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https://hackaday.com/2021/09/14/hacking-the-wooly-mammoth/ | Hacking The Wooly Mammoth | Al Williams | [
"News"
] | [
"cloning",
"CRISPR",
"dna",
"wooly mammoth"
] | In case you can’t get enough Jurassic Park movies, you can look forward to plans a biotech company has to
hybridize endangered Asian elephants with long-extinct wooly mammoths
using gene splicing and other exotic techniques.
Expect a long movie, the team hopes to have calves after six years and we don’t think a theme park is in the making. The claim is that mammoth traits will help the elephants reclaim the tundra, but we can’t help but think it is just an excuse to reanimate an extinct animal. If you read popular press reports, there is some question if the ecological mission claimed by the company is realistic. However, we can’t deny it would be cool to bring an animal back from extinction — sort of.
We aren’t DNA wizards, so we only partially understand what’s being proposed. Apparently, skin cells from a modern elephant will serve as a base to accept extracted mammoth DNA. This might seem far-fetched but turns out the mammoth lived much more recently than we usually think. When they die in their natural deep-freeze environment, they are often well preserved.
Once the gene splicing is set up, a surrogate elephant will carry the embryo to term. The hope is that the improved breed would be able to further interbreed with natural species, although with the gestation and maturity times of elephants, this will be a very long time to bear fruit.
So how do you feel about it? Will we face a movie-level disaster? Will we get some lab curiosity creatures? Will it save the tundra? Let us know what you think in the comments.
DNA manipulation has gone from
moon-shot-level tech to readily accessible
in a very short amount of time. In particular,
CRISPR
, changes everything and is both exciting and scary on what it puts in the hands of nearly anyone. | 19 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380749",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-09-15T02:59:09",
"content": "Maybe with some advanced sequencing this project could work.https://www.cell.com/cell-systems/fulltext/S2405-4712(21)00332-X",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comme... | 1,760,372,950.609194 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/14/harp-uses-frikin-lasers/ | Harp Uses Frikin’ Lasers | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Laser Hacks",
"Musical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"arduino",
"electric harp",
"harp",
"laser harp",
"midi",
"MIDI harp"
] | We aren’t sure if you really need lasers to build [HoPE’s]
laser harp
. It is little more than some photocells and has an Arduino generate tones based on the signals. Still, you need to excite the photocells somehow, and lasers are cheap enough these days.
Mechanically, the device is a pretty large wooden structure. There are six lasers aligned to six light sensors. Each sensor is read by an analog input pin on an Arduino armed with a music-generation shield. We’ve seen plenty of these in the past, but the simplicity of this one is engaging.
We’ve used the copper tape writing trick ourselves and it is quite effective. The tape is often used for stained glass work and sticks to many surfaces. You can solder to it and solder overlaps where you need connections. The results are often as good as a simple single-sided PCB.
The code attached to the post is fairly straightforward and the MIDI shield does the bulk of the work. It should also make it easy to create some really impressive musical effects with a bit of extra coding.
If you want an artsy self-contained version, check out
this previous Hackaday Prize entry
. We’ve seen several of these at
different levels of complexity
. | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380747",
"author": "Craig Hollabaugh",
"timestamp": "2021-09-15T02:58:26",
"content": "There’s a giant one of these at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe. Glad another exists. Thanks for the post.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6380751",
... | 1,760,372,950.449586 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/14/gorgeous-battery-welder-hits-the-spot/ | Gorgeous Battery Welder Hits The Spot | Ryan Flowers | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"classic hacks",
"how-to"
] | [
"arduino",
"battery welder",
"lithium ion",
"mahogany",
"spot",
"spot welder",
"welder",
"wood working"
] | Raise you’re hand if you’ve ever soldered directly to a battery even though you know better. We’ve all been there. Sometimes we get away with it when we have a small pack and don’t care about longevity. But when [Robert Dunn] needed to build a battery pack out of about 120 Lithium Ion cells, he knew that he had to do it The Right Way and use a battery spot welder. Of course, buying one is too simple for a hacker like [Robert]. And so it was that he decided to
Build a Spot Welder from an old Microwave Oven and way too much mahogany, which you can view below the break.
Spot Welding leaves two familiar divots in the attached tab, which can be soldered or welded as need.
For the unfamiliar, a battery spot welder is the magical device that attaches tabs to rechargeable batteries. You’ll notice that all battery packs with cylindrical cells have a tab with two small dimples. These dimples are where high amperage electricity quickly heats the battery terminal and the tab until they’re red hot, welding them together. The operation is done and over in less than a second, well before any heat damage can be done. The tab can then be soldered to or spot welded to another cell.
One of the most critical parts of spot welding batteries is timing. While [Robert Dunn] admits that a 555 timer or even just a manual switch and relay could have done the job, he opted for an Arduino Uno with a 4 character 7 segment LED display that shows the welding time in milliseconds. A 3d printed trigger and welder handle wrap up the hardware nicely.
The build is topped off by a custom mahogany enclosure that is quite a bit overdone. But if one has the wood, the time, the tools and skills (and a YouTube channel perhaps?) there’s no reason not to put in the extra effort! [Robert]’s resulting build is almost
too
nice, but it’ll certainly get the job done.
Of course, spot welders are almost standard fare here at Hackaday, and we’ve covered
The Good
,
The Bad
, and
The Solar.
Do you have a battery welder project that deserves a spot in Hackaday’s rotation? By all means, send it over to the
Tip Line
! | 32 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380664",
"author": "Gewandsznajder",
"timestamp": "2021-09-14T20:10:35",
"content": "After the 3:15 welding stuff doesn’t he short all the laminations? I thought the laminations were supposed to be electrically insulated to reduce loss from eddy currents. At that specs would that b... | 1,760,372,951.162522 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/14/lithium-mine-to-battery-line-tesla-battery-day-and-the-future-of-evs/ | Lithium Mine To Battery Line: Tesla Battery Day And The Future Of EVs | Maya Posch | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"lithium battery",
"tesla"
] | After last year’s Tesla Battery Day presentation and the flurry of information that came out of it, [The Limiting Factor]
spent many months researching the countless topics behind Tesla’s announced plans
, the resource markets for everything from lithium to copper and cobalt, and what all of this means for electrical vehicles (EVs) as well as batteries for both battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) and power storage.
A number of these changes are immediate, such as the use of battery packs as a structural element to save the weight of a supporting structure, while others such as the shift away from cobalt in battery cathodes being a more long-term prospective, along with the plans for Tesla to set up its own lithium clay mining operation in the US. Also impossible to pin down: when
the famous ‘tabless’ 4680 cells
that Tesla plans to use instead of the current 18650 cells will be mass-produced and when they will enable the promised 16% increase.
Even so, in the over 1 hour long video (also linked below after the break), the overall perspective seems fairly optimistic, with
LFP
(lithium iron phosphate) batteries also getting a shout out. One obvious indication of process to point out is that the cobalt-free battery is
already used
in Model 3 Teslas, most commonly in Chinese models. | 15 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380686",
"author": "Redhatter (VK4MSL)",
"timestamp": "2021-09-14T21:20:51",
"content": "That’s LiFePO₄ not LFP.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6380688",
"author": "rpavlik",
"timestamp": "2021-09-14T21:26:36... | 1,760,372,950.704922 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/14/the-worlds-first-autonomous-electric-cargo-ship-is-due-to-set-sail/ | The World’s First Autonomous Electric Cargo Ship Is Due To Set Sail | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"green hacks",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"boat",
"container shipping",
"electric ship",
"electric shipping",
"ship",
"shipping"
] | Maritime shipping is big business, with gigantic container ships responsible for moving the vast majority of the world’s goods from point A to points B, C and D. Of course, there’s a significant environmental impact from all this activity, something ill befitting the cleaner, cooler world we hope the future will be. Thus, alternatives to the fossil fuel burning ships of old must be found. To that end, Norwegian company Yara International has developed a zero-emission ship by the name of
Yara Birkeland
, which aims to show the way forward into
a world of electric, autonomous sea transport.
Electric Power On The Water
The
Yara Birkeland
on trial, pictured here with a temporary bridge for manual control of the ship. Credit: Yara International
Yara International was originally founded to solve issues of famine in Europe in the early 20th century. This was achieved primarily through the development of the world’s first nitrogen fertilizers, which drastically increased crop yields. In more recent times, the company has come to focus on a broader range of sustainability issues, thus leading to the development of the
Yara Birkeland
.
The ship relies on electric power, packing a 7 MWh battery. As a comparison, the average electric car has a battery pack somewhere between 40 and 100 kWh. In fact, the
Yara Birkeland’s
battery pack is approximately the equivalent of 70 Tesla Model S battery packs in capacity. It’s intended for the ship to charge its battery packs when in port via quayside facilities.
Three separate facilities will monitor the progress of the ship. Credit: Kongsberg
The battery is paired with two 700 kW tunnel thrusters for propulsion. There’s also a further two 900 kW Azipull pod thrusters, which propel the ship in addition to adding maneuverability. All that power gives the
Yara Birkeland
a top speed of 13 knots, or around 15 MPH. Cargo capacity is 120 twenty-foot equivalent units, or TEUs in the common shipping parlance. Alternatively, it can carry 60 forty-foot containers.
The ship is being built in partnership with
Kongsberg
, a marine systems provider based in Norway. The company stretches back over 200 years, originally starting out as a munitions factory in 1814. The company diversified over the years, building a heavy presence in the maritime industry up to the present day. Kongsberg is responsible for the autonomous side of the project, including the sensors and integration work involved, as well as the electric drivetrain and propulsion systems.
Before the year is out, the ship will travel from Herøya to Brevik under its own autonomous control, while being monitored from a series of land-based control centres. At this early stage, the ship will be loaded and unloaded manually by humans, as per any other container ship. However, the aim is to automate these processes as well down the track, lowering the costs of transporting goods by removing humans from the loop. Notably, though, berthing and unberthing will be handled automatically without the need for human intervention or special equipment on the docks.
A Cleaner Option
The shipping industry accounts for a significant chunk of global greenhouse gas emissions, on the order of 2.5-3%
according to recent studies.
Although it only makes up roughly 10% of the total scope of emissions from transport as a whole, once road travel, aviation, rail and other sources are taken into account. Regardless, greenhouse gas levels and global temperatures have continued to rise to the point where savings need to be found in all areas, shipping included.
Unfortunately, the pace of change has been slow. Emissions from shipping have
continued to rise,
increasing by approximately 10 percent from 2012 to 2018. In the face of this, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is aiming for a
40% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030
, relative to 2008 levels. By 2050, the hope is they’ll be down by 70%. A steep goal given the negative progress made thus far.
The ship under tow from a tug, pictured here configured for autonomous operation.
The IMO has already mandated a series of efficiency requirements in an attempt to reign in the industry. Their international guidelines state that ships built in 2022 will need to be 30% more energy efficient than those constructed in 2014. These guidelines were originally due to come into effect for 2025, but were brought forwards at the 74th meeting session of the Marine Environment Protection Committee.
These energy efficiency regulations will lead to a raft of changes to international shipping operations. The IMO aims to see incremental improvements via simple measures like better voyage planning and more regular cleaning of propellers and the undersides of ships. More in-depth technological measures will involve efficiency modifications to ships, such as implementing waste heat recovery devices or fitting more efficient propellers to help ships save fuel and thus reduce emissions.
The Way Forward
Obviously, zero-emissions ships that emit no greenhouse gases themselves would be a huge win towards achieving these goals. Even if the ships run on electricity generated by fossil fuels, shifting the pollution from many ships to fewer municipal power plants is still a huge win in terms of efficiency and thus lower emissions. In that regard, it’s much the same benefit as gained from switching to electric cars.
However, similar issues that have slowed down the uptake of electric vehicles would similarly effect electric shipping. Infrastructure does not yet exist at ports to support electric ships, and
huge amounts of raw materials
would be required to produce the necessary batteries to support electric shipping fleets. Neither of these issues is insurmountable, but these problems take time to solve, often on the order of decades.
The project from Yara International then serves as a great first step towards what could become a broader trend in the shipping industry. Obviously, a small electric craft carrying 120 containers is not the solution when full-size container ships boast capacities over 14,000 TEUs in comparison. However, it’s the first step down a long road towards transforming global shipping for the better. The project’s success or failure will teach us much about what is to come. | 55 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380606",
"author": "ameyring",
"timestamp": "2021-09-14T17:08:13",
"content": "Yay, a step in the right direction since ship routes are pretty standard from what I’ve seen. However, what’s to keep a hijacker from taking the ship? Hope the owner has a way to disable the ship so it’s... | 1,760,372,950.9286 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/14/3d-objects-without-scanning/ | 3D Objects Without Scanning | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d scanning",
"blender",
"Photogrammetry"
] | There are many scanners — both commercial and homemade — that can take a variety of scans or images of a 3D object and convert it into something like a 3D printable file. When the process works, it works well, but the results can be finicky at best and will require a lot of manual tuning. According to [Samuel Garbett],
you might as well just draw your own model using Blender
. He shows you how using a Red Bull can which, granted, isn’t exactly the most complicated thing ever, but it isn’t the simplest either.
He does take one photo of the can, so there is a camera involved at some point. He also takes measurements using calipers, something you probably already have laying around.
Since it is just a can, there aren’t many required pictures or measurements as, say, a starship model. Once you have the measurements, of course, you could use the tool of your choice and since we aren’t very adept with Blender, we might have used something we think is easier like FreeCAD or OpenSCAD. However, Blender has a lot of power, so we suspect making the jump from can to the USS Enterprise might be more realistic for a Blender user.
Besides, it is good to see how other tools work and we were surprised that Blender could be relatively simple to use.
Every time we see [Jared’s] channel
, we think we should learn more about Blender. But if you have your heart set on a real scanner, there are
plenty of open source designs you can print
. | 24 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380590",
"author": "Alex365",
"timestamp": "2021-09-14T16:14:18",
"content": "Even though I was building/operating 3D-Scanners for a living, I often told people, that certain objects are far easier modelled than scanned. If it happens to be an engineered part with sane dimensions i... | 1,760,372,950.989244 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/14/a-rant-on-personal-software-projects/ | A Rant On Personal Software Projects | Matthew Carlson | [
"Engineering",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants",
"Software Development"
] | [] | Looking across your hard drive and GitHub, you might find hundreds of notes and skeletons of Git repositories. A veritable graveyard of software side projects. The typical flow for many of these projects is: get an idea, ruminate on the idea until it becomes exciting, eventually becoming more exciting than the current side project, notes are captured, a repository is created, and work begins at a blistering pace as the focus and excitement are there. There might be some rewrites or some changes in direction. Questions of whether the project is worthwhile or “what even should this project actually be” start to arise. Eventually, enthusiasm wanes as these questions continue to multiply. Progress slows as the path forward seems less clear-cut as it once did. The project is either sunset with a mournful promise to someday return or quietly put aside as something new and exciting comes to take its place. Sound familiar? Perhaps not, but the principles here could be helpful.
This particular article is largely a piece of opinion from one engineer to another. It’s about engineering the process by which you design a project to have better outcomes. There are many reasons why a project could be shelved or scrapped and not all of them are from a lack of clear project definition. In the case where it isn’t clear what the project is, it can be helpful to think about it in a more holistic/meta sense. There are two types of personal projects in broad strokes: technology demos and products.
0b10 Types of Personal Projects
A technology demo is about the tech or the how. Perhaps you’re trying
some new language
or
a new algorithm
. It’s okay for it to be half-baked and clunky because that’s not what it was designed for. It was designed to be beautiful and interesting on the inside. In a way, when you step away, the project is complete because you got what you wanted: learning.
Trying out Rust on a microcontroller is a fine reason for doing a project.
In contrast, a product personal project focuses on what it does and the experience as an end-user interacts with it. Maybe it has a great README, a slick user experience, or does something better than anything else out there. The point is that it is focused on the end-user that uses it rather than the person who makes it. It doesn’t particularly matter what it looks like on the inside. It could be based on COBOL and be a tangle of spaghetti internally. Clean code helps with maintenance and project longevity, but it does absolutely nothing for the product experience.
In a nutshell, it is about designing the project experience rather than simply the project itself. It begins at a more abstract level, starting with how you will approach this particular idea. Is it a tech demo or a product? Is this
a project that’s an easy win
? With these sorts of things in mind, you can start asking better questions. Questions that allow you to design what this will be. By being intentional about the process by which you make something, you directly influence the thing you make.
Let the Right Question Be Your Guide
This robot looks awesome! If it’s all loose wire and hot snot on the inside, does it matter?
For a product, you need to ask who the end-user is. Even if the user is you, that doesn’t mean you are static. Old bad code written by yourself is utterly mystifying; why wouldn’t an old, poorly designed product do the same? A product is about the end-user, not the developer, even if those two are the same person.
Another good question would be, if Hackaday wrote about my project, what would they focus on and write about? (I’ll follow that up with “have I included clear, high-resolution pictures for them to use?”) As an end-user, what is the desired experience and how can it be simpler. It can be helpful to write these things down.
Come up with a concrete plan, don’t change it or allow the scope to creep. If problems come up, go back to the questions you asked earlier and then redefine the scope. Try not to get distracted by the technology, and instead focus on what you’re trying to do. Don’t get too sucked into the how. A great example of how a product is designed and made is
the Flipper Zero
.
For a tech demo, have fun with it. Want to throw something else on there? Go for it. Perhaps you’re trying to
learn some WebAssembly by porting Doom
. There is no scope creep as there is no scope. As mentioned earlier, the focus is on the developer, not the user. Usability is not the focus here. Questions might be “what would be most interesting” or “how can I skip over boilerplate?”
But What Do I Know?
Of course, this is all just one writer’s opinion and has a sample size of one. It’s possible for a project to be somewhere in between a product and a tech demo, or neither. Nevertheless, adopting some of these methodologies has led to much more satisfaction with side-project endeavors. Do you have a different perspective? When you accomplish the goals you set out,
do you move the goalposts
or step back to tackle something new? | 41 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380525",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2021-09-14T14:23:19",
"content": "for the project usually dies in 2 ways. 1) when I do search to figure out some messed up syntax or trying to add some function/feature to the program. Excited yes to get it to work and while doing a search o... | 1,760,372,950.835262 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/15/3d-printed-scooter-zips-around/ | 3D Printed Scooter Zips Around | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"balancing scooter",
"electric scooter"
] | Tooling around downtown on a personal electric vehicle is a lot of fun, but it is even better when you do like [James Dietz] and ride on
your own 3D-printed electric scooter
. As one of the entries for the Hackaday Prize, RepRaTS (Replicable Rapid prototyper Transportation System) has a goal of doing for scooters what the original RepRap project did for 3D printing: provide a user-friendly design base that you can extend, modify, and maintain. It doesn’t even require power tools to build, other than, of course, your 3D printer.
The design uses threaded rods and special plastic spacers made to hold a large load. The prototype is deliberately oversized with large hub motors, with the understanding that most builds will probably be smaller. As you can see in the video below, the scooter seems to go pretty fast and handles well.
[James] warns that the scooter is not yet safe to use. There are a number of battery mounting and safety issues that need to be repaired. We’re looking forward to seeing the final versions.
The 3D printed parts are all in PETG with 0.8mm nozzle and 0.4 mm layer height. The infill is a rather modest 30% grid and no supports are needed. Tensioning the threaded rod is critical and there are specific instructions about both the torquing and gluing steps required.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 8 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6381089",
"author": "iifdy",
"timestamp": "2021-09-15T21:42:51",
"content": "Electric scooters were a stupid idea in the 90s (but back then it was just a very niche toy for rich kids) and they are still a stupid idea nowdays. My wife works as nurse in city hospital. She says the amo... | 1,760,372,950.652632 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/15/the-many-ways-to-solve-your-enclosure-problems/ | The Many Ways To Solve Your Enclosure Problems | Bob Baddeley | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"3d printing",
"cardboard",
"clay",
"Laser cutting",
"moldable"
] | Most projects around here involve some sort of electronics, and some sort of box to put them in. The same is true of pretty much all commercially available electronic products as well.
Despite that, selecting an enclosure is far from a solved problem. For simple electronics it’s entirely possible to spend more time getting the case just right than working on the circuit itself. But most of the time we need to avoid getting bogged down in what exactly will house our hardware.
The array of options available for your housing is vast, and while many people default to a 3D printer, there are frequently better choices. I’ve been around the block on this issue countless times and wanted to share the options as I see them, and help you decide which is right for you. Let’s talk about enclosures!
Cardboard: Great for Both Enclosures and Proofing PCB Layout
You need something quick and dirty and temporary for a proof of concept or a short-lived project. Why not use some cardboard you have laying around?
LCD, switch, power supply, microcontroller, and battery are all nestled inside a cardboard box in this proof of concept.
The top of the cardboard has a printout of the PCB layout, with copper tape in some key areas and SMT components soldered in place. This rough model is used to verify physical dimensions and mechanical functionality within minutes.
The injection molded button used for a different product inside a 3D printed part for testing a new product in development.
Cardboard is easy to work with, and you can rapidly put in holes and slots for your interfaces and connectors. Draw on it, shape it, whatever it takes. Use card stock (like a cereal box) for even higher quality finer dimension work. In the world of rapid prototyping, cardboard is a fantastic option for generating quick iterations that test out usability and rough ideas. It also has a similar thickness to a .062″ PCB, making it quick and easy to print your design, glue it to cardboard, cut it out, and have a temporary substitute to do your mechanical work while you’re waiting for the real ones to arrive by mail.
Plastic Food Containers
Mobile disco-turtle robot
When you need a little more sturdiness or water resistance, reusable plastic food enclosures, including yogurt containers and Tic Tac packaging, can go a long way as well. This high-fiving mobile disco turtle robot was made under the direction of a 5-year-old. The yogurt container holds the batteries, speaker, Arduino, and all the wiring, securing the sensitive parts just enough for this limited-lifetime monstrosity.
Find something roughly the size and shape you need, and trim and drill as necessary. A utility blade is the only tool needed to make a higher fidelity enclosure, and careful application of heat or glue can seal and stick parts together. Unless your aim is a kitsch-y product, you shouldn’t expect to do more than a couple of these, and their durability is limited, so expect that this will last only a little bit longer than cardboard, and better for wetter environments.
Clay/Moldable Plastic
Using InstaMorph to make a quick plastic electronics case (
Image from InstaMorph
)
If you have skills with molding and can take a block of material and form it to your vision, then clay might be a good option, or oven-bake polymer (Sculpey). InstaMorph is another tool that consists of plastic that softens at low heat and becomes moldable. It’s available in sheets and pellets and can be softened with hot water or air and worked by hand until it cools.
Use Existing Enclosures
Takachi Enclosures is just one of many companies with project boxes in a variety of sizes and types. Perfect for small volume high quality projects.
This option doesn’t get enough attention. Existing enclosure are perfect for small volumes, and bridge the gap between prototype and high volume production.
Polycase
,
New Age Enclosures
,
Takachi
,
Bud
, and
Hammond
are all places that I have used in the past for enclosures that are injection molded, extruded, or otherwise pre-fabricated, and can easily be modified to suit your exact needs (and no, we’re not being paid to mention any of them).
Once you become familiar with their product lines, you’ll start to recognize their enclosures in other products. You pick out an enclosure of the right size and type, and most of them provide CAD of some form (or at least PDF design drawings with relevant dimensions) and usually even suggested PCB outlines. Order one or a few and you have everything you need for only a couple bucks. When it’s time to take it to production, you can even give these companies drawings of any milling that’s needed, or printing on any face, and they’ll take care of that for you, too, for a small setup fee and per part cost.
3D Printed
There’s no shortage of
articles about 3D printing
here, and it seems like this is a default choice for people even when faster, cheaper, cleaner-looking options exist.
If your needs extend beyond a box, and you must have some kind of special enclosure to fit a specific shape, or you are trying to make it quickly or miniature, then 3D printing may work. You’ll have to bust out the CAD program of your choice, or find an existing design, and this is one of the things that makes this option less accessible to many, and can be very time consuming. On the plus side, a variety of materials are available, there are services that will 3D print and mail you the part, and many public libraries are even getting in on the 3D printer as a service they offer.
Laser Cut
Example of box design form Boxes.py (image source:
Wolfpuppie
)
If you have access to it, laser cutting is a decent option as well. Generally these are acrylic or plywood enclosures, though cardboard works well, too, with the edges either interlocking or straight. There are online generators for simple customizable boxes like
MakerCase
and
Boxes.py
, and you can modify them after downloading to add your holes and cutouts.
Injection Mold
Injection molds are the industry standard for high volume production, capable of spitting out plastic parts at phenomenal rates and running continuously. They can be designed to exact specifications, and last for anywhere from a few thousand up to millions of parts. The downside is the up-front costs, which can be in the thousands of dollars for basic molds, and millions for really high volume hardened steel with slides and multiple cavities and cooling lines.
We’ve covered injection molding in detail
, but the primary thing to remember about injection molding is that it’s not for a one-off, and you won’t be able to change your design easily once the tool is cut.
Others: CNC, Casting, and Composite
There are countless other options. You could make your enclosure out of wood or metal in a shop using CNC. There are all kinds of casting techniques, including 3D printing the mold and casting inside the mold, or 3D printing the positive, creating a silicone mold of it, and then casting parts inside the mold. You could put everything in a temporary enclosure and pot it (essentially dump epoxy in to fill it up). You could use a combination of methods to make different parts of your enclosure, or even sub-components. I’ve 3D printed and laser cut brackets for use in an existing enclosure.
Conclusion
Before you jump straight to your CAD software to spend a few hours designing a box and 3D printing it, consider other options that may be faster or cheaper or look better. Of course, this article wasn’t an exhaustive list, but if I missed something significant, mention it below. | 63 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380978",
"author": "Shirley Marquez",
"timestamp": "2021-09-15T17:27:46",
"content": "Let’s not forget enclosures that are manufactured for some other purpose and reused. Altoids tins are a popular one for small electronics projects; they’re cheaper than the purpose-made boxes from... | 1,760,372,951.092414 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/15/smart-home-hack-breaks-down-walls-figuratively-and-literally/ | Smart Home Hack Breaks Down Walls Figuratively And Literally | Ryan Flowers | [
"Android Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"android root",
"hvac",
"plc",
"plc hack",
"rootkit",
"smart home",
"smart home hack"
] | Are you ready for a tale of poorly supported hardware, clueless contractors, and bad coding? Look no further than [Neighborino]’s
excellent write-up where he details his pursuit of smart home pwnership
.
[Neighborino]’s smart home system controls the windows, blinds, outlets, and HVAC. But by the time the high-rise apartment was ready for occupancy in 2015, the smart home controllers were already showing their age. You see, the contractor had installed an app to run the home’s programmable logic controllers (PLCs) on stock Galaxy Tab 3 hardware. Yes, that’s a tablet originally released in 2013. They then built the tablets into the wall of each apartment, dooming the homeowner to rely on the vendor forevermore.
It was not long before [Neighborino] and their fellow residents were dealing with stability problems. Bloatware from both Samsung and Google was causing major slowdowns, and the PLC system’s unpublished WiFi password prevented replacement of the controllers.
Being an Android developer by trade, [Neighborino] set siege to the walled garden before him. The writeup details the quest to execute what would be a straightforward hack on anything but the x86 hardware that was being targeted.
A debloating app strips all non-essential software.
The first fruit of [Neighborino]’s efforts was a hack for the aged tablets that would display the WiFi password, allowing owners to connect their own controllers to their smart homes. Of course, this is Hackaday, so you know that [Neighborino] didn’t stop there.
Despite having to deal with two different versions of Android and tablets that were
built into the wall of the apartments of non-hacker neighbors,
[Neighborino] succeeded in sideloading an APK. This freed them from the shackles of the company that installed the original system and gets longer life out of their Snowden-era Samsungs. A de-bloating tool frees up memory and restores the systems to a nearly performant status. A reboot scheduler keeps the x86 tablets running without user intervention, and of course the WiFi password revealer makes yard waste out of the previously walled garden.
If Smart Home hacks are your thing, we recently covered a
Voice Controlled Smart Home setup
, and less recently another that combined a
Smart Home with a Dumb Terminal
. Be sure to share your own smart home hacks with us via the
Tip Line
! | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380998",
"author": "SteveS",
"timestamp": "2021-09-15T18:15:24",
"content": "Sigh.This is something we’re going to seeforeverin smart homes.Builders are going to install the flavor of the month from whoever sells it most cheaply. It’s already the norm with “builder grade” carpet, p... | 1,760,372,950.755918 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/15/monoclonal-antibodies-the-guided-missiles-of-medicine/ | Monoclonal Antibodies: The Guided Missiles Of Medicine | Dan Maloney | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"antibodies",
"antigen",
"Covid-19",
"epitope",
"fusion",
"hybridoma",
"immumology",
"monoclonal",
"myeloma",
"polyclonal",
"SARS-CoV-2"
] | Whenever anyone mentions the word “antibodies” these days, it’s sure to grab your attention. Thoughts generally flow to the human immune system and the role it plays in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and to how our bodies fight off disease in general. The immune system is complex in the extreme, but pretty much everyone knows that antibodies are part of it and that they’re vital to the ability of the body to recognize and neutralize invaders like bacteria and viruses.
But as important as antibodies are to long-term immunity and the avoidance of disease, that’s far from all they’re good for. The incredible specificity of antibodies to their target antigens makes them powerful tools for biological research and clinical diagnostics, like
rapid COVID-19 testing
. The specificity of antibodies has also opened up therapeutic modalities that were once the stuff of science-fiction, where custom-built antibodies act like a guided missile to directly attack not only a specific protein in the body, but sometimes even a specific part of a protein.
Making these therapies work, though, requires special antibodies: monoclonal antibodies. These are very much
in the news recently
, not only as a possible treatment for COVID-19 but also to treat everything from rheumatoid arthritis to the very worst forms of cancer. But what exactly are monoclonal antibodies, how are they made, and how do they work?
Poly vs. Mono
It helps to have a general idea of how the immune system works before diving into the specifics of monoclonal antibodies. Luckily, the basics are pretty straightforward. In a nutshell, there are two systems of immunity in the human body: the innate and the adaptive. Both are comprised of specialized white blood cells called lymphocytes. The innate immune system is a “fast attack” system, capable of quickly discerning friend from foe and digesting invaders. The remnants of these invaders, primarily the fragments of their proteins, are called antigens, and they are presented to lymphocytes of the adaptive immune system, which are studded with antibodies known as immunoglobulins. These antibodies are a highly diverse population of proteins that represent a chemical memory of antigens the body has encountered before. Any antigen that matches an antibody will bind to it, setting off a series of events that causes a huge build-up of lymphocytes bearing that antibody, which then seek out and destroy the invader with great specificity.
While antibodies produced by the adaptive immune system are highly specific for a particular antigen, there’s still some “wiggle room” in them. The antigens that are presented to the adaptive immune system are actually pretty large, and it’s entirely possible that antibodies exist to different features of the same protein, called epitopes. This is an advantage, since it increases the likelihood that the adaptive immune system will be able to recognize the antigen, no matter how chopped up it gets by the innate immune system. It’s also helpful in case the virus mutates, which might change an epitope enough to no longer be recognized. Antibodies to multiple epitopes, which are called polyclonal antibodies, provide redundancy and help increase the chances of a robust immune response.
