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https://hackaday.com/2021/02/01/handy-tool-drains-18650-cells-so-you-dont-have-to/ | Handy Tool Drains 18650 Cells So You Don’t Have To | Tom Nardi | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"18650",
"battery charger",
"discharger",
"power resistor",
"TP4056"
] | Draining a battery is easy. Just put a load across the terminals, maybe an incandescent bulb or a beefy power resistor, and wait. What’s quite a bit trickier is doing so
safely
. Put too large a load on, or leave it connected for longer than necessary, and you can end up doing damage to the cell. Not convinced he’d always remember to pull the battery out of his jury-rigged discharger at the opportune moment,
[Jasper Sikken] decided to come up with a simple tool that could automatically handle the process
with the cold and calculating precision of silicon.
V4 used the protection module from a pouch battery.
At a glance we can see the major components you’d expect in a discharger: a fairly simple PCB, four ceramic power resistors, a holder for a single 18650 cell, and a rocker switch to connect it all together. But wait, what’s that a TP4056 charging module doing in there?
While its presence
technically
makes this device a battery charger, [Jasper] is actually using it for the onboard protection IC. With the charging module between the cell and the power resistors, it will cut the connection when the voltage drops to 2.4 V. Oh yeah, and it can charge the battery back up if you connect up a USB cable.
[Jasper] says his little tool works great, with the resistor array putting just enough load on the battery to pull it down quickly without getting so hot that they’re dangerous to have exposed. He estimates the BOM for this gadget runs around $2 USD, and is considering offering it as a kit on Tindie in the near future.
If you’re looking for something a bit more advanced,
[Jasper] built a programmable load a few years back
that can discharge batteries and test power supplies all while logging the data to your computer for later analysis. | 29 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317729",
"author": "josephsleary",
"timestamp": "2021-02-01T21:20:43",
"content": "Nice build",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6317730",
"author": "graeme",
"timestamp": "2021-02-01T21:20:56",
"content": "I’d buy one... | 1,760,373,201.456465 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/02/01/all-the-best-computers-from-cambridge-boot-to-basic/ | All The Best Computers From Cambridge Boot To Basic | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"basic",
"bbc basic",
"raspberry pi"
] | The Raspberry Pi is a fine machine that appears in many a retrocomputing project, but its custom Linux distribution lacks one thing. It boots into a GNU/Linux shell or a fully-featured desktop GUI rather than as proper computers should, to a BASIC interpreter. This vexed [Alan Pope], who yearned for his early days of ROM BASIC, so he set out to create
a Raspberry Pi 400 that delivers the user straight to BASIC
. What follows goes well beyond the Pi, as he takes something of a “State of the BASIC” look at the various available interpreters for the simple-to-code language. Almost every major flavour you could imagine has an interpreter, but as is a appropriate for a computer from Cambridge running an ARM processor, he opts for one that delivers BBC BASIC.
It would certainly be possible to write a bare-metal image that took the user straight to a native ARM BASIC interpreter, but instead he opts for the safer route of running the interpreter on top of a minimalist Linux image. Here he takes the unexpected step of using an Ubuntu distribution rather than Raspberry Pi OS, this is done through familiarity with its quirks. Eventually he settled upon a BBC BASIC interpreter that allowed him to do all the graphical tricks via the SDL library without a hint of X or a compositor, meaning that at last he had a Pi that boots to BASIC. Assuming that it’s an interpreter rather than an emulator it should be significantly faster than the original, but he doesn’t share that information with us.
This
isn’t the first boot-to-BASIC machine
we’ve shown you.
Header image: A real BBC Micro BASIC prompt. Thanks [Claire Osborne] for the picture. | 77 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317700",
"author": "Pax",
"timestamp": "2021-02-01T19:58:17",
"content": "I like the Raspberry Pink Look of RaspberryPi BASIC:https://www.highcaffeinecontent.com/rpi/when the open firmware gets hdmi, hdmi_audio & usb. (In 2030 or so), I would love to flash it to the eeprom of a RPI... | 1,760,373,202.022865 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/02/01/it-costs-what-a-sounding-into-hearing-aids/ | It Costs WHAT?! A Sounding Into Hearing Aids | Bob Baddeley | [
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"amplification",
"amplifier",
"ears",
"hearing",
"hearing aid",
"hearing impaired",
"hearing loss"
] | We are accustomed to medical devices being expensive, but sometimes the costs seem to far exceed reasonable expectations. At its most simplistic, a hearing aid should just be a battery, microphone, amplifier, and speaker, all wrapped in an enclosure, right? These kinds of parts can be had for a few dimes, so why do modern hearing aids cost thousands of dollars, and why can’t they seem to go down in price?
Background
Until the nearly 1900s, the best available option for partial hearing loss was the ear trumpet, which takes the sound over a larger area and condenses it into a smaller area at the ear canal. The invention of the microphone enabled electronic hearing devices, with Miller Reese Hutchison inventing the Akouphone, a tabletop unit. By 1902 it had become a battery-powered smaller device called the Acousticon, but it was still bulky and the batteries didn’t last long and it didn’t have good volume control or frequency filtering; basically it was pretty much every V1 product, but it was still revolutionary.
The Acousticon hearing aid (image is public domain)
Since it was impossible to jam vacuum tubes into people’s ears safely, it took a long time before hearing aids got significantly better, but suffice it to say that as technology improved, so did hearing aids. Advances in plastics, microelectronics, sensing, filtering, batteries, manufacturing, and all of the other things that have improved every other aspect of modern life also contributed to better hearing aids.
Now there are a variety of types, but they exist in three general categories: behind-the-ear (BTE), in-the-ear (ITE), and in-the-canal (ITC or completely-in-the-canal CTC). Their names are descriptive enough, and their advantages are easily imagined. Behind-the-ear allows for larger batteries and more complex electronics, at the expense of bulk. In-the-ear is smaller but still visible and is a compromise. In-the-canal are the smallest yet, but aren’t easy to adjust or remove, and can’t have some of the nicer features or amplify very much.
Features
Hearing aids have come a long way in 120 years. Current aids can have Bluetooth connectivity for interfacing directly with smartphones. There is also a feature called telecoil, which uses a magnetic field created by a loop in the listening area. Many meeting places, like churches and libraries, have this technology installed in meeting rooms to allow the hearing impaired to pick up and amplify the sound more clearly. Aids will have adjustable volumes and frequency ranges (to only amplify the ranges where the patient has loss, or to shift frequencies from ones where there is loss to ones where there is not), dynamic volume adjustment, noise reduction, profiles for different environments. The R&D and engineering involved in these advancements is certainly part of the high cost, but in some cases these features can be undesirable, such as when it filters out sounds you want to hear, like music. There is definitely a sweet spot between a high cost product that amplifies exactly what you want exactly how you want it but with a complicated interface for navigating all of those settings, and a cheap run-of-the-mill amplifier that barely gets the job done. The only problem is it’s a different spot for everyone.
Teardown
Not having any hearing aids around, I resorted to my
favorite FCC trick for teardowns
, and discovered the internal photos of a few.
Behind-the-ear units are rigid-flex PCBs folded into a variety of contortions to place all the components into the curved enclosure. Behold the
Aurora BTE
:
The completely-in-canal
Aurora CIC
is a marvel of engineering and a challenge to photograph. Fortunately their user guide has a helpful diagram to assist.
The components of a CIC hearing aid are as minimal as possible.
Designing a new one
If one were to assume that all the current manufacturers of hearing aids are misguided in their goals of making smaller and more expensive devices, and one wanted to make something for the masses of underinsured and uninsured who have mild to severe hearing loss, how would one go about it? First, let’s assume that CIC or even ITC is unrealistic, as it requires far too many customized components, including a molded shell for the user’s ears, and difficult assembly. BTE is far more accessible, as is a headphone or earbud solution.
What kind of off-the-shelf parts could be used to reduce NRE and scaling costs? A rechargeable battery would be nice, but more expensive, lower energy density, and more difficult to service than disposable cells or alkalines. How about the circuit: a pure analog solution, or a digital solution that incorporates DSP? Throw in Bluetooth or not? What knobs should it have? A digital solution with some pre-designed profiles and a knob for volume and a knob to select the profile could accomplish the vast majority of the requirements.
And this is where we come to the difference between a hearing aid and a Personal Sound Amplification Product (PSAP). There are lots of PSAPs available for a wide range of prices, with many offering all of the same features at a fraction of the cost of a hearing aid, but an equally large number of warnings about them and their inappropriateness as hearing aids. The primary concern is that they will do more harm than help, as improper amplification of frequencies can contribute to further damage, and using one can delay being seen by a professional who may be able to diagnose and treat the underlying cause before it’s too late.
Proper procedure aside, when presented with a choice between a PSAP and nothing, there are still many who will choose the PSAP, and some who have done research in it as an acceptable solution. We
shared one such device in 2016
, and as recently as September another group created
LoCHAid
with a BOM of <$1 (primarily a MAX98306 3.7W Class D amplifier).
Regulatory
Being able to slap the words “medical device” on a product automatically adds zeroes to the price, but the privilege comes with a lot of effort and cost on the part of the manufacturers as well. The regulatory requirements are rigorous. Because it is worn so close to the body for extended periods, it must pass radiation emissions tests, SAR evaluation, biocompatibility tests, and other safety tests. Acidic ear wax can have effects on the enclosure as well, and the device must not cause harm to the users. Testing and documentation and regulatory filings can occupy years of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and vary from country to country, so it is an effort not lightly undertaken. This is why PSAPs exist.
Conclusions
Getting involved in helping people with their medical problems, especially those who are underprivileged, is a noble endeavor. Technology has improved to the point where an open source design may even be accessible. Maybe there is a middle ground somewhere for a low-cost design with the minimum features that is safe, with an open source development environment and BSP that would allow developers to improve the audio features. There may be room in the market for budget hearing aids for low and middle-income countries. However, where health is concerned, we should be extremely careful not to create something that would cause more harm than good. | 153 | 35 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317638",
"author": "Kaz",
"timestamp": "2021-02-01T18:04:09",
"content": "“Since it was impossible to jam vacuum tubes into people’s ears safely…”Citation needed!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6317779",
"author": "R... | 1,760,373,202.336698 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/02/01/mechanical-timekeeping-hack-chat-with-clickspring/ | Mechanical Timekeeping Hack Chat With Clickspring | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Slider"
] | [
"antikythera",
"calendar",
"Clickspring",
"clock",
"Hack Chat",
"horology",
"timekeeping"
] | Join us on Wednesday, February 3 at noon Pacific for the
Mechanical Timekeeping Hack Chat
with Clickspring!
The reckoning of the passage of time has been of vital importance to humans pretty much for all our history, but for most of that time we were stuck looking at the movements of heavenly bodies or noting the changing of the seasons to answer questions of time. The search for mechanical aids to mark the passage of time began surprisingly early, though, pretty much from the time our ancestors first learned to work with metals.
Timekeeping devices were often created to please a potentate or to satisfy a religious imperative, but whatever the reason for their invention, these early clocks and calendars were key to a ton of discoveries. Timekeeping devices were among the first precision mechanisms, and as such formed the basis of much of our mechanical world. A mechanical representation of the passage of time also gave us some of the first precise observations of the physical world, which led to an enormous number of discoveries about the nature of the universe, not to mention practical skills such as navigation, which allowed us to explore the world with greater confidence.
In our era, precision timekeeping has moved beyond the mechanical realm into the subatomic world, and mechanisms built to please a prince are relegated to museums and collectors. That’s not to say there isn’t plenty to learn from the building of mechanical timepieces, as anyone who has watched any of the videos on
Clickspring’s YouTube channel
can attest. Clickspring not only makes some magnificent modern timepieces, like
his famous open-frame clock
, but recently he’s also branched out into the timekeeping mechanisms of the ancients. He built
a reproduction Byzantine sundial-calendar
, and tackled a reproduction of the famous Antikythera mechanism. The latter was undertaken using only the tools and materials that would have been available to the original maker. That led to
an unexpected discovery
and a detour into the world of scholarly publishing.
Clickspring has been busy lately, but he made some time to stop by the Hack Chat and talk about mechanical timepieces. We’ll talk about his modern builds, his forays into the mechanisms of antiquity, and his serendipitous discovery. On the way we’re likely to talk about what it takes to build precision mechanisms in a small shop, and whatever else that crops up.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, February 3 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. | 3 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317647",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-02-01T18:29:49",
"content": "I have a wind-up pendulum mantle clock (80+ years old?) that doesn’t want to stay running.I have made sure that it is level.It is also very sensitive to over winding.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,201.391549 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/02/01/electric-candle-replaces-flame-with-plasma/ | Electric Candle Replaces Flame With Plasma | Dan Maloney | [
"Science"
] | [
"Class-E",
"flame",
"high voltage",
"mosfet",
"plasma",
"resonator",
"tesla coil"
] | Ah, the charm of candlelight! Nothing says “romance” — or “extended power outage” — like the warm, soft glow of a real candle. But if you’re not a fan of burning wax for whatever reason,
this electric plasma candle
may be just the thing to build for your next dinner for two.
This re-imagining of the humble candle comes to us by way of plasma super-fan [Jay Bowles], who has a lot of experience with plasmas and the high-voltage circuits that often go along with them. Even so, he had to enlist help with the circuit, with is essentially a 10-MHz Class-E oscillator, from [Leon] at the Teslaundmehr channel on YouTube. The most prominent feature of the build is the big resonator coil, surrounded by the shorter primary coil and sitting atop the heatsink for the MOSFET driver. [Jay]’s usual acrylic-rich style is well represented here, and the resulting build is quite lovely.
The tuning process, though, sounds like it was pure torture. It took a lot of tweaking — and a lot of MOSFETs — to get the candle to produce a stable flame. But once it did, the results were striking. The plasma coming off the breakout point on the resonator coil is pretty much the same size, shape, and — occasionally — the color as a candle flame. It’s also hot enough to do some damage, so do be careful if you build this. We’ve included both [Jay]’s and [Leon]’s videos below; [Leon]’s has great step-by-step build instructions.
We’ve been following [Jay]’s journey through the plasmaverse for a while now, from
his cheap and simple Tesla coils
to
using corona discharge to clean his hands
. He even hosted
a Hack Chat on the subject
last year.
Note:
[Jay] reached out to us after publication about mitigating RF noise. He does his experiments inside a steel-reinforced concrete building with grounded metal screens over the windows. An RF-wizard friend has checked across the spectrum and detected no leaks to the outside. Sounds like the business to us. | 32 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317601",
"author": "Julian Silden Langlo",
"timestamp": "2021-02-01T16:15:30",
"content": "Very nice build but I sure hope he doesn’t use it very often.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6317613",
"author": "Paul",
... | 1,760,373,201.617141 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/30/a-heat-reclaimer-for-your-woodstove-the-one-thing-its-not-is-cool/ | A Heat Reclaimer For Your Woodstove; The One Thing It’s Not Is Cool | Jenny List | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"heat exchanger",
"heating",
"wood stove"
] | It’s the middle of winter for those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere, which naturally turns minds towards heating, or sometimes the lack of it. It’s particularly difficult for those who rely on a wood stove to escape the feeling that perhaps most of that hard-won heat may be whistling up the chimney rather than keeping them warm. It’s a problem [Lou] has addressed with
his DIY chimney heat reclaimer
.
As can be seen from the video below the break, his stove appears to be in a workshop, and has a long single-wall metal stove pipe. Over the outside of this he’s placed a pair of T pieces joined by a longer length of pipe all of a larger bore, and a mains-powered fan forces air through this air jacket. The result is a continuous flow of hot air that he claims delivers a 45% heat reclamation. We’re curious though whether the reduction in flue temperature might cause extra tar condensation and thus the build-up of flammable material further up the chimney. The stove itself is a double barrel affair with access for smoking, and
the video describing it
is worth a look in itself.
Whatever the stove,
be sure to ensure a constant supply of fuel
! | 27 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317208",
"author": "punkdigerati",
"timestamp": "2021-01-30T21:27:08",
"content": "From research on this topic it seems that there are multiple possible downsides, creosote buildup being one of them. If it gets cold enough (probably won’t with the working fluid being air) and the f... | 1,760,373,201.683114 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/30/nissan-gives-up-root-shell-thanks-to-hacked-usb-drive/ | Nissan Gives Up Root Shell Thanks To Hacked USB Drive | Tom Nardi | [
"car hacks",
"Linux Hacks",
"Security Hacks"
] | [
"car hacking",
"Embedded Linux",
"infotainment",
"nissan",
"reverse engineering",
"root",
"serial port"
] | For the impatient Nissan owners who may be joining us from Google, a hacker by the name of
[ea] has figured out how to get a root shell on the Bosch LCN2kai head unit of their 2015 Xterra
, and it looks like the process should be the same for other vehicles in the Nissan family such as the Rogue, Sentra, Altima, and Frontier. If you want to play along at home, all you have to do is write the provided image to a USB flash drive and insert it.
Now for those of us who are a more interested in
how
this whole process works, [ea] was kind of enough to provide a very detailed account of how the exploit was discovered. Starting with getting a spare Linux-powered head unit out of a crashed Xterra to experiment with, the write-up takes the reader through each discovery and privilege escalation that ultimately leads to the development of a non-invasive hack that doesn’t require the user to pull their whole dashboard apart to run.
The early stages of the process will
look familiar to anyone who’s messed with embedded Linux hacking
. The first step was to locate the board’s serial port and connect it to the computer. From there, [ea] was able to change the kernel parameters in the bootloader to spawn an interactive shell. To make things a little easier, the boot scripts were then modified so the system would start up an SSH server accessible over a USB Ethernet adapter. With full access to the system, the search for exploits could begin.
A simple script on the flash drive enables the SSH server.
After some poking, [ea] discovered the script designed to mount USB storage devices had a potential flaw in it. The script was written in such a way that the filesystem label of the device would be used to create the mount point, but there were no checks in place to prevent a directory traversal attack. By crafting a label that read
../../usr/bin/
and placing a Bash script on the drive, it’s possible to run arbitrary commands on the head unit. The provided script permanently adds SSHd to the startup process, so when the system reboots, you’ll be able to log in and explore.
So what does [ea] want to do with this new-found exploit? It looks like the goal is to eventually come up with some custom programs that extend the functionality of the in-dash Linux system. As it seems like these “infotainment” systems
are now an inescapable feature of modern automobiles
, we’re certainly excited to see projects that aim to keep them under the consumer’s control. | 46 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317158",
"author": "glenn",
"timestamp": "2021-01-30T18:18:48",
"content": "I have a 2016 Nissan Rogue and the navigation system is crap. They also want $200.00 to upgrade. Wonder with this hack what is the potential?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
... | 1,760,373,201.547784 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/30/run-the-math-or-try-it-out/ | Run The Math, Or Try It Out? | Elliot Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Rants"
] | [
"calculation",
"design",
"engineering",
"intuition",
"math",
"newsletter"
] | I was reading Sonya Vasquez’s marvelous piece on
the capstan equation
this week. It’s a short, practical introduction to a single equation that, unless you’re doing something
very
strange, covers everything you need to know about friction when designing something with a rope or a cable that has to turn a corner or navigate a wiggle. Think of a bike cable or, in Sonya’s case, a moveable dragon-head Chomper. Turns out, there’s math for that!
Basically, the more you wrap a cable or rope around something stationary, the more friction you have to deal with. I put this to good advantage last Spring when my son and I were doing some random tree-climbing with ropes. Turns out that four or five loops of climbing rope against fairly frictiony bark is enough to hold the weight of a grown man, with nothing other than the weight of the rope itself on the other end, for instance. I was also using this effect in a recent wall-plotter-bot design that uses simple cable braid instead of the ubiquitous timing belt.
In none of these cases did I work out the capstan equation with my pocket calculator: four loops around is almost always enough™. But by digging into the math and physics, I got more insight. Basically, the friction is an exponential with the angle times the friction coefficient of your cable in the exponent. So what? So, that next turn holds
exponentially
more weight when you’re climbing. And the grippiness of the tree bark matters in just the same way. You might know this intuitively from experience, but it’s nice to have numbers.
