url stringlengths 37 208 | title stringlengths 4 148 | author stringclasses 173
values | publish_date stringclasses 1
value | categories listlengths 0 12 | tags listlengths 0 27 | featured_image stringlengths 0 272 | content stringlengths 0 56.1k | comments_count int64 0 900 | scraped_comments_count int64 0 50 | comments listlengths 0 50 | scraped_at float64 1.76B 1.76B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/16/where-you-are-influences-what-you-invent/ | Where You Are Influences What You Invent | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants"
] | [
"creativity",
"ideas",
"invention"
] | [Timon] just
bought a new PCB holder setup
for his desk. It’s one of those spring-loaded jobbies that uses strong magnets to hold it up off of a work surface, and is made of metal so that you can reflow solder with it. It might be a clone of the
PCBite
, but frankly I’ve seen similar projects everywhere — it’s hard to say who is copying whom these days. And anyway, that’s not the point.
What struck me about the holders was their tops: they’re repurposed 3D printer nozzles. That’s a fantastic idea because they’re non-magnetic, heat tolerant, relatively uniform, and probably dirt cheap in Shenzhen, where the designer of this board almost certainly lives. Maybe he or she even works in a 3D printer factory? Who knows? But the designer almost certainly looked around for something that would fit the bill, and found the nozzles.
Indeed, there’s been a lot of innovation in all things board-holding coming out of China over the last decade. I can remember when the state of the art was a vise-like affair. (I still like my homebrew
Stickvise
clone for low, square jobs.)
But with cell phone repairs requiring the ability to hold and reflow ever stranger board shapes, there’s been a flourishing of repositionable holders. The
pawn-pillar designs
are cool, but their utility rests firmly in how strong the magnets are. (I wouldn’t buy the one linked, for instance, without trying it first-hand.) I really like the look of
these jobbies
, which have springs to maintain tension. (Will the 3D-printed plastic jaws hold up to multiple reflows?) Anyway, it’s no coincidence that the inventors of these devices are in the cellphone-repair capital of the universe.
The old saying is that necessity is the mother of invention. But what if, like with real estate, it’s location, location, location? You dream up solutions to problems around you, using parts that you’ve got on-hand. If that sounds a little fatalistic, consider that you can also change your surroundings, either physical or even virtual. Are you in the middle of the right challenges and opportunities?
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
! | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6391082",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2021-10-16T14:46:23",
"content": "“one of those jobbies” – as a Scot the word “jobbies” has a different meaning to me.https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Jobbie",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{... | 1,760,372,917.895172 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/16/unique-seven-segment-display-relies-on-fr-4-fluorescence/ | Unique Seven-Segment Display Relies On FR-4 Fluorescence | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"black light",
"FR-4",
"led",
"pcb",
"resin",
"uv"
] | It’s interesting what you see when you train a black light on everyday objects. We strongly suggest not doing this in a hotel room, but if you shine UV light on, say, a printed circuit board, you might see what [Sam Ettinger] did, which led him to build
these cool low-profile seven-segment fluorescent PCB displays
.
As it turns out, at least some FR-4 PCBs fluoresce under UV light, giving off a ghostly blue-green glow. Seeing the possibilities, [Sam] designed a PCB with cutouts in the copper and solder mask in the shape of a traditional seven-segment display. The backside of the PCB has pads for UV LEDs and current-limiting resistors, which shine through the board and induce the segments to glow. Through-slots between the segments keep light from one segment from bleeding over into the next; while [Sam] left the slots unfilled, they could easily be filled with solder. The fluorescent property of FR-4, and therefore the brightness and tint of the segments, seems to vary by board thickness and PCB manufacturer, but it looks like most PCBs will show pretty good results.
We’d say the obvious first improvement might be to cover the back of the display with black epoxy, to keep stray light down, and to improve contrast. But they look pretty great just as they are. We can also see how displays with other shapes, like icons and simple symbols. Or maybe even alphanumeric characters — say, haven’t we seen
something like that
before? | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6391057",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2021-10-16T12:29:57",
"content": "Well this certainly creates some interesting possibilities for making low-cost displays. I would be really interested to see how this works out when used on some of those high-end PCBs that can embed smal... | 1,760,372,917.698041 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/16/the-pi-400-as-a-pc-peripheral/ | The Pi 400 As A PC Peripheral | Jenny List | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"keyboard",
"raspberry pi",
"raspberry pi 400",
"usb"
] | The Raspberry Pi 400 all-in-one computer is a neat little unit that is powerful enough to take on most humdrum computing tasks while doing an excellent job of freeing up valuable desktop space. But what about those moments when both the Pi and a PC are needed on the same desktop? How can the Pi and the bulky PC keyboard share the same space?
[Gadgetoid] may have the answer, with a clever bit of software that
presents the Pi’s mouse and keyboard as peripherals on its USB-C power port
. If your PC has a high-power USB socket that can run the Pi then it can use the small computer’s input devices just as well as the Pi itself can. It’s fair to say that the Pi 400’s keyboard is not it’s strongest point, but we can see some utility in the idea.
Running it is simply a case of running an executable from the Pi. Control can be wrested back to Raspberry Pi OS with a simple keystroke. Perhaps it’s not the ultimate desktop experience, but if you’re a die-hard Pi-head there’s plenty of appeal.
Within a few weeks, it’s a year since the launch of the Pi 400. We’ve not seen as many of them as the other Pi models, but
you might find our original review to be of interest
.
Thanks [Itay] for the tip. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6391023",
"author": "OG",
"timestamp": "2021-10-16T08:08:48",
"content": "It’s a cool product except for one glaring blunder: the micro-HDMI ports. WTF.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6391192",
"author": "Mojoe",
... | 1,760,372,917.788581 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/15/learn-dmx512-basics/ | Learn DMX512 Basics | Al Williams | [
"LED Hacks",
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"differential signaling",
"dmx",
"dmx512",
"rs485"
] | If you’ve done anything with modern lighting effects, you’ve probably heard of DMX, also known as
DMX512
. Ever wonder what’s really happening under the hood? If so, then you should have a look at [EEForEveryone’s] video on the topic, which you can see below.
At the core, the DMX512 uses RS485, but adds software layers and features. The video uses the OSI model to show how the system works.
Of course, RS485 is just a physical layer like a serial port. The DMX standard defines an actual protocol. If you haven’t used RS485 before, there’s a good explanation of differential signaling and why it is important when you have high data rates or long signal paths. There’s also a discussion of alternate physical layers such as networked DMX512 and wireless DMX.
The 512 part of the name refers to the maximum number of devices on the bus. However, with the networked variation you can use a single Ethernet cable to connect up to 400 DMX busses to one network device. That’s quite a few DMX channels. Each channel is a byte, so a typical RGB LED, for example, consumes three channels.
We’ve seen DMX
in a backpack
. If you do it right, the DMX can not only react to music, it can be
part of the instrument
that creates it, too. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390987",
"author": "Ruud",
"timestamp": "2021-10-16T05:53:58",
"content": "The part that continues to confuse me when using rs485, modbus rtu or dmx… Is the gnd signal drawn in the differential signal drawing needed or not?All of these uses of rs485 are typically used for long mu... | 1,760,372,917.941326 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/15/better-history-through-x-rays/ | Better History Through X-Rays | Al Williams | [
"News",
"Science"
] | [
"history",
"ink",
"x-ray",
"x-ray spectroscopy",
"xray",
"xray spectroscopy"
] | Even if you aren’t a giant history buff, you probably know that the French royal family had some difficulties in the late 1700s. The end of the story saw the King beheaded and, a bit later, his wife the famous Marie Antoinette suffered the same fate. Marie wrote many letters to her confidant, and probable lover, Swedish count Axel von Fersen. Some of those letters have survived to the present day — sort of. An unknown person saw fit to blot out parts of the surviving letters with ink, rendering them illegible. Well, that is, until now thanks to modern
x-ray technology
.
Anne Michelin from the French National Museum of Natural History and her colleagues were able to foil the censor and they even have a theory as to the ink blot’s origin: von Fersen, himself! The technique used may enable the recovery of other lost portions of historical documents and was published in the journal Science Advances.
Michelin’s team used X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and found that the author of the letter used ink of one composition, and the censor used another that was quite different. The different fluorescence under X-ray allowed recovery of some of the hidden letters. Further data analysis allowed the interpretation of much of the text.
One interesting result: the ink in the blots matched closely with von Fersen’s ink, so the researchers think he blotted out the passages himself. Small wonder since they included lines from the Queen like:
“
I will finish not without telling you my dear and loving friend that I love you madly and that I can never be a moment without adoring you.”
Probably not something you’d want the King to read later.
Granted, most of us don’t have X-ray spectrometers laying around. But this is an interesting technology detective story and who knows? Maybe it will inspire a hacker-developed spectrometer build. After all, you can build an
X-ray machine
. You can even make your own
tube
if you want to go that far. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390974",
"author": "Mmmdee",
"timestamp": "2021-10-16T03:58:27",
"content": "True then, as it is today, nothing is ever truly deleted. The moral of the story being if you don’t want something discovered, never commit it to physical media such as paper or hard drive.",
"parent_i... | 1,760,372,917.73616 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/15/oak-d-depth-sensing-ai-camera-gets-smaller-and-lighter/ | OAK-D Depth Sensing AI Camera Gets Smaller And Lighter | Donald Papp | [
"Crowd Funding",
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"ai camera",
"depth camera",
"movidius",
"myriad x",
"OAK-D",
"opencv",
"raspberry pi",
"smart camera",
"Stereo Vision"
] | The OAK-D is an open-source, full-color depth sensing camera with embedded AI capabilities, and there is now
a crowdfunding campaign for a newer, lighter version called the OAK-D Lite
. The new model does everything the previous one could do, combining machine vision with stereo depth sensing and an ability to run highly complex image processing tasks all on-board, freeing the host from any of the overhead involved.
An example of
real-time feature tracking
, now in 3D thanks to integrated depth sensing.
The OAK-D Lite camera is actually several elements together in one package: a full-color 4K camera, two greyscale cameras for stereo depth sensing, and onboard AI machine vision processing with Intel’s Movidius Myriad X processor. Tying it all together is an open-source software platform called
DepthAI
that wraps the camera’s functions and capabilities together into a unified whole.
The goal is to give embedded systems access to human-like visual perception in real-time, which at its core means detecting things, and identifying where they are in physical space. It does this with a combination of traditional machine vision functions (like edge detection and perspective correction), depth sensing, and the ability to plug in pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) models for complex tasks like object classification, pose estimation, or hand tracking in real-time.
So how is it used? Practically speaking, the OAK-D Lite is a USB device intended to be plugged into a host (running any OS), and the team has put a lot of work into making it as easy as possible. With the help of a downloadable application, the hardware can be up and running with examples in about half a minute. Integrating the device into other projects or products can be done
in Python with the help of the DepthAI SDK
, which provides functionality with minimal coding and configuration (and for more advanced users, there is also a
full API
for low-level access). Since the vision processing is all done on-board, even a Raspberry Pi Zero can be used effectively as a host.
There’s one more thing that improves the ease-of-use situation, and that’s the fact that support for the OAK-D Lite (as well as the previous OAK-D) has been added to a software suite called the
Cortic Edge Platform (CEP)
. CEP is a block-based visual coding system that runs on a Raspberry Pi, and is aimed at anyone who wants to rapidly prototype with AI tools in a primarily visual interface, providing yet another way to glue a project together.
Earlier this year we saw the OAK-D used in
a system to visually identify weeds and estimate biomass in agriculture
, and it’s exciting to see a new model being released. If you’re interested, the OAK-D Lite is available at a considerable discount
during the Kickstarter campaign
. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390932",
"author": "Brandon Gilles",
"timestamp": "2021-10-15T23:09:18",
"content": "Thanks a ton for covering us!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6391007",
"author": "John Smith",
"timestamp": "2021-10-16T06:43:53",
... | 1,760,372,917.834359 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/15/why-wait-for-apple-upgrade-your-iphone-with-usb-c-today/ | Why Wait For Apple? Upgrade Your IPhone With USB-C Today! | Jenny List | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"apple",
"iphone",
"lightning",
"USB C"
] | Apple iPhones ship with the company’s Lightning cable, a capable and robust connector, but one that’s not cheap and is only useful for the company’s products. When the competition had only micro-USB it might have made sense, but now that basically all new non-fruity phones ship with USB-C, that’s probably the right way to go.
[Ken Pilonell] has addressed this
by modifying his iPhone to sport a USB connector
. The blog post and the first video below the break show us the proof of concept, but an update in the works and
a teaser video
show that he made it.
We’re a bit hazy on the individual iPhone model involves, but the essence of the work involves taking the internals of a Lightning-to-USB-C cable and hooking it up to the phone’s internal Lightning port. The proof-of-concept does it by putting the Apple flexible PCB outside the phone and plugging the cable part in directly, but it seems his final work involves a custom flexible board on which the reverse-engineered USB-C converter parts are mounted along with the USB-C socket itself. We see a glimpse of machining the slot in the phone’s case to USB-C dimensions, and we can’t wait for the full second installment.
It’s purely coincidental, but this comes against a backdrop of
the European Union preparing to mandate USB-C on all applicable devices
.
Thanks [Itay] for the tip! | 22 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390724",
"author": "CRImier",
"timestamp": "2021-10-15T11:11:18",
"content": "Nice! The only omission is not linking the Strange Parts original headphone jack hack in the footer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6390739",
"a... | 1,760,372,917.994132 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/15/fpga-boards-add-vga-and-hmdi-interfaces-to-the-original-game-boy/ | FPGA Boards Add VGA And HDMI Interfaces To The Original Game Boy | Robin Kearey | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks"
] | [
"brick game boy",
"fpga",
"game boy",
"hdmi"
] | The classic Game Boy remains a firm favorite in the realm of retrocomputing. Revolutionary as it was at the time, by today’s standards its display is rather primitive, with no backlight and a usable area measuring only 47 mm x 44 mm. [Martoni] figured out a way to solve this, by developing
GbVGA
and
GbHdmi
, two projects that enable the Game Boy to connect to an external monitor. This way, you can play Super Mario Land without straining your eyes, and we can also image potential uses for those who stream their gameplay online.
Getting the image data out of the Game Boy is surprisingly straightforward, and
has been done
a
few times
before. Basically, the connection between the CPU and the LCD screen is a serial interface with a 4 MHz clock, two data lines and two sync lines. [Martoni] uses pin headers sticking out of the Game Boy’s plastic case to connect these to a small FPGA board. The board in question is a Fireant for the VGA version and a Tang Nano 4K for the HMDI model. In either case the FPGA reads out each frame from the Game Boy’s LCD interface and draws the extracted image onto the monitor, using the same four shades of green as used on the original screen.
[Martoni] states that the ultimate goal of these projects is to make a Switch-like docking station for the original Game Boy, which is definitely something we’re looking forward to. Although adding external monitors to the Game Boy is
not entirely new
, we like the simplicity of this implementation and the fact that anyone can improve upon it thanks to the full source code being available. Similar hacks have been performed on the newer
Game Boy Pocket
and
Game Boy Advance
as well. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390691",
"author": "erik",
"timestamp": "2021-10-15T09:06:14",
"content": "not sure if i would call the gameboy revolutionary if you compare it to the atari lynx, gamegear and turbografx-16 also released at that time. if you mean the sales, yes definitely.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,918.049275 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/14/hack-your-sodastream-with-a-giant-co2-canister/ | Hack Your Sodastream With A Giant CO2 Canister | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"co2",
"ESP8266",
"sodastream"
] | Sodastream machines are popular amongst people who like to make their own seltzer water at home. However, replenishing the tiny gas canisters is expensive and wasteful. [Becky] decided to upgrade her machine to avoid this problem,
and added some smarts while she was at it.
The simple part of the hack is using an adapter to connect the Sodastream apparatus to a 50 lb CO2 tank from the welding store. This is easy enough, and just uses a off the shelf adapter. Using welding-grade gas in your drinking water is probably a really bad idea, but [Becky] was willing to take the nisk.
However, safety was given due attention in that a CO2 monitor was installed to make [Becky] aware of any dangerous leaks. The tank is also placed on a custom scale built with load cells and an ESP8266, which allows monitoring of how much gas is left. [Becky] notes that at her rate of drinking one bottle a day, the tank should last her a full 7 years or so.
The project brings costs down to 18 cents per liter of seltzer, versus 38 cents for the Sodastream gas supply. It’s likely that the Sodastream prices could still be beat even if a food-safe CO2 source was used. Plus, there’s no need to regularly buy new bottles!
Overall, it’s a great project and one that recalls us of
continuous-ink printer hacks
. Video after the break. | 110 | 29 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390640",
"author": "Alexander Clarke",
"timestamp": "2021-10-15T05:17:47",
"content": "Please, please, please don’t store a CO2 cylinder in your house, no matter how much you trust your alarm.The toxicity profile is very different to carbon monoxide, but an undetected leak overnigh... | 1,760,372,918.229739 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/14/risc-v-in-typescript/ | RISC-V In… Typescript? | Al Williams | [
"FPGA"
] | [
"fpga",
"RISC-V",
"typescript",
"verilog"
] | We are accustomed to seeing RISC-V implementations in Verilog or VHDL, but [Low Level JavaScript]
has one in TypeScript
. Before you dismiss it as a mere emulator, know that the project relies on
gateware-ts
, a conversion between TypeScript and Verilog. From there, you can actually put the CPU on an FPGA. You can see the launch video below and there is one development video as well as, presumably, more to come.
We aren’t sure if many FPGA designers will be willing to switch to TypeScript. But if you are comfortable with it, it might open up FPGA development without having to learn as much of a new language.
Of course, the end product is Verilog which gets put through the vendor’s tools. The good news is that means it will work with nearly anything. The bad news is that it is another step and means things like error messages might not relate directly back to your code in a way that’s easy to understand.
There are plenty of alternatives to Verilog and VHDL, but it doesn’t seem like any of them get much traction. You might want to compare this implementation (as it develops) with a
RISC-V done in SpinalHDL
. Then again, maybe just
learn Verilog
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390645",
"author": "therogerv",
"timestamp": "2021-10-15T05:30:29",
"content": "have programmed in lots of different programming languages over the years (as in used them in commercial setting) and I don’t think there’s anything about Verilog that’s so scary that it warrants runnin... | 1,760,372,918.094427 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/14/printed-piano-mechanism-sure-is-grand/ | Printed Piano Mechanism Sure Is Grand | Kristina Panos | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"Grand Piano",
"hammer",
"piano",
"wippen"
] | Do you know how a piano works? Sure, you press a key and a hammer strikes a string, but what are the finer points of this operation? The intricacy of the ingenious mechanism is laid bare in [Mechanistic]’s
3D-printed scale model of a small section of the grand piano keyboard
. The ‘grand’ distinction here is piano length-agnostic and simply refers to any non-upright. Those operate the same way, but are laid out differently in order to save space.
The keys of an acoustic piano are much longer than just the part that shows — they are long levers that do a lot of work, including working their own sound dampeners. The really interesting part is the mechanism that allows a note to be played repeatedly without first releasing the key. This same mechanism also lets the pianist play softly, loudly, or somewhere in between based on the amount of pressure applied.
So you know that the hammer strikes the string (or in this case, the rod), and you can probably figure that it backs off to let the string ring out. But there’s also this whole system that keeps the hammer close by for repeated strikings, as long as the person is holding down the key. Be sure to check it out in the build video after the break.
[Mechanistic] must be going for the standing ovation, because they say in the video’s comments that they will release STL files when they’re finished writing the assembly guide (!). What an encore that will be.
There are many ways to hack an acoustic piano,
but don’t go thinking you can sub in guitar strings
. | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390605",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2021-10-15T00:21:36",
"content": "That gets you most of the way here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-pGytcPQ08",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6390617",
"author": "Tom",
"ti... | 1,760,372,918.347565 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/14/valve-reluctantly-shows-how-to-mod-the-steam-deck/ | Valve Reluctantly Shows How To Mod The Steam Deck | Tom Nardi | [
"Games",
"Teardown"
] | [
"disassembly",
"repair",
"steam",
"steam deck",
"teardown",
"valve"
] | As the narrator in this official instructional video from Valve
reminds the viewer several times, the gaming company would
really
rather you not open up your brand new Steam Deck and start poking around. They can’t guarantee that their software will function should you start changing the hardware, and since there’s no source for replacement parts yet anyway, there’s not much you can do in the way of repairs.
That said, Valve does believe you have the right to take apart your own device, and has produced the video below as an aid to those who are willing risk damaging their new system by opening it up. Specifically, the video goes over how to replace the most likely wear items on the handheld, namely the thumb sticks and the SSD. It seems inevitable that the stock thumb sticks will wear down after a couple years of hard use, so we’re glad to see they are easily removable modules. As for the SSD, it stands to reason that users would want to swap it out for faster and higher capacity models as they become available in the coming years.
Sooner or later, these are going to need to be replaced.
Now to be clear, we appreciate Valve making this video, and would love to see other manufacturers be so forthcoming. But we have to admit that some of its messaging does seem a bit heavy handed. The narrators admonition that users who open their Steam Deck are
literally
taking their lives into their own hands due to the danger of potentially rupturing the system’s lithium-ion battery is a bit hyperbolic for our tastes. The constant reminders of how badly you could bungle the job just comes off as overly preachy, though to be fair, we probably aren’t the intended audience.
Outside of its obvious gaming functions,
we’re excited too see what the community can do with the Steam Deck
. With official reference material like this, perhaps we’ll even start seeing some hardware modifications before too long. Though we wouldn’t blame you for hitting the Mute button halfway through.
[Thanks to burningbroccoli for the tip.] | 35 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390556",
"author": "Richard",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T20:23:57",
"content": "Agreed! This is very heavy handed. I feel personally oppressed by their suggestion that this is a bad idea. (/s… does anybody actually that warnings on stuff like that are anything more than a formality a... | 1,760,372,918.30287 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/14/these-first-remoticon-speakers-are-just-a-taste-of-whats-to-come/ | These First Remoticon Speakers Are Just A Taste Of What’s To Come | Tom Nardi | [
"cons"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Remoticon",
"presenters",
"Remoticon",
"talks"
] | With the 2021 Hackaday Remoticon fast approaching, we’ve been hard at work crafting a schedule filled with thought-provoking presentations from knowledgeable speakers; precisely what you’ve come to expect from one of our events, virtual or otherwise. We’ve already announced that Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) astrophysicist
Keith Thorne will be presenting a
literally
out-of-this-world keynote
on the incredible engineering it takes to detect gravitational waves with the highest precision interferometers ever devised, but that’s only the beginning.
To make doubly sure we’ll be able to pack every available minute of our second Remoticon with fascinating content, we’ve decided to
extend the deadline on talk proposals
for a few more days to see what the late-bloomers can bring to the table. If you’ve ever wanted to present at a Hackaday event, but couldn’t swing the trip to Pasadena or Belgrade, this is your chance to take the stage virtually and show off what you’re passionate about.
In the meantime, we’ve churned through enough of the early proposals to let slip the first four talks that we’ll be beaming out between November 19th and 20th. There is plenty more to announce over the coming weeks, but hopefully this gives you an idea of what we’ve got in store for our global audience of hardware hackers. So
grab your Remoticon ticket right now
!
Debra Ansell
Form is Function: Modular PCB Building Blocks
The low cost of PCB manufacturing makes PCBs a reasonable choice to use as structural elements comprising larger modular electronic projects. I first created a system of PCB-based NanoLeaf-style tiles in June of 2020. My goal was to build an inexpensive, reconfigurable, aesthetically pleasing,
sturdy system using custom PCBs and readily available parts
.
Issues in modular systems can be different from those in more typical PCB projects. For example physical stress on boards in an assembly can create just enough torque to separate pressure connectors from contact points. I’ve spent many hours combing through the results of “board-to-board connector” searches on Mouser and Digi-Key, and invested even more time trying to design my own PCB-based connectors.
I’ll cover which connectors have worked best for me in different builds, which connectors I would love to use if they were just a bit cheaper, and why dollhouse hinges don’t actually make a great PCB connector, even though they provide terrific structural support. Anyone with an interest in PCB design, and in stretching PCBs beyond their standard use cases might be interested in this talk.
Rob Weinstein
Patently Obvious – Reverse Engineering a 45 Year Old Patent into a Fully-Functional HP-35 Replica
HP-35, the first scientific calculator, by Seth Morabito CC BY 2.0
I’m an electrical engineer who has spent the last 30 years designing with FPGAs for the wireless communications field (mostly). When I was a young engineer, I only cared about what was the latest and greatest and I didn’t give a hoot about old stuff. Now that I’m old stuff, I’m fascinated by what came before — how the foundation of technology was built by brilliant people using only stone knives and bear skins.
On Halloween 2018, I started reverse engineering US Patent 4,001,569 in which the HP-45 pocket scientific calculator is disclosed. Using the ‘569 patent as my primary source, I built a fully-functional replica of the HP-35 calculator using a small FPGA for each of the seven ICs described in the patent. I attempted to implement the FPGA designs faithfully to what’s described in ‘569. Together, the seven ICs comprise a 56-bit, serial CPU and display subsystem that runs a calculator program stored in three of the ICs. There’s no microprocessor emulation here. The replica became fully operational on June 9th, 2021.
In this talk, I’ll attempt to explain everything I learned along the way.
Matt Venn
Open source ASICs – A Year in Perspective
Drawing N-channel MOSFET in silicon
Hot on the heels of his
Zero to ASIC
workshop from Remoticon 2020
, Matt Venn is back with a retrospective covering the major developments in the world of application-specific integrated circuits, as well as a look at what’s to come in the future. Last year saw the release of
SkyWater: the world’s first manufacturable, open source Process Design Kit
(PDK), which is a key part of what’s required to design custom ASICs.
Since then there have been two “shuttles”, the ASIC manufacturing service set up by Google and SkyWater, with a third set to launch in October. This free program allows anyone with a fully open source design to experiment with custom silicon without the usual costs associated with fabrication.
This talk will be relevant to anyone interested in the new opportunities to make their own chips, and with four free shuttles left, there’s still plenty of time to get involved without having to pay a lot of money.
Voja Antonic
Become a Hardware Expert in 40 Minutes
An original Galaksija computer.
If there’s anyone who can give you the knowledge you need to master hardware in under an hour, it’s Voja Antonic. Over the course of 100 slides he’ll show off the microprocessor architecture in a way that anyone can understand it. That includes basic logic gates, combinational logic, flip-flops, sequential logic, registers, CPU structure, memories, I/O and peripherals.
Voja,
who famously developed the Galaksija computer in 1983
, says this talk is relevant to beginners and experienced engineered alike; although it’s really targeted towards the hardware hackers and enthusiasts who want to peek into the “blackbox” of the CPU. He believes that programmers can write better and more efficient programs if they know how a CPU works internally.
With Much More to Come
These first four talks are only a fraction of what we’ve got planned for Remoticon 2021,
so make sure you get your free tickets now
so we have an accurate headcount come showtime. There is also a $25 ticket that includes a shirt, because what’s a hacker con if not an excuse to add another t-shirt to your collection of swag? | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390566",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T21:03:15",
"content": "I for one, am greatful that Venn included a diagram with his work!B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,372,919.144519 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/14/thingiverse-data-leaked-check-your-passwords/ | Thingiverse Data Leaked — Check Your Passwords | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"bcrypt",
"data breach",
"makerbot",
"sha-1",
"thingiverse"
] | Every week seems to bring another set of high-profile data leaks, and this time it’s the turn of a service that should be of concern to many in our community.
A database backup from the popular 3D model sharing website Thingiverse has leaked online
, containing 228,000 email addresses, full names, addresses, and passwords stored as unsalted SHA-1 or bcrypt hashes. If you have an account with Thingiverse it is probably worth your while to head over to
Have I Been Pwned
to search on your email address, and just to be sure you should also change your password on the site. Our informal testing suggests that not all accounts appear to be contained in the leak, which appears to relate to comments left on the site.
Aside from the seriousness of a leak in itself, the choice of encryption should raise a few eyebrows. Both
SHA-1
and
bcrypt
can be considered broken or at best vulnerable to attack here in 2021, so much so that for any website to have avoided migration to a stronger algorithm indicates a very poor attention to website security on the part of Thingiverse. We’d like to think that it would serve as a salutary warning to other website operators in our field, to review and upgrade their encryption, but we suspect readers will agree that this won’t be the last time we report on such a leak and nervously check our own login details. | 40 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390511",
"author": "Naviathan",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T18:24:42",
"content": "Given the difficulty in getting anything fixed on that site, it’s really not surprising that they’ve had a breach. I think the more surprising part is that it hasn’t happened sooner.",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,372,918.998022 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/14/hacking-an-ikea-lampshade-into-a-stunning-dichroic-lamp/ | Hacking An IKEA Lampshade Into A Stunning Dichroic Lamp | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [] | Often, when we see a colorful lamp project, it’s something that makes use of RGB LEDs and all manner of lovely animations and fading effects.
This project from [Raymond Power]
features beautiful shifting colors, but foregos fancy LEDs for the magic of dichroic film.
Dichroic films work with thin-film interference, with the wavelength of light passed through the film changing depending on the angle of incidence. Thus, as the observer’s viewing angle changes, the apparent color of the film changes, too. It creates particularly beautiful effects when several layers of film are laid on top of each other.
[Raymond] happened to source some of this film from a fancy IKEA lampshade. At the time, he’d been experimenting with folding paper cubes and similar constructions, and decided to meld the two ideas.
The result was a cubic dichroic lampshade, which looks truly fantastic. Sitting on top of a simple white LED light, the structure lights up with a rich blend of complementary and shifting colors.
It’s a beautiful thing, and something we’d love to have in our own home. Dichroic materials find themselves being used
in some more scientific uses, too.
Video after the break. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390508",
"author": "Make",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T18:17:42",
"content": "Shut up and take my money!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6390513",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T18:30:01",
"content": "Any... | 1,760,372,918.775725 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/14/basics-of-remote-cellular-access-watchdogs/ | Basics Of Remote Cellular Access: Watchdogs | Lewin Day | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Original Art",
"Skills",
"Slider",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"basics of remote cellular access",
"cellular access",
"watchdog",
"watchdog timer"
] | When talking about remote machines, sometimes we mean
really
remote, beyond the realms of wired networks that can deliver the Internet. In these cases, remote cellular access is often the way to go. Thus far, we’ve explored the
hardware
and
software
sides required to control a machine remotely over a cellular connection.
However, things can and do go wrong. When that remote machine goes offline, getting someone on location to reboot it can be prohibitively difficult and expensive. For these situations, what you want is some way to kick things back into gear, ideally automatically. What you’re looking for is a watchdog timer!