Cartoon of polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies. Note that monoclonal antibodies only bind to a single epitope of the antigen; polyclonals bind multiple epitopes, but tend to bind much more of the antigen. So monoclonals have the benefit of epitope specificity at the cost of decreased overall affinity for an antigen. Source:
Creative Diagnostics
While so far I’ve described how the immune system works in your body, it’s important to keep in mind that antibodies are also powerful tools for research and for clinical diagnosis. The ability to create a population of antibodies that can bind to a specific protein has been a huge boon to biological research. Creating antibodies usually involves injecting a rat or a mouse with the target antigen, harvesting the animal’s white blood cells, and purifying the antibodies to get just those that bind to the antigen of interest. It’s a process that requires a lot of time — three months or more is not uncommon — and a lot of specialist skill. The end result is a set of polyclonal antibodies.
While traditional antibody production techniques have done a lot of the heavy lifting in biomedical research over the years, there are times when the polyclonal antibodies they produce are just not the tool for the job. In some cases, more specificity in binding is needed, which is what monoclonal antibodies are for. Monoclonal antibodies, often abbreviated “mAbs”, are antibodies that recognize a single epitope of the target antigen. This can be an incredibly powerful tool for research, as antibodies can be created that bind to just a single region of a large protein. This can be used to explore the function of that region; for example, a monoclonal antibody that binds only to a specific epitope can be used to probe whether that region is a binding site for another protein by physically blocking access to it.
Cancer Cells Made Good
While the natural immune system is basically a polyclonal antibody factory, that’s not to say that monoclonal antibodies don’t show up naturally. Unfortunately they are most often seen in patients with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that affects the blood cells involved in immunity. All cancers are characterized by overproduction of a particular tissue type, and natural myeloma cells gave researchers a tool for creating massive populations of identical cells — clones — that each produced a single antibody.
The trick, though, was to figure out how to program the myeloma cells to produce a specific antibody, and in the 1970s when all this was first being explored, molecular biology was still in its infancy. Researchers therefore had to hack around a bit to make this happen. The basic idea they came up with was to fuse together immortal myeloma cells with cells bearing antibodies raised up against antigens of interest. These hybridoma cells each carry the genes for a single antibody, and can be grown in abundance once the work of creating them is done.
Monoclonal antibody production via hybridomas. HAT selection makes sure only fused cells get through by treating them with the chemotherapy agent aminopterin. Source:
Antibody Engineering for Pursuing a Healthier Future
Hybridoma cells are tricky to produce. First there’s the problem of growing up a lot of antibody-producing cells, called B cells, in mice or other mammals. Then the B cells have to be fused to the myeloma cells, either chemically by treating the cells with polyethylene glycol, or by using an electric field. There’s also the problem of separating the few cells that successfully fuse together from the unfused myeloma and B cells. This is accomplished by using myeloma cells that are sensitive to the chemotherapy agent aminopterin. Myeloma cells that successfully fuse will be “rescued” by the intact version of the gene in the B cells, and will be able to live in a growth medium containing the drug.
The next trick is to turn the polyclonal population of hybridoma cells into a number of monoclonal populations. This is done by diluting the surviving fusion cells to the point that, on average, there’s only a single cell in a given volume of growth medium. Placing that volume in each well of a
microtiter plate
allows the single cell to grow, producing a clonal cell line that carries the genes to create antibodies against a single epitope. Finding the cell line that reacts with a specific epitope is then a matter of screening all the hybridoma lines using a variety of immunochemical methods, like fixing the antigen to a solid substrate and using that to bind only the hybridomas that are specific for it.
In the decades since hybridoma techniques were first explored, many other methods for mAb production have been developed. Phage display, where viruses that infect bacteria are modified to express antibodies on their protein coats, can be used to screen large numbers of antibodies against a specific antigen, and then have the DNA that codes for the antibodies readily available for cloning. Transgenic mice which bear genes for human antibodies can also be used to produce libraries of mAbs; almost all of the currently approved monoclonal antibody therapeutics on the market today were developed via transgenic mice.
The Guided Missiles of Medicine
3D-structure of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein; the receptor-binding domain (RBD) is shown in green. Monoclonal antibodies that bind to the RBD make it impossible for the virus to bind to ACE-2 receptors in the lung. Source:
SciNews
From the above example of using mAbs to probe binding domains on proteins, it’s a pretty short leap to seeing how they can be used not only diagnostically, but therapeutically. The specificity of monoclonal antibodies makes for extremely targeted therapies, as opposed to, say, taking a drug orally and hoping for it to be transported through the entire body to the therapeutic target. This is where monoclonal antibodies get their well-earned reputation as the “guided missiles” of medicine.
The missile metaphor starts to break down a bit when you consider how mAb therapies work, though. Where a missile generally needs to deliver a warhead to be effective, in mAb therapy, sometimes just the fact that they can bind to specific proteins is weapon enough. This is particularly the case with therapies for autoimmune diseases like Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis, where the patient’s own immune system mistakes their own cells for invaders and starts attacking them.
These diseases are treated with mAbs that target and bind to tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), a protein that regulates the immune system, and turns down the self-destructive cascade. Some cancer therapies use a similar approach, with mAbs binding to certain proteins that regulate cell division, thereby targeting them for cleanup by the patient’s immune system.
But still, some mAb therapies also carry a payload to their target. In some cases, a radioisotope can be connected to the mAb to deliver a dose of radiation directly to cancer cells; other mAbs can deliver with molecular precision either drug molecules or pro-drug molecules which can later be converted to their active form.
Monoclonals for COVID
All this brings us to the current pandemic, and how monoclonal immunotherapy is being leveraged to help COVID-19 patients. The US Food and Drug Administration has so far authorized three mAb immunotherapies for COVID-19 under Emergency Use Authorizations (EUA). Two of them are currently recommended, and are being used for patients hospitalized with mild to moderate COVID-19. One is a cocktail of two mAbs, called casirivimab and imdevimab — you can tell a drug is a monoclonal antibody by the –
mab
suffix — which is interesting because while each mAb binds to the fabled spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, they each bind to different but overlapping epitopes of the protein.
Both epitopes are in the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein, meaning that once the mAbs bind to the spike proteins on a circulating virus particle, it’s no longer able to bind to its receptor, the ACE-2 receptor’s lining the epithelium of the respiratory tract. The upshot is that the virus is no longer able to enter cells and replicate, which hopefully reduces the viral load and leads to quicker recoveries.
For casirivimab/imdevimab, which is marketed by Regeneron under the name REGEN-COV,
the numbers look pretty good
— giving the mAb therapy, which is either an IV infusion or a set of four subcutaneous injections, within the first ten days of symptoms reduces the risk of a mild to moderate case of COVID progressing by about 70%. It also has indications for prophylactic use post-exposure for immunocompromised individuals.
Monocolonal antibodies have been a game-changer in biological research, and in the treatment of a wide range of dire diseases. The development of new techniques to make them easier to manufacture should broaden their use as the guided missiles of medicine. | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380910",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2021-09-15T14:18:24",
"content": "i love reading journal articles on the biochemistry of the immune system. it’s always astonishing how much is known, how many complicated tests are possible. but then it’s a little sobering to realize, w... | 1,760,372,951.216288 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/15/bringing-a-ruined-game-boy-cart-back-to-life-with-tons-of-soldering/ | Bringing A Ruined Game Boy Cart Back To Life With Tons Of Soldering | Lewin Day | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"corrosion",
"game boy",
"nintendo",
"repair"
] | Retro consoles and handhelds are full of nostalgia and happy memories for many. However, keeping these machines and their media going can be a difficult job at times. [Taylor] was challenged to rescue a copy of Kirby’s Dream Land for the original Game Boy,
and set about the task
.
The cartridge was badly corroded, with many of the traces eaten through, rendering the game inoperable. First, all the components were removed, and the board was cleaned. This allowed easy access to the traces across the whole board. Then, the job was to delicately remove some solder mask from the parts of the traces still remaining, and bridge the gaps with fine copper wire. Even worse, several vias were damaged, which [Taylor] tackled by feeding jumper wires through the board and executing a repair on each side.
It’s a simple enough repair for the experienced hand, but virtually magic to a retro gaming fan that doesn’t know how to solder. [Taylor] has given us a great example of how to deal with corroded carts properly, with enough detail to be quite educational to the beginner.
We’ve seen other great work in this vein too, like an Amiga 2000 brought back from
a horrible creeping green death.
If you’ve done your own retro rescue,
be sure to drop us a line! | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380887",
"author": "deshipu",
"timestamp": "2021-09-15T12:09:22",
"content": "I wonder why nobody would make a more-or-less universal cartridge PCB, to which you could just move all the relevant components. It’s not like the schematic is a secret. There are probably a dozen combina... | 1,760,372,951.772771 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/15/german-experiment-shows-horses-beating-local-internet-connections/ | German Experiment Shows Horses Beating Local Internet Connections | Lewin Day | [
"internet hacks",
"News"
] | [
"fiber",
"fiber optic",
"horse",
"internet",
"internet speed"
] | These days, we’re blessed with wired and wireless networks that can carry huge amounts of data in the blink of an eye. However, some areas are underprovisioned with bandwidth, such as Schmallenberg-Oberkirchen in Germany. There, reporters ran a test last December to see which would be faster:
the Internet, or a horse?
The long and the short of it is that Germany faces issues with disparate Internet speeds
across the country
. Some areas are well-served by high-speed fiber services. However, others deemed less important by the free market struggle on with ancient copper phone lines and subsequently, experience lower speeds.
Thus, the experiment kicked off from the house of photographer [Klaus-Peter Kappest], who started an Internet transfer of 4.5GB of photos over the Internet. At the same time, a DVD was handed to messengers riding on horseback to the destination 10 kilometers away. The horses won the day, making the journey in about an hour, while the transfer over [Kappest’s] copper connection was still crawling along, only 61% complete.
Obviously, it’s a test that can be gamed quite easily. The Internet connection would have easily won over a greater distance, of course. Similarly, we’ve all heard the quote from [Andrew Tanenbaum]: “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.”
Notably, [Kappest’s] home actually had a fiber line sitting in the basement, but bureaucracy had stymied any attempts of his to get it connected. The stunt thus also served as a great way to draw attention to his plight, and that of others in Germany suffering with similar issues in this digital age.
Top speeds for data transfer continue to rise; an Australian research team
set a record last year of 44.2 terabits per second.
Naturally, the hard part is getting that technology rolled out across a country. Sound off below with the problems you’ve faced getting a solid connection to your home or office. | 61 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380831",
"author": "Mick Tee",
"timestamp": "2021-09-15T08:14:02",
"content": "Interesting adaption of RFC1149, which has been the gold standard for bandwidth comparisons for decades.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6380837",... | 1,760,372,951.553206 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/14/useless-machine-is-a-clock/ | Useless Machine Is A Clock | Bryan Cockfield | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"battery",
"clock",
"fall",
"opencv",
"raspberry pi",
"servo",
"useless machine",
"wall"
] | Useless machines are a fun class of devices which typically turn themselves off once they are switched on, hence their name. Even though there’s no real point, they’re fun to build and to operate nonetheless. [Burke] has followed this idea in spirit by putting an old clock he had to use with his take on a useless machine of sorts. But instead of simply powering itself off when turned on,
this useless machine dislodges itself from its wall mount and falls to the ground anytime anyone looks at it
.
It’s difficult to tell if this clock was originally broken when he started this project, or if many rounds of checking the time have caused the clock to damage itself, but either way this project is an instant classic. Powered by a small battery driving a Raspberry Pi, the single-board computer runs OpenCV and is programmed to recognize any face pointed in its general direction. When it does, it activates a small servo which knocks it off of its wall, rendering it unarguably useless.
[Burke] doesn’t really know why he had this idea, but it’s goofy and fun. The duct tape that holds everything together is the ultimate finishing touch as well, and we can’t really justify spending too much on fit and finish for a project that tosses itself around one’s room. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a more refined useless machine, we
have seen some that have an impressive level of intricacy
.
Thanks to [alchemyx] for the tip! | 15 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380792",
"author": "geocrasher",
"timestamp": "2021-09-15T05:30:19",
"content": "This is brilliant!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6380801",
"author": "BillSF9c",
"timestamp": "2021-09-15T06:06:05",
"content": "Lov... | 1,760,372,951.459601 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/14/whats-cooler-than-a-7-segment-display-a-7200-segment-display/ | What’s Cooler Than A 7-Segment Display? A 7200-Segment Display! | Jim Heaney | [
"Art",
"LED Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"7-segment display",
"art",
"Chris Combs",
"i2c",
"IS31FL3733",
"multiple 7-segment display"
] | If you look around your desk right now, odds are you’ll see a 7-segment display or two showing you some vital information like the time or today’s weather. But think of how much information you could see with over 1,100 digits, like with
[Chris Combs’] 7200-segment display.
For [Chris], this project started the same way that many of our projects start; finding components that were too good of a deal to pass up on. For just “a song or two plus shipping”, he was the proud owner of two boxes of
18:88
7-segment displays, 500 modules in total. Rather than sitting and using up precious shelf space, [Chris] decided to turn them into something fancy he could hang on the wall.
The IS31FL3733 can produce
8 levels of dimming
8-bit PWM, allowing [Chris] to display in grayscale
The first challenge was trying to somehow get a signal to all of the individual segments. Solutions exist for running a handful of displays in one device, but there are certainly no off-the-shelf solutions for this many. Even the possible 16 addresses of the IS31FL3733 driver IC [Chris] chose for this project were not enough, so he had to get creative. Fearing potential capacitance issues with simply using an i2C multiplexer, he instead opted to run 3 different i2C busses off of a Raspberry Pi 4, to interface with all 48 controllers.
The second challenge was how to actually wire everything up. The finished display comes out to 26 inches across by 20.5 inches tall, much too large for a single PCB. Instead, [Chris] opted to design a series of self-contained panels, each with 6 of the display modules and an IS31FL3733 to drive them. While the multiplexing arrangement did leave space for more segments on each panel, he opted to go for this arrangement as it resulted in a nice, clean, 4:3 aspect ratio for the final display.
The end result was a unique and beautiful piece, which Chris titled “One-to-Many”. He uses it to display imagery and art related to the inevitability of automation, machines replacing humans, and other “nice heartwarming stuff like that”, as he puts it. There’a video after the break, but if you are interested in seeing the display for yourself, it will be on display at the VisArt’s Concourse Gallery in Rockville, MD from September 3 to October 17, 2021.
More info on [Chris’s] website
.
This isn’t [Chris’s] first adventure in using 7-segment displays in such a unique way,
click here to read about the predecessor to this project that we covered last year
. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380470",
"author": "Danjovic",
"timestamp": "2021-09-14T11:35:15",
"content": "Absolutely gorgeous! It is nice to see electonics and art together.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6380473",
"author": "Carl",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,372,951.876452 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/14/salvaging-working-leds-from-dead-light-bulbs/ | Salvaging Working LEDs From “Dead” Light Bulbs | Tom Nardi | [
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"led",
"led bulb",
"light bulb",
"salvage"
] | Sure the box
said
they would last for years or even decades, but anyone who’s picked up some bargain LED bulbs knows the reality is a bit more complicated. Sometimes a few LEDs in the array pop, reducing the overall light output. More commonly, the power supply starts to fail and the bulb begins to flicker or hum. In either event, you end up pulling the bulb and replacing it.
But [Bifferos] thinks we can do a bit better than that. Rather than just chalking it up to poor QA and tossing the bulb, why not do a little exploratory surgery to
identify salvageable LEDs in an otherwise “dead” bulb
? After pulling apart a couple of burned out bulbs (name brand and otherwise), he was able to pull out an impressive number of handy LED panels that could be easily repurposed. Naturally, with a little more coaxing, the individual SMD LEDs could be liberated and pushed into service as well.
Separate PCBs with banks of LEDs are ideal for reuse.
As you might expect, there are far too many different LED bulbs out there to create a comprehensive teardown guide, but [Bifferos] does provide some tricks to help get the bulb open without hurting yourself or destroying the thing in the process. Once inside, the design of the bulb will dictate what happens next. Bulbs with multiple arrays of LEDs on their own PCBs can be easily broken down, but if there’s just the single board, you may want to pull the LEDs off individually. To that end, the write-up demonstrates efficient methods of stripping the LEDs using either hot air or a pair of soldering irons.
We’ve talked previously about the rather
underwhelming performance of modern LED bulbs
compared to the manufacturer’s lofty claims. We’d rather see these bulbs designed well enough that they actually live up to their full potential, but the ability to salvage useful components from the failed luminaries at least softens the blow of having to toss them early. Though that’s not the only reason you should
disassemble your LED bulbs before you put them in the trash
. | 22 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380426",
"author": "Sprite_tm",
"timestamp": "2021-09-14T08:14:45",
"content": "I’d posit an even better way is to take preventative measures… modern LED bulbs generally aren’t made from shitty components, but they do suffer massively from the fact that these components are driven ... | 1,760,372,951.613895 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/13/the-labor-of-love-that-is-recovering-lost-software/ | The Labor Of Love That Is Recovering Lost Software | Chris Wilkinson | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"cassette tape",
"retrocomputing",
"software preservation",
"spectrum",
"zx81"
] | At the beginning of the home computer revolution, the humble compact cassette was far and away the most popular choice for microcomputer data storage, especially on the European continent. As a volunteer at the Museum of Computing, [Keith] was instrumental in
recovering and archiving the early works of Roger Dymond
, a pioneering developer of early computer software in the United Kingdom.
In his video, [Keith] goes to great lengths detailing the impact that Roger Dymond had on the early home computing scene. After being let go from his council apprenticeship, Roger turned his attention to developing games for the ZX81, and later the ZX Spectrum. With the help of his family, he went on to run a moderately successful mail-order games publishing venture for several years. Increasing advertising costs and a crowded development scene saw Roger’s business become nonviable by 1983, but not before developing several gambling-style games and a standout Space Invaders clone.
Fast forward to 2021, and while some of Roger’s Spectrum software had been archived, much had been marked as ‘missing’ by online archivists. After further research, [Keith] realized that another potentially important tape had been forgotten about. ‘Games Compendium’ for the ZX81 had been completely lost to time, with the only evidence that it had ever existed coming from a 1983 advert in ‘Sinclair User’ magazine. Being written for the earlier model ZX81, the compendium would undoubtedly be of interest to software archivists and game historians.
Roger unexpectedly passed away in 1999, and his parents would later donate some of his computer software to the Museum of Computing in Swindon. Sixteen years after this first visit to the museum, [Keith] was able to get back in touch with Roger’s parents to inquire about the missing software. Delighted to help, Roger’s parents were able to find the missing master tape, and kindly donated it along with Roger’s other treasured computing possessions, including his original Spectrum.
The master tape was likely the only copy left in existence, and [Keith] took it upon himself to delicately repair the 40-year-old cassette mechanism. While a degrading foam spacer was an easy replacement job, the unusually sticky tape surface threatened to snap the tape during the first recovery attempt. Thankfully, the cassette was able to be fully cleaned and repaired, and the data was successfully recovered. With the permission of Roger’s parents, the contents of the tape were then
archived online
for all to enjoy.
Given another year, the contents of the Games Compendium tape may have been lost. Much has been said about storing these fragile media in the right environments, but entropy eventually catches up with everything.
We’ve covered some exceptional stories of software archival
in the past, but it’s impossible to know for sure how much software is on the verge of rotting away forever. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380412",
"author": "pıʌɐp (@sinusoidal)",
"timestamp": "2021-09-14T05:08:13",
"content": "One nice thing about tape is that it is generally an extremely forgiving and flexible format. If all else fails, you can usually just read it back at a really low(but stable) speed on an analo... | 1,760,372,951.819769 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/13/ray-casting-101-makes-things-simple/ | Ray Casting 101 Makes Things Simple | Al Williams | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"3d graphics",
"graphics",
"ray tracing"
] | [SSZCZEP] had a tough time understanding ray tracing to create 3D-like objects on a 2D map. So once he figured it out,
he wrote a tutorial he hopes will be more accessible
for those who may be struggling themselves.
If you’ve ever played
Wolfenstein 3D
you’ll have seen the technique, although it crops up all over the place. The tutorial borrows an animated graphic from [Lucas Vieira] that really shows off how it works in a simplified way. The explanation is pretty simple. From a point of view — that is a camera or the eyeball of a player — you draw rays out until they strike something. The distance and angle tell you how to render the scene. Instead of a camera, you can also figure out how a ray of light will fall from a light source.
There is a bit of math, but also some cool interactive demos to drive home the points. We wondered if Demos 3 and 4 reminded anyone else of an obscure vector graphics video game from the 1970s? Most of the tutorial is pretty brute force, calculating points that you can know ahead of time won’t be useful. But if you stick with it, there are some concessions to optimization and pointers to more information.
Overall, a lot of good info and cool demos if this is your sort of thing. While it might not be the speediest, you can do ray tracing on our old friend the
Arduino
. Or, if you prefer,
Excel
. | 16 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380400",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp": "2021-09-14T04:10:01",
"content": "Al, I don’t know what game you’re referring to that the demos reminded you of, but what they remind ME of is Flatland. Whereas ray-tracing is typically used to project 3D spaces onto 2D displays, t... | 1,760,372,951.926106 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/13/vektor-kollektor-inspector/ | Vektor Kollektor Inspector | Michael Shaub | [
"Art",
"Microcontrollers",
"Musical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino nano",
"art",
"chip tunes",
"plotter",
"public art"
] | With the world opening up again, [Niklas Roy] and [Kati Hyyppä] have been busy making a public and collaborative project.
Meet the Vektor Kollektor
, a portable drawing machine experience, complete with a chip-tune soundtrack. It’s great to see public art meet the maker community with zero pretension and a whole lot of fun!
The build started with an HP7475A pen plotter from the 80s, one that was DOA (or was fried during initial testing). [Niklas] and [Kati] kept the mechanism but rebuilt the controls allowing for easy integration with an Arduino Nano and to be powered with a motorcycle battery.
The magic seems to be less in the junk-bin build (which is great) and more in the way this team extended the project. Using a joystick with arcade buttons as an input, they carted Vektor Kollektor to public parks and streets where they invited others to make art. The Kollekted drawings are available on
a gallery website
in a very cool animated form, freely available for download, on t-shirts, 3D prints, and on coffee mugs because, why not?
Some select drawings are even spray-painted on walls using a large plotter, and we really hope [Niklas Roy] and [Kati Hyyppä] share details on that build soon. Of course this comes hot on the heels of the
workshop window cyborg
we saw from these two hardware artists. | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380380",
"author": "x14km2d",
"timestamp": "2021-09-14T01:05:58",
"content": "Oh, yeah. I agree with you on that one. I would also like to see the Spray Painted Plotter project as a video and maybe even a github project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,372,951.970718 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/13/clocktal-for-when-reading-a-clock-is-just-too-easy/ | ClOCkTAL: For When Reading A Clock Is Just Too Easy | Dave Rowntree | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"Bresenham",
"led matrix display",
"octal",
"PIC16F",
"SDCC"
] | Over on Hackaday.io, [danjovic] presents
clOCkTAL, a simple LED clock
for those of us who struggle with the very concept of making it easy to read the time. Move aside binary clocks, you’re
easy
, let’s talk binary coded octal. Yes, it is a thing. We’ll leave it to [danjovic] to describe how to read the time from it:
Do not try to do the math using 6 bits. The trick to read this clock is to read every 3-bit digit in binary and multiply the MSBs by 8 before summing to the LSBs.
Simple. If you’re awake enough, that is. Anyway, we’re a big fan of the stripped-down raw build method using perf board, and scrap wood. No details hidden here. The circuit is straightforward, being based on a minimal configuration needed to drive the PIC16F688 and a handful of LEDs arranged in a 3×4 matrix.
An interesting detail is the use of
Bresenham’s Algorithm
to derive the one event-per-second needed to keep track of time. And no, this isn’t the more famous
Bresenham’s line algorithm
you may be more familiar with, it’s much simpler, but does work on the same principle of replacing expensive arithmetic division operations with incremental errors. The original Bresenham’s Algorithm was devised for using with X-Y plotters, which had limited resolution, and was intended to allow movements that were in an imperfect ratio to that resolution. It was developed into a method for approximating lines, then extended to cover circles, ellipses and other types of drawables.
Bresenham’s Algorithm allows you to create the event you want, with
any
period from
any
oscillator frequency, and this is very useful indeed. Now obviously you don’t get something for nothing, and the downside is periodic jitter, but at least it is deterministic. The way it works is to alternate the period being counted between two power-of-two division ratios (or something easily created from that) such that the average period is what you want. Cycle-to-cycle there is an error, but overall these errors do not accumulate, and we get the desired average period. The example given in [Roman Black]’s description is to alternate 16 cycles and 24 cycles to get an average of 20 cycles.
The software side of things can be inspected by heading over to the
clOCkTAL GitHub
which makes use of the
Small Device C Compiler
which has support for a fair few devices, in case dear readers, you had not yet come across it.
The video shows the clock being put through a simple test demonstrating the LED dimming in response to ambient light. All-in-all a pretty simple and effective build. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380351",
"author": "SteveS",
"timestamp": "2021-09-13T20:47:32",
"content": "Ah man! I overslept again! it’s almost 11100101 !",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6380364",
"author": "Iván Stepaniuk",
"timestamp": "2021-09-... | 1,760,372,952.073133 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/13/glados-voice-assistant-passive-aggressively-automates-home/ | GLaDOS Voice Assistant Passive-Aggressively Automates Home | Ryan Flowers | [
"home entertainment hacks",
"home hacks",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"glados",
"portal",
"portal 2",
"raspberry pi",
"ReSpeaker"
] | With modern voice assistants we can tell a computer to play our favorite music, check the weather, or turn on a light. Like many of us, [nerdaxic] gave in to the convenience and perceived simplicity of various home automation products made by Google and Amazon. Also like many of us, he found it a bit difficult to accept the privacy implications that surround such cloud connected devices. But after selling his Home and Echo, [nerdaxic] missed the ability to control his smart home by voice command. Instead of giving in and buying back into the closed ecosystems he’d left behind,
[nerdaxic] decided to open his home to a murderous, passive aggressive, sarcastic, slightly insane AI: GLaDOS
, which you can see in action after the break.
Using open source designs from
fellow YouTube creator [Mr. Volt]
, [nerdaxic] 3d printed as much of the GLaDOS animatronic model as he was able to, and implemented much of the same hardware to make it work. [nerdaxic] put more Open Source Software to use and has created a functional but somewhat limited home AI that can manage his home automation, give the weather, and tell jokes among other things. GLaDOS doesn’t fail to deliver some great one liners inspired by the original Portal games while heeding [nerdaxic]’s commands, either.
A ReSpeaker from Seeed Studio cleans up the audio sent to a Raspberry Pi 4, and allows for future expansion that will allow GLaDOS to look in the direction of the person speaking to it. With its IR capable camera, another enhancement will allow GlaDOS to stare at people as they walk around. That’s not creepy at all, right? [nerdaxic] also plans to bring speech-to-text processing in-house instead of the Google Cloud Speech-To-Text API used in its current iteration, and he’s
made everything available on GitHub
so that you too can have a villainous AI hanging on your every word.
Of course if having GLaDOS looming isn’t enough, you could always build a
functional life size Portal turret
or listen to the radio on your very own
Portal Radio
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380373",
"author": "Mart",
"timestamp": "2021-09-13T23:52:39",
"content": "Overkill loll thumbs up",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6380377",
"author": "Garth Bock",
"timestamp": "2021-09-14T00:54:22",
"content... | 1,760,372,952.013848 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/13/even-bees-are-abuzz-about-caffeine/ | Even Bees Are Abuzz About Caffeine | Kristina Panos | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"bees",
"caffeine",
"energy",
"fake flowers"
] | Many of us can’t get through the day without at
minimum
one cup of coffee, or at least, we’d rather not think about trying. No matter how you choose to ingest caffeine, it is an awesome source of energy and focus for legions of hackers and humans. And evidently, the same goes for pollinator bees.
You’ve probably heard that there aren’t enough bees around anymore to pollinate all the crops that need pollinating. That’s old news. One solution was to raise them commercially and then truck them to farmers’ fields where they’re needed. The new problem is that the bees wander off and pollinate wildflowers instead of the fields they’re supposed to be pollinating. But there’s hope for these distracted bees: Scientists at the University of Greenwich have discovered that
bees under the influence of caffeine are more likely to stay on track
when given a whiff of the flower they’re supposed to be pollinating.
Image via
Cell
Percolating Proof
For the purposes of experimentation, scientists divided a swarm of bees into three groups: one got caffeinated sugar water and a blast of strawberry flower scent, the second got plain sugar water plus the scent, and the third got plain sugar water and no scent.
Then came the moment of truth — they released the bees into an indoor field of robotic flowers. Some of the flowers gave off the strawberry smell. Others emitted a different scent meant to distract the bees, and all the flowers contained plain sugar water as a reward for discovery.
The results point to a strong association between caffeine and scent
: 70.4% of the caffeinated bees went straight for the strawberry flowers, while only 60% of the plain sugar water bees went for the strawberries first.
After a while, bees from all three groups eventually went for the distraction flowers. But that part of the experiment seems a bit skewed, as these distraction flowers were much closer in proximity to the target flowers than they would be in the real world. So until farmers set up caffeinated sugar water troughs for their bees to congregate before work, we won’t know how effective or long-lasting the jolt could potentially be.
There is research indicating that
caffeine does enhance memory performance in humans
, at least the college-aged ones suffering through early-morning exams.
Many of us enjoy plenty of caffeine for focus well past the university years
, including yours truly and our own [Jenny List].
Via
adafruit
Images via
@chrisdubai | 33 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380288",
"author": "Coffee Bean",
"timestamp": "2021-09-13T17:11:53",
"content": "I thought caffeine was poisonous to insects and that was even the whole reason some plants evolved the ability to produce it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,372,952.14667 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/13/cisco-router-repair-revives-piece-of-internet-history/ | Cisco Router Repair Revives Piece Of Internet History | Tom Nardi | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"cisco",
"recapping",
"repair",
"router",
"teardown",
"troubleshooting"
] | It would be fair to say that the Internet as we know it runs on Cisco hardware. While you might never see the devices first-hand, there’s an excellent chance that every web-bound packet leaving your computer or smartphone will spend at least a few milliseconds of its life traveling through hardware built by the San Jose, California based company. But of course, even a telecommunications giant like Cisco had to start somewhere.
Cisco’s first commercial router, the Advanced Gateway Server (AGS), was released in 1986 and helped put the company (and the Internet) on the path towards unfathomable success.
[Andreas Semmelmann] had wanted to add one of these microwave-sized machines to his collection for some time
, so when an AGS+ popped up in the local classifieds he didn’t hesitate to make the hour drive to go pick it up. But like many pieces of vintage computing equipment, it needed a little help getting back on its feet.
What 4 MB of flash looked like in the late 1980s.
Since he had to take the router apart anyway to diagnose what ailed it, [Andreas] decided to take photographs along the way and document this piece of Internet history. He walks the reader through the massive processor, Ethernet, and serial cards that are housed in the unit’s rack-like enclosure. We appreciate him taking the scenic route, as it gives us a great look inside what would have been state-of-the-art telecommunications gear when this version of the AGS hit the market in 1989.
The walk-through is full of interesting details that make us appreciate just how far things have come in the last 32 years. Imagine yanking the EPROMs out of the board and firing up the UV eraser each time you needed to update your router’s firmware. Or needing a special adapter to convert the AUI-15 connectors on the back panel to the now ubiquitous RJ45 jack.
After this stroll down memory lane, [Andreas] gets to the actual repair work. It likely won’t surprise the regular Hackaday reader to find that the power supply wasn’t operating to spec, and that some aged capacitors and a shorted rectifier diode needed to be replaced to put it back on an even keel. But even with the PSU repaired, the router failed to start. The console output indicated the software was crashing, but hardware diagnostics showed no obvious faults.
Replacing these failed PSU components was just the beginning.
