From Down In Any Space
SymPy
Tricky Screw Heads Have Disappearing Slots
Building A Water Rocket That Lands Via Parachute
Foam and two-stage experiments
U.S. Water Rockets – Water Rocket Designs, Construction, and Experiments
Tomy Timers: Where to get them, Construction, Operation and Adjustment
How to make a Clark Cable Tie Launcher Release
Tutorial: How to build a huge water rocket [3/5] – Pressure test and assembly – YouTube
Modified Car Alternator Powers Speedy DIY E-Bike
Gears! – But Were Afraid To Ask (MiniLathe) – YouTube
Simple Electronic Hacks Inspire Doing More With Less
Internet Archive Search: encyclopedia of electronic circuits
Omni-Wheeled Cane Steers The Visually-Impaired Away From Obstacles
Digital White Cane
20 Projects tagged with “Visually Impaired”
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks
SuperSlicer Reviewed: Another 3DP Slicer?
Surf Sensor Adds Depth To Finding The Ultimate Wave
The Humble NE-2 Neon Lamp Has A New Trick
Mike’s Picks:
ESP32 Clock Takes Time To Give Weather Info, Too
3D Printer Bed Probing Using A Tact Switch And Coin Cell
Mesmerizing Mechanical Seven-Segment Display
Can’t-Miss Articles:
In Search Of The First Comment
Dali Clock
APL (programming language) – Wikipedia
The Longest Ever Flight Was Over 64 Days In A Cessna 172
The Smell Of Space
Everything You NEED TO KNOW about Piper “Legacy” Autopilots | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,901.483336 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/29/can-3d-printed-press-tools-produce-repeatable-parts/ | Can 3D Printed Press Tools Produce Repeatable Parts? | Ryan Flowers | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printed tool",
"3d printer",
"copper",
"press",
"tool"
] | When we think of using a press to form metal we think of large stamps with custom made metal dies under unimaginable hydraulic pressure. It’s unlikely we’d e think of anything 3D printed. And in a commercial environment we’d be right. But your average garage hacker is far more likely to have access to a bench vise and a 3D printer. It’s in this context that [The Shipping Container Garage] has spent considerable time, effort, and money perfecting a process for
pressing copper parts with 3D printed dies
, which you can watch below the break.
In the quest to make a custom intake manifold for his project car, [The Shipping Container Garage] first made 3D printed jigs for cutting out a manifold flange that bolts to the cylinder head. It’s a process he calls Analog CNC, as all the cutting is done by hand.
Buoyed by his success, he proceeded with the next step: making manifold runners. His metal of choice was copper. While softer than many metals such as steel, he found it too hard. In the video, he describes his method for annealing the copper. Once cooled, two 3D printed dies are pressed into the copper tubes to progressively shape them. Watch the video to find out one of the neatest details of the die itself: how he gets it out!
Of course no matter how clever this all is, it’s useless if it produces poor results. And that’s where the most astounding part of the build is: The parts are all the same within 0.006 inches (0.15mm) of each other, and the parts fit the manifold flange they were made for. Additionally, the die can be used for the duration of the project at hand. For low volume production, this appears to be a viable method. It’ll be interesting to see what others do to iterate these processes to even more advanced stages.
You may also like to see
3D printing used in leather working
and in
jigs for beautiful circuit sculptures
. A big thanks to [JapanFan] for the tip! If you have your own pressing hacks to share, let us know via the
Tip Line
! | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395041",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T15:37:13",
"content": "I’ve been playing with this and have found that if you use a set of progressive dies, with each one only stretching the metal like 2mm, you can have quite long-lifetime dies and do some pretty amazi... | 1,760,372,901.533006 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/29/this-week-in-securityuse-after-free-for-dummies-wifi-cracking-and-php-fpm/ | This Week In Security:Use-After-Free For Dummies, WiFi Cracking, And PHP-FPM | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"ctf",
"gitlab",
"This Week in Security",
"wpa"
] | In a brilliant write-up, [Stephen Tong] brings us his “
Use-After-Free for Dummies
“. It’s a surprising tale of a vulnerability that really shouldn’t exist, and a walkthrough of how to complete a capture the flag challenge. The vulnerable binary is running on a Raspberry Pi, which turns out to be very important. It’s a multithreaded application that uses lock-free data sharing, through pair of integers readable by multiple threads. Those ints are declared using the
volatile
keyword, which is a useful way to tell a compiler not to optimize too heavily, as this value may get changed by another thread.
On an x86 machine, this approach works flawlessly, as all the out-of-order execution features are guaranteed to be globally transparent. Put another way, even if thread one can speed up execution by modifying shared memory ahead of time, the CPU will keep the shared memory changes in the proper order. When that shared memory is controlling concurrent access, it’s really important that ordering happens the way you expect it. What was a surprise to me is that the ARM platform does not provide that global memory ordering. While the out-of-order execution will be transparent to the thread making changes, other threads and processes may observe those actions out of order. An example may help:
volatile int value;
volatile int ready;
// Thread 1
value = 123; // (1)
ready = 1; // (2)
// Thread 2
while (!ready); // (3)
print(value); // (4)
This is one of [Stephen]’s examples. If this were set up to run in two threads, on an x86 machine you would have a guarantee that (4) would always print 123. On an ARM, no such guarantee. You may very well have an uninitialized value. It’s a race condition. Now you may look at this and wonder like I did, how does anyone program anything for ARM chips? First thing, even though memory reordering is a thing, ARM guarantees consistency within the same thread. This quirk only affects multi-threaded programming. And second, libraries for multi-threaded programming offer
semantics for marking memory access that need to be properly ordered across threads
.
The actual exploitable binary in question uses a circular queue for the inter-process buffer, and tracks a head and tail location, to determine how full the buffer is. One process puts data in, the second reads it out. The vulnerability is that when the buffer is completely full, memory manipulation reordering can result in a race condition. This ring buffer gets filled with pointers, and when the race is won by an attacker, the same pointer is used twice. In essence, the program now has two references to the same object. Without any further tricks, this results in a double free error when the second reference is released.
What are the tricks we could use to make this into an exploit? First, know that what we have is two references to an object. That object contains a pointer to another string, the length of which is entirely controlled by the user provided data. We can trigger a release of one of those references, which leads to the object getting freed, but we still have another reference, which now points to uninitialized memory. To turn this into an arbitrary read, a very clever trick is used. Before freeing our object, we allocate another object, and store a long-ish string. Then we free the object we have a double reference to, and finally free the object with the long string. Finally, we allocate one more object, but the string we store is crafted to look like a valid object. Memory gets reallocated in a last in, first out order, so the string is stored in the reclaimed memory we still have a reference to. The program expects the object to contain a pointer to a string, so our fake object can point to arbitrary memory, which we can then read.
The last trick is arbitrary write, which is even harder to pull off. The trick here is actually perform the double free, but manipulate the system so it doesn’t result in a segfault. We can use the above trick to write arbitrary data to a freed memory location. Because the location has made it onto the free list twice, the system still considered it free even though it’s also in use. The Linux memory manager uses a clever trick to manage reclaimed memory chunks, storing a pointer to the next reclaimed location in each chunk. Write the location you want to overwrite in that free chunk, and then allocate another chunk. The system now thinks your arbitrary location is the next free memory location to use. The next allocation is your arbitrary write. The writeup has more details, as well as the rest of the exploitation chain, so be sure to read the whole thing.
How Secure is that WiFi?
[Ido Hoorvitch] of CyberArk had some pandemic induced time on his hands, and
opted to collect packet captures of 5000 password protected WiFi networks around Tel Aviv
. In the old days, you had to capture a 4-way handshake to have any chance at breaking WPA encryption. In 2018
a new technique was discovered
, where a single authentication response was all that was required to attempt to crack the key — no active user required. The magic string here is the PMKID, which is a SHA-1 hash of the WPA password and other network details, first run through a key derivation function.
The popular tool, Hashcat, can take advantage of a GPU to accelerate the cracking of a PMKID. SHA-1 hashes are one of the things GPUs are particularly good at, after all. The 8 Quadros managed almost 7 million hash calculations per second. The problem with trying to crack a WPA key is that while they must be at least 8 characters long, they can be much longer, making for an enormous search space. The first trick [Ido] used was to take advantage of one of the common password sources, a cell phone number. In Tel Aviv, that means the password is 05 followed by 8 more digits. That’s a searchable key space, and of the 5000 sniffed networks, nearly half were cracked by this approach. Next was pointing Hashcat at a dictionary file, to automatically try known passwords. Between the dictionary attack, and constraint-based approaches like the cell number format, 70% of the networks targeted were cracked. The takeaway? Use a long password that isn’t easily guessed, and won’t be easily part of a constrained search.
Google Use After Free PoC
Reported in June of this year by the Security For Everyone Team,
CVE-2021-30573
now has a published PoC. This vulnerability was fixed in Chrome/Chromium 92. The triggering code is a bit of simple but very malformed HTML. Trying to parse this code just by looking at it, I immediate called it “cursed” HTML, so there’s no wonder Chrome had trouble with it, too.
<select class="form-control">
<option style="font-size: 1rem;" value="
<"">
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA(abbreviated)
</>">a
</option>
</select>
PHP Worker to Root
A bug in PHP-FPM discovered by Ambionics Security
allows jumping from control over a PHP worker straight to system root. While it’s a serious problem, this isn’t a remote code execution vulnerability. Some other techniques needs to be used first to take over a PHP worker thread. This means an attacker would nead to be able to run PHP code, and then also find a way to escape the PHP “sandbox.” While not trivial, there are techniques and bugs to make this possible.
The problem is that the inter-process communication mechanism is shared mapped memory, and far too much of the data structure is made available to the individual workers. A worker can modify the main data structure, causing the top-level process to write to arbitrary memory locations. While the location may be arbitrary, the actual data writes are extremely limited in this vulnerability. In fact, it boils down to two write primitives: Set-0-to-1 and clear-1168-bytes. That may not seem like much, but there are a lot of flags that can be toggled by setting a value to 1, and the rest of the exploit makes heavy use of that technique. The real trick is to generate arbitrary error messages, then use the 0-to-1 primitive to corrupt the data structure of those messages.
The vulnerability has been around for a very long time, since PHP 5.3.7. It’s fixed in 8.0.12, 7.4.25, and 7.3.32. One final wrinkle here is PHP 7.3 is still in security support, but this was considered an invasive change, and the PHP maintainers initially opted not to push the fix to this older version. After some back and forth
on the bug discussion
, the right call was made, and 7.3.32 has been released with the fix.
Gitlab in the Wild
HN Security had a client report something suspicious, and it turns out to be
CVE-2021-22205 in use in the wild
. This bug is a problem in ExifTool, where
a DjVu file can execute arbitrary perl code
. This RCE was abused to make new users admin on the attacked system. If you’re running Gitlab, make sure you’re up-to-date. Versions 13.10.3, 13.9.6, and 13.8.8 were released with the fix on April 14 of this year. It appears that the 14.* versions were never vulnerable, as version 14.0 was released after this fix. Hackerone and the entire bug bounty community has its share of problems, but
the disclosure thread for this one
is an example of a program run correctly. | 27 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395027",
"author": "abjq",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T14:41:18",
"content": "With ARM compilers using volatile isn’t enough for such operations (depending on the compiler).You also have to use memory barrier instructions (again, syntax depending on the compiler) to enforce that data ... | 1,760,372,901.446571 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/29/fixing-a-broken-game-installer-by-sheer-force-of-will/ | Fixing A Broken Game Installer By Sheer Force Of Will | Lewin Day | [
"Games",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"game",
"games",
"heroes of might and magic",
"installer",
"installshield",
"ubisoft",
"video games"
] | These days, we seldom purchase games on physical media. Even when buying titles from yesteryear, we usually download them from an online service. Some of these older games haven’t been properly ported to their new delivery platform, as [Slortibort] found out. Thus, it was time to dive into the game files
and sort the problem out.
The game in question was the Hammers of Fate expansion pack for the base game Heroes of Might and Magic V. [Slortibort’s] partner bought it from Ubisoft, and ran the installer. However, the installer would report that it couldn’t find the original files from the base game, and fail to start.
Fixing the issue was no mean feat, requiring use of the
Sexy Installshield Decompiler
to dive into the guts of the installer to see what was going wrong. In the end, it came down to some registry key shenanigans, but the route of how [Slortibort] got there is well worth the read.
It’s a fine example of some of the issues around moving games to digital distribution; proper attention must be paid to do it right. Even then, there’s always the risk you’ll lose your games
down the track.
There are benefits, of course, but there’s always a tradeoff to be made. | 25 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395002",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T12:08:44",
"content": "Sounds like cracking not hacking.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6395009",
"author": "Brandano",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T12:25:38"... | 1,760,372,901.940703 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/28/gamecubepc-packs-plenty-of-punch-into-gamecube-plastics/ | GamecubePC Packs Plenty Of Punch Into GameCube Plastics | Ryan Flowers | [
"Games"
] | [
"dolphin emulator",
"gamecube",
"gamecube hack",
"mSTX",
"nintendo gamecube",
"nintendo wii",
"wii"
] | If reading Hackaday teaches us anything, it’s that there is a subset of hackers who take things like emulator builds a step farther than most. [RetroModder] is very clearly one such hacker. Enter the
GamecubePC, which you can read about on Hackaday.io
. The GamecubePC is a multi-year project that aims to stuff an entire Windows 10 PC into a GameCube shell while still being able to play Wii and GameCube titles at native resolution and performance.