Watchdogs
The concept of a watchdog timer is simple. When attached to a system and enabled, the watchdog timer starts counting down from a preset time. The embedded system or computer is then responsible for sending a “kick” signal to the watchdog at regular intervals. This resets the watchdog back to its maximum time value, and it begins counting down again. If the “kick” is not received before the watchdog timer reaches zero, the watchdog reboots the system.
A simple watchdog timer.
Getting the watchdog interval right is important. Set it too short, and a heavily-loaded system may fail to respond with a kick in time and an unnecessary reboot will be caused. Set it too long, and the system could be down for a significant period before the watchdog gets things up and running again. Careful analysis of the system and its proper behavior is needed to tune this appropriately.
It’s a handy way for dealing with crashes, kernel panics, and system hangs in a remote machine. Rather than having to send a technician out to hit the reset button, the machine can reboot itself when it gets stuck. Watchdog timers are crucial in applications where sending out a human could cost thousands of dollars, or even be impossible, such as in satellites and other space applications.
A multi-stage watchdog timer, which takes corrective measures in turn before going for a full power cycle of the target machine. If the system manages to fire off a kick signal after stage 1 or stage 2 has fired, the system resets to normal operation.
More complicated designs are possible, too. Multi-stage watchdog timers involve several timers cascaded in series. In such a design, when the first watchdog times out after not receiving a “kick”, it takes a corrective action and starts a second timer. If that does not rectify the situation, eventually the second timer will time out, firing a further corrective action, and so on, until all stages have fired. This can be useful for more complex applications. The first stage timer could institute a simple process kill command to a server, the second a software shutdown command to the OS, while the third could execute a full hard reset with a power cycle.
How Do I Implement One, Though?
Watchdog timers are critical in space systems like the Curiosity Rover.
Implementing a watchdog on a given system is highly dependent on the application in question. An exhaustive breakdown of specific watchdog designs is beyond the scope of this article. Instead, we’ll look at a couple of pitfalls, and outline a couple of different cases that highlight the varying scopes of watchdog designs.
Pitfalls
Note that these cases all refer to proper hardware watchdogs. Ideally, for maximum robustness, the watchdog should be an entirely separate piece of hardware capable of rebooting the main system of interest. Some microcontrollers and SoCs do include internal watchdogs that run with varying levels of independence, and these can be usable, too. However, they must usually be triggered appropriately by the main code loop. Using an interrupt to trigger a watchdog can be fraught with danger. The main loop can crash but as long as the interrupt still fires, the watchdog will never reset the system.
Also important to note is that “software watchdogs” are often anything but. For example, creating a process to watch other processes on a computer system can be helpful. It can catch a broad range of minor faults and issues and restart those other processes where needed. However, in the event another process crashes the whole machine, or creates a lower-level issue such as a kernel panic, the software watchdog will be helpless to act. Generally, a proper watchdog should be largely independent of the system it is monitoring.
Case Study 1: Home-Built Tank Monitor
Let’s say you’re deploying a homebrew Raspberry Pi project far from home to monitor levels in a few water tanks. It’s nothing mission critical, nor will it risk life or limb if the system goes down. However, the system is battery powered with solar charging, and you want to avoid having to drive out to reboot the system if there are issues when power levels get low or if something else causes a crash.
In this case, a simple solution can remove a lot of headaches without a lot of added complexity. Something as simple as an Arduino Uno or similar could be installed to implement a watchdog quite easily. The Raspberry Pi could be configured to send GPIO pulses or serial messages to the Arduino to indicate that it’s still running properly. If no signal is received in a set period of time, the Arduino could reboot the Raspberry Pi by simply cutting the power with a relay. This period of time can be minutes, hours, or even longer if the system isn’t critical. The trick is not making it too short, otherwise if the system is temporarily heavily loaded, the watchdog might time out despite the system not actually having crashed.
Having an Arduino in the system could bring further benefits, too. It could send commands to the Raspberry Pi to safely shut down in the event that the battery voltage starts getting low. Additionally, it could command regular soft reboots of the Raspberry Pi on daily or weekly intervals to head off any potential glitches in processes that could crash from running for extended periods.
I’ve implemented similar systems on mobile robots out in the field, and they can work surprisingly well. It’s important, however, to make sure that the watchdog operates correctly. For example, a primary process on the Raspberry Pi could get stuck without bringing down the whole system. If the watchdog service process responsible for signalling the Arduino is able to keep going independently, the system will remain powered up despite the fact that the main process is no longer working. The way around this is to have the watchdog service check that other processes are running properly prior to sending the kick signal to the external watchdog. If you’re writing all your own code, this is easy to do! Checking whether other programs are running properly can be harder, however. This is where regular pre-emptive soft reboots can be a sneaky workaround. For homebrew stuff, it’s often good enough.
Case Study 2: Remote Pump Controller
When machines are allowed to take actions on their own, rather than merely reporting data, things can get more complicated. For example, imagine a system responsible for controlling water pumps to fill tanks from a dam or other source. The system can be monitored and manually controlled over cellular data link, but otherwise operates independently, round the clock.
In this case, far more rigor may be needed to avoid disaster. If the system were to crash while pumps are enabled, the dam could be emptied, leading to the pumps running dry and causing expensive damage. Alternatively, tanks could be overflowed, or flooding could occur. Depending on scale, this could cause a mess in a shed or destroy crops, homes, and livestock.
Thus, a more rigorous watchdog must be implemented in these cases. For example, it may not be enough to simply reboot the pump controller in the event it stops sending kick signals to the watchdog. In this case, the watchdog may instead be configured to first switch the pumps to a failsafe off condition to minimise the chance of damage. The system may then be rebooted, and when back online, remote operators notified that a restart must be triggered manually due to the failure. This avoids the system simply rebooting and instantly failing again in the event that there is an ongoing problem.
In these cases, particularly where expensive equipment or even human lives may be at risk, a simple Arduino probably isn’t going to serve as a suitably reliable watchdog. Multiple redundant watchdogs may be required in some cases to provide a greater chance of stopping the system in the event of a failure. At the highest levels, code reviews and risk assessments will be required along with specially certified hardware across the board. But if you’re working on a watchdog system for a municipal-level dam or other safety-critical installation, you’re probably not looking up how to do it. If you are, please reach out to a supervisor or other official and tell them you need some help.
Summary
The aim of this article is to explain the basic concept of watchdogs, and why they’re useful for remote systems. Hopefully, the ideas presented here are enough to help you implement watchdog timers to improve the uptime and serviceability of your own projects. After all, there’s nothing cooler than being able to show off your rugged and reliable remote project to everyone at the Hackerspace. There’s also nothing worse than having your live demo fail because you can’t reboot a failed remote machine. Thus, get your watchdogs up and running and show off what a great hacker you really are! | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390494",
"author": "targetdrone",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T17:23:16",
"content": "Good information, thanks!But I feel compelled to note that implementing a watchdog isn’t a hack — it’s engineering!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,372,919.058879 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/14/art-project-fast-and-fouriously-transforms-audio-into-eye-candy/ | Art Project Fast And Fouriously Transforms Audio Into Eye Candy | Ryan Flowers | [
"Art"
] | [
"ESP32",
"fast fourier transform",
"fft",
"led",
"rgb",
"RGB LED matrix",
"spectrum",
"ws2812"
] | Fast Fourier Transforms. Spectrum Analyzers. Waterfall displays. Not long ago, such terms were reserved for high end test gear. But oh, how things have changed! It’s no surprise to many Hackaday readers that modern microcontrollers have transformed the scene as they become more powerful and as a result are endowed with more and more powerful software libraries. [mircemk] has used such a library along with other open source software combined with mostly off the shelf hardware to create what he calls the
DIY FFT Spectrum Analyzer
. Rather than being a piece of test gear, this artful project aims to please the eye.
The overall build is relatively simple. Audio is acquired via a line-in jack or a microphone, and then piped into an ESP32. The ESP32 runs the audio through the FFT routine, sampling, slicing, and dicing the audio into 16 individual bands. The visual output is displayed on a 16 x 16 WS2812 Led Matrix. [mircemk] wrote several routines for displaying the incoming audio, with a waterfall, a graph, and other visualizations that are quit aesthetically pleasing. Some of them are downright mesmerizing! You can see the results in the video below the break.
Of course the build doesn’t stop with slapping some hardware and a few passive components together. To really be finished, it needs to be encased in something worth displaying. [mircemk] does not disappoint, as a beautiful 3D-printed enclosure wraps it all up nicely.
We think that the final product is great, and it reminds us of some of the very things that inspired us early on in our hacking careers. We would love to see this project integrated with an
Interactive Musical Art Installation
of any kind, the more esoteric the better. Perhaps a
555 timer synth could fit the bill
? Be sure to share your own hacks with us
via the Tip Line
! | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390479",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T16:21:03",
"content": "It needs 2 or 3 more buttons and a Tetris easter egg…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6390538",
"author": "Foxhood",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T19... | 1,760,372,918.737733 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/14/the-compute-module-comes-of-age-say-hello-to-the-real-cutting-edge-of-raspberry-pi/ | The Compute Module Comes Of Age: Say Hello To The Real Cutting Edge Of Raspberry Pi | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"cm4",
"compute module 4",
"Pi 4",
"raspberry pi"
] | If we wanted to point to an epoch-making moment for our community, we’d take you back to February 29th, 2012. It was that day on which a small outfit in Cambridge put on the market the first batch of their new product. That outfit was what would become the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and the product was a run of 10,000 Chinese made versions of their very first single board computer, the Raspberry Pi Model B. With its BCM2835 SoC and 512 megabytes of memory it might not have been the first board that could run a Linux distribution from an SD card, but it was certainly the first that did so for pocket money prices. On that morning back in 2012 the unforseen demand for the new board brought down the websites of both the electronics distributors putting it on sale, and a now-legendary product was born. We’re now on version 4 of the Model B with specs upgraded in almost every sense, and something closer to the original can still be bought in the form of its svelte stablemate, the Pi Zero.
How Do You Evolve Without Casualties?
The original Pi Model B+ from 2014. The form factor has had a few minor changes, but hardware-wise the Pi 4 follows this pretty closely. Lucasbosch,
CC BY-SA 3.0
.
The problem with having spawned such a successful product line is this: with so many competitors and copies snapping at your heels, how do you improve upon it? It’s fair to say that sometimes its competitors have produced more capable hardware than the Pi of the moment, but they do so without the board from Cambridge’s ace in the hole: its uniquely well-supported Linux distribution, Raspberry Pi OS. It’s that combination of a powerful board and an operating system with the minimum of shocks and surprises that still makes the Pi the one to go for after all these years.
But for all that, the Pi is still a Pi with largely the same interfaces and the same PCB as it had when the original Model B received its first upgrade to a 40-pin header and 4 USB ports. How do you improve on that without breaking compatibility with nearly a decades-worth of projects? We don’t have an inside line on the Pi folks’ R&D thinking on a future Pi 5, but we’d like to advance the theory that they’ve already done so, and with a Raspberry Pi. Not the extremely cute Raspberry Pi 400 all-in-one, but the Pi 4’s stripped down sibling, the Compute Module 4. Say hello to the new cutting edge of Raspberry Pi, it’s where we think the most interesting hardware developments currently lie for the platform.
The original StereoPi board is a relatively rare project creating a custom board that’s visibly a Raspberry Pi,using an earlier Compute Module.
There have been Raspberry Pi Compute Modules for sale since 2014 when the first one appeared as a BCM2835 on a SODIMM form factor. Since then we’ve seen a couple of versions with the Raspberry Pi 3’s multicore BCM2837 still on a SODIMM, but it’s fair to say that with
a few very notable exceptions such as the StereoPi
they’ve failed to set the world on fire for our community while the Compute Module 4 has in a short time spawned an interesting array of carrier boards.
We’d like to hazard a few guesses as to why this might be the case, among them that early Compute Module pricing wasn’t tailored towards individuals, that the Zero offered a much more affordable way to find a Pi on a smaller PCB, and that while capable the Compute Module perhaps didn’t offer enough extra that a regular Pi couldn’t do. It made sense for the volume manufacturers it was originally aimed at, but not so much for a hardware hacker when the Pi itself was so easily available. The Compute Module 4 in its daughter board format by contrast offers easy availability and some significantly tasty extra interfaces such as the PCI Express bus that make it a far more tempting target for the experimenter than a regular Pi. When you can spin your own Pi to your specifications, why look back? Here are a few examples, should you fail to have been convinced.
A Plethora Of Ways To Spin Your Own Pi
[Timonsku]’s single-sided minimal CM4 carrier board
Making a complex PCB can often be a daunting prospect for those of us who don’t do it for a living every day, so our first CM4 board from [Timonsku]
shows that a CM4 project needn’t be complex at all
. It’s a CM4 carrier board with a full-size HDMI socket, USB-A and C ports, as well as a microSD slot. A modest specification to be sure, but what sets it apart is the PCB itself. It’s a single-sided design milled with a PCB router, demonstrating that a CM4 carrier is simple enough to be created at home. Anyone really can spin up their own Pi! [Timonsku] hasn’t rested on his laurels though, producing as well the Piunora,
a CM4 carrier with an Arduino footprint
.
This CM4 NAS carrier board brings out the PCIe interface to great effect.
In a similar vein though not quite so simple in its construction is [Arturo182]’s
smallest CM4 carrier board
. It’s a truly minimalist design that sits on just one of the CM4’s connectors and only exposes a UART, I2C, and SPI. It requires the CM4 version with on-board mass storage, but even with this limited array of interfaces it still has plenty of potential.
Staying with minimalism, the CM4’s own form factor makes a handy template for [Kamil Lorenc]’s uCM4,
a board the same size as the CM4 that’s designed as a tiny network powerhouse
. It has an Ethernet port of course, and beyond that just micro USB for power and USB2, and a microSD slot for a boot disk. With USB-OTG support we could see it becoming a mini network too accessible from a portable device, for example.
While we’re on the subject of network peripherals it’s worth turning to the
CM4-based NAS
from [mebs]. Simple NAS devices have long been a Raspberry Pi staple, and this one takes the idea to the next level with a PCIe slot holding a SATA card. This is something that finally turns Pi-based NAS boxes into something that can compete with more conventional devices, as while the USB3 on the Pi 3 offers the speed it doesn’t so much offer the flexibility.
Finally in our quick round-up of CM4 projects is
the StereoPi V2
. We mentioned the original StereoPi earlier, and when we saw that first board we lauded it as a demonstration of how the earlier range of Compute Modules could be used to spin up a custom Raspberry Pi without the inconvenience of trying to source one of the Broadcom chips. Like the original it incorporates most of the interfaces that make a Pi a Pi, but it does so in its own compact form factor and sporting those two camera connectors that are it’s raison d’etre.
We hope that having had a chance to see all these CM4 boards in one place will have convinced you that there’s something in the idea of freeing yourself from the constraints of a mere Pi. We hope the Raspberry Pi folks will be watching the breadth of work done using their creation too, and will make future Compute Modules ever more accessible. Welcome to the new face of the Raspberry Pi!
Header image: SparkFun,
CC BY 2.0
. | 66 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390438",
"author": "Ken",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T14:10:29",
"content": "“This is something that finally turns Pi-based NAS boxes into something that can compete with more conventional devices, as while the USB3 on the Pi 3 offers the speed it doesn’t so much offer the flexibility... | 1,760,372,919.246728 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/14/3d-printing-toothpaste-in-the-name-of-science/ | 3D Printing Toothpaste In The Name Of Science | Tom Nardi | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"bioprinter",
"extrusion",
"paste extruder",
"toothpaste"
] | While we don’t often see them in the hobbyist community, 3D printers that can extrude gels and viscous liquids have existed commercially for years, and are increasingly used for biological research.
[Ahron Wayne] has recently been working with such a printer
as part of a project to develop a printed wound dressing made of honey and blood clotting proteins, but for practice purposes, wanted to find a cheaper and more common material that had similar extrusion properties.
The material he settled on ended up being common toothpaste. In the video below you can see him loading up the cartridge of a CELLINK INKREDIBLE+ bioprinter with the minty goop, which is then extruded through a thin blunt-tip needle by compressed air. After printing out various shapes and words using the material, often times directly onto the bristles of a toothbrush, he’s come up with a list of tips for printing similarly viscous substances.
First and foremost, go slow. [Ahron] says the material needs a moment to contract after being extruded if it’s going to have any hope of supporting the next layer of the print. Thick layer heights are a necessity, as is avoiding sharp curves in your design. He also notes that overhangs must be avoided, and though it probably goes without saying, clarifies that an object printed from toothpaste will never be able to support anything more than its own weight.
In addition to the
handful of legitimate DIY bioprinters
that have graced these pages over the years,
we’ve seen the occasional chocolate 3D printer
that operated on a similar principle to produce bespoke treats, so the lessons learned by [Ahron] aren’t completely lost on the hacker and maker crowd. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll one day find yourself consulting this video when trying to get a
modified 3D printer to lay down some soldering paste
. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390427",
"author": "gluestick",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T13:05:51",
"content": "Inventing the wheel again? “robots” for applying viscous materials like adhesives to objects have been on the market for decades. I even used one myself, long long ago. Extruding/applying different thic... | 1,760,372,919.101634 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/14/a-deep-dive-into-the-sound-of-an-apple-ii/ | A Deep Dive Into The Sound Of An Apple II | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"Apple 2",
"audio",
"AY-3-8910",
"mockingboard"
] | A major part of the retrocomputing scene for many of us lies in the world of chiptunes, music created either using original retrocomputing hardware or in the style of those early synthesiser chips. There’s one machine we don’t hear much about among all this though, and that’s the Apple II. Though probably one of the most expandable of all the 8-bit home computers, it lacked a sound channel beyond a speaker hooked up to a memory location port so any complex sound work had to be done via an add-on card.
It’s something [Nicole Branagan] has investigated in depth
, as she demonstrates first the buzz from the speaker and then what must have been an object of extreme desire back in the day, a Mockingboard sound card.
Her card is not an original but a modern recreation using the same hardware, which is to say a pair of 6522 VIA port chips, each driving an AY-3-8910 audio chip. This is already a familiar device to those who have heard an Amstrad CPC, a later Sinclair Spectrum or, an MSX, and in the Apple it delivers an impressive stereo sound thanks to both channels being present. Interestingly though, it delivers a far smoother output than an MSX playing the same music, probably because of a superior filtering circuit.
She wraps up with a discussion of coding on the Apple for the AY, and how to best accommodate the card on the later Apple IIgs. If the AY chip catches your interest,
it’s also easy to drive from a microcontroller
. | 21 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390416",
"author": "vince",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T12:09:39",
"content": "while a nice article, I wouldn’t necessarily call this a “deep dive” into Apple II sound (I say this as someone who has spent the last few years doing extensive Apple II sound programming for game demakes a... | 1,760,372,918.831245 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/13/spilled-oj-does-a-number-on-zelda-game-boy-cartridge/ | Spilled OJ Does A Number OnZeldaGame Boy Cartridge | Tom Nardi | [
"classic hacks",
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks"
] | [
"corrosion",
"game boy color",
"Legend of Zelda",
"PCB repair",
"repairing traces"
] | When
[Taylor Burley] first opened up the cartridge for
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons
, it certainly didn’t
look
like it had been dunked in corrosive orange juice. But looks can be deceiving, and while the game’s owner certainly did an admirable job of cleaning up the surface of the PCB, the cartridge was no longer functional. Clearly, this was a sticky situation.
After removing all of the components from the PCB, [Taylor] was quickly able to piece together what had happened. Despite the vigorous cleaning the game received after the spill, juice had found its way under each IC on the board. Left to sit in these nooks and crannies for who knows how long, the juice started to eat away at the traces on the PCB. Getting the game back up and running would naturally require considerable board repairs, but they don’t call him
Solderking
for nothing.
Corrosion lurking under each chip.
In the video below, you can see [Taylor] methodically scraping away the corrosion on the board before he starts recreating damaged connections with solid 30 gauge wire. Using tweezers and viewing the action through a digital microscope, he deftly bends the wire around to fit the shapes of the original traces and tacks the new conductors down with solder. He even goes ahead and repairs the traces that go to various test points on the cartridge; it’s a completely unnecessary extravagance, but we’re certainly not complaining. There’s a relaxing quality to watching him work, so we were in no rush to see his latest video end.
After fixing the board back up, he replaces all the components and takes it for a test drive on an original Game Boy Color. Confirming that Link’s 2001 outing is working as expected, he finishes the job with a few coats of spray-on conformal coating. With any luck, the next time this particular cartridge has to go face-to-face with some spilled juice, it will roll right off.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen
[Taylor] laboriously rebuild a Game Boy cartridge
, and it certainly isn’t the first time we’ve seen him
pull off some particularly impressive feats of soldering
, either. His work always reminds us that patience and a steady hand can really do wonders. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390370",
"author": "Derek Tombrello",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T06:11:18",
"content": "ummm… what video below?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6390413",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T11:... | 1,760,372,919.373038 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/13/solar-power-goes-back-to-1910-tech/ | Solar Power Goes Back To 1910 Tech | Al Williams | [
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"history",
"solar cell",
"solar panel"
] | If you want to read about a low-tech approach to solar cells invented — and forgotten — 40 years before Bell Labs announced the first practical silicon solar cell, we can’t promise the website,
Low Tech Magazine
, will be available. Apparently the webserver it is on is solar-powered, and a disclaimer mentions that it sometimes goes offline.
The article by [Kris De Decker] tells of George Cove and includes a picture from 1910 of the inventor standing next to what looks suspiciously like a solar panel (the picture above is from a 1909 issue of Technical World Magazine). His first demonstration of the technology was in 1905 and there is a picture of another device from 1909 that produced 45 watts of power using 1.5 square meters with a conversion efficiency of 2.75%. That same year, a new prototype had 4.5 square meters and used its 240-watt output to charge 5 lead-acid batteries. The efficiency was about 5%.
Of course, 5% doesn’t sound so great today. But to put it in context, the original Bell solar cells in 1954 had about 6% efficiency. Oddly enough, Cove didn’t set out to build solar electric generators. He was actually trying to build a thermoelectric generator to produce electricity from a wood stove.
His design used metal plugs in an asphalt substrate. One end of the three-inch plugs would get hot while the other was meant to stay cool. The temperature difference ought to create a bit of electricity and with almost 1,000 plugs in the 1.5 square meter panel, there would be enough to do something useful.
Or so Cove thought. Some early devices generated some power when exposed to heat. But changes to the plug composition caused the device to quit working when exposed to heat. However, sunlight through a violet glass did work and worked significantly better than before. Cove couldn’t explain why, but we can see that Cove had stumbled onto a metallic semiconductor, not unlike a modern Schottky junction. The plugs were
zinc and antimony
— something used in modern semiconductor processing — and were capped on one end with a nickel, copper, and zinc alloy and on the other end with copper.
The article goes on to point out that simple metal solar panels could be cheaper to produce and easier to recycle. Of course, you’d need to work on getting the efficiency way up to match modern cells.
There is one disclaimer. Apparently, Cove is relatively unknown and while he has a patent issued in 1906 the patent has some misleading information in it. Add to that he was supposedly kidnapped (the police thought it was a hoax) and he spent a year in jail for stock manipulation. We don’t know how much of Cove’s story is true or not — apparently [Decker] received research from a reader, but it all sounds plausible enough.
We keep hearing about
alternate solar cell materials
, but silicon is still the standard to beat. Most
do-it-yourself panels
start with a cell, but using this low-tech method could let you produce the whole thing. | 41 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390353",
"author": "charlie merritt",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T02:48:00",
"content": "Interesting. I wonder about the cost, even at 5-10% efficiency it might work on cheap land or to make parking lot shade.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,919.317527 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/13/solder-paste-stencilling-that-doesnt-suck/ | Solder Paste Stencilling That Doesn’t Suck | Dave Rowntree | [
"hardware"
] | [
"3d printed",
"alignment",
"pcb",
"solder stencils"
] | Working with solder paste stencils can be a real faff, they rarely sit flat and move around when you so much as breath on them. [Unexpected Maker] airs his frustrations, and comes up with a simple solution, he simply
makes a 3D-printed jig to align the PCB panel and applies his shop vacuum cleaner
and hey presto!
If you’re ever been tempted to switch from frameless to framed solder stencils, then you’ll notice they can be rather awkward to work with. The usual online vendors have plenty of listings for stencil frame holders, but they do all seem to us, exactly the same, and more suited to stencilling T-shirts, than working with tiny PCB footprints.
The problem with unframed stencils is one of clamping and registration to the PCB, which framed stencils fix, when used with a jig that can dial in the rotation and translation errors.
But problem with those is, unless you have a perfectly flat support region all round the PCB, the weight of the frame tends to make the stencil bow up over the PCB, causing parts of it to lift away from the solder lands. This results in paste not being pushed into the places you want it, and instead it sticks to the stencil apertures and comes away when you lift it up. Most irritating.
You can try offset it by taping spare PCBs of the same thickness all around, but this is not always terribly successful in this scribe’s extensive experience doing this job by hand. [Unexpected Maker] solves this bowing issue by making a 3D printed jig that bolts to the stencil holder, takes a custom top plate with holes in, which in turns allows a vacuum to be applied from below. This sucks the PCB down to the jig, keeping it flat (in case it is also warped) and also pulls the stencil plate directly down to the PCB, making it also lie perfectly flat.
The second benefit of this setup is that you can now use frameless stencils on the same jig, as the vacuum is strong enough to keep it in place, but not so strong you can’t make minor alignment adjustments prior to pasting.
This simple idea helps make a common PCB prototyping task, suck a whole lot less.
Thanks [Foaly] for this sucky tip! | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390334",
"author": "Daniel Beaven",
"timestamp": "2021-10-13T23:56:32",
"content": "Love it!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6390389",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T08:29:08",
"content": "Cannot be au... | 1,760,372,919.418182 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/13/tiny-tv-tells-the-temperature-tale/ | Tiny TV Tells The Temperature Tale | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"console TV",
"ESP32",
"lcd",
"openweathermap",
"test pattern",
"weather"
] | Once upon a time, we would run home from the bus stop to watch Gargoyles and Brady Bunch reruns on the family TV, a late-1970s console Magnavox number that sat on the floor and was about 50% more cabinet than CRT. The old TV, a streamlined white Zenith at least ten years older, had been relegated to the man cave in the basement. It looked so mod compared to the “new” TV, but that’s not the aesthetic my folks were after. They wanted their electronics to double as furniture.
This little TV is a happy medium between the two styles, and for us, it’s all about those feet. But instead of cartoons,
it switches between showing the current weather and the top news headlines
. Inside that classy oak cabinet is an LCD, an ESP32, and an SD card module. The TV uses OpenWeatherMap and pulls the corresponding weather image from the SD card based on time of day — light images for day, and dark images for night.
We love that it shows the SMPTE color bars, aka the standard American TV test pattern as it switches between weather and news. After showing the top headlines, it automatically switches back to the weather channel. Be sure to check out the short demo video after the break.
Do you like your tiny televisions in strange places?
Here’s one you can use to trim your tree this year
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390291",
"author": "Bruce Perens K6BP",
"timestamp": "2021-10-13T20:17:53",
"content": "There used to be something like this for sale, called a Chumby. It wasn’t a success, though they are still available and still have a running subscription service.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,919.459822 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/13/g10-is-the-3d-print-surface-you-crave/ | G10 Is The 3D Print Surface You Crave | Danie Conradie | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing surface",
"FDM",
"G10",
"maker's muse"
] | Print surfaces have been a major part of 3D printer development and experimentation since the beginning. [Makers Muse] has been experimenting with G10, a cheap high-pressure fiberglass laminate, and found that it’s an excellent candidate for most of your FDM printing needs. (Video embedded after the break.)
You’re probably more familiar with the fire-resistant version of G10, FR-4, the fiberglass substrate used for most PCBs. It’s also known by the brand name Garolite. [Makers Muse] tested with PLA, PETG (on his
headphone build
), ABS, ASA,
PET
,
PCTG
, and nylon. All the materials displayed excellent bed adhesion when heated to the appropriate temperature, and would often self-release the part as it cooled down. For TPU, the bed was left unheated to prevent it from sticking too well. 0.5 mm, 1.5 mm, and 3 mm G10 sheet thicknesses were tested, and [Makers Muse] found 1.5 mm to be the perfect balance between rigidity, and flexibility for removing particularly sticky prints.
G10 has been used in some commercial 3D printers, but there is very little information regarding its use beyond high-temperature materials like nylon. It leaves an excellent surface finish on the bottom of parts, as long as you take care not to scratch the bed. Compared to glass, its lower weight is advantageous for printers where the bed moves for the Y-axis. Another major advantage is the low cost, especially compared to some of the more exotic bed materials.
The results certainly look very promising, and we are keen to get our hands on some G10 for our own printers. If you have trouble finding it for sale, check out your local knife-making suppliers, who sell it as handle materials. | 49 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390275",
"author": "DougM",
"timestamp": "2021-10-13T19:00:30",
"content": "Has anyone played around with mounting it to the MK3S’s magnets?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6390284",
"author": "bob",
"timestam... | 1,760,372,919.613132 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/13/space-age-road-rage-right-of-way-above-the-karman-line/ | Space Age Road Rage: Right Of Way Above The Karman Line | Ryan Flowers | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"dead satellites",
"debris",
"launch",
"orbit",
"orbital debris",
"orbital mechanics",
"satellite",
"Satellites",
"space junk"
] | On a dark night in 2006 I was bicycle commuting to my office, oblivious to the countless man made objects orbiting in the sky above me at thousands of miles per hour. My attention was instead focused on a northbound car speeding through a freeway underpass at dozens of miles per hour, oblivious to my southbound headlamp. The car swerved into the left turn lane to get to the freeway on-ramp. The problem? I was only a few feet from crossing the entrance to that very on-ramp! As the car rushed through their left turn I was presented with a split second decision: slow, and possibly stop in the middle of the on-ramp, or just go for it and hope for the best.
In Blue: Terrified cyclist. In Red: A speeding car careening around a corner without slowing down.
By law I had the right of way. But this was no time to start discussing right of way with the driver of the vehicle that threatened to turn me into a dark spot on the road. I followed my gut instinct, and my legs burned in compliance as I sped across that on-ramp entrance with all my might. The oncoming car missed my rear wheel by mere feet! What could have ended in disaster and possibly even death had resulted in a near miss.
Terrestrial vehicles generally have laws and regulations that specify and enforce proper behavior. I had every right to expect the oncoming car be observant of their surroundings or to at least slow to a normal speed before making that turn. In contrast, traffic control in Earth orbit conjures up thoughts of bargain-crazed shoppers packed into a big box store on Black Friday.