And what’s even better about the insight from doing the math is what
doesn’t
matter. The radius of the tree falls out, so you can pick a fat branch or a skinny one, as long as it’ll hold your weight! The fat branch bends less sharply, which gives you less friction per centimeter, but there’s also more centimeters per wrap, and they cancel out. So pick a fatter, rougher tree over a skinnier, smoother one. I would have never thought that!
Here at Hackaday, we’re
big
fans of rough-and-ready learning by doing. Will this work? Try it out! (If it shouldn’t, and yet it does, it’s a hack.) But there’s also a lot to be said for knowing the underlying math and physics too. Many people think of math as being about crunching numbers, but I find the deeper intuition about which variables in your problem matter, and which don’t at all, infinitely more useful. Learning by doing, guided by a good physical / mathematical intuition, is the best of both worlds. And it saves wear and tear on your mint HP-48G.
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
! | 39 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317150",
"author": "Foaly",
"timestamp": "2021-01-30T17:13:49",
"content": "Agreed, that was a very interesting piece. I didn’t know the Capstan equation, I would never have guessed the relation was exponential, I had never thought about it but intuitively I would have believed it ... | 1,760,373,201.865362 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/30/an-op-amp-from-the-ground-up-2/ | An Op-Amp From The Ground Up | Jenny List | [
"Parts"
] | [
"analog",
"discrete transistors",
"op-amp"
] | If we had to pick one part to crown as the universal component in the world of analogue electronics, it would have to be the operational amplifier. The humble op-amp can be configured into so many circuit building blocks that it has become an indispensable tool for designers. It’s tempting to treat an op-amp as a triangular black box in a circuit diagram, but understanding its operation gives an insight into analogue electronics that’s worth having. [
Mitsuru Yamada
]’s
homemade op-amp using discrete components
is thus a project of interest, implementing as it does a complete simple op-amp with five transistors.
Looking at the circuit diagram it follows the classic op-amp with a long-tailed pair of NPN transistors driving a PNP gain stage and finally a complimentary emitter follower as an output buffer. It incorporates the feedback capacitor that would have been an external component on early op-amp chips, and it has a couple of variable resistors to adjust the bias. Keen eyed readers will notice its flaws such as inevitably mismatched transistors and the lack of a current mirror in the long-tailed pair, but using those to find fault in a circuit built for learning is beside the point. He demonstrated it in use, and even goes as far as to show it running an audio power amplifier driving a small speaker.
For the dedicated student of op-amps,
may we suggest further reading as we examine the first integrated circuit op-amp
? | 49 | 21 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317104",
"author": "BT",
"timestamp": "2021-01-30T13:36:05",
"content": "“…and finally a complimentary emitter follower”.Can I have one too if they are free?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6317119",
"author": "KD9PDP... | 1,760,373,202.119287 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/30/usb-c-charging-on-your-thinkpad-one-step-at-a-time/ | USB-C Charging On Your ThinkPad, One Step At A Time | Tom Nardi | [
"computer hacks",
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"lenovo",
"power delivery",
"ThinkBook",
"thinkpad",
"USB C",
"USB-PD"
] | Hackers love their ThinkPads. They’re easy to work on, well documented, and offer plenty of potential for upgrades. For the more daring, there’s also a wide array of community-developed modifications available. For example,
[Berry Berry Sneaky] has recently put together a step-by-step guide
on swapping the common ThinkPad rectangular charging port (also used on ThinkBooks and other Lenovo machines) for USB-C Power Delivery.
Now to be clear, this is not a new concept. But between
freely sharing the STL for the 3D printed adapter
, providing a full parts list, and providing clear instructions on how to put it all together, [Berry Berry Sneaky] has done a fantastic job of making this particular modification as approachable as possible. For the cost of a common PDC004 Power Delivery “trigger” module and a bit of PETG filament, you can add yet another device to the list of things that work with your shiny new USB-C charger.
While not strictly necessary, [Berry Berry Sneaky] recommends getting yourself a replacement DC input cable for your particular machine before you crack open the case. That will let you assemble everything ahead of time, making the installation a lot quicker. It will also let you keep the original rectangular power jack intact so you can swap it back in if something goes wrong or you decide this whole
unified charging thing isn’t quite what you hoped for
.
Not a member of the ThinkPad Army? No worries. We’ve seen a lot of interest in using
these configurable USB-C trigger modules
to upgrade
all manner of devices to the new Power Delivery standard
or sometimes put together
custom battery chargers for their older mobile gadgets
. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317108",
"author": "Fred",
"timestamp": "2021-01-30T14:14:49",
"content": "Or use this adapter:https://www.amazon.com/CERRXIAN-Female-Charging-Lenovo-Thinkpad/dp/B08B3BBG3B/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6317124",
"... | 1,760,373,201.915507 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/29/giant-diy-mouse-sets-the-ball-free/ | Giant DIY Mouse Sets The Ball Free | Kristina Panos | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"Adafruit Feather",
"nRF52840",
"reed switch",
"trackball",
"wireless charging"
] | Make the move to a split keyboard and the first thing you’ll notice is that you have all this real estate between the two halves. (Well, as long as you’re doing it right). This is the perfect place to keep your cat, your coffee cup, or in [Jacek]’s case, your
fantastic DIY trackball mouse
.
Don’t be fooled by the orange plastic base — all the electronics are rolled up inside that big sexy ball, which [Jacek] printed in two halves and glued together. Inside the ball there’s an Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Sense, which has an onboard accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer. As you’ll see in the video after the break, the Feather takes readings from these and applies a sensor-fusing algorithm to determine the ball’s orientation in 3D space before sending its position to the computer. To send the click events, [Jacek] baked some mouse buttons into the keyboard’s firmware. Among the other Feather sensors is a PDM MEMS microphone, so detecting taps on the ball and translating them to clicks is not out of the question for a future version.
Here comes the really clever part: there are two reed switches inside the ball. One is used as a power switch, and the other is for setting the ‘up’ direction of the trackball. The ball charges wirelessly in a 3D printed base, which also has a small neodymium magnet for activating the reed switches. Check out the demo after the break, which shows [Jacek] putting the trackball through its paces on a mouse accuracy testing program.
If you prefer your DIY trackballs to be more standard looking,
click on over to the Ploopy project
. | 8 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317079",
"author": "Mongrel Shark",
"timestamp": "2021-01-30T10:23:41",
"content": "Would be great for rotation of parts in CAD especially if you could add zoom.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6317080",
"author": "Be... | 1,760,373,202.394651 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/29/soul-wants-to-process-your-audio/ | SOUL Wants To Process Your Audio | Al Williams | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"audio",
"dsp",
"multimedia",
"programming",
"sound"
] | Abstraction is the core of nearly all progress in computing. Unless you are fabricating your own semiconductors and drawing wire, we all create with building blocks ranging from components like CPUs, to operating system functions, to specialized libraries. Just as you wouldn’t want to spend your time deblocking disk records or rendering fonts for output devices, you probably shouldn’t have to think too much about audio data. While there are some powerful audio processing libraries out there, a new embeddable language called
SOUL
(SOUnd Language) is now in version 1.0 and wants to help you create efficient code for processing audio.
The goal of SOUL is to target a runtime that can run on CPUs, but is better on DSPs. The code aims to be secure and real time with no pointers, garbage collection, and other things that typically interfere with audio processing or security.
The code isn’t hard to puzzle out. Here’s the example for cutting audio volume by half:
processor MinimalGainExample
{
// declare our inputs and outputs:
input stream float audioIn; // mono input stream called "audioIn"
output stream float audioOut; // mono output stream called "audioOut"
// every processor must declare a run() function
void run()
{
const float gain = 0.5f; // a constant to use as our gain factor
loop // (this just loops forever)
{
audioOut &lt;&lt; audioIn * gain; // Read the next input sample, multiply by our
// constant, and write it to our output
advance(); // Moves all our streams forward by one frame
}
}
}
You can see that a processor is essential a thread and can have local and global storage. There are also graphs that assemble different processors with input and output.
Usually, when we want to process audio, we turn to PortAudio just like [Matt] did for his
oscilloscope port of Quake
. We know of some projects that use
Pure Data
for audio processing, too. | 14 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317035",
"author": "Gravis",
"timestamp": "2021-01-30T04:10:30",
"content": "You should probably change those square brackets to angle brackets because [CODE] doesn’t seem to do anything.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6317039... | 1,760,373,202.554401 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/02/01/sirius-xm-satellite-failure-a-reminder-that-space-is-risky-and-that-satellite-insurance-is-a-thing/ | Sirius XM Satellite Failure A Reminder That Space Is Risky (And That Satellite Insurance Is A Thing) | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"failure",
"Falcon 9",
"insurance",
"radio",
"satellite",
"SpaceX"
] | It’s easy to imagine that once a spacecraft leaves Earth’s atmosphere and is in a stable orbit, the most dangerous phase of the mission is over. After all, that’s when we collectively close the live stream and turn our attentions back to terrestrial matters. Once the fire and fury of the launch is over with, all the excitement is done. From that point on, it’s just years of silently sailing through the vacuum of space. What’s the worst that could happen?
Unfortunately, satellite radio provider Sirius XM just received a harsh reminder that there’s still plenty that can go wrong after you’ve slipped Earth’s surly bonds. Despite a flawless launch in early December 2020 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and a reportedly uneventful trip to its designated position in geostationary orbit approximately 35,786 km (22,236 mi) above the planet, their brand new SXM-7 broadcasting satellite appears to be in serious trouble.
Maxar Technologies, prime contractor for the SXM-7, says they’re currently trying to determine what’s gone wrong with the 7,000 kilogram satellite. In a statement, the Colorado-based aerospace company claimed they were focused on “safely completing the commissioning of the satellite and optimizing its performance.” But the language used by Sirius XM in their
January 27th filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
was notably more pessimistic. No mention is made of bringing SXM-7 online, and instead, the company makes it clear that their existing fleet of satellites will be able to maintain service to their customers until a replacement can be launched.
So what happened, and more importantly, is there any hope for SXM-7? Neither company has released any concrete details, and given the amount of money on the line, there’s a good chance the public won’t get the full story for some time. But we can theorize a bit based on what we do know, and make some predictions about where things go from here.
The Story so Far
We know the launch went off without a hitch. For one thing, Sirius XM has made it clear they aren’t implicating SpaceX in the failure. But moreover, as is customary for the commercial launch provider, the entire mission was live streamed. Had there been some kind of issue during fairing or payload separation that could have physically damaged SXM-7, the whole world would have seen it.
SXM-7 heading to space on December 13th
We also know that SXM-7 was functioning normally after it separated with the Falcon 9’s upper stage. The booster put the satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit, but it was the spacecraft’s own onboard propulsion systems that were responsible for carrying it the rest of the way. Had the satellite failed completely, or was otherwise unresponsive to ground controllers, it would never have arrived at its intended orbit.
What about the spacecraft itself? As the name implies, SXM-7 is the seventh satellite of its type, all of which have been based on some permutation of Maxar’s modular SSL-1300 bus. This is an extremely popular platform, and since its introduction in the late 1980s, has been the basis of nearly 150 current or planned communication and weather satellites. Of these, only a handful have experienced major system failures. In short, this is a mature and well-understood spacecraft. A systemic problem, while not impossible, seems unlikely.
Dead on Arrival
Shortly after liftoff, Sirius XM put out a press release announcing
SXM-7 was safely in orbit and operating normally
. It then started on the two week journey to geostationary orbit, and as recently as January 14th,
a post on Maxar’s blog said the spacecraft was working perfectly
and would soon be entering service. But it never happened.
Rendering of SXM-7 in orbit and fully deployed.
At this point, we can’t say for sure why SXM-7 failed so late in the game. But if ground controllers had control of the spacecraft and were able to maneuver it into orbit, it stands to reason that the fault has something to do with its ability to be used commercially.
Some have theorized that the satellite’s large unfurlable reflector, critical to its ability to deliver streaming audio to the tiny antennas used by consumer XM radio receivers, has failed to open. Or potentially the issue is in one of the satellite’s powerful radios; either SXM-7 is unable to receive the uplinked audio broadcast from Sirius XM, or it can’t transmit it back down to Earth.
On January 27th a company spokesperson made it clear that despite the failure,
Sirius XM still has control over the satellite and can maneuver it
. This is actually a very important detail. For one thing, it confirms this wasn’t a total failure and that the spacecraft is still intact. But it also means the satellite will be able to move itself into a “graveyard orbit” if it can’t be brought online. With only a limited number of geosynchronous orbits available, non-functional satellites must be removed in a timely manner. While the ability to
reposition dead communications satellites by a recovery vehicle has recently been demonstrated
, it’s an expensive and complex operation that should be avoided if at all possible.
A Covered Loss
While the failure of SXM-7 is surely a great disappointment to Sirius XM, the company’s pragmatic approach to operating their satellite fleet should keep it from becoming anything more than a temporary setback. Their primary XM-3 and XM-4 satellites are still in good health, and an orbital backup is ready to take over should the need arise. Another satellite, SXM-8, is also due to join the fleet later this year. But beyond these practical considerations, the company was also careful to protect themselves financially.
In the SEC filing, Sirius XM revealed they purchased a $225 million insurance policy for SXM-7 that covered not only the launch, but the first year of commercial operation. While for many missions it would be enough to get reimbursed for a vehicle that’s destroyed during liftoff, this case is a perfect example of why extending that coverage into the spacecraft’s operational lifetime can be important when the long-term success of a commercial venture is potentially on the line.
But while that potential insurance payout might be good news for Sirius XM stockholders in the short term, it will ultimately add to an industry-wide problem that’s been building for years. With a relatively limited pool of policyholders from which premiums can be collected, insuring spacecraft is an unusually risky proposition. For example, the $410+ million payout that resulted from the loss of a United Arab Emirates military satellite in July 2019
cancelled out the year’s premiums for the entire industry.
Traditionally this hasn’t been much of a concern, but as launches become cheaper and more frequent, the likelihood that insurers will get hit with a claim increases. Logically this should lead to rising premiums, but since spacecraft insurance isn’t compulsory, insurers could price themselves right out the market if they aren’t careful. It will be interesting to see if an influx of new customers can balance out the equation in the coming decades, or if the concept of space insurance in its current form ends up being little more than an interesting historical footnote from the fledgling days of space commerce. | 58 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317589",
"author": "Inhibit",
"timestamp": "2021-02-01T15:09:32",
"content": "Funny when you put it like that. Pricing yourself out of a market, if you’ll loose money in it, sounds like exactly what one should do.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,202.501743 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/02/01/electronic-embroidery-birthday-card-is-a-celebration-of-skills/ | Electronic Embroidery Birthday Card Is A Celebration Of Skills | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"candle flicker",
"capsense",
"embroidery",
"embroidery machine",
"leds"
] | Hackers and makers can sometimes feel like they’re getting the short end of the stick when it comes to gift giving. You’re out there making thoughtful, intricate circuit sculptures, helpful software, or face masks for people, and what do you get in return? Okay, yes, usually gift cards or tools or other things that feed your creativity in the first place. But darn it, it would be nice to receive a handmade gift once in a while, right?
So here’s what you do: make friends with enough other makers that you find your birthday twin, or close enough that you both feel the warmth of the personal holiday you share.
Then you get them to agree to trade handmade birthday presents with you
. That’s more or less what happened between [Becky Stern] and [Estefannie], who seem to have found each other through the magic of sharing projects on YouTube.
[Becky]’s gift to [Estefannie] is a busy intersection of maker elements including graphic design, embroidery, electronics, and 3D printing. [Becky] started with the embroidery, which was made possible thanks to
a new open-source library for Processing called PEmbroider
. Once that was done, she 3D printed the frame and added the electronics — candle flicker LEDs for the birthday cake, and a handful of songs that are accessible via touch contacts screwed into the side of the frame. [Becky] added a real-time clock module so it plays a few extra songs on [Estefannie]’s actual birthday.
The most thoughtful element here is personalization, and it’s amazing what can happen when you put 100% of yourself into something that is 100% about someone else. Every bit of the art is personal to [Estefannie], and every atom of the build is pure [Becky]. Check out the demo and build video and see what [Estefannie] made for [Becky] after the break.
[Becky]’s varied creativity has graced these pages many times before.
See how she bid adieu to 2020
,
built a daily affirmation mirror
, and gave a
mask-making masterclass
in the early stages of the pandemic. | 5 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317552",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-02-01T12:07:47",
"content": "“You’re out there making thoughtful, intricate circuit sculptures…”Wouldn’t mind seeing more. It’s hard combining artistic with technology.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},... | 1,760,373,202.599098 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/02/01/13000-regular-expressions-make-an-editors-life-easier/ | 13,000 Regular Expressions Make An Editor’s Life Easier | Jenny List | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"regex",
"regular expressions",
"text processing"
] | Being an editor is a job that seems deceptively easy until you are hauled over the coals for letting a textual howler go to print (or website). Most publications have style guides to ensure that their individual voice is preserved, but even the most eagle-eyed will sometimes slip up in their application.
At the
Guardian
newspaper in the UK they have been struggling with this against an ever-evolving style guide
that must adapt to fast-moving world events, to the extent that they had a set of regular expressions to deal with commonly-occurring problems. A
lot
of regular expressions, in fact around 13,000 of them.
Clearly some form of management was required, and a team of developers set about taming this monster. The result is
Typerighter
, their server-side document-checker,
which can be found in a GitHub repository
. Surprisingly for rule management they started with a Google Sheet, a choice which proved unexpectedly robust when working with such a long list even though they later replaced it. The back end doing the job of text matching was written in Scala, and for the front end
a plugin was created
for their Prosemirror text editor.
For a publication of course this is extremely interesting, but where’s the interest for hackers? The answer lies in any text-processing engine that uses a lot of regular expressions; those of you who have dabbled in this space will know how unwieldy this work can become. Any user of computational linguistic techniques in the pursuit of language processing could probably find much of interest here.
If you’re a bit hazy on regular expressions, how about
the episode on them
from our long-running Linux-fu series? | 41 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317531",
"author": "Puoskari",
"timestamp": "2021-02-01T09:27:13",
"content": "What does the fu in Linux-fu mean? I always just read it as “Linux, f##ck you.”, but that just sounds wrong.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "63175... | 1,760,373,202.673566 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/31/bugatti-concept-car-shows-3d-printed-strength/ | Bugatti Concept Car Shows 3D Printed Strength | Al Williams | [
"car hacks"
] | [
"3d printed car",
"bugatti",
"titanium"
] | We doubt you’ll be driving a Bugatti Bolide anytime soon. It’s a bit of a showy concept car, and it really is pushing some limits on what you can 3D print in an automobile. As you can imagine, they aren’t printing car parts out of ABS or PLA. According to The Drive, the
prints use selective laser melting with titanium
to make some impressively strong and light parts.
It isn’t just the material that makes the 3D prints strong. Bugatti actually patented the internal structure of some parts which are almost bone-like. By having the parts largely hollow, the weight is cut. But fine internal structure creates very strong parts. How strong? A 3.52 ounce pushrod can handle up to 3.85 tons. The printed titanium is apparently heat-treated to increase its resistance to fracture strains.
In addition to titanium, some of the concept car’s parts are printed ceramic which insulates some components from heat. The printing process can apparently get resolutions down to 0.1 mm. Many parts are quite lightweight including a 0.48 mm wheel that with supports weighs in at about 100 grams.
