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https://hackaday.com/2021/07/06/evan-doorbells-telephone-world/ | Evan Doorbell’s Telephone World | Jonathan Bennett | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"ma bell",
"phone phreaking",
"phreak"
] | Ah, phone phreaking. Some of us are just old enough to remember the ubiquity of land lines, but just young enough to have missed out on the golden years of phreaking. There’s something nostalgic about the analog sounds of the telephone, and doubly so when you understand what each click and chunk sound means. If this wistful feeling sounds familiar, then you too will appreciate [Evan Doorbell] and
his recordings of 1970s telephone sounds
. He’s been slowly working through his old recordings, and compiling them into a series of narrated tours of the phreak subculture.
[Evan]’s introduction to exploring the phone system started from a misdialed number, and an odd message. He describes that recorded “wrong number” message as being very different from the normal Ma Bell messages — this one was almost sultry. What number did he have to dial to hear that unique recording again? What follows is a youth spent in pursuit of playing with the phone system, though it would be more accurate to say the “phone systems”, as discovering the differences between the various local phone exchanges is a big part of the collection. Check out the first tape in the series after the break.
What’s really unique is the way the narration is woven together with his recordings from the time. A “party line” is the nickname for a number that can host an unintentional conference call, where multiple callers can talk to each other. Party lines feature heavily in this series, and it’s the first time I’ve heard actual recordings of one from the era. Head to the website for the audio downloads, or check the Youtube playlist above to stream them. Either way, enjoy the trip down the Phone Phreak rabbit hole. | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362386",
"author": "Nikolai",
"timestamp": "2021-07-07T03:08:07",
"content": "In my town in Russia, they still use Pulse Dial.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6362394",
"author": "Chris",
"timestamp": "2021-07... | 1,760,373,029.571339 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/06/see-through-carburetor-gives-a-clear-demonstration/ | See-Through Carburetor Gives A Clear Demonstration | Danie Conradie | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"carburetor",
"high speed video",
"Smarter Every Day"
] | Carburetors have been largely phased out on most automobiles, but for a century they were the standard, and still are on many smaller engines. Armed with a high-speed camera and with the help of his father, [Smarter Every Day] investigates these devices by experimenting with a DIY
see-through carburetor
connected to a real engine.
The purpose of a carburetor is to mix gasoline and oxygen to the correct ratio for combustion inside the engine. Gasoline flow from the tank to the bowl, from where gets sucked into the venturi. The choke valve adjusts the amount of air entering the carb, while the throttle controls the amount of air-fuel mixture entering the engine. It appears that the carburetor was made from a resin 3D printed body and manifold, with an acrylic cover and PLA throttle and choke valves. It was attached to a single-cylinder engine.
The high-speed footage is incredible, and clearly shows the operation of the carburetor and makes it incredibly easy to understand. If you’re interested, he also uploaded a second video with almost 80 minutes of detailed footage.
[Smarter Every Day]’s infectious curiosity has led to numerous fascinating projects, including a
supersonic baseball canon
and the
backward bicycle
. | 19 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362355",
"author": "steelman",
"timestamp": "2021-07-06T23:06:54",
"content": "[Smarter Every Day]I belive he introduces himself as Destin.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6362418",
"author": "Ni",
"timestamp"... | 1,760,373,029.208219 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/06/e-paper-pocket-map-goes-where-your-phone-cant/ | E-Paper Pocket Map Goes Where Your Phone Can’t | Tom Nardi | [
"handhelds hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"e-ink",
"e-paper",
"electronic paper",
"gps",
"navigation"
] | It’s easy to take for granted the constantly-connected, GPS-equipped, navigation device most of us now carry in our pockets. Want to know how to get to that new restaurant you heard about? A few quick taps in Google Maps, and the optimal route given your chosen transportation method will be calculated in seconds. But if you ever find yourself lost in the woods, you might be in for a rude awakening. With no cell signal and a rapidly dwindling battery, that fancy smartphone can quickly end up being about as useful as a rock.
Enter the IndiaNavi, a
modernization of the classic paper
map that’s specifically designed to avoid the pitfalls that keeps your garden variety smartphone from being a reliable bushcraft tool. The color electronic paper display not only keeps the energy consumption low, but has unbeatable daylight readability. No signal? No problem, as the relevant maps are pre-loaded on the device.
Besides the 5.65 inch e-paper display from Waveshare, the India Navi features a L96 M33 GPS receiver and ESP32-WROOM-32 microcontroller. The 3D printed enclosure that holds the electronics and the lithium pouch battery that powers them is still in the early stages, but we like the book-style design. The focus on simplicity and reliability doesn’t end with the hardware, either. The software is about a straightforward as it gets: just boot the IndiaNavi and you’re presented with a map that shows your current position.
With the rise of easily hackable e-paper displays
, we’re excited to see more concepts like the IndiaNavi which challenge our ideas on how modern electronics have to function and be used.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 47 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362327",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2021-07-06T21:06:48",
"content": "The only thing it’s missing to be a critical piece of survival gear is some solar cells and to be ruggedized.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "636232... | 1,760,373,029.51475 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/06/usb-power-banks-auto-off-becomes-useful-feature-in-garage-door-remote/ | USB Power Bank’s Auto-Off Becomes Useful Feature In Garage Door Remote | Donald Papp | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"auto-off",
"diy",
"garage door",
"power bank",
"power saving",
"remote"
] | For devices that are destined for momentary and infrequent use as well as battery power, some kind of power saving is pretty much a required feature. For example, when [PJ Allen]
turned two ESP8266-based NodeMCU development boards into a replacement wireless remote garage door opener
, a handy USB power bank ended up serving as a bit of a cheat when migrating the remote away from the workbench. Instead of moving the board from USB to battery power and implementing some kind of sleep mode or auto-off, [PJ Allen] simply plugged in a USB power bank and let it do all the work.
This is how the feature works: some USB power banks turn themselves off unless they detect a meaningful current draw. That means that if the power bank is charging a phone, it stays on, but if it’s only lighting up a few LEDs, it’ll turn itself off. This feature can be a frustrating one, but [PJ Allen] realized that it could actually be useful for a device like his garage door remote. Turning on the power bank delivers 5 V to the NodeMCU board and allows it to work, but after about fifteen seconds, the power bank turns itself off. Sure, strapping a power bank to the remote makes the whole thing bigger than it needs to be, but it’s a pretty clever use of the minimum load as an effortless auto-off feature.
The NodeMCU boards in [PJ Allen]’s DIY remote use
ESP-NOW
for their wireless communications, a nifty connectionless protocol from Espressif that we’ve seen used in other projects as well, such as
this ESP32-based walkie-talkie
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362313",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2021-07-06T19:47:45",
"content": "I have a 1100 lumin work light I use as a bike headlight. It has a USB port for charging, great. But it shuts off after running a LED taillight for a minute. Urgh! How much power load do I have to waste... | 1,760,373,029.015746 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/06/linux-fu-pdf-for-penguins/ | Linux Fu: PDF For Penguins | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Linux Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"ghostscript",
"linux",
"pdf",
"postscript"
] | PostScript started out as a programming language for printers. While PostScript printers are still a thing, there are many other ways to send data to a printer. But PostScript also spawned the Portable Document Format or PDF and that has been crazy successful. Hardly a day goes by that you don’t see some kind of PDF document come across your computer screen. Sure, there are other competing formats but they hold a sliver of market share compared to PDF. Viewing PDFs under Linux is no problem. But what about editing them? Turns out, that’s easy, too, if you know how.
GUI Tools
You can use lots of tools to edit PDF files, but the trick is how good the results will look. Anything will work for this: LibreOffice Draw, Inkscape, or even GIMP. If all you want to do is remove something with a white box or make an annotation, these tools are usually great, but for more complicated changes, or pixel-perfect output, they may not be the right tool.
The biggest problem is that most of these tools deal with the PDF as an image or, at least, a collection of objects. For example, columns of text will probably turn into a collection of discrete lines. Changing something that causes a line to wrap will require you to change all the other lines to match. Sometimes text isn’t even text at all, but images. It largely depends on how the creator made the PDF to begin with.
If you don’t mind using a Web-based tool,
PDFEscape
is free and works very well. Other options include Scribus and Okular. Both of these tools can’t really edit the file but can import them as images that you can further manipulate. For example, Okular’s review mode can add annotations like highlights and freehand lines.
Unsurprisingly, emacs can display a PDF file if it is running under X. You can use Control+C Control+C to switch to view a text representation. After all, most of the PDF file format is text and emacs can even handle binary files. So if you don’t mind working inside the PDF format — very much like PostScript — you can do your editing in emacs or even another text editor.
There are a few dedicated non-free editors out there and at least one
open-source PDF-specific editor
. Of course, like most things in Linux, you can also use the command line.
Hiding Text
The problem with working with PDFs as text — even in emacs — is that they are often compressed and otherwise unreadable. For example, words may appear a character at a time separated by formatting code or other data. So searching for arbitrary text in the PDF may not work.
You can convert the file to use more uncompressed text, although that’s no panacea. For example, if you open up this segment from an article on ham radio and want to change the word “convention”, it is hard to tell exactly where that text is, but it is somewhere in this general area:
3 0 obj << /Length 14770 /Filter /FlateDecode >> stream
H�|Wɒ�8��+p$gJ,�c��v�cS�Ҍc��J�$���\ZV�����\0�� �CTR�������r��[�}�7}����|��������I5u���`M�>�/��?l�.8�@��gBzq�r!#�%� AE�� � ᥉��x!$��X8^%$��A�D�B���(���b�[H �>����#��{a���e0$^H&|/����U1$^��#��/�G�Us��/"/��\ <i�'qC���$xe�"X�x22�������G��F�Lp]Mnm�$] #TI��G�q�l��'3;!���!+�ȷ�{䕀���
��b��Qja����Q i� GRn�\0�g;L����x�Zܿ㌳�n�2�R& :"x�r�ky�[JPK��/���S��i��������]r�F�p����k�� |���
QI�mx>1�\�1�Q��y)ХǺ�Z�U.^�](pN��dx����;�֬;d�_�{˪�cYa�\�.t�s�}�ْ{<\0ZW�:�Ȅ�Oɴ��cS�UzluP�֨o}ި��Uqf��o��V��bT%mj|��t����;v�{s�Rj˺���
Good luck finding it in that soup. You want to convert it to unpacked text.
qpdf -qdf input.pdf output.txt
The resulting file is actually a PDF even though I named it .txt. However, it has everything unpacked. That’s still not great, though, but at least you could find the part you need to change:
1.2632 -1.1242 TD
0.0739 Tc
0.1263 Tw
(One potentially confusing Stamp)Tj
-1.2632 -1.1368 TD
0.026 Tc
0.1248 Tw
[(con)38.6(v)20.7(ention is that the I/O pin numbers)]TJ
0 -1.1242 TD
0.0262 Tc
0.0072 Tw
[<646f6e90>13.6(t correspond to the IC pin numbers.)]TJ
T*
Again, good luck searching for the word “convention,” for example. But it is still better than the first example. You can also find metadata even in unprocessed files using things like /Author and /Title.
Command Line Magic
The
qpdf
tool can convert a PDF file to another PDF file. It can optimize the output for Web serving, text editing, and it can do simple things like remove pages or merge pieces of multiple files. You can read
the documentation
, but here we use the QDF mode to produce a legitimate PDF file with all the objects in numerical order and with normal Unix-style line endings. This allows you to more easily edit the file with a text editor, but as you’ve seen that doesn’t always make it simple. Removing entire objects is a headache, but if you get rid of all the mentions of an object, you can run fix-qdf to recreate the proper QDF file.
Another way to make common edits to PDF files is to use
PDFtk server
(PDFtk without the server moniker is a GUI toolkit for Windows). Using PDFtk you can merge or split documents, rotate pages, and do many other common tasks. For example, to join two files in order:
pdftk in1.pdf in2.pdf cat output output.pdf
You can omit, say, page 9:
pdftk in1.pdf in2.pdf cat 1-8 10-end output output.pdf
You can also shuffle merged pages in different orders:
pdftk A=in1.pdf B=in2.pdf shuffle A B output output.pdf
Text to PDF and Back
If you want to convert text into PDF from the command line you have several options.
Pandoc
is an amazing tool that converts markdown to almost anything. It will not only convert markdown to PDF but just about anything else.
You can also use various combinations of
ps2pdf
(along with a tool to generate PostScript), pdf2text (part of
poppler-utils
), or
Ghostscript
to create PDFs or strip text out of them. Ghostscript can do a lot, including convert a PDF to a number of image formats if you want to, say, display them on a Web page as an image.
Special Printing and Other Tools
Sometimes you want to modify a PDF file so it will print a certain way. We’ve already talked about how to merge odd and even pages, for example, but there are a few other commands you might want for this purpose:
pdfxup
– Uses pdflatex and Ghostscript to put multiple pages on one printed page (e.g., 2-up)
pdfjam
– Uses LaTeX to put documents on different size pages or produce multiple pages on one printed page
pdfposter
– Create giant output on multiple pages from a single page
If you prefer a GUI you might check out
PDFsam basic
. If you are interested in Java software, there is
Multivalent
.
Wrap Up
As usual, there are many ways to do daily tasks in Linux. Sometimes the challenge isn’t doing the work, but rather finding the tool that best fits your style of working.
Oddly enough pandoc
keeps coming up
for different reasons. If you prefer your documents on paper, you need a printer and
bookbinding clamp
. | 44 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362275",
"author": "lthemick",
"timestamp": "2021-07-06T17:19:45",
"content": "This is really useful information; thanks, Al!As a follow-up: What Linux tools enable indexing or searching a collection of pdf’s?For example, I have a large collection of magazine pdf’s – all paid for! ... | 1,760,373,029.378715 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/06/lightwave-multimeter-teardown/ | Lightwave Multimeter Teardown | Al Williams | [
"Repair Hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"8163A",
"agilent",
"fiber optic",
"fibre optic",
"HP",
"Keysight",
"laser",
"lightwave multimeter"
] | You tend to think of test equipment in fairly basic terms: a multimeter, a power supply, a signal generator, and an oscilloscope. However, there are tons of highly-specialized test equipment for very specific purposes. One of these is the 8163A “lightwave multimeter” and [Signal Path] tears one part for
repair
in a recent video that you can see below.
If you’ve never heard of a lightwave multimeter, don’t feel bad. The instrument is a measuring system for fiber optics and, depending on the plugins installed, can manage a few tests that you’d usually use an optical power meter, a laser or light source, and some dedicated test jigs to perform.
These meters are pricey, even used, so [Signal Path] picked up one that didn’t work. If you can repair an instrument, this is a good way to build a serious test bench at low cost. Of course, there is risk that you can’t find out what is wrong or you can’t get a suitable replacement part. But often the problems with this old test equipment are pretty simple. In this case, the box powered up, but had nothing but a flickering LCD screen.
The device is hard to access, but with the main board removed, it revealed an x86 processor and a large circuit board full for components. There’s even an FPGA. Many components are not populated so the same board probably does other functions, as well.
It isn’t a common occurrence, but we’ve all had times where taking something apart mysteriously makes it work and this was one of those times. Our suspicion is that taking the cables out and putting them back in restored connections between the main board and the front panel. But who knows?
About 8 minutes in, you get a nice walk though of how the device works along with a teardown of some of the plug in modules. This is the kind of test gear you may never have need for, and it is fun to have a look at how it works both inside and outside.
It is amazing how much special test equipment is out there. Our favorite has to be the
TV analyst from B&K
. Some of the
old space-related gear
is fun to peek inside, too. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362393",
"author": "smellsofbikes",
"timestamp": "2021-07-07T05:02:21",
"content": "At work we have a pile of LeCroy oscilloscopes that are functional as general-purpose but all their design is geared purely towards tuning and testing hard drives. There was an enormous market in s... | 1,760,373,029.054204 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/06/terrapowers-natrium-combining-a-fast-neutron-reactor-with-built-in-grid-level-storage/ | TerraPower’s Natrium: Combining A Fast Neutron Reactor With Built-In Grid Level Storage | Maya Posch | [
"Engineering",
"Featured",
"green hacks",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"fast reactor",
"Natrium",
"nuclear power",
"sodium coolant",
"TerraPower"
] | Most new nuclear fission reactors being built today are of the light water reactor (LWR) type, which use water for neutron moderation into thermal neutrons as well as neutron capture. While straightforward and in use since the 1950s in commercial settings, they are also essentially limited to uranium (U-235) fuel. This is where fast neutron reactors are highly attractive.
Fast neutron reactors can also fission other fissile elements, covering the full spectrum of neutron cross sections. TerraPower’s Natrium reactor is one such fast reactor, and it’s the world’s first fast reactor that not only targets commercial use, but also comes with its own grid-level storage in the form of a molten salt reservoir.
The upshot of this is that not only can these Natrium reactors use all of the spent LWR fuel in the US and elsewhere as their fuel, but they should also be highly efficient at load-following, traditionally a weak spot of thermal plants.
TerraPower and its partners are currently looking to
build a demonstration plant
in Wyoming, at the site of a retiring coal plant. This would be a 345 MWe (peak 500 MWe) reactor.
Why Natrium is Exciting
Render of the demonstration TerraPower Natrium plant. (Source: TerraPower)
As mentioned in the introduction, the Natrium reactor can use not just U-235 as its fuel. This is a property of the neutrons used in the reactor. As a refresher, the water used in current commercial fission reactors acts as a moderator on the neutrons that are produced during a nuclear fission chain reaction, effectively slowing them down. This makes the resulting thermal (‘slow’) neutrons fall right within the
neutron cross section
for U-235 and a few other elements (e.g. Pu isotopes), but incapable of fissioning most transuranics and actinides.
Over time the build-up of those transuranic and actinide isotopes ‘pollute’ the fuel in an LWR to the point where the nuclear chain reaction is far less efficient than with ‘fresh’ fuel rods. This is the point where an LWR is refueled (generally on a 2-year cycle), and the spent fuel rods are stored or reprocessed. In the latter case the problematic isotopes are removed via chemical processes as a lot of U-235 fuel remains in these fuel rods.
Since Natrium uses sodium as its coolant instead of water (the reason behind its name), it can use fast neutrons as well as thermal neutrons. As a result any isotope in the fuel that’s fissile can become part of the nuclear chain reaction, allowing this reaction to proceed until no further fissile elements remain in the fuel. This includes the U-238 that makes up a large percentage of uranium fuel.
Natrium reactors could thus run on the spent fuel stored in cooling pools at LWRs around the country and only produce small amounts of short-lived waste. This is essentially the culmination of decades of research in US test reactors like the
EBR-II
and
FFTF
and similar in scope to Russia’s
BN-series
of fast reactors.
TerraPower has teamed up with Centrus
for the production of the High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) fuel for the Natrium reactor.
In addition to these reactor designs, Natrium also adds an on-site energy storage in the form of molten salt that can bump up the reactor’s electrical output from 345 MWe to 500 MWe for about 5.5 hours. This would make it possible to flexibly cover peaks in demand.
Still a Long Road Ahead
An overview of the NRC’s tasks and responsibilities.
Before anyone is allowed to build or operate a nuclear plant in the US it has to go through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). A panel of experts will analyze, comment on, and require changes to offered designs until they are confident that that all regulations are adhered to and all relevant questions answered. I
covered this process
in detail previously.
For TerraPower’s Natrium this certification process can be followed via
its public page
. This tells us that Natrium is currently in the pre-application stage. Once the application has been finalized and submitted, Phase 1 of the Safety Evaluation Report (SER) can commence, which will then go through another few phases before resulting in the final SER (FSER), which will be used for the rulemaking, at which point the Natrium design will be allowed for new construction in the US.
With that approval in hand, the NRC would still have to approve the construction of each individual Natrium reactor, involving more safety reports, and in order to also be allowed to turn the reactor on and operate it commercially, even more safety reviews and reports would be involved. This makes the claim by TerraPower (on e.g. their
Fact Sheet
) of the Natrium design being available for commercial use (i.e. construction of new plants) by the late 2020s seem believable.
Cue the Competition
Cut-away model of the BREST-300 reactor. (Source: Rosatom)
Perhaps most telling is that TerraPower isn’t the sole company seeking to commercialize a fast neutron reactor. In Russia, Rosatom along with nuclear fuel manufacturer TVEL have
announced
the start of construction of the
BREST-OD-300
lead-cooled reactor. Like the Natrium design, this is a Generation IV fast neutron reactor, but it uses lead as coolant instead of sodium, which is beneficial in terms of heat transfer capacity as it has a higher melting point than sodium.
BREST-OD-300 is designed to have on-site fuel processing capacity, to keep a closed uranium fuel cycle within the plant’s grounds. Alongside this reactor type, Rosatom is also looking to build a number of sodium-cooled
BN-1200
fast reactors which build upon the research done with the BN-350, BN-600, and BN-800 reactors since the 1970s. So far, two BN-1200s are scheduled for construction in Russia.
In China, the
CFR-600
has been under construction since 2017. Much like in Russia, the idea is to run these fast reactors alongside LWRs in a complementary manner. Meanwhile in India, its
PFBR
is scheduled to be put online by 2021, when it will be used primarily to transmute (breed) U-233 from thorium as part of India’s
thorium-based fuel cycle
.
It’s clear that the demand for commercial fast reactors exists, and that TerraPower’s Natrium reactor might be the US’s best bet to be a part of this market.
Adding Grid Level Storage
Where TerraPower’s Natrium reactor is different from the competition is that it focuses not so much on the traditional role of thermal plants which involves getting as much steam or equivalent to a turbine to generate electricity. Instead, the heat from the reactor’s core is led away using the sodium coolant and stored in multiple large, insulated tanks. This is similar to how Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) with
thermal storage
works.
Overview of the thermal energy transfer in the Natrium reactor design. (Source: TerraPower)
This stored heat energy can then be used as needed to spin an electric generator, heat buildings, and so on. By decoupling the processes of generating the thermal energy and using it for generating electricity and so on, the electrical output of such a nuclear plant can be varied dynamically depending on the needs of the grid. This leads TerraPower to advertise Natrium as the ideal firm power compliment to a grid with a lot of variable renewable energy (VRE) like solar and wind.
Currently VRE-heavy grids rely on simple-cycle combustion turbines (
SCCT
) which have no waste heat recovery. While a lot faster to spin up and down than combined cycle turbines (
CCGT
), a CCGT plant will have a thermal efficiency of over 60%, whereas a simple-cycle plant will be generally just over 30%, with worse efficiencies while idling, such as when they are standing by to cover surges in demand.
The Broader Picture
The world today grapples with the realization that the sooner we rid ourselves of fossil fuels, the better off we’ll be. Yet right now the
overwhelming majority
of our daily energy use for transport (even with electric vehicles) and such still comes from fossil sources. In US states like
California
, natural gas makes up the overwhelming majority of its in-state sources of electricity using its over 200 natural gas plants. These are a combination of SCCT and CCGT plants.
With the rapid increase in the deployment of VRE, it’s important to provide grid-level storage and peaker plants which can respond rapidly to both the naturally fluctuating demand for power, as well as the variable input from these VRE sources. This is one area where something like TerraPower’s Natrium design may make a lot of sense, especially considering that it removes the ‘nuclear waste’ argument that is often used against new nuclear.
Regardless of how things play out in the USA, it seems clear that many countries are ready to embrace fast neutron reactors for commercial purposes. It still remains to be seen whether TerraPower’s concept of thermal storage in combination with a nuclear plant will stick, however. It too trades some thermal efficiency for convenience, which may or may not be worth it in the long run and might be better covered by e.g. battery storage alongside a traditional thermal plant design. | 66 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362239",
"author": "Stephen",
"timestamp": "2021-07-06T14:15:06",
"content": "Sodium cooling has been tried before, with the fast breeder reactors of hte 1960s and 1970s. I don’t think any survive in operation. A leak in a PWR is pretty horrible, but a leak of molten sodium is horr... | 1,760,373,029.677199 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/03/e-ink-equipped-sourdough-starter-jar/ | E-Ink Equipped Sourdough Starter Jar | Danie Conradie | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"CO2 sensor",
"e-ink",
"ESP32",
"sourdough starter",
"Time of Flight Sensor"
] | One of the unexpected side effects of our this pandemic is a sudden growth in the global population of captive colonies of Lactobacillus bacteria and yeast. Also known as sourdough starters, they are usually found in jars with curious names written on top, living off a mixture of flour and water. They require close monitoring to keep them healthy and to determine when they are ready for baking. [Noah Feehan] has been working to instrument and automate the process for the past two years, and has created a
high-tech jar to keep an eye on his sourdough starter
.
For a sourdough starter to stay active, it must be kept within a certain temperature range, and performance is measured by how much the level inside the jar rises. Existing
open source
and
commercial
projects monitor these two parameters and transmit data out, but [Noah] wanted to include a few more features. The height of a sourdough starter rises due to the production of CO2, so he added an SCD-30 sensor module, which includes a temperature and humidity sensor. For level monitoring, an VL6180 time-of-flight sensor is mounted over a hole on top of the jar. [Noah] wanted to be able to see recent CO2 production and height stats right on the jar, a ESP32 module with onboard E-ink display was used. To draw air over the CO2 sensor at a constant rate, a small extraction fan was also added. Power is provided by a small LiPo battery. For long term logging, the data is sent over MQTT to a server running
Mycodo
environmental regulation software.
There are still several software improvements [Noah] would like to make, including battery life, user interface and alerts, but everything is
open-source and available on GitHub
, so feel free to jump in and build your own. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361822",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2021-07-04T08:35:50",
"content": "I recently quite enjoyed:https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08CJ86Y1WWhich has a sourdough starter as one of the characters.(It’s aimed at YA but I didn’t realise that when it popped up in my recommen... | 1,760,373,029.149169 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/03/wifiwart-linux-pentesting-device-gets-first-pcbs/ | WiFiWart Linux Pentesting Device Gets First PCBs | Tom Nardi | [
"computer hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"A33",
"Allwinner",
"Embedded Linux",
"KiCAD",
"open hardware",
"pentesting",
"WiFiWart"
] | When we last checked in on the WiFiWart, an ambitious project to scratch-build a Linux powered penetration testing drop box small enough to be disguised as a standard phone charger, it was still in the early planning phases. In fact, the whole thing was little more than an idea. But we had a hunch that [Walker] was tenacious enough see the project through to reality, and now less than two months later,
we’re happy to report that not only have the first prototype PCBs been assembled
, but a community of like minded individuals is being built up around this exciting open source project.
Now before you get too excited, we should probably say that the prototypes didn’t actually work. Even worse, the precious Magic Smoke was released from the board’s Allwinner A33 ARM SoC when a pin only rated for 2.75 V was inadvertently fed 3.3 V. The culprit? Somehow [Walker] says he mistakenly ordered a 3.3 V regulator even though he had the appropriate 2.5 V model down in the Bill of Materials. A bummer to be sure, but that’s what prototypes are for.
Even though [Walker] wasn’t able to fire the board up, the fact that they even got produced shows just how much progress has been made in a relatively short amount of time. A lot of thought went into how the 1 GB DDR3 RAM would get connected to the A33, which includes a brief overview of how you do automatic trace length matching in KiCad. He’s also locked in component selections, such as the RTL8188CUS WiFi module, that were still being contemplated as of our last update.
Multiple boards make better use of vertical space.
Towards the end of the post, he even discusses the ultimate layout of the board, as the one he’s currently working on is just a functional prototype and would never actually fit inside of a phone charger. It sounds like the plan is to make use of the vertical real estate within the plastic enclosure of the charger, rather than trying to cram everything into a two dimensional design.
Want to get in on the fun, or just stay updated as [Walker] embarks on this epic journey? Perhaps you’d be interested in joining the recently formed
Open Source Security Hardware Discord server
he’s spun up. Whether you’ve got input on the design, or just want to hang out and watch the WiFiWart get developed, we’re sure he’d be happy to have you stop by.
The first post about this project got quite a response from Hackaday readers
, and for good reason. While many in the hacking and making scene only have a passing interest in the security side of things, we all love our little little Linux boards. Especially ones that are being developed in the open. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361750",
"author": "Joe Sammarco",
"timestamp": "2021-07-03T20:49:56",
"content": "Nice",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6361757",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2021-07-03T21:34:52",
"content": "It’s curious why ... | 1,760,373,029.435521 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/03/your-pc-sound-card-as-a-sensor-input/ | Your PC Sound Card As A Sensor Input | Jenny List | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"measurement",
"soundcard"
] | The commoditised PC is the most versatile tool many of us will own, and since it has been around for a very long time it is also something that can be found for free or very cheaply if the latest components aren’t a concern. It’s not without limitations though, while it’s designed for expansion it no longer has any ports that can easily be repurposed as GPIOs for reading sensors. A solution for some sensors comes courtesy of [Ruslan Nagimov],
who shows us how the PC sound card can become a measurement interface
.
The idea is that simple resistive or capacitive sensors can be read through their AC characteristics by sending out a sine wave on one channel of the card and reading the result on the other from a divider circuit. He goes extensively into the code, both for the resistive example and for reactive components, and we can see that it forms a handy extension to the PC capabilities.
We’re sure this technique will find applications for some readers, but it interests us for another platform.
Measurement using a mobile phone’s audio jack doesn’t have an inspiring history
, but perhaps this could be used as well for mobile sensors. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361721",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2021-07-03T17:27:58",
"content": "I know the audio from my motherboard’s build-in sound card has a lot of noise in it because it’s placed so closely to the CPU. If this is highly tolerant of noise then this might work but frankly I think ... | 1,760,373,029.112909 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/03/the-devil-is-in-the-details/ | The Devil Is In The Details | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants"
] | [
"newsletter",
"Practice",
"precision",
"theory"
] | If you’ve taken a physics class, you’ve doubtless heard tales of mythical beasts like the massless string, the frictionless bearing, and the perfect sphere. And if you’re designing something new, it’s not always wrong to start by thinking in terms of these abstractions, just to get the basic framework laid and a first-order handle on the way things go. But once you start building, you’d better be ready to shed your illusions that a 6 mm peg will fit into a 6 mm hole.
Theory and practice are the same thing, in theory. But as soon as you step into practice, your “weekend build” can easily
turn into a 500-hour project
, full of hurdles, discoveries, experimentation, and eventual success. I’m not going to rehash [Scott Rumschlag]’s project here — you should really watch his detailed video — but suffice it to say that when building a sub-millimeter precision 3D measuring device, bearings
do
have friction and string
does
have non-zero mass, and it all matters.
When you start working on a project that “looked good on paper” or for whatever reason just doesn’t turn out as precisely as you’d wished, you could do worse than to follow [Scott’s] example: start off by quantifying your goals, and then identify where every error along the way accumulates to keep you from reaching them. Doing precise work isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible either if you know where all the errors are coming from. You at least have a chain of improvements that you can consider, and if you’ve set realistic goals, you also know when to stop, which is almost as important.
And if anyone out there has an infinite sheet of perfectly conductive material, I’m in the market.
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
! | 28 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361686",
"author": "JanW",
"timestamp": "2021-07-03T14:04:01",
"content": "https://hackaday.com/2021/07/01/sub-mm-mechanical-3d-scanner-with-encoders-and-string/???",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6361689",
"author": ... | 1,760,373,029.74677 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/03/a-custom-raspberry-pi-spotted-in-the-wild/ | A Custom Raspberry Pi Spotted In The Wild | Jenny List | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"BCM3837",
"custom SBC",
"industrial pc"
] | Since the first Raspberry Pi came to market back in 2012 there have been a variety of models released. Some of them are rarer than others, and unusual boards can even be rather sought-after.
This one spotted at a Thai junk vendor
won’t be in the hands of many collectors though, and investigating it sheds a bit of light on some of the most unusual boards from the company.
The board is recognisably very similar to a Pi 3 with a BCM2837 SoC, but despite all that it has no Pi logo. On the underside there is an eMMC in place of the SD socket, and one pair of USB sockets has been replaced by a micro USB socket and a header. The source is reported to have been a washing machine, but given that this SoC is exclusive to the the Pi Foundation there’s no way it could easily have been manufactured by anyone else. The answer comes in the 2015 launch of
a customisation service for industrial customers
, which allowed manufacturers to have their own versions made of the fruity SBC.