So is spacecraft traffic in orbit really a free-for-all? If there were stringent rules, how can they be enforced? Before we explore the answers to those questions, let’s examine the problem we’re here to discuss: stuff in space running into other stuff in space.
What Happens in Orbit Stays in Orbit
When an object is put into orbit, it does not readily come back to Earth until it is either forced out of orbit with a thruster or until orbital decay allows atmospheric drag to snatch it from the sky. As a result, functional satellites are only a portion of what orbits the Earth. Derelict satellites, debris from broken up spacecraft, and countless other man made objects too small to measure are hurtling above our heads this very moment.
There’s an incredible amount of stuff orbiting the earth. [Source:
ESRI Satellite Map
]
The oldest known example of such debris is the Vanguard 1 research satellite, launched in 1958. It stopped functioning in 1964, but the satellite and its third ascent stage remain in orbit to this day. They’re not expected to deorbit until about the year 2198. Thankfully the Vanguard 1 is in an orbit that’s not likely to affect others, but this is not the case for all dead satellites.
In 2009 Russia’s Cosmos 2251, a decommissioned and uncontrolled satellite at 790 km altitude smashed into the Iridium 33 satellite. Their combined velocity was 42,000 km/h (26,000 mph). Although the Cosmos 2251 was inoperable, it couldn’t have gotten out of the way even if it wanted to — it had no maneuvering abilities even when it was healthy. By 2011, the collision could be held responsible for over 1,000 trackable pieces of debris larger than 10cm. Around this same time, the International Space Station had to maneuver to avoid collisions with some of this debris, with the crew taking shelter inside docked Soyuz capsules just in case. Everything turned out okay.
Of course stray Russian satellites are only the tip of an iceberg. Ascent stages, old satellites, and even debris from the intentional destruction of a satellite in 2007 are all in orbit, ready to collide with whatever gets in their way. Does this mean that Earth orbit is a wasteland of junk, uninhabitable by all but the most heavily armored spacecraft? Not quite.
Close Encounters of the Nerd Kind
When objects in orbit come within one kilometer of each other, it is considered a “close encounter”. One reason for this could be that it is very difficult to track small objects traveling at orbital speeds, and so there must be some room for error. This is especially true in Low Earth Orbit where the distance traveled in each orbit is less than that of a higher orbit. And it is Low Earth Orbit that is the most desirable for a large majority of communications satellite operators, especially those looking for low latency communications such as Starlink and OneWeb.
Rows of Starlink satellites about to be released into orbit [Source:
Starlink
]
Many have looked at the sheer number of satellites that SpaceX has launched for Starlink as a contributor to space junk. While there is always room for debate, the Starlink satellites were designed to be able to deorbit on command, and their very low orbit means that even if a satellite becomes uncontrollable it will re-enter the atmosphere on its own within 5 years of failure.
While Starlink, OneWeb, and other satellite operators have built satellites that can maneuver to avoid collisions, and even remove themselves from orbit, there are other problems that have caused close encounters and near-misses. The first is that many satellites lack any means to navigate, or their operators avoid such maneuvers to save on precious propellant that can’t be refilled.
The second problem is lack of communication and cooperation between satellite operators. In 2019, the ESA satellite Aeolus Earth was forced into a game of space chicken with a Starlink satellite that SpaceX had moved into a conflicting orbit. SpaceX held their ground, causing the ESA to expend precious fuel to thrust their spacecraft out of the way.
Some might point the finger at SpaceX and say that they acted poorly, and that’s a subject for a different article. But did SpaceX break any laws or rules? No.
More Launches, More Junk, More Problems
The discussion thus far has focused on some of the problems that have arisen because of space debris, conflicting orbital paths, and conflicting interests. Is there a solution? Probably.
To understand any possible solutions we have to take one more look at the core of the problem: Traffic control. When we think of traffic control, it is easiest to think of traffic that we’re most familiar with: Automobiles, Ships, and Aircraft. Each mode has its own governing entities that have oversight at multiple levels, be it local, regional, state, or national. International treaties and organizations have a say over what is acceptable on a global scale. Cooperation between all makes for relatively safe, controlled travel to and from any cooperating destination. What is at the core of all such traffic control in some way, shape or form? Right of way: The idea that one entity has the right to assert its path at the cost of another.
But once we reach the Kármán line that divides Earth’s atmosphere from outer space, all of that is out the window.
Where There’s a Will There’s a Right of Way
Taming the beast of orbital traffic control has been on the radar of regulators for many years. In 2002 the Inter-Agency Debris Coordination Committee
issued a report
(PDF) recommending that satellite operators should remove spacecraft and their ascent stages from commonly used orbits no more than 25 years after their missions are complete. Not all have abided by this rule though, and not all even have the ability.
Objects in orbits lower than 600 km will naturally follow the 25 year rule, but those at great altitude will need technology to aid in compliance. Currently there is no incentive to follow the 25 year rule, and there are no legally binding agreements in place to enforce any deterrents. With new operators popping up and incumbents launching dozens of loads a year, the problem continues to grow. What can be done?
A US government funded research firm called The Aerospace Corporation recently published a report on the subject. The report suggested various forms of incentive, ranging from direct government management and mandatory collision insurance to deorbit credits that can be traded like carbon credits.
We also can’t help but wonder if, as object density in various orbits increases, redefining what constitutes a close encounter will help ease fears. Could orbital traffic rules ever catch up to terrestrial law and enforcement, or will operators forever be dodging each other like poorly lit bicycles in the night? Will future space companies start getting demerits on their license for uncooperative behavior? Time will tell. We’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject in the comments below! | 35 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390265",
"author": "sobiguy",
"timestamp": "2021-10-13T17:23:45",
"content": "“I was bicycle commuting to my office”How does one become a bicycle? You’re a wizard Harry!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6390272",
"auth... | 1,760,372,919.685848 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/13/doom-played-by-tweet/ | DOOM Played By Tweet | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Games"
] | [
"cloud",
"doom",
"port",
"reply",
"software",
"tweet",
"twitter"
] | Getting DOOM to run on hardware it was never intended to run on is a tradition as old as time. Old cell phones, embedded systems, and ancient televisions have all been converted to play this classic first-person shooter. This style of playing games on old hardware might be passé now as the new trend seems to be the ability to play this game on more ethereal platforms instead.
This project brings DOOM to Twitter
.
The gameplay is a little nontraditional as well. To play the game, a tweet needs to be sent with specific instructions for the bot. The bot then plays the game according to its instructions and then tweets a video. By responding to this tweet with more instructions, the player can continue the game tweet-by-tweet. While slightly cumbersome, it does have the advantage of allowing a player to resume any game simply by responding to the tweet where they would like to start. Behind the scenes of the DOOM-playing Twitter bot is interesting as well and
the code is available on the project’s GitHub page
.
While we’ve seen plenty of DOOM instances on all kinds of hardware, it’s safe to say we’ve never really seen a gameplay experience quite like this one. It may stay as a curiosity, but DOOM porters are always looking for something else to run this classic game so it may eventually branch out or develop into something more user-friendly
like this cloud-based Atari 2600
. | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390280",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2021-10-13T19:20:53",
"content": "File this one under “wasting bandwidth and storage capacity for the lulz”.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6390287",
"author": "Ell",
... | 1,760,372,919.724383 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/12/the-beauty-of-dance-seen-through-the-power-of-touch/ | The Beauty Of Dance, Seen Through The Power Of Touch | Kristina Panos | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize"
] | It’s nothing short of amazing what trained dancers can do with their bodies, and a real shame that visually-impaired people can’t enjoy the experience of, say, ballet. For this year’s Hackaday Prize,
[Shi Yun] is working on a way for visually-impaired people to experience dance performances via haptic feedback on a special device
.
This platform, which is called Kinetic Soul, uses Posenet computer vision to track a dancer’s movements. Posenet detects the dancer’s joints and creates a point map to determine what body parts are moving where, and at what speed. Then the system translates and transmits the movements to the 32 pins on the surface, creating a touchable picture of what’s going on. Each 3D-printed pin is controlled with a solenoid, all of which are driven by a single Arduino.
We think it’s interesting that Kinetic Soul can speak to the user in two different languages. The first is more about the overall flow of a dance, and the second delves into the deconstructed details. Both methods allow for dances to be enjoyed in real time, or via video recording. So how does one deconstruct dance? [Shi Yun] turned to
Laban Movement Analysis
, which breaks up human locomotion into four broad categories: the body in relation to itself, the effort expended to move, the shapes assumed, and the space used.
[Shi Yun] has been user-testing their ideas at dance workshops for the visually impaired throughout the entire process — this is how they arrived at having two haptic languages instead of one. They plan to continue getting input as they work to fortify the prototype, improve the touch experience, and refine the haptic languages. Check out the brief demonstration video after the break.
Yes indeed, dance is a majestic way of expressing all kinds of things. Think you have no use for interpretive dance? Think again —
it can help you understand protein synthesis
in an amusing way.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390101",
"author": "David H",
"timestamp": "2021-10-12T23:19:23",
"content": "It’s a beautiful idea, but I am skeptical that the nuance of dance can be compressed into 32 bits in a way that makes for a meaningful experience. Small but significant differences would be obscured by th... | 1,760,372,920.010364 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/12/showdown-time-for-non-standard-chargers-in-europe/ | Showdown Time For Non-Standard Chargers In Europe | Jenny List | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Phone Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"Apple Lightning",
"eu",
"phone charger",
"USB C"
] | It seems that few features of a consumer electronic product will generate as much rancour as a mobile phone charger socket. For those of us with Android phones, the world has slowly been moving over the last few years from micro-USB to USB-C, while iPhone users regard their Lightning connector as the ultimate in connectivity. Get a set of different phone owners together and this can become a full-on feud, as micro-USB owners complain that nobody has a handy charging cable any more, USB-C owners become smug bores, and Apple owners do what they’ve always done and pretend that Steve Jobs invented USB. Throwing a flaming torch into this incendiary mix is the European Union,
which is proposing to mandate the use of USB-C on all phones sold in its 27 member nations
with the aim of reducing considerably the quantity of e-waste generated.
Minor annoyances over having to carry an extra micro-USB cable for an oddball device aside, we can’t find any reason not to applaud this move, because USB-C is a connector born of several decades of USB evolution and brings with it not only the reversible plug but also the enhanced power delivery standards that enable fast charging no matter whose USB-PD charger you are using. Mandating USB-C will put an end to needlessly overpriced proprietary cables, and bring eventual unity to a fractured world.
A Reminder Of The Bad Old Days
A variety of proprietary phone charger plugs, from the left: Samsung E900, Motorola V3, Nokia 6101, and Sony Ericsson K750. Mk2010,
CC BY-SA 3.0
.
Readers with long memories will recall that the EU has done this before with USB charging, something that was only mostly successful because it took the form of a memorandum of understanding with the manufacturers. But most Android phone manufacturers signed on. And this spilled over to other devices.
Apple wiggled out of micro USB by including an adapter cable, leaving the proprietary jack in the phone itself. This time around, it’s likely the EU will mandate the connector, thus removing any room for manoeuvre on the part of recalcitrant manufacturers.
What Could Go Wrong?
The USB-C port is tough, convenient, and feature-rich, so where might be the snags in this plan? Imagine for a minute that they had made this move back in 1998 instead of 2021. There were a multitude of chargers on the market back then, but probably the most common was the Nokia 5 V miniature barrel jack. It would have made sense to go with the Nokia connector, so all phones made in the last couple of decades for the EU market would have it. By now the demands for an improved connector taking up less space and with some means of data transfer would be deafening, because the mobile phone has evolved in so many ways unimaginable in the days when a Nokia 5100 was an object of desire.
So it is today, the USB-C connector has all the features we can think of for a mobile device of the 2020s, and will remain useful for the coming years, right? But what about the 2030s or the 2040s? When a Galaxy Fold or an iPhone 13 look as quaint as that Nokia with Snake on it does today, will the 5 GB data transfer rate or 100 W power limit be enough? Any mandated standard must have within it a provision for revision to reflect technological advancement, otherwise we risk creating a throwback. Or push forward the next standard.
So we welcome the prospect of a truly unified charging cable for all our devices. We think USB-C is a good tool for the job, and we hope it doesn’t simply create standardised EU versions while leaving the rest of the world still arguing over which cable is best. We simply hope that the EU can act with sense when it comes to the lifespan of their choice.
Header image: Project Kei,
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 115 | 34 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389968",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-12T17:29:05",
"content": "Fiber port, let the laser charge and transfer the data.B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6390142",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,372,920.532273 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/12/ultrasonic-array-powers-this-halloween-spirit-writer/ | Ultrasonic Array Powers This Halloween Spirit Writer | Dan Maloney | [
"Holiday Hacks"
] | [
"halloween",
"phase",
"phased array",
"transducer",
"ultrasonic"
] | The spooky season is upon us, and with it the race to come up with the geekiest way to scare the kids. Motion-activated jump-scare setups are always a crowd-pleaser, but kind of a cheap thrill in our opinion. So if you’re looking for something different for your Halloween scare-floor, you might consider
“spirit writing” with ultrasound
.
The idea that [Dan Beaven] has here is a variation on the ultrasonic levitation projects we’ve seen so many of over the last couple of years. While watching bits of styrofoam suspended in midair by the standing waves generated by carefully phased arrays of ultrasonic transducers is cool, [Dan] looks set to take the concept to the next level. Very much still a prototype, the setup has a 256-transducer matrix suspended above a dark surface. Baking powder is sprinkled over the writing surface to stand in for dust, which is easily disturbed by the sound waves reflecting off the hard surface. The array can be controlled to make it look like an unseen hand is tracing out a design in the dust, and the effect is pretty convincing. We’d have chosen “REDRUM” rather than a pentagram, but different strokes.
[Dan] obviously has a long way to go before this is ready for the big night, but the proof-of-concept is sound. While we wait for the finished product, we’ll just file this away as a technique that might have other applications. SMD components are pretty small and light, after all — perhaps an ultrasonic pick-and-place? In which case,
sonic tweezers
might be just the thing. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389951",
"author": "Timo",
"timestamp": "2021-10-12T16:15:47",
"content": "About 800 years ago in Spain one would have been thoroughly roasted for showing off this little trick! Pretty amazing what people can do with a little bit of science! Love it :)",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,372,920.228465 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/12/a-tritium-story-how-afraid-should-you-be-of-hydrogens-big-brother/ | A Tritium Story: How Afraid Should You Be Of Hydrogen’s Big Brother? | Maya Posch | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"Tritium"
] | Despite being present in everything that contains water, tritium is not an isotope that many people were that familiar with outside of select (geeky) channels, such as DEF CON with a
tritium-containing badge
, the always excellent NurdRage’s assembly of a
tritium-based atomic battery
, or the creation of a tritium-phosphor-based
glow-in-the-dark tesseract cube
.
Tritium is a
hydrogen isotope
that shares a lot of characteristics with its two siblings:
1
H (protium) and
2
H (deuterium), with the main distinction being that tritium (
3
H) is not a stable isotope, with a half-life of ~12.32 years that sees it decay into
3
He. Most naturally occurring tritium on Earth originates from interactions between fast neutrons (>4.0 MeV) from cosmic radiation and atmospheric nitrogen.
Recently tritium has become a politically hot topic on account of the announced release of treated water at the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. This has raised for many the question of just how much tritium is ‘too much’ and what we’re likely to notice from this treated — but still tritium-containing water — being released into the ocean.
On Becquerels and Equivalent Dose
The LNT model versus other models and measurements. (Source: CNSC)
When assessing the risk of exposure to radioactivity, the Linear-Non-Treshold (
LNT
) model is most commonly used. This model essentially claims that there is a perfectly linear match between exposure to radiation and the chance of developing cancer and other negative side-effects that could be caused by said exposure.
As has become apparent through multiple recent studies, reality isn’t that simple. Between the varying effects of different types of radiation on different parts of the body and the role of the body’s ability to repair damage to cells, the reality is that we see an effect far closer to that of what is often called radiation hormesis. This is the theory that in low doses, radiation can even be beneficial.
Far-fetched as this may seem, studies such as e.g.
Bannister et al. (2016)
and
Khan et al. (2021)
, on mouse models showed no cytotoxicity or genotoxicity in the spleen after exposure to beta radiation from tritium (Bannister et al.), or found that the immune system had been upregulated after exposure to low-dose radiation (LDR, Khan et al.). As noted by Khan et al., the current evidence in the literature points to LDR being a positive influence on the body’s immune system, which could have significant effects on our understanding of e.g. cancer treatments.
These kind of studies also give us some idea of how afraid we should be of e.g. the radiation in wine, as studied by
Tonev et al. (2018)
. Here the levels of
137
Cs,
40
K and
3
H are used to try and pinpoint the age of wine, to help identify wines that are being passed off as a much older vintage. Their findings for Melnik (Bulgaria) wines from a 2001 vintage were
137
Cs levels at <0.15 Bq/L compared to 44.6 Bq/L in 1986 due to the fallout from the Chernobyl power plant’s #4 nuclear reactor.
Meanwhile,
3
H levels fluctuated between roughly 7 to 63 Bq/L and natural potassium-40 (
40
K) between 15 to 20 Bq/L over that same timespan. We can
compare this
to the natural
3
H levels in the atmosphere and surface water using information provided via the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) as part of its
tritium studies
. Expected tritium level in rainwater is about 0.6 Bq/L, while surface waters range from 0.37 to 1.11 Bq/L.
Atmospheric nuclear weapons testing has elevated environmental tritium levels between 1945 and 1976, with an estimated 1.7 x 10
20
Bq tritium produced. This tritium would have gradually made its way out of the atmosphere in a manner similar to natural (cosmic ray) tritium and ended up in surface waters and from there into organisms and ground water.
At the Fukushima Daiichi site, roughly 860 TBq (0.86 x 10
15
Bq) of tritium are stored, diluted across many liters of water. The tritium itself is part of so-called
tritiated
water (HTO, T
2
O, or super-heavy water), which is chemically virtually indistinguishable from H
2
O and D
2
O (deuterium-containing heavy water), which is why it isn’t easily separated from the H
2
O. Heavy-water based Canadian CANDU reactors (HWR) in normal operation release about 430 TBq per year, while a PWR like the Westinghouse AP1000 releases about 20 TBq/year and a BWR about 1 TBq/year.
Considering that the tritiated water at Fukushima Daiichi will be released gradually and heavily diluted with seawater over the course of years, this should make it obvious that the amounts being released are insignificant compared to that released by just the active nuclear plants around the world. So nothing to worry about, then?
Oceans Are Big
PNNL scientist holding up vial with 5 grams of yellowcake recovered from seawater. (Source: PNNL)
With roughly three-quarters of the Earth’s surface covered by water, there is a lot of water to dilute something like tritiated water into, as well as e.g. uranium, with
PNNL reporting recovering
5 grams of yellowcake (uranium) from seawater in 2018. It is estimated that there are at least four billion tons of uranium in seawater, diluted to about 3 parts per billion, which at some point in the future could become economical to recover.
When it comes to e.g. drinking water, we have come to accept that there will always be some amount of heavy metals, minerals as well as radioactive isotopes (e.g. radon, uranium, and tritium) in it. This is why countries have set limits on what amounts are deemed acceptable in drinking water. For tritiated water, this varies heavily, with Australia accepting over 76,000 Bq/L, while Finland aims for 100 Bq/L, or roughly five liters of Melnik wine worth of
40
K equivalent.
An interesting point worthy of note here is that
potassium-40
behaves just like its stable potassium forms when it comes to its biological role. As a result, an adult human body that weighs 70 kg will contain about 140 grams of potassium. With
40
K naturally occurring at a rate of 0.0117%, this means roughly 0.0164 grams of the isotope and ~4,300 Bq worth of beta decays per second.
Since
3
H and
40
K are both beta emitters, but only potassium bioaccumulates in any significant manner, this would theoretically make eating a banana riskier than drinking tritiated water, even at a relatively high levels of HTO. Not unexpectedly, at the WHO-recommended level of 0.01 MBq/L in drinking water,
Guéguen et al. (2018)
reported no noticable physiological effects on tissues in mouse models.
Lower Is Always Possible
Figure 1: Simplified model of tritium fluxes in an HTR system coupled to a SG. (Credit: Fütterer et al. 2016)
The production of tritium is not a goal in nuclear reactors, but occurs as a side-effect, with pressurized water reactors (PWRs) using
boric acid
as neutron poison in their primary loop to help with moderating the nuclear chain reaction. Boron-10 (
10
B) can sometimes capture a neutron and produce
4
He and
3
H. Similarly, in heavy water reactors (HWRs) like the CANDU, deuterium will also capture neutrons and turn into tritium.
Most of the tritium produced in the reactor’s primary loop remains there and is at some point removed and used for commercial and other applications. Since tritium is a hydrogen isotope, it also has that other amazing feature of hydrogen: the ability to ignore attempts to contain it. Much like how containing
1
H is a problem due to
hydrogen permeation
, so too do nuclear reactors have the issue of containing the tritium inside the primary loop.
Fütterer et al. (2016)
cover this issue in detail for upcoming Generation IV high-temperature reactors, which use helium as coolant.
Generally, the point where some tritium permeates into the secondary loop is via the heat exchanger. These are devices where heat transfer efficiency is important, which means thin (nickel-alloy) walls. Although resistant to embrittlement from hydrogen diffusion, these heat exchangers do allow some hydrogen to permeate through, which is what ultimately ends up at the turbines and in the cooling water that is either released into a nearby body of water, or to the atmosphere in a cooling tower.
Since HWRs and PWRs generate a fair amount of tritium in normal operation in their primary loop, this means that relatively more hydrogen (thus tritium) will permeate into the secondary loop. New alloys for the heat exchanger may reduce the amount of permeated tritium in the secondary loop, or more effective capture mechanisms may enable even the low amounts of trititum in the secondary loop to be filtered out.
All of this will also be important with future nuclear fusion reactors, which will generally use a deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel mixture, as well as with the increased use of hydrogen in industrial and other applications. Containing hydrogen isotopes is essential, regardless of whether it is merely a waste product as in fission reactors, an ingredient in industrial processes, a fuel, or an energy carrier.
A Radioactive World
Perhaps the most harmful part of the LNT model is that it creates the illusion that a world with zero radiation is somehow possible, or at least highly desirable. This is where statements in the media about ‘TBqs worth of tritium’ without further context and a distinct void when it comes to interviewing e.g. physicists and other experts in the field (like those at the IAEA) are anything but helpful.
While the release of tritium by nuclear plants and other artificial sources (like discarded tritium-based batteries and self-illuminating signs) is undesirable and something that needs research into ways to further limit its impact, it is not a significant issue. We live, after all, on a planet that itself is radioactive, sheltered by an atmosphere that for the most part keeps us safe from cosmic rays and other radiation hazards.
As with most things in life, the key to happiness lies in finding the right perspective.
[Heading image: Fukushima Daiichi at night. (Source: Tepco)] | 30 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389924",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2021-10-12T14:26:50",
"content": "“All of this will also be important with future nuclear fusion reactors, which will generally use a deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel mixture”“Critical” is more like it. Fusion reactors will generate their own tri... | 1,760,372,919.970139 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/12/ford-maverick-welcomes-diy-spirit/ | Ford Maverick Welcomes DIY Spirit | Roger Cheng | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"car",
"car mod",
"diy",
"diy bike rack",
"ford",
"Ford Motor Company",
"pickup truck"
] | We’ve featured a lot of car hacks on these pages, most would void the warranty and none of it with explicit factory support. Against that background, Ford’s upcoming Maverick is unique: a major manufacturer has invited owners to unleash their do-it-yourself spirit. It is one of several aspects that led [Jason Torchinsky] of
Jalopnik
to proclaim
The 2022 Ford Maverick Is An Honest, Cheap, Multitool Of A Vehicle And I’m All For It
.
There are two primary parts to Ford’s DIY invitation. Inside the cabin are several locations for a dovetail mount called
“Ford Integrated Tether System” (FITS)
. Naturally Ford will be selling their own FITS accessories, but they also expect people to create and 3D-print designs addressing needs unmet by factory kits. CAD files for FITS dimensions are promised, but any maker experienced with a caliper should have little trouble.
Another part of Ford’s DIY invitation is in the cargo area, whose sides were stamped with slots for lumber beams supporting projects like
a ~$45 bike rack
. There are also threaded bolt holes already in the bed, no drilling or tapping into sheet metal necessary. Behind a few small plastic doors are wires to supply 12 V DC power without the risk of splicing into factory harnesses.
There will always be wild car hacks like
turning a sedan into a pickup truck
. But it’s great to lower the barrier of entry for milder hacks with these small and very welcome features. QR codes on a sticker takes us to
Ford’s collection of video instructions
to get things started. Naturally if this idea takes off other people will post many more on their own YouTube channels. We like where Ford wants to go with this, and we would love to see such DIY-friendliness spread across the auto industry. A few Ford videos explaining design intent in this area after the break.
[Title image:
Ford Motor Company
]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dru9oZu5J9c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8Wci7cRwZE | 43 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389880",
"author": "Justin",
"timestamp": "2021-10-12T11:45:09",
"content": "The 2×4 slots are standard on lots of OEM bed liners, but the rest is nice",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6464413",
"author": "Holt Rhineha... | 1,760,372,920.375606 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/12/bendable-colour-epaper-display-has-touch-input-too/ | Bendable Colour EPaper Display Has Touch Input Too | Dave Rowntree | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed case",
"eink",
"electrophoretic",
"epaper",
"resistive touch",
"wearable"
] | The Interactive Media Lab at Dresden Technical University has been busy working on ideas for user interfaces with wearable electronics, and presents a nice project, that any of us could reproduce, to create your very own
wearable colour epaper display device
. They even figured out a tidy way to add touch input as well. By sticking three
linear resistive touch strips
, which are effectively touch potentiometers, to a backing sheet and placing the latter directly behind the Plastic Logic Legio 2.1″ flexible
electrophoretic display (EPD)
, a rudimentary touch interface was created. It does look like it needs a fair bit of force to be applied to the display, to be detectable at the touch strips, but it should be able to take it.
The rest of the hardware is standard fayre, using an off-the-shelf board to drive the EPD, and an Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Sense board for the application and Bluetooth functionality. The casing is 3D printed (naturally) and everything can be built from items many of us have lying around. The video below shows a few possible applications, including interestingly using the display as part of the strap for another wearable. Here is also is a
report on adding interactive displays to smart watches
. After all,
you can’t have too many displays
.
Many wearables projects can be found in the HaD archives, including this
dubious wearable scope
, a method for
weaving OLED fibres into garments
. Finally, for a good introduction to wearable DIY tech, you could do worse than this
Supercon talk from Sophy Wong
. | 8 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389853",
"author": "Mike Massen, Perth, Western Australia",
"timestamp": "2021-10-12T08:49:45",
"content": "Cool, lots of applications, nice to see, where can I buy a kit in Australia of different sizes & i2c controller/drivers ?Thanks for posting, keep up the good work :-)",
"... | 1,760,372,920.053527 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/11/sinclair-pocket-tv-teardown/ | Sinclair Pocket TV Teardown | Al Williams | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"cathode ray tube",
"crt",
"ftv1",
"pocket TV",
"sinclair",
"tv8"
] | A pocket-sized TV is not a big deal today. But in 1983, cramming a CRT into your pocket was quite a feat. Clive Sinclair’s TV80 or FTV1 did it with a very unique CRT and [Dubious Engineering] has
a teardown video
to show us how it was done.
A conventional CRT has an electron gun behind the screen which is why monitors that use them are typically pretty thick. The TV80’s tube has the electron gun to the side to save space. It also uses a fresnel lens to enlarge the tiny image.
The device was not successful in the market since it cost about 4 million pounds to develop and sold around 15,000 units. The advent of the LCD killed off these kinds of devices, altogether.
The CRT is a marvel and doesn’t look like a normal CRT. The TV converts its 5V input to about 20KV and uses it to shoot and deflect electrons parallel to the screen’s surface. While a normal CRT has the electrons hit the screen from the rear, the TV80 uses an electrode on the front screen to push the electrons down to the front of the imaging surface. A voltage multiplier generates several high voltages for the CRT.
There is only one IC in the entire device, apparently. Hard to imagine these days where there are almost no discrete components in anything anymore.
Another place to find tiny CRTs is in
old camcorder viewfinders
. We were sad to see
Sir Clive Sinclair passed away recently
. While the TV might not have been a success, it was certainly creative and innovative. | 27 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389824",
"author": "cyberteque",
"timestamp": "2021-10-12T05:32:20",
"content": "there were 2 models, the first version was bigger, about the size of a ST:TOS Tricorder, that one used a camcorder CRTSinclair also made a small oscilloscope in the same form factorthe battery life is ... | 1,760,372,920.292074 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/13/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-curved-typewriter/ | Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Curved Typewriter | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"cherry switches",
"Hammond typewriter",
"Rotring",
"Stack OverFlow",
"vendors"
] | Aerodox Flies on Wireless Wings
[Simon Merrett] didn’t know anything about keyboards when he started this project, but he didn’t let that stop him. [Simon] did what any of us would do — figure out what you like, learn enough to be dangerous, and then start fiddling around, taking all that inspiration and making
a mashup of influences that suits your needs
.
The Aerodox design became a cross between the
ErgoDox
‘s key layout and the logic and communication of the Redox Wireless, itself a reduced-size version of the ErgoDox. Interestingly, [Simon] chose the ErgoDox’s dimensions and spacing, and not those of the Redox. Like a lot of people out there,
I found the ErgoDox to be too big for my hands
, mostly in that the thumb cluster is too far away from the mainland. It’s nice to see that it suits some people, though.
[Simon] worked up a custom hot-swap footprint that makes the board reversible, much like the ErgoDox. Each half has an NRF51822 for a brain, and there’s a third one that acts as a receiver. This external NRF board is connected over UART to an Arduino Pro Micro, which acts as the USB HID and runs QMK. It’s an interesting journey for sure, so
go dig into the logs
.
An Everything Keyboard Vendor Database
Image via
Keyboard Builders’ Digest
Are you yearning to find that 60% keyboard from that one group buy a few years ago, but they always go too fast on r/mechmarket? Or what about that discontinued desk pad, or the perfect switch puller?
Keyboard or keyboard accessory, whatever you’re looking for — it may be available from one of the 300+ vendors around the world that are currently listed with
The Keyboard Builders’ Digest’s vendor database
.
Maybe you spent the bulk of 2020 getting into custom cable making, and you’d like to clear out some of the inventory that’s piling up around your desk. It’s free to get listed in this database no matter how big or small your shop may be. And, coming soon — the more complete your vendor profile, the higher your vendor score (out of 10) will be. It’s all there in
the FAQ
.
