url stringlengths 37 208 | title stringlengths 4 148 | author stringclasses 173
values | publish_date stringclasses 1
value | categories listlengths 0 12 | tags listlengths 0 27 | featured_image stringlengths 0 272 | content stringlengths 0 56.1k | comments_count int64 0 900 | scraped_comments_count int64 0 50 | comments listlengths 0 50 | scraped_at float64 1.76B 1.76B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/14/you-need-an-automated-overhead-camera-assistant/ | You Need An Automated Overhead Camera Assistant | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"how-to",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino mega",
"camera assistant",
"camera slider",
"NEMA-17",
"stepper motor"
] | It’s 2021. Everyone and their mother is filming themselves doing stuff, and a lot of it is super cool content. But since most of us have to also work the video capture devices ourselves, it can be difficult to make compelling footage with a single, stationary overhead view, especially when there are a lot of steps involved. A slider rig is a good start, but the ability to move the camera in three dimensions programmatically is really where it’s at.
[KronBjorn]’s excellent
automated overhead camera assistant
runs on an Arduino Mega and is operated by typing commands in the serial monitor. It can pan ±20° from straight down and moves in three axes on NEMA-17 stepper motors. It moves really smoothly, which you can see in the videos after the break. The plastic-minimal design is interesting and reminds us a bit of an
ophthalmoscope
phoropter
— that’s that main rig at the eye doctor. There’s only one thing that would make this better, and that’s a dedicated macro pad.
If you want to build your own, you’re in luck — there’s quite a lot of detail to this project, including a complete BOM, all the STLs, code, and even assembly videos of the 3D-printed parts and the electronics. Slide past the break to check out a couple of brief demo videos.
Not enough room for a setup like this one?
Try the pantograph version
. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339755",
"author": "Matt H",
"timestamp": "2021-04-14T16:21:58",
"content": "An opthalmascope is a hand held device used for examinig the retina. The big rigs at the eye doctor are the phoropter (with all the lenses, “better A or B”) and the slit lamp which is another eye examining... | 1,760,373,121.079119 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/14/magna-announces-simple-drive-solution-for-electric-pickup-trucks/ | Magna Announces Simple Drive Solution For Electric Pickup Trucks | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider"
] | [
"beam axle",
"car",
"car hacks",
"electric",
"electric car"
] | Thus far, the majority of electric cars on sale have been aimed at commuters, fitting into the sedan and SUV segments of the marketplace. Going forward, there’s a very real need for electrification to touch the whole spectrum of automobiles, and that includes work vehicles like pickup trucks. A company called Magna have recently thrown their hat into the ring in just this space,
developing a simple drivetrain that can be readily installed in pickup trucks without major modifications.
It’s All About The Form Factor
The eBeam motor slots into the chassis in place of a traditional rear differential, requiring no special adaptation to the suspension or braking systems.
The aim of Magna’s eBeam technology is to make it easier to build electric pickup trucks and other related work vehicles. The basic concept is one of an electric motor drive unit built into a form factor that mimicks that of traditional beam axles, commonly used with leaf spring suspension designs in most pickups. This has the possibility of being a drop-in motor solution for a wide variety of trucks, the vast majority of which use broadly similar rear suspension setups. By simply changing the axle shafts and spring mounts to suit, Magna’s eBeam motor can be fitted to virtually any pickup. The eBeam setup is designed to work with OEM braking and suspension systems, though regenerative brake assist is likely a possibility as well.
Beam axles are common on pickup trucks and other load-carrying vehicles. Magna’s eBeam motor system is aimed at these applications.
The eBeam is a rear-drive solution only, of course, though it need not be limited to only two wheel drive trucks. Magna have already developed a series of electric drive solutions that can be used up front in order to handle four wheel drive, something often considered a must in the truck market. This obviously necessitates a second motor and associated control hardware,
but avoids the hassle of differentials, transfer cases and driveshafts typical of traditional four-wheel drive systems.
The line of eBeam motor drives is slated to come in three different combinations. A single-motor drive, a single-motor drive with two-speed gearing, and a twin-motor drive with torque vectoring. Power ranges are slated to be from 120 kW (160 hp) up to 250 kW (335 hp). This is roughly on par with existing engine choices in most low-to-mid market pickups, though falls short somewhat compared to the most powerful truck engines currently on the market which are pushing in excess of 400 hp (~300 kW). Against this, electric motors have the benefit of delivering maximum torque right from zero RPM – a major benefit when it comes to pulling heavy loads. It’s likely that for many jobs, an electric powertrain of slightly lesser peak power would nonetheless fare well against a petrol or diesel competitor.
Currently, Magna are marketing the eBeam axles towards automakers, hoping to secure a slice of the not-yet-mainstream electric pickup market. Nevertheless, the homebrew conversion scene is a lively one,
with enthusiasts taking whatever parts are available to create their own electric rides.
It’s easy to imagine there’d be a healthy market in selling such conversion parts for popular older trucks, such as Ford’s F-series and older Rams and Silverados.
This cutaway shows the eBeam rear axle and one of Magna’s existing front-drive motor solutions.
Regardless of the target vehicle, however, the Magna eBeam is not an all-in-one solution. Although it solves the problem of how to drive the rear wheels with an electric motor, that’s all it does. Figuring out a battery solution, charging, and other such concerns are left as an exercise for the buyer.
For the dedicated gearhead, hacking in some salvaged parts from crashed EVs would likely get one most of the way there. For automakers, however, significant design effort is still required to take platforms originally designed for fuel tanks and big combustion engines, and shake everything around until it fits.
More likely, we’ll see electric pickups designed around battery packs from the ground up, for safety, packaging and performance concerns. The market has a heavy focus on the range of electric vehicles, and this is dependent on battery size and performance. While the eBeam design makes for a drop-in rear drive solution, vehicles hoping to compete in the marketplace will still need well integrated battery solutions if they’re going to convince buyers to adopt.
With electric pickups like the Rivian R1T and Tesla Cybertruck reportedly just around the corner, the electric pickup battle is about to begin.
Overall, the eBeam is an interesting product, though one that seems better suited to a thirsty conversion market rather than established automakers. While one can appreciate an integrated rear drive motor solution, it’s something that’s well within the design abilities of just about any top-20 automaker, so we don’t know why they buy it externally. The real challenge lies in the integration of electric drive systems with the rest of the vehicle, and that’s something that a beam-axle motor can’t solve.
Whether Magna’s hardware takes off in the industry depends on what automakers themselves have been developing behind closed doors, and one would imagine they’d started with the motors a long time ago. As always, time will tell. | 68 | 32 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339715",
"author": "Steven-X",
"timestamp": "2021-04-14T14:16:11",
"content": "Many years ago I bought a book on creating your own electric vehicle. It’s recommendation was to convert a pickup truck.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment... | 1,760,373,121.350156 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/14/gaming-with-1-horsepower-of-rumble-feedback/ | Gaming With 1 Horsepower Of Rumble Feedback | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"haptic feedback",
"rumble",
"rumble feedback",
"vibration"
] | Force feedback took off in a big way in the late 90s, bringing a sense of realism to flight sticks and racing wheels that hadn’t been there before. Its cheaper haptic cousin was rumble feedback via vibration motors, which does add
a little something
but it’s more an idea of a feeling than anything relevant to real life. It’s also usually pretty weak,
but [teenenggr] has a way around that.
The build takes a regular Playstation controller, and disconnects the internal rumble motors. The controller’s motor output is instead linked to an Arduino Uno’s digital input. When the Arduino detects the rumble motor signal switching on, it turns on a relay, supplying power to a hefty one horsepower induction motor, fitted with an eccentric weight.
What happens next is pure chaos. Essentially equivalent to throwing a brick in a washing machine, the motor shakes the entire desk at the slightest hint of rumble signals from the gain. Sustained vibration commands, such as when firing machine guns in
Crysis,
flung [teenenggr]’s monitor from the desk. Even with it taped down, game play quickly became impossible as he inadvertently hits ALT-Tab and leaves the game while trying to hang on to the desk for dear life.
Is it a useful hack? No, but it would make an excellent prank if bolted underneath your friend’s gaming rig for a laugh. With that said, the intense vibration probably won’t do any good for mechanical hard drives, anything with edge connectors, or just their computer in general. It’s a big step up from the last [teenenggr] project we featured –
a rumble feedback mouse.
Video after the break. | 14 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339679",
"author": "DonPavlov",
"timestamp": "2021-04-14T11:48:11",
"content": "Ah really love this guy. He also already did a nice solenoid keyboard feedback. Or a smaller variant with solenoid feedback on mouseclick.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},... | 1,760,373,121.474113 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/14/sanity-check-your-engines-with-this-dynamometer/ | Sanity Check Your Engines With This Dynamometer | Sonya Vasquez | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Robots Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"dynamometer",
"prony brake",
"torque meter"
] | As you get ready to pop the hood of your RC car to drop in a motor upgrade, have you ever wondered how much torque you’re getting from these small devices? Sure, we might just look up the motor specs, but why trust the manufacturer with such matters that you could otherwise measure yourself? [JohnnyQ90] did just that, putting together an
at home-rig
built
almost
from a stockpile of off-the-shelf parts.
To dig into the details, [JohnnyQ90] has built himself a
Prony Brake Dynamometer
. These devices are setup with the motor shaft loosely attached to a lever arm that can push down on a force-measuring device like a scale. With our lever attached, we then power up our motor. By gradually increasing the “snugness” of the motor shaft, we introduce sliding friction that “fights” the motor, and the result is that, at equilibrium, the measured torque is the maximum amount possible for the given speed. Keep turning up that friction and we can stall the motor completely, giving us a measurement of our motor’s
stall torque
.
Arming yourself with a build like this one can give us a way to check the manufacturer’s ratings against our own, or even get ratings for those “mystery motors” that we pulled out the dumpster. And [JohnnyQ90’s] build is a great reminder on how we can leverage a bit of physics and and a handful of home goods to get some meaningful data.
But it turns out that Prony Brake Dynamometers aren’t the only way of measuring motor torque. For a disc-brake inspired, have a look at this
final project
. And if you’re looking to go bigger, put two motors head-to-head to with [Jeremy Felding’s]
larger scale build
. | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339657",
"author": "G",
"timestamp": "2021-04-14T09:28:50",
"content": "It’s a cool build, and I’m glad he gets some recognition – I’ve been following him for quite a while, and there is a lot of interesting content.That being said, I think the article would be more interesting if ... | 1,760,373,120.973235 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/13/a-lot-of-effort-for-a-pi-laptop/ | A Lot Of Effort For A Pi Laptop | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"battery",
"circuit",
"junk",
"laptop",
"low voltage",
"parts bin",
"power bank",
"raspberry pi"
] | Building a Raspberry Pi laptop is not that uncommon. In fact, just a few clicks from any of the major electronics suppliers will have the parts needed for such a project speeding on their way to your house in no time at all. But [joekutz] holds the uncontroversial belief that the value in these parts has somewhat diminishing returns, so he struck out to build his own Pi laptop with a €4 DVD player screen and
a whole lot of circuit wizardry to make his parts bin laptop work
.
The major hurdle that he needed to overcome was how to power both the display and the Pi with the two small battery banks he had on hand. Getting 5V for the Pi was easy enough, but the display requires 8V so he added one lithium ion battery in series (with its own fuse) in order to reach the required voltage. This does make charging slightly difficult but he also has a unique four-pole
break-before-make
switch on hand which doesn’t exactly simplify things, but it does make the project function without the risk of short-circuiting any of the batteries he used.
The project also makes use of an interesting custom circuit which provides low voltage protection for that one lonely lithium battery as well. All in all it’s a master course in using some quality circuit-building skills and electrical theory to make do with on-hand parts (and some 3D printing) rather than simply buying one’s way out of a problem. And the end result is something that’s great for anything
from watching movies to playing some retro games
. | 7 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339683",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2021-04-14T12:24:26",
"content": "i can’t believe people put pis on batteries, given the thing is a heater even when it’s unloaded. there’s enough black box i don’t care to invest the effort to figure out why but it seems to me like the c... | 1,760,373,121.179113 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/13/treatment-triggers-teeth-to-thrive/ | Treatment Triggers Teeth To Thrive | Kristina Panos | [
"Medical Hacks",
"News"
] | [
"bone morphogenic protein",
"monoclonal antibody",
"monoclonal antibody treatment",
"teeth",
"tooth regeneration",
"USAG-1"
] | We humans like to think we’re pretty advanced, but we can’t regrow missing teeth in adulthood like sharks, alligators, and crocodiles. Once those pearly whites are gone, they’re gone for good, and we don’t even have a way to regenerate the protective enamel. However, this may not always be the case, because
scientists at Kyoto University and University of Fukui in Japan have discovered a monoclonal antibody treatment that triggers tooth regeneration in laboratory mice.
Image by Katsu Takahashi/Kyoto University via
Medical Express
Monoclonal antibodies
are lab-fabbed molecules that act as substitute antibodies to enhance the body’s natural defenses against diseases like cancer and arthritis. These antibodies are also used to develop vaccines
and treat COVID-19
. In the case of cancer, monoclonal antibodies bind to antigens on cancer cells, effectively flagging them for removal, but they also do much more, such as deliver chemo and radioimmunotherapies.
By blocking the gene USAG-1, the scientists saw an increase in Bone Morphogenic Protein (BMP)
, which is a molecule that dictates the number of teeth a given creature will have in the first place. Because of this increase in BMP, the mice were able to regrow teeth. This proposition was a challenging one — BMP affects other aspects of development, and the early attempts did more harm than good by causing birth defects. The good news is that the treatment also worked in ferrets, whose teeth are much closer to human dentition than mice. Before moving on to human trials, the scientists will test it out on pigs and dogs. If you were given a second shot at a set of teeth, would you treat them better than the first, or even worse because you can just grow new ones again?
Speaking of pigs, it seems that
pig-to-human organ transplants are on track for 2021
. | 38 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339591",
"author": "Roadtripper",
"timestamp": "2021-04-14T02:12:58",
"content": "Cool, I can grow a new set of wire strippers.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6339594",
"author": "Greco",
"timestamp": "2021-0... | 1,760,373,121.42494 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/13/garage-door-controller-gets-the-iot-treatment/ | Garage Door Controller Gets The IoT Treatment | Anool Mahidharia | [
"hardware"
] | [
"automatic garage door opener",
"automation",
"BFT TIR 60-120",
"ESP8266",
"garage",
"garage door opener",
"home automation"
] | [TheStaticTurtle] built
a custom controller for automating his garage doors
. He wanted to retain the original physical button and RF remote control interfaces while adding a more modern wireless control accessible from his internet connected devices. Upgrading an old system is often a convoluted process of trial and error, and he had to discard a couple of prototype versions which didn’t pan out as planned. But luckily, the third time was the charm.
The original door-closer logic was pretty straightforward. Press a button and the door moves. If it’s not going in the desired direction, press the button once again to stop the motor, and then press it a third time to reverse direction. With help from the user manual diagrams and a bit of reverse-engineering, he was able to get a handle on how to plan out his add-on controller to interface with the old system.
There are many micro-controller options available these days when you want to add IoT to a project, but [TheStaticTurtle] decided to use the old faithful ESP8266 as the brains of his new controller. For his add-on board to work, he needed to detect the direction in which the motor was turning, and detect the limit switches when the door reached end of travel in either direction. Finally, he needed a relay contact in parallel with the activation button to send commands remotely.
To sense if the motor was moving in the “open” or “close” direction, he used a pair of back-to-back opto-couplers in parallel with the motor terminals. He connected another pair of opto-couplers across the two end-limit switches which indicated when the door was fully open or closed, and shut off the motor supply. Finally, a GPIO from the ESP8266 actuates a relay to send the door open and close commands. The boards were designed in EasyEDA and with a quick turnaround from China, he was able to assemble, test and debug his boards pretty quickly.
The code was written using the Arduino IDE and connects the ESP8266 to the MQTT server running on his home automation computer. The end result is a nice dashboard with three icons for open, close and stop, accessible from all the devices connected to his home network. A 3D printed enclosure attaches outside the original control box to keep things tidy. Using hot melt glue as light pipes for the status LED’s is a pretty nifty hack. If you are interested in taking a deeper look at the project, [TheStaticTurtle] has posted all resources on his
Github repository
. | 23 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339570",
"author": "Anonymous",
"timestamp": "2021-04-14T00:14:06",
"content": "Nice if… you have reliable 24×7 internet, your garage is reasonably close to your router or you’re okay adding mesh, you don’t already have too many IOT devices on your LAN, your router and LAN are lock... | 1,760,373,121.13365 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/13/homebrew-risc-v-computer-has-beauty-and-brains/ | Homebrew RISC-V Computer Has Beauty And Brains | Tom Nardi | [
"computer hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"discrete components",
"homebrew computer",
"RISC-V"
] | Building your own CPU is arguably the best way to truly wrap your head around how all those ones and zeros get flung around inside of a computer, but as you can probably imagine even a relatively simple processor takes an incredible amount of time and patience to put together. Plus, more often than not you’re then left with a maze of wires and perfboards that takes up half your desk and doesn’t do a whole lot more than blink some LEDs.
An early prototype of the Pineapple ONE.
But the
Pineapple ONE, built by [Filip Szkandera] isn’t your average homebrew computer
. Oh sure, it still took two years for him to design, debug, and assemble, his 32-bit RISC-V CPU and all its associated hardware; but the end result is a gorgeous looking machine that runs C programs and offers a basic interactive shell over VGA. In fact with its slick 3D printed enclosure, vertically stacked construction, and modular peripheral connections, it looks more like some kind of high-tech scientific instrument than a computer; homebrew or otherwise.
[Filip] says he was inspired to build this 500 kHz (yes, kilohertz) beauty using only discrete logic components by [Ben Eater]’s well known 8-bit breadboard computer and [Robert Baruch]’s LMARV-1 (Learn Me A RISC-V, version 1). He spent six months simulating the machine before he even started creating the schematics, let alone design the individual boards. He tried to keep all of his PCB’s under 100 x 100 mm to take advantage of discounts from the fabricator, which ultimately led to the decision to align the nine boards vertically and connect them together with pin headers.
In the video below you can see [Filip] start up the computer, call up a bit of system information, and even play a rudimentary game of snake before peeking and poking some of the machine’s 512 kB of RAM. It sounds like there’s still some work to be done and bugs to squash, but we’ve already seen enough to say this machine has more than
earned entry into the pantheon of master-crafted homebrew computers
. | 17 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339537",
"author": "nah!",
"timestamp": "2021-04-13T20:42:56",
"content": "ahh yes, the homebrew computer i totally understand the complexity of its inner workings. i did the homebrew computer building a lot in my life",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},... | 1,760,373,121.03006 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/13/removable-extruder-pulls-out-the-stops-on-features/ | Removable Extruder Pulls Out The Stops On Features | Sonya Vasquez | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"hotend",
"toolchanger"
] | For all of us fascinated with 3D printing, it’s easy to forget that 3D printer jams are an extra dimension of frustration to handle. Not to mention that our systems don’t really lend themselves well to being easily disassembled for experiments. For anyone longing for a simpler tune-up experience, you’re in luck. [MihaiDesigns] is dawning on what looks to be
a cleanly designed solution to nozzle-changing, servicing, and experimenting
.
The video is only 39 seconds, but this design is packed with clever editions that come together with a satisfying click. First, the active part of the extruder is detachable, popping in-and-out with a simple lever mechanism that applies preload. For consistent attachment, it’s located with a kinematic coupling on the side with a magnet that helps align it. What’s neat about this design is that it cuts down on the hassle of wire harnesses; tools are set to share the same harness via an array of spring-loaded pogo pins. Finally, a quick-change extruder might be neat on its own, but [MihaiDesigns] is teasing us with an automatic tool change feature with a handy lever arm.
This is a story told over multiple sub-60-second videos, so be sure to check out their other recent videos for more context. And for the 3D printing enthusiasts who dig a bit further into [MihaiDesigns’]
video log
, you’ll be pleased to find more magnetic extruder inventions that
you can build yourself
.
The world of tool-changing 3D printers is simply brimming with excitement these days. If you’re curious to see other machines with kinematic couplings, have a peek at
E3D’s toolchanger designs
,
Jubilee
, and [Amy’s]
Doot Changer
. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339499",
"author": "Doktoreq",
"timestamp": "2021-04-13T19:02:13",
"content": "Hotend heater current and pogo pins aren’t a good combination in my opinion.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6339511",
"author": "fiddling... | 1,760,373,120.932506 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/13/teardown-linkimals-musical-moose/ | Teardown: Linkimals Musical Moose | Tom Nardi | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Teardown",
"Toy Hacks"
] | [
"dissected anthropomorphic woodland creatures",
"fisher-price",
"mesh networking",
"radio control",
"toys"
] | Like so many consumer products these days, baby toys seem to get progressively more complex with each passing year. Despite the fact that the average toddler will more often than not be completely engrossed by a simple cardboard box, toy companies are apparently hell-bent on producing battery powered contraptions that need to be licensed with the FCC.
As a perfect example, we have Fisher-Price’s Linkimals. These friendly creatures can operate independently by singing songs and flashing their integrated RGB LEDs in response to button presses, but get a few of them in the room together, and their 2.4 GHz radios kick in to create an impromptu mesh network of fun.
They’ll soon be back, and in greater numbers.
Once connected to each other, the digital critters synchronize their LEDs and sing in unison. Will your two year old pay attention long enough to notice? I know mine certainly wouldn’t. But it does make for a compelling commercial, and when you’re selling kid’s toys, that’s really the most important thing.
On the suggestion of one of our beloved readers, I picked up a second-hand
Linkimals Musical Moose
to take a closer look at how this cuddly pal operates. Though in hindsight, I didn’t really need to; a quick browse on Amazon shows that despite their high-tech internals, these little fellows are surprisingly cheap. In fact, I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that given its current retail price of just under $10 USD, I actually paid more for my used moose.
But you didn’t come here to read about my fiscal irresponsibility, you want to see an anthropomorphic woodland creature get dissected. So let’s pull this smug Moose apart and see what’s inside.
Infant Engineering
Being that this it the first gadget intended for actual infants that we’ve taken a look at here in this continuing series of teardowns, it’s worth noting the little details that come with the territory. There isn’t a sharp corner on the moose, and the few visible screws have been set deeply enough into the plastic that even the most inquisitive youngster couldn’t get them out.
It’s also interesting to see that the battery compartment has been made impervious to liquids by way of a generous gasket around the door and sealant at the top where the terminals pop through the plastic. Remember, this toy isn’t intended to go anywhere near the water. So was this an effort to keep saliva out of the internal workings, or to make sure the crusty goodness of a popped alkaline cell didn’t find its way into junior’s mouth? When dealing with users of this age, perhaps it’s a little bit of both.
Pro Tip: Don’t try this on a toy your child actually plays with.
Unfortunately, it turns out this construction method isn’t exactly conducive to non-destructive teardowns. While the feet and head of the Musical Moose come off with no problem, the body itself, where all the electronic goodies live, appears to be permanently sealed. Try as I might with all manner of prying implements, I simply couldn’t get this thing to open up. Ultimately I had to start cutting away at the plastic, which eventually uncovered the eight pegs holding the two halves of the body together. I’m not sure if they were glued or ultrasonically welded, but the end result is the same: a very traumatic scene for any little ones who might wander over to the bench.
A
One
Two Chip Solution
Given the incredibly low price of this toy I expected to see
at least a few black epoxy blobs on the inside
, but the reality ended up being quite a bit more interesting. Outside of an RGB LED, a button, and a handful of passives, there are just two components on the Musical Moose PCB. One of them, while being completely devoid of any markings, is clearly the radio. The other is a fascinating all-in-one solution from Nuvoton specifically designed for talking gadgets like this.
The Nuvoton N569S1K0 is an ARM Cortex-M0 32-bit microcontroller running at 49 MHz with 6 kB RAM and 64 kB ROM. As part of the company’s NuVoice series of chips, it also features 1 MB of internal storage for audio data. According to the spec sheet, that allows the single chip to hold nearly seventeen minutes worth of voice clips. Not at a particularly high quality, mind you, but more than good enough for a talking toy.
Clearly the soldered on module with the antenna lead is the radio, but other than the name Coolwaveasia on the silkscreen, there’s nothing to identify it. Searching the name we can see it’s a product of Coolwave Communications, and browsing through their site even shows some very similar looking modules, but none of them appear to have a publicly available datasheet.
Radio Research
Soldered on radio modules are a
common sight when taking apart cheap wireless gadgets
, as it saves the designers from having to figure out the RF side of things. But without a datasheet, it’s difficult to say exactly what we’re looking at here. Is this chip just a simple radio, or is it a microcontroller of its own? After all, that’s a lot of pins just to pass a few bytes of data back and forth. Unfortunately, without more information to go by, this is where the trail often ends up going cold.
The only good to come from the
Jurassic World
franchise.
But not this time. After a bit of searching I found an
FCC entry for the
Jurassic World
“Raptor Attack Jeep”
that appeared to use the same radio module. That alone wouldn’t have been too helpful, but unlike the vast majority of FCC database entries for commercial products, this one actually had its circuit diagrams available. What’s more, under “Technical Description”, it
included the module’s datasheet from Coolwave Communications
.
With this information in hand, we can see that communication with the radio module is very simple. It’s not using I2C, SPI, or even UART. Instead each pin appears to correspond to its own channel, and transmitting on it is as easy as grounding it out. Indeed, the Jeep’s circuit diagram shows that the Forward/Backward and Left/Right lines are connected directly to push buttons. The module’s documentation goes on to explain that the pins can be configured as input or output, which presumably makes reception as straightforward as waiting for the pin to go low.
Talking to the Animals
So where does that leave us? Well we’ve got a pretty good idea of how the Nuvoton MCU talks to the radio module, and one very mangled Musical Moose. Rather than toss the parts in the trash, I decided to wire in a header between the two chips so I could plug in a logic analyzer. With a little hot glue holding it together, the Moose Sniffer was born.
At the moment I don’t have any other Linkimals, so I can only look at what the massacred moose is sending out. It doesn’t appear to be any traditional communications protocol, which given how the
Jurrasic World
toy used the radio module, isn’t a great surprise. Three of the channels send out a few bits in a clearly repeating pattern, perhaps as some sort of heartbeat or discovery signal for the other critters to key in on. Pressing the button to make the moose sing fires a few extra bits off on these same channels.
Four of the channels initially see some chatter right after power up, but then quiet down and don’t show any more activity. Presumably these are the receive channels which would light up when another animal is in the vicinity, but I won’t know for sure until I get my hands on a few more Linkimals. Given how cheap they are that shouldn’t be a problem, and now that I have a dedicated sniffer, I won’t even have to take the others apart. Which is good, since I don’t think my daughter would forgive me if any more of these fellows met the same fate as the Musical Moose.
High Tech, Low Cost
I plan on exploring the communication between these toys in the near future, and hopefully will be able to revisit the subject with another article. But in the meantime, the biggest takeaway from the teardown of the Linkimals Musical Moose is that you don’t have to break the bank to pack some legitimately impressive technology in your product.
Fisher-Price is selling these things for a song, and each one includes 2.4 GHz mesh networking and a powerful 32-bit microcontroller with onboard audio capabilities. Sure you can get an ESP32 for five bucks, but this is a fully developed and marketed product with all the expenses that entails. Yet they’re still making a profit at $10.
Toys have historically been a pretty good indicator
of what
contemporary low budget hardware has looked like
, and it makes you wonder what kind of technology will be backed into a child’s plaything in another decade. One thing’s for sure: I can’t wait to take one of them apart. | 23 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339466",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2021-04-13T17:31:57",
"content": "Creepy networked singing robots? Isn’t this how Skynet started?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6339487",
"author": "blah test",
"timestamp... | 1,760,373,121.248647 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/13/new-hackadayu-classes-antenna-basics-raspberry-pi-pico-and-designing-complex-geometry/ | New HackadayU Classes: Antenna Basics, Raspberry Pi Pico, And Designing Complex Geometry | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"Antenna Design",
"classes",
"HackadayU",
"NURBS",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"RF Design",
"Rhino",
"rhino 3d modeling",
"rp2040"
] | Get ’em while they’re hot:
a new session of HackadayU
just opened with classes from three fantastic instructors and
seats are filling up fast
.
Introduction to Antenna Basics
— Instructor Karen Rucker teaches the fundamentals of antenna design as if it were your first year on-the-job. She’ll cover the common types of antenna designs and the fundamentals of radio frequency engineering that go into them. Begins Thursday, May 6th.
Raspberry Pi Pico and RP2040 – The Deep Dive
— Instructor Uri Shaked guides the class through the internals of the RP2040 microcontroller, covering system architecture, hardware peripherals, and dipping into some ARM assembly language examples. Begins Wednesday, May 5th.
Designing with Complex Geometry
— Instructor James McBennett helps you up your 3D modelling game with a course on using complex geometries in Grasshopper3D (part of Rhino3D). Dive into Non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) and go from simple shapes to incredibly complex objects with a bit of code. Begins Tuesday, May 4th.
Each course includes five weekly classes beginning in May. Being part of the live class via Zoom offers interactivity with the instructor and other attendees. All tickets are “pay-as-you-wish” with a $20 suggested donation; all proceeds go to socially conscious charities.
For the benefit of all, each class will be edited and published on Hackaday’s YouTube channel once this session has wrapped up.
Check out our playlists for past HackadayU courses
, or watch them all in
one giant playlist
.
You might also consider becoming an Engineering Liaison for HackadayU. These volunteers help keep the class humming along for the best experience for students and instructors alike.
Liaison applications are now open
. | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339559",
"author": "𐂀 𐂅",
"timestamp": "2021-04-13T22:50:42",
"content": "For a FOSS alternative to Rhino etc. for “Designing with Complex Geometry” try Blender 3D and the Sverchok plugin. Just head over to YouTube and search for “Sverchok” to find a pile of amazing stuff. Sorry... | 1,760,373,121.513907 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/13/beam-powered-ball-flinging-beam-has-us-beaming/ | BEAM-Powered, Ball-Flinging Beam Has Us Beaming | Kristina Panos | [
"classic hacks",
"Solar Hacks"
] | [
"ball bearing",
"beam",
"marble machine",
"solar panel",
"solar power",
"solenoid"
] | We have a soft spot for BEAM projects, because we love to see the Sun do fun things when aided by large capacitors.
[NanoRobotGeek]’s marble machine is an extraordinary example
— once sufficiently charged, the two 4700 μF capacitors dump power into a home-brew solenoid, which catapults the ball bearing into action toward the precipice of two tracks.
[NanoRobotGeek] started with the freely-available
Suneater solar circuit
. It’s a staple of BEAM robotics, slightly modified to fit the needs of this particular project. First up was verifying that the lever (or beam, if you will) principle would work at all, and [NanoRobotGeek] just built it up from there in admirable detail. The fact that it alternates between the swirly track and the zigzag track is entrancing.
There are several disciplines at play here, and we think it’s beautifully made all around, especially since this was [NanoRobotGeek]’s first foray into track bending. We love the way it flings the ball so crisply, and the track-changing lever is pretty darn satisfying, too. You can check it out in action in the video after the break.
Although this was [NanoRobotGeek]’s maiden marble track, it’s not their first circuit sculpture —
check out this flapping, BEAM-powered dragonfly
. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339426",
"author": "mark g",
"timestamp": "2021-04-13T16:18:45",
"content": "Extremely well presented. The tracks have enough complexity to be interesting without so much going on that it distracts from the electronics and the catapult. Very balanced design.",
"parent_id": null... | 1,760,373,121.746625 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/12/eyecam-is-watching-you-in-between-blinks/ | Eyecam Is Watching You In Between Blinks | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Art",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"arduino nano",
"Raspberry pi camera",
"Raspberry Pi Zero",
"servo",
"web cam"
] | We will be the first to admit that it’s often hard to be productive while working from home, especially if no one’s ever really looking over your shoulder. Well, here is one creepy way to feel as though someone is keeping an eye on you, if that’s what gets you to straighten up and fly right.
The Eyecam research project by [Marc Teyssier] et. al.
is a realistic, motorized eyeball that includes a camera and hangs out on top of your computer monitor. It aims to spark conversation about the sensors that are all around us already in various cold and clinical forms. It’s an open source project with a
paper
and a
repo
and a how-to video in the works.