If you want to get into having a project car,
we’d suggest something more modest
. Even if you want to 3D print a titanium part for your ride, we’d still
start a little smaller
. | 30 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317494",
"author": "Andy",
"timestamp": "2021-02-01T06:11:07",
"content": "“a 0.48 mm wheel that with supports weighs in at about 100 grams.” : I built my best wheels out of tungsten after the atomic commission denied me uranium and plutonium, -> check your numbers.",
"parent_i... | 1,760,373,203.32086 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/31/dazzling-desktop-dodecahedron/ | Dazzling Desktop Dodecahedron | Kristina Panos | [
"LED Hacks",
"Microcontrollers"
] | [
"dodecahedron",
"infinity",
"leds",
"wemos d1 mini"
] | Much like us, [AGBarber] digs all the infinity polyhedra already out there, but laments the fact that almost all of them are too large to be used as desktop
distractions
conversation pieces. That’s probably because it’s a lot easier to build ’em big, but that didn’t stop [AGBarber] from trying, succeeding spectacularly, and
paving the way for anyone who wants to take on the challenge of building a dazzling desk toy of their own
.
We all know that all those little strips of LEDs have to be chained together somehow. Wires would work fine in a larger version, but at roughly softball size, they become a tedious and fiddly nightmare. So what did [AGBarber] do instead? That’s right, they designed two different types of custom corner PCBs. The 3D printed brackets that hold the LEDs and the panels together are no cakewalk, either — [AGBarber] recommends using a resin printer if you have access to one, though it isn’t strictly required.
Everything about this project is open source, including a bonus printable jig for gluing the brackets together at just the right angles. All the steps are well-documented, from applying the mirror film to programming the Wemos D1 mini that controls the lights [AGBarber] programmed in a ton of animations, too, which you can watch after the break.
Want to build a small infinity thingy that isn’t quite so difficult?
Crack open a cold one and check out these cool coasters
. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317498",
"author": "Drone",
"timestamp": "2021-02-01T06:36:14",
"content": "The YouTube video of the dodecahedron has a comment right below the video with a timed playlist of all 19 LED modes, just click SHOW MORE to see it. You have to go to YouTube proper to see the timed playlis... | 1,760,373,203.02637 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/31/hackaday-links-january-31-2021/ | Hackaday Links: January 31, 2021 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"Adbode",
"course",
"Falcon Heavy",
"flash",
"hackaday links",
"laser cutter",
"railway",
"saturn v",
"shuttle",
"sls",
"stm32",
"supply chain"
] | There are an awful lot of machines on the market these days that fall under the broad category of “cheap Chinese laser cutters”. You know the type — the K40s, the no-name benchtop CO2 cutters, the bigger floor-mount units. If you’ve recently purchased one of these machines from one of the usual vendors, or even if you’re just thinking about doing so, you’ll likely have some questions. In which case, this
“Chinese Laser Cutters 101” online class
might be right up your alley. We got wind of this though its organizer, Jonathan Schwartz of
American Laser Cutter
in Los Angeles, who says he’s been installing, repairing, and using laser cutters for a decade now. The free class will be on February 8 at 5:00 PM PST, and while it’s open to all, it does require
registration
.
We got an interesting tip the other day that had to do with Benford’s Law. We’d never heard of this one, so we assumed was a “joke law” like Murphy’s Law or Betteridge’s Rule of Headlines. But it turns out that Benford’s Law describes the distribution of leading digits in large sets of numbers. Specifically, it says that the leading digit in any given number is more likely to be one of the smaller numbers. Measurements show that rather than each of the nine base 10 digits showing up about 11% of the time, a 1 will appear in the leading digit 30% of the time, while a 9 will appear about 5% of the time. It’s an interesting phenomenon, and the tip we got pointed to
an article that attempted to apply Benford’s Law to image files
. This technique was used in a TV show to prove an image had been tampered with, but as it turns out, Hollywood doesn’t always get technical material right. Shocking, we know, but the technique was still interesting and the code developed to Benford-ize image files might be useful in other ways.
Everyone knew it was coming, and for a long time in advance, but it still seems that the once-and-for-all, we’re not kidding this time, it’s for realsies shutdown of Adobe Flash has had some real world consequences. To wit,
a railroad system in the northern Chinese city of Dalian ground to a halt earlier this month thanks to Flash going away
. No, they weren’t using Flash to control the railroad, but rather it was buried deep inside software used to schedule and route trains. It threw the system into chaos for a while, but never fear — they got back up and running by installing a pirated version of Flash. Here’s hoping that they’re working on a more permanent solution to the problem.
First it was toilet paper and hand sanitizer, now it’s…STM32 chips? Maybe, if
the chatter on Twitter
and other channels is to be believed. Seems like people are having a hard time sourcing the microcontroller lately. It’s all anecdotal so far, of course, but the prevailing theory is that COVID-19 and worker strikes have lead to a pinch in production. Plus, you know, the whole 2020 thing. We’re wondering if our readers have noticed anything on this — if so, let us know in the comments below.
And finally, just because it’s cool, here’s a
video of what rockets would look like if they were transparent
. Well, obviously, they’d look like twisted heaps of burning wreckage on the ground is they were really made with clear plastic panels and fuel tanks, but you get the idea. The video launches a virtual fleet — a Saturn V, a Space Shuttle, a Falcon Heavy, and the hypothetical SLS rocket — and flies them in tight formation while we get to watch their consumables be consumed. If the burn rates are accurate, it’s surprising how little fuel and oxidizer the Shuttle used compared to the Saturn. We were also surprised how long the SLS holds onto its escape tower, and were pleased by the Falcon Heavy payload reveal. | 12 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317448",
"author": "John",
"timestamp": "2021-02-01T00:08:37",
"content": "More on Benford’s Law:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=etx0k1nLn78",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6317518",
"author": "pelrun",
"timesta... | 1,760,373,203.084994 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/31/serial-studio-easily-visualise-and-log-serial-data/ | Serial Studio: Easily Visualise And Log Serial Data | Danie Conradie | [
"Software Development",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"arduino serial",
"dashboard",
"data analysis",
"data visualization",
"json",
"qt",
"serial port"
] | Outputting data from a microcontroller over a serial port is convenient and easy, but formatting, visualizing, and analyzing the data can be tedious and frustrating. [Alex Spataru] knows this all too well, having spent too many hours building and debugging custom dashboards. To save himself and others the same frustration in the future, he created
Serial Studio
, a tool for quickly building dashboards for serial data.
The only input required for Serial Studio to create a dashboard is a simple JSON structure specifying the data’s format, and how it should be grouped and displayed. Originally Serial Studio required all the JSON data to be sent over serial, which is fine for simple data but quickly becomes cumbersome for more complex applications. To solve this, [Alex] added a feature allowing the JSON document with the format information loaded from the computer, while only the data is sent over serial.
Serial Studio includes several visualization options, including raw line graphs, bar/level indicator, dial indicator, the artificial horizon for IMU data, or a map widget. It can also output the formatted data to a CSV file for further analysis in other software. A console window is also included for viewing raw data or debugging purposes. See the usage demo after the break.
We like Serial Studio’s ease of use and adaptability, and we’ll likely use it for our own projects in the future. It is compatible with Linux, Windows, and Mac thanks to the
Qt framework
, and the code is open-source and available on
GitHub
.
If you’ve ever watched one of the
BPS.Space model rocket launch videos,
you’ll know how critical data logging, visualization and analysis is for [Joe Barnard]’s work. Serial Studio is perfect for such applications, and [Alex] used it extensively for simulated satellite competitions at his university. | 28 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317427",
"author": "pkjon",
"timestamp": "2021-01-31T22:35:21",
"content": "Qt5 is not a libre software. If you want to build cross-platform GUIs consider using wxWigets or GTK.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6317447",
... | 1,760,373,203.236335 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/29/add-an-extra-8gb-of-vram-to-your-2070/ | Add An Extra 8GB Of VRAM To Your 2070 | Matthew Carlson | [
"computer hacks"
] | [
"gddr",
"gpu",
"NVIDIA",
"ram upgrade"
] | Most of us make do with the VRAM that came with our graphics cards. We can just wait until the next one comes out and get a little more memory. After all, it’d be madness to try and delicately solder on new components of something so timing-sensitive as RAM chips, right?
[VIK-on] took it upon himself
to do just that
. The inspiration came when a leaked diagram suggested that the RTX 2000 line could support 16 GB of RAM by using 2GB chips. NVIDIA never did release a 16GB version of the 2070, so this card is truly one of a kind. After some careful scouring of the internet, the GDDR6 chips were procured and carefully soldered on with a hot air gun. A few resistors had to be moved to accommodate the new RAM chips. During power-on, [VIK-on] saw all 16 GB enumerate and was able to run some stress tests. Unfortunately, the card wasn’t stable and started having black screen issues and wonky clocks. Whether it was a bad solder joint or firmware issues, it’s hard to say but he is pretty convinced it is a BIOS error. Switching the resistors back to the 8GB configuration yielded a stable system.
While a little more recent, this isn’t the
only RAM upgrade we’ve covered in the last few months
. Video after the break (it’s not in English but captions are available).
Thanks to Carson for sending this one in! | 31 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316999",
"author": "crashsuit",
"timestamp": "2021-01-30T00:24:34",
"content": "Now I’m thinking how great it would be if GPU cards came with some sort of standardized VRAM slots, to make upgrading them super easy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,203.163669 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/29/adding-remote-control-to-an-old-stereo/ | Adding Remote Control To An Old Stereo | Lewin Day | [
"home entertainment hacks"
] | [
"infrared",
"ir",
"remote control",
"tape"
] | Sometimes, the best hifi gear is the gear you’ve already got. This is particularly the case in the cassette world, as high quality decks are long out of production. [Nick] liked his current rig, but wanted to be able to use it with a remote from across the room.
Naturally, he set to hacking the feature in.
The cassette deck in question, a Yamaha K-220, was old enough to lack a remote, but thankfully new enough to use a computer-controlled tape transport. This meant that the basic features of play, stop, rewind and fast forward can all be controlled with simple digital buttons rather than mechanical ones. This made it easy to interface an ATmega328P to the stereo’s original circuitry. Digital IO pins are hooked up to the buttons, held as high-impedance inputs most of the time, only toggling to ground when necessary to trigger a button press. It was then a simple job to hook up an IR receiver to the chip and program it with some Arduino libraries to work with a typical stereo remote control [Nick] had laying around.
It’s a tidy build, and with
more cool
cassette releases
coming out every year, we’re sure [Nick]’s going to put some miles on the setup. If you find IR too cumbersome though,
you can go a step further and replace it with a web app instead.
If you’ve been tinkering with similar things in your own workshop,
be sure to drop us a line! | 17 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316973",
"author": "Ren",
"timestamp": "2021-01-29T22:12:13",
"content": "I would have liked a remote control on my 1983 Yamaha Virago.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6316991",
"author": "Vincent J Guiel",
"t... | 1,760,373,203.565491 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/29/proofing-press-proves-diy-is-a-ok/ | Proofing Press Proves DIY Is A-OK | Kristina Panos | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"letterpress",
"moveable type",
"proofing press"
] | Back in the day when most people read the news on wood pulp, newspaper outfits would run off a test print on a small proofing press. This gave them a chance to check for typos before printing off thousands of newspapers on the real press.
These presses can be used for more than letterpress proofing, as [Paul] proves with
this DIY version
(YouTube, embedded below). They are simple machines that use a heavy roller on bearings to provide uniform pressure, so they’ll work for lino-cut printmaking and aquatint etchings, too.
The roller is the most important bit and is easily the most expensive part of a build like this one. [Paul]’s was fashioned by a UK machinist that he found through ebay. The total cost was £220 (~$300 USD), which is well below the thousand-pound mark where commercial machine prices start.
[Paul] made the base and handle out of plywood and CNC’d the side panels out of aluminium. These side panels contain bearings that hold the roller’s ends in place. As the roller moves back and forth, it slides along on another set of bearings the underside of the press. These bearings ride thin metal rails on the underside of the press so they don’t wear grooves into the wood over time.
[Paul]’s press looks fantastic and looks like it does a great job with everything he throws at it. Some uses require raising up the surface to be printed on to get a good transfer, so [Paul] might make it adjustable in the z-direction at some point in the future. Check out the build and walk-through video after the break.
If [Paul] looks familiar, it’s because we featured
his equally impressive large-format book press
last spring. | 17 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316934",
"author": "niorsh",
"timestamp": "2021-01-29T20:24:20",
"content": "That gives me an excellent idea how to manufacture money, polish 10 and 20 zł banknotes should be pretty easy to make.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,373,203.510421 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/29/why-blobs-are-important-and-why-you-should-care/ | Why Blobs Are Important, And Why You Should Care | Jenny List | [
"computer hacks",
"Featured",
"hardware",
"Linux Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"blob",
"kernel",
"linux",
"open source",
"SoC"
] | We are extraordinarily fortunate to live at a time in which hardware with astounding capabilities can be had for only a few dollars. Systems that would once have taken an expensive pile of chips and discretes along with months of development time to assemble are now integrated onto commodity silicon. Whether it is a Linux-capable system-on-chip or a microcontroller, such peripherals as WiFi, GPUs, Bluetooth, or USB stacks now come as part of the chip, just another software library rather than a ton of extra hardware.
Beware The Blob!
The cheapest of chips still comes with a blob.
If there is a price to be paid for this convenience, it comes in the form of the blob. A piece of pre-compiled binary software that does the hard work of talking to the hardware and which presents a unified API to the software. Whether you’re talking to the ESP32 WiFi through an Arduino library or booting a Raspberry Pi with a Linux distribution, while your code may be available or even maybe open source, the blob it relies upon to work is closed source and proprietary. This presents a challenge not only to Software Libre enthusiasts in search of a truly open source computer, but also to the rest of us because we are left reliant upon the willingness of the hardware manufacturer to update and patch their blobs.
An open-source advocate would say that the solution is easy, the manufacturers should simply make their blobs open-source. And it’s true, were all blobs open-source then the Software Libre crowd would be happy and their open-source nature would ease the generation of those updates and patches. So why don’t manufacturers release their blobs as open-source? In some cases that may well be due to a closed-source mindset of never releasing anything to the world to protect company intellectual property, but to leave it at that is not a full answer. To fully understand why that is the case it’s worth looking at how our multifunctional chips are made.
Chips Aren’t Made Like They Used To Be
You knew where you were, with a 68k. Pauli Rautakorpi,
CC BY 3.0
.
Decades ago, a new microcomputer and its range of peripheral chips would have been designed in-house in their entirety by a team of engineers employed by the company. Chips such as Intel’s 8086 or Motorola’s 68000 were produced in this way, and would in many cases even have been put on silicon by in-house chip fabs. Today’s semiconductor industry is much more fragmented, and works in an entirely different fashion. While some large companies might still do the whole job in-house it’s far more likely that they will instead buy in the components of their new products as pieces of IP, as software in the form of VHDL or similar hardware description languages. It’s entirely possible to design a complete SoC in this way without owning any of the IP yourself, and companies such as ARM have made themselves into dominant industry players by selling their cores to chip developers. Such a chip assembled from off-the-shelf IP can then be sent off to a third-party chip fab for production, meaning that a complete product line of chips can be marketed without the direct ownership of either IP or factory.
A chip assembled from multiple pieces of commercial IP will of course be subject to all of the individual licensing agreements for its constituent parts. Individual IP owners will have a multiplicity of reasons for inserting restrictive clauses in their agreements, but at the most basic level they are anxious not to reveal any trade secrets to their competitors in a cut-throat industry. Thus it’s a given that the blob controlling a peripheral on that chip will be bound by a clause in the licensing agreement restricting the dissemination of information relating to its hardware. The blob remains a closed-source precompiled binary, and no amount of railing at the chipmaker about open source will change that. Even chips that contain open-source components such as a RISC-V core are not immune to also containing closed peripheral IP, as for example is the case with
the Bouffalo Labs BL602 WiFi SOC
.
It’s All In The Updates
Even the earliest Raspberry Pi Model B from 2012 can run the latest Raspberry Pi OS, thanks to updated blobs.
So open source advocates have an answer to why blobs exist and why they won’t be going away any time soon, while it might not be to everybody’s taste it is at least a valid one. But the problem with blobs doesn’t stop there, and perhaps our community needs to think a little about it too. Because even if you have no problem with your hardware requiring a blob its presence can still come back to bite you. The reason may have as much to do with the open source world as it does with the IP holder or the manufacturer.
If you own a Raspberry Pi, you may well have updated your copy of Raspbian or Raspberry Pi OS several times with new versions that included major updates to their Linux kernel. The Raspberry Pi’s Broadcom SoC is just like all the other chips in that it comes with a blob, and when they release a new kernel it will be
in a firmware package
customised for use with that blob and will also come with any appropriate blob updates. The Raspberry Pi folks will have the sources to the closed-source bits but they are prevented from releasing them by their agreement with Broadcom that granted them blob source access. Thus the Raspberry Pi has up-to-date software, but it’s an uneasy mix of an open-source operating system that relies on a closed-source component to work.
Now compare the Raspberry Pi to a lesser-known single-board computer, say a ten-dollar board with a name that follows the {SomeFruit}Pi naming scheme. The Raspberry Pi might have a less exciting spec, but if you examine the operating system that comes with the off-brand board you’ll find that it has a very similar customised kernel that relies on a blob. The difference will come as you continue to use it, over time there may be no new kernels released and after a while you will be using an ancient kernel version with no prospect of an upgrade.
Even if you don’t have a no-name board you’ll recognise the same problem if you have an Android phone. It’s a powerful Linux-capable computer running a customised Linux distro, but after a few years your chance of a new Android version is very slim indeed and you will have next-to-zero chance of installing another Linux distribution on it without tricks involving userland
chroot
and whatever stale old Android kernel it has installed.
Both these examples have the blob at the root of their problems, in that both come from manufacturers with no interest in releasing new custom kernels for their blobs, so both slowly drift into obsolescence.
What Do You Think Open Source Is For?
Yunsup Lee holding RISC V prototype chip. At UC Berkeley Par Lab Winter Retreat, January 2013. Derrick Coetzee,
CC0
.
In asking what can be done to alleviate this situation it’s worth considering what role open-source software can play. We have established semiconductor industry IP as the root of there being zero chance of manufacturers making their blob code open-source, but how can the world of open source react to that? It comes down to a question of open source philosophy that is probably reflected in licence choice; does open-source exist to make software that works alongside closed source components, or does it exist to extend open-source to all corners of computing and exclude closed source? In the case of Linux it veers toward the latter as the interface to which the blob must talk changes with each version of the kernel, forcing a blob developer to update or let their distribution age into irrelevance. The Raspberry Pi developers put in their effort as a key feature of their products, but this is not a priority for many hardware vendors. If other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows can retain some low-level driver compatibility across their versions, why can’t their open-source alternatives?
There is of course another potential outcome. Semiconductor manufacturers prefer things that cost them less money, and as can be seen with the current slow appearance of RISC-V cores, they are showing signs of becoming willing to dip their toe in the water when it comes to open-source hardware chip components. A quick look at
OpenCores
or
LibreCores
will reveal a wealth of parts that can be freely added to designs, so there is at least a possibility of an SoC with no proprietary IP that would need a blob. It will take more than the mere existence of such resources to persuade a manufacturer to take the plunge though, for a fully open-source chip to be a practical proposition there must not only be components for all on-chip functions but they must also be reliable enough for production. Even with the best of intentions, those two things may take a little while to happen.
I hope this article gives some food for thought as to the role of the blob on modern chips and to its relationship with open-source software. It goes beyond a simple argument that manufacturers should just release their blob sources, but if the blob situation can’t be changed should the open source world adapt itself to deal with that? As always, we’d like to hear your views in the comments. | 53 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316905",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2021-01-29T18:28:20",
"content": "It’s not just the IP for the silicon that has restrictions, some of the standards themselves require association membership and non-disclosure to be allowed to use them, maybe even per unit license f... | 1,760,373,203.670891 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/29/hackaday-podcast-ep-103-antennas-for-everyone-a-clock-made-of-chains-magic-eye-tubes-and-a-little-google-bashing/ | Hackaday Podcast 103: Antennas For Everyone, A Clock Made Of Chains, Magic Eye Tubes, And A Little Google Bashing | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams discuss the greatest hacks of the week that was. Antennas aren’t rocket science, so this week we really enjoyed a video that demystifies antenna designs and a project that tunes up the antennas on cheap wireless modules in the simplest of ways. Google’s in the news this week with the end to project Loon, and a dust-up with the volunteer package maintainers who have spent years making sure Chromium browser is in the Linux repos. Elliot is gaga for magic eye tubes and crazy musical instruments, while Mike is over the moon for a chain-based clock display. We close up the episode talking about the Concorde, and the math behind cable mechanisms.