The Stack Overflow Macropad Is Now a Real Thing
Image via
Drop
Remember this April Fool’s prank from Stack Overflow? Content Overlord Ben Popper told users they would no longer be able to copy and paste code from the site
unless they bought the Key
— a tiny, dedicated macropad that unlocks the mono-spaced goods.
When enough people want your fake product, you might as well find a way to produce it. Stack Overflow teamed up with Drop and keyboard connoisseur [Cassidy Williams] to make this happen. According to an update on the blog post, the original production line of these sold out in six hours.
It’s only $29
, and some of the proceeds from each sale are going to digitalundivided, a non-profit that helps Black and Latinx women succeed as entrepreneurs in the technology space. We love it when April Fool’s Day gags become real, especially when they do some good on the side.
Historical Clackers: the Hammond 1 Typewriter
Image via
the Antikey Chop
Even though the keys resemble the layout of a piano, this is not the same Hammond as the company that makes organs. This
Hammond was the third typewriter to market after the Remington and the Caligraph
, though it might have been first if not for some setbacks that delayed its release until 1884.
Not only is this typewriter eye-catching, it has a few features that make it stand out from the QWERTY machines. The most obvious one is the curved keyboard of solid ebony keys. Instead of type bars, the Hammond I has a
type shuttle
made of two curved pieces, one for each half of the keyboard. The shuttle could be easily traded out for another typeface, font size, or language, which paved the way for
a Braille shuttle
and lots of Hammond typewriters to be distributed to children in need at schools for the blind.
Less obvious is the way the thing actually operated. When a key is struck, the type shuttle swings around to present the correct letter. A spring-loaded hammer smacks the paper from behind, pushing it against the shuttle. No matter how hard or softly the typist tickled the ebonies, that hammer ensured consistent force with every letter, which gave Hammond the edge when it came to printing clear impressions onto paper.
Hammond typewriters were manufactured until about 1920
. The original Hammond I came in oak, mahogany, or cherry, and the keys only came in solid ebony. It sold for $100, which was more than a horse-drawn carriage cost at the time. Would you spend more on your keyboard than your car?
Historical Bonus: This Old Switch
I bought a pair of these vintage Cherries from an ebay vendor who has a bunch of loose switches for sale. They are allegedly among the first mechanical keyboard switches, if not the very first.
Although there is no identifier other than Cherry and the electrical rating on the switch, these are widely known as model 01APBSW
from 1959
, although
they are probably some form of S-31s
. There’s
a bit more info on Deskthority
, including a side-view picture of a Computer Communications 303 keyboard full of similar switches.
I really like these switches. For one thing, they look like little Morse keyers or tiny mousetraps. They feel nice, too — a linear travel with a tiny bit of tactility on actuation. I want to make a whole keyboard out of them, or at least use one of them to replace the now-silent switch in my new-old triple foot pedal.
The two switches I have sound slightly different from each other. Below is a sample of the lower-pitched switch. It sounds nicer, in my opinion. The tones don’t quite come across on my microphone, but they have a music box twinkle to them.
This video captures the sound quite well
.
https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/1959-Cherry-switch.mp3
ICYMI: r0tring CS-50 Restoration
If you’ve ever had to do any ISO lettering on a technical drawing, you know how tedious it is whether you use a stencil or freehand it. However there is another way, and it’s called a scriber.
Basically, you type on the keyboard, confirm input on the screen, and then it writes the lettering for you using a fine drawing pen in the holder. It’s a portable penmanship plotter, and [Atkelar]
brought one back from the brink of death
by replacing one of the motor driver chips. Be sure to
check out the video
to see how [Atkelar] was able to rebuild a broken screw boss using adhesives and common household items.
Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards?
Help me out by sending in a link or two
. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to
email me directly
. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390363",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2021-10-14T04:28:08",
"content": "Re: Stack Overflow Macro Pad“It’s only $29”ONLY $29!? for 3 keys?? I can get over 100 keys for half that!only $29…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "639... | 1,760,372,920.582282 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/13/adding-wireless-charging-to-the-switch-lite/ | Adding Wireless Charging To The Switch Lite | Tom Nardi | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"Nintendo Switch",
"QI",
"qi charger",
"retrofit",
"USB C",
"wireless charging",
"wireless charging hack"
] | The Nintendo Switch is a monstrously popular machine, and it’s had no difficulty raking in the bucks for the Japanese gaming giant, but there’s no denying that it’s technologically a bit behind the curve. Until the long-rumored “Pro” version of the Switch materializes, industrious gamers like [Robotanv] will simply have to make up for Nintendo’s Luddite ways by hacking in their own upgraded hardware.
In this case,
[Robotanv] wanted to add Qi wireless charging to his Switch Lite
. He figured that if all of his other mobile devices supported the convenient charging standard, why not his portable gaming system? Luckily, the system already supports the increasingly ubiquitous USB-C, so finding an aftermarket Qi receiver that would connect to it was no problem. He just needed to install it into the handheld’s case.
After liberating the Qi receiver from its protective pouch enclosure to get it a bit thinner, [Robotanv] taped it to the inside of the system’s case and ran thin wires to the rear of the USB-C port. As luck would have it, Nintendo was kind enough to put some test pads for the power pins right behind the port, which made for an ideal spot to connect the charger.
At first he only connected the positive and negative lines from the charger, but quickly realized he also had to connect the CC pin to get the juice flowing. After that, it was just a matter of buttoning the system back up. All told, it looks like a pretty simple modification for anyone who’s not bashful about taking a soldering iron to their $199 console.
We’ve seen these Qi receivers retrofitted into devices before
, and it remains an excellent way to add the feature not only to commercial products, but to your own projects. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390271",
"author": "LestatsMods",
"timestamp": "2021-10-13T18:39:06",
"content": "hey tom, i have a Qi usb c i have ripped open but i have only 3 points and looks to be pos is in the centre with a gourn on dise and cc the other but i cant tell which is which… any pointers?",
"p... | 1,760,372,920.621224 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/13/software-removes-the-facebook-from-facebooks-vr-headset-mostly/ | Software Removes The Facebook From Facebook’s VR Headset (Mostly) | Donald Papp | [
"Software Hacks",
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"facebook",
"jailbreak",
"Oculus",
"root",
"vr"
] | It’s not a jailbreak, but [basti564]’s
Oculess
software nevertheless
allows one the option to remove telemetry and account dependencies
from Facebook’s Oculus Quest VR headsets. It is not normally possible to use these devices without a valid Facebook account (or a legacy Oculus account in the case of the original Quest), so the ability to flip any kind of disconnect switch without bricking the hardware is a step forward, even if there are a few caveats to the process.
To be clear, the Quest devices still require normal activation and setup via a Facebook account. But once that initial activation is complete,
Oculess
allows one the option of disabling telemetry or completely disconnecting the headset from its Facebook account. Removing telemetry means that details about what apps are launched, how the device is used, and all other usage-related data is no longer sent to Facebook. Disconnecting will log the headset out of its account, but doing so means apps purchased from the store will no longer work and neither will factory-installed apps like Oculus TV or the Oculus web browser.
What
will
still work is the ability to sideload unsigned software, which are applications that are neither controlled nor distributed by Facebook. Sideloading isn’t on by default; it’s enabled by putting the headset into Developer Mode (a necessary step to installing
Oculess
in the first place, by the way.) There’s a fairly active scene around unsigned software for the Quest headsets, as evidenced by the existence of the alternate app store
SideQuest
.
Facebook’s control over their hardware and its walled-garden ecosystem continues to increase, but clearly there are people interested in putting the brakes on where they can.
It’s possible the devices might see a full jailbreak someday, but even if so, what happens then
? | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390193",
"author": "Alex365",
"timestamp": "2021-10-13T09:24:18",
"content": "I was able to try a Quest once and it’s a great piece of hardware. Also with some really nice games on it, but being forced to interact with Facebook is a big no for me. Even though it’s hackable I don’t ... | 1,760,372,920.673412 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/12/vintage-radio-gets-internet-upgrade/ | Vintage Radio Gets Internet Upgrade | Donald Papp | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"audio pirate",
"internet radio",
"radio",
"raspberry pi",
"vintage"
] | There’s nothing quite like vintage hardware, and the way it looks and works is something that can be worth celebrating. [Old Tech. New Spec] did that with his loving modification of a 1964 Dansette portable radio, bringing it into the modern era by giving it the ability to
play Internet radio stations while keeping all the original controls and appearance
. As he says, you’d hardly know it has been modified unless you turned it on.
A full color LCD behind a convex lens matches the radio’s aesthetic.
A real centerpiece of this conversion is that the inner part of the tuning dial has been replaced with a full color LCD display that shows, among other things, the logo of whatever Internet radio station is currently playing. The combination of LCD and convex lens looks fantastic, and blends beautifully into the aesthetic.
Inside the device is a Raspberry Pi, some simple Python scripts, and a
Pirate Audio board
. Together, they handle the job of audio streaming and output, displaying album art, and accepting inputs for playback controls. A large power bank ensures the result remains portable, and as usual with vintage hardware, there’s no worry about fitting everything inside. Watch it in action in the video embedded below. (And if the name of the audio board got you excited, but you’re disappointed to discover there’s no actual pirate broadcasting happening? Well,
the Raspberry Pi can do that, too
.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98O8wwiskhk | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390192",
"author": "Alessandro",
"timestamp": "2021-10-13T09:23:32",
"content": "Something I never understand: why gutting a nice-looking vintage thing and “bringing it to the modern era”? If it’s good make us listen to it and keep it dear, but if it is not working, repair it and y... | 1,760,372,920.823227 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/12/ibm-cheese-cutter-restoration/ | IBM Cheese Cutter Restoration | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"antique",
"cheese",
"ibm",
"machine",
"restoration",
"tool",
"vintage",
"weight",
"wheel"
] | For a while now, Mac Pro towers have had the nickname “cheese grater” because of their superficial resemblance to this kitchen appliance. Apple has only been a company since the 70s, though, and is much newer than one of its historic rivals, IBM. In fact, IBM is old enough to have made actual cheese-related computers as far back as the 1910s, and [Hand Tool Rescue] recently obtained one of
these antique machines for a complete restoration
.
The tool arrived to the restoration workshop in a state so poor that it was difficult to tell what many of the parts on the machine did except for the large cleaver at the top. The build starts with a teardown to its individual parts, cleaning and restoring them to their original luster, machining new ones where needed, and then putting it all back together. The real mystery of this build was what the levers on the underside of the machine were supposed to do, but after the refurbishment it was discovered that these are the way that portions the cheese wheel would be accurately sized and priced before a cut was made.
By placing a section of a wheel of cheese on the machine and inputting its original weight with one of the levers, the second lever is adjusted to the weight of cheese that the customer requested, which rotates the wheel of cheese to the correct position before a cut is made. To us who are spoiled with a world full of electronic devices, a mechanical computer like this seems almost magical, especially with how accurate it is, but if your business in the 1910s involved cheese, this would have been quite normal.
In fact, it would be 50 more years before IBM created the machines that they’re more commonly known for
.
Thanks to [Jasper Jans] for the tip! | 31 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390129",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2021-10-13T02:17:46",
"content": "The original cheese wiz! A cheese Pi computer. Mouse not included. It will make the Cheese It Team as a coach.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6390... | 1,760,372,921.030867 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/12/this-homemade-mass-spectrometer-works/ | This Homemade Mass Spectrometer Works | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"ions",
"mass spec",
"mass spectrometer",
"quadrupole",
"quadrupole mass filter"
] | Hats off to [Paul Brooking] as he shows off his homemade mass spectrometer in two recent videos you can see below. The first video
demonstrates
that the device works. The second video shows details about
how it was made
.
It’s not a good starter project, requiring quite a bit of sophisticated gear including two-stage vacuum pumps, Peltier cold plates, and ion sources, but if you aren’t familiar with mass spectrometers the basic idea is simple enough. You take a sample and bombard it with electrons. This creates a stream of ions of the component parts of the sample. Ions of heavy elements, obviously, weigh more than ions of lighter elements. A magnetic field deflects the ions, and the lighter ones are deflected more than the heavier ones. By detecting ions at a certain spot in the deflected beam, you can determine the relative amount of ions at a certain mass.
There are many ways you can do this, of course. But all mass spectrometers work more or less the same way with just variations on the details. In particular, [Paul’s] device uses a method to detect ions called a
quadrupole mass filter
. There are four parallel rods that create an RF field that oscillates.
We love to see people building things that were once found only in the highest-tech labs. We would love to see more details about how to build this spectrometer so we could try to duplicate it. There is quite a bit of detail, but we feel like it would still be a big deal to recreate this yourself.
This is not the first
homebrew mass spec
we’ve seen. Some of them are
quite inexpensive
. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390115",
"author": "Chris Cox",
"timestamp": "2021-10-13T00:13:46",
"content": "Your “quite inexpensive” link is to a visible light spectrometer – which is VERY different from a mass spectrometer.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,372,920.971491 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/12/3d-printed-adapter-puts-slides-in-their-best-light/ | 3D Printed Adapter Puts Slides In Their Best Light | Tom Nardi | [
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"dslr",
"photographic slide",
"slide scanner",
"slides"
] | If you’ve got old family photos on slides there’s an excellent chance you’ve considered digitizing them at one point or another, but perhaps didn’t know the best way of going about it. In that case, this
3D printed adapter designed by [Rostislav Persion]
that lets you photograph slides with a standard DSLR may be exactly what you were waiting for.
The idea is simple enough, you place the slide inside the adapter, get your focus right, and snap a picture. But of course, you’ve also got to provide some illumination. In this case, the camera is mounted on a tripod and pointed at an appropriate light source. Once you’ve experimented a bit and got the image backlit the way you want it, you can lock everything in place and easily power through a stack of vintage family memories in no time.
For such a straightforward concept, we really appreciate the little details in the execution. For example, rather than just sliding a 3D printed cylinder over the DSLR’s lens, [Rostislav] came up with a foam-padded “shim” that’s strong enough to hold the adapter on without marring anything. The two-part slide spacer that features a bit of springiness to hold everything tight is also a very nice touch.
An approach like this should work nicely for the amount of slides most families are likely to have, but if you’re in a position where you need to digitize thousands of images,
some automation would certainly help things along
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6390048",
"author": "bob",
"timestamp": "2021-10-12T20:50:44",
"content": ">easily power through a stack of vintage family memories in no time<That's fine when the number of slides is limited. In previous life I ran a photography business and had a portfolio of some 20k slides, and ... | 1,760,372,920.870766 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/11/ibm-attempts-an-uncrewed-atlantic-crossing-again/ | IBM Attempts An Uncrewed Atlantic Crossing (Again) | Al Williams | [
"drone hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [] | IBM
and a non-profit company,
ProMare
, failed to send their 49-foot Mayflower autonomous ship across the Atlantic back in June. Now they are almost ready to try again. The Mayflower will recreate the path of its more famous namesake.
The total voyage is set to take a month, but the last attempt developed mechanical problems after three days. Now they are running more sea trials closer to shore before attempting another crossing in 2022.
With a triple-hull design, this Mayflower doesn’t look much like an old sailing vessel and, in fact, uses a combination of power sources. The ship is supposed to use wind turbines, diesel, and solar power. However, according to a Washington Post article, a failure in the generator system reduced the ship’s power to where it was unable to complete its voyage.
The vessel has a number of sensors including six cameras. The “Captain” software uses AI rules that IBM describes as “explainable.” Crossing the Atlantic is one of those things that seems like it would be pretty easy, but handling every eventuality is probably a lot harder than it sounds.
Most of the
crewless ships we’ve seen
probably wouldn’t cross the Atlantic just on their size. We have, however, seen an attempt to automate
cargo vessels
. | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389815",
"author": "cyberteque",
"timestamp": "2021-10-12T03:12:15",
"content": "how big can these get before they need to be registered?when do they stop being modelsI know a guy that wants to tow a detection loop with an autonomous boat, I can’t not get any answers as to legal re... | 1,760,372,920.929432 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/11/the-m5stack-color-maker-can-mix-paint-to-match-your-subject/ | The M5Stack Color Maker Can Mix Paint To Match Your Subject | Robin Kearey | [
"Art",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"paint",
"watercolor"
] | We’ve all learned in primary school art classes that blue and yellow make green, and that adding a little black to a color will make it darker. But what if you want to paint with a color that exactly matches something else? Usually, that requires a lot of trial and error (and paint), and the end result may not look the way you wanted after all.
To help aspiring artists, [Airpocket] made the
M5Stack Color Maker
. This is a device that reads out a color sensor and automatically mixes watercolor paint in the right proportions to match what it sensed. It dispenses drops of cyan, magenta, yellow and black paint (CMYK) into a small bowl, from which you can then apply it with a paintbrush.
The color sensor is similar in use to the color picker (or “dropper”) tool present in most graphics programs: simply point it at something that has the right color, and it will generate the correct values for you. It is based on an AMS TCS34725 color sensor, which is housed in a 3D-printed shell that also includes a white LED. The sensor outputs Red, Green and Blue (RGB) values, which are converted into the corresponding CMYK values by a Raspberry Pi Pico. A touch-sensitive screen allows the user to make adjustments before activating the paint pumps.
Those pumps are tube pumps, which have been specifically designed (and also 3D printed) to allow them to move tiny amounts of liquid while minimizing the pulsing motion typical with this type of pump. They are driven by stepper motors which are controlled by the Pi Pico.
Although many artists might prefer to mix their colors manually, the M5Stack makes mixing that exact shade of blue just that little bit easier. We can also imagine it might help those who are color blind and unable to clearly tell different colors apart. We’ve seen simple
paint mixers
for larger quantities of paint, and even
robots that can do the actual painting for you
. If you need a refresher on color theory,
we’ve got you covered too
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 28 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389775",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2021-10-11T23:42:08",
"content": "I think they mean, “peristaltic pumps” don’t they? They have rollers that squeeze liquids through flexible tubes in a way similar to the action the intestines use to move food. “Peristalsis.” Cool project... | 1,760,372,921.404131 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/11/diy-anemometer-for-projects-big-and-small/ | DIY Anemometer For Projects Big And Small | Chris Wilkinson | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"anemometer",
"sensors",
"weather"
] | When [Fab] needed an anemometer for his latest project, he was stymied by the limited range and relatively high prices of commercial options. Undeterred, his solution was an
impressive DIY anemometer
that rivals the off-the-shelf alternatives.
AnemoSens was designed from the ground up as a component for the ambitious
WinDIY_2 Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine
, however it’s just as suitable as part of your standard home weather station. The microcontroller unit uses RS485/Modbus connectivity, ensuring that data from the wind sensor is accessible across a variety of platforms. Serial-stream via USB and an SD cart slot are also available for recording data, the latter being particularly useful for long-term unsupervised monitoring. [Fab] also integrated an ESP32 for recording data over the air.
The MCU also features a location for the venerable BME280, which is a relatively accurate temperature, pressure and humidity sensor often deployed in DIY weather stations. This feels like a nice touch, as it means the anemometer package alone could feasibly serve as a rudimentary weather sensing station, or as a backup for more elaborate environmental monitoring.
The prototype currently uses a Hall effect sensor for measuring the wind speed, while a AS5048B magnetic rotary encoder does a decent job of measuring rotation (wind direction). Some calibration is likely necessary to improve the accuracy of this setup, but it’s a promising start.
[Fab] has already identified some shortcomings with the bearing, but has a plan for future iterations. He might want to check out this
spare-parts anemometer that uses a bearing from an old hard drive
. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389854",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2021-10-12T09:03:12",
"content": "It’s a 14bit absolute direction sensor, not much calibration needed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6389885",
"author": "fho",
"tim... | 1,760,372,921.540599 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/11/resin-printing-hack-chat/ | Resin Printing Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"3d printing",
"Elegoo",
"Hack Chat",
"MSLA",
"photoploymerization",
"resin",
"sla",
"stereolithography"
] | Join us on Wednesday, October 13 at noon Pacific for the
Resin Printing Hack Chat
with Andrew Sink!
At its heart, 3D printing is such a simple idea that it’s a wonder nobody thought of it sooner. Granted, fused deposition modeling does go back to the 80s, and the relatively recent explosion in cheap, mass-market FDM printers has more to do with cheap components than anything else. But really, at the end of the day, commodity 3D printers are really not much more than glorified hot-glue guns, and while they’re still a foundational technology of the maker movement, they’ve gotten a bit dull.
So it’s natural that we in this community would look for other ways to push the 3D printing envelope, and stereolithography has become the new hotness. And with good reason — messy though it may be, the ability to gradually pull a model from a tank of goo by selective photopolymerization looks magical, and the fine level of detail resin printers are capable of is just as enchanting. So too are the prices of resin printers, which are quickly becoming competitive with commodity FDM printers.
If there’s a resin printer in your future, then you’ll want to swing by the Hack Chat when Andrew Sink visits us. Andrew has been doing a lot of 3D printing stuff in general, and resin printing in particular, over on
his YouTube channel
lately. We’ve featured a couple of his
tricks
and
hacks
for getting the most from a resin printer, and he’ll be sharing some of what he has learned lately. Join us as we discuss the ins and outs of resin printing, what’s involved in taking the dive, and the pros and cons of SLA versus FDM.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, October 13 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389779",
"author": "Nub",
"timestamp": "2021-10-12T00:00:25",
"content": "Printers becoming widely available seems to have more to do with patents expiring than anything else. The patents for FDM printing expired first and quickly thereafter, the Reprap project started that industr... | 1,760,372,921.243118 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/11/cant-spill-coffee-on-your-keyboard-if-its-already-inside/ | Can’t Spill Coffee On Your Keyboard If It’s Already Inside | Kristina Panos | [
"Lifehacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"atmega32u4",
"Kailh chocs",
"keyboard",
"mechanical keyboard"
] | No matter where you live in the world or what beverage you enjoy, it’s too easy to spill it on the keyboard. Obviously, the solution is to combine the two. That’s exactly what Google Japan did this past April Fool’s Day when they released the Gboard —
a cylindrical keyboard wrapped around a removable cup
. But is it still a joke once you’ve
open-sourced it and made a build guide
, more or less?
Here’s where it gets weird: each kanji on the keyboard represents a different kind of fish, and they’re laid out in Japanese phonetic order. You’re not stuck with the fish, though — one of the 60 keys switches between fish input and regular Hiragana (the basic Japanese phonetic alphabet). Underneath all those fish are low-profile Kailh chocs hooked up to an ATMega32u4. We only wish it were wireless.
We love that they open-sourced this keyboard, and it even makes sense in a way. In order to produce a good April Fool’s video, you actually have to make the fake product. The better it is (i.e. weird but plausible),
the more people will like it and probably want one
. So if you’re going to go to all that trouble, why not set it free on GitHub? Note that the second line of the readme is “this is not an officially-supported Google product”, which we suppose goes without saying.
Be sure to check out the short video after the break. If you don’t understand Japanese, you’ll want to turn on the closed captions.
You know, now that Raspberry Pi have made their answer to the Arduino,
it’s about time that Apple made their answer to the Raspberry Pi
.
Via
r/ErgoMechKeyboards | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389700",
"author": "Gilliam Vespa",
"timestamp": "2021-10-11T18:20:04",
"content": "but gboard already exists as the google android swype-able on screen keyboard… or am i getting the name dyslexically wrong?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,921.204762 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/11/automate-the-freight-autonomous-ships-look-for-their-niche/ | Automate The Freight: Autonomous Ships Look For Their Niche | Dan Maloney | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"Automate the Freight",
"autonomous",
"boat",
"cargo",
"container",
"in-shore",
"oceangoing",
"seamen",
"shipping"
] | It is by no means an overstatement to say that life as we know it would grind to a halt without cargo ships. If any doubt remained about that fact, the last year and a half of supply chain woes put that to bed; we all now know just how much of the stuff we need — and sadly, a lot of the stuff we don’t need but still think we do — comes to us by way of one or more ocean crossings, on vessels specialized to carry everything from shipping containers to bulk liquid and solid cargo.
While the large and complex vessels that form the backbone of these globe-spanning supply chains are marvelous engineering achievements, they’re still utterly dependent on their crews to make them run efficiently. So it’s not at all surprising to learn that some shipping lines are working on
ways to completely automate their cargo ships
, to reduce their exposure to the need for human labor. On paper, it seems like a great idea — unless you’re a seafarer, of course. But is it a realistic scenario? Will shipping companies realize the savings that they apparently hope for by having fleets of unmanned cargo vessels plying the world’s oceans? Is this the right way to automate the freight?
Lights-Out Shipping
Details of the plan being proffered by shipping company NYK Lines are slim so far, limited to
a few press releases
with little in the way of technical discussion. But from what we gather, something like 30 shipping companies have formed a consortium called DFFAS, for “Designing the Future of Full Autonomous Ships.” Under the sponsorship of the Japanese government, they’ve built a Fleet Operation Center that will support the operation of crew-less cargo vessels. From the few photos released, the FOC certainly looks the business — sleek consoles, flatscreen monitors everywhere, subdued lighting, and seats for a few operators.
Part of the Fleet Operation Center that NYK Lines built to test autonomous domestic shipping. Source:
NYK Lines
The operations center will provide support for vessels working the coastal trade routes up and down the Japanese archipelago, with a short test voyage scheduled for February of next year. The 236-nm run will take the MV
Suzaku
, an 85-m long container cargo vessel, from Tokyo Bay down the coast to the port in the city of Ise. There’s no word on how or if the ship has been retrofitted for the voyage, but chances are good that since she was built in 2019, she likely had all the latest navigational, communications, and computer gear installed.
MV
Suzaku
, the target of the upcoming automation test. By
AlfvanBeem
, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
What’s interesting about all this is the overall scale of the problem, both in terms of the ship and in terms of the route. The ship itself is rated at 749 gross tons — a maritime measurement of the overall internal volume of a ship — and is therefore a relatively small ship, at least compared to behemoths like transoceanic container vessels and supertankers. A smaller ship should be easier to control than a larger ship. A small ship like the
Suzaku
is also designed to operate close to shore, rather than venture out into the open ocean like the bigger vessels. This has pros and cons for an autonomous test: on the one hand, the test vessel will always be close enough to the FOC that low-latency, direct radio contact should be possible; on the other hand, unlike the open ocean, littoral routes like the one the test will be conducted over tend to be crowded with other ships.
In it for the Short Haul
Route selection for these tests also reveals a lot about the economic problems autonomous shipping is intended to solve. A large container ship may spend weeks on a voyage, over which time a lot can go wrong mechanically. Crews on these vessels are constantly performing repairs on equipment, and when there’s nothing to fix, there are always preventive maintenance tasks to work on. The deck crews of these vessels are always busy, too. Ocean-going container ships are especially labor-intensive; the constant vibration and motion of the ship require that crews check the lashings of containers regularly, to make sure none work themselves loose in transit.
There’s also the fact that long-haul vessels are already highly automated. The evidence for that is plain to see in any of the hundreds of vlogs that mariners post — just look for “container ship tour” in YouTube and you’ll find plenty to choose from. What I’ve noticed from watching these videos (and I’ve watched a lot of them;
JeffHF
and
Chief MAKOi
are among my favorites) is how empty these ships are, at least relative to their size and complexity. One very rarely sees many of the vlogger’s crewmates, and even accounting for camera-shyness or privacy concerns, there just don’t seem to be that many people needed to run one of these big ships.
In-shore shipping, though, seems like it might be a riper target for automation. Most of the tasks that automation would be bad at — performing maintenance on the ship, checking cargo — are less of a factor on voyages that have many legs with more frequent port calls. Automating the other stuff — navigation, steering the ship, and perhaps even shoreside operations — seems like it would have a bigger impact here.
Automation vs. Demographics
There also appears to be a social engineering aspect to the selection of in-shore shipping for NYK’s automation tests. Like other developed countries, Japan is facing a demographic crunch in a lot of industries, especially transportation, where the workforce is trending older overall. There are probably a lot of reasons for this trend, but it may be that in-shore shipping tends to attract older, more experienced workers, who might not want to take contracts that will result in months at sea away from their families. Mariner vlogs seem to support that; most of the crew members on the long-haul vessels tend to be on the young side.
So it would seem that in-shore rather than transoceanic shipping would present the biggest bang for the buck to shipping lines. But will it work? That remains to be seen, of course, but Japan appears to be placing a big bet on it.
The timeline of the DFFAS project
extends out to 2040, and lists a goal of 50% of domestic vessels being fully automated by that point. Between here and there, the consortium aims to have 10% of the domestic fleet automated by 2030, and even has a bullet point for extending some of the core technologies to oceangoing vessels within just a few years.
Setting goals like these are what drives innovation, and we applaud the effort. And in-shore, domestic shipping seems like the logical place to start, and may well bear fruit in the near future. But it seems a bit of a reach to completely replace the crews of larger oceangoing vessels, what with so many tasks that are best performed by skilled human hands. We suspect it’ll be a while before we see lights-out vessels plying these routes. | 46 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389681",
"author": "a_do_z",
"timestamp": "2021-10-11T17:17:39",
"content": "“236-nm run”…”nm”… hmm…huh…oh, nautical miles! Yes, that makes a lot more sense than nanometers. :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6389697",
... | 1,760,372,921.496249 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/11/keith-thorne-engineer-at-ligo-to-deliver-remoticon-keynote/ | Keith Thorne, Engineer At LIGO, To Deliver Remoticon Keynote | Mike Szczys | [
"cons",
"Featured",
"Slider"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Remoticon",
"astromony",
"keynote",
"LIGO",
"science"
] | It is my pleasure to announce that Keith Thorne has graciously agreed to deliver a keynote take at Hackaday Remoticon 2.
Get your ticket now
!
Keith is an astrophysicist and has worked on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) since 2008, literally looking for ripples in space-time that you know as gravitational waves. The effects of the phenomena are so subtle that detecting an event requires planet-scale sensors in the form of 4 km long interferometers placed in different parts of the United States whose readings can be compared against one another. A laser beam inside these interferometers bounces back and forth 300 times for a total travel distance of 1,200 km in which any interaction with gravitational waves will ever-so-slightly alter how the photons from the beam register.
The challenges of building, operating, and interpreting such a device are manifold. These interferometers are the highest precision devices ever devised, able to detect motion 1/10,000 of the diameter of a proton! To get there, the mirrors need to be cooled to 77 nano-Kelvins. Getting the most out of it is what Keith and the rest of the team specialize in. This has included things like hacking the Linux kernel to achieve a sufficient level of
real-time digital control
, and
using “squeezed light”
to improve detection sensitivity in frequencies where quantum mechanics is getting in the way. While the detectors were first run in 2015 & 2016, successfully observing three events, the work to better understand this phenomenon is ongoing and may include a third site in India, and a space-based detector in the future.