With some part swapping, firmware flashing, and even a bit of assistance from
Cisco luminary [Phillip Remaker]
, the issue was eventually identified as a faulty environmental monitoring (ENVM) card installed in the AGS+. As luck would have it the ENVM capability isn’t required to boot the router, so [Andreas] was able to just disconnect the card and continue on with his exploration of the hardware that helped build the Internet as we know it.
Considering its age, this piece of 1980s Cisco gear ended up being in relatively good shape. But that’s not always the case.
Over the years we’ve found ourselves in awe
of the incredible amount of time, effort, and skill,
it takes to restore some of these classic machines
. We have great respect for the
dedicated individuals who are willing to take on the challenge
of keeping these pieces of history up and running for future generations to marvel at.
[Thanks to Bob for the tip.] | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380248",
"author": "Ben",
"timestamp": "2021-09-13T15:15:24",
"content": "I’m not convinced the opening sentence is a truth any more. I think theres a lot more HW provider diversification now.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,372,952.407172 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/13/pinning-tails-on-satellites-to-help-prevent-space-junk/ | Pinning Tails On Satellites To Help Prevent Space Junk | Tom Nardi | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Parts",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"cubesat",
"deorbit",
"Lorentz force",
"reentry",
"SmallSat",
"space junk",
"space tech",
"Tether"
] | Low Earth orbit was already relatively crowded when only the big players were launching satellites, but as access to space has gotten cheaper, more and more pieces of hardware have started whizzing around overhead. SpaceX alone has launched nearly 1,800 individual satellites as part of its Starlink network since 2019, and could loft as many as 40,000 more in the coming decades. They aren’t alone, either. While their ambitions might not be nearly as grand, companies such as Amazon and Samsung have announced plans to create satellite “mega-constellations” of their own in the near future.
At least on paper, there’s plenty of room for everyone. But what about when things go wrong? Should a satellite fail and become unresponsive, it’s no longer able to maneuver its way out of close calls with other objects in orbit. This is an especially troubling scenario as not everything in orbit around the Earth has the ability to move itself in the first place. Should two of these uncontrollable objects find themselves on a collision course, there’s nothing we can do on the ground but watch and hope for the best.
The resulting hypervelocity impact can send shrapnel and debris flying
for hundreds or even thousands of kilometers in all three dimensions, creating an extremely hazardous situation for other vehicles.
One way to mitigate the problem is to design satellites in such a way that they will quickly reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up at the end of their mission. Ideally, the deorbit procedure could even activate automatically if the vehicle became unresponsive or suffered some serious malfunction. Naturally, to foster as wide adoption as possible, such a system would have to be cheap, lightweight, simple to integrate into arbitrary spacecraft designs, and as reliable as possible. A tall order, to be sure.
But perhaps not an impossible one. Boeing subsidiary Millennium Space Systems recently announced it had
successfully deployed a promising deorbiting device developed by Tethers Unlimited
. Known as the Terminator Tape, the compact unit is designed to rapidly slow down an orbiting satellite by increasing the amount of drag it experiences in the wispy upper atmosphere.
A Real Space Race
Launched to space aboard a Rocket Lab Electron on November 20th 2020,
Millennium Space System’s DRAGRACER mission
consisted of two identical CubeSats which were released simultaneously into a 400 kilometer (250 mile) orbit above the Earth. The only difference between the two satellites was that one of them, called
Alchemy
, was equipped with the Terminator Tape device. The other satellite, referred to as
Augury
, had no active deorbit capability and served as the experiment’s control.
Once the two craft were safely in orbit,
Alchemy
unfurled the tightly packed 70 meter (230 feet) conductive tether stored inside the 180 mm x 180 mm x 18 mm Terminator Tape module. With the tether slowing it down, it was initially estimated that
Alchemy
would hit the denser sections of Earth’s atmosphere and burn up within 45 days
.
The twin stacked satellites separated in orbit.
In the end it took approximately eight months for the Terminator-equipped vehicle to passively deorbit itself. This is considerably longer than the pre-mission estimate, but in a followup presentation during the SmallSat Virtual Conference, Tethers Unlimited President Rob Hoyt said the team was still
gathering data to improve their predictions of satellite deorbit rates
. For one thing,
Alchemy
was the first spacecraft to deploy the tether at a low enough altitude that it reentered the atmosphere as a result, so this was essentially uncharted territory. Hoyt also explained that the tether’s effectiveness is highly dependent on current solar conditions, which can make it difficult to determine how much it will slow the craft down until it’s actually been deployed and real-world data starts coming in.
Still, eight months is nothing compared to the time
Augury
is going to spend in space. Given its current velocity and altitude, it’s estimated that the control CubeSat won’t reenter the atmosphere until 2028 at the earliest. While the team obviously needs to improve their models for estimating deorbit time frames, there’s no question that the Terminator Tape is capable of greatly reducing the velocity of an orbiting satellite.
Growing a Tail
Take one look at your traditional satellite, and it’s pretty clear that atmospheric drag wasn’t of any great concern to the designers. Despite their large solar panels, haphazardly placed parabolic antennas, and general asymmetry, the drag imparted on most spacecraft is so slight that the occasional thruster firing is more than enough to compensate. Even the International Space Station, the largest and most ungainly vehicle humanity has ever put into space, only drops between two and three kilometers per month. As you’d expect the effect diminishes with increased altitude, meaning some satellites such as the Vanguard 1 launched in 1958, are expected to remain in orbit for hundreds of years.
The Terminator Tape works, at least in part, by greatly increasing the surface area of the satellite. Given the common 3U CubeSat is just 30 cm long, deploying the 70 m x 150 mm tether would increase its total surface area by a factor of roughly 150. Extended out from the satellite like the tail of a kite, the tether will passively reduce the craft’s orbital velocity so long as it’s at a low enough altitude to still experience significant atmospheric drag.
But it’s not just the increased surface area that will help bring the spacecraft down. A charge is built up within the conductive tether material as it moves through the Earth’s magnetic field, which in turn induces an electromagnetic drag on the system by way of a Lorentz force. The tether will essentially act as a retrograde propellant-less thruster, constantly pulling against the spacecraft and robbing it of momentum. This characteristic of the tether is especially important for craft in higher altitudes, where atmospheric drag alone may be too weak to have an impact.
Drag as a Service
To add the Terminator Tape to an existing spacecraft, there just needs to be a flat enough area to bolt the 180 mm square device onto and at least 808 grams available in the mass budget. It doesn’t even matter which face of the vehicle you attach it to or what orientation the craft is in at the moment of deployment, physics will handle all of that.
As a spacecraft designer, the only thing you really need to concern yourself with is providing it with the activation signal at the appropriate time.
According to the datasheet
that means applying 9 VDC to the unit’s shape-memory alloy (SMA) activator for 30 seconds, during which time the thermal device will pull around 1.9 amps. When using the smaller version of the tether, it only takes 300 mA @ 3 VDC. In either event, firing off the device at the end of a nominal mission should require little more than a free GPIO pin on the vehicle’s computer and a MOSFET.
The two Terminator Tape models currently offered by Tethers Unlimited.
Designers would also be wise to implement a secondary, automatic, deployment signal in the event of a vehicle failure. This could take the form of a dedicated battery, solar cell, and circuit that’s capable of providing the activation signal after a set period of time regardless of the vehicle’s status. For missions with relatively short lifespans, this contingency system could potentially even run on long-lasting primary cells.
In the future, such a system may not even require power to activate.
As part of the growing “Design for Demise” initiative in the aerospace industry
, research is being done into
materials and adhesives which predictably break down
based on time or external factors such as temperature and exposure to sunlight. Eventually, we may see a tether that’s deployed automatically once its cover plate has been deteriorated by the space environment; an autonomous and efficient reaper that makes sure no satellite stays around any longer than it needs to. | 32 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380224",
"author": "Alice Lalita Heald",
"timestamp": "2021-09-13T14:10:35",
"content": "Please stop polluting the orbit with useless science! (seehttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6380276... | 1,760,372,952.340569 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/13/firmware-modding-your-vintage-nokia-handset/ | Firmware Modding Your Vintage Nokia Handset | Chris Wilkinson | [
"Cellphone Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"5110",
"firmware",
"nokia",
"softmod"
] | These days we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to smartphone software, especially games. Official repositories for the leading handsets feature hundreds of thousands of games, and sideloading adds infinite possibilities. If you were lucky enough to be sporting a Nokia handset in the late 1990s, you probably had all of three games to choose from (and only one that was actually fun). [Janus Cycle] explores the steps needed to
firmware mod your vintage Nokia phone
, and how to expand on that paltry games library.
Enthusiasts have been modding their Nokia handsets since the 2000s, and the tools required now are the same as they were then. The Nokia 5110 and 6110 (as featured in the video below) use a proprietary cable and connector for communicating with PCs and other devices. Nokia’s official serial cable already opens up many possibilities for handset tinkering, including access to RAM and toggling Monitor Mode. This cable interfaces solely with the phone’s fast FBUS protocol, however firmware flashing takes place using the slower MBUS protocol over a single wire bi-directional pin.
The handset expects both serial ports to be available during firmware flashing. [Janus Cycle] demonstrates how to build a custom harness that connects both serial ports to a PC parallel port. At this point the flashing process is relatively straightforward, especially if you have an appropriately vintage computer to run the old flashing software.
Nokia owners may fondly remember changing the network name on the home screen to all sorts of inappropriate graphics, yet far more was possible with the right technology and know-how. It’s interesting to think about what may have been if softmodding was more widespread during the reign of the Nokia 5110 and its peers.
[Many thanks to the anonymous tipster for submitting this story] | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380189",
"author": "Jonathan Wilson",
"timestamp": "2021-09-13T12:09:03",
"content": "I still remember some of the tricks I was able to do via flashing on my Nokia N900 linux phone (I stopped using it because the USB/charge port broke, the cellular radio started becoming flaky and ... | 1,760,372,952.260473 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/13/how-the-ps5s-genuinely-clever-adaptive-triggers-work/ | How The PS5’s Genuinely Clever Adaptive Triggers Work | Donald Papp | [
"Games",
"Playstation Hacks"
] | [
"dualsense",
"force feedback",
"haptic triggers",
"playstation",
"ps5",
"teardown"
] | Sony’s Playstation 5 console and its DualSense controllers aren’t exactly new, but
the triggers of the controllers have a genuinely interesting design
that is worth examining. The analog triggers on the PS5 controllers are generally described as having “variable resistance”, but it turns out that’s not the whole story. Not only is the trigger capable of variable resistance when being pressed, but it can also
push back
in variable ways and with varying amounts of force. How it works is pretty clever.
The feedback for the trigger assembly is handled by a lever, a geared wheel, and a worm gear on an electric motor. Under normal circumstances, nothing interferes with the trigger at all and it works like a normal analog trigger. But when the motor moves the lever into place, trigger movement now has to overcome the added interference with a mechanical disadvantage. The amount of resistance felt can be increased a surprising amount by having the motor actively apply additional force to counter the trigger’s movement.
That’s not all, either. The motor can also actively move the lever into (or out of) position, which means that pulling the trigger not only has the ability to feel smooth, mushy, or stiff in different places, but it can also actively push back. This feedback can be introduced (or removed) at any arbitrary point along the trigger’s range of motion. A trigger pull can therefore feel like it has a sharp breakpoint, a rough travel, a hard stop, an active recoil, or any combination of those at any time.
It’s a little hard to describe, but you can get a better idea of it all works in practice by watching part of
this teardown by [TronicsFix]
(video cued to about 9:17 where the trigger teardown begins.) It’s also embedded below, so give it a peek.
A small amount of force applied in the right place can produce outsized results, but a force feedback project doesn’t have to be subtle. One can always shake things up by
mounting a whole bunch of solenoids onto a mouse
. | 27 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380139",
"author": "Tom Cook",
"timestamp": "2021-09-13T08:39:27",
"content": "Am I the only one really struggling to find a difference between “resistance” and “push back”?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6380140",
"... | 1,760,372,952.808668 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/12/documentation-is-hard-let-the-skunkworks-project-show-you-how-to-do-it-well/ | Documentation Is Hard, Let The SkunkWorks Project Show You How To Do It Well | Orlando Hoilett | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"Bo Peep",
"Buzz Lightyear",
"Cardboard model",
"mattel",
"pixar",
"Sheriff Woody",
"Skunkmobile",
"textiles",
"Toy Story"
] | Documentation can be a bit of a nasty word, but it’s certainly one aspect of our own design process that we all wish we could improve upon. As an award-winning designer, working with some of the best toy companies around, [Jude] knows a thing or two about showing your work. In his
SkunkWorks Project
, he takes a maker’s approach to Bo Peep’s Skunkmobile and gives us a master class on engineering design in the process.
As with any good project brief
, [Jude] first lays out his motivation for his work. He was very surprised that Pixar hadn’t commercialized Bo Peep’s Skunkmobile and hoped his DIY efforts could inspire more inclusive toy options from the Toy Story franchise. He does admit that the Skunkmobile presents a more unique design challenge than your standard, plastic, toy action figure. Combining both the textile element to create the
illusion of fur
and the
RC components to give the toy its mobility
requires careful thought. You definitely don’t want the wheels ripping into the fabric as you wheel around the backyard or for the fur to snag every object you pass by in the house.
Given the design challenges of making the Skunkmobile from scratch, [Jude] decided the best way forward was to retrofit a custom-designed skunk-shaped body onto a standard RC car chassis. The difficulty here lies in finding a chassis that can support the weight of the retrofitted body as well as one big enough to hold a 9-inch Bo Peep doll inside the driver’s compartment. Before spending endless hours 3D printing (and re-printing) his designs, [Jude] first modeled the Skunkmobile in card (using cardboard), a
practice we’ve seen before
, and are
always in love with
. He continually emphasized the form of his device was probably even more important than its function as capturing the essence as well as the “look and feel” of the Skunkmobile were critical design criteria. You can even see the skunk wagging its tail in all his demo videos. Prototyping in card gave [Jude] a good feel for his Skunkmobile and the designs translated pretty well to the 3D printed versions.
What really impressed us about [Jude’s] project is the incredible detail he provides for his entire design process from his backstory, to the initial prototypes, to the user testing, and, finally, to the realization of the final product. Remember,
“We want the gory details!” | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380125",
"author": "Andrew",
"timestamp": "2021-09-13T05:59:38",
"content": "I make prototypes in cardboard too! This is awesome. Previously I use tape and scissors, but I have a laser cutter on loan, which means everything is a 3D representative model cut from corrugated cardboard... | 1,760,372,952.647274 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/12/overengineering-a-smart-doorbell/ | Overengineering A Smart Doorbell | Jenny List | [
"cons",
"Machine Learning",
"News"
] | [
"doorbell",
"newline",
"raspeberry pi"
] | Fresh from the mediaeval splendour of the Belgian city of Gent, we bring you more from the Newline hacker conference organised by Hackerspace Gent. [Victor Sonck] works at the top of his house, and thus needed a doorbell notifier. His solution was unexpected, and as he admits over engineered,
using machine learning on an audio stream from a microphone to detect the doorbell’s sound
.
Having established that selling his soul to Amazon with a Ring doorbell wasn’t an appropriate solution, he next looked at his existing doorbell. Some of us might connect directly to its power to sense when the button was pressed, but we’re kinda glad he went for the overengineered route because it means we are treated to a run-down how machine learning works and how it can be applied to audio. The end result can sometimes be triggered by a spoon hitting a cereal plate, but since he was able to demonstrate it working we think it can be called a success. Should you wish to dive in further you can find more
in his GitHub repository
.
How would you overengineer a doorbell? Use GNU radio and filters? Or maybe a Rube Goldberg machine involving string and pulleys? As always, the comments are open.
Header image: © Raimond Spekking /
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 19 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380101",
"author": "NiHaoMike",
"timestamp": "2021-09-13T02:35:29",
"content": "If it’s the old style of bell with the interrupting contacts, an AM radio would be an easy way to detect it operating. Could base the detection on a crystal radio placed as close to the bell as possible... | 1,760,372,952.969389 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/12/hackaday-links-september-12-2021/ | Hackaday Links: September 12, 2021 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"antenna",
"conference",
"emc",
"GnuRadio",
"hackaday links",
"ham",
"insulin pump",
"international space station",
"iss",
"tuning stubs"
] | The last thing an astronaut or cosmonaut on the International Space Stations wants to hear from one of their crewmates is, “Do you smell plastic burning?” But that’s
apparently what happened this week
aboard the increasingly problematic spacecraft, as the burning smell and visible smoke spread from the Russian Zvezda module to the American side of town. The reports say it occurred while charging the station’s batteries, and
we all know how dicey that can get
. But apparently, the situation resolved itself somehow, as normal operations continued soon after the event. Between reports of cracks, air leaks, problems with attitude control, and even accusations of sabotage, the ISS is really starting to show its age.
Speaking of burning and batteries, normally a story about burning Tesla batteries wouldn’t raise our eyebrows much. But
this story out of California
introduces a potential failure mode for Tesla batteries that we hadn’t considered before. It seems a semi-truck with a load of Tesla batteries lost its brakes on Interstate 80 in the Sierra Nevada mountains and ended up flipping across the highway. Video from the scene shows the cargo, which looks like replacement batteries or perhaps batteries salvaged from wrecked cars, scattered across the highway on their shipping pallets. A fire was reported, but it’s not clear whether it was one of the batteries which had gotten compromised in the crash, or if it was something other than the batteries. Still, we hadn’t considered the potential for disaster while shipping batteries like that.
Attention all GNURadio fans —
GRCon21 is rapidly approaching
. Unlike most of the conferences over the last year and half, GRCon21 will actually be both live and online. We always love the post-conference dump of talks, which cover such a wide range of topics and really dive deeply into so many cool areas. We’re especially looking forward to the SETI talks, and we’re pleased to see our friend
Hash
, who was
on the Hack Chat
a while back, scheduled to talk about his smart-meter hacking efforts. The conference starts on September 20 and is being held in Charlotte, North Carolina, and virtually of course. If you attend, make sure to drop tips to your favorite talks in the tips line so we can share them with everyone.
We got a tip this week on
a video about how 1/4-wave tuning stubs work
. It’s a simple demonstration using a length of coax, a signal generator, and an oscilloscope to show how an unterminated feedline can reflect RF back to the transmitter, and how that can be used to build super-simple notch filters and impedance transformers. We love demos that make the mysteries of RF a little simpler — W2AEW’s videos come to mind, like
this one on standing waves
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380094",
"author": "Tenaja",
"timestamp": "2021-09-13T01:14:21",
"content": "“we hadn’t considered the potential for disaster while shipping batteries like that.”Well, WE had…and did the testing to prove it was safe, immediately after we found out that there is up to a $25,000 fine... | 1,760,372,952.69193 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/12/successfully-crowdfunded-hardware-everything-behind-the-scenes/ | Successfully Crowdfunded Hardware: Everything Behind The Scenes | Donald Papp | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"Crowd Funding",
"hardware"
] | [
"crowdfunding",
"ctf",
"fulfillment",
"hardware",
"product",
"The Skull"
] | Crowdfunding hardware has its own unique challenges, and [Uri Shaked] wrote
a fascinating report that goes into excellent detail about his experience bringing a crowdfunded hardware project to life
.
[Uri]’s project was
The Skull CTF
, an electronic hardware puzzle that came in the shape of a PCB skull, and his detailed look behind the scenes covers just about every angle, from original concept to final wrap-up, along with his thoughts and feedback at every stage. His project reached its funding goal, got manufactured and shipped, and in the end was a success.
[Uri] started with a working project, but beyond that was virtually a complete novice when it came to crowdfunding. He eventually settled on using Crowd Supply to make his idea happen, and his writeup explains in great detail every stage of that process, including dollar amounts. What’s great to see is that not only does [Uri] explain the steps and decisions involved, but explains the research that went into each, and how he feels each of them ended up working out.
The entire thing is worth a read, but [Uri] summarizes the experience of crowdfunding a hardware project thus: an excellent way to test out the demand for an idea and bring a product into existence, but be aware that unless a project is a runaway success it probably won’t be much of an income generator at that stage. It was a great learning experience, but involved a lot of time and effort on his part as well.
[Uri] really knows his stuff, and considering his skill at
hunting down pesky bugs
, it’s probably no surprise that this
wasn’t his first hardware puzzle
. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6380087",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-09-12T22:02:59",
"content": "I didn’t finish reading Uri’s blog, but I am impressed by the amount of detail he included.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6380102",
"author": "Inhi... | 1,760,372,952.596221 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/12/massive-cleaning-effort-saves-acid-drenched-atari/ | Massive Cleaning Effort Saves Acid-Drenched Atari | Robin Kearey | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"atari 800xl",
"battery leakage",
"cleaning"
] | Anyone who’s ever had to deal with the aftermath of a leaking battery knows how much damage such a failure can cause. Degrading batteries leak corrosive chemicals that eat away PCB traces, clog up connectors and generally leave everything looking nasty. Getting your gadget working again usually calls for lots of scrubbing, followed by patiently tracing suspect connections and restoring any broken ones.
We doubt, however, that anyone has ever gone through as much effort as [Lee Smith] has on his
Atari 800 XL
. This example was listed on eBay in a severely damaged state, having been stored under an entire box of leaking batteries. [Lee] put in a bid and, to his own bemusement, won the auction. He was now the proud owner of a classic gaming machine which was covered in a thick brown crust of battery residue.
A first inspection showed that the damage was more than skin-deep: even inside the computer’s case it was one big mess of crusty brown junk. [Lee] first spent several hours on the plastic case, using different cleaning agents and an ultrasonic bath, and managed to get the case almost spotless again. The keyboard presented a larger challenge however: not only did it require thorough cleaning of every single switch and keycap, the keyboard’s matrix on the PCB had several connections missing, which had to be restored using bodge wires.
With the keyboard working again, [Lee] turned to the mainboard. This turned out to be an even greater challenge, with several components (including a few custom chips) damaged beyond repair. With the help of a few eBay replacements parts and (again) countless hours of scrubbing, the mainboard started to look healthy again. After a few tests, [Lee] felt confident enough to hook up the entire system and turn it on. And his efforts had paid off: the battered Atari dutifully displayed its BASIC prompt, ready for its second lease of life.
We’ve seen before what kind of damage a
leaking battery can do to an Amiga
, or
faulty caps to an Xbox
. But both of these seem minor inconveniences compared to what happened to this poor Atari. Thanks to [Simon] for the tip. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379979",
"author": "Red-Fathom",
"timestamp": "2021-09-12T17:17:52",
"content": "Alkali batteries are so much worse than acidic ones.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6379987",
"author": "lee smith",
"timestamp": "2021-0... | 1,760,372,952.74048 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/12/making-a-car-key-from-a-ratcheting-wrench/ | Making A Car Key From A Ratcheting Wrench | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"lockpicking hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"car",
"car key",
"key cutting"
] | Car keys these days are remarkably complex beasts. Covered in buttons and loaded with security transponders, they often cost hundreds of dollars to replace if you’re unlucky enough to lose them. However, back in the day, keys used to just be keys — a hunk of metal in a mechanical pattern to move some levers and open a door. Thus, you could reshape a wrench into a key for an old car
if that was something you really wanted to do.
The concept is simple. Take a 12mm ratcheting wrench, and shape the flat section into a profile matching that of a key for an older car without any electronic security features. The first step is to cut down the shaft, before grinding it down to match the thickness and width of the original key.
The profile of the key is then drawn onto the surface, and a Dremel used with a cutting disc to create the requisite shape. Finally, calipers are used to mark out the channels to allow the key to slide into the keyway, before these are also machined with the rotary tool.
Filing and polishing cleans up the final result to create a shiny, attractive ratchet wrench key. Even better, it does a great job of opening the car, too.
Similar machining techniques can be used to
duplicate a key from just a photo
(
something I did back in 2019 to prank my friend
). Alternatively,
3D printing can be great for reproducing even high-security keys.
Video after the break.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXJxT1eQk_k | 45 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379916",
"author": "CM",
"timestamp": "2021-09-12T14:34:05",
"content": "Really cool hack, but bad for overall longevity of the lock cylinder. Keys are made of softer metal for more reasons than just ease of cutting: the cylinder pins will outlive the key. Wrenches are made from ch... | 1,760,372,953.051486 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/12/using-homebrew-coils-measure-mains-current-and-taking-the-circuit-breaker-challenge/ | Using Homebrew Coils To Measure Mains Current, And Taking The Circuit Breaker Challenge | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"circuit breaker",
"coil",
"current",
"induction",
"mains",
"nonmetallic",
"residential",
"romex",
"transformer",
"winding",
"wiring"
] | Like many hackers, [Matthias Wandel] has a penchant for measuring the world around him, and quantifying the goings-on in his home is a bit of a hobby. And so when it came time to sense the current flowing in the wires of his house, he did what any of us would do:
he built his own current sensing system
.
What’s that you say? Any sane hacker would buy something like a Kill-a-Watt meter, or even perhaps use commercially available current transformers? Perhaps, but then one wouldn’t exactly be hacking, would one? [Matthias] opted to roll his own sensors for quite practical reasons: commercial meters don’t quite have the response time to catch the start-up spikes he was interested in seeing, and clamp-on current transformers require splitting the jacket on the nonmetallic cabling used in most residential wiring — doing so tends to run afoul of building codes. So his sensors were simply coils of wire shaped to fit the outside of the NM cable, with a bit of filtering to provide a cleaner signal in the high-noise environment of a lot of switch-mode power supplies.
Fed through an ADC board into a Raspberry Pi, [Matthias]’ sensor system did a surprisingly good job of catching the start-up surge of some tools around the shop. That led to the entertaining “Circuit Breaker Challenge” part of the video below, wherein we learn just what it really takes to pop the breaker on a 15-Amp branch circuit. Spoiler alert: it’s a lot.
Speaking of staying safe with mains current, we’ve covered a little bit about
how circuit protection works
before. If you need
a deeper dive into circuit breakers
, we’ve got that too.
Thanks to tip-line stalwart [Baldpower] for the tip. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379889",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2021-09-12T11:22:47",
"content": "So many things wrong. You can’t re-write physics for your convenience. The field at some distance from the wires sums to zero. Positive current in one conductor, negative in the other. The magnetic field ... | 1,760,372,953.116529 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/12/hey-mister-emulator-gimme-almost-any-classic-platform/ | Hey, MiSTer Emulator, Gimme Almost Any Classic Platform! | Jenny List | [
"cons",
"FPGA",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"emulator",
"fpga",
"MiSTER",
"newline",
"retrocomputing"
] | I’m back with another of the talks from Hackerspace Gent’s NewLine conference, fresh from my weekend of indulgence quaffing fine Belgian food and beers while mixing with that country’s hacker community. This time it’s
an overview from [Michael Smith] of the MiSTer project,
a multi-emulator using an FPGA to swap out implementations of everything from an early PDP minicomputer to an 80486SX PC.
At its heart is
a dev board containing an Intel Cyclone SoC/FPGA
, to which a USB hub must be added, and then a memory upgrade to run all but the simplest of cores. Once the hardware has been taken care of it almost seems as though there are no classic platforms for which there isn’t a core, as a quick browse of
the MiSTer forum
attests. We are treated to seamless switching between SNES and NED platforms, and even switching different SID chip versions during a running Commodore 64 demo.
There are many different routes to a decent emulator set-up be they using hardware, software, or a combination of both. It’s unlikely that there are any as versatile as this one though, and we’re guessing that as it further evolves it will become a fixture below the monitor or TV of any gamer. It’s
a step up from single-platform FPGA emulators
, that’s for certain! | 20 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379882",
"author": "VarnishMike",
"timestamp": "2021-09-12T09:42:23",
"content": "One small amendment, the usb hub isn’t necessary. You can run a mister system perfectly fine with just a usb otg cable. The sdram is however absolutely necessary.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth":... | 1,760,372,953.172572 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/11/3d-printed-hat-blasts-the-rain-away/ | 3D Printed HatBlastsThe Rain Away | Dave Rowntree | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"EDF"
] | Some ideas are so bad that we just try them anyway, at least that seems to be [Ivan Miranda]’s philosophy. No stranger to just totally ignoring the general consensus on what you can (or at least
should
) or can’t make with a 3D printer, and just getting on with it, [Ivan] may have gone a little too far this time. Since umbrellas are, well, boring, why not try to
keep dry with an air-curtain hat
?
As you’ll see from the video, attempting to 3D print an impeller to run from a BLDC motor didn’t exactly go well. The imbalance due to imperfections in the printing process (and lack of an easy way balance it post-print) caused incredibly unpleasant (and possibly damaging) vibrations directly into his skull, not to mention the thing self-disassembling in a short time.
Not to be discouraged, he presses on regardless, substituting an electrical
ducted fan
(EDF), increasing the silliness-factor oh-so-little, after all as he says “I think I have a solution for all the issues — more power!”
EDFs and other kinds of ducted fans are used in many applications nowadays. Thanks to advances in rare-earth magnets enabling more powerful brushless motors, combined with cheap and accessible control systems, there has never been a better time to drop an EDF into your latest madcap idea. We have covered many ducted fan projects over the years, including
this great video about how ducted fans work
, which we think is well worth a watch if you’ve not already done so.
The “
rain in spain, stays mainly in the plain
” doesn’t actually reflect reality, as most rainfall is actually recorded in the mountainous north, rather than the central ‘plain’, But regardless, it never rains when you want it to, certainly in the Basque country where [Ivan] is based. Initial testing was done with a hose pipe, in the shop, which shows a certain dedication to the task in hand to say the least.
He does demonstrate it appearing to actually work, but we’re pretty sure there is still plenty of room for improvement. Although, maybe it’s safer to just shelve it and move on the next mad-
cap
idea? | 32 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379860",
"author": "John7",
"timestamp": "2021-09-12T05:32:05",
"content": "Maybe not suitable for a crowd …. of TWO or more",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6379864",
"author": "Pelle van der Heide",
"timestam... | 1,760,372,953.241948 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/11/you-can-3d-print-your-own-rc-motorbikes/ | You Can 3D Print Your Own RC Motorbikes | Lewin Day | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"motor bike",
"motor cycle",
"motorbike",
"motorcycle",
"radio control"
] | Radio control cars have been a popular toy for decades, but their motorcycle counterparts have always lagged behind due to balance issues and compromised agility. At the same time, a little toy motorbike can be mesmerizing in action. [brettt3] built a few of his own design that look
remarkably fun to play with.
Modeled after the Ducati Draxter and Suzuki GSX-RR, the 3D printed bodies do a great job of aping their full-size counterparts. With a lick of paint and some finer touches, these could be absolutely exquisite, but they look awesome in the bare plastic nonetheless. The bikes use a belt drive to deliver power from a motor in the body to the rear wheel. To keep them upright, a weighted front wheel is used as a passive gyroscope for stabilization.
But the finest touch is arguably the rider which sits atop each motorcycle. Articulated and with hands resting on the handlebars, the rider moves with the steering of the bike, creating an eerie realism that we can’t get enough of. There’s even a tiny micro-servo in the head which allows the rider to swivel and look in the direction of motion as you’d expect.
Files are available for those wishing to recreate these designs at home. Alternatively,
dive deeper into gyro-stabilised designs
to learn more about how it all works. Video after the break. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379872",
"author": "John Woo",
"timestamp": "2021-09-12T07:05:35",
"content": "Videos look like the bikes use two additional wheels on the side to stabilize the bikes, not a “passive gyroscope.”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,372,953.281784 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/11/em-glitching-for-nintendo-dsi-boot-roms/ | EM-Glitching For Nintendo DSi Boot ROMs | Jenny List | [
"cons",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"em glitching",
"glitching",
"newline",
"nintendo"
] | Some hacker events are muddy and dusty affairs in distant fields, others take place in darkened halls, but I went to one that can be experienced as a luxury break in a European city steeped in culture and history. Newline takes place at Hackerspace Gent, in the Belgian city of that name, and I was there last weekend to catch the atmosphere as well as the programme of talks and workshops. And of those a good start was made by [PoroCYon],
whose fascinating introduction to the glitching techniques
involved in recovering the boot ROMs from a Nintendo DSi taught us plenty of things we hadn’t seen before.