The eyebrow-raising design pulls no punches in the uncanny department: the eye behaves as you’d expect (if you could have expected this) — it blinks, looks around, and can even waggle its brow. The eyeball, brow, and eyelids are actuated by a total of six servos that are controlled by an Arduino Nano.
Inside the eyeball is a Raspberry Pi camera connected to a Raspi Zero for the web cam portion of this intriguing horror show. Keep an eye out after the break for the Eyecam infomercial.
Creepy or fascinating, it succeeds in making people think about the vast amount of sensors around us now, and what the future of them could look like. Would mimicking eye contact be an improvement over the standard black and gray oblong eye? Perhaps a pair of eyes would be less unsettling, we’re not really sure. But we are left to wonder what’s next, a microphone that looks like an ear? Probably. Will it have hair sprouting from it? Perhaps.
Yeah, it’s true; two eyes are more on the mesmerizing side, but still creepy,
especially when they follow you around the room and can shoot frickin’ laser beams
.
Thanks for the tip, [Sven, greg, and Itay]! | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339113",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2021-04-12T19:02:48",
"content": "And the Creepy Computing Award goes to… Eyecam!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6339319",
"author": "Inhibit",
"timestamp": "2021-04... | 1,760,373,122.020541 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/12/zinc-fever-a-look-at-the-risks-of-working-with-hot-metal/ | Zinc Fever: A Look At The Risks Of Working With Hot Metal | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Interest",
"Medical Hacks",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"cytokine",
"health and safety",
"metal fume fever",
"metallothionein",
"metalwork",
"respirator",
"welding",
"zinc"
] | For as raucous as things can get in the comments section of Hackaday articles, we really love the give and take that happens there. Our readers have an astonishing breadth of backgrounds and experiences, and the fact that everyone so readily shares those experiences and the strongly held opinions that they engender is what makes this community so strong and so useful.
But with so many opinions and experiences being shared, it’s sometimes hard to cut through to the essential truth of an issue. This is particularly true where health and safety are at issue, a topic where it’s easy to get bogged down by an accumulation of anecdotes that mask the underlying biology. Case in point: I recently covered
a shop-built tool cabinet build
and made an off-hand remark about the inadvisability of welding zinc-plated drawer slides, having heard about the dangers of inhaling zinc fumes once upon a time. That led to a discussion in the comments section on both sides of the issue that left the risks of zinc-fume inhalation somewhat unclear.
To correct this, I decided to take a close look at the risks involved with welding and working zinc. As a welding wannabe, I’m keenly interested in anything that helps me not die in the shop, and as a biology geek, I’m also fascinated by the molecular mechanisms of diseases. I’ll explore both of these topics as we look at the dreaded “zinc fever” and how to avoid it.
Flu-Like Symptoms
One of the first things you’ll notice if you research zinc fever is how hard it is to find useful information. Googling “zinc fever” will get you a load of articles about using zinc supplements to stave off viral infections, not to mention other medically dubious uses for zinc. That’s partly thanks to living in these pandemic times, but also shows the unusually high noise floor that attends most searches for actionable medical information, as opposed to anecdotes.
Thankfully, though, I was able to dig deep enough to discover that what’s called zinc fever is an actual illness that has been well-described in the medical literature since the mid-1800s. It goes by a wide range of names, from the wonderfully medieval-sounding “brass founder’s ague” to “the galvie flu”, all of which reflect the fact that this is largely an occupational hazard of the metalworking trades. The illnesses all fall under the broad category of “metal fume fever” or MFF.
The metal most strongly associated with MFF is zinc, either alone or in alloy with other metals — hence the association with brass, an alloy mainly composed of copper and zinc. Other metals that can cause the illness pretty much run the gamut of commonly worked metals; the most common culprits after zinc are chromium, cadmium, and copper.
Metal fume fever typically presents as a sudden onset of classic flu-like symptoms — fever, headache, muscle and joint aches, fatigue, nausea, and violent chills. Symptoms usually begin within a few hours of exposure to metal fumes, either via welding, grinding, or foundry operations. Diagnosis is typically made based on the history, as opposed to any blood tests or other diagnostics; basically, someone who presents to an emergency room with flu-like symptoms who reports welding within the last day or so will get a presumptive diagnosis of MFF, after ruling out other possible causes.
In almost every case study and review on MFF that I could find, the course of the illness was characterized as “self-limiting”. This is medical shorthand for “it’ll go away in a couple of days,” and indeed, for most metalworkers that’s clearly the case. While some people who’ve gotten MFF report a week or so to get back to feeling normal, most are up and around again after just a few days of feeling really, really crappy.
Going Too Far
Jim “Paw-Paw” Wilson. Source:
Anvilfire.com
Most, but not all: take
the extreme case of Jim “Paw-Paw” Wilson
, a blacksmith of some renown in the smithing community. Back in 2005, when Jim was 65, he was building a stock rack from surplus galvanized pipe. Knowing the dangers of zinc fumes, Jim attempted to burn the coating off some pipe fittings in a gas-fueled forge. He apparently charged the forge with too many fittings at once, which filled the shop with billows of thick, white zinc oxide smoke. The smoke was so thick that it left deposits of zinc oxide 1/16″ (1.5 mm) thick on the inside of the forge.
As he probably had multiple times in his metalworking career, Jim took ill with the classic symptoms of MFF shortly after that forge session. He felt well enough within a few days to take a trip, but a week after the exposure he came down with bilateral pneumonia, which killed him the next week. While it’s true that Jim suffered from emphysema before the forge incident, and that probably contributed to the outcome, the fact remains that he likely would not have gotten the pneumonia that killed him had he not tried to burn off those fittings.
Although Jim’s case was an extreme one, both in terms of the amount of zinc oxide fumes produced and the victim’s underlying medical issues, it does illustrate the point that MFF can be dangerous under the right conditions. However, the risk of dying from MFF seems to be quite low. I couldn’t find much information about the epidemiology of the illness except that there are an estimated 1,500 to 2,500 cases per year in the United States, about 700 of which were reported to poison control and a third of which required medical treatment
1
. It’s not clear from this review whether any of these cases resulted in death, but it’s probably safe to assume that the authors would have mentioned any deaths that had occurred.
Speaking of poison control, an interesting aspect of MFF was revealed by a 2012 review of data from poison control in Victoria, Australia
2
. They plotted the number of calls to poison control against the day of the week that the incident occurred, and found that Monday was by far the most likely time for someone to come down with MFF. This goes along with one of the alternate names for MFF, “Monday morning fever”, and may have to do with a certain degree of tolerance that the body builds up with extended exposure to small amounts of metal fumes. The thinking is that after a weekend away from the shop, the body’s ability to deal with the zinc toxin has decreased, making it more likely to cause symptoms after a weekend away from the shop.
Monday is the most common day for MFF. Source:
Australian Family Physician 2012; 41: 141-3
How It Works
This is all well and good, but what about the meat of the problem: how do metal fumes cause flu-like symptoms? Put simply, we just don’t know. The mechanism doesn’t appear to be well studied, possibly due to the fact that the illness is generally self-limiting and non-fatal. But it’s likely that what causes the symptoms experienced during a legitimate case of the flu — or, as we’ve learned the last year, a coronavirus such as SARS-CoV-2 — also causes the symptoms of MFF. So the blame falls on the human immune system, with activation of white blood cells called neutrophils; the release of cytokines, signaling chemicals related to inflammation responses; and formation of oxygen radicals. These form the biochemical brew that makes you feel so bad during the flu, and it’s thought that zinc oxide and the other metal vapors associated with MFF somehow trigger their release too.
A plant metallothionein, which is similar to mammalian MTs. The sulfur-rich cysteine residues (yellow) form coordination centers that bind to metallic ions (purple) and scavenge them from cells. Source:
Thomas Shafee
, CC BY 4.0
Another clue as to how MFF happens is revealed by looking at that “Monday morning fever” aspect of the illness
3
. The ability to develop tolerance to metal fumes over time is thought to be related to the expression of metallothioneins (MTs), which are sulfur-rich proteins that are specialized for binding metal ions in the body. A single human MT molecule can scavenge up to seven zinc ions, sequestering them and preventing them from doing whatever they do to activate the immune system. Small amounts of metal ions are thought to stimulate MT expression, which tracks with building up a tolerance over the workweek. In the absence of stimulus, though, like over a weekend away from the shop, expression of MTs is down-regulated, meaning the hapless welder who gets a big dose of zinc on Monday likely has a reduced ability to deal with the threat.
And because someone is sure to mention it in the comments, we’ll point out that old-school welders swear by
the drinking of copious quantities of milk
before welding anything with zinc in it to stave off the symptoms of MFF. There are plenty of anecdotes out there about how well this works, and there’s speculation that the calcium in the milk somehow blocks or competes with the zinc ions. But given that most recommendations are for drinking four or more liters of milk, and that it has to be done before welding starts, it’s probably not going to be practical for most people as a prophylactic method.
So, what’s the take-home message on metal fume fever? I think, first and foremost, that welders need to realize that it’s a real illness and not just some old wives tale. From all accounts, the illness is self-limiting and temporary in nature, but unless you have underlying medical conditions, it doesn’t seem likely to kill you. Given how debilitating flu-like symptoms can be, though, I’m not sure why anyone would even flirt with something that will make you feel like that, even if only for a couple of days. If I absolutely had to weld something galvanized, I’d make sure to do it with some sort of positive-pressure respirator, with fume extraction, or even outdoors to keep those noxious fumes away. Better to be overly cautious than to be laid up for a couple of days with symptoms that could easily be confused for something else, especially in this day and age.
References:
Ahsan SA, Lackovic M, Katner A, Palmero C.
Metal Fume Fever: A Review of the Literature and cases Reported to the Louisiana Poison control center. J. of the LA State Med Soc 2009;161:348-351.
Wong A, Greene S, Robinson J.
Metal fume fever: A case review of calls made to the Victorian Poisons Information Centre. Australian Family Physician 2012; 41:141-143.
Kaye
P
,
Young
H
,
O’Sullivan
.
Metal fume fever: a case report and review of the literature.
Emergency Medicine Journal
2002;
19:
268-269
. | 69 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339087",
"author": "BobH",
"timestamp": "2021-04-12T17:15:01",
"content": "Good write-up, thanks! When I weld galvanized stuff, I try to grind off the galvanizing a couple of inches back from the weld area and always do it outside. Grinding the galvanizing off is important (in addi... | 1,760,373,121.964109 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/12/inside-smart-meters-hack-chat/ | Inside Smart Meters Hack Chat | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"electric",
"grid",
"Hack Chat",
"mesh network",
"reverse engineering",
"smart meters",
"utility"
] | Join us on Wednesday, April 14 at noon Pacific for the
Inside Smart Meters Hack Chat
with [Hash]!
That electrical meter on the side of your house might not look like it, but it’s pretty packed with technology. What was once a simple electromechanical device that a human would have to read in person is now a node on a far-flung network. Not only does your meter total up the amount of electricity you use, but it also talks to other meters in the neighborhood, sending data skipping across town to routers that you might never have noticed as it makes its way back to the utility. And the smartest of smart meters not only know how much electricity you’re using, but they can also tease information about which appliances are being used simply by monitoring patterns of usage.
While all this sounds great for utility companies, what does it mean for the customers? What are the implications of having a network of smart meters all talking to each other wirelessly? Are these devices vulnerable to attack? Have they been engineered to be as difficult to exploit as something should be when it’s designed to be in service for 15 years or more?
These questions and more burn within [Hash], a hardware hacker and security researcher who runs the
RECESSIM
reverse-engineering wiki. He’s been inside a smart meter or two and has shared a lot of what he has learned on the wiki and with some
in-depth YouTube videos
. He’ll stop by the Hack Chat to discuss what he’s learned about the internals of smart meters, how they work, and where they may be vulnerable to attack.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, April 14 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
.
Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about. | 39 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339063",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-04-12T16:07:24",
"content": "“Not only does your meter total up the amount of electricity you use, but it also talks to other meters in the neighborhood, sending data skipping across town to routers that you might never have noticed... | 1,760,373,122.170284 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/12/sixty-years-ago-today-yuri-gagarin-becomes-the-first-human-in-space/ | Sixty Years Ago Today: Yuri Gagarin Becomes The First Human In Space | Jenny List | [
"Space"
] | [
"CCCP",
"Gagarin",
"USSR",
"Vostok"
] | As those of us with an interest in space exploration look forward with excitement towards new Lunar and Martian exploration, it’s worth casting our minds back for a moment because today marks a special anniversary. Sixty years ago
on April 12th 1961, the Vostok 1 craft with its pilot Yuri Gagarin was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome
in what is now Kazakhstan. During the 108-minute mission he successfully completed an orbit of the Earth before parachuting from his craft after re-entry and landing on a farm near Engels, in the Saratov oblast to the south of Moscow.
Yuri Gagarin
In doing so he became the first human in space as well as the first to orbit the Earth, he became a hero to the Soviet and Russian people as well as the rest of the world, and scored a major victory for the Soviet space programme by beating the Americans to the prize. All the astronauts and cosmonauts who have been to space since then stand upon the shoulders of those first corps of pioneering pilots who left the atmosphere alone in their capsules, but it is Gagarin’s name that stands tallest among them.
In Russia the anniversary is being celebrated with particular fervour
with special events, TV coverage, and a visit by President Putin to the landing site, and from space
by the Russian cosmonauts in orbit on the ISS
. Meanwhile space agencies closer to home are remaining tight-lipped, with
NASA failing to mention that particular objective for ISS Expedition 65 crewmembers
.
We consider that the politics of the Cold War should not be allowed to detract on our side of the world from the achievement of Gagarin and the engineers and scientists who placed him in orbit, thus
we prefer to tell the whole story
when dealing with space history. If you’d like to read a bit more Vostok history then we’d like to point you at the story of another Soviet cosmonaut,
Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space
.
Header image: Нина ПЕТРИЩЕВА,
CC BY-SA 4.0
. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339060",
"author": "Aashwinshanker",
"timestamp": "2021-04-12T15:58:06",
"content": "It marked the commencement of a new era of opportunities and troubles.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6339070",
"author": "merlino1976",
... | 1,760,373,122.085434 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/12/microleds-lighting-the-way-to-a-solid-oled-competitor/ | MicroLEDs: Lighting The Way To A Solid OLED Competitor | Maya Posch | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"hardware",
"home entertainment hacks",
"LED Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"crt",
"display",
"lcd",
"MicroLED",
"panel",
"technology",
"tv"
] | We’re accustomed to seeing giant LED-powered screens in sports venues and outdoor displays. What would it take to bring this same technology into your living room? Very, very tiny LEDs. MicroLEDs.
MicroLED screens have been rumored to be around the corner for almost a decade now, which means that the time is almost right for them to actually become a reality. And certainly display technology has come a long way from the early cathode-ray tube (CRT) technology that powered the television and the home computer revolution. In the late 1990s, liquid-crystal display (LCD) technology became a feasible replacement for CRTs, offering a thin, distortion-free image with pixel-perfect image reproduction. LCDs also allowed for displays to be put in many new places, in addition to finally having that wall-mounted television.
Since that time, LCD’s flaws have become a sticking point compared to CRTs. The nice features of CRTs such as very fast response time, deep blacks and zero color shift, no matter the angle, have led to a wide variety of LCD technologies to recapture some of those features. Plasma displays seemed promising for big screens for a while, but organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) have taken over and still-in-development technologies like SED and FED off the table.
While OLED is very good in terms of image quality, its flaws including burn-in and uneven wear of the different organic dyes responsible for the colors.
MicroLEDs
hope to capitalize on OLED’s weaknesses by bringing brighter screens with no burn-in using inorganic LED technology, just very, very small.
So what does it take to scale a standard semiconductor LED down to the size of a pixel, and when can one expect to buy MicroLED displays? Let’s take a look.
All About the Photons
Schematic view of a color CRT: three electron guns along with the deflection coils to target the electrons onto the phosphor layer.
The most important property of a display is of course the ability to generate a sufficient number of photons to create a clear image. In the case of CRTs, this is done by accelerating electrons and smashing them into a phosphor layer. Each impact results in a change in the energy state of the phosphor molecule, which ultimately leads to the added energy being emitted again in the form of a photon. Depending on the phosphor used, the photon’s wavelength will differ, and presto, one has a display.
The reason why
CRTs
are rather bulky is because they use one electron gun per color. While this is fairly efficient, and the use of electromagnetic controls make for impressively fast scan rates, it does give CRTs a certain depth that is a function of display dimension. An interesting improvement on these classical CRTs came from Canon and Sony in the form of
SED
and
FED
, respectively during the early 2000s. These display technologies used semiconductor technology to create a single electron gun per pixel, which would fire at the phosphor layer, mere millimeters away.
By that time LCD technology was already beginning to become firmly established, however. Unlike like the somewhat similar
plasma display
technology, SED and FED never made it into mass production. Even then, LCD technology itself was going through some big growing spurts, trying to outgrow its early days of
passive matrix
LCDs with slow response times, massive ghosting and very narrow viewing angles using primitive twisted nematics (
TN
) panels.
Even though LCDs were clearly inferior to CRTs during the 1990s and into the early 2000s, what LCDs did have, however, was thinness. Thin enough to be put into mobile devices, like laptops and the ‘smart assistants’ of the time, such as personal digital assistants (
PDAs
). As LCDs gained features like active matrix technology which removed most ghosting, and new liquid crystal alignments (e.g.
IPS
, MVA) that improved viewing angles, so too did their popularity grow. Clearly, bulky displays were to be a thing of the past.
The Curse of the Backlight
Schematic overview of a twisted nematic (TN) LC display, showing the OFF and ON state, respectively.
An LCD has a number of layers that make it work. There is the liquid crystal layer that can block or let light through, there are also the color filters that give pixels their colors, and the TFT control and polarization layers. Most LCDs use a backlight source that provides the photons that ultimately reach our eyes. Because of all these layers in between the backlight and our Mark I eye balls, quite a lot of energy never makes it out of the display stack.
In the case of a ‘black’ pixel, the intention is to block 100% of the backlight’s energy in that section using the LC layer. This is both wasteful, and since the crystals in the LC layer do not fully block the light, LCDs are incapable of producing pure blacks. While some LCD technologies (e.g. MVA) provide a much better result here, this comes at compromises elsewhere, such as reduced response time.
This illustrates the most fundamental difference between a CRT display and an LC display: a CRT is fundamentally dark where the electrons don’t hit. SEDs, FEDs and plasma displays are also self-illuminating, as is OLED. This is a crucial factor when it comes to high dynamic range content.
With the move to
LED-based backlights
for LCDs, the situation has improved somewhat because an LCD can have different backlight sections that can activate separately. By using more, smaller LEDs in the backlight the number of so-called dimming zones can be increased, making darker blacks. You can see where this is going, right?
The Future is Self-Illuminating
After decades of display technology evolution, the factors which determine a display technology’s popularity essentially come down to four factors:
How cheaply it can be produced.
How well it reproduces colors.
How well does it scale.
How many use cases does it cover.
In the case of LCDs over CRTs it was clear why the latter couldn’t compete, and why plasma screens never made a big splash. It also makes it clear that – as demonstrated by e.g. Samsung exiting the LCD market – LCDs have hit somewhat of a dead end.
This is how Samsung apparently envisions MicroLED TVs will be used. Good thing that they have very high brightness levels. (Credit: Samsung)
MicroLEDs were invented over twenty years ago, and while e.g.
Samsung’s The Wall
is seeing limited commercial use, the most exciting development will probably come this year, with MicroLED TVs that fall into the ‘affordable’ range appearing, assuming one’s target is a 76″ MicroLED TV for roughly what an early plasma display would have cost.
Smaller MicroLED displays are unlikely to appear for a while. Immature manufacturing technologies and the need to reduce pixel pitch even more are the bottlenecks at the moment. This latter point is quickly seen in the specifications for Samsung’s MicroLED TVs to be released this year: they only support 4K, even in the 110″ version. At 50″, 1080p (‘fullHD’) would be about the most one could hope for without sending production costs skyrocketing.
A Matter of Time
As cool as new technologies can be, one cannot expect them to fall off the production line one day, all perfect and ready to be used. Early CRTs and passive matrix LCDs were terrible in their own unique way . As the technology matured, however, CRTs became reliable workhorses at very affordable prices, and LCDs became pretty tolerable.
OLED technology started off with an optimistic ~1,000 hour lifespan on the early Sony prototypes, but today we see (AM)OLED displays everywhere, from cellphones to TVs and even as tiny monochrome or multi-color screens for embedded applications. With MicroLED having the benefit of being based on well-known semiconductor technologies, there’s little reason to doubt that it’ll undergo a similar evolution.
As MicroLED features higher brightness and longer lifespan that OLED, with lower latency, higher contrast ratio, greater color saturation, and a simplified display stack compared to LCDs, it’s little wonder that MicroLED displays are being produced by not only Samsung, but also by Sony (‘Crystal LED’) and AU Optronics, amidst a smattering of other display manufacturers, and
tantalizing promises
of small (<5″) MicroLED displays.
We know that everyone likes lots of tiny LEDs. Will your love last, once they become this commonplace? | 59 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339033",
"author": "DainBramage",
"timestamp": "2021-04-12T14:28:37",
"content": "That does sound promising, and is an idea that I had never considered. If the microLEDs are anywhere near as robust as the epoxy coated ones we’re all used to seeing, these displays could last darn ne... | 1,760,373,122.531196 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/12/exhuming-an-ancient-game-from-a-government-warehouse/ | Exhuming An Ancient Game From A Government Warehouse | Jenny List | [
"Games",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"castlequest",
"digitla archaeology",
"text adventure"
] | Many readers will be familiar with the final scene of
Raiders Of The Lost Ark
, in which the Ark of the Covenant, having been retrieved by Indiana Jones, is placed in a crate and wheeled off to be lost in the seemingly infinite depths of a dusty Government warehouse. Who knows what treasures lurk in such fabled taxpayer-funded repositories, and as if to prove their vast potential, [Arthur O’Dwyer] relates
a tale of digital archaeology
in which the entire source code of a game thought long-lost was regurgitated with the help of a civil servant.
The game in question is
Castlequest
, which he had played in the 1980s on the now-defunct
GEnie
online service. One of very few online references to it came via
an entry in the copyright catalog of the US Copyright Office
, where copyright holders can choose to register their works. Eventually after some detective work and a conversation with one of the game’s authors, he received copies of the entry. But instead of the expected summary, he was pleasantly surprised to find the full Fortran code of the game. The snag was that it came as a PDF scan of printed pages rather than as code itself, so there followed a tedious process of transcription before it could be
published in a GitHub repository
and
eventually made compilable
. The code remains copyrighted as an important part of its story, but should you be interested you can transport yourself back four decades and try your luck at text adventuring.
Maybe there’s more to be found in those dusty copyright warehouses, and searching for it has to be more pleasant than
digging up landfills
. | 21 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338989",
"author": "David Given",
"timestamp": "2021-04-12T11:22:31",
"content": "“The code remains copyrighted as an important part of its story…”_Everything_ is copyrighted, except where explicitly put into the public domain! What this code is lacking is a license, meaning you ca... | 1,760,373,122.298201 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/12/playing-the-interview-game/ | Playing The Interview Game | Matthew Carlson | [
"Games",
"Lifehacks",
"Software Development"
] | [
"factorio",
"interview",
"Software Engineering",
"technical interview"
] | Technical interviews are generally dreaded, just like every other interview. However, technical interviews include many elements that non-technical folks might find mystifying or even pointless, such as whiteboard problem solving, take-home assignments, design sessions, or even just straight brain teasers. [Erik McClure] went a bit off the beaten path and
started using the factory builder game Factorio as a technical interview
.
Many point to the intent behind the problems and tricky questions inherent in whiteboard coding exercises and assert that the focus is not to complete the problem, but rather to expose how a candidate thinks and problem solves. Factorio is all problem-solving as you work as a team to slowly scale up a humble production line to a massive factory, which makes it a good candidate for assessing these sorts of skills. We doubt that the fine developers who wrote the game ever imagined it being used as an interview.
In all likelihood, you probably won’t have a Factorio interview anytime soon as [Erik] estimated each interview would take between eight and twenty hours. But we love the idea of reimagining the interview from a tedious set of problems to solve to an evolving cooperative game. Of course, you can also read more about
getting the experience necessary for a job and what companies are looking for in an interview
.
A trailer for Factorio is after the break. | 37 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338966",
"author": "Erin",
"timestamp": "2021-04-12T08:41:04",
"content": "I didn’t notice it brought up as I skimmed the article, but an 8 to 20 hour long interview had better include pay. I even like playing Factorio, but spending half a working week playing it as a test sounds ... | 1,760,373,122.243342 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/11/high-current-measurement-probe-for-oscilloscopes/ | High Current Measurement Probe For Oscilloscopes | Anool Mahidharia | [
"hardware",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"ACS730",
"AD823ARZ",
"alternating current",
"current",
"current measurement",
"current meter",
"current sensor",
"direct current",
"MCP73831",
"TPS65133"
] | A decent current measurement sensor ought to be an essential part of every hacker’s workbench. One that is capable of measuring DC, as well as low and high frequencies with reasonable accuracy. And bonus credits if it can also withstand high bus voltages – such as those found in mains utility or electric vehicle work. [Undersilicon] couldn’t find one that ticked all the boxes, so he built an
ACS730 based AC/DC current probe
capable of measuring up to 25 A at frequencies up to 1 MHz.
Allegro Microsystems has a wide offering of
current sensor IC’s
. The
ACS730
features a -3 dB bandwidth of 1 MHz, and -1 dB bandwidth of 500 kHz. Since it is galvanically isolated, it can be used in AC mains applications up to 297 Vrms and for DC up to 420 V. And as he intended to use it as an oscilloscope accessory, the analog output suited the application nicely. A pair of precision op-amps provide the voltage output scaled to 100 mV/A. The board is powered off a 1000 mAh LiPo battery that can run the sensor for about 15 ~ 20 hours. The power supply section consists of a charge circuit for the LiPo, and a split rail dual output power supply converter for the op-amps.
The ACS730 has a 2.5 V output when measured current is zero, and is scaled for 40 mV/A. This gives an output voltage swing from -0.5 V for -50 A to +4.5 V for +50 A. This is where the
AD823ARZ
dual 16 MHz, Rail-to-Rail FET Input Amplifiers step in. One pair is used to obtain a 2.5 V reference from the 5 V supply, and also to buffer the analog output from the ACS730. The second pair subtracts the 2.5 V offset, and applies a gain of 2.5 to get the 100 mV/A output. Dual power supply for the op-amps comes from a
TPS65133
Split-Rail Converter, ±5V, 250mA Dual Output Power Supply. Lastly, LiPo charging is handled by the
MCP73831
Single Cell, Li-Ion/Li-Polymer Charge Management Controller.
Initial testing of direct currents has shown fairly accurate performance. But he’s observed some noise when measuring currents below 1 A which requires some debugging to figure out the source.
[Undersilicon] has provided the CAD files for both the PCB and 3D printed enclosure
, giving you access to everything you need to build one yourself. If you’re looking for something a bit more heavy duty, you might be interested in
this +/-50 A, 1.5 MHz sensor encased in concrete
. | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338933",
"author": "Mike Massen, Perth, Western Australia",
"timestamp": "2021-04-12T05:13:01",
"content": "Nice one, thanks for posting :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6338937",
"author": "ROB",
"timestamp": "2021-... | 1,760,373,122.429779 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/11/led-brightness-adjustment-uses-itself-as-sensor/ | LED Brightness Adjustment Uses Itself As Sensor | Donald Papp | [
"LED Hacks",
"Parts"
] | [
"fail of the week",
"led",
"led sensor",
"light sensor"
] | This is a story about a successful system that nevertheless failed to make the cut. An
experimental LED brightness adjustment
is something [Mitxela] explored in a project for a high-precision clock; one that shows time down to the nearest millisecond, and won’t flicker or otherwise look weird when photographed with a high-speed camera. To pull this off means reinventing many things about a clock display, including how to handle brightness adjustment elegantly. Now, to be clear, the brightness adjustment idea described here is something that did not end up being used, but it’s interesting enough that [Mitxela] wrote it up and we’re very glad he did.
The idea was to have a smooth and seamless automatic brightness adjustment, ideally with no added components. Since
LEDs can be used as light sensors
, [Mitxela] saw an opportunity to use elements of the clock displays themselves as sensors. This is how it works: a charge in the p-n junction that makes up an LED will decay at a rate proportional to the amount of light hitting the junction. By measuring the speed of this decay, it’s therefore possible to tell how much light is hitting the LED. It’s effective and elegant, but there are a few practical issues to deal with.
The first failed idea was to employ as sensors the unused decimal points in the seven-segment LED modules, but that turned out to have issues. One was the common-cathode wiring of the display modules; this makes them very convenient to drive as displays, but made using the decimal point as a light sensor impractical. The other issue was that the built-in diffuser that makes the displays easier to read absorbs a lot of ambient light. A much better option was to use the LEDs in the colon separators between digits, since they’re independent. Naturally they still have to light up in addition to being used as sensors, but [Mitxela] made a successful prototype by performing the necessary measurements in between the LEDs being driven by PWM.
Despite how clever and efficient the solution was, in the end what sank it was the fact that the LEDs just don’t do a very good job of sensing ambient light for this purpose. The LEDs are simply too directional. Even after sanding away the top (lens) part of the LEDs, they still had a very narrow field of view. As [Mitxela] describes it, tilting the clock towards the ceiling could send it to full brightness, and the shadow of one’s head falling across the clock would plummet it into “night mode” dimness. In short, it responded to what was directly in front of it, rather than the ambient light level as a whole.
It’s a reminder that sometimes a solution simply won’t tick all the right boxes, and it can happen for unexpected reasons. Still, LEDs are versatile things. Not only can they sense light, but as the name implies they’re also diodes. As
diodes can be used as temperature sensors
that means
LEDs can as well
. | 16 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338914",
"author": "YGDES",
"timestamp": "2021-04-12T02:09:08",
"content": "Oh and LED can also serve as “varicap” diodes as well, thanks to their large/wide junction.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6339025",
"author... | 1,760,373,122.359707 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/11/hackaday-links-april-11-2021/ | Hackaday Links: April 11, 2021 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"bitcoin",
"drone",
"hackaday links",
"helicopter",
"Ingenuity",
"IoT",
"mars",
"methane",
"prop",
"sci-fi",
"tricorder",
"uav",
"volumetric"
] | Bad news, Martian helicopter fans: Ingenuity, the autonomous helicopter that Perseverance birthed onto the Martian surface a few days ago,
will not be taking the first powered, controlled flight on another planet today as planned
. We’re working on a full story so we’ll leave the gory details for that, but the short version is that while the helicopter was undergoing a full-speed rotor test, a watchdog timer monitoring the transition between pre-flight and flight modes in the controller tripped. The Ingenuity operations team is going over the full telemetry and will reschedule the rotor test; as a result, the first flight will occur no earlier than Wednesday, April 14. We’ll be sure to keep you posted.
Anyone who has ever been near a refinery or even a sewage treatment plant will have no doubt spotted flares of waste gas being burned off. It can be pretty spectacular, like an Olympic torch, but it also always struck us as spectacularly wasteful. Aside from the emissions, it always seemed like you could at least try to harness some of the energy in the waste gasses. But apparently the numbers just never work out in favor of tapping this source of energy, or at least that was the case until
the proper buzzword concentration in the effluent
was reached. With the soaring value of Bitcoin, and the fact that the network now consumes something like 80-TWh a year, building portable mining rigs into shipping containers that can be plugged into gas flaring stacks at refineries is now being looked at seriously. While we like the idea of not wasting a resource, we have our doubts about this; if it’s not profitable to tap into the waste gas stream to produce electricity now, what does tapping it to directly mine Bitcoin really add to the equation?
What would you do if you discovered that your
new clothes dryer was responsible for a gigabyte or more of traffic
on your internet connection every day? We suppose in this IoT world, such things are to be expected, but a gig a day seems overly chatty for a dryer. The user who reported this over on the r/smarthome subreddit blocked the dryer at the router, which was probably about the only realistic option short of taking a Dremel to the WiFi section of the dryer’s control board. The owner is in contact with manufacturer LG to see if this perhaps represents an error condition; we’d actually love to see a Wireshark dump of the data to see what the garrulous appliance is on about.