From the point of view of an experimenter this board offers nothing that a standard device can’t do. But it’s an interesting glimpse of an unseen side to the Pi story, and it holds the prospect of other special versions being unearthed. If you find one on your travels, let us know! | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361668",
"author": "Pax",
"timestamp": "2021-07-03T11:47:46",
"content": "Maby someone should do a Kickstarter for a custom rpi400+ board:Topside changes: 8gb+FullsizeHDMI+AVP (+ pads for 2nd HDMI)Bottom additions: PCIeSwitch+M2-NVME (+pads for CSI & 3lane DSI headers)and make a cu... | 1,760,373,029.84166 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/03/3d-zoetrope-uses-illusion-to-double-the-frames/ | 3D Zoetrope Uses Illusion To Double The Frames | Kristina Panos | [
"classic hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"3D zoetrope",
"animation multiplexing",
"persistence of vision",
"POV",
"zoetrope"
] | Although film and animation have come quite a long way, there’s still something magical about that grandaddy of them all, the zoetrope. Thanks to persistence of vision, our eyes are fooled into seeing movement where there is none, only carefully laid-out still pictures strobing under the right lighting.
After four months of research, CAD, prototyping, and programming, [Harrison McIntyre] has built
a 3D zoetrope that brings a gif to glorious physical life
(video, embedded below). All the image pieces are printed and move
under a fancy backlight that [Harrison] borrowed from work. It works essentially the same as a 2D zoetrope, as long as you get the spacing juuuuust right. 360° divided by 20 frames comes out to 18° per frame. So a motor spins the disk around, and every 18°, the light pulses for one millisecond and then turns off until the next frame is in position.
The really interesting thing is that there are actually more than 20 frames at play here. If you follow a single character through the loop, it takes 46 frames to complete the animation thanks to something 3D zoetrope pioneer [Kevin Holmes] dubbed ‘
animation multiplexing
‘, which in [Harrison]’s example, is easily explained as a relay race in which all runners run their section at the same time, creating the illusion of constant motion.
There’s more than one way to use a 3D printer to create a zoetrope, and
we doubt we would have ever thought of this one that squashes four dimensions into three
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361654",
"author": "Apintofmild@yahoo.co.uk",
"timestamp": "2021-07-03T09:36:39",
"content": "This idea has been around a little while, in the UK at least:https://4-mation.co.uk/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6361723",
... | 1,760,373,029.893873 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/understanding-custom-signal-protocols-with-old-nintendos/ | Understanding Custom Signal Protocols With Old Nintendos | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"controller",
"interface",
"nintendo",
"protocol",
"snes",
"super nintendo",
"timing",
"Trinket",
"usb"
] | For retro gaming, there’s really no substitute for original hardware. As it ages, though, a lot of us need to find something passable since antique hardware won’t last forever. If a console isn’t working properly an emulator can get us some of the way there, but using an original controller is still preferred even when using emulators. To that end, [All Parts Combined]
shows us how to build custom interfaces between original Nintendo controllers and a PC
.
The build starts by mapping out the controller behavior. Buttons on a SNES controller don’t correspond directly to pins, rather a clock latches all of the button presses at a particular moment all at once during each timing event and sends that information to the console. To implement this protocol an Adafruit Trinket is used, and a thorough explanation of the code is given in the video linked below. From there it was a simple matter of building the device itself, for which [All Parts Combined] scavenged controller ports from broken Super Nintendos and housed everything into a tidy box where it can be attached via USB to his PC.
While it might seem like a lot of work to get a custom Nintendo controller interface running just because he had lost his Mega Man cartridge, this build goes a long way to understanding a custom controller protocol. Plus, there’s a lot more utility here than just playing Mega Man; a method like this could easily be used to interface other controllers as well. We’ve even seen the reverse process where
USB devices were made to work on a Nintendo 64
. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361724",
"author": "Osgeld",
"timestamp": "2021-07-03T17:42:23",
"content": "ya know its just a p>s shift register and SPI right?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6361900",
"author": "BrightBlueJim",
"timestamp... | 1,760,373,029.785423 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/05/microfluidics-for-biohacking-hack-chat/ | Microfluidics For Biohacking Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"biochemistry",
"biohacking",
"biology",
"dna",
"fluidics",
"Hack Chat",
"lab on a chip",
"microfluidics",
"nano"
] | Join us on Wednesday, July 7 at noon Pacific for the
Microfluidics for Biohacking Hack Chat
with Krishna Sanka!
“Microfluidics” sounds like a weird and wonderful field, but one that doesn’t touch regular life too much. But consider that each time you fire up an ink-jet printer, you’re putting microfluidics to work, as nanoliter-sized droplets of ink are spewed across space to impact your paper at exactly the right spot.
Ink-jets may be mundane, but the principles behind them are anything but. Microfluidic mechanisms have found their way into all sorts of products and processes, with perhaps the most interesting uses being leveraged to explore and exploit the microscopic realms of life. Microfluidics can be used to recreate some of the nanoscale biochemical reactions that go on in cells, and offer not only new ways to observe the biological world, but often to manipulate it. Microfluidics devices range from “DNA chips” that can rapidly screen drug candidates against thousands of targets, to devices that can rapidly screen clinical samples for exposure to toxins or pathogens.
There are a host of applications of microfluidics in biohacking, and Krishna Sanka is actively working to integrate the two fields. As an engineering graduate student, his focus is open-source, DIY microfluidics that can help biohackers up their game, and he’ll stop by the Hack Chat to run us through the basics. Come with your questions about how — and why — to build your own microfluidics devices, and find out how modern biohackers are learning to “go with the flow.”
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, July 7 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
.
[Featured image:
Cooksey/NIST
] | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362231",
"author": "Alexander Bissell",
"timestamp": "2021-07-06T13:23:43",
"content": "Oh man I can’t wait. I’ve been working on DIY (makerspace and homelab) microfluidics for the last 2 years and it’s such a niche field that it’s hard to find people to chat with!",
"parent_id... | 1,760,373,030.053841 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/05/a-new-spin-on-empty-filament-spools-for-part-storage/ | A New Spin On Empty Filament Spools For Part Storage | Donald Papp | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"filament spool",
"openscad",
"organization",
"reuse"
] | Empty spools from 3D printer filament are the kind of thing that begs to be repurposed, and one option is [3d-printy]’s
vertical filament spool parts drawer design
. The way this solution works is by using the spool to hold twelve vaguely pie-shaped drawers that can be individually unlocked and removed entirely, which makes accessing their contents (or dumping them out) much easier. This method requires the spools to be oriented vertically, so it ends up handling a bit like a Rolodex.
One downside of the design is that it requires two inserts to be installed on the inside of the spool walls, which act as guide rails and lock points for the drawers. Another is that managing a vertical spool can be a bit awkward, given its lack of flat surfaces. Happily, there is an option for a
matching stand
that not only provides a flat base, but keeps any accidentally-unlocked drawers from falling out and spilling their contents.
The project files are
OpenSCAD
files, which allows easy customization for different spool manufacturers and dimensions, and [3d-printy] provides measurements for some common ones. Another nice element of this design is that no single part uses more than 30 grams of filament, which makes printing them an attractive way to use up the last bits of filament rolls.
We’ve seen drawer-style storage for filament spools before
, but haven’t seen a design quite like this one before. Watch an overview of the drawer design as well as the spool holders in the videos, embedded below. | 26 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362039",
"author": "Sowee",
"timestamp": "2021-07-05T14:09:52",
"content": "A spring on those locks would be very good!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6362041",
"author": "mechanism853",
"timestamp": "2021-07-05T14:14:... | 1,760,373,031.047193 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/05/messaging-on-signal-via-the-esp32/ | Messaging On Signal Via The ESP32 | Lewin Day | [
"internet hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"internet of things",
"IoT",
"signal",
"signal app",
"signal messenger"
] | Signal is a popular encrypted messaging app, typically used on smartphones.
The cross-platform service can now be used via the ESP32, however, thanks to the work of [Dharmik] and [Tirth].
The demonstration is simple, using an ESP32 microcontroller fitted with two push buttons. When one button is pushed, it increments a counter and sends a Signal message noting the current count. The other button sends an image as a Signal message.
The project relies on a Signal bot to deliver an API key that enables the project to work. Messages are sent by making HTTP requests with this key to the CallMeBot.com server. With the API key as authentication, users can only send messages to their own number, keeping the system safe from spammers.
While the demonstration is basic, it merely serves to illustrate how the project works. The aim was to allow home automation and other Internet of Things systems to send Signal messages, and through this method, it’s now possible. The highly security conscious likely won’t want to rely on a random third party server, but for those tinkering around, it may not be such a big deal.
The Internet of Things has a long history with self-messaging projects;
we featured the Twittering Toaster back in 2008
! Video after the break. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362024",
"author": "chris0x00",
"timestamp": "2021-07-05T12:43:51",
"content": "This seems to forgo the security niceties of Signal. Rather than using a third-party service, perhaps run Signal locally on a different machine with remote debugging enabled?https://github.com/mandator... | 1,760,373,030.112306 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/05/litter-buggies-haul-trash-off-the-beach/ | Litter Buggies Haul Trash Off The Beach | Danie Conradie | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"beach",
"remote control",
"rock crawler",
"trash collection"
] | There is a depressing amount of trash in our oceans, and a lot of it is washes up on beaches. [Glenn Morris] has turned collecting all this trash into a favourite pastime, using a series of custom
radio-controlled Litter Buggies
to haul the load.
The most basic versions of these buggies are off the shelf RC rock crawlers, usually a Traxxas TRX-4, with a basket mounted in place of the body. However, [Glenn] has developed the buggies far beyond that, making extensive use of 3D printing to create purpose-built trash haulers. He has created several frame systems to hold removable baskets, buckets, lights and tools. Most of the buggies use lithium power tool batteries to allow quick swapping, and the electric motors, ESCs and gearing is selected for low speed and high torque. Since the buggies spend a lot of time exposed to salt water, almost all the steel hardware on the chassis are replaced with stainless steel. To allow for one handed control, [Glenn] attached 3D printed levers to the steering knobs of the standard RC controllers, allowing steering to be done with his thumb.
We really like what [Glenn] has been doing with these buggies, and think they might be a good platforms for adding some autonomous capabilities. Add a
smartphone for target following or obstacle avoidance
, or some
solar panels and a GPS autopilot system
. | 28 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362006",
"author": "Joseph Eoff",
"timestamp": "2021-07-05T09:48:26",
"content": "But a used wagon from E-bay or whatever and pull the darned thing around the beach. No batteries to charge, no complicated electronics, you can guide it with one hand, and it can carry your grabber, ... | 1,760,373,030.176999 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/04/convert-your-mouse-into-a-paddle-controller/ | Convert Your Mouse Into A Paddle Controller | Danie Conradie | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"atari",
"opticalm mouse",
"paddle controller"
] | Early game consoles had a wide and interesting variety of controllers, many of which fell by the wayside as consoles evolved. One of these is the Atari 2600 paddle controller, which was the preferred interface for playing games like Kaboom!, Tempest, and Pong. While it is possible to play these games with a mouse, [Retro Gaming I Guess] wanted to do it the historically correct way, so he created a simple hack to
convert an optical mouse into a paddle controller
.
The main idea Is to attach a rotary knob to the bottom of the mouse, with the optical sensor located just inside the edge of the knob. To the optical sensor, it appears that the bottom surface of the knob is moving in a straight line, so the mouse pointer will move in a straight line as the knob rotates. The 3D printed knob (or bottle cap) is magnetically attached to the bottom of the mouse, by gluing one magnet into the center of the knob, and the other on the inside of the mouse under the PCB. This allows for quick conversion back to a normal mouse. You could off course sacrifice an old mouse to the cause to create a dedicated paddle controller, and make it closer to the original by adding end stops and a spring return.
We really like the simplicity of this hack, and we’re sure our readers can come up with a few other use cases for it in the comments below. You can also approach old Atari games from the opposite end, like adding a
machine vision powered laser blaster
. While many may think the Atari 2600 was the first gaming console, that honor actually goes to the
Magnavox Odyssey
, which was the start the of the multi-billion dollar home gaming industry we know today. | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362008",
"author": "poiuyt",
"timestamp": "2021-07-05T10:09:23",
"content": "Great hack! Particularly Impressive that the modifications are hidden and the conversion is reversible, so the mouse can still be used as normal.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
... | 1,760,373,030.21923 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/04/iron-becomes-smd-hot-plate/ | Iron Becomes SMD Hot Plate | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"hot plate",
"hotplate",
"reflow",
"reflow plate",
"smd plate",
"smd soldering",
"soldering plate"
] | Few things have changed our workshops more than surface mount components. In 1980 it would have been strange to see a hobby bench with a microscope, hot air equipment, tweezers, and all the other accouterments that are a necessity today. [Electronoobs] wanted a reflow hot plate and decided that he could
repurpose a consumer laundry iron for the job
. You can see the results in the video below.
Opening the iron revealed surprisingly simple circuitry, so the build has some additional parts along with a controller and an LCD, of course. The power requirement for the heating element is significant — 13 amps — so the plate uses a solid state relay to turn things on and off.
The iron has a ceramic bottom which is good for heat flow. There’s also a mystery component inside that [Electronoobs] is hoping someone can identify.
The final build uses a single thermocouple for temperature measurement although there is a provision for more sensors. If you want to see the device in operation first, fast forward to about the 9 minute mark.
The device appears to work with some caveats. The center of the plate seems to be cooler than the edges. We wondered if using an electric skillet might have helped or even replacing the plate with something that made direct contact with the heating element. We also wondered if some thermal compound might have helped transfer heat into the plate better.
Of course,
using a skillet
wasn’t our original idea. You don’t even necessarily need to
modify
it much. | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361971",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2021-07-05T02:48:27",
"content": "yeah, a clothes iron works pretty well: it easily ramps fast enough. But the work area isn’t so big, and you can’t have anything at all on the bottom side.But watch the thermal fuse (on american ones anyway... | 1,760,373,030.277199 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/04/hackaday-links-july-4-2021/ | Hackaday Links: July 4, 2021 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"3d",
"collapse",
"echolocation",
"espionage",
"Florida",
"hackaday links",
"phased array",
"rescue",
"sdr",
"spy",
"Starlink",
"urban"
] | With rescue and recovery efforts at the horrific condo collapse in Florida this week still underway, we noted with interest some of the technology being employed on the site. Chief among these was a contribution of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), whose secretive Unit 9900 unveiled
a 3D imaging system to help locate victims
trapped in the rubble. The pictures look very much like the 3D “extrusions” that show up on Google Maps when you zoom into a satellite view and change the angle, but they were obviously built up from very recent aerial or satellite photos that show the damage to the building. The idea is to map where parts of the building — and unfortunately, the building’s occupants — ended up in the rubble pile, allowing responders to concentrate their efforts on the areas most likely to hold victims. The technology, which was developed for precision targeting of military targets, has apparently already located several voids in the debris that weren’t obvious to rescue teams. Here’s hoping that the system pays off, and that we get to learn a little about how it works.
Radio enthusiasts, take note: your hobby may just run you afoul of authorities if you’re not careful. That seems to be the case for one Stanislav Stetsenko, a resident of Crimea who was
arrested on suspicion of treason
this week.
Video of the arrest
was posted which shows the equipment Stetsenko allegedly used to track Russian military aircraft on behalf of Ukraine: several SDR dongles, a very dusty laptop running Airspy SDR#, an ICOM IC-R6 portable communications receiver, and various maps and charts. In short, it pretty much looks like what I can see on my own desk right now. We know little of the politics around this, but it does give one pause to consider how non-technical people view those with technical hobbies.
If you could choose a superpower to suddenly have, it really would take some careful consideration. Sure, it would be handy to shoot spider webs or burst into flames, but the whole idea of some kind of goo shooting out of your wrists seems gross, and what a nuisance to have to keep buying new clothes after every burn. Maybe just
teaching yourself a new sense, like echolocation
, would be a better place to start. And as it turns out, it’s not only possible for humans to echolocate, but it’s actually not that hard to learn. Researchers used a group of blind and sighted people for the test, ranging in age from 21 to 79 years, and put them through a 10-week training program to learn click-based echolocation. After getting the basics of making the clicks and listening for the returns in an anechoic chamber, participants ran through a series of tasks, like size and orientation discrimination of objects, and virtual navigation. The newly minted echolocators were also allowed out into the real world to test their skills. Three months after the study, the blind participants had mostly retained their new skill, and most of them were still using it and reported that it had improved their quality of life.
As with everything else he’s involved with, Elon Musk has drawn a lot of criticism for his Starlink satellite-based internet service. The growing constellation of satellites bothers astronomers, terrestrial ISPs are worried the service will kill their business model, and the beta version of the Starlink dish has been shown to be
flakey in the summer heat
. But it’s on equipment cost where Musk has taken the most flak, which seems unfair as
the teardowns we’ve seen
clearly show that the phased-array antenna in the Starlink dish is being sold for less than it costs to build. But still, Musk is assuring the world that
Starlink home terminals will get down in the $250 to $300 range
soon, and that the system could have 500,000 users within a year. There were a couple of other interesting insights, such as where Musk sees Starlink relative to 5G, and how he’s positioning Starlink to provide backhaul services to cellular companies.
Well, this is embarrassing.
Last week
, we mentioned that certain unlucky users of an obsolete but still popular NAS device found that their data had disappeared, apparently due to malefactors accessing the device over the internet and forcing a factory reset. Since this seems like something that should require entering a password, someone took a look at the PHP script for the factory restore function and found that a developer had commented out the very lines that would have performed the authentication:
function get($urlPath, $queryParams=null, $ouputFormat='xml'){
// if(!authenticateAsOwner($queryParams))
// {
// header("HTTP/1.0 401 Unauthorized");
// return;
// }
It’s not clear when the PHP script was updated, but support for MyBook Live was dropped in 2015, so this could have been a really old change. Still, it was all the hacker needed to get in and wreak havoc; interestingly, the latest attack may be a reaction to a three-year-old exploit that turned many of these devices into a botnet. Could this be a case of hacker vs. hacker? | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361963",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2021-07-04T23:57:26",
"content": "If your are interested in human echolocation here are a couple links about a blind guy who taught himself to do it, and also teaches others.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kishhttps://www.cbc.ca/na... | 1,760,373,030.404175 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/07/emojo-chatbot-will-be-there-for-you/ | EMOJO Chatbot Will Be There For You | Kristina Panos | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"raspberry pi",
"speech to text",
"text to speech",
"tft"
] | We all need someone to talk to sometimes, and the pandemic has only made matters worse when it comes to the number of people living with anxiety and depression. Exchanging the simplest of pleasantries can make you feel whole again, but the masks make it hard to engage with strangers and judge their emotions, so your big trip to the grocery store can make you feel lonely in a crowd.
So you go back home, still feeling lonely, and maybe you turn on the TV. Watching people interact is probably the next best thing to actual interaction, and it might even make you laugh. But have you ever wished you could talk to the people on TV?
With [aniketdhole]’s EMOJO chatbot, you’ll feel as though you’re among friends
. And technically you are — all the dialogue is from the TV show
Friends
.
In
Castaway
, Tom Hanks didn’t give that volleyball a frowny face, now did he? Nor does he have a dopey grin. Instead, he wears a wry smile that suggests depth of character and a grasp of the dire situation at hand. But now we have emoji, and they do a pretty good job of conveying and evoking emotion. EMOJO is a visual chatbot that uses voice and emoji to make easy, two-way conversation to help chase the loneliness away. It uses a Raspberry Pi and a TFT display to take voice input from a Bluetooth headset, convert it to text, and then respond in kind with both voice and text.
It was a finalist in the rethink displays round of the Hackaday Prize
, and we can’t wait to see how its character develops. Be sure to check out the demo after the break.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362581",
"author": "CRJEEA",
"timestamp": "2021-07-07T19:32:49",
"content": "Let’s hope it doesn’t develop a murderous streak.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,030.547542 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/07/did-you-meet-pepper/ | Did You Meet Pepper? | Jenny List | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"humanoid robot",
"pepper",
"softbank pepper"
] | Earlier this week it was widely reported that Softbank’s friendly-faced almost-humanoid Pepper robot was not long for this world, as the Japanese company’s subsidiary in France that had been responsible for the robotic darling of the last decade was being downsized,
and that production had paused
. Had it gone the way of Sony’s Aibo robotic puppy or Honda’s crouching-astronaut ASIMO? It seems not, because the company soon rolled back a little and was at pains to communicate that
reports of Pepper’s untimely death had been greatly exaggerated
. It wasn’t so long ago that Pepper was the face of future home robotics, so has the golden future become a little tarnished? Perhaps it’s time to revisit our plastic friend.
A Product Still Looking For A Function
A Pepper earning an honest crust as a tourist guide at the Heijo Palace museum. Tokumeigakarinoaoshima,
CC BY-SA 4.0
.
Pepper made its debut back in 2014, a diminutive and child-like robot with basic speech recognition and conversation skills, the ability to recognize some facial expressions, and a voice to match those big manga-style eyes. It was a robot built for personal interaction rather than work, as those soft tactile hands are better suited to a handshake than holding a tool. It found its way into Softbank stores as well as a variety of other retail environments, it was also used in experiments to assess whether it could work as a companion robot in medical settings, and it even made
an appearance as a cheerleading squad
. It didn’t matter that
it was found to be riddled with insecurities
, it very soon became a favourite with media tech pundits, but it remained at heart a product that was seeking a purpose rather than one ready-made to fit a particular function.
I first encountered a Pepper in 2016, at the UK’s National Museum of Computing. It was simply an exhibit under the watchful eye of a museum volunteer rather than being used to perform a job, and it shared an extremely busy gallery with an exhibit of Acorn classroom computers from the 1980s and early ’90s. It was an odd mix of the unexpected and the frustrating, as it definitely saw me and let me shake its hand but stubbornly refused to engage in conversation. Perhaps it was taking its performance as a human child seriously and being shy, but the overwhelming impression was of something that wasn’t ready for anything more than experimental interaction except via its touch screen. As a striking contrast in 2016 the UK saw the first release of the Amazon Echo, a disembodied voice assistant that might not have had a cute face but which could immediately have meaningful interactions with its owner.
How Can A Humanoid Robot Compete With A Disembodied Voice?
In comparing the Pepper with an Amazon Echo it’s possible that we’ve arrived at the root of the problem. Something that looks cool is all very well, but without immediate functionality, it will never capture the hearts of customers. Alexa brought with it the immense power of Amazon’s cloud computing infrastructure, while Pepper had to make do with whatever it had on board. It didn’t matter to potential customers that a cloud-connected microphone presents a huge privacy issue, for them a much cheaper device the size of a hockey puck would always win the day if it could unfailingly tell them the evening’s TV schedule or remind them about Aunty’s birthday.
Over the next decade we will see the arrival of affordable and compact processing power that can do more of the work for which Amazon currently use the cloud. Maybe Pepper will never fully receive that particular upgrade, but it’s certain that if Softbank don’t do it then somebody else will. Meanwhile there’s a reminder from another French company that being first and being cute in the home assistant market is hardly a guarantee of success,
who remembers the Nabaztag
?
Header: Tokumeigakarinoaoshima,
CC0
. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362557",
"author": "Funksloff",
"timestamp": "2021-07-07T17:25:18",
"content": "I have a Pepper sitting right next to me right now. Same scenario as in the article, in a science museum where (with the help of a staff member) kids can learn a bit more about coding or put into practi... | 1,760,373,030.593098 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/07/leggo-my-nintoaster/ | Leggo My Nintoaster! | Kristina Panos | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"Case mod",
"nintendo",
"toaster"
] | If you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000* who have never seen a Nintoaster case mod before,
boy are we glad you get to see this one first
. [Dizzle813] found a shiny old Sunbeam toaster that looks just like the one we grew up with. Although the original creator made a build video, there is room for improvement in the explanation, and some people prefer reading, anyway. This handy guide references and builds upon [VomitSaw]’s original Nintoaster video.
[Dizzle813] really makes the hard parts look easy, and a build like this seems to be mostly hard parts. Unless you find this exact vintage of Sunbeam, you would have to orchestrate the innards as needed to fit your toaster. The hardest part of all is probably wiring up the 72-pin connector to the NES motherboard, but [Dizzle813] managed to pull it off using 22 AWG solid-core wire and still get everything to flex and fit together. Even still, they broke off a pin trying to ease it into the perfboard, but cutting a hole in the connector and inserting a bodge wire replacement worked just fine.
We absolutely love the way this looks and operates, especially with the lever-activated power button and the six orange LEDs inside that are brightness-controlled through the toastiness knob. Be sure to check out the demo after the break.
Isn’t it great when things are built into other things? Case in point:
there’s a laptop hiding inside this printer
.
*relevant xkcd | 9 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362527",
"author": "Arif Hossain",
"timestamp": "2021-07-07T15:47:37",
"content": "How about making a toaster PS1 next!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6362555",
"author": "sjm4306",
"timestamp": "2021-07-07T1... | 1,760,373,030.639909 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/07/whats-chia-and-why-is-it-eating-all-the-hard-drives/ | What’s Chia, And Why Is It Eating All The Hard Drives? | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Original Art"
] | [
"bitcoin",
"Chia",
"cryptocurrency",
"farming",
"mining",
"proof of space",
"proof of work"
] | At this point the average Hackaday reader is likely familiar with so-called “Proof of Work” (PoW) cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin. In the most basic of terms, these cryptocurrencies allow users to earn money by devoting computational power to the network. Unfortunately, it’s well past the point where your standard desktop CPU is moving enough bits to earn anything worthwhile. Individuals looking to turn a profit have therefore resorted to constructing arrays of high-end graphics cards for the express purpose of “mining” their cryptocurrency of choice.
These miners, combined with ongoing chip shortages, have ravaged the GPU market. Anyone who’s looked at building or upgrading a computer recently will know that new video cards are in short supply, and even old models that would otherwise be considered budget options, are commanding outrageous prices. In an effort to appease their core customers,
NVIDIA has even introduced cryptocurrency-specific cards that lack video output
. The hope was that professional miners would buy these Cryptocurrency Mining Processors (CMPs) instead of the traditional video cards, freeing up the latter for purchase by gamers. But due to the limited availability and relatively high cost of CMPs, they’ve done little to improve the situation.
Now if you don’t use your computer for gaming, this probably seems like a distant problem. You could even be forgiven for thinking of this as little more than two largely frivolous pursuits at loggerheads with each other. After all, in a community that still holds decades-old Thinkpads as the high water mark in portable computing, a certain ambivalence about cutting edge video cards is perhaps to be expected.
But there’s a new form of cryptocurrency on the rise which threatens more than just the hardcore gamers. With “Proof of Space” (PoS) cryptocurrencies, it’s not about having the fastest CPU or the highest number of GPUs; the commodity being traded is storage space, and the player with the most hard drives wins.
The Rise of Chia
Conceptually, PoS cryptocurrencies have been around for some time.
The idea was first proposed in the 2013 paper
“Proofs of Space”
by Stefan Dziembowski, Sebastian Faust, Vladimir Kolmogorov, and Krzysztof Pietrzak, which was later presented at the 35th International Cryptology Conference in 2015. The core argument of the paper is that PoW currencies are inherently wasteful as they consume processing power to function, and notes that critics were already predicting Bitcoin would be an environmental disaster. By comparison, the difference in energy consumption between an idle computer and one running their hypothetical PoS software would be negligible. Further, they reasoned that computers already had a large amount of unused disk space that could be offered up to the network.
A few cryptocurrencies did emerge based on the concepts laid out in
“Proofs of Space”
, but none of them really caught on until the Chia Network was founded in 2017. Thanks at least in part to investors eager to get into anything involving blockchain technology,
the startup sailed to a valuation of $500 million in May of this year
. Created by BitTorrent developer Bram Cohen, the documentation for Chia leans heavily into the idea that it’s the “green” alternative to Bitcoin, requiring neither a high-performance computer nor any equipment that couldn’t be readily reused if you were no longer interested in Chia. As explained in their FAQ, nothing stops you from deleting the Chia data from your drives and using them for regular file storage.
At least on paper, Chia certainly seems like the more eco-friendly option. Consider that a modern high-end video card like the GeForce RTX 3080 can easily pull more than 300 watts when running at full tilt, while even the most power hungry SSDs top out at 8 watts. Of course that doesn’t take into account the cost of the hardware, or the relative value of each resource as measured by their respective cryptocurrencies. But if your only concern is how many watts your system is drawing, you could spin up 20 or 30 SSDs before they even got close to what a modern GPU consumes.
Life on the Farm
The term “mining” makes sense for Proof of Work cryptocurrencies, since you’re putting effort in to unlock something of value. But in the parlance of Chia, those looking to dedicate their storage space to the network are known as “farmers”; since after the initial setup, it essentially becomes a passive activity. The user simply tends their farm, which in this case means keeping an array of disk drives powered and properly maintained, and waits for something to sprout.
In a perfect world, you could simply point your Proof of Space software at an empty hard drive, and get credit for it. But in practice, such a simplistic system would be susceptible to fraud. So if you want to dedicate your drives to Chia, the software needs to periodically verify they aren’t being used for something else. When a drive is first brought online, the Chia software will “plot” it by filling the unused space with cryptographic data. Then, when the blockchain broadcasts a challenge, the farmer’s drives will be scanned and whoever has a hash that’s the closest match will be rewarded with Chia.
As it essentially operates like a lottery, the best way to increase your chances of getting a matching hash and receiving Chia in return is to add more storage to your farm. The good news it that operating a farm doesn’t require any great computational power. In fact,
the Chia documentation recommends using a single-board computer
such as the Raspberry Pi 4 or ROCK Pi with an array of USB drives to tend your digital crops.
Chia reference farming setup, using 32 HDDs and a ROCK Pi 4
So how big of a farm does one need to make money on Chia? There’s a lot of variables, many of which are changing day to day, but the short answer is that with just one plot taking up 100 GB, you’re going to need
a lot
of drives to see any notable return. As of this writing, the Chia Calculator indicates that a
100 TB array could bring in $240 USD a month at current prices
. But as there’s a certain element of luck involved, your real world results will absolutely vary.
The Plot Thickens
It’s clear how the growing popularity of Chia could pose a problem. Setting up a farm doesn’t take a cutting-edge video card that only a relatively small number of computer users were likely to purchase in the first place; it takes common hardware like USB hubs and external hard drives that we all take for granted. A surging Chia could even limit the availability of single-board computers, something that would impact the hacking and making community more than anyone.
Shortages so far have been limited to high capacity enterprise-grade drives
, but it’s not hard to imagine how that could expand into consumer hardware.
That’s because Chia has something of a dirty secret. While it’s true that farming is largely passive, the processing of creating the initial 100 GB “plot” is anything but. Creating the cryptographic hashes not only requires a decently powerful computer, but writing them out puts the target drive itself under enormous stress. To get around this farmers have taken to creating their plots on smaller SSDs, and then moving them over to higher capacity enterprise drives for long-term storage once they’re done. In such a configuration the SSDs are considered an expendable resource, with some reports
claiming it takes as little as a few weeks to burn through a standard consumer drive
.
The demand for drives is real.
A representative from Seagate recently confirmed the manufacturer was exploring the idea of Chia-specific drives
, but didn’t elaborate on what that would entail. Though given how little impact NVIDIA’s attempts to curb miners have had, it’s hard to imagine it would change much. Unless cryptocurrency tailored hardware is cheaper and more widely available than the traditional options, farmers and miners aren’t going to make the effort to switch over.
Market Volatility
It’s not all bad news. While the situation was truly looking dire for awhile there, it seems like cooler heads might be prevailing. There was a mad rush to buy up hard drives when the price of Chia skyrocketed to a little over $1,600 in May, but by June 1st the price was down to around $700. Today it sits at roughly $280.