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
(~65 MB)
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
Google Podcasts
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
Episode 103 Show Notes:
New This Week:
Google Loon’s Internet Balloons Come Back To Earth After A Decade In The Stratosphere
What’s The Deal With Chromium On Linux? Google At Odds With Package Maintainers
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
Fixing NRF24L01+ Modules Without Going (Too) Insane
Optimizing your nRF24 range with a simple test rig
What Makes A Good Antenna?
Active GNSS antenna
Custom Bite Sensor Replaces Keyboard Expression Pedal
Ted Yapo’s Thinkpad space bar repair
Meet The Magic Eye Vacuum Tube
Magic Eye Spectrum Analyzer
Chain Link Clock Drags Time Along
Unique Clock Finally Unites Hackers And Sequins
Edgytokei’s Incredible Mechanism Shows Time Without A Face
When Appliance Hackers Hit The Music Scene
Drawn In By The Siren’s Song
Quick Hacks:
Mike’s Picks:
Repairing 200+ Raspberry Pis For A Good Cause
Collapsible Pattern Projector Is A Bright Idea
A Deep Dive Into The Chemistry Of Retrobright
Elliot’s Picks:
Low Cost Metal 3D Printing By Electrochemistry
Reconstructing Data From A Corrupt Apple ][ Floppy Disk
The Sony ScopeMan, Possibly The Best Product They Never Made
Can’t-Miss Articles:
The Politics Of Supersonic Flight: The Concord(e)
Cable Mechanism Maths: Designing Against The Capstan Equation | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316884",
"author": "Opossumax",
"timestamp": "2021-01-29T17:40:55",
"content": "I work in medical device manufacturing, and we use Loctite 3311 for everything that we can’t use CA for.You guys are right that it can be difficult to get it all to cure, but what you missed is that the... | 1,760,373,203.449045 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/29/the-last-few-analogue-tv-stations-in-north-america/ | The Last Few Analogue TV Stations In North America | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"analog tv",
"frankenfm",
"ntsc",
"tv",
"VHF TV"
] | Analogue TV is something that most of us consider to have been consigned to the history books about a decade ago depending on where in the world we are, as stations made the transition to much more power and frequency efficient digital multiplexes. However some of them still cling on for North American viewers, and [Antenna Man]
took a trip to Upstate New York in search of some of them
before their final switch-off date later this year.
What he reveals can be seen in the video below the break, an odd world of a few relatively low-power analogue TV stations still serving tiny audiences, as well as stations that only exist because their sound carrier can be picked up at the bottom of the FM dial. These stations transmit patterns or static photographs, with their income derived from the sound channel’s position as an FM radio station. While his journey is an entertaining glimpse into snowy-picture nostalgia it does also touch on some other aspects of the aftermath of analogue TV boradcasting. The so-called “FrankenFM” stations sound much quieter, we’re guessing because of the lower sound carrier deviation of the CCIR System M TV spec compared to regular FM radio. And we’re told that there are more stations remaining in Canada, so get out there if you still want to see an analogue picture before they’re gone forever. Where this is being written the switch to DVB was completed in 2013, and it’s still a source of regret that we didn’t stay up to see the final closedown.
Does your country still have an analogue TV service? Tell us in the comments. | 40 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316859",
"author": "KD9KCK",
"timestamp": "2021-01-29T16:39:47",
"content": "Here in Chicago I can still get MeTV FM’s TV station. Its one of the weird FM audio type of stations as described here.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRME-LP",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"re... | 1,760,373,203.409226 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/29/this-week-in-security-sudo-database-breaches-and-ransomware/ | This Week In Security: Sudo, Database Breaches, And Ransomware | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"ransomware",
"sudo",
"This Week in Security"
] | Obligatory
XKCD
Sudo is super important Linux utility, as well as the source of endless jokes. What’s not a joke is
CVE-2021-3156
, a serious vulnerability around incorrect handling of escape characters. This bug was discovered by researchers at Qualys, and has been in the sudo codebase since 2011. If you haven’t updated your Linux machine in a couple days, you may very well be running the vulnerable sudo binary still. There’s a simple one-liner to test for the vulnerability:
sudoedit -s '\' `perl -e 'print "A" x 65536'`
In response to this command, my machine throws this error, meaning it’s vulnerable:
malloc(): corrupted top size
Aborted (core dumped)
To understand the problem with sudo, we have to understand escape characters. It really boils down to spaces in file and folder names, and how to deal with them. You want to name your folder “My Stuff”? That’s fine, but how do you interact with that directory name on the command line, when spaces are the default delimiter between arguments? One option is to wrap it in quotation marks, but that gets old in a hurry. The Unix solution is to use the backslash character as an escape character. Hence you can refer to your fancy folder as
My\ Stuff
. The shell sees the escape character, and knows to interpret the space as part of the folder name, rather than an argument separator. Escape characters are a common vulnerability location, as there are plenty of edge cases.
Sudo is no exception
. The edge case here is a second bug. The
sudoedit
command launches sudo in editor mode, and is intended to be equivalent to
sudo -e
. In fact on many systems, sudoedit is a symlink to sudo. The problem is in the command-line parsing code. If you try to invoke
sudo
with both the -e and -s flags, it treats the command as invalid, and helpfully prints the usage notes. However, when
sudoedit
is used to launch the editor mode, the -s flag can also be specified, putting sudo into an unintended state, with undefined behavior. After looking over the vulnerability, I’m convinced that this is the more serious of the two bugs. There are likely quite a few other vulnerabilities that could be found as a result of being able to put sudo in two modes of operation at once.
The other problem is how sudo handles an escape character with no following character to escape. The code hops over the null string termination, and keeps copying characters. In a normal usage mode, this code is impossible to execute in this strange way, but because of the odd dual-mode state, this bug can be exploited.
Updated versions of sudo have shipped in the major distros, so make sure you update! Thankfully, while there is a proof-of-concept one-liner that will crash sudo, no actual exploit code has been published. There will likely be full exploit POCs available soon, though.
Load a Webpage, Get iPwned
Apple has
published an advisory
about what appears to be an attack chain found in the wild against the iOS platform. The chain is a trio of CVEs, two in webkit and one in the kernel. This is likely the work of yet another state-sponsored actor, who put the attack chain together to gather information on a specific group of people. The two webkit CVEs are probably an initial RCE and a sandbox escape. The kernel vuln is then used to elevate to system privileges and run the spyware. It’s typical to see these malware packages run in memory only, and not make any permanent modifications to the device’s OS. If the rest of the story gets released, we can come back and check my guesses for accuracy.
Brazill Leaks Entire Taxpayer Database
It may not be the biggest database leak for raw size, but this must set a per capita record. One of Brazil’s government agencies seems to have
let their database escape
(in Portuguese), as a whopping 220 million records of CPF number, full name, and date of birth are floating around the shadier side of the internet. This is probably the identifying information of every Brazilian citizen alive, and even some who are no longer with us, because their official population is only 213 million. While the immediate uses for targeted phishing and fraud is obvious, it will be interesting to see what the long term effects are of publishing the equivalent of everyone’s social security number.
And not to be outdone, the dating site
MeetMindful has leaked their entire user database as well
. If there is any silver lining for the site’s users, it is that no private messages or pictures were part of the leak.
Dovecat. Wait What?
Recently both
a Synology user
, and
a QNAP user
discovered a
dovecat
process pegging their device processors at 100%. What is this strange process, clumsily trying to look like an innocent mail daemon?
Thankfully [Matthew Ruffel] has
already done an analysis on this malware
. Dovecat is nothing more than the open source XMRig crypto miner, with some hard coded configuration. It’s very possible that any system that has a dovecat process also has the “hy4” malware on it. What might be the most fascinating about this little crypto-mining malware campaign is that it seems to be targeting NAS devices. Alternatively, it may be simply targeting SSH servers with weak passwords.
NetWalker Takedown
The image to the right caught my attention, as there have just been a handful of successful TOR page takedowns like this.
The NetWalker infrastructure has been seized
, along with over $450,000 in cryptocurrency. A Canadian citizen has been arrested as part of the operation.
Krebs has more details on this story
. NetWalker is a ransomware system, and has been called “ransomware-as-a-service”. It remains to be seen if the head of this particular snake has been cut off, or if instead it’s a hydra, and will pop right back up.
Odds’n’ends
VLC has released version 3.0.12
. Most of the changelog is normal bug fixes, with support for Apple designed processors being the stand-out new feature, do note that this release also fixed “some security issues”. What issues might those be? While we don’t have the details spelled out, the security bulletin points out a pair of buffer overflows and some invalid pointers being dereferenced. Put clearly, these bugs could probably be used to build an exploit that triggers as a result of viewing a video.
The IObit forums were breached recently
, and the user database is being used to spread ransomware. To make the whole scheme seem even more legitimate, the attacker hosted the malicious installer on the compromised site. Here’s where the story takes a humorous turn. The ransom process is also a crypto-currency ponzi scheme! You send us 200 DERO coins to decrypt your files, and once DERO hits $100 a coin, we’ll send you back $500 worth of the coin. It’s a 5X return on your investment!
Drupal just released an update
that fixes a potentially severe vulnerability. The
Archive_Tar
library is used in Drupal core, and contained a directory traversal vulnerability, CVE-2020-36193. This usually means that even if an archive is unzipped in a safe directory, it can overwrite important files elsewhere on the server. Regardless, Drupal considers this a critical issue, and recommends updating right away. | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316822",
"author": "Elliot Williams",
"timestamp": "2021-01-29T15:30:18",
"content": "True story:Read this article this morning, tested for sudo bug. I had it.Updated the sudo package, and the bug went away. (Arch linux, YMMV.)Thanks, Jonathan.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth... | 1,760,373,203.742713 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/29/fire-in-the-palm-of-your-hand/ | Fire In The Palm Of Your Hand | Danie Conradie | [
"News",
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"fire",
"hall effect sensor",
"pyro",
"wearable"
] | For as long as super-heroes have existed, they have inspired hacker projects. For [Everett Bradford], emulating the character Pyro from X-Men has been an on and off project for the last decade. His latest version,
Pyro System V4
, integrates quite a bit of control electronics to give the rather convincing effect of mind-controlled fire in the palm of his hand. (Video, embedded below.)
The system is a motor-actuated slider strapped to [Everett]’s forearm, which pushes a pivoting end-effector with an integrated butane burner into the palm of his hand. The slider runs on 4 mm linear bearings actuated by a small geared DC motor using cables. The end effector is spring-loaded to push it into the palm and integrates a high voltage ignition arc generator circuit, nozzle, and capacitive activation button.
The butane gas canister and the valve was cannibalized from a small blow torch lighter, and the valve is actuated by another geared DC motor. The valve actuator, slide actuator, and end-effector hinge all integrate position feedback via hall effect sensors and magnets. The sensor in the hinge allows the slide to actively correct for the angle of the user’s wrist, keeping the end effector in the middle of the palm.
The control circuit is split into two parts. One PIC16 microcontroller runs all the motion control and position sensing, while a PIC18 connected to a small touch screen handles user interface, control parameters, and ignition. The touch screen proved especially useful for control parameters during development without needing to connect to a laptop.
Some of [Everett]’s previous version had a much more impressive (and dangerous) flame but was also very bulky. We think this latest version strikes a pretty good balance regarding compactness and achieving convincing illusion.
[Colin Furze] is another name commonly associated with
fire-breathing contraptions
, but they have a proven history of
landing him in hospital
. | 15 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316782",
"author": "mrehorst",
"timestamp": "2021-01-29T13:22:53",
"content": "I predict pain! Good luck!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6316844",
"author": "Paul Hupman",
"timestamp": "2021-01-29T16:05:16",... | 1,760,373,203.921993 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/29/a-look-at-the-interesting-rp2040-peripheral-those-pios/ | A Look At The Interesting RP2040 Peripheral, Those PIOs | Jenny List | [
"Parts",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"PIO",
"Raspberry Pi Pico",
"rp2040"
] | The Raspberry Pi Pico is the latest product in the Raspberry Pi range, and it marks a departure from their previous small Linux-capable boards. The little microcontroller board will surely do well in the Pi Foundation’s core markets, but its RP2040 chip must have something special as a commercial component to avoid being simply another take on an ARM microcontroller that happens to be a bit more expensive and from an unproven manufacturer in the world of chips. Perhaps that special something comes in its on-board Programable IO perhipherals, or PIOs.
[CNX Software] have taken an in-depth look at them
, which makes for interesting reading.
The PIOs are a set of state machines that have their own simple assembly language to execute simple repetitive I/O tasks without requiring the attention of the main processor core. How they can be configured is up to the imagination of the programmer, but examples suggested are extra I2C or SPI buses, or video interfaces. We expect the hacker community to push them to extremes with unexpected applications,
much as has happened with the ESP32’s I2S peripheral
. The article introduces the assembly language, then gives us simple examples in assembler, C/C++, and Python. If you have a Raspberry Pi Pico then you’ll surely be wanting to have a play with the PIOs, and we look forward to seeing what you come up with.
You can read Hackaday’s review of the Pico here
. | 41 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316733",
"author": "Valen",
"timestamp": "2021-01-29T09:54:00",
"content": "I wouldn’t say “simple assembly language”. It’s a small set, but the operands make them quite versatile and complex to use. Destination, source, buitlt in extended delays, simultaneous IO pin actions (side... | 1,760,373,204.184254 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/28/this-negative-reinforcement-keyboard-may-shock-you/ | This Negative Reinforcement Keyboard May Shock You | Kristina Panos | [
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"capacitive sensor",
"hunt and peck",
"keyboard",
"negative reinforcement",
"neural network",
"tensorflow",
"touch typing"
] | We wouldn’t be where we are today without Mrs. Coldiron’s middle school typing class. Even though she may have wanted to, she never did use negative reinforcement to improve our typing speed or technique. We unruly teenagers might have learned to type a lot faster if those IBM Selectrics had been wired up for discipline like [3DPrintedLife]’s
terrifying, tingle-inducing typist trainer keyboard
(YouTube, embedded below).
This keyboard uses capsense modules and a neural network to detect whether the user is touch-typing or just hunting and pecking. If you’re doing it wrong, you’ll get a shock from the guts of a prank shock pen every time you peck the T or Y keys. Oh, and just for fun, there’s a 20 V LED bar across the top that is supposed to deter you from looking down at your hands with randomized and blindingly bright strobing light.
Twenty-four of the keys are connected in groups of three by finger usage — for example Q, A, and Z are wired to the same capsense module. These are all wired up to a Raspberry Pi Zero along with the light bar. [3DPrintedLife] was getting a lot of cross-talk between capsense modules, so they solved the problem in software by training a TensorFlow model with a ton of both proper and improper typing data.
We love the little meter on the touchscreen that shows at a glance how you’re doing in the touch typing department. As the meter inches leftward, you know you’re in for a shock. [3DPrintedLife] even built in some games that use pain to promote faster and more accurate typing. Check out the build video after the break, but don’t say we didn’t warn you about the strobing lights.
The secret to the shock pen is a tiny flyback transformer like the kind used in CRT televisions. Find a full-sized flyback transformer and
you can build yourself a handheld high-voltage power supply
. | 23 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316697",
"author": "Derek Tombrello",
"timestamp": "2021-01-29T06:35:50",
"content": "I have never been able to type the “approved” way, but I can still type faster than a lot of people who do. When I was a kid, my aunt – who taught typing – was amazed at how well I could type the ... | 1,760,373,203.984326 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/28/controlling-a-quadcopter-with-one-dead-motor/ | Controlling A Quadcopter With One Dead Motor | Danie Conradie | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"event camera",
"fault tolerance",
"flight controller",
"quadcopter"
] | Quadcopters have incredible flying abilities, but if one loses just a single motor, it drops like a rock. Researchers from the University of Zurich’s Robotics and Perception Group have proven that this does not need to be the case by
keeping a quadcopter flying with only three motors
.
A quadcopter usually has enough thrust to stay aloft with only three motors, but it will spin uncontrollably in the yaw axis. It is impossible to stop a quadcopter from spinning, so the focus for researchers was on keeping the drone controllable while it’s spinning. To achieve this, accurate position and motion estimation is required, so they attached a pair of cameras to the bottom of the craft for visual-inertial odometry (VIO). One is a normal optical camera, while the other is an event camera, which has pixels that can independently respond to changes in light as they occur. This means that it has better low light performance and does not suffer from motion blur.
The feeds from the cameras are analyzed in real-time by an onboard Nvidia Jetson TX2 for state estimation, which is then used with an optical range sensor and onboard IMU to maintain controlled flight, as demonstrated in the video after the break. The
research paper
is free to read, and all the
code is available on GitHub
.
New developments in drone control schemes are always fascinating, like this
hexacopter with an innovative motor
layout to achieve six degrees of freedom, or a
conventional helicopter with a virtual swash plate
.
Thanks for the tip [Qes]! | 17 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316675",
"author": "Ch",
"timestamp": "2021-01-29T03:38:52",
"content": "I would think that cameras would not be needed, even cheap 12$ drones offer a mode that enables yaw to not be the direction control, the gyro keeps orientation while spinning. Line of sight control lets you us... | 1,760,373,203.866285 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/28/randonaut-device-tells-you-where-to-be-and-when/ | Randonaut Device Tells You Where To Be And When | Lewin Day | [
"gps hacks"
] | [
"geocaching",
"geohashing",
"gps",
"randonaut",
"randonauting"
] | Randonauting is the pastime of using random numbers to generate a destination to visit, in the pursuit of adventure. Of course, anything that can be done on a website with a script is even cooler with custom hardware,
so [Decker] built a rig for the job.
The device uses a USB hardware random number generator to produce
truly
random numbers through quantum effects; at least, according to our best theories of the universe. These numbers are then used to pick a random set of GPS coordinates and a time in which to be there, a fun twist on traditional Randonauting of [Decker]’s own creation.
At its heart, it’s a random number generator pumped through some Python scripts. Where this build elevates itself is not in the mechanics, but the presentation. The rig runs on a Raspberry Pi, inside a bell jar, with a vacuum fluorsecent display, fairy lights and plumbing components. It plays on the cyberpunk aesthetic, and it’s so much harder to ignore one’s mission when the time and place are given in glowing numerals by an enigmatic, mysterious machine.
It looks like great fun, though beware the dangers of randonauting –
some participants have found more then they bargained for.
It’s not dissimilar to
the old geohashing craze.
Video after the break. | 5 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316651",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-01-29T00:46:23",
"content": "“Randonauting is the pastime of using random numbers to generate a destination to visit, in the pursuit of adventure.”Like…Mars? ;-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
... | 1,760,373,204.308157 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/28/a-physical-front-panel-for-oscilloscope-software/ | A Physical Front Panel For Oscilloscope Software | Tom Nardi | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"blue pill",
"front panel",
"oscilloscope",
"stm32",
"usb hid",
"usb oscilloscope"
] | For hackers on a tight budget or with limited bench space, a USB oscilloscope can be a compelling alternative to a dedicated piece of hardware. For plenty of hobbyists, it’s a perfectly valid option. But while the larger discussion about the pros and cons of these devices is better left for another day, there’s one thing you’ll definitely miss when the interface for your scope is a piece of software: the feel of physical buttons and knobs.
But what if it doesn’t have to be that way?
The ScopeKeypad by [Paul Withers] looks to recreate the feel of a nice bench oscilloscope
when using a virtual interface. Is such a device actually necessary? No, of course not. Although one could argue that there’s a certain advantage to the feedback you get when spinning through the detents on a rotary encoder versus dragging a slider on the screen. Think of it like a button box for a flight simulator: sure you can fly the plane with just the keyboard and mouse, but you’re going to have a better time with a more elaborate interface.