Internals of the GamecubePC with all the custom chassis and PCB’s on display
Although it only takes a spare computer and the Dolphin emulator to make a GameCube and Wii emulator, great attention has been paid to keeping the GameCube at the forefront. Contributing to the illusion is the preservation of the original GameCube power switch and reset buttons by way of custom PCB’s that interface the parts to the mSTX motherboard.
The bottom of the GameCube shell is replaced with a 3D printed base that mounts the motherboard while smartly giving access to the motherboard’s front panel. The minuscule motherboard sports an Intel Core™ i5-7600 with 8GB memory, and SSD storage. Topping off the experience are four functional controller ports that can be switched to be used with the emulator or with PC games too. Surely the GamecubePC will be the subject of many double takes!
Custom game builds are no stranger to Hackaday, and you might appreciate this
portable Wii that can play Wii and GameCube games
or this
GameCube controller hacked into a Joycon for the Nintendo Switch
.
Edit from the far future: it’s
now a project on Tindie
. Check it out. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394934",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T01:06:27",
"content": "I didn’t have a GameCube, but I did have the LCD monitor that attached to one.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6394943",
"author": "Danjovic",
"t... | 1,760,372,901.680936 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/28/speaker-stun-gun-aims-to-combat-chinas-dancing-grannies/ | Speaker ‘Stun Gun’ Aims To Combat China’s Dancing Grannies | Lewin Day | [
"classic hacks",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"anti-square dancing device",
"infrared",
"jammer",
"square dance",
"square dancing",
"tv-b-gone"
] | One of the more popular social activities in China is group dancing in public squares. Often the pastime of many middle-aged and older women, participants are colloquially referred to as “dancing grannies.” While the activity is relatively wholesome, some dancers have begun to draw the ire of their neighbourhoods with their loud music and attempts to dominate the use of public parks and recreational areas.
Naturally, a technological solution sprung up promising to solve the problem. The
South China Morning Post
has reported on
a “stun gun” device
which claims to neutralise speakers from a distance, in an effort to shut down dance gatherings. The device created a huge stir on social media, as well as many questions about how it could work. It’s simpler, and a bit less cool, than you think.
A Sequel To The TV-B-Gone
Image sourced from a Taobao listing for a anti-square dance device. Note the device is reported as capable of interfering with common outdoor PA systems but not other types of speakers.
The devices are hard to find concrete details on, particularly in the English world. Listings on Western-facing websites like eBay and Aliexpress have been deleted with remarkable speed. It only adds to the mystery around a device that can supposedly shut down audio device at long range.
However, dig deep enough, arm yourself with some translation apps, and talk to a few friends in China, and you’ll learn the truth. The devices are not some all-powerful stun gun that can blast speakers into submission. Instead, they are but simple infrared remote controls, built into a familiar flashlight-style housing. Combining a powerful infrared LED and a lens to focus the beam means the devices can shoot infrared signals over 50 m in ideal conditions. It’s then a simple matter of modulating the infrared LED with the right signal. Have the LED match the “power off” command used by remote controls for the common portable PA speakers used by the dancing grannies, and you’re in business.
It’s the same concept as the famous
TV-B-Gone.
Essentially a one-button universal remote that launched over a decade ago, the TV-B-Gone had an infrared transmitter and simply spewed out “off” commands for a wide variety of popular televisions when you held the button down. These speaker shutdown devices use exactly the same methodology. The only differences are that they fire codes to shut off portable speakers, not TVs, and they’re built in a package designed to work at longer range.
Funnily enough, Hackaday featured a very similar device
years ago
. It combined a simple TV-B-Gone infrared code sender with a 1 W IR LED packed into a compact torch housing. It was designed for TVs, not PA systems, but the concept is the same.
The devices are most readily found on Taobao, such as
these
listings
we turned up in the last few days. However, it was the deleted Aliexpress listings that were most honest about how the devices worked, noting they only worked with outdoor PAs that used infrared remote controls.
Spinning the lens fitting can throw a narrow beam a long way or a wider beam a shorter distance.
Countermeasures are obvious once one knows how the devices work. A simple strip of opaque tape over the PA’s infrared receiver would be enough to render the devices ineffective, at the cost of losing the functionality of one’s own remote.
The devices will likely remain hard to find in the West. Government authorities look dimly upon anything marketed as a “jammer” or “interference” device, even if these are really just odd remote controls. Whether they’ve been involved, or eBay and Aliexpress have just been proactive about removing listings is unclear. Regardless, the market for these device outside of China is likely small.
However, within China, there’s been much talk on social media of finally
wresting back control
from leagues of dancing grannies that take over neighbourhoods on the regular. Whether these devices prove effective at bringing peace to neighbourhoods is unclear; it seems just as likely they may inflame tensions instead.
In any case, if you’ve got a better idea for a device that could shut down a broader spectrum of amplifiers, share it below. Alternatively, give us your best solutions to the conflict between the grannies and their neighbors. Peace in China depends on it!
[Thanks to Dashiell Dunn for assistance in researching this article.] | 74 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394772",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2021-10-28T14:37:23",
"content": "Honestly, this seems like the coward’s way of telling someone to turn down the music.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6394779",
"author": "T... | 1,760,372,902.09038 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/28/really-robotic-robot-costume-will-probably-win-the-contest/ | Really Robotic Robot Costume Will Probably Win The Contest | Kristina Panos | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"cardboard",
"cardboard robot",
"Micro:bit",
"robot"
] | Still don’t have anything to wear to that Halloween party this weekend? Or worse, your kid hasn’t decided on a costume that you both can agree on? Well, look no further than [Natasha Dzurny]’s
Sally Servo the Really Robotic Robot Costume and accompanying multi-part build guide
. You might want to start by raiding that recycle bin for cardboard, because you’re going to need a lot of it.
What you won’t need a lot of is hard-to-source parts, at least if you build it the [Natasha] and Brown Dog Gadgets way. Even so, there are a ton of cool moving and blinking bits and bobs to be made with servos, LEDs, and RGB LEDs connected up to something kid-friendly like the Micro:bit and the Brown Dog Gadgets Bit Board — that’s a base for the :bit that lets users connect components via LEGO and conductive tape.
Between Sally’s robotic googly eyes and her light-up belt, there are plenty of ideas here to steal and make your own, and each one is packaged in a great-looking guide complete with paper printing templates.
Our favorite part has to be the infinity mirror heart, which appears to be beating thanks to clever programming. That, and the costume details, like the waist-area wires running between the upper and lower pieces.
Is the party at your house? There’s probably still enough time to put together
a projector-based stomping game for the driveway
. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394747",
"author": "vib",
"timestamp": "2021-10-28T12:39:58",
"content": "Where is the keeb ? and the soap dispenser option ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6394767",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-28... | 1,760,372,902.158808 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/28/taking-a-stroll-down-uncanny-valley-with-the-artificial-muscle-robotic-arm/ | Taking A Stroll Down Uncanny Valley With The Artificial Muscle Robotic Arm | Ryan Flowers | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"artificial muscle",
"hydraulic",
"robot hand",
"uncanny valley",
"water pressure"
] | Wikipedia says “The uncanny valley hypothesis predicts that an entity appearing almost human will risk eliciting cold, eerie feelings in viewers.” And yes, we have to admit that as incredible as it is, seeing [Automaton Robotics]’ hand and forearm move in almost human fashion is a bit on the disturbing side. Don’t just take our word for it, let yourself be fascinated and weirded out by the
video below the break
.
While the creators of the Artificial Muscles Robotic Arm are fairly quiet about how it works, perusing through the
[Automaton Robotics] YouTube Channel
does shed some light on the matter. The arm and hand’s motion is made possible by artificial muscles which themselves are brought to life by water pressurized to 130 PSI (9 bar). The muscles themselves appear to be a watertight fiber weave, but these details are not provided. Bladders inside a flexible steel mesh, like finger traps?
[Automaton Robotics]’ aim is to eventually create a humanoid robot using their artificial muscle technology. The demonstration shown is very impressive, as the hand has the strength to lift a 7 kg (15.6 lb) dumbbell even though some of its strongest artificial muscles have not yet been installed.
A few years ago we
ran a piece on Artificial Muscles
which mentions pneumatic artificial muscles that contract when air pressure is applied, and it appears that [Automaton Robotics] has employed the same method with water instead. What are your thoughts? Please let us know in the comments below. Also, thanks to [The Kilted Swede] for this great tip! Be sure to
send in your own tips
, too! | 24 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394687",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2021-10-28T08:17:29",
"content": "At least they didn’t go with a flesh-colored covering.This is promising. Muscle-analogs that pull when activated have advantages when it comes to mounting them, because unlike pushing actuators, th... | 1,760,372,902.257459 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/27/new-raspberry-pi-zero-2-upgrades-to-quad-core-processor/ | New Raspberry Pi Zero 2 Upgrades To Quad-Core Processor | Tom Nardi | [
"News",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"announcement",
"pi zero",
"Pi Zero 2 W",
"SBC"
] | Over the years, we’ve seen a steady stream of updates for the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s flagship single-board computer (SBC), with each new release representing a significant boost in processing power and capability. But the slim Raspberry Pi Zero, released all the way back in 2015, hasn’t been quite so fortunate. Beyond the “W” revision that added WiFi and Bluetooth in 2017, the specs of the diminutive board have remained unchanged since its release.
That is, until now.
With the introduction of the $15 USD Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
, the ultra-compact Linux board gets a much-needed performance bump thanks to the new RP3A0 system-in-package, which combines a Broadcom BCM2710A1 die with 512 MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM and a quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 CPU clocked at 1 GHz. In practical terms, the Raspberry Pi Foundation says the new Zero 2 is five times as fast as its predecessor with multi-threaded workloads, and offers a healthy 40% improvement in single-threaded performance. That puts it about on par with the Raspberry Pi 3, though with only half the RAM.
Otherwise, the new Zero 2 isn’t much different from the original. It’s the same size and shape, meaning existing cases or mounts should work fine. You’ll also find the micro SD slot, CSI camera connector, dual micro USB ports, and mini HDMI port in the same places they were in 2015.
Frankly we’re a little surprised they didn’t switch over to USB-C (at least for the power port) and micro HDMI to bring it in line with the Pi 4, but of course, they presumably didn’t want to break compatibility with existing Zero projects. At least we won’t have to wait for a second edition to add wireless, as the Zero 2 W offers 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2 out of the box.
We’ll have samples of the new Zero 2 W in hand shortly, so keep an eye out for a detailed overview of this highly anticipated new member of the Pi family. In the meantime, let us know what you think about the new hardware in the comments. Is it a worthy successor to the original $5 Pi Zero? | 78 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394665",
"author": "Eric_S",
"timestamp": "2021-10-28T06:27:04",
"content": "I was (very) vainly hoping for the RP2040 to be merged into the SoC somehow. But a special silicon spin for a Zero is “a bit” of a tall order, I understand.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,372,902.51414 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/27/halloween-themed-talking-clock-relies-on-pi-pico/ | Halloween-Themed Talking Clock Relies On Pi Pico | Lewin Day | [
"clock hacks",
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"talking clock"
] | Many of us learn to read clocks at a young age, however, talking clocks eliminate the need to do that entirely. [Alberto] whipped up one of his own, in this case designed with
some Halloween holiday spookiness
.
A basic clock movement is used to display the time in the typical fashion. However, the movement also features a built-in trigger signal, which it sends to an attached microcontroller on the hour, every hour. The build relies on the Raspberry Pi Pico for sound, chosen for its USB programming interface and its 2 MB of onboard flash storage. Sound is stored in simple 16-bit WAV files, and played out to a speaker via a PWM output. Alternatively, a CircuitPython version of the code is available that uses MP3s instead. A light sensor is used to avoid triggering any sounds at night time that could disturb one’s sleep. The entire circuit can be built on a single-sided board. [Alberto] etched one at home in the old-fashioned way, though one could also order one online, too.
Halloween is an excellent time for hacks, and this year
we have the Halloween Hackfest contest to show them off
. It’s ending soon though, you have until the stroke of midnight Pacific time on Friday (that’s the moment Thursday night ends) to enter your Halloween-themed hacks.
Talking clocks have been around
for some time,
but are nevertheless a fun and educational project to build. We’ve seen
some other great Halloween hacks lately, too.
If you’ve been busy with projects this fall holiday, don’t hesitate to
drop us a line! | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394646",
"author": "andrea",
"timestamp": "2021-10-28T03:33:50",
"content": "put some blue leds into the eyes and make sans",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6394654",
"author": "Chris j",
"timestamp": "2021-10-28T04:44:1... | 1,760,372,902.194801 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/27/a-tidy-clamshell-keyboard-for-the-pinephone/ | A Tidy Clamshell Keyboard For The Pinephone | Lewin Day | [
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"phone",
"pinephone"
] | Something a lot of people don’t realise about modern smartphones is that many of them have fully-featured USB interfaces. Perhaps the best of all is the Pinephone, which is a fully open-source smartphone that gives end users total control over their phone experience. [silver] has such a phone, and set about building himself
a neat keyboard setup for the platform.