Chia’s value has tumbled since its mid-May peak. Source:
CoinMarketCap
Looking at the data, it certainly seems like Chia is running out of stream. Unless its value rebounds soon, the return on investment for prospective farmers just isn’t there. Why spend thousands of dollars to earn hundreds? There’s even a chance, given the lottery-like nature of the reward system, that you’d earn nothing at all.
With a little luck, perhaps the dreaded hard drive apocalypse will pass us by. We could certainly use a break,
considering how many shortages we’ve already got to contend with
. But as we’ve seen with other cryptocurrencies, a tweet from Elon Musk could be all it takes to turn Chia around overnight. So maybe picking up a couple spare drives now wouldn’t be the worst idea. | 102 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362479",
"author": "some guy",
"timestamp": "2021-07-07T14:05:38",
"content": "We really need a law to stop this nonsense waste of energy and ressources.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6362484",
"author": "Some Other... | 1,760,373,030.846737 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/07/starlink-terminal-unit-firmware-dumped/ | StarLink Terminal Unit Firmware Dumped | Al Williams | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"satellite",
"SpaceX",
"Starlink",
"teardown"
] | There’s a lot of expense in what telephone companies call “the last mile” — delivering service from the main trunks to your home or business. StarLink wants to avoid that cost by connecting you via an array of low-orbit satellites and some users are already using the service. In Belgium, [Lennert Wouters] managed to dump the terminal’s firmware and has some
interesting observations
.
The teardown is actually more than just a firmware dump. His “level 1” teardown involves exposing the board. This can be tricky because there are apparently different versions of the terminal out already, so advice from one source might not match your hardware, and that was the case here.
A UART connector revealed U-Boot log messages on startup. The boot messages gave instructions displayed for interrupting the boot process, but they didn’t appear to actually work. The next step was “level 2” which involved dislodging the board to directly access the eMMC chip.
Dumping the data from the chip wasn’t that hard. However, the chip also has error correcting codes that aren’t part of the actual data stream, so those had to go.
Analysis of the code proved interesting. There is a fuse that identifies development hardware and if that fuse isn’t present, you can’t log in. Further, the login flag is geofenced. You have to be in certain locations — some, but not all, SpaceX facilities — to log in.
Overall, an interesting tear down and we wonder what other secrets these terminals will give up as more people have access to them. We’ve covered
the system
before, including an
X-ray view of the antenna
. | 17 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362445",
"author": "Ben",
"timestamp": "2021-07-07T11:08:09",
"content": "Geofencing is an easy one. I guess you could get around that (with questionable legality) with SDR GPS spoofing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "636244... | 1,760,373,030.899869 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/07/simplefoc-demystifies-precision-bldc-motor-control/ | SimpleFOC Demystifies Precision BLDC Motor Control | Sonya Vasquez | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [] | Brushless DC (BLDC) motors are standard fare in low-precision, speedy RC applications. The control schemes needed to run them slowly or precisely go deep into motor theory and might put these motors out of reach for your next homebrew robot project. [Antun Skuric] and crew aim to change just that. They’ve taken the
field-oriented control
algorithm and encapsulated it into a compact Arduino library, added a host of examples, and minted a stackable BLDC motor control shield to boot. The sum of their efforts is captured into the
SimpleFOC Project
in the aim of bringing precision BLDC control to a wide community of new hackers.
Field-Oriented Control is a BLDC motor control scheme that involves using a microprocessor to control the stator winding current in such a way that it always applies torque to the rotor. Doing so requires that your processor measure both motor current (think: shunt resistor) and rotor position (think: encoder). Implementing the algorithm, though, can get a bit tricky since it touches bits of linear algebra, motor physics, and control theory. But that’s the magic behind SimpleFOC. With the library at your fingertips, you don’t have to! And with that, the hardest part of brushless motor control has been made simpler with a solution that’s almost plug-in-and-play.
SimpleFOC has been implemented to extend to a variety of possible implementations. While you can certainly design your own control board, you can also start with the SimpleFOC motor shield for a single motor pulling up to 5 A of current. From there, you’ve got a pretty wide range of micros to choose from as the library has been extended to work on the Arduino, Teensy, STM32, and
a few other microcontroller families
. For implementation details, theory, and setup, there’s a healthy set of
documentation
to reference. And if you’re looking to share your project or ask questions, you can pop into the
community forum
for some high-fives and tips. Best of all,
the source code
has been offered for your enjoyment under a generous MIT License.
While the project kicked off last year, it’s undergoing continuous improvements including added support for current sensing and torque control in addition to position control. With a healthy community emerging around the project, we’ll keep our eyes peeled for more projects that build off of this fantastic reference design.
If BLDC motor control has your interest piqued, have a look through our archive for other BLDC motor control projects, including
motor/controller hybrids
,
anti-cogging control schemes
, and other
low-speed position controllers
. And if you’re up for a real challenge,
why not 3D print the motor
too? | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362420",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2021-07-07T08:44:53",
"content": "Nice! I’ve always been interested in using brushed and brushless motors for precision applications, but never wanted to dive into all the hassle. This is the perfect solution. Thanks!",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,373,030.946699 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/06/recognising-bird-sounds-with-a-microcontroller/ | Recognising Bird Sounds With A Microcontroller | Danie Conradie | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"ARM microcontroller",
"bird calls",
"conservation",
"Edge Impulse",
"machine learning"
] | Machine learning is an incredible tool for conservation research, especially for scenarios like long term observation, and sifting through massive amounts of data. While the average Hackaday reader might not be able to take part in data gathering in an isolated wilderness somewhere, we are all surrounded by bird life. Using an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense and an online machine learning tool, a team made up of [Errol Joshua], [Ajith KJ], [Mahesh Nayak], and [Supriya Nickam] demonstrate how to set up an
automated bird call classifier
.
The
Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense
is a fully featured little dev board that features the very capable NRF52840 microcontroller with Bluetooth Low Energy, and a variety of onboard sensors, including a microphone. Training a machine learning model might seem daunting to many people, but online services like
Edge Impulse
makes the process very beginner-friendly. Once you start training your own models for specific applications, you quickly learn that building and maintaining a high quality dataset is often the most time-consuming part of machine learning. Fortunately for this use case, a massive online library of bird calls from all over the world is available on
Xeno-Canto
. This can be augmented with background noise from the area where the device will be deployed to reduce false-positives. Edge Impulse will train the model using the provided dataset, and generate a library that can be used on the Arduino with one of the provided sample sketches to log and send the collected data to a server. Then comes the never ending process of iteratively testing and improving the recognition model. Edge Impulse is also compatible with more powerful devices such as the Raspberry Pi and Jetson Nano if you want more intensive machine learning models.
We’ve also seen the exact same setup get used for
smart baby monitor
. If you want to learn more, be sure to watch at
[Shawn Hymel]’s talk from the 2020 Remoticon
about machine learning on microcontrollers.
Header photo by Joey Smith on Unsplash
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 4 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6362424",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2021-07-07T09:06:57",
"content": "Spurtleete ceoweet, robin. A spelt vocabulary is is needed perhaps. Peterson’s has voice graphs. I’ve never heard of the library above but have heard of the Cornell School of Ornithology which is the st... | 1,760,373,030.989357 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/10-000-physics-wager-settles-the-debate-on-sailing-downwind-faster-than-the-wind/ | $10 000 Physics Wager Settles The Debate On Sailing Downwind Faster Than The Wind | Danie Conradie | [
"Science"
] | [
"land yacht",
"laws of physics",
"sailing",
"veritasium",
"wind power"
] | By now, many of you have seen the video of [Rick Cavallaro]’s Blackbird, the controversial wind-powered land vehicle that can outrun the wind. The video has led to a high-profile
$10 000 wager between [Derek Muller] aka [Veritasium] and [Alex Kusenko], a professor of physics from UCLA
. [Veritasium] won the wager with the help of a
scale model built by [Xyla Foxlin]
, and you need to watch the videos after the break for some excellent lessons in physics, engineering, and civilized debate.
After seeing
[Veritasium]’s video on Blackbird
, [Professor Kusenko] contacted him and said the performance claims and explanation were incorrect. After a bit of debate [Veritasium] proposed a wager on the matter, which [Professor Kusenko] accepted, and it was made official with a written agreement witnessed by [Neil deGrasse Tyson], [Bill Nye], and [Sean Carrol]. From the start, it was agreed that the entire debate would be made public.
[Professor Kusenko] made a very thorough and convincing argument, backed by calculations, against the claims in the video. He claimed the observations were due to a combination of gusty winds, a vertical wind gradient. He was convinced and that the vehicle would not be able to maintain a speed higher than the wind, directly downwind. By [Veritasium]’s own admittance, his original video could have contained more details and proof of performance claims of the Blackbird vehicle. He added these to the latest video and included two model demonstrations. The model that brought the concept home for us is at 13:46 in the video, and substitutes the propeller for a large wheel being driven by a piece of lumber being bushed across it. The second model, built by [Xyla Foxlin] was designed to demonstrate the concept on a treadmill. The 4th version of [Xyla]’s model was the first to be successful after she found out from [Rick Cavallaro] that the key design detail is the Vehicle Speed Ratio, which must be 0.7 or less. It is the pitch of the propeller divided by the circumference of the driven wheel, assuming a 1:1 gear ratio. All the 3D files and details are available if you want to build your own downwind cart.
In the end, [Professor Kusenko] conceded in light of the evidence, and [Veritasium] will use the money towards funding more STEM education videos. What stood out for us is the humble and civilized manner the debate was handled. As [Veritasium] says, scientific agreements are not problems, but rather an opportunity for everyone to learn. If all disagreements were handled in this manner, mankind would be a lot better off. | 95 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361586",
"author": "Keith J Wakeham",
"timestamp": "2021-07-03T02:17:47",
"content": "His original explanation always bothered me because it implied “bluff body” provides the force for the wheels. As far as I can figure that was 100% wrong. The second one he’s sort of clearer and i... | 1,760,373,031.231789 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/from-printer-to-vinyl-cutter/ | From Printer To Vinyl Cutter | Matthew Carlson | [
"cnc hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"3d printing",
"arduino",
"inkjet printer",
"pcb",
"vinyl",
"vinyl cutter"
] | Some might look at a cheap inkjet printer and see a clunky device that costs more to replace the ink than to buy a new one. [Abhishek Verma] saw an old inkjet printer and instead saw a smooth gantry and feed mechanism, the perfect platform to
build his own DIY vinyl cutter
.
The printer was carefully disassembled. The feed mechanism was reworked to be driven by a stepper motor with some 3D printed adapter plates. A solenoid-based push/pull mechanism for the cutting blade was added with a 3D printed housing along with a relay module. An Arduino Uno takes in commands from a computer with the help of a CNC GRBL shield.
What we love about this build is the ingenuity and reuse of parts inside the old printer. For example, the old PCB was cut and connectors were re-used. From the outside, it’s hard to believe that HP didn’t manufacture this as a vinyl cutter.
If you don’t have a printer on hand, you can always
use your CNC as a vinyl cutter
. But if you don’t have a CNC, [Abhishek] shares all the
STL files for his cutter as well as the schematic
. Video after the break. | 14 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361577",
"author": "Xtremegamer",
"timestamp": "2021-07-02T23:45:35",
"content": "Vinyl cutters are becoming e-waste since some companies tend to go the apple way and revise hardware just for the sake of money influx, yet they DRM everything so you cant use it without their eco-sys... | 1,760,373,031.101296 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/an-oshw-ir-remote-control-powered-by-the-attiny13a/ | An OSHW IR Remote Control Powered By The ATtiny13A | Tom Nardi | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"ATtiny13A",
"infrared",
"IR remote",
"remote control"
] | The new hotness in consumer electronics might be RF remotes based on protocols like Bluetooth Low Energy, but there’s still plenty of life left in the classic infrared remote. Especially with projects like
TinyRemoteXL from [Stefan Wagner]
, which let you build and program an IR “clicker” of your own. Whether you want to spin up your own custom universal remote or create a beefed up version of the TV-B-Gone, this open source effort is a great place to start.
The original TinyRemote.
As you might have guessed from the name, this project is actually a larger version of the
TinyRemote that [Stefan] put together previously
. The documentation for that project goes a bit more into the nuts and bolts of talking IR, and is definitely worth a read if you’re into the low level stuff. For the original five button TinyRemote, the hardware consists of little more than a ATtiny13A microcontroller, a pair of IR LEDs, and the transistors to drive them.
But on the XL, things are a bit trickier as there are now twelve buttons for the ATtiny13A to read. Obviously there aren’t enough pins to read so many buttons directly, but with a combination of BAS16TW diode arrays and resistors, [Stefan] is able to detect what button was pressed using the chip’s interrupt pin and ADC. Certainly a handy trick to have in the back of your mind, and the open source nature of this project gives you a great chance to see how it’s implemented.
Between this project and the
impressive development board [Djordje Mandic] released recently
, it seems we’re looking at something of an infrared hacking revival. Earlier this year we even saw the
commercial release of an IR-equipped ESP8266 board
. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361535",
"author": "Vojťák",
"timestamp": "2021-07-02T20:16:39",
"content": "I would prefer charlieplexed buttons (with diodes and internal pull-up resistors) instead of using ADC. But still, great project!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"... | 1,760,373,031.349327 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/throne-of-dev-an-endgame-office-chair/ | Throne Of Dev: An Endgame Office Chair | Kristina Panos | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"Office Chair",
"plywood",
"recliner",
"working from home"
] | They say you shouldn’t cheap out on anything that comes between you and the ground. Typically, that list includes shoes, tires, and mattresses. But it’s 2021, and it’s high time to add ‘office chair’ to that list. Take it from someone who bought a handful of hundred-dollar office chairs and finally invested in an Aeron. Your throne makes a difference.
We’re not sure if there is conclusive evidence of this phenomenon, but it seems that for many people, the fastest way to get those creative juices flowing is to lean back and put your feet up. Now it’s one thing to lean back in an office chair and hold yourself there, but it’s quite another to sit in, say, a recliner that keeps the position for you. What if there was an office chair that could switch between the two? [Peter van der Walt] has been working from home for a decade now and will soon be moving to a new base of operations. The new space has a little office next to the main area, so it’s the perfect opportunity to build the dream chair —
a day-to-night endgame throne for working, gaming, and everything in between
.
[Peter] is working with some cyborg additions to his body and doesn’t care for the standard office chair fare. Currently, he splits his sits between a plastic chair like you’d find outside a coffee house (hey, whatever works best) and a cushy recliner. The idea is to find comfort and focus, and build something comfortable enough to accommodate the occasional afternoon siesta. It will be completely CNC-machineable from 18 mm plywood, and will probably have some upholstery eventually. Your ideas for feature creep are welcome below, or better yet, in the discussion area of the project page.
Some of us like to stand once in a while, but don’t want to go all in on a robotic desk.
There are budget-friendly ways around that problem too, of course
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361518",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2021-07-02T19:27:16",
"content": "(Apropos of suggestions) Awhile back I had some thoughts on doing this.I don’t like 2 displays on the same computer, because you spend a lot of time trying to find the mouse pointer and adjusting the apps ... | 1,760,373,031.406843 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/the-trouble-with-hubble-payload-computer-glitch-stops-science-at-the-space-observatory/ | The Trouble With Hubble: Payload Computer Glitch Stops Science At The Space Observatory | Dan Maloney | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"News",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [] | The Hubble Space Telescope’s remarkably long service life and its string of astonishing contributions to astronomy belie its troubled history. Long before its launch into low Earth orbit in 1990, Hubble suffered from design conflicts, funding and budgetary pressures, and even the death of seven astronauts. Long delayed, much modified, and mistakenly sent aloft with suboptimal optics, Hubble still managed to deliver results that have literally changed our view of the universe, and is perhaps responsible for more screensaver and desktop pictures than any other single source.
But all of that changed on June 13 of this year, when Hubble suffered a computer glitch that interrupted the flow of science data from the orbiting observatory. It’s not yet clear how the current issue with Hubble is going to pan out, and what it all means for the future of this nearly irreplaceable scientific asset. We all hope for the best, of course, but while we wait to see what happens, it’s worth taking the opportunity to dive inside Hubble for a look at its engineering and what exactly has gone wrong up there.
Above It All
The idea of putting a telescope in space, high above the roiling atmospheric soup we all live near the bottom of, was not exactly a new one even in the early 1960s, when humanity’s first tentative steps into space actually made such an audacious plan feasible. Before they had even put a boot on the Moon, NASA aspired to put a large reflecting telescope in Earth orbit, with a tentative goal of making it happen by the end of 1979. They recognized that such an installation would require frequent visits to maintain and upgrade it, and so the future space telescope’s design proceeded alongside NASA’s intended replacement for the mighty expendable rockets of the Apollo era: the reusable space plane that would come to be known as the Space Shuttle.
The parallel development of the Space Shuttle and the space telescope, which would eventually be named after American astronomer Edwin Hubble, resulted in design decisions that would pay enormous dividends down the road. Hubble was designed from the outset to be serviced, and specifically by space shuttle missions. As such, the spacecraft carrying the telescope and all the various scientific instruments that can be switched into its optical path has abundant handholds, tether points, and easily accessed hatches and compartments, all designed to make it easier for spacewalking astronauts to perform their tasks. Inside the spacecraft’s many equipment bays, instruments are attached with standardized fasteners designed to be manipulated with gloved hands. Hubble even came with a complete kit of specialized tools, to be used by future service missions.
All the best vehicles come with a nice toolkit. Hubble’s specialized service tools. Source: NASA
Ever mindful of the march of progress, Hubble’s designers knew that the instruments they could think up and build in the 1980s would pale in comparison to what would undoubtedly follow. To prevent built-in obsolescence, Hubble was specifically designed with not only repairs in mind, but upgrades to its scientific packages. Really the only part of Hubble that has been constant over its service life has been the Optical Telescope Assembly, consisting of the famously misground primary mirror, a secondary mirror, and supporting structures like the trusses that keep them in alignment and the baffles to control reflections.
The instrument bay behind the primary mirror was designed to accommodate five scientific instruments at a time. The first service mission to the Hubble, which went up on
Endeavour
in 1993 and made Story Musgrave and Kathyrn Thornton household names, included the COSTAR corrective optics package, which restored Hubble’s fine focus and allowed it to explore the faintest and furthest objects in the universe. A dozen other spectrographs and cameras have occupied the equipment bays over the years, some being left in place for just a few years; others have been permanent parts of Hubble, generating data since the very beginning.
NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer: Built to be Modded
The foresight Hubble’s designers showed in recognizing the need to swap out science packages on Hubble influenced their designs for other areas of the spacecraft as well. As early as the mid-1970s, NASA realized that building custom subsystems for every mission, which had worked so well for the manned space flights of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, would be a hindrance to developing and fielding a wide range of spacecraft to explore near space. To that end, the NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 (NSSC-1) was developed, with the goal of standardizing the tricky business of keeping pretty much any spacecraft that carried it stable and in orbit, as well as to run whatever science the mission planners could dream up, and to do all of that with basically just software changes.
The Hubble SI C&DH. The NSSC-1s are called out as CPUs at the back of the tray, flanked by the stacks of primary and backup memory modules. Source: NASA
NSSC-1 flew on a number of missions before finding its way into the Hubble equipment bay. By modern standards, the computer seems primitive, with discrete TTL chips and a mere 64k of 18-bit core memory (
plated-wire memory
was also used, and appears to be what was originally flown on Hubble’s NSSC-1). But the design was robust, radiation-hardened, and redundant at the module level, and most importantly, it gave mission planners for the first time what had largely been absent from prior spacecraft controllers: in-flight programmability.
On Hubble, the NSSC-1 forms the core of a subassembly called the Scientific Instrument Command and Data Handling Unit, or SI C&DH. This is a largish tray upon which the NSSC-1 module and other modules, like power regulators, interfaces to the scientific instruments, and remote control interfaces are attached. Everything is redundant, and the entire assembly is built to support being swapped out by spacewalking astronauts. In fact, the final service call paid to Hubble in 2009 included the replacement of the SI C&DH with a new unit, one with the original core memory modules upgraded to CMOS. The video below shows the SI C&DH undergoing ground tests before heading upstairs.
Trouble Upstairs
The current issue with Hubble centers around the SI C&DH assembly, which the media have mercifully dubbed “the payload computer.” On June 13, the NSSC-1 in the unit went into safe mode, which was the widely reported “glitch”. Initial diagnostics led operators to suspect that one of the memory modules had degraded enough that the computer couldn’t continue operating. Exactly how a single degraded memory module is causing this issue is a bit of a mystery; the NSSC-1 only needs one memory module at a time to work, leaving the other three — as well as the four memory modules in the backup NSSC-1 — in reserve. But given the available data, it seemed like the most logical explanation.
The initial attempt at recovery from the error state was pretty much what we’d all try first: turning it off and back on again. The commands to do that were sent up on June 14, to no avail. The next step was to switch the NSSC-1 to one of the three backup memory modules, but that command was met with a failure as well. This and other diagnostics led NASA to believe that the problem might not lie in the NSSC-1 or its memory modules at all, but rather in other modules on the SI C&DH, specifically the Standard Interface (STINT) hardware, or the Central Processor Module (CPM).
Testing that hypothesis required a radical step: turning on the backup NSSC-1 for the first time in space. The backup had only ever been tested on Earth, and has been sitting dormant since it was installed twelve years ago. This step was taken on June 23 and 24, and the data indicated that the backup computer suffered from the exact same fault as the primary computer.
It’s unlikely in the extreme that both the primary computer and a backup computer that has been sitting idle for more than a decade would fail in exactly the same way at exactly the same time, so that test provided strong evidence that the fault lies somewhere else. Current thinking is that some other piece of hardware on the SI C&DH, something shared by both computers, is actually causing the fault, and that the memory error is but a symptom. NASA is looking at the Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF), which formats and sends commands to the various science instruments and data to the ground, as the likely culprit. The other suspect is the Power Control Unit, which conditions and regulates the various voltage rails needed around the SI C&DH.
Is This the End?
While it sounds like NASA has a good handle on what’s going on with Hubble, given everything the spacecraft has been through over the last 31 years, it’s hard to say that the odds of recovery are in its favor at this point. That’s a shame, because aside from the current issue, the spacecraft and instruments are in great shape. But there’s also the fact that since the retirement of the shuttle fleet in 2011, Hubble is without the vehicle it was designed to be serviced by, and to boost it to a higher orbit from time to time to fight atmospheric drag.
What’s even more ominous is one of the last modifications made to Hubble in the 2009 service call: affixing a device called a Soft Capture Mechanism to the aft end of the spacecraft. Originally intended to provide a means for returning Hubble to Earth in the payload bay of a shuttle, the SCM’s purpose is now to provide an attachment point for a future deorbiting mission. Left to its own devices, Hubble will deorbit naturally sometime between 2028 and 2040, taking a trajectory that may leave the more than 800 kg mirror at least partially intact. The SCM will allow NASA to control reentry more precisely, giving Hubble a quick and dignified end to a decades-long career of unmatched scientific accomplishment.
It seems to us that a hypothetical deorbit mission could just as easily be an orbital boost mission, but that presumes NASA will be able to clear the current bug and get Hubble back to work. Here’s hoping that’s exactly what happens, and that the SCM doesn’t have to be used one minute earlier than necessary.
A big thanks to [David Anders] for pulling together a bunch of excellent sources on the NSSC-1 and SI C&DH and
posting it on Hackaday.io
. It was invaluable in pulling this article together.
[Main image
via Wikimedia Commons
] | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361939",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-07-04T21:29:27",
"content": "Thank you for activating the Comments!(Though I’ve forgotten what I was going to write!)B^)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6362745",
"author":... | 1,760,373,031.296867 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/hackaday-podcast-125-linux-users-talking-windows-11-pop-bottle-filament-old-phones-with-modern-guts-and-eavesdropping-in-rf/ | Hackaday Podcast 125: Linux Users Talking Windows 11, Pop Bottle Filament, Old Phones With Modern Guts, And Eavesdropping In RF | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams look through the most interesting hacks of the week. We spent ample time in adulation of the automatons built by
François Junod
; wizard-level watchmaking wrapped in endless levels of artistic detail. A couple projects stuffed into old cellphones turned Elliot’s head. We got to see what happens if you spin a gear’s teeth on two axes to make a universal spherical gear. And we conclude the episode with a look at how Windows 11 may send a lot of good hardware to recycle center, and at how toothpaste tubes sometimes miss the recycling center completely.
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Direct download
(55 MB or so.)
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
Google Podcasts
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
Episode 125 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 limited-edition Hackaday Podcast T-shirt. (How limited? This will be the 5th ever.)
New This Week:
Ten Projects Won The Rethink Displays Round Of The Hackaday Prize
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Listen To The RF Around You
Vivaldi Antennas
Making an Ultra-Wideband Antenna – Part 2 (Introducing the Palm Tree Vivaldi Antenna)
Second-Hand Television SHINEs, Takes Down Entire Village’s Internet
Old Phones with New OSes
LoRa Messenger In Nokia’s Shell
A Phone That Old Shouldn’t Be Running Android
The Incredible Mechanical Artistry Of François Junod
2:06 into this video you see the cam that makes birds sing
Tiny Operating System For Tiny Computer
Minitel – Wikipedia
Zardoz (1974) – IMDb
Video De-shaker Software Measures Linear Rail Quality
Active Ball Joint Uses Spherical Gear
Active ball mechanism joint – Floating in the Clouds
Quick Hacks:
Mike’s Picks
PetBot: Turn PET Bottles Into Filament
Garage Semiconductor Fab Gets Reactive-Ion Etching Upgrade
Mechanical 7-Segment Display Uses A Single Motor
Mechanically Multiplexed Flip-Dot
Elliot’s Picks:
Just How Vulnerable To Accidental Erasure Are EPROMs Anyway?
Electric RC Plane Flies For Almost 11 Hours
Measuring Planck’s Constant With LEDs And A DMM
Can’t-Miss Articles:
The Great Windows 11 Computer Extinction Experiment
Trusted Platform Module – Wikipedia
You Can’t Put The Toothpaste Back In The Tube, But It Used To Be Easier | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361584",
"author": "fumthings",
"timestamp": "2021-07-03T01:43:42",
"content": "also the censoring this week was the “6 million dollar man” jumping or doing something superhuman.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6361641",
... | 1,760,373,031.54428 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/discarded-plastic-laser-cut-and-reassembled/ | Discarded Plastic Laser-Cut And Reassembled | Bryan Cockfield | [
"cnc hacks",
"green hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"garbage",
"laser cutter",
"melt",
"plastic",
"recycle",
"reuse",
"sheet"
] | The longevity of plastic is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it’s extremely durable, inexpensive, and easy to work with, but it also doesn’t biodegrade and lasts indefinitely in the environment when not disposed of properly. While this can mean devastating impacts to various ecosystems, it can also be a benefit if you happen to
pick this plastic up and also happen to have a laser cutter around
.
After cleaning and sorting plastic that they had found from various places, including scraps from a 3D printing facility, the folks at [dinalab] set about turning waste plastic into something that would be usable once more. After sorting it they shredded it and then melted it into sheets. They found that a sandwich press yielded the best results, as it kept the plastic at a low enough temperature to keep it from burning. Once its off of the press and properly cooled, the flat sheets of plastic can be sent to the laser cutter to be made into whatever useful thing they happen to need.
Not only does this process reuse plastic that would otherwise end up in the landfill (or worse, the ocean), it can also reuse plastic from itself since the scraps can be re-melted back into sheets. Plastic does lose some of its favorable material properties with repeated heat cycles, but we’d have to imagine this is negligible for the types of things that [dinalab] is creating. Of course, you can always skip the heat cycles entirely and
turn waste plastic directly into 3D printer filament instead
. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361470",
"author": "Alice Lalita Heald",
"timestamp": "2021-07-02T15:41:37",
"content": "Good idea, but too colorful for my taste, how to make it normal?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6361480",
"author": "MikrySoft"... | 1,760,373,031.664072 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/this-week-in-security-bad-signs-from-microsoft-an-epyc-vm-escape/ | This Week In Security: Bad Signs From Microsoft, An Epyc VM Escape | Jonathan Bennett | [
"computer hacks",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"0-day",
"My Book Live",
"This Week in Security",
"Zyxel"
] | Code signing is the silver bullet that will save us from malware, right? Not so much, particularly when
vendors can be convinced to sign malicious code
. Researchers at G DATA got a hit on a Windows kernel driver, indicating it might be malicious. That seemed strange, since the driver was properly signed by Microsoft. Upon further investigation, it became clear that this really was malware. The file was reported to Microsoft, the signature revoked, and the malware added to the Windows Defender definitions.
The
official response from Microsoft
is odd. They start off by assuring everyone that their driver signing process wasn’t actually compromised, like you would. The next part is weird. Talking about the people behind the malware: “The actor’s goal is to use the driver to spoof their geo-location to cheat the system and play from anywhere. The malware enables them to gain an advantage in games and possibly exploit other players by compromising their accounts through common tools like keyloggers.” This doesn’t seem to really match the observed behavior of the malware — it seemed to be decoding SSL connections and sending the data to the C&C server. We’ll update you if we hear anything more on this one.
Escaping the KVM
Let’s talk virtualization, specifically
a flaw in the KVM code for AMD hardware
. There’s a few distinctions to cover that makes this more understandable. First, virtualization in Linux is split into two distinct parts. The Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) is the driver that runs in the kernel, and handles the heavy lifting, like memory management, scheduling, and sending control instructions to the CPU. The other half is the userspace part, the widest use project here being QEMU. This vulnerability is notable because it’s in KVM code itself, meaning that it runs in kernel space.
Our bug revolves around how the
VMRUN
instruction is handled in a nested virtualization environment. This instruction takes a block of data and initializes a new running VM. When it’s called from withing an already running VM, that data is sanity-checked, and then copied before being passed on to the underlying KVM. This process is the potential problem, because the check-then-copy process isn’t an atomic process. In other words, it’s possible to modify the nested VM initialization data after the checks are performed, but before the data is actually sent down the virtualization stack — it’s a Time Of Check, Time Of Use (TOCTOU) vulnerability.
There’s one more important concept. The KVM module on the bare metal handles the bring-up of all VMs, even nested ones. All
VMRUN
calls have to go through the hypervisor kernel, to get hardware virtualization acceleration. One bit of the VMRUN data is an indicator whether the KVM is supposed to do the interception of this instruction. Setting that bit to 0 isn’t supported, and just cancels the process. The problem is when a nested VM calls this command, but a process in the outer VM manages to change the bit to 0 after checks. This results in code being run in an unintended way, overwriting the outer VM’s configuration with the inner VM data.
To actually exploit this TOCTOU bug, the outer VM permissions get overwritten, giving the VM greater access to the underlying hardware. One of those permissions allows the VM to overwrite the saved context address for a
VMEXIT
call. So with a few other tricks, the VM can use the TOCTOU flaw to give itself this permission, construct a malicious context and trick the bare metal KVM process to switching into that malicious context, giving the attacker control over the system. I’ve glossed over a bunch of details here, so if you want the full details, go check out the full write-up, expertly put together by [Felix Wilhelm] of Project Zero.
Linkedin Data
A database of 700 million Linkedin users has
shown up for sale on a forum
, with one million samples released as evidence of good data. Certain sites are calling this a breach, which isn’t entirely correct, as the data seems to be scraped from the Linkedin API and it doesn’t include password hashes or private messages. This seems to be essentially the same data set as
was reported back in April
, possibly updated with fresh entries to make up the difference in numbers.
The My Book Story Continues
Last week we told you about the My Books that were being wiped remotely, and I speculated that it could be a ransomware campaign gone wrong. It seems like it wasn’t ransomware at all, but someone covering their tracks after a remote exploit. There are actually
two vulnerabilities at play here
. The previously known CVE-2018-18472 seems to have been used to install a malicious binary on internet-accessible devices. It’s not yet known what exactly that binary did, but probably something resembling botnet activity. Regardless, a second 0-day vulnerability, CVE-2021-35941, was used to trigger a remote factory reset. An early theory was that the binary was deployed by one attacker, and someone else triggered the reset, but
WD’s analysis
found that in some cases, both attacks were launched from the same IP. Hopefully more of the story will come to light as the binary is investigated.