The comparison with a flight simulator panel actually goes a bit deeper, since that’s essentially what the ScopeKeypad is. With an STM32 “Blue Pill” microcontroller doing its best impression of a USB Human Interface Device, the panel bangs out the prescribed virtual key presses when the appropriate encoder is spun or button pressed. The project is designed with PicoScope in mind, and even includes a handy key map file you can load right into the program, but it can certainly be used with other software packages. Should you feel so inclined, it could even double as a
controller for your virtual spaceship in
Kerbal Space Program
.
Affordable USB oscilloscopes
have come a long way over the years
, and these days, using one is hardly the mark of shame it once was. But the
look and feel of the classic bench scope is about as timeless as it gets
, so we can certainly see the appeal of a project that tries to combine the best of both worlds. | 19 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316616",
"author": "engineerworkshop7",
"timestamp": "2021-01-28T21:38:06",
"content": "I don’t know if I’d consider a Picoscope to be a “budget oscilloscope”…I particularly like their range of automotive scopes. Hardened against physical (and overvoltage) abuse.",
"parent_id":... | 1,760,373,204.421539 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/28/modded-robot-vacuum-can-whistle-while-it-works/ | Modded Robot Vacuum Can Whistle While It Works | Tom Nardi | [
"digital audio hacks",
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"bluetooth",
"Neato",
"PAM8403",
"robot vacuum",
"VHM-314"
] | While repairing his Neato Botvac D85, [elad] noticed the little fellow was packing a real speaker and not just a piezo buzzer. Thinking this was a bit overkill just for the occasional beep and bloop, he decided to
round things out with a Bluetooth receiver and a second speaker
so the bot can spin some stereo tunes while it gets down and dirty.
It wasn’t a very expensive modification. Between the VHM-314 Bluetooth receiver, the 3 watt PAM8403 amplifier, and a matching speaker, [elad] says he was only a few bucks out of pocket. Truly a small price to pay for a robotic vacuum that plays its own theme music as it travels around the house. A small demonstration of the Neato’s new musical talents can be heard in the video after the break.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the audio hardware puts enough of a drain on the robot’s batteries at max volume that there’s a noticeable reduction in runtime. He’s not too worried about it right now, but [elad] mentions that if it ends up keeping the vacuum from being able to complete it’s whole cleaning cycle, that he might look into adding a dedicated power source to keep the music going.
Despite some early encouragement from iRobot
, we haven’t seen quite as much robot vacuum hacking as you might think. It’s always interesting
to get a glimpse inside of these automated housekeepers
, especially
when it’s a custom built machine
. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316589",
"author": "kc8rwr",
"timestamp": "2021-01-28T19:37:58",
"content": "From the title I was expecting a reed placed in the air path. What a nasty prank that would be.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6316603",
"author"... | 1,760,373,204.357787 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/31/opencv-and-depth-camera-spots-weeds/ | OpenCV And Depth Camera Spots Weeds | Donald Papp | [
"green hacks"
] | [
"agriculture",
"depth camera",
"OAK-D",
"opencv",
"stereo camera"
] | Using vision technology to identify weeds in agriculture is an area of active development, and a team of researchers recently shared
their method of using a combination of machine vision plus depth information to identify and map weeds
with the help of
OpenCV
, the open-source computer vision library. Agriculture is how people get fed, and improving weed management is one of its most important challenges.
Many current efforts at weed detection and classification use fancy (and expensive) multispectral cameras, but
PhenoCV-WeedCam
relies primarily on an
OAK-D
stereo depth camera. The system is still being developed, but is somewhat further along than a proof of concept. The portable setups use a Raspberry Pi, stereo camera unit, power banks, an Android tablet for interfacing, and currently require an obedient human to move and point them.
It’s an interesting peek at the kind of hands-on work that goes into data gathering for development. Armed with loads of field data from many different environments, the system can use the data to identify grasses, broad leaf plants, and soil in every image. This alone is useful, but depth information also allows the system to estimate overall plant density as well as try to determine the growth center of any particular plant. Knowing that a weed is present is one thing, but to eliminate it with precision — for example with a laser or mini weed whacker on a robot arm — knowing where the weed is
actually
growing from is an important detail.
PhenoCV-WeedCam
(GitHub repository) is not yet capable of real-time analysis, but the results are promising and that’s the next step. The system currently must be carried by people, but could ultimately be attached to
a robotic platform made specifically to traverse fields
. | 25 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317382",
"author": "did computer vision once",
"timestamp": "2021-01-31T18:29:35",
"content": "Humans do the same thing with three channels of color and no depth sensor, so it’s likely this is a dead end and will be replaced with a pure rgb deep learned computer vision system if th... | 1,760,373,204.485163 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/31/old-gas-meter-gets-smart-with-the-esp8266/ | Old Gas Meter Gets Smart With The ESP8266 | Anool Mahidharia | [
"ATtiny Hacks",
"home hacks"
] | [
"attiny",
"attiny13",
"ESP8266",
"gas meter",
"hall sensor",
"IoT",
"plotly"
] | Measuring the usage of domestic utilities such as water, gas or electricity usually boils down to measuring a repetitive pulse signal with respect to time. To make things easy, most modern utility meters have a pulsed LED output, which can be used to monitor the consumption by using an external optical sensor. But what do you do if your meter isn’t so cooperative?
That’s exactly what [Francesco] had to figure out while developing the
non-invasive gas tracking system he calls ESPmeter
. His meter might not have an LED, but it did have a magnet attached to the counter disk which activated an internal hall sensor. With some hacking, he was able to attach an external Hall-effect sensor to pick up this magnet and use the signal to monitor his daily gas consumption.
A big stumbling block in such projects is the issue of powering the device for an extended period, and remembering when it’s time to change the batteries. With the clever use of commonly available parts, he was able to reduce power consumption allowing three AA batteries to last about a year between changes. For one thing, he uses an ATtiny13 to actually read the sensor values. The chip doesn’t run continuously, its watchdog is set at 1 Hz, ensuring that the device is woken up often enough so that it has time to power up the sensor and detect the presence of the magnet. Battery voltage is also measured via a voltage divider connected to the chip’s ADC pin.
At regular intervals throughout the day, the ESP8266 polls the ATtiny13 to pull the stored sensor pulses and voltage measurement. Then at midnight, the ESP transmits all the collected data to a remote server. Overall, this whole scheme allows [Francesco] to reliably gather his gas consumption data while not having to worry about batteries until he gets the low voltage notification. Since the data visualization requirements are pretty basic, he is keeping things simple by using
Plotly
to display his time series data.
If you are unfortunate enough to have an even older meter which doesn’t use optical or magnetic rotation sensing, you can use a
disassembled mouse to keep track of the Gas Meter
. | 34 | 15 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317391",
"author": "Gösta",
"timestamp": "2021-01-31T19:35:03",
"content": "Combining an Attiny with a bigger Esp, how elegant :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6317395",
"author": "Jeff Kowalski",
"timestamp": "2021-... | 1,760,373,204.26763 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/31/this-hot-air-gun-is-either-a-work-of-genius-or-lethal-we-cant-decide/ | This Hot Air Gun Is Either A Work Of Genius Or Lethal, We Can’t Decide | Jenny List | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"diy heat gun",
"heat gun",
"upcycling"
] | One of the essentials on the bench is some form of hot air gun. Whether it’s a precision tool intended for reworking PCBs or the broad-stroke item used for paint stripping, we’ve all got one somewhere. The paint-stripping variety are pretty cheap, but not as cheap as [Porcas Pregos e Parafusos]’s
home made hot air gun
. This slightly hair-raising device is made from a variety of junk parts and delivers hot air, though we suspect the possibility for burning the operator remains high.
At its heart is one of those mains powered water boiler elements designed to be lowered into a cup or similar, and since such devices would burn out if not cooled in some way, there is a fan from a microwave oven passing air over it. The whole thing sits inside an aluminium cone cut from a circular cake tin, and is held together on a wooden chassis to which the handle and power switch from a defunct electric drill provide the operator with something to hold on to.
As you can see from the video below the break it makes for an effective hot air gun, but one that we’re guessing you’d soon learn to avoid touching on the metal cone. Still, as a community we’re used to this with our soldering irons, as the RevSpace T-shirt puts it: “
If it smells like chicken, you’re holding it wrong
“.
Strangely,
this isn’t the first DIY heat gun we’ve seen
.
Thanks [Danjovic] for the tip. | 31 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317327",
"author": "NotThatGuy",
"timestamp": "2021-01-31T12:37:01",
"content": "I’m not that guy, but this will encourage more people to do hacks going against common sense.Not sure if giving this an audience is the right idea.There is a reason a water boiler is submerged in a liq... | 1,760,373,204.553164 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/31/mystery-box-gives-up-its-patented-secrets/ | Mystery Box Gives Up Its Patented Secrets | Al Williams | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"capacitive sensing",
"surplus"
] | [CuriousMarc] likes to go to surplus stores even though there are fewer of them around. On a recent trip, he found a box that had some parts he thought would work for a temperature controller project. It was marked
Dial-A-Level
and proudly proclaimed that it had a patent pending. The box was from the 1970s and [Marc] was wondering what the device was meant to do.
The device was a bit of a puzzle since it had three oddly-marked probe inputs. A search through the patent database revealed the device was a “capacitance probe for detecting moisture with very long cables.” The idea was to create a capacitor at the end of the cable and use the liquid as a dielectric. The sensor creates a 10 kHz sine wave it uses to excite the probe and an op amp measures the relative capacitive reactance of the probe versus a reference capacitor. The rest of the circuit is a comparator that reacts when the level is at a threshold.
We love seeing the old hand-drawn boards from that era. Component designations are in copper and there’s no solder mask visible. There was a clever application of a silicon controlled rectifiers and a relay to create a type of flip flop, that [Marc] explains.
Interestingly, the company that made the device, Expo Instruments, is still around and [Marc] contacted them. The actual patent holder replied and was amazed that [Marc] had possession of this antique. You can only wonder if anything you build today will wind up on whatever passes for YouTube three or four decades from now.
Capacitive sensing
is quite versatile. Of course, there are
many other ways
to sense liquid level, too. | 21 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317320",
"author": "Malanovo",
"timestamp": "2021-01-31T11:01:11",
"content": "I had a piece of equipment I was trying to reverse engineer a while ago due to it having a bug that rendered it useless after trying to use the “factory reset” option (a serial console server, if you’re ... | 1,760,373,204.613391 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/30/3d-printing-a-full-scale-fiberglass-speedboat/ | 3D Printing A Full Scale Fiberglass Speedboat | Al Williams | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"3D printed boat",
"3d printing",
"boat",
"fiberglass",
"motorboat",
"powerboat"
] | It’s an age-old problem. You draw up a nice 6.5-meter long motorboat and then discover the shape won’t allow for a fiberglass mold. What do you do? If you’re [Moi], you grab a few Kuka robots and 3D print it using thermoplastic with embedded glass fibers. A UV light cures the plastic and you wind up with printed fiberglass. That’s the story behind the
MAMBO, a 3D printed powerboat.
Despite the color, the fiberglass isn’t blue out of the gate — the boat is painted. Still, it looks nice with lines inspired by [Sonny Levi]’s Arcidiavolo design from 1973. MAMBO stands for Motor Additive Manufacturing BOat. It has a dry weight of about 800 kg and is fitted with a cork floor, white leather seats, and an engine. We presume none of those things were 3D printed.
Although it wasn’t fiberglass, we’ve seen a 3D printed boat before. In particular, the
University of Maine’s giant 22,000 square foot printer cranked one out
. We’ve also seen
boats printed in standard PLA filament
, which then had fiberglass cloth and resin applied after printing. True that one was only RC, but there’s no reason the concept couldn’t be scaled up if you had the patience. | 15 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317311",
"author": "arcturus",
"timestamp": "2021-01-31T09:14:19",
"content": "Sorry, but that has to be the ugliest boat I’ve ever seen… The tech is interesting though.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6317388",
"auth... | 1,760,373,204.670549 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/30/master-video-call-control-panel-is-made-of-pcbs/ | Master Video Call Control Panel Is Made Of PCBs | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"Peripherals Hacks"
] | [
"hardware controls",
"Meet",
"pcb enclosure",
"teams",
"videoconference",
"zoom"
] | [memestra] is a teacher whose life has become a series of videoconferences over the last year or so. With all the classes and meetings, they spend the whole day switching between either Zoom, Teams, or Meet. If anyone needs
a single piece of hardware to control them all
, it’s [memestra]. Well, and every other teacher out there.
The hardware — an Arduino Pro Micro and some buttons — should come as no surprise, except for maybe [memstra]’s use of a resistor network for the LEDs. Still, there’s a lot to like about this little box, starting with the enclosure. That’s not milled or laser-cut metal — each side is a PCB, and they’re all soldered together into a box.
We especially like the top panel, which fits down over the PCB that all the components are soldered to. Each of the non-volume buttons has multiple functions that are accessed by pressing, long pressing, or double pressing. But even the volume buttons do double duty: press them together to mute and un-mute. If [memestra] ever forgets which button does what and how, there’s a handy reference table silkscreened on the bottom panel.
In true teacher fashion, [memestra] has written comprehensive instructions for anyone looking to build a similar device. The heavily-commented code should make it a cinch to drop in keyboard shortcuts for Discord or anything else you might be using, though it’s worth noting that this box is optimized for the desktop apps and not the browser-based versions.
Just looking for a fun way to end video calls?
Pull chains are pretty fun
. | 6 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317288",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-01-31T04:35:46",
"content": "“[memestra] is a teacher whose life has become a series of videoconferences over the last year or so. With all the classes and meetings, they spend the whole day switching between either Zoom, Teams, or ... | 1,760,373,204.776122 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/30/scrappy-drag-racing-bush-plane/ | Scrappy: Drag Racing Bush Plane | Danie Conradie | [
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"aviation",
"bush plane",
"experimental aircraft",
"mike patey",
"piston engine",
"scrappy"
] | We like to feature hacks that are affordable and accessible to the average person, but from time to time it’s fun to dream about the projects we’ll tackle when we’re all grown up and stinking rich. [Mike Patey] appears to fall rather comfortably in the latter category, but thankfully he hasn’t lost his “excited kid with big plans” spirit. A talented and experienced experimental aircraft builder, he’s currently working on Scrappy,
a small bush plane built to be a short take-off and landing drag racer
.
Scrappy started life as a Carbon Cub, a modernized kit version of the venerable Piper Super Cub. The only thing left of the original plane is a part of the fuselage frame, with almost everything else being custom. The engine is a 780 cubic inch (13 liter) horizontally opposed 8-cylinder, scavenged from one of [Mike]’s racing planes, and fitting it required extensive structural changes to the fuselage. The
paddle-like propeller
was intended for an airboat, and is designed for high thrust at low speeds. The skin of the aircraft is all carbon fiber, and the suspension almost looks like it’s borrowed from an off-road racing truck. [Mike] also added (and test fired) a ballistic recovery parachute. The
cockpit instruments
are also over-the-top for an aircraft like this, with seven Garmin multi-function displays.
Scrappy is still missing its wings, which will also be heavily modified. From the oil-cooling system to the door latch and gust-lock for the stick, everything was designed and made by [Mike]. We’re enjoying the in-depth build videos that show how he tackles all the little challenges that pop-up in such an ambitious project.
[Mike] made a name for himself with
his previous monster bush plane Draco
, which was sadly destroyed during an ill-considered take-off last year. Fortunately nobody was harmed in the incident, and Draco became a part donor for Scrappy. If budget planes are more your style, check out
[Peter Sripol]’s latest electric microlight
. | 19 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6317253",
"author": "Eldowr",
"timestamp": "2021-01-31T00:33:56",
"content": "I encourage folks to check out the Experimental Aircraft Association!Also, the FAA roles for Experimental-Amateur Built aircraft airworthiness certification.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"r... | 1,760,373,204.724994 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/28/swine-of-the-times-pig-to-human-organ-transplants-on-track-for-2021/ | Swine Of The Times: Pig-to-Human Organ Transplants On Track For 2021 | Kristina Panos | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Medical Hacks",
"Original Art",
"Science",
"Slider"
] | [
"GMO",
"heart",
"kidney",
"organ donor list",
"organs",
"pig",
"transplant",
"xenotransplantation"
] | Every day in the US, seventeen people die because they couldn’t get a organ transplant in time
. An American biotech company called
United Therapeutics is looking to pick up the lifesaving slack
by producing a line of genetically-modified pigs for the purpose of harvesting their organs, among other therapeutic uses. United Therapeutics’ pig-farming subsidiary
Revivicor
is a spin-off of PPL Therapeutics, the company that gave us
Dolly the cloned sheep
back in 1996. They intend to start transplanting pig organs into humans as early as this year.
Baby Fae after transplant surgery. Image by Duane Miller-AP via
Time Magazine
Although it sounds like science fiction,
the idea of transplanting animal cells, organs, and tissue into humans has been around for over a hundred years
. The main problem with xenotransplantation is that it usually triggers severe immune system reactions in the recipient’s body. In one of the more noteworthy cases,
a baby girl received a baboon heart in 1984
, but died a few weeks later because her body rejected the organ.
The leading cause of xenotransplant rejection is a sugar called alpha-gal. This sugar appears on the cell surfaces of all non-primate mammals. Alpha-gal is problematic for other reasons, too: a condition called
alpha-gal syndrome
usually begins when a Lone Star tick bites a person and transmits alpha-gal cells from the blood of animals they have bitten. From that point on, the person will experience an allergic reaction when eating red meat such as beef,
pork
, and lamb.
Pigs with Purpose
A litter of lifesaving piglets. Image via
Revivicor
Pig heart valves have been used as replacements in humans since the 1960s
, but in those cases, the tissue is chemically treated to kill off the cells including the alpha-gal sugar. Presumably, this won’t work for organs like kidneys, hearts, and livers, so they’re starting with the genes.
According to the interview with Future Human, Revivicor’s latest GMO pig
has a total of ten modifications
that are designed to aid in transplant acceptance. They turned off four pig genes including the one that produces alpha-gal, and added six human genes.
One of the added human genes causes the pigs to produce an immune system-moderating protein called CD46
.
Bridging the Gap
More people need a kidney than any other organ, so the company plans to start human trials with kidneys and move on to heart transplants in the future. In December 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
certified these so-called GalSafe pigs as fit for human consumption and therapeutic use
. Although Revivicor doesn’t intend to produce GalSafe pigs for an allergy-free alternative for people with alpha-gal syndrome anytime soon, the door is certainly open for other companies to do so.
In 2016, Revivicor and researchers from the National Institutes of Health reported that they had been able to keep pigs’ hearts alive inside baboons for two and a half years. However, these weren’t direct transplant situations — the baboons kept their original hearts and hosted the pigs hearts in their abdomens.
Genetically modified alpha-gal-free pigs could help the organ transplant crisis, though it’s unclear at this point how long the organs will last once transplanted into humans. Revivicor and United Therapeutics hope they can last the rest of a person’s life, or at least long enough until they can get a human organ to replace it. Even if this only ends up being a stopgap until a better alternative arives, it could save many lives. What do you think? | 73 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316563",
"author": "Rob T",
"timestamp": "2021-01-28T18:06:04",
"content": "“Swine of the times”: love it!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6316669",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2021-01-29T02:52:24",
... | 1,760,373,205.154754 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/28/logic-meter-aims-to-make-hobby-electronics-troubleshooting-easier/ | Logic Meter Aims To Make Hobby Electronics Troubleshooting Easier | Dan Maloney | [
"Tool Hacks"
] | [
"gps",
"logic analyzer",
"pic32",
"PIC32MZ2048EFH064",
"pwm",
"serial peripheral interface",
"servo",
"spi",
"test equipment",
"uart"
] | The basic test instrument suite — a bench power supply, a good multimeter and perhaps an oscilloscope — is extremely flexible, but not exactly “plug and play” when it comes to diagnosing problems with some common hardware setups. A problem with a servo driver, for example, might be easy enough to sort of with a scope, but setting everything up to see what’s going on with the PWM signal takes some time.