As often happens in our wanderings of the interwebz to find the very freshest of hacks for you, we fell down yet another rabbit hole that we thought we’d share. It’s not exactly a secret that there’s a large number of “Star Trek” fans in this community, and that for some of us, the way the various manifestations of the series brought the science and technology of space travel to life kick-started our hardware hacking lives. So when we found
this article about a company building replica Tricorders from the original series
, we followed along with great interest. What we found fascinating was not so much the potential to buy an exact replica of the TOS Tricorder — although that’s pretty cool — but the
deep dive
into how they captured data from one of the few remaining screen-used props, as well as
how the Tricorder came to be
.
And finally, what do you do if you have 3,281 drones lying around? Obviously, you
create a light show to advertise the launch of a luxury car brand in China
. At least that’s what Genesis, the luxury brand of carmaker Hyundai, did last week. The display, which looks like it consisted mostly of the brand’s logo whizzing about over a cityscape, is pretty impressive, and apparently set the world record for such things, beating out
the previous attempt
of 3,051 UAVs. Of course, all the coverage we can find on these displays concentrates on the eye-candy and the blaring horns of the soundtrack and gives short shrift to the technical aspects, which would really be interesting to dive into. How are these drones networked? How do they deal with latency? Are they just creating a volumetric display with the drones and turning lights on and off, or are they actually moving drones around to animate the displays? If anyone knows how these things work, we’d love to learn more, and perhaps even do a feature article. | 30 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338885",
"author": "Jonathan Bennett",
"timestamp": "2021-04-11T23:09:05",
"content": "“Effluent” and “garrulous” were both obscure enough to force me to research their definitions. I’m sure your wordcraft annoys a handful of readers who want HaD to read like an instruction manual,... | 1,760,373,122.596895 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/11/solar-stevenson-screen-for-smart-sprinkler/ | Solar Stevenson Screen For Smart Sprinkler | Bob Baddeley | [
"green hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"automated plant care",
"capacitive sensor",
"ESP8266",
"home automation",
"moisture sensor",
"soil moisture sensor",
"soil sensor"
] | It’s not infrequent that we see the combination of moisture sensors and water pumps to automate plant maintenance. Each one has a unique take on the idea, though, and solves problems in ways that could be useful for other applications as well. [Emiliano Valencia] approached the project with a few notable technologies worth gleaning, and did a nice writeup of his “
Autonomous Solar Powered Irrigation Monitoring Station
” (named Steve Waters as less of a mouthful).
Of particular interest was [Emiliano]’s solution for 3D printing a threaded rod; lay it flat and shave off the top and bottom. You didn’t need the
whole
thread anyway, did you? Despite the relatively limited number of GPIO pins on the ESP8266, the station has three analog sensors via an ADS1115 ADC to I2C, a BME280 for temperature, pressure, and humidity (also on the I2C bus), and two MOSFETs for controlling valves. For power, a solar cell on top of the enclosure charges an 18650 cell. Communication over wireless goes to Thingspeak, where a nice dashboard displays everything you could want. The whole idea of the
Stevenson Screen
is clever as well, and while this one is 3D printed, it seems any kind of stacking container could be modified to serve the same purpose and achieve any size by stacking more units. We’re skeptical about bugs getting in the electronics, though.
We recently saw an
ESP32-based capacitive moisture sensor
on a single PCB sending via MQTT, and we’ve seen [Emiliano] produce other high quality content
etching PCBs with a vinyl cutter
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6344725",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2021-04-30T23:56:16",
"content": "I assume that hexagonal perforation would prevent some of the bugs… But yeah it will probably still need cleaning eventually. Commercial setups have the same issue, and it’s not like you can completely seal ... | 1,760,373,122.638319 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/11/keep-coffee-warm-through-induction-heating/ | Keep Coffee Warm Through Induction Heating | Bryan Cockfield | [
"cooking hacks"
] | [
"coffee",
"frequency",
"heater",
"induction",
"metal",
"mug",
"resonance",
"square wave",
"transformer"
] | Transformers have an obvious use for increasing or decreasing the voltage in AC systems, but they have many other esoteric uses as well. Electric motors and generators are functionally similar and can be modeled as if they are transformers, but the truly interesting applications are outside these industrial settings. Wireless charging is essentially an air-core transformer that allows power to flow through otherwise empty space, and induction cooking uses a similar principle to induce current flow in pots and pans.
And, in this case, coffee mugs
.
[Sajjad]’s project is an effort to keep his coffee warm while it sits on his desk. To build this special transformer he places his mug inside a coil of thick wire which is connected to a square wave generator. A capacitor sits in parallel with the coil of wire which allows the device to achieve resonance at a specific tuned frequency. Once at that frequency, the coil of wire efficiently generates eddy currents in the metal part of the coffee mug and heats the coffee with a minimum of input energy.
While this project doesn’t work for ceramic mugs, [Sajjad] does demonstrate it with a metal spoon in the mug.
While it doesn’t heat up to levels high enough to melt solder
, it works to keep coffee warm in a pinch if a metal mug isn’t available. He also plans to upgrade it so it takes up slightly less space on his desk. For now, though, it can easily keep his mug of coffee hot while it sits on his test bench.
Thanks to [Jerry] for the tip! | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338845",
"author": "Sailingfree",
"timestamp": "2021-04-11T18:17:31",
"content": "I remember my father in the early 70s coming home with his latest creation from work and getting my mum to test boiling milk in an iron saucepan. Very easy to control the heat with the potentiometer. ... | 1,760,373,122.690222 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/11/the-dynamotor-simplified/ | The Dynamotor Simplified | Al Williams | [
"classic hacks"
] | [
"brushless motor",
"dynamotor",
"fan",
"generator",
"inverter",
"motor generator",
"pc fan",
"Robert Murray-Smith",
"rotary transformer"
] | [Robert Murray-Smith] doesn’t like the price of inverters to convert DC to AC. That led him to build a dynamotor, or what is sometimes called a motor-generator set. These devices are just DC motors driving a generator. Of course, motors can also be used as generators and [Robert] had a stack of brushless motors in the form of PC fans.
A two-fan dynamotor was born
.
The brushless motors are attractive because, traditionally, the brushes are what usually fail on a dynamotor. The fan that will act as a generator needs some surgery, but it is simple. He scraped off all the control electronics and connected wires to the coils to form a three-phase generator. There’s no need for the fan blades in that configuration, either. If you were using ordinary motors and a generator, getting shafts concentric would be an important task. With the fans, it is simple to just line up the mounting holes and you get perfect alignment for free.
How does it work? [Robert] has a second video showing the
output on a scope
. You can see both videos below. The dynamotor makes a good-looking sine wave, probably much better than most reasonable-priced solid state inverters. He didn’t mention how much current he could successfully draw, but it probably isn’t much. You’d also need a transformer to replace a commercial inverter that would put out line voltage, so that would be some more loos in the system. On the other hand, if you wanted AC at a lower voltage, you might just replace all the transformers, if you were building a piece of gear yourself.
We’ve looked at
how these things work
in some detail. There were
common in old tube radios
, particularly military ones. | 28 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338822",
"author": "tomás zerolo",
"timestamp": "2021-04-11T15:00:49",
"content": "Thing is, to drive the (fan) motor, you need that three-phase AC right away!What to do, what to do?Functional folks invented the fixpoint combinator for this. Or something.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,123.355823 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/11/a-fresh-e-ink-newspaper-delivered-every-morning/ | A Fresh E-Ink Newspaper Delivered Every Morning | Matthew Carlson | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"e-ink",
"e-ink display",
"eink",
"electronic paper",
"newspaper"
] | [Greg Raiz] recently set out to make it easy to read multiple newspapers in the morning over breakfast. Inspired by a similar project, he built an
e-ink newspaper that hangs on his wall, delivering fresh news every ten minutes.
The project started with a 32″ Visionect e-ink display configured as a thin client. With a battery life measured in months thanks to the low power electronics, most of the work here was focused on the backend. A docker container running on a local NAS server collects newspapers via freedomforum.org, formats them to fit the aspect ratio of the display, and serves them up. [Greg] is really trying to preserve the design and thought that goes into the front page of each of these publications as traditional newspaper layouts are often designed by hand.
We love the simplicity and the “it-just-works” feel of this project as there are no buttons, wires, or anything that you need to fiddle with. [Greg] points out that it could also be used for other purposes, and we’d love to see a large calendar
such as this e-ink calendar
or perhaps even a 32″ version of
this e-ink laptop
. The code for this is on
his GitHub
with a video after the break. | 28 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338806",
"author": "Thinkerer",
"timestamp": "2021-04-11T11:43:37",
"content": "$6,000 for the dev kit used here?Lovely idea (and clevery puffery in the video) but I think I’ll wait for whatever version of Moore’s Law works on spendy E-ink displays to do its thing for a while.https... | 1,760,373,123.140734 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/13/werent-we-supposed-to-live-in-plastic-houses-in-the-future/ | Weren’t We Supposed To Live In Plastic Houses In The Future? | Jenny List | [
"Featured",
"History",
"home hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"fibreglass",
"futurism",
"futuro",
"plastic",
"plastic house"
] | Futurism is dead. At least, the wildly optimistic technology-based futurism of the middle years of the 20th century has been replaced in our version of their future by a much more pessimistic model of environmental challenges and economic woes. No longer will our flying cars take us from our space-age wonder-homes to the monorail which will whisk us through sparkling-clean cities to our robotised workplaces, instead while we may have a global computer network and voice controlled assistants we still live in much the same outdated style as we did decades ago. Our houses are made from wood and bricks by blokes with shovels rather than prefabricated by robots and delivered in minutes, and our furniture would be as familiar to a person from the 1950s as it is for us.
A Plastic Future That Never Quite Happened
There was a time when the future of housing looked remarkably different. Just as today we are busily experimenting with new materials and techniques in the type of stories we feature on Hackaday, in the 1950s there was a fascinating new material for engineers and architects to work with in the form of plastics. The Second World War had spawned a huge industry that needed to be repurposed for peacetime production, so almost everything was considered for the plastic treatment, including houses. It seemed a natural progression that our 21st century houses would be space-age pods rather than the pitched-roof houses inherited from the previous century, so what better way could there be to make them than using the new wonder material? A variety of plastic house designs emerged during that period which remain icons to this day, but here we are five or six decades later and we still don’t live in them. To find out why, it’s worth a look at some of them, partly as a fascinating glimpse of what might have been, but mostly to examine them with the benefit of hindsight.
Disneyland’s Monsanto House Of The Future. Orange County Archives from Orange County, California, United States of America,
CC BY 2.0
.
The most famous of the plastic house designs is the
Futuro
, designed in the late 1960s by the Finnish architect Matti Suuronen originally as a skiing lodge but later commercialised in modest numbers across the globe. It’s a sectional fibreglass reinforced plastic design that resembles a flying saucer, with oval windows around its circumference and a Learjet-style folding staircase for its entrance. It stands on a tubular frame that locates with four concrete pads, making it capable of being placed on almost any terrain. Internally it has several rooms and fitted furniture incorporated into its curved shape.
It wasn’t the only famous plastic house of the era even though it was the one most commercialised, aside from Suuronen’s smaller
Venturo
design there were also buildings such as Jean-Benjamin Maneval’s
Bubble House
and the Disney Corporation’s popular Disneyland attraction, the
Monsanto House Of The Future
which happened to be
MIT-designed
and was visited by many millions of people from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. These were both more practical designs than the Futuro, in which fibreglass modules would be assembled from central structures in a variety of configurations. The Disney house’s modules had steel frames cantilevered from a central concrete tower containing the building’s utilities, and was a serious attempt to model a house for a typical American family. All of its internal furniture and features were also made from plastic as a showcase of the new material, and though it was never inhabited there are period films showing park cast members acting the roles of residents. (As an aside, the central tower foundation is said to survive to this day at the park as a planter.)
So Where Did It All Go Wrong?
The interior of a Futuro house. Ilkka Jukarainen (
CC BY-ND 2.0
)
Given that the technology was proven by the serial production of the Futuro, ultimately by the longevity of the surviving houses, and by the resilience of the Disney house under the pressure of millions of visitors, it is evidently not a lack of practicality that caused them not to catch on. Maybe your tastes are different, but I for one would happily live in a clone of the Disney house if I were satisfied of its fire safety, and were someone to offer me the keys to a Futuro I’d have my bench installed within the day. But perhaps surprisingly given our popular view of the era as an explosion of the new, they struggled to gain acceptance when placed in real-world locations.
In fact though its influence on later decades was huge, the 1960s mod-wonderland showcased in popular myth like the
Austin Powers
movies was in reality restricted to a relatively few places and select age groups, and the appearance of a Futuro at the end of the street would have been too much for the more conservative residents whose tastes would have been formed decades earlier. Those few Futuros and their ilk which were built faced hostility from their neighbours, and were excluded by planning ordinances and home finance companies. The oil crisis of the early 1970s provided the death-knell by driving up the price of the raw materials, and by the 1980s that future was but a distant memory.
Turns Out You Can’t Order
Everything
from Amazon
Perhaps a further surprise comes in how relatively few of us today live in truly prefabricated homes (as opposed to site-built kit homes) even if they aren’t made from plastic. We have an immense demand for affordable housing in developed countries coupled with a building industry still using intensive techniques perfected in another century, and these conditions should be a perfect environment for prefabricated housing.
Manufactured prefabrication of housing units has a long history in many countries from Soviet apartment blocks through Western European high-rise buildings to Japanese and American modular homes. But they still meet resistance from local planning authorities, in building codes, and sometimes even from would-be customers themselves. In some respects this is driven by the interests of a construction industry that would face ruin were the need for its thousands of wet-trade workers to end, but in others it seems driven by a continuing obsession with making houses look as though they were made centuries ago. Perhaps if we are ever to solve our housing crises, we need once more to revive futurism. After all, our children might need it.
Header image: Futuro house, Nan Palmero (
CC BY 2.0
). | 117 | 36 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339361",
"author": "Dude",
"timestamp": "2021-04-13T14:32:59",
"content": "There’s a reason plastic houses never caught on, and that was discovered in the 70’s – though not immediately. The oil crisis brought the first wave of energy efficient housing, and they solved the problem b... | 1,760,373,123.293211 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/13/an-rp2040-board-designed-for-machine-learning/ | An RP2040 Board Designed For Machine Learning | Lewin Day | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"machine learning",
"pico",
"raspberry pi",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"rp2040",
"TinyML"
] | Machine learning (ML) typically conjures up ideas of fancy code requiring oodles of storage and tons of processing power. However, there are some ML models that, once trained, can readily be run on much more spartan hardware – even a microcontroller! The RP2040, star of the Raspberry Pi Pico, is one such chip up to the task,
and [Arducam] have announced a board aiming to employ it to those ends – the Pico4ML.
The board goes heavy on the hardware, equipping the RP2040 with plenty of tools useful for machine learning tasks. There’s a QVGA camera on board, as well as a tiny 0.96″ TFT display. The camera feed can even be streamed live to the screen if so desired. There’s also a microphone to capture audio and an IMU, already baked into the board. This puts object, speech, and gesture recognition well within the purview of the Pico4ML.
Running ML models on a board like the Pico4ML isn’t about robust high performance situations. Instead, it’s intended for applications where low power and portability are key. If you’ve got some ideas on what the Pico4ML could do and do well, sound off in the comments. We’d probably hook it up to a network so we could have it automatically place an order when we yell out for pizza. We’ve covered machine learning on microcontrollers before, too –
with a great Remoticon talk on how to get started! | 30 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339310",
"author": "Bike Forever",
"timestamp": "2021-04-13T11:48:30",
"content": "After a spider incident yesterday I’d like a spider tracking robot. Visual tracking and then feed back so we know where is safe.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
... | 1,760,373,122.967927 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/13/alien-art-drawn-with-surprisingly-simple-math/ | Alien Art Drawn With Surprisingly Simple Math | Michael Shaub | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"bit math",
"computer graphics",
"html5",
"javascript",
"math",
"pixel art"
] | Programmer [aemkei]
Tweeted the formula
(x ^ y) % 9
alongside code for more “alien art”
. But how can a formula as simple as
(x ^ y) % 9
result in a complex design? The combination of Bitwise XOR (
^
) and Modulo (
%
) generate a repeating pattern that’s still complex enough to satisfy the eye, and it’s ok if that doesn’t sound like an explanation. Bitwise operations are useful when working with memory and shift registers, but also worth learning if you want to drive lines or matrices of LEDs or interpret combinations of multiple switches, or in this case a great way to throw an interesting test pattern up on a new
flip-dot display
or
low-res LED matrix
. Are you into it? We are, so let’s jump in.
XOR Truth Table
0b00
0b01
0b10
0b11
0b00
0b00
0b01
0b10
0b11
0b01
0b01
0b00
0b11
0b10
0b10
0b10
0b11
0b00
0b01
0b11
0b11
0b10
0b01
0b00
Bitwise XOR compares each binary digit of the two inputs. The XOR returns a 1 when only one of the two digits is a 1, otherwise, it returns a zero for that position. Let’s say the coordinates were 3, 2. Converted to binary we have 0b11 and 0b10. From this truth table, we can see the most-significant digits are both 1, returning a 0, while only one of the least-significant digits is a 1, so the comparison returns a 1.
Moving onto the %, which is the Modulo operator has nothing to do with percentages. This operator divides two numbers and returns the remainder if any. Take
9 % 5
. When dividing 9 by 5, 5 goes in once with a remainder of 4 so
9 % 5 = 4
. Now our original formula from the top will draw a black box for every ninth number except that the bitwise XOR throws a wrench into that count, varying how often a number divisible by 9 appears and supplying the complexity necessary for these awesome patterns.
What are the most interesting designs can you create in a simple formula? | 20 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339275",
"author": "Niklas",
"timestamp": "2021-04-13T08:04:22",
"content": "Very nice! That reminds me of “Algorithmic symphonies from one line of code”:http://countercomplex.blogspot.com/2011/10/algorithmic-symphonies-from-one-line-of.html(x ^ y) % 9 might also sound interesting ... | 1,760,373,123.415405 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/12/imaging-the-past-with-time-travel-rephotography/ | Imaging The Past With Time-Travel Rephotography | Adam Zeloof | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"artifical intelligence",
"film",
"neural network",
"photography",
"restore"
] | Have you ever noticed that people in old photographs looks a bit weird? Deep wrinkles, sunken cheeks, and exaggerated blemishes are commonplace in photos taken up to the early 20th century. Surely not
everybody
looked like this, right? Maybe it was an odd makeup trend — was it just a fashionable look back then?
Not quite — it turns out that the culprit here is the film itself. The earliest glass-plate emulsions used in photography were only sensitive to the highest-frequency light, that which fell in the blue to ultraviolet range. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when combined with the fact that humans have red blood, this posed a real problem. While some of the historical figures we see in old photos may have benefited from an improved skincare regimen, the primary source of their haunting visage was that the photographic techniques available at the time were simply incapable of capturing skin properly. This lead to the sharp creases and dark lips we’re so used to seeing.
Of course, primitive film isn’t the only thing separating antique photos from the 42 megapixel behemoths that your camera can take nowadays. Film processing steps had the potential to introduce dust and other blemishes to the image, and over time the prints can fade and age in a variety of ways that depend upon the chemicals they were processed in. When rolled together, all of these factors make it difficult to paint an accurate portrait of some of history’s famous faces. Before you start to worry that you’ll never know just what Abraham Lincoln looked like, you might consider taking a stab at
Time-Travel Rephotography
.
Amazingly, Time-Travel Rephotography is a technique that actually lives up to how cool its name is. It uses a neural network (specifically, the StyleGAN2 framework) to take an old photo and project it into the space of high-res modern photos the network was trained on. This allows it to perform colorization, skin correction, upscaling, and various noise reduction and filtering operations in a single step which outputs remarkable results. Make sure you check out the project’s website to see some of the outputs at full-resolution.
We’ve seen
AI upscaling
before, but this project takes it to the next level by completely restoring antique photographs. We’re left wondering what techniques will be available 100 years from now to restore JPEGs stored way back in 2021, bringing them up to “modern” viewing standards.
Thanks to [Gus] for the tip!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNOGqNCbcV8 | 49 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339240",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2021-04-13T05:19:23",
"content": "It’s not restoring as the info never was there in the first place. Now this is called enhancing!The fun fact is AI predicts color, but from paintings and the few remaining autochrome pictures we know th... | 1,760,373,123.56448 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/12/why-pendulums-sync-up-and-other-mysteries-explained/ | Why Pendulums Sync Up, And Other Mysteries Explained | Lewin Day | [
"Science"
] | [
"Clocks",
"Huygens",
"metronome",
"physics",
"synchronisation"
] | If you’ve ever seen fireflies flashing together at night, you’ve witnessed the glory of synchronisation. In a new video,
[Veritasium] examines some of the mechanisms in nature that help create order out of chaos.
The story begins back in 1665, when [Christiaan Huygens] discovered that two pendulum clocks hanging from the same wooden beam would
spontaneously synchronise over a period of time.
The same principle is then demonstrated with metronomes – an experiment readily recreated in the home. Other systems that show this same eerie coordiation are then explored – from tidally locked moons orbiting around planets (like ours!), to chemical oscillators discovered by Soviet scientists during the cold war. There’s also a great explanation of the problems faced by the London Millennium Bridge, which swayed wildly under heavy foot traffic as it induced pedestrians to walk in sync.
Overall, it’s a look at some of the action behind the scenes that ties seemingly independent systems together. Learning about such things can prove useful too –
it might even help you solve real world problems in your machine shop!
Video after the break. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339228",
"author": "Not Busted.",
"timestamp": "2021-04-13T03:19:20",
"content": "Myth confirmed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6339242",
"author": "Feinfinger (M-x totally-tame-mode)",
"timestamp": "2021-04-13T05:33:... | 1,760,373,123.610551 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/12/space-shuttle-program-40th-anniversary-of-the-first-launch-of-columbia/ | Space Shuttle Program: 40th Anniversary Of The First Launch Of Columbia | Dan Maloney | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"Coumbia",
"Crippen",
"nasa",
"orbiter",
"Space Shuttle",
"spaceflight",
"STS-1",
"Young"
] | For those who grew up watching the endless coverage of the Apollo program in the 60s and 70s, the sight of OV-102, better known as the Space Shuttle Columbia, perched on pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center was somewhat disconcerting. Compared to the sleek lines of a Saturn V rocket, the spacecraft on display on April 12, 1981, seemed an ungainly beast. It looked like an airplane that had been tacked onto a grain silo, with a couple of roman candles attached to it for good measure. Everything about it seemed the opposite of what we’d come to expect from spaceflight, but as the seconds ticked away to liftoff
40 years ago this day
, we still had hope that this strange contraption wouldn’t disappoint.
At first, as the main engines ignited, it seemed that Columbia would indeed disappoint. The liquid hydrogen exhaust plume seemed anemic, at least compared to the gout of incandescent kerosene that had belched out from every rocket I’d ever seen launched. But then those magnificent — and as it later turned out, deadly dangerous — solid rocket boosters came to life, and Columbia fairly leaped off the launchpad. Americans were on their way to space again after a six-year absence, and I remember cheering astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen on as I watched the coverage with my dad that early Sunday morning.
STS-1
Crippen and Young training aboard Columbia for STS-1.
The seeds for what would become the Space Transportation System (STS), which was the official name for the Space Shuttle program, were sown even before the famous flight of Apollo 11 in 1969. The incredible expense of launching an almost completely expendable rocket to get astronauts into orbit or beyond was becoming untenable, so the focus switched to building a new generation of spacecraft with reusability in mind. Dozens of ideas were floated, but eventually the rocket-boosted spaceplane concept won out and the STS program was funded by Congress in 1972.
The first flight of Columbia on that April morning, which by sheer luck coincided with
the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s ride to space aboard Vostok-1
, was a record-setter in many ways. Not only was it to be the first orbital flight of a reusable spaceplane, but it was also the first time America had a crewed maiden flight. Every rocket used for crewed missions to that point had had at least one uncrewed flight. Columbia had been tested on the pad with her main engines lit, and sister ship Enterprise had done extensive unpowered drop tests for approach and landing training, but everything between the countdown clock reaching zero and the end of reentry had never been done before.
STS-1 was a brief mission filled with technical tests; it was intended to make sure the orbiter was spaceworthy and did very little if any science. Young and Crippen stayed aloft for a little more than two days before deorbiting over the Indian Ocean, beginning the unpowered, Mach 24 reentry process. Much of the early reentry maneuvers were handled automatically by Columbia’s on-board computers, but Commander Young eventually took the stick and guided the spaceplane to a smooth landing on the dry lake beds of Edwards Air Force Base in California. STS-1 was complete, and the age of the Space Shuttle had begun.
Columbia’s Legacy
As with any major system, the design of the Shuttle was a compromise, but given its high profile as a successor to Apollo and the competing factions vying for the capabilities it wanted to see in a launch system, it’s a wonder the spacecraft ever got off the ground. Along with the test article Enterprise, the five STS orbiters — Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour — have been called the most complex machines ever built by humans. The truth of that is probably open to debate, but there’s no doubt that the complexity of the orbiters was at odds with its reusability, and the desired
quick turnaround times from each orbital mission were never delivered
.
Still, the Shuttle fleet delivered a total of 133 successful missions, ferried 355 individuals to space, and delivered thousands of tons of payloads into orbit and beyond. The Hubble Space Telescope, both its initial delivery and later repairs, were courtesy of the Shuttle, and a great many of the modules of the ISS were delivered in the orbiter’s ample cargo bay. The interplanetary missions that started in the payload bay of orbiters — notably Magellan, Galileo, and Ulysses — are still paying dividends in terms of understanding the nature of the universe.
Still, the Space Shuttle program suffered from a pair of catastrophic losses. As much as I remember the launch of STS-1, I much more keenly remember the loss of Challenger at launch on STS-51-L in 1986, and the reentry breakup of Columbia on STS-107 in 2003. Those losses plus the failure to deliver the rapid turnaround and lower costs needed to maintain a reasonable tempo of launches were the final nails in the coffin for the STS program, which was canceled after the 2011 landing of STS-135. Still, the program had staying power, and for 30 years it was the only way for America to get payloads upstairs. | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339219",
"author": "Daryl Baker",
"timestamp": "2021-04-13T01:35:31",
"content": "I remember this as clear as yesterday, not the actual launch but the scrubbed attempt on the 10th.I was 11 and school was 5 minutes away, back then you could go home for lunch, great I thought go home... | 1,760,373,123.478194 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/12/queen-victorias-secret-teletype-and-cosmac-elf/ | Queen Victoria’s Secret (Teletype And COSMAC Elf) | Al Williams | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"1802",
"cosmac",
"cosmac elf",
"retrocomputing",
"steampunk",
"vintage computer"
] | We don’t really think anyone in the Victorian era had a COSMAC Elf — the homebrew computer based around the RCA 1802 CPU. But if they did, it might have looked like [Daniel Ross’]
steampunk recreation of the system that includes an appropriate-looking teletype device
. You can see the thing in a series of videos, below. There are actually quite a few videos showing different parts of the system, along with several blog postings stretching back a few months.
A
magic eye tube
doesn’t look out of place in this build. We especially liked the glass tube displays and the speaker, although we thought the
USS Enterprise
looked out of place with the technology based on stone knives and bearskins, to paraphrase Mr. Spock. On the plus side, the VFD displays have the right glowing look, although a Nixie would have been pretty good there, too.
The videos don’t have much detail, but the blog posts do if you wanted to attempt something similar. Honestly, 1802 system design is pretty easy thanks to the its on-chip DMA that allows you to load memory from switches with no actual software like a monitor. The teletype started out life as a Remington #7 from around 1900, although another newer machine donated parts to get everything working. It is a testament to how well things were built then that it took as much abuse as it did and still has working parts.
We have a soft spot for the 1802 — it was a very good design for its time. We’ve even gone as far
as to simulate it
. | 15 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6339187",
"author": "chris snyder",
"timestamp": "2021-04-12T22:40:55",
"content": "LOLO the Cosmac elf ( RCA 1802) the fist microprocessor I ever encountered, One of th3e electronics mags had a build project and a friend of mine got a development kit when we were both in the Navy. ... | 1,760,373,123.659493 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/10/the-last-days-of-the-wild-west/ | The Last Days Of The Wild West | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Radio Hacks",
"Rants",
"Space"
] | [
"eavesdropping",
"Falcon 9",
"newsletter",
"sdr",
"SpaceX"
] | We loved it a few weeks ago when an international team of
hackers managed to record and decode telemetry and images from SpaceX launches
. And now it looks like
SpaceX has started encrypting it all
in response. Booo!
Decoding satellite and other space ship transmissions has been a great hacker pastime. Most recently, we’ve seen a
group working on listening in to the Chinese Tianwen-1 Mars probe
shortly after its launch, but
listening to the Deep Space Network
or even just
decoding weather satellite broadcasts
can give folks a reason to stretch their radio muscles.
We understand that SpaceX runs some contract missions for US gov’t agencies that don’t appreciate leaking info about their satellite’s whereabouts, but for non-secret missions, we don’t see the harm in letting the amateurs listen in over their shoulder. Maybe they’re doing it for PR reasons if/when something goes badly wrong?
Whatever the reasons, it’s a shame. Space has been open to hackers for a long time, knowingly in the case of amateur satellites, and unknowingly in the case of many other satellites which until the mid-90s had
command channels
that were unencrypted. (I’ll have to stick with “unnamed sources” on this one, but I do know a person who has rotated a satellite that he or she didn’t own.) There’s a lot to be learned by listening to signals from above, and while you can still decode weather satellite data yourself, it’s not quite as sexy as downloading images straight from a Falcon 9.
The cool hand for SpaceX to have played would have been to say “of course — we broadcast unencrypted as PR to our biggest fans” but it looks instead like they simply didn’t think that anyone would be listening in, and this caught them by surprise and they panicked. In 2021, with something as complicated as a space mission, that’s a little bit embarrassing. Anyway, to those of you who managed to get in before encryption, kudos!
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on
the web version of the newsletter
.
Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning?
You should sign up
! | 21 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338699",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2021-04-10T17:25:14",
"content": "Shout out to some of the pioneers of this…http://www.zarya.info/Kettering/Kettering.php",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6338701",
"aut... | 1,760,373,123.722423 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/10/newest-playstation-exploit-skips-the-disc/ | Newest PlayStation Exploit Skips The Disc | Tom Nardi | [
"Playstation Hacks",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"exploit",
"loader",
"playstation",
"psx",
"sony"
] | Last month we brought you word of tonyhax, a clever exploit for the original Sony PlayStation that leveraged a buffer overflow in several of the games from the
Tony Hawk Pro Skater
series to load arbitrary code from a specially prepared memory card. But now [Bradlin] has taken that idea a step further and
developed a software exploit for Sony’s iconic console that doesn’t need to be triggered from a game
.
The exploit is considerably more complex this time around, but [Bradlin]
does an excellent job of breaking it down for those who want the gritty details
. The short version is that missing boundary checks in the PlayStation’s built-in memory card handling routines mean a carefully formatted “block” on the memory card can get the console to execute a small 128 byte payload. That’s not a lot of room to work with, but it ends up being just enough to load up additional code stored elsewhere on the memory card and really kick things off.
Unlike tonyhax, which was designed specifically to allow the user to
swap their retail
Tony Hawk
disc with a game burned to a CD-R
, [Bradlin]’s FreePSXBoot is presented as more of a generic loader. As of right now, it doesn’t allow you to actually play burned games, although its inevitable that somebody will connect those last few dots soon.