Zyxel 0-day
Zyxel has published a
response to a recent spate of device compromises
. Their response is very short on details so far, most notably lacking a CVE, the details of a vulnerability being exploited, or firmware that actually fixes the vulnerability.
The threat actor attempts to access a device through WAN; if successful, they then bypass authentication and establish SSL VPN tunnels with unknown user accounts.
The post is very heavy on how to prevent attackers from accessing an exposed web interface from the Internet, but it seems to me that the big question is how an attacker could trivially “bypass authentication”. It’s possible that attackers are simply running through a password list, and there isn’t sufficient rate-limiting in the Zyxel firmware. I suspect, though, that this is a 0-day vulnerability being exploited in the wild.
As far as I can tell, it’s over a week since this notice was first announced, and Zyxel still hasn’t revealed whether they have a 0-day at play. That’s irresponsible. Then again, Zyxel
doesn’t
exactly
have the
best record
for
product security
.
RPM’s Problem
Ah, the Red Hat Package Manager. In some ways, it defined what a Linux distribution should look like, with decent software management and hard-to-break updates. Seriously, if I could change only one thing about the non-free operating systems out there, it would be to move the whole OS to something like RPM or dpkg. Instantly more usable, but I digress.
One of the benefits of the CentOS forks is that more people are looking at some of the under-the-hood code behind RPM-based systems. As a result, problems are found, like the fact that
RPM doesn’t check for certificate revocation or expiration
. That sounds like a terrible vulnerability, but keep in mind that it was simply never part of the plan to use certificate revocation. That feature was never implemented, because it hasn’t ever been needed or used. On the other hand, the lack of verification means that if a distro loses control of one of their signing keys, they will have a harder time containing the problem. Either way, patches are being worked on to add the checks to RPM’s OpenPGP implementation.
Disable Print Spooler to Avoid PrintNightmares
There was
a Windows vulnerability patched in June of this year
, CVE-2021-1675, that allowed RCE using the print spooler. It appears that Microsoft’s patch was a poor one, preventing one particular exploit, rather than fixing the real problem. Once the patch was pushed as part of patch Tuesday, multiple
PoCs have been disclosed
, but surprisingly
some of them still work
! The still-working exploit
is being tracked as CVE-2021-34527
. A quick glance at the PoCs seems to indicate that it’s a way to push an unsigned printer driver into a machine that offers remote printing.
This vulnerability is easy to exploit, and working exploits are available, so expect attackers to add this to their bag of tricks very soon. It’s serious enough that Microsoft and CISA are suggesting that we all
turn off print spooler altogether
on domain controllers, as well as any system that doesn’t need to print. | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361460",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2021-07-02T14:58:17",
"content": "> it seemed to be decoding SSL connections and sending the data to the C&C serverPlug “SSLKEYLOGFILE” into your search engine of choice. The logged keys could then be used for debugging TLS traffic.SSL is o... | 1,760,373,031.610505 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/a-robot-to-top-up-your-tesla/ | A Robot To Top Up Your Tesla | Danie Conradie | [
"car hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"charging station",
"electric car",
"robot arm",
"tesla"
] | The convenience of just plugging in your car in the evening and not going into a gas station is great as long as you remember to do the plugging. You really don’t want to get caught with an empty battery while you’re in a rush. [Pat Larson]’s
Tesla plugging robot
might be a handy insurance policy if you count forgetfulness among your weaknesses.
The robot consists of a standard Tesla charging plug attached to a 2-axis robotic arm mounted on [Pat]’s garage wall. Everything is controlled by a Python script running on Raspberry Pi 4. After taking a picture with a camera module, it uses a Tensor Flow Lite machine learning model to determine the position of a reflector on the charging port cover. The platform moves back and forth to align with the charging port, after which it opens the charging port using the Tesla API. It then extends the arm towards the charging port, using ultrasonic proximity sensors for distance control, and again uses the camera module and Tensor Flow to look for the illuminated Tesla logo adjacent to the charging port. The charge plug is flipped out using a large servo, and after some final position adjustment, it takes the plunge. While robot won’t be winning any interior design contests, it does the job well, and adds a bit of convenience and peace of mind.
Other Tesla hacks we’ve seen include
building a working Model S for $6500
, turning an
old Honda into a speed demon using Tesla parts
, and a
Casio F-91W that can unlock your Tesla
. | 37 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361419",
"author": "BaZ",
"timestamp": "2021-07-02T11:34:48",
"content": "Might it be more accurate to print some high contrast QR style vinyl stickers to identify the charging hole? Four small ones around it, placed at known distances from each other?",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,031.827016 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/02/dumping-90s-honda-ecu-programming-with-arduino/ | Dumping 90’s Honda ECU Programming With Arduino | Danie Conradie | [
"car hacks",
"classic hacks"
] | [] | [P1kachu] owns a pair of early 1990’s Honda’s with custom tuning on their stock ECUs, and after having to get the ECU repaired on his ’93 civic, he found himself going down the rabbit hole of
Honda ECU EPROM chips
.
During the repair process, the tuning shop owner, or [Tuner-san] as [P1ikachu] refers to him, made a backup of the custom tuning to another EPROM chip. This was done with an old Advantest R4945A EPROM programmer, which [Tuner-san] supposedly also used to clone Famicom cartridges back in the day. After realizing that [Tuner-san] could only clone the contents, but not view or modify it, he started looking at ways to do that.
EPROMS are programmed using higher voltage (12.5 V – 25 V) but to read them 5 V is used. The memory address is selected by setting each of the 15 address pins high or low, and then reading the status of the 8 data pins to extract one byte of data. Rinse and repeat for each of the 256 memory addresses on the Microchip 27C256 EPROM. One of the previous owners of [Pikachu]’s Civic made some unknown tuning changes, so he is in the process of looking at the dumped data to see what was changed. Once he has completed figuring out the programming table of the EPROM, he plans to do some testing with [Tuner-san] to possible smooth out the rev limited.
An interesting aspect of EPROMs is that they are
erased using UV ligh
t, which sets all the memory bits to 1. During programming, selected bits can be set to 0, but it’s not possible to set them back to 1 without erasing the entire chip again.
Messing around with the computers in cars is not only for tuning, but can also expose some rather
serious security flaws
, especially in modern vehicles. | 19 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361370",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2021-07-02T08:10:06",
"content": "“for each of the 256 memory addresses on the Microchip 27C256 EPROM”.There are 32k memory addresses. The 256 in the chip number refers to 256*k* bits = 32k bytes.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"... | 1,760,373,031.984148 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/01/this-horrifying-robot-is-here-to-teach-you-a-lesson/ | This Horrifying Robot Is Here To Teach You A Lesson | Tom Nardi | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"python",
"Raspberry Pi 4",
"ssh",
"telepresence",
"telepresence robot",
"work from home"
] | No, despite what it might look like, this isn’t some early Halloween project. The creepy creation before you is actually a tongue-in-cheek “robot” created by the prolific [Nick Bild], a topical statement about companies asking their remote workers to come back into the office now that COVID-19 restrictions are being lifted. Why commute every day when this
ultra realistic avatar can sit in for you
?
OK, so maybe it’s not the most impressive humanoid creation to ever grace the pages of Hackaday. But if you’re looking to spin up a simple telepresence system, you could do worse than browsing through the Python source code [Nick] has provided. Using a Raspberry Pi 4, a webcam, and a microphone, his client-server architecture combines everything the bot sees and hears into a simple page that can be remotely accessed with a web browser.
Naturally this work from home (WFH) bot wouldn’t be much good if it was just a one-way street, so [Nick] has also added a loudspeaker that replays whatever he says on the client side. To prevent a feedback loop, his software includes a function that toggles which direction the audio stream goes in by passing the appropriate commands to the bot over SSH; a neat trick to keep in mind for your own, less nightmarish, creations.
If you’re looking for something a bit more capable and have some cardboard laying around, this
DIY telepresence mount for your phone
might be a good place to start. | 8 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361346",
"author": "JWhitten",
"timestamp": "2021-07-02T06:24:45",
"content": "Raise your hand if that looks uncannily like one of your coworkers…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6361428",
"author": "Nick Bild",
... | 1,760,373,031.869961 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/01/quick-and-simple-morse-decoder/ | Quick And Simple Morse Decoder | Chris Lott | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"algorithm",
"arduino",
"morse code"
] | [Rostislav Persion] wrote a
simple Morse Code decoder
to run on his Arduino and display the text on an LCD shield. This is probably the simplest decoder possible, and thus its logic is pretty straightforward to follow. Simplicity comes at a price — changing the speed requires changing constants in the code. We would like to see this hooked up to a proper Morse code key, and see how fast [Rostislav] could drive it before it conks out.
In an earlier era of Morse code decoders, one tough part was dealing with the idiosyncrasies of each sender. Every operator’s style, or “fist”, has subtle variations in the timings of the dots, dashes, and the pauses between these elements, the letters, and the words. In fact, trained operators can recognize each other because of this, much like we can often recognize who is speaking on the phone just by hearing their voice. The other difficulty these decoders faced was detecting the signal in low signal-to-noise ratio environments — pulling the signal out of the noise.
A Morse decoder built today is more likely to be used to decode machine-generated signals, for example, debugging information or telemetry. This would more than likely be sent at fixed, known speeds over directly connected links with very high S/N ratios (a wire, perhaps). In these situations, a simple decoder like [Rostislav]’s is completely sufficient.
We wrote about a couple of Morse code algorithms back in 2014, the
MorseDetector
and the
Magic Morse algorithm
. While Morse code operators usually rank their skills by speed — the faster the better — this
Morse code project
for very low power transmitters turns that notion on its head by using speeds more suitably measured in minutes per word (77 MPW for that project). Have you used Morse code in any of your projects before? Let us know in the comments below. | 14 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361320",
"author": "Paul",
"timestamp": "2021-07-02T03:48:04",
"content": "Yep. Morse makes great error beep codes, and a single letter is easy enough to be parsable even by muggles. (like “long short short short” = “B”attery)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replie... | 1,760,373,031.928221 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/01/automate-the-farm-with-acorn/ | Automate The Farm With Acorn | Bryan Cockfield | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"acorn",
"automation",
"capacitor",
"computer vision",
"farm",
"gps",
"robot",
"solar",
"sustainable"
] | Farming has been undergoing quite a revolution in the past few years. Since World War 2, most industrial farming has relied on synthetic fertilizer, large machinery, and huge farms with single crops. Now there is a growing number of successful farmers bucking that trend with small farms growing many crops and using natural methods of fertilizing that don’t require as much industry. Of course even with these types of farms, some machinery is still nice to have,
so this farmer has been developing an open-source automated farming robot
.
The robot is known as Acorn and is the project of [taylor] who farms in California. The platform is powered by an 800 watt solar array feeding a set of supercapacitors for energy storage. It uses mountain bike wheels and tires fitted with electric hub motors which give it four wheel drive and four wheel steering to make it capable even in muddy fields. The farming tools, as well as any computer vision and automation hardware, can be housed under the solar panels. This prototype uses an Nvidia Jetson module to handle the heavy lifting of machine learning and automation, with a Raspberry Pi to handle the basic operation of the robot, and can navigate itself around a farm using highly precise GPS units.
While the robot’s development is currently ongoing, [taylor] hopes to develop a community that will build their own versions and help develop the platform. Farming improvements like this are certainly needed as more and more farmers shift from unsustainable monocultures to more ecologically friendly methods involving multiple simultaneous crops, carbon sequestration, and off-season cover crops. It’s certainly a long row to hoe but
plenty of people are already plowing ahead
.
Thanks to [rvense] for the tip! | 40 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361276",
"author": "Programmer Dude (@koppanyh)",
"timestamp": "2021-07-01T23:37:16",
"content": "Ok, now I’m curious, I’ve noticed a lot of farm robots have that similar form-factor, why is that? I understand that the wheels are like that because of the terrain it has to work on, ... | 1,760,373,032.231189 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/01/esp32-turned-handy-swd-flasher-for-nrf52-chips/ | ESP32 Turned Handy SWD Flasher For NRF52 Chips | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"custom firmware",
"ESP32",
"flasher",
"nRF52",
"SWD",
"voltage glitch"
] | Got an nRF52 or nRF51 device you need to flash? Got an ESP32 laying around collecting dust? If so, then firmware hacking extraordinaire
[Aaron Christophel] has the open source code you need
. His new project allows the affordable WiFi-enabled microcontroller to read and write to the internal flash of Nordic nRF52 series chips via their SWD interface. As long as you’ve got some jumper wires and a web browser, you’re good to go.
In the first video below [Aaron] demonstrates the technique with the PineTime smartwatch, but the process will be more or less the same regardless of what your target device is. Just connect the CLK and DIO lines to pins GPIO 21 and GPIO 19 of the ESP32, point your web browser to its address on the local network, and you’ll be presented with a straightforward user interface for reading and writing the chip’s flash.
As demonstrated in the second video, with a few more wires and a MOSFET, the ESP32 firmware is also able to perform a power glitch exploit on the chip that will allow you to read the contents of its flash even if the APPROTECT feature has been enabled. [Aaron] isn’t taking any credit for this technique though, pointing instead to the
research performed by [LimitedResults] to explain the nuts and bolts of the attack
.
We’re always excited when a message from [Aaron] hits the inbox, since more often that not it means another device has received an open source firmware replacement.
From his earlier work with cheap fitness trackers
to his
wildly successful Bluetooth environmental sensor hacking
, we don’t think this guy has ever seen a stock firmware that he didn’t want to immediately send to
/dev/null
. | 9 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361242",
"author": "DonPavlov",
"timestamp": "2021-07-01T20:22:12",
"content": "You can SWD flash the device with it. But can you also delete the flash easily with it? From my experience I always needed a jlink for that.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,032.032289 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/30/mits-knitted-keyboard-is-quite-a-flexible-midi-controller/ | MIT’s Knitted Keyboard Is Quite A Flexible MIDI Controller | Kristina Panos | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"aftertouch",
"capacitive touch",
"midi controller",
"MPR121",
"Teensy",
"Teensy 4.0"
] | There are only so many ways to make noise on standard instruments such as acoustic pianos. Their rigidity and inputs just don’t allow for a super-wide range of expression. On the other hand, if you knit your interface together, the possibilities are nearly endless.
MIT’s new and improved knitted keyboard is an instrument like none other
— it responds to touch, pressure, and continuous proximity, meaning that you can play it like a keyboard, a theremin, and something that is somewhere in between the two. Because it’s a MIDI interface, it can ultimately sound like any instrument you’ve got available in software.
The silver keys of this five-octave interface are made of conductive yarn, and the blue background is regular polyester yarn. Underneath that is a conductive knit layer to complete the key circuits, and a piezo-resistive knit layer that responds to pressure and stretch. It runs on a Teensy 4.0 and uses five MPR121 proximity/touch controllers, one per octave.
The really exciting thing about this keyboard is its musical (and physical) versatility. As you might expect, the keyboard takes discrete inputs from keystrokes, but it also takes continuous input from hovering and waving via the proximity sensors, and goes even further by taking physical input from squeezing, pulling, stretching, and twisting the conductive yarns that make up the keys. This means it takes aftertouch (pressure applied after initial contact) into account — something that isn’t possible with most regular instruments. And since this keyboard is mostly yarn and fabric, you can roll it up and take it anywhere, or wrap it around your neck for a varied soundscape.
If you’re looking for more detail, check out
the paper for the previous version
(PDF), which also used thermochromic yarn to show different colors for various modes of play using a heating element. With the new version, [Irmandy Wicaksono] and team sought to improve the sensing modalities, knitted aesthetics, and the overall tactility of the keyboard. We love both versions! Be sure to check it out after the break.
Want to play around with capacitive touch sensors without leaving the house for parts?
Make your own from paper and aluminum foil
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361100",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2021-07-01T07:51:22",
"content": "Eat your heart out theremin!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6361140",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2021-07-01T12:47:00",
... | 1,760,373,032.083609 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/30/installing-linux-like-its-1989/ | Installing Linux Like It’s 1989 | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"1989",
"286",
"compaq",
"dos",
"intel",
"linux",
"pi zero",
"raspberry pi",
"retro",
"terminal"
] | A common example of the sheer amount of computing power available to almost anyone today is comparing a smartphone to the Apollo guidance computer. This classic computer was the first to use integrated circuits so it’s fairly obvious that most modern technology would be orders of magnitude more powerful, but we don’t need to go back to the 1960s to see this disparity. Simply going back to 1989 and getting
a Compaq laptop from that era running again, while using a Raspberry Pi Zero to help it along
, illustrates this point well enough.
[befinitiv] was able to get a Raspberry Pi installed inside of the original computer case, and didn’t simply connect the original keyboard and display and then call it a completed build. The original 286 processor is connected to the Pi with a serial link, so both devices can communicate with each other. Booting up the computer into DOS and running a small piece of software allows the computer into a Linux terminal emulator hosted on the Raspberry Pi. The terminal can be exited and the computer will return back to its original DOS setup. This also helps to bypass the floppy disk drive for transferring files to the 286 as well, since files can be retrieved wirelessly on the Pi and then sent to the 286.
This is quite an interesting mashup of new and old technology, and with the Pi being around two orders of magnitude more powerful than the 286 and wedged into vacant space inside the original case, [befinitiv] points out that this amalgamation of computers is “borderline useful”. It’s certainly an upgrade for the Compaq, and for others attempting to get ancient hardware on the internet, don’t forget that you can always
use hardware like this to access Hackaday’s retro site
. | 34 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361034",
"author": "Rumble_in_the_Jungle",
"timestamp": "2021-06-30T23:07:10",
"content": "Just let the old tech go away for retirement.(typed on IBM X31)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6361249",
"author": "Nyetski"... | 1,760,373,032.157065 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/30/machine-vision-archer-makes-you-the-target-if-you-dare/ | Machine-Vision Archer Makes You The Target, If You Dare | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"archery",
"arrow",
"ballistics",
"bow",
"computer vision",
"depth camera",
"machine vision",
"Realsense",
"target"
] | We’ll state right up front that it’s a really, really bad idea to let
a robotic archer shoot an apple off of your head
. You absolutely should not repeat what you’ll see in the video below, and if you do, the results are all on you.
That said, [Kamal Carter]’s build is pretty darn cool. He wisely chose to use just about the weakest bows you can get, the kind with strings that are basically big, floppy elastic bands that shoot arrows with suction-cup tips and are so harmless that they’re intended for children to play with and you just know they’re going to shoot each other the minute you turn your back no matter what you told them. Target acquisition is the job of an Intel RealSense depth camera, which was used to find targets and calculate the distance to them. An aluminum extrusion frame holds the bow and adjusts its elevation, while a long leadscrew and a servo draw and release the string.
With the running gear sorted, [Kamal] turned to high school physics for calculations such as the spring constant of the bow to determine the arrow’s initial velocity, and the ballistics formula to determine the angle needed to hit the target. And hit it he does — mostly. We’re actually surprised how many on-target shots he got. And yes, he did eventually get it to pull a [William Tell] apple trick — although we couldn’t help but notice from his, ahem, hand posture that he wasn’t exactly filled with self-confidence about where the arrow would end up.
[Kamal] says he drew inspiration both from
[Mark Rober]’s dart-catching dartboard
and
[Shane Wighton]’s self-dunking basketball hoop
for this build. We’d say his results put in him good standing with the skill-optional sports community. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361009",
"author": "Alexander Wikström",
"timestamp": "2021-06-30T20:31:53",
"content": "For a second there I were thinking he used a real bow. Honestly hard to tell with the Olympic recurve style that toy bow has going for it.But to a degree. As long as the control loops and recog... | 1,760,373,032.272301 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/30/pinthing-mechanizes-pin-art/ | PinThing Mechanizes Pin Art | Danie Conradie | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"3d printed",
"dc motor",
"firmata",
"pin art"
] | Pin art is one of those things that simply cannot be left alone if it’s within arms reach, and inevitably end up with a hand or face imprint. [hugs] is also fascinated by them, so he designed the
PinThing
, a mechanized pin art display.
The PinThing pin diameters are much larger than standard pin art, but this is to fit small geared DC motors. Each pin is a short 3D-printed lead screw mechanism. The motors are driven with a stack of motor driver shields on top of an Arduino Uno, which uses Firmata to receive instructions over serial from a Node.js app using the Johnny-Five library. This may be a simple 3×5 proof of concept, but then it could be used for everything from displays to interactive table surfaces.
One of the challenges with pixelated mechanical displays like this, the
inFORM
from MIT, or even
flip dot displays
, are the costs in actuators and driver electronics. A small 10×10 array requires 100 motors and drivers, which quickly adds up as you expand, even if individual components are quite cheap.
If you are willing to sacrifice instantaneous response from each pixel, you can use a
mechanical multiplexer
. It consists of some sort of moving carriage behind the display with mounted actuators, so you’ll only need an actuator per row, not for every pin. This also means the pins can be closer together since the actuators can be staggered on the carriage.
PinThing project was an entry to the Rethink Displays Challenge of the
2021 Hackaday Prize
, for which the
finalists
were just announced.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 11 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360988",
"author": "mathvdd",
"timestamp": "2021-06-30T18:55:03",
"content": "The sound is so satisfying",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6361010",
"author": "Thinkerer",
"timestamp": "2021-06-30T20:39:46",
"content"... | 1,760,373,032.320734 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/30/adding-a-gentle-touch-to-prosthetic-limbs-with-somatosensory-stimulation/ | Adding A Gentle Touch To Prosthetic Limbs With Somatosensory Stimulation | Maya Posch | [
"Featured",
"Medical Hacks",
"News",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"nathan copeland",
"neuroprosthetics",
"utah array"
] | When Nathan Copeland suffered a car accident in 2004, damage to his spinal cord at the C5/C6 level resulted in
tetraplegic paralysis
. This left him initially at the age of 18 years old to consider a life without the use of his arms or legs, until he got selected in 2014 for a study at the University of Pittsburgh involving the controlling of a robotic limb using nothing but one’s mind and a BCI.
While this approach, as replicated in various other studies, works well enough for simple tasks, it comes with the major caveat that while it’s possible to control this robotic limb, there is no feedback from it. Normally when we try to for example grab an object with our hand, we are aware of the motion of our arm and hand, until the moment when our fingers touch the object which we’re reaching for.
In the case of these robotic limbs, the only form of feedback was of the visual type, where the user had to look at the arm and correct its action based on the observation of its position. Obviously this is far from ideal, which is why Nathan hadn’t just been implanted with Utah arrays that read out his motor cortex, but also arrays which connected to his
somatosensory cortex
.
As covered in
a paper by Flesher et al.
in Nature, by stimulating the somatosensory cortex, Nathan has over the
past few years
regained a large part of the sensation in his arm and hand back, even if they’re now a robotic limb. This raises the question of how complicated this approach is, and whether we can expect it to become a common feature of prosthetic limbs before long.
Please Plug In The BCI To Continue
Utah array drawing from Richard Normann’s patent. This part goes into your brain.
At the core of these brain-controlled prosthetics we find the brain-computer interface (
BCI
). This is essentially the interface between the brain’s neurons and the electronics which interact with these neurons, either by reading the signals captured by the sensor device implanted into the brain, or by sending signals to it. Here the most commonly used type is the so-called
Utah array
. This is a microelectrode array featuring many small electrodes, each of which captures part of the electrical activity in the brain, or allows for the stimulation of neurons near that specific electrode.
While it’s possible to capture the brain’s activity through the skull without opening it, the general rule here is that for the best signal resolution one wants to get as close to the action as possible. A second rule is that more and smaller electrodes (generally) equates a better signal and resolution, giving us a better idea of what’s happening in a specific part of the brain.
Obviously, just jamming some electrodes into the brain and hooking it up to some electronics isn’t likely to produce very meaningful results: to these tiny electrodes the brain is a very big world, with countless electrical impulses zipping to and fro. A crucial step is to discern the signal in these patterns of noise that are being read to be able to tell when e.g. the patient desires to lift the prosthetic arm, or to open or close the hand.
Similarly, while one can totally inject current into random parts of the brain, the general goal is to elicit a specific sensation instead of hitting whatever neurons happen to be nearby. In the case of Nathan, the goal was to ideally link for example pressure exerted on the left finger of the robotic hand to the ‘left finger’ area in the somatosensory region of Nathan’s brain.
An Imperfect Approximation
When we talk about ‘touch’, there are for humans four different types of
mechanoreceptors
embedded in the skin which are responsible for the full range of touch-related sensations:
Pacinian corpuscles
(coarse touch, distinction soft/rough surfaces).
Tactile corpuscles
(light touch and moderate (10-50 Hz) vibration).
Merkel cell
nerve endings (deep static touch, 5-15 Hz vibrations).
Bulbous corpuscles
(slow response, e.g. skin stretching & slipping object).
Schematic diagram tracking the paths different types of touch take to possible end-points in the human brain.
This gradation of different sensor types shows the sheer complexity of restoring something like the sense of touch — ideally one would not only want to get these different types of sensory perceptions replicated, but also delivered to the somatosensory cortex in a way that allows it to fit within the existing processing pathways.
As noted in the
press release
by the University of Pittsburgh on the most recent results, the goal was to provide somatosensory feedback when there was contact between the robotic hand, to allow the subject to feel the moment of contact, in addition to confirming the action visually. As Nathan himself described it after the experiments, it felt more like pressure and a tingle instead of the natural sensation of ‘touch’ which he remembers from before the accident that caused his paralysis. Even so, he was able to use this new feedback and use it to improve his performance on standard tests compared to when no somatosensory feedback was provided.
A Testament To The Brain’s Adaptability
Nathan Copeland (right) meeting President Obama in 2016.
Although the sensory input experienced by Nathan’s brain was obviously not what it had originally been receiving prior to the permanent interruption years prior, it was nevertheless ‘good enough’ that it allowed Nathan to experience a marked quality of life improvement simply from experiencing a sensation roughly in the ‘hand’ area of his somatosensory cortex that could be linked to the motor cortex action of moving the robotic limb.
This corroborates with previous studies on e.g. the feeling of
body ownership
, as well as the role of the insular cortex in
keeping track
of one’s limbs and the ease with which an additional limb extension can be added, as with e.g. the ‘third thumb’ art project (which we
covered previously
) where a second thumb was added to a hand and which users learned to control in a fairly natural manner. Essentially it appears that one can subject the human brain to a lot of ‘unnatural’ situations, and it’ll find a way to adapt and make the best of things.
Based on the results so far, we could reasonably make the assumption that adding even simplistic touch sensors to prosthetic, brain-controlled limbs could make for a much appreciated boost in qualify of life for those who find themselves in the position of using these prosthetics on a daily basis. It might some day even form the basis for elective BCIs, for use with operating certain types of machinery and tools some day with a precision that goes beyond the manipulation of controls like joysticks and buttons.
Of course, none of that matters if we cannot solve the issue of
biocompatibility
, which is the reason that for Nathan his BCI may soon have to be removed, when the
expected five year lifespan
of the Utah array implants expires.
A Story Of Cyborgs
Nathan Copeland playing a game of Pong using his brain-computer interface. He has
challenged Neuralink’s monkey
to a game of Pong. (Credit: Nathan Copeland)
The field of
cybernetics
(from Greek κυβερνητική (
kybernētikḗ
), meaning “governance”) involves the exploration and definition of processes, both in societies as well as in biological systems. Where possible, these processes can be enhanced or repaired, which over the years has led to the fields of medical cybernetics and the closely related systems biology working on finding ways to restore lost functionality to the body, including such essentials as an artificial heart replacement and the cloning of organs using a patient’s own stem cells.
Neuroprosthetics
such as those being prototyped by Nathan Copeland are cybernetic neural implants which seek to restore functionality that was lost due to disease or an accident. Combining cybernetics and biomedical engineering, the goal is to identify and solve any remaining fundamental biological and engineering questions that prevent the natural process from being restored.
In the case of artificial limbs like an arm and its hand, the number of remaining issues are broad. It’s hard to beat biological muscles and the nervous system innervation that not only connects these muscles to the motor cortex, but also the advanced mechanoreceptors with the somatosensory cortex with a level of detail that we cannot hope to approach yet.
In the case of replacing biological systems with artificial ones, this is commonly referred to as a ‘
cyborg
‘ (cybernetic organism), even though cybernetics itself has no preference for artificial or biological systems. Regardless, the essential issues encountered with the merging of biological and non-biological systems is at the interface layer: the biological systems tend to be very hostile to implanted devices, and will damage them over time.
Devil Is In The Signal-To-Noise Ratio
We have previously
looked at start-up Neuralink’s
claims about ‘revolutionary’ improvements to BCIs and bidirectional data exchange between the human brain and computer systems. Back in 2019 the conclusion was essentially that the most exciting thing that
Neuralink
had brought to the table was its alternative to the Utah array, with a three-dimensional electrode structure that added recordings from inside the brain instead of just the top layer. This allows theoretically access to a lot more of the data inside the cortices.
Even so, the data recorded by those electrodes still have to be made sense of. In the case of Nathan Copeland, the researchers made use of a residual sense of touch in his arms and hands to pin-point areas to target with somatosensory stimulation, along with residual muscle control in his shoulders. For patients where there is no residual functionality, the required calibration process would be far slower. In the case of figuring out which parts of the motor cortex map to something as intricate as the facial muscles and those involved in speech the process would be even more tedious.
The other complication is in getting the data in and out of the brain without a permanent socket on one’s skull, as is the case with Nathan. Much like a piercing, he has to keep it sterile and keep the skin from getting in the way. Although interesting in a
Matrix
kind of dystopian sci-fi fashion, constantly having a plug on one’s head and cables running to and from prosthetic limbs is probably less than ideal. Perhaps internal wiring could work here, aside from the obvious medical nightmare here, or perhaps a wireless transceiver as Neuralink has proposed.
In the end it appears that although science today offers a glimpse of a better future to people like Nathan, we’re still many decades away from a plug-and-play future of medical prosthetics. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360982",
"author": "mathvdd",
"timestamp": "2021-06-30T18:29:43",
"content": "Would somebody know how is the boundary between the internal electrodes, the external connector and the organic tissues? Like, is the apparatus screwed to the skull? How is the boundary between the skin a... | 1,760,373,032.528349 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/30/astronomic-patio-light-timer/ | Astronomic Patio Light Timer | Chris Lott | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"astronomic",
"patio lights",
"remote control",
"string lights",
"sunset timer"
] | Not satisfied with the handheld remote control for his outdoor patio lights, [timabram] decided to build an
automatic timer using an ESP8266
. He’s using a set of string lights from Costco, but as you dig into his project you’ll see the method he uses can be applied to almost any set of lights that have a remote.
He does this by connecting GPIO pins from the ESP8266 GPIO into the remote control in order to simulate a user pressing the button. Both boards are packaged together in a 3D-printed enclosure that utilizes the front portion of the remote control, so that manual operation is still possible.
His firmware gets the date and time from an NTP server, and then makes an API call to an online service that returns the local sunrise and sunset times for a specific location. He tries to minimize the power consumption by experimenting with different intervals to wakeup from deep sleep and ping the time server. But in the end, he realizes the RF remote control carries quite some distance, and installed the unit inside a closet where it could be powered by adaptors connected to the mains.
We wondered how the remote control knows if the lights are on or off, and [timabram] notes this is a shortcoming which could be addressed in a future version. If you’ve ever seen a mechanical version of an astronomic timer switch, packed full of gears and dials and setting pins, you can really appreciate a no-moving-parts solutions like this project. If you want to make one that doesn’t use the internet, check out
this Arduino-based solution
that we wrote about back in 2013. | 21 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360920",
"author": "Alice Lalita Heald",
"timestamp": "2021-06-30T15:41:48",
"content": "Why over complicate it? LDR with filtering.Has built in planetary compensation :D",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6360921",
"author": ... | 1,760,373,032.596835 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/30/chinas-mars-rover-goes-exploring/ | China’s Mars Rover Goes Exploring | Lewin Day | [
"Current Events",
"Science",
"Space"
] | [
"china national space administration",
"CNSA",
"mars",
"mars rover",
"space",
"space program",
"Zhurong"
] | China’s space program has big goals and is already starting to achieve them. Recently, the China National Space Administration has landed its first rover on Mars, and begun to explore the surface of the red planet.