In getting to know Keith he mentioned that he is excited to speak to a conference packed with people who want to hear the gory technical details of this fantastic piece of hardware. I’m sure we’re all giddy to learn what he has to say. But if you’re someone who wants to work on a project like this, he tipped us off that there’s
an active EE job posting for LIGO
right now. Maybe you’ll end up doing the keynote at a future Hackaday conference.
Call for Proposals is Still Open!
We’re still on the hunt for great talks about hardware creation. True creativity is fed by a steady stream of inspiration. Be that inspiration by giving a talk about the kinds of things you’ve been working on! | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389691",
"author": "LG",
"timestamp": "2021-10-11T17:41:41",
"content": "Skimming down the front page, I read“…engineer at Lego…”…skip a couple paragraphs……(something about precision interferometers)…Had to scroll up and read the title again!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,372,921.635079 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/11/magnetic-experiments-shows-gradients/ | Magnetic Experiments Shows Gradients | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"iron filings",
"magnet",
"magnetic",
"magnetic field",
"magnetic gradient",
"silicone oil",
"wooly willy"
] | You’ve probably heard the term magnetic gradient before, but have you ever seen one?
Now you can in [supermagnetman’s] video
, below. The key is to use very fine (2 micron) iron filings and special silicone oil. The video is a good mix of whiteboard lectures and practical hands-on experimenting. Just watching him spin the iron filings in the bottle was entertaining. There’s sources in the video description for the oil and the filings if you want to replicate the demonstrations for a classroom or just for your own enjoyment.
It’s one thing to know the math behind magnetic fields. It’s another to be able to use them in practical applications. But a good understanding of the physical manifestation of the magnetic field coupled can help clarify the math and vice versa. There’s a lot of common sense explanations too. For example, the way the filings accelerate as they get closer to the magnet explains why the patterns form the way they do. Iron filings are a traditional way to “see” magnetic fields. Ask anyone who ever had a
Wooly Willy
.
Iron filings can be
fun to play with
, although we don’t think we’ve ever had any this fine. If you prefer your magnetic field visualizations to be higher-tech,
we have the answer
. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389739",
"author": "Sean",
"timestamp": "2021-10-11T20:20:43",
"content": "I’ll say it because no one else is….This is cool. Nice work.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6389752",
"author": "EnnyPenny",
"timestamp": "202... | 1,760,372,921.57939 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/11/things-are-looking-brighter-but-not-the-stars/ | Things Are Looking Brighter! But Not The Stars | Bob Baddeley | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Science",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"light pollution",
"observatory",
"satellite"
] | Growing up in Montana I remember looking out at night and seeing the Milky Way, reminding me of my insignificance in the universe. Now that I live in a city, such introspection is no longer easy, and like 1/2 of humanity that also lives in urban areas, I must rely on satellites to provide the imagery. Yet satellites are part of the problem. Light pollution has been getting worse for decades, and with the recent steady stream of satellite launches and billionaire joyrides we have a relatively new addition to the sources of interference. So how bad is it, and how much worse will it get?
Looking up at the night sky, you can usually tell the difference between various man-made objects. Planes go fairly slowly across the sky, and you can sometimes see them blinking green and red. Meteors are fast and difficult to see. Geostationary satellites don’t appear to move at all because they are orbiting at the same rate as earth’s rotation, while other orbit types will zip by.
SpaceX has committed to reducing satellite brightness, and some observations have confirmed that
new models are a full magnitude darker
, right at the threshold of naked-eye observation. Unfortunately, it’s only a step in the right direction, and not enough to satisfy astronomers, who aren’t looking up at the night sky with their naked eyes, naturally.
The satellites aren’t giving off the light themselves. They are merely reflecting the light from the sun back to the earth, exactly the same way the moon is. Thus something that is directly in the shadow of the Earth will not reflect any light, but near the horizon the reflection from the satellites can be significant. It’s not practical to only focus our observatories in the narrow area that is the Earth’s shadow during the night, so we must look closer to the horizon and capture the reflections of the satellites.
What Would Satisfy Astronomers?
Sunlight reflects off space debris and satellites and reflects onto the night side of Earth. [
https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.17125
]
While it’s entertaining to imagine astronomers as crotchety old men shaking their fist at the sky and yelling “get off my lawn” at the passing satellites, their concerns are valid, and the impacts are measurable and potentially catastrophic.
When photographing the stars, the galactic paparazzi are using complicated and sensitive equipment. The exposure times are very long in order to gather enough light. But when a satellite passes over, its brightness can saturate the CCD, which doesn’t just ruin one pixel in the image, but a whole line as the satellite streaked through the shot. Further, the camera is focused way beyond low earth orbit, so the satellite is blurry, making the thin line into a wide gash across the image. Thus in any given image, the efficiency of the image, or how many pixels are usable, is significantly impacted by any satellite passing overhead.
The streak of a satellite not only saturates pixels, but the focus interrupts nearby pixels, and inter-CCD crosstalk creates additional errors. [
https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.12417
]
Even if the satellites were completely black, though, their passing in front of stars would cause the stars to appear have brief dips in brightness. Rather than having a bright gash across the image it would be a dark gash. Astronomers use dips in brightness for everything from exoplanet detection to estimations of nebula density.
The relative movement of all of the celestial bodies, and the rotation of Earth and position of the observatory are all calculated by a scheduler that determines when the best time is to take a photo of a specific part of the sky. It’s certainly possible to add the positions of satellites into that calculation to determine when is the optimum time to take a photo without interference. But with thousands of satellites already in space, and tens of thousands more planned, the windows are getting shorter and shorter, the delays until the right time is available are getting longer and longer, and the calculations become not about avoiding images with satellites but just reducing the number of gashes.
Astronomers can calculate the exact loss of efficiency caused by the satellites. At the Rubin Observatory LSST, they have found that with 48000 LEO satellites in orbit, about
30% of all LSST images would contain at least one satellite trail
, and
at least 1% of pixels would be lost
. Further, because multiple images must be taken to compare, and a lot more math has to be applied to pixels to mathematically erase the trails (as long as the pixels hadn’t reached saturation), the extra effort required would extend surveys by several months.
The effects could be catastrophic. When it’s so bright in here that we can’t see out, we can’t identify external threats, like approaching asteroids. We already know where many of the nearby stars are and the mechanics of their motion, but we don’t often know about the much smaller, much dimmer asteroids that may have paths we don’t know about, that could intersect with ours. Being able to detect them requires constant attention to the vastness of our surroundings, and they could easily be masked by a passing satellite, delaying their detection.
So what’s the right amount for astronomers? The idealists might say only theirs. The pragmatic want to work with the space companies to take measures to reduce their impact. And the fearful worry that if efforts aren’t put in from the beginning then it will become a free-for-all with nobody bothering to put in the work to reduce their impact.
What About Us Plebs?
It’s one thing for the individual satellites to be visible to the naked eye, but even if they were darkened, the cumulative effect of tens of thousands of satellites scatters enough light that the night sky becomes brighter overall. With all the objects currently in the sky it’s estimated to be about
10% brighter already
than it was in the 70s. If you live in the city and can’t already see the stars, maybe this doesn’t affect you at all. But for everyone else, this may mean the difference between seeing the Milky Way and not. Being able to see it in Montana was profound; for the whole world to be denied that so that some people can get better Internet is disappointing.
This is how I remember Montana. NPS Photo / Milky Way over Big Prairie, Glacier National Park
After some digital manipulation, this is what it would look like if the sky was brighter. Everything looks more washed out.
[Banner photo: “Castle Geyser & Milky Way”, NPS photo by Neal Herbert, Public Domain] | 37 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389647",
"author": "MikeR",
"timestamp": "2021-10-11T15:19:35",
"content": "Got into an argument about how we detect approaching asteroids by the dip in light of background stars. The dude was dead set on that not being how they are detected. So even if the sats aren’t illuminated ... | 1,760,372,921.751002 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/11/tiny-winged-circuits-fall-with-style/ | Tiny Winged Circuits Fall With Style | Danie Conradie | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"glider",
"helicopter seeds",
"sensor node"
] | Researchers at Northwestern University is moving the goalposts on how small you can make a tiny flying object down to 0.5 mm, effectively creating
flying microchips
. Although “falling with style” is probably a more accurate description.
A larger “IoT Macroflyer” with more conventional circuitry
Like
similar projects
we featured before from the
Singapore University of Technology and Design
, these tiny gliders are inspired by the “helicopter seeds” produced by various tree species. They consist of a single shape memory polymer substrate, with circuitry consisting of silicon nanomembrane transistors and chromium/gold interconnects transferred onto it.
Looking at the
research paper
, it appears that the focus at this stage was mainly on the aerodynamics and manufacturing process, rather than creating functional circuitry. A larger “IoT Macroflyer” did include normal ICs, which charges a super capacitor from a set of photodiodes operating in the UV-A spectrum, which acts as a cumulative dosimeter. The results of which can be read via NFC after recovery.
As with other similar projects, the proposed use-cases include environmental monitoring and surveillance. Air-dropping a large quantity of these devices over the landscape would constitute a rather serious act of pollution, for which case the researchers have also created a biodegradable version. Although we regard these “airdropped sensor swarms” with a healthy amount of skepticism and trepidation, we suspect that they will probably be used at some point in the future. We just hope that those responsible would have considered all the possible consequences. | 10 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389578",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2021-10-11T11:06:36",
"content": "Considering the smallest camera and flat lens combination is smaller than a grain of rice and the same could be said for a comparable processor and transmitter. I’m just imagining thousands of these being ... | 1,760,372,923.840944 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/11/handheld-bandsaw-gets-standup-conversion-with-scrap-lumber/ | Handheld Bandsaw Gets Standup Conversion With Scrap Lumber | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"band saw",
"bandsaw",
"tool",
"tools"
] | Handheld band saws exist, and can be highly useful tools. However, they lack some of the finesse and precision of the more traditional upright units, particularly for with smaller workpieces. [Honus] set about rectifying this,
building a stand for their DeWalt handheld bandsaw out of scrap lumber.
The stand consists of some hefty wooden beams sawn to length and screwed together to make a support for the bandsaw. A nice 1/4″ thick aluminium plate is installed as a baseplate for cutting.
Then, the handheld bandsaw itself is attached to the rig, held in place with a bolt and a large zip tie. The zip tie is fastened around the trigger, holding it down all the time. Then, a switched powerboard is used to turn the saw on and off as needed. Importantly, simply cutting a ziptie and removing a bolt is enough to restore the handheld saw to its original purpose.
It’s a tidy build and one that makes an existing tool more useful for minimal extra cost. We’ve actually seen bandsaws
built from scratch, too.
If you’re cooking up your own great hacks in the home shop,
be sure to let us know! | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389565",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2021-10-11T09:03:44",
"content": "I did a similar thing, but using toggle clamps to hold the bandsaw in place on the table so that it can be quickly demounted for use by hand or on the horizontal angle table.If you do this, I would advo... | 1,760,372,923.496167 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/10/gps-with-starlink-we-dont-need-it-any-more/ | GPS? With Starlink, We Don’t Need It Any More! | Jenny List | [
"Space"
] | [
"global positioning",
"gps",
"Starlink"
] | To find your position on the earth’s surface there are a variety of satellite-based navigation systems in orbit above us, and many receiver chipsets found in mobile phones and the like can use more than one of them. Should you not wish to be tied to a system produced by a national government though, there’s now an alternative. It comes not from an official source though, but as a side-effect of something else. Researchers at Ohio State University
have used the Starlink satellite broadband constellation to derive positional fixing
, achieving a claimed 8-metre accuracy.
The press release is light on information about the algorithm used, but since it mentions that it relies on having advance knowledge of the position and speed of each satellite we’re guessing that it measures the Doppler shift of each satellite’s signal during a pass to determine a relative position which can be refined by subsequent observations of other Starlink craft.
The most interesting takeaway is that while this technique leverages the Starlink network, it doesn’t have any connection to the service itself. Instead it’s an entirely passive use of the satellites, and though its accuracy is around an order of magnitude less than that achievable under GPS it delivers a position fix still useful enough to fit the purposes of plenty of users.
Earlier in the year there was some amusement when the British government bought a satellite broadband company
under the reported impression it could plug the gap left by their withdrawal from the European Galileo project
. Given this revelation, maybe they were onto something after all!
Thanks [Renze] for the tip. | 58 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389535",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2021-10-11T05:41:28",
"content": "8-metre accuracy is great and all… though it’s still worse than the original GPS. :/The real question is, what possible application could make this useful?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,372,923.450069 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/10/arduino-becomes-superhet-with-a-little-help-from-friends/ | Arduino Becomes Superhet With A Little Help From Friends | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"Arduion",
"SI5351",
"superhet",
"Superhetrodyne"
] | A radio receiver is always a fun project. [Jayakody2000lk] decided that his new
superheterodyne design
would use an Arduino and it looks like it came out very nicely. The system has four boards. An off-the-shelf Arduino, a Si5351 clock generator board (also off-the-shelf), and two custom boards that contain the IF amplifier and mixer.
The receiver started out in 2015 without the Arduino, and there’s a link in the post to that original design. Using the Si5351 and the Arduino replaces the original local oscillator and there have been other improvements, as well. You can see a video about the receiver below.
Tuning is by a rotary encoder and the current software lets you tune from about 4.75 MHz to a little over 15.8 MHz. Of course, you could change to any frequency the Si5351 can handle as long as the mixer and other components can handle it. The IF frequency is the usual 455 kHz.
If you decide to build this yourself, the design files are on
GitHub
. Overall a very nice and neat design. We are always amazed how little radio architecture has changed since
Edwin Armstrong’s
day. Of course, we have better components, even if
they aren’t meant for radio purposes
. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389542",
"author": "Joshua",
"timestamp": "2021-10-11T06:32:19",
"content": "Cool! 😎 Superhets make me feel super nostalgic.I used to use them before direct-conversion receivers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6389545",
"... | 1,760,372,923.271064 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/10/hackaday-links-october-10-2021/ | Hackaday Links: October 10, 2021 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"ai",
"Beethoven",
"bgp",
"Blue Origin",
"Captain Kirk",
"car theft",
"cb",
"citizens band",
"data center",
"dns",
"facebook",
"fcc",
"fm",
"hackaday links",
"mode",
"modulation",
"Shatner"
] | We have to admit, it was hard not to be insufferably smug this week when
Facebook temporarily went dark around the globe
. Sick of being stalked by crazy aunts and cousins, I opted out of that little slice of cyber-hell at least a decade ago, so Monday’s outage was no skin off my teeth. But it was nice to see that the world didn’t stop turning. More interesting are the technical postmortems on the outage, particularly
this great analysis by the good folks at the University of Nottingham
. Dr. Steve Bagley does a great job explaining how Facebook likely pushed a configuration change to the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) that propagated through the Internet and eventually erased all routes to Facebook’s servers from the DNS system. He also uses a graphical map of routes to show peer-to-peer connections to Facebook dropping one at a time, until their machines were totally isolated. He also offers speculation on why Facebook engineers were denied internal access, sometimes physically, to their own systems.
It may be a couple of decades overdue, but the US Federal Communications Commission finally decided to
allow FM voice transmissions on Citizen’s Band radios
. It seems odd to be messing around with a radio service whose heyday was in the 1970s, but Cobra, the CB radio manufacturer, petitioned for a rule change to allow frequency modulation in addition to the standard amplitude modulation that’s currently mandatory. It’s hard to say how this will improve the CB user experience, which last time we checked is a horrifying mix of shouting, screaming voices often with a weird echo effect, all put through powerful — and illegal — linear amps that distort the signal beyond intelligibility. We can’t see how a little less static is going to improve that.
Can you steal a car with a Game Boy? Probably not, but
car thieves in the UK are using some sort of device hidden in a Game Boy case to boost expensive cars
. A group of three men in Yorkshire used the device, which supposedly cost £20,000 ($27,000), to wirelessly defeat the security systems on cars in seconds. They stole cars for garages and driveways to the tune of £180,000 — not a bad return on their investment. It’s not clear how the device works, but we’d love to find out — for science, of course.
There have been tons of stories lately about all the things AI is good for, and all the magical promises it will deliver on given enough time. And it may well, but we’re still early enough in the AI hype curve to take everything we see with a grain of salt. However, one area that bears watching is the ability of AI to help fill in the gaps left when an artist is struck down before completing their work. And perhaps no artist left so much on the table as Ludwig von Beethoven, with his famous unfinished 10th Symphony. When the German composer died, he had left only a few notes on what he wanted to do with the four-movement symphony. But those notes, along with a rich body of other works and deep knowledge of the composer’s creative process, have allowed
a team of musicologists and AI experts to complete the 10th Symphony
. The article contains a lot of technical detail, both on the musical and the informatics sides. How will it sound? Here’s a preview:
And finally,
Captain Kirk is finally getting to space
. William Shatner, who played captain — and later admiral — James Tiberius Kirk from the 1960s to the 1990s, will head to space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket on Tuesday. At 90 years old, Shatner will edge out
Wally Funk
, who recently set the record after her Blue Origin flight at the age of 82. It’s interesting that Shatner agreed to go, since he is said to have previously refused the offer of a ride upstairs with Virgin Galactic. Whatever the reason for the change of heart, here’s hoping the flight goes well. | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389486",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2021-10-10T23:11:59",
"content": "Yeah, that NSA firmware sometimes causes problems when you load in onto your servers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6389487",
"author": "Michael ... | 1,760,372,923.581067 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/09/single-event-upsets-high-energy-particles-from-outer-space-flipping-bits/ | Single Event Upsets: High Energy Particles From Outer Space Flipping Bits | Danie Conradie | [
"Science",
"Space"
] | [
"cosmic rays",
"space radiation",
"veritasium"
] | Our world is constantly bombarded by high-energy particles from various sources, and if they hit in just the right spot on the sensitive electronics our modern world is built on, they can start flipping bits. Known as
Single Event Upsets
(SEU), their effect can range from unnoticeable to catastrophic, and [Veritasium] explores this phenomenon in the video after the break.
The existence of radiation has been known since the late 1800s, but the effect of low-level radiation on electronics was only recognized in the 1970s when trace amounts of radioactive material in the ceramic packaging of Intel DRAM chips started causing errors. The most energetic particles come from outer space and are known as cosmic rays. They originate from supernovas and black holes, and on earth they have been linked to an
impossibly fast Super Mario 64 speedrun
and a counting error in a Belgian election. It’s also possible to see their path using a
cloud chamber you can build yourself
. There are even research projects that
use the camera sensors of smartphones as distributed cosmic ray detectors
.
Earth’s magnetic field acts as a protective barrier against the majority of these cosmic rays, and there is a measurable increase in radiation as you gain altitude and enter space. In space, serious steps need to be taken to protect spacecraft, and it’s for this reason that the
Perseverance
rover that landed on Mars this year uses a 20-year-old main computer, the PowerPC RAD750. It has a proven track record of radiation resistance and has been used on more than a dozen spacecraft. Astronauts experience cosmic radiation in the form of flashes of light when they close their eyes and
protecting their DNA from damaging effects is a serious concern for NASA
.
It’s impossible to know the true impact of cosmic radiation on our world and even our history. Who knows, one of those impossible-to-replicate software bugs or the inspiration for your latest project might have originated in another galaxy. | 13 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389262",
"author": "fonz",
"timestamp": "2021-10-09T23:05:04",
"content": "at one point Xilinx had an issue with new lead used in certain packages flipping bits",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6389273",
"author": "M",... | 1,760,372,923.361363 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/09/drive-high-impedance-headphones-with-this-stylish-usb-dac/ | Drive High-Impedance Headphones With This Stylish USB DAC | Jenny List | [
"home entertainment hacks",
"Portable Audio Hacks"
] | [
"dac",
"headphone amplifier",
"usb audio"
] | For anyone with an interest in building audio projects, it’s likely that an early project will be a headphone amplifier. They’re relatively easy to build from transistors, ICs, or tubes, and it’s possible to build one to a decent quality without being an electronic engineering genius. It’s not often though that we see one as miniaturized as [daumemo]’s
USB-C DAC and headphone amplifier combo
, that fits within a slightly elongated 3.5 mm jack cover as part of a small USB-to-headphone cable.
The DAC is an off-the-shelf board featuring an ALC4042 IC, it has a line-level output and a handy place to tap off a 5 volt line for the amplifier. This final part is a tiny PCB with two chips, a TPS65135 that produces clean +5 and -5 volt rails, and an INA1620 which is a high-quality audio amplifier set up for 2x gain. All this has been designed onto a very small PCB, which sits inside a 3D-printed housing along with the 3.5 mm earphone socket. The result is a very neat unit far better able do drive high-impedance headphones than the output from an unmodified DAC, but still looking as svelte as any commercial product. We like it.
This may be one of the most compact USB-to-headphone amplifiers we’ve seen, but
it’s by no means the first
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389309",
"author": "Collie147",
"timestamp": "2021-10-10T08:41:45",
"content": "Hmm I’ll have to see if there’s a matching XLR input one for a decent mic (with phantom power?). Really up my home video conferencing game.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,923.530668 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/09/making-coffee-with-hydrogen/ | Making Coffee With Hydrogen | Jenny List | [
"chemistry hacks",
"green hacks"
] | [
"aluminium",
"aluminum",
"green energy",
"hydrogen",
"NaOH"
] | Something of a Holy Grail among engineers with an interest in a low-carbon future is the idea of replacing fossil fuel gasses with hydrogen. There are various schemes, but they all suffer from the problem that hydrogen is difficult stuff to store or transport. It’s not easily liquefied, and the tiny size of its molecule means that many containment materials that are fine for methane simply won’t hold on to it.
[Isographer] has an idea: to transport the energy not as hydrogen but as metallic aluminium, and generate hydrogen by reaction with aqueous sodium hydroxide. He’s demonstrated it
by generating enough hydrogen to make a cup of coffee
, as you can see in the video below the break.
It’s obviously very successful, but how does it stack up from a green perspective? The feedstocks are aluminium and sodium hydroxide, and aside from the hydrogen it produces sodium aluminate. Aluminium is produced by electrolysis of molten bauxite and uses vast amounts of energy to produce, but since it is often most economic to do so using hydroelectric power then it can be a zero-carbon store of energy. Sodium hydroxide is also produced by an electrolytic process, this time using brine as the feedstock, so it also has the potential to be produced with low-carbon electricity. Meanwhile the sodium aluminate solution is a cisutic base, but one that readily degrades to inert aluminium oxide and hydroxide in the environment. So while it can’t be guaranteed that the feedstock he’s using is low-carbon, it’s certainly a possibility.
So given scrap aluminium and an assortment of jars it’s possible to make a cup of hot coffee. It’s pretty obvious that this technology won’t be used in the home in this way, but does that make it useless? It’s not difficult to imagine energy being transported over distances as heavy-but-harmless aluminium metal, and we’re already seeing
a different chemistry with the same goal being used to power vehicles
. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389214",
"author": "Bruce Perens K6BP",
"timestamp": "2021-10-09T17:09:45",
"content": "This sounds like a very expensive and complicated form of the carbide lamp. The question is not whether it would work, of course it would, but whether it could ever be economical in comparison t... | 1,760,372,923.693716 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/09/hackers-and-china/ | Hackers And China | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Slider",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"javascript",
"manufacturing",
"reverse engineering",
"smartwatch"
] | The open source world and Chinese manufacturing have a long relationship. Some fifteen years ago, the big topic was how companies could open-source their hardware designs and not get driven bankrupt by competition from overseas. Companies like Sparkfun, Adafruit, Arduino, Maple Labs, Pololu, and many more demonstrated that this wasn’t impossible after all.
Maybe ten years ago, Chinese firms started picking up interesting hacker projects and producing them. This gave us hits like the
AVR transistor tester
and
the NanoVNA
. In the last few years, we’ve seen open-source hardware and software projects that have
deliberately targeted Chinese manufacturers
, and won. We do the design and coding, they do the manufacturing, sales, and distribution.
But this is something else:
the Bangle.js watch
takes an essentially mediocre Chinese smartwatch and reflashes the firmware, and sells them as open-source smartwatches to the general public. These pre-hacked watches are being sold on Kickstarter, and although the works stands on the shoulders of
previous hacker’s reverse engineering work on the non-open watch hardware
, it’s being sold by the prime mover behind the Espruino JavaScript-on-embedded language, which it runs on.
We have a cheap commodity smartwatch, being sold with frankly mediocre firmware, taken over by hackers, re-flashed, re-branded, and sold by the hackers on Kickstarter. As a result of it being (forcibly) opened, there’s a
decently sized app store
of contributed open-source applications that’ll run on the platform, making it significantly more useful
and
hacker friendly than it was before.
Will this boost sales? Will China notice the hackers’ work? Will this, and similar projects, end up in yet another new hacker/China relationship? We’re watching.
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
! | 26 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389193",
"author": "William J. Jackson",
"timestamp": "2021-10-09T14:27:51",
"content": "Years ago, after the war, all major cities had a ‘surplus’ row. There you could buy all manner of radios and parts that were left over from the war effort. We also had the Heath kits and later ... | 1,760,372,923.644729 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/09/when-benchies-fly/ | When Benchies Fly | Al Williams | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"benchie",
"drone",
"radio control"
] | Most of us have printed a few benchies to test our 3D printers. The intrepid little boat has a variety of features that tax different parts of the printing process. However, the guys at [FliteTest] had a different idea. They set out in a competition to build a giant
flying benchie
. They aren’t quite done, but they did make some interesting progress, as you can see in the video below.
In all fairness, the benchies are not, themselves, 3D printed. Foamboard, however, is a bit more practical. Inevitably, you can’t help but think of a flying boat when you see the results.
There’s something a little surreal about watching a benchie glide or fly over the field. We did find it interesting watching the iterative process they used to test the airframe. A flying benchie is probably not the most practical project, but we get it.
By the end of the video, they had something flying, but they apparently have some more work to get to the end which they’ve promised to share in an upcoming video.
If you want something marginally more practical, why not convert
an RC boat to a seaplane
? Given that benchie is a boat, we hope they
waterproofed their foamboard
. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389231",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-09T18:42:27",
"content": "I didn’t finish the video.It seems like a fun project.But doesn’t it all come down to,“with enough thrust, anything can fly”?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment... | 1,760,372,923.311002 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/09/nifty-chip-adapter-does-the-impossible/ | Nifty Chip Adapter Does The Impossible | Jenny List | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"qfn",
"QFP",
"soldering"
] | The semiconductor shortage has curtailed the choices available to designers and caused some inventive solutions to be found, but
the one used by [djzc]
is probably the most inventive we’ve yet seen. The footprint trap, when a board is designed for one footprint but shortages mean the part is only available in another, has caught out many an engineer this year. In this case an FTDI chip had been designed with a PCB footprint for a QFN package when the only chip to be found was a QFP from a breakout board.
The three boards which make up the adapter
For those unfamiliar with semiconductor packaging, a QFN and QFP share a very similar epoxy package, but the QFN has its pins on the underside flush with the epoxy and the QFP has them splayed out sideways. A QFP is relatively straightforward to hand-solder so it’s likely we’ll have seen more of them than QFNs on these pages.
There is no chance for a QFP to be soldered directly to a QFN footprint, so what’s to be done? The solution is an extremely inventive one, a two-PCB sandwich bridging the two. A lower PCB is made of thick material and mirrors the QFN footprint above the level of the surrounding components, while the upper one has the QFN on its lower side and a QFP on its upper. When they are joined together they form an inverted top-hat structure with a QFN footprint below and a QFP footprint on top. Difficult to solder in place, but the result is a QFP footprint to which the chip can be attached. We like it, it’s much more elegant than
elite dead-bug soldering
! | 30 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389154",
"author": "Meri Coury",
"timestamp": "2021-10-09T09:40:05",
"content": "Seems to me there coukd be a pin insertion made and then run the the wave to solder without liding control of the placement.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,372,923.909217 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/model-f-keyboard-restoration-goes-the-extra-mile/ | Model F Keyboard Restoration Goes The Extra Mile | Chris Wilkinson | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"ibm",
"IBM model F",
"Model F",
"retro computing",
"vintage computing"
] | The IBM Model F keyboard should need no introduction. Famed for its buckling spring key mechanisms, the Model F is lusted over for its satisfying typing experience and Armageddon-proof build quality. First introduced in 1981, many of these keyboards will now naturally require basic maintenance. However, [Epictronics] recently went a step further and
restored a Model F to like-new condition
.
Missing keycaps were the least of his worries, as both new and old replacements are relatively easy to come by. [Epictronics] was more concerned about the forty-year-old foam sandwiched tight inside the keyboard, most likely having long since degraded. Apart from being plain gross, the decaying foam has the potential to foul the buckling spring switches. After taking apart the body and removing the ‘disgusting’ foam pad, a replacement was forged from neoprene and a handy-dandy hole punch.
Disassembly of the keyboard case required the gentle touch of a mallet, and reassembly needed similarly inappropriate tools. As demonstrated in
this vintage clip from IBM
, keyboard assembly was (and still is) performed automatically by robots, driven by an IBM Series/1 minicomputer. These robots were equally impressive for their precision and strength. Without access to IBM’s aptly named ‘closing tool’ and various other robotic helpers, [Epictronics] had to settle for pool noodles and a comically large clamp during reassembly, mixed with sheer determination.
Other neat tricks in the video include applying heat to reform the coiled keyboard cable, and using car polish to clean the case plastics. The latter has the potential to make things worse, so a delicate hand is needed to maintain the textured plastic.
We recently covered
another Model F restoration
, and it’s exciting to see so many dedicated hackers keeping these keyboards clickety-clacking well into the 21st century.
https://youtu.be/Tmllb-qNA68 | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389144",
"author": "Epictronics",
"timestamp": "2021-10-09T08:35:13",
"content": "Thanks for posting. A viewer pointed out to me that this very keyboard belonged to IBM Deutschland. The black sticker is apparently their inventory number. Knowing this, I will revert this keyboard ba... | 1,760,372,924.118289 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/10/with-luos-rapid-embedded-deployment-is-simplified/ | With Luos Rapid Embedded Deployment Is Simplified | Dave Rowntree | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Development"
] | [
"embedded",
"luos",
"portability",
"programming",
"software reuse",
"stm32"
] | Those of us tasked with developing firmware for embedded systems have a quite a few hurdles to jump through compared to those writing for the desktop or mobile platforms. Solved problems such as code reuse or portability are simply harder. It was with considerable interest that we learnt of
another approach to hardware abstraction, called Luos
, which describes itself as micro-services for embedded systems.