The talk which you’ll find below the break starts by describing the process of glitching — using power supply interference to interrupt the operation of a microprocessor and avoid certain instructions — to bypass security code. It then moves on to some of the protection mechanisms used in the various generations of Nintendo consoles and handhelds, before moving on to the work on the DSi at which point the talk moved onto a field which may be old hat in glitching circles but was new to me; that of EM glitching.
EM glitching involves using a small coil to generate precisely timed electromagnetic pulses which induce the glitch voltages in the chip. The fascinating part is that the EM probe can be made small enough to target individual areas of the chip, so using it involves a brute-force technique trying all combinations of timing and position with the probe held in a computer-controlled X-Y mount.
The DSi has two processors on board, this achieves success with the ARM7 but leaves its companion ARM9 as yet untapped. There are a promising set of attack vectors left to try, of which the ARM7 placing the ARM9 into a state from which it can be glitched seems to be the most promising. It’s fairly obvious that there’s plenty more to come from this quarter.
More details of the talk can be found
in this repository
, and for those interested in EM glitching you can find out more
in this video
and in this project using it to attack
a Gecko microcontroller
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379855",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2021-09-12T04:28:20",
"content": "If you had a coil attached to a CD drive xy sled. And then had it pick up a series of differently sized metal heads. You could in theory automate the process completely. Like a glitching plotter.",
"pa... | 1,760,372,953.32079 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/11/thicc-gba-sp-mod-gets-easy-install-ahead-of-release/ | THICC GBA SP Mod Gets Easy Install Ahead Of Release | Tom Nardi | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks"
] | [
"console mod",
"game boy advance",
"Game Boy Advance SP",
"gba",
"GBA SP",
"injection molding",
"modification",
"upgrade"
] | Back in August we covered a unique modification for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP which replaced the handheld’s rear panel with an expanded version that had enough internal volume for an upgraded battery, a Bluetooth audio transmitter, and support for both Qi wireless and USB-C charging. The downside was that getting the 10 mm 3D printed “backpack” installed wasn’t exactly the most user-friendly operation.
But today we’re happy to report that the dream team behind the so-called
THICC BOI SP
have not only made some huge improvements to the mod
, but that they intend to release it as a commercial kit in the next few months. The trick to making this considerable upgrade a bit more forgiving is the use of a bespoke flat flex cable that easily allows the user to solder up all the necessary test points and connections, as well as a custom PCB that pulls together all the hardware required.
In the video below, [Tito] of
Macho Nacho Productions
goes over the latest version of the mod he’s been working on with [Kyle] and [Helder], and provides a complete step-by-step installation tutorial to give viewers an idea of what they’ll be in for once the kit goes on sale. While it’s still a fairly involved modification, the new design is surprisingly approachable. As we’ve seen with previous console modifications,
the use of flat flex technology means the installation shouldn’t pose much of a challenge
for anyone with soldering experience.
The flat flex cable allows for an exceptionally clean install.
Some may be put off by the fact that the replacement rear panel is even
thicker
this time around, but hopefully the unprecedented runtime made possible by the monstrous 4,500 mAh LiPo battery pack hiding inside the retrofit unit will help ease any discomfort (physical or otherwise) you may have from carrying around the chunkier case. Even with power-hungry accouterments like an aftermarket IPS display and a flash cart, the new battery can keep your SP running for nearly 20 hours. If you still haven’t beaten
Metroid: Zero Mission
by then, it’s time to take a break and reflect on your life anyway.
According to [Tito], the logistical challenges and considerable upfront costs involved in getting the new rear panels injection molded in ABS is the major roadblock holding the release of the kit back right now. The current prototypes, which appear to have been 3D printed in resin, simply don’t match the look and feel of the GBA SP’s original case well enough to be a viable option. A crowd funding campaign should get them over that initial hump, and we’ll be keeping an eye out for more updates as things move along towards production.
The previous version of this mod was impressive enough
as a one-off project, but we’re excited to see the team taking the next steps towards making this compelling evolution of the GBA more widely available. It’s a fantastic example of what’s possible for small teams, or even individuals, when you leverage all the tools in the modern hardware hacking arsenal. | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379895",
"author": "Ergotron",
"timestamp": "2021-09-12T12:23:40",
"content": "Really looking forward to seeing this kit hit the market. Do wonder if there’s a possibility to offer a smaller version that doesn’t have as massive a battery though. I’d rather give up a thousand or so ... | 1,760,372,953.543345 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/11/dont-sleep-on-the-lawn-theres-an-ai-powered-flamethrower-wielding-robot-about/ | Don’t Sleep On The Lawn, There’s An AI-Powered, Flamethrower-Wielding Robot About | Dave Rowntree | [
"Machine Learning",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"6 DOF Robot arm",
"can-bus",
"colab",
"google collaboratory",
"Jupyter Notebook",
"machine learning",
"Nvidia Jetson"
] | You know how it goes, you’re just hanging out in the yard, there aren’t enough hours in the day, and weeding the lawn is just such a drag. Then an idea just pops into your head. How about we attach a gas powered flamethrower to a robot arm, drive it around on a tank-tracked robotic base, and have it operate autonomously with an AI brain? Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Let’s do that. And so, [Dave Niewinski] did exactly that with his
Ultimate Weed Killing Robot
.
And you thought the robot overlords might take a more subtle approach and
take over the world one coffee machine at a time?
No, straight for the fully-autonomous flamethrower it is then.
This build uses a
Kinova Robots Gen 3
six-axis arm, mounted to an
Agile-X Robotics
Bunker base. Control is via a
Connect Tech Rudi-NX box
which contains an Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX Edge AI computing engine. Wow that was a mouthful!
Connectivity from the controller to the base is via
CAN bus
, but, sadly no mention of how the robot arm controller is hooked up. At least this particular model sports an effector mount camera system, which can feed straight into the Jetson, simplifying the build somewhat.
To start the software side of things, [Dave] took a video using his mobile phone while walking his lawn. Next he used
RoboFlow
to highlight image stills containing weeds, which were in turn used to help train a vision AI system. The actual AI training was written in Python using
Google Collaboratory
, which is itself based on the awesome
Jupyter Notebook
(see also
Jupyter Lab on the main site
. If you haven’t tried that yet, and if you do any data science at all, you’ll kick yourself for not doing so!) Collaboratory would not be all that useful for this by itself, except that it gives you direct, free GPU access, via the cloud, so you can use it for AI workloads without needing fancy (and currently hard to get) GPU hardware on your desk.
Details of the hardware may be a little sparse, but at least the software required can be found on the
WeedBot GitHub
. It’s not like most of us will have this exact hardware lying around anyway. For a more complete description of this terrifying contraption, checkout the video after the break. | 25 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379716",
"author": "Dane",
"timestamp": "2021-09-11T17:19:55",
"content": "This is wonderful, really well done video. The premise is absurd and it delivers. That platform must have been a pretty penny, nominally as they do not have pricing available publicly:https://indrorobotics.c... | 1,760,372,954.412861 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/11/pick-up-the-ball-and-run-with-it/ | Pick Up The Ball And Run With It | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"collaboration",
"inspiration",
"newsletter",
"open source"
] | Once in a while we get to glimpse how people build on each other’s work in unexpected and interesting ways. So it is with the GateBoy project,
a gate-level emulator built from die shots of the original Game Boy processor.
The thing is, [Austin Appleby] didn’t have to start by decapping and taking photos of the chip. He didn’t even have to make his own schematics by reverse engineering those structures. Someone else had already done that and made it available for others to use. A couple of years back, [Furrtek] started manually tracing out the DMG chip and
posted schematics to the DMG-CPU-Inside repo
, kindly licensing it as CC-BY-SA 4.0 to let people know how they can use the info.
But playing Game Boy games isn’t actually the end game of [Austin’s] meticulous gate-level recreation. He’s using it to build “a set of programming tools that can bridge between the C/C++ universe used by software and the Verilog/VHDL universe used by hardware.” A new tool has been born, not for gaming, but for converting a meta language that assigns four-letter codes to gate structures (somewhat reminiscent of DNA sequences) and will eventually convert them to your choice of C++ or a Hardware Description Language for use with FPGAs.
The open source community is playing four-dimensional football. Each project moves the ball downfield, but some of them add an additional goal in an alternate hardware universe — advancing the aims of both (like finding and fixing some errors in [Furrtek’s] original schematics).
Of course the real challenge is getting the word out that these projects exist and can be useful for something you’re working on. For instance,
[Neumi’s] depth sounding rowboat
allows an individual to make detailed depth maps of lakes, rivers, and the like. It was in the comments that
the OpenSeaMap project
was brought up — a site working to create crowd sourced waterway charts. It’s the perfect place for [Neumi] to get inspiration, and help move that ball toward a set of goals.
How do we get the word out so more of these connections happen? We’ll do our part here at Hackaday. But it’s the well-document and thoughtfully-licensed projects that set the up playing field in the first place.
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
! | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379879",
"author": "Rumble_in_the_Jungle",
"timestamp": "2021-09-12T09:01:04",
"content": "Mike, this is a post for HaD from the distant past. There are no buzz words in it, new readers don’t care. Maybe it’s time for a new project to fill the void and up the game?",
"parent_id... | 1,760,372,953.479175 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/11/flip-top-foundry-helps-manage-the-danger-of-metal-casting/ | Flip-Top Foundry Helps Manage The Danger Of Metal Casting | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"burner",
"ceramic",
"crucible",
"forge",
"foundry",
"furnace",
"metal casting",
"propane",
"refractory"
] | Melting aluminum is actually pretty easy to do, which is why it’s such a popular metal for beginners at metal casting. Building a foundry that can melt aluminum safely is another matter entirely, and one that benefits from some of the thoughtful touches that [Andy] built into
his new propane-powered furnace
. (Video, embedded below.)
The concern for safety is not at all undue, for while aluminum melts at a temperature that’s reasonable for the home shop, it’s still a liquid metal that will find a way to hurt you if you give it half a chance. [Andy]’s design minimizes this risk primarily through the hands-off design of its lid. While most furnaces have a lid that requires the user to put his or her hands close to the raging inferno inside, or that dangerously changes the center of mass of the whole thing as it opens, this one has a fantastic pedal-operated lid that both lifts and twists. Leaving both hands free to handle tongs is a nice benefit of the design, too.
The furnace follows a lot of the design cues we’ve seen before, starting as it does with an empty party balloon helium tank. The lining is a hydrid of ceramic blanket material and refractory cement; another nice safety feature is the drain channel cast into the floor of the furnace in case of a cracked crucible. The furnace is also quite large, at least compared to [Andy]’s previous DIY unit, and has a sturdy base that aids stability — another plus in the safety column.
Every time we see a new furnace design, we get the itch to start getting into metal casting. And with the barrier to entry as low as
a KFC bucket
or
an old fire extinguisher
, why not give it a try? Although it certainly pays to
know what can go wrong
before diving in. | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379612",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2021-09-11T13:02:28",
"content": "Just FYI, in the US propane tanks for grills, etc. are typically the same “12 inch” diameter (likely 12.2 inch) as the helium tank he used.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{... | 1,760,372,953.596345 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/11/save-that-old-vga-monitor-from-the-trash/ | Save That Old VGA Monitor From The Trash | Jenny List | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"monitor",
"repair",
"vga"
] | It’s quite a while since any of us unpacked a brand new VGA monitor, but since so many machines still have the ability to drive them even through an inexpensive adaptor they’re still something that finds a use. With so many old VGA flat panel monitors being tossed away they even come at the low low price of free, which can’t be argued with. CNXSoft’s [Jean-Luc Aufranc] was tasked with fixing a dead one, and
wrote an account of his progress
.
Seasoned readers will no doubt be guessing where this story will lead, as when he cracked it open and exposed the PSU board there was the tell-tale puffiness of a failed electrolytic capacitor. For relative pennies a replacement was secured, and the monitor was fixed. As repair hacks go it’s a straightforward one, but still worth remarking because a free monitor is a free monitor.
We
called the demise of VGA back in 2016
, and have seen no reason to go back on that. But for those of us left with a few legacy monitors it’s worth remembering that DVI and thus the DVI compatibility mode of HDMI is little more than a digitised version of the R, G, and B channels you’d find on that trusty blue connector. Maybe that little dongle doesn’t make such a bad purchase, and of course
you can also use it as an SDR if you want
. | 64 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379579",
"author": "JanW",
"timestamp": "2021-09-11T09:51:44",
"content": "Been there, done that. With Samsung screens an additional fuse often blows, too.All in all that 10 or 15eur repair cost many many years ago was a good deal for me, instead of buying a new monitor!",
"par... | 1,760,372,953.706928 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/10/retro-stereo-sid-synth-looks-and-sounds-sensational/ | Retro Stereo SID Synth Looks And Sounds Sensational | Chris Wilkinson | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"commodore 64",
"sid",
"SID synth"
] | Over the years, plenty of work has gone into emulating the Commodore 64 6581 SID chip, but as [SlipperySeal] puts it, nothing beats the real thing.
His take on the MIDI SID-based synth
not only sounds fantastic, but looks the business.
The 6581 SID arguably blessed the Commodore 64 with some of the best sound capabilities of any home computer in the 8-bit era (make sure to ‘sound off’ in the comments if you disagree). The 6581 was a three-voice analog synth with a dizzying array of settings. This was at a time when most home computers could just about manage a ‘beep’ of varying lengths and frequencies.
When you mix MIDI with the capabilities of the SID, you get something like [SlipperySeal]’s awesome looking synth, known as ‘Monty’. While the road to this point unfortunately resulted in several blown-up SID chips, the sacrifice seems to have paid off.
Realizing the limitations of having ‘just’ three voices, Monty is designed to use two SID chips in parallel, for a total of six voices in pleasing stereo sound. MIDI commands are transferred to the dual SIDs by way of an ATmega1284p microcontroller. The SID is well understood by this point, and [SlipperySeal] goes into great detail explaining the fundamentals of SID programming over on
GitHub
.
This isn’t the first MIDI synth that is based around the C64 SID chip, but [SlipperySeal] made sure that his stood out from the crowd. The seven-segment display centered on the board makes for a delightfully simple visualizer, an effect that looks even better when running two Monty boards at once, each responding to alternate MIDI channels (check out the video below). Naturally, we’re also fans of projects that include ominous, cryptic keyswitches. | 36 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379545",
"author": "Moryc",
"timestamp": "2021-09-11T05:56:33",
"content": "Blue LEDs are NOT retro! Blue LEDs are tacky. Learn the difference…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6379559",
"author": "Organism",
"... | 1,760,372,953.89841 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/10/gnu-radio-decodes-voyager-data/ | GNU Radio Decodes Voyager Data | Al Williams | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Space"
] | [
"gnu radio",
"voyager"
] | With the 44th anniversary of the launch of Voyager I, [Daniel] decided to use GNU Radio to
decode Voyager data
. The data isn’t live, but a recording from the Green Bank Telescope. The 16 GB file is in GUPPI format which stores raw IQ samples.
The file contains 64 frequency channels of just under 3MHz each. The signal of interest is in one channel, so it is easy to just throw away the rest of the data.
A Python block manipulates the file and provides a data source. Once you have that, the rest is pretty standard processing although, as you might expect, the signal is weak even with a 100 meter antenna. Large Fourier transforms do the trick.
Then it is a matter for decoding, although there are some obscure keys needed to pull the data out correctly. In the end, it all shows up and it is a great detective story of how to go through the data step-by-step.
It is amazing what Voyager does with
old tech
. If you need a bootstrap on GNU Radio,
check out our series
. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379551",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2021-09-11T06:13:25",
"content": "A 16 GB downloaded recording of raw data yields just 22.57 seconds of usable 8-bit data. Amazing. The extraction and demodulation process is fascinating nevertheless.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,372,953.771467 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/10/old-school-fastener-tutorial-is-riveting/ | Old School Fastener Tutorial Is Riveting | Ryan Flowers | [
"classic hacks",
"Repair Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"brass",
"copper",
"hammer",
"propane",
"riveting",
"rivets",
"Robert Murray-Smith",
"steel"
] | Whether you’re making, repairing, or hacking something together, we all need fastners. Screws, nuts and bolts, and pop rivets are handy sometimes. Various resins and even hot glue are equally useful. In some cases however the right fastener for the job eludes us, and we need another trick up our sleeve.
[Robert Murray-Smith] found himself in such a position. His goal was to join two pieces of aluminum that need a nice finish on both sides. Neither glue, pop rivets, screws, nuts or bolts would have been appropriate. [Robert] is always flush with ideas both new and old, and he resorted to using an old school fastener as explained as explained in his video “
How To Make And Use Rivets
“.
In the video below the break, [Robert] goes into great detail about making a simple rivet die from a 5 mm (3/16”) piece of flat steel, creating the rivet from a brass rod, and then using the flush rivet to join two pieces of aluminum. The simple tooling he uses makes the technique available to anybody with a propane torch, a vise, some basic tools, and a simple claw hammer. We also appreciate [Robert]’s discussion of cold riveting, hot riveting, and annealing the rivets as needed.
Not only is riveting a technique thousands of years old, its advancement and application during the Industrial Revolution enabled technologies that couldn’t have existed otherwise. Hackaday’s own [Jenny List] did a
wonderful write-up about rivets
in 2018 that you won’t want to miss! | 18 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379451",
"author": "SayWhat?",
"timestamp": "2021-09-10T23:32:03",
"content": "Metal shop in Jr High a long time ago… built a nice tool tray with handle using only rivets for fasteners. Do they even have metal shop any more?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,372,953.825813 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/10/ic-clock-uses-ammeters-for-a-unique-time-telling-display/ | IC Clock Uses Ammeters For A Unique Time-Telling Display | Jim Heaney | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"Ammeter",
"clock",
"cmos",
"cmos logic",
"milliammeter"
] | It is a rite of passage for hackers to make a clock out of traditionally not-clock items. Whether it be blinking LEDs or servos to move the hands, we have all crafted our own ways of knowing
when
it currently is. [SIrawit] takes a new approach to this, by
using ammeters to tell the time
.
The clock is built using mostly CMOS ICs. A CD4060 generates the 1HZ clock signal, which is then passed to parallel counters to keep track of the hours, minutes, and seconds. [SIrawit] decided to keep the ammeters functioning as intended, rather than replacing the internals and just keeping the needle and face. To convert the digital signal to a varying current, he used a series of MOSFETs connected in parallel to the low side of the ammeters, with different sizes of current-limiting resistors. By sizing these resistors properly, precise movement of the needle could be achieved by turning on or off the MOSFETs. You can see the schematics and learn more about how this is achieved on the
project’s GitHub page
(at the time of writing, the most recent commits are
in the ‘pcb’ branch
).
In addition to the custom PCB that holds all the electronics, PCBs help make up the case as well. While the main body of the case is made out of a repurposed junction box, [SIrawit] had a PCB on an aluminum substrate manufactured for the front panel. While the board has no actual traces or electrical significance, this makes for a cheap and easy way to get a precisely cut piece of aluminum for your projects, with a sharp-looking white solder mask to boot.
We love to see cool and unique ways to tell the time, such as using
Nixie Tubes to spell out the time in binary
!
[via
r/electronics
] | 24 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379394",
"author": "Ian D",
"timestamp": "2021-09-10T20:11:08",
"content": "Hi Hackaday, Sorry, but this is not a “new approach”. I’m a long time reader and you’ve featured clocks using analog meters several times previously.https://hackaday.com/blog/?s=analog+meter+clock",
"pa... | 1,760,372,953.96401 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/10/minimal-mill-the-minamil/ | Minimal Mill: The Minamil | Bryan Cockfield | [
"cnc hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"acrylic",
"aluminum",
"arduino",
"cnc",
"dremel",
"low cost",
"mill",
"minamil",
"pcb",
"rotary tool"
] | Having a few machine tools at one’s disposal is a luxury that not many of us are afforded, and often an expensive one at that. It is something that a large percentage of us may dream about, though, and with some commonly available tools and inexpensive electronics a few people have put together some very inexpensive CNC machines. The latest is
the Minamil, which uses a rotary tool and straps it to an economical frame
in order to get a functional CNC mill setup working.
This project boasts impressively low costs at around $15 per axis. Each axis uses readily available parts such as bearings and threaded rods that are readily installed in the mill, and for a cutting head the build is based on a Dremel-like rotary tool that has a similarly low price tag. Let’s not ignore the essentially free counterweight that is used.
For control, an Arduino with a CNC shield powers the three-axis device which is likely the bulk of the cost of this project. [Paul
McClay
] also points out that a lot of the material he needed for this build can be salvaged from things like old printers, so the $45 price tag is a ceiling, not a floor.
The Minamil has been demonstrated milling a wide variety of materials with excellent precision. Both acrylic and aluminum are able to be worked with this machine, but [Paul] also demonstrates it in its capacity to mill PCBs. It does have some limitations but for the price it seems that this mill can’t be beat, even compared to
his previous CNC build which repurposed old CD drives
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 35 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379369",
"author": "Niklas Roy",
"timestamp": "2021-09-10T18:44:53",
"content": "I like the design :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6379654",
"author": "Paul McClay",
"timestamp": "2021-09-11T14:33:48",
... | 1,760,372,954.151687 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/10/nasa-are-squaring-up-against-the-asteroid-threat/ | NASA Are Squaring Up Against The Asteroid Threat | Lewin Day | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"asteroid",
"dart",
"Didymos",
"Dimorphos"
] | The world faces many terrestrial crises right now, so it’s easy to forget that giant space rocks may one day threaten the very existence of entire civilizations. Yes, the threat of asteroid strikes is a remote one, but nevertheless something humanity may have to face one day, and one day soon.
NASA takes the issue seriously, and has staffed its Planetary Defence Coordination Office since 2016. In service to these efforts, it’s also developing a mission to research how dangerous androids may be deflected. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART,
is set to launch within the next year.
A graphic outlining the basics of the DART mission. The DART spacecraft intends to impact the Dimorphos asteroid, changing its rotational period around Didymos, while the LICIACube satellite images the impact event.
DART aims to change the path of an asteroid through kinetic impact, or, in layman’s terms, by smashing into it. The craft will target Didymos, a binary asteroid system consisting of Didymos itself and the smaller asteroid Dimorphos in orbit around it. The asteroid will pass near Earth, at a distance of 11 million kilometres, without being on a collision trajectory, making it a good candidate for humanity’s first attempt at asteroid deflection.
Didymos, the larger asteroid of the pair measures 780 meters in diameter, while Dimorphos is significantly smaller at just 160 meters across. The DART craft will aim to hit Dimorphos head on, and in doing so, reduce its orbital period around Didymos. This change in the orbit will be measured from observatories on Earth in order to gauge the success of the mission.
The main body of the DART spacecraft measures just 1.2 x 1.3 x 1.3 meters, and the craft as a whole weighs approximately 500 kg. DART is intended to impact Dimorphos at a speed of 6.6 km/s. In doing so, it will alter the orbital period by 4.2 minutes, from 11.9 to 11.8 hours. The change in the orbital period is expected to be on the order of 10 minutes or so. It may not sound like a big change, but the hope is that over millions of kilometers, it will add up to a significant shift in the original trajectory of the asteroid system.
The roll-up solar wings that will power DART are similar to those recently installed on the International Space Station.
The DART mission will also serve to trial
several innovative technologies
. New to the project are the Roll Out Solar Arrays, or ROSA. These flexible solar panels can be rolled up for launch, and deployed once the craft is in space. They’re also lighter and more compact than traditional arrays, while also being stiffer as well. The twin roll-out panels will each span 8.5 meters when fully unfurled. Similar technology was recently deployed to the ISS, which has had roll-out panels laid over its original rigid solar panels to improve the power budget of the aging space station. The ROSA arrays will also feature a small section to trial Transformational Solar Array technology, which uses reflective concentrators combined with high-efficiency solar cells to potentially provide triple the power available from a typical solar array.
Propulsion is via NASA’s NEXT-C xenon-fueled
gridded ion thruster.
This uses electric fields to accelerate ions to huge velocities on the order of 40 km/s in order to generate thrust for the spacecraft. While the thrust generated is small, on the order of a few hundred milliNewtons, the ion thruster is very fuel efficient. Thus, it can be run for a long time to slowly accelerate the craft to great speed.
We’ve featured a run down on the technology before
, which promises to be useful on a variety of long-range space missions.
In order to target the asteroid and hit it square and true, the DART mission needs a top-notch navigation system. The craft thus features the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical, or DRACO. This device is for terminal navigation to ensure DART makes a good solid impact with the asteroid. The high-resolution camera feeds into the
SmartNAV autonomous guidance system
which will control the space craft in its final four hours of flight towards the asteroid. Having the spacecraft guide itself is important, as with the distances involved, the round trip delay for commands from Earth would be 1.5 minutes. Thus, the craft must fly itself to its target.
The DART craft under construction at NASA’s Johns Hopkins APL facility.
The DART mission will also carry LICIACube, a small cube sat built by the Agenia Spaziale Italiana (ASI). Five days prior to impact, LICIACube will be deployed in order to image the impact of DART into Dimorphos. The aim is to capture shots of the impact site itself, as well as the cloud of ejected material in the immediate wake of the impact. This should provide plenty of material for analysis as to the effectiveness of the DART mission at redirecting the asteroid.
It’s an interesting approach to the problem of asteroid deflection. Hitting asteroids with relatively small spacecraft nice and early in their approach is something that should be readily achievable with current technology, as DART will demonstrate. It’s also less desperate and drastic than other ideas involving the last-ditch use of nuclear weapons to turn away or destroy incoming objects.
At present, there are no major asteroids expected to hit Earth in the near future. However, that’s not to say there aren’t plenty of asteroids floating around out there. The Planetary Defense Coordination Office had detected over
19,000 near-Earth asteroids
by the start of 2019, and 30 new objects are detected on average each week. These detection and tracking efforts are key to planetary defense. The earlier we’re aware of an object heading towards Earth, the more time we have to plan a mission to deal with it, and more options are on the table. Let the asteroid get too close, and the amount of energy needed to deflect it away from Earth becomes much greater, and the task much harder.
While the effect of DART will be small, it’s only humanity’s very first attempt to redirect an asteroid. The brave people of Earth will be able to rest easier, knowing that great minds are tackling the difficult problem of how to protect us from the big rocks from above. | 43 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379346",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-09-10T17:09:18",
"content": "“It’s also less desperate and drastic than other ideas involving the last-ditch use of nuclear weapons to turn away or destroy incoming objects.”https://youtu.be/Y4iGdyni_8gConsidering the size of a lot ... | 1,760,372,954.244652 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/10/hackaday-podcast-135-three-rocket-hacks-all-the-game-boy-gates-and-depth-sounding-from-a-rowboat/ | Hackaday Podcast 135: Three Rocket Hacks, All The Game Boy Gates, And Depth Sounding From A Rowboat | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Tom Nardi go over the best stories and hacks from the previous week, covering everything from sidestepping rockets to homebrew OLED displays. We’ll cover an incredible attempt to
really
emulate the Nintendo Game Boy, low-cost injection molding of rubbery parts, a tube full of hypersonic shockwaves, and how a hacked depth finder and a rowboat can help chart those local rivers and lakes that usually don’t get any bathymetric love. Plus, even though he’s on vacation this week, Elliot has left us with a ruddy mysterious song to try and identify.
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Direct download
(52 MB)
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
YouTube
Check
out our Libsyn landing page
Episode 135 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.
New This Week:
So How Does A Rocket Fly Sideways, Anyway?
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
GateBoy Is A Game Boy Emulated At Gate Level
GitHub – furrtek/DMG-CPU-Inside: Reverse-engineered schematics for DMG-CPU-B
Programming Tetris By First Building A Logic Gate, Then A Computer, Then…
Injection Molding Silicone Parts For Under $50
Casting Silicone Parts With 3D-Printed Inserts For Stiffness
Making OLED Displays In The Home Lab
Homebrew Sounder Maps The Depths In Depth
OpenSeaMap: Startseite
Motorcycle Simulation Rig Is Off To The Races
Xbox Flexure Joystick Puts You In The Pilot’s Seat
Countersteering
Three-Stage Thrust Vectoring Model Rocket With Tiny Flight Computers
Quick Hacks:
Mike’s Picks
Small Scale Mad Max: Danny Huynh’s Dystopian Animatronics
3D Printed Synth Kit Shares Product Design Insights
Tiny ESP32 Strider Walks The Walk
Tom’s Picks:
‘Quiet On The Set’ Goes For Objects, Too
Building A Levitating Turbine Desk Toy
Lightning Detector Keeps A Tally
Can’t-Miss Articles:
The Postmortem Password Problem
Japanese Rocket Engine Explodes: Continuously And On Purpose
The “Impossible” Tech Behind SpaceX’s New Engine | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379393",
"author": "Opossumax",
"timestamp": "2021-09-10T20:10:47",
"content": "Mike you were on the right track! Think of it as steering the bike out from under itself. You turn the handlebars right, which makes the bike turn right and lean left. Then the handlebars are slightly t... | 1,760,372,954.299545 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/10/creating-video-from-a-rom/ | Creating Video From A ROM | Jenny List | [
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"analog video",
"ttl",
"video"
] | We’re used to computers with display screens, yet how many of us have created the circuitry to drive one directly? Sure, we’ve coded up an SPI display driver on a microcontroller, but create the hardware to generate a usable video signal? That’s a little more difficult. [Jdh] has given it a go though,
with a TTL video card
.
In this case it’s not a card so much as a collection of breadboards, but all the logic is there to generate the complex array of video timings necessary for synchronisation, and to output the bits sequentially at the right voltage levels for the analogue monitor. It’s worth pointing out though that it’s not a composite video signal that’s being created sinceit’s monochrome only with no subcarrier.
In the end he encounters the problem that his ROM isn’t fast enough for the pixel rate and thus the image has artefacts, but it does at least produce a recognisable and readable something on the screen. Old hands in the video business might point out that analogue TVs were a bit forgiving when it came to exact timings and line counts so the circuit could quite possibly be simplified, and also that trading away some of the resolution might fix the ROM speed issue. But it’s an impressive piece of work, and should be of particular interest for anyone interested in how video works.
Fans of video cards on breadboards should also check out
[Ben Eater’s] 7400-series video card
.
Thanks [Måns Almered] for the tip. | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379326",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2021-09-10T15:40:58",
"content": "Been there, done that.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6379327",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2021-09-10T15:45:45",
"content... | 1,760,372,954.353066 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/10/this-week-in-security-ghoscript-in-imagemagick-solarwinds-and-dhcp-shenanigans/ | This Week In Security: Ghoscript In Imagemagick, Solarwinds, And DHCP Shenanigans | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"imagemagick",
"openwrt",
"Solarwinds",
"This Week in Security"
] | A PoC
was just published
for a potentially serious flaw in the Ghostscript interpreter. Ghostscript can load Postscript, PDF, and SVG, and it has a feature from Postscript that has been a continual security issue: the
%pipe%
command. This command requests the interpreter to spawn a new process — It’s RCE as part of the spec. This is obviously a problem for untrusted images and documents, and Ghostscript has fixed security vulnerabilities around this mis-feature several times over the years.