The build is based around an RCA RKT773P tablet keyboard case, which uses USB to interface with a tablet via pogo pins. [silver] modified this by soldering on a USB cable to the pins, paired with a USB-C host adapter on the Pinephone. Paired with a few 3D printed parts to hold everything in place, it almost turns the assembly into a cute little Pinephone laptop.
It’s a neat build that would likely save a lot of frustration when hacking away at a terminal window on the Pinephone.
Parts are available on Thingiverse
for those interested in replicating the hack. Those eager to dive into the Pinephone platform may relish the new Pro model
that has just dropped, too.
Video after the break. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394617",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2021-10-28T00:03:30",
"content": "Nice. Very nice. Looks like some thought went into the hinge, too. Damn nice.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6394639",
"author": "Derek... | 1,760,372,902.301104 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/29/vcf-east-2021-the-early-evolution-of-personal-computer-graphics/ | VCF East 2021: The Early Evolution Of Personal Computer Graphics | Chris Wilkinson | [
"cons",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"graphics",
"retrocomputing",
"transducer",
"Vintage Computer Festival",
"vintage computing"
] | The evolution of computer graphics is something that has been well documented over the years, and it’s a topic that we always enjoy revisiting with our retrocomputing readers. To wit, [Stephen A. Edwards] has put together an
impressively detailed presentation
that looks back at the computer graphics technology of the 1960s and 70s.
The video, which was presented during VCF East 2021, goes to great lengths in demystifying some of the core concepts of early computer graphics. There’s a lot to unpack here, but naturally, this retrospective first introduces the cathode-ray tube (CRT) display as the ubiquitous technology that supported computer graphics during this time period and beyond. Building from this, the presentation goes on to demonstrate the graphics capabilities of DEC’s PDP-1 minicomputer, and how its striking and surprisingly capable CRT display was the perfect choice for playing
Spacewar!
As is made clear in the presentation, the 1960s featured some truly bizarre concepts in regards to cutting edge computer graphics, such as Control Data Corporation’s 6600 mainframe and accompanying vector-based dual-CRT video terminal, which wouldn’t look out of place on the Death Star. Equally strange at the time was IBM’s 2260 video data terminal, which used a ‘sonic delay line’ as a type of rudimentary video memory, using nothing but coiled wire, transducers and
sound
itself to store character information following a screen refresh.
These types of hacks were later replaced by solid state counterparts during the microcomputer era. The video concludes with a look back at the ‘1977 trinity’ of microcomputers, namely the Apple II, Commodore PET and TRS-80. Each of these microcomputers handled graphics in a slightly different way, and it’s in stark contrast to today’s largely homogenised computer graphics landscape.
There’s a lot more to this great retrospective, so make sure to check out the video below. When you’re finished watching, make sure to check out our other coverage of VCF 2021, including some great examples of
computer preservation
and
TTL-based retrocomputing
.
[With thanks to Stephen Walters for sending in the great tip] | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394990",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T09:34:16",
"content": "Missing a generation. Early displays also used storage tube displays. The tube itself is bistable and image remains (mostly) until erased. ARDS terminals used this. They also used U-core ROMS. Drive wire... | 1,760,372,902.710208 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/28/turn-a-parking-sensor-into-an-anemometer/ | Turn A Parking Sensor Into An Anemometer | Danie Conradie | [
"classic hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [] | To measure wind speed and direction, most people turn the traditional cup anemometer and wind vane. Another less-known method is to use an array of ultrasonic transducers, which doesn’t need any moving parts. [Andy] demonstrates building an
ultrasonic anemometer using a cheap after-market parking distance sensor kit
and an Arduino. Demo video after the break.
Aside from the price, these kits have the added advantage of including waterproof ultrasonic transducers, perfect for an outdoor weather station, and all the required circuitry to drive them. Some circuit surgery is required to remove the existing 8-pin microcontroller and wire in an Arduino Pro Micro and a few passives to take control of the pulse outputs and processing of the received signal to calculate direction and velocity. The ultrasonic transducers are mounted in a circular baseplate pointing up to an “echo plate” mounted on a carbon fiber rod. [Andy]’s latest version also added an ESP8266 Wi-Fi module for connectivity.
One of the challenges of DIY environmental sensors is calibrating them to output reliable absolute values, and this is especially the case for wind speed. You need another anemometer that is known to be accurate or a wind source of a known velocity. A while back we covered
[Jianjia Ma]’s ultrasonic anemometer build
, where he mounted it on top of his car and went for his drive, but still couldn’t quite get consistent results.
While the lack of moving parts are nice, ultrasonic anemometers are significantly more complex on the software and electronics side, and a
DIY cup and vane anemometer
is still a viable alternative. | 10 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395004",
"author": "Jack",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T12:10:11",
"content": "The question is why the wind sensors are so expensive, or at least, why isn’t there a cheaper wind sensor based on similar level of hardware. Just a different sensor configuration, housing and programming c... | 1,760,372,902.562647 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/28/rc-minecraft-boat-patrols-the-pool-for-treasure/ | RCMinecraftBoat Patrols The Pool For Treasure | Tom Nardi | [
"Games",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"minecraft",
"propeller",
"rc",
"rc boat",
"rudder",
"servo"
] | Looking to recreate those relaxing
Minecraft
fishing sessions in real life,
[electrosync] recently set out to 3D print himself a blocky remote controlled boat
, complete with a similarly cubic occupant to ride in it. Each element of the build, from the oars to the bobber on the end of the fishing line, has been designed to look as faithful to the source material as possible. In fact, the whole thing is so accurate to the game that it’s almost surreal to see it rowing around the pool.
That said, some of the resemblance is only skin deep. For example the rowing action, though it appears to be properly synchronized to the boat’s movement through the water, is completely for show. A standard propeller and rudder arrangement under the boat provide propulsion and directional control, and [electrosync] notes its actually powerful enough to push the boat very near to its scale top speed from the game, despite the exceptionally poor hydrodynamics of what’s essentially just a rectangle.
A look under the deck.
Speaking of which, [electrosync] even went through the trouble of printing the hull in wood-fill PLA and coating it in polyester resin to make sure it was watertight. Granted he could have just made the boat out of wood in the first place, saving himself the nearly 60 hours it took to print the hull parts, but that would have been cheating.
Beyond the servos and motors that move the boat and the oars, [electrosync] had to give his 3D printed fisherman a considerable amount of dexterity. Servos embedded into the 3D printed parts allow “Steve” to rotate at the hips and raise and lower his arm. With a fishing pole slipped into a hole printed into the hand, he’s able to cast out his magnetic bobber and see whats biting.
We’ve actually seen quite a number of projects that
allow virtual objects inside
Minecraft
to interact with the real world
, but comparatively few efforts
to recreate objects from the game’s blocky universe
, so the change of pace is nice. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394947",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T03:02:49",
"content": "Enjoyed the video!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6394953",
"author": "scoldog",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T03:51:51",
"content": "Yes, but do... | 1,760,372,902.60781 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/28/soil-sensor-shows-flip-dots-arent-just-for-signs/ | Soil Sensor Shows Flip-Dots Aren’t Just For Signs | Donald Papp | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"flip-dot",
"moisture sensor",
"plant care",
"soil sensor"
] | Soil sensors are handy things, but while sensing moisture is what they
do
, how they handle that data is what makes them
useful
. Ensuring usefulness is what led [Maakbaas] to design and create
an ESP32-based soil moisture sensor
with wireless connectivity, deep sleep, data logging, and the ability to indicate that the host plant needs watering both visually, and with a push notification to a mobile phone.
A small flip-dot indicator makes a nifty one-dot display that requires no power when idle.
The visual notification part is pretty nifty, because [Maakbaas] uses
a small flip-dot indicator made by Alfa-Zeta
. This electromechanical indicator works by using two small coils to flip a colored disk between red or green. It uses no power when idle, which is a useful feature for a device that spends most of its time in a power-saving deep sleep. When all is well the indicator is green, but when the plant needs water, the indicator flips to red.
The sensor itself wakes itself up once per hour to take a sensor measurement, which it then stores in a local buffer for uploading to a database every 24 measurements. This reduces the number of times the device needs to power up and connect via WiFi, but if the sensor ever determines that the plant requires water, that gets handled immediately.
The sensor looks great, and a 3D-printed enclosure helps keep it clean while giving the device a bit of personality. Interested in rolling your own sensor? The project also has
a page on Hackaday.io
and we’ve previously covered
in-depth details about how these devices work
. Whether you are designing your own solution or using existing hardware, just remember to stay away from cheap probes that
aren’t worth their weight in potting soil
. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394928",
"author": "rpavlik",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T00:22:55",
"content": "Bistable displays!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6394929",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T00:31:49",
"content": "O... | 1,760,372,902.660421 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/28/oscilloscope-clocks-now-in-color/ | Oscilloscope Clocks: Now In Color! | Adam Zeloof | [
"clock hacks",
"FPGA",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"fpga",
"oscilloscope"
] | Ordinarily, when we hear the words “clock” and “oscilloscope” in the same sentence we conjure images of measuring a stable, repeating square wave that acts as the heartbeat of a system. Of course, that’s not the only meaning– there’s a much more fun and less useful one: using an oscilloscope to display the time.
That’s what [Wolfgang Friedrich] set out to do when he cobbled some protoboard, probes, and an FPGA into the
Multi Color Oscilloscope Clock
. Each digit on the clock is treated like a seven-segment display, made up of three horizontal bars and four vertical bars. The horizontal bars are generated by constant voltage at different levels, and the vertical bars are generated by quickly switching between two voltages. [Wolfgang] decided to use an
R-2R resistor ladder DAC
to create the appropriate analog signals from the FPGA’s digital outputs. For bonus points, each set of digits (hours, minutes, and seconds) are output concurrently through separate channels, so they can be displayed in different colors on the screen of his four-channel scope (the fourth channel is used for the points between numbers).
Misusing oscilloscopes in the name of fun has become a time-honored tradition– from
Tennis for Two
back in 1958 (which later became the beloved
Pong
) to the
plethora of analog o-scope clocks we’ve seen
, it’s clear that hackers just can’t get enough of the unique vector display style that a scope can provide. We love [Wolfgang]’s idea of using the scope’s channels to create a multi-color display, and we’re left wondering what kind of wacky waveforms we’ll be seeing next. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394935",
"author": "W2AEW",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T01:13:37",
"content": "Cool, and thank you for Rt reference to my blog on the DAC.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6395024",
"author": "WF",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,372,902.874615 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/28/eye-tracking-device-is-a-tiny-movie-theatre-for-jumping-spiders/ | Eye-Tracking Device Is A Tiny Movie Theatre For Jumping Spiders | Donald Papp | [
"digital cameras hacks",
"Science"
] | [
"eye tracking",
"ir",
"jumping spider",
"research",
"science"
] | The eyes are windows into the mind, and
this research into what jumping spiders look at and why
required a clever device that performs eye tracking, but for jumping spiders. The eyesight of these fascinating creatures in some ways has a lot in common with humans. We both perceive a wide-angle region of lower visual fidelity, but are capable of directing our attention to areas of interest within that to see greater detail. Researchers have been able to perform eye-tracking on jumping spiders, literally showing exactly where they are looking in real-time, with the help of a custom device that works a little bit like a miniature movie theatre.
A harmless temporary adhesive on top (and a foam ball for a perch) holds a spider in front of a micro movie projector and IR camera. Spiders were not harmed in the research.
To do this, researchers had to get clever. The unblinking lenses of a spider’s two front-facing primary eyes do not move. Instead, to look at different things, the cone-shaped inside of the eye is shifted around by muscles. This effectively pulls the retina around to point towards different areas of interest. Spiders, whose primary eyes have boomerang-shaped retinas, have an X-shaped region of higher-resolution vision that the spider directs as needed.
So how does the spider eye tracker work? The spider perches on a tiny foam ball and is attached — the help of a harmless and temporary adhesive based on beeswax — to a small bristle. In this way, the spider is held stably in front of a video screen without otherwise being restrained. The spider is shown home movies while an IR camera picks up the reflection of IR off the retinas inside the spider’s two primary eyes. By superimposing the IR reflection onto the displayed video, it becomes possible to literally see exactly where the spider is looking at any given moment. This is similar in some ways to
how eye tracking is done for humans
, which also uses IR, but watches the position of the pupil.
In the short video embedded below, if you look closely you can see the two retinas make an X-shape of a faintly lighter color than the rest of the background. Watch the spider find and focus on the silhouette of a tasty cricket, but when a dark oval appears and grows larger (as it would look if it were getting closer) the spider’s gaze quickly snaps over to the potential threat.
Feel a need to know more about jumping spiders? This eye-tracking research was featured as
part of a larger Science News article highlighting the deep sensory spectrum these fascinating creatures inhabit
, most of which is completely inaccessible to humans. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394847",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2021-10-28T18:48:51",
"content": "A cool thing about some insects (and if I recall correctly spiders do this too) is that they can derive color information even though they only have monochromatic photoreceptors. By separately proc... | 1,760,372,902.831159 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/28/four-more-talks-added-to-the-2021-remoticon-lineup/ | Four More Talks Added To The 2021 Remoticon Lineup | Tom Nardi | [
"cons",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Remoticon",
"presenters",
"Remoticon",
"talks"
] | We’ve already unveiled multiple keynote speakers and a slate of fascinating presenters that will be showing off everything from reverse engineering vintage calculators to taking those first tentative steps on your CAD journey for this year’s Remoticon. You’d be forgiven for thinking that’s everything you’ll see at the conference, but there’s still plenty to announce before the two-day virtual event kicks off on November 19th. Normally we’d be promising to make sure you get your money’s worth,
but since tickets are completely free
, we’re shooting a bit higher than that.