It’s a huge step, and something only previously achieved successfully by NASA. Let’s take a look at the Chinese project, its goals, and see how it compares to the American rovers that have also roamed so far away.
Wheelin’ on Mars
Zhurong pictured next to its landing platform, thanks to a selfie camera it deployed on the Martian surface. Such cameras have become popular in recent missions, as it’s widely agreed that it’s cool to see the rovers doing their thing on Mars.
China’s first Mars rover goes by the name of Zhurong, named after a figure in Chinese mythology that is typically associated with fire. Given that Mars is known as the “Planet of Fire” in China, it’s a fitting name selected by a public vote held earlier this year.
The rover comes in at a size of 2.6 meters long, 3 meters wide, and 1.85 meters high, with its size placing it in between NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers which landed in 2004, and the later Curiosity rover which is a touch larger. The Zhurong rover weighs 240 kilograms, again placing it in between the two recent generations of NASA Mars rovers.
Zhurong was launched as part of the Tianwen-1 mission which launched on July 23, 2020. The spacecraft entered Martian orbit on February 10, 2021, with the lander touching down on 14 May 2021 in the Utopia Planitia. The area on Mars was chosen as an ideal spot to investigate the possibility of the planet being host to an ancient ocean. The descent was controlled by parachutes and retro-rockets which slowed the lander as it approached the surface.
What Lies Beneath
A photo taken from the rover shortly after landing, showing the ramps down which it descended to the Martian surface.
The rover sports a sensor package designed to perform a variety of science missions. Chief among those is the ground-penetrating radar, designed to collect geological data and capable of imaging up to 100 meters below the Martian surface. This goes far deeper than the 10 meter depth capability of the instrument fitted to the Perseverance rover which landed earlier this year. There’s also a magnetometer onboard for determining the finer details of Mars’s magnetic field.
Atmospheric data is captured by measuring temperature, pressure, wind velocity and direction in the Martian atmosphere. There’s also a microphone which captures sound, which tends to have a different quality to that on Earth due to the different atmospheric conditions.
Analysis and Imaging Hardware
Similarly to other rovers, a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy instrument is included. For those who aren’t deeply involved in the spectroscopy subculture, this is a device which blasts rock and other samples with a laser and measures the emitted light. This can be used to determine the chemical makeup of samples.
A replica of the Chinese rover has been displayed at the National Museum in Beijing.
Camera-wise, a multi-spectral camera is fitted which aims to research the details around the existence of water on Mars. There are also extra cameras specifically intended for navigational purposes and for mapping out the topography of the surrounding area. These are key to the rover’s mission, as communication time delays from Earth to Mars make direct teleoperation of the rover impossible. Cameras are instead used to enable the rover to take some level of autonomy in getting around its immediate area.
Some of the rover’s science hardware is eclipsed by that present on Perseverance, such as the fancier spectrometers on board, but overall it’s a very complete science package. Zhurong’s primary goals of studying Martian geology and soil, as well as the atmosphere, should reveal useful insights into the makeup of Mars as well as its history.
One unique feature of the rover is its active suspension system
. Unlike the passive rocker-bogie suspension system used on NASA rovers, Zhurong has fully independent control of each wheel’s suspension. It can adjust the weight placed on each wheel, which could be particularly useful if the rover finds itself encountering softer soils, and could also assist in navigating obstacles or steeper slopes.
The Mission Thus Far
China has recently released images of the rover on Mars,
taken by a selfie camera that was dropped for that very purpose.
The images document
Zhurong rolling away
from the camera as it begins to explore its landing site. Thus far, the rover has spent over a month on Mars, and has travelled 236 meters since landing. It is expected to spend 90 days studying the Martian surface, though it’s common for rover missions to be extended if the hardware continues functioning past the original timeline. As an example, NASA’s Opportunity rover ended up exploring the planet for 14 years despite originally being intended to operate for just 90 days.
The video released of the rover and its lander don’t show a lot of action yet, but we look forward to more images and more science coming out of the project. More rovers on Mars can only mean more learning, though we’re a touch disappointed that thus far, they’ve all landed far apart and don’t get to hang out. Perhaps one day, two rovers will meet; for now, with only six on the Martian surface, that’s likely quite some time away! | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360887",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-06-30T14:26:21",
"content": "” More rovers on Mars can only mean more learning, though we’re a touch disappointed that thus far, they’ve all landed far apart and don’t get to hang out.”Demolition Derby on Mars!Only One Will Win!B^)",
... | 1,760,373,032.662609 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/30/handheld-hackintosh-runs-mac-os-on-lattepanda/ | Handheld Hackintosh Runs Mac OS On LattePanda | Tom Nardi | [
"handhelds hacks",
"Mac Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"hackintosh",
"handheld",
"Mac OS",
"portable computer"
] | We’ve seen a huge influx of bespoke portable computers over the last couple of years thanks to availability of increasingly powerful single-board computers. The vast majority of these have been ARM powered using something like the Raspberry Pi 4, and naturally, run Linux. Only a handful have run on x86 hardware, usually because whoever built it wanted to be able to run Windows.
But this
handheld x86 Hackintosh running the latest Mac OS on the LattePanda Alpha
is truly something unique. Creator [iketsj] claims it to be a world’s first, and after a bit of searching, we’re inclined to agree. While others have installed Mac OS on the LattePanda to create Hackintosh laptops, this would indeed appear to be the first
handheld
computer to utilize this particular hardware and software blend.
Like other custom portables we’be seen, this one starts with a 3D printed enclosure. The overall design
reminds us a bit of the YARH.IO we covered last year
, and even borrows the trick of reusing the membrane and PCB of one of those miniature keyboard/pointer combos. Which in this case ends up being especially important, as in keeping with Apple’s own portable Mac OS machines, the screen on this handheld doesn’t support touch.
We especially like how the integrated Arduino on the LattePanda is being used in conjunction with some MOSFETs to control power to the handheld’s LCD, keyboard, and fans. While it sounds like the fans are currently running at full throttle, [iketsj] mentions he does intend on adding automatic speed control in the future. A dedicated “chassis controller” like this makes a lot of sense, and is something we imagine will only become more common as these portable builds become increasingly complex.
Now that we’ve seen a custom portable computer running Mac OS, are we due to see a whole new wave of cyberdecks sporting Cupertino’s software in the future? Maybe not. As [iketsj] points out at the end of this video,
Apple’s switch from x86 to their own in-house silicon
will almost certainly mean the death of the Hackintosh project within the next few years, bringing a
fascinating era of computer hacking to a close
. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360828",
"author": "Luenardi De Polo",
"timestamp": "2021-06-30T11:08:01",
"content": "Very nice aesthetics.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6360845",
"author": "Peter Burkimsher",
"timestamp": "2021-06-30T11:45:17",
... | 1,760,373,032.816142 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/30/robotic-ball-bouncing-platform-learns-new-tricks/ | Robotic Ball-Bouncing Platform Learns New Tricks | Donald Papp | [
"Art",
"cnc hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"art",
"ball bouncing",
"bounce",
"computer vision",
"motion control",
"ping pong",
"platform",
"robotic"
] | [T-Kuhn]’s
Octo-Bouncer platform has learned some new tricks since we saw it last
. If you haven’t seen it before, this device uses computer vision from a camera mounted underneath its thick, clear acrylic platform to track a ball in 3D space, and make the necessary (and minute) adjustments needed to control the ball’s movements with a robotic platform in real time.
We loved the Octo-Bouncer’s mesmerizing action
when we saw it last
, and it’s only gotten better. Not only is there a whole new custom ball detection algorithm that [T-Kuhn] explains in detail, there are also now visualizations of both the ball’s position as well as the plate movements. There’s still one small mystery, however. Every now and again, [T-Kuhn] says that the ball will bounce in an unexpected direction. It doesn’t seem to be a bug related to the platform itself, but [T-Kuhn] has a suspicion. Since contact between the ball and platform is where all the control comes from, and the ball and platform touch only very little during a bounce, it’s possible that bits of dust (or perhaps even tiny imperfections on the ball’s surface itself) might be to blame. Regardless, it doesn’t detract from the device’s mesmerizing performance.
Design files and source code are available on
the project’s GitHub repository
for those who’d like a closer look. It’s pretty trippy watching the demonstration video because there is so much going on at once; you can check it out just below the page break. | 11 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360799",
"author": "davethewalker",
"timestamp": "2021-06-30T09:07:49",
"content": "I think the next step has to be two of these robots passing the ball between them.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6361161",
"author"... | 1,760,373,034.478522 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/29/the-incredible-mechanical-artistry-of-francois-junod/ | The Incredible Mechanical Artistry Of François Junod | Danie Conradie | [
"Art"
] | [
"automata",
"automaton",
"mechanics",
"Mechanisms"
] | The art of building purely mechanical automatons has dramatically declined with the arrival of electronics over the past century, but there are still a few craftsmen who keep the art form alive. [François Junod] is one of these masters, and the
craftsmanship and intricacy on display in his automata
is absolutely amazing.
[François]’ creations are all completely devoid of electronics, and are powered either by wound-up springs or weights. The mechanics of the automata are part of the display, and contain a vast array of gears, linkages, belts and tracks. Many of them also include their own soundtrack, which range from simple bells and chimes to complete melodies from mechanized wind instruments, as demonstrated in
Le Champignonneur
below. He also collaborates with craftsman like jewelers on works like
La Fée Ondine
, which we thought was CGI when we first saw it in the video after the break.
Very few people have the time, skill and patience to make these creations, but we are glad there are still a few around. Some builds, like
[Patelo]’s flightless drone
aren’t quite as complex, but are no less inspiring. If you don’t quite have the time and fabrication skills, you can still create mesmerizing
automatons with 3D printing like [gzumwalt]
. | 16 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360758",
"author": "geocrasher",
"timestamp": "2021-06-30T05:53:48",
"content": "These works are incredible beyond words. They are the confluence of expert engineering and masterful art. I doubt kings commissioned greater works.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,373,034.371228 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/29/the-game-boy-as-you-have-never-seen-it-before/ | The Game Boy As You Have Never Seen It Before Is Newest From [Sprite_tm] | Jenny List | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks"
] | [
"game boy",
"raspberry pi",
"sprite_tm"
] | Explain a Game Boy to a child in 2021 and they’ll have little idea of how much impact that chunky grey brick had back in the day. Search for a YouTube video to demonstrate, and you might find the one we’ve put below the break. It starts with the classic Tetris on the Game Boy, then moves on to Super Mario World before treating us to Sonic the Hedgehog, and finally Doom. All seminal games of the Game Boy’s heyday, with one small problem. The last three were never Game Boy titles, and certainly wouldn’t have run on the device’s limited hardware. Most of you will by now not be surprised to find that the narrator is none other than [Sprite_tm], and
his Game Boy has one of the nicest Raspberry Pi conversions we’ve ever seen
.
Given his previous work we expected the cartridges to have an ESP32 on board that somehow mapped into Game Boy display memory, but in fact he’s swapped the original Nintendo motherboard with a replacement carrying an ICE40 FPGA on one side to handle the Nintendo hardware and a Pi Zero on the other to do the heavy lifting. Insert a Game Boy cartridge and it emulates the original to the point you’d never suspect it wasn’t the real thing, but insert one of the non Game Boy cartridges and it passes an identifier to the Pi which launches a script to run the appropriate Pi code. So the Mario and Sonic games are running in Pi-based emulators, and Doom is running natively on the Pi. It gives the appearance of a seamless gaming experience, wherein lies its charm.
This project certainly has the quality we’ve come to expect from Sprite, and a quick flick through these pages will show plenty of previous examples. One of the most recent was a
miniature working DEC VT100 terminal containing an emulated PDP minicomputer
. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360784",
"author": "Jeremy",
"timestamp": "2021-06-30T07:28:35",
"content": "this is what i’ve been hoping to see from someone doing a pi gameboy from the beginning",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6360785",
"author": "James... | 1,760,373,034.603422 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/29/ball-cvt-drives-robot-from-a-constant-speed-motor/ | Ball CVT Drives Robot From A Constant Speed Motor | Danie Conradie | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"continuously variable transmission",
"CVT",
"drivetrain",
"james bruton"
] | [James Bruton] is experimenting is a series of interesting mechanical mechanisms, the latest being a CVT transmission system which uses a
tilting sphere to get a variable speed output
from a constant speed input. Video after the break.
In [James]’ proof of concept RC vehicle, a single powered disc is mounted on top, at 90 degree to the wheels. A rotating sphere makes contact with both the driven disc and the wheel. When the rotation axis of the sphere is at 45° between the disc and the wheel, it provides a one 1:1 transmission ratio. As the axis is tilted, the contact points on the sphere shift, changing the relative circumference at the contact points, and therefore changing the transmission ratio. It can also reverse by tilting the sphere in the opposite direction, and disconnected from the output wheel by aligning it with the hole in the bottom of the sphere. [James]’ simple two-wheel RC car concept quite well, driving around his kitchen with the transmission spheres being tilted by servos.
Thanks to the response time, CVT gearboxes are generally not needed for electric motors, but on internal combustion engines that which run best within a certain RPM range they can be very useful. One possible weak point of a design like this is it’s dependence on friction to transfer torque, which makes it vulnerable to wear and slipping.
This build is a spin-off of his
spherical omni-wheels
and the
robot chassis
he developed around them. For another interesting robot mechanism, check out is
gyroscope balancing system
.
Thanks for the tips [BaldPower] and [Mel]! | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360690",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2021-06-29T23:09:12",
"content": "This is the basis of the Kopp Variator, used in a number of lathes and other applications around the middle of the last century.I did a rebuild of one some years ago, it’s an interesting device.Pictures... | 1,760,373,034.742453 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/29/smart-response-xe-turned-pocket-basic-playground/ | SMART Response XE Turned Pocket BASIC Playground | Tom Nardi | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"basic",
"Pogo pin",
"SMART Response XE",
"tiny BASIC"
] | Ever since the SMART Response XE was brought to our attention back in 2018, we’ve been keeping a close lookout for projects that make use of the Arduino-compatible educational gadget. Admittedly it’s taken a bit longer than we’d expected for the community to really start digging into the capabilities of the QWERTY handheld, but occasionally we see an effort like
this port of BASIC to the SMART Response XE by [Dan Geiger]
that reminds us of why we were so excited by this device to begin with.
This project combines the
SMART Response XE support library by [Larry Bank]
with Tiny BASIC Plus, which itself is an update of the Arduino BASIC port by [Michael Field]. The end result is a fun little BASIC handheld that has all the features and capabilities you’d expect, plus several device-specific commands that [Dan] has added such as
BATT
to check the battery voltage and
MSAVE
/
MLOAD
which will save and load BASIC programs to EEPROM.
To install the BASIC interpreter to your own SMART Response XE, [Dan] goes over the process of flashing it to the hardware using an AVR ISP MkII and a few pogo pins soldered to a bit of perboard. There are holes under the battery door of the device that exposes the programming pads on the PCB, so you don’t even need to crack open the case. Although if you
are
willing to crack open the case, you might as well
add in a CC1101 transceiver so the handy little device can double as a spectrum analyzer
. | 13 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360632",
"author": "Ken",
"timestamp": "2021-06-29T20:25:05",
"content": "The only way it could look more like a Radio Shack Model 100 would be if the case were white & black!The various claims to fame the model 100 had were that it ran off dry cell batteries, it held its value ver... | 1,760,373,034.849851 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/29/just-how-vulnerable-to-accidental-erasure-are-eproms-anyway/ | Just How Vulnerable To Accidental Erasure Are EPROMs Anyway? | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"eprom",
"erasable",
"memory",
"sunlight",
"sunscreen",
"uv"
] | On the scale of things worth worrying about, having to consider whether your EPROMs will be accidentally erased by some stray light in the shop is probably pretty low on the list. Still, losing irreplaceable data can make for a bad day, so it might just pay to know what your risks really are.
To address this question, [Adrian] set out to test
just how susceptible to accidental erasure some common EPROM chips are
. An EPROM, or “erasable programmable read-only memory”, is a non-volatile memory chip that can be programmed electrically and then erased optically, by exposing the die inside the chip to light at a specific wavelength, usually in a special chip erasing tool. But erasure can also happen in daylight (
even if it takes a few weeks
), so [Adrian] cooked up an experiment to see what the risk really is.
He exposed a selection of EPROMs with known contents to UV and checked their contents. Three of the chips had a simple paper or foil label applied, while one had its quartz window exposed to the UV. As expected, the unprotected chip was erased in just 30 minutes. The covered chips, though, all survived that onslaught, and much more — up to 780 minutes of continuous exposure.
So rest easy — it seems that even a simple paper label is enough to protect your precious retro EPROMs. It’s a good data point, and hats off to [Adrian] for taking a look at this. But now we can’t help but wonder: what would a little sunscreen applied to the quartz window do to erasability? Sounds like a fun experiment, too. | 45 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360581",
"author": "KD9KCK",
"timestamp": "2021-06-29T18:38:25",
"content": "One question could also be how long will they survive in todays LED lighted rooms, which put out much less UV then say a fluorescent tube.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,373,034.687237 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/29/kathleen-lonsdale-saw-through-the-structure-of-benzene/ | Kathleen Lonsdale Saw Through The Structure Of Benzene | Kristina Panos | [
"Biography",
"chemistry hacks",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"benzene",
"benzene ring",
"crystallography",
"x-ray crystallography",
"x-ray diffraction"
] | The unspoken promise of new technologies is that they will advance and enhance our picture of the world — that goes double for the ones that are specifically designed to let us look closer at the physical world than we’ve ever been able to before. One such advancement was the invention of X-ray crystallography that let scientists peer into the spatial arrangements of atoms within a molecule. Kathleen Lonsdale got in on the ground floor of X-ray crystallography soon after its discovery in the early 20th century, and used it to prove conclusively that the benzene molecule is a flat hexagon of six carbon atoms, ending a decades-long scientific dispute once and for all.
Benzene is an organic chemical compound in the form of a colorless, flammable liquid. It has many uses as an additive in gasoline, and it is used to make plastics and synthetic rubber. It’s also a good solvent. Although the formula for benzene had been known for a long time, the dimensions and atomic structure remained a mystery for more than sixty years.
Kathleen Lonsdale was a crystallography pioneer and developed several techniques to study crystal structures using X-rays. She was brilliant, but she was also humble, hard-working, and adaptable, particularly as she managed three young children and a budding chemistry career. At the outbreak of World War II, she spent a month in jail for reasons related to her staunch pacifism, and later worked toward prison reform, visiting women’s prisons habitually.
After the war, Kathleen traveled the world to support movements that promote peace and was often asked to speak on science, religion, and the role of women in science. She received many honors in her lifetime, and became a Dame of the British Empire in 1956. Before all of that, she honored organic chemistry with her contributions.
From Math to Physics to Chemistry
Kathleen in the lab. Image via
Britannica
Kathleen Yardley was born in Ireland on January 28th, 1903. She was the tenth and final child of Harry and Jessie Yardley. Her father Harry was the town postmaster and spent much of his free time reading. Kathleen has said that she got her passion for facts from her father.
Unfortunately, her parents’ marriage ended and Jessie moved the children to England. Jessie was a strict Baptist, and Kathleen has said that her earliest memories are of attending church and learning to count with little yellow balls at school.
Kathleen won a scholarship to a girls’ high school and later attended a boys’ high school for math and science classes, which were not offered at the girls’ school. Her older siblings were forced to drop out of school so that they could get jobs and help support the family. One of her brothers, Fred, was a wireless operator and received the last signals from the Titanic.
At age sixteen, Kathleen won scholarship through the county and entered Bedford College for Women, a division of the University of London. She started down a mathematical path, but soon switched to physics, earning a Bachelor of Science in 1922 at age nineteen with the highest marks the school had seen in ten years. She worried about finding a job, and was surprised and honored when Sir William Henry Bragg, X-ray diffraction pioneer and Physics Nobel Laureate 1915 invited her to stay and join his crystallography research team at the University in a paid position while she did her master’s degree. In 1929, Kathleen would be awarded a doctorate of science from the Faraday Laboratory of the Royal Institution.
Sir Bragg proved to be quite an inspiring mentor and supervisor, and Kathleen wrote this of him:
He inspired me with his own love of pure science and with his enthusiastic spirit of inquiry, and at the same time left me entirely free to follow my own line of research.
A plate from the Astbury-Yardley Tables. Image via
Data is Nature
Decoding the Benzene Ring
In 1923, W.H. Bragg left for the Royal Institution in London and Kathleen went with him. It was around this time that X-ray crystallography began to be used to look inside organic molecules — carbon atoms with other elemental atoms attached. The process involved a lot of calculations, and Kathleen saw the need for crystallography look-up tables that would greatly speed things up. Together with her lab-mate, they created the
Astbury-Yardley tables
, which formed the basis for what became the International Tables for X-ray Crystallography.
While at the Royal Institution, Kathleen met Thomas Lonsdale, an engineering student who would become her husband. They married in 1927 and then moved to Leeds to accommodate his new job. Meanwhile, Kathleen joined the University of Leeds’ physics department and worked on X-ray diffraction.
It was at the University of Leeds that Kathleen made a name for herself. Chemists had been arguing about the atomic structure of benzene for decades. In 1865, chemist August Keuklé had a dream that included a vision of the structure of benzene. He saw atoms dancing around and transforming into an ouroboros — a serpent swallowing its own tail. Kathleen was given hexamethylbenzene crystals to study, and
in 1929 she was able to prove conclusively that the benzene molecule is in fact a flat ring
. This was a remarkable achievement, especially considering that all the calculations had to be done by hand. And as if that wasn’t enough of a contribution, Kathleen was also the first to apply Fourier methods to X-ray pattern analysis as she solved the structure for another type of benzene — hexachlorobenzene.
Benzene structures throughout history. From left to right: Claus (1867), Dewar (1867), Ladenburg (1869), Armstrong (1887), Thiele (1899), and Kekulé (1865). The two on the right are used today, since Kathleen Lonsdale proved its cyclical structure in 1929. Image via
Wikipedia
Kathleen’s first child, Jane, arrived later that same year. The family soon moved back to London and had two more children in 1931 and 1934 — Nancy and Stephen. Although moving and raising children greatly disrupted Kathleen’s work, she kept her head in the crystallography game, doing calculations of structure factors by hand whenever she had the time. Soon, Sir Bragg shared good news: he’d been given an allowance so that Kathleen could hire a nanny and come back to work at the Royal Institution.
When Kathleen returned, there were no X-ray instruments available to her. She was able to secure a large electromagnet instead, so she pursued another interest — determining the magnetic properties of benzene-like compounds known as aromatics. By doing this, she was able to establish proof of molecular orbitals, but another chemist, Linus Pauling, beat her to publication.
Jailed for Her Beliefs
Kathleen’s account of her time in Holloway Prison. Image via
Wikipedia
As an adult, Kathleen rejected her Baptist upbringing. She and Thomas joined the Quakers, who are chiefly pacifists. Kathleen refused to register for war service in WWII even though it was expected of everyone. She was charged her a £2 fine which she also refused, and this earned her a month in Holloway Prison.
Kathleen had to clean floors there and do other tasks, but the chores weren’t too restrictive — she managed to get in several hours of scientific work on most days. Her time in Holloway touched her deeply, and she later fought for prison reform and became a volunteer visitor to women’s prisons.
Toward the end of her time at the Royal Institution, she examined kidney stones and diamonds, both synthetic and natural, studied solid-state reactions, and developed divergent beam X-ray photography.
Kathleen also joined the fight for world peace and received many honors and awards, including a claim to Dame in 1956 and a fellowship in the Royal Society.
Thanks for the skookum tip, [AvE]! | 14 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360614",
"author": "Michael",
"timestamp": "2021-06-29T20:00:26",
"content": "I’d dewar.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6360620",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2021-06-29T20:13:09",
"content": ... | 1,760,373,034.429063 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/29/petbot-turn-pet-bottles-into-filament/ | PetBot: Turn PET Bottles Into Filament | Danie Conradie | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer filament",
"filament extruder",
"PET plastic"
] | Recycling plastic into filament normally involves chopping it into tiny pieces and pushing it through a screw extruder. [
JRT3D
] is taking a different approach with PetBot, which cuts PET bottles into tape and then turns it into filament. See the videos after the break.
Cutting the tape and extrusion happens in two completely separated processes on the same machine. A PET bottle is prepared by cutting off the bottom, and the open rim is pushed between a pair of bearings, where a cutter slices the bottle into one long strip, as a driven spool rolls it up. The spool of tape is then moved to the second stage of the machine, which pulls the tape through a hot end very similar to that on a 3D printer. While most conventional extruders push the plastic through a nozzle with a screw, the PetBot only heats up the tape to slightly above its glass transition temperature, which allows the driven spool to slowly pull it through the nozzle without breaking. A fan cools the filament just before it goes onto the spool. The same stepper motor is used for both stages of the process.
We like the simplicity of this machine compared to a conventional screw extruder, but it’s not without trade-offs. Firstly is the limitation of the filament length by the material in a single bottle. Getting longer lengths would involve fusing the tape after cutting, or the filament after extrusion, which is
not as simple as it might seem
. The process would likely be limited to large soda bottle with smooth exterior surfaces to allow the thickness and width of the tape to be as consistent as possible. We are curious to see the consistency of the filaments shape and diameter, and how sensitive it is to variations in the thickness and width of the tape. That being said, as long as you understand the limitations of the machine, we do not doubt that it can be useful.
It doesn’t look like PetBot is open source at the moment, but if you don’t want to figure out how to build it yourself, you can
buy one for $400
. [JRT3D] also says there is a crowdfunding campaign in the works.
We’ve seen several
DIY filament extrusion machines
over the years, but if your primary goal is to save on filament costs they might
not be worth the trouble
. A
3D printer that can use plastic pellets
is likely a better way to do that.
Using my Petbot, PET Bottle Converter…making that PET filament! Recycle! Ginger Ale Green :)
pic.twitter.com/5eyURrBjeJ
— Joshua R. Taylor – JRT3D (@joshuartaylor)
June 26, 2021 | 44 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360495",
"author": "JWhitten",
"timestamp": "2021-06-29T15:39:01",
"content": "That’s pretty cool. What about washing the plastic though? How clean does it need to be?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6360550",
"author... | 1,760,373,034.555839 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/29/the-great-windows-11-computer-extinction-experiment/ | The Great Windows 11 Computer Extinction Experiment | Jenny List | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"News",
"Slider",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"microsoft",
"windows",
"Windows 11"
] | There was a time when a new version of Windows was a really big deal, such the launch of Windows 95 for which the tones of the Rolling Stones’
Start me up
could be heard across all manner of media outlets. Gradually over years this excitement has petered out, finally leaving us with Windows 10 that would,
we were told
, be the last ever version of the popular operating system and thence only receive continuous updates
But here we are in 2021, and
a new Windows has been announced
. Windows 11 will be the next latest and greatest from Redmond, but along with all the hoopla there has been an undercurrent of concern. Every new OS comes with a list of hardware requirements, but those for Windows 11 seem to go beyond the usual in their quest to cull older hardware. Aside from
requiring Secure Boot and a Trusted Platform Module
that’s
caused a run on the devices
, they’ve
struck a load of surprisingly recent processors including those in some of their current Surface mobile PCs
off their supported list, and it’s reported that
they will even require laptops to have front-facing webcams
if they wish to run Windows 11.
Out With The Old And In With The New
On some motherboards the TPM is a real module. FxJ,
Public domain
.
It makes absolute sense for a new operating system to lose support for legacy hardware, after all there is little point in their providing for owners of crusty old Pentiums or similar. The
system requirements
dropping support for 32-bit cores for example mirrors Windows 95’s abandonment of the 286 and earlier chips that had run the previous version, Windows 3.1. But in this case it seems as though they have wielded the axe a little too liberally, because a lot of owners of not-too ancient and certainly still pretty quick hardware will be left in the cold.
In the past there were accusations of a Microsoft/Intel duopoly idea that revolved around the chipmaker and OS vendor conspiring to advance each other’s products, and some commentators have revived it for this launch. A comparison between the 1990s and the present isn’t an easy one to make though, because the difference between the capabilities of a 386 desktop of 1990 and a Pentium 3 of 1999 through a decade in which Moore’s Law was at its height is so much more than for example that between between the first Intel i7 and the latest one. Is this simply Microsoft’s attempt to break with the need for so much of the backwards compatibility in which Windows is mired, and define a new PC for the 2020s? It will be interesting to see when the OS does finally land whether or not it will in fact run on some of the lesser machines, simply without official support.
A New OS Shouldn’t Cause An E-Waste Crisis
Burning cables to recover copper, 2018, Accra, Ghana. Muntaka Chasant [
CC BY-SA 4.0
].
Moving on from applying a commentator’s magnifying glass to the new Windows, it’s worth looking further to the effect it will have on the PCs it leaves behind. If so many slightly older machines won’t be able to make the upgrade from Windows 10 it’s likely that a significant number will be discarded even though Windows 10 will continue to be supported until 2025, something that given the scale of the Windows userbase could represent a significant e-waste impact. And for many users, buying a new computer with the latest OS installed is more palatable than the thought of performing their own system upgrade, even if the hardware is still well supported in 11.
It’s likely a greater-than-average number of Hackaday readers are already users of alternative operating systems such as GNU/Linux, but expecting an ordinary Windows user to install a Linux distro on their machine is a pipedream. Perhaps the real impact of the Windows 11 launch will be a large and slowly dwindling Windows 10 population and a new mountain forming in the e-waste breaking centres of the developing countries who can least afford to deal with the consequences. I think that a new OS should have a better legacy than that. | 294 | 50 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360441",
"author": "Miles",
"timestamp": "2021-06-29T14:11:31",
"content": "I am not looking forward to a MS account, I’m hopeful tpm 1.2 and local user accounts will be available with a workaround. Shame on MS, and shame on Apple and Google for showing them the way to track users... | 1,760,373,035.430578 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/29/garage-semiconductor-fab-gets-reactive-ion-etching-upgrade/ | Garage Semiconductor Fab Gets Reactive-Ion Etching Upgrade | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"CF4",
"etching",
"fab",
"fluorine",
"ic",
"plasma",
"Reactive",
"RF",
"SF4",
"silicon"
] | It’s a problem that few of us will likely ever face: once you’ve built your first homemade integrated circuit, what do you do next? If you’re [Sam Zeloof], the answer is clear: build
better
integrated circuits.
At least that’s [Sam]’s plan, which
his new reactive-ion etching setup
aims to make possible. While
his Z1 dual differential amplifier chip
was a huge success, the photolithography process he used to create the chip had its limitations. The chemical etching process he used is a bit fussy, and prone to undercutting of the mask if the etchant seeps underneath it. As its name implies, RIE uses a plasma of highly reactive ions to do the etching instead, resulting in finer details and opening the door to using more advanced materials.
[Sam]’s RIE rig looks like a plumber’s stainless steel nightmare, in the middle of which sits a vacuum chamber for the wafer to be etched. After evacuating the air, a small amount of fluorinated gas — either carbon tetrafluoride or the always entertaining sulfur hexafluoride — is added to the chamber. A high-voltage feedthrough provides the RF energy needed to create a plasma, which knocks fluorine ions out of the process gas. The negatively charged and extremely reactive fluorine ions are attracted to the wafer, where they attack and etch away the surfaces that aren’t protected by a photoresist layer.