This particular vulnerability
was discovered by [Emil Lerner]
, and described at ZeroNights X.
That talk is available
, but in Russian. The issue seems to be a bypass of sorts, where the pipe command appears to be working in the
/tmp/
directory, but a simple semicolon allows for an arbitrary command to be executed. Now why is this a big deal? Because ImageMagick uses Ghostscript to open SVG images by default on some distributions, and ImageMagick is often used for automatically resizing and converting images for web sites. In [Emil]’s presentation, he uses this flaw as part of an attack chain against three different companies.
I was unable to reproduce the flaw on my Fedora install, but I haven’t found any notice of it being fixed in the Ghostscript or Imagemagick changelogs either. It’s unclear if this problem has already been fixed, or if this is a true 0-day for some platforms. Either way, expect attackers to start trying to make use of it.
SIP Client Slashed
CVE-2021-33056
is an oddball bug in the way SIP headers are parsed by the Linphone SIP client. Multiple header fields in a SIP packet are required to be valid URIs, and are expected to be SIP URIs — something like
sip:alice@example.com
. The problem is that there is a lot of flexibility in what is considered a valid URI. In this case, a single slash, “/”, is a valid URI. The code attempts to extract the scheme, and upon finding none, returns a NULL pointer. That pointer is then passed into the next function without being validated, causing the crash. Null pointer references are particularly difficult to turn into more than a simple DoS attack, and this seems to be no exception. The biggest challenge here is that the Linphone stack has made its way into various mobile and IoT clients.
Solarwinds Again
In the past few weeks, Solarwinds devices were hit with another 0-day attack, this one against the SSH service. Researchers from Microsoft determined that the primary attacker was an APT from China, and were able to recreate the attack. The main problem? Solarwinds rolled their own SSH server instead of using a mature solution like OpenSSH. Address Space Layout Randomization was turned off on that service, and an odd behavior was found. When running a fuzzing tool and watching the process with a debugger, the Microsoft researchers observed multiple exceptions that should have crashed the process. Instead, the exception was logged, an attempt made to clean up the damage, and the process continued on. While a successful RCE chain was found and fixed, it isn’t certain that this is the same chain that was used in the wild. Without major changes to this service, it should be assumed to still be vulnerable.
DHCP Tricks
What sorts of trouble could an attacker cause, if they controlled the DHCP responses sent to the router?
It apparently depends on what services the router is providing
, above and beyond routing. Researchers at Anvil Secure use the term “smart router”, meaning a device that’s doing something like serving files, hosting a VPN, or managing IP cameras. In that case, there are some strange edge cases that to be found when IP ranges collide.
Put simply, you can use a more specific DHCP range to route internal IPs out to an attacker on the WAN side of the router. This could be used to set up a MitM attack, and intercept file transfers or VPN traffic. While it’s interesting, the attack doesn’t work across the network, so impact is limited. This could be pulled off by an attacker that has taken over the modem, or attached hardware between the router and modem.
Overflow Enables Smuggling
Another clever approach to request smuggling was published this week, this one
a vulnerability in HAProxy
. CVE-2021-40346 is an integer overflow, triggered by a malicious header:
Content-Length0aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...:
The actual attack has over 240 “a” characters there, bringing the total character count to 270. That header name is stored in a data structure that uses an 8-bit integer to track string length. As 270 is greater than the maximum of 256, the value overflows and is treated as length 14, which just happens to be the length of a valid-looking
Content-Length
. It just so happens that the next field in this data structure is the length for the value (The part after the colon). The overflow sets this to 1. While this is all stored as a possible header, the next line is actually a valid content-length header, and is immediately honored, causing the rest of the message to be read into memory.
POST /index.html HTTP/1.1
Host: abc.com
Content-Length0aaaa...:
Content-Length: 60
GET /admin/add_user.py HTTP/1.1
Host: abc.com
abc: xyz
Now that the packet has been loaded into memory, the next processing stage writes it out in a packet sent to the back-end. Here, the obviously invalid header is processed based on the manipulated length values, resulting a
Content-Length: 0
header being set on the outgoing packet. The rest of the data is then appended to the same packet, which is the now-smuggled request. Once this single packet is received by the back-end, the content-length header is understood to mean that two separate messages are being sent in the same packet. And thus, the second request has been smuggled past the security controls on the front-end server.
OpenWRT Release
OpenWRT has
just released 2021.02.0
, a new major version based on the 5.4.143 LTS kernel. There are some notable new security features, including on-by-default WPA3 and SSL support, as well as ASLR for binaries. There is also now support for running SELinux, though this isn’t on by default. With the new features is the added downside that a wide range of older devices are no longer officially supported, due to higher system requirements. 8 MB of flash and 64 MB of ram are now the minimum required for full support. | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379340",
"author": "ChipMaster",
"timestamp": "2021-09-10T16:27:50",
"content": "@Jonathan Bennett I wanted to post this real quick. Before I came here I just read a security bulletin from Debian claiming this was *JUST* fixed. So, yes, unless someone stripped Fedora’s package of G... | 1,760,372,956.324655 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/10/acousto-optic-filter-uses-sound-to-bend-light/ | Acousto-Optic Filter Uses Sound To Bend Light | Dan Maloney | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"acoustic",
"acousto-optic",
"diffraction",
"filter",
"grating",
"laser",
"piezoelectric",
"RF",
"tellurium",
"tuning"
] | We all know that light and sound are wave phenomena, but of very different kinds. Light is electromechanical in nature, while sound is mechanical. Light can travel through a vacuum, while sound needs some sort of medium to transmit it. So it would seem that it might be difficult to
use sound to modify light
, but with the right equipment, it’s actually pretty easy.
Easy, perhaps, if you’re used to slinging lasers around and terms like “acousto-optic tunable filter” fall trippingly from your tongue, as is the case for [Les Wright]. An AOTF is a device that takes a radio frequency input and applies it to a piezoelectric transducer that’s bonded to a crystal of tellurium oxide. The RF signal excites the transducer, which vibrates the TeO
2
crystal and sets up a standing wave within it. The alternating bands of compressed and expanded material within the crystal act like a diffraction grating. Change the excitation frequency, and the filter’s frequency changes too.
To explore the way sound can bend light, [Les] picked up a commercial AOTF from the surplus market. Sadly, it didn’t come with the RF driver, but no matter — a few quick eBay purchases put the needed RF generator and power amplifier on his bench. The modules went into an enclosure to make the driver more of an instrument and less of a one-off, with a nice multi-turn pot and vernier knob for precise filter adjustment. It’s really kind of cool to watch the output beam change colors at the twist of a knob, and cooler still to realize how it all works.
We’ve been seeing a lot of [Les]’ optics projects lately, from
homemade TEA lasers
to
blasting the Bayer filter off a digital camera
, each as impressive as the last! | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379282",
"author": "Pete Todd",
"timestamp": "2021-09-10T11:25:29",
"content": "Scophony did some remarkable work on a liquid version of this using the Jefree Cell for projection television.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "63... | 1,760,372,956.007374 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/10/putting-thousands-of-minecraft-players-on-the-same-server/ | Putting Thousands Of Minecraft Players On The Same Server | Matthew Carlson | [
"Games",
"Software Development"
] | [
"autoscale",
"minecraft",
"worldql"
] | Multi-threading was the common go-to technique for extracting more performance from a machine for several years. These days it’s all about horizontal scaling or adding more virtual machines to a pool of workers. The Minecraft server is still stuck in the past in some ways as it supports neither multi-threading nor horizontal scaling. [Jackson Roberts] decided to change all that
by hacking Minecraft to support thousands of players rather than dozens
.
Since the server is single-threaded, having more than 100 players on a single server can slow it to a crawl. Some mods try to optimize and speed up the existing server but [Jackson] wanted more. An early proof of concept was to slice the world into separate servers, each holding 64×64 chunks (chunks are what Minecraft defines as a 16x256x16 volume of the world). When crossing a boundary, entities such as players and zombies were transferred from one server to another. While workable, the demo had issues such as parts of the world being inaccessible if a server went down. The boundaries were also jarring as you had to reconnect and couldn’t see players outside your server.
Instead of splitting the world, [Jackson] took the approach to split the players and have some backing store for persisting and broadcasting changes. A proxy sits in front of several Minecraft servers, which each have a connection to a WorldQL server (a spatial database based on Postgres). Each server reports the player’s location to the WorldQL server and receives updates for their loaded locations. When a server comes online, it catches up with the changes stored in WorldQL and starts syncing, allowing servers to auto-scale. There are still a few core game mechanics that aren’t quite ready for prime-time such as NPCs and Redstone, but the progress so far is remarkable.
The
code for the Minecraft plugin is up on GitHub
, but more is coming in the future. So if you’re interested in something a little more vanilla, why not marvel at the
completely playable Pokemon Red inside vanilla Minecraft? | 15 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379246",
"author": "mip",
"timestamp": "2021-09-10T08:08:35",
"content": "Too bad that so much effort is put into non-free software…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6379251",
"author": "Bleugh",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,372,956.057531 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/09/vinygo-stereo-vinyl-recorder-will-put-you-in-the-groove/ | VinyGo Stereo Vinyl Recorder Will Put You In The Groove | Kristina Panos | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"record cutter",
"record cutting",
"vinyl"
] | A long time ago, there were these vinyl recording booths. You could go in there and cut a 45PM record as easily as getting a strip of four pictures of yourself in the next booth along the boardwalk. With
their 2021 Hackaday Prize entry called VinyGo
, [mras2an] seeks to reinvigorate this concept for private use by musicians, artists, or anyone else who has always wanted to cut their own vinyl.
VinyGo is for people looking to make a few dozen copies or fewer. Apparently there’s a polymer shortage right now on top of everything else, and smaller clients are getting the shaft from record-pressing companies. This way, people can cut their own records for about $4 a unit on top of the cost of building VinyGo, which is meant to be both affordable and accessible.
You probably know how a record player works, but how about a record cutter? As [mras2an] explains over on IO, music coming through a pair of speakers vibrates a diamond cutting head, which cuts a groove in the vinyl that’s an exact representation of the music. Once it’s been cut, a regular stylus picks up the groove and plays back the vibrations. Check it out after the break.
[mras2an] plans to enter VinyGo into
the Hackaday Prize
during the Wildcard round, where anything goes. Does your project defy categorization? Or are you just running a little behind? The Wildcard round runs from Monday, September 27th to Wednesday, October 27th and is your last chance to enter this year’s Prize.
Not your kind of vinyl cutter?
We’ve got those, too
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 30 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379219",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2021-09-10T05:09:35",
"content": "If vinyl’s scarce, why not cut it on a disk 3D printed on glass for a smooth surface? Make it a single-sided record and you don’t have to worry about the other side’s print quality.",
"parent_id": null,... | 1,760,372,956.426296 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/09/aerodynamic-buoyant-blimp-budges-into-low-cost-cargo-commerce/ | Aerodynamic Buoyant Blimp Budges Into Low Cost Cargo Commerce | Ryan Flowers | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"airship",
"autonomous",
"autonomous delivery",
"blimp",
"startup"
] | Before the Wright Brothers powered their way across the sands of Kitty Hawk or Otto Lilienthal soared from the hills of Germany, enveloping hot air in a balloon was the only way to fly. Concepts were refined as time went by, and culminated in the grand Zeppelins of the 1930’s. However since the tragic end of the Zeppelin era, lighter than air aircraft have often been viewed as a novelty in the aviation world.
Several companies have come forward in the last decade, pitching enormous lighter than air machines for hauling large amounts of cargo at reduced cost. These behemoths rely on a mixture of natural buoyancy and lifting body designs and are intended to augment ferries and short haul commercial aviation routes.
It was this landscape where
Buoyant Aero founders [Ben] and [Joe]
saw an underserved that they believe they can thrive in: Transporting 300-600 lbs between warehouses or airports. They aim to increase the safety, cargo capacity, and range of traditional quadcopter concepts, and halve the operating costs of a typical Cessna 182. They hope to help people such as those rural areas of Alaska where high transportation costs double the grocery bill.
Like larger designs, Buoyant Aero’s hybrid airship relies on aerodynamic lift to supply one third the needed lift. Such an arrangement eliminates the need for ballast when empty while retaining the handling and navigation characteristics needed for autonomous flight. The smaller scale prototype’s outstanding ability to maneuver sharply and hold station with a tailwind is displayed in the video below the break. You can also learn more about their project on their
Hacker News launch
. We look forward to seeing the larger prototypes as they are released!
Perhaps this project will inspire your own miniature airship, in which case you may want to check out the
Blimpduino
for some low buck ideas. We recently covered some other
Hybrid Airships that are trying to scale things even further
. And if you have your own blimpy ideas you’d like to pass along, please let us know via the
Tip Line
! | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379214",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2021-09-10T05:05:49",
"content": "> enveloping hot air in a balloon was the only way to fly.Or helium, or hydrogen.BTW even when the Zeppelin was active, Eckener, who was running the company, felt that it was a niche product serving... | 1,760,372,956.241193 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/09/musical-cyberdeck-is-part-synth-part-midi-controller-and-all-cool/ | Musical Cyberdeck Is Part Synth, Part MIDI Controller, And All Cool | Dan Maloney | [
"Cyberdecks",
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"cyberdeck",
"cynth",
"effects",
"midi",
"mixer",
"Patchbox OS",
"Raspberry Pi 4"
] | When a new project type starts to get a lot of exposure, it’s typically not long before we see people forking the basic concept and striking out in a new direction. It happened with POV displays, it happened with Nixie clocks, and now, it seems to be happening with cyberdecks. And that’s something we can get behind, especially with cyberdecks built to suit a specialized task, like
this musical cyberdeck/synth
.
Like many musicians, [Benjamin Caccia] felt like he needed a tool to help while performing with his band “Big Time Kill.” He mainly needed to trigger track playbacks on the fly, but also wanted something to act as a mega-effects pedal and standalone synth. And while most of that could be done with an iPad, it wouldn’t look as cool as a cyberdeck. The build centers around a Raspberry Pi 4 and a 7″ LCD display. Those sit on top of a 25-key USB MIDI keyboard and a small mixer. Alongside the keyboard is a USB keypad, which has custom mappings to allow fast access to buried menu functions in the cyberdeck’s Patchbox OS. Everythign was tied together on a 3D-printed frame; the video below shows it in action, and that it sounds as good as it looks.
We think [Benjamin]’s cyberdeck came out great. Need to see some other specialized cyberdecks? Why not take a look at
this battle-ready cyberdeck
,
one that aims to be distraction-free
, or a
cyberdeck for patrolling the radioactive wastelands
.
[via
Tom’s Hardware
] | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379144",
"author": "Eric Weatherby",
"timestamp": "2021-09-09T23:48:46",
"content": "*This* is a prime example of what a cyberdeck is supposed to be: a portable computer system that’s customized to do *exactly* what a specific user needs to do.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth":... | 1,760,372,956.280473 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/09/drill-press-runs-faster-on-a-treadmill-motor/ | Drill Press Runs Faster On A Treadmill Motor | Kristina Panos | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"drill press",
"Office Chair",
"recycling",
"tachometer",
"treadmill motor"
] | Are you tired of the same old video style from your favorite content creators? We can’t say that we were, exactly. But nevertheless, we appreciate
this creative departure from [Eric Strebel]’s regular fare
as he soups up his drill press with an old treadmill motor and a few extra features.
First off, that commentator in the video is right — 2.6 horsepower is a crazy amount for a drill press. Fortunately, [Eric] also added a variable speed controller and a digital tachometer to keep things in check. As an added bonus, he no longer has to get under the hood and mess with the belts.
We like what [Eric] brings to the drill press motor mod, which is already well-documented on YouTube. We love the re-use of an office chair bracket as a new motor mount. It’s probably our favorite bit aside from the 2-color forward/reverse switch plate idea: print it in whatever letter color you want with proud lettering, paint the whole thing black, and sand off the letters so the color shows. Check it out after the break.
There are many ways to make your own drill press, and
one of the easiest is to mount a hand drill
.
Did you miss the Industrial Design Hack Chat with [Eric]? It’s okay, you can
read the transcript
over on IO. | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379093",
"author": "cliff claven",
"timestamp": "2021-09-09T20:19:00",
"content": "“2.6 horsepower is a crazy amount for a drill press”That depends so much on other factors. At low speed, where I might WANT 2KW to hog out steel, the power is much less than 2KW. At higher speed wher... | 1,760,372,956.184238 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/09/rpi-python-library-has-retro-chiptunes-and-speech-covered/ | RPi Python Library Has Retro Chiptunes And Speech Covered | Dave Rowntree | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"chiptunes",
"python",
"raspberry pi",
"speech synthesis"
] | The classic SP0256-AL2 speech chip has featured a few times on these pages, and if you’ve not seen the actual part before, you almost certainly have heard the resulting audio output. The latest Python library from prolific retrocomputing enthusiast [Nick Bild] brings the
joy of the old chip to the Raspberry Pi platform
, with an added extra trick; support for the venerable
AY-3-8910 sound generator
as well.
The SP0256-AL2 chip generates vaguely recognisable speech using the
allophone system
. Allophones are kind of like small chunks of speech audio which when reproduced sequentially, result in intelligible phonemes that form the basis of speech. The chip requires an external device to feed it the allophones at a regular rate, which is the job of his
Gi-Pi library
.
This speech synthesis technology is based on
Linear-predictive coding
, which is used to implement a human vocal tract model. This is the same coding method utilized by the first generation of GSM digital mobile phones, implementing a system known as
Full-Rate
. Both an LPC encoder and an LPC decoder are present on the handset. The LPC encoder takes audio in from the user, breaks it into the tiny constituent parts of speech, and then simply sends a code representing the audio block, but not the actual audio. Obviously there are a few more parameters sent as well to adjust the model at the receiving side. The actual decoding side is therefore not all that dissimilar to what the AY-3-8910 and related devices are doing, except you the user have to create the list of audio blocks up-front and feed the chip at the rate it demands.
Hardware-wise, [Nick] doesn’t document his breadboard build, but the SP0256-AL2 is fairly easy to drive. It is simply a matter of level-shifting the 3.3V logic of the Pi into the 5V domain of the chip, then bit-banging it with a few parallel GPIOs. The PCM audio output is then low-pass filtered and fed into an audio mixer and power amplifier.
The AY-3-8910 can be similarly treated, except it contains its own DAC blocks, so the output is already analog, and you could simply feed the analog outputs directly into the shared mixer with the above.
We’ve featured the AY-3-8910 sound chip before, with this
simple hack, which turns an Arduino into a MIDI device
. Check out the sweet chiptunes version of Mozart’s Queen of the Night Aria from his Opera ‘The Magic Flute’ in the earlier article linked.
The video after the break gives a (somewhat short) demo of the resulting speech audio you can expect, as if you didn’t already know. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379075",
"author": "thomastechguy",
"timestamp": "2021-09-09T19:21:35",
"content": "In the early 1980’s I purchase the SP0256-AL2 from Radio Shack and connected it to the I/O port on my TRS-80 (stone age Z80 PC). I also created an interrupt routine (hardware driver) to help with te... | 1,760,372,956.362868 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/09/historical-hackers-the-hacker-of-cragside-circa-1870/ | Historical Hackers: The Hacker Of Cragside, Circa 1870 | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"History"
] | [
"Armstrong",
"cragside",
"history",
"hydroelectric",
"joseph swan",
"william armstrong"
] | Imagine visiting a home that was off the grid, using hydroelectric power to run lights, a dishwasher, a vacuum cleaner, and a washing machine. There’s a system for watering the plants and an intercom between rooms. Not really a big deal, right? This is the twenty first century, after all.
Image of Armstrong and his 7-inch gun from an 1887 edition of Illustrated London News
But then imagine you’ve exited your time machine to find this house not in the present day, but in the year 1870. Suddenly things become quite a bit more impressive, and it is all thanks to a British electrical hacker named
William Armstrong who built a house known as Cragside
. Even if you’ve never been to Northumberland, Cragside might look familiar. It’s appeared in several TV shows, but — perhaps most notably — played the part of Lockwood Manor in the movie
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
.
Armstrong was a lawyer by training but dabbled in science including hydraulics and electricity — a hot topic in the early 1800s. He finally abandoned his law practice to form W. G. Armstrong and Company, known for producing Armstrong guns, which were breech-loading artillery pieces ranging from 2.5 inch bores up to 7 inches. By 1859, he was knighted and became the principal supplier of armaments to both the Army and the Navy.
A Vacation Destination
By 1862, Armstrong was sorely in need of a vacation. He had spent time in Northumberland as a child, specifically in the town of Rothbury, so he returned there to relax.
The house started as a simple hunting lodge. Source: National Trust
He enjoyed it so much that he decided to buy land and build a modest house in the area. The original house was really just a hunting lodge and didn’t offer much in the way of luxuries, but Armstrong equipped it with furnishings suitable for a much finer house. Becoming even more enamored with the area over time, Armstrong decided to expand the house in 1869. An architect named Shaw quickly drew up the plans, but the execution would take over 20 years to complete.
Apparently, Armstrong was a difficult client for an architect. He was prone to changing plans on the fly and, because of this, the end result is a house that could perhaps best be described as disjointed.
Powering Up
Part of the hydroelectric system at Cragside uses an Archimedes screw (source: National Trust)
Armstrong had a laboratory built where he would experiment with electric current. The room is now a billiard room and has been since 1895. Prior to that, though, the lab must have been a busy place, indeed. Armstrong built dams to create five separate lakes on the property. In 1868, a water mill provided mechanical power and by 1870, a Siemens generator turned the site into what is thought to be the world’s first hydroelectric power station.
Armstrong was an avid art collector, so in 1878 he lit up his collection using arc lamps. Arc lamps were not optimal for nearly anything, however, much less viewing works of art. Arc lamps generally produced a harsh light and
tended to flicker and hiss.
While the lamps were not too bad for street lighting, they certainly weren’t ideal for general use. But at the time, Edison’s incandescent bulb was a year away from being invented and even further away from being both practical and available.
Let There Be Light
While Edison gets all the glory for inventing the incandescent bulb, lots of people were working on parallel research, and at least one of them independently struck on a workable design. While Edison found carbonized cotton and bamboo as a suitable filament around 1880, inventor
Joseph Swan was working with carbonized paper as early as 1850
and had a working but impractical model in 1860. The problems included the lack of a reliable source of electricity and the difficulties in drawing a good vacuum. Swan invented a mercury pump to solve the latter problem, an approach also used by Hermann Sprengel.
It looks like Swan found cotton as a suitable filament about the same time as Edison. His own home was the first to be lit with bulbs from the Swan Electric Light Company, of course. He also provided 1,200 bulbs for the Savoy theater in Westminster which until that point had been lit by gas. While the theater was having its lights installed, the home of Swan’s friend William Armstrong became the second dwelling to be lit by Swan’s bulbs. After all, in December 1880 the house already had electricity. Although the lights were far from perfect, they fit with the modern conveniences that Armstrong was fond of.
The bulbs had low resistance and required thick copper wires. They also burned out very quickly. But it did give Cragside the distinction of being one of the first homes in the world with electric lighting and doubtlessly the first to be lit by hydroelectric power.
Ahead of the Curve
Armstrong
might not be a household name, but he did quite a few things of note. He built the mechanism that operates London’s Tower Bridge. He also developed a method to store hydraulic energy called the hydraulic accumulator. He was a correspondent with Michael Faraday, who we do often remember. He also used hydraulics and friction to generate static electricity in an apparatus similar to a Van de Graf machine that was seen in a show at the London Polytechnic. No wonder he has been called “the magician of the north.”
It seems Armstrong was ahead of his time in many ways. In addition to the modern appliances in his home, he was a strong proponent of renewable energy. He recognized the power of water, obviously, but also of the sun. He also thought coal was wasteful and predicted that Britain would cease coal production within 200 years.
The house still gets some of its power from a rebuilt hydroelectric plant on the site. There’s a video you can watch about the project and see a glimpse of Armstrong’s remarkable “hunting lodge” below. | 27 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379043",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-09-09T17:24:25",
"content": "“He also thought coal was wasteful and predicted that Britain would cease coal production within 200 years.”Not quite, but working on it.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_Kingdom#De... | 1,760,372,956.127588 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/09/2021-hackaday-remoticon-call-for-proposals/ | 2021 Hackaday Remoticon: Call For Proposals | Mike Szczys | [
"cons",
"Featured"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Remoticon",
"call for proposals",
"cfp"
] | The Hackaday Remoticon is happening this November 19th and 20th and the whole Internet is invited. This time around we’re packing the weekend with talks about all the hardware, software, special skills, and inspiration that gets poured into the world of electronic stuff.
Send in your talk proposal now
! I know,
Call for Proposals
sounds so official, but it’s really just a matter of giving us a summary of what the talk will cover, and an in-depth description where you make your case on why the talk is relevant to the people who will be watching it.
We go out of our way with all of our Hackaday conferences to get first-time speakers up on stage (or I suppose in front of a webcam in this case). Whether it’s your first time or your fortieth, the substance of the talk is what matters the most — we want to see what you’ve been doing at your workbench and in your lab so please give us a window into that part of your life.
Like many of you, we desperately wanted to get back to an in-person Hackaday Superconference this year. We waited until now to make the call in hopes that maybe a smaller live conference would be possible, but at this point, even if we could pull off the weekend safely, it’s hard to imagine people would have the relaxing good time that Supercon has come to be known for. On the plus side, holding a virtual event like Remoticon means more of the Hackaday community gets to join in on the action. To shake things up for 2021, we’re pivoting away from workshops to make room for more talks and adding some excellent new ways for you to participate that we’ll be sharing more about very soon.
But to pull it off we need a slate of engineers, hackers, and geeks who want to share what they’re passionate about with a captive audience of like-minded individuals. Think you’re up to the challenge?
Submit your ideas and let’s build something amazing
. Or if you’d rather just kick back and watch, reach out to your favorite hacker and encourage them to speak. The one huge upside of a virtual conference is that it breaks down the time and treasure barriers of travelling to Pasadena to participate, and having this event accessible to a much wider range of people is something we can all get behind. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379085",
"author": "Cprossu",
"timestamp": "2021-09-09T19:40:46",
"content": "Woot!I do long for the day that another event like Supercon in 2019 can happen again without (or at least with less and calculated) worry/risk. Perhaps next year, but this seems to be the correct action t... | 1,760,372,955.949502 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/09/building-an-x-ray-machine/ | Building An X-Ray Machine | Matthew Carlson | [
"Medical Hacks"
] | [
"high voltage",
"medical",
"vacuum tube",
"x-ray",
"x-ray imaging",
"xray"
] | While we typically encourage hackers to make their own tools or machines when practical, x-ray machines don’t usually make that list. Despite the risk of radiation, [William Osman] has done just that and
built a homemade x-ray machine
. After receiving an eye-watering medical bill, [William] resolves to make his own x-ray machine in the hopes of avoiding future bills. Thanks to his insurance, the total owed was smaller but still ridiculous to those who live in single-payer health care countries, but it got William thinking. What if he could make an x-ray machine to do cheap x-rays?
Armed with a cheap high voltage DC power supply he acquired from an online auction house, he started to power up his x-ray vacuum tube. A smaller power supply energizes the cathode and forms an electron beam. Then the high voltage (30-150kv) is applied as a tube voltage, accelerating the electrons into x-rays. Safety measures are taken somewhat haphazardly with Geiger counters and lead sheets. With a finger bone cast in ballistic shell [William] made his first x-ray with a long exposure on a DSLR. The next items to go in the x-ray “chamber” were a phone and a hand. The results were actually pretty decent and you can clearly see the bones.
We’ve seen
homemade X-Ray machines
here at Hackaday before, but not one that is constructed perhaps so haphazardly — his approach makes this obvious: don’t try this at home. Video after the break. | 57 | 22 | [
{
"comment_id": "6379011",
"author": "Doug Leppard",
"timestamp": "2021-09-09T15:24:32",
"content": "This guy is crazy, it makes my experiments look very safe. He did make one good video and it was successful project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_... | 1,760,372,956.657213 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/09/teardown-impassa-scw9057g-433-alarm-system/ | Teardown: Impassa SCW9057G-433 Alarm System | Tom Nardi | [
"Engineering",
"Hackaday Columns",
"home hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"433 mhz",
"alarm",
"alarm keypad",
"anti-tamper",
"cellular modem",
"home alarm system",
"reverse engineering",
"stm32"
] | This series of monthly teardowns was started in early 2018 as an experiment, and since you fine folks keep reading them, I keep making them. But in truth, finding a new and interesting gadget every month can sometimes be a chore. Which is why I’m always so thankful when a reader actually sends something in that they’d like to see taken apart, as it absolves me from having to make the decision myself. Of course it also means I can’t be blamed if you don’t like it, so keep that in mind as well.
Coming our way from the tropical paradise of Eastern Pennsylvania, this month’s subject is an ADT branded Impassa SCW9057G-433 alarm system that was apparently pulled off the wall when our kind patron was moving house. As you might have guessed from the model number, this unit uses 433 MHz to communicate with various sensors and devices throughout the home, and also includes a 3G cellular connection that allows it to contact the alarm monitoring service even if the phone line has been cut.
The alarm can connect to a wide array of 433 MHz devices.
From how many of these are on eBay, and the research I’ve done on some home alarm system forums, it
appears
that you can actually pick one of these up on the second-hand market and spin your own whole-house alarm system without going through a monitoring company like ADT. The extensive documentation from Impassa covers how to wire and configure the device, and as long as the system isn’t locked when you get it, it seems like wiping the configuration and starting from scratch isn’t a problem.
If it’s possible to put together your own homebrew alarm system with one of these units at the core, then it seems the least we can do is take it apart and see what kind of potentially modifiable goodies are waiting under that shiny plastic exterior.
Reach Out and Touch Someone
The SCW9057G-433 comes apart in two pieces with a bit of coercion around the edges, with the battery and 3G2075 “Alarm Communicator” board on the rear and the main PCB on the front. Or, at least, there
should
be a battery in the rear compartment. Our particular specimen has been robbed of its backup power, so you’ll have to use your imagination.
As we can see the cellular communications board features a SIM slot (with an unpopulated spot for a second), an external antenna, and an HE863-NAR 3G module that’s capable of pulling a respectable 7.2 Mbps over HSPA and features voice and SMS support. I didn’t expect there to be much else interesting on the 3G2075, but pulling open the RF shield revealed an unexpectedly large microcontroller.
The STM32F217VGT6 packs a 120 MHz ARM Cortex-M3 CPU and an impressive array of capabilities, including built-in Ethernet and USB. It’s not immediately clear why such a powerful chip is necessary to facilitate communications between the main PCB and the HE863-NAR, though its hardware accelerated encryption capabilities are potentially being put to use. Next to the MCU is a 16 Mb AT45DB161D serial flash chip, which under normal circumstances I would assume held the chip’s firmware. But since the STM32F217VGT6 already has fairly ample onboard flash, it seems more likely it’s being used to hold configuration data.
Chips Ahoy!
In this series of teardowns, we’re often confronted with some unfortunate realities, such as the fact that epoxy blobs and unmarked ICs are so common these days that it’s nearly the norm. I usually consider myself lucky if it’s possible to identify one or two of the chips on the board, especially if they’re the important ones. But as luck would have it, the main board of the SCW9057G-433 is packed full of recognizable ICs.
There’s a dizzying array of components here, but with a close eye we can see that the board is laid out quite logically, making it relatively easy to break down the different functional blocks. Especially since so many of the parts were obviously intended to be cordoned off from each other with snap-on RF shields, even if in the end most of them didn’t actually get installed. For example, by looking at where the coil antenna at the top of the board terminates, we can see the hardware responsible for 433 MHz communications.