We were blown away by the number of fantastic talk proposals we received during this year’s extended call. Let’s take a look at the next four presenters who will be joining us for the 2021 Hackaday Remoticon on November 19th through the 20th.
Jeroen Domburg (aka [Sprite_tm])
Rickrolling Buddha: A Deep Dive in Reverse Engineering and Thoroughly Pwning an Unknown Chip
Jeroen, best known to Hackaday readers as the legendary [Sprite_tm], is not one to turn down a challenge. So when Big Clive published a flash dump from a cheap musical Buddhist meditation aid and asked if his viewers were interested in trying to figure out how the device could be made to play different songs, he was happy to lend his skills to the effort.
It turns out, Jeroen and the other Internet sleuths who took on the puzzle had their work cut out for them. Between figuring out what chip was hiding under the dreaded black epoxy blob to cracking the encrypted firmware stored on the SPI flash chip, the project has ended up being a tour de force in reverse engineering.
While they still haven’t hit their aspirational goal of loading the gadget up with Rick Astley’s greatest hit, Jeroen thinks they’re getting close and will tell us all about their progress in what’s sure to be a fascinating presentation.
Sergiy Nesterenko
Don’t Flip My Bits: Electronics in Spaaaace
Designing electronics is hard, and it gets even harder when the electronics in question are built to travel through space. During his five years working in the avionics group at SpaceX, specializing in EMI and ionizing radiation effects, Sergiy learned a thing or two about making sure your hardware has the
Right Stuff
to complete its mission.
His talk is a hitchhiker’s guide to lightning, humidity, vibration, triboelectric charging, radiation, solar flares, re-entry plasma and some of the other physics that engineers must consider in their designs. In other words, 1000 ways to break a computer. These are issues we don’t give much thought to when hacking around with development boards, but if you ever hope to take one of your designs out to the black, these are the things that will keep you up at night.
Now heading up a startup that does physics-driven generative design for PCBs (space-bound and otherwise), Sergiy describes his presentation as a light-hearted take on the effort required to qualify electronics for space applications, so you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to tune in. But it might help.
Vaibhav Chhabra
M19 Initiative – A Case of Open Innovation & Distributed Manufacturing at Scale
To say the world was unprepared for the global COVID-19 pandemic would be something of an understatement. Seemingly overnight, communities all over the globe found themselves woefully short on the same personal protective equipment (PPE) that hospitals were in desperate need of. Seeing this as an opportunity to put their skills and equipment to use, makers all over the world began using their 3D printers, laser cutters, and CNC routers to churn out everything from face masks to prototype ventilators.
In March of 2020, makers in India banded together to form the M19 Collective. With an eye towards combining centralized open source design philosophy with decentralized manufacturing, they were able to produce one million face shields in just 49 days. Recently they have been focusing on India’s oxygen shortage by not only building and distributing concentrators, but in educating locals on how to operate and maintain them.
During his presentation, Vaibhav will give a first-hand account of how India’s hacker and maker community came together in these unprecedented times. With grass-root level innovation leading to arguably the largest scale adoption of open source hardware in history, the M19 Collective is demonstrating the value collaborative development on the global stage.
Arsenijs Picugins
Laptop-Be-Done
It’s safe to say that most Hackaday readers have an old laptop or two kicking around the workshop. You might not use them, they might not even be in functional condition, but it just seems wrong to throw them away. You know they’re full of fabulously useful components, miniaturized and made cheap by the economies of scale, but how do you determine which parts are worth salvaging? Perhaps more importantly, what do you do with the components once you’ve liberated them?
Luckily for us, Arsenijs has put together a presentation specifically for the hacker that wants to get the most out of that stack of old laptops collecting under their desk. In this talk he’ll go over reusing the obvious components like the screen, keyboard, charger, motherboard, webcam, battery, and touchpad, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot more useful gear inside those old machines than you’d expect, you’ve just got to know what to look for.
As the creator of the Zerophone, a
hacker-friendly mobile phone that can be assembled for $50 USD
, Arsenijs knows plenty about mobile devices. But his experience with reusing scavenged parts also comes from trying to put projects together with next to no budget; something we’ve all had to deal with at one time or another. He believes the Hackaday Remoticon is the perfect place to show off some of the thrifty lessons he’s learned as a starving hacker, and so do we.
We’re Not Done Yet
Hungry for more? Don’t worry, there might only be three weeks left before we kick off our second Remoticon, but we’ve still got more talks and special events to reveal as we enter the final stretch. So do yourself a favor and
put your name down for a free ticket
, or better yet,
spend the $25 and get the shirt
. After all, it’s the only way you’re going to get some swag from a virtual event until we develop transporter technology. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394842",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-28T18:25:53",
"content": "With this list of speakers, my appetite is whet!Now to find time to view (“attend”) the talks.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,902.758711 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/26/being-green-its-a-rich-mans-game/ | Being Green, It’s A Rich Man’s Game | Jenny List | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"green hacks",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"affordable tech",
"climate change",
"electric car",
"green tech",
"Heat pump",
"insulation",
"solar panels"
] | It’s an old saying with an apocryphal origin: “
May you live in interesting times
“. We Brits are certainly living in interesting times at the moment, as a perfect storm of the pandemic, rising energy prices, global supply chain issues, and arguably the post-Brexit departure of EU-national truck drivers has given us shortages of everything from fresh vegetables in the supermarket to carbon dioxide for the food industry. Of particular concern is a shortage of automotive fuels at the filling station, and amid sometimes-aggressive queues for the pumps it’s reported that
there’s a record uptick in Brits searching online for information about electric cars
.
Nothing Like A Crisis To Make You Green
How I miss my little car, here loaded for
EMF 2018
.
This sudden interest in lower-carbon motoring may be driven by the queues rather than a concern for the planet, but it’s certainly true that as a culture we should be making this move if we are to have a hope of reducing our CO2 production and meeting our climate goals. A whole slew of lifestyle changes will have to be made over the coming years of which our car choices are only a part. Back to those beleaguered Brits again, a series of environmental protests have caused major disruption on the motorway network round London, not protesting against the traffic but
campaigning for better home insulation
.
For reasons of personal circumstance rather than principle, earlier this year I gave my trusty VW Polo to an old-Volks-nut friend and now rely on a bicycle. Living where I do within reach of everything I need it hasn’t been as challenging as I expected it to be, and aside from saving a bit of cash I know my general fitness level has gone up. Though I have less need for a car now than I used to, I intend to find myself another vehicle in due course so that I can do silly things such as throwing a Hackaday village in the back and driving halfway across Europe to a hacker camp. With an awareness that whatever I choose should be as good for the planet as I can make it then, I’ve been cruising the used-car websites to see what I can find.
Rollin’ on Chip Fat
Of course I’d like an electric vehicle, but there’s the snag that many of you will no doubt share with me, electric cars ain’t cheap. As an impecunious scribe I can just about find one that’s maybe a decade old, but when its range is less than I can easily cycle without getting tired it becomes little more than a very expensive automotive project in terms of its use to me. I’ve reached the odd conclusion that one of the greenest vehicles I can find is on the face of it the least green, if I run a diesel car from the 1980s on biodiesel derived from vegetable oil which is readily available pre-taxed where I live from industrial processors then I can drive around as close to carbon-neutral as possible.
This car is green, but not the
right
green. Mejidori,
Public domain
.
So I could pick up a super-reliable old Mercedes for a song and waft around on used chip fat, but here I meet a problem. When it comes to being green it’s not so much the greenness that matters as being seen to be green, and as a result our whole approach to the matter has been one of perception and technology rather than affordability. In short: it’s easy for higher earners to buy an electric car, insulate their homes, fit solar panels, or buy a heat pump, but for the lower earners who make up much of the population who can’t afford to replace their gas boilers even though they’re
belching out CO2
many of those things remain a distant dream.
My chip fat Merc would arguably have a lower net CO2 output per mile than that Tesla whose power comes from a coal or gas fired power station, but the received opinion of the world around it would be that it’s old and dirty, and that I should scrap it and somehow achieve the impossible and find the cash to buy a Tesla.
Here’s the rub. If aspirations of green living only available to those with money are transformed into legislation and requirements are imposed upon people at all levels of society, there is an inevitable disconnect between aspiration and reality. This understandably leads to resentment of environmental requirements among those without the means to meet them.
If Only A Few Can Afford To Be Green, How Can We Meet Our Targets?
This should be of concern to environmentalists and politicians, but closer to home it’s a problem for we engineers too. When we approach environmental problems we do so with solutions that are high-tech, our minds are too often on the elegance of the solution rather than on its practicality for mass adoption. We should be thinking about how a heat pump system can be transformed into a no-brainer upgrade for someone on a modest income, or why an electric conversion industry for fossil-fuel cars hasn’t taken off except for a few boutique classic cars despite
promising signs
. It’s no use justifying a ten-thousand-dollar-plus purchase by saying it will save that much in lower bills over so many years, when the customer simply can’t rustle up the $10k in the first place. To make progress with such things they can not simply be a lifestyle choice enabling the well heeled to pat themselves on the back for their chequebook environmentalism.
It would be a convenient device as a writer to sign off with some witty one-liner involving the phrase “costing the earth” to signify both unaffordability and urgency in one go. But it’s better to end with a question: If you have a Big Idea for a bit of climate-saving tech, can the person who delivered your Uber Eats order afford it? If not, we need to do more work before we can call it a solution.
Header image: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas /
CC-BY-SA-3.0
. | 245 | 33 | [
{
"comment_id": "6393985",
"author": "dave b",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T14:10:34",
"content": "verrrrry cherry picked facts to make the point.In essence the post says the obvious. Living according to todays preferences in a luxurious manner is expensive. Having some lesser degree of style comes with... | 1,760,372,903.367695 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/26/this-really-really-is-your-last-chance-to-enter-the-2021-hackaday-prize-really/ | This Really Really Is Your Last Chance To Enter The 2021 Hackaday Prize (Really!) | Mike Szczys | [
"contests",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"Reactive Wildcard"
] | Oh, walnuts! How can we
already
be at the end of the last round? 2021 has been a time warp and now we are staring down
the final day to enter the Reactivate Wildcard challenge of the Hackaday Prize
. You must enter by 7 AM Pacific time on Wednesday or it’s too late!
Of course the good news is that the topic is wide-open. Wildcard is for all the things that didn’t fit in the first four entry challenges. If it’s a good idea, if it’s a build that really matters, it should be entered!
The ten winning projects from this round will each get $500 cash prizes, and be shuttled on to the final round. All 50 finalists will have until November 7th to hone their offerings, at which point
our slate of expert judges
will pick the most interesting and impactful for the $25,000 grand prize and four other top prizes.
And how, you ask, will you find out who won? The Hackaday Prize Ceremony will be held online on November 20th during the Hackaday Remoticion. So your assignment today is to warm up that keyboard, mouse, and smartphone camera to
get your project entered right away
! Step two is to
grab your ticket to Remoticon
for a weekend of wonderful talks, great people, and an inspiring lineup of hardware builds that made this year’s Hackaday Prize truly shine.
Wondering what kind of stuff makes a great Wildcard entry? Majenta Strongheart has you covered in her latest video roundup below. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6393986",
"author": "behle",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T14:15:48",
"content": "Regarding the titel, may I still enter next week? :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6394065",
"author": "Mike Szczys",
"timestamp": ... | 1,760,372,902.91018 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/26/spider-man-swings-a-little-closer-to-reality/ | Spider-Man Swings A Little Closer To Reality | Matthew Carlson | [
"Toy Hacks",
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"hot glue",
"spider-man",
"spiderman",
"web shooter",
"web slinger",
"webshooter"
] | Despite reading Hackaday daily and seeing the incredible things that people do, something comes along that just sort of blows you away every once in a while. Sometimes it’s just technically impressive, but often it is just, “I didn’t think that anyone would try this or even think of this.” [Joel Creates] is one such example with his
Spider-Man wrist-mounted web-shooters
.
Previously, [Joel] had built a web-slinging system based around a pressurized tank of hot glue worn like a backpack. What it lacked in miniaturization, it made up for in functionality. However, [JT of Build IRL] created a grappling-based Spider-Man system that fired ropes which got [Joel] thinking that perhaps the hot glue and the grappling system could be combined for a smaller overall package.
His solution is quite simple. Old CO2 cartridges filled with glue and a small nozzle drilled in are loaded into a quick-connect fitting. The hot glue is heated via an induction coil on a small tool belt before loading. A thermally insulating layer of paint and micro-vacuum spheres on the canister helps [Joel] place it in the wrist shooter without burning himself. A bike tire inflator with a lever-activated system forms the main assembly of the shooter. Using compressed air, the system fires a glob of hot glue at a surface and a metal web-shaped disk with holes and a rope attached to the blob of hot glue. As the glue rapidly cools, the metal disk provides a lot of surfaces for the adhesive to hang onto. Overall, the results are pretty impressive, but the engineering challenges make for an exciting journey. Everything from failed prototypes to failed power supplies seems to happen on this build.