If you want to check out the progress so far, all you need is wire a PlayStation memory card up to an Arduino, write the provided image to it, and stick it in the slot. [Bradlin] says the exploit doesn’t work 100% of the time (something else that will surely be addressed in future releases), but it shouldn’t take too many attempts before you’re greeted with the flashing screen that
proves Sony’s 27 year old console has now truly been bested
. | 17 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338658",
"author": "Alex Rossie",
"timestamp": "2021-04-10T13:21:53",
"content": "I think I called this in the comments to the original tonyhax.FreeMcBoot was a revolution for PS2 home brew hopefully it has the same effect on PSX.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"repli... | 1,760,373,123.776163 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/10/dynamic-build-platforms-for-3d-printers-remove-supports-and-save-material/ | Dynamic Build Platforms For 3D Printers Remove Supports And Save Material | Bob Baddeley | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printer",
"3d printing",
"3d printing techniques"
] | We’re all too familiar with the 3D printing post-processing step of removing supports, and lamenting the waste of plastic on yet another dwindling reel of filament. When the material is expensive NinjaFlex or exotic bio-printers, printing support is downright painful. A group at USC has come up with a novel way of significantly reducing the amount of material that’s 3D printed by
raising portions of the bed over time
, and it makes us wonder why a simpler version isn’t done regularly.
In the USC version, the bed has a bunch of square flat metal pieces, with a metal tube underneath each. The length of the tube determines the eventual height of that square. Before the print is made, the bed is prepared by inserting the appropriate length tubes in the correct squares. Then, during the print, a single motor pushes a platform up, and based on the height of the pin, that portion of the bed raises appropriately, then stops at the right height.
This is a significant savings over having a matrix of linear motors or servos to control each square, at the cost of having to prepare the pins for each print.
But it has us wondering; since CURA and other slicing software have the ability to pause at height, what if the slicing software could allow for the placement of spacer blocks of a known size? The user would have a variety of reusable spacer blocks, and position them in the software, and the slicer would build the support material starting on top of the block. It could print a rectangle on the base layer to aid in proper placement of the blocks during printing, and pause at the correct heights to let the user insert the blocks. At the end of the print a lot less support material has been used.
For situations where you want to leave your print to run unattended, or if the cost of the material is low enough that it doesn’t justify the effort, then maybe this isn’t worth it. Another problem might be heating that platform, though since only support material will be printed on it, some curling won’t matter much. What do you think? | 31 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338637",
"author": "Arthur Wolf",
"timestamp": "2021-04-10T11:13:24",
"content": "It would be pretty easy to do this without needing to pre-set tubes of various lenghts under the bed:Instead of a grid of tubes, have a grid of (very fine pitch) threaded rod, with a pair of magnets a... | 1,760,373,123.848519 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/10/nasas-lucy-stretches-its-wings-ahead-of-trojan-trek/ | NASA’s Lucy Stretches Its Wings Ahead Of Trojan Trek | Zach Zeman | [
"Space"
] | [
"asteroid",
"Jupiter",
"nasa",
"solar panels",
"solar power",
"space exploration",
"spacecraft"
] | The good news about using solar power to explore space is there are no clouds to block your sunlight. Some dust and debris, yes, but nowhere near what we have to deal with on planets. The bad news is, as you wander further and further out in the solar system, your panels capture less and less of the sunlight you need for power. NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will be dependent on every square inch, so we’re happy to hear
technicians have successfully tested its solar panel deployment
in preparation for an October 2021 launch.
Trojan asteroids (in green) orbit the Sun ahead of and behind Jupiter.
Lucy’s 12-year mission
is to examine one Main Belt asteroid and seven so-called Trojans, which are asteroids shepherded around the Sun in two clusters at Lagrange points just ahead and behind Jupiter in its orbit. The convoluted orbital path required for all those visits will sling the spacecraft farther from the sun than any solar-powered space mission has gone before. To make up for the subsequent loss of watts per area, the designers have done their best to maximize the area. Though the panels fold up to a package only 4 inches (10 centimeters) thick, they open up to an enormous diameter of almost 24 feet (7.3 meters); which is enough to provide the roughly 500 watts required at literally astronomical distances from their power source.
Near-Earth asteroids are exciting targets for exploration partly because of the hazards they pose to our planet. Trojan asteroids, thought to be primordial remnants of the same material that formed the outer planets, pose no such danger to us but may hold insights about the early formation of our solar system. We’re already eagerly anticipating
the return of OSIRIS-REx’s sample
, and
Hayabusa2 continues its mission
after so many firsts. An extended tour of these farther-off objects will keep us watching for years to come. Check out the video embedded below for Lucy’s mission overview. | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338634",
"author": "Truth",
"timestamp": "2021-04-10T10:39:27",
"content": "Surely this is once instance where smaller would be better. Being a 7.3 meters (24 feet) target for debris has to be an undesirable feature. Or would going nuclear with a 500+ watt Radioisotope Thermoelectr... | 1,760,373,124.198616 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/09/kerbal-space-program-goes-to-the-movies-in-stowaway/ | Kerbal Space Program Goes To The Movies InStowaway | Tom Nardi | [
"Games",
"Space"
] | [
"kerbal space program",
"ksp",
"mars",
"movie",
"orbital mechanics",
"sci-fi"
] | Fans of the lusciously voiced space aficionado [Scott Manley] will know he often uses Kerbal Space Program (KSP) in his videos to knock together simple demonstrations of blindingly complex topics such as orbital mechanics.
But as revealed in one of his recent videos
, YouTube isn’t the only place where his KSP craft can be found these days. It turns out he used his virtual rocket building skills to help the creators of Netflix’s
Stowaway
develop a realistic portrayal of a crewed spacecraft in a Mars cycler orbit.
The Mars cycler concept was proposed in 1985 by Buzz Aldrin as a way to establish a long-term human presence on the Red Planet. Put simply, it describes an orbit that would allow a vehicle to travel continuously between Earth and Mars while needing only an occasional engine burn for course corrections. The spacecraft couldn’t actually stop at either planet, but while it made a close pass, smaller craft could rendezvous with it to hitch a ride. The concept can be thought of as a sort of interplanetary train: where passengers and cargo are picked up and dropped off at “stations” above Earth and Mars. It’s worth noting that a similar cycler orbit should be possible for Earth-Venus trips,
but nobody really wants to go there
.
An early KSP proof of concept for
Stowaway.
The writers of
Stowaway
wanted their film to take place on a Mars cycler, and to avoid having to create the illusion of weightlessness, they wanted their fictional craft to also have some kind of artificial gravity. The only problem was, they weren’t sure what that would actually look like. So they reached out to [Scott], who in turn used KSP to throw together a rough idea of how such a ship might work in the real-world.
As you can see in the video below, the CGI spacecraft shown in the film’s recently released trailer ended up bearing a strong resemblance to its KSP prototype. While naturally some artistic license was used, [Scott] is excited by what he’s seen so far. The spinning spacecraft, which uses a spent upper stage to counterbalance its crew module and features a stationery utility node at the center, certainly looks impressive; all the more so with the knowledge that it’s based on sound principles.
While
Netflix has had a hand in some surprisingly realistic science fiction
in the past, they’ve also greenlit some real groan-worthy productions (if you haven’t watched
Away
, don’t). So until we can see the whole thing for ourselves, we can only hope that [Scott]’s sage advice will allow the crew of
Stowaway
to fly safe. | 14 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338615",
"author": "Cuvtixo D",
"timestamp": "2021-04-10T07:01:11",
"content": "I take exception to “nobody wants to go there”! That linked article explains “At an altitude of approximately 50 kilometers, conditions inside the Venusian atmosphere… (are) almost identical to surface-... | 1,760,373,124.048626 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/09/engineering-the-less-boring-way/ | Engineering The Less Boring Way | Al Williams | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"course",
"education",
"engineering",
"mechanical engineering",
"mechanics",
"statics",
"vector",
"vectors",
"youtube"
] | We have to admire a YouTube channel with the name [
Less Boring Lectures
]. After all, he isn’t promising they won’t be boring, just less boring. Actually though, we found quite a few of the videos pretty interesting and not boring at all. The channel features videos about mechanical engineering and related subjects like statics and math. While your typical electronics project doesn’t always need that kind of knowledge, some of them do and the mental exercise is good for you regardless. A case in point: spend seven minutes and learn about
2D
and
3D
vectors in two short videos (see below). Or spend 11 minutes and do the whole
vector video
in one gulp.
These reminded us of Kahn Academy videos, although the topics are pretty hardcore. For example, if you want to know about axial loading, shear strain, or free body diagrams, this is a good place to look.
There are a lot of things we tend to just guess at when doing projects, like what kind of bolts to use to hold things together. Usually, we overdesign and use our experience, but if you really want to optimize what you are doing or you need to be absolutely sure, there are topics on bolt tension and failure theories.
There are also good videos about gears and bearings and other traditional mechanical engineering topics. Will you get as much out of these videos as you would taking some engineering classes at the local university? Maybe not. But you might remember about the same amount of things in six months. Funny how that works.
We find we’ve been much more interested in mechanics since we’ve been
3D printing
. Some of that is because we want to design better models, but sometimes we are more interested in the
machine itself
. | 6 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338632",
"author": "retiredJan",
"timestamp": "2021-04-10T10:35:07",
"content": "Nice refresh, long time from class (~50 years)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6338633",
"author": "Pekka",
"timestamp": "2021-04-10T10:37... | 1,760,373,123.983188 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/09/laser-cut-solder-masks-from-business-cards/ | Laser-Cut Solder Masks From Business Cards | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Laser Hacks"
] | [
"business card",
"circuit board",
"Kapton",
"laser cutter",
"pcb",
"solder",
"solder mask"
] | There are plenty of ways to make printed circuit boards at home but for some features it’s still best to go to a board shop. Those features continue to decrease in number, but not a lot of people can build things such as a four-layer board at home. Adding a solder mask might be one of those features for some, but if you happen to have a laser cutter and a few business cards sitting around then
this process is within reach of the home builder too
.
[Jeremy Cook] is lucky enough to have a laser cutter around, and he had an idea to use it to help improve his surface mount soldering process. By cutting the solder mask layer into a business card with the laser cutter, it can be held on top of a PCB and then used as a stencil to add the solder paste more easily than could otherwise be done. It dramatically decreases the amount of time spent on this part of the process, especially when multiple boards are involved since the stencil can be used multiple times.
While a laser cutter certainly isn’t a strict requirement, it certainly does help over something like an X-acto knife. [Jeremy] also notes that this process is sometimes done with transparency film or even Kapton,
which we have seen a few times before as well
. | 22 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338560",
"author": "Alexander Wikström",
"timestamp": "2021-04-09T23:24:40",
"content": "Another solder stencil material that is fairly perfect for small runs of a handful of boards is regular 80 gram paper.If one desires more thickness, there is thicker paper on the market too.Yes... | 1,760,373,124.259171 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/11/new-part-day-espressif-esp32-c6/ | New Part Day: Espressif ESP32-C6 Includes WiFi 6 And A RISC-V Core | Kerry Scharfglass | [
"Parts"
] | [
"ble",
"bluetooth",
"bluetooth 5",
"ESP32",
"ESP32-C6",
"ESP32-S3",
"espressif",
"New Part Day",
"wifi",
"WiFi 6"
] | If you’re a reader of Hackaday, then you’ve almost certainly encountered an Espressif part. The twin microcontroller families ESP8266 and ESP32 burst onto the scene and immediately became the budget-friendly microcontroller option for projects of all types. We’ve seen the line expand recently with the ESP32-C3 (packing a hacker-friendly RISC-V core) and ESP32-S3 with oodles of IO and fresh new CPU peripherals. Now we have a
first peek at the ESP32-C6
; a brand new RISC-V based design with the hottest Wi-Fi standard on the block; Wi-Fi 6.
There’s not much to go on here besides the standard Espressif block diagram and a press release, so we’ll tease out what detail we can. From the diagram it looks like the standard set of interfaces will be on offer; they even go so far as to say “ESP32-C6 is similar to ESP32-C3” so we’ll refer you to
[Jenny’s] excellent coverage of that part
. In terms of other radios the ESP32-C6 continues Espressif’s trend of supporting Bluetooth 5.0. Of note is that this part includes both the coded and 2 Mbps Bluetooth PHYs, allowing for either dramatically longer range or a doubling of speed. Again, this isn’t the
first ESP32
to support these features but we always appreciate when a manufacturer goes above and beyond the minimum spec.
Welcome to the ESP32-C6
The headline feature is, of course, Wi-Fi 6 (AKA 802.11ax). Unfortunately this is still exclusively a 2.4GHz part, so if you’re looking for 5GHz support (
or 6GHz
in Wi-Fi 6E) this isn’t the part for you. And while Wi-Fi 6 brings a bevy of features from significantly higher speed to better support for mesh networks, that isn’t the focus here either. Espressif have brought a set of IoT-centric features; two radio improvements with OFDMA and MU-MIMO, and the protocol feature Target Wake Time.
OFDMA and MU-MIMO are both different ways of allowing multiple connected device to communicate with an access point simultaneously. OFDMA allows devices to slice up and share channels more efficiency; allowing the AP more flexibility in allocating its constrained wireless resources. With OFDMA the access point can elect to give an entire channel to a single device, or slice it up to multiplex between more than once device simultaneously. MU-MIMO works similarly, but with entire antennas. Single User MIMO (SU-MIMO) allows an AP and connected device to communicate using a more than one antenna each. In contrast Multi User MIMO (MU-MIMO) allows APs and devices to share antenna arrays between multiple devices simultaneously, grouped directionally.
Finally there’s Target Wake Time, the simplest of the bunch. It works very similarly to the Bluetooth Low Energy (4.X and 5.X) concept of a connection interval, allowing devices to negotiate when they’re next going to communicate. This allows devices more focused on power than throughput to negotiate long intervals between which they can shut down their wireless radios (or more of the processor) to extended battery life.
These wireless features are useful on their own, but there is another potential benefit. Some fancy new wireless modes are only available on a network if
every
connected device supports them. A Wi-Fi 6 network with 10 Wi-Fi 6 devices and one W-Fi 5 (802.11ac) one may not be able to use all the bells and whistles, degrading the entire network to the lowest common denominator. The recent multiplication of low cost IoT devices has meant a corresponding proliferation of bargain-basement wireless radios (often Espressif parts!). Including new Wi-Fi 6 exclusive features in what’s sure to be an accessible part is a good start to alleviating problems with our already strained home networks.
When will we start seeing the ESP32-C6 in the wild? We’re still waiting to hear but we’ll let you know as soon as we can get our hands on some development hardware to try out.
Thanks to friend of the Hackaday [
Fred Temperton
] for spotting this while it was fresh! | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338799",
"author": "Menno",
"timestamp": "2021-04-11T10:49:57",
"content": "I’m not so sure about the immediately in “immediately became the budget-friendly microcontroller option”.According to Wikipedia’s article onthe ESP8266:“The chip first came to the attention of Western maker... | 1,760,373,124.317857 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/11/learn-multirotors-from-first-principles/ | Learn Multirotors From First Principles | Jenny List | [
"drone hacks",
"Video Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"drone",
"multirotor"
] | Multirotors, or drones as they’re popularly called, are so ubiquitous as to have become a $10 toy. They’re no less fun to fly for it though, and learning how they work is no less fascinating. It’s something [Science Buddies] has addressed in
a series of videos examining them from first principles
. They may be aimed at youngsters, but they’re still an entertaining enough watch for those of advancing years.
Instead of starting with a multirotor control board, the video takes four little DC motors and two popsicle sticks to make a rudimentary drone frame. Then with the help of dowels and springs it tethers the craft as the control mechanisms are explained bit by bit, from simple on-off motor control through proportional control to adding an Arduino and following through to how a multirotor stays in flight. It’s instructional and fun to watch, and maybe even for some of us, a chance to learn something.
We’ve had multirotor projects aplenty here over the years, but
how about something completely different made from popsicle sticks
? | 5 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338907",
"author": "Clovis Fritzen",
"timestamp": "2021-04-12T01:37:39",
"content": "Good stuff! starting from the principles is the way to go; ready-made quads are so cheap these days that nobody even cares about learing how to DIY one (really from scratch) anymore.",
"parent_... | 1,760,373,124.449136 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/10/camera-zero-looks-cool-runs-cool/ | Camera Zero Looks Cool, Runs Cool | Al Williams | [
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"arducam",
"camera",
"neopixel",
"neopixel ring"
] | Security cameras are a commodity item these days,
but that doesn’t mean [edgett’s] design using a Pi Zero
, an Arducam, an LED ring, and active cooling isn’t worth a look. This is a great example of how integrating some off-the-shelf modules and 3D printing can create very professional-looking results. There’s also a trackball interface so you can control the camera. The software, written in Python, is available on
GitHub
.
The trackball doesn’t move the camera, but it does manage a menu system that lets you capture a photo or video, set the optical parameters like exposure, shutter, and ISO, and launch Camera Remote to offer a Web-based interface instead of the trackball.
If you add infrared illumination, you can swap out the camera for an IR version and have a nice-looking night vision camera, too. The camera is reasonably compact. Not including the lens and the tripod, the camera measures 100 by 44 by 44 mm. So under two inches square and about 4 inches long.
We worried a little about gluing the LED ring down, but then again our phones are all glued together these days, so maybe we should stop fretting. One thing we didn’t see on either site, though, was a picture taken with the camera itself. However, the
12-megapixel camera
and quality lens should do a great job. We’ve even seen that particular camera module
work with a much smaller computer
recently. | 3 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338781",
"author": "BotherSaidPooh",
"timestamp": "2021-04-11T07:06:12",
"content": "Active cooling? Thats remarkable.I looked into using micro Peltiers from projectors and Macbook laptop components to make an astro-photography setup here but couldn’t find a used CCD cheaply enough... | 1,760,373,124.360374 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/10/scratch-built-robot-arm-looks-like-something-off-the-factory-floor/ | Scratch-Built Robot Arm Looks Like Something Off The Factory Floor | Dan Maloney | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"AC servo",
"aluminum",
"arm",
"articulated",
"industrial",
"robot"
] | [Jeremy Fielding] is rightly impressed with the power and precision of industrial robot arms. The big arms that you see welding cars on assembly lines and the like are engineering feats in their own right, which is why his leap into scratch-building one in the home shop promises to be quite an adventure, and one we’re eager to follow.
From the look of the video below, [Jeremy]’s arm is already substantially complete, so it seems like he’ll be releasing videos that detail how he got to the point where this impressively large and powerful arm took over so much of his shop. He’s not fooling around here — this is a seven-axis articulated arm built from aluminum and powered by AC servos. [Jeremy] allows that some of the structural parts are still 3D-printed prototypes that he’s using to finalize the design before committing to cutting metal, a wise move as he notes that most of the metalworking skills he needs to complete the build are still fairly new to him. It still looks amazing, and we’re looking forward to the rest of the series to see how he got to this point.
We always appreciate [Jeremy]’s enthusiasm and presentation style, and we generally learn a lot from his videos. Whether it’s
a CNC table saw
,
a homebrew dynamometer
, or
supersonically melting baseballs
, his videos are always great to watch. | 13 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338767",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-04-11T03:04:38",
"content": "I could see a fully robotized workshop.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6338770",
"author": "ticktok",
"timestamp": "2021-04-11T03:39:50",
... | 1,760,373,124.406482 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/10/coffee-table-railroad-flips-to-hide-the-fun/ | Coffee Table Railroad Flips To Hide The Fun | Mike Szczys | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"coffee table",
"model railroad",
"model train",
"train"
] | The livingroom coffee table has long been a favorite realm of the model railroad. But what to do when you actually want to have coffee? [Peter Waldraff] has come up with a most eloquent answer to the problem by designing
a coffee table model railroad capable of turning the world upside down
.
This isn’t [Peter’s] first rodeo. In his demo video below he shows off a coffee table train he built 20 years ago using a rectangular layout under glass. This time the circular design means a spherical volume can rotate around two skateboard bearing pivot points, revealing the mountainous scene on one side and the boring old wood table on the other. But what happens to the N-scale train itself when gravity is reversed? There’s a brilliant solution to that!
The frame of the coffee table includes an outer loop for train storage. Before flipping the model upside-down, the train itself is sent to this siding for safe keeping. In
an earlier build video
we can glimpse the latching mechanism that uses a solenoid and is actuated by a magnet in the center of the table. A clever use of toggle bolts (sometimes known as butterfly anchors for securing things on drywall) has them transfer power to the outer ring of storage track when their spring-loaded arms come in contact with some screw heads on the other side of the gap. The source of the electricity is a rechargeable Makita power tool battery in a hidden chamber within the mountain.
Of course we’ve seen other hideaway coffee table trains like
this lovely hand-carved version
. But you have to admire how [Peter] managed to incorporate everything into a self contained unit here, without the needing to store a removable cover. If you are someone who wants to always show off your handy work,
that’s where a perspex box coffee table design comes into play
. | 13 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338757",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-04-11T00:08:26",
"content": "Great idea!I’ll link it to a Model Railroader forum.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6338785",
"author": "Mark A.",
"timestamp": "2021-04-11T08:4... | 1,760,373,124.499999 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/10/antique-map-of-paris-with-modern-tech/ | Antique Map Of Paris With Modern Tech | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Art",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"antique",
"art",
"classic",
"ESP8266",
"lunar",
"map",
"moon",
"neopixel",
"Paris",
"solar",
"sun",
"tracking"
] | There’s plenty to love about antiques, from cars, furniture, to art. While it might be a little bit of survivorship bias, it’s easy to appreciate these older things for superior quality materials, craftsmanship, or even simplicity. They are missing out on all of our modern technology, though, so performing “restomods” on classics is a popular activity nowadays.
This antique map of Paris
, for example, is made of a beautiful hardwood but has been enhanced by some modern amenities as well.
At first the creator of this project, [Marc], just wanted to give it some ambient lighting, but it eventually progressed over the course of two years to have a series of Neopixels hidden behind it that illuminate according to the current sun and moon positions. The Neopixels get their instructions from an ESP8266 which calculates these positions using code [Marc] wrote himself based on the current date. Due to the limitations of the ESP8266 it’s not particularly precise, but it gets the job done to great effect.
To improve on the accuracy, [Marc] notes that an ESP32 could be used instead, but we can give the ESP8266 a pass for now since the whole project is an excellent art installation even if it is slightly off on its calculations. If you need higher accuracy for tracking celestial objects,
you can always grab a Raspberry Pi too
. | 7 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338736",
"author": "Gregg Eshelman",
"timestamp": "2021-04-10T20:59:33",
"content": "Take a modern digital map and give it a Victorian era treatment. Then print it on translucent paper to overlay onto a display. Get realtime traffic and other relevant data to underlay the paper map... | 1,760,373,124.54702 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/10/orphaned-iot-sleep-tracker-resurrected-as-an-air-quality-monitor/ | Orphaned IoT Sleep Tracker Resurrected As An Air Quality Monitor | Anool Mahidharia | [
"home hacks",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"hack",
"hardware",
"hello sense",
"IoT",
"repair",
"sense"
] | If you have a Hello Sense sleep tracking device lying around somewhere in your drawer of discards, it can be brought back to life in a new avatar. Just follow [Alexander Gee]’s instructions to
resurrect the Hello Sense as an IoT air quality data-logger
.
In 2014, startup “Hello” introduced the
Sense, an IoT sleep tracking device
with a host of embedded sensors, all wrapped up in a slick, injection molded spherical enclosure. The device was quite nice, and by 2015, they had managed to raise $21M in funding. But their business model didn’t seem sustainable, and in 2017, Hello shut shop. Leaving all the Sense devices orphaned, sitting dormant in beautifully designed enclosures with no home to dial back to.
The original Sense included six sensors: illumination, humidity, temperature, sound, dust / particulate matter on the main device, and motion sensing via a separate Bluetooth dongle called the Pill. [Alexander] was interested in air quality measurements, so only needed to get data from the humidity/temperature and dust sensors. Thankfully for [Alexander], a detailed
Hello Sense Teardown
by [Lindsay Williams] was useful in getting started.
The hardware consisted of four separate PCB’s — power conditioning, LED ring, processor, and sensor board. This ensured that everything could be fit inside the orb shaped enclosure. Getting rid of the LED ring and processor board made space for a new NodeMCU ESP8266 brain which could be hooked up to the sensors. Connecting the NodeMCU to the I2C interface of the humidity/temperature sensor required some bodge wire artistry. Interfacing the PM sensor was a bit more easier since it already had a dedicated cable connected to the original processor board which could be reconnected to the new processor board. The NodeMCU board runs a simple Arduino sketch,
available on his Git repo,
to gather data and push it online.
Sensor board bodge
NodeMCU
For the online data display dashboard, [Alexander] found a nice solution by [Nilhcem] for
home monitoring
using MQTT, InfluxDB, and Grafana. It could be deployed via a docker compose file and have it up and running quickly. Unfortunately, such projects don’t usually succeed without causing some heartburn, so [Alexander] has got you covered with a bunch of troubleshooting tips and suggestions should you get entangled.
If you have an old Sense device lying around, then this would be a good way to put it some use. But If you’d rather build an air-quality monitor from scratch, then try “
Building a Full-Fat Air-Quality Monitor
” or “
An Air-quality Monitor That Leverages the Cloud
“. | 9 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338694",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-04-10T17:08:19",
"content": "Were sleep trackers really any kind of useful? Seemed more like a fad.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6338705",
"author": "Greg A",
... | 1,760,373,124.646195 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/09/uplink-system-for-high-altitude-balloons/ | Uplink System For High-Altitude Balloons | Maya Posch | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"HAB",
"high altitude balloon",
"LoRa"
] | Most uses of high-altitude balloons are fairly simple: send balloon up, have it beam down measurements and images. While this is indeed straightforward, it is also very limiting. This is why [Dave Akerman] has been working on
adding to the HAB balloons
he regularly flies. This builds on the work [Dave] did back in 2015 with
adding LoRa transceiver
RF communication.
Since LoRa transceivers are by definition capable of bidirectional communication, this was very useful for adding simple but essential features such as retransmission of data in case e.g. part of some image or telemetry data is missing. Other interesting things one can do with bidirectional transmission include controlling individual balloons, and having them transmit or relay information between balloons.
A tricky thing which [Dave] describes in the blog post is making sure that both ends of the connection are actually listening using timing settings. The use of encryption is also strongly recommended, unless you want to risk someone hijacking your balloons. This has now all been implemented in the
HAB Explora app
for Android, as well as the application for Windows.
Header image: Antonino Vara,
CC BY 4.0
. | 10 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338517",
"author": "Bruce Perens K6BP",
"timestamp": "2021-04-09T20:10:02",
"content": "The use of encryption isn’t absolutely necessary to keep folks from “hijacking your baloons”. A command sent entirely in the clear, with a digital signature, would work every bit as well. This i... | 1,760,373,124.59133 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/09/hamster-goes-on-virtual-journey/ | Hamster Goes On Virtual Journey | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Virtual Reality"
] | [
"ESP32",
"exercise",
"hall effect",
"hamster",
"journey",
"mqtt",
"node.js",
"pet",
"raspberry pi",
"wheel"
] | Hamsters are great pets, especially for those with limited space or other resources. They are fun playful animals that are fairly easy to keep, and are entertaining to boot. [Kim]’s hamster, [Mr. Fluffbutt], certainly fits this mold as well but [Kim] wanted something a little beyond the confines of the habitat and exercise wheel and decided to
send him on a virtual journey every time he goes for a run
.
The virtual hamster journey is built on an ESP32 microcontroller which monitors the revolutions of the hamster wheel via a hall effect sensor and magnet. It then extrapolates the distance the hamster has run and sends the data to a Raspberry Pi which hosts a MQTT and Node.js server. From there, it maps out an equivalent route according to a predefined GPX route
and updates that information live
. The hamster follows the route, in effect, every time it runs on the wheel. [Mr Fluffbutt] has made it from the Netherlands to southeastern Germany so far, well on his way to his ancestral home of Syria.
This project is a great way to add a sort of augmented reality to a pet hamster,
in a similar way that we’ve seen self-driving fish tanks
. Adding a Google Streetview monitor to the hamster habitat would be an interesting addition as well, but for now we’re satisfied seeing the incredible journey that [Mr Fluffbutt] has been on so far. | 19 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338496",
"author": "CityZen",
"timestamp": "2021-04-09T18:37:42",
"content": "I was assuming that there would be a screen for the hamster to see the results of its journey. Disappointed.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "63385... | 1,760,373,124.804164 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/09/linux-fu-shell-script-file-embedding/ | Linux Fu: Shell Script File Embedding | Al Williams | [
"Featured",
"Linux Hacks",
"Skills"
] | [
"base64",
"bash",
"linux",
"Linux Fu",
"shell scripting",
"tar",
"tarball",
"uuencode"
] | You need to package up a bunch of files, send them somewhere, and do something with them at the destination. It isn’t an uncommon scenario. The obvious answer is to create an archive — a zip or tar file, maybe — and include a shell script that you have to tell the user to run after unpacking.
That may be obvious, but it assumes a lot on the part of the remote user. They need to know how to unpack the file and they also need to know to run your magic script of commands after the unpack. However, you can easily create a shell script that contains a file — even an archive of many files — and then retrieve the file and act on it at run time. This is much simpler from the remote user’s point of view. You get one file, you execute it, and you are done.
In theory, this isn’t that hard to do, but there are a lot of details. Shell scripts are not compiled — at least, not typically — so the shell only reads what it needs to do the work. That means if your script is careful to exit, you can add as much “garbage” to the end of it as you like. The shell will never look at it, so it’s possible to store the payload there.
So Then What?
The only trick, then, is to find the end of the script and, thus, the start of the payload. Consider this file,
deliver.sh
:
#!/bin/bash
WORKDIR=$( mktemp -d )
#find last line +1
SCRIPT_END=$( awk '
BEGIN { err=1; }
/^\w*___END_OF_SHELL_SCRIPT___\w*$/ { print NR+1; err=0; exit 0; }
END { if (err==1) print "?"; }
' "$0" )
# check for error
if [ "$SCRIPT_END" == '?' ]
then
echo Can\'t find embedded file
exit 1
fi
# Extract file
tail -n +$SCRIPT_END $0 >"$WORKDIR/testfile"
# Do something with the file
echo Here\'s your file:
cat "$WORKDIR/testfile"
echo Deleting...
rm -r "$WORKDIR"
exit 0
# Here's the end of the script followed by the embedded file
___END_OF_SHELL_SCRIPT___
A man, a plan, a canal, Hackaday!
Not exactly a palindrome, but there's no pleh for it.
Multiple Files
If you don’t mind transmitting script files full of binary garbage at the end, the recovered file might just as well be a compressed tar file or a zip file. The trick is to create your base script and append the file to it. So I might have
deliver.sh0
as the entire file up to and including the
___END_OF_SHELL_SCRIPT___
identifier. Then to create the final script you can say:
cat deliver.sh0 bundle.zip >deliver.sh
Encode, Reuse, Recycle
Sometimes you don’t want binary characters cluttering up your shell script. Maybe you want to e-mail the script and you are afraid of what the various mail systems in the path might do to your data. It is easy enough to encode your binary data as text strings (with the associated size penalty, of course). For example, you could just as easily say:
cp deliver.sh0 deliver.sh
base64 bundle.zip >>deliver.sh
To recover the file, you’d need some additional work in the main body of the script, specifically after the
tail
command.
tail -n +$SCRIPT_END $0 | base64 -d >"$WORKDIR/bundle.zip"
Of course, you don’t have to store the file. You could just feed it to another program. A tar archive, for example, might have the line:
tail -n +$SCRIPT_END $0 | base64 -d | tar xf
Naturally, your script can do whatever you need to do to get ready and then maybe process the files after you unpack. You might, say, install a library or a font or merge a patch to the system’s existing files.
You could even embed an executable file in a script — even another script — and then execute that script which might unpack another script. It boggles the mind. Just remember that not every system will allow executables to reside on /tmp or on some mounted file systems, so plan accordingly.
Script Doctor
While bash scripting is often maligned and not without reason, it is very flexible and powerful, as this example shows. It is dead easy to embed files in a script and that opens up a lot of flexible options for distributing complex file setups and applications.