One half of the equation is an Atmel ATA5428 ASK/FSK transceiver, which has a maximum data rate of 20 Kbit/s and can operate at either 433 or 868 MHz. In this case, the radio is paired with a PIC24FJ64GA002 microcontroller in a QFN28 package which appears to be running at 32 MHz by the looks of the nearby external oscillator.
Directly below that, and right next to where a speaker is plugged in, we find a slightly incongruous SOIC28 chip labeled U4082B. Located next to a MAX9730E 2.4 watt mono amplifier and a pair of MCP6002 op amps, at first I thought it might be some kind of audio alarm IC. But actually it’s a speakerphone chip that, among other things, is responsible for detecting when the user is speaking. Sure enough, a two-way speakerphone is listed as one of the features of the SCW9057G-433, presumably to be used so a representative of the monitoring company can speak to the customer directly through the alarm panel.
Old Reliable
It seems you can’t go more than a few millimeters on this board before you run into another IC to look up, but of course, there’s only so many voltage regulator spec sheets you can read in a day. So let’s pull off the RF shield and check out the real star of the show.
Here we can see a trio of chips in their natural habitat. In the center we have the STM32F101VF, a considerably less capable relative of the STM32F217 used in the communication board. The 36 MHz ARM Cortex-M3 chip doesn’t have nearly the bells and whistles of the newer F2 series, but it’s a reliable workhorse that Impassa likely has experience with from previous products. To the right of it we see an ST-branded 45PE10VP 1 Mb serial flash chip, and to the left, a Microchip 24LC128 128 K I2C EEPROM. Between the two external chips and the 768 Kb onboard the STM32F101VF, it seems the system has plenty of room to grow.
Incidentally, back in 2018 Aaron Christophel cracked open a robotic vacuum and found a very similar MCU. As we’ve come to expect from the prolific hacker,
he started working on a his own firmware for the cleaning bot
, part of which involved getting the chip working in the Arduino environment. It’s not clear how far he took the concept, but it at least establishes precedent should anyone want to take on the challenge of creating a custom firmware for this unit.
Tamper Resistant Packaging
The particularly keen-eyed reader may have already noticed it, but before closing out this teardown, I wanted to point out an interesting little feature of the SCW9057G-433: the tamper detectors. This capability is actually referenced in section 3.5 of the manual, and is described as a way for the unit to determine if somebody has tried to remove it from the wall.
Much like the VeriFone MX 925CTLS
that I
liberated from a defunct Toys R’ Us back in 2018
, this is accomplished using a series of strategically placed plungers that push against traces on the PCB. Essentially it’s an open-air momentary push button that’s held closed so long as the device’s case isn’t opened. There’s one pad on the rear of the communications board, and two of them on the main PCB.
Enclosure tamper pads
Rear tamper pad
The first one is attached to a little lever that’s pushed when the SCW9057G-433 is screwed to the wall, so that the alarm will sound should anyone remove it. The central pad on the front PCB corresponds to a stalk attached to the rear plate of the case, which is clearly to alert the system if the panel has been opened. The third pad doesn’t have any obvious mate, so I can only assume its counterpart would be mounted to the battery, or perhaps some chassis component that holds it in. This would let the system detect if somebody was clever enough to try and cut the battery out from the side of the panel while it was still on the wall.
Note the rocker mechanism on the left pad that contacts the wall.
Second Life, or Good Enough?
We’ve got a bunch of identifiable chips, a microcontroller that we’ve already seen programmed via the Arduino IDE, and some pretty blatant programming headers. So what’s holding back an open source replacement firmware for the SCW9057G-433?
Well, for one thing there’s still a lot of reverse engineering you’d need to do before you could make a truly functional firmware. Getting the MCU to talk to the LCD and keypad probably wouldn’t be a problem, but that’s just scratching the surface. If you feel like giving it a go, we’ve covered some
STM32 reverse engineering which should get you going in the right direction
.
That said, the bigger problem might simply be that a custom firmware isn’t really
needed
for this device. The documentation from Impassa seems exceptional, and unless you’re unlucky enough to get one of these units that’s been locked by the previous user or installer, you should have free rein to pair it with your devices and configure it however you see fit.
As much as we love seeing proprietary code being obliterated by the glorious light of open source software here at Hackaday, I’ll admit that occasionally you have to pick your battles. Though just to be safe, I might ask Aaron Christophel if he wants a new toy to play with.
The device you see here was graciously provided to us by one of our wonderful readers. If you have an interesting piece of hardware that’s just taking up space around the shop and would like to donate it towards our ongoing series of teardowns, anonymously or otherwise,
don’t hesitate to drop us a line. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378996",
"author": "josephsleary",
"timestamp": "2021-09-09T14:34:47",
"content": "I have one of these when we moved in and the previous owner won’t give us the code. Tried common codes but no luck getting access to my alarm system. I don’t want to pay ADT to erase it and reprogram... | 1,760,372,956.906257 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/09/ai-powered-coffee-maker-knows-a-bit-too-much-about-you/ | AI Powered Coffee Maker Knows A Bit Too Much About You | Dave Rowntree | [
"cooking hacks",
"Machine Learning",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"advanced coffee machine",
"artificial intelligence",
"flask",
"machine learning",
"nixie tube",
"python",
"Raspberry Pi Zero"
] | People keep warning that Skynet and the great robot uprising is not that far away, what with all this recent AI and machine-learning malarky getting all the attention lately. But we think going straight for a terminator robot army is not a very smart approach, not least due to a lack of subtlety. We think that it’s a much better bet to take over the world one home appliance at a time, and this
AI Powered coffee maker
might just well be part of that master plan.
PCB stackup with Pi Zero sat atop the driver / PSU PCBs
[Mark Smith] has taken a standard semi-auto espresso maker and jazzed it up a bit, with a sweet bar graph nixie tube the only obvious addition, at least from the front of the unit. Inside, a Raspberry Pi Zero sits atop his
own nixie tube hat
and
associated power supply
. The whole assembly is dropped into a 3D printed case and lives snuggled up to the water pump.
The Pi is running a web application written with the excellent
Flask framework
, and also an additional control application written in python. This allows the user to connect to the machine via Ethernet and see its status. The smarts are in the form of a simple self-grading machine learning algorithm, that takes a time series as an input (in this case when you take your shots of espresso) and after a few weeks of data, is able to make a reasonable prediction as to when you might want it in the future. It then automatically heats up in time for you to use the machine, when you usually do, then cools back down to save energy. No more pointless wandering around to see if the machine is hot enough yet – as you can just check the web page and see from the comfort of your desk.
But that’s not all [Mark] has done. He also improved the temperature control of the water boiler, and added an interlock that prevents the machine from producing a shot until the water temperature is just so. Water level is indicated by the glorious bar graph nixie tube, which also serves a few other user indication duties when appropriate. All in all a pretty sweet build, but we do add a word of caution: If your toaster starts making an
unreasonable number of offers of toasted teacakes
, give it a wide berth. | 20 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378947",
"author": "T Bowler",
"timestamp": "2021-09-09T11:30:01",
"content": "While skimming, I saw “nixie tube hat” and got excited, but my balloon deflated when I remembered what ‘h’ ‘a’ ‘t’ means in the Pi-osphere.Oh well.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,372,957.515018 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/08/love-letter-to-commodore-64-ads-takes-us-down-memory-lane/ | Love Letter To Commodore 64 Ads Takes Us Down Memory Lane | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"c64",
"commodore 64",
"retrocomputer"
] | If you shop, you can get a pretty nice laptop for around $595. Maybe not the top of the line, but still pretty nice with multiple cores, a large hard drive, and a big color screen. But in the 1980s, the Commodore 64 bragged that for $595, they’d give you more than anyone else at twice the price. After all, 64K of RAM! Graphics with 16 whole colors! [Lunduke] dug up
a bunch of these ads
and has some thoughts on them and we really enjoyed the trip down memory lane.
If you look at other contemporary computers, they did cost more although sometimes it wasn’t a fair comparison. The TRS80 III, for example, cost $999 with 16K of RAM but it also had its own monitor — not color, though.
It is amazing to think that we’ve gone from where 16K was a reasonable amount of RAM in a personal computer to where it isn’t even worth having a flash drive with that capacity. We also can’t help but note that while computing power per dollar is through the roof now, computers aren’t actually that much more fun. We enjoyed interfacing a teletype to our 1802 ELF and working out a 300 baud modem for our TRS-80. Sure, we didn’t have Skyrim or HD movies, but we still have fun.
If you want to relive these exciting days, it is easy enough to
build your own C64
with varying degrees of fidelity. It is trivial to
emulate
the thing on any kind of modern hardware, too. | 23 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378656",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2021-09-08T15:56:40",
"content": "Yes, back then we were doing thing never done before at home.The nice thing was the price of the C64 fell fairly quickly, as I think my first one was $299, and its replacement was $199. My second one was... | 1,760,372,956.724293 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/08/the-dark-side-of-package-repositories-ownership-drama-and-malware/ | The Dark Side Of Package Repositories: Ownership Drama And Malware | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"dependency resolution",
"development",
"infrastructure",
"NPM",
"programming",
"software repositories"
] | At their core, package repositories sound like a dream: with a simple command one gains access to countless pieces of software, libraries and more to make using an operating system or developing software a snap. Yet the rather obvious flip side to this is that someone has to maintain all of these packages, and those who make use of the repository have to put their faith in that whatever their package manager fetches from the repository is what they intended to obtain.
How ownership of a package in such a repository is managed depends on the specific software repository, with the especially well-known JavaScript repository NPM having suffered regular PR disasters on account of it playing things loose and fast with package ownership. Quite recently an auto-transfer of ownership feature of NPM was quietly taken out back and erased after Andrew Sampson had a run-in
with it painfully backfiring
.
In short, who can tell when a package is truly ‘abandoned’, guarantee that a package is free from malware, and how does one begin to provide insurance against a package being pulled and
half the internet collapsing
along with it?
NPM As Case Study
The old NPM procedure for obtaining ownership, summarized.
In Andrew Sampson’s
Twitter thread
, they describe how during the process of getting packages for a project called
bebop
published in various software repositories, they found that this name was unclaimed except in NPM. As this package hadn’t been updated in a long time, they assumed it was likely abandoned, and found an
entry on package name disputes
in the NPM documentation. This entry has since been heavily altered, because of what happened next.
Following the steps in the NPM documentation, Andrew emailed the author of the existing
bebop
package and CC’ing NPM support as requested. After four weeks had passed, Andrew got an email from NPM support indicating that Andrew now owned the NPM package:
Message from NPM support confirming the package ownership transfer.
It all seemed fine and dandy, until it turned out that not only was
bebop
still being actively developed by one Zach Kelling, but that at least thirty different packages on NPM depended on it. During the subsequent communication, Zach and Andrew realized that the email address produced by the
npm owner ls
command was not even associated with the package, explaining why Zach never got a message about the ownership transfer.
The obvious failures here are many: from NPM failing to ascertain that it had an active communication channel to a package owner, to no clear way to finding out whether a package is truly abandoned, to NPM apparently failing to do basic dependency checking before dropping a package. Perhaps most astounding here is the resulting “solution” by NPM, with Zach not getting ownership of the package restored, but only a GitHub Pro subscription and $100 coupon to buy merchandise from the GitHub Shop. Andrew ended up compensating Zach for the package name.
In their thoughts on this whole experience, Andrew makes it clear that they don’t feel that a software repository should have the right to change ownership of a package, that this responsibility should always lie with the owner. That said, as a matter of practicality, one could argue that a package could be considered abandoned if it has not been downloaded in a long time and no other software depends on it.
But is NPM really an outlier? How does their policy compared to more maintainer-centric models used by other repositories, such as those provided with the various Linux and BSD distributions?
The Burden of Convenience
A feature of the NPM software repository is that it’s highly accessible, in the sense that anyone can
create an account and publish
their own packages with very little in the way of prerequisites. This contrasts heavily with the Debian software repository. Here the procedure is that in order to add a package to the Debian archive, you
have to be a Debian Developer
, or have someone who is one, sponsor you and upload your packages on your behalf.
While it’s still possible to create packages for Debian and distribute them without either of these prerequisites, it means that a user of your software has to either manually download the DEB file and install it, or add the URL of your archive server to the configuration files of their package manager as a Personal Package Archive (PPA) to enable installation and updating of the package along with packages from the official Debian archive.
XKCD’s take on ‘Move fast and break things’. (Credit: Randall Munroe)
The basic principle behind the Debian software repository and those of other distributions is that of integrity through what is essentially a
chain of trust
. By ensuring that everyone who contributes something (e.g. a package) to the repository is a trusted party by at least one person along this chain of contributors, it’s virtually assured that all contributions are legitimate. Barring security breaches, users of these official repositories know software installed through any of the available packages is as its developers intended it to be.
This contrasts heavily with specialty software repositories that target a specific programming language. PyPI as the official Python software repository has
similar prerequisites
as NPM, in that only a user account is required to start publishing. Other languages like Rust (
Crates.io
) and Java/Kotlin (
Sonatype Maven
) follow a similar policy. This is different from Tex (
CTAN
) and Perl (
CPAN
), which appear to provide some level of validation by project developers. Incidentally CPAN’s policy when it comes to changing a package’s maintainer is that this is done only after much effort and time, and even then it’s preferred to add a co-maintainer rather than drop or alter the package contents.
Much of these differences can seemingly be summarized by the motto “
Move fast and break things
“. While foregoing the chain of trust can make a project move ahead at breakneck speed, this is likely to come at a cost. Finding the appropriate balance here is paramount. For example in the case of an operating system, this cavalier approach to quality, security, and reliability is obviously highly undesirable.
One might postulate that “break things” is also highly undesirable when deploying a new project to production and having it fall over because of a pulled dependency or worse. Yet this is where opinions seem to differ strongly to the point where one could say that the standard package manager for a given programming language (if any) is a direct reflection of the type of developer who’d be interested in developing with the language, and vice-versa.
Do You Really Need That?
Some memes hit painfully close to home.
As anyone who has regularly tried to build a Node.js project that’s a few months old or an Maven-based Java 6 project can likely attest to, dependencies like to break. A lot. Whether it’s entire packages that vanish, or just older versions of packages, the possibility of building a project without spending at least a few minutes cursing and editing project files will gradually approach zero as more time passes.
In light of what these dependencies sometimes entail, it’s perhaps even more ludicrous that they are dependencies at all. For example, the
left-pad
package in NPM that caused many projects to fall over consists of
only a handful lines of code
that does exactly what it says on the tin. It does raise the question of how many project dependencies can be tossed without noticeably affecting development time while potentially saving a lot of catastrophic downtime and easing maintenance.
When your file browser hangs for a few seconds or longer when parsing the
node_modules
directory of a Node.js project because of how many folders and files are in it, this might be indicative of a problem. Some folk have taken it up them to cut back on this bloat, such as in
this post by Adam Polak
who describes reducing the size of the
node_modules
folder for a project from 700 MB to 104 MB. This was accomplished by finding replacements for large dependencies (which often pull in many dependencies of their own), removing unneeded dependencies, and using custom code instead of certain dependencies.
Another good reason to cut back on dependencies has to do with start-up time, as
noted by Stefan Baumgartner
in a recent blog post. While obviously it’s annoying to type
npm install
and have enough time before it finishes to take a lunch break, he references
Mikhail Shilkov’s work
comparing cold start times with cloud-based service offerings. Increasing the total size of the deployed application also increased cold start times significantly, on the order of seconds. These are billed-for seconds that are essentially wasted money, with large applications wasting tens of seconds doing literally nothing useful while starting up and getting the dependencies sorted out.
This extra time needed is also reflected in areas such as continuous integration (CI) and deployment (CD), with developers noting increased time required for building e.g. a Docker image. Clearly, reducing the dependencies and their size to a minimum in a project can have very real time and monetary repercussions.
KISS Rather Than Breaking Things
Modern-day infrastructure, as visualized by XKCD. (Credit: Randall Munroe)
There’s a lot to be said for keeping things as simple as reasonably possible within a software project. While it’s undoubtedly attractive to roll out the dump truck with dependencies and get things done fast, this is an approach that should ideally be reserved for quick prototypes and proof-of-concepts, rather than production-level code.
Through my own experiences with (commercial) NPM-based JavaScript projects, as well as Maven and Gradle-based Java projects using an assortment of Nexus repository servers, I have come to appreciate the simplicity and stability of less-is-more. Adding a dependency to a project is something that should be considered in-depth and ideally prevented as dependency or the need for its inclusion eliminated. If it’s added, it should be considered whether this dependency should be external or exist inside the source tree.
At the end of the day, making a project bullet-proof is something that should be appreciated more. That includes decreasing the reliance on code and infrastructure provided by others, especially if said code and/or infrastructure is provided
free of cost
. If your business plan
includes the continued provision
of certain free services and software, any sane investor should think twice before investing in it. | 77 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378606",
"author": "Alice Lalita Heald",
"timestamp": "2021-09-08T14:09:18",
"content": "Can’t wait till we go back to html 1.0, life was so much faster.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6378916",
"author": "JaK",
... | 1,760,372,956.84281 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/08/game-like-its-2021-on-a-mcdonalds-touchscreen-table/ | Game Like It’s 2021 On A McDonald’s Touchscreen Table | Dave Rowntree | [
"Android Hacks",
"Games",
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"android",
"arcade machine",
"cocktail cabinet",
"McDonald's"
] | Some of you around the world may have come across these Android-based gaming tables installed in your local fast-food outlet, and may even have been lucky enough to paw at one that was actually working at the time.
Originally based on an ancient mini PC, with a 1080p flat panel LCD and a touch overlay, they would have been mind-blowing for small children back in the day, but nowadays we expect somewhat more. YouTuber [BigRig Creates]
got his hands on one,
in a less than pleasant condition, but after a lot of soap and water, it was stripped down and the original controller junked in favour of a modern mini PC. To be clear, there isn’t much left beyond the casing and display from the original hardware, but we don’t care, as a lot of attention was paid to the software side of things to get it to triple-booting into Windows 10, Android x86 and Linux running
emulation station
, covering all those table-gaming urges you may have.
Internally, there is a fair amount of room for improvement on the wiring side of things, and [BigRig] is quick to admit that, but that’s what this learning game is all about. Now, many of you will choke on the very idea of playing games on a table system like this, after all, it’s pretty obvious this will be really hard on the back and neck. But, it does offer the easy option to switch from landscape to portrait orientation, simply by walking around the side, so it does have an upside. Also you’ve got a handy place to dump your beer and the takeaway when it arrives, so maybe not such a bad thing to have in your apartment? And, yes, it does
run Doom
.
We were particularly amused by the custom boot logo as well as the slick custom art in emulation station. It’s attention to detail like this that makes a build a great one and a conversation piece at parties. Now if only he could sort out that wiring job.
Thanks [Raj] for the tip! | 6 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378582",
"author": "NQ",
"timestamp": "2021-09-08T12:08:41",
"content": "Hey it actually works! Sure beats the Taylor ice cream machines.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6378613",
"author": "Gravis",
"timesta... | 1,760,372,956.94941 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/08/controlling-external-monitors-on-m1-macs-with-undocumented-apis/ | Controlling External Monitors On M1 Macs With Undocumented APIs | Maya Posch | [
"Mac Hacks"
] | [
"DDC",
"DDC2",
"macOS"
] | Display Data Channel (DDC) is a very useful feature of modern digital displays, as it allows the graphics card (and thus the OS) to communicate with a display and control features such as brightness and contrast. The biggest negative aspect here is
the relatively poor access to this feature within an operating system like MacOS, which can change on a whim
, as [Alin Panaitiu] found out recently.
Current displays implement
DDC2
, which is based around an I
2
C bus. Despite this, few OSes offer DDC-based control of features such as brightness which is where [Alin] developed a popular utility for MacOS that used undocumented APIs to talk DDC2 with external monitors via I2C. Until the new Arm-based Mac systems got released and these undocumented APIs got changed, that is.
Even though there are some ways around this, with some utilities using a simple software-based overlay to ‘dim’ the display, or using an external gamma adjustment via an external Raspberry Pi system hooked up to HDMI and using
ddcutil
, the best way is still via DDC2. Ultimately the new (undocumented) APIs that provide access were discovered, with another user going by the name [zhuowei] notifying [Alin] of the new
IOAVServiceReadI2C
and
IOAVServiceWriteI2C
methods with Arm-based MacOS.
After this it took some more sleuthing to figure out which of the devices on the I2C bus were which monitor in the case of multiple external monitors, but in the end it all worked again, adding hardware-based brightness controls back in the hands of MacOS users. Minus a few apparent hardware issues with HDMI on the M1 Mac Mini and some displays, but who is counting?
[Heading image: Screenshot of the Lunar app on MacOS. Credit: Alin Panaitiu] | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378556",
"author": "Alin Panaitiu",
"timestamp": "2021-09-08T08:52:18",
"content": "Developer of Lunar here.Thanks for the very nice write-up Maya!The HDMI port of the Mac mini is still blocking I2C writes. I know there are a lot of way-smarter-than-me people in this community so I... | 1,760,372,956.990332 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/07/an-inexpensive-fm-receiver-for-the-raspberry-pi/ | An Inexpensive FM Receiver For The Raspberry Pi | Chris Wilkinson | [
"Radio Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"fm radio",
"hackaday.io",
"qn8035",
"raspberry pi"
] | At this point, there are no shortage of impressive hacks for the Raspberry Pi. [Dilshan Jayakody] recently documented his experience in designing and building an
inexpensive FM Stereo Receiver for the Pi platform
, and the results are impressive.
Quite a few FM receiver projects center around the RDA5807 or TEA5767 ICs, however [Dilshan] has used the QN8035 by Quintic Corporation in his build. A handful of discrete components on a pleasing single-sided PCB is all that is needed to interface the QN8035 with the Pi’s I2C bus.
After demonstrating that the FM tuner could be, well,
tuned
at the command line, [Dilshan] then coded a smart looking GUI application that makes tuning a breeze. The software allows the listener to manually and automatically scan through FM stations, decode program service data, control the volume, and display the RSSI and SNR readings from the tuner.
As we reported earlier,
FM radio is on a slow decline into obsolescence
. This latest project isn’t aiming to break new ground, however its simplicity and inexpensive components are the perfect combination for beginner hackers and radio enthusiasts alike. More details can be found over on
Hackaday.io
. The schematic, source code and bill of materials can be found on
GitHub
. | 39 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378514",
"author": "Flotsam",
"timestamp": "2021-09-08T05:25:53",
"content": "“FM radio is on a slow decline into obsolescence”Not in cyclone-prone regions. It’s often the only way information can be disseminated after a big one. A cheap wind-up receiver is part of our storm prep k... | 1,760,372,957.127873 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/07/dont-bristle-teethbrush-wont-hurt-you/ | Don’t Bristle; Teethbrush Won’t Hurt You | Kristina Panos | [
"Lifehacks",
"News",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"electric toothbrush",
"teethbrush"
] | Good dental hygiene is the first line of defense when it comes to your health, and– you’re already bored, aren’t you? It’s totally true, though. Take care of your teeth, and the rest of you has a better chance of staying fairly healthy.
This is like, the one thing we have control over after diet and exercise, and most people just plain fail on this front. They brush for 30 seconds, tops. Or they rarely floss. Maybe they’ve never even considered brushing or scraping their tongue.
Okay, fine. You don’t want to spend the recommended two minutes twice a day working the brush around your mouth. The good news is,
technology has finally caught up with you and your habits
, if you can call them that. How about using something that can truly be called a teethbrush? As in, it brushes all of your teeth at once? Well, half of your teeth anyway. Allegedly, you can spend as little as 10 seconds on each arch and effectively scour your smile — that’s because the thing vibrates at an astonishing 40,000 per minute or so.
Sounds kind of scary, doesn’t it? Wait ’til you hear how much they cost. One brand is $150 off the bat, and replacement heads are close to $40 each, although they’re supposed to last for six months each (eww!). Most of them have some fancy extras that make the cost more palatable, such as a tooth-whitening mode.
What do you think? Would you use a teethbrush? We’re still on the fence. It could be interesting to develop our own, but you have to crawl before you can run.
Guess we’ll start with a manual
. | 33 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378467",
"author": "Sonny_Jim",
"timestamp": "2021-09-08T03:22:51",
"content": "These scams were all over Kickstarter/IGG a couple of years ago. TL;DR they don’t work, it’s essentially a pager vibrator motor in a silicon mould. Some of the fancier products would have ‘UV sterilis... | 1,760,372,957.19843 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/07/ikea-wardrobe-holds-entire-hardware-workspace/ | IKEA Wardrobe Holds Entire Hardware Workspace | Robin Kearey | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"furniture",
"ikea",
"workspace"
] | If you’re like us, you probably don’t finish a typical hardware project in one sitting. This doesn’t have to be a problem if you’re fortunate enough to have a dedicated workbench for your hacking activities; you simply leave your current project there, ready to continue when you have time again. But this is not always a workable option if you, or a housemate, needs to use the same desk for other tasks as well.
[!BATTA!] over at IKEAhackers ran into this problem, and solved it by building a
complete electronics workstation inside a wardrobe
. The base of this project is a storage unit called PAX, which is designed to store clothes and shoes but which also works just fine with project boxes. [!BATTA!] installed a variety of shelves and drawers to organize their collection of boxes and tools.
Not content with simple storage, [!BATTA!] decided to add a workbench, using a sturdy sliding tray that carries a working surface and a reinforced back panel to hold parts bins. Metal braces were added to prevent wobbliness, and the whole structure was bolted to a wall to prevent it from tipping over. When the workbench is not in use, the tray simply slides inside so the doors can be closed for a nice, clean look.
We really like the many clever storage solutions spread around the work area, such as a magnetic rail to hold hand tools and a “honeycomb” of PVC tubes for storing cables. Compact LED strips provide suitable lighting while a power strip with both mains and USB sockets brings juice to the tools and projects.
Modifying pieces of IKEA furniture is nothing new; we’ve seen them turned into
arcade cabinets
and
MP3 players
. We’ve also covered several
well-organized workspaces
, but none as compact as this one. Thanks to [IrregularShed] for the tip. | 18 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378420",
"author": "david",
"timestamp": "2021-09-07T23:09:57",
"content": "This is a clever idea. as an international student, I am frequently changing places and running low of empty space where I can work on my projects. Thanks Robin and Batta for sharing this.",
"parent_id... | 1,760,372,957.051912 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/09/highly-configurable-open-source-microscope-cooked-up-in-freecad/ | Highly Configurable Open Source Microscope Cooked Up In FreeCAD | Dave Rowntree | [
"hardware",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"arduino",
"freecad",
"KiCAD",
"microscope",
"open source hardware"
] | What do you get when you cross a day job as a Medical Histopathologist with an interest in 3D printing and programming? You get a fully-baked Open Source microscope, specifically the
Portable Upgradeable Modular Affordable
(or PUMA), that’s what. And this is no toy microscope. By combining a sprinkle of off-the-shelf electronics available from pretty much anywhere, a pound or two of filament, and a dash of high quality optical parts, PUMA cooks up quite possibly one of the best open source microscopy experiences we’ve ever tasted.
GitHub user [TadPath] works as a medical pathologist and clearly knows a thing or two about what makes a great instrument, so it is a genuine joy for us to see this tasty project laid out in such a complete fashion. Many a time we’ve looked into an high-profile project, only to find a pile of STL files and some hard to source special parts. But not here. This is deliberately designed to be buildable by practically anyone with access to a 3D printer and an eBay account.
The project is not currently certified for medical diagnostics use, but that is likely only a matter of money and time. The value for education and research (especially in developing nations) cannot really be overstated.
A small selection of the fixed and active aperture choices
The modularity allows a wide range of configurations from simple ambient light illumination, with a single objective, great for using out in the field without electricity, right up to a trinocular setup with TFT-based spatial light modulator enabling advanced methods such as Schlieren phase contrast (which allows visualisation of fluid flow inside a live cell, for example) and a heads-up display for making measurements from the sample. Add into the mix that PUMA is specifically designed to be quickly and easily broken down in the field, that helps busy researchers on the go, out in the sticks.
The GitHub repo has all the details you could need to build your own configuration and appropriate add-ons, everything from CAD files (FreeCAD source, so you can remix it to your heart’s content) and a detailed Bill-of-Materials for sourcing parts.
We covered
fluorescence microscopy before
, as well as many many other microscope related stories over the years, because quite simply, microscopes are a very important topic. Heck, this humble scribe has a binocular and a trinocular microscope on the bench next to him, and doesn’t even consider that unusual. If you’re hungry for an easily hackable, extendable and cost-effective scope, then this may be just the dish you were looking for.
Thanks to [linus] for the delicious tip! | 22 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378981",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-09-09T13:49:30",
"content": "“PUMA cooks up quite possibly one of the best open source microscopy experiences we’ve ever tasted.”Did your word processor get the article mixed up with your article about the coffee maker?B^)Or do we just c... | 1,760,372,957.32688 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/08/spooky-usb-baby-types-out-messages-from-beyond/ | Spooky USB Baby Types Out Messages From Beyond | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"caps lock",
"creepy doll",
"haunted toy",
"text input",
"usb hid",
"V-USB"
] | You might think it’s a bit early for us to be running Halloween hacks, but don’t worry. While this
microcontroller-equipped doll that mimics a USB keyboard to type out messages
in the creepiest way possible might
seem
like a gag gift you’d get after attending somebody’s bone-chilling holiday bash, creator [Jonathan] actually put it together for a friend’s wedding. So not only is it an interesting piece of hacked together hardware, but it’s also a great reminder about the importance of having a wedding registry.
Even if this seems like a rather unusual wedding gift from an outsider’s perspective (for the record, pranks involving this “haunted doll” have been a running gag between them since their school days), we can’t help but be impressed with the way [Jonathan] implemented it.
An ATtiny85-powered Digispark
is hidden inside the doll, along with a simple USB 2.0 hub that
supposedly eases some teething issues
the diminutive development board has with newer USB 3.0 ports. Through the use of V-USB, this lets the baby type out messages once plugged into the recipient’s computer.
Soldering the Digispark to a cheap USB hub keeps newer computers happy.
Now he could have just stopped there, but [Jonathan] wanted this to be an interactive experience. Specifically, he wanted the baby to present the newlyweds with a personally test of sorts, and that meant taking user input. He came up with the clever user interface demonstrated in the video below, which responds to changes in the system’s “Caps Lock” state.
This platform-agnostic solution lets the user navigate the doll’s menu system by tapping a single key, although the Chromebook users out there will have to break out the Alt key to play along. It’s a neat trick for getting two-way communication going between a MCU and a computer without any client-side software, and worth filing away mentally for future non-haunted projects. It’s also worth checking out the effort [Jonathan] put into optimizing everything to fit into the chip’s paltry 6012 bytes of flash.
Incidentally, this is a good a time as any to remind readers that our
Halloween Hackfest
contest is live right now
and taking entries until October 11th. If you’ve got any cursed bar mitzvah gifts you’ve been putting the finishing touches on, we’d love to see them. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378990",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-09-09T14:11:58",
"content": "“but it’s also a great reminder about the importance of having a wedding registry.”True dat!B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6378992",
"author": "... | 1,760,372,957.264576 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/08/brain-interface-uses-tiny-needles/ | Brain Interface Uses Tiny Needles | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"brain-machine interface",
"brainwave",
"ee"
] | We often look at news out of the research community and think, “we could build that.” But the latest
brain-machine interface
from an international team including the Georgia Institute of Technology actually scares us. It uses an array of tiny needles that penetrate the skin but remain too small for your nerves to detect. Right. We assume they need to be sterile but either way, we don’t really want to build a pin grid array to attach to your brain.