It all sounds simple enough, but the video below reveals the complexity. There are a lot of details, like correctly measuring vacuum, avoiding electrocution, keeping the vacuum pump oil from exploding, and dealing with toxic waste products. Hats off to [Sam’s dad] for pitching in to safely pipe the exhaust gases through the garage door. This ties with
[Huygens Optics]’s latest endeavor
for the “coolest things to do with fluorine” award. | 21 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360434",
"author": "newspaperman57",
"timestamp": "2021-06-29T13:42:10",
"content": "I never expected the words “Garage” and “Semiconductor fab” to be used in the same sentence…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6360733",
... | 1,760,373,034.798464 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/29/just-how-did-1500-bytes-become-the-mtu-of-the-internet/ | Just How Did 1500 Bytes Become The MTU Of The Internet? | Donald Papp | [
"internet hacks",
"Network Hacks"
] | [
"internet",
"mtu",
"network",
"packet",
"protocol design"
] | [Benjojo] got interested in where the magic number of 1,500 bytes came from, and
shared some background on just how and why it seems to have come to be
. In a nutshell, the maximum transmission unit (MTU) limits the maximum amount of data that can be transmitted in a single network-layer transaction, but 1,500 is kind of a strange number in binary. For the average Internet user, this under the hood stuff doesn’t really affect one’s ability to send data, but it has an impact from a network management point of view. Just where did this number come from, and why does it matter?
[Benjojo] looks at a year’s worth of data from a major Internet traffic exchange and shows, with the help of several graphs, that being stuck with a 1,500 byte MTU upper limit has real impact on modern network efficiency and bandwidth usage, because bandwidth spent on packet headers adds up rapidly when roughly 20% of all packets are topping out the 1,500 byte limit. Naturally, solutions exist to improve this situation, but elegant and effective solutions to the Internet’s legacy problems tend to require instant buy-in and cooperation from everyone at once, meaning they end up going in the general direction of nowhere.
So where did 1,500 bytes come from? It appears that it is a legacy value originally derived from a combination of hardware limits and a need to choose a value that would play well on shared network segments, without causing too much transmission latency when busy and not bringing too much header overhead. But the picture is not entirely complete, and [Benjojo] asks that if you have any additional knowledge or insight about the 1,500 bytes decision, please share it because manuals, mailing list archives, and other context from that time is either disappearing fast or already entirely gone.
Knowledge fading from record and memory is absolutely a thing that happens, but occasionally things get saved instead of vanishing into the shadows. That’s how we got
IGNITION! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants
, which contains knowledge and history that would otherwise have simply disappeared. | 59 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360383",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2021-06-29T08:19:49",
"content": "I would try and make contact Vint Cerf or Bob Kahn, they may not know the answer, but they would definitely have more insight than most. And could probably point you in the direction of someone for a more d... | 1,760,373,034.988254 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/28/tiny-operating-system-for-tiny-computer/ | Tiny Operating System For Tiny Computer | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"arduino",
"Atmel",
"France",
"french",
"mega",
"Minitel",
"operating system",
"zardos"
] | Before the World Wide Web became ubiquitous as the
de facto
way to access electronic information, there were many other ways of retrieving information online. One of the most successful of these was Minitel, a French videotex service that lasted from 1980 all the way until 2012. But just because the service has been deactivated doesn’t mean its hardware can’t be used for modern builds like
this Arduino-based operating system
. (
Google Translate from French
)
Called ZARDOS, the operating system is built to run on an Arduino MEGA although a smaller version is available for the Uno. The Arduino is connected by a serial cable to the Minitel terminal. It can take input from a keyboard and PS/2 mouse and displays video on the terminal screen with the same cable. There is functionality built-in for accessing data on a cartridge system based on SD cards which greatly expands the limited capabilities of the Atmel chip as well, and there is also support for a speaker and a Videotex printer.
Even though the build uses a modern microcontroller, it gives us flashbacks to pre-WWW days with its retro terminal. All of the code is available on the project site for anyone looking to build an Arduino-based operating system, although it will take a little bit of hardware hacking to build a Minitel terminal like this. Either way, it’s a great way to revive some antique French hardware similar to a build we’ve seen
which converts one into a Linux terminal
.
Thanks to [troisieme_type] for the tip! | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360381",
"author": "David",
"timestamp": "2021-06-29T07:57:26",
"content": "Really cool seeing that someone is working on these Minitel machines. I remember seeing these in multiple apartments when visiting France as kid in the 90s. From what I remember it was pretty common, even i... | 1,760,373,035.036406 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/28/slice-your-next-fpga-design/ | Slice Your Next FPGA Design | Al Williams | [
"FPGA"
] | [
"fpga",
"slice",
"verilog"
] | A recent trend has been to convert high-level constructs into FPGA code like Verilog or VHDL.
Silice
goes the other way: it converts very hardware-specific concepts to Verilog and aims to be a more expressive and easier to use language.
Why Silice? The project’s web page enumerates its design goals:
A clean, simple syntax that clearly exposes the flow of operations and where clock cycles are spent.
Precise rules regarding flow control (loops, calls) and their clock cycle consumption.
Familiar hardware constructs such as always blocks, instantiation, expression tracking (wires).
An optional flow-control oriented design style (automatic FSM generation), that naturally integrates within a design: while, break, subroutines.
The possibility to easily describe pipelines.
Automatically takes care of creating flip-flops for variables, with automatic pruning (e.g. const or bindings).
Generic interfaces and grouped IOs for easy reuse and modular designs.
Generic circuits that can be instantiated and reused easily.
Explicit clock domains and reset signals.
Familiar syntax with both C and Verilog inspired elements.
Inter-operates with Verilog, allowing to import and reuse existing modules.
Powerful LUA-based pre-processor.
There are several examples of the different styles of coding Silice supports, ranging from the obligatory blinking LED example to a RISC-V CPU and a video processing application. Here’s part of the blinking example, just to give you a taste of what it looks like:
algorithm main(output uint5 leds)
{
intensity less_intense;
uint26 cnt = 0;
leds := cnt[21,5] & {5{less_intense.pwm_bit}};
cnt := cnt + 1;
}
algorithm intensity(output uint1 pwm_bit)
{
uint16 ups_and_downs = 16b1110000000000000;
pwm_bit := ups_and_downs[0,1];
ups_and_downs := {ups_and_downs[0,1],ups_and_downs[1,15]};
}
Of course, the real benefit over straight Verilog is only apparent with some of the more complex examples.
Working on a project using Silice? Drop us a
tip
so we can share it with everyone. If you really want to get close to the hardware, you can see an
FPGA teardown
. If you want to compare Slice to another alternative hardware description language, check out
SpinalHDL
. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360330",
"author": "Anon",
"timestamp": "2021-06-29T02:47:21",
"content": "The language appears to be named “Silice” not “Slice” in the linked Github repo. Really cool project.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6360341",
"au... | 1,760,373,035.59165 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/01/wiggling-screen-and-dlp-power-this-volumetric-pov-display/ | Wiggling Screen And DLP Power This Volumetric POV Display | Dan Maloney | [
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize",
"digital light processor",
"dlp",
"membrane",
"persistence of vision",
"POV",
"volumetric"
] | It seems like the world is ready for a true 3D display. We’ve seen them in sci-fi for decades now, with the ability to view a scene from any angle and inspect it up close. They’ve remained elusive, but that might just be changing thanks to
this open-source persistence-of-vision volumetric display
.
If the VVD, as it has been named by its creator [Madaeon], looks somewhat familiar, perhaps it’s because editor-in-chief [Mike Szczys]
ran into it back in 2019
at Maker Faire Rome. It looks like it has progressed quite a bit since then, but the basic idea is still the same. A thin, flexible membrane, which is stretched across a frame, is attached to articulated arms. The membrane can move up and down rapidly, fast enough that a 1,000-fps high-speed camera is needed to see it move. That allows you to see the magic in action; a digital light processor (DLP) module projects slices of a 3D image onto the sheet, sending the correct image out for each vertical position of the membrane. Carefully coordinating the images creates the POV illusion of a solid image floating in space, which can be observed from any angle, requires no special glasses, and can even be viewed by groups.
With displays like this, we’re used to issuing the caveat that “it no doubt looks better in person”, but we have to say in the GIFs and videos included the VVD looks pretty darn good. We think this is a natural for inclusion in the
2021 Hackaday Prize
, and we’re pleased to see that it made it t
o the semi-finals of the “Rethink Displays” round
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 25 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361207",
"author": "KVG",
"timestamp": "2021-07-01T18:36:48",
"content": "That is amazing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6361211",
"author": "Will",
"timestamp": "2021-07-01T18:49:17",
"content": "Nice work.",
... | 1,760,373,035.54443 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/01/could-airships-make-a-comeback-with-new-hybrid-designs/ | Could Airships Make A Comeback With New Hybrid Designs? | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"airlander",
"airlander 10",
"airship",
"flight",
"helium",
"hybrid air vehicles",
"hybrid airship",
"lighter-than-air"
] | Airships. Slow, difficult to land, and highly flammable when they’re full of hydrogen. These days, they’re considered more of a historical curiosity rather than a useful method of transport.
Hybrid Air Vehicles are a UK-based startup working to create a modern take on the airship concept.
The goal is to create cleaner air transport for short-hop routes
, while also solving many of the issues with the airship concept with a drastic redesign from the ground up. Their vehicle that will do all this goes by the name of Airlander 10. But is it enough to bring airships back to the skies?
A Hybrid Technology
Airlander 10 seen taking off during its first flight.
The Airlander 10 is not a lighter-than-air craft like traditional airships. Instead, the vehicle uses the buoyancy from its helium envelope to create only 60-80% of its lift. The rest of the left is generated aerodynamically by air passing over the eliptical shape of the airship’s body. This lift can also be further augmented by two diesel-powered ducted fans on the sides of the airship, which can pivot to assist with takeoff and landing. Two further fixed ducted fans on the rear provide the primary propulsion for the craft.
The hybrid approach brings several benefits over the traditional airship model. Chief among them is that as the Airlander 10 is heavier than air, it need not vent helium throughout flight to avoid becoming positively buoyant as fuel burns off, nor does it need to vent helium to land. However, it still maintains the capability to loiter for incredibly long periods in the sky as it needs to burn very little fuel to stay aloft. Reportedly, it is capable of five days when manned, and even longer durations if operated in an unmanned configuration. Using helium for lift instead of solely relying on engine thrust and wings means that it is much more fuel efficient than traditional fixed-wing airliners. The company’s own estimates suggest the Airlander 10 could slash emissions on short-haul air routes by up to 90%. The gentle take-off and landing characteristics also mean the vehicle doesn’t require traditional airport facilities, making it possible to operate more easily in remote areas, on grass, sand, or even water.
The craft currently uses four diesel-powered ducted fans. An all-electric drive system is in development to further reduce emissions.
There are drawbacks, of course, relative to more conventional air travel. The hybrid airship is only capable of a cruise speed of 148 km/h, far below the roughly 900 km/h of a modern jet airliner. The Airliner 10 is also large – at 91 meters long and 34 meters wide, it’s just as wide as a Boeing 737 and three times as long. Additionally, while it is capable of landing on unprepared flat surfaces, Hybrid Air Vehicles state that a 600m diameter circle is required. This is a significantly large area, and one that means finding a landing spot in many places could prove difficult.
Hybrid Air Vehicles have stated the Airlander 10 will be capable of carrying up to 100 passengers on short haul journeys, just over half of that carried by a modern single-row airliner. One proposed route for a passenger service is the short hop from Belfast to Liverpool. The former takes an hour on a conventional plane, or around 8 to 9 hours by ferry. The Airlander 10 would complete the journey in an estimated 5 hours and 20 minutes. Another proposed route, from Barcelona to Palma de Mallorca, goes much the same way, 1 hour by jet, or 9 hours by boat. The hybrid airship could split the difference at around 4 and a half hours.
Airlander 10 as seen in flight over Cardington.
Hybrid Air Vehicles claim that the added overheads of air travel, such as airport check-in and security clearances, add significantly to the flight time itself, thus giving the Airlander an advantage. However, it’s difficult to understand why their slower-moving air vehicle would be free of these requirements; even sea-going ferries take time to deal with docking and passenger loading.
It’s a slow, graceful thing in flight,
as seen in this BBC clip from 2016.
Noting the manner in which it takes to the air, the large required landing area could be due to the fact that taking off into the wind is critical for safety.
There’s also an amusing story from 2017
in which the prototype craft came loose from its moorings on the morning after a test flight. The emergency deflation system activated when this occurred, with the craft coming to rest at the airfield perimeter. Imagine coming to work one day and the giant airship you’ve been working on is sitting halfway across the airfield from where you left it, with its empty balloon sagging as its stuck on the fence.
Interior designs are renders at this stage, but boast far more room than contemporary passenger aircraft.
The new technology will have to compete with existing cheap flights; fares on airliners can often be had for under £50 on shorthop routes. The lower fuel use of the hybrid airship does help, of course. The Airlander 10 itself cost £25 million pounds to build,
in amongst a £140 million development budget for Hybrid Air Vehicles.
This pales in comparison to the $300 million or more required to purchase a modern single-aisle airliner. Operating and maintenance costs for four diesel piston engines are likely lower than those for two large jet engines as well. However, existing jet operations have the benefit of being well established and are familiar to the public.
As opposed to the above luxury or sightseeing design, in a more budget-focused role, the Airlander could carry up to 100 passengers.
The hybrid airship’s reliance on helium also tends to raise questions given the scarcity and expense of the element. The Hybrid Air Vehicles website claims that “600 Airlander aircraft would account for just 1% of annual helium consumption.” However, we suspect that calculation may have dropped a zero. 600 Airlander 10 aircraft, each using 38,000 cubic meters of helium, adds up to 22,800,000 million cubic meters of the gas.
Roughly 160,000,000 cubic meters of the gas was produced in 2018
; back of the envelope calculations would put the real figure somewhere between 10-15% of global supply in 2021. Of course, there aren’t that many Airlander 10 aircraft, with the company planning on building a more modest number of 12 airships a year from 2025.
With helium shortages easing,
there shouldn’t be any major issues with supply, though someone ought to sort out the maths on the website.
It’s rare for a new mode of transport to have an easy birth;
the Channel Tunnel faced turmoil for years once it entered service.
Passenger hovercraft once seemed like a silver bullet, too,
but have all but faded away in recent decades.
Whether or not the hybrid airship concept will become a regular transit link will depend on whether investors pony up the cash to get the concept over the line in the first place. From there, it’s up to operators to find a way to run the craft economically in the face of stiff competition from existing rivals. | 101 | 25 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361187",
"author": "Cree",
"timestamp": "2021-07-01T17:13:53",
"content": "OH YES PLEASE!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6361385",
"author": "mac012345",
"timestamp": "2021-07-02T09:11:22",
"content":... | 1,760,373,035.73782 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/01/jigsaw-puzzle-lights-up-with-each-piece/ | Jigsaw Puzzle Lights Up With Each Piece | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Art",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"attiny3216",
"fabacademy",
"jigsaw puzzle",
"light",
"neopixel",
"puzzle",
"spirograph"
] | Putting the last piece of a project together and finally finishing it up is a satisfying feeling. When the last piece of a puzzle like that is a literal puzzle, though, it’s even better. [Nadieh] has been working on
this jigsaw puzzle that displays a fireworks-like effect
whenever a piece is placed correctly, using a lot of familiar electronics and some unique, well-polished design.
The puzzle is a hexagonal shape and based on a hexagonally symmetric spirograph, with the puzzle board placed into an enclosure which houses all of the electronics. Each puzzle piece has a piece of copper embedded in a unique location so when it is placed on the board, the device can tell if it was placed properly or not. If it was, an array of color LEDs mounted beneath a translucent diffuser creates a lighting effect that branches across the entire board like an explosion. The large number of pieces requires a multiplexer for the microcontroller, an ATtiny3216.
This project came out of a FabAcademy, so the documentation is incredibly thorough. In fact, everything on this project is open sourced and available on the project page from the code to the files required for cutting out the puzzle pieces and the enclosure. It’s an impressive build with a polish we would expect from a commercial product, and
reminds us of an electrified jigsaw puzzle
we saw in a previous build.
Thanks to [henk] for the tip! | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361175",
"author": "SPD",
"timestamp": "2021-07-01T16:19:27",
"content": "Videohttp://fab.academany.org/2021/labs/waag/students/nadieh-bremer/presentation.mp4",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6361262",
"author": "Ducky",
... | 1,760,373,035.477552 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/01/social-engineering-and-menus/ | Social Engineering And Menus | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"Skills",
"Slider"
] | [
"marketing",
"menu engineering",
"psychology",
"social engineering"
] | If you follow cybersecurity hacker methods — or just watch
Mr. Robot
— you probably know that the best way to get someone’s password is to ask for it. Sure, you probably can’t just say “Hi, I’m a bad guy. Can I have your password?” But there are all sorts of tricks you can use like pretending to be in the person’s IT department, someone in management, or by making up a crisis to overcome their better judgement with a sense. But of course, as wise computer people, we are immune to such things, right? We also don’t need those kinds of tricks in our arsenal.
Is that true? It is amazing how many subtle things influence what we think are rational decisions, no matter who we are. Consider going to eat in a restaurant. Simple, right? You look at the menu, pick what you want, and order. No one is influencing you. But they are. According to
a BBC article
, there’s a whole industry of
menu “engineering”
that figures out how to get you to order pricey food.
You might not think social engineering for menus is a great skill for us. But maybe your new open source project needs collaborators. Maybe your startup company needs investors. Maybe you’d like someone to look at your resume. Maybe the same tricks that work with diners will work in those cases, too.
Not Just Menus
It isn’t just menus. Grocery stores have a whole science about where to put things like milk to make sure you get a chance to buy other things. They also know what locations sell things. Casinos are wise, too. Slots that are highly visible often pay out more than ones tucked in a corner. Unless they are visible from the high-profit table games where they might annoy high rollers.
The TV show
Brain Games
did an experiment about “the decoy effect.” They offered moviegoers a choice of a small popcorn for $3 or a large popcorn for $7. They sold virtually no large popcorns and — when asked — customers complained about the cost of a large. Later, they offered similar customers three choices. The small and large were still the same, but they included a $6.50 medium size. Everyone wanted the medium size but then would realize that they could get the large size for only 50¢ more and did that. The way the menu options were presented moved the results from small to large and consumers were none the wiser.
Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Menu
As the popcorn experiment shows, our sensibility around pricing on menus is inexplicable. Dishes that use longer words on a menu tend to cost more and diners don’t mind. Restaurants will also place the most expensive items up top so when you get to the lower-priced items, they seem more reasonable.
So what entices diners? Simple things like typefaces and color apparently can make big changes. Italics convey quality and — paradoxically — ornate script may be hard to read but may make things seem to taste better. Apparently, wine labelled with a hard-to-read script font got higher marks than the same wine in a more legible bottle.
Studies show that people associate round typefaces with sweet foods and angular ones with salty food. Doesn’t make sense, but it is apparently true.
Presentation
Obviously, fries don’t sell as well as “thick crispy fries.” Penn and Teller’s show,
Bullshit!
did an episode on this where diners were served horrible food in an upscale restaurant and loved it because the waiter sold everything. Store-brand whipped topping was a hand-whipped mousse, for example. Most people ate the cheap corner market fare as though it were a five-star meal.
Menu experts claim that descriptive language can increase sales by 27%. Stanford found that “sweet sizzling green beans” were ordered 23% more often than “green beans.” That stands to reason, but it is strange that even though you know it is hyperbole, it still affects you.
Consider this text from the description of a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder:
…hot, deliciously juicy and cooked when you order. It’s seasoned with just a pinch of salt and pepper, sizzled on a flat iron grill, then topped with slivered onions, tangy pickles and two slices of melty American cheese on a sesame seed bun.
A flat iron grill? Do other places have non-tangy pickles or cheese that doesn’t melt on a hot burger? Is the McDonald’s chef back there pinching a little seasoning into your burger? But it still works. You are probably ordering one on your phone right now.
Pictures and videos are a mixed bag. Sometimes diners associate food pictures with low quality. Also, there’s the fear that the food you see in the picture — which is often not really food as you’ll see in the video below, since food is hard to photograph well — will look better than the food that arrives at your table. If you’ve eaten at a fast-food joint, you know that isn’t at all unlikely.
So What?
You may think this kind of social engineering is only for the shopkeeper or the restaurateur. But how many times do you pick a tool like, say, Chrome over a comparable tool like Firefox? If you want people to use your work, maybe some social engineering is in order.
We’ve all seen great projects and companies falter while lesser ones flourish. Without naming names, operating systems, Linux distributions, editors, programming languages, and video formats have all seen this effect. So when you write your next great IoT library, maybe it shouldn’t be “functions that let you control devices using network requests.” Maybe it should be “a robust and secure library that makes it easy to take control of devices from anywhere in the world simplifying and enhancing your high tech lifestyle.” Sure, it sounds ridiculous, but it’s proven to work. | 59 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361149",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-07-01T14:08:51",
"content": "Social in a group that’s traditionally not noted for it.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6361167",
"author": "Jon",
"timestamp": "... | 1,760,373,035.952551 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/01/sub-mm-mechanical-3d-scanner-with-encoders-and-string/ | Sub-mm Mechanical 3D Scanner With Encoders And String | Danie Conradie | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d scanning",
"encoders",
"metrology"
] | [Scott Rumschlag] wanted a way to precisely map interior spaces for remodeling projects, but did not want to deal with the massive datasets created by optical 3D scanning, and found the precision of the cost-effective optical tools lacking. Instead, he built a
3D cable measuring device
that can be used to map by using a manual probe attached to a cable.
The cable is wound on a retractable spool, and passes over a pulley and through a carbon fiber tube mounted on a two-axis gimbal. There are a few commercial machines that use this mechanical approach, but [Scott] decided to build one himself after seeing the prices. The angle of rotation of each axis of the gimbal and the length of extended cable is measured with encoders, and in theory the relative coordinates of the probe can be calculated with simple geometry. However, for the level of precision [Scott] wanted, the devil is in the details. To determine the position of a point within 0.5 mm at a distance of 3 m, an angular resolution of less than 0.001° is required on the encoders. Mechanical encoders could add unnecessary drag, and magnetic encoders are not perfectly linear, so optical encoders were used. Many other factors can also introduce errors, like stretch and droop in the cable, stickiness of the bearings, perpendicularity of the gimbals axis and even the spring force created by the encoder wires. Each of these errors had to accounted for in the calculations. At first, [Scott] was using an Arduino Mega for the geometry calculations, but moved it to his laptop after he discovered the floating point precision of the Mega was not good.
[Scott] spend around 500 hours building and tuning the device, but the end result is really impressive. There are surprisingly few optical machines that can achieve this level of precision and accuracy, and they can be affected by factors like the reflectivity of an object.
If you do want to get into real 3D scanning, definitely take the time to read
[Donal Papp]’s excellent guide to the practical aspects of the various technologies
. Most of us already have a 3D scanner in our pocket in the form of a smartphone, which can be used for
photogrammetry
. | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361128",
"author": "Olivier",
"timestamp": "2021-07-01T11:06:31",
"content": "Very cool idea & execution",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6361178",
"author": "Gert",
"timestamp": "2021-07-01T16:39:28",
... | 1,760,373,035.849383 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/07/01/pi-pico-game-boy-flash-cart-gets-slim-rp2040-upgrade/ | Pi Pico Game Boy Flash Cart Gets Slim RP2040 Upgrade | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks"
] | [
"flash cart",
"flash cartridge",
"game boy",
"pi pico",
"rom",
"rp2040"
] | The story for this one starts a few months ago,
when [John Green] released his PICO-GB project
. His code allowed the Raspberry Pi Pico to stand in for a Game Boy cartridge, complete with a simple text menu that let the user select between ROMs that had been baked into the microcontroller’s firmware. The project was particularly notable for the fact that it was entirely a software solution; while a custom breakout cartridge made for a handy temporary solution, you could have permanently wired the Pico’s pins directly to the Game Boy’s cartridge connector if you wanted to.
PICO-GB running on the full-size Pi Pico
Then in early June, the RP2040 chip that powers the Pi Pico
went up for sale in single unit quantities
. That opened up the possibility of building the PICO-GB functionality into a cartridge small enough to actually fit inside the Game Boy. So [Martin “HDR” Refseth] got to work creating the
slick cartridge PCB you’re seeing now
.
The RP2040 is joined by a trio of Texas Instruments TXB0108 level shifters, and there’s a spot for adding a SPI flash chip. The RP2040 supports a maximum of 16 MB of external flash, but given the size of Game Boy games were generally measured in kilobytes, that shouldn’t pose much of a problem.
Looking ahead, the original PICO-GB documentation mentions enhancements like loading ROMs from SD card, as well as hardware additions like a real-time-clock for the more advanced games that supported it. We assume those concepts will become part of [Martin]’s PCB eventually, but these are still early days.
We’ve seen
Game Boy cartridge emulation with a microcontroller
in the past, but we’re exited to see how the
unique capabilities of the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s custom silicon
can improve the state-of-the-art.
[Thanks to Itay for the tip.] | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361112",
"author": "bastetfurry",
"timestamp": "2021-07-01T09:33:33",
"content": "When micro-controllers get fast enough to bit-bang-emulate a ROM.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6361146",
"author": "Daid",
"... | 1,760,373,035.7887 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/30/smart-camera-based-on-google-coral/ | Smart Camera Based On Google Coral | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"artificial intelligence",
"face mask",
"Google Coral",
"license plate",
"machine learning",
"opencv",
"pytesseract",
"raspberry pi",
"usb accelerator",
"zero"
] | As machine learning and artificial intelligence becomes more widespread, so do the number of platforms available for anyone looking to experiment with the technology. Much like the single board computer revolution of the last ten years, we’re currently seeing a similar revolution with the number of platforms available for machine learning. One of those is Google Coral, a set of hardware specifically designed to take advantage of this new technology. It’s missing support to work with certain hardware though, so [Ricardo] set out to get one working with a Raspberry Pi Zero with
this smart camera build based around Google Coral
.
The project uses a
Google Coral Edge TPU
with a USB accelerator as the basis for the machine learning. A complete image for the Pi Zero is available which sets most of the system up right away including headless operation and includes a host of machine learning software such as OpenCV and
pytesseract
. By pairing a camera to the Edge TPU and the Raspberry Pi, [Ricardo] demonstrates many of its machine learning capabilities with several example projects such as an automatic license plate detector and even a mode which can recognize whether or not a face mask is being worn, and even how correctly it is being worn.
For those who want to get into machine learning and artificial intelligence, this is a great introductory project since the cost to entry is so low using these pieces of hardware. All of the project code and examples are available on [Ricardo]’s GitHub page too. We could even imagine his license plate recognition software being used to augment this
license plate reader which uses a much more powerful camera
. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6361082",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2021-07-01T05:10:33",
"content": "Google announces the discontinuation of Google Coral in 3….2…..1….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6361089",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "20... | 1,760,373,036.249364 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/27/video-de-shaker-software-measures-linear-rail-quality/ | Video De-shaker Software Measures Linear Rail Quality | Donald Papp | [
"cnc hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"cnc",
"linear rail",
"odometry",
"stabilization",
"video",
"virtualdub"
] | Here’s an interesting experiment that
attempts to measure the quality of a linear rail by using a form of visual odometry
, accomplished by mounting a camera on the rail and analyzing the video with open-source software usually used to stabilize shaky video footage. No linear rail is perfect, and it should be possible to measure the degree of imperfection by recording video footage while the camera moves down the length of the rail, and analyzing the result. Imperfections in the rail should cause the video to sway a proportional amount, which would allow one to characterize the rail’s quality.
To test this idea, [Saulius] attached a high-definition camera to a linear rail, pointed the camera towards a high-contrast textured pattern (making the resulting video easier to analyze), and recorded video while moving the camera across the rail at a fixed speed. The resulting video gets fed into the
Deshaker plugin for VirtualDub
, of which the important part is the
deshaker.log
file, which contains X, Y, rotate, and zoom correction values required to stabilize the video. [Saulius] used these values to create a graph characterizing the linear rail’s quality.
It’s a clever proof of concept, especially in how it uses no special tools and leverages a video stabilizing algorithm in an unusual way. However, the results aren’t exactly easy to turn into concrete, real-world measurements. Turning image results into micrometers is a matter of counting pixels, and for this task video stabilizing is an imperfect tool, since the algorithm prioritizes visual results instead of absolute measurements. Still, it’s an interesting experiment, and perfectly capable of measuring rail quality in a relative sense. Can’t help but be a bit curious about how it would profile
something like these cardboard CNC modules
. | 15 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359893",
"author": "diane",
"timestamp": "2021-06-27T11:11:56",
"content": "This may be one of the best parts of hacking, identifying slight imperfections to narrow the gap to total perfection",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "63... | 1,760,373,036.00534 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/27/mechanical-7-segment-display-uses-a-single-motor/ | Mechanical 7-Segment Display Uses A Single Motor | Danie Conradie | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"3d printed",
"7 segment",
"automaton",
"gzumwalt",
"mechanical display"
] | Seven-segment displays have been around for a long time, and there is a seemingly endless number of ways to build them. The latest of is a
mechanical seven-segment
from a master of 3D printed mechanisms, [gzumwalt], and can use a single motor to cycle through all ten possible numbers.
The trick lies in a synchronized pair of rotating discs, one for the top four segments and another for the bottom three segments. Each disc has a series of concentric cam slots to drive followers that flip the red segments in and out of view. The display can cycle through all ten states in a single rotation of the discs, so the cam paths are divided in 36° increments. [gzumwalt] has shown us a completed physical version, but judging by CAD design and working prototype of a single segment, we are pretty confident it will. While it’s not shown in the design, we suspect it will be driven by a stepper motors and synchronized with a belt or intermediate gear.
Another 3D printed mechanical display we’ve seen recently is a DIY flip dot, array, which uses the same electromagnet system as the commercial versions. [gzumwalt] has a gift for designing fascinating mechanical automatons around a single motor, including an
edge avoiding robot
and a
magnetic fridge crawler
. | 29 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359879",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2021-06-27T08:07:28",
"content": "It’d be nice if the red segment pivoting into place caused a black panel to move out of the way, and the red segment pivoting away allowed the black panel to move back and close the gap.",
"parent_id": ... | 1,760,373,036.069168 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/26/coding-a-custom-driver-for-the-adafruit-mini-thermal-printer/ | Coding A Custom Driver For The Adafruit Mini Thermal Printer | Lewin Day | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"printer",
"thermal printer"
] | Thermal printers are cool… or, uh, warm actually. They use heat to make images, so they never need ink and they print on receipt rolls. The thermal printer available from Adafruit is a particularly tasty example, as it comes fully documented for the budding hacker. [Ed] is one such person,
who set about writing his own driver to use the hardware with Linux on a Raspberry Pi.
The project came about as [Ed] didn’t like the halftone output from the standard Adafruit CUPS driver. Thus, a dithering-capable driver was needed instead. The first step of the project was to get dithering working via running such an algorithm into a custom driver, as well as to vary the heating time of the print head to gain greyscale capability. From there,
the driver was integrated with CUPS and could be used with the Linux lp command.
Finally,
measures to deal with the paper running out were coded in as well.
It’s a fun dive into the nitty-gritty of talking to printers at the low level, something that few of us think about when printing concert tickets in a rush. There’s a lot that goes on to get a page to print successfully, and [Ed]’s work leaves us more respect for everything that goes on to get an image on the paper.
The driver is available for keen tinkerers over at Github.
Meanwhile, consider a thermal printer for all your banner-printing needs. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359884",
"author": "Anonym",
"timestamp": "2021-06-27T08:36:17",
"content": "…a proper Micropython driver for this printer would be really cool",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6359994",
"author": "Yeshua Watson",
... | 1,760,373,036.568227 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/26/emulating-a-power-grid/ | Emulating A Power Grid | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"cloud",
"electricity",
"fiware",
"model",
"modular",
"open source",
"power grid",
"research",
"simulation"
] | The electric power grid, as it exists today, was designed about a century ago to accommodate large, dispersed power plants owned and controlled by the utilities themselves. At the time this seemed like a great idea, but as technology and society have progressed the power grid remains stubbornly rooted in this past. Efforts to modify it to accommodate solar and wind farms, electric cars, and other modern technology need to take great effort to work with the ancient grid setup,
often requiring intricate modeling like this visual power grid emulator
.