If you are writing serious bash scripts, we suggest you
write them carefully
. You can even find a “
lint
” program that can test for errors for you. | 25 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338477",
"author": "adrian",
"timestamp": "2021-04-09T17:26:34",
"content": "Anybody else here that ran Minix back in the day, and applied megabytes of shar patches from Usenet when Tanenbaum released an update ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,124.959487 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/09/hackaday-podcast-113-python-switching-to-match-a-magnetic-dyno-a-flying-dino-and-a-spinning-sequencer/ | Hackaday Podcast 113: Python Switching To Match, A Magnetic Dyno, A Flying Dino, And A Spinning Sequencer | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams recap a week of great hacks. You won’t want to miss the dynamometer Leo Fernekes built to measure the power output of his Sterling engine, which is also DIY. In this age of lithium-powered multirotors, it’s nice to step back and appreciate a hand-built rubberband-powered ornithopter.
We have a surprising amount to say about Python’s addition of the match statement (not be be confused with switch statements). And when it comes to electromechanical synth gear, it’s hard to beat a spinning tape-head sequencer.
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
(~60 MB)
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
Google Podcasts
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
Episode 113 Show Notes:
New This Week:
Google v Oracle Ruling
(PDF)
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
You Otter Be Able To Stream That Audio: Open Hardware Eclipses Chromecast Audio
Fan-tastic Misuse Of Raspberry Pi GPIO
RTL-SDR: Seven Years Later
Sixteen Channel Retro Rotary Fader
Logic Noise: The Switching Sequencer Has The Beat
Open Source Electric Vehicle Charging
Flight Of The Pterothopter: A Jurassic-Inspired Ornithopter
Scratch-Built Ornithopter: Here’s How I Flapped My Way To Flight
This Custom Dynamometer Is A Stirling Example Of Homebrewing
Quick Hacks:
Mike’s Picks
Color-Changing Sutures Detect Infection
You Can Now Build Your Own Glowing LED D20 (with A Whopping 2,400 LEDs)
Playing Snake On A PCB!
Elliot’s Picks
Music Production Studio In A Box
Solid Tips For Casting Colored Silicone Tires
Arduino Plots Your Portrait With Style
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Death Of The Turing Test In An Age Of Successful AIs
Python Will Soon Support Switch Statements
Stack Overflow Users Rejoice as Pattern Matching is Added to Python 3.10 • Stephen Brennan | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6340029",
"author": "Bryan",
"timestamp": "2021-04-15T15:33:24",
"content": "You describe the cassette head hack as being like a mellophone. What you’re thinking of is the mellotron. A mellophone is a wind instrument used mostly in marching bands.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth... | 1,760,373,126.693605 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/09/is-it-a-lawnmower-is-it-an-rpi-irc-server-its-both/ | Is It A Lawnmower? Is It An RPi IRC Server? It’s Both! | Maya Posch | [
"green hacks",
"Raspberry Pi",
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"irc",
"lawnmower",
"undernet"
] | Although first presented to the world as an April 1st joke, [Jotun]’s
IRC-enabled lawnmower
began life as the result of casual bantering among folk on the Undernet IRC network. When the project worked out better than probably anyone could have expected, it was presented as the
Green Future of Undernet
on April 1st. Joking aside, the project actually is pretty interesting and well-executed.
At the core is a Remington RM110, a fairly basic gas-powered push lawnmower. After years of use it wasn’t running so well any more, so [Jotun] took it apart and cleaned the engine, despite never having done so before. With that grimy task completed, a subsequent remark in an Undernet channel about linking the lawnmower to Undernet led to a Raspberry Pi 4 and various other components being ordered.
The view from the driver’s seat with the server box installed.
The write-up by [Jotun] provides a pretty good overview of the project’s history: from getting the Raspberry Pi 4 working with a UPS add-on, to getting the IRC server software working and serving clients, and putting a weather- and dust-proof box together with enough filtered ventilation to ensure that the freshly mowed grass doesn’t clog up the Raspberry Pi while keeping everything cool.
As a bonus, the system tracks the wheel revolutions so that [Jotun] can keep track of the square kilometers of grass he has cut, and reports this with an IRC bot to anyone interested on Undernet, in the channel #lawnmower. The only thing that isn’t working well yet so far is the live camera feed from the lawnmower, due to the obvious vibration issues, but [Jotun] reckons that can be solved in time. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338455",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-04-09T16:32:58",
"content": "Oh good! The IRC doesn’t control the mower! (Yet)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6338501",
"author": "Joel B",
"timestamp": "2021-04-0... | 1,760,373,127.115961 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/09/this-week-in-security-the-facebook-leak-the-youtube-leak-and-file-type-confusion/ | This Week In Security: The Facebook Leak, The YouTube Leak, And File Type Confusion | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"apt",
"scraping",
"This Week in Security"
] | Facebook had a problem, way back in the simpler times that was 2019. Something like 533 million accounts had the cell phone number associated with the account leaked. It’s making security news this week, because
that database has now been released
for free in its entirety. The dataset consists of Facebook ID, cell number, name, location, birthday, bio, and email address.
Facebook has pointed out
that the data was not a hack or breach, but was simply scraped prior to a vulnerability being fixed in 2019.
The vulnerability was in Facebook’s contact import service, also known as the “Find Friends” feature. The short explanation is that anyone could punch a random phone number in, and get a bit of information about the FB account that claimed that number. The problem was that some interfaces to that service didn’t have appropriate rate limiting features. Combine that with Facebook’s constant urging that everyone link a cell number to their account, and the default privacy setting that lets anyone locate you by your cell number, and the data scraping was all but inevitable. The actual technique used may have been to spoof that requests were coming from the official Facebook app.
[Troy Hunt]’s
Have i been pwned service
has integrated this breach, and now allows searching by phone number, so go check to see if you’re one of the exposed. If you are, keep the leaked data in mind every time an email or phone call comes from someone you don’t know.
Impersonating a TV
[David Schütz] was at a friend’s house, and pulled out his phone to show off a private YouTube video. Google has worked hard to make the Android/Chromecast/Android TV interconnect seamless, and that system was firing on all cylinders. With a simple button press, that private video played on his friend’s smart TV, and it seemed very wrong that this was so easy.
For background, YouTube videos can exist in three states. A normal video shows up for everyone, and there are no restrictions on watching it. An unlisted video doesn’t show up in search results or on the channel’s page. You have to have the link to see it. The third option is a private video. These aren’t visible to anyone, even if they have the direct link. To share a private video, the viewers have to be on the list of allowed viewers. Not on the list? No video for you. So how did a smart TV, that wasn’t signed in to an authorized account, manage to play the private video? The magic is a token that is generated when a user initiates the process. This “ctt” token serves as a single purpose authenticator, allowing the TV to play the user’s private video.
This is a reasonable system, so long as everything was implemented securely.
Spoilers: It wasn’t.
The problem was a Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerability. The magic token is intended to only be generated when a user is requesting it from YouTube. Because that intention wasn’t enforced, any site can request a token, so long as the video ID is known. Not only does the “cast to TV” process work with individual videos, it works with playlists, and it turns out that every YouTube account has a semi-hidden playlist consisting of every upload.
The attack flow goes like this: The victim visits the malicious website, and that site sends off a request for the user’s “uploads” playlist. Since the victim is logged in to YouTube, and the request is coming from their browser, the request is honored. Once the video IDs are known, a ctt token can be generated for each. And with that, the attacker has access to every video on the victim’s account, even the private ones. The fix was to implement proper CSRF protection, and restrict access to the API to the official client. PoC Demo below:
CRLF to Access Private Pages
GitHub offers more than just code hosting. They also host GitHub pages, and one of the features offered there is private pages. You can put together a web interface that uses GitHub accounts as authorization. Set up your organization with different roles, and you can restrict the page to users with the appropriate role. GitHub is very interested in keeping those pages secure, so private pages is one of the areas they offer bug bounties for exploits.
[Robert Chen] had a very boring junior year of high school, thanks to COVID, and
took up vulnerability hunting as a hobby
. He started looking at GitHub, and discovered a quirk. The authentication process sends a
page_id
value, and that value is embedded in the response. He discovered that he could use url encoding to embed whitespace in the value. The authentication process would succeed, but the resulting page included the whitespace. This usually means that the value is processed by a
toInt()
function, but the raw, user-generated value is getting passed on. It’s better practice to convert the integer back to a string, and use that as a known-trustworthy value.
The attack is to embed a script tag in that ID, in such a way that the authentication logic still succeeds, but you have code that runs on the victim’s page. This accomplished by a series of Carriage Returns and Line Feeds (CRLF), followed by an encoded null value. The
toInt()
function stops processing as soon as it sees the null, but the payload is still passed on. The next step was taking advantage of inconsistent case sensitiveness. One part of the process sees “__HOST” and “__Host” as identical.
The last piece of the puzzle is cache poisoning. GitHub makes use of caching in the authentication flow, and without the above issues, it would be reasonably secure. The cache lookup is based on the results of
toInt()
, so if an attacker’s malicious request is the one that populated the cache, every visitor could potentially run the embedded script. His research netted him a nice $35,000, and Github has cleaned up the problems within a month.
When a txt File Is HTML
How does an OS determine what to do with a given file? The primary two approaches are the filename extension, and the contents of the file. And some times, the exact response is determined by the combination of both. It’s potentially complicated, and such complications can give rise to security issues. Case in point,
CVE-2019-8761
. As you might notice from the year embedded in the CVE, [Paulos Yibelo] didn’t get into a huge hurry to publish his work. That aside, this CVE is all about how MacOS handles
.txt
files that contain HTML code.
TextEdit is the default program used to open a text document, but it has support for bold text, different text colors, etc. In short, there’s more going on than raw text editing. The question then becomes, how much will TextEdit let you get away with? Quite a bit. If that text file starts out with
, TextEdit parses the HTML rather than letting the user edit it. It’s not quite broken enough to run JavaScript, but there are still some shenanigans to be had. Inside a pair of CSS tags, it’s possible to import an external style script. While that imported script is external to the
.txt
file, it is still limited to the local filesystem. This would be the end of the story, and the most we could do is something mischievous like including
/dev/urandom
, crashing the machine.
MacOS has an interesting feature, called AutoFS, which allows auto-mounting remote locations onto the local filesystem. This feature doesn’t require any special privileges, so it’s easy enough to include a file from a remote server that you control. That’s enough to do something interesting. [Paulos] drops a casual bombshell: He also happened to find a way for a website to automatically download a
.txt
file and open it without any user interaction. So armed with this knowledge, an attacker could host a simple text file on a TOR server, and collect the real IP addresses of each visitor.
If that wasn’t enough, a bit of trickery with an unclosed style tag allows our rogue text file to reference the contents of a local file as part of the request. The result is that any file the TextEdit process can read, it can also upload to the attacker. The final MacOS quirk to make this even more interesting? Mac’s Gatekeeper, the part of the OS that tries to prevent running potentially malicious code, totally ignores
txt
files. [Paulos] privately reported his finding to Apple in 2019, and he believes it was fixed in 2019 or early 2020.
Google’s Hard Decision Ends an Op
A couple weeks ago,
news broke about who was behind a series of attacks
covered by Google’s Project Zero. The attacks in question were a counter-terrorism operation run by a western government. Google discovered the attack, reverse-engineered the vulnerabilities, and made it public without providing any details about who was behind it. It’s become controversial, because this action likely killed the op before it got results. It raises an interesting question: What are the responsibilities of a researcher when he finds a vulnerability being used by a friendly government? When the researcher believes in the mission of the operation in question, even?
Google seems to have taken a justice-is-blind sort of approach. If they find the attack happening, they respond the same way, regardless of who is behind it. I suspect that this is based partly on the assumption that if Google has detected and reverse-engineered the attack, so have the usual suspects. If they sit on the findings, the op can happen, but APT groups from less friendly countries could reverse engineer and use the exploits as well. What do you think Hackaday, should Project Zero sit on vulnerabilities if a friendly government is behind the exploits? [Editor’s bonus question: Should “friendly” governments, tasked with protecting the security of their own citizen’s Internet, sit on vulnerabilities? If “yes”, with what oversight?] Let us know what you think about that and the rest of the stories below! | 21 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338435",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2021-04-09T14:49:21",
"content": "The answer to the Project Zero issue is simple: notify the “friendly” government in question when the exploit is discovered that you will be releasing the details on the vulnerability. While Project Zero ... | 1,760,373,126.570504 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/09/taking-a-peek-inside-the-newest-echo-show-10/ | Taking A Peek Inside The Newest Echo Show 10 | Tom Nardi | [
"home entertainment hacks",
"Teardown"
] | [
"Amazon Echo",
"Echo Show",
"teardown"
] | When Amazon released the original Echo, it was a pretty simple affair. Cylinder, some LEDs on top, done. Then they came out with the Echo Dot, which was basically the same thing, but shorter. It seemed like there was a pretty clear theme for awhile, but then at some point Amazon decided it would be a good idea to start producing Echo devices in every form factor imaginable, from wall plugs to literal sunglasses, and things got a lot more complicated. As a perfect example, take a look at this
teardown of the third generation Echo Show 10 by [txyzinfo]
.
Granted the base still looks a bit like the Echos of old, but the family resemblance stops there. As you can probably gather from the name, the Show features a high resolution 10.1 inch LCD panel, greatly improving the number and type of advertisements Amazon is able to force on the user. In true
Black Mirror
fashion, there’s even a brushless motor in the base that allows the machine to rotate the display towards the user no matter how hard they try to escape.
A salvageable part if there ever was one.
The teardown is presented with no commentary; in both the video below and on the Hackaday.IO page, all you’ll find are clear and well-lit images of the device’s internals. But for those who are just interested in what the inside of one of these $250 USD gadgets looks like, that’s all you really need.
At this point, it doesn’t seem like [txyzinfo] is trying to reverse engineer the Show or figure out how it all works, and looking at the complexity of that main board, we’re not surprised. Still, it’s a marvel to look at all the hardware they packed into such a relatively small device.
If you’re looking for a more technical examination at the newer Echo devices,
[Brian Dorey] did some impressive poking around on the third generation Dot in 2019
and [electronupdate] went as far as
decapping a few of the chips inside the Flex
. On the software side of things, check out the recent efforts to
craft an open source firmware for the original Echo
. | 26 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338395",
"author": "Winston",
"timestamp": "2021-04-09T12:14:23",
"content": "https://pics.me.me/people-in-the-sikties-the-government-will-wiretap-your-home-18968906.png",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6338404",
"author": "... | 1,760,373,127.060701 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/09/stepper-motors-quick-and-simple/ | Stepper Motors Quick And Simple | Chris Lott | [
"how-to"
] | [
"555",
"CUPL",
"GAL",
"pal",
"stepper motor",
"stepper motor controller"
] | If you want a simple and easy introduction to stepper motors, check out the [IMSAI Guy]’s short video where he
designs a very basic stepper motor controller
and packs in a lot of quick lessons along the way. (Embedded below.)
He first goes over the fundamentals of a stepper motor in a practical, hands-on approach, and also shows us how to ring out the connections if the pinout is unknown. Next he demonstrates stepping the motor manually and then makes a simple FET driver circuit. Just when you’re expecting a small microcontroller to appear, the [IMSAI Guy] instead digs deep into his junk box and explains how to drive the motor with a 22V10 GAL (an electrically erasable PAL) and a 555 timer module. Based on a clearly-explained logic table for driving the coils, a sneaky way to introduce Karnaugh maps, he proceeds to write the output equations in WinCUPL.
Mature Readers will recall the “Happy PAL” Character
WinCUPL is the modern version of CUPL (Compiler for Universal Programmable Logic) originally written by a company called Assisted Technology, now owned by Altium. CUPL and peers like PALASM from Monolithic Memories, Inc. (MMI) and ABEL from Data I/O Corporation were basic Hardware Description Languages specifically designed for PALs, GALs, and CPLDs. PALs were small arrays of logic gates with fusible interconnections, and your design is “burned” into the fuses much like a (EE)PROM. When designing with PALs, you could clearly visualize the connections in your mind, something that has since been remedied by the advent of modern FPGAs.
Alas, he cuts out the part where the source code is compiled and the 22V10 is programmed, and jumps directly into testing the circuit on a breadboard. Spoiler alert — it does work. Zooming in close and squinting, the nifty 555 timer breadboard module that he points out is called a TP353, which you can find from your favorite online supplier.
There is a lot to learn in this tutorial, and the [IMSAI Guy] does a great job at making the subject approachable to hobbyists and novices. We also covered another of
his tutorials a couple of weeks ago on image sensors
. Thanks to [itsevilbert] for the tip. | 37 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338363",
"author": "Mike Massen, Perth, Western Australia",
"timestamp": "2021-04-09T08:20:01",
"content": "Hmm, nice idea,Whats interesting is that with pass if time such as decades getting exposed to increasingly complex systems that it can be refreshing, cathartic and a reminder... | 1,760,373,127.195445 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/08/three-piece-cyberdeck-plays-the-role-of-military-computer-that-never-was/ | Three-Piece Cyberdeck Plays The Role Of Military Computer That Never Was | Dan Maloney | [
"Cyberdecks"
] | [
"cyberdeck",
"cyberpunk",
"mechanical keyboard",
"military",
"raspberry pi"
] | While we’re not at all sick of the cyberdeck movement yet, we do have to admit that some of the builds we see are starting to fall into categories that are beginning to seem a little familiar. The clamshell aesthetic comes to mind, but really, with spaces for a display and a keyboard, the form factor is pretty much a natural for cyberdecking. Which is why we like
this three-piece twist on the cyberdeck concept
so much.
Like many cyberdeck builds, inspiration for the awesomely mustachioed [Max]’s deck came from the military surplus world. As the story goes, he has a smallish clamshell case that once held radio tools and supplies for the Bundeswehr. Figuring it would make the perfect case for half of a split keyboard, he tracked down a couple more of the sturdy aluminum cases and got to work. As a mechanical keyboard aficionado, [Max] already had PCBs that would fit into two of the cases, so he populated those with suitably clicky switches, came up with cool-looking faceplates, and connected the two boxes with retractile cables. The third case got a Raspberry Pi 4 with a trimmed-down heatsink, a battery and power management, and a generous touchpad and LCD panel display. A Kali Linux install completes the tacticool look.
The three-piece cyberdeck looks very cool when all wired up together, but [Max] needed one more piece to really sell it. So he 3D-printed a slipcase for all three units; painted in military colors and suitably distressed, the whole thing really just works. We’ve seen a lot of
cyberdecks lately
in
all sorts of styles
, but this one really pleases. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338353",
"author": "Bop",
"timestamp": "2021-04-09T07:24:08",
"content": "This is too beautiful for this world.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6338438",
"author": "geocrasher",
"timestamp": "2021-04-09T15:09:... | 1,760,373,126.956762 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/08/hacking-the-classroom/ | Hacking The Classroom | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"education",
"tinkercad"
] | With so many students attending class virtually these days, how can you give kids — or adults — some hands on experience with electronics projects? [Ben Finio] says you can by
moving your lab to the virtual world
using — of all things — Tinkercad. [Ben] should know something about a classroom since he is a lecturer at Cornell.
Of course, you could do this trick with any online simulator, but Tinkercad is nice because it is easy to use, looks real, and doesn’t cost the students a dime. [Ben] mentions there are some scenarios where it is especially useful like large classes or online classes. There are probably some cases where it doesn’t make sense, like teaching RF design, for example. Even then, maybe you just need a different tool.
It would be something else if Tinkercad would add some features to support this use case. Imagine an instructor being able to peek at a student’s circuit or modify it without having to screen share to the whole class. Or perhaps provide a connector to connect one student’s outputs to another student’s inputs.
We couldn’t help but think you could do some more hardcore electronics using our favorite
Falstad
simulator. It doesn’t have the realistic look, but it can simulate a lot of interesting circuits. After all, we’ve long been a fan of
project-based learning
. | 4 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338298",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2021-04-09T02:18:32",
"content": "“Hacking the classroom”?You move outside of it because your learning is outside of it. You start reading Scientific American and Carolina Scientific catalogs, or get interested in electronics. Thi... | 1,760,373,126.997862 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/08/someone-get-this-minimalist-wooden-pc-a-martini/ | Someone Get This Minimalist Wooden PC A Martini | Kristina Panos | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"hairpin legs",
"mid-century",
"minimalism",
"minimalist",
"pc"
] | It’s interesting to imagine what computers may have looked like throughout different time periods that precede their portability or even their existence altogether. In the 1950s and ’60s, computers still filled entire rooms, but if the age of the PC had arrived earlier one is left to wonder what might a minimalist mid-century PC might look like.
Well, if we were lucky, it would have looked something like [xmorneau]’s cubical computing creation
. This DIY beauty is made of scrap oak and a sexy set of hairpin legs. As hot as it looks, [xmorneau] shouldn’t have to worry about overheating — the bottom is completely open except for an intake fan, there’s another fan at the top that exhausts hot air through a mesh grille, and those lovely little legs elevate it four inches off the desk. Our favorite part (after the legs) has to be the secret lid that blends in beautifully.
The cube measures 32cm³ (~12.6in³), so [xmorneau] went with a mini-ATX motherboard, but was able to fit in a full-size graphics card. Everything is mounted internally to wood except for the mobo, which is mounted on a panel of sheet metal that makes up the back wall.
We love the way this looks and are glad to see that this build changed [xmorneau]’s opinion of RGB a little bit, because we can’t help but like it both ways.
Too sophisticated for your taste?
Check out this LEGO-Minecraft mashup
. | 19 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338274",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-04-09T00:10:49",
"content": "Next the paisley polyester computer of the mid-1970s!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6338281",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp":... | 1,760,373,126.817477 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/08/an-open-source-smart-watch-youd-actually-wear/ | An Open Source Smart Watch You’d Actually Wear | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"circular display",
"ESP32",
"smart watch",
"smartwatch"
] | We’ve seen a number of open source smart watches over the years, and while they’ve certainly been impressive from a technical standpoint, they often leave something to be desired in terms of fit and finish. Exposed PCBs and monochromatic OLED displays might be fine for a trip to the hackerspace, but it wouldn’t be our first choice for date night attire.
Enter the
Open-SmartWatch from [pauls_3d_things]
. This ESP32 powered watch packs a gorgeous circular 240×240 TFT display, DS323M RTC, BMA400 three-axis accelerometer, and a 450 mAh battery inside of a 3D printed enclosure that can be produced on your average desktop machine. WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity are a given with the ESP32, but there’s also an enhanced edition of the PCB that adds another 4 MB of RAM, a micro SD slot, and a Quectel L96 GPS receiver.
The GPS edition of the PCB
As it’s an open source project you’re free to download the PCB design files and get the board produced on your own, but [pauls_3d_things] has actually partnered with LILYGO to do a run of the Open-SmartWatch electronics which you can
pick up on AliExpress right now for just $24 USD
. You’ll still need to order the battery separately and 3D print your own case, but it still seems like a pretty sweet deal to us.
On the software front, things are pretty basic right now. The watch can update the time from NTP using a pre-configured WiFi network, and there’s a Bluetooth media controller and stopwatch included. Of course, as more people get the hardware in their hands (or on their wrists, as the case may be), we’ll likely start seeing more capabilities added to the core OS.
While
getting our own code running on commercially produced smartwatches
holds a lot of promise, the Open-SmartWatch is arguably the best of both worlds. The partnership with LILYGO brings professional fabrication to the open hardware project, and the GPLv3 licensed firmware is ripe for hacking. We’re very excited to see where the community takes this project, and fully expect to start seeing these watches out in the wild once we can have proper cons again. | 38 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338233",
"author": "Greg A",
"timestamp": "2021-04-08T20:47:43",
"content": "there are so many cheap watches now that i have to keep reminding myself that i don’t really want one. it’s too easy to remember how badly i wanted one before they were feasible! when i was a kid i loved... | 1,760,373,126.651301 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/08/cnc-chainsaw/ | CNC Chainsaw | Al Williams | [
"cnc hacks"
] | [
"chainsaw",
"cnc",
"robot arm"
] | You can spend a lot of time trying to think of a clever title for a post about a CNC chainsaw. But you’ll finally realize, what else can you say but “CNC Chainsaw?” [Stuff Made Here]
actually built such a beast
, and you can watch it go in the video embedded below. A custom chainsaw on a Tormach robotic arm. So it is more like a robot using a chainsaw than a conventional CNC machine.
Instead of an XY motion, the machine uses what the video calls an “apple peeler” method and uses the Minkowski algorithm to adjust for the size of the chainsaw. The video is an odd juxtaposition of advanced topics like the Minkowski and basic things like G code.
The chainsaw needed to keep a low profile, so it actually started life as the business end of a pole saw with drive courtesy of a skateboard motor. However, the cutting speed didn’t meet expectations, so that caused a change to the algorithm.
Some of the sketches to illustrate comments are pretty good and give a good idea of the issues involved. Like many things, it seems easy until you try to actually do it. Sadly, his saw got overheated so he finally switched to cutting foam instead of logs. With the right tool, however, the log should work. Maybe that’s version two.
Before you get too excited, you should know the arm used says it costs “under $20,000” so this probably isn’t a weekend project with your birthday money. Still, the problem-solving that went into it is interesting and you could probably figure out a cheaper way to do an arm if you didn’t buy it off the shelf.
Overall, this is a great story and the final product was surprisingly good considering how coarse the saw is. We liked the math and problem-solving behind the killer chainsaw CNC.
We don’t know if
a different DIY chainsaw
might work better. Not the first
killer chainsaw robot
we’ve seen, by the way. | 29 | 16 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338198",
"author": "KBZ",
"timestamp": "2021-04-08T18:56:38",
"content": "Awesome project… XYZ PQR 👍",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6338262",
"author": "Robot CRC Cutting",
"timestamp": "2021-04-08T22:39:52"... | 1,760,373,126.76087 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/08/electric-vehicle-1900s-style-new-leases-on-old-tech/ | Electric Vehicle 1900’s Style: New Leases On Old Tech | Al Williams | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"battery",
"edison",
"electric car",
"electric vehicle",
"nickel iron battery",
"thomas edison"
] | Excited about your new electric vehicle? Thomas Edison would be, too. He tried to produce electric vehicles for Ford around 1900. Petroleum-based vehicles dashed his dreams of the electric car, and the battery he wanted to use languished as a technological dead end. The batteries were long-lasting, sure, but they were expensive and had other problems, not the least of which was producing hydrogen gas. But that battery technology is receiving renewed interest today, because some of the things that made it a bad car battery make it good for alternate energy projects.
You wouldn’t think a century-old battery technology that was never very popular would make a comeback. But then again, who thought we’d see the return of bell-bottom pants or vinyl records?
Edison’s Car
Edison and his electric car in 1913.
Even 90 years after his death, Thomas Edison is still a household name. Why not? He invented — or at least popularized — quite a number of things we take for granted in the modern world. Apparently, he was ahead of his time in at least one area: electric vehicles. The first electric vehicle was an electric tricycle plying the streets of Paris in 1881 and Englishman Thomas Parker took an electric car into production in 1884. According to a
recent BBC article
, Edison and others had electric vehicles around 1900. There were even electric cabs in London and New York. But Edison’s electric car was a bit different.
Most electric vehicles in those days used lead-acid batteries — a technology still with us in normal cars, although now in a more refined state. These vehicles were probably more like what we would think of today as golf carts. But Edison’s car used a nickel-iron battery that had been around since 1899, the work of Swede Ernst Waldemar Jungner, who also invented the NiCad battery.
Edison had a deal in place to produce electric vehicles for Ford using the batteries. He claimed that they were extremely resilient, lasting in some cases up to 40 years, and charged twice as fast as conventional cells of the day. They were, however, larger and more expensive. They also had an undesirable byproduct of hydrogen gas. By the time Edison was ready with his new battery, petroleum-based cars had caught on, and no electric Ford vehicles would ever issue from the deal.
The Edison Storage Battery Company made these batteries up until 1972. The company passed to Exide Battery, which produced them until 1975.
Nickle-Iron Today
Cut away view from Edison manual.
Today, however, the battery tech is resurging. A research team at the
Delft University of Technology
noticed that the battery charging process was similar to breaking down water, as both processes generate hydrogen and oxygen. It turns out that using the batteries to directly electrolyze water increased the battery’s energy storage and efficiency. The hydrogen gas created as a byproduct is also usable as an energy source.
The team thinks this has applications in storing intermittent power sources such as wind or solar. Storing energy in lithium-ion batteries, for example, is great until the battery is full. Then you have to disconnect to prevent overheating which will shorten the life of the cells. A nickel-iron battery, however, is fine fully charged, and using this new innovation can transition to producing hydrogen gas to handle the excess energy put in. The battery can work more efficiently than a traditional electrolyzer. The only downsides are higher internal resistance than some other battery technologies and lower charge retention times. However, some of these problems have been mitigated by
adding carbon
.
At Scale
A current prototype handles about 15 kWh, but one twice that size is under construction. They hope to eventually to scale the batteries up nearly 100 times. The batteries did not completely disappear after Edison. Their long life and tolerance of abuse such as overcharging and short circuiting have made them popular in applications where they need a long service life. Some subway trains, for example, use this type of battery. The German V2 rocket also used them.
One benefit to nickel-iron is that while they are expensive to produce, it isn’t because of rare materials. We have plenty of nickel and iron. Disposing of nickel and iron isn’t particularly problematic, either. If you want to learn more about the battery technology, there’s
an entire website
from the Nickel Iron Battery Association that includes a 1912 electric car that claims to have a working battery still, over 100 years later. You can also find a
scan of Edison’s 1914 manual
on caring for their batteries. You can even try making your own battery at home, if you watch the video below.
Mining History
Edison holding one of his batteries.
It makes us wonder what other old tech is sitting around waiting for some improvements and a change in conditions to make them successful? After all, if you told Edison you wanted his batteries to produce hydrogen, he’d have probably thought you were crazy.
I have to admit, I sometimes thumb through old electronic magazines for inspiration. Sometimes it is pretty indirect, but it is amazing what people were doing with what we think of now as very little. It also amazes me how many things we think of as modern were being done much earlier than you would guess. Fax machines, video, computers, and data searches all existed way before they became mainstream. Sometimes the technology just has to wait for people to catch up to it.
[
Banner image source
] | 69 | 23 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338152",
"author": "rok",
"timestamp": "2021-04-08T17:22:37",
"content": "and “electrolyze” / “electrolyzer” ?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6338153",
"author": "Packrat",
"timestamp": "2021-04-08T17:22:56",
"cont... | 1,760,373,127.309016 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/07/harmonic-drive-uses-compliant-mechanism-to-slim-down/ | Harmonic Drive Uses Compliant Mechanism To Slim Down | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"compliant mechanism",
"gear",
"harmonic",
"joint",
"power",
"reduction",
"robot",
"strain-wave",
"torque",
"transmission"
] | [Levi Janssen] has a secret: he doesn’t like harmonic drives. But rather than abandon the torque-amplifying transmission completely, he decided to see about
improving them using 3D-printed compliant mechanisms
.
For the uninitiated, harmonic drives, also known as strain-wave gears, are a compact, high-torque gearbox that has become popular with “robotic dog” makers and other roboticists. The idea is to have a rigid, internally-toothed outer ring nested around an externally-toothed, flexible cup. A wave generator rotates within the inside cup, stretching it so that it meshes with the outer ring. The two gears differ by only a couple of teeth, meaning that very high gear ratios can be achieved, which makes them great for the joints of robot legs.
[Levi]’s problem with the harmonic drive is that due to the depth of the flexible spline cup, compactness is not among its virtues. His idea is to couple the flex spline to the output of the drive through a flat spring, one that allows flexion as the wave generator rotates but transmits torque efficiently. The entire prototype is 3D-printed, except for the wave generator bearings and stepper motor, and put to the test.
As the video below shows after the excellent introduction to harmonic drives, the concept works, but it’s not without its limitations. Even lightly loaded, the drive made some unpleasant crunching sounds as the PLA springs gave out. We could easily see that being replaced with, say, a steel spring, either machined or cut on a water-jet machine. That might solve the most obvious problem and make [Levi]’s dream of a compact harmonic drive a reality. Of course, we have seen
pretty compact strain-wave gears
before.