It seems the soft device is comfortable and since it is very lightweight it doesn’t suffer from noise if the user blinks or otherwise moves. Looking at the picture of the electrodes, they look awfully pointy, but we assume that’s magnified quite a few times, since the post mentions they are not visible to the naked eye.
By using machine learning, people were able to control virtual reality tasks with high accuracy — about 93%. Controlling things via brainwaves is nothing new, but the challenge has always been getting an easy and robust way to read the brainwaves to begin with. Obviously, this kind of technology could really help adaptive technology where using traditional control methods isn’t feasible.
We’ve seen brain control used to
drive a car
. We’ve even seen an
Arduino
get in on the act. | 25 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378868",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2021-09-09T03:21:49",
"content": "If they’re not visible to the naked eye, they can’t be long enough to go very far into your skin. I’d wear it. It must be better than dealing with shaving your head or using jelly on electrodes.",
"paren... | 1,760,372,957.450551 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/08/custom-joystick-build-guide-should-point-you-in-the-right-direction/ | Custom Joystick Build Guide Should Point You In The Right Direction | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"how-to",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"HID keyboard",
"Joystick"
] | Over the last two years, [benkster] has been perfecting their ideal flight controller. Like many people, they started out with a keyboard and mouse and eventually moved on to a joystick. While a HOTAS (hands on throttle-and-stick — e.g. a yoke controller with inputs right there on the sides) might have been the next logical step, those things cost too much. Naturally, the answer is to build one, ideally for less money. Hey, it could happen.
The design went from just an idea to a cardboard prototype, and then to a wooden enclosure and later, a 3D-printed case. Since [benkster] learned a great deal along the way, they want to give back to the community with
a comprehensive joystick design/build guide
so that others don’t have to start from zero, overwhelmed with information.
[benkster] wanted three joysticks, a bunch of big buttons, a throttle, a display to show component status (as in, is joystick #3 a joystick right now or a WASD keyboard?), and immersive details everywhere — you know, a million buttons and switches to give it that cockpit feel. [benkster] is using a Teensy 4 to control two 3-axis joysticks and one 2-axis stick. Since this adds up to too many axes for Windows/DirectX to read in, the 2-axis stick is used as a WASD keyboard.
This guide is a great place to start, especially for folks who may be newer to electronics. There are nice introductions to many types of components and tidbits that are relevant outside the world of joysticks.
You want immersive flight simulation away from the PC?
Here’s a printable flexure-based ‘stick that snaps right on your Xbox controller and pushes the buttons
. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378791",
"author": "Somun",
"timestamp": "2021-09-08T23:33:54",
"content": "If anyone thinks that a 600 Mhz micro is overkill, he could have used a Raspi 4.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6378912",
"author": "LordNot... | 1,760,372,957.568501 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/08/arduino-powered-heat-pump-controller-helps-warm-your-toes/ | Arduino Powered Heat Pump Controller Helps Warm Your Toes | Dave Rowntree | [
"green hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"arduino",
"Heat pump"
] | Heat pump heating technology is starting to pop up more and more lately, as the technology becomes cheaper and public awareness and acceptance improves. Touted as a greener residential heating system, they are rapidly gaining popularity, at least in part due to various government green policies and tax breaks.
[Gonzho] has been busy the last few years working on his own Arduino Powered
Open Source heat pump controller
, and the project logs show some nice details of what it takes to start experimenting with
heat pumps
in general, if that’s your game. Or you could use this to give an old system a new lease of life with an Arduino brain transplant.
In essence they are very simple devices; some kind of refrigerant is passed through a source of heat, absorbing some of it, it then flows elsewhere, and is compressed, which increases its temperature, before that increased heat is lost where the increase in temperature is desired.
This heat source could be a river, a mass of pipes buried in the ground, or simply the air around you. The source and quality of the heat source as well as the desired system operating temperature dictate the overall efficiency, and with ground-source systems it’s even possible to dump excess heat directly into the ground and store it for when required later. This could be the result of a residential cooling system, or even directly sourced from a solar heated setup.
This heat pumping process is reversible, so it is possible to swap the hot and cold ends, just by flipping some valves, and turn your space heater into a space cooler. This whole process can trace its roots back to the super talented Scottish professor,
William Cullen
who in 1748 was the first person on record to demonstrate artificial refrigeration.
The power needed to run the compressor pump and control gear is usually electrically derived, at least in non-vehicular applications, but the total power required is significantly less than the effective heating (or cooling) power that results.
We’ve covered a few heat pump hacks before,
like this guy who’s been heating his house geothermally for years
, but not so many platforms designed for experimentation from the ground up.
The associated GitHub project provides the gerber files as well as the Arduino code
, so you’ve got a great starting point for your own heat pumping builds. | 39 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378748",
"author": "Brian",
"timestamp": "2021-09-08T20:53:00",
"content": "“but the total power required is significantly less than the effective heating (or cooling) power that results.”No, it’s not, but they can have pretty good electrical to thermal efficiency.",
"parent_id... | 1,760,372,957.90641 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/08/clickspring-imagines-the-workshop-that-built-the-antikythera-mechanism/ | Clickspring Imagines The Workshop That Built The Antikythera Mechanism | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [] | When you look at the mechanisms of antiquity, it’s hard not to wonder, “How did they ever do that?” Just a look around our own shops shows how many things are bought from suppliers that benefit from the latest in automated machinery, computer control, and clean, safe electrical power. And that’s not to mention the high-tech stuff like electronics, which were centuries in the future for the ancient master craftsmen.
And yet, they built. Granted, not every artifact was as complex as the Antikythera mechanism, but still, this ancient astronomical computer exists, and must have come from someone’s workshop. What did that place look like? That’s
the question [Chris], aka [Clickspring], sets out to answer
in his new video.
Like any
good academician
would, he relies on evidence locked in the device itself to provide clues as to how it was produced, and to make educated guesses as to the contents of the shop (or shops) that made it. For example, the intricacy of the work would have required ample lighting, so the shop was likely at least partially open-air. There must have been a source of heat for working the brass and bronze materials of the original. There had to be workbenches, storage for stock, and probably places for apprentices to turn their hands to simple tasks under their master’s watchful eye. In short, it probably would have been quite recognizable to our eyes, and probably would have been a model of ergonomic efficiency.
[Chris] kindly gave us a sneak peek at the video and a few hours of exclusivity before it goes live to the general public, and we really appreciate that. We’re really looking forward to more of the Antikythera build, and can’t wait to see the finished product. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378768",
"author": "Dave Everett",
"timestamp": "2021-09-08T21:59:56",
"content": "Tool history is the story of more precise tools being created with less precise tools.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6378780",
"auth... | 1,760,372,957.721862 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/08/books-you-should-read-bil-herds-back-into-the-storm/ | Books You Should Read: Bil Herd’s Back Into The Storm | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"History",
"Retrocomputing",
"Reviews",
"Slider"
] | [
"bil herd",
"commodore",
"commodore 128",
"Commodore TED"
] | It’s a morning ritual that we guess most of you share with us; before whatever work a new day will bring to sit down with a coffee and catch up with the tech news of the moment on Hackaday and other sites. Most of us don’t do many exciting things in our everyday lives, so reading about the coolest projects and the most fascinating new developments provides us with interest and motivation. Imagine just for a moment then that by a twist of fate you found yourself taking a job at the epicentre of the tech that is changing the world, producing the objects of desire and pushing the boundaries, the place you’d give
anything
to work at.
This is the premise behind our Hackaday colleague
Bil Herd’s autobiographical chronicle of time in the mid 1980s during which he worked at Commodore
, maker of some of the most iconic home computers of the day. We follow him through the three years from 1983 to 1986 as hardware lead on the “TED” series of computers including the Commodore 16 and Plus/4, and then the Commodore 128, a dual-processor powerhouse which was arguably the last of the big-selling 8-bit home computers.
It’s an intertwined set of narratives peppered with personal anecdotes; of the slightly crazy high-pressure world of consumer videogames and computing, the fine details of designing a range of 8-bit machines, and a fascinating insight into how the culture at Commodore changed in the period following the departure of its founder Jack Tramiel.
Jack Tramiel’s Vision For A Low-Cost Computer
TED and processor chips on a Commodore 16 motherboard. CommodoreFriend,
CC BY-SA 4.0
.
Looking at the 8-bit computers of the early 1980s from our lofty perch here in 2021 it’s tempting to believe that all the machines with similar processors were equivalent to each other and in direct competition, but in Bil’s description of the landscape from which Jack Tramiel had conceived what would become the TED computers lies a reminder that the market was very much stratified. Processors such as the MOS 6502 and Zilog Z80 may have been at the heart of so many machines of the day, but their market positions depended so much more on the capabilities of their inbuilt video and sound hardware and other peripherals than it did on the microprocessor. Commodore had a runaway success story in the Commodore 64 as a premium gaming computer at the more expensive end of the market, but lacked an effective product to head off the threat from the much cheaper and less-well-specified Sinclair Spectrum at the lower end.
Tramiel’s vision was for a new architecture surrounding the 6502 that would integrate less capable video and sound into the TED, a much cheaper single chip perhaps analogous to the Sinclair’s Ferranti ULA, and simultaneously see off the competition for low-priced gaming hardware and open up an entirely new market for a budget business computer. The TED machines would be available in a three-model range starting at $49 and going up to a fully-fledged business desktop with a numerical keypad and a talking GUI.
Bil Herd speaks with Jack Tramiel at the 25th Anniversary of the Commodore 64. Babylon4
CC BY-SA 3.0
.
Bil describes the early TED period at Commodore as his “happy time”, and reading his account of a twenty-something hardware engineer catapulted into the position of bringing a new Commodore computer to life, it’s not difficult to see why. The tone changes over the book as the culture of the company shifted following the departure of Jack Tramiel, and for those of us who witnessed the catastrophic final years of the company through the lens of Amiga fandom it’s a glimpse into the roots of the company’s ultimate decline. He provides a candid look at Jack Tramiel’s management style from the viewpoint of someone who was really there rather than through heresay, and from that we gain a sense of how Commodore became the success story that it did.
Reading the book I’m left with the sense that we’ll never hear the true details surrounding his departure from the company he founded and subsequent piloting of Atari, so students of the later years of the home computer era will have to accept disappointment on that front. The book provides a personal view of how during this period without the founder’s vision the company fell under the spell of its marketing department, and the TED computers never appeared in the forms or at the price points which they deserved.
The Last Of The Great 8-Bit Computers
Bil Herd’s prototype Commodore LCD portable machine.
Bil Herd
The first half of the book takes us from 1983 through 1984 and the genesis of the TED computers, then through a short interlude with the ill-fated LCD machine. The second half follows the development of the Commodore 128 up to its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in 1985. This machine was the last new 8-bit mass-produced home computer platform to be released by a major manufacturer, and the tale of its development is particularly interesting because, despite Bil and his colleagues pushing at the edge of what was possible with 6502-derived parts, he describes it in such a way as to make it readily comprehensible to readers here in 2021. In some cases he’s doing things that would be relatively easy with modern test equipment but were extra-hard in the 1980s, such as when he uses persistence of vision and an analogue ‘scope to spot a transitory echo on a PCB line. This feat resulted in the bodge wire that adorns every single Commodore 128 board. The electronic engineer’s craft demonstrated in these pages as he solves bugs in custom silicon should make this book required reading for any electronics student aside from the retrocomputing angle.
The Commodore 128. Ismael Olea,
CC BY-SA 2.0
.
The Commodore 128 with its two different microprocessors and three different operating environments comes through as an engineer’s machine — designed
despite
the work of the marketeers rather than
because
of them. He describes quietly not implementing a request for a proprietary video connector that wouldn’t work with non-Commodore monitors because it would have compromised the final machine, and this is one of many running battles that were fought to deliver the best product that could be made. The thought of what might have been is a theme that pervades Commodore fandom, and here we see that the engineers were on “our” side, that of the customer rather than with those in the company who seemingly had little idea about the end users. One of the saddest parts of the story concerns the number of machines that the company developed and then never released; we mentioned the unreleased TED computers and the LCD machine above but he also makes reference to entire ranges of business machines that never saw the light of day. The Commodore story might still have ended in the 1990s had more of them been put on the market, but there’s a vast sense of waste that such poor decisions were made about such promising hardware.
Reading the book as someone with a background in the computer game business during the following decade I immediately recognize the combination of bad management, very bright teams, a frenetic atmosphere, and extremely high pressure surrounding the industry’s trade shows. It’s a world that can deliver a huge buzz at the expense of fast burnout for those who aren’t careful, and Bil’s comments about seeking the adrenaline fix continuing after he left Commodore in early 1986 ring true. I was riveted by this book and have read it again more than once during the writing of this article. I wasn’t the only one here at Hackaday who bought a copy as soon as it came out, and I can only suggest that you find yourself a copy too.
Back into the Storm: A Design Engineer’s Story of Commodore Computers
in the 1980s, by Bil Herd with Margaret Morabito,
can be found for sale through Amazon
, at $19.96 on the Kindle and $24.99 for a physical edition. | 27 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378706",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2021-09-08T17:23:17",
"content": "TIL: “TED” stands for Text Editing Device.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6378708",
"author": "Bil Herd",
"timestamp": "2021-09-08T17... | 1,760,372,957.790898 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/07/pandemic-gives-passersby-a-window-on-cyborg-control/ | Pandemic Gives Passersby A Window On Cyborg Control | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Microcontrollers",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"art installation",
"ESP12-E",
"NodeMCU",
"remote control",
"robosapien"
] | What’s this? Another fabulous creation from [Niklas Roy] and [Kati Hyyppä] that combines art and electronics with our zeitgeist and a lot of recycled bits and bobs? You got it. Their workshop in eastern Berlin used to be a retail shop and has a large display window as a result. This seems perfect for a pair of artists in a pandemic, because they can communicate with the community through the things they display in the window. Most recently, it was
this interactive cyborg baby
we are choosing to call Cybaby.
You might recognize Cybaby as one of the very hackable Robosapien robots, but with a baby doll head. (It also has a single red eye that really pulls its look together.) In the window, Cybaby comes alive and toddles around against a backdrop that grew and evolved over several weeks this spring and summer. Passersby were able to join the network and control Cybaby from outside with their smartphone to make it walk around, press various buttons that change its environment, and trigger a few sensors here and there. Robosapien has been around for about 20 years, so there is already Arduino code out there that essentially simulates
its R/C signals
. [Niklas] and [Kati] used a NodeMCU (ESP12-E) to send pulses to the IR input of the robot.
Back on the zany zeitgeist front, there’s a hair salon, a convenience store, and a nightclub for dancing that requires a successful trip through the testing center first (naturally). Oh, and there’s a lab next door to the nightclub that can’t be accessed by Cybaby no matter what it tries or how it cries. Check it out after the break.
There’s a dearth of Robosapien posts for some reason, so here’s what [Niklas] and [Kati] had in their window before the World of Cybaby —
a really cool pen plotter that prints out messages sent by people walking by
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378231",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2021-09-07T08:55:30",
"content": "Not a cyborg? :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6378236",
"author": "Felix",
"timestamp": "2021-09-07T11:20:35",
"content": "I’d like to ma... | 1,760,372,957.827281 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/06/smart-laser-cutter-ad-on-detects-material-optically/ | Smart Laser Cutter Ad-on Detects Material Optically | Dave Rowntree | [
"Laser Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"laser cutter",
"materials",
"mit"
] | Come on now, admit it. You’ve done it. We’ve done it. You know — you were
really
sure that sheet of plastic stock you found lying around the hackerspace was acrylic right? You dialled in the settings, loaded the design, set the focus and pushed the little green ‘start’ button. Lots of black smoke, fire, and general badness ensued as you lunged for the red ‘stop’ button, before lifting the lid to work out how you’re going to clean this one up.
That was not acrylic. That was polycarbonate.
What you need is the latest gadget from MIT:
SensiCut: A smart laser cutter system that detects different materials automatically
.
The technique makes use of so-called ‘speckle imaging’ where a material illuminated by a laser will produce a unique pattern of reflected spots, or speckles into a camera. By training a deep neural model with a large set of samples, it was found possible to detect up to 30 types of material with 98% accuracy.
The pre-baked model runs on a Raspberry PI zero with an off-the-shelf camera all powered from a power bank. This allows the whole assembly to simply drop onto an existing laser cutter head, with no wiring needed.
Even if you’re a seasoned laser cutter user, with a well-controlled stock pile, the peace-of-mind this could give would definitely be worth the effort. A more detailed description and more videos may be found by
reading the full paper
. Here’s hoping they release the system as open source, one day in the not-to-distant future. If not, then, you know what to do :) | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378216",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2021-09-07T06:05:32",
"content": "Wow! Awesome!Running a hackerspace with a laser is always a challenge, this would eliminate a lot of common problems.Even though I dislike software-as-service, I found Glowforge with QR coded material was a ... | 1,760,372,957.954505 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/06/this-electronics-overview-guides-new-hackers-in-the-right-direction/ | This Electronics Overview Guides New Hackers In The Right Direction | Jim Heaney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"Beginners",
"learning",
"reference"
] | Many of us don’t have a formal background to build off when taking on new hacks, we have had to teach ourselves complex concepts and learn by doing (or more commonly, by failing). To help new hackers get off the ground a bit easier, [PhilosopherFar3847] created a fantastic starter’s resource on electronics,
The Electroagenda Summary of Electronics
.
[PhilosipherFar3847] created Electroagenda with the goal of helping amateurs, students, and professionals alike better understand electronics. The Summary of Electronics, one of the more recent additions to the website, is split across 26 sections each breaking down a different electrical concept into easy-to-understand facts with no math or unfamiliar jargon. The summary covers a broad range of electronics, from simple passive components and their uses, up to the basic operating concepts of a microcontroller.
While this resource on its own will not be enough to get a fledgling hacker started making cool circuits, it does provide a very important skill; knowing how to ask the right questions. This base of knowledge provides enough context and keywords to better articulate a challenge and Google-fu a bit more effectively.
Are you the aforementioned fledgling hacker, looking to learn more? check out these nifty
logic gates you can plug into each other
to build a basic circuit.
[via
r/diyelectronics
] | 12 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378213",
"author": "ohryo",
"timestamp": "2021-09-07T05:55:49",
"content": "A weird mix of academic knowledge and O’Reilly-like dumbing-down. Sorry, but in its current state it has little use.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "... | 1,760,372,958.04859 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/06/homebrew-sounder-maps-the-depths-in-depth/ | Homebrew Sounder Maps The Depths In Depth | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"bathymetry",
"boat",
"gps",
"matplotlib",
"nmea",
"python",
"sonar",
"ultrasound"
] | For those who like to muck around in boats, there’s enough to worry about without wondering if you’re going to run aground. And there’s really no way to know that other than to work from charts that show you exactly what lies beneath. But what does one do for places where no such charts exist? Easy —
make your own homebrew water depth logger
.
Thankfully, gone are the days when an able seaman would manually deploy the sounding line and call out the depth to the bottom. [Neumi]’s sounding rig uses an off-the-shelf sonar depth sounder, one with NMEA, or National Marine Electronic Association, output. Combined with a GPS module and an Arduino with an SD card, the rig can keep track not only of how much water is below it, but exactly where the measurement point is. The whole thing is rigged up to an inflatable dinghy which lets it slowly ply the confines of a small marina, working in and out of the nooks and crannies. A bit of Python and matplotlib stitches that data together into a bathymetric map of the harbor, with pretty fine detail. The chart also takes the tides into account, as the water level varies quite a bit over the four hours it takes to gather all the data. See it in action in the video after the hop.
There’s something cool about revealing the mysteries of the deep, even if they’re not that deep. Want to go a little deeper?
We’ve seen that before too
. | 10 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378188",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2021-09-06T23:12:16",
"content": "Good effort. I wish the video had used a narrative rather than a musical soundtrack.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6378229",
"author": "ilias... | 1,760,372,957.999978 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/06/m4-breadstick-is-a-tasty-prototyping-alternative/ | M4 Breadstick Is A Tasty Prototyping Alternative | Kristina Panos | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize"
] | What does “breadboard-friendly” mean to you? It’s become a game of minimum viability. Sure, it fits in the breadboard, but are there any accessible tie points left for wires and components? What good is a development board if you can’t easily prototype with it?
A few years ago, [Michael Rangen] set out to change all of that by creating
a long and skinny development board that spaces out the I/O pins and simplifies wiring
, making every circuit beautiful and easier to take in visually. The current version is an adaptation of Adafruit’s ItsyBitsy M4 Express. It has 20 I/O pins, all spread out along the length and numbered around the horn like an IC. [Michael] dipped this breadstick in 24 tiny RGB LEDs, all of which are on a dedicated com bus.
We think this is a great idea that will definitely make microcontrollers more hackable. This type of layout would make checking students’ work a breeze, and you can make tidy prototypes with it yourself after class. Today the board runs CircuitPython, and it will be able to run Arduino in the future.
This ESP socket may not leave quite as many tie points open, but it’s way easier than soldering header to it
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 10 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378174",
"author": "Bence",
"timestamp": "2021-09-06T20:59:06",
"content": "For this purpose, I’ve used my design skills to make a _vertical_ aligned demo board for myself…https://www.instructables.com/Breadboard-Compatible-PIC18F25J50-Demoboard/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth... | 1,760,372,958.097232 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/06/tiny-esp32-strider-walks-the-walk/ | Tiny ESP32 Strider Walks The Walk | Danie Conradie | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"robot walker",
"strandbeest"
] | Wheels might be the simplest method of locomotion for robots, but walkers are infinitely more satisfying to watch. This is certainly the case for [
Chen Liang’s]
tiny Strider walker controlled by a ESP32 camera board
.
The Strider mechanism might look similar to
Strandbeest
walkers, but it lifts its feet higher, allowing it to traverse rougher terrain. [Chen]’s little 3D printed version is driven by a pair of geared N20 motors, with three legs on each side. The ESP32 camera board allows for control and an FPV video feed using WiFi, with power coming from a 14500 LiFePO4 battery. The width required by the motors, leg mechanisms, and bearings means the robot is quite wide, to the point that it could get stuck on something that’s outside the camera’s field of view. [Chen] is
working to make it narrower
by using continuous rotation servos and a wire drive shaft.
We’ve seen no shortage or riffs on the many-legged walkers, like the
TrotBot and Strider
mechanism developed by [Wade] and [Ben Vagle], and their
website
is an excellent resource for prospective builders.
Thanks for the tip [Thinkerer]! | 3 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378171",
"author": "ConsultingJoe",
"timestamp": "2021-09-06T20:28:37",
"content": "That is cool. I like how the wifi Hotspot pops up the gateway login page automatically after login in for the controller page.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,372,958.133466 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/06/small-scale-mad-max-danny-huynhs-dystopian-animatronics/ | Small Scale Mad Max: Danny Huynh’s Dystopian Animatronics | Danie Conradie | [
"Robots Hacks",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"animatronics",
"post-apocalyptic",
"puppets",
"radio control car"
] | The hacker spirit is always alive and well in post-apocalyptic fiction, as characters throw together contraptions from whatever junk they can find. While these might not always be practical or possible in reality, their primary purpose is usually to look the part. This is definitely the case for
[Danny Huynh]’s post-apocalyptic animatronic creations
, which look like they can slot straight into Mad Max or Fallout.
[Danny] is an avid RC enthusiast, so many of the models are
highly customized off-the-shelf RC cars
. However, it’s the lifelike moving characters in these models that really catch the eye. Their hands and feet move with the steering and throttle, and in the
motorcycle builds
they will often lean with the turns. Other notable builds include a
hexapedal taxi
and a couple of
animatronic bands
.
All the vehicle builds are electric, but it looks like [Danny] often includes an audio module to simulate a roaring engine. He makes extensive use of servos and linkages for character movement, with wiring and electronics carefully hidden by paint or bodywork.
With all the CGI technology available today, great animatronic builds like an eerily
lifelike heart
, or
a talking Nikola Tesla
are all the more impressive to see. | 11 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378116",
"author": "c",
"timestamp": "2021-09-06T15:05:52",
"content": "I love his creations. Especially the one that shoots real arrows. A while back his facebook page got hacked and facebook just let the hackers have the page, so he had to create a new page. He said he backed up ... | 1,760,372,958.181264 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/07/gateboy-is-a-game-boy-emulated-at-gate-level/ | GateBoy Is A Game Boy Emulated At Gate Level | Lewin Day | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"emulation",
"emulator",
"game boy",
"gameboy",
"nintendo",
"Nintendo Game Boy"
] | Old game systems are typically the most popular targets for emulation. With huge communities of fans wanting to recreate the good times of yesteryear, most old systems have all been brought back to life in this manner. However, some simply dive into emulation for the technical challenge,
and [Austin Appleby] has done just that with GateBoy.
GateBoy is a project to emulate the Game Boy logic gate by logic gate. It’s a lower level approach that builds upon earlier work [Austin] did on a project called MetroBoy,
which we featured previously
.
The emulator was created by painstakingly reverse-engineering the logic of the Game Boy. This was done by poring over die shots of the actual DMG-01 CPU silicon. GateBoy emulates most of the chip, though avoids the audio hardware at this stage.
Presently, GateBoy runs at roughly 6-8 frames per second on a modern 4GHz CPU. As it turns out, emulating all those gates and the various clock phases at play in the DMG-01 takes plenty of processing power. However, compilation optimizations do a lot of heavy lifting, so in some regards, GateBoy runs impressively quickly for what it is.
[Austin] still has plenty of work to do before GateBoy is completely operational, and there are some strange quirks of the Game Boy hardware that still need to be figured out. Regardless, it’s a fantastic academic exercise and a noble effort indeed. Meanwhile, you might like to check out the Game Boy emulator that runs
just one single game. | 26 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378397",
"author": "Austin Appleby",
"timestamp": "2021-09-07T20:58:12",
"content": "Hi, author here, happy to answer questions.Also, please try out the Plait graph visualizer included in the repo. It’s a hacky mess, but you might have fun with it. :D",
"parent_id": null,
"... | 1,760,372,958.290153 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/07/rugged-solar-generator-packs-a-punch/ | Rugged Solar Generator Packs A Punch | Dave Rowntree | [
"Solar Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"18650 cell",
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"power bank",
"solar"
] | Hackaday Prize 2021 entrant [Philip Ian Haasnoot] has been building a well-polished power bank. But this is no ordinary little power bank the like you would throw in your rucksack for a day out. No, this
2.5 kW luggable power bank
is neatly encased in a tough, waterproof Pelican 1550 case, and is suitably decked out with all the power sockets you could possibly need for a long weekend of wilderness camping and photography.
Boy, that’s a lot of tab welding
This box sports USB-C and USB 3.0 connectors for gadget charging, as well as 12 VDC cigarette lighter and XT-60 ports for high-drag devices. Also it provides a pair of 120 VAC sockets via an integrated inverter, which at 1.5 kW could run a small heater if you were really desperate, but more likely useful to keep your laptop going for a while. Now if only you could get Wi-Fi out in the desert!
[Philip] doesn’t actually talk much about the solar panels themselves, but we know the box contains a 600 W
MPPT
boost converter to take solar power in, and feed the LiPo battery pack in the correct manner.
The battery pack is custom-made from salvaged and tested 18650 cells, as you would expect, which we reckon took an absolute age to make by hand. The whole project is nicely finished, and looks like something we’d be happy to throw in the back of the car before heading out into our local wilderness.
As [Philip] says in the project description, it’s a tough job to carry enough power and keep all his drones, cameras and lighting equipment charged, not mention helping prevent the campsite occupants from freezing overnight during the chilly Arizona nights.
Many power bank designs have graced these fair pages over the years, like this
rather polished build
, and long may they continue to do so.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 29 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378367",
"author": "buzzkil11",
"timestamp": "2021-09-07T19:14:14",
"content": "Lotta details not in the build notoes. Like why 24 volt lithium ion and then throwing in the loss of using a voltage dc to dc converter to get back down to 12 volts? Also the underside of that board ha... | 1,760,372,958.565429 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/07/new-engines-could-propel-the-b-52-beyond-its-100th-birthday/ | New Engines Could Propel The B-52 Beyond Its 100th Birthday | Lewin Day | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider",
"Weapons Hacks"
] | [
"aircraft",
"B-52",
"B-52 Stratofortress",
"bomber",
"military",
"military aircraft"
] | First taking to the skies in April 1952, and introduced into the US Air Force in 1955, the B-52 Stratofortress has since become a mainstay of American air power. Originally developed as a nuclear bomber to carry out the critical deterrence role, changing realities saw it delivering solely conventional munitions in actual operations.
Of 744 B-52s originally built, 76 remain in service with the Air Force and Air Force Reserve. This fleet is set to go on flying beyond the type’s 100th birthday, into 2050 and beyond. To reach that milestone,
a new engine package will be key to keeping these birds in the air.
Built Nuclear Tough
A U.S. B-52H Stratofortress in flight over the Persian Gulf in 2019. Note the black contrails commonly seen from the eight engines of the B-52.
Despite its age, the B-52 is still regularly flown and
kept in prime combat readiness.
Part of the reason for its long service is that the Buff, or “Big Ugly Fat Fella”, as it’s known, was intentionally overengineered and overbuilt. Created in the era of slide rules, designers wanted to ensure that the plane would be able to deal with the stresses of the high-altitude nuclear attack mission. Leaving enough margin in the design has meant that despite flying for decades, the B-52s still in service still have plenty of structural life left in them.
The B-52 is known for its distinctive layout of eight engines in four separate two-engine pods. Equipped with Pratt & Whitney TF33-PW-103 engines, the bomber boasts a range of 8,800 miles (14,162 kilometers) without refueling. However,
the last of these engines was built in 1985
, and continuing to produce parts and maintain the engines is becoming a hassle.
Thus, the Air Force seeks a new engine with which to power the remaining fleet. Indeed, it’s not for the first time either. The first B-52s built actually flew with a variety of Pratt & Whitney J57 turbojets, before the TF33 turbofan was rolled out with B-52H production in 1961. Since then, the USAF has investigated the prospect of engine replacement multiple times. Once ahead of the development of the B-1 bomber, and again in 1996, and both times, the project was rejected. Since then, the engines have only gotten older, thus leading to the USAF opening up its request for proposals once more in 2020.
Flying Farther and Smarter
In order for the refit to make sense, the Air Force is seeking a replacement program that will net an engine that is cheaper to operate. These savings could come from increased reliability, easier maintenance, or simply better parts availability. The engine should also be quieter, and perhaps most importantly, more fuel efficient. Jet engine technology has moved on a long way since the TF33 was developed in the 1950s, and thus newer designs could bring great benefits to the B-52 platform.
The B-2 Spirit, pictured here flying next to a B-52 Stratofortress, is a more modern and stealthier aircraft than its predecessor. However, high running costs and the fact only 20 were built mean that the B-2 is not able to supplant the B-52 in regular operations.
There’s little desire for more thrust or greater speed, due to the limitations of the aging B-52 airframes. However, a more efficient engine could enable even longer range and greater loiter times than are already possible with the B-52. The hope is to boost range by 20-40 percent, up to 12,320 miles without refueling. This could allow the B-52 to reach any point on Earth without support from a tanker aircraft.
The other major benefit is that the new engines will come with digital engine controls. These systems monitor every aspect of an engine’s health, from turbine inlet and outlet temperatures, to shaft speeds, and just about everything else. When dealing with the maintenance of eight engines on each aircraft, having a digital system to monitor what’s failing and what needs to be changed is a huge help to ground crews. As a bonus, any problem fixed ahead of time is one that doesn’t derail a training program or active mission. Given the cost of these operations, it’s a saving that’s difficult to quantify accurately, but one that pays dividends nonetheless.