Combined with some
electromagnets
, you could really have the whole spider package.
Thanks [Carson B] for sending this one in! Video after the break. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6393955",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T11:17:29",
"content": "Maybe superglue-on-impact bag shooted out?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6393967",
"author": "Fred",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T12:38:08",
... | 1,760,372,903.405612 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/26/classic-80s-text-to-speech-on-classic-80s-hardware/ | Classic 80s Text-To-Speech On Classic 80s Hardware | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"c++",
"ESP8266",
"I2S",
"retrocomputer",
"serial",
"software",
"speech",
"synthesizer",
"text to speech",
"VIC-20"
] | Those of us who were around in the late 70s and into the 80s might remember the Speak & Spell, a children’s toy with a remarkable text-to-speech synthesizer. While it sounds dated by today’s standards, it was revolutionary for the time and was riding a wave of text-to-speech functionality that was starting to arrive to various computers of the era. While a lot of them used dedicated hardware to perform the speech synthesis, some computers were powerful enough to do this in software, but others were not quite able.
The VIC-20 was one of the latter, but thanks to an ESP8266 it has been retroactively given this function
.
This project comes to us from [Jan Derogee], a connoisseur of this retrocomputer, and builds on the work by [Earle F. Philhower] who ported the retro speech synthesis software known as SAM from assembly to C which made it possible to run on the ESP8266. Audio playback is handled on the I2S port, but some work needed to be done to get this to work smoothly since this port also handles the communication with the VIC-20. Once this was sorted out, a patch was made to be able to hear the computer’s audio as well as the speech synthesizer’s. Finally, a serial command interface was designed by [Jan] which allows for control of the module.
While not many of us have VIC-20s sitting at home, it’s still an interesting project that shows the broad scope of a small and inexpensive chip like the ESP8266 which would have had a hefty price tag back in the 1980s. If you have other 80s hardware laying around waiting to be put to work, though, take a look at this project
which brings new vocabulary words to that old classic Speak & Spell
. | 34 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6393934",
"author": "Nitpicker Smartyass",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T08:27:17",
"content": "Pretty sure there was a small version of SAM for the VC20 (SAM/Reciter was quite popular on the C64) … it did create quite understandable output, and by this to me seemed superior to a lot of ... | 1,760,372,903.685576 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/25/surf-sensor-adds-depth-to-finding-the-ultimate-wave/ | Surf Sensor Adds Depth To Finding The Ultimate Wave | Ryan Flowers | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"breaking wave",
"depth sensing",
"Raspberry Pi 4B",
"sonar",
"surfing",
"transducer",
"underwater sonar"
] | To say that the ocean is a dynamic environment would be a gross understatement, especially when coastlines are involved. Waves crash, tides go in and out, and countless variables make even the usual conditions a guessing game. When [foobarbecue] goes surfing, he tries to take into account all of these things. The best waves at his local beach are directly over an ever-moving sand bar, and their dynamics are affected by depth, another constant variable. [foobarbecue]’s brilliant solution to understanding current conditions?
Build a depth finder directly into his surf board
!
At the heart of the “surfsonar” is the Ping Sonar Echosounder, a sonar transducer designed for AUV’s and ROV’s. [foobarbecue] embedded the transducer directly into the board. Data is fed to a Raspberry Pi 4b, which displays depth and confidence (a percentage of how sure it is of the measurement) on a 2.13 inch e-Paper Display Hat.
Power is provided by a PiSugar. Charging is done wirelessly, which we’d say is pretty important considering that the whole device is sealed inside a modified surfboard.
While it’s not a low budget build, and there’s yet room for improvement, early reports are positive. Once away from the breaking waves, the device confidently shows the depth. More testing will show if the surfsonar will help [foobarbecue] find that ever-moving sandbar!
Surf hacks are always welcome, we’ve featured the
LED Strip Lit Surfboard
as well as the
Surf Window,
which tells its owner if the surf is up. Be sure to let us know about any cool hacks you find when you’re out surfing the ‘net via our
Tips Line
! | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6393942",
"author": "HorstBaerbel",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T09:05:54",
"content": "Nice, but maybe use an Arduino (or ESP if you need BT/WiFi) for longer runtimes? A Pi 4b seem seriously overpowered and also too big space-wise for this application…",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,372,903.492458 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/25/building-a-water-rocket-that-lands-via-parachute/ | Building A Water Rocket That Lands Via Parachute | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"rocket",
"water rocket"
] | Water rockets are plenty of fun, but they can be even more fun if you go wild with the engineering. [The Q] is one such experimenter, who built a dual-thrust water rocket that even has
a parachute for landing!
The testing took place in an area strangely reminiscent of a certain operating system.
The dual-thrust concept is an interesting one, and is well explained
by fellow YouTube channel [Air Command Rockets].
The basic idea is to use several chambers on the water rocket, one which provides an initial short “boost” phase of high acceleration, followed by a longer “sustain” level of acceleration from a secondary chamber.
It’s a great way to send a water rocket ever higher, but [The Q] didn’t stop there. The build was also fitted with a wind-up module from a little walking toy, colloquially referred to as a “Tomy timer” in the water rocket scene. A rubber band is wound around the timer’s output shaft, holding a door shut containing a parachute. At launch, the windup mechanism is released, and its output shaft turns, eventually releasing the parachute. The trick is setting up the timer to release the chute just after the rocket is done with its thrust phase.
It’s a neat build, and one that would serve as a great guide to those eager to start their own journey down the rabbit hole of advanced water rockets.
We’ve seen similar work before, too
. Video after break. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6393977",
"author": "Garth Bock",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T13:25:58",
"content": "This is great ! I remember the plastic water rocket with the pump that I had as a kid. I think it was 2 stage as well. Maybe this could work as a sounding rocket with some kind of guidance system. I wo... | 1,760,372,903.452177 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/25/drawing-robot-creates-portraits-using-pen-paper-and-algorithms/ | Drawing Robot Creates Portraits Using Pen, Paper And Algorithms | Robin Kearey | [
"Art",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"art",
"drawing",
"portrait",
"robot"
] | Although the market for hand-drawn portraits largely collapsed following the invention of photography, there’s something magical about watching an artist create a lifelike image using nothing but a pencil, some paper, and their fine motor skills. Watching a machine do the same is a similarly captivating experience, though often the end result is not so great. Trying to fix this deficiency, [Joris Wegner] and [Felix Fisgus] created the
Pankraz Piktograph
which seems to do a pretty good job at capturing faces. They were inspired by classic picture-drawing automatons, and made a 21st-century version to be used in museums or at events like trade shows.
The operation of the Piktograph is very simple: you stand in front of the machine, look into the camera and take a selfie. If you like what you see, the robot will then begin to draw your portrait on a piece of paper. It does this using two human-like arms which are made from aluminium and driven by two stepper motors. An ordinary ballpoint pen is held in a spring-loaded carrier, which provides just enough pen-to-paper pressure to reliably draw lines without lifting off or scratching the paper. We can’t help but be impressed with the overall look of the machine: with a sleek, powder-coated aluminium case and a stainless steel stand it’s a work of art by itself.
Inside, the Piktograph is powered by a Raspberry Pi 3, which runs a rather sophisticated algorithm to generate a vector image which doesn’t take too long to draw, but still results in a recognizable image of the subject. The makers’
thesis
goes into quite some detail to explain the process, which uses
Canny edge detection
to create an outline drawing, then fills in the empty bits to create bright and dark areas. A certain amount of noise and wigglyness is added to the lines to give it a more “handmade” feel, and the resulting drawing is divided into continuous lines for efficient drawing by the plotter.
We’ve seen several types of specialized art robots before, capable of
drawing portraits
with a pen,
painting them
, or even
using an Etch-a-Sketch
, but [Joris] and [Felix]’s creation seems to win on speed, workmanship, and the quality of the end result. Video embedded after the break. | 6 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6393892",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T01:32:07",
"content": "Darn, I was hoping to finally see an algorithm that actually *drew* a picture. But this is yet another plotter that converts a webcam picture to an edge-enhanced low-resolution 4-level grayscale bitmap, and... | 1,760,372,903.613038 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/26/add-mycelium-to-your-mesh-networks/ | Add Mycelium To Your Mesh Networks | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"amateur",
"antenna",
"encrypted",
"ESP32",
"ham",
"mesh",
"message",
"messaging",
"mushroom",
"mycelium",
"radio",
"secure"
] | In many parts of the world, days after a good rainfall, it’s fairly common to see various species of mushrooms popping up out of the ground. These mysterious organisms aren’t the whole story, though. The living being is a vast network of hidden fibers, called mycelium, spreading through the ground and into any other organic material it can colonize. Its air of mystery and its vast reach are the inspiration for entire Star Trek shows and, of course, projects like
this LoRa-based mesh network called Mycelium
.
Mycelium is the invention of [Catamine] and includes many novel features compared to more typical mesh networks. For one, it is intended to be used in low power applications to give users the ability to send messages over a distributed network rather than a centralized network like a cell phone service provider. For another, the messages are able to be encrypted and authenticated, which is not currently possible with other mesh networks such as APRS. The idea is that a large network of people with nothing more complicated than an ESP32, an antenna,
and this software
would be able to communicate securely in situations where a centralized network is not available, whether that is from something like a natural disaster or from a governmental organization disabling the Internet during a political upheval.
The mesh network is currently in active development, and while messages can not yet be sent, the network is able to recognize nodes and maintain a keybase. There are certainly plenty of instances where something like this would be useful as we’ve seen before
from other (non-encrypted) LoRa-based network solutions
which are built around similar principles.
Thanks to [dearuserhron] for the tip! | 21 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394287",
"author": "aceat64",
"timestamp": "2021-10-27T05:24:25",
"content": "How does this compare to something like Meshtastic?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6394655",
"author": "2ftg",
"timestamp": "2021-... | 1,760,372,903.739786 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/26/simple-electronic-hacks-inspire-doing-more-with-less/ | Simple Electronic Hacks Inspire Doing More With Less | Ryan Flowers | [
"classic hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"blinking led",
"diode",
"diode hacks",
"electronics hack",
"LED hack",
"lm7805",
"op amp hack",
"op-amp",
"salvaged",
"salvaged electronics",
"voltage regulator"
] | It’s late at night. The solder smoke keeps getting in your tired eyes, but your project is nearly done. The main circuit is powered by your 13.8 V bench supply, but
part
of the circuit needs 9 V. You dig into your stash to find your last LM7809 voltage regulator, but all you have is a bunch of LM7805’s. Are you done for the night? Not if you’ve watched
[0033mer]’s Simple Electronic Circuit Hacks video
! You know just what to do. The ground pin of a LM7805 connects to the cathode of a TL431 programmable Zener diode pulled from an old scrapped TV. The diode is referenced to a voltage divider, and voila! Your LM7805 is now putting out a steady 9 V.
How did [0033mer] become adept at doing more with less? As he explains in the video below, his primary source of parts in The Time Before The Internet was old TV’s that were beyond repair. Using N-Channel MOSFETs to switch AC, sensing temperature changes with signal diodes, and even replacing a 555 with a blinking LED are just a few of the hacks covered in the video below the break.
We especially appreciated the simple, to-the-point presentation that inspires us to keep on hacking in the truest sense: Doing more with less! If you enjoy a good diode hack like we do, you will likely appreciate learning
Diode Basics by W2AEW
, or a
Diode Based Radiation Detector
.
Thank you [DSM] for the tip! Be sure to submit your the cool things you come across to our
Tips Line
! | 18 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394274",
"author": "Arthur Mezins",
"timestamp": "2021-10-27T03:58:59",
"content": "There’s a old “trick” almost as old as the original LM309 5V regulator, to convert any 3 terminal into an adjustable regulator whose output voltage is GREATER than the regulator’s. This was develop... | 1,760,372,903.862021 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/26/theres-not-a-cassingle-thing-missing-from-this-cassette-deck-masterclass/ | There’s Not A Cassingle Thing Missing From This Cassette Deck Masterclass | Kristina Panos | [
"how-to"
] | [
"audio cassette",
"capstan",
"cassette",
"cassette deck",
"repair",
"tape head"
] | For [ke4mcl], this whole cassette craze of late is not a new discovery so much as it is a personal nostalgia machine. Since [ke4mcl] sees a lot of basic questions go unanswered, they made
an incredible beginner’s guide to all things cassette deck
. This concise wealth of information covers everything from terminology to operation, basic maintenance like repairing the belt and lubricating the motor, and appropriate cleaning methods for the various parts. Yep, we’re pretty sure this covers everything but the pencil winding technique, which you probably already knew about.
You don’t need a lot of tools and supplies to maintain a cassette deck or twelve (apparently they’re addictive) — mostly just head cleaning fluid, isopropyl, window cleaner, and a bunch of cotton swabs. And given this guide, you’ll enter the enclosure confidently, armed with knowledge about everything from the belts to the capstan to the head. This is valuable information, the kind of stuff your older brother wouldn’t take the time to explain to you in the 80s. But maybe he didn’t know reverse bias from the holes in the top of the tape.