There’s got to be a better way to diagnose hobby electronics woes, and if [Bob Alexander] has his way,
his “Logic Meter”
, or something very close to it, will be the next must-have bench tool. The Logic Meter combines some of the functionality of an oscilloscope and a logic analyzer into a handy instrument that’s as easy to use as a multimeter. The Logic Meter’s probes connect to logic-level signals in a circuit and can be set up to capture or send serial data, either directly to or from a UART or via an SPI bus connection. There are also functions for testing servos and similar devices with a configurable PWM output. [Bob] rounds out the functionality with a GPS simulator and a simple logic analyzer, plus some utility functions.
The beauty part of the Logic Meter is that [Bob] has left where it goes next largely up to the community. He’s got a
GitHub
repo with details on the PIC32-based hardware, and the video below makes it clear that this is just a jumping-off point to further work that he hopes results in a commercial version of the Logic Meter. That’s a refreshing attitude, and we hope it pays off; from the look of a few of
[Bob]’s retrocomputing makeovers
, something like the Logic Meter could come in pretty handy. | 28 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316539",
"author": "Ken Boak",
"timestamp": "2021-01-28T16:54:57",
"content": "A great multi-function instrument. With high speed microcontrollers, FPGAs, wireless connectivity and low cost LCDs, I would expect a few similar products to emerge. At the right price, they may even gi... | 1,760,373,204.948072 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/28/google-loons-internet-balloons-come-back-to-earth-after-a-decade-in-the-stratosphere/ | Google Loon’s Internet Balloons Come Back To Earth After A Decade In The Stratosphere | Maya Posch | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"internet hacks",
"News",
"Slider"
] | [
"Alphabet",
"google",
"high-altitude ballooon",
"loon",
"Starlink",
"taara"
] | After a journey of a decade, what started as Project Loon by Google is no more. Promoted as a way to bring communications to the most remote parts of the globe, it used gigantic, high-altitude balloons equipped with communication hardware for air to ground, as well as air to air communication, between individual balloons. Based around LTE technology, it would bring multiple megabit per second data links to both remote areas and disaster zones.
Seven years into its development, Loon became its own company (Loon LLC), and would provide communications to some areas of Kenya, in addition to Sri Lanka in 2015 and Puerto Rico in 2017 after Hurricane Maria. Three years later, in January of 2021, it was announced that Loon LLC would be shutting down operations. By that point it had become apparent that the technology would not be commercially viable, with alternatives including wired internet access having reduced the target market.
While the idea behind Loon sounds simple in theory, it turns out that it was more complicated than just floating up some weather balloon with LTE base stations strapped to them.
The (Ba)looney Part
A NASA super pressure balloon at altitude.
The balloons that Loon used were manufactured by
Raven Aerostar
, from their
Super Pressure balloon
series. These are recommended by Raven for mission profiles such as scientific data collection, reconnaissance, remote communications and surveillance. Such
super-pressure balloons
(SPB) are
aerostatic
balloons which keep the volume of the balloon constant even when the external (ambient) pressure changes. This feature allows the balloon to stay at a fixed altitude for an extended duration, which was ideal for Loon’s mission profile in the stratosphere.
Made from 0.076 mm thin polyethylene, each balloon is 15 meters across and 12 meters tall when its two inner sections are inflated with helium and air respectively. To this balloon, a 10 kg payload box is attached which contains the LTE antennae, control system and the rest of the communication system, which
appears to be
the Ubiquiti
Rocket M2
. Ground stations used the
Rocket M5
, with both the ground stations and the balloons using a custom
patch antenna
to facilitate the long-distance communication.
This package is completed with batteries and an array of solar cells, which allow the system to operate day and night for as long as the balloon retains its altitude. This tends to be a maximum of 100 to 150 days, after which the balloon is either gracefully deflated above a suitable landing zone, or in the case of a more rapid, unscheduled descent, captured by a parachute system that’s attached to the balloon. Loon’s goal was to re-use or recycle as much of each balloon and hardware as possible.
Mission Profile
The Project Loon autolauncher system in action.
While initially Loon balloons were launched manually, this process was eventually automated with an
autolauncher
system. After the balloon has been inflated and makes its way into the air, it faces the challenge of moving to where it’s needed. While Project Loon could have used
dirigibles
(‘blimps’) which would have including a method of propulsion, they instead chose to use the air currents in the atmosphere, rather than fight them.
To this end, Loon used
NOAA
-provided wind data for the
stratosphere
(starting between 10 and 20 km altitude). Each balloon would be directed to a layer where the air current was headed in the right direction. Over time this would allow the balloon to reach its approximate location. With no propulsion method, the only way for the balloon to stay within the area was to constantly change between wind layers by pumping air in or out of its air compartment to change its overall buoyancy.
Loon balloons during laser-based communication testing in 2016. (Credit: Google)
Each balloon would communicate with ground stations, both for control and for the internet link which subscribers on the ground could then access via an LTE link. Communication between balloons within each reach was also a common feature, with subscriber’s internet link hopping a few balloon links before reaching a ground station. This inter-balloon communication was performed using radio frequency links, though
laser-based optical communication
was also being attempted over the past years.
After the mission ended, or at the end of the balloon’s lifespan, the balloon would be directed to an easy to reach area where its helium would be released into the atmosphere during which the balloon descended for recovery. On a number of occasions, however,
balloons have crashed
. Even with the parachute-based emergency system in place, it can still happen that the 10 kg payload plus balloon falls out of the sky.
However, even without those safety concerns, there was something else that was threatening to sink Loon LLC faster than a balloon with a helium leak: their financial balance sheet and increasingly desperate attempts to attract funding. As a commercial entity they would have to put into action a viable business plan that would enable them to somehow make money, if only for maintenance and further development.
Who Needs Floating LTE Towers?
As it turned out, large, fragile floating structures that are constantly subjected to the harsh conditions in the Earth’s stratosphere are quite expensive to maintain. As pointed out by
Slate’s Future Tense
on Loon’s demise, each balloon needed to be
replaced approximately every five months
at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars. With the target areas featuring mostly potential clients on the lower end of the income scale in that nation, subscriptions to the service were not going to cover the expenses.
There was also the issue that as a result of being solar-powered some parts of the globe were off-limits, reducing the potential markets. Finally, by being dependent on the right air currents in the stratosphere to navigate, any mistake or incorrect prediction there could lead to a balloon being taken many kilometers away from its intended location, cutting service for people in that area.
Despite having multiple ongoing trial projects by 2019, Loon as an independent entity was still reliant on its originating company
Alphabet
(formerly Google, now the parent company of Google). Having already burned through the money from an external investor, Loon was by that time trying to sustain a yearly loss of $100 million.
Between the advent of ground-based 4G and 5G towers in more and more areas and encroachment of wired internet, the possible market for Loon was rapidly shrinking. In addition, although space-based internet access had been an option for as long as Project Loon had been around, it had to that point been a remote threat, especially with the high cost and latency from primarily geosynchronous satellites. When SpaceX announced
Starlink
in 2015 and launched the first batch of Starlink satellites in 2018, Loon’s prospects began to look quite dire.
Lasers in Space
Dozens of new StarLink satellites ready to be deployed in 2019.
Unlike Loon’s balloons, Starlink satellites can be navigated to an exact orbital position in low Earth orbit (LEO), unaffected by weather and the atmosphere. Due to their close proximity to Earth, round-trip latency is minimal and bandwidth is expected to reach tens to hundreds of megabits using its K
u
and K
a
-band transceivers. SpaceX also has full vertical integration of Starlink satellite development and launch capability using Falcon 9 rockets today and conceivably hundreds of satellites being launched at once by
Starship
.
It’s not inconceivable that Starlink will be able to provide service to every square meter of the Earth’s surface within the next few years, at increasingly lower cost per satellite. With the lifespan of a single satellite being approximately 3-5 years based on what we know at this point, it’s reasonable to assume that they would be cheaper than Loon’s balloons over this time period.
As of writing, StarLink is being used by Beta testers primarily in the northern USA, providing people who are living in areas that are poorly serviced by existing wired and wireless (LTE) internet options suddenly with access to proper broadband internet connectivity. At the beginning of this year, SpaceX’s Transporter-1 mission also launched the first 10 StarLink satellites into a polar orbit which contain active laser-based inter-sat communication, allowing for multiple hops between satellites before reaching a ground station.
It’s the Business Plan, Silly
Perhaps more important than the costs was the altruistic angle of Loon: by focusing on
providing LTE to impoverished areas first of all
, it seems to have completely ignored the issue of a business needing income to finance itself. Their approach was to contract services to existing telecoms who would in turn sell to subscribers, but this never turned into a solid and reliable model. Much is yet unknown about how Starlink subscriptions will operate, but SpaceX decided to focus on first providing poorly connected North American citizens with the service, betting that they will be able to generate sufficient subscriber fees in this market.
As for the wind-down of Loon, a few assets from the project will find themselves absorbed into another
Google X
project:
Taara
. Taara involves none of the balloons or other flashy parts of Loon, instead taking mostly the newest technology that Loon was working on: the optical data links that would have increased the bandwidth between individual balloons. By using line of sight transceivers, this should theoretically enable remote areas to be connected with the internet and more without having to dig trenches to put in fiber.
While Loon’s story is at an end, it seems that with Taara the spirit of the project will live on. Here a major and so far unanswered question will remain whether Project Taara makes sense when Starlink exists. I’m however quite certain that within a matter of years we’ll have our answer here. | 47 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316514",
"author": "Foldi-One",
"timestamp": "2021-01-28T15:46:49",
"content": "Seems a shame to me, this is a neat and effective system, so easy to deploy where needed rapidly.Starlink and the like is clearly superior in many ways, but something goes wrong with a few of their sate... | 1,760,373,205.042341 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/28/a-look-at-how-nintendo-mastered-dual-screens/ | A Look At How Nintendo Mastered Dual Screens | Tom Nardi | [
"Nintendo DS Hacks"
] | [
"3d graphics",
"gpu",
"graphics",
"nintendo",
"Nintendo DS"
] | When it was first announced, many people were skeptical of the Nintendo DS. Rather than pushing raw power, the unique dual screen handheld was designed to explore new styles of play. Compared to the more traditional handhelds like the Game Boy Advance (GBA) or even Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP), the DS seemed like huge gamble for the Japanese gaming giant.
But it paid off. The Nintendo DS ended up being one of the most successful gaming platforms of all time,
and as [Modern Vintage Gamer] explains in a recent video
, at least part of that was due to its surprising graphical prowess. While it was technically inferior to the PSP in almost every way, Nintendo’s decades of experience in pushing the limits of 2D graphics allowed them to squeeze more out of the hardware than many would have thought possible.
On one level, the Nintendo DS could be seen as a upgraded GBA. Developers who were already used to the 2D capabilities of that system would feel right at home when they made the switch to the DS. As with previous 2D consoles, the DS had several screen modes complete with hardware-accelerated support for moving, scaling, rotating, and reflecting up to four background layers. This made it easy and computationally efficient to pull off pseudo-3D effects such as having multiple backdrop images scrolling by at different speeds to convey a sense of depth.
On top of its GBA-inherited tile and sprite 2D engine, the DS also featured a rudimentary GPU responsible for handling 3D geometry and rendering. Hardware accelerated 3D could only used on one screen at a time, which meant most games would keep the closeup view of the action on one display, and used the second panel to show 2D imagery such as an overhead map. But developers did have the option of flipping between the displays on each frame to render 3D on both panels at a reduced frame rate. The hardware can also handle shadows and included integrated support for cell shading, which was a particularly popular graphical effect at the time.
By combining the 2D and 3D hardware capabilities of the Nintendo DS onto a single screen, developers could produce complex graphical effects. [Modern Vintage Gamer] uses the example of
New Super Mario Bros
, which places a detailed 3D model of Mario over several layers of moving 2D bitmaps. Ultimately the 3D capabilities of the DS were hindered by the limited resolution of its 256 x 192 LCD panels; but considering most people were still using flip phones when the DS came out, it was impressive for the time.
Compared to the Game Boy Advance
, or
even the original “brick” Game Boy
, it doesn’t seem like hackers have had much luck coming up with ways to exploiting the capabilities of the Nintendo DS. But perhaps with more detailed retrospectives like this, the community will be inspired to take another look at this unique entry in gaming history. | 24 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316478",
"author": "Xeon",
"timestamp": "2021-01-28T13:07:45",
"content": "Very clever system to allow gpu’s to share screen buffers for drawing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6316511",
"author": "Gravis",
"... | 1,760,373,205.411056 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/28/open-source-cubesats-ease-the-pain-of-building-your-own/ | Open Source CubeSats Ease The Pain Of Building Your Own | Danie Conradie | [
"Space"
] | [
"atsamd51",
"CircuitPython",
"cubesats",
"pycubed",
"sattelite"
] | Space is hard, especially if you haven’t done it before. A growing number of CubeSats are launched by small, inexperienced teams every year, and a number of them fail due to missing some small but critical hardware or software problem. Researchers from the Robotic Exploration Lab (REx) at Carnegie Melon University have learned some of these lessons the hard way and created
PyCubed
, an open-source hardware and software framework for future CubeSats.
Most satellites, including
CubeSats
, require the same basic building blocks. These include ADCS (Attitude Determination and Control System), TT&C (telemetry, track, and command), C&DH (command and data handling), and an EPS (electrical power system). Each of these building blocks is integrated into a single PC/104 size PCB. The main microcontroller is an ATSAMD51, also used on a couple of Adafruit dev boards, and runs Circuit Python. Communications are handled by a LoRa radio module, and there is also an unpopulated footprint for a second radio. An LSM9DS1 IMU and an optional GPS handle navigation and attitude determination, and a flash chip and micro SD card provide RAM and data storage. The EPS consists of an energy harvester and battery charger, power monitor, and regular, that can connect to external Li-Ion batteries and solar panels. Two power relays and a series of MOSFETs connected to burn wires are used to deploy the CubeSat and its antennas.
On the PCB there are standardized footprints for up to four unique payloads for the specific missions. The hardware and software are documented on
GitHub
, including testing and a complete document on all the design decisions and their justifications. The PyCubed was also
presented at the 2019 AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites
. The platform has already been flight-tested as part of the
Kicksat-2
mission, and will also be used in the upcoming
V-R3X
,
Pandasat
, and
Pycubed-1
projects.
This is not the first
open-source CubeSat
we’ve seen, and we expect these platforms to become more common. Tracking a CubeSat is a lot less expensive than sending one to space, and can be done for
as little as $25
. | 8 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316449",
"author": "VictorB",
"timestamp": "2021-01-28T10:19:47",
"content": "Just a question:If I order in these boards and develop a Cubesat. Should I do a burn in and cherry pick the best boards?Or throw caution to the wind? Send up two?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1... | 1,760,373,205.350271 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/27/led-hourglass-moves-like-the-real-thing/ | LED Hourglass Moves Like The Real Thing | Kristina Panos | [
"Arduino Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"accelerometer",
"arduino",
"arduino mega",
"ESP8266",
"hour glass",
"hourglass",
"RGB LEDs"
] | If you want to waste time in a meaningful way, get yourself an hourglass. It’s simultaneously mesmerizing and terrifying to sit there and watch the seconds slip through the threshold that separates possibility from missed opportunity.
[Ty and Gig]’s LED hourglass is equally beautiful to watch
. It doesn’t actually tell time, but that’s perfectly fine by us. What it does do is animate the LEDs to approximate grains of sand in gravity, no matter how the hourglass is tilted.
In either vertical orientation, the sand falls as long as there is some in the top. When the hourglass is horizontal, the LEDs settle just like real sand does. [Ty and Gig] achieved this with
a whole lot of code
that breaks the animation frames into structure arrays.
By contrast, the hardware part of this build is fairly simple: all that’s needed to replicate this build is some RGB LEDs a beefy power supply to drive them, an accelerometer, and a microcontroller.
[Ty and Gig] were planning to use an ESP8266, but misplaced it and went with an Arduino Mega instead. (You know what they say — buy a replacement and the one you lost will turn up almost immediately.) The beautiful frame is made from leftover purpleheart,
a hardwood that turns purple with exposure to air
. Check out the build video after the break.
Too lazy to reset your hourglass every hour?
Here’s one that flips itself
. | 6 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316442",
"author": "troisieme_type",
"timestamp": "2021-01-28T08:58:10",
"content": "“buy a replacement and the one you lost will turn up almost immediately”I usually have a “buffer” of lost objects and tools. As soon as I loose something that I often need, the previous thing I lo... | 1,760,373,205.305561 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/27/goodbye-2020-contest-winners-announced/ | Goodbye 2020 Contest Winners Announced | Mike Szczys | [
"contests"
] | [
"Goodbye 2020!"
] | The Goodbye 2020 contest asked you to turn out the lights on an objectively crappy year in an interesting way.
Four winners have been announced
, and we have to tip the hat to [Becky Stern] for both creativity and execution on the 2020 candle seen above. Three wicks burn the candle down, revealing a metalwork dumpster fire along the way. It’s not just a performance piece but also an interesting look into candle making with 3D printed molds and insight on specifics like pour-temperature for best results. [Becky]
entered as a group with a few other YouTube channels
that included gags like [TechnoChic’s] knitted 2020 mask that is unraveled to count down the to the end.
[Marius Taciuc] spun up a clock to count down his year. The custom PCB uses a set of 7-segment displays to show the time (and some custom messages), along with a battery-backed RTC for precision. The aesthetic is a PC overclocker’s dream as
the timepiece lives inside of a mason jar filled with baby oil
.
You certainly can’t go out to a rave during these pandemic times. [George Cave] brought the party to his face with
a set of shades that blast RGB light into your eyeballs
. A pair of ultasonic distance sensors shut the party down if anyone breaks social distancing guidelines.
And [
Scott Clandinin
] picked up an honorable mention with
a Christmas-themed countdown
. A color LCD takes the place of a from/to card on a gift wrapped package, displaying the number of days using candy cane font.
Congratulations to each of the winners who received a $25 Tindie gift card for showing off their whimsical work. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316408",
"author": "John W Peterson",
"timestamp": "2021-01-28T06:40:56",
"content": "You really can’t beatJohn Oliver’s send-off.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6316411",
"author": "ncrmnt",
"timestamp": "2021-01-28T0... | 1,760,373,205.462024 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/27/apple-watch-gets-custom-transparent-case/ | Apple Watch Gets Custom Transparent Case | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"apple watch",
"epoxy",
"silicone mold",
"watch"
] | The Apple Watch was the tech company’s attempt to bring wrist computers into the mainstream. It’s naturally available in a variety of fits and finishes, but if you want something properly original, you’ve got to go custom.
[Useless Mod] does just that with a clear case for the popular smartwatch.
The mod starts with a patient, careful disassembly of the watch – necessary given the delicate components inside. It’s achieved in the end with only having to drill out 1 screw and an unfortunately snapping of the crown wheel axle. However, [Useless Mod] presses on, and silicone casts the original Apple enclosure. The video goes over all the finer points, from degassing to using strips of acrylic plastic to act as runners. Once done, the silicone mold is used to produce a replica case in transparent epoxy, and the watch is reassembled.
The final result is impressive, with the case optically clear and showing off the watch’s internals. The look is improved by removing some of the original insulation tape to better reveal the PCBs inside. Unfortunately, the design of the watch, which is largely covered by a screen and heartbeat sensor, means it’s not the greatest choice for a clear case mod, but it works nonetheless. We’ve seen similar work before from [Useless Mod] too –
like this transparent drone case for the Mavic Mini.