This open source project enables deployment of distributed architectures composed of collaborating micro-services. By containerizing applications and hardware drivers, interfaces to the various components are hidden behind a consistent API. It doesn’t even matter where a resource is located, multiple services may be running on the same microcontroller, or separate ones, yet they can communicate in the same way.
By following
hardware
and
software
design rules, it’s possible to create an architecture of cooperating computing units, that’s completely agnostic of the actual hardware. Microcontrollers talk at the hardware level with a pair of bidirectional signals, so the hardware cost is very low. It even integrates with ROS, so making robots is even easier.
Luos architecture
By integrating a special block referred to as a
Gate
, it is possible to connect to the architecture in real-time from a host computer via USB, WiFi, or serial port, and stream data out, feed data in, or deploy new software. The host software stack is based around
Python, running under Jupyter Notebook
, which we absolutely love.
Current
compatibility
is with many STM32 and ATSAM21 micros, so chances are good you can use it with whatever you have lying around, but more platforms are promised for the future.
Now yes, we’re aware of
CMSIS
, and the idea of Hardware Abstraction Layers (HALs) used as part of the platform-specific software kits, this is nothing new. But, different platforms work quite differently, and porting code from one to another, just because
you can no longer get your preferred microcontroller any more
, is a real drag we could all do without, so why not go clone the
GitHub
and have a look for yourselves? | 18 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389454",
"author": "Danjovic",
"timestamp": "2021-10-10T20:39:46",
"content": "It looks to me more like a bus topology with an associated API.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6389709",
"author": "Nicolas (Luis)",
... | 1,760,372,923.980296 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/10/a-bike-trailer-for-any-expedition/ | A Bike Trailer For Any Expedition | Jenny List | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bike trailer",
"trailer",
"wheelbarrow"
] | One of the greatest challenges for a hardware hacker relying only on a bicycle for transport lies in the regular need to carry more than can be slung from the handlebars or on the luggage rack of your trusty steed. One of our favourite YouTube creators in our sphere, [Laura Kampf], has addressed this problem with
a trailer for her electric bike made from a pair of second-hand wheelbarrows
. She uses their buckets to make a clamshell box, and their wheels alongside a custom steel chassis to make the rest of the trailer.
As always with Laura’s work it’s a delight to watch, with some careful use of the cutting wheel to install hinges and vents in the upper bucket. Finishing touches are a chequer plate top for the trailer and a spare wheel mounted on the back for that extra-rugged look. Experience with wheelbarrow wheels suggests to us that the slightly more expensive ones with ball bearings are worth the investment over the plastic ones, but either way this is a bike trailer that means business.
We don’t see as many bike trailers as we’d like here at Hackaday, and those few we have are old enough to have succumbed to link-rot. Perhaps this project might tempt a few people to try their hand? | 30 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389396",
"author": "Or bugs for that matter.",
"timestamp": "2021-10-10T17:10:37",
"content": "How does it keep the rain out?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6389422",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-10T18:41:41"... | 1,760,372,924.051248 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/10/axial-flux-motors-for-electric-vehicles/ | Axial Flux Motors For Electric Vehicles | Al Williams | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"axial flux",
"axial flux motor",
"electric vehicle",
"ev",
"motor"
] | In the everything old is new again folder,
[Lesics] has a good overview of axial flux motors
. These are promising for electric vehicles, especially aircraft, since the motors should have high torque to weight ratio. The reason this is actually something old is that the early generators built by Faraday were actually of the axial flux type. Soon, though, radial flux generators and motors became the norm.
The simple explanation is that in a radial system, the magnetic flux lines are perpendicular to the axis of rotation. In the axial system, the flux lines are parallel to the axis of rotation. There’s more to it than just that of course, and the video below has nice animations showing how it all works.
While these are not very common, they do exist even today. The
Lynch motor
, for example, is a type of axial flux motor that dates back to 1979. Usually, the impetus for using an axial flux motor is the ease of construction, but with the right design, they can be quite efficient (up to 96% according to the video).
We’ve seen plenty of
PCB motors
and most of those are axial in design. Not
all of them
, though. | 37 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389367",
"author": "pierremuth",
"timestamp": "2021-10-10T14:25:20",
"content": "Like a direct drive turntable?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6389370",
"author": "tgyjty",
"timestamp": "2021-10-10T14:38:50",
"cont... | 1,760,372,924.364167 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/10/autonomous-ground-effect-vehicle-demonstrator-aims-to-speed-up-maritime-shipping/ | Autonomous Ground Effect Vehicle Demonstrator Aims To Speed Up Maritime Shipping | Danie Conradie | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"ardupilot",
"ekranoplan",
"ground effect",
"lidar",
"rctestflight",
"think flight"
] | Ground effect vehicles, or ekranoplans, have the advantage of being more efficient than normal aircraft and faster than boats, but so far haven’t been developed beyond experimental prototypes. Fortunately, this doesn’t stop companies from trying, which has led to a collaboration between [ThinkFlight] and [rctestflight] to create a
small-scale demonstrator
for the
Flying Ship Company
.
The Flying Ship Company wants to use unmanned electric ekranoplans as high-speed marine cargo carriers that can use existing maritime infrastructure for loading and unloading. For the scale model, [rctestflight] was responsible for the electronics and software, while [ThinkFlight] built the airframe. As with his
previous ekranoplan build
, [ThinkFlight] designed it in XFLR5, cut the parts from foam using a CNC hot wire cutter (which we still want a better look at), and
laminated it with Kevlar
for strength. One of the challenges of ground effect vehicles is that the center of pressure will shift rearward as they leave a ground effect, causing them to pitch up. To maintain control when moving into and out of ground effect, these crafts often use a large horizontal stabilizer high up on the tail, out of ground effect.
A major feature of this demonstrator is automatic altitude control using a LIDAR sensor mounted on the bottom. This was developed by [rctestflight] using a
simple foam board ekranoplan
and
[Think Flighs]’s previous airframe
, with some custom code added to ArduPilot. It works very well on smooth, calm water, but waves introduce a lot of noise into the LIDAR data. It looks like they were able to overcome this challenge, and completed several successful test flights in calm and rough conditions.
The final product looks good, flies smoothly, and is easy to control since the pilot doesn’t need to worry about pitch or throttle control. It remains to be seen if The Flying Boat will overcome the challenges required to turn it into a successful commercial craft, and we will be following the project closely. | 35 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389326",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2021-10-10T11:21:57",
"content": "Dont forget:-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_Sea_Monster",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6389328",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2021-10... | 1,760,372,924.294947 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/10/1981-called-heres-your-software/ | 1981 Called, Here’s Your Software | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Development"
] | [
"basic",
"game listing",
"trs-80"
] | How many of us who have a few decades of adulthood under our belts would like to talk to our 17 year old selves? “
Hey kid, it’s all gonna be OK. Also, Duke Nukem Forever does come out eventually, but it’s not going to be pretty!”
Being honest, exposure to the hot takes of one’s naive teenage self would almost certainly be as cringeworthy as the time-worn-but-familiar adult would be to the teenager, but there’s one way in which you can in a sense have a conversation with your teenage self. [Mad Ned] had this opportunity,
when he discovered a printed BASIC listing for a game he’d written for the TRS-80 back in 1981
. Could he make it run again, and what did it tell him about his teenage years?
Grizzled 8-bit veterans will tell you of countless hours spent typing poorly-reproduced listings found in magazines, and the inevitable pain that followed as all those mistypes were ironed out. [Ned] eschewed all that retro experience because this is the 21st century, and we now have much more powerful computers to do our bidding! The reality of incomplete OCR is one we’ll no doubt all be used to, and for 8-bit fans also the debugging that was needed to get the listing to run.
Breaker Ball
is an odd hybrid of
Breakout
and
Space Invaders
, and it’s his analysis of the teenage thinking that led to the game being the way it is that rounds off the piece. Sadly we’re not treated to the entire listing, but there’s a short gameplay video we’ve placed below the break.
Via
Hacker News
. | 53 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389304",
"author": "Menno",
"timestamp": "2021-10-10T08:16:39",
"content": "I’d tell my 17 year old to buy Bitcoin.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6389350",
"author": "Danjovic",
"timestamp": "2021-10-10T13:3... | 1,760,372,924.695229 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/09/borehole-camera-rig-makes-life-easier-in-mining/ | Borehole Camera Rig Makes Life Easier In Mining | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"GoPro",
"inspection camera",
"mining",
"skateboard"
] | Much of mining involves digging and drilling holes in the ground. Often, these holes need inspecting, but [Dean Harty] found that existing borehole inspection solutions weren’t up to snuff. Resolution was poor, and often live-view devices made recording footage a pain. Instead, he set about the development of the Sneaky Peaky,
going through several revisions in the process.
The first revision was nothing more than a GoPro strapped to a small penny board, paired with a bright flashlight. The 4K resolution of the GoPro provided useful footage, and the assembly could be lowered into boreholes on a rope and retrieved easily. Rugged and water resistant, the gear worked well, and was remarkably cheap compared to more obscure mining industry hardware.
An early version of the Sneaky Peaky
Later revisions ditched the skateboard, replacing it with a pipe-style housing instead. Key to the design was that the device could readily be destroyed and flushed out of a borehole with an air blast in the event it got stuck.
Eventually, mining outfit Metrologi got involved, having worked with [Dean] on several borehole backfill operations. A 3D-printed chassis was developed to hold an action camera and twin torches, held together with plastic zip ties. These are attached to the pull rope, and if the camera becomes jammed, a sharp pull will snap the ties and cause the device to fall apart. Steel cable ties are then used to create flexible guides to center the assembly in a variety of pipe diameters.
It’s a great example of people on the ground hacking together the tools they need, combined with iterative design to integrate improvements over time. We don’t talk about boreholes much around here, but they can be musical if properly employed,
as it turns out.
If you’ve got your own great mining hacks, however,
do drop us a line! | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389305",
"author": "12L14",
"timestamp": "2021-10-10T08:17:06",
"content": "I remember times when we were milling brass(SS in protoypes) “hulls” for company making pipe inspection crawlers.Owner of said business was A. Sirko(really nice and smart guy), sorda local V. Antonic(he als... | 1,760,372,924.224295 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/09/dial-a-for-arduino/ | Dial A For Arduino | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"dial",
"dial phone",
"phone dial",
"rotary phone"
] | A lot of phrases surrounding phones don’t make sense anymore. With a modern cellphone, you don’t really “hang up” and there’s certainly no “dial” to be had. However, with [jakeofalltrades’] project, you can
read an old-fashioned phone dial
using an Arduino.
The idea behind a phone dial is actually pretty simple. When you pull the dial back to the stop using one of the numbered holes and release it, it causes a switch to open and close the same number of times as the hole you selected. That is, if you pull back the 5 hole, you should get 5 switch closures. The duration of each switch event and the time between switch events is a function of the speed the dial moves because of its internal spring. The zero hole actually produces ten pulses.
There are standards for how precise the timing has to be, but — honestly — it’s pretty loose since these were not made to be read by precise microcontroller timers. In the United States, for example, the dial was supposed to produce between 9.5 and 10.5 pulses per second, but the equipment on the other end would tolerate anything from 8 to 11.
Even if you don’t want a rotary dial in your next project, the code has some good examples of using ATmega328 timers that you might find useful in another context. However, a dial would add a nice retro touch to any numeric input you might happen to need.
If you need project inspiration, how about
a volume control
? Or, why not a
numeric keypad
? | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389279",
"author": "Lee",
"timestamp": "2021-10-10T02:38:00",
"content": "I used a rotary dial for a alarm system I built once. Was pretty fun to use. I am half tempted to use one again for another project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,372,924.414699 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/this-week-in-security-apache-nightmare-revil-arrests-and-the-ultimate-rickroll/ | This Week In Security: Apache Nightmare, REvil Arrests? And The Ultimate RickRoll | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"facebook",
"REvil",
"Senior Prank",
"This Week in Security"
] | The Apache HTTP Server version 2.4.49 has a blistering vulnerability, and it’s already being leveraged in attacks.
CVE-2021-41773
is a simple path traversal flaw, where the
%2e
encoding is used to bypass filtering. Thankfully the bug was introduced in 2.4.49, the latest release, and a hotfix has already been released, 2.4.50.
curl --data "echo;id" 'http://127.0.0.1:80/cgi-bin/.%2e/.%2e/.%2e/.%2e/bin/sh'
If that returns anything other than a 403 error, your server may be vulnerable. It’s worth pointing out that Apache is shipped with a configuration block that mitigates this vulnerability.
# Deny access to the entirety of your server's filesystem. You must
# explicitly permit access to web content directories in other
# blocks below.
#
<Directory />
AllowOverride none
Require all denied
</Directory>
The Day The Internet Stood Still
You might have noticed a bit of a kerfluffel on the Internet on Monday. Facebook dropped out for nearly six hours. While the break was nice for some, it was a major problem for others. What exactly happened? The most apparent cause was that the Facebook.com domain was returning nxdomain to DNS lookups. This led to some fun tweets, with screen caps showing Facebook.com for sale.
how much?
https://t.co/fH0zXw7rV9
— jack⚡️ (@jack)
October 4, 2021
Facebook has put up
a blog post with all the details
, and Cloudflare has a nice write-up on
the fallout from their perspective
. An unintentional BGP update was sent to the entire Facebook network, knocking their internal backbone network offline. Facebook’s DNS servers keep constant tabs on the connectivity to the internal network, and stop advertising inaccessible routes in an effort to automatically route around problems in normal cases. In this case, that automated behavior led to the entire network disappearing, making the problem worse.
With both BGP and DNS offline, many of the tools and techniques engineers would use to troubleshoot and fix the problem were also unavailable. Humorously, even physical access controls were affected, meaning that FB engineers were locked out of the very datacenters they needed to access to resolve the problem.
Cloudflare has some interesting insights from their 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver. Namely, when Facebook.com stopped responding, DNS traffic exploded, and global DNS queries for Facebook multiplied thirty-fold. If other domains were timing out or acting strange, it was probably because of that unintentional DDoS on DNS. What caused it? Too many applications written without error handling for facebook.com’s disappearance. Or to quote Cloudflare:
This happened in part because apps won’t accept an error for an answer and start retrying, sometimes aggressively, and in part because end-users also won’t take an error for an answer and start reloading the pages, or killing and relaunching their apps, sometimes also aggressively.
There has been speculation that a couple of other stories are related, namely
the offered 1.5 billion user records
being offered on the dark web. As far as anyone can tell, these stories are completely unrelated, and the latest data set for sale is simply the results of more scraping.
Twitch Leaks Everything
Twitch, on the other hand, has a more serious problem on its hands. Source code, payment records, and internal tools were
released in a torrent labeled “part one”
. Twitch has confirmed the validity of the data, citing a server misconfiguration as the cause. There were a couple of surprises in the dump, like an in-progress Steam competitor. Also included is the source code with commits going back basically to the beginning of the service. Time will tell if more data is coming. Either way, Twitch has a mess on its hands.
REvil Arrests — Maybe
This week
a pair of arrests happened in Ukraine
, with a few hints that it’s related to REvil. Ukrainian officials have stated that the actor had been operating since March 2020, and demanding ransoms as high as $70 million. It would be quite ironic if it turns out that the most famous “Russian” malware gang was actually operating out of Ukraine.
Open Source Bug Bounties
The Linux Foundation and Google’s Open Source Security Team have worked together to create
Secure Open Source Rewards
. The new program is an open ended bounty for developers making security improvements to open source projects. This effort is a bit different from other bug bounties, as the emphasis isn’t on finding vulnerabilities, but work to prevent problems. Examples are things like adding continuous integration testing to a project, or adding code signing and verification.
To be a valid target for payable work, the project being improved needs to be widely used or considered critical. Follow the link for more information on those details. With potential payouts over $10,000, the potential payoff is worth the work. The big advantage to this project over conventional bug bounties is that less luck is involved here. Rather than hoping to find a vulnerability, there is no shortage of projects that need better testing and verification.
The Ultimate Rickroll
[WhiteHoodHacker] has posted
his write-up of Rickrolling his entire school district
, in what must be the best senior prank of all time. It all started when our aspiring hacker was a freshman, and started scanning the district’s IP space. The result was a whole bunch of devices, many with improper security, like security cameras that could be viewed with no passwords. Those were eventually secured, but there was an IPTV system in place, and it was ripe for messing with.
The idea for a senior prank seemed to die with the COVID pandemic, but fate intervened, and in-class instruction resumed just in time. [WhiteHoodHacker] and his team dubbed the idea “The Big Rick”, and put together an impressive operation to pull it off. A combination of default passwords and vulnerable IPTV equipment allowed them to stream their bootleg video over multicast, and tell every TV and projector in the system to turn it on at the same time. The embedded video is glorious:
Now. As the write-up points out, this prank was technically a computer crime and it would have been all too easy for the school district to press charges. Becoming a felon because of a prank is a terrible way to start adult life. Thankfully, the district administration responded well, and this story ends happily.
Followups
Apple has responded to [Denis Tokarev]
, who released iOS zero days out of frustration with the Apple security team. Unfortunately Apple’s response doesn’t include fixes or workarounds, but just more assurances that they “are still investigating these issues”. In other words, nothing much has changed, and many security researchers are still frustrated.
OpenOffice has released 4.1.11
, containing the fix for CVE-2021–33035, which we discussed last week. Just a reminder, that means that this vulnerability was available as a 0-day for about a week before this release. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388889",
"author": "Reality bites",
"timestamp": "2021-10-08T14:07:06",
"content": "Its comical how fragile the networks really are… like eggshell’s stacked on eggshells… just the slightest misstep and it all breaks. Its a testament to the true level of ineptitude of programmers. ... | 1,760,372,924.465632 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/power-your-home-with-a-water-battery/ | Power Your Home With A Water Battery | Matthew Carlson | [
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"pump",
"quint",
"solar",
"water"
] | I’ve stated it before on Hackaday but one of the most interesting engineering challenges posed to me this year was “how could you store enough energy to power a decent portion of a home for several hours without using batteries, all while staying within the size of a typical suburban plot?” [Quint Builds] attempts something up that alley
by using solar power to pump water up onto his roof and later releasing it for power generation
. (Video, embedded below.)
Earlier [Quint] had
built a water collecting system using his gutters and a bell siphon
but wasn’t satisfied with the overall power output. Using the turbine he had created for that system, he put a 55-gallon drum on top of his roof with the help of some supporting structures. We’d like to advise the public to consult a professional before adding a large heavy weight on top of your roof, but [Quint] forges ahead after studying his trusses and determining it to be a risk he is willing to take. A solar panel runs a small pump that pumps water from a reservoir up to the top of the roof when the sun shines with a float switch in the roof barrel stopping the motor once it’s full. A valve at the bottom allows water to spin the turbine and fill back into the bottom reservoir, forming a closed loop. There were a few snags along the way with prototype circuits not being fully contacted and the motor needing water cooling, an issue fixed by a custom CNC’d heat sink. The fixes for the various issues are almost as entertaining to see as the actual system itself.
It’s incredible to see lights come on powered by water alone but also sobering to realize just how much water you’d need to power a typical home. Perhaps if [Quint] upgrades, he can swap out the small motor for a
larger 3D printed water pump
. | 69 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388843",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2021-10-08T11:11:29",
"content": "A lot of work for small amount of power, don’t compete with nuclear power.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6388849",
"author": "Krzysztof",
... | 1,760,372,924.565455 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/led-matrix-hourglass-knows-which-way-is-up/ | LED Matrix Hourglass Knows Which Way Is Up | Donald Papp | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Art",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"art",
"clock",
"gravity",
"hourglass",
"led matrix",
"physics"
] | [Fearless Night]’s
slick dual hourglass
doesn’t just simulate sand with LEDs, it also emulates the effects of gravity on those simulated particles and offers a few different mode options.
The unit uses an Arduino (with ATMEGA328P) and an MPU-6050 accelerometer breakout board to sense orientation and movement, and the rest is just a matter of software. Both the Arduino and the MPU-6050 board are readily available and not particularly expensive, and the LED matrix displays are just 8×8 arrays of red/green LEDs, each driven by a HT16K33 LED controller IC.
The enclosure and stand are both 3D-printed, and a PCB not only mounts the components but also serves as a top cover, with the silkscreen layer of the PCB making for some handy labels. It’s a clever way to make the PCB pull double-duty, which is a technique [Fearless Night] also used on their earlier
optical theremin design
.
Those looking to make one of their own will find all the design files and source code handily available from the project page. It might not be able to tell time in the classical sense, but seeing the hourglass displays react to the device’s orientation is a really neat effect. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388818",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2021-10-08T09:14:34",
"content": "Is it just me or is this article missing the link to the project?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6389017",
"author": "Donald Papp",
"t... | 1,760,372,924.611755 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/07/groovy-tv-gets-a-very-brady-makeover/ | Groovy TV Gets A Very Brady Makeover | Ryan Flowers | [
"Art"
] | [
"television",
"that 70's show",
"video display",
"vintage television",
"wood"
] | Here’s the story of an old Sharp TV, which was donated to [mandy] to be hacked. Just one look and
you can see, very clearly, it plays old Brady Bunch tracks
.
Upon inspection of the old television, [Aaron] and [mandy] found that the unit first hit the local Montgomery Ward in 1969. And what just momentous event played on televisions across North America in 1969? Well yes, the Apollo moon landing. And David Bowie’s Space Oddity. And Abbey Road. And Woodstock. But no, we’re talking about that
other
momentous event that would shape young minds for generations to come:
The pilot episode of The Brady Bunch.
The wood base keeps all the electronics in formation.
Yes, The Brady Bunch, that campy TV show that first aired in 1969 and ended in 1974. It just so happens that [mandy]’s favorite TV show is The Brady Bunch, so when the bright orange Sharp TV came along, she knew what had to be done.
While the style of the television may be timeless, the internals weren’t. They were removed, and a new internal frame was built from a naturally occurring cellulose/lignin composite adorned in Brady Blue. Inspired by in-store advertising displays and billboards that play the same content on a loop, [mandy] and [Aaron] added an Eyoyo 7” monitor and an Aptek video player.
Leaving no question as to what era the TV came from, the revamped piece now plays about 50 of [mandy]’s favorite Brady clips on loop, all modified to be centered properly on the off-center screen. Groovy! To round out the experience and keep things mellow, the knobs were re-attached using Lego pieces, and are reportedly very satisfying to spin.
If you’ve got a thing for vintage hacks, you might like this
Pi-powered NuTone home intercom
or this
vintage camera flash turned clock
. And if you have any awesome hacks you think we’d like to see, be sure to send them on over to the
Tip Line
! | 17 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388777",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2021-10-08T05:12:48",
"content": "Should be showing Space: 1999 or The Jetsons",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6388801",
"author": "Ray T. Ube",
"timestamp": "2021-10-08T07:34:4... | 1,760,372,924.842317 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/07/leonardo-the-hopping-flying-bipedal-robot/ | LEONARDO: The Hopping, Flying Bipedal Robot | Dan Maloney | [
"drone hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"bipedal",
"drone",
"hopping",
"kinematics",
"locomotion",
"obstacle avoidance"
] | We appear to have a new entry atop the “Robots That Creep Us Out” leader board:
meet LEONARDO, the combination quadcopter/bipedal robot
.
LEONARDO, a somewhat tortured name derived from “LEgs ONboARD drOne,” is actually just what it appears to be: a quadcopter with a set of legs. It comes to us from Caltech’s Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies, and the video below makes it easy to see what kind of advantages a kinematic mash-up like this would offer. LEO combines walking and flying to achieve a kind of locomotion that looks completely alien, kind of a bouncy, tip-toeing step that really looks like someone just learning how to walk in high heels. The upper drone aspect of LEO provides a lot of the stabilization needed for walking; the thrust from the rotors is where that bouncy compliance comes from. But the rotors can also instantly ramp up the thrust so LEO can fly over obstacles, like stairs. It’s also pretty good at slacklining and skateboarding, too.
It’s easy to see how LEO’s multimodal locomotion system solves — or more accurately, avoids — a number of the problems real-world bipedal robots are going to experience. For now, LEO is pretty small — only about 30″ (76 cm) tall. And it’s rather lightly constructed, as one would expect for something that needs to fly occasionally. But it’s easy to see how something like this could be scaled up, at least to a point. And LEO’s stabilization system might be just what
its drunk-walking cousin
needs.
Thanks to [qes] for the tip.
[via
Tech Xplore
] | 22 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388757",
"author": "ask",
"timestamp": "2021-10-08T02:43:59",
"content": "Nature does it better -> birds or legs onboard wings 🤣",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6388762",
"author": "paulvdh",
"timestamp": "2021-10-08T0... | 1,760,372,924.900948 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/07/building-your-own-filing-machine-from-a-kit/ | Building Your Own Filing Machine From A Kit | Lewin Day | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"die filer",
"filing machine",
"tool",
"tool hacks",
"tools"
] | Files are a very useful important tool if you’re machining your own parts. They can do plenty of shaping themselves on smaller parts in particular. Powering such a tool just makes sense, and a die filer or filing machine is essentially just that, reciprocating a file up and down for you. They’re highly prized amongst clockmakers and model builders,
and [jeanluc83] decided to build one at home.
The design chosen was the MLA-18 filing machine, for which castings and parts can be purchased from a company called
Metal Lathe Accessories.
However, it’s far from a simple screw-together kit. [jeanluc83] goes through the full process of painting, machining, and assembling the kit, which takes quite a bit of work to do properly.
Notably, the design is quite old fashioned in that it does not include its own power source. Instead, the MLA-18 filing machine is fitted with a pulley, such that it can be driven from a motor on a bench. A 1/4 horsepower motor running at roughly 1725 RPM is recommended for best results.
Filing machines aren’t exactly something you’ll find at every hardware store or Harbor Freight, so you might find building your own is the right way to go. Hackaday is, after all, full of examples of hackers
building their own tools! | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388737",
"author": "Simon",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T23:25:27",
"content": "This seems to be the same kit that Adam Savage has been building:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNwvjaIW-pU",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6388821"... | 1,760,372,924.957059 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/07/c-clamp-becomes-light-duty-arbor-press/ | C-Clamp Becomes Light-Duty Arbor Press | Donald Papp | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"arbor press",
"c-clamp",
"custom tool",
"press"
] | [ThingaUser] made a tool to solve a specific problem of theirs, but the design also happens to be a pretty good way to turn a c-clamp into a
poor man’s light duty arbor press
.
The frame is made for a common 4-inch c-clamp.
The problem they had was a frequent need to press nuts and occasionally bearings into other parts. Some kind of press is really the best tool for the job, but rather than buy a press, they opted to make their own solution. By designing and 3D printing an adapter for a common 4-inch c-clamp, a simple kind of light duty press was born.
Sure, one has to turn the handle on the clamp to raise and lower the moveable jaw, and that’s not the fastest operation. But the real value in the design is that the clamp can now stand by itself on a tabletop, leaving the operator to dedicate one hand to manipulating the part to be pressed, while twisting the clamp’s handle with the other hand. There’s no need for a third hand to keep the clamp itself stable in the process. As a bonus, it can print without supports and the clamp secures with zip ties; no other fasteners or glue needed.
Not all c-clamps are the same, so there is a risk that this frame that fits [ThingaUser]’s clamp might not fit someone else’s. In those cases, it’s best to have access to not just the STL file, but also to a version in a portable CAD format like STEP to make it easy to modify. But
there are still ways to make changes to an STL that isn’t quite right
. | 8 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388696",
"author": "philosiraptor117",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T20:23:06",
"content": "just give er the ol tappy tap tap",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6388713",
"author": "Ø",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T21:09:... | 1,760,372,925.00298 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/python-provides-classic-basic/ | Python Provides Classic Basic | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"basic",
"github",
"python"
] | Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s when you turned on a PC, more often than not, you’d get a Basic prompt. Most people would then load a game from a tape, but if you were inclined to program you could just start writing. [Richpl] wanted that same experience and thus
PyBasic
was born. Along with some other Github contributors, the system has grown quite a bit and would be a good start at porting classic games or creating a replica vintage computer.
The interpreter lacks specialized hardware-specific features such as sound and graphics, of course, but then again, you could add them. It does have file I/O and also includes some interesting features like an analog of C’s ternary operator.
There are line numbers and if you are looking for a way to contribute, the program is lacking a renumber feature. There are a few oddities around handling numerics. For example, you can assign a string to a number (which could be a feature) and there’s an extra space in negative number output. Leading zeros are not optional for numbers less than one. You can use colons to put more than one statement on a line, but not if they are part of a loop. So there are lots of ways you could contribute if you were so inclined.
We hear that [Richpl] is working on an Oregon Trail port and already has a text adventure, Star Trek, and Eliza working. If you decide to play with this, you really
need this book
. We still like computers that
boot to Basic
. | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389075",
"author": "Adam",
"timestamp": "2021-10-09T02:29:44",
"content": "A while back, I wanted to play ICBM. (From More BASIC Computer Games) Rather than translate it into Python, I wrote a very simple (And specific) BASIC interpreter in Python.",
"parent_id": null,
"dep... | 1,760,372,925.055736 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/3d-printed-preschooler-proof-mp3-player-takes-a-beat-ing/ | 3D Printed Preschooler Proof MP3 Player Takes A Beat-ing | Ryan Flowers | [
"digital audio hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"hot glue",
"kid friendly",
"mp3 player",
"toddler",
"zip ties"
] | Prototyping new ideas can be a lot of fun, but putting new projects in a durable enclosure can be a difficulty. This is especially the case when the user of this product is one of the most destructive forces in nature: A toddler! This is the circumstance that [blue blade] found himself in when he wanted to build a durable MP3 player for his grandson, and you can see
the results of his work
below the break.
The hardware is simple: A 16850 lithium-ion battery powers an MP3 Decoder/Amplifier module that plays MP3s stored on a Micro SD card. A speaker, power switch, and micro USB powered battery charger complete the build. What stands out most is the enclosure. Why?
When children are involved, durability isn’t a matter of product lifetime, it’s also a matter of safety. Items that are easily broken aren’t just useless, they can be dangerous. With this in mind, [blue blade] built a brightly colored enclosure with extra thick walls joined by metal bolts. Externally, a rounded cover bolts over the charger connector and Micro SD card slot. The only other protrusion is a lighted rocker switch for powering the MP3 player on and off.
The attention to durability also extends to the interior of the MP3 cube. Cutouts for the electronics keep them from moving horizontally, while a clip bolts over them to keep them firmly planted. Zip ties hold the battery to the base, and hot glue provides an extra element of security to the circuit boards. Even the speaker is held firmly in place by four bolts. [blue blade] has
made the print available
with a Creative Commons license.