Don’t care for the quality of audio cassettes? Tapes are good for lots of stuff, like
data storage
and
decoration
. | 78 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394213",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T23:10:44",
"content": "If only some company would manufacture a high quality cassette mechanism. There’s only one or two manufacturers of them now and even when all the best build options are selected, they’re still garb... | 1,760,372,903.977472 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/26/3d-printer-bed-probing-using-a-tact-switch-and-coin-cell/ | 3D Printer Bed Probing Using A Tact Switch And Coin Cell | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"z probe"
] | Inspired by his CNC’s leveling system, [Chuck] built a small PCB to
help level his 3D printer
and he shares the details in the video you can see below. The idea is simple, the nozzle pushes down on the PCB which has a tact switch underneath. When the switch closes, an LED lights.
In practice, you measure the height of the board and use that for your Z offset, and you are done. Our only concern would be how repeatable the switch is. Granted, most people use a piece of paper and that’s probably not totally repeatable or accurate either. Proper feeler gauges are the “right” way to do it, but we know only a few people who do that.
If you ever look into the repeatability of various Z probes like the proximity sensors or the little pins that drop out of a 3D Touch probe, they aren’t that repeatable. Some people use
microswitches
, too, which is pretty similar to this approach and is apparently good enough.
The board is available, but it is simple enough that you could create it — or an equivalent — with just about any method you use for your PCBs. [Chuck’s] prototype board was milled. We are always surprised more people don’t use
the nozzle itself
to sense the bed. Some people go to a lot more
trouble than just electrical contact
even for CNC. | 39 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394136",
"author": "Jan Praegert",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T20:14:21",
"content": "A cheap fully automated clone probe costs less than 10 €.To me automatic bed leveling was really a game changer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,372,903.813706 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/26/superslicer-reviewed-another-3dp-slicer/ | SuperSlicer Reviewed: Another 3DP Slicer? | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"cura",
"PrusaSlicer",
"simplify3d",
"slic3r",
"slicer",
"superslicer"
] | When you think of slicers for FDM 3D printing — especially free slicers — you probably think of Cura, Slic3r, or PrusaSlicer. There are fans of MatterControl and many people pay for Simplify3D. However, there are quite a few other slicers out there including the one [TeachingTech] has switched to:
SuperSlicer
. You can see his video review, below.
Of course, just as PrusaSlicer is a fork of Slic3r, SuperSlicer is a fork of the Prusa software. According to the project’s home page, the slicer does everything Prusa does but adds custom calibration tests, ironing, better thin wall support, and several other features related to infill and top surfaces. The software runs on Windows, Linux, or Mac.
[TeachingTech] had used a purchased copy of Simplify3D for years. However, he had a drive failure and had to rebuild his profiles anyway, so he tried some other choices. He didn’t like Cura’s interface. He’d used Slic3r before and since that is the mother of PrusaSlicer and the grandmother of SuperSlicer, it seemed more familiar to him.
SuperSlicer can upload to WiFi printers and has some infill and support options that were not in Simplify3D. The video shows some intelligent features for improving top layers and overhangs if you don’t provide the right support under them.
We liked that there is support for
Klipper
. The built-in calibration prints are good for finding the right retraction and other parameters for your printer and materials. If you haven’t used PrusaSlicer and want an idea of what that looks like, you can
read our take on it from a few years
ago. | 32 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394105",
"author": "Prusa",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T18:52:56",
"content": "SuperSlicer is a community fork of PrusaSlicer. Basically, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V of PrusaSlicer, where the author then experiments with new things. Some might be a good idea, some not. Some might work, some might ... | 1,760,372,904.122093 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/26/how-much-is-that-shirt-in-the-atmospheric-window/ | How Much Is That Shirt In The (Atmospheric) Window? | Kristina Panos | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"atmospheric window",
"climate change",
"electromagnetic radiation",
"greenhouse gases",
"infrared",
"passive cooling"
] | Summer is fading into a memory now, but as surely as the earth orbits the sun, those hot and sweaty days will return soon enough. And what can you do about it at the level of a single, suffering human being? After all, a person can only remove so much clothing to help cool off. Until someone figures out a way to make those stillsuits from Dune, we need an interim solution in which to drape ourselves.
We’ve seen the whitest paint possible for cooling buildings
, and then we saw a
newer, whiter and more award-winning paint
a few months later. This paint works by the principle of passive cooling. Because of its color and composition, it reflects most light and absorbs some heat, which gets radiated away into the mid-infrared spectrum. It does this by slipping out Earth’s atmospheric window and into space. Now, a team based in China
have applied the passive cooling principle to fabric
.
Wait, What’s the Atmospheric Window?
Technically speaking, there are two atmospheric windows — one in the infrared spectrum, and another in the radio spectrum. For the purposes of this discussion, we are only concerned with the infrared window. But let’s back up a bit.
What gets absorbed. Image via
University of Rochester’s Department of Physics and Astronomy
The energy radiating from the Sun includes much more than just the light we see and the heat we feel. Earth’s upper atmosphere absorbs gamma rays, x-rays, and some of the ultraviolet part of the spectrum. Think of the upper atmosphere as a blanket that protects Earth from these harmful rays.
There is a hole in the blanket — or a window, if you will — in the low end of the infrared range (roughly 8-14 μm) that lets in visible light and heat because none of the atmospheric gasses absorb that wavelength. That’s a good hole; it’s a hallmark of a habitable planet. So, this is what is meant by the atmospheric window — light and heat can go both ways. The window lets in light and heat, but more importantly, it also lets it escape. This way the planet is nice and warm, but not to a deadly degree.
Fabric of the Universe
So, back to the fabric. To reiterate, passive cooling materials work by reflecting almost all of the incoming light, keeping those energetic photons from heating the surface. These materials also absorb heat from whatever they’re covering and radiate it out.
Passively cooling something like a building is kind of a set-it-and-forget-it type of thing. Clothing, on the other hand, has to be flexible, breathable, and must stand up to repeated washings. So, how does this fabric work already? Much of its reflectivity comes from titanium dioxide powder, like the stuff in some kinds of sunscreen. These titanium dioxide nanoparticles are embedded in fibers made of PLA, which emit radiation (lose heat) in the mid-infrared spectrum.
Then the fabric is further coated with polyetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which reflects the part of the UV spectrum that the titanium dioxide doesn’t. PTFE is hydrophobic, so it will repel water from the outside and sweat from the inside. The fabric is woven together rather than knit, and has a carefully-calculated pore size. In tests, the fabric reflected more than 92% of sunlight. The team half-covered a vest with their fabric and sat someone in the sunlight while wearing it. They monitored the person’s body with infrared cameras and found that the side covered by the fabric measured an average of 3° C cooler than the side without the fabric.
One Shirt, Please — With a Jolly Wrencher
This stuff seems to tick all the boxes — it’s breathable, washable, and (we assume), comfortable enough to wear all day in the desert. It’s also supposed to be biodegradable, but we have to wonder what effect sweat and laundry detergents and
double rubs
might have on the fibers’ ability to passively cool someone on a long enough timeline. Since it’s mostly plastic, we do wonder how it feels.
And it comes in any color you want, as long as it’s white. The good news is that it can be embroidered. Dyeing it is a no-no because it will lose its function. But if you can embroider it, you can probably make it visually interesting and still viable. A shirt made of this magic fabric will probably cost even more than that Hypercolor shirt we loved so much in the 90s, but at least it won’t announce our anxiety to the world in living color. But if you need to keep cool at all costs, an atmospheric window-wear shirt might just be the ticket. | 41 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394087",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T17:46:15",
"content": "Here’s something to consider: PTFE is teflon, which is a fluoride.I’d be concerned about wearing a fluoride compound on my body, with rubbing and sweat and possible transfer. Also, I routinely get scratche... | 1,760,372,904.058128 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/26/smart-flower-pot-build-is-all-about-that-base/ | Smart Flower Pot Build Is All About That Base | Kristina Panos | [
"how-to",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"automated plant care",
"flower pot",
"internet of flower pots",
"IoT",
"PyPortal"
] | For some reason, it seems like most of the plant monitoring setups we see separate the plant and the monitoring system. This makes sense in a don’t-own-a-waterbed-and-a-cat kind of way, but it also doesn’t from an aestheitc standpoint.
This build by [Jorge Enrique Gamboa Fuentes] sure does look nice and tidy as an all-in-one unit, and fortunately is built with obvious issues in mind
. It tracks water level, soil moisture, and soil temperature with a single device — a STEMMA-connected soil sensor that does all the monitoring work.
This attractive beginner build is a Python-powered project that runs on a PyPortal Titano and has a speaker that anthropomorphizes the thing so it can
berate you
politely ask for water in English. But the real magic of this build is in
the enclosure
itself. Thankfully, it’s designed with a drip tray, but it also keeps the electronics out of the water, allowing just the tip of the sensor to get wet. You can view the vital signs directly on the device, or on a web dashboard whenever you’re away.
In the future, [Jorge] wants to experiment with GCP and Azure, connect more flower pots together, and add more sensors so that it is more autonomous. One of the major lessons learned was that you probably shouldn’t start with a succulent, because they need very little water and this will drag out your development time considerably unless you over-water it, which will kill it. Check it out after the break.
If [Jorge] wanted to go the easy route, they might
stick this plant under an old Keurig that’s been converted to an automatic watering device
.
Via
adafruit | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394028",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T15:36:46",
"content": "And the base is a vase!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6394038",
"author": "some guy",
"timestamp": "2021-10-26T16:07:52",
"co... | 1,760,372,904.312969 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/30/esp32-internet-radio-is-no-game/ | ESP32 Internet Radio Is No Game | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"ARM"
] | [
"ESP32",
"internet radio",
"t-display",
"tto"
] | More than once, we’ve looked at a cool board like the TTGO T-Display and thought, “What can we build with this?” If you’re [Danko Bertović], the answer is the
tiny Internet radio you can see in the
Volos Projects
video below
.
Of course, the core Internet streaming code would be useful with any ESP32, but the display makes for a good-looking unit. The code is available on
GitHub
. With judicious use of network and audio libraries, the player only takes a few hundred lines of code. Pretty impressive considering it even shows a visualization on the tiny display screen.
What we’d really like to see is a nice case, power supply, and speaker option to make a tiny and portable unit. With a 3D printer, it is easy to make very professional-looking projects, as we often see. On the other hand, it does look better than the breadboard version you can see towards the end of the video. It is, though, a neatly done breadboard.
If you want a larger screen, you might enjoy the
ESP32 internet radio
we looked at before. Probably our favorite case for an Internet radio
was this globe
. | 6 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395365",
"author": "Popolon",
"timestamp": "2021-10-30T19:18:04",
"content": "There is a mistake in the “Posted in”, if this is ESP32, this isn’t ARM, this is Espressif LX6 or RISC-V ISA. Here is an LX6.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,372,904.351499 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/30/dream-bigger-predict-the-future/ | Dream Bigger, Predict The Future | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Parts",
"Rants"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"cheap",
"right",
"wrong"
] | I’d love to tell you that I’m never wrong, but I’ve been wrong a lot. Remember the Arduino? When it was brand new, I thought it was some silly collection of libraries and a drop-down menu for people who are too lazy to just type out their own
#include
statements. Needless to say, it launched about a million hacks and brought microcontroller programming into the mainstream. Oops.
Similarly, about fifteen years ago, I saw an educational project out of MIT’s Media Lab. It consisted of a bunch of blocks that had LCD screens on them and would interact with each other when put together. The real hook, though, was that each block had an accelerometer inside, so you could “pour water” out of one block into another, for instance.
At that time, accelerometers were expensive, even in quantities. Even one of these cubes must have cost $100 at the time, much less a whole set. Accelerometers were so expensive that I wouldn’t have thought about incorporating one into a project, much less a dozen, so I ignored them for hacker purposes. Then came the cellphone and economies of scale. Today, even in chip shortage times, they’re readily available for around $2 each, making them useful for exactly this kind of “frivolous” use.
From the Arduino experience, I learned to never underestimate the impact of what seem to me to be “small” conveniences. (And maybe more so, the value of the tremendous common effort from the community.) From the MIT accelerometer story, the moral is that some parts will get drastically cheaper in the future, so you shouldn’t necessarily exclude the cool new sensor from your design repertoire. After all, ten years ago, nobody would have thought that we’d have laser time-of-flight rangefinders for less than a hamburger.
What new components are fantastically useful, or full of potential, that might be cheap enough in the future to make them also worth looking into? Swing by Hackaday tomorrow morning and join in the conversation!
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning?
You should sign up
! | 55 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395325",
"author": "tyjtyjty",
"timestamp": "2021-10-30T14:59:41",
"content": "I dream about linux device with working time a mont on one charge",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6395345",
"author": "Gravis",
"t... | 1,760,372,904.527801 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/30/skeleton-watches-you-intensely-because-its-halloween-okay/ | Skeleton Watches You Intensely Because It’s Halloween, Okay | Lewin Day | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"halloween",
"opencv",
"raspberry pi",
"skeleton"
] | If you’ve ever seen a painting in which the eyes follow you around the room, you might have found that a bit uneasy. [CuriousInventor] has taken that concept further with a skeleton that literally holds a gaze on
anyone in its field of view.