May The Best Engine Win
The Air Force aims to order 608 new engines for its fleet
, with General Electric, Rolls-Royce, and Pratt & Whitney are the three players vying for the contract. Based on those numbers, that’s eight engines for each of the 76 B-52s still in service today. Thus, it seems likely the plan is to stick with an eight-engine setup, despite four larger engines being a more typical solution on modern aircraft. Each company proposed an engine in the 20,000 lbf thrust range. General Electric put forward its CF34-10 and Passport engines, Rolls-Royce the F130, and Pratt & Whitney a version of its PW800. These are all smaller engines that one would typically see in applications such as small regional or private jets.
It’s hoped that greater fuel efficiency could reduce the B-52’s dependency on aerial refueling during its missions.
Each company is obviously eager to win the lucrative contract to re-engine the B-52.
Rolls Royce have already been testing their F130 contender since 2019,
well before the official announcement of the program, while
GE
and
Pratt & Whitney
are also busy touting their respective engines. Military procurement is big business, and fierce battle will go on behind closed doors before the ink is dry on the contracts.
Ask any engineer who worked on the B-52 program back in the 1950s
as to whether their aircraft would be flying in 100 years time, and you’d likely draw a chorus of raucous laughter. However, it just so happens that the B-52 does a job and does it well. Given that replacing it would require the development of an expensive new aircraft, something that the Air Force has struggled with in recent decades, it’s clear the Buff will still soar the skies for a while yet. For the pilots and crews responsible for running the grand machine, hopefully new engines will make that duty a little easier in the years to come. | 87 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378330",
"author": "Lee",
"timestamp": "2021-09-07T17:15:40",
"content": "Thought they were doing away with the b-52 in favor for the b-2. Mostly because of stealth not so much of payload/distance.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_i... | 1,760,372,959.082928 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/07/industrial-design-hack-chat/ | Industrial Design Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"Hack Chat",
"industrial design",
"model making",
"modeling",
"prototype",
"usability"
] | Join us on Wednesday, September 8 at noon Pacific for the
Industrial Design Hack Chat
with Eric Strebel!
At Hackaday, we celebrate all kinds of hardware hacks, and we try not to judge based on appearance. After all, every product starts out on the breadboard, or as a prototype built with hot glue and tape. What’s important is getting it to work, at least at first. But there comes a time when you’ve got to think about how to make your project look like something people want to use, how to position controls and displays in a logical and attractive way, and how to make sure your thing can actually be built.
Turning a project into a product is the job of an industrial designer. Pretty much everything you use, from the toothbrush by your sink to the car you drive to work in bears the marks of industrial design, some more successfully than others. Eric Strebel has been doing industrial design for years, and he keeps feeding us a steady diet of design tips and tricks through
his popular YouTube channel
. He’ll stop by the Hack Chat to get a little more in-depth on industrial design principles, and how you can make your projects look as good as they work.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, September 8 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
. | 9 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378369",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2021-09-07T19:22:07",
"content": "Attractive or functional. Rarely can be both. Function never needs a makeover, I want the winXP look forever. Maintain ADA and access standards. Curvy rows of keys kerned to fit in a shape made by a ske... | 1,760,372,958.488667 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/07/one-mans-quest-to-build-a-baby-book-with-brains/ | One Man’s Quest To Build A Baby Book With Brains | Tom Nardi | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Crowd Funding",
"Microcontrollers",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"ATmega328pb",
"book",
"coin cell",
"crowdfunding",
"phototransistor"
] | Regular readers will know that Hackaday generally steers clear of active crowdfunding campaigns. But occasionally we do run across a project that’s unique enough that we feel compelled to dust off our stamp of approval. Especially if the campaign has already blasted past its funding goal, and we don’t have to feel bad about getting you fine folks excited over vaporware.
It’s with these caveats in mind that we present to you
Computer Engineering for Babies,
by [Chase Roberts]
. The product of five years of research and development, this board book utilizes an internal microcontroller to help illustrate the functions of boolean logic operations like AND, OR, and XOR in an engaging way. Intended for toddlers but suitable for curious minds of all ages, the book has already surpassed 500% of its funding goal on Kickstarter at the time of this writing with no signs of slowing down.
The electronics as seen from the rear of the book.
Technical details are light on the Kickstarter page to keep things simple, but [Chase] was happy to talk specifics when we reached out to him. He explained that the original plan was to use discreet components, with early prototypes simply routing the button through the gates specified on the given page. This worked, but wasn’t quite as robust a solution as he’d like. So eventually the decision was made to move the book over to the
low-power ATmega328PB microcontroller
and leverage the MiniCore project so the books could be programmed with the Arduino IDE.
Obviously battery life was a major concern with the project, as a book that would go dead after sitting on the shelf for a couple weeks simply wouldn’t do. To that end, [Chase] says his code makes extensive use of the Arduino LowPower library. Essentially the firmware wakes up the ATmega every 15 ms to see if a button has been pressed or the page turned, and updates the LED state accordingly. If no changes have been observed after roughly two minutes, the chip will go into a deep sleep and won’t wake up again until an interrupt has been fired by the yellow button being pressed. He says there are some edge cases where this setup might misbehave, but in general, the book should be able to run for about a year on a coin cell.
[Chase] tells us the biggest problem was finding a reliable way to determine which page the book was currently turned to. In fact, he expects to keep tinkering with this aspect of the design until the books actually ship. The current solution uses five phototransistors attached to the the MCU’s ADC pins, which receive progressively more light as fewer pages are laying on top of them. The first sensor is exposed when the second page of the book is opened, so for example, if three of the sensors are seeing elevated light levels the code would assume the user is on page four.
Opening to the last page exposes all five light sensors.
The books and PCBs are being manufactured separately, since as you might expect, finding a single company that had experience with both proved difficult. [Chase] plans on doing the final assembly and programming of each copy in-house with the help of family members; given how many have already been sold this early in the campaign, we hope he’s got a lot of cousins.
So what do you do with an Arduino-compatible book when Junior gets tired of it? That’s what we’re particularly interested in finding out. [Chase] says he’s open to releasing the firmware as an open source project after the dust settles from the Kickstarter campaign, which would give owners a base to build from should they want to roll their own custom firmware. Obviously the peripheral hardware of the book is fairly limited, but nothing is stopping you from hanging some sensors on the I2C bus or hijacking the unused GPIO pins.
If you end up teaching your copy of
Computer Engineering for Babies
some new tricks,
we’ve love to hear about it
. | 44 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378311",
"author": "fennec",
"timestamp": "2021-09-07T15:31:25",
"content": "Was about to back, but shipping is almost as much as the pledge.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6378410",
"author": "John",
"timest... | 1,760,372,958.656504 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/07/review-hands-on-with-the-swarm-satellite-network-eval-kit/ | Review: Hands On With The Swarm Satellite Network Eval Kit | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"Radio Hacks",
"Reviews",
"Space"
] | [
"Ground Station",
"IoT",
"satcom",
"satellite",
"space",
"swarm"
] | If you have devices out in the field, you probably want to connect with them. There was a time when that was hard to do, requiring telephone wires or specialized radio gear. Now cellular data is prevalent, but even cellular isn’t everywhere. If you have the cash, you can pay a number of satellite companies to carry your data, but that’s generally pricey and has its own challenges.
The age of satellite constellations is changing that. Of course everyone by now has heard of Starlink which is offering satellite internet via numerous satellites that are much smaller than traditional telecom satellites. But they’re not the only came in town.
A company called Swarm has put up
a constellation of 1/4U cube satellites
in low orbits. They offer a ground station that uses an omni antenna and a subscription access program for small amounts of data. They sent us
a unit to review
, and while I haven’t used the system in a real project yet, the kit was pretty impressive.
About Swarm
The Swarm Tile is made to mount on a PCB
The Swarm “tile” is a tiny radio that can talk bi-directionally with small satellites in low Earth orbit. The little unit is made to mount on a PCB, can control its power consumption, and talks to your system via a standard 3.3V UART connection. It does, however, require a small antenna and maybe even a smaller antenna for its GPS module. Small, in this case, is about a mid-size handy talkie antenna. There is a half-wave antenna that doesn’t need a ground plane and a shorter antenna that does need a ground plane.
The system can get away with the small antenna because the satellites are in low Earth orbit. However, that also means you don’t always have a satellite overhead. The company claims they will eventually have more coverage but even then, the tile may hold on to your data until it finds a satellite. So for real-time data, this is probably not your answer.
Since these devices are made to go into the field, battery life is often a concern. According to the manual, the device uses up to 1A when transmitting, and up to 35mA on receive. In standby mode, the power draw drops to .022mA.
The tile itself costs just over $100. Then there’s the service. For $60 a year you get 750 data packets per device per month. Each packet can hold up to 192 bytes per packet. That’s enough for two packets a day for even the longest months. Of course, if you need more data or you need more frequent access, that’s something else. You can stack up to 4 data plans on one device, so $20 per month would get you 3,000 packets per month.
All packets aren’t created equal, either. You can have up to 10 downlink packets per day for a maximum of 60 of the 750 allocated per month. So if you really need two-way, you should think about that carefully. Obviously, this isn’t the right service for, say, a system to control a tank level remotely that needs to trade commands and data in both directions multiple times an hour in real-time. But an alarm system that checks in once per day, sends a packet when it goes off, and accepts an infrequent command changing the arm/disarm times, for example, might be a good fit.
The Competition
The usual way you see connected devices talk over satellite is via a VSAT (very small aperture terminal) with a 2-3 foot dish antenna. These tend to be pricey and they are finicky to set up as well. The upside is the satellites don’t move so once you are set up, that’s it (unless your antenna is moving). You always have access to the satellite. Latency, of course, is significant, too.
A VSAT antenna (public domain).
However, you can find VSAT almost everywhere. Stores use it to keep their point of sale terminals connected, for example. Many lottery machines use VSAT, too. Electric power utilities and gas pipelines use VSAT to collect data from remote locations.
VSAT doesn’t seem like it is really direct competition to Swarm, however. If you need real network connectivity, you can’t really use Swarm. But if you only need a small amount of infrequent data, Swarm is probably a lot cheaper and easier to deploy than a VSAT terminal. It seems to us that the real competition is cheap cellular modems and, of course, cellular won’t do you any good on your data collection buoy in the middle of the ocean. So Swarm isn’t for everyone, but for certain projects, it is probably well worth a look.
There are a few other companies trying to be the satellite provider of choice for IoT applications. There is
OqTec
,
Orbcomm
,
Kepler Communications
, and
Fleet
along with doubtless other contenders. StarLink will probably be a player in this space too, but so far
its been making a splash in providing internet connections
. There are also a lot of traditional names like Hughes, GlobalStar, and Iridium that have some IoT product in the market or, at least, announced. However, Swarm seems pretty hacker-friendly compared to some of the other choices.
The Evaluation Kit
The back of the Swarm eval kit
The evaluation kit was surprisingly rugged, arriving in a waterproof (IP68) case with a battery, a solar panel, and an ESP32 host computer. There was also a sturdy tripod. It isn’t cheap at $500, but the quality shows and it didn’t feel like it should cost less. There’s
a setup video from the company
if you’re looking for more detail on that process.
There’s a rubber-domed switch to turn the thing on and an OLED display shows some initial data. The SNR figure on the display and a red LED told me there was too much noise to successfully communicate with the satellite indoors, but sitting out on the patio, the light turned green. I didn’t mount the tripod and that seemed to be no problem.
The green LED doesn’t mean the device is actually talking to a satellite yet, though. As luck would have it, the pass predictor showed I was almost two hours away from a satellite pass. The company says by 2022 they plan to have all 92 satellites up and that will give them “near constant” coverage. Once I had a satellite overhead, though, it all worked as you would expect.
Software
The evaluation kit has a serial connection for the ESP32, but since it is in a watertight case, it is easier to use the WiFi. We noticed the range on the WiFi was limited, probably to reduce the noise for the satellite receiver.
Data appears in a web interface or readable via JSON.
The box sends its GPS location and some other data periodically and using the network interface you can post a short e-mail although, obviously, that will eventually eat up your data plan. By default, the data shows up on a website, and you can grab the JSON from a web service. You can also see the GPS data on a map which is only interesting if you are moving.
This map shows the satellite passes over the Johnson Space Center.
Of course, everything is on hold until you get a satellite overhead. You can enter your location into
a website
to see when the upcoming passes are for you.
If you are communicating directly with the tile, you’ll find it uses a NMEA-style communication string just like a GPS. Obviously, there are
a few unusual commands
, but the data format is the same.
What Would You Do With It?
When you first start thinking of what you could do with satellite data, your imagination will run wild. Then you have to come back to Earth — so to speak — when you realize you have to severely limit your data and you can’t expect it to be even close to real-time.
I have a feeling satellite data is one of those things that sounds better than it is for most applications. If you are in range of the cellular network, that
might be a cheaper option than you think
. However, for those applications that will go where no cell tower has gone before, Swarm might be an answer if you can live within its limitations. | 29 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378302",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-09-07T14:23:32",
"content": "Even with only 2 connects a day, I think it would be useful for sending data from remote weather stations.Or water levels, earth tremors. I think of the number of unpopulated islands around the world, some ar... | 1,760,372,958.731967 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/07/getting-a-flys-eye-view-with-microfabricated-lens-arrays/ | Getting A Fly’s-Eye View With Microfabricated Lens Arrays | Dan Maloney | [
"Parts",
"Science"
] | [
"etching",
"hydrofluoric acid",
"mace",
"MEMS",
"metal-assistec chemical etching",
"microfabrication",
"molding",
"nitric acid",
"PDMS",
"silcon",
"silcone",
"silicon"
] | Atomic force microscopy, laser ablation, and etching with a witches brew of toxic chemicals: sounds like [Zachary Tong] has been playing in the lab again, and this time he found
a way to fabricate arrays of microscopic lenses
as a result.
Like many of the best projects, [Zach]’s journey into micro-fabrication started with a happy accident. It happened while he was working on metal-activated chemical etching (MACE), which uses a noble metal catalyst to selectively carve high-aspect-ratio features in silicon. After blasting at a silver-coated silicon wafer with a laser, he noticed the ablation pits were very smooth and uniform after etching. This led him to several hypotheses about what was going on, all of which he was able to test.
The experiments themselves are pretty interesting, but what’s really cool is that [Zach] realized the smooth hemispherical pits in the silicon could act as a mold for an array of microscopic convex lenses. He was able to deposit a small amount of clear silicone resin into the mold by spin-coating, and (eventually) transfer the microlens array to a glass slide. The lenses are impressively small — hundreds of them over only a couple hundred square microns — and pretty well-formed. There’s always room for improvement, of course, but for an initial attempt based on a serendipitous finding, we’d call it a win. As for what good these lenses are, your guess is as good as ours. But novel processes like these tend to find a way to be useful, and the fact that this is coming out of a home lab doesn’t change that fact.
We find this kind of micro-fabrication fascinating. Whether it’s
making OLED displays
,
micro-machining glass with plasma
, or even
rolling your own semiconductors
, we can’t get enough of this stuff. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378251",
"author": "Jan-Maarten",
"timestamp": "2021-09-07T11:39:06",
"content": "My guess: light field optics",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6378599",
"author": "rpavlik",
"timestamp": "2021-09-08T13:54:05",... | 1,760,372,958.783397 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/06/lightning-detector-keeps-a-tally/ | Lightning Detector Keeps A Tally | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"lightning detector"
] | Lightning is one of the great forces of nature. The huge releases of electricity release detectable electromagnetic emissions, as you might expect. The team at the [LVL1 Hackerspace] put together a lightning detector of their own; one which keeps count of the number of discharges
in the atmosphere.
The device consists of a typical tank circuit tuned to 300kHz, paired with a small telescopic antenna. Lightning strikes in the area induce an oscillation in the circuit which is amplified and then detected by an Arduino. The Arduino measures the voltage of the pulse, which is proportional to the magnitude of the signal detected. A ring of Neopixel LEDs are then switched on relative to the intensity of the signal. Additionally, when not actively detecting strikes, the Arduino instead uses the LEDs to display the current time and a binary count of the number of strikes detected since it has been running.
It’s a simple build, and one that would serve as a great introduction into the world of addressable LEDs and environmental monitoring. If you’d like to go about it another way, you can detect lightning
with an SDR, too
! | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378098",
"author": "bob",
"timestamp": "2021-09-06T14:19:13",
"content": "Such a device would have been interesting a couple weeks ago when we had a storm roll through here, north of Denver, CO, that spent about an hour with discharges about 3-4 times per minute. New experience for... | 1,760,372,959.126564 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/06/how-to-get-good-with-wood/ | How To Get Good With Wood | Tom Nardi | [
"how-to",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"cutting",
"power tools",
"sanding",
"wood working",
"woodworking"
] | It’s perhaps unsurprising that we don’t see much in the way of woodworking here at Hackaday; after all, this is a plastics and metal community if there ever was one. But that doesn’t mean you’ll never come across a situation where a dead tree needs to be cut or shaped to your will, so we appreciate
[Eric Strebel] demonstrating some tips and best practices for working with this exceptionally versatile building material
.
The first video assumes you’re a lumber neophyte, and goes over topics such as the different species of wood you’re likely to find at the hobby shop, proper sanding technique, and the differences between cutting with and against the grain. Some of the different cutting tools you can use are also covered, ranging from the humble hobby knife to the band saw. As always, [Eric] sprinkles the video with tips and tricks gained from his considerable professional experience, such as using some glue and a bit of sawdust to fill in any gaps left behind by an uneven joint.
In the second video, things start getting more advanced. [Eric] demonstrates how you can create custom laminates, and how wood can be permanently bent into arbitrary shapes with sufficient steam and clamping pressure. By combining these new techniques with the basic concepts covered in the first video, surprisingly complex shapes can be formed with minimal effort.
[Eric] previously put together a similar series of videos on working with acrylic
, a material that’s arguably far more familiar to the Hackaday readership. But whatever material you use, the takeaway message from this series is clear: get the right tools, learn the techniques, and professional results are well within your reach. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378059",
"author": "Rumble_in_the_Jungle",
"timestamp": "2021-09-06T08:39:46",
"content": "Bend it to your will. By practicing often.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6378092",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,372,958.939707 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/05/injection-molding-silicone-parts-for-under-50/ | Injection Molding Silicone Parts For Under $50 | Lewin Day | [
"Parts"
] | [
"injection molding",
"silicone"
] | You’ve likely seen many tutorials on making silicone parts using 3D printed molds online. The vast majority of these methods use a simple pour method to fill the mold. This relies on careful degassing and gentle pouring to reduce the presence of bubbles in the final result. [Jan Mrázek] has been working on an alternative method however,
that allows for injection molding at low cost in the home shop.
The process relies on the use of printed resin molds. [Jan] notes that this generally necessitates the use of condensation-cure silicones, as additive types don’t cure well in resin molds. The condensation silicone is mixed up, degassed, and poured into a standard cartridge. From there, it’s installed in a silicone delivery air gun, which uses compressed air to force the silicone out of the nozzle and into the waiting mold.
It’s basically using a bunch of home DIY gear to create a cheap injection molding solution for silicone parts. [Jan] notes that there are a few mods needed to mold design to suit the process, and that 400-800 kPa is a good pressure to inject the silicone at.
Having the silicone injected under pressure is great for complex mold designs, as it forces the material into all the little difficult nooks and crannies. Of course,
we’ve seen other methods for making silicone parts before, too.
Be sure to sound off in the comments with your own favored techniques for producing quality silicone parts. Video after the break. | 14 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378048",
"author": "centpiece",
"timestamp": "2021-09-06T07:21:37",
"content": "Thanks for sharing. Really interesting stuff.Does anyone know about the stiffness and hardness of the parts? I did see the inserts for rigidity but I still recon it would be pretty rubbery, but I guess ... | 1,760,372,959.179261 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/05/stranger-things-message-board-passes-the-time-by-spelling-it-out/ | Stranger ThingsMessage Board Passes The Time By Spelling It Out | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"clock hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"ESP-01",
"letter clock",
"RGB LEDs",
"Stranger Things",
"word clock"
] | Will Netflix’s nostalgic hit
Stranger Things
be back for a fourth series anytime soon? We could pull out a Ouija board and ask the spirits, but we’d much rather ask closer to the source, i.e. a spirit in the upside down. And you know that the best way to do that is with LEDs — one for each letter of the alphabet so the spirit can spell out their messages.
Although contact with the Demogorgon’s world isn’t likely with
[danjovic]’s open-source
Stranger Things
board
, you are guaranteed to get the time spelled out for you every minute, as in, ‘it’s twenty-five (or six) to four’. And if you want to freak out your unwitting friends, you can covertly send messages to it from your phone.
There are two versions now — the original desktop version, and one that hangs on the wall and uses a high-quality photo print for the background. Both use an ESP-01 and an Arduino to help drive the 26 RGB LEDs, and use a DS2321 real-time clock for timing. We love the enameled wiring job on the wall-mount version, but the coolest part has to be dual language support for English and Brazilian Portuguese. You can check out demos of both after the break.
We’ve seen many a word clock around here, but this is probably one of the few that’s dripping with pop culture. If it’s stunning modernism you want,
take a look at this painstakingly-constructed beauty
. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6378045",
"author": "vib",
"timestamp": "2021-09-06T07:04:51",
"content": "B O R * * G",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6378080",
"author": "Adam",
"timestamp": "2021-09-06T10:51:16",
"content": "I think if letters wo... | 1,760,372,959.226685 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/05/hackaday-links-september-5-2021/ | Hackaday Links: September 5, 2021 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links",
"Slider"
] | [
"alarm clock",
"coring",
"fracture",
"hackaday links",
"injuries",
"mars",
"Perseverance",
"phone phreaking",
"pots",
"roller coaster",
"rover",
"sample return"
] | Good news from Jezero crater as the Mars rover Perseverance manages to accomplish for the first time what it was sent to do:
collect and cache core samples from rocks
. Space buffs will no doubt recall that
Perseverance’s first attempt at core sampling didn’t go as planned
— the rock that planetary scientists selected ended up being too soft, and the percussive coring bit just turned the core sample into powder. The latest attempt went exactly as planned: the cylindrical coring bit made a perfect cut, the core slipped into the sample tube nested inside the coring bit, and the core broke off cleanly inside the sample tube when it was cammed off-axis. Operators were able to provide visible proof that the core sample was retained this time using the Mastcam-Z instrument, which clearly shows the core in the sample tube. What’s neat is that they then performed a “percuss to ingest” maneuver, where the coring bit and sample tube are vibrated briefly, so that the core sample and any dust grains left around the sealing rim slide down into the sample tube. The next step is to transfer the sample tube to the belly of the rover where it’ll be hermetically sealed after some basic analysis.
Did any Android users perhaps oversleep this week? If you did, you’re not alone —
lots of users of the Google Clock app reported that their preset alarms didn’t go off
. Whether it was an actual issue caused by an update or some kind of glitch is unclear, but it clearly didn’t affect everyone; my phone mercilessly reminded me when 6:00 AM came around every day last week. But it apparently tripped up some users, to the point where one reported losing his job because of being late for work. Not to be judgmental, but it seems to me that if your job is so sensitive to you being late, it might make sense to have a backup alarm clock of some sort. We all seem to be a little too trusting that our phones are going to “just work,” and when they don’t, we’re surprised and appalled.
There seem to be two kinds of people in the world — those who hate roller coasters, and those who love them. I’m firmly in the latter camp, and will gladly give any coaster, no matter how extreme, a try. There have been a few that I later regretted, of course, but by and large, the feeling of being right on the edge of bodily harm is pretty cool. Crossing over the edge, though, is far less enjoyable, as the owners of
an extreme coaster in Japan are learning
. The Dodon-pa coaster at the Fuji-Q Highland amusement park is capable of hitting 112 miles (180 km) per hour and has racked up a sizable collection of injuries over the last ten months, including cervical and thoracic spine fractures. The ride is currently closed for a safety overhaul; one has to wonder what they’re doing to assess what the problem areas of the ride are. Perhaps they’re sending crash test dummies on endless rides to gather data, a sight we’d like to see.
And finally, you may have thought that phone phreaking was a thing of the past; in a lot of ways, you’d be right. But there’s still a lot to be learned about how POTS networks were put together, and
this phone switch identification guide
should be a big help to any phone geeks out there. Be ready to roll old school here — nothing but a plain text file that describes how to probe the switch that a phone is connected just by listening to things like dial tones and ring sounds. What’s nice is that it describes why the switches sound the way they do, so you get a lot of juicy technical insights into how switches work. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6377985",
"author": "gregg4",
"timestamp": "2021-09-05T23:13:33",
"content": "So far that text document is an interesting one. Will there be more from him?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6378034",
"author": "ThoughtPh... | 1,760,372,959.275448 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/05/building-a-levitating-turbine-desk-toy/ | Building A Levitating Turbine Desk Toy | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"desk toy",
"Magnetic levitation"
] | Magnetic levitation is a beautiful thing to watch. Seeing small objects wobble about while seemingly hovering in thin air never gets old. If you want something suitably distracting in this vein for your own desk,
consider building this levitating turbine from [JGJMatt].
The build uses a combination of 3D printed parts and metal rods to form a basic frame. The turbine is also 3D printed, making it easy to create the complex geometry for the curved fins. Rare earth magnets are then slotted into the parts in order to create the levitation effect. Two magnets are fitted to each frame piece, and one magnet is inserted into each end of the turbine. When aligned properly, the turbine will hover over the frame and can spin freely with almost no friction.
One concession made to functionality is a sewing needle inserted into the turbine. This presses against one part of the frame in order to keep the turbine from being pushed out of the magnetic field entirely. It’s possible that with very careful attention to detail in alignment, the pin could be eliminated, but it makes the system far more robust and reliable to have it there.
Floating in the magnetic field, a simple puff of air is enough to set the turbine spinning for quite some time. It makes for a captivating desk ornament, and one that can be tinkered with by changing the turbine blades for different performance. It may be frivolous, but at the larger scale, magnetic levitation is put to more serious uses like
high-speed transport
. Video after the break. | 18 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6377930",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2021-09-05T20:22:50",
"content": "If it’s in a vacuum, what’s going to make the turbine blade spin?What’s it going to do in a solar/wind generation system?It all sounds too complicated.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,372,959.392707 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/05/three-stage-thrust-vectoring-rocket/ | Three-Stage Thrust Vectoring Model Rocket With Tiny Flight Computers | Danie Conradie | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"guidance system",
"model rocket",
"rocket",
"Thrust vectoring"
] | Flying a thrust-vectoring rocket can be a challenge, and even more so if you stack multiple stages and a minimalist flight computer on top of it all. But [Joe Barnard] is not one to shy away from such a challenge,
so he built a three stage actively guided rocket named
Shreeek
.
[Joe] is well known for his thrust-vectoring rockets, some of which have came within a hair’s breadth of making a perfect
powered landing
. Previous rockets have used
larger, more complex flight computers
, but for this round, he wanted to go as small and minimalist as possible. Each stage of the rocket has its own tiny 16 x 17 mm flight computer and battery. The main components are a SAM21 microcontroller running Arduino firmware, an IMU for altitude and orientation sensing, and a FET to trigger the rocket motor igniter. It also has servo outputs for thrust vector control (TVC), and motor control output for the reaction wheel on the third stage for roll control. To keep it simple he omitted a way to log flight data, a decision he later regretted.
Shreeek
did not have a dedicated recovery system on any of the stages, instead relying on its light weight and high drag to land intact
None of the four launch attempts went as planned, with only the first two stages functioning correctly in the test with the best results. Thanks to the lack of recorded flight data, [Joe] had to rely on video footage alone to diagnose the problems after each launch. Even so, his
experience diagnosing problems certainly proved its worth
, with definitive improvements. However, we suspect that all his future flight computers will have data logging features included.
Thanks for the tip [BaldPower]! | 23 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6377915",
"author": "Mr_President",
"timestamp": "2021-09-05T18:37:44",
"content": "Although awesome, please look up applicable FAA regulations before doing this yourself. At least for Level 3 rockets, possibly 2s, any attitude control devices (including thrust vectoring/gimballed e... | 1,760,372,959.339418 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/05/build-yourself-a-nifty-cable-smartphone-mount/ | Build Yourself A Nifty Cable Smartphone Mount | Lewin Day | [
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"camera mount",
"mount",
"phone",
"smartphone",
"smartphone mount"
] | Smartphones have supplanted cameras in day to day use for the vast majority of purposes. However, unlike cameras, they don’t come with tripod mounts or any real good way of holding them in a set position.
[Mrballeng] has built an excellent mount,
however, that uses cable to hold a smartphone in all manner of positions, for photography or other purposes.
The mount relies on vinyl-coated steel cable. Upon this cable are slotted four blocks that are 3D printed out of resin. The blocks are also fitted with strong magnets. This allows them to be positioned along the vinyl cable while sticking themselves in place thanks to the magnetic attraction to the steel core. The blocks can also be used to attach the cable to magnetic objects like drywall screws or light fittings.
Using the mount is simple. The cable is wrapped around the phone and the blocks cinched up to hold it in place. Then, the magnets in the blocks can be used to hold the phone to walls or other surfaces.
It’s a tidy build, and one we can imagine using regularly if we had one. Of course, there’s no reason you couldn’t produce the parts on a more common filament-based printer, either. We’ve seen some other great smartphone photography hacks too, like this mod that
lets you use your phone as a microscope for under $10
. Video after the break. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6377957",
"author": "IIVQ",
"timestamp": "2021-09-05T21:24:22",
"content": "On a tangent: would it be possible to click the magnets to the build plate (maybe after printing a first layer for position) then embed them in the print, thereby omitting the entire pushing them in step?",
... | 1,760,372,959.639333 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/09/05/building-an-aluminum-rc-truck-from-scratch/ | Building An Aluminum RC Truck From Scratch | Adam Fabio | [
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"hand made",
"metalworking",
"R/C car",
"remote control car"
] | These days you can get just about any kind of radio controlled vehicle as a ready-to-run model. Cars, trucks, excavators, you name it. Open the box, charge the batteries, and you’re ready to roll. Even with all these modern conveniences, there is still a special breed of modelers who create their own models using only a few off-the-shelf parts.
[Rini Anita] is exactly that rare breed, creating this
aluminum RC truck from scratch
. The truck itself is a cab-over — short for Cab Over Engine (COE), a style seen making local deliveries worldwide. He starts with the ladder frame chassis, which is constructed using an extruded aluminum channel. This is the same material you’d normally use for the door tracks in retail store display cases. The electronics and standard RC fare: a receiver, electronic speed control, and a servo for steering. Batteries are recycled lithium cells. The main gearbox and drive axle look to be sourced from another RC vehicle, while leaf springs and suspension components are all custom built.
The truck’s body is a great example hand forming metal. First, a wooden form was created. Sections for the windows and door panels were carved out. Sheet aluminum was then bent over the wood form. Carefully placed hammer blows bend the metal into the carved sections – leaving the imprints of doors, windows, and other panel lines.
Throughout this build, we’re amazed by [Rini]’s skills, and the fact that the entire job was done with basic tools. A grinder, an old drill press, and a rivet gun are the go-to tools; no welder or 3D printer to be found. This puts a project like this well within the means of just about any hacker — though it may take some time to hone your skills! For his next truck, maybe [Rini] can
add a self driving option
! | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6377886",
"author": "Gary",
"timestamp": "2021-09-05T13:08:29",
"content": "Wow. This is a labor of love for sure. Very impressed! Though I had to laugh at 24:42. I’m surprised the scissors survived cutting both wires at the same time (shorts out the battery pack!). I made that... | 1,760,372,959.696812 |
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