What’s more, [blue blade] reports that his grandson loves the toy, and that the cube has withstood over six months of toddler abuse. Clearly, the attention to details given this toy has made it nearly indestructible!
If kid proof printsheck out this
toddler friendly MP3 player with light based navigation
, and this
Ikea book shelf turned into a buttonless MP3 player
. And of course if you have any interesting hacks to share, be sure to
send them our way via the Tip Line
! | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389129",
"author": "Oliver",
"timestamp": "2021-10-09T07:32:55",
"content": "Looks like a DIY toniebox. Im not sure if the article states, but is the outside also soft and of cloth?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6389324",
... | 1,760,372,925.100414 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/minitel-terminal-becomes-mini-laptop/ | Minitel Terminal Becomes Mini Laptop | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"arduino pro micro",
"azerty",
"Minitel",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi 3B+"
] | In 1980, France took a step into the future when the telecom companies introduced the Minitel system — a precursor to the Web where users could shop, buy train tickets, check stocks, and send and receive electronic mail through a small terminal. Minitel still had 10 million monthly connections in 2009, but the service was discontinued in 2012.
So, you can imagine how many Minitel terminals must be floating around at this point. [Gautchh] picked one up at a garage sale a while back
and converted it into a battery-powered laptop
for taking notes in class. Luckily for us, [Gautchh] recently open-sourced this project and has given us a wiring diagram, STLs, BOM, and a good look into the build process.
[Gautchh] started by gutting the Minitel, but saved the power button and the très chic power indicator that looks like a AA cell. The new 10.4″ LCD screen is held in place with four 3D-printed corner blocks and a bit of hot glue, and the original keyboard (which we’d love to clack on) is now wired up to an Arduino Pro Micro. The main brain — a Raspberry Pi 3B — is easily accessible through a handy little hatch in the back. Well, it looks like we’ve got a new ebay alert to set up.
In the mood for more AZERTY goodness?
Check out this gallery of French computers
, or
a more traditional take on a Minitel with a Raspberry Pi
. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6389018",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2021-10-08T21:51:31",
"content": "Not so much a precursor than a parallel world.Services like CompuServe did some of this at the same time.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "638... | 1,760,372,925.158413 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/homebrew-circuit-explores-the-mysteries-of-analog-to-digital-conversion/ | Homebrew Circuit Explores The Mysteries Of Analog-to-Digital Conversion | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"adc",
"analog to digital",
"comparator",
"dac",
"r-2r",
"sample-hold",
"successive approximation"
] | When it comes to getting signals from an analog world into our computers, most of us don’t give much thought to how the hardware that does the job works. But as it turns out, there are a number of ways to skin the analog to digital conversion cat, and
building your own homebrew successive approximation register ADC
is a great way to dispel some of the mystery.
From his description of the project, it’s clear that [Mitsuru Yamada] wasn’t looking to build a practical ADC, but was more interested in what he could learn by rolling his own. A successive approximation register ADC works by quickly cycling through all possible voltage levels in its input range, eventually zeroing in on the voltage of the input signal at that moment and outputting its digital representation. The video below shows how the SAR ADC works visually, using an oscilloscope to show both the input voltage and the output of the internal R-2R DAC. The ADC has an input range of 0 V to 5 V and seven bits of resolution and uses nothing but commonly available 74xx series logic chips and a couple of easily sourced analogs for the sample-hold and comparator section. And as usual with one of his projects, the build quality and workmanship are impeccable.
We love these sorts of projects, which are undertaken simply for the joy of building something and learning how it works. For more of [Yamada-san]’s projects, check out
his 6502-based RPN calculator
, or
the serial terminal that should have been
. | 9 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388991",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-08T20:14:42",
"content": "I kind of understand what is happening in the video, but I will need to see schematic to understand it better.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6388997"... | 1,760,372,925.201818 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/can-we-repurpose-old-wind-turbine-blades/ | Can We Repurpose Old Wind Turbine Blades? | Lewin Day | [
"Engineering",
"green hacks"
] | [
"blade",
"recycling",
"reuse",
"turbine",
"wind power",
"Wind turbine",
"wind turbine blade",
"wind turbine blades",
"wind turbines"
] | Wind turbines are a fantastic, cheap, renewable source of energy. However, nothing lasts forever, and over time, the blades of wind turbines fatigue and must be replaced. This then raises the question of what to do with these giant waste blades. Thankfully, a variety of projects are exploring just those possibilities.
A Difficult Recycling Problem
Around 85% of a modern wind turbine is recyclable. The problem is that wind turbine
blades
currently aren’t. The blades last around 20 to 25 years, and are typically made of fiberglass or carbon fiber. Consisting of high-strength fibers set in a resin matrix, these composite materials are incredibly difficult to recycle,
as we’ve discussed previously
. Unlike metals or plastics, they can’t just be melted down to be recast as fresh material. Couple this with the fact that wind turbine blades are huge, often spanning up to 300 feet long, and the problem gets harder. They’re difficult and expensive to transport and tough to chop up as well.
A wind turbine blade can make for an easy-to-build bike shed, it seems. Credit:
Siemens Gamesa
Thus, the Re-Wind project is looking more towards reuse than recycling. Rather then spending energy and time breaking down turbine blades back into reusable raw materials, the project is exploring uses where the blades may be modified and repurposed while remaining largely in their existing form.
A variety of projects have been proposed thus far. Perhaps the simplest is a project by wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa. The company took a used wind turbine blade, and fashioned it into a sleek and modern looking
bike shed in Denmark.
The blade was cut and shaped in order to act as an effective break for the wind and rain, and was able to be quickly installed as a single pre-fabricated piece atop a pair of custom-built metal supports. It’s a quick and easy way to build a shed or shelter, for sure, but unlikely to be a solution that scales well.
As the company itself notes
, it’s a “small-scale solution,” but one that makes good use of a few scrap blades nonetheless.
The Re-Wind project aims to explore broader uses, with the BladePole concept
one of the most interesting
. The aim is to reuse wind turbine blades as electrical transmission poles. A paper on the topic
shared by Re-Wind
highlights the fact that while strength and stiffness are lost in turbine blades due to fatigue loads in their service life, this is only on the order of 10-20% by retirement. In a application such as serving as a utility pole, the dynamic loading would be significantly less, and the overall static loads lower as well. Thus, the blades could potentially serve a useful second life in this application.
A proposed design of a utility pole built out of a used wind turbine blade. Credit:
Alshannaq, Bank, Scott and Gentry, 2021
There are some caveats, however. To be effective at scale, and to avoid giving utility engineers massive headaches, ideally blades repurposed in this fashion would all be of the same size, shape and construction. Given the broad variance in wind turbines installed around the globe, this isn’t the case. However, this isn’t an insurmountable obstacle so much as it is an added frustration to the reuse effort. However, if a utility did find itself employing broad numbers of the same turbines, it could then reuse its own waste stream to build out its network in future. It’s potentially a very neat solution.
Other concepts are in development too, such as using the blades in construction applications. The Re-Wind project has explored ideas such as using blade sections as roofing for small houses or as girders
to build small bridges under 50m in length.
Thus far, these efforts remain largely speculative.
However, for more serious structural applications, several problems are faced. One noted in a paper by Kullberg and Nygren, 2020, is that wind turbine manufacturers hold the finer details of their blade designs as closely guarded secrets. This frustrates efforts to properly engineer new projects using the blades, as it’s difficult to run accurate calculations without a proper knowledge of the materials being used. There’s also the concern of damage and fatigue that a blade may have incurred in service. Cracks or other defects may have built up over time and one used blade may not be as tough as the next. Thus, conservative safety factors would have to be used in designs, or blades would need to be carefully inspected to ensure they were up to reuse in structural applications. The prospect of further degradation of the composite parts already exposed to 20 years of UV and weather is also something that must be accounted for.
An Uncertain Future
A render of a proposed design of a bridge over a greenway in Cork, Ireland. The design hopes to delay the disposal of the used blade components by 60 years, but remains speculative at this stage. Credit:
Re-Wind Project
That hasn’t stopped all reuse projects, however, with the Wikado Playground in Rotterdam, Amsterdam
famously putting old blades to great use
. However, a few children running about is not quite the same loading that a bridge or other structure may see. Thus, wind turbine manufacturers and engineers will likely have to learn to work together if used turbine blades are going to see any real structural use en masse.
It may yet be that the issue of composite recycling is solved and thus reuse efforts will play only a minor role in disposing of wind turbine blades going forward. Efforts like the RecycleBlade from Siemens Gamesa hope to do just that, using new advanced resins
to enable easier recovery of raw materials.
However, for the time being, research will continue on both recycling and reuse streams until a viable path forward is found. In the meantime, expect to see some creative efforts making good use of these gigantic composite structures!
[Main image:
Jhimpir Wind Farm
by Muzaffar Bukhari CC-BY-SA 2.0] | 92 | 38 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388946",
"author": "kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang",
"timestamp": "2021-10-08T17:13:09",
"content": "Maybe reinforced and sharpened could work as swords for giant robots…But We need giant robots first, and a very good reason to give them swords.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"r... | 1,760,372,925.601759 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/hackaday-podcast-139-furter-burner-glowing-potato-peeler-hacked-smartwatch-and-the-last-atlas/ | Hackaday Podcast 139: Furter Burner, Glowing Potato Peeler, Hacked Smartwatch, And The Last Atlas | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Hackaday editors Tom Nardi and Elliot Williams bring you up to speed on the most interesting stories of the week. Hackaday’s Remoticon and Germany’s Chaos Communication Congress are virtual again this year, but the Vintage Computer Festival will be live. We’ll also talk about ocean-going drones, the recreation of an old-school light bulb with a potato peeler, cheap smart watches with hidden potential, and sanding down shady modules to figure out just how you’ve been scammed. Stick around for some thoughts on turning real-estate signs into a handy prototyping material, and to find out why some very impressive Soviet tech is getting the boot from America’s space program.
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Direct download
(52.775158 MB)
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 139 Show Notes:
What’s that Sound?
Tell us your answer for this week’s “What’s that sound?”
. Next week on the show we’ll randomly draw one name from the correct answers to win a rare Hackaday Podcast T-shirt.
News This Week:
Hackaday Remoticon: Tickets And T-Shirts!
Vintage Computer Festival East Reboots This Weekend
2021 Chaos Communication Congress Cancelled
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
How Does A Sail Drone Bring Home Hurricane Footage In Record Time?
Demonstrating ThermoAcoustics With The Rijke Tube
Forget Digital Computing, You Need An Analog Computer
A Glowing Potato Peeler Makes A Nernst Lamp
Retrotechtacular: The Nernst Lamp
Hackable Smart Watch Is Also Open Source
Investigating A Defective USB Power Bank Module
Deconstructing PCBs
Quick Hacks:
Tom’s Picks
Raspberry Pi Plots World Wide Earthquakes
What’s On Your Bank Card? Hacker Tool Teaches All About NFC And RFID
Furter Burner Cooks The Wieners Just So
Elliot’s Picks:
Removing Threadlocked Screws With A Soldering Iron
BreadBin Is An 8-bit TTL CPU On A Breadboard, In A Bread Bin
Atari ST Still Manages Campground Reservations After 36 Years
Can’t-Miss Articles:
3D Printering: Corrugated Plastic For Cheaper & Easier Enclosures
DIY Plastic Speedboat For One
Counting Down To The Final Atlas Rocket | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,372,925.402105 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/hacked-set-of-instruments-saves-musicians-gigs/ | Hacked Set Of Instruments Saves Musician’s Gigs | Dan Maloney | [
"Musical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"airlines",
"beatbox",
"flute",
"gig",
"luggage",
"piezo",
"PVC",
"ukelele",
"wind instruments"
] | Most of the horror stories you hear about air travel seem to center around luggage. Airlines do an admirable job of getting people safely to their destinations, but checked baggage is a bit of a crapshoot — it could be there when you land, it could end up taking the scenic route, or it could just plain disappear. That’s bad enough when it contains your clothes, but
when it contains your livelihood?
Talk about stress!
This was the position musician [Nicolas Bras] found himself in after a recent trip. [Nicolas] was heading for a gig, but thanks to Brussels Airlines, his collection of musical instruments went somewhere else. There was nothing he could do to salvage that evening’s gig, but he needed to think about later engagements. Thankfully, [Nicolas] specializes in DIY musical instruments, made mostly with PVC tubes and salvaged parts from commercial instruments, so the solution to his problem was completely in his hands.
Fair warning to musical instrument aficionados — harvest the neck from a broken ukelele is pretty gruesome stuff. Attached to a piece of pallet wood and equipped with piezo pickups, the neck became part of a bizarre yet fascinating hybrid string instrument. A selection of improvised wind instruments came next, made from PVC pipes and sounding equally amazing; we especially liked the bass chromojara, sort of a flute with a didgeridoo sound to it. The bicycle pump beatbox was genius too, and really showed that music is less about the fanciness of your gear and more about the desire — and talent — to make it with whatever comes to hand.
Here’s hoping that [Nicolas] is eventually reunited with his gear, but hats off to him in the meantime for hacking up replacements. And if he looks familiar, that’s because we’ve seen some of his work before, like
his sympathetic nail violin
and
“Popcorn” played on PVC pipes
. | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388919",
"author": "X",
"timestamp": "2021-10-08T15:43:17",
"content": "I learned a long time ago to never check baggage. I drop it off with UPS ahead of time and it gets delivered directly to my destination, fully insured to boot. Good grief, no more dragging stuff through the air... | 1,760,372,925.456569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/07/halloween-build-exquisite-ray-gun-has-sound-effects/ | Halloween Build: Exquisite Ray Gun Has Sound Effects | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"cosplay",
"haloween",
"phaser",
"pistol",
"prop",
"ray gun",
"raygun"
] | When we first saw [lonesoulsurfer’s]
ray gun
, we thought it looked oddly familiar. Sure, it looks like a vintage ray gun you might see in a dozen 1950-era movies or TV shows. But still, there was something oddly familiar about it. Turns out, the core piece of it is an old-fashioned timing light used when doing a car tune-up.
This is no unobtrusive Star Trek phaser. It looks substantial and has a cool sound generator that not only gives it something to do but also sports cool control knobs out the top of the gun. The design files for the sound circuit are in a
Google drive folder
if you want to recreate the build.
It doesn’t hurt that the timing light was already shiny silver and the lens holder even fit the gun’s speaker. An old cell phone battery powers the whole thing. The audio board is decidedly old school, using a 4000-series IC oscillator, a CMOS VCO, and the ubiquitous LM386 audio amplifier.
If you are going to a party as Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, or even Captain Proton, this gun would look great on your belt. You can still buy timing lights, but they don’t always look like this one. You might have to hit the pawn shops or the second-hand store to find one to suit. Or, do like [lonesoulsurfer] did and pick one up on eBay.
A lot of the parts came from the junk box, so your build will probably look different. Still, a fun project and just in time for costume party season.
The last time we saw [lonesouldsurfer] making ray guns,
he was cutting up a soldering gun
. If you want something
with a real laser in it
, be careful with everyone’s eyesight. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388679",
"author": "josephsleary",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T18:37:02",
"content": "Nice build!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6388705",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T20:47:42",
"content": ... | 1,760,372,925.74373 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/07/linux-fu-globs-vs-regexp/ | Linux Fu: Globs Vs Regexp | Al Williams | [
"Linux Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"bash",
"glob",
"linux",
"Linux Fu",
"regexp",
"regular expressions"
] | I once asked a software developer at work how many times we called fork() in our code. I’ll admit, it was a very large project, but I expected the answer to be — at most — two digits. The developer came back and read off some number from a piece of paper that was in the millions. I told them there was no way we had millions of calls to fork() and, of course, we didn’t. The problem was the developer wasn’t clear on the difference between a regular expression and a glob.
Tools like grep use regular expressions to create search patterns. I might write
[Hh]ack ?a ?[Dd]ay
as a regular expression to match things like “HackaDay” and “Hack a day” and, even, “Hackaday” using a tool like grep, awk, or many programming languages.
So What’s a Glob?
The problem is the shell also uses pattern matching and uses many of the same characters as regular expressions. The fork call? The pattern the developer used was
fork*
. This would be OK — maybe not great — as a glob if you were afraid there were calls that started with
fork
but then had something else following (like an
exec
call which might be
execl
,
execv
, or one of several others).
If the shell saw that pattern it would look for anything that started with
fork
and then had zero or more characters following it. But as a regular expression, the meaning is quite different. The pattern actually meant: the letters
f o r
followed by zero or more occurrences of the letter
k
. So
for
would match. So would
fork
. As would
forkkkkk
. Also things like
forth
,
format
, and
formula
. So the matching number was enormous.
Glob Survival Guide
Globbing is typically a function of the shell. When you enter something like:
ls a*
The ls program never sees the
a*
. Instead, it sees the shell’s expanded list of files that start with the letter a. Well, that’s not exactly true. If there are no files that match the glob pattern, then ls will see the text you entered and will probably print an error message that it can’t find
a*
. At least, this is the default behavior. You can modify what the shell does if it can’t find a match (lookup
nullglob
and
failglob
).
This is a good thing because it means programs don’t have to write their own globbing and it all works the same inside a single shell. There may be differences, of course, depending on the shell you use. You can, also, turn off globbing in some shells. In bash, you can issue:
set -f
You’ll probably find that frustrating, though, so undo it with:
set +f
The most common special characters for globs are:
* – zero or more characters
? – any character
[] – A class of characters like [abc] or [0-9]
[^] – Negative class of characters
[!] – Same as [^]
If you have filenames that have a year in them like
post07-26-2020.txt
, you might write the following globs:
post*2020.txt – All posts from 2020
post*202?.txt All posts from 2020-2029 (or, even, 202Z; any character will match)
post0[345]*2020.txt – All posts from March, April, and May of 2020
post[!0][01]*.2021.txt – Posts from October or November 2021
You can do a lot with a glob, but you can’t really do everything. Bash has other expansion options that can help, but those aren’t technically globs. For example, you could enter:
process post{01,02,03,11,12}-*2020.txt
However, that will expand, no matter if the files exist or not, to:
post01-*2020.txt post02-*2020.txt post03-*2020.txt post11-*2020.txt post12-*2020.txt
Then the shell will glob those patterns for actual file names. You can learn a lot more on the bash man page. Search for pattern matching.
The bash man page has a lot on pattern matching
A Little Regex Syntax
Regular expressions are much more expressive, but also more variable. Every program that offers regular expressions uses its own code and, in some cases, it is significantly different than other programs. The good news is that the majority of regular expressions you want to use won’t be different. Usually, it is only the more obscure features that change, although that is little comfort if you hit one of those features.
The basic syntax is probably best represented by grep. However, if you are using something else you’ll need to check its documentation to see how its regular expressions might be different.
The biggest problem is that the
*
and
?
characters have completely different meanings from their glob counterparts. The
*
means zero or more of the previous pattern. So
10*
will match
1
,
10
,
100
,
1000
and so on.
Our subject regexp represented graphically thanks to
Regexper
The question mark means the previous pattern is optional. So,
10?5
will match
105
and
15
equally well. For any character, in a regular expression, you use a period. So, going back to my original example,
[Hh]ack ?a ?[Dd]ay
you can see how this is not meaningful as a glob. The
Regexpr
website does a nice job of graphically interpreting regular expressions, as you can see.
Even More Confusion
To make matters even more strange, starting with version 3, bash offers regular expressions in scripting so you could have a script with both globs and regular expressions that are both going to bash.
Then there’s the fact that bash offers a
different style of glob
you can turn on with
shopt -s extglob
. These are actually closer to regular expressions, although the syntax is a bit reversed.
Learning Regular Expressions
I had thought about offering you a cheat sheet of common regular expressions, but then I realized I couldn’t do better than Dave Child so I decided
I’d just point you to that
.
Regular expressions have a reputation for being difficult, and that reputation is not wholly undeserved. But we’ve looked at ways to make regular expressions
more literate
, and if you need practice, try
crosswords
. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388642",
"author": "jonmayo",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T17:04:09",
"content": "If you want a glob in your own program check out the function fnmatch(). It’s also not difficult to write a portable version for those of your not on a POSIX system.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": ... | 1,760,372,925.70545 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/07/meet-the-winners-of-the-hackaday-prize-round-four-redefine-robots/ | Meet The Winners Of The Hackaday Prize Round Four: Redefine Robots | Elliot Williams | [
"Robots Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"redefine robots",
"robots",
"winners"
] | The judges’ ballots are in and we’re proud to present the ten winners of the fourth round of the 2021 Hackaday Prize. We love robots, and it’s obvious that you do too! The number and range of projects submitted this year were overwhelming.
No robotics round is complete without a robot arm, and while a few of them were in the finals, we especially liked
CM6
, which really pulled out all the stops. This is research-grade robotics on a not-quite-student budget, featuring custom compliant mechanisms so that it can play well with its fleshy companions.
With six degrees of freedom, and six motors, the drivetrain budget can quickly get out of hand on builds like these, so we’re especially happy to see custom, open, brushless-motor driver boards used to reduce the cost of admission. Even if you’re not going to make a 100% faithful CM6 clone, you’ll learn a lot just from going through the build. Oh, and did we mention it has a software stack?
Speaking of stacks, check out
Stack-chan
, a JavaScript super-cute desktop robot communicator and assistant. This one is meant to sit on your desk and connect you with your friends, being a sort of kawaii telepresence bot. Emphasis here was on simplicity of the build, and extensibility of the software; this is a robot for code jockeys, and it looks like a fantastic first step into making physical some of your virtual ideas, or just keeping in touch in these strange days. Besides, who can resist something that
cute
?
And while you’re in the development phase of building a ‘bot, you’re going to need telemetry, logging, and probably remote control. [Maximiliano Palay]’s
Robotics Ground Control Station
does all of that, with overkill. Made to drive his Cablecam bot, this has everything you might need and more, all packed in a watertight case. Computer, screen, radio, joysticks, sliders, and knobs galore: if your robot needs controlling, this is your controller. Cyberdeck meets remote? If you build one of these, you can use it for all of your robotic creations.
Of course, that’s not all! We had
nearly a hundred entries
and ten finalists, and while only the finalists get the money, you all deserve the limelight.
Ten Finalists from the Redefine Robots Challenge:
CM6
Tardygrade
My Machinery 2021
Stack-chan – JavaScript-Driven Super-kawaii Robot
Assistive Robotic Manipulator and 6-DoF controller
Autonomous Litter Detection Robot w/ Edge Impulse
UV Sanitizing Autonomous Robot
FiberGrid Reloaded
A Robot for Automating 3D Printers
Robotics Ground Control Station
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388656",
"author": "Norbert",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T17:22:18",
"content": "Thanks for voting my project into the final round of this year’s HackadayPrize! Parts for the new iteration of my granules extruder have arrived right this afternoon. Time to go back to my workshop…",
... | 1,760,372,925.647895 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/07/worlds-cheapest-and-possibly-worst-ir-camera/ | World’s Cheapest And Possibly Worst IR Camera | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Arduino Hacks",
"digital cameras hacks"
] | [
"diy infrared camera",
"harbor freight",
"infrared",
"ir camera"
] | Don’t blame us for the title. [CCrome] admits it may well be the
cheapest and worst IR camera
available. The concept is surprisingly simple. Mount a cheap Harbor Freight non-contact thermometer on a 3D printer carriage and use it to scan the target. The design files are available on
GitHub
.
There is, of course, an Arduino to grab the data and send it to the PC. Some Python code takes care of converting it into an image.
Perhaps you don’t need a camera, but having a way to communicate with an $11 IR temperature sensor might come in handy someday. You do have to mash the measurement button down, so [CCrome] used the 3D printer to make a clamp for the button that also holds the POGO pins to the PCB. We would have been tempted to solder across the switch and also solder the wires to the pad. But, then again, you need a 3D printer for the project anyway.
Don’t expect the results you would get from a real thermal sensor. If you want that, you may have to
build it yourself
or open your wallet wide. If you need some inspiration for a use case, look at the
thermal camera contest
from a few years back. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388603",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T15:35:44",
"content": "Neat idea!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6388609",
"author": "neorpheus",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T15:51:50",
"content": "I’ve always wonde... | 1,760,372,925.798163 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/07/creating-methane-from-captured-carbon-dioxide-and-the-future-of-carbon-capture/ | Creating Methane From Captured Carbon Dioxide And The Future Of Carbon Capture | Maya Posch | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"amine solvent",
"Cansolv",
"carbon capture",
"synthethic fuel",
"synthethic natural gas"
] | There’s something intrinsically simple about the concept of carbon (CO
2
) capture: you simply have the CO
2
molecules absorbed or adsorbed by something, after which you separate the thus captured CO
2
and put it somewhere safe. Unfortunately, in physics and chemistry what seems easy and straightforward tends to be anything but simple, let alone energy efficient. While methods for carbon capture have been around for decades, making it economically viable has always been a struggle.
This is true both for carbon capture and storage/sequestration (
CCS
) as well as carbon capture and utilization (
CCU
). Whereas the former seeks to store and ideally permanently remove (sequester) carbon from the atmosphere, the latter captures carbon dioxide for use in e.g. industrial processes.
Recently, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has
announced
a breakthrough CCU concept, involving using a new amine-based solvent (2-EEMPA) that is supposed to be not only more efficient than e.g. the previously commonly used
MEA
, but also compatible with directly creating methane in the same process.
Since methane forms the major component in natural gas, might this be a way for CCU to create a carbon-neutral source of synthetic natural gas (SNG)?
Carbon Capture in a Nutshell
Process flow diagram of a typical amine treating process used in petroleum refineries, natural gas processing plants and other industrial facilities. (Credit: Raminagrobis, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The most common type of carbon capture (CC) system is a CO
2
scrubber that is used with fossil fuel power plants or similar sources of flue gas. This gas is led through the liquid solvent, typically
amine
-based. Amines are derivatives of ammonia, with at least one of its three hydrogen atoms having been replaced by a substituent.
Monoethanolamine
(
C
2
H
7
N
O, MEA
) is a primary amine that in a water-based solution can efficiently absorb CO
2
and H
2
S from flue gas.
When the resulting CO
2
rich amine solvent is then led into a regenerator unit which heats up the rich solvent to about 118 °C at 69 kPa, it causes the absorption to be reversed and the gases to be released. Most of the MEA is recovered in this manner and can then be returned to absorb more CO
2
from the flue gas.
Problems with MEA include the high water content in the solvent. Water has a high specific heat, which means it takes a lot of energy to get hot. MEA also reacts with carbonyl sulfide (COS) and carbon disulfide (CS
2
) to form heat-stable salts, which remove MEA from the process and require an additional process step to be removed.
After the CO
2
gas has been captured this way, it is generally compressed before transport for use, storage or sequestration. The heating up of the rich amine solvent in the regeneration process, as well as the compression of the captured carbon dioxide all cost considerable amounts of energy. This is where the economics of CC are not very favorable, and prefer input gases that are already rich in the gas that is to be captured.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries CO2 capture plant at the EOR project in Texas, USA. (Credit: Hirata et al. (2018), MHI)
Over the years, various alternatives have been developed to MEA which require less water, and processes that omit or reduce the compression step. Examples of the former are for example
Shell’s Cansolv
capture technology and Mitsubishi Heavy Industry’s
KM CDR process
with its proprietary KS-1 solvent. These all have the same goals: use less water, reduce the amount of amine solvent caught in the flue gas that’s emitted into the atmosphere and improvement of the recovery rate of the solvent while reducing energy requirements.
None of these processes are suitable for something like direct air CCS, though. Although one can technically lead atmospheric air through one of these capture plants, the difference in CO
2
content in the air versus flue gas is immensely different (>9% in flue gas versus 0.04% in air), leading to a very low efficiency rating.
Even so, with flue gas the capture rate of CO
2
is generally above 90%, but <99% (claimed 98% for Cansolv, >90% for KM CDR). This means that although most of the CO
2
is indeed captured, some of it still is emitted with the flue gas, along with amine solvents.
PNNL’s 2-EEMPA
In PNNL’s paper by
Heldebrant et al.
(2021) titled
Integrated Capture and Conversion of CO
2
to Methane using a Water-lean, Post-Combustion CO
2
Capture Solvent
a number of claims are made:
>90% conversion of captured CO
2
to hydrocarbons (mostly methane).
More efficient than the usual
Sabatier process
(skipping the CO
2
compression & transport steps).
Process conditions are 170 °C and <15 bar H
2
pressure with
ruthenium
catalyst.
Better performance of 2-EEMPA than MEA.
There are a number of steps involved in this process, from absorbing the CO
2
, to getting it to the point where it can react with the hydrogen that is added to create the hydrocarbons. Heldebrant et al. first describe the Sabatier process, using a combined cycle natural gas turbine plant equipped with Shell’s Cansolv (using a 50% by weight amine solvent) process as example:
CO
2
captured in the absorber & released in the stripper (regenerator) at 2 bars of pressure.
Pure CO
2
is compressed and mixed with hydrogen.
Mixture is added to methanation reactor for the Sabatier reaction.
The Sabatier reaction runs at 350 °C and 30 bar with an Ru/Al
2
O
3
catalyst.
The exothermic reaction provides heat for the stripper unit and power generation.
The PNNL version does not use the proprietary Cansolv process, but instead its own 2-EEMPA (N-(2-ethoxyethyl)-3-morpholinopropan-1-amine). Heldebrant et al. claim a CO
2
capture efficiency of >95% with coal-derived flue gas. 2-EEMPA-based solvent is projected to have a ~4% water content by weight in operation. At this water ratio, 74% of the CO
2
captured by 2-EEMPA (as EEMPA-carbamate) is converted to hydrocarbons when hydrogen is introduced and with an Ru/Al
2
O
3
catalyst present. Of these, 92% of these were methane.
At the same conditions, MEA showed a conversion ratio to hydrocarbons of <20%. The entire process chain can be summarized as in the following graphic:
Proposed FG-to-SNG process with the IC3M technology. (Source: Heldebrant et al. (2021))
The benefits compared to the traditional Sabatier process are a lower reaction temperature (170 °C instead of 350 °C), lower pressure (15 vs 30 bar) and lower cost for constructing and maintaining the equipment.
A Story of External Factors
As alluded to earlier in this article, a major consideration with carbon capture is the efficiency of the process. If we consider that CCU as proposed here relies on a rich source of CO
2
, as well as a pure source of hydrogen, it would appear that the former would have to come from flue gas and similar waste streams from the fossil fuel industry. For the latter, things are more problematic if we wish to not create additional waste.
Currently virtually all hydrogen on the market is
produced
through steam reforming (SMR) of natural gas. This makes it not carbon-neutral: if it requires natural gas as input for SMR to create the hydrogen needed to create the SNG, one may as well directly use the natural gas.