The heart of the system is a Raspberry Pi Zero, fitted with a Pi Camera. Running OpenCV, code is set up to track humans and turn the skeleton’s head to face any that are detected. This is achieved via a servo in the skeleton’s neck. A servo bonnet is used to drive the servos without unnecessarily straining the Raspberry Pi.
The skeleton itself doesn’t look modified in any way, though most of the electronics are mounted inside a pretty obvious plastic box. We’d love to see a version 2 with all the hardware housed neatly inside the skull.
It’s a fun hack that makes for an enjoyable Halloween decoration. OpenCV can do other useful things, too, however,
like spotting weeds
. Video after the break. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395596",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2021-10-31T19:53:10",
"content": "There’s nothing creepier than a guy sitting on his steps not wearing pants on watching you.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,904.267841 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/30/cheap-caliper-hack-keeps-em-running-longer/ | Cheap Caliper Hack Keeps ‘Em Running Longer | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"caliper",
"digital caliper"
] | Many a hacker is a fan of the cheapest calipers on the market. Manufactured in China and priced low enough that they’re virtually disposable, they get a lot of jobs done in the world where clinical accuracy isn’t required. However, their batteries often die when left in a drawer for a long time. [Ben] was sick of that,
and got to hacking.
The result was a quick-and-dirty mod that allows the calipers to be powered by a AAA battery. The average AAA cell has 5-10 times the capacity of the typical LR44 coin cells used in these devices.
[Ben] whipped this up with an eye to making it work rather than making it nice, so there are some shortcuts taken. The battery housing was 3D-printed on the lowest-quality settings that were viable, and it’s held to the calipers with hot glue. Similarly, bare wire ends were used instead of proper contacts, taking advantage of the battery being crammed in to make a good connection.
It’s a hack that will likely save [Ben] much frustration, as he’ll now rarely open his drawer to find his calipers dead. However, one [Pete Prodoehl] suggests another useful trick: store the calipers in the closed position with the lock screw tight to save them
turning themselves on accidentally
.
Whichever way you go, you’ve hopefully learned something today that will keep your cheap calipers working when you need them. Next, you might consider hacking them
to capture data, too. | 48 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395258",
"author": "vib",
"timestamp": "2021-10-30T08:35:59",
"content": "Because the micro-controller from those cheap callipers isn´t optimized for low-power, or lacks the necessary power states, they drain the batteries all the time. All they do is switching the LCD off, which d... | 1,760,372,904.434586 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/29/emc-tutorial-puts-you-in-the-loop/ | EMC Tutorial Puts You In The Loop | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"emc",
"LTSpice",
"noise",
"noise simulation",
"smps",
"switching power supply"
] | A student once asked his lab instructor why his amplifier was oscillating. After looking at it and noting the wild construction, the instructor remarked, “A better question would be why shouldn’t it oscillate?” The truth of it is, our circuits generate noise and especially if they are oscillating anyway. Distortion and nonlinearities generate harmonics and other component imperfections also contribute.
[FesZ Electronics] has a great video series about noise in switching power supplies and the latest talks about
the hot loop
. If you want to improve the noise performance of your next design, these videos are well worth watching. You can see the hot loop video below.
We really liked the homebrew noise probes. In addition to real-world probing. The video also observes circuit operation under simulation. Even if you don’t care about noise performance, there’s a lot of good information about basic switching power supply design here.
You can see the difference in a PCB that has a small hot loop versus a very small hot loop. Something to think about next time you are laying out a power supply board.
If you want to dive deeper into
noise simulation
, we have a good read on that for you. Or ditch simulation, and make
your own cheap probe
with an SDR dongle. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395254",
"author": "helge",
"timestamp": "2021-10-30T07:35:18",
"content": "Or, as the Texas Instruments AN-2155 puts it, “The goal of our DC/DC converter design is to make bad antennas out of the loops that carry the high di/dt currents.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,372,904.677099 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/29/this-eyeball-watches-you-thanks-to-kinect-tracking/ | This Eyeball Watches You Thanks To Kinect Tracking | Lewin Day | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"eyeball",
"halloween",
"Kinect"
] | Eyeballs are often watching us, but they’re usually embedded in the skull of another human or animal. When they’re staring at you by themselves, they can be altogether more creepy. This Halloween project from [allpartscombined] aims to elicit
that exact spooky vibe
.
The project relies on a Kinect V2 to do body tracking. It feeds data to a Unity app that figures out how to aim the eyeball at any humans detected in the scene. The app sends angle data to an Arduino over serial, with the microcontroller generating the necessary signals to command servos which move the eyeball.
With tilt and pan servos fitted and the precision tracking from the Kinect data, the eye can be aimed at people in two dimensions. It’s significantly spookier than simply panning the eye back and forth.
The build was actually created by modifying an earlier project to create an airsoft turret,
something we’ve seen a few times around these parts
. Fundamentally, the tracking part is the same, just in this case, the eye doesn’t shoot at people… yet! Video after the break. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395255",
"author": "Blue Moon",
"timestamp": "2021-10-30T08:14:42",
"content": "People really are finding every cool way to use Kinect that doesn’t involve making a fun game using one.Always thought that the tech for Kinect was a little too niche and not quite responsive enough for... | 1,760,372,904.717385 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/29/worlds-cutest-pomodoro-timer-is-also-a-clock/ | World’s Cutest Pomodoro Timer Is Also A Clock | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"clock hacks"
] | [
"7-segment display",
"arduino",
"arduino nano",
"buzzer",
"pomodoro",
"rtc",
"the pomodoro technique",
"time management"
] | Student and hacker [prusteen] recently fell in love with the Pomodoro method of time management. That’s where you concentrate on your task for 25 minutes, then take a five-minute break, and repeat this four times with a longer break at the end. Initially, [prusteen] was keeping track on their phone, but hated having to change the timer value between Pomodoros and break times. In order to keep the flow mode engaged,
[prusteen] came up with this darling little study buddy
that does it all with the push of a button.
By default, this tomato shows the current time, which we think is a handy and often-overlooked feature of Pomodoro timer builds. Press that momentary switch on the front, and it starts counting upward to 25 minutes. Then it beeps in stereo through a pair of buzzers when the time is up, and automatically starts a five-minute break timer. Press it again and the display goes back to clock mode, although judging by
the code
, doing this will cancel the timer.
Inside the juicy enclosure is an Arduino Nano, an RTC, and a 7-segment display. We love the attention to detail here, from the little green leaves on top to the anatomically-correct dimple on the underside. And we always like to see lids that snap on with magnets. So satisfying. Check out the brief demo after the break, which unfortunately does not include any lid-snapping action.
Do you need more interaction with your Pomodoro timer?
Build yourself a pomo-dachi instead
. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6395200",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29T23:20:29",
"content": "A clock without seconds is not a clock.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6395202",
"author": "adrian godwin",
"timestamp": "2021-10-29... | 1,760,372,904.773308 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/27/ethernet-cable-turned-into-antenna-to-exploit-air-gapped-computers/ | Ethernet Cable Turned Into Antenna To Exploit Air-Gapped Computers | Dan Maloney | [
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"air gap",
"Cat6",
"ethernet",
"exfiltration",
"exploit",
"HackRF",
"RF",
"RTL-SDR"
] | Good news, everyone! Security researcher [Mordechai Guri] has given us yet another reason to look askance at our computers and wonder who might be sniffing in our private doings.
This time, your suspicious gaze will settle on the lowly Ethernet cable, which he has used to
exfiltrate data across an air gap
. The exploit requires almost nothing in the way of fancy hardware — he used both an RTL-SDR dongle and a HackRF to receive the exfiltrated data, and didn’t exactly splurge on the receiving antenna, which was just a random chunk of wire. The attack, dubbed “LANtenna”, does require some software running on the target machine, which modulates the desired data and transmits it over the Ethernet cable using one of two methods: by toggling the speed of the network connection, or by sending raw UDP packets. Either way, an RF signal is radiated by the Ethernet cable, which was easily received and decoded over a distance of at least two meters. The bit rate is low — only a few bits per second — but that may be all a malicious actor needs to achieve their goal.
To be sure, this exploit is quite contrived, and fairly optimized for demonstration purposes. But it’s a pretty effective demonstration, but along with the previously demonstrated
hard drive activity lights
,
power supply fans
, and even
networked security cameras
, it adds another seemingly innocuous element to the list of potential vectors for
side-channel attacks
.
[via
The Register
] | 30 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394578",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2021-10-27T21:18:54",
"content": "Very cool. Also, I’m pretty sure that if you air gapping your systems then you are at the very least going to be using shielded LAN cable. I would hope you would use fiber to at least make tapping in dif... | 1,760,372,905.444516 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/27/heavy-metal-lathe-build-doesnt-spare-the-steel/ | Heavy Metal Lathe Build Doesn’t Spare The Steel | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"fabrication",
"lathe",
"Machine tool",
"machining",
"steel",
"welding"
] | It’s common wisdom that the lathe is the essential machine tool, and the only one that can make copies of itself. While we won’t argue the primacy of the lathe in the machine shop,
this scratch-built, heavy-duty lathe
gives the lie to the latter argument — almost.
We’re used to seeing homebrew lathes, of course, and we’ve featured more than a few of them before. But two things make [Jornt]’s build stand out: how few specialized tools were needed to build it, and the sheer size and bulk of the finished product. Where most homebrew lathes tend to be the bench top variety and feature cast aluminum parts, [Jornt] went with steel for his build, and a lot of it. The base and bed of the machine are welded from scrap steel I-beams, and the ways are made from angle iron that has been ground flat with a clever jig to hold an angle grinder. The angle grinder plays a prominent role in the build, as do simple tools like a hand drill, files, and a welder — and yes, the unfinished lathe itself, which was used to bore out the bearing blocks for the headstock.
The completed lathe, powered by a treadmill motor in a way that
[Jeremy Fielding] would no doubt endorse
, comes in at a beefy 450 kg. It honestly looks like something you could buy from a catalog, and has most of the features of commercial machines. One thing we’d love to see on this lathe is
the electronic lead screw
that [James Clough] developed for his off-the-shelf lathe. | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394537",
"author": "Wheels17",
"timestamp": "2021-10-27T18:46:42",
"content": "Beautiful work. Quite a commitment and skilled execution. The els would be a great addition.At just over 1000 lbs it’s not real heavy metal. Here’s on where the machinist rides the carriage:https://i1... | 1,760,372,904.831348 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/27/vcf-east-2021-preserving-heathkits-8-bit-computers/ | VCF East 2021: Preserving Heathkit’s 8-Bit Computers | Tom Nardi | [
"cons",
"Featured",
"History",
"Retrocomputing",
"Slider"
] | [
"heathkit",
"Intel 8080",
"microcomputer",
"VCF East",
"VCF East 2021"
] | To say the Heathkit name is well known among Hackaday readers would be something of an understatement. Their legendary kits launched an untold number of electronics hobbies, and ultimately, plenty of careers. From relatively simple radio receivers to oscilloscopes and televisions, the company offered kits for every skill level from the post-war era all the way up to the 1990s.
So it’s hardly a surprise that in 1977, seeing the success of early home computers like the Altair 8800 and IMSAI 8080, Heathkit decided to join the fray with a computer kit of their own. But by that point the home computing market had started to shift from a hobbyist’s pursuit to something the whole family could enjoy. Compared to the Apple II and TRS-80, both of which also launched in 1977, Heathkit’s machine seemed like the product of a bygone era.
While it might not have gained the notoriety of the microcomputers it was designed to compete with, the Heathkit H8 is certainly not forgotten. Tucked away in a corner at the 2021 Vintage Computer Festival East was an
impressive exhibit dedicated to the Society of Eight-Bit Heath Computerists (SEBHC)
called
Heathkit: Keeping the Legacy Alive
. Presented by Glenn Roberts, this collection of original and modern hardware demonstrated the incredible lengths to which this group of passionate Heathkit owners have gone to not just preserve the memory of these often overlooked computers, but to continue to improve upon the kit’s unique design.
No Mere Clone
While the Heathkit H8 might have been designed as a contemporary to the Altair 8800, and used the same Intel 8080 CPU, it was by no means a clone like the IMSAI 8080. In perhaps the biggest departure from common microcomputers of the day, the H8 didn’t use the S-100 bus. Hastily thrown together and based on military surplus 100-pin edge connectors, the S-100 bus had a number of known issues, so Heathkit decided to design a simplified 50-pin backplane design they called the Benton Harbor Bus.
Installing the H8’s backplane
The backplane was mounted on the right hand side of the H8’s enclosure, and could accommodate ten angled expansion cards. The first slot was naturally taken up by the front panel hardware, with the CPU board occupying the second. In the default configuration this left a generous eight additional slots for expansion purposes, though the card in the last position needed to be of a reduced length or else it would hit the power supply.
Operationally, the H8 also differed significantly from its competitors. The front panel did away with the distinctive binary toggle switches and LEDs of the Altair, and replaced them with an octal keypad and seven-segment LED displays. This allowed users to much more rapidly enter programs and examine memory addresses, although the address notation was somewhat less intuitive. That said, the H8 actually had a 1 kB ROM that contained enough code to boot the machine into a functional state, so the user didn’t need to key in a loader each time they started up like they would on earlier S-100 microcomputers.