Thanks to [BaldPower] for the tip. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337887",
"author": "Andy Pugh",
"timestamp": "2021-04-07T20:13:21",
"content": "There is another design (used in metal by Harmonic Drive LLC) that bypasses many of these issues.See this YouTube video for an example:https://youtu.be/IdfKre6zpEYIt works pretty well:https://youtu.be/J... | 1,760,373,127.36473 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/07/the-simplest-wind-turbine-is-the-most-satisfying/ | The Simplest Wind Turbine Is The Most Satisfying | Jenny List | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"treadmill motor",
"wind power",
"Wind turbine"
] | Sometimes there’s a satisfaction to be found not in the more complex projects but the simplest ones. We’ve featured wind turbines of all types here at Hackaday over the years, but
HowToLou’s one is probably one of the least sophisticated
. That notwithstanding, it does its job admirably, and provides a handy reminder of a parts source many of us might have overlooked.
At its heart is a motor from an exercise treadmill, which appears to be quite a powerful DC motor so that’s a source worth noting away for any future projects. To that he attaches the blades from a desk fan, and when placed outdoors on a windy day it generates enough power to run an LED head torch and charge his phone.
Of course, this most basic of wind turbines is not displaying its true potential in the video below the break. Were it mounted in a high position free from ground based wind obstacles it would no doubt catch a lot more wind, and in particular were it hooked up to a charge controller and a battery it could provide a much more useful power source. Then you could start optimizing fan blade designs… But this is a fun project that isn’t trying to masquerade as anything sophisticated, and it still has that potential.
This isn’t the first such simple turbine we’ve brought you
. | 37 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337854",
"author": "Largol1",
"timestamp": "2021-04-07T18:43:44",
"content": "Brillant :) Clever :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6338096",
"author": "Archy114",
"timestamp": "2021-04-08T14:05:57",
"... | 1,760,373,127.441085 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/07/field-guide-to-shipping-containers/ | Field Guide To Shipping Containers | Kristina Panos | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"containerization",
"drum",
"flat rack",
"Malcom McLean",
"refrigerated container",
"shipping",
"shipping container",
"tank"
] | In the 1950s, trucking magnate
Malcom McLean
changed the world when he got frustrated enough with the speed of trucking and traffic to start a commercial shipping company in order to move goods up and down the eastern seaboard a little faster.
Within ten years, containers were standardized
, and the first international container ship set sail in 1966. The cargo? Whisky for the U.S. and guns for Europe.
What was once a slow and unreliable method of moving all kinds of whatever in barrels, bags, and boxes became a streamlined operation
— one that now moves millions of identical containers full of unfathomable miscellany each year.
When I started writing this, there was
a container ship stuck in the Suez canal
that had been blocking it for days. Just like that, a vital passage became completely clogged, halting the shipping schedule of everything from oil and weapons to ESP8266 boards and high-waist jeans. The incident really highlights the fragility of the whole intermodal system and makes us wonder if anything will change.
A rainbow of dry storage containers. Image via
xChange
Setting the Standard
We are all used to seeing the standard shipping container that’s either a 10′, 20′, or 40′ long box made of steel or aluminum with doors on one end. These are by far the most common type, and are probably what come to mind whenever shipping containers are mentioned.
These are called dry storage containers, and per
ISO container standards
, they are all 8′ wide and 8′ 6″ tall. There are also ‘high cube’ containers that are a foot taller, but otherwise share the same dimensions. Many of these containers end up as some type of housing, either as stylish studios, post-disaster survivalist shelters, or construction site offices. As the pandemic wears on, they have become so much in demand that
prices have surged in the last few months
.
Although Malcom McLean did not invent container shipping, the strict containerization standards that followed in his wake prevent issues during stacking, shipping, and storing, and allow any container to be handled safely at any port in the world, or load onto any rail car with ease. Every bit of the container is standardized, from the dimensions to the way the container’s information is displayed on the end. At most, the difference between any two otherwise identical containers is the number, the paint job, and maybe a few millimeters in one dimension.
Standard as they may be, these containers don’t work for every type of cargo. There are quite a few more types of shipping containers out there that serve different needs. Let’s take a look at some of them, shall we?
Flat rack with a bus. Image via
Alconet Containers
Flat Rack Container
Flat rack containers are basically platforms with no walls or roofs that are used to transport things like pipes, machinery, timber, buses, and boats. In other words, anything large or bulky that needs to be loaded and unloaded from the top.
Some flat rack containers have collapsible sides that make the cargo easy to remove, and others’ sides are fixed in place. Collapsible flat racks can be stacked together — a stack of four is about the size of a dry storage container. Flat racks come in both 20ft and 40ft sizes, though the widths and heights are often similar between the two.
The biggest tires ever? Image via
xChange
Open Top Container
There are a lot like dry storage containers, except they have either a tarp on the top or a convertible lid that can be taken off completely to accommodate shipments of any height, including massive tires.
The short sides double as doors, so there are a couple of options when it comes to loading and unloading cargo.
Image via
Florida Container Depot
Tunnel Container
Also called double-door containers, tunnel containers are basically dry storage containers that open at both ends instead of just one. This makes it really easy to load and unload the shipment, or if the container is being used as a temporary warehouse, to get to a piece of stored cargo that would otherwise be stuck in the back of the container.
As you might expect, tunnel containers come in 20- and 40-foot lengths. They are usually made of steel and have plywood floors.
Image via
xChange
Open Side Storage Container
These are a lot like tunnel containers except that only one of the short sides has doors, and one of the long sides can be opened to accommodate wide things. This design is also useful for helping to locate specific cargo without having to unload too much of the container.
Many types of containers have forklift pockets so they can be easily moved around when empty. You can clearly see the forklift pockets around the bottom of this open side storage container.
Bananas like to travel in a certain way. Image via
Refrigerated and Frozen Foods
Refrigerated or “Reefer” Container
Reefer containers are used for shipping things like produce and other perishable items at consistent temperatures over long distances. They are typically air-cooled or water-cooled, though some of them come with a generator.
These containers are the reason that I can get oranges and apples year round, despite living in the Midwest. They’re also used for items like fresh flowers and pharmaceuticals.
The container pictured is designed to transport bananas, which must be kept away from oxygen lest they begin to ripen. It has a controlled atmosphere system that can keep bananas green for up to 45 days.
Image via
Marine Insight
Insulated Container
Not all perishables have to be actively refrigerated during shipping, but they do need to be kept within a specific temperature range. Some things like apples or certain types of pharmaceuticals will do fine in an insulated or thermal container.
Insulated containers also serve the purpose of safeguarding the cargo from outside air contaminants by running it through a filter first. Some insulated containers have dual walls like a Thermos, and others are simply lined with thermal blankets.
Image via
Maritime Manual
Cargo Storage Roll Container
These are specialized containers for transporting sets or stacks of things. They have rollers on the bottom that make them easier to move around, and the whole thing can fold up for storing and stacking.
Cargo storage roll containers are usually made from strong wire mesh and come in different colors.
Image via
Florida Container Depot
Half-Height Container
Half-height containers are basically dry storage containers that are half as tall, and can be either open-topped or closed.
These are usually used to move things like coal, stones, and other heavy, pour-able cargo that calls for easy loading and unloading. They’re also used for vehicles, heavy equipment, or anything else that fits inside. The lower center of gravity makes them quite useful for heavy loads.
Image via
Conexwest
Car Carriers
Yep, you guessed it — these are for transporting cars and other vehicles. If you buy a car overseas, it has to get to you somehow.
Many car carriers have a ramp and two levels of racks so they can be stuffed with cars without wasting any space.
Image via
More Than Shipping
Tanks
Tank containers are giant steel cylindrical tanks with frames built around them. They’re used for shipping all kinds of liquids from molasses to gasoline.
Each tank container can carry 21,000 to 40,000 liters of whatever types of liquids it is designed to store.
IBCs come in several styles. Image via
Wikipedia
Intermediate Bulk Containers
These are a class of specialized container that holds everything from liquids to solids. They are typically used for shipping goods like chemicals, food syrups, paints, and raw materials. IBCs are called intermediate because they are smaller than tanks but larger than drums.
Some containers are rigid, and others are flexible and fold up for storage when empty. IBC containers have only been around for about thirty years.
Image via
Air Sea Containers
Drums
We’ve all seen these before, though there are many types beyond the 55-gallon drum. Drums are usually made from steel, hard plastic, or dense paperboard, depending on the intended use.
Drums are handy containers for many liquids and powders because they can be rolled, moved around with a hand truck, or stacked together on pallets for easily shifting groups of them around with a forklift.
Image via
Maritime Manual
Special Purpose Containers
These are unique, sometimes one-off containers that are often used for high-profile shipments like weapons and military cargo. Because of this, they are often heavily secured.
Unlike most other standardized containers, these come in many shapes and sizes and are made of whatever materials suit the special purpose.
Image via
Wikipedia
Swap Bodies
These are mostly used in Europe and have a strong bottom with the convertible top, so they can ship many kinds of items.
Swap body containers are typically only used on trucks and trains and don’t ride on container ships. Instead of a sturdy base with forklift pockets, these have spindly folding legs on the corners to support the container at a dock or between truck and train.
A Container for Everything
These are some of the most common types of shipping containers out there aside from the metal box we’re all familiar with. Lots of cargo has special needs, but it can all be containerized one way or another.
So what is it like to receive a large shipment via container ship?
Our own [Bob Baddeley] has firsthand experience and told us all about it a while back
. Do you have any experience with shipping at this scale, or have you ever repurposed a shipping container? Let us know in the comments! | 94 | 28 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337828",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-04-07T17:26:56",
"content": "“The incident really highlights the fragility of the whole intermodal system and makes us wonder if anything will change.”Plans for building alternate canals.There’s also one use for containers not descr... | 1,760,373,128.285358 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/07/diving-into-the-details-of-keyboard-interfaces-at-the-gate-level/ | Diving Into The Details Of Keyboard Interfaces At The Gate-Level | Dan Maloney | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"6502",
"Ben Eater",
"diy",
"interface",
"ps2"
] | Never doubt the value of a good teacher. Even if you know — or think you know — the material being presented, a good teacher can open your eyes to new ways of looking at things that will pay dividends you never expected.
That’s the feeling we got while watching [Ben Eater]’s latest video on
building a keyboard interface
(embedded below) for his breadboard 6502 computer. On the face of it, getting a keyboard to talk to a computer should be a simple job. [Ben] had
previously looked at the serial protocol
used by the old PS/2 keyboard and even built a wildly complex circuit out of discrete shift register chips to visualize the data being sent by the keyboard. The video below continues that work, this time concentrating on using the keyboard with his 6502 breadboard computer.
After some instructive preliminaries on interrupt programming, [Ben] dives into the logic-level details of teasing useful signals from the keyboard. His signal processing starts with some inverters and an RC network to turn multiple clock pulses into one logic level transition. Walking through this circuit step by step was the really interesting bit; even if you know that the answer is eventually going to be “Schmitt trigger,” getting to that point was really instructive.
Of course, what [Ben]’s videos mainly accomplish is making us want to follow along with him and build a breadboard computer of our own. From
a low-rez VGA card
to
a reliable UART
, following along with his discrete chip builds is always educational. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337816",
"author": "CH",
"timestamp": "2021-04-07T16:37:24",
"content": "Very good video, his style is easy to follow. Using datasheets is nice although he does simplify the datasheet significantly if you are not familiar with them.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"rep... | 1,760,373,128.398917 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/07/review-what-on-earth-is-an-electromagnetic-radiation-tester-and-why-would-i-need-one/ | Review: What On Earth Is An Electromagnetic Radiation Tester And Why Would I Need One? | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Reviews",
"Slider",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"electric field",
"EM radiation",
"magnetic field",
"teardown"
] | One of the joys of an itinerant existence comes in periodically being reunited with the fruits of various orders that were sent to hackerspaces or friends somewhere along the way. These anonymous parcels from afar hold an assortment of wonders, with the added element of anticipation that comes from forgetting exactly what had been ordered.
So it is with today’s subject, a Mustool MT525 electromagnetic radiation tester. At a cost not far above £10 ($13.70), this was an impulse purchase driven by curiosity; these devices claim to measure both magnetic and electric fields, but what do they really measure? My interest in these matters lies in the direction of radio, but I have never examined such an instrument. Time to subject it to the Hackaday treatment.
Who Knew Everything Was So Harmful!
Out of the box comes a smart handheld unit with three buttons and an LCD display, and an instruction leaflet. On the rear of the case is a battery compartment, this takes three AAA cells. It claims to measure electric fields from 1 V/m to 1999 V/m, and magnetic fields from 0.01 μT to 99.99 μT, with a bandwidth from 5 Hz to 3500 MHz. Opening the instruction leaflet it becomes clear that this is intended for use in monitoring electromagnetic fields for the purpose of human safety, with a list of conditions from leukemia to blindness that they can cause.
Open it up, and here’s what we find.
Powering it up gives a zero reading for both measurements when held in free space in this very average house, increasing markedly when held near various electronic appliances. Particularly concerning is a beeper that sounds when either level is considered harmful, which it does in proximity to a horrifying number of items including the laptop keyboard and trackpad this is being written with. As expected the door seal of a running microwave oven generates particularly high readings, as does a Baofeng handheld transceiver at full power in the 430 MHz band. Sadly my CRT TV is in storage at the moment, but I would expect that would also generate high readings.
The sensors for magnetic and electric fields.
The alarm threshold values for that beeper are 40 V/m and 0.4 μT respectively, and given that it sounds the alarm on such mundane things as my keyboard I have to question what that means.
Reading around the subject of typical safe exposure levels
it becomes obvious that the alarm is set far too low, and I have to wonder whether it might cause unnecessary worry in a person who had bought this unit because of a personal concern for electromagnetic field levels. Fortunately the beep can be disabled with a long press of a button.
So having described what it does, what’s inside the case? On the back are four small screws, and with those undone it splits into two to reveal a circuit board. At the business end of the unit are the sensors, a metal plate for electric fields and a wire-ended inductor for magnetic ones, and their outputs are each fed to their own
TI TLC27M2 dual op-amp
. These in turn feed a
Weltrend WT56F216 microcontroller
which boasts an 8052 core and analogue inputs, that drives the LCD via a
Holtek HT1621 LCD controller
. It appears well-engineered, and the sensors follow what I would expect for a device measuring these properties.
Does It Have A Use?
The Mustool MT525 electromagnetic radiation tester then. It appears to be a well-engineered instrument that does what it claims, and measures the presence and strength of oscillating electric and magnetic fields. But is it an instrument that’s any use, should I trust it, and does it have a space on my bench? I am curious about its calibration for a start, it’s hardly as though I’d expect any traceable calibration certificate from such a cheap item, but are the V/m and μT figures even in the right ballpark? I am also concerned about the way it and devices like it are sold for health purposes, it worries me that there might be people driven to unnecessary worry by its “Harmful” beeper when in reality they have no need. For myself, I can report that it’s a handy way to check for a field at close quarters, and it works at common amateur radio frequencies, though I can’t really claim it has much use as a bench instrument. There is one thing at which it’s quite handy though, it detects live mains cables buried in walls more reliably than the traditional metal-detector type of wire finder, perhaps that’s where I will use it. For yourselves though, I bought one so you don’t have to. | 75 | 26 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337766",
"author": "Cyk",
"timestamp": "2021-04-07T14:11:48",
"content": "I’d put this in the same bin for brand-new garbage, that already contains the cheap PH meters, $20 oscilloscopes and $1 LiIon chargers.Also usable for smart home devices that come with horrendous security hol... | 1,760,373,128.068501 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/07/an-esp32-walkie-talkie-for-those-spy-radio-moments/ | AN ESP32 Walkie-Talkie, For Those Spy Radio Moments | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"ESP-Now",
"ESP32",
"walkie talkie",
"wifi"
] | One of the most thrilling childhood toys for the adventurous 1970s or 1980s kid was probably the toy walkie-talkie. It didn’t matter that they were a very simple AM low-end-VHF radio with a range of about 500m and a Morse key of debatable utility, you could talk clandestinely with your friends, and be a more convincing spy, or commando, or whatever was the game of the moment. It’s a memory conjured up for grown-ups by [Chris G] with his ESP32 walkie-talkie,
which replaces a shaky 49MHz connection with one a bit more robust through the magic of WiFi
.
The hardware is a collection of modules on a custom PCB, aside from the ESP32 there’s an I2S microphone and I2S audio amplifier, which along with battery and speaker are housed in a neat 3D printed case. I2S is used for simplicity, but there is no reason why analogue components couldn’t be used with a few code changes. Connection is made via UDP over a WiFi network, or should there be no network via ESP-NOW. We’re not sure the range will be brilliant with those little on-board chip antennas, but with the wide range of 2.4GHz antennas to be had it’s likely a better result could easily be achieved if the stock item disappoints.
We like this project, and it’s one that’s especially pleasing to see given that
we saw the potential a few years ago in a less successful walkie-talkie using the ESP8266
. | 29 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337716",
"author": "anonymous",
"timestamp": "2021-04-07T11:10:51",
"content": "Hmmm. I wonder if this would work with one of the LoRa modules.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6337737",
"author": "trndr",
"tim... | 1,760,373,128.353806 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/07/soviet-axe-restoration-replace-or-repair/ | Soviet Axe Restoration: Replace Or Repair? | Kristina Panos | [
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"distortion",
"Formanta Solo II",
"phaser",
"Soviet guitar"
] | What do you do with a cool-looking misfit guitar that has non-working built-in effects and some iffy design aspects? Do you try to fix it and keep it original, or do you gut it and strut your stuff with new bits from around the shop? This is the conundrum that [Tim Sway]
finds himself in with this late 70s/early 80s Formanta Solo II straight out of the USSR
. (Video, embedded below.)
[Tim] likes a lot of things about it (and we do, too), especially the acid green pick guard, the sparkly pickups, and the beefy bridge that lets him set the string spacing individually, on the fly. It even has a built-in phaser and distortion, but those aren’t working and may never have worked that well at all.
The non-working effects guts.
As you can see in the video below, [Tim] has already spent a few hours making it playable and a little more palatable in order to figure out what to do with it electronics-wise. He started by making the 9 V compartment big enough to actually fit a battery inside, and drilled out bigger holes for new tuners.
Interestingly, these guitars had a 5-pin DIN receptacle instead of a 1/4″ jack. [Tim] bought an adapter just in case, but once someone dug up a schematic and sent it over, he decided to rewire it with a 1/4″.
For all of its plus sides, [Tim] doesn’t like the headstock on this thing at all and found the neck to be too chunky for the modern guitarist, so he cut down the headstock, shaved down the neck a bit, and stained it dark. He also made a new nut out of what looks like rosewood. Then it was on to the more standard stuff — file down the frets and polish them, oil the fretboard, and clean up the body.
The point of this exercise is to make a usable guitar for the modern musician. As [Tim] says, this is not a particularly valuable guitar, nor is it rare, and it wasn’t built that well to begin with. One of the issues is the switches — they’re kind of light and cheesy feeling, and one of them is directly in the strum path. Will [Tim] change those out but fix the original effects, or will he make the thing completely his own? We wait with bated breath.
Want to mess around with cheap old guitars, but don’t know where to start?
Our own [Sven Gregori] has your back with Axe Hacks
.
Via
adafruit | 12 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337704",
"author": "daveboltman",
"timestamp": "2021-04-07T10:22:51",
"content": "Keep the original!!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6337724",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2021-04-07T11:53:46",
"content": "If it... | 1,760,373,127.951909 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/08/18650-brings-esp8266-wifi-repeater-along-for-the-ride/ | 18650 Brings ESP8266 WiFi Repeater Along For The Ride | Tom Nardi | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"18650",
"ESP-01",
"ESP8266",
"TP4056",
"wifi repeater"
] | We’re truly fortunate to have so many incredible open source projects floating around on the Internet, since there’s almost always some prior art you can lean on. By combining bits and pieces from different projects, you can often save yourself a huge amount of time and effort. It’s just a matter of figuring out how all the pieces fit together,
like in this clever mash-up by [bethiboothi]
that takes advantage of the fact that the popular TP4056 lithium-ion battery charger module happens to be almost the exact same size of the ESP-01.
By taking a 3D printed design intended to
attach a TP4056 module to the end of an 18650 cell
and combining it with an ESP8266 firmware that
turns the powerful microcontroller into a WiFi repeater
, [bethiboothi] ended up with a portable network node that reportedly lasts up to three days on a charge. The observed range was good even with the built-in PCB antenna, but hacking on an external can get you out a little farther if you need it.
While it doesn’t appear that [bethiboothi] is using it currently, the
esp_wifi_repeater
firmware does have an automatic mesh mode which seems like it would be a fantastic fit for this design. Putting together an impromptu mesh WiFi network with a bunch of cheap battery powered nodes would be an
excellent way to get network connectivity at an outdoor hacker camp
, assuming the ESP’s CPU can keep up with the demand. | 30 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338125",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2021-04-08T15:38:58",
"content": "If you wanted to implement this as a “throwie” to leave a breadcrumb trail of repeaters you weren’t sure you were going to get back again, you might want a cheaper battery. It came to my attention th... | 1,760,373,127.847959 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/08/code-your-own-twitch-chat-controls-for-robots-or-just-about-anything-else/ | Code Your Own Twitch Chat Controls For Robots — Or Just About Anything Else! | Lewin Day | [
"Featured",
"how-to",
"internet hacks",
"Original Art",
"Skills",
"Slider",
"Software Development"
] | [
"chatbot",
"python",
"twitch",
"twitch bot",
"twitch chat",
"twitch.tv"
] | Twitch Plays Pokemon
burst onto the then nascent livestreaming scene back in 2014, letting Twitch viewers take command of a Game Boy emulator running Pokemon Red via simple chat commands. Since then, the same concept has been applied to everything under the sun. Other video games, installing Linux, and even trading on the New York Stock Exchange have all been gameified through Twitch chat.
TwitchPlaysPokemon
started a craze in crowdsourced control of video games, robots, and just about everything else.
You, thirsty reader, are wondering how you can get a slice of this delicious action. Fear not, for with a bit of ramshackle code, you can let Twitch chat take over pretty much anything in, on, or around your computer.
It’s Just IRC
The great thing about Twitch chat is that it runs on vanilla IRC (Internet Relay Chat). The protocol has been around forever, and libraries exist to make interfacing easy. Just like the original streamer behind Twitch Plays Pokemon, we’re going to use Python because it’s great for fun little experiments like these. With that said, any language will do fine — just apply the same techniques in the relevant syntax.
SimpleTwitchCommander,
as I’ve named it on Github
, assumes some familiarity with basic Python programming. The code will allow you to take commands from chat in two ways. Commands from chat can be tabulated, and only the one with the most votes executed, or every single command can be acted on directly. Actually getting this code to control your robot, video game, or pet viper is up to you. What we’re doing here is interfacing with Twitch chat and pulling out commands so you can make it do whatever you like. With that said, for this example, we’ve set up the code to parse commands for a simple wheeled robot. Let’s dive in.
Code Walking
import socket
from emoji import demojize
from apscheduler.schedulers.background import BackgroundScheduler
With this code, you too can watch as random people from the Internet
drive your robot straight into a bush.
The first thing to do in our code is import the libraries we need. Libraries are great, they’re presents from talented programmers that make our lives easier — or at least we hope the are. We’re using four libraries in this case, but you can get by with just the first three depending on your application. The first, and perhaps most important, is the
socket
library, which handles all our network communication. The
emoji
library provides us with a neat tool for stripping out emojis out of chat messages, as they can get messy.
APScheduler
is used for our command voting system, which lets Twitch users vote on their desired action rather than simply letting every Twitch command through.
class TwitchControl:
This statement sets up the class for our program.
def __init__(self):
self.server = 'irc.chat.twitch.tv'
self.port = 6667
self.nickname = 'yourtwitchusername'
self.token = 'oauth:youroauthkeyhere'
self.channel = '#yourtwitchchannel'
self.sched = BackgroundScheduler()
self.sock = socket.socket()
self.sock.connect((self.server,self.port))
self.sock.send(f"PASS {self.token}\n".encode('utf-8'))
self.sock.send(f"NICK {self.nickname}\n".encode('utf-8'))
self.sock.send(f"JOIN {self.channel}\n".encode('utf-8'))
__init__()
is a special Python routine called when an object is created from a class. In plain terms, when we call on
TwitchControl
, the code in
__init__()
runs first. Here, we’re creating variables that store the address of Twitch’s chat server, the port, and our Twitch login and channel details. The oauth token is how the Twitch server knows who is connecting to the chat channel,
and you can generate your own here
.
self.voteDict = {"null": 0, "fwd" : 0, "rev" : 0, "left" : 0, "right" : 0}
Next, we create a special variable called a dictionary, and give it the name
voteDict
. Dictionaries are great, as they allow us to store data in neat little pairs. In our case, we have our desired commands, and each one has a number next to it. This will correspond to the number of votes for each command in chat. We initialise these at 0 to begin with.
self.sched.add_job(self.voteCount, 'interval', seconds=2)
self.sched.start()
The above lines set up
APscheduler
to run a function at regular 2 second intervals. That function goes by the name
voteCount
, and at each two second interval it checks
voteDict
to see which command got the most votes in chat, and then executes the winner. We’ll come back and look at voteCount in a bit. For now, let’s look at the main loop that runs once everything is initialised.
def loop(self):
while True:
resp = self.sock.recv(2048).decode('utf-8')
if resp.startswith('PING'):
self.sock.send("PONG\n".encode('utf-8'))
elif len(resp) > 0:
respClean = demojize(resp)
print(respClean)
msgComponents=respClean.split(" ",3)
msgUser=msgComponents[0] #get username from message
msgUser = msgUser[msgUser.find(':')+1: msgUser.find('!')]
msgContent=msgComponents[3] #print message content
Once we get into the while loop, we need to receive data from the IRC server. If the data is “PING”, we respond with “PONG” as per typical IRC practice to keep the connection alive. Otherwise, we clean the data with the demojize function, which replaces any emojis in the message with plain text. Then we use string functions to split up the raw message from the server into its components: the username that sent the message, and the actual message content. At this point, we can hunt directly for a command, and if we want that to trigger directly off messages, we can do it here.
if msgContent.find("LIGHTS") >=0:
print("Turning Lights On!")
#code to turn lights on here
Alternatively, if we want to collect commands in chat and see which is voted the most popular, we can do that too. Each time one of the following commands is detected, its corresponding field in the
voteDict
dictionary is incremented by 1.
if msgContent.find("FWD") >=0:
self.voteDict["fwd"] = self.voteDict["fwd"] +1
if msgContent.find("REV") >=0:
self.voteDict["rev"] = self.voteDict["rev"] +1
if msgContent.find("LEFT") >=0:
self.voteDict["left"] = self.voteDict["left"] +1
if msgContent.find("RIGHT") >=0:
self.voteDict["right"] = self.voteDict["right"] +1
That’s all our main loop does. It receives data from the IRC server as it comes in, processes it, and increments the vote count from incoming commands. To actually act on those votes, we need to go to our
voteCount
function. Thanks to the
APscheduler
routine we set up before, this automatically runs every two seconds.
def voteCount(self): #function responsible for checking votes and executing commands
print('Counting votes and executing command')
voteWinner = max(self.voteDict, key=self.voteDict.get)
print("biggest vote:" + voteWinner)
nullCheck=all(x==0 for x in self.voteDict.values())
if nullCheck:
print('doing a nullo')
elif voteWinner=="fwd":
print('going Forward')
#code to go forward here
elif voteWinner=="rev":
print('going Reverse')
#code to go reverse here
elif voteWinner=="left":
print('going Left')
#code to go left here
elif voteWinner=="right":
print('going Right')
#code to go right here
self.voteDict = {"null" : 0, "fwd" : 0, "rev" : 0, "left" : 0, "right" : 0}
voteCount is a simple function, one which uses Python’s inbuilt dictionary functions to determine the command that had the most votes. Note that we also check to see if all votes equal zero — in that case, we must do nothing, hence the nullCheck code. Once the winner is determined, the code for the relevant command can be executed.
What Will You Unleash on Twitch?
There’s a little more boilerplate to string things together, but fundamentally, these are the blocks that make everything work.
Grab the real thing from Github if you wish to tinker at home
. Obviously, from here, it’s simply a matter of customisation to shape the code to your particular purpose. If you’re looking to control a robot, put your commands for servos or motors in the necessary spots, or send instructions over serial to your microcontroller that handles those tasks. Alternatively, if you’re working with a game in an emulator, have the Python code simply emulate the relevant button presses.
The code is in no way optimised; writing this article took about twice as long as writing the code itself. There’s likely huge gains to be made by using more idealised string management code and other such tweaks. Further work in wrapping all this up in a neat library is left as an exercise for the reader. Hopefully this gets you well on your way to having some crowdsourced fun on Twitch! As always, happy hacking. | 4 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338098",
"author": "SPD",
"timestamp": "2021-04-08T14:08:58",
"content": "“What Will You Unleash on Twitch?”Twitch Plays Twitter…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6338228",
"author": "Stuart Longland",
"timestamp": "2021... | 1,760,373,127.894789 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/08/compute-module-4-nas-with-custom-carrier-board/ | Compute Module 4 NAS With Custom Carrier Board | Tom Nardi | [
"hardware",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"3D printed enclosure",
"compute module 4",
"file server",
"nas",
"raspberry pi",
"sata"
] | At this point, we’ve seen more Raspberry Pi Network Attached Storage (NAS) builds than we can possibly count. The platform was never a particularly ideal choice for this task due to the fact it could only connect to drives over USB, but it was cheap and easy to work with, so folks made the best of it. But that all changed once the Compute Module 4 introduced PCIe support to the Raspberry Pi ecosystem.
If this
impressive NAS built by [mebs] represents the shape of things to come
, we’re more than a little excited. On the outside, with its 3D printed case and integrated OLED display to show system status, it might look like plenty of builds that came before it. But pop the top of this cyberpunk-styled server, and you realize just how much work went into it.
At the heart of this NAS is a purpose-built carrier board that [mebs] designed based on the KiCad files the Raspberry Pi Foundation released for
their official CM4 IO Board
. While not much larger than the CM4 itself, the NAS board breaks out the board’s PCIe, Ethernet, HDMI, and USB. There’s also a header for I2C, used primarily for the OLED display but naturally expandable to additional sensors or devices, and nine GPIO pins for good measure.
Of course, that alone doesn’t make a NAS. Into that PCIe port goes a four channel SATA controller card, which in turn is connected to the hard disk drives that are nestled into their respective nodes of the printed case. A central fan blows over the electronics at the core, and
thanks to clever design and a few cardboard seals
, pulls air over the drives by way of intake vents printed into the sides.
As impressive as this build is, not everyone will need this level of performance. If you don’t mind being limited to USB speeds,
you can 3D print a NAS enclosure for the standard Raspberry Pi.
Or you could always
repurpose an old PC case if you’d like something a bit more substantial
. | 20 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338062",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2021-04-08T12:11:31",
"content": "Looks really good, I’ve been using an original small ram model B as a NAS (and server for other things too) since I got it, and its been very much adequate for the tiny user numbers mostly streaming our... | 1,760,373,128.462948 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/08/big-clive-hacks-led-bulbs-with-openscad/ | Big Clive Hacks LED Bulbs With OpenSCAD | Chris Lott | [
"home hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"bulb",
"Bulbshade",
"lamps",
"LED bulbs",
"LED fixture"
] | After accidentally crushing the plastic envelope on a cheap LED light bulb, [bigclivedotcom] figured out he could
make custom ones using OpenSCAD
in any shape he wants. He
previously hacked a bunch of these inexpensive LED bulbs
last month, discovering they all shared a similar circuit topology. All the ones he experimented with drove the LEDs hard, something that’s bound to reduce bulb lifetime. By reverse engineering the current control regulator, it turns out it is easy to adjust the drive current by changing a resistor or two. Reducing the current should not only increase lifetime, but could allow repurposing the bulb for other uses, such as decorative lighting.
Tweaking the LED Current
Three OpenSCAD scripts are provided which generate what he calls diamond, obelisk, and globe styles. Basic parameters for each style can be tweaked by the user, such as feature sizes and number of facets. He mentions the lack of OpenSCAD customizers in his script — this can easily be added as shown in the following example (
this section of the User Manual
on customizers explains the syntax). Note that you can’t make the slider generate real numbers, only whole numbers, which is why the scaling factor is multiplied by 10.