This is further illuminated by
Howarth et al.
, whose recent study details the effectiveness of so-called ‘blue hydrogen’, which uses CCS with SMR of NG and came to the conclusion that it’s more effective to just burn the NG directly. This leaves then only so-called ‘green’ hydrogen as viable input for this SNG process to conceivably make it carbon-neutral.
In 2020, only 4% of worldwide hydrogen was produced via electrolysis, some of it from low-carbon power sources. Even if all hydrogen at these SNG production facilities came from electrolysis facilities powered by VRE or nuclear power, that would still leave the CO
2
as an issue. If this came from fossil fuels, then it merely postpones the moment this carbon enters the atmosphere to when the SNG is burned.
True
carbon-neutral fuel
is conceivable, but so far no viable source of carbon has been found. Carbon from flue gas costs about $7.5 per ton, extracting carbon from sea water as carbonic acid would cost about $50 per ton and direct air carbon capture between $94 and $232 per ton. This then leaves PNNL’s process primarily as a way to use the carbon from fossil fuels (coal or NG) twice, though at a considerable energy investment.
No Free Lunch
In light of these considerations and also based on PNNL’s own
press release
, it would seem clear that the ability to generate methane using this method is mostly transitional, to support the transition to low-carbon ways to power the modern world. The only likely exception to this is probably extra-terrestrial exploration, where in-situ resource utilization (
ISRU
) is likely to become a big thing.
One of the reason why SpaceX’s Mars-bound
Raptor
rocket engines are methane-fueled is due to the relative ease with which methane can be produced even on locations like the surface of Mars. When the nearest source of terrestrial methane is suddenly a planet away, the electrical and others costs of even DACC and electrolysis of water to slowly create a trickle of methane fuel for the trip back or to sustain a colony do not seem as outrageous any more.
One major benefit of water-lean solvents like 2-EEMPA is also likely to be the more efficient capturing of CO
2
at fossil fuel plants. Whether this is enough to make big players like MHI and Shell sit up and pay attention is still anyone’s guess, but it’s hard to deny the benefit of more efficient CCS at fossil fuel plants. | 124 | 30 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388574",
"author": "Cory",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T14:08:46",
"content": "while just a simulation, and involving nanofab techniques that likely do not scale (we need a breakthrough in this field!!!), this would be really good.https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25426-5I act... | 1,760,372,926.463114 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/07/diy-solar-ebike-goes-around-the-world-we-hope/ | DIY Solar Ebike Goes Around The World, We Hope | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bike",
"ebike",
"hub motor",
"long distance",
"recumbent",
"solar panels",
"solar tracking"
] | [Mark Havran] is on a mission to complete a solo trip around the world on his bicycle. For such a long and arduous trip, unsupported by anything other than what he and his bike can carry, he has devised a unique vehicle with everything he needs to accomplish his journey. This bike has plenty of things we’ve seen before, such as solar panels and an electric motor, but plenty of things that are completely novel as well.
For such long-distance trips, the preferred style of bike for most is a recumbent. This allows the rider to take a more relaxed position while riding and is much more efficient than an upright bike as well. [Mark]’s bike also uses a hub motor in the front wheel powered by a set of lithium ion battery packs. The bike also utilizes four solar panels with three charge controllers (to reduce the impacts of panel shading) laid out with three of the panels on a trailer and a single panel above the bike to give him some shade while riding. [Mark] also built solar tracking abilities into each of the two arrays, allowing the solar panels to automatically rotate around the trailer and bike to more efficiently capture sunlight
than a statically-mounted set of panels
would be able to. They can also be manually controlled in case of high winds.
From the video linked below, we can see a number of other added features to the bike that will enable it to make such a long trip. First, he is getting a new motor which has a number of improvements over his old one, which he put over 30,000 kilometers on. Second, there are some safety features that deserve a mention such as his lighting setup borrowed from emergency response vehicles, and even includes a fire extinguisher for any catastrophic electrical failures. Of course, if you aren’t optimizing your recumbent electric bike for long distance
there are some other modifications you could make to it as well to improve its off-road abilities
. Best of luck, Mark! | 47 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388532",
"author": "vib",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T11:26:54",
"content": "That fire extinguisher will be of zero usefulness since the only fire that can start here is a Li-Ion battery fire.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "638... | 1,760,372,926.057761 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/07/microgps-sees-what-you-overlook/ | MicroGPS Sees What You Overlook | Matthew Carlson | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"gps",
"indoor location service",
"Nvidia Jetson"
] | GPS is an incredibly powerful tool that allows devices such as your smartphone to know roughly where they are with an accuracy of around a meter in some cases. However, this is largely too inaccurate for many use cases and that accuracy drops considerably when inside such as warehouse robots that rely on barcodes on the floor. In response, researchers [Linguang Zhang, Adam Finkelstein, Szymon Rusinkiewicz] at Princeton have
developed a system they refer to as MicroGPS that uses pictures of the ground to determine its location with sub-centimeter accuracy
.
The system has a downward-facing monochrome camera with a light shield to control for exposure. Camera output feeds into an Nvidia Jetson TX1 platform for processing. The idea is actually quite similar to that of an
optical mouse as they are often little more than a downward-facing low-resolution camera with some clever processing
. Rather than trying to capture relative position like a mouse, the researchers are trying to capture absolute position. Imagine picking up your mouse, dropping it on a different spot on your mousepad, and having the cursor snap to a different part of the screen. To our eyes that are quite far away from the surface, asphalt, tarmac, concrete, and carpet look quite uniform. But to a macro camera, there are cracks, fibers, and imperfections that are distinct and recognizable.
They sample the surface ahead of time, creating a globally consistent map of all the images stitched together. Then while moving around, they extract features and implement a voting method to filter out numerous false positives. The system is robust enough to work even a month after the initial dataset was created on an outside road. They put leaves on the ground to try and fool the system but saw remarkably stable navigation.
Their paper, code, and dataset are all available online. We’re looking forward to fusion systems where it can combine GPS, Wifi triangulation, and MicroGPS to provide a robust and accurate position.
Video after the break. | 45 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388485",
"author": "Manfred",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T08:07:23",
"content": "There are already household vacuum robots that do the same thing with the ceiling structure.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6388508",
"aut... | 1,760,372,925.976722 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/06/bbc-microbit-reads-morse-code-with-makecode/ | BBC Micro:bit Reads Morse Code With MakeCode | Al Williams | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"bbc microbit",
"makecode",
"morse code"
] | We always have mixed feelings about the drag-and-drop programming languages. But we were impressed with [SirDan’s]
Morse code decoder
built with the graphical MakeCode. Granted, it is reading 5 element groups from a button on the BBC micro:bit and not worrying about details such as intercharacter or interelement spacing or word spacing. But it is still a nice demo for MakeCode.
Interestingly, the online editor for MakeCode can apparently simulate well enough to test the program. However, [SirDan] only provides the hex file so we couldn’t try it out. There is a screenshot of the visual code, but you’d have to work out the part that didn’t fit on the screenshot (the data arrays are pretty long).
We do like that you can jump between blocks and JavaScript in MakeCode, so it would have been possible to provide a more traditional listing. There are times when you really want to just do something in code, we think.
Purists will argue it really isn’t decoding Morse code because it uses one button for a dot and another button for a dash. But that’s no different than an iambic paddle. You’d still want to fix the timing issues to make it practical for real Morse code operators.
If you want a more practical code reader, try
this one
. Better still, learn the code. The
Ludwig Koch
method works for a lot of people. | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388467",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T05:14:20",
"content": "Two buttons is far removed from real code, as is sending directly to a machine.There is very little need for knowing what you are sending. It’s receiving that’s “harder”. And generally, that means... | 1,760,372,926.101194 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/06/retrotechtacular-3d-printed-buildings-1930s-style/ | Retrotechtacular: 3D-Printed Buildings, 1930s Style | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrotechtacular"
] | [
"building",
"concrete",
"construction",
"extruder",
"mortar",
"retrotechtacular",
"wall"
] | Here we are in the future, thinking we’re so fancy and cutting edge with mega-scale 3D printers that can extrude complete, ready-to-occupy buildings, only to find out that
some clever inventor came up with essentially the same idea back in the 1930s
.
The inventor in question, one [William E. Urschel] of Valparaiso, Indiana, really seemed to be onto something with his “Machine for Building Walls,” as
his 1941 patent describes
the idea. The first video below gives a good overview of the contraption, which consists of an “extruder” mounted on the end of a counterweighted boom, the length of which determines the radius of the circular structure produced. The boom swivels on a central mast, and is cranked up manually for each course extruded. The business end has a small hopper for what appears to be an exceptionally dry concrete or mortar mix. The hopper has a bunch of cam-driven spades that drive down into the material to push it out of the hopper; the mix is constrained between two rotating disks that trowel the sides smooth and drive the extruder forward.
The device has a ravenous appetite for material, as witnessed by the hustle the workers show keeping the machine fed. Window and door openings are handled with a little manual work, and the openings are topped with lintels to support the concrete. Clever tools are used to cut pockets for roof rafters, and the finished structure, complete with faux crenellations and a coat of stucco, looks pretty decent.
But [Mr. Urschel] wasn’t one to rest on his laurels, for as
the second video
shows, by the late 1940s he had made some improvements to the machine. The extruder design had been streamlined, and the number of potentially dangerous pulleys and belts had been reduced. He also added the ability to angle the boom relative to the mast, letting new courses corbel in over lower courses. The beehive-shaped structure that resulted was pretty charming, even if it needed manual finishing for the very top. Equally charming are the antics of helpers [Larry], [Curly], and [Moe]. It was also good to see that the original building was still standing a decade or more later, although the buildings no longer appear to be standing, at least judging by a quick look at Valparaiso, Indiana on Google Maps.
Granted, [Mr. Urschel]’s design was pretty limited, and we’ve far surpassed his vision by 3D-printing all kinds of structures, from
complete castles
to
wind turbine towers
. But there’s no denying that he got there before we did, and it took some pretty clever hacking to do it.
Thanks to tipline stalwart [Keith Olson] for the heads-up on this one. | 35 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388422",
"author": "Jack Buffington",
"timestamp": "2021-10-07T02:32:06",
"content": "Those walls look a lot nicer than the 3D printed walls that I have seen elsewhere. It would be a big improvement on the modern machines to have a spinning disk like he had to smooth out the edges... | 1,760,372,926.17228 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/06/using-a-pcb-to-reflow-pcbs-take-2/ | Using A PCB To Reflow PCBs – Take 2! | Jim Heaney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"heater",
"pcb",
"reflow",
"reflow plate",
"soldering"
] | It’s not too hard to make your electronics project get warm. Design your traces too small, accidentally short the battery inputs together, maybe reverse the voltage going to your MCU. We’ve all cooked a part or two over the years. But what about making a PCB that gets hot on purpose? That’s exactly what [Carl Bugeja] did in his
second revision of a PCB hot plate, designed to reflow other PCBs
.
[Carl’s] first attempt at making a hot plate yielded
lukewarm
results. The board, which was a single snaking trace on the top of an aluminum substrate, did heat up as it was supposed to. However, the thin substrate led to the hot plate massively warping as it heated up, reducing the contact against the boards being soldered. On top of that, the resistance was much greater than expected, resulting in much lower heat output.
The new revision of the board is on a thicker substrate with much thicker traces, reducing the resistance from 36 ohms on the previous design to just 1 ohm. The thicker substrate, paired with a newer design with fewer slots, made for a much sturdier surface that did not bend as it was heated.
We especially like the wiring solution [Paul] came up with for his new hot plate. Soldering to a resistive heater can be a massive annoyance since the board will act as a heatsink. While Alligator clips do work for testing, there is always the chance of them slipping and shorting against each other. [Paul] decided to make a custom flexible PCB that would connect with nylon screws to the hot plate, and fit directly onto the connection points of his power supply.
Unfortunately, this new revision of the board did have some issues as well. The biggest of these was that there was a miscommunication with the board manufacturer, and the solder mask used begins to degrade after a few hours at the operating temperature. But for light-duty work and intermittent use, it is the perfect tool.
You can read more about [Paul’s] first PCB hot plate in our
previous coverage of it here
. | 29 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388389",
"author": "pablo",
"timestamp": "2021-10-06T23:52:18",
"content": "I could see this working well on an aluminum substrate with high-temperature dielectric",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6388414",
"author": "... | 1,760,372,926.24081 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/06/dave-the-drive-able-duck-does-donuts/ | Dave The Drive-able Duck Does Donuts | Kristina Panos | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"duck decoy",
"R/C boat",
"silicone caulking",
"Sugru"
] | [Hey Jude] is tired of the machismo dripping from most modern electronic toys, especially stuff like monster trucks and police/military sets. He grew up on weird stuff, not aggression, and
wanted to share the experience of kit-bashing a new toy together alongside his son
.
This is essentially an R/C boat stuffed into a decoy duck, but there’s more to it than that. After removing the ballast that made him stay upright, [Hey Jude] performed plastic surgery on both sides of Dave the duck, creating a boat-shaped hole in the bottom, and a hinged bonnet out of the top which serves as an access panel for the boat’s innards. Everything is sealed up with Sugru, though you could probably use caulk or even hot glue (if you wanted something more temporary and less expensive).
The smartest bit has to be the loop on Dave’s back — this makes it easy to lower him into a pond from a footbridge, or rescue him if he stalls in the middle of the water. Check out the footage of Dave’s maiden voyage after the break.
Remote control of things will never get old. Do you have an old Nintendo Zapper lying around?
Why not make it do your home automation bidding? | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388364",
"author": "k-ww",
"timestamp": "2021-10-06T21:10:55",
"content": "The concept quacks me up.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6388372",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2021-10-06T21:46:25",
"content": "... | 1,760,372,926.297359 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/06/making-the-most-of-your-resin-printer-investment/ | Making The Most Of Your Resin Printer Investment | Dan Maloney | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"Elegoo",
"MSLA",
"production",
"resin",
"sla",
"stereolithography"
] | To the extent that we think of 3D printers as production machines, we tend to imagine huge banks of FDM machines slowly but surely cranking out parts. These printer farms are a sensible way to turn a slow process into a high-volume operation, but it turns out there’s a way to do the same thing with only one printer —
as long as you think small
.
This one comes to us by way of [Andrew Sink], who recently showed us a neat trick for
adding a dash of color to resin printed parts
. As with that tip, this one centers around his Elegoo resin printer, which is capable of intricately detailed prints but like any additive process, takes quite a bit of time to finish a print. Luckily, though, the printer uses the MSLA, or masked stereolithography, process, which exposes the entire resin tank to ultraviolet light in one exposure. That means that, unlike FDM printers, it takes no more time to print a dozen models than it does to print one. The upshot of this is that however many models can fit on the MSLA print platform can be printed in the same amount of time it takes to print the part with the most layers. In [Andrew]’s case, 22 identical figurine models were printed in the same three hours it took to print just one copy.
It seems obvious, but sometimes the simplest tips are the best. And the next step is obvious, especially as MSLA printer prices fall: a resin printer farm, with each printer working on dozens of small parts at a time. Such a setup might rival injection molding in terms of throughput, and would likely be far cheaper as far as tooling goes. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388332",
"author": "nc",
"timestamp": "2021-10-06T20:05:06",
"content": "Adidas has been doing this for literal years. look up the futurecraft 4D.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6388338",
"author": "scott.tx",
"timesta... | 1,760,372,926.582961 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/06/decoding-smd-part-markings/ | Decoding SMD Part Markings | Chris Lott | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Parts",
"Repair Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"database",
"repair",
"smd part marking"
] | You’ve probably encountered this before — you have a circuit board that is poorly documented, and want to know the part number of a tiny SMD chip. Retro computer enthusiast [JohnK]
recently tweeted
about one such database that he recently found, entitled
The Ultimate SMD Marking Codes Database
. This data base is only a couple of years old judging from the Wayback Machine, but seems to be fairly exhaustive and can be found referenced in quite a few electronics forums.
Unlike their larger SMD siblings, these chips in question are so small that there is no room to print the entire part number on the device. Instead, the standard practice is for manufacturers use an abbreviated code of just a few characters. These codes are only unique to each part or package, and aren’t necessarily unique across an entire product line. And just because it is standard practice does not imply the marking codes themselves follow any standard whatsoever. This seemingly hodgepodge system works just fine for the development, procurement and manufacturing phases of a product’s lifecycle. It’s during the repair, refurbishment, or just hacking for fun phases where these codes can leave you scratching your head.
Several sites like the one [JohnK] found have been around for years, and adding yet another database to your toolbox is a good thing. But none of them will ever be exhaustive. There’s a good reason for that — maintaining such a database would be a herculean task. Just finding the part marking information for a known chip can be difficult. Some manufacturers put it clearly in the data sheet, and some refer you to other documentation which may or may not be readily available. And some manufacturers ask you to contact them for this information — presumably because it is dynamic changes from time to time.
As a quick example of the pitfalls encountered when using these reverse lookups databases, consider two small-footprint SMD parts from a Tiny FPGA module that is sitting on my desk. Using the database that [JohnK] posted, the
WXS
is most likely a 3.2 V LDO by Richtek, part number RT9013-31GB. But
WXS
is also the code for a 3-pin PNP transistor. Richtek themselves says the RT9013 should be marked
WX=
, but that is based on a document from 2009. Richtek is one of the companies that says to contact them for the latest marking codes, so this may have changed in the past ten years.
The other chip marked
654
is more than likely a linear voltage regulator, such as the Micrel MIC5365-1.2YCV5. Here is a situation, presumably by coincidence, where several manufacturers are using the same code to represent different kinds of chips — interestingly all of them power supply circuits. Except for the Micrel part, the others all generate 5.4 VDC. For an FPGA board that probably uses 1.2 V, it’s reasonable to rule out those others. As you can see, knowing the package details and guessing the basic function of the chip can help narrow things down. Even though these lookups aren’t perfect, finding a match in the database and considering other things you know about the chip means you can usually find the information you want.
In the future, will we have a web-crawling AI who automatically generates and maintains such a database, even calling the manufacturers to obtains codes that aren’t published online? What is your favorite go-to site for looking up these codes? Let us know in the comments below. Thanks to [J. Peterson] for sending bringing this to our attention via the tips line. | 29 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388272",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2021-10-06T17:06:34",
"content": "And how do you know it is WXS not SXM?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6388277",
"author": "AK",
"timestamp": "2021-10-06T17:12:35",
... | 1,760,372,926.529384 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/06/vintage-computer-festival-east-reboots-this-weekend/ | Vintage Computer Festival East Reboots This Weekend | Tom Nardi | [
"cons",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"InfoAge",
"retrocomputing",
"VCF",
"VCF East",
"VCF East 2021"
] | We don’t have to tell the average Hackaday reader that the last two years have represented a serious dry spell for the type of in-person events that our community has always taken for granted. Sure virtual hacker cons have their advantages, but there’s nothing quite like meeting up face to face to talk shop with like-minded folks and checking out everyone’s latest passion project.
Luckily for classic computer aficionados, especially those on the East Coast of the United States, the long wait is about to end. After being forced to go virtual last year,
Vintage Computer Festival East will once again be opening their doors to the public
from October 8th to the 10th at the InfoAge Science & History Center in Wall, New Jersey. Attendees will need to wear a mask to gain access to the former Camp Evans Signal Corps R&D laboratory, but that’s a small price to pay considering the impressive list of exhibits, presentations, and classes being offered.
In fact, it’s shaping up to be the biggest and best VCF East yet. The Friday classes cover a wide range of topics from CRT repair to implementing a basic video controller with a FPGA, and the list of speakers include early computer luminaries such as Michael Tomczyk, the Product Manager for the VIC-20, and
Adventure International
founder Scott Adams. A little birdie even tells us that if
you bring your copy of
Back into the Storm
, our very own Bil Herd will be sign it for you after his talk on the history of the Commodore wraps up Saturday evening.
If you’d rather get hands-on you can always take a walk over to the
Computer Deconstruction Laboratory
, InfoAge’s on-site hackerspace. Glitch Works will be on hand with several
popular kits such as the XT-IDE
, an 8-bit ISA adapter that lets you connect (relatively) modern drives to classic machines, and the
R6501Q/R6511Q Single Board Computer
. A bit rusty with the iron and would rather start on something a little easier? Not to worry. Neil Cherry, a staple of the Hackaday comment section since before we switched to color pictures, will be instructing hackers young and old in the ways of the flux during his all-day soldering classes.
Of course, no VCF trip is truly complete until you’ve searched for treasure in the consignment room. The space has been expanded for 2021, and considering how long folks have had to clean out their attics and garages thanks to the pandemic, we’re expecting a bumper crop of interesting hardware to wade through.
If the turnout for the VCF Swap Meet in April was any indication
, we’d suggest bringing some extra cash with you.
As a proud sponsor of the 2021 Vintage Computer Festival East, Hackaday will naturally be bringing you a first-hand account of the overall event as well as a deeper look into some of the incredible exhibits on display in the very near future. But words and pictures on a page can only go so far. If you’ve grown tired of virtual events and are looking to peek your head out, we can guarantee a trip to InfoAge this weekend will be well worth the gas money for anyone within driving distance. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388255",
"author": "Neil Cherry",
"timestamp": "2021-10-06T16:29:57",
"content": "I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book every day! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity, you’re name in print, that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to start happening ... | 1,760,372,926.69498 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/06/furter-burner-cooks-the-wieners-just-so/ | Furter Burner Cooks The Wieners Just So | Lewin Day | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"grill",
"sausage",
"wiener"
] | Sometimes you’re hungry for two sausages, and not a sausage more. [Wesley] designed his
Furter Burner
to handle precisely these situations, and it looks to cook up a pair of wieners a treat. (Video, embedded below.)
The process starts with a couple of wooden stunt wieners, and some foam board, with which [Wesley] roughs out a design. From there, a CAD design is drawn up and parts routed out of compressed board to troubleshoot the assembly further. Later moving on to a plywood version, having a wooden prototype quickly reveals plenty of things to improve, from adding handles to the grill surface to air holes to allow combustion.
The design goes through a couple of further iterations in metal before completion. The final result is impressive—resulting in a twin-wiener cooker that burns coals, complete with skewers for easy sausage handling and bearing [Wesley’s] own logo.
The video shows off the benefits of the iterative design process. It also demonstrates why it often makes sense to rough out designs in cheaper materials before going to the heavy stuff, particularly in a case like [Wesley]’s where the metal parts can only be cut off-site. Refining the design in-house first saves a lot of mucking around.
We’ve seen [Wesley]’s work before, too –
like this impressive workshop storage solution
. | 31 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388217",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2021-10-06T15:08:02",
"content": "Two nails and an AC cord. “Makes a perfect hot dog cooker”. It was in the book from the chikdren’s library fifty years ago.Or buiod a solar cooker, that was in a book, but maybe not from the libra... | 1,760,372,926.64583 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/06/3d-printering-corrugated-plastic-for-cheaper-easier-enclosures/ | 3D Printering: Corrugated Plastic For Cheaper & Easier Enclosures | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"3D Printering",
"cnc",
"Coroplast",
"corrugated plastic",
"enclosure"
] | Clear acrylic panels have long been a mainstay of 3D printer enclosure designs, but they can also add significant cost in terms of money, shipping, weight, and hassle. An alternative material worth looking at is corrugated plastic (also known by its trade name
coroplast
) which is cheap, light, an excellent insulator, and easy to work with. Many enclosure designs can be refitted to use it instead of acrylic, so let’s take a closer look at what it has to offer.
What’s Wrong With Acrylic?
It’s not just the purchase price that makes acrylic a spendy option. Acrylic is fairly heavy, and shipping pieces the size of enclosure panels can be expensive. Also, cutting acrylic without special tools can be a challenge because it cracks easily if mishandled. Acrylic cuts beautifully in a laser cutter, but most laser cutters accessible to a hobbyist are not big enough to make enclosure-sized panels. If you are stuck with needing to cut acrylic by hand,
here are some tips on how to get by with the tools you have
.
It is best to source acrylic from a local shop that can also cut it to size with the right tools for a reasonable price, but it is still far from being a
cheap
material. There’s another option: corrugated plastic has quite a few properties that make it worth considering, especially for a hobbyist.
What’s Good About Corrugated Plastic?
Most of us know corrugated plastic as the stuff lawn signs are made of. Using it in enclosure design isn’t a new idea (here’s
a printer enclosure made entirely from it
, and
here is a CNC mill enclosure using it as well
) but instead of making an entire enclosure out of it, it can make more sense to use it only as a panel material. There is no need to design a new enclosure from scratch. One can use an existing design and swap the acrylic panels for corrugated plastic ones.
Corrugated plastic, also known as
Coroplast
.
Corrugated plastic offers quite a few advantages:
It is a fraction of the cost of acrylic.
It is an excellent insulator.
It is lightweight.
Easily cuts with a sharp blade.
Available in fire retardant versions if needed.
Can be bent or folded along the corrugation, with or without scoring it first.
It can be easier to source than acrylic sheets, and is certainly much easier to work with. Any sign shop or plastics supplier likely has it on hand in a variety of colors.
There are a few disadvantages, however.
A standard thickness is 4 mm. Acrylic, however, is commonly used in 3 mm (or 1/8″) thickness.
It is not transparent (but windows can be cut easily.)
It is not fireproof. Like acrylic, it can burn if it gets hot enough. But compared to other plastics, combustion
doesn’t spew a toxic mess, and is easily extinguished
.
Corrugated plastic material being 4 mm thick instead of 3 mm means it is not necessarily a drop-in replacement for acrylic in existing designs. But not every enclosure is constrained by panel thickness.
Using Corrugated Plastic in Enclosures
The two easiest ways to use this material are: create an enclosure by adding panels to an existing structure, or use an existing design but replace the acrylic with corrugated plastic. Below are examples of both.
Make an Enclosure From an Existing Structure
Here is an enclosure I built into a metal IKEA BROR shelving unit, and it easily houses a Prusa Mini 3D printer. The BROR is made from angled metal pieces that contain regularly spaced holes. This makes it very convenient to turn a shelf section into an enclosure just by mounting a few side panels; the regular shelf surfaces provide a top and bottom.
Not only do corrugated plastic panels fit easily behind the angled metal posts, but a few short screws through the convenient holes is all it takes to fully secure them. Windows can be made by cutting a hole, and gluing or taping a clear plastic sheet to one or both sides. CA glue and most other adhesives work fine on corrugated plastic.
The only inconvenience I encountered was when it came to fashioning a door for the front. Instead of making cabinet-style doors with hinges, I took advantage of the lightweight nature of the material to create a simple removable cover. The shelf frame is steel, so I glued several strong magnets into a separate sheet to create a magnetically-attached removable front cover. I can close the front up completely, or leave a gap for airflow as needed. The result is simple, attractive, and cost very little apart from the shelf itself.
Corrugated plastic panels fit easily into the angled steel of an IKEA BROR shelf
Embedded magnets make a simple front cover instead of a door.
Replace the Acrylic in an Existing Enclosure Design
The only problem with refitting an existing enclosure designed for 3 mm acrylic sheets is that 4 mm corrugated plastic may not fit because they are slightly thicker. While it’s always possible to simply cut and peel away material until it fits, for best results, panel-retaining parts should be redesigned to accommodate the thicker material.
For example, I like the
Prusa V2 LACK enclosure design
and its 3D-printed parts, but the next time I build one I will use corrugated plastic panels instead of acrylic. In preparation for this,
I have redesigned the necessary parts to accept 4 mm thick material
.
Prusa’s original LACK enclosure design, intended for 3 mm thick acrylic panels. (Photo: Prusa Research)
Parts modified to accept 4 mm thick corrugated plastic instead of 3 mm acrylic.
Fortunately, Prusa provides not only STL files for their design, but also the CAD files. While it is possible to
modify parts that exist only as STL files
, in general having access to CAD format files makes this kind of task much easier.
An Under-Represented Material
For 3D printers,
enclosure design is still a problem that isn’t entirely solved
. “Soft” enclosure options like photo tents or fabric grow boxes meant for plants are an option for the cost-conscious, but there are also ways to reduce the cost of more traditional designs. Corrugated plastic offers a lot of advantages in that regard.
The idea of using corrugated plastic in enclosures isn’t new, but it does seem under-represented. Do you know of enclosures that make effective or particularly clever use of it, or do you have any tips of your own? We definitely want to hear about it, so share your thoughts in the comments. | 37 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388191",
"author": "jpa",
"timestamp": "2021-10-06T14:20:30",
"content": "Glass can be pretty cost-effective material also. Many local shops will even cut it to size and chamfer the edges if needed. When combined with steel shelving, it should provide some extra chances of stopping... | 1,760,372,926.831558 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/06/building-a-multi-ton-power-loader-for-fun/ | Building A Multi-Ton Power Loader For Fun | Danie Conradie | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"exoskeleton",
"Hacksmith",
"mech suit",
"robot",
"ros"
] | Exoskeletons, power suits, and iron suits in science fiction have served as the inspiration for many engineers and engineering projects over the years. This is certainly the case at [Hacksmith Industries], where Hackaday alum [James Hobson] has been building a
massive mechanical exoskeleton
since January 2019, inspired by the P-5000 Power Loader from the Alien movies. (Video, embedded below.)
Unlike the movie version, the [Hacksmith] power loader is not bipedal but built on top of the chassis of a small tracked skid-steer loader. Its existing hydraulic power unit also feeds all the upper body hydraulic cylinders. The upper body maintains the basic look of the movie version and was built from plasma-cut steel sections that fit together with a tab and slot system before being welded. Each arm has five degrees of freedom, controlled by proportional hydraulic valves. The power loader is controlled by an industrial grade control system based on the Raspberry Pi, running
ROS
.
Every single actuator is capable of applying enough force to kill, so safety is an important consideration in the design. It has emergency stop buttons mounted in several locations, including on a wireless remote. The ROS controller monitors the position of every cylinder using string potentiometers for closed-loop control, and to trigger the emergency stop if an actuator goes out of bounds. The power loader can be controlled by the onboard pilot using a pair of simulator flight controller joysticks, or remotely using a PS4 controller.
[Hacksmith Industries] is clear about the fact that they are building multi-ton power loaded for fun and entertainment, not because it’s necessarily practical or a commercially viable product. However, other
exoskeletons
have proven that they are a viable solution for reducing fatigue and risk of injury for industrial workers, and
carrying heavy loads in rough terrain
. | 18 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6388126",
"author": "Viktor",
"timestamp": "2021-10-06T11:18:12",
"content": "Why the huge backlash when moving? Isn’t there negative feedback?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6388161",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
... | 1,760,372,926.983241 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.