Clearly, Heathkit wasn’t just looking to copy what the competition was doing. They had some very interesting ideas about how a microcomputer should work, and made a number of improvements over the defacto machines of the day. But there’s always room for improvement.
Remastering a Classic
Since the H8 came in kit form and included complete schematics, members of the SEBHC have been able to create modern replicas that roll in various tweaks and improvements. With community developed PCBs and documentation, it’s possible to create a functional Heathkit H8 without having any of the original hardware.
An H8-2000, with IDE drive and ATX PSU.
Depending on which generation of PCBs you use, these are referred to as H8-2000s or H8-2020s by members of the community. Without the benefit of the original enclosure these machines can end up looking rather industrial, but the aesthetics are largely dependent on how far the person building the system wants to go. Of course, if you’re fortunate enough to have an original H8 (or at least, parts of one), you can augment it with the newly developed components and expansions for the best of both worlds.
Members of the SEBHC such as
Norberto Collado have developed an incredible array of expansion cards
to fit the H8, such as memory upgrades, IDE controllers, networking interfaces, a USB controller that supports Mass Storage devices, and even a new CPU board that uses the Z80. A properly outfitted H8 has the potential to be a retrocomputing dream machine.
Glenn put two such H8s right at the head of the table to grab the attention of passing attendees, as even to the uninitiated, it was abundantly clear these computers were the result of some blended design. Seeing the vintage enclosures outfitted with modern ATX power supplies and newly-manufactured expansion boards, show goers couldn’t help but be curious. Particular attention was paid to what Glenn calls “Big Blue”, a H8-2020 outfitted with a startling blue LED display and lighted keypad, a gorgeous blend of 70s simplicity and modern style.
Copying the Competition
In an effort to catch up to newer machines from the likes of Apple and Tandy, Heathkit soon introduced a new desktop machine, the H89. It was based on the Z80, combined a 12 inch CRT display and disk drive into one unit, and was available in both kit and pre-built forms. The end result was something that looked a lot like the TRS-80 Model III, and nothing like the H8 that came before it.
Set up right next to Glenn’s table, Alex Bodnar brought his beautiful H89 along as part of an exhibit he called
Adventure 1.0 on the Heathkit H89
. As the name implies, his machine was set up running the CP/M version of the text adventure off of the original floppies offered by the Heath Users’ Group.
Unfortunately, Heathkit’s days in the computer game were numbered. Not long after the release of the H89, the company was purchased by Zenith, who in turn rebranded the H89 as the Z-89 and ended sales of the kit version. The Z-89 went through a few revisions and stayed on the market until 1985, but the Heathkit name would never again grace the front panel of a computer.
For a New Generation
Despite Heathkit being exceptionally well known brand among electronic hobbyists, relatively few are familiar with their brief foray into the computer market. Several attendees came away from
Heathkit: Keeping the Legacy Alive
surprised that a company they knew so well had developed and marketed multiple computers that they’d never even heard about.
The Heathkit H8 might never have gotten the chance to star opposite Matthew Broderick back in the 1980s, but through the efforts of the Society of Eight-Bit Heath Computerists, this vintage computer seems well positioned to get a second chance at life. The fact is, you can build a brand-new H8 today that’s more capable and more reliable than the original from 1977. So whether you’re looking for a unique electronics project or want to explore the world of retrocomputing, a Heathkit might be just what you’re looking for. | 39 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394500",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-27T17:15:57",
"content": "Each time I read “H8”, my mind thought of the Hitachi family of processor.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H8_Family",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6394508... | 1,760,372,904.911584 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/27/3d-printed-printing-plates-made-using-modern-tools/ | 3D Printed Printing Plates Made Using Modern Tools | Dave Rowntree | [
"Art",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"inkscape",
"KiCAD",
"letterpress",
"openscad"
] | It’s widely accepted that the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in the 15
th
Century was the event that essentially enabled the development of the modern world, allowing access to knowledge beyond anything that came before, even if the Chinese got in on the bookmaking act some 500 years previously. Fast-forward a few centuries more and we’ve got the ability to design electronics from our arm chairs, we can print 3D objects from a machine on the coffee table, and 3D modeling can be done by your kids on a tablet computer. What a time to be alive! So we think it’s perfectly fine that [Kris Slyka] has gone full circle and
used all these tools to make printing plates for a small press
, in order to produce cards for her Etsy business.
Now before you scoff, yes she admits quite quickly that KiCAD wasn’t the best choice for designing the images to print, since she needed to do a lot of post-processing in Inkscape, she could have just dropped the first step and started in Inkscape anyway. You live and learn. Once the desired image was fully vectorised, it was popped into OpenSCAD in order to extrude it into 3D, thickening the contact to the base to improve the strength a little.
[Kris] demonstrates using the registration marks to align the front and rear side plates, and even (mostly) manages adding a second colour infill for a bit more pizzazz. The results look a little bit wonky and imperfect, exactly what you want for something supposed to be handmade. We think it’s a nice result, even if designing it in KiCAD was a bit bonkers.
For those interested in the OpenSCAD code, have a butchers at this
gist
. This project is not the first 3D-printed printing press we’ve covered, checkout the
Hi-Bred
for an example, and here’s the
Open Press Project
if you’re still interested. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394468",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2021-10-27T15:41:00",
"content": "Guteberg’s real inovation was movable type. Rather than carving each page, you could assemble them from common pieces (letters.)There were printing presses in use in Europe before Gutenberg – he didn... | 1,760,372,904.959991 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/27/tech-in-plain-sight-air-conditioning/ | Tech In Plain Sight: Air Conditioning | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"home hacks",
"Misc Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"air conditioning",
"carrier",
"ice",
"refigeration"
] | I’m always amazed that technology can totally wipe out industries. Sure, some people make a living making horseshoes, for example, but the demand for them is way down compared to what it would have been when horses were the normal mode of transportation. But even so, people still make horseshoes. But think about the ice harvesting business. Never heard of it? Turns out, before refrigeration, there was a huge business of moving ice from where it naturally occurred to other places and storing it, usually underground with a lot of insulation. As far as I know, that business — including the neighborhood ice man — is totally gone now except for some historical exhibitions. We take refrigeration and air conditioning for granted, but it hasn’t been that long ago that ice was a luxury and your own reprieve from the heat was a fan.
Early Cooling
The story starts a little earlier than you might expect. In the 1840s, physician John Gorrie was concerned about “the evils of high temperature.” His hospital in Florida imported ice using the aforementioned ice trade and it wasn’t cheap nor was it very effective.
Undeterred, he developed a machine that used a horse, a waterwheel, steam, or wind power to drive a compressor to create ice. He got a
patent
in 1851 but it failed to catch on before his financial backer died. In fact, Oliver Evans had the idea in 1805 but never built a working machine. Jacob Perkins patented the first compression cooler in 1834, again with little practical use.
When U.S. President Garfield was shot, Navy engineers built a cooling box using cloths soaked in ice water to cool the president’s hospital room by 20 degrees. Since the mortally wounded president survived 80 days after the shooting, we presume he appreciated the comfort.
Carrier and The Hollywood Connection
Willis Carrier (Public domain)
We owe modern air conditioning to the magazine printing business. A magazine publisher in Brooklyn had such humidity that their pages were wrinkling. It was not only unsightly but created problems with the printing process. An engineer named Willis Carrier — still a name in the air conditioning business — worked for the Buffalo Forge Company and was asked to solve the problem in 1902.
His invention removed humidity from the air but, as a result, it also cooled down the air. Patents ensued and the apparatus also found use in the textile industry. Eventually, Carrier and six other engineers would leave Buffalo and form a company called Carrier.
It would be the 1920s, though, before the general public started to learn about air conditioning, thanks to the most unlikely venue: movie theaters.
Movie theaters modified their heating systems to blow cold air, which led to patrons on the floor having cold feet and those in the balcony were overly warm. In 1922, Carrier installed a well-designed system at the Metropolitan in Los Angeles. These early systems were prone to failure, however, so later that year Carrier introduced a centrifugal system first used in the Rivoli in New York.
Air conditioning in theaters increased business since people in the heat would gladly spend some money to sit in a cool theater for a few hours no matter what movie might be playing. They might even buy a drink or some popcorn.
At Home
These early air conditioners were big and expensive. They also used flammable refrigerants. Regardless, Frigidaire introduced a two-piece unit aimed at home use in 1929. By 1930, General Electric had an all-in-one design.
Window unit circa 1955 (Public domain)
This was about the time that General Motors developed chlorofluorocarbons, a nonflammable coolant that would unfortunately later be found to harm the Earth’s ozone layer.
Expensive window units appeared in 1932 but did not become popular. An affordable window unit wouldn’t appear until 1947. Today, in the United States, 85% of homes have air conditioning of some sort. Heating and cooling account for about 48% of U.S. energy consumption.
The Inside Story
So how does it work? When a liquid turns into a gas, it absorbs heat. The trick, then, is to compress a gas into a liquid and then let it turn back into a gas. The compression generates heat, of course, and that is exchanged using fans blowing over the condenser coils.
Ideally, that heat is put out of the area to cool. For a window unit, it goes out the back, for example. This is also one reason why portable units have a hose that you have to hang out of a door or window.
The gas flows through the system to the evaporator coils where it absorbs heat from the surrounding air. Cooling the air also causes condensation and every air conditioner has to dispose of the water somehow. Keep in mind, Carrier’s original device was meant to dehumidify.
An expansion valve separates the high pressure (liquid) side from the low pressure (gas) side. The valve only allows a tiny bit of refrigerant through at one time which prevents the pressure from equalizing on both sides of the valve. The liquid refrigerant suddenly in a lower pressure environment, expands into a gas and that’s what causes cooling.
Of course, there are variations. Fans might be blowers. Some large units cool water which is sent elsewhere, but the principles are the same. Refrigerators are, unsurprisingly, very similar although some of them use a different method to expand the gas and, of course, only cool an enclosed space with little or no outside airflow.
The Future
With air conditioning using so much power, it isn’t hard to imagine that people keep trying to come up with more efficient ways to cool off. Geothermal cooling relies on the fact that underground is relatively cool so you can exchange heat with the Earth making it cooler when your house is warm and warmer when your house is cool. This is a type of heat pump, and some heat pumps are little more than air conditioners that can switch their cold side and hot side via a reversing valve. These heat pumps draw heat from the air, which means when it is very cold outside they don’t work as well as a traditional heater.
Remember President Garfield’s air conditioner? Modern times have made that idea somewhat feasible again. Because of demand, it is often possible to purchase electricity for less cost at low demand times. To take advantage of the lower cost, office buildings can freeze water at night when they are closed and then use that ice to cool the building during the day. This requires a lot of water, of course and is sometimes augmented with traditional air conditioning. When electricity prices rise, maybe ice harvesting like in the video below will make a comeback. Probably not.
Of course, you can always DIY. We’ve seen a guy who builds air conditioners out of
whatever he happens to find,
or you could build your own
small-scale ice cooler
.
Banner image “
Air Conditioners – Abstract
”
by zeevveez
is licensed with CC BY 2.0.
Thumbnail image “
Air Conditioner
”
by jthetzel
is licensed with CC BY 2.0. | 41 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394433",
"author": "cyberteque",
"timestamp": "2021-10-27T14:08:53",
"content": "not many farriers actually forge horseshoes these daysmost use premade ones, Winchester no longer make guns and ammo but the horseshoe business is in full swing",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,... | 1,760,372,905.039988 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/27/esp32-clock-takes-time-to-give-weather-info-too/ | ESP32 Clock Takes Time To Give Weather Info, Too | Kristina Panos | [
"clock hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"clock",
"ESP32",
"weather"
] | It’s fall in the northern hemisphere, so [Mike Rankin]’s kids are back in school and have returned to consulting him every morning about the weather and what they should wear. Since he’s no meteorologist,
[Mike] built a beautifully dim and diminutive clock
that does all the work for him, plus much more. It glows a lovely dark orange that’s perfect for the nightstand and those early morning interrogations.
In default mode, this clock displays the time, CO2 level, room temperature, and humidity in that eye-friendly orange. But wave your hand in front of the time of flight sensor, and it goes external, displaying the low and high temperatures for the day, plus the weather conditions forecast. After a few seconds of that, it goes back to default mode. The ESP fetches the time from an NTP server, then gets the weather from the OpenWeather API. The indoor weather comes from a combination sensor on the board.
Inside this tiny package is a beautifully-spun board with an ESP32 Pico D4 for a brain. In addition to the climate sensors there is a combination CO2/TVOC sensor (that’s total volatile organic compounds) to sniff out danger. There is also a pair of push buttons on the back and an ambient light sensor, but [Mike] isn’t using those just yet. Add in the Qwiic connector for future doo-dads, and you have quite the little gadget. Although the pictures make it look kind of big, you can see exactly how small it is in the demo video after the break.
[Mike] seems to like things tiny, and we admire that in a big way.
Check out his positively Lilliputian ESP32 dev board
. | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6394401",
"author": "Mike A Rankin",
"timestamp": "2021-10-27T13:01:14",
"content": "Thank you for the wonderful write up and it is an honor to see the project on Hackaday. I rarely write code so I basically mashed together bits and pieces of a few different sketches so I’m surprise... | 1,760,372,905.085489 |
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