Adding Parameter Customization Sliders is Easy
These fancy globes can be used as night lights and possibly outdoor lighting, if you can make a good seal with the base. Custom chandeliers, anyone? Indicator lamps for very large panels? Any other ideas? If you want to explore the LED lifetime issue further, inveterate tinkerer Ted Yapo wrote a
deep dive into the mythical 100,000 hour LED bulb
. Thanks to [Cliff Claven] for the tip. | 11 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6338077",
"author": "mt21",
"timestamp": "2021-04-08T13:18:48",
"content": "nice hack. I discovered as a side effect that “opaque” PLA/ABS is actually not so opaque when used as a lamp shade, so this can be sed for interesting effects, too.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,128.60815 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/07/fun-while-it-lasted-falcon-9-telemetry-now-encrypted/ | Fun While It Lasted, Falcon 9 Telemetry Now Encrypted | Tom Nardi | [
"News",
"Radio Hacks",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"amateur radio",
"Decode",
"Falcon 9",
"SpaceX",
"telemetry"
] | A few weeks back we brought word that Reddit users [derekcz] and [Xerbot] had managed to receive the 2232.5 MHz telemetry downlink from a Falcon 9 upper stage and pull out some interesting plain-text strings. With further software fiddling, the vehicle’s video streams were decoded, resulting in some absolutely breathtaking shots of the rocket and its payload from low Earth orbit.
Unfortunately, it looks like those heady days are now over, as
[derekcz] reports the downlink from the latest Falcon 9 mission was nothing but intelligible noise
. Since the hardware and software haven’t changed on his side, the only logical conclusion is that SpaceX wasn’t too happy about radio amateurs listening in on their rocket and decided to employ some form of encryption.
Since this data has apparently been broadcast out in the clear for nearly a decade before anyone on the ground noticed, it’s easy to see this as an overreaction. After all, what’s the harm in a few geeks with hacked together antennas getting a peek at a stack of Starlink satellites? [derekcz] even mused that allowing hobbyists to capture these space views might earn the company some positive buzz, something Elon Musk never seems to get enough of.
Some of the images [derekcz] was able to capture from the Falcon 9
On the other hand, we know that SpaceX is actively pursuing more lucrative national security launch contracts for both the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.
For these sensitive government payloads
, the normal on-screen telemetry data and space views are omitted from the company’s official live streams. It seems likely the Pentagon would be very interested in finding out how civilians were able to obtain this information, and a guarantee from SpaceX that the link would be encrypted for all future flights could have helped smooth things over.
At the end of the post [derekcz] echos a sentiment we’ve been hearing from other amateur radio operators recently, which is that pretty soon space may be off-limits for us civilians.
As older weather satellites begin to fail
and get replaced with newer and inevitably more complex models, the days of
picking up satellite images with an RTL-SDR and a few lines of Python
are likely numbered. | 56 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337983",
"author": "Definitely not John",
"timestamp": "2021-04-08T05:18:17",
"content": "Double standards are the only standards. There are two sets of rules, one for the haves, one for the have nots. I’m all for starting up opensource space flight. Everyone who wants to go to spa... | 1,760,373,128.558646 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/07/hydraulics-made-simple/ | Hydraulics Made Simple | Al Williams | [
"Science"
] | [
"flow",
"hazen-williams equation",
"hydraulics",
"pipe",
"pipeline",
"pressure",
"reynolds number"
] | Corralling electrons is great and what most of us are pretty good at, but the best projects have some kind of interface to the real world. Often, that involves some sort of fluid such as water or air moving through pipes. If you don’t grasp hydraulics intuitively, [Practical Engineering] has a video you’ll enjoy. It explains
how flow and pressure work in pipes
.
Granted, not every project deals with piping, but plumbing, sprinkler systems, cooling systems, and even robotics often have elements of hydraulics. In addition, as the video points out, fluid flow in a pipe is very similar to electrical current flowing through wires.
The discussion about friction loss coves some math, but we were surprised not to hear much about the Reynolds number that measures the turbulence, although the video does cover turbulence towards the end. The C term of the Hazen-Williams equation doesn’t depend on the Reynolds number but is only valid for water at room temperature over a limited range of velocities. If you are working with other fluids or in other operating conditions, you’ll need more math, but the video still gives you some intuition that will help regardless of the fluid.
However, the real gem is the experimental test setup with clear pipes and some flow and pressure meters. We couldn’t help but notice the googly eyes on the instruments, too.
While you might need hydraulic intuition for every project, it is a good thing to know more about it.
Fluid robots
have certain advantages. With some work, you can even
3D print hydraulics
. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337965",
"author": "Garth Bock",
"timestamp": "2021-04-08T02:48:16",
"content": "I remember an article in Popular Science magazine back in the 70’s on the subject of Fluidics… using a moving fluid (ie…air, water) to control external devices. The demonstrator in the article turned o... | 1,760,373,128.652129 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/07/shoot-above-the-waves-on-this-e-foil-made-from-a-rifle-case/ | Shoot Above The Waves On This E-Foil Made From A Rifle Case | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"BLDC",
"boat",
"e-foil",
"esc",
"hydrofoil",
"rifle case",
"surf",
"wing"
] | So you say you want to fly above the waves on an electric hydrofoil, but you don’t have the means to buy a commercial board. Or, you don’t have the time and skills needed to carve a board and outfit it with the motor and wing that let it glide above the water. Are you out of luck? Not if you follow
this hackworthy e-foil build
that uses a waterproof rifle case as the… hull? Board? Whatever, the floaty bit.
If you haven’t run across an e-foil before, prepare to suddenly need something you never knew existed. An e-foil is basically a surfboard with a powerful brushless motor mounted on a keel of sorts, fairly far below the waterline. Along with the motor is a hydrofoil to provide lift, enough to raise the board well out of the water as the board gains speed. They look like a lot of fun.
Most e-foils are built around what amounts to a surfboard, with compartments to house the battery, motor controller, and other electronics. [Frank] and [Julian] worked around the difficult surfboard build by just buying a waterproof rifle case. It may not be very hydrodynamic, but it’s about the right form factor, it already floats, and it has plenty of space for electronics. The link above has a lot of details on the build, which started with reinforcing the case with an aluminum endoskeleton, but at the end of the day, they only spent about 2,000€ on mostly off-the-shelf parts. The video below shows the rifle case’s maiden voyage; we were astonished to see how far and how quickly the power used by the motor drops when the rifle case leaves the water.
Compared to
some e-foil builds we’ve seen
, this one looks like a snap. Hats off to [Frank] and [Julian] for finding a way to make this yet another hobby we could afford but never find time for.
Thanks to [Chris] for the tip. | 17 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337942",
"author": "Arjan Wiegel",
"timestamp": "2021-04-07T23:52:09",
"content": "How on earth does balancing on such a board even work? Does it self-balance from left to right like a skate-board or bicycle? And how about the front to back rocking motion? Wouldn’t you simply fall?... | 1,760,373,128.70693 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/06/open-source-electric-vehicle-charging/ | Open Source Electric Vehicle Charging | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"car",
"charging",
"electric vehicle",
"ev",
"high voltage",
"IoT",
"nano",
"network",
"Nissan Leaf",
"web app"
] | Electric vehicles are becoming more and more common on the road, but when they’re parked in the driveway or garage there are still some kinks to work out when getting them charged up. Sure, there are plenty of charging stations on the market, but they all have different features, capabilities, and even ports, so to really make sure that full control is maintained over charging a car’s batteries it might be necessary to reach into the parts bin and pull out a trusty Arduino.
This project comes to us from [Sebastian]
who needed this level of control over charging his Leaf, and who also has the skills to implement it from the large high voltage switching contactors to the software running its network connectivity and web app. This charging station has every available feature, too. It can tell the car to charge at different rates, and can restrict it to charging at different times (if energy is cheaper at night, for example). It is able to monitor the car’s charge state and other information over the communications bus to the vehicle, and even has a front-end web app for monitoring and controlling the device.
The project is based around an Arduino Nano 33 IoT with all of the code available on the
project’s GitHub page
. While we would advise using extreme caution when dealing with mains voltage and when interfacing with a high-ticket item like an EV, at first blush the build looks like it has crossed all its Ts and might even make a good prototype for a production unit in the future. If you don’t need all of the features that this charging station has, though,
you can always hack the car itself to add some more advanced charging features
. | 26 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337470",
"author": "Nick",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T15:09:32",
"content": "I was going to jump on this guy for not including a GFI in his design, but his project page does say he’s plugging into a GFI protected circuit.However, I also don’t see any GCM in his design, which is anoth... | 1,760,373,128.993884 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/06/death-of-the-turing-test-in-an-age-of-successful-ais/ | Death Of The Turing Test In An Age Of Successful AIs | Steven Dufresne | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"ai",
"alan turing",
"artifical intelligence",
"ibm project debater",
"ibm watson",
"neural network",
"speech recognition",
"turing test",
"watson"
] | IBM has come up with an automatic debating system called Project Debater that researches a topic, presents an argument, listens to a human rebuttal and formulates its own rebuttal. But does it pass the Turing test? Or does the Turing test matter anymore?
The Turing test was first introduced in 1950, often cited as year-one for AI research. It asks, “Can machines think?”. Today we’re more interested in machines that can intelligently make restaurant recommendations, drive our car along the tedious highway to and from work, or identify the surprising looking flower we just stumbled upon. These all fit the definition of AI as a machine that can perform a task normally requiring the intelligence of a human. Though as you’ll see below, Turing’s test wasn’t even for intelligence or even for thinking, but rather to determine a test subject’s sex.
The Imitation Game
Turing test with machine
The Turing test as we know it today is to see if a machine can fool someone into thinking that it’s a human. It involves an interrogator and a machine with the machine hidden from the interrogator. The interrogator asks questions of the machine using only keyboard and screen. The purpose of the interrogator’s questions are to help him to decide if he’s talking to a machine or a human. If he can’t tell then the machine passes the Turing test.
Often the test is done with a number of interrogators and the measure of success is the percentage of interrogators who can’t tell. In
one example
, to give the machine an advantage, the test was to tell if it was a machine or a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy. The young age excused much of the strangeness in its conversation. It fooled 33% of the interrogators.
Imitation game with a machine and a man
Naturally Turing didn’t call his test “the Turing test”. Instead he called it the imitation game, since the goal was to imitate a human. In
Turing’s paper
, he gives two versions of the test. The first involves three people, the interrogator, a man and a woman. The man and woman sit in a separate room from the interrogator and the communication at Turing’s time was ideally via teleprinter. The goal is for the interrogator to guess who is male and who is female. The man’s goal is to fool the interrogator into making the wrong decision and the woman’s is to help him make the right one.
The second test in Turing’s paper replaces the woman with a machine but the machine is now the deceiver and the man tries to help the interrogator make the right decision. The interrogator still tries to guess who is male and who is female.
But don’t let that goal fool you. The real purpose of the game was as a replacement for his question of “Can a machine think?”. If the game was successful then Turing figured that his question would have been answered. Today, we’re both more sophisticated about what constitutes “thinking” and “intelligence”, and we’re also content with the machine displaying intelligent behavior, whether or not it’s “thinking”. To unpack all this, let’s take IBM’s recent Project Debater under the microscope.
The Great Debater
IBM’s Project Debater is an example of what we’d call a composite AI as opposed to a narrow AI. An example of narrow AI would be to present an image to a neural network and the neural network would label objects in that image, a narrowly defined task. A composite AI, however, performs a more complex task requiring a number of steps, much more akin to a human brain.
Project Debater is first given the motion to be argued. You can
read the paper on IBM’s webpage
for the details of what it does next but basically it spends 15 minutes researching and formulating a 4-minute opening speech supporting one side of the motion. It also converts the speech to natural language and delivers it to an audience. During those initial 15 minutes, it also compiles leads for the opposing argument and formulates responses. This is in preparation for its later rebuttal. It then listens to its opponents rebuttal, converting it to text
using IBM’s own Watson speech-to-text
. It analyzes the text and, in combination with the responses it had previously formulated, comes up with its own 4-minute rebuttal. It converts that to speech and ends with a summary 2-minute speech.
All of those steps, some of them considered narrow AI, add up to a composite AI. The whole is done with neural networks along with conventional data mining, processing, and analysis.
The following video is of a live debate between Project Debater and Harish Natarajan, world record holder for the number of debate competitions won. Judge for yourself how well it works.
Does Project Debater pass the Turing test? It didn’t take the formal test, however, you can judge for yourself by imagining reading a transcript of what Project Debater had to say. Could you tell whether it was produced by a machine or a human? If you could mistake it for a human then it may pass the Turing test. It also responds to the human debater’s argument, similar to answering questions in the Turing test.
Keep in mind though that Project Debater had 15 minutes to prepare for the opening speech and no numbers are given on how long it took to come up with the other speeches, so if time-to-answer is a factor then it may lose there. But does it matter?
Does The Turing Test Matter?
Does it matter if any of today’s AIs can pass the Turing test? That’s most often not the goal. Most AIs end up as marketed products, even the ones that don’t start out that way. After all, eventually someone has to pay for the research. As long as they do the job then it doesn’t matter.
IBM’s goal for Project Debater is to produce persuasive arguments and make well informed decisions free of personal bias, a useful tool to sell to businesses and governments. Tesla’s goal for its AI is to drive vehicles. Chatbots abound for handling specific phone and online requests. All of them do something normally requiring the intelligence of a human with varying degrees of success. The test that matters then is whether or not they do their tasks well enough for people to pay for them.
Maybe asking if a machine can think, or even if it can pass for a human, isn’t really relevant. The ways we’re using them require only that they can complete their tasks. Sometimes this can require “human-like” behavior, but most often not. If we’re not using AI to trick people anyway, is the Turing test still relevant? | 98 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337444",
"author": "Pat",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T14:15:32",
"content": "I still think the big problem with the Turing test is the basic idea that ahumanis the right tester. Humans are notoriously awful at constructing tests for themselves. We construct tests that ignore ahugeamou... | 1,760,373,129.57528 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/06/flight-of-the-pterothopter-a-jurassic-inspired-ornithopter/ | Flight Of The Pterothopter: A Jurassic-Inspired Ornithopter | Zach Zeman | [
"drone hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"aircraft",
"aircraft design",
"balsa wood",
"model aircraft",
"ornithopter",
"rubber band"
] | Ornithopters look silly. They look like something that shouldn’t work. An airplane with no propeller and wings that go flappy-flappy? No way that thing is going to fly. There are, however, a multitude of hobbyists, researchers, and birds who would heartily disagree with that sentiment, because ornithopters do fly. And they are almost mesmerizing to watch when they do it, which is just one reason we love
[Hobi Cerdas]’s build of the Pterothopter
, a rubber band-powered ornithopter modeled after a pterodactyl.
All joking aside, the science and research behind ornithopters and, relatedly, how living organisms fly is fascinating in itself — which is why [Lewin Day] wrote
that article about how bees manage to become airborne
. We can lose hours reading about this stuff and watching
videos of prototypes
. While most models we can currently build are not as efficient as their propeller-powered counterparts, the potential of evolutionarily-perfected flying mechanisms is endlessly intriguing. That alone is enough to fuel builds like this for years to come.
As you can see in the video below, [Hobi Cerdas] went through his own research and development process as he got his Pterothopter to soar. The model proved too nose-heavy in its maiden flight, but that’s nothing a little raising of the tail section and a quick field decapitation couldn’t resolve. After a more successful second flight, he swapped in a thinner rubber band and modified the wing’s leading edge for more thrust. This allowed the tiny balsa dinosaur to really take off, flying long enough to have some very close encounters with buildings and trees.
For those of you already itching to build your own Pterothopter, the plans come from
the Summer 2017 issue of
Flapping Wings
, the official newsletter of the
Ornithopter Society
(an organization we’re so happy to learn about today). You can also find more
in-depth ornithopter build logs
to help you get started. And, honestly, there’s no reason to limit yourself to uncontrolled flight; we’ve come across some
very impressive RC ornithopters
in the past.
[via
reddit
] | 14 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337410",
"author": "Mr. Smooth",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T11:25:58",
"content": "Wow. Beautiful!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6337412",
"author": "Robert",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T11:49:26",
"content": "“quick f... | 1,760,373,129.044473 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/06/you-otter-be-able-to-stream-that-audio-open-hardware-eclipses-chromecast-audio/ | You Otter Be Able To Stream That Audio: Open Hardware Eclipses Chromecast Audio | Kerry Scharfglass | [
"digital audio hacks",
"google hacks",
"hardware"
] | [
"airplay",
"analog audio",
"ARM Cortex-A7",
"audio",
"chromecast",
"chromecast audio",
"linux",
"pulseaudio",
"snapcast",
"spotify",
"streaming audio"
] | When Google halted production of the Chromecast Audio at the start of 2019, there was a (now silent) outcry. Fans of the device loved the single purpose audio streaming dongle that delivered wide compatibility and drop-dead simplicity at a rock bottom $35 price. For evidence of this, look no further than your favorite auction site where they now sell for significantly
more
than they did new, if you can even find an active listing. What’s a prolific hacker to do about this clear case of corporate malice? Why, reinvent it of course! And thus
the Otter Cast Audio V2
was born, another high quality otter themed hack from one of our favorite teams of hardware magicians [Lucy Fauth, Jana Marie Hemsing, Toble Miner, and Manawyrm].
USB-C and Ethernet, oh my!
The Otter Cast Audio is a disc about the shape and size of standard Chromecast (about 50mm in diameter) and delivers a nearly complete superset of the original Chromecast Audio’s features plus the addition of a line in port to redirect audio from existing devices. Protocol support is more flexible than the original, with AirPlay, a web interface, Spotify Connect, Snapcast, and even a PulseAudio sink to get your Linux flavored audio bits flowing.
Ironically
the one thing the Otter Cast Audio
doesn’t
do is act as a target to Cast to. [Jan] notes that out of all the protocols supported here, actual Cast support was locked down enough that it was difficult to provide support for. We’re keeping our fingers crossed a
solution
can be found there to bring the Otter Cast Audio to complete feature parity with the original Chromecast Audio.
But this is Hackaday, so just as important as
what
the Otter Cast Audio does is
how
it does it. The
OtterCast team
have skipped right over shoehorning all this magic into a microcontroller and stepped right up to an
Allwinner S3 SOC
, a capable little Cortex A7 based machine with 128 MB of onboard DDR3 RAM. Pint sized by the bloated standards of a fully interactive desktop, but an absolutely perfect match to juggling WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, and convenient support for all the protocols above. If you’re familiar with these hackers’ other work it won’t surprise you that what they produced here lives up to the typical extremely high quality bar set by such wonders as this
USB-C adapter for JBC soldering iron handles
and this
TS-100 mainboard replacement
.
It sounds like a small production run might be on order in the future, but until then
production files optimized for a particularly popular Chinese manufacturer
are provided, with complete BOM and placement files. It sounds like turnkey production costs from that manufacturer are a shockingly reasonable
$10 (total) per unit with most components, and come to a still-reasonable $22
with the remaining self-sourced components manually installed.
For a demo of the finished goods, check out the tweet embedded after the break.
Proud to finally announce OtterCastAudioV2, an open-source audio streaming device running Linux. Based on a Sochip S3 SoC, featuring a Webinterface, shairport-sync, snapcast, Spotify Connect and pulseaudio sink.
pic.twitter.com/9GYVGyEKYI
— Jana Marie Hemsing (@_Jana_Marie)
March 22, 2021 | 43 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337396",
"author": "Julian Silden Langlo",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T08:58:46",
"content": "I notice that it has three audio jacks, do they all simply output the same audio or can they output different audio or even receive audio?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replie... | 1,760,373,129.127079 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/05/arduino-plots-your-portrait-with-style/ | Arduino Plots Your Portrait With Style | Lewin Day | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"pen plotter",
"plotter",
"portrait painter"
] | Around these parts, we see plenty of plotter builds. They’re a great way to learn about CNC machines and you get to have fun making pictures along the way. [Ben Lucy] was undertaking just such a build of his own, but wanted to do something standalone that served a purpose.
The result is the impressive Portable Portrait Painter.
What sets [Ben]’s project apart is how complete it is. Unlike other plotters that simply follow G-code instructions or process external images, the Portable Portrait Painter is a completely standalone machine. Fitted out with an OV7670 camera, hooked up to an Arduino, it’s capable of taking its own photos and then drawing them out as well.
Through some clever code from [Indrek Luuk]
, the Arduino Mega2560 is able to display a 20fps video preview on a color LCD screen. When the user presses a button, the current frame is captured and sent to the pen plotter. The plotting algorithm is particularly impressive, with images first processed with histogram compensation to maximise contrast. The pen is then drawn across the page line by line, and pressed into the page by varying amounts depending on the color value of each pixel. The darker the pixel, the thicker the stroke made by the pen. This more analog approach produces a much more detailed image than more basic plotters which either leave a mark or don’t.
The portraits produced by the plotter are impressive, and we like the edge-of-page artifacts, which add a little style to the final results. The Portrait Painter would make a great conversation piece at any Maker Faire or hackerspace night.
It’s a project that reminds us of some of the painting robots we’ve seen over the years
. Video after the break. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337386",
"author": "Jan",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T07:02:54",
"content": "Fun project and a very clean looking build.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6337465",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T14:53:29",
"... | 1,760,373,128.926402 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/05/portable-telescope-rolls-anywhere/ | Portable Telescope Rolls Anywhere | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Space"
] | [
"adjustable",
"ball",
"diy",
"dobsonian",
"focal length",
"portable",
"telescope"
] | Since Galileo began observing celestial objects with a telescope, an almost uncountable number of improvements have been made to his designs and methods. Telescopes can now view anything from radio waves to gamma waves, come in a wide range of sizes and shapes, and some are also fairly accessible to hobbyists as well. In fact, several homemade telescopes are specifically designed for ease of use, portability, and minimum cost,
like this portable ball telescope
. (
Google Translate from Italian
)
The telescope was designed and built by [andrea console] and features a ball-shaped mount for the mirror which was built from a bowl. Ball designs like this are easier to orient than other telescopes since the ball allows for quick repositioning in any direction, but the main focus of this project was to investigate focal length with various accessories while also being as portable as possible. To that end, the mount for the eyepiece is on a lattice that assembles and disassembles quickly, and the ball and other equipment are easily packed. This makes transportation quick and easy and reduces weight compared to a more traditional, or even Dobsonian, telescope.
This build is impressive not just from having an extremely portable telescope, but also from [andrea console]’s documentation of the optics in his build. It includes some adjustable parts which can increase the magnification and has detailed notes on all of the finer points of its operation. The ball telescope is a popular build, and we’ve recently seen
others made out of parts from IKEA
as well. | 12 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337389",
"author": "Konrad",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T07:42:37",
"content": "Looks like a really clever way to build a mobile telescope. My experience is that after assembling telescope on site one needs to realign optical axis of prmary/secondary mirrors. I wonder how it’s done in... | 1,760,373,129.174347 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/05/tcam-mini-adding-wireless-to-flir-lepton-thermal-imaging-sensors/ | TCam-Mini: Adding Wireless To Flir Lepton Thermal Imaging Sensors | Maya Posch | [
"hardware"
] | [
"diy flir camera",
"Flir lepton",
"tcam-mini"
] | With how expensive thermal cameras are, why not build your own? This is the goal with which [Dan Julio] set out a while ago,
covering the project
in great detail. While the ultimate goal is to create a stand-alone solution, with its own screen, storage and processing, the TCam-Mini is an interesting platform. Using the 160×120 pixel
FLIR Lepton 3.5
thermal sensor, and combining it with a custom PCB and ESP32 module for wireless, he created a wireless thermal camera called the TCam-Mini along with accompanying software that can display the radiometric data.
The project is
available on GitHub
, as well as as a
GroupGets crowd-funding
campaign, where $50 gets one a TCam-Mini board, minus the $199 Lepton 3.5 sensor. Not cheap, but quite a steal relative to e.g. the FLIR One Pro camera add-on module. Compared to the aforementioned FLIR One Pro, there’s a definite benefit in having a more portable unit that is not reliant on a smartphone and accompanying FLIR app. Being able to load the radiometric data directly into a desktop application for processing makes it a closer match to the professional thermal cameras which [Dan] states that he’d like to get as close to in terms of features as possible.
Recently [Dan] has also begun to further
characterize these Lepton sensors
, in order to see whether their accuracy can be improved from the rated +/- 5-10 °C. For this he repurposed an old in-ear thermometer calibration device. Along with tweaking the ESP32 firmware, there is still a lot that can be done with the TCam-Mini, but it sure looks like a fun project to tinker with if one is into Leptons. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337382",
"author": "Neil",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T06:36:40",
"content": "Another good reason to build your own is that the official FLiR app crashes with older devices and when you report issues against it, you’ll get a reply that the older devices are unsupported.",
"parent_... | 1,760,373,129.228579 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/05/honey-i-shrunk-the-arduino-core/ | Honey, I Shrunk The Arduino Core | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"code",
"microcontroller",
"optimization"
] | High-level programming languages do a great job of making a programmer’s job easier, but these languages often leave a lot of efficiency on the table as a compromise. While a common thought is to move into a lower-level language like assembly to improve on a program’s speed or memory use, there’s often a lot that can be done at the high level before resorting to such extremes. This, of course, is true of the Arduino platform as well, as [NerdRalph] demonstrates by
shrinking the size of the Arduino core itself
.
[NerdRalph] had noticed that the “blink” example program actually includes over 1 kB of extraneous code, and that more complicated programs include even more cruft. To combat this issue, he created ArduinoShrink, which seeks to make included libraries more modular and self-contained. It modifies some of the default registers and counters to use less memory and improve speed, and is also designed to improve interrupt latency as well by changing when the Arduino would otherwise disable interrupts.
While there are some limits to ArduinoShrink, such as needing to know specifics about the pins at compile time, for anyone writing programs for Arduinos that are memory-intensive or need improvements in timing, this could be a powerful new tool. If you’d prefer to go in the opposite direction to avoid ever having to learn C or assembly, though,
you can always stick with running Python on your embedded devices
. | 69 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337146",
"author": "HatTipper",
"timestamp": "2021-04-05T09:06:47",
"content": "First and foremost: hats off to NerdRalph for the achievement!But then: how much money does one get back for the not used FlashROM space? And from who? ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,129.679888 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/04/decoding-s-pdif-with-a-microcontroller-brings-a-few-headaches/ | Decoding S/PDIF With A Microcontroller Brings A Few Headaches | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"digital audio",
"s/pdif",
"spdif"
] | The average punter shunts audio around with analog 3.5 mm cables, RCA jacks, or Bluetooth on a regular basis. A useful standard that hasn’t really bothered most of us is S/PDIF, standing for Sony/Phillips Digital Interface. It’s a useful way to pump digital audio around over copper cables or optic fiber. [Andrew Jeddeloh] got curious about the standard after contemplating some long cable runs in his home,
and decided to try decoding it.
The target for [Andrew]’s development efforts was the STM32L476 Discovery, which had no SPDIF decoding hardware on board. Instead, [Andrew] tinkered with the peripherals he had to see what would work. In the end, a cavalcade of internal timers were daisy chained to allow the microcontroller to recover a clock from the self-clocked S/PDIF signal. This was then used to generate a clock to sync up the onboard SPI hardware to actually read in the 16-bit PCM data from the S/PDIF signal.
[Andrew]’s original broader plan was to pipe the S/PDIF data to the onboard I2S DAC, though he struggled manipulating the remaining resources on the STM chip to do so successfully. Anyone wishing to have a crack can take a look at [Andrew]’s code
over on GitHub.
If completed, the STM32L476 would become a useful analog endpoint for S/PDIF streams, allowing you to pump tunes digitally over long distances without signal degradation. If you know the key to getting it done, sound off in the comments! Alternatively, if you need to get up and running more quickly,
the Teensy platform has you covered! | 14 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337136",
"author": "rok",
"timestamp": "2021-04-05T07:07:45",
"content": "Looks like a painful way to replace a CS8416",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6337222",
"author": "CW",
"timestamp": "2021-04-05T15:38:2... | 1,760,373,129.436291 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/04/a-magnetic-field-strength-meter-using-an-arduino/ | A Magnetic Field Strength Meter Using An Arduino | Jenny List | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"gauss meter",
"hall effect sensor",
"magnetic field meter"
] | We’re used to Hall effect devices as proximity sensors in mechanical systems, used to provide detection of something that has a magnet attached to it. However it’s easy to forget that the devices that provide a magnet-or-not digital output are only part of the story, and linear Hall effect devices provide a handy way to measure a static magnetic field. It’s something [mircemk] demonstrates, with
an Arduino-powered magnetic field strength meter
that uses a UGN 3503U Hall effect device.
The circuit is extremely simple, comprising the sensor, an Arduino Nano, and an OLED display. This device is handy because its voltage output has a known relationship to the gauss level the sensor is experiencing, so while the accuracy of its calibration isn’t verified it can at least give a believable reading derived from the Arduino’s ADC.
The whole is wrapped up in an attractive case that looks as though it has been made from PCB material, with the sensor protruding on what seems to be the shell of a plastic ballpoint pen. It makes a handy instrument that provides a useful function for not a lot of money, so what’s not to like! Take a look at the video below the break for the full story.
Surprisingly such projects are few and far between here at Hackaday, however
it’s not the first magnetic field measurement we’ve seen
. | 7 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337114",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-04-05T03:02:09",
"content": "A Magnetic Field “streight” Meter?Is this something that should be on every workbench?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6337119",
"author": "Wolf",
... | 1,760,373,129.270711 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/04/hackaday-links-april-4-2021/ | Hackaday Links: April 4, 2021 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"afterburner",
"Anatoli Bugorski",
"Chandra",
"emdrive",
"hackaday links",
"jet engine",
"magent wire",
"metalworking",
"particle physics",
"smd",
"Uranus",
"x-ray"
] | Can I just say that doing a links roundup article in a week that includes April Fool’s Day isn’t a fun job? Because it’s not. I mean, how can you take something like reports of
X-rays flowing from Uranus
seriously when they release the report on such a day? It sure looks like a legitimate story, though, and a pretty interesting one. Planets emitting X-rays isn’t really a new thing; we’ve known that Jupiter and Saturn are both powerful X-ray sources for decades. Even though Uranus is the odd child of our solar system, finding evidence for X-ray emissions buried in data captured by the Chandra observatory in 2007 was unexpected. Astronomers think the X-rays might be coming from Uranus’ rings, or they might be reflections of X-rays streaming out from the sun. Or, it might be the weird alignment of the gas giant’s magnetic field causing powerful aurorae that glow in the X-ray part of the spectrum. Whatever it is, it’s weird and beautiful, which all things considered isn’t a bad way for things to be.
Another potential jest-based story popped up this week about the seemingly impossible “EmDrive”. It seems that when you appear to be breaking the laws of physics, you’re probably doing it wrong, and
careful lab tests showed that fuel-free propulsion isn’t here yet
. One would think it was self-obvious that filling a closed asymmetrical chamber with microwaves would produce absolutely no thrust, but EmDrive proponents have reported small but measurable amounts of thrust from the improbable engine for years. A team at TU Dresden found otherwise, though. Even though they were able to measure a displacement of the engine, it appears to be from the test stand heating up and warping as the RF energy flowed into the drive chamber. By changing the way the engine was supported, they were able to cancel out the dimensional changes that were making it look like the EmDrive was actually working.
Want to use surface-mount parts, but don’t want to bother spinning up an SMD board? Not a problem, at least if you follow the lead of David Buchanan and perform
no-surface surface-mount prototyping
. We stumbled upon this on Twitter and thought it looked cool — it’s got a little bit of a circuit sculpture feeling, and we like the old-school look of plain 0.1″ perfboard. David reports that the flying leads are just enameled magnet wire; having done our share of scraping and cleaning magnet wire prior to soldering, we figured that part of the build must have been painful. We pinged David and asked if he had any shortcuts for prepping magnet wire, but alas, he says he just used a hot blob of solder and a little patience while the enamel cooked off. We still really like the style of this build, and we applaud the effort.
Speaking of stumbling across things, that’s one of the great joys of this job — falling down algorithmically generated rabbit holes as we troll about for the freshest hacks. One such serendipitous was
this YouTube channel
documenting a really nice jet engine build. We’ve seen plenty of jet engines before, but very few with afterburners like this one has. There’s also something deeply satisfying about the variable-throat nozzle that Praendy built for the engine — it’s a level of complexity that you don’t often see in hobbyist jet engines, and yet the mechanism is very simple and understandable.