The model is known as LEGOS, the Lite Emulator of Grid Operations, and comes from researchers at RWTH Aachen University. Its goal is to simulate a modern power grid with various generation sources and loads such as homes, offices, or hospitals. It uses a DC circuit to simulate power flow, which is visualized with LEDs. The entire model is modular, so components can be added or subtracted easily to quickly show how the power flow changes as a result of modifications to the grid. There is also a robust automation layer to the entire project, allowing real-time data acquisition of the model to be gathered and analyzed using an open source cloud service called
FIWARE
.
In order to modernize the grid, simulations like these are needed to make sure there are no knock-on effects of adding or changing such a complex system in ways it was never intended to be changed. Researchers in Europe like the ones developing LEGOS are ahead of the curve, as smart grid technology continues to filter in to all areas of the modern electrical infrastructure. It could also find uses for modeling power grids in areas where
changes to the grid can happen rapidly as a result of natural disasters
. | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359845",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-06-27T02:51:08",
"content": "“Researchers in Europe like the ones developing LEGOS are ahead of the curve, as smart grid technology continues to filter in to all areas of the modern electrical infrastructure.”And then we have storie... | 1,760,373,037.15456 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/26/custom-3d-printer-cart-hides-clever-features/ | Custom 3D Printer Cart Hides Clever Features | Tom Nardi | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"cart",
"NFC",
"ultimaker",
"workshop"
] | Even if you’ve got a decent sized workshop, there’s only so much stuff you can have sitting on the bench at one time. That’s why [Eric Strebel], ever the prolific maker,
decided to build this slick cart for his fairly bulky Ultimaker 3 Extended printer
. (Video, embedded below.) While the cart is obviously designed to match the aesthetics of the Ultimaker, the video below is sure to have some useful tips and tricks no matter which printer or tool you’re looking to cart around the shop in style.
[Eric] made a second video
on sketching out the design.
On the surface this might look like a pretty standard rolling cart, and admittedly, at least half of the video is a bit more
New Yankee Workshop
than something we’d usually be interested in here on Hackaday. But [Eric] has built a number of neat little details into the cart that we think are worth mentally filing away for future projects.
For example, we really liked his use of magnets to hold the plastic totes in place, especially his method of letting the magnets align themselves first before locking everything down with screws and hot glue. The integrated uninterruptible power supply is also a nice touch, as it not only helps protect your prints in the event of a power outage, but means you could even move the cart around (very carefully…) as the printer does its thing.
But perhaps the most interesting element of the cart is that [Eric] has relocated the Ultimaker’s NFC sensors from the back of the printer and into the cart itself. This allows the printer to still read the NFC chip built into the rolls of Ultimaker filament, even when they’re locked safely away from humidity in a sealed box.
Now all you’ve got to do is apply for the loan it will take to pay for all of the MDF you’ll need to build your own version. At this point, we wouldn’t be surprised if
encasing your 3D printer in metal would end up being cheaper
than using wood. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359830",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2021-06-27T00:18:27",
"content": "Nice build, really matches the printer aesthetic. I made my 3D Printer table from an IKEA BEKVÄM a few years back.https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/bekvaem-kitchen-trolley-birch-30240348/Surprisingly,... | 1,760,373,036.399504 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/26/lora-messenger-in-nokias-shell/ | LoRa Messenger In Nokia’s Shell | Jenny List | [
"Phone Hacks"
] | [
"LoRa",
"messenger",
"nokia",
"smartphone"
] | The arrival of LoRa a few years ago gave us at last an accessible licence-free UHF communication protocol with significant range. It’s closed-source, but there are plenty of modules available so it’s found its way into a variety of projects in our community over the years. Among them we’ve seen a few messaging devices, but none quite so slick as [Trevor Attema]’s
converted Nokia E63 BlackBerry-like smartphone
. The original motherboard with its cellphone radio and Symbian-running processor have been tossed aside, and in its place is a new motherboard that hooks into the Nokia LCD, keypad, backlighting and speaker. To all intents and purposes from the outside it’s a Nokia phone, but one that has been expertly repurposed as a messenger.
On the PCB alongside a LoRa module is an STM32H7 microcontroller and an ATECC608 secure authentication chip for encrypted messages. It’s designed to form a mesh network, further extending the range across which a group can operate.
We like this project for the quality of the work, but we especially like it for the way it uses the Nokia’s components. We’ve asked in the past
why people aren’t hacking smartphones
, but maybe we’re asking the wrong question. If the smartphone as a unit isn’t useful, then how about its case, components, and form factor? Perhaps a black-brick Android phone will yield little, but the previous generation such as this Nokia use parts that are easy to interface with and well understood. Let’s hope it encourages more experimentation. | 30 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359783",
"author": "NiHaoMike",
"timestamp": "2021-06-26T20:13:39",
"content": "So a modern 2 way pager?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6359974",
"author": "fhunter",
"timestamp": "2021-06-27T18:52:54",
... | 1,760,373,036.63949 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/26/raspberry-pi-pico-oscilloscope/ | Raspberry Pi Pico Oscilloscope | Danie Conradie | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"android app",
"oscilliscope",
"Raspberry Pi Pico"
] | As you dive deeper into the world of electronics, a good oscilloscope quickly is an indispensable tool. However, for many use cases where you’re debugging low voltage, low speed circuits, that expensive oscilloscope is using only a fraction of its capabilities. As a minimalist alternative
for these use cases [fhdm-dev] created Scoppy
, a combination of firmware for the
Raspberry Pi Pico
and an
Android app
to create a functional oscilloscope.
As you would expect, the specifications are rather limited, capturing a maximum of 100 kpts at a speed of 500 kS/s shared between the two channels. Without some additional front end circuitry to protect the Pico, the input voltage is limited to 0-3.3 V. Neither the app nor the firmware is open source, and getting access to the second channel and removing ads requires a ~$3 in-app purchase. Even so, we can still think of plenty of practical uses for a ~$7 oscilloscope. If you do decide to add some front-end circuitry to change to voltage range, you can set them in the app, and switch between them by pulling certain GPIO pins high or low. The app has most of the basic oscilloscope features covered, continuous and single shot capture, adjustable trigger settings and a scalable waveform display.
Simple, cheap oscilloscopes like these have their place, but you start to understand why the “real” ones are so expensive when you see
what goes into developing a high performance oscilloscope
. | 50 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359740",
"author": "some guy",
"timestamp": "2021-06-26T17:04:02",
"content": "#advertSeriously, it’s basically useless and not even OS (and worse, with ads)? Why are you even talking about this?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,373,036.938916 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/26/how-did-i-live-without-a-microscope/ | How Did I Live Without A Microscope? | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants"
] | [
"microscope",
"newsletter"
] | Get yourself a decent stereo inspection microscope, preferably optical. Something that can magnify from maybe 4x to 40x is fine, anything outside this range is icing on the cake. Some people claim they’re fine with a minimum of 10x, but if you go there, you’re going to need a reducing lens eventually. Either way, get one, and you’ll thank me.
How do I know this? I finally caved in and bought one about two years ago now, and while it’s not something I use daily, it’s something that I use at least once a month and for which there is simply no substitute.
This is Hackaday, so a lot of you will be thinking “inspection scope = fine-pitch soldering” and you’re not wrong. With clearance of 10 cm or more, and a slab of sacrificial optical glass (“neutral density filter”) to protect the optics from tarry flux fumes, a stereo scope at 4x makes even the fiddliest solder joints possible. Good lighting, and sharp tweezers are also a must, of course. That’s what got me in the door.
But that’s the half of it, or less. When my scope was new to me — it hasn’t been “new” since the late 1980s — we spent a whole rainy Sunday afternoon microscoping whatever would fit under the lens. Grains of salt, blades of grass, all manner of bugs living and otherwise, shells, skin, textiles. Everything is cooler under the microscope.
The event that triggered this article wasn’t my son’s school project this week to photograph dandelion seeds. Nope, today my wife found a bug in the basement; to the microscope! And with a very quick and unfortunately very positive identification, we now know that we have to strain all of our flour for
bread beetles
and pitch whichever bags they came in with. Hooray!
The inspection scope was intended for the soldering bench, but has found general use as an irreplaceable household tool. While I admittedly also intended to use it to lure my son into science, the real fight over scope time has been with my wife. And that’s why you want an optical scope instead of one that’s tethered to a monitor — as a general-purpose tool, portability is paramount. No menu diving, no power source, and anyone can just grab it and go.
Convinced? Ready to pull out your wallet? Microscopes are like cars. You can spend as much as you’d like on one, the cheapest will cause you nothing but pain and suffering, and the difference between the mid-range and high-end is full of diminishing returns. Buying used, especially if you can kick the metaphorical tires, can be a great bargain, and a high-end used scope will hold its value a lot better than a new budget model. Just around $200 is a sweet spot new and $300-$400 will get you the top of the line from yesteryear if you shop around. That’s not cheap, but if you’re the microscope type, it’s easily worth it. Trust me.
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
! | 48 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359708",
"author": "WereCatf",
"timestamp": "2021-06-26T14:17:41",
"content": "I don’t really have much use for a microscope, personally. The only uses for one would be for inspecting solder-joints and electronics, but I am getting by quite well with my phone’s camera and an app th... | 1,760,373,036.789273 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/26/can-the-solenoid-engine-power-a-car/ | Can The Solenoid Engine Power A Car? | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"arduino",
"car",
"crankshaft",
"drivetrain",
"electric",
"engine",
"solenoid",
"timing"
] | [Emiel] aka [The Practical Engineer] makes all kinds of fun projects in his fully-featured shop, and one of his tangents has been building a series of solenoid engines. These engines mimic the function of an internal combustion engine, with each solenoid acting as a piston. The only problem with [Emiel]’s concept engines, though, was that he never actually put them into a vehicle to prove their effectiveness.
This build finally proves that they can work at powering a vehicle
.
The project starts with a new engine. [Emiel] chose a V4 design using four solenoids and an Arduino-based controller. After some trouble getting it to operate properly, he scavenged a small circuit board he built in his V8 solenoid engine to help with timing. With that installed, the solenoids click away and spin the crankshaft at a single constant speed. The vehicle itself was mostly 3D printed, with two aluminum tubes as support structures to mount the engine. Even the wheels were 3D printed with a special rubber coating applied to them. With a small drive train assembled, it’s off to the races for this tiny prototype.
While the small car doesn’t have steering and only goes at a constant speed, the proof of concept that these tiny electric engines actually work is a welcomed addition to [Emiel]’s collection of videos on these curious engines. Of course they’re not as efficient as driving the wheels directly with an electric motor, but we all know there’s no fun in that. If you haven’t seen his most intricate build,
the V8 is certainly worth checking out
, and also shows off the timing circuitry he repurposed for this car. | 12 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359680",
"author": "Bill",
"timestamp": "2021-06-26T11:51:03",
"content": "Cool project",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6359699",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-06-26T13:56:07",
"content": "And for more Ru... | 1,760,373,037.266367 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/26/random-numbers-from-a-smoke-detector/ | Random Numbers From A Smoke Detector | Jenny List | [
"hardware"
] | [
"entropy",
"random number generator",
"smoke detector"
] | The quest for truly random numbers is something to which scientists and engineers have devoted a lot of time and effort. The trick is to find an unpredictable source of naturally occurring noise that can be sampled, so they have looked towards noisy gas discharge tubes or semiconductor junctions, and radioactive decay. Noisy electrical circuits have appeared in these pages before as random number generators, but we’d be forgiven for thinking that radioactive decay might involve something a little less run-of-the-mill. In fact we all probably have just such a device in our houses, in the form of the ionisation chamber that’s part of most household smoke detectors. [Lukas Koch]
has built a project that shows us just how this can be done
.
A smoke detector of this type uses a metal shell to house a tiny sample of radioactive americium that emits alpha particles into the space between two electrodes. These ionise the air in that space, and the detectable effect on the space between the two electrodes is increased when ionised gasses from smoke are present. However it can also quite happily detect the ionisation from individual alpha particles, which means that it’s perfect as a source of random noise. A sensitive current amplifier requires significant shielding to avoid the device merely becoming a source of mains hum, and to that end he’s achieved a working breadboard prototype.
This is still a work in progress and though it has as yet no schematic he promises us that it will arrive in due course. It’s a project that’s definitely worth watching, because despite getting more up-close and personal than most of us have with radioactive components, it’s one we’re genuinely interested to see come to fruition.
Of course,
we’ve seen smoke detectors in more detail before here at Hackaday
. | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359656",
"author": "diane",
"timestamp": "2021-06-26T08:44:07",
"content": "Apparently, the rate of radioactive decay is slightly affected by the rotation of the sun’s core every 33 days…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "63596... | 1,760,373,036.693919 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/25/pinet-one-small-project-grows-unexpectedly/ | PiNet — One Small Project Grows Unexpectedly | Chris Lott | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"diy home security",
"garage door opener",
"home automation",
"pool controller",
"python",
"raspberry pi"
] | A few years ago, [Gregory Sanders] aka [Dr Gerg] had one simple wish in mind when he started what is now
the PiNet project
— to know whether his garage door was open or closed. Instead of searching out off-the-shelf solutions, he looked at the project as a learning opportunity. After picking up Python, he built a system from a Raspberry Pi, a 12V gel cell battery, and a power supply / charger circuit. Thus project Overhead Door (ohd) was complete (see the
ohd GitHub repository
) and [Dr Gerg] was done.
Or so he thought. After getting a swimming pool installed, he got the itch again, and started a new project called Pool Controls, because:
The controls for your average backyard in-ground pool are pathetic. I felt like I could do better with a Raspberry Pi, a relay board and some Python. And so I did, and frankly, it’s awesome.
Then he built his own weather station to replaced a commercial one which had died twice in as many years, followed by his own web-based UI framework. Next was the integration of an outdoor security camera system. And finally, although we don’t believe it’s really final, he ripped out the cloud-based controls from his shop air conditioner and added his own Raspberry Pi-based solution. All of these projects are available on
his GitHub page
.
[Dr Gerg]’s goal in posting all this work is not necessarily so people can duplicate it, although that is okay as well. Instead, he hopes that people will realize that they can build these types of projects on their own, perhaps leaning some things and picking up new skills along the way — have fun doing it. We like the way you think, [Dr Gerg]. Do you know of any small projects which grew and grew and took on a life of their own? | 21 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359648",
"author": "Paul Delys",
"timestamp": "2021-06-26T06:07:33",
"content": "I have a home grown ESP8266/ESP32 system that monitors and alarms on water consumption (no well, no city water . . . I haul every drop of house water in my pickup truck), water tank level, freezer temp... | 1,760,373,036.849933 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/25/some-of-the-many-ways-to-build-am-transmitters-and-receivers/ | Some Of The Many Ways To Build AM Transmitters And Receivers | Danie Conradie | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"am radio",
"AM receiver",
"AM Transmitter"
] | AM radios are relatively simple devices, and building one is a good way to start exploring the world of radio communications. [GreatScott] does exactly this
in the video after the break
, building both a transmitter and receiver.
At the most basic level, AM radio works by generating a carrier wave with an oscillator, and then modulating the amplitude with an audio signal. Around these parts, the venerable 555 timer is always brought up whenever things get to oscillating; so you’ll no doubt be happy to see [GreatScott] decided to give it a shot for his first experiments, testing two popular 555 transmitter circuits. One uses the control voltage pin to input the audio signal, while the other uses the reset pin. The CV-pin version worked slightly better, but it was still just barely possible to distinguish a voice over a standard commercial AM/FM receiver.
The next attempt was with a XR2206 function generator kit, which worked quite well when combined with a simple microphone amplifier circuit. But this time the receiving side was swapped out, as [GreatScott] built a basic circuit around a TA7642 AM amplifier/demodulator IC, with only six passive components and a hand-wound coil.
There is no shortage of ways to build AM radios, and we’ve covered quite a few over the years. Off course a
555 timer can also be used in a receiver
, and building transmitters using only discrete components is quite simple, as demonstrated by the
10-minute transmitter
and
single transistor transmitter
. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359634",
"author": "Jason Doege",
"timestamp": "2021-06-26T02:10:39",
"content": "Interesting article, Danie. It does need a serious once-over by an editor, though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6359639",
"author": "ellis... | 1,760,373,037.766769 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/25/a-custom-clock-with-led-filament-hands/ | A Custom Clock With LED Filament Hands | Zach Zeman | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"clock",
"ESP32",
"LED clock",
"LED filament",
"LED Filaments",
"ntp"
] | LEDs have become so ubiquitous in our projects that just hearing that term probably conjures images of tiny illuminated domes in an array of single-spectrum colors. It’s easy to forget that these efficient sources of light come in a variety of form factors, including the retro-tacular filaments that [bitborked] used to make
his beautiful analog LED wall clock
.
Aside from its aesthetics, this timepiece features some great design. A custom PCB acts as a hub for all the LED filament spokes. The onboard brains come in the form of an ESP32, which means it can keep extremely accurate time via NTP.
WS2811 LED controllers, which we’re so accustomed to seeing alongside RGB LEDs that they almost feel strange to see here, provide the 12 volts required for each filament and make individual addressing a breeze.
[bitborked] takes advantage of that addressability to
display other animations
in addition to the standard clock face. They also plan to implement MQTT for eventual alerts from other home automation devices. When it comes to just telling time, you can discern the individual “hands” by differences in their brightness, which sadly does not show up as well in video as it does in real life.
We would certainly be happy to have this clock on our walls, and we hope to eventually see more of its PCB designs. In the meantime, though, we can drool over
a more digital take on the LED filament clock
. Although, filaments are certainly not required to make
a beautiful LED timekeeper
. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359617",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2021-06-25T23:11:57",
"content": "Sweet, and it has a very 50’s aesthetic. Does he share the PCB?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6359688",
"author": "sander",
"ti... | 1,760,373,036.991017 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/25/casting-a-simple-3d-print-in-aluminium/ | Casting A Simple 3D Print In Aluminium | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"aluminium casting",
"cast",
"casting",
"gravity casting"
] | 3D printing with plastics and resins is great for quickly prototyping parts with all manner of geometries, but strength and durability of the parts produced is often limited. One way around this is to use your 3D printed parts as patterns for casting in something tougher like aluminium.
That’s precisely what [Brian Oltrogge] did to produce an attractive wall hook from a 3D printed design.
The process starts with the design and printing of a wall hook, with [Brian] taking care to include the proper draft angles to allow the pattern to be properly removed from the mold. The print is carefully sanded down and post-processed to be highly smooth, so that it doesn’t spoil the mold when its removed for the casting process. From there, a sand casting mold is built around the pattern using sodium silicate in a 3-4% mix by weight with fine masonry sand. Once ready, the pattern is removed, and the mold is assembled, ready for the pour.
[Brian] completes the process with a simple gravity casting method using molten aluminium. The part is then removed from the mold, and filed down to improve the surface finish from the sand casting process. It’s then polished up to a nice shine and hung on the wall.
[Brian] does a great job of explaining the basics of what it takes to get gravity casting right; draft angles in particular are something often ignored by beginners, yet are crucial to getting good results. You needn’t just settle for casting inanimate objects though;
we’ve featured DIY casting processes for gears before, too
. Video after the break. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359589",
"author": "MacAttack",
"timestamp": "2021-06-25T21:09:33",
"content": "Nice demonstration of casting and interesting that he shows the importance of draft angles, only then to go on to show they weren’t important in this casting.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,037.220188 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/28/measuring-plancks-constant-with-leds-and-a-dmm/ | Measuring Planck’s Constant With LEDs And A DMM | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"constant",
"electron",
"led",
"photon",
"physics",
"Planck",
"quantum mechanics"
] | The remarkable thing about our universe is that it’s possible to explore at least some of its inner workings with very simple tools. Gravity is one example, to which [Galileo]’s inclined planes and balls bear witness. But that’s classical mechanics: surely the weirdness that is quantum mechanics requires far more sophisticated instrumentation to explore, right?
That’s true enough — if you consider a voltmeter and a Mark 1 eyeball to be sophisticated. That’s pretty much all you need for instruments to
determine Planck’s constant
to a decent degree of precision, the way that [poblocki1982]’s did. There’s a little more to it, of course; the method is based on measuring the voltage at which LEDs of various wavelengths start shining, so a simple circuit was built to select an LED from the somewhat grandly named “photon energy array” and provide a way to adjust and monitor the voltage and current.
By performing the experiment in a dark room with adapted eyes, or by using an opaque tube to block out stray light, it’s possible to slowly ramp the voltage up until the first glimmer of light is seen from each LED. Recording the voltage and the wavelength gives you the raw numbers to calculate the Planck constant
h
, as well as the Planck error
Δh
, with the help of a handy spreadsheet. [poblocki1982] managed to get within 11% of the published value — not too shabby at all.
Does this all still sound too complicated for you? Maybe
a Watt balance made from Lego
is more your speed. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360101",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2021-06-28T08:33:08",
"content": "Optimal results would probably be had by using a darkened room and covering one eye until it dark-adjusts, and using that eye to spot the LED’s light.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies":... | 1,760,373,037.468496 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/27/miata-sci-fi-digital-dash/ | Miata Sci-Fi Digital Dash | Matthew Carlson | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"car hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"custom dash",
"mazda miata",
"miata",
"star trek"
] | One of the hardest, but sometimes best, things you can do for a project is to walk away. [Jroobi] had spent hundreds of hours crafting
the digital dash for his MX5 Miata
(video, embedded below) and after spending far too long chasing down I2C bugs, he made the difficult decision to step away for a while. However, as of May 2021, [Jroobi] returned to the project and found a power supply was under-specified and was causing brownouts that resulted in crashes.
All in all, it’s an incredible work of engineering. Everything from the massive codebase that describes all the different states to the tasteful graphic design is masterfully done. The Star-Trek-inspired theme and attention to detail really show in the different modes on the tachometer. The dynamic soft RPM limit based on engine temperature is particularly ingenious.
Under the hood of this custom dash are two Ardunios running the show. The center media console offers more controls with a generous touch screen while the instrument cluster shows most of the data. They talk over I2C to each other and communicate with other parts in the car, such as the RGB cabin lighting and the TEIN electronic suspension dampeners. Fuel and temperature levels come in as voltage levels which can be read via an ADC. The gear position is calculated based on RPMs and speed given the wheel size and the transmission in the vehicle.
It is a phenomenal labor of love and if you’re inspired to further upgrade your Miata you might want to see how to
put carbs on the engine
or
RGB light rings in the instruments
. | 26 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360082",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2021-06-28T06:08:44",
"content": "I like it a lot.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6360094",
"author": "Deka",
"timestamp": "2021-06-28T07:46:06",
"content": "Where do I send... | 1,760,373,038.237057 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/27/turning-a-mig-welder-into-a-metal-3d-printer/ | Turning A MIG Welder Into A Metal 3D Printer | Lewin Day | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"mig",
"mig welder"
] | Metal 3D printers are, by and large, many times more expensive than their FDM and resin-based brethren. It’s a shame, because there’s plenty of projects that would benefit from being able to produce more heat-resistant metal parts with additive fabrication methods. [Integza]’s rocketry projects are one such example, so he decided to explore
turning a MIG welder into a 3D printer for his own nefarious purposes
. (Video, embedded below.)
The build is as simple as you could possibly imagine. A plastic adapter was printed to affix a MIG welding nozzle to an existing Elegoo Neptune 2 3D printer. Unfortunately, early attempts failed quickly as the heat from the welding nozzle melted the adapter. However, with a new design that held the nozzle handle far from the hot end, the ersatz metal 3D printer was able to run for much longer.
Useful parts weren’t on the cards, however, with [Integza] facing repeated issues with the steel bed warping from the heat of the welding process. While a thicker steel base plate would help, it’s likely that warping could still happen with enough heat input so more engineering may be needed.
It’s not a new concept by any means
, and results are typically rough, but it’s one we’d like to see developed further regardless. | 70 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360050",
"author": "Jon H",
"timestamp": "2021-06-28T02:42:32",
"content": "It’s probably going to require a full-on heavy welding table as a building platform, probably wouldn’t hurt for the surface being printed on to have multiple threaded studs welded on the underside, so that ... | 1,760,373,037.570936 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/27/hackaday-links-june-27-2021/ | Hackaday Links: June 27, 2021 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"apple",
"atm",
"bank",
"card",
"drone",
"fuctional print. helmet",
"goat",
"hackaday links",
"helicopter",
"iCloud",
"shimmer",
"skimmer",
"theft",
"UAS",
"western digital"
] | When asked why he robbed banks, career criminal Willie Sutton is reported to have said, “Because that’s where the money is.” It turns out that a reporter made up the quote, but it’s a truism that offers by extension insight into why ATMs and point-of-sale terminals are such a fat target for criminals today. There’s something far more valuable to be taken from ATMs than cash, though — data, in the form of credit and debit card numbers. And taking a look at some of the hardware used by criminals to get this information reveals some pretty sophisticated engineering. We’d heard of
ATM “skimmers”
before, but never the related “shimmers” that are now popping up, at least according to
this interesting article on Krebs
.
While skimmers target the magnetic stripe on the back of a card, simmers are aimed at reading the data from card chips instead. Shimmers are usually built on flex PCBs and are inserted into the card slot, where traces on the device make contact with the chip reader contacts. The article describes a sophisticated version of shimmer that steals power from the ATM itself, rather than requiring a separate battery. The shimmer sits inside the card slot, completely invisible to external inspection (
sorry, Tom
), and performs what amounts to man-in-the-middle attacks. Card numbers are either stored on the flash and read after the device is retrieved, or are read over a Bluetooth connection; PINs are stolen with the traditional hidden camera method. While we certainly don’t condone criminal behavior, sometimes you just can’t help but admire the ingenuity thieves apply to their craft.
In a bit of foreshadowing into how weird 2020 was going to be, back in January of that year
we mentioned
reports of swarms of mysterious UAVs moving in formation at night across the midwest United States. We never heard much else about this — attention shifted to other matters shortly thereafter — but now there are reports out of Arizona of
a “super-drone” that can outrun law enforcement helicopters
. The incidents allegedly occurred early this year, when a Border Patrol helicopter pilot reported almost colliding with a large unmanned aerial system (UAS) over Tucson, and then engaged them in a 70-mile chase at speeds over 100 knots. The chase was joined by a Tucson police helicopter, with the UAS reaching altitudes of 14,000 feet at one point. The pilots didn’t manage to get a good look at it, describing it only as having a single green light on its underside. The range on the drone was notable; the helicopter pilots hoped to exhaust its batteries and force it to land or return to base, but they themselves ran out of fuel long before the drone quit. We have to admit that we find it a little fishy that there’s apparently no photographic evidence to back this up, especially since law enforcement helicopters are fairly bristling with sensors, camera, and spotlights.
When is a backup not a backup? Apparently, when it’s an iCloud backup. At least that’s the experience of one iCloud user, who uses
a long Twitter thread
to vent about the loss of many years of drawings, sketches, and assorted files. The user, Erin Sparling, admits their situation is an edge case — he had been using an iPad to make sketches for years, backing everything up to an iCloud account. When he erased the iPad to loan it to a family member for use during the pandemic, he thought he’s be able to restore the drawings from his backups, but alas, more than six months had passed before he purchased a new iPad. Apparently iCloud just up and deletes everythign if you haven’t used the account in six months — ouch! We imagine that important little detail was somehere in the EULA fine print, but while that’s not going to help Erin, it may help you.
And less the Apple pitchfork crowd think that this is something only Cupertino could think up, know that some Western Digital external hard drive users are crying into their beer too, after
a mass wiping of an unknown number of drives
. The problem impacts users of the WD My Book Live storage devices, which as basically network attached storage (NAS) devices with a cloud-based interface. The data on these external drives is stored locally, but the cloud interface lets you configure the device and access the data from anywhere. You and apparently some random “threat actors”, as WD is calling them, who seem to have gotten into some devices and performed a factory reset. While we feel for the affected users, it is worth noting that WD dropped support for these devices in 2015; six years without patching makes a mighty stable codebase for attackers to work on. WD is recommending that users disconnect these devices from the internet ASAP, and while that seems like solid advice, we can think of like half a dozen other things that need to get done to secure the files that have accumulated on these things.
And finally, because we feel like we need a little palate cleanser after all that, we present
this 3D-printed goat helmet for your approval
. For whatever reason, the wee goat pictured was born with a hole in its skull, and some helpful humans decided to help the critter out with TPU headgear. Yes, the first picture looks like the helmet was poorly Photoshopped onto the goat, but scroll through the pics and you’ll see it’s really there. The goat looks resplendent in its new chapeau, and seems to be getting along fine in life so far. Here’s hoping that the hole in its skull fills in, but if it doesn’t, at least they can quickly print a new one as it grows. | 24 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360020",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2021-06-27T23:26:11",
"content": "“While we certainly don’t condone criminal behavior, sometimes you just can’t help but admire the ingenuity thieves apply to their craft.” Someone who can make wine in a prison toilet can do anything!",... | 1,760,373,037.636345 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/27/ad409-microscope-review/ | AD409 Microscope Review | Al Williams | [
"Reviews",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"AD409",
"microscope"
] | It wasn’t that long ago that if you had an optical microscope in your electronics shop, you had a very well-supplied shop indeed. Today, though, a microscope is almost a necessity since parts have shrunk to flyspeck-size. [Maker Mashup] recently picked up an AD409 and posted
a video review
of the device that you can see below.
The microscope in question has a 10-inch screen so it is a step up from the usual cheap microscope we’ve seen on a lot of benches. Of course, that size comes at a price. The going rate for a new on is about $400.
If the 10 inch screen isn’t enough, you can connect the microscope to an external monitor. That does disable the onboard monitor, though. The microscope offers plenty of space to solder under and has a removable lens and filter so you can add filters or even put on a wide-angle lens.
We also liked that the scope has a remote control so you can operate it without touching it. We’ve used scopes where pushing the buttons to do things like snap a photo sometimes causes vibrations or worse when you are trying to focus on something specific.
If you don’t have a microscope, you can get some use out of
your phone
. Or, go shopping for — no kidding —
ear wax cameras
. | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359989",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2021-06-27T20:17:01",
"content": "I had a Tasco microscope when I was eight, it’s still around.These broad statements need defining. Most electronic hobbyists didn’t use microscopes for electronics because they weren’t needed.And I... | 1,760,373,038.174692 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/27/listen-to-the-rf-around-you/ | Listen To The RF Around You | Danie Conradie | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"falstad",
"foxhunting",
"radio direction finding",
"receiver"
] | These days, we are spoiled for choice with regard to SDRs for RF analysis, but sometimes we’re more interested in the source of RF than the contents of the transmission. For this role, [Drew] created the
RFListener
, a wideband directional RF receiver that converts electromagnetic signal to audio.
The RF Listener is built around a AD8318 demodulator breakout board, which receives signals using a directional broadband (900 Mhz – 12 Ghz) PCB antenna, and outputs an analog signal. This signal is fed through a series of amplifiers and filters to create audio that can be fed to the onboard speaker. Everything is housed in a vaguely handgun shaped enclosure, with some switches on the back and a LED amplitude indicator. [Drew] demonstrates the RFListener around his house, pointing it at various devices like his router, baby monitor and microwave. In some cases, like with a toy drone, the modulation is too high frequency to generate audio, so the RF listener can also be switched to “tone mode”, which outputs audio tone proportional to the signal amplitude.
The circuit is completely analog, and the design was first done in
Falstad Circuit Simulator
, followed by some breadboard prototyping, and a custom PCB for the final version. As is, it’s already an interesting exploration device, but it would be even more so if it was possible to adjust the receiver bandwidth and frequency to turn it into a wideband
foxhunting
tool. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359966",
"author": "George White",
"timestamp": "2021-06-27T18:02:38",
"content": "You don’t realize how much RF is around yuo, not only at home, but anywhere you go.All your local AM, FM, and TV stations, the public service bands, police, fire,medical, and the CB’ers and ham opera... | 1,760,373,037.822633 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/27/electric-rc-plane-flies-for-almost-11-hours/ | Electric RC Plane Flies For Almost 11 Hours | Danie Conradie | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"electric airplane",
"endurance",
"lithium ion",
"RC airplane",
"solar power"
] | Electric RC aircraft are not known for long flight times, with multirotors usually doing 20-45 minutes, while most fixed wings will struggle to get past two hours. [Matthew Heiskell] blew these numbers out of the water with a
10 hour 45 minute flight
with an RC plane on battery power. Condensed video after the break.