Video after the break. | 0 | 0 | [] | 1,760,373,205.494167 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/27/decoding-noaa-satellite-images-in-python/ | Decoding NOAA Satellite Images In Python | Tom Nardi | [
"Software Hacks",
"Space"
] | [
"noaa",
"python",
"RTL-SDR",
"satellite communication",
"satellite imagery",
"sdr",
"sdrplay"
] | You’d be forgiven for thinking that receiving data transmissions from orbiting satellites requires a complex array of hardware and software, because for a long time it did. These days we have the benefit of cheap software defined radios (SDRs) that let our computers easily tune into arbitrary frequencies. But what about the software side of things? As [Dmitrii Eliuseev] shows,
decoding the data satellites are beaming down to Earth is probably a lot easier than you might think
.
Well, at least in this case. The data [Dmitrii] is after happens to be broadcast from a relatively old fleet of satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). These birds (NOAA-15, NOAA-18 and NOAA-19) are somewhat unique in that they fly fairly low and utilize a simple analog signal transmitted at 137 MHz. This makes them especially good targets for hobbyists who are just dipping their toes into the world of satellite reception.
[Dmitrii] doesn’t spend a lot of time talking about the hardware in this post, only to say that he’s using a SDRPlay with what he describes as a poor antenna. He provides a link for information on building a more suitable antenna, but the signal is strong enough that
an old set of “Rabbit Ears” will do in a pinch
. From there he goes over how you can predict when one of the NOAA birds will be passing overhead, and explains how to configure your SDR software to capture the resulting signal. From there, it’s a step-by-step guide on how to make sense of the recorded WAV file.
With the help of the
scipy
library, it’s surprisingly easy to load the WAV file and generate some visualizations of the signal within. Since it’s analog, it only takes a bit more work with the Python Imaging Library (PIL) to convert that into a 2D image. [Dmitrii] notes that using the
putpixel
function isn’t the most efficient way to do this, and gives some tips on how you could speed up the process greatly, but for the purposes of the demonstration it makes for more easily understood code.
Of course, there are already
mature software packages that will decode this data for you
. But there’s something to be said for doing it yourself, especially since these NOAA satellites won’t be around forever. The new satellites that replace them will certainly be using a more complex protocol, so the
clock is ticking if you want to try your hand at this unique programming exercise
. | 10 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316405",
"author": "Christian",
"timestamp": "2021-01-28T06:00:33",
"content": "Hearing NOAA satellites was always fun. I even build a special receiver kit and used 2 hb9vc for the circular polarized signal.The signal is really easy to recognize. AM modulation of a FM sent tone. Si... | 1,760,373,205.543603 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/27/3d-printing-an-ion-propulsion-system/ | 3D Printing An Ion Propulsion System | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"Science",
"Space"
] | [
"ion drive",
"ion engine",
"ion propulsion",
"mit",
"zinc oxide"
] | As much as we love Star Trek, we have to admit there are some continuity problems. For example, in
Spock’s Brain
, the alien-of-the-week’s ion drive gave Scotty engineering envy. However, in
The Menagerie
, the computer identifies a Starfleet shuttlecraft as having ion propulsion. Either way, ion propulsion is real and NASA has toyed with it for ages and many satellites use it for maintaining orbit. Now researchers from MIT and the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Studies
3D printed tiny ion engines
.
The engine is about the size of a dime and, like all ion engines, produces tiny amounts of thrust. In fact, the researchers liken it to half the weight of one sesame seed from a hamburger bun. However, in space, these tiny thrusts add up and over time can produce significant acceleration.
The
full paper
is available and shows the device operates electrohydrodynamically, creating a fine spray of charged particles. Interestingly, the device is capable of creating fine sprays of liquid or nanofibers, so the applications aren’t just for space vehicles. However, the researchers were actually surprised that the device creates a pure ion jet and they aren’t entirely sure how the device works.
The device has a reservoir of liquid with an array of emitter cones. The cones are coated with zinc oxide nanowires that act as wicks to transfer the liquid to the emitter tips where the liquid is ionized and expelled. The researchers think the nanowires are responsible for the creation of the pure jet of ions.
An
ion-powered spacecraft
is visiting Mercury. The ion drive we really want to see, though, is on our very own
pedal-driven space bike
. | 20 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316258",
"author": "CodeToad",
"timestamp": "2021-01-27T19:39:15",
"content": "I think I understand your problem: your didn’t wipe Spock’s Brain from your memory. Life is better if you do that.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6... | 1,760,373,205.595438 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/27/sonys-electric-car-now-road-testing-in-austria/ | Sony’s Electric Car Now Road Testing In Austria | Lewin Day | [
"car hacks",
"Featured",
"Interest",
"Original Art",
"Slider"
] | [
"automotive",
"car",
"electric car",
"self-driving",
"sony"
] | The Consumer Electronics Show was not typically a place for concept cars, and Sony aren’t known as a major automaker. However, times change, and the electric transport revolution has changed much. At the famous trade show, Sony shocked many by revealing its Vision-S concept —
a running, driving, prototype electric car
.
Far from a simple mockup to show off in-car entertainment or new fancy cameras, Sony’s entry into the automotive world is surprisingly complete. Recently,
the Japanese tech giant has been spotted testing the vehicle on the road in Austria,
raising questions about the future of the project. Let’s dive in to what Sony has shown off, and what it means for the potential of the Vision-S.
Plenty of Swish Features
The Vision-S prototype boasts twin motors, one front and one rear, each delivering up to 200 kW at peak power. Combined with a roughly 2300 kg kerb weight and a reported 4.8 second zero-to-60 mph time suggest performance on par with Tesla’s Model 3. Interestingly, the company has kept its cards close to its chest regarding range or any specifications on the battery. Presumably, the battery pack uses cells of Sony’s own manufacture.
The interior features wall-to-wall screens, as is the current trend. There are four bucket seats for the passengers. as the classical rear bench seems to be going out of style along with declining birth rates in the developed world.
The vehicle is advanced inside and out, packing a suite of 40 sensors including CMOS cameras, LIDARs, ultrasonic sensors, and radar. With this package, Sony hope to enable the vehicle to deliver level 2 autonomy – wherein the vehicle can hold its speed and lane with driver supervision, akin to Telsa’s AutoPilot system. The goal is to eventually reach Level 4 autonomy, with the vehicle able to fully drive itself in select areas.
Much attention is paid to the in-car entertainment, which is unsurprising given Sony’s history in this space. Features include screens spanning the full width of the dashboard, as well as further displays for rear seat passengers. Each seat also gets its own set of speakers, which are intended to enable each passenger to listen to their own choice of content. One notable inclusion is that Sony aim for seamless transfer of audio from a driver’s smartphone earbuds to the car’s speakers when entering the car. Not a game changer, by any means, but something that highlights the seamless experience the company is going for.
Prototype or Production-Ready?
Magna-Steyr are well established contract manufacturer in the automotive industry, bringing much needed engineering experience to the project.
Sony has been working on the vehicle in concert with
Magna-Steyr
, a contract manufacturer of automobiles based in Graz, Austria. Currently, the company is producing a range of vehicles, from the combustion-engined Mercedes G-Class to the hybrid BMW 5-series and fully-electric Jaguar I-Pace. The collaboration has lent great credibility to the project, with the company’s long experience in automotive production serving as a base for Sony’s technological exploration.
Unlike the Apple Car, around which rumors have swirled for years with no real product spotted, Sony’s Vision-S appeared on the CES stage fully formed in 2020 before further details came to light this year. However, doubts remain as to whether the car will enter production or public sale. Sony are not established as an automotive brand, with no dealership or parts network around the world. Additionally, building a prototype is a far cry from getting a vehicle approved for sale in multiple jurisdictions around the world, which requires extensive testing, often destructive. The upfront costs for delivering a car to market are prohibitively expensive; as a particularly poignant example,
Tesla took well over a decade to reach sustainable profitability.
Exterior shots on the Sony website feature different colors – by name – suggesting some thought has been given to marketing the car.
It’s also difficult to see how well the Vision-S could fit into the marketplace. It’s unlikely Sony has automotive battery technology
on par with Tesla’s latest innovations,
let alone the factories required to produce them en masse for vehicles which require an incredible number of cells compared to the average consumer device.
Production plays a part, too. Magna-Steyr’s output is on the order of 200,000 cars a year, which is already split between several existing models and is unlikely to have much capacity to greatly expand that number for Sony. For contrast,
Tesla built almost 500,000 cars in 2020
— 140,000 of which were the Model 3. Sony needs economies of scale to balance price and performance. Without a lot of hype or brand cachet in the automotive world, it’s a scary proposition to bet millions, if not billions, of dollars on.
A Rolling Testbed?
It’s perhaps likely that the project is instead Sony’s effort to invest in automotive technology. The Vision-S could instead serve as a testbed for Sony’s image sensors, LIDARs, and other technologies which it hopes to sell to existing automakers. By building their own vehicle which is representative of future market trends, they have a perfect engineering platform with which to experiment with. This is particularly useful when it comes down to the tricky engineering of actually integrating advanced hardware into a vehicle. Anyone can throw a bunch of expensive, off-the-shelf sensors on a roof pod and drive around with it; to create something practical, attractive, and cost-effective is a far harder task.
The car came as a shock to many; unlike projects at Apple and Google, there was little hype or expectation for a Sony car to exist. One wonders if a little more hype earlier on could have been useful to build market interest. The company’s website leaves things open to interpretation, stating that “This content and prototype vehicle are intended to illustrate our future concepts in the area of mobility.” It’s hard to bet on the project’s outcome either way, with the concept both seeming too polished for an internal engineering project, yet too poorly positioned to truly compete in the marketplace. It could even be the case that the project gets packaged up and sold wholesale to an existing automaker, with a new set of badges to hide its origins. Given several automakers like Mazda and Subaru are yet to show any serious efforts towards electrification, it could be the way to go. Regardless, we look forward to the next stage of development for this sleek and compelling vehicle — and wait with baited breath to see the impact it makes on the marketplace. | 73 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316212",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2021-01-27T18:11:34",
"content": "“One notable inclusion is that Sony aim for seamless transfer of audio from a driver’s smartphone earbuds to the car’s speakers when entering the car.”So they’re gonna rootkit your phone?",
"pare... | 1,760,373,207.63291 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/27/raspberry-pi-zero-powers-spotify-streaming-ipod/ | Raspberry Pi Zero Powers Spotify Streaming IPod | Tom Nardi | [
"digital audio hacks",
"ipod hacks",
"Raspberry Pi"
] | [
"apple",
"click wheel",
"ipod",
"iPod Classic",
"python",
"spotify"
] | Even those critical of Apple as a company have to admit that they were really onto something with the iPod. The click wheel was a brilliant input device, and the simplicity of the gadget’s user interface made it easy to get to the music you wanted with a minimum of hoop jumping. Unfortunately it was a harbinger of proprietary software and DRM, but eventually there were a few open source libraries that let you put songs on the thing without selling your soul to Cupertino.
Of course, modern users expect a bit more than what the old hardware can deliver. Which is why [Guy Dupont]
swapped the internals of his iPod Classic with a Raspberry Pi Zero W
. This new Linux-powered digital audio player is not only capable of playing essentially any audio format you throw at it, but can also tap into streaming services such as Spotify. But such greatness doesn’t come easy; to pull this off, he had to replace nearly every component inside the player with the notable exception of the click wheel itself. Good thing the Classics were pretty chunky to begin with.
In addition to the Pi Zero running the show, he also had to fit a 1000 mAh battery, its associated charging and boost modules, a vibration motor for force feedback, and a 2″ LCD from Adafruit. The display ended up being almost the perfect size to replace the iPod’s original screen, and since it uses composite video, only took two wires to drive from the Pi. To interface with the original click wheel, [Guy] credits the
information he pulled from a decade-old Hackaday post
.
Of course with a project like this, the hardware is only half the story. It’s one thing to cram all the necessary components inside the original iPod enclosure, but by creating such an accurate clone of its iconic UI in Python, [Guy] really took things to the next level. Especially since he was able to so seamlessly integrate support for Spotify, a feature the Apple devs could scarcely have imagined back at the turn of the millennium. We’re very interested in seeing the source code when he pushes it to the currently empty GitHub repository, and wouldn’t be surprised if it set off a resurgence of DIY iPod clones.
We’ve seen
modern hardware grafted onto the original iPod mainboard
, and over the years a few hackers have tried to
spin up their own Pi-based portable music players
. But this project that so skillfully combines both concepts really raises the bar. | 32 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316174",
"author": "sxmwht",
"timestamp": "2021-01-27T16:34:45",
"content": "This looks fucking awesome!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6316185",
"author": "Guy Dupont",
"timestamp": "2021-01-27T17:21:48",
"content... | 1,760,373,207.4821 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/27/before-google-there-was-the-reference-librarian/ | Before Google, There Was The Reference Librarian | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Microcontrollers",
"Rants",
"Slider"
] | [
"data book",
"data sheet",
"databook",
"datasheet",
"ee master",
"eemaster",
"ic master",
"icmaster"
] | I know it is a common stereotype for an old guy to complain about how good the kids have it today. I, however, will take a little different approach: We have it so much better today when it comes to access to information than we did even a few decades ago. Imagine if I asked you the following questions:
Where can you have a custom Peltier device built?
What is the safest chemical to use when etching glass?
What does an LM1812 IC do?
Who sells AWG 12 wire with Teflon insulation?
You could probably answer all of these trivially with a quick query on your favorite search engine. But it hasn’t always been that way. In the old days, we had to make friends with three key people: the reference librarian, the vendor representative, and the old guy who seemed to know everything. In roughly that order.
Thomas’ Register
Back in the day, any good library had a tremendous set of green books known as the Thomas’ Register. These sort of still exist, but as a specialized search engine called
ThomasNet
. The books date back to 1898, but in the 1970s and 1980s, they contained 34 huge volumes. They were essentially a Yellow Pages for industry. If you wanted to know who sold fiber washers, there was a list in the register. Epoxy sealing compounds? Check the big green books.
What always struck me when browsing through the Register is that someone woke up one morning and thought, “I should start a business selling plastic pipe caps.” You can only assume there was some logical progression that led to that decision, but you have to wonder.
Old Thomas’ Register from the ThomasNet Blog (see link below)
Kudos, though, to Thomas for being
nimble enough to move to digital
even though the company is over a century old.
The Chemical Formulary
The Register was good if you wanted to buy something, but what if you wanted to make something chemically? Then you went looking for
The Chemical Formulary
, a set of 10 or 11 books that
are still available
in some form.
For example, suppose you wanted to start building electrolytic capacitors. In the 1940s, those were condensers, and the Formulary shows several compounds along with British patent numbers. Some of the recipes were quite specific. Some, like this electrolyte one, is very brief:
Liquid Dielectric
British Patent 493,961
Chlorinated Diphenyl (60% chlorine) 2 lb.
Trichlorobenzol 2 lb.
Tetrachlorobenzol 1 lb.
There’s no discussion about what the properties of the compound would be or why you’d use it over the other included recipe which called for ethylene glycol, boric acid, and ammonia. Don’t expect a material safety data sheet, either.
Yet some of the formulae are more specific. A rectifier element calls out specific instructions for oxidizing copper plates. Some of the entries aren’t even really compounds. One entry is about detecting forged documents using a few chemicals, but it wasn’t exactly clear how it would indicate a forgery. It is funny how the entries range from highly technical (zinc etching and light-sensitive emulsions) to quite pedestrian (how to remove alcohol spots from polished furniture).
[Styropyro] tested a few of the recipes for things like fireproofing and a reusable match. You can see his video experiments, below. We were suspicious of the contraceptive jelly formula and the compound you were supposed to smoke in a pipe to relieve asthma.
Data Books
A few of my surviving data books
If you wanted to find out about a particular IC in the old days, the best thing to do was to find the manufacturer’s data book. If you were in a school or a company, there might be what you wanted in the library. Otherwise, you’d have to beg or borrow a copy from the manufacturer. These were prized possessions and were rarely sent by mail because of the expense.
You’d usually get these from sales reps who wanted to sell you the parts in the book. If you got a new edition of, say, a TI databook, you might generously pass down your old copy to a junior person. It was more common to order from the company just a particular datasheet for a specific part, but that was difficult to browse through if you were just trying to get ideas without a specific part in mind. Some datasheets were works of art, with example circuits and detailed explanations about the device. There were also books for discrete components that would describe characteristics of, say, transistors, and provide cross-reference tables so you could replace one maker’s transistor with another.
You could buy some databooks at stores like Radio Shack which had, at least, some books from TI and National Semiconductor you could purchase. Catalogs were more available, and they had some information, too. However, it was rare for a catalog to have as much data as a proper datasheet or databook. There was also a trend for data to show up on microfiche. If you don’t remember that technology, it was essentially small filmstrip organized in an index card-like format. A reader could magnify the page you wanted to read on a screen.
One prized datasheet was for the Signetics 25120
Write Only Memory
. This fictitious device had arguably the most famous datasheet of all the spoof datasheets ever created. The schematic diagram showed a faucet as the “sink” just to give you a flavor for how silly it was. There were other spoof sheets, though, including the Zener-enhanced dark-emitting diode.
IC and EE Masters
A 2D image can’t convey just how thick the IC Master was
The problem with data books is they typically covered one vendor. Sure, a TI 7474 was probably just like a National 7474, but there could be small differences. But the real problem was the many parts that only had one or two sources. If you didn’t have the right data book, you’d probably never hear of that part. That’s where the IC Master came in.
If there was ever a book that should have been in volumes, it was the IC Master. The thing was huge like an Oxford English Dictionary. It would contain just about every datasheet from every vendor at the time of its publication. These were not cheap, but they were worth it. The only problem is the vendor’s databook probably included application notes and other information that you might not get in the IC Master. But you still would at least know a part existed and could research it further.
You can find some
PDFs of the giant books
online. The 1979 edition takes a while to load with nearly 2,400 pages!
For everything other than ICs, there was the EE Master. This was another big book, sometimes in a few volumes, that was like the Thomas’ Register, but only for electronic components. That means it could be more detailed and if you were looking for something even vaguely electronic, this could be your first stop.
The Good Old Days?
Some people fondly remember the good old days. Not me. Give me an internet search any day of the week over poring through out of date books. Even catalogs are better since nearly all the major websites now let you search and filter through components. Many will even point out ways to save money with equivalent parts or by exploiting quantity price breaks.
While I appreciate the feel of a paper book in my hands, I don’t want to go back to those days. It makes you wonder what will be around 50 years from now, though. Will you go to the QuantumMart VR store and tell the AI what you are trying to do and let it produce a design for you? Who knows? But just as we couldn’t imagine replacing our beloved data books, it is difficult to see what will replace the tools we use today.
Photo Credit: Thanks to [Tom N3LLL] for the picture of his fine collection of reference books. | 75 | 31 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316154",
"author": "drenehtsral",
"timestamp": "2021-01-27T15:42:11",
"content": "I have to say that I *do* miss the grouchy but helpful anyway old guy who knew everything (in my home town that guy ran a store out of his garage where you could buy hard to find parts (tubes, oddball... | 1,760,373,207.827844 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/27/chain-link-clock-drags-time-along/ | Chain Link Clock Drags Time Along | Anool Mahidharia | [
"clock hacks"
] | [
"3d print",
"chain",
"chain link",
"clock",
"servo",
"time"
] | When it comes to building quirky clocks that also double up as beautiful animated sculptures, [Ekaggrat Singh Kalsi] is a master par excellence. His latest offering is the
Getula
, a time piece inspired by an old, discarded bicycle chain, while the name seems inspired by the chain kingsnake —
Lampropeltis getula
– due to its snake like movements. Getula shows time by manipulating eight short pieces of chain to show four digits representing hours and minutes. But wrangling a flexible piece of chain to morph in to numerals turned out to be a far more complex endeavour than he bargained for, and he had to settle for a few compromises along the way.
He could not use real bicycle chains because they are too flexible and heavy, which made it impossible for them to hold the shapes he desired. Instead, he designed custom 3D printed chains similar to drag link chains used for cable management. For rigidity, he added O-rings in the chain joints to increase friction. But even this was not sufficient to completely form each digit using a single piece of chain.