The other rabbit hole we discovered was after reporting on
this cool TIG tungsten grinding tool
. That took us into The Metalist’s back catalog, where we found a lot of interesting stuff. But the real treat was
this automatic tube polisher
(video), which we have to say kept us guessing up to the very end. If you’ve got 12 minutes and you enjoy metalworking builds at all, watch it and see if you’re not surprised by the cleverness of this tool.
And finally, we had heard of the travails of Anatoli Bugorski before, but never in the detail presented in
this disturbing video
. (Embedded below.)
Who is Anatoli Bugorski, you ask? He is a Russian particle physicist who, while working in an accelerator lab in 1978, managed to get his head directly in the path of a 76 GeV proton beam. Despite getting a huge dose of radiation, Bugorski not only survived the accident but managed to finish his Ph.D. and went on to a long career in nuclear physics. He also got married and had a son. He was certainly injured — facial paralysis and partial deafness, mainly — but did not suffer anything like the gruesome fates of the Chernobyl firefighters or others receiving massive radiation doses. The video goes into some detail about how the accident happened — two light bulbs are better than one, it turns out. We enjoyed the video, but couldn’t stop thinking that Bugorski was the Russian atomic-age equivalent of
Phineas Gage
. | 17 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337085",
"author": "Hirudinea",
"timestamp": "2021-04-04T23:53:31",
"content": "I’d heard of Bugorski before, but just off hand. I think that he should be thankful that his accident involved a laser tight beam firing through his head rather than full body radiation. Like Phineas Ga... | 1,760,373,129.738536 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/04/pocket-cheat-sheets-for-electronics/ | Pocket Cheat Sheets For Electronics | Chris Lott | [
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"business cards",
"cheat sheet",
"PCB ruler"
] | What started as business cards for [Nerdonic]’s engineering clients unexpectedly expanded into a project in its own right. A
CheatKard
set consists of seven electronics cheat sheets made in the style of PCB rulers. Sized at 80 mm x 50 mm, they should fit in your business card holder or wallet regardless of the standard in your country. Alternatively, the set can be held together with a small ring in the top corner. The cards are made from fiberglass PCB stock, 0.6 mm thick with gold plating and matte black solder mask. The stackup goes like so:
Cover
Measurements
Schematic Symbols
Component Values
Footprints, SMD 1
Footprints, SMD 2
PCB Design
Laws and Theory
Even before shipping this electronics set, [Nerdonic] has already been asked to make sets of CheatKards for other fields, such as photography, chemistry, antenna design, mathematics, etc. While these aren’t as comprehensive as the
Pocket Ref
book from years gone by, we like a good cheat sheet. If you want to get a set, check out [Nerdonic]’s
Kickstarter project
which was funded within hours of going live, and see the short video clip below the break. He also makes a pledge to plant one tree in the Amazon rainforest for each set he sells.
Do you have any favorite cheat sheets or cheat sheet making techniques? Do you prefer your cheat sheets to be physical or stored on your computer? Share your comments down below. | 39 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337044",
"author": "Eugene",
"timestamp": "2021-04-04T21:00:06",
"content": "They should at least correct the title card to be electronic engineering instead of electrical engineering, we’re not hanging high voltage wires on poles here.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,129.81737 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/04/a-big-ship-chop-shop-on-the-georgia-coast/ | A Big Ship Chop Shop On The Georgia Coast | Roger Cheng | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"cleanup",
"environmental cleanup",
"salvage",
"ship",
"shipping",
"ships",
"shipwreck",
"transportation",
"underwater"
] | Last week we saw a hapless container ship vaulted to fame, where people converged on its combination of mind-boggling size suffering an easily relatable problem of getting stuck. Now that it is moving again, armchair engineers who crave more big ship problem-solving should check out [David Tracy]’s
writeup on the salvage operation of an overturned car carrier ship, the MV
Golden Ray
published by
Jalopnik
. If the ship’s name doesn’t ring a bell, the writeup opens with a quick recap.
Written for an audience of gearheads, [Tracy]’s writeup walks through some technical aspects of the salvage plan and initial results of execution. Citing from the official entity in charge, the
St. Simons Sound Incident Response Unified Command
, and augmented with information from elsewhere. Even though the MV
Golden Ray
is “only’ half the length and a third of the gross tonnage of
our meme darling MV
Ever Given
, it is still a huge ship. Every salvage operation this big is unique, requiring knowledge far beyond our everyday intuition. At this scale, most Internet “Why don’t they just…” comments range from impractical to absurd.
Fortunately, people who actually know how to perform salvage work designed plans, submitted by multiple bidders, each making a different tradeoff in cost and speed among other factors. The chosen plan was to cut the ship into sections small enough to be carried by barge for further processing elsewhere. This required a huge floating crane, a chain pressed into cutter duty, custom fabricated lugs for lifting, and similarly custom fabricated cradles for the barges.
But we all know that no plan survives contact with reality. While this plan was seemingly chosen for speed, it hasn’t gone nearly as fast as advertised. Certainly the pandemic was a huge hinderance, but cutting has also been slowed by pieces built far stronger than spec. Delays also meant more sediment buildup inside the wreck, compounding headaches. Other bidders have started saying that
if their plan had been chosen
the job would be done by now, but who’s to say their plan wouldn’t have encountered their own problems?
In time St. Simons Sound will be cleared as the Suez Canal has been. Results of their respective investigations should help make shipping safer, but salvage skills will still be needed in the future. At least this operation isn’t as controversial as
trying to retrieve the radio room of RMS
Titanic
. | 16 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6336995",
"author": "James",
"timestamp": "2021-04-04T17:02:58",
"content": "Somehow I read that as a “big chip shop”. I must stop browsing HaD whilst cooking dinner.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6337001",
"author": "wan... | 1,760,373,129.868581 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/04/cheat-at-cornhole-with-a-bazillion-dollar-robot/ | Cheat At Cornhole With A Bazillion-Dollar Robot | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"computer vision",
"Cornhole",
"game",
"kr-20",
"KUKA",
"Nvidia Jetson",
"open cv",
"robot"
] | While the days of outdoor cookouts may be a few months away for most of us, that certainly leaves plenty of time to prepare for that moment. While some may spend that time perfecting recipies or doing various home improvement projects during their remaining isolation time, others are practicing their skills at the various games played at these events. Specifically, this group from [Dave’s Armory] which have trained a robot that
helps play the perfect game of cornhole
. (Video, embedded below.)
While the robot in question is an industrial-grade KUKA KR-20 robot with a hefty price tag of $32,000 USD, the software and control system that the group built are fairly accessible for most people. The computer vision is handled by an Nvidia Jetson board, a single-board computer with extra parallel computing abilities, which runs OpenCV. With this setup and a custom hand for holding the corn bags, as well as a decent amount of training, the software is easily able to identify the cornhole board and instruct the robot to play a perfect game.
While we don’t all have expensive industrial robots sitting around in our junk drawer, the use of OpenCV and an accessible computer might make this project a useful introduction to anyone interested in computer vision, and the group made the code public
on their GitHub page
. OpenCV can be used for a lot of other things besides robotics as well,
such as identifying weeds in a field
or
using a Raspberry Pi for facial recognition
. | 19 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6336962",
"author": "ScriptGiddy",
"timestamp": "2021-04-04T14:04:02",
"content": "Can anyone explain to me why this game is named corn hole?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6336963",
"author": "Ren",
"timestam... | 1,760,373,129.923217 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/06/fan-tastic-misuse-of-raspberry-pi-gpio/ | Fan-tastic Misuse Of Raspberry Pi GPIO | Stephen Ogier | [
"Wireless Hacks"
] | [
"ceiling fan",
"home automation",
"raspberry pi",
"rpitx",
"RTL-SDR",
"RTL2832U",
"smart home"
] | [River] is a big fan of home automation. After moving into a new house,
he wanted to assimilate two wirelessly controlled fan lights into his home automation system
. The problem was this: although the fans were wireless, their frequency and protocol were incompatible with the home automation system.
Step one was to determine the frequency the fan’s remote used. Although public FCC records will reveal the frequency of operation, [River] thought it would be faster to use an inexpensive USB RTL-SDR with the Spektrum program to sweep the range of likely frequencies, and quickly found the fans speak 304.2 MHz.
Next was to reverse-engineer the protocol.
Universal Radio Hacker
is a tool designed to make deciphering unknown wireless protocols relatively painless using an RTL-SDR. [River] digitized a button press with it and immediately recognized it as simple on-off keying (OOK). With that knowledge, he digitized the radio commands from all seven buttons and was quickly able to reverse-engineer the entire protocol.
[River] wanted to use a Raspberry Pi to bring the fans into his home automation system, but the Raspberry Pi doesn’t have a 304.2 MHz radio. What it does have is user-programmable GPIO and
the rpitx package
, which converts a GPIO pin into a basic radio transmitter. Of course, the Pi’s GPIO pin’s aren’t long enough to efficiently transmit at 304.2 MHz, so [River] added a proper antenna, as well as a low-pass filter to clean up the transmitted signal. The rpitx package supports OOK out of the box, so [River] was quickly able get the Pi controlling his fan in no time!
If you’d like to do some more low-cost home automation, check out this approach to
using a Raspberry Pi to control some bargain-bin smart plugs
. | 36 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337669",
"author": "mime",
"timestamp": "2021-04-07T06:38:47",
"content": "I think this is very impressive, and I like that the article explains step by step how it was done.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6337672",
"autho... | 1,760,373,129.992928 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/06/forgotten-tech-self-driving-cars/ | Forgotten Tech — Self Driving Cars | Chris Lott | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Tech Hacks"
] | [
"autonomous cars",
"self-driving",
"south korea"
] | The notion of self driving cars isn’t new. You might be surprised at the number of such projects dating back to the 1920s. Many of these systems relied on external aids built into the roadways. It’s only recently that self driving cars on existing roadways are becoming closer to reality than fiction — increased computer processing power, smaller and power-efficient computers, compact Lidar and millimeter-wave Radar sensors are but a few enabling technologies. In South Korea, [Prof Min-hong Han] and his team of students took advantage of these technological advances and
built an autonomous car
which successfully navigated the streets of Seoul in several field trials. A second version subsequently drove itself along the 300 km journey from Seoul to the southern port city Busan. You might think this is boring news, until you realize this was accomplished back in the early 1990s using an Intel 386-powered desktop computer.
The project created a lot of buzz at the time, and was shown at the
Daejeon Expo ’93 international exposition
. Alas, the government eventually decided to cancel the research program, as it didn’t fit into their focus on heavy industries like ship building and steel production. Given the tremendous focus on self-driving and autonomous vehicles today, and with the benefit of hindsight, we wonder if that was the best choice. This isn’t the only decision from Seoul that seems questionable when viewed from the present — Samsung executives famously declined to buy Andy Rubin’s new operating system for digital cameras and handsets back in late 2004, and a few weeks later Android was purchased by Google.
You should check out
[Prof Han]’s YouTube channel
showing videos of the car’s camera while operating in various conditions and overlaid with the lane recognition markers and other information. I’ve driven the streets of Seoul, and that alone can be a frightening experience. But [Han] manages to stretch out in the back seat, so confident in his system that he doesn’t even wear a seatbelt. | 29 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337658",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2021-04-07T04:32:02",
"content": "What happens with these self-driving cars if it encounters a vehicle with a stop sign, a zebra crossing, a person, an elephant, or perspective angled lines painted on the back?",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,373,130.061058 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/06/this-custom-dynanometer-is-a-sterling-example-of-homebrewing/ | This Custom Dynamometer Is A Stirling Example Of Homebrewing | Dan Maloney | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"dynanometer",
"dyno",
"electrodynamic",
"pid",
"sensor",
"sterling engine",
"teansducer",
"torque"
] | [Leo Fernekes] has fallen down the Stirling engine rabbit hole. We mustn’t judge — things like this happen in the best of families, after all. And when they do happen to someone like [Leo],
things can get interesting mighty quickly
.
His current video, linked below, actually has precious little to do with his newfound Stirling engine habit per se. But when you build a Stirling engine, and you’re of a quantitative bent, having some way to measure its power output would be handy. That’s a job for a dynamometer, which [Leo] sets out to build in grand fashion. Dynos need to measure the torque and rotational speed of an engine while varying the load on it, and this one does it with style.
[Leo]’s torque transducer is completely DIY, consisting of hand-wound coils on the ends of a long lever arm that’s attached to the output shaft of the engine under test by a magnetic coupling. The coils are free to move within a strong magnetic field, with a PID loop controlling the current in the coils. Feedback on the arm’s position is provided by an optical sensor, also DIY, making the current necessary to keep the arm stationary proportional to the input torque. The video goes into great detail and has a lot of design and build tips.
We just love the whole vibe of this build. There may have been simpler or quicker ways to go about it, but [Leo] got this done with what he had on hand for a fraction of what buying in off-the-shelf parts would have cost. And the whole thing was a great learning experience, both for him and for us. It sort of reminds us of
a dyno that [Jeremy Fielding] built
a while back, albeit on a much different scale. | 25 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337620",
"author": "Anonymous Pedant",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T23:04:36",
"content": "It’s a “Stirling” engine. And typically also a “dynamometer”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6337687",
"author": "Elliot Williams"... | 1,760,373,130.122076 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/06/iss-astronaut-shows-off-spacexs-stylish-spacesuit/ | ISS Astronaut Shows Off SpaceX’s Stylish Spacesuit | Tom Nardi | [
"Space"
] | [
"Crew Dragon",
"human spaceflight",
"spacesuit",
"SpaceX"
] | Beyond the fact that Hollywood costume designer Jose Fernandez was called in to develop its distinctively superhero look, SpaceX hasn’t released a lot of public information about their high-tech spacesuit. But thanks to Japanese astronaut [Soichi Noguchi], Mission Specialist on the first operational Crew Dragon flight and a current occupant of the International Space Station,
we now have a guided tour of the futuristic garment.
The fact that it was recorded in space is just an added bonus.
As it was released on his personal YouTube account and isn’t an official NASA production, the video is entirely in Japanese, though most of it can be understood from context. You can try turning on the automatic English translations, but unfortunately they seem to be struggling pretty hard on this video. For example as [Soichi] demonstrates the suit’s helmet, the captions read “A cat that is said to have been designed using a 3D printer.” Thanks, Google.
Still, this video provides us with the most information we’ve ever had about how astronauts store, wear, and operate the suit. [Soichi] starts by showing off the personalized bags that the suits are kept in and then explains how the one-piece suit opens on the bottom so the wearer can pull it on over their head. He also points out the three layers the suit is made of: a Teflon-coated outer shell, a fiber-reinforced core for strength, and an inner airtight garment.
Little details are hidden all over the suit, such as a track built into the heel of the boot that’s used to restrain the astronaut’s feet to the Crew Dragon’s seats. [Soichi] also provides what appears to be the first public view of the umbilical connector on the suit. Hidden under a removable cover, the connector features 14-pins for data and power, a wide port for air circulation, and smaller high-pressure port for nitrox that would presumably be used to inflate the suit should the cabin lose pressure while in flight.
It’s taken an incredible amount of work
to get commercial spacecraft such as the Dragon to the point that
they can begin ferrying crews to the ISS
. This close look at all the details that went into something as seemingly mundane as the suit astronauts wear while riding in their craft is a reminder that
nothing about human spaceflight is easy
. | 15 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337601",
"author": "Tomino",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T21:13:45",
"content": "Looks like Michael Jackson’s fancy drysuit with Bluetooth biking helmet attached :)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6337602",
"author": "rok",
... | 1,760,373,130.175656 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/06/raspberry-pi-spigot-puts-digits-of-pi-on-tap/ | Raspberry Pi Spigot Puts Digits Of Pi On Tap | Kristina Panos | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"led matrix",
"leds",
"Pi",
"raspberry pi",
"spigot",
"spigot algorithm"
] | What did you do for Pi Day? Play with your Raspberry Pi 400? Eat some pizza or other typically round objects and recite all nine digits you’ve got memorized? That’s about where we were at this year. But not [bornach], no. [bornach] went all out and built
a spigot that spews digits of Pi
well past the first nine decimal places.
This clever spigot sculpture implements
the spigot algorithm
for generating digits of Pi one-by-one in a stream on to a chain of 8×8 matrices, and does so using a Raspberry Pi (of course). The point of the spigot algorithm is to store as few numbers as possible at any given time by reusing variables. We love the way the digits materialize on the matrix, almost as if they are ink being activated by water. Be sure to check out the build and demo video after the break.
That 10k pot on the top really does control the spigot — since the Pi has no ADC, [bornach] is using the potentiometer to charge a capacitor and using the time it takes to reach the threshold to decide whether the faucet is open or closed. There are a couple of hacks at play here, including the Popsicle-stick LED matrix bracing and the HAT [bornach] fashioned so the daisy-chained 8×8 LED modules could interface with the Pi.
We love Raspberry Pis of all eras around here, especially the darling new Pico. Diminutive as it may be,
the Pico can be sliced even smaller with a hacksaw if you don’t mind losing a few GPIO pins
. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337555",
"author": "Alex",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T18:55:43",
"content": "Awesome build!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6337609",
"author": "Conor Stewart",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T21:43:18",
"content": "Cool pro... | 1,760,373,130.223136 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/06/mercedes-split-turbo-was-a-game-changer-in-formula-1/ | Mercedes Split Turbo Was A Game Changer In Formula 1 | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"Engineering",
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"formula 1",
"mercedes",
"turbo",
"turbocharger"
] | In 2014, Formula 1 switched away from V8 engines, electing instead to mandate all teams race with turbocharged V6 engines of 1.6 litres displacement, fitted with advanced energy recovery systems. The aim was to return Formula 1 to having some vague notion of relevance to modern road car technologies, with a strong focus on efficiency. This was achieved by mandating maximum fuel consumption for races, as well as placing a heavy emphasis on hybrid technology.
The Mercedes W05 Hybrid was the first of 7 championship-winning F1 cars from the British-based, German-funded team. It quickly showed the value of the team’s split-turbo technology.
Since then, Mercedes have dominated the field in what is now known as the turbo-hybrid era. The German team has taken home every drivers and constructors championship since, often taking home the crown well before the season is over. Much has been made of the team’s engine as a key part of this dominance, widely considered to be more powerful and efficient than the competition at all but a few select races in the last seven years, and much of the credit goes to the company’s innovative split-turbo system. Today, we’ll explore why the innovation was such a game changer in Formula 1.
Many and Varied Gains
This article assumes a basic working knowledge of turbochargers. If you’re not quite up to speed yet,
check out our primer on the topic!
The basic template given to the teams was to produce 1.6 litre engines with forced induction, with the option of using a turbocharger or supercharger, with all teams electing to use turbos in their designs. Additionally, teams were able to use energy recovery systems to further boost performance and efficiency. The MGU-K, standing for Motor Generator Unit – Kinetic, is connected to the engine’s crankshaft, harvesting energy under braking and supplying power during acceleration. The MGU-H, or Motor Generator Unit – Heat, is connected to the turbocharger’s shaft, and can thus turn waste energy from the exhaust into electricity, or conversely, spin up the turbocharger to reduce turbo lag.
The layout of the 2014 Mercedes F1 engine. Note the large separation of the compressor in blue and the turbine in red, connected by a long shaft through the centre of the engine’s vee. Image credit:
Giorgio Piola/Motorsport.com
Most manufacturers went with tightly-packaged designs featuring relatively conventional turbos, albeit with a MGU-H unit attached for energy recovery. However, Mercedes decided to aim for an unconventional split-turbo design. In a regular turbocharger, the compressor wheel and turbine wheel are connected by a short shaft, with the respective housings mounted directly back to back. However, Mercedes realised there were a multitude of gains to be had by instead splitting the two halves further apart. Instead, the compressor was mounted at the front of the engine, and the turbine at the rear. The two were joined with a much longer shaft than is usual, passing through the vee of the engine. This also allowed the MGU-H to be mounted in the center of the vee, between the compressor and turbine.
The design promised a multitude of benefits. Separating the turbine from the compressor meant that heat from the exhaust gases wouldn’t bleed into the compressor as much, reducing intake temperatures and allowing the team to fit a smaller intercooler. The packaging benefits also allowed the team to make the whole engine, or power unit, more compact, giving the chassis designers more freedom to make aerodynamic optimisations to the car. It also allowed for cleaner, more straightforward routing of the exhaust piping, which helps with power output, and shorter intake piping, which helps reduce lag for better driveability.
Diagram showing the engine layouts of other competitors in the early turbo hybrid era. Image credit:
Giorgio Piola/Motorsport.com
With all the benefits to be had, it raises the question why the solution was such a novel one, and the reason is speed. The turbochargers in an F1 car spin at over 100,000 RPM. At such high rates of angular velocity, the slightest imbalance in a shaft can destroy a turbo in seconds. Making that shaft almost an order of magnitude longer only makes things worse, due to the greater moment arm created by the length exacerbating even the smallest vibrations significantly. However, top tier motorsport is the right venue for attempting new feats in materials and machining, and Mercedes were able to make the system work.
The team leaned on their institutional experience with turbocharging in the Daimler truck division
, with work on the engine beginning as far back as 2011 to prepare for the initial 2014 season. After their dominating performance in the first three years of the turbo-hybrid era,
Honda elected to copy the idea for their 2017 engine.
More recently,
Renault have been linked with a switch to the layout,
with Ferrari rumoured to be considering the concept too.
Not Destined for the Open Road
The engine in all its glory. Note the compressor visible at the front of the engine. Image credit: Mercedes
Despite Formula 1’s renewed focus on technologies that are transferable to the road, it’s not likely that you’ll see split turbos nestled in the vee of your performance road car any time soon. Formula 1 is a world where incremental percentage gains can make or break a World Championship effort, and where every last scrap of aerodynamic downforce is necessary to come out on top of the competition. Road cars simply don’t have any real reason to focus on such tight packaging, or minor gains in cooler inlet temperatures from such technology. It’s generally far simpler to bolt on a larger intercooler and make the bonnet a little longer instead. Additionally, the tight machining tolerances required for such a long, high-speed shaft would make such turbos prohibitively expensive for any road car. They’d also likely have maintenance intervals entirely unsuitable outside of the racing environment.
While split-turbo technology remains limited to on-track action in F1, it nonetheless shows how thinking outside the box and ignoring convention can lead to real world engineering benefits. While its competitors play catch up, we’re sure Mercedes F1 engineers are already looking around the corner for the next nifty idea that will end up worth a second a lap on the circuit. | 40 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337522",
"author": "M",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T17:14:45",
"content": "…and F1 has never been more boring!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6337532",
"author": "RBMK",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T17:40:13",
... | 1,760,373,130.489512 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/06/bring-a-hack-is-back-this-thursday/ | Bring A Hack Is Back This Thursday! | Jenny List | [
"cons"
] | [
"Bring A Hack",
"pandemic",
"remote"
] | As the pandemic edges further into its second year, the tedium of life under lockdown is taking its toll. We may be fighting the spread of infection by staying home and having our meetings over video conferencing software, but it’s hellishly boring! What we wouldn’t do for our hackerspaces to be open, and for the chance to hang out and chew the fat about our lockdown projects!
Here at Hackaday we can bring some needed relief in the form of
the Hackaday Remote: Bring-A-Hack
held via Zoom on Thursday, April 8th, at 1pm Pacific time. We know you’ve been working hard over the last year, and since you’ve been denied the chance to share those projects in person, we know you just can’t wait to sign up. Last year’s Remoticon showed us the value of community get-togethers online, with both the team soldering challenge rounds and the bring-a-hack being particular event highlights, so it’s time for a fresh dose to keep up our spirits.
It doesn’t matter how large or small your project is, if it interests you other readers will also want to see it. Be prepared to tell the world how you made it, what problems you solved, and a bit about yourself, and then step back, take a bow, and be showered with virtual roses from the adoring masses.
There’s a sign-up link if you have a project to show off
Looks like we’re full up for planned presenations, but still come and bring your hacks for showing in conversation groups. Don’t hold back if you’re worried it’s not impressive enough, a certain Hackaday scribe has submitted an OpenSCAD library she’s working on. | 4 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337516",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-04-06T16:46:05",
"content": "“As the pandemic edges further into its second year, the tedium of life under lockdown is taking its toll. We may be fighting the spread of infection by staying home and having our meetings over video co... | 1,760,373,130.263652 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/05/totally-useless-coffee-dispenser-is-anything-but/ | Totally Useless Coffee Dispenser Is Anything But | Kristina Panos | [
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"coffee grounds",
"Micro:bit",
"stepper motor"
] | Good coffee is nice to have, sure, but frankly, caffeine is caffeine and we’ll take it any way we can get it. That includes freeze-dried, if that’s all you’ve got. We won’t judge anyone for their taste in caffeinated beverages, and
to call this coffee dispenser ‘totally useless’ is just patently untrue
. It clearly has a use, and even if you don’t like freeze-dried coffee, you could sacrifice one jar worth of Nescafe and fill it with Skittles or anything else that will fit in the little collector basket.
In this machine, the cup is the trigger — the 3D-printed plate underneath activates a micro switch embedded in the scrap wood base, and this triggers a micro:bit around back to actuate the stepper motor that twirls the collector basket around. Although [smogdog] has provided all the files, you’d have to come up with your own connector to suspend the thing over the cup and carve your own base.
We love it when we can see what a machine is doing, so not only is it useful, it’s beautiful. And it worked, at least for a little while. For some reason, it keeps burning out stepper motors. Check it out in proof-of-concept action after the break.
We’ve seen the Micro:bit do a lot, and
this pinball machine is among the most fun
. | 15 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337308",
"author": "bm",
"timestamp": "2021-04-05T20:42:38",
"content": "I think maybe that little stepper and driver is undersized for the torque required to turn the dispenser. Either find a beefier motor and driver or try relocating that stepper so it can mesh with a toothed cir... | 1,760,373,130.53942 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/05/music-production-studio-in-a-box/ | Music Production Studio In A Box | Stephen Ogier | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"custom case",
"electronic music",
"synth"
] | [Emil Smith] is an electronic music producer in the Greater London area. He spent a lot of time commuting in and out of central London, so he decided to
put together COVERT-19, a portable music production studio.
After making a couple of prototypes, [Emil] settled on what he needed from his portable studio: a sampler, a sequencer, a synthesizer, a mixer, and a way to record his work.
[Emil] didn’t overlook any details with his mechanical design. Taking the beautiful London weather into account, he designed a laser-cut plywood case that has a neoprene foam gasket to keep water out when closed and put all of the inputs and outputs on the interior of the case. Inside the case, he opted for machine screws with threaded inserts so he could disassemble and reassemble his creation as often as he liked, and he included gas springs to keep the studio open while he’s making music. [Emil] even thought to include ventilation slots to keep the built-in PC cool!
A portable studio is useless without a power supply, so [Emil] taught himself some circuit theory and bought his first soldering iron in order to create the custom power delivery system. Power is supplied by a battery of twelve 18650 cells with switching converters to supply the three different voltages his studio needs. Even with all of his music-making gear, he manages to get about four hours of battery life!
The music-making gear consists of a sequencer and synthesizer as well as a touch-screen NUC PC running Xubuntu. The built-in PC runs software that allows him to mix the audio, apply extra effects, record his creations, and save his patches when he’s done working. The system even has an extra MIDI output and audio input to allow it to incorporate an external synthesizer.
If you’re interested in getting started with MIDI synthesizers, but you’re more interested in building than buying,
check out the KELPIE. | 5 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337312",
"author": "wanderer_",
"timestamp": "2021-04-05T20:49:55",
"content": "His first soldering iron! This is a day to be celebrated! He will probably have an anniversary celebration every year…",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id... | 1,760,373,130.582315 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/05/spacing-out-starship-explodes-again-passenger-space-flight-space-bugs-astronaut-bone-and-martian-water/ | Spacing Out: StarShip Explodes (Again), Passenger Space Flight, Space Bugs, Astronaut Bone, And Martian Water | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Roundup",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"bone density",
"Crew Dragon",
"Ingenuity",
"iss",
"Mars Express",
"Perseverance",
"SpaceShip III",
"SpaceX",
"starship",
"Virgin Galactic"
] | This time I promise I only have a couple of stories from Elon Musk’s company.
SpaceX’s latest Starship test launch ended in another explosion
, proving that space hardware remains hard to get right. We’ll keep watching as they keep launching, and it can’t be long until they’ve ironed out all the problems. Meanwhile there’s brighter news from the company’s Crew Dragon, a modified version of the capsule with the forward docking ring replaced by a transparent dome is planned for launch in September with
the company’s first flight carrying civilian passengers
. It’s doubtless unwelcome news for Virgin Galactic, whose suborbital passenger flights are edging closer to reality with
the unveiling of their first SpaceShip III craft
. Finally, a Falcon 9 upper stage broke up on re-entry over the northwestern USA,
giving observers on the ground a spactacular show
.
Spectacular view of the Falcon 9 debris. Via
Lu Jerz
Meanwhile up there in orbit there have been found on the ISS
some strains of bacteria previously unknown to scientists on Earth
, but it’s not yet time to panic about Mutant Bugs From Space. It seems these bacteria are of a type that is essential in the growing of plants, so it’s likely they originally hitched a ride up with one of the several plant-growing experiments that have taken place over the station’s lifetime. Staying on the ISS, astronauts visiting the station have been at the centre of
a recently published study
looking at loss of bone density over long periods in space. The bone experts found that bone density could still be lost despite the astronauts’ in-flight exercise programs, and concluded that exercise regimes pre-flight should be taken into account for future in-orbit exercise planning.
Further away from Earth, the ESA Mars Express satellite has been used for
a multi-year study of water loss to space from the Martian atmosphere
. The ESA scientists identified the seasonal mechanism that leads to the planet’s upper atmosphere having an excess of water and in particular the effect of the periodic planet-wide dust storms on accelerating water loss, but failed to account for the water that they estimate Mars must have lost over its history. From a study of water-created surface features they can estimate how much liquid the planet once had, yet the atmospheric losses fail to account for it all. Has it disappeared underground? More studies are required before we’ll have an answer.
The exciting news over the coming days will no doubt be the Ingenuity Martian helicopter,
which we have seen slowly unfolding itself
prior to unloading from the belly of the Perseverence rover. If all goes according to plan the little craft will be set down before the rover trundles off to a safe distance, and the historic flight will take place on April 8th. We’ll be on the edges of our seats, and no doubt you will be, too. | 24 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6337261",
"author": "userko",
"timestamp": "2021-04-05T17:45:59",
"content": "A nice overview. It has been reported the Ingenuity helicopter’s flight was postponed till April 11.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6337265",
"au... | 1,760,373,130.704645 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/04/05/haptics-hack-chat-with-nanoport-technology/ | Haptics Hack Chat With Nanoport Technology | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"ar",
"feedback",
"Hack Chat",
"haptics",
"touch",
"vibration",
"vr"
] | Join us on Wednesday, April 7 at noon Pacific for the
Haptics Hack Chat
with
Tim Szeto
and
Kyle Skippon
!
Of all our senses, the sense of touch is perhaps the most underappreciated. We understand and accept the tragedy that attends loss of vision or hearing, and the impact on the quality of life resulting from olfactory and gustatory sensations can be severe. But for some reason, we don’t give a second thought to our sense of touch, which is indeed strange given that we are literally covered with touch sensors. That’s a bit of a shame, since touch can reveal so much about the world around us, and our emotional well-being is so tightly tied to the tactile senses that those deprived of it in infancy can be scarred for life.
Haptics is the technology of tactile feedback, which seeks to leverage the human need for tactile experiences to enrich the experience of dealing with the technological world. Haptic feedback devices are everywhere now, and have gone far beyond the simple off-balance motor used since the days when a pager was a status symbol. To help us sort out what’s new in the haptics world, Tim and Kyle from
Nanoport Technology
will stop by the Hack Chat. Nanoport is a company on the cutting edge of haptics, so they’ll have a wealth of details about what haptics are, where the field is going, and how you can start thinking about making touch a part of your projects.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, April 7 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a
handy time zone converter
.
Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,373,130.636854 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.