Flight stats right before touchdown. Flight time in minutes on the left, and miles travelled second from the top on the right.
The secret? An efficient aircraft, a well tuned autopilot and a massive battery. [Matthew] built a custom 4S 50 Ah li-ion battery pack from LG 21700 cells, with a weight of 2.85 kg (6.3 lbs). The airframe is a Phoenix 2400 motor glider, with a 2.4 m wingspan, powered by a 600
Kv
brushless motor turning a 12 x 12 propeller. The 30 A ESC’s low voltage cutoff was disabled to ensure every bit of juice from the battery was available.
To improve efficiency and eliminate the need to maintain manual control for the marathon flight, a GPS and Matek 405 Wing flight controller running ArduPilot was added. ArduPilot is far from plug and play, so [Matthew] would have had to spend a lot of timing tuning and testing parameters for maximum flight efficiency. We are really curious to see if it’s possible to push the flight time even further by improving aerodynamics around the protruding battery, adding a pitot tube sensor to hold the perfect airspeed speed on the lift-drag curve, and possibly making use of thermals with
ArduPilot’s new soaring feature
.
A few of you are probably thinking, “Solar panels!”, and so did Matthew. He has another set of wings covered in them that he used to do a
seven-hour flight
. While it should theoretically increase flight time, he found that there were a number of significant disadvantages. Besides the added weight, electrical complexity and weather dependence, the solar cells are difficult to integrate into the wings without reducing aerodynamic efficiency. Taking into account what we’ve already seen of [rcflightest]’s various
experiments/struggles
with
solar planes
, we are starting to wonder if it’s really worth the trouble. | 45 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359926",
"author": "Joe",
"timestamp": "2021-06-27T14:25:43",
"content": "If you’re gonna do that to your LiPo’s, you might as well just use disposable batteries. Higher energy to weight and it’ll be cheaper than destroying expensive lithium cells every flight.",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,373,037.908341 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/28/retrofitting-fast-charging-to-a-nissan-leaf-ev/ | Retrofitting Fast Charging To A Nissan Leaf EV | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"chademo",
"electric vehicle",
"ev",
"Leaf",
"nissan",
"Nissan Leaf"
] | Electric cars have been around for a while now, and thus they’re starting to get chopped up and modded just like any other car. [Daniel Öster] is one such person doing the work,
and recently posted his efforts to retrofit fast charging to an base-model Nissan Leaf that didn’t ship with the feature.
[Daniel] uses special high-voltage insulated tools when working on EVs for safety.
It’s an involved swap, requiring the substitution of several parts and surgery on the wiring loom. Cost of components was just 700 euros but the swap required 20 hours of labor. The vehicle in question is an early model Leaf that was already fitted with an upgraded 40 kWh battery, and the owner desired an upgrade to CHAdeMO fast charging to better use the larger pack.
The swap required the power distribution unit to be replaced, and the CHAdeMO port to be installed in the front of the car. The vehicle control module (VCM) also had to be opened in order to run a wire to a relay to activate the fast charging subsystem. Finally, wires had to be spliced to get everything to play nicely between the car and the fast charger.
[Daniel] had the benefit of quality forum resources and a Nissan Leaf that already had CHAdeMO to reference, which helped a lot. At the end of the day, the fast charger worked first time, much to [Daniel]’s relief.
We’ve featured his work before, too
. Video after the break. | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360309",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2021-06-28T23:09:10",
"content": "Safety Third.Which is not to denigrate this project at all. If safety were truly first, nothing worthwhile would ever get done.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comm... | 1,760,373,037.975147 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/28/a-modern-take-on-the-luggable-computer/ | A Modern Take On The “Luggable” Computer | Tom Nardi | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"all-in-one",
"aluminum extrusion",
"Case mod",
"luggable"
] | Back before the industry agreed on the now ubiquitous clamshell form factor of portable computers, there were a class of not-quite-desktop computers that the community affectionately refers to as “luggable” PCs. These machines, from companies like Kaypro and Osborne, were only portable in the sense that their integrated design made it relatively easy to move them. Things we take for granted today, like the ability to run on battery power or being light enough to actually place in your lap, wouldn’t come until later.
For a contemporary take on this decades old concept,
take a look at this fantastic build by [Ragnar84]
. It packs a modern desktop computer and a 15.6 inch laptop display into a custom designed case, but like so many other projects, the devil is truly in the details for this one. Little touches such as the kickstand on the bottom, the removable handle on the top, and the right angle adapter that takes the HDMI output from the GeForce GTX 1060 video card and redirects it back into the case really add up to create a surprisingly practical computer that’s more than the sum of its parts.
While the case might look like your standard gamer fare, [Ragnar84] built the whole thing out of miniature T-Slot extrusion and custom-cut aluminum and acrylic panels. But not before modelling the whole thing in 3D to make sure all of his selected components would fit. For the most part the internals aren’t unlike a standard Mini-ITX build, though he did need to make a few special additions like a shelf to mount the driver board for the N156H LCD panel, and a clever clamp to hold down the rounded USB speakers.
We’ve seen some impressive recreations of the classic luggable in the past,
but those have usually been powered by the Raspberry Pi
and
leaned heavily into the retrofuturism
that’s a hallmark of the nascent cyberdeck movement. In contrast [Ragnar84] has put together something that looks perfectly usable, and dare we say it, maybe even practical. | 25 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360271",
"author": "GameboyRMH",
"timestamp": "2021-06-28T20:10:38",
"content": "I wanted a gaming PC in this form factor so bad when I was a teenager. Gaming PCs needed to be a lot bulkier back then, they had optical drives in them and hard drives with big heatsinks, and no mere m... | 1,760,373,038.69321 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/28/ten-projects-won-the-rethink-displays-round-of-the-hackaday-prize/ | Ten Projects Won The Rethink Displays Round Of The Hackaday Prize | Mike Szczys | [
"contests",
"Roundup",
"The Hackaday Prize"
] | [
"2021 Hackaday Prize"
] | We asked you to rethink what displays can look like and you didn’t disappoint. From almost 150 entries the judges have winnowed the list down to ten projects which are awarded a $500 prize and will go on to the final round of the
2021 Hackaday Prize
in October.
In a world where there’s an HD (or better) display in every pocket, it is the oddball ideas that tend to turn heads. High on that list is
a volumentric display that levitates a tiny foam ball on ultrasonic transducers
to draw 3D color patterns before your eyes, or
the volumetric display shown above
that works with a sheet of film and motors. Or how about
a take on a laser projected display that uses a phosphorescent screen
so that the path of the laser persists, fading in time for the next infrequent update.
Mirrors are a part of everyday life but they’re all limited to the visable spectrum. One of today’s finalists flipped the script and
turned the mirror into one the visualizes heat
. And we’ll be watching with keen interest as
this holographic display project
seeks to turn a tube of perspex into a 3D display that can be viewed from any side!
This was the first of five challenges in the 2021 Hackaday Prize and the great news is that these finalists — all of which are listed below — will have until the end of October to refine their designs for the final judging round. Meanwhile the next round has already begun with
the Refresh Work-From-Home Life challenge
. Show off your solutions to being productive when working (or studying) from home while still preserving your personal life and your health.
Ten Finalists from the Rethink Displays challenge:
eON Indoor Air Quality Sensor
UV Glow-In-The-Dark Laser Displays
Volumetric Display using Acoustically Trapped Ball
Holographic Wavefront Cylindrical Display
India Navi
Infrared Mirror
VVD: an open source Real 3D Volumetric Display
EMOJO Mental Health Chatbot
Stereo Ninja
AR Glasses
If you like these, you’ll love browsing through
the entire field of entries in this challenge
.
The
Hackaday
Prize2021
is Sponsored by: | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360340",
"author": "PWalsh",
"timestamp": "2021-06-29T03:42:52",
"content": "Wow! That volumetric display is awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6360402",
"author": "Madaeon",
"timestamp": "2021-06-29T08:49:34",
... | 1,760,373,038.278811 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/28/despite-uncertainty-wwii-warbirds-resume-tours/ | Despite Uncertainty, WWII Warbirds Resume Tours | Tom Nardi | [
"Featured",
"History",
"Slider"
] | [
"air show",
"B-17",
"B-29",
"history",
"Nine-O-Nine",
"tour",
"Warbird",
"wwii"
] | Back in September of 2019, I had the opportunity to climb aboard the restored B-17G bomber
Nine-O-Nine
as part of a national “Wings of Freedom” airport tour operated by the Collings Foundation. I was excited to get up close and personal with such an iconic aircraft, particularity since Hackaday gave me a platform to share the experience with a global audience. With fewer than 50 B-17s left in the world, and most of those in the United States,
taking this sort of “virtual tour” was as close as most people would ever get
to seeing what it was really like for the crews who operated these machines over the skies of Europe more than 75 years ago.
Tragically, just a week after the article was published, the
Nine-O-Nine
crashed during a visit to Bradley International Airport in Connecticut
. The pilot, co-pilot, and five paying passengers were all killed in either the initial impact or the subsequent fire. When crews were finally able to extinguish the flames, the left wing and tail were all that remained of the once mighty bomber. In a twist of fate, some of the images I took for the Hackaday article
ended up being included in the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident report
, as they represented perhaps the most detailed photographic record of the aircraft’s condition before the crash.
Wreckage of the
Nine-O-Nine
.
In the weeks and months that followed, many voiced their concerns over what the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) calls “Living History Flight Experience” aircraft such as those operated by the Collings Foundation. The main point of contention was whether or not these planes were too old to safely carry passengers, and by extension, whether continuing to fly them around the country presented a menace to the national airspace. Critics argued that whatever cultural benefit offered by the chance for the public to tour or ride these antique aircraft was not worth anyone losing their lives over; a line of logic that’s difficult to find fault in.
Then came COVID-19. By March of 2020, individual states had already started going into lockdown, and suddenly there were far more pressing matters to address than the fate of a few dozen teetering WWII aircraft. It was around this time that the FAA pulled the Collings Foundation’s license to conduct any more paid flights, but since outdoor gatherings such as airshows were being put on hold for the foreseeable future, the measure had little immediate impact. It was clear these airborne museum pieces were going to spend most of 2020 in their hangers anyway.
Now, thankfully, the pall of COVID-19 is finally beginning to lift over the United States. In response to widespread vaccine availability, most states are ending or at least reducing their restrictions on outdoor events. With major airshows like the “World War II Weekend” in Reading, Pennsylvania given the green light to proceed, these legendary aircraft are being awakened from their long slumber and making their first tentative flights of the post-pandemic era.
A Date With FiFi
It was a dreary rainy day when the Commemorative Air Force brought their AirPower History Tour through my local airport, but that didn’t stop people from coming out and seeing the planes on display. After all, it’s not often you get to see a B-29. Best known for dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only two of these highly advanced bombers are still airworthy.
The history of this particular B-29,
FiFi
, is not unlike that of the
Nine-O-Nine
. Both were built too late in the war to see any combat, and instead were kept stateside and used as targets in various weapon research and development programs. While this might seem like an unfortunate fate to befall two brand-new military aircraft, in reality, it’s a big part of why they were still in good enough condition to be restored to flight-worthy status in the 70s and 80s. Upon returning to the US, the majority of actual combat aircraft were sent to languish in the desert before eventually being cut up for scrap metal.
Designed to fly on longer range missions than the B-17 and with more than double the bomb load, the B-29 is far larger than its early-war predecessor. While navigating through the tight passages and low overhangs of the B-17 was something of a challenge for even relatively young and spry visitors, the interior of the B-29 was cavernous by comparison. That said, visitors taking the tour of
FiFi
could only enter the plane’s forward bomb bay and pressurized flight deck. To reach the rear pressurized compartment, where the gunners operated the state-of-the-art analog computer that directed the bomber’s defensive machine guns, visitors would have to crawl through a narrow tunnel that runs nearly the length of the fuselage. From a liability standpoint alone, it’s clear why this area was kept off-limits.
Radio Operator’s Station
Navigator’s Station
Flight Engineer’s Station
Still, the flight deck of the B-29 offered plenty to see. The stations for the radio operator and navigator are packed with interesting pieces of vintage equipment, while the flight engineer’s seat puts you face-to-face with a literal wall of switches, gauges, levers, and dials. Even with everything forward of the pilot and co-pilot seats roped off, there was more than enough room in the forward compartment for five adults to mill around without getting uncomfortably close to one another. A volunteer from the Commemorative Air Force was in the cockpit at all times, ostensibly to answer questions, but also to keep a watchful eye out for any inquisitive finger poking.
Unfortunately a light drizzle turned into a downpour, and the crew was forced to cover up the pilot and co-pilot panels before it was my turn to climb up onto the flight deck. While this was disappointing, knowledge that the iconic “green house” nose of the B-29,
which confounded Soviet engineers
and inspired the design of the
Millennium Falcon’s
cockpit, leaks like hell in the rain should make for an interesting bit of WWII trivia to pull out in the future.
Change is in the Wind
The Commemorative Air Force is still licensed by the FAA to provide living history flights on
FiFi
, with prices ranging from $570 to $1,595 depending on which seat you chose for your 30 minute excursion. Even at those prices, all of the ride opportunities were booked solid during the bomber’s stay in my area. While the loss of the
Nine-O-Nine
might have shaken the public’s perception of these flights, it seems there’s no shortage of history buffs and thrill seekers that are still eager to climb aboard and strap in.
Seating price chart from the
AirPower History Tour website
.
During the AirPower History Tour,
FiFi
is joined by several WWII fighters and trainers such as the P-51 Mustang, T-6 Texan, and Boeing Stearman. Depending on the location, guest aircraft such as the Consolidated B-24 bomber and TBM Avenger occasionally join the entourage. All of these aircraft are available for rides, with even the cheapest seats setting visitors back $250.
But while it may seem like business as usual for now, it’s unclear how long it will continue that way. The wheels of government might have been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but they never stop. On March 23rd, the NTSB released a report
urging the FAA to implement more stringent safety and maintenance requirements
for historic aircraft after their investigation into the
Nine-O-Nine
crash showed the bomber
had been badly in need of repairs for some time
. While acknowledging that holding WWII aircraft to the same safety standards as their modern counterparts isn’t possible, the report argues that the FAA should establish new guidelines that are closer aligned with the expectations placed on other commercial operators.
Statements from the FAA have made it clear they have every intention of preserving living history flights by historic aircraft, but the reality is that greater oversight invariably will lead to increased costs. Keeping these planes in the air is already an extremely expensive proposition, so it’s not hard to imagine these tours being shortened in the future as a cost cutting measure.
In any event, one thing is plainly obvious: if you’ve ever wanted to take a ride in a WWII warbird, you better do it soon, since ticket prices are only going to get more expensive and opportunities more rare as time goes on. | 26 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360239",
"author": "gregg4",
"timestamp": "2021-06-28T17:27:21",
"content": "Since when did Boeing make the B-24? She was designed and first built by Consolidated. Her airframe was also used for the PBY design.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,038.494089 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/28/lego-microscope-aims-to-discover-future-scientists/ | Lego Microscope Aims To Discover Future Scientists | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"camera",
"lego",
"lens",
"microscope",
"objective",
"ocular",
"optics",
"smart phone",
"stem"
] | When it comes to inspiring a lifelong appreciation of science, few experiences are as powerful as that first glimpse of the world swimming in a drop of pond water as seen through a decent microscope. But sadly, access to a microscope is hardly universal, denying that life-changing view of the world to far too many people.
There have been plenty of attempts to fix this problem before, but we’re intrigued to see
Legos used to build a usable microscope
, primarily for STEM outreach. It’s the subject of a scholarly paper (
preprint
) by
[
Bart E.
Vos]
, [
Emil Betz
Blesa]
, and [T
imo
Betz]. The build almost exclusively uses Lego parts — pretty common ones at that — and there’s a complete list of the parts needed, which can either be sourced from online suppliers, who will kit up the parts for you, or by digging through the old Lego bin. Even the illuminator is a stock part, although you’ll likely want to replace the orange LED buried within with a white one. The only major non-Lego parts are the lenses, which can either be sourced online or, for the high-power objective, pulled from an old iPhone camera. The really slick part is
the build instructions
(PDF), which are formatted exactly like the manual from any Lego kit, making the build process easily accessible to anyone who has built Lego before.
As for results, they’re really not bad. Images of typical samples, like salt crystal, red onion cells, and water fleas are remarkably clear and detailed. It might no be
a lab-grade Lego microscope
, but it looks like it’s more than up to its intended use.
Thanks for the heads up on this, [Jef]. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360215",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2021-06-28T15:52:37",
"content": "You can get sharper results from cheap lenses by limiting the light spectrum used to illuminate the object being observed. Human eyes are very sensitive to green light, so using a green LED can give nice... | 1,760,373,038.325685 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/28/we-all-need-a-win-sometimes-so-make-them-yourself/ | We All Need A Win Sometimes, So Make Them Yourself | Donald Papp | [
"Featured",
"Lifehacks",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"life on contract",
"mental health",
"work planning"
] | We all need the occasional win when it comes to work or personal projects. Being able to feel that payoff of progress and satisfaction is deeply important, because if everything is always uphill, that’s a recipe for burnout. Avoiding that is important enough to explore how to set oneself up for a few easy wins.
Getting the occasional win helps us stay motivated, creative, and fulfilled. Meaningful work can deliver on this, but many of us rely on hobbies to make up any shortfall. Sometimes, that isn’t enough. Hobbies themselves can end up feeling like a chore, and when that happens, they cease to provide respite. The good news is that I believe it is possible to exploit the benefits of hobbies to deliver supplemental “wins” when they are needed most, and I’ll explain how.
I have found that successes do not have to be hard-won in order to be beneficial, but they do need to be relevant to one’s passions and interests. So, when naturally-occurring successes come too few and far between, and hobbies aren’t doing the trick, use knowledge of yourself to stack the deck for some easy wins. It can tip the scales towards feeling meaningful progress and fulfillment in the face of what could otherwise lead to burnout.
We All Need a Win Sometimes
A “win” is any meaningful sense of fulfillment that comes from putting effort into something. This payoff of positive feelings can come from completing a job, reaching milestones, or finishing a project. Being deprived of them is not healthy. This is especially a risk with challenging work that demands a lot of time and effort, but can suffer stalls or setbacks.
If one is doing many different jobs at once, there is even more opportunity to be robbed of feeling progress. While it’s rare to encounter setbacks and failures on all fronts at once, it’s also rare to have successes across the board. It has been my experience that successes in some areas can end up feeling cancelled out by setbacks in others. Success is hard to enjoy when combined with stalls or failures elsewhere.
Doing many jobs at once is very common with people like entrepreneurs, the self-employed, and indie developers. The issues I listed above would probably resonate with the author of
this tired-sounding tweet I stumbled across
, which expressed “I just want to be successful enough that I can concentrate on a single job.”
What Counts as a Win?
It is important for projects to provide their creators with feelings of progress and discovery, but it is also important to experience a sense of closure and completion. Some insight into this process started when our own Kristina Panos asked
What If I Never Make Version Two?
which led to some very interesting and insightful
observations about what it actually means to be happy with a project
.
What it comes down to is this: projects can provide satisfaction, but an individual’s outlook and state of mind also play an important role. The ability to say to oneself “I am satisfied with what I have done here” is a big part of securing closure and fulfillment.
How To Craft Wins With Easy Projects
My own experience has been that successes do not have to be difficult or hard-won in order to “count”. Easy projects are perfectly capable of providing healthy feelings of fulfillment, as long as they tick the right boxes.
Everyone is different, but here are some generally useful ways to choose projects and activities that have the best chance of delivering the payoff of a positive and meaningful experience.
Choose something relevant to your passions and interests (but not necessarily related to your work.)
A project should be something that helps your brain glow happily, and everyone has different levers for doing that. A person who enjoys building, creating, or learning should choose projects related to those things, but there is no need to tie it in to whatever else one has going on in their work or life. For example, I enjoy cooking and baking, but those things have nothing to do with work that I might be stalled on. I use cooking as a way to tickle the “I’m building something” part of my brain.
Explicitly give yourself permission to focus on the activity.
Projects or activities designed to provide a “win” should not be left vague or open-ended in scope. Make the activity a definite thing with a clear timeslot. Give yourself permission to focus on it during that time. Do not underestimate the power of telling yourself “I’m going to set aside one hour this afternoon for my chosen activity, and it’s okay for me to focus on it completely during that time.”
My use of cooking is a great example because not only will it have a clear beginning and end, but it also gets me out of the workshop and I can focus on it completely. Sometimes I simply want to try an idea in the kitchen as a project, and I accept beforehand that it’s possible it just won’t work out and that’s okay, which brings me to the next point.
Have a simple goal, or better yet, just play and explore.
Happiness is always over the horizon because it is human nature to have vague goals, and to keep moving the goalposts as we approach them. You must explicitly reject this. An activity designed for an easy win should be simple, clear, and short-term.
Just giving yourself the goal of
playing
is perfectly valid and healthy. “I’m going to plug in the new part, see if it works, and browse the built-in examples” has no aim other than playing with a new part or tool. “I’ll unpack this new tool, and see how it feels to cut some scrap with it” is another good one. Probably you will learn something or have a new thought in the process, but it’s not required.
If a more specific goal is helpful, keep it simple. “I’ve always wanted to learn FreeCAD, maybe I can do it this afternoon” is daunting and open-ended. But “I’m going to at least install the software and bookmark a good tutorial, anything beyond that is a bonus” is a great short-term project with a definite scope.
Choose to accept and be satisfied with your results.
Having a simple goal (even just the goal of indulging in aimless play) is what makes it possible to finish a task and feel a sense of closure on the effort, yielding the payoff of feeling a small but meaningful “win”. It won’t happen by itself, so make the conscious decision beforehand to be satisfied with the time spent, and whatever it is that results from it.
Remember, the purpose of all this isn’t to compel your brain to light up happily. The purpose is to create a permissive environment in which your brain is
allowed
to light up happily, with no strings attached.
What Works For You?
I deliberately give myself both the time and permission to indulge in easy (but still meaningful) projects. Because success doesn’t have to be hard-won in order to “count”, this helps me feel satisfaction and closure that is sometimes lacking in my professional work. Most people accomplish this with hobbies, but sometimes it’s good to supplement naturally-occurring successes with a few easy ones.
Do you have your own methods for coping when hobbies can’t be relied on to provide respite? We’re all different, even if we struggle with the same things sometimes, so share what works for you in the comments. | 39 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360183",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2021-06-28T14:30:20",
"content": "parenthood grumble",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6360203",
"author": "J",
"timestamp": "2021-06-28T15:19:06",
"content": "... | 1,760,373,038.423834 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/28/a-phone-that-old-shouldnt-be-running-android/ | A Phone That Old Shouldn’t Be Running Android | Jenny List | [
"Cellphone Hacks"
] | [
"cellphone",
"flip phone",
"smartwatch"
] | Cars and smartphones have something curious in common, just as most everyday saloon cars from different manufacturers have tended towards similarity, so have smartphones. Whether your smartphone the latest and greatest or only cost you $50 from a supermarket, it matters little to look at because both phones will be superficially near-identical black slabs.
It wasn’t always this way though, in decades past phones from different manufacturers each had their own flavours, and there was a variety in form factors to suit all tastes.
There’s a ray of hope for fans of those days though, in the form of [befinitiv]’s 2000-era Sony flip phone
. It runs Android. Yes, you read that right, there on the tiny screen is Android 9.
Of course whatever processor and electronics the phone came with are long gone, and instead the phone sports the internals of a modern Chinese watch-smartphone grafted in in place of the original. The whole electronics package fits in the screen opening, and though it required some wiring for the USB-C socket and a few other parts it looks for all the world from the outside as though it was meant to run Android. You can take a look in the video below the break.
He cheerfully admits that there’s still a way to go for example in getting the original keyboard working, but even with a tiny touchscreen it’s good enough to be a daily driver. It may be a little on the small side, but for those of us who miss our old phones maybe there’s hope in it for something new.
Meanwhile
this isn’t the first re-use of an old phone we’ve seen recently
. | 23 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6360128",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2021-06-28T11:16:43",
"content": "Oh. For a moment i thought i could revamp my trusty Nokia N8 with that marvelous camera. :(But a nice hack indeed!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id":... | 1,760,373,038.630993 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/25/will-we-soon-be-running-linux-on-sifive-cores-made-by-intel/ | Will We Soon Be Running Linux On SiFive Cores Made By Intel? | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"intel",
"RISC-V",
"SiFive"
] | There’s an understandably high level of interest in RISC-V processors among our community, but while we’ve devoured the various microcontroller offerings containing the open-source core it’s fair to say we’re still waiting on the promise of more capable hardware for anything like an affordable price. This could however change, as the last week or so has seen a flurry of interest surrounding SiFive, the fabless semiconductor company that has pioneered RISC-V technology. Amid speculation of
a $2 billion buyout offer
from the chip giant Intel it has been revealed that the company best known for the x86 line of processors
has licensed the SiFive portfolio for its 7nm process
. This includes
their latest and fastest P550 64-bit core
, bringing forward the prospect of readily available high-power RISC-V computing. Your GNU/Linux box could soon have a processor implementing an open-source ISA, without compromising too much on speed and, we hope, price.
All this sounds pretty rosy, but there is of course a downer for open-source hardware enthusiasts. These chips may rely on some open-source technologies, but sadly they will not themselves be open-source chips as there will be plenty of proprietary IP contained within them. We can thus only hope that Intel see fit to provide the same level of Linux support for them as they do for their x86 ranges, and we’re not left in the same situation with respect to ongoing support as we are with so many other chips. Meanwhile it’s worth remembering that SiFive are not the only player in the world of RISC-V cores, so it’s likely that competitors to the P550 and its stablemates will not be far behind.
If you’d like a more in-depth explanation of the true open-source nature of a RISC-V chip,
we’ve featured something on that theme before
.
Header image: Gareth Halfacree,
CC BY-SA 2.0
. | 38 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359544",
"author": "tytytyy",
"timestamp": "2021-06-25T18:40:27",
"content": "closed blob and closed micro instruction ;(but if it will be faster than raspberry pi /odroid etc and cost will be cheapest….",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"com... | 1,760,373,038.572477 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/06/25/know-audio-a-loudspeaker-primer/ | Know Audio: A Loudspeaker Primer | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"hi-fi",
"know audio",
"loudspeaker",
"speaker"
] | As we’ve started out on our journey through the world of Hi-Fi audio from a strictly practical and engineering viewpoint without being misled by any audiophile woo, we’ve already taken a look at the most important component in any audio system: the listener’s ear. It’s time to move down the chain to the next link; the loudspeaker.
Sound is pressure waves in the air, and the purpose of a loudspeaker is to move the air to create those waves. There are a variety of “exotic” loudspeaker technologies including piezoelectric and
electrostatic
designs, here we’ll be considering the garden variety moving-coil speaker. It’s most usually used for the large bass or smaller mid-range drivers in a typical speaker system.
A cross-section of a loudspeaker. Iain, png by Rohitbd,
CC BY-SA 3.0
.
A moving coil speaker has a lightweight cone suspended by a flexible coupling round its edge, with a coil of electrical wire near its point that sits within a powerful magnetic field. Applying an electric current in one direction moves it outwards, in the other direction inwards. Applying an alternating electric current to it causes it to vibrate, and the resulting air movement causes creates sound. There are as many variations on the basic idea as there are loudspeaker designers, but it’s usual for the cone and flexible coupling to be retained in an open-backed metal frame that also holds the magnet, and for the cone to be made of some form of stiffened paper.
Infinitely Baffled
Try to play a loudspeaker sitting in free air, and you’ll find its sound to be underwhelming. The speaker is producing pressure waves from the rear and from the front, 180 degrees out of phase and interfering with each other. The result is something of a mess, and especially the lower frequencies will cancel out. Some means of isolating front sound from rear sound is called for, and that comes in the form of the enclosure, or speaker cabinet.
An infinite baffle loudspeaker enclosure. Gaudiowork,
CC BY-SA 4.0
The ideal cabinet is a so-called infinite baffle. Imagine you are standing in front of a wall that stretches infinitely in all directions, with the speaker mounted in front of you. When the cone moves, you only receive the waves from the front of the speaker, and as a result your ears receive the full range of sound that the speaker can produce without undesirable effects from the front and rear sounds mixing.
But you don’t have an infinite wall. If you make the wall ever smaller and start to compensate for any sound leaking its edges by curving it around the back of the speaker, what you end up with eventually is a sealed box with the speaker mounted in its front, which starts to look a lot like the speaker enclosures with which we are all familiar. There are variations on this theme that employ tuned ports in an attempt to harness some of that sound from the rear of the speaker and phase shift it to augment the front sound, but this sealed-box infinite baffle enclosure remains the most common type of loudspeaker enclosure because it is simple to build and delivers good results.
There’s More To A Good Speaker Than Just A Box
For most speakers of the type you will encounter, you can make an enclosure of the right size to contain them and they’ll sound pretty good. But unless you are very lucky, you won’t be operating the speaker with an enclosure of the right volume to fulfil its potential to the maximum. Loudspeakers are modelled mathematically using a set of parameters describing their various electrical and mechanical properties, named the
Thiele-Small parameters
for the two researchers who codified them. Using these parameters the optimum enclosure
can be calculated
for a given speaker, resulting in the best quality sound for that device. Sadly it’s often the case that cheap speakers don’t have any published Thiele-Small parameters, but should your chosen ones have them you can use them to get the best results.
The circuit diagram of the crossover network inside a vintage Philips speaker. Piano Piano!,
CC BY 2.0
.
It is important that the material from which the speaker enclosure is constructed is appropriate, because the wrong choice can seriously degrade the sound. A speaker enclosure should be constructed of a material that won’t resonate or flex at the frequencies the speaker is producing, so ideally it should possess significant mass and rigidity. It needs to contain the sound, after all. For this reason many decent quality speaker cabinets are made from MDF, as it has those qualities and is reasonably inexpensive. Even with a good enclosure though, it is also common for it to be partially filled with acoustic wadding, a lightweight fluffy material designed to damp reflections and resonances within the enclosure.
Because speakers have mass, the bigger they are, the less easily they accelerate. Big speakers that are good at reproducing lower frequencies are called woofers. Mid-range speakers and the high-frequency tweeter are designed specifically to resolve different frequency bands. A set of LC filters referred to as a crossover network then takes care of feeding only the desired content to each cone.
Finally, there is a breed of speaker that appears to defy all odds and sound good despite being in what would appear a wildly inappropriate enclosure. On my desk I have a Bluetooth speaker that cost me around $25 and is about the size of two packs of cards, yet it sounds far better than I would expect from a device of that nature. The answer lies in electronics. In fact it’s a deeply flawed speaker but one whose built-in amplifier contains a DSP programmed to compensate for those flaws in the audio. Don’t be tempted to replicate a small speaker of this nature unless you are also a DSP wizard, because it will inevitably not replicate the sound of its commercial equivalent.
Speakers don’t have to be complicated, but there’s more to it than merely 3D printing a box that looks good. But in making fancy speaker cabinets, we enter the law of diminishing returns in a big way, and it’s debatable once a certain price point has been passed whether further budget extensions deliver their money’s worth. Ultimately it comes back to the physics of getting the pressure waves to your ears — if a pair of decent speakers sound good to you, then perhaps you’ve got your money’s worth without spending too much.
The next step in the Hi-Fi chain is the cable connecting the speaker to the amplifier, but since we’ll be looking at cables as a whole at a later date it’s better instead for our next instalment to take a look at amplifiers, and what makes a good one. | 27 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6359548",
"author": "Alex99a",
"timestamp": "2021-06-25T19:09:58",
"content": "I was really hoping for more on the crossover than one picture.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6359582",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
... | 1,760,373,038.763855 |
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