The compromise was to use two pieces of chain per digit, which results in a more artistic expression of time keeping. Each piece of chain is pushed or pulled using stepper motors, and bent in to shape using servos. The end result is a mesmerising dance of chain links, steppers and servos every minute, around the clock.
Designing the clock was no trivial exercise, so [Ekaggrat] improved it over a couple of iterations. There are four modular blocks working in synchronism — each consisting of an Arduino Nano, two stepper motor drives with motors and two servos. Each chain has an embedded magnet at its start, which is sensed by a hall sensor to initialise the chain to a known position. A DS1307 RTC module provides timekeeping. The project is still work in progress, and [Ekaggrat] has managed to finish off just one module out of four — giving us a tantalizing glimpse of Getula welcoming 2021.
If you’d prefer something more shiny, check out his
Unique Clock that finally unites Hackers and Sequins,
while some of his other creations, such as the
Edgytokei
Clock and the
Torlo
Clock feature beautiful and intricate 3D printed mechanisms. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316107",
"author": "Arjan Wiegel",
"timestamp": "2021-01-27T12:50:38",
"content": "I have never seen anything like this before. This replaces my personal favourite “whiteboard+eraser” clock. Imagine being blind, but able to recognize the time by the sound of the servo’s banging the... | 1,760,373,207.209124 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/26/linear-pong-loses-a-dimension-but-remains-challenging/ | Linear Pong Loses A Dimension But Remains Challenging | Dan Maloney | [
"Games"
] | [
"arduino nano",
"led",
"Neopixels",
"pong",
"ws2812"
] | When Pong hit the scene in the early 70s, there was something about the simplicity of the 2D monochrome tennis game that made it engaging enough that enthusiastic proto-gamers shorted-out machines by stuffing their coin boxes to overflowing. But even with the simplicity of Pong’s 2D gameplay, the question becomes: could it by made simpler and still be playable?
Surprisingly, if
this one-dimensional Pong game
is any indication, it actually seems like it can. Where the original Pong made you line up your paddle with the incoming ball, with the main variable being the angle of the carom from your opponent, [mircemk]’s version, limited to a linear game field, makes the ball’s speed the variable. Players take control of the game with a pair of buttons at the far ends of a 60-LED strip of WS2812s. The ball travels back and forth along the strip, bouncing off a player’s paddle only if they push their button at the exact moment the ball arrives. Each reflection back to the opponent occurs at a random speed, making it hard to get into a rhythm. To add some variety, each player has a “Boost” button to put a little spice on their shot, and score is kept by LEDs in the center of the play field. Video of the game play plus build info is below the break.
With just a Neopixel strip, an Arduino Nano, and a small handful of common parts, it should be easy enough to whip up your own copy of this surprisingly engaging game. But if the 2D-version is still more your speed, maybe you should check out
the story of its inventor, [Ted Dabney]
. Or, perhaps building
a clock that plays Pong with itself
to idle the days away is more your speed. | 15 | 8 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315803",
"author": "Steve Toner",
"timestamp": "2021-01-26T16:39:11",
"content": "Unsurprisingly, this has been done before, and predates Pong. Many years ago we played ping pong using the front panel lights & switches of a Data General Nova minicomputer.",
"parent_id": null,
... | 1,760,373,207.258713 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/26/whats-the-deal-with-chromium-on-linux-google-at-odds-with-package-maintainers/ | What’s The Deal With Chromium On Linux? Google At Odds With Package Maintainers | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"google hacks",
"News",
"Slider",
"Software Hacks"
] | [
"api",
"chrome",
"chromium",
"foss",
"google",
"linux",
"open source"
] | Linux users are more likely than most to be familiar with Chromium, Google’s the free and open source web project that serves as the basis for their wildly popular Chrome. Since the project’s inception over a decade ago, users have been able to compile the BSD licensed code into a browser that’s
almost
the same as the closed-source Chrome. As such, most distributions offer their own package for the browser and some even include it in the base install. Unfortunately, that may be changing soon.
A post made earlier this month to the official Chromium Blog
explained that an audit had determined “third-party Chromium based browsers” were using APIs that were intended only for Google’s internal use. In response, any browser attempting to access features such as Chrome Sync with an unofficial API key would be prevented from doing so after March 15th.
To the average Chromium user, this doesn’t sound like much of a problem. In fact, you might even assume it doesn’t apply to you. The language used in the post makes it sound like Google is referring to browsers which are spun off of the Chromium codebase, and at least in part, they are. But the search giant is also using this opportunity to codify their belief that the only official Chromium builds
are the ones that they provide themselves
. With that simple change, anyone using a distribution-specific build of Chromium just became persona non grata.
Unhappy with the idea of giving users a semi-functional browser, the Chromium maintainers for several distributions such as
Arch Linux
and
Fedora
have said they’re considering pulling the package from their respective repositories altogether. With a Google representative
confirming the change is coming regardless of community feedback
, it seems likely more distributions will follow suit.
Broken Promises
For most users, this is little more than a minor annoyance. Sure it was nice to have Chromium available in your distribution’s package repository, but popping over to the official website and downloading the latest stable is hardly the end of the world. Those running older machines may be in for a rude awaking however, as Google no longer makes 32-bit builds available. They also don’t provide a native BSD build at the time of this writing. For those users, it may be time to give Firefox a shot.
Soon to be a memory of simpler times?
The people that are actually hurt the most by this decision are the ones who’ve spent years packaging Google’s open source browser. They’ve put in considerable time and effort to compile, distribute, and support a custom built Chromium, only to have Google pull the rug out from under them without so much as a call for comments. You might think that’s just one of the risks you take on when supporting a BSD-licensed project, which by definition offers no implied warranty, but in this case things are a little less cut and dry.
As developer Eric Hameleers explains in a lengthy blog post
, he was supplied with a dedicated API key for his Slackware Chromium builds by the Google Chrome Team in 2013. He was granted “official permission to include Google API keys in your packages”, and was told that the usage quota for that particular key would be increased “in an effort to adequately support your users”, as normally the key he was assigned would only be for personal development use. Evangelos Foutras, the maintainer for the Arch Linux Chromium package,
has indicated he received a similar email at around the same time
.
There’s no question that Google understood how these individuals intended to use their API keys. They were even given special dispensation to circumvent API limits, a decision which must have gone through several layers of approvals. The framework for giving distribution-specific Chromium packages the same level of functionality as official builds was agreed upon and put into operation years ago, that much is certain. What’s less clear is what happened internally at Google that prompted them to terminate these existing agreements with little more than a vague blog post to serve as notification.
Keys to the Kingdom
We may never get the full story in this situation, and since a Google representative has made it clear that the decision is final, there’s not much sense fretting over it. Ultimately, Google is going to run their business as they see fit. If they think allowing unofficial builds of Chromium to tap into their cloud services such as Sync isn’t worth it, it’s their prerogative to block them. Those who believe firmly in the concept of free and open source software would tell you that this is a perfect example of why you should have been using Firefox or another truly libre browser in the first place.
On the other hand, hackers as a whole aren’t overly fond of being told what to do.
Finding unconventional solutions to arbitrary limitations
is the name of the game, so what options exist for those who can’t or won’t use the official Chromium builds from Google?
Foutras has put forward an interesting suggestion that
, at least on the surface, doesn’t seem to run afoul of Google’s Terms of Service. Though that certainly doesn’t mean they’ll be happy about it.
Put simply, there doesn’t appear to be any technical reason that a third-party build of Chromium couldn’t simply use the official API keys that ship with Chrome. These keys have been publicly known since at least 2012, and in all that time, have never been changed. While actually
distributing
a build of Chromium using these keys may be enough of a gray area that mainline distributions would steer clear, a separate script that executes on the end-user’s machine and slips the keys into the relevant environment variables may be a loophole Google wasn’t expecting. | 152 | 43 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315764",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2021-01-26T15:16:35",
"content": "In my head this is translating as “Google limits it’s own ability to snarf data from unofficial Chromium builds”",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id"... | 1,760,373,208.026929 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/26/3d-printed-box-gets-bigger/ | 3D Printed Box Gets Bigger | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"3d printing",
"print in place",
"prusa"
] | If you ever watched Dr. Who, you probably know that the TARDIS looked like a police call box on the outside, but was very large on the inside. When asked, the Doctor had some explanation of how something can look small when it is far away and large when it is close up, which never made much sense. However, [iQLess] has been
3D printing boxes in a small area
, that fold out to be much larger boxes. (Video, embedded below.) The design comes from someone called [Cisco] who has a lot of
interesting print in place designs
.
You can find the design on the Prusa site or
Thingiverse
. The boxes do take a while to print, according to the video below. What was interesting to us, though, is that you should be able to print a design like this to create a box larger than your printer.
There are two versions of the box, a large one and a small one. The small box took about 10 hours to print with an estimated cost of just over a dollar. The large box takes about 24 hours to print on the machine [iQLess] uses.
Of course, any time you are printing hinges in place, you need your printer well calibrated so you don’t wind up with an immobile blob.
We’ve talked about
printing hinges
before. Printing something large on a small bed made us think of the experiments where a printer
lays out a roll of filament for itself
. | 10 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315756",
"author": "Third",
"timestamp": "2021-01-26T14:22:05",
"content": "Here’s a video by Cisco themselves (linked on the Thingiverse page), if you want to send some likes their way:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjjmdFSOrek",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replie... | 1,760,373,207.360804 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/26/custom-bite-sensor-replaces-keyboard-expression-pedal/ | Custom Bite Sensor Replaces Keyboard Expression Pedal | Lewin Day | [
"Musical Hacks"
] | [
"accessability",
"bite",
"bite sensor"
] | Sometimes, standard hardware won’t do when it comes to the differently abled. [Ben Krasnow] found himself recently working on a project for a musician who doesn’t have the use of his legs,
and thus needed to create a new interface to replace a standard expression pedal.
[Ben] is a big fan of the build first method of working, and demonstrates why it works well. In this case, the first attempt involved a pneumatic design, where the user would bite down on an air bladder that actuated a remotely-located potentiometer via a tube and bellows. However, while this design worked, the tactile feedback was poor. This led to experimentation with mechanical designs, with an initial attempt involving a 3D printed mechanism and a rotary pot. This was better, but still had problems with damage from teeth and poor feel .The final design is essentially an analog button, built with fabric-impregnated silicone for wear resistance and using a linear pot for smooth feedback.
The final design is impressively tidy, and [Ben] notes that while it looks simple, it was only arrived at by trying plenty of worse solutions first. We’ve seen other work done in the gaming world too; recently,
modular controllers have come into vogue to serve a wide variety of needs
. Video after the break.
[Thanks to Baldpower for the tip!] | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315909",
"author": "echodelta",
"timestamp": "2021-01-26T20:56:31",
"content": "At first I thought this was about expression pedal as in organ etc.This problem would be a challenge for a real piano. If I had to do this for someone, I’d go pneumatic like a player piano of old. The n... | 1,760,373,207.517211 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/25/steam-engine-replica-from-lego/ | Steam Engine Replica From LEGO | Bryan Cockfield | [
"Engine Hacks"
] | [
"corliss",
"dobson",
"engine",
"flywheel",
"lego",
"model",
"steam",
"vacuum",
"valve"
] | If engineering choices a hundred years ago had been only slightly different, we could have ended up in a world full of steam engines rather than internal combustion engines. For now, though, steam engines are limited to a few niche applications and, of course, models built by enthusiasts. This one for example is
built entirely in LEGO as a scale replica
of a steam engine originally produced in 1907.
The model is based on a 2500 horsepower triple-expansion four-cylinder engine that was
actually in use
during the first half of the 20th century. Since the model is built using nothing but LEGO (and a few rubber bands) it operates using a vacuum rather than with working steam, but the principle is essentially the same. It also includes Corliss valves, a technology from c.1850 that used rotating valves and improved steam engine efficiency dramatically for the time.
This build is an impressive recreation of the original machine, and can even run at extremely slow speeds thanks to a working valve on the top, allowing its operation to be viewed in detail. Maximum speed is about 80 rpm, very close to the original machine’s 68 rpm operational speed. If you’d prefer your steam engines to have real-world applications, though, make sure to check out
this steam-powered lawnmower
.
Thanks to [Hari] for the tip! | 25 | 9 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315700",
"author": "Max",
"timestamp": "2021-01-26T07:51:22",
"content": "Wow. That is seriously impressive!",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6315721",
"author": "James Scott",
"timestamp": "2021-01-26T11:13:29",
"c... | 1,760,373,207.319534 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/25/avoiding-pcb-crosstalk/ | Avoiding PCB Crosstalk | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"crosstalk",
"layout",
"pc board",
"pcb",
"pcb layout",
"Printed Circuit Board"
] | Now that it is relatively cheap and easy to create a PCB, it is a common occurrence for them to be used in projects. However, there are a lot of subtleties to creating high-performance boards that don’t show up so much on your 555 LED blinker. [Robert Feranec] is well-versed in board layout and he recently highlighted an
animation on signal crosstalk
with [Eric Bogatin] from Teledyne LeCroy. If you want a good understanding of crosstalk and how to combat it, you’ll want to see [Eric’s] presentation in the video below.
Simplifying matters, the heart of the problem lies in running traces close together so that the magnetic fields from one intersect the other. The math is hairy, but [Eric] talks about simple ways to model the system which may not be exact, but will be close enough for practical designs.
The models use inductors and capacitance to represent different modes of crosstalk, and it’s likely you already know how to deal with those quantities. The video shows some simulations and also suggests methods to control the problem.
Even though the topic is PC boards, some of the same ideas apply to cables. Ethernet cables, for example, have specifications for FEXT for similar reasons.
Our own [Bil Herd] has a take on
similar topics
you might enjoy. [Feranec] is behind
Fedevel Academy which we’ve read reviews
about before. | 13 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315755",
"author": "Not a Chemist",
"timestamp": "2021-01-26T14:17:47",
"content": "“Now that it is relatively cheap and easy to create a PCB”Is it though? Or have enough people started building projects that are so tiny that there is a market now for PCBs which are cheap only beca... | 1,760,373,207.408949 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/25/how-to-run-alternative-batteries-on-the-dji-mavic-mini/ | How To Run Alternative Batteries On The DJI Mavic Mini | Lewin Day | [
"drone hacks"
] | [
"battery pack",
"DJI",
"drm",
"mavic mini"
] | Rechargeable batteries are ubiquitous these days, freeing us from the expense and hassle of using disposable cells. However, this has come with the caveat that many manufacturers demand their equipment only be used with their own official batteries.
[aeropic] wasn’t a fan of this, so built a circuit to allow his DJI Mavic Mini to fly with any batteries he pleased.
The Mavic Mini uses I2C to communicate with official packs, making the hack relatively straightforward. [aeropic] built a board nicknamed B0B, which tells the drone what it wants to hear and lets it boot up with unofficial batteries installed. The circuit uses a PIC12F1840 to speak to the drone, including reporting voltage on the cells installed. Notably, it only monitors the whole pack, before dividing the voltage to represent the value of individual cells, but it shouldn’t be a major problem in typical use. Combined with a few 3D printed components to hold everything together, it allows you to build your own cheap pack for the Mavic Mini with little more than a PCB and a few 18650 cells.
It’s always good to see hackers getting out and doing the bread and butter work to get around restrictive factory DRM measures, whether its on music, printer cartridges, or drone batteries.
We’ve even seen the scourge appear on litter boxes, too
. Video after the break. | 40 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315648",
"author": "Mart",
"timestamp": "2021-01-26T00:35:45",
"content": "I hope if Dji see this they wont implement tougher countermeasures, i hate any company who force the client to use their proprietary stuff",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
... | 1,760,373,208.09984 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/27/reconstructing-data-from-a-corrupt-apple-floppy-disk/ | Reconstructing Data From A Corrupt Apple ][ Floppy Disk | Maya Posch | [
"computer hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"apple",
"apple II",
"data recovery",
"ProDOS"
] | Back in 1990 [Benjamin Zotto] wrote – while in elementary school – a dog racing game called
Wonderland 2
. The BASIC source code and images for the game were stored on a single ProDOS formatted, soft-sectored 5.25″ floppy disk. Fast-forward thirty years to today and [Benjamin] found to his dismay that ProDOS could no longer read the floppy, giving an I/O error. Not deterred, he set about to recover the data, as
documented in this Twitter thread
.
Applesauce visualization of the patterns on the corrupted disk, with soft-sectoring spiral arms.
The gist of the story is that the floppy disk’s surface could still be scanned with help from the aptly named
Applesauce Floppy Drive Controller
, which got the following visualization of the magnetic patterns on the disk surface:
This data could then be analyzed sector by sector, with the bad sectors and the cause for ProDOS flaking out with its reading attempts here marked in red.
Checking the data recovered so far confirmed that it was a ProDOS disk. It also confirmed that the sector containing the directory listing was shot. This required diving into the technical reference manual for ProDOS and its filesystem to figure out how to reconstruct the directory layout. This required figuring out the offsets and sizes of the files, assisted by knowing what was likely on the disk, and having some bits and pieces of the original volume listing still intact. This allowed for the directory volume to be rebuilt, one byte at a time.
Sectors on the disk, with bad sectors in red.
At the end of that arduous and highly educational journey success waited, and [Benjamin] was once again able to relive his memories of 1990s BASIC and hand-drawn bitmap graphics. | 47 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316080",
"author": "macsimski",
"timestamp": "2021-01-27T10:43:21",
"content": "Nice visualisation. We still have some 8″ floppies to read. This will come handy.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6316084",
"author": "davebolt... | 1,760,373,208.194786 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/26/arduino-learns-the-martial-arts-with-nunchucks-input-device/ | Arduino Learns The Martial Arts With Nunchucks Input Device | Al Williams | [
"Arduino Hacks"
] | [
"arduino",
"nunchuck",
"tetris",
"wii",
"wii nunchuck"
] | There is a boring part of every computer introduction class that shows how a computer is made up of input, output, and processing. Maybe it wouldn’t be so boring if the input device was a nunchuck.
[Brian Lough] thinks so and he belligerently asserts that nunchucks are the best input device ever
. With a simple connection to a Wii controller and an associated library, you get access to an analog joystick, two buttons, and an accelerometer.
The nunchuck is meant to plug into a Wii controller and the connection is I
2
C, so that’s trivial to interface to an Arduino or other small microcontroller. The only issue is making the connection. We might have just snipped the wires, but [Brian] prefers to use a small breakout board that plugs into the stock connector and provides solder points for your own cable. There are options for the breakout boards, and [Brian] has his own design that you can get from OSHPark for about a buck for three boards. You can also just jam wire into the connector, but that’s not always robust.
The controllers use 3.3V which isn’t unusual these days. There’s an available library that makes reading them easy. Obviously, not all applications will be a natural fit, but we did like them on the Tetris game [Brian] created. It is also natural for any kind of motion control like his gimbal mount example.
Even if you don’t have junk Wii controllers hanging around, they are common enough on the resale market and you can buy new third-party controllers without spending much. Makes us sorry we threw away ours in the last move.
If you want to get serious hacking a nunchuck, you can
go full custom
. Or, just give up, and turn one into a
Raspberry Pi
. | 11 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316038",
"author": "todbot",
"timestamp": "2021-01-27T06:43:36",
"content": "Huh, this all looks familiar… :)https://todbot.com/blog/2008/02/18/wiichuck-wii-nunchuck-adapter-available/",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6316054"... | 1,760,373,208.244613 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/26/how-to-keep-your-head-warm-with-a-skirt/ | How To Keep Your Head Warm With A Skirt | Kristina Panos | [
"Wearable Hacks"
] | [
"hat",
"sewing",
"skirt",
"upcycle",
"upcycling"
] | We’re not sure what we like better about
this upcycled trapper hat
— that [ellygibson] made it as a tribute to Holden Caulfield, the anti-hero of the classic teen angst novel
The Catcher in the Rye
, or the fact that she made it out of a skirt that cost a dollar from the thrift store. Oddly enough, one dollar is exactly what Holden paid for his hat in the book.
To make this hat, [elly] started by measuring the circumference of her head, then used math to figure out the radius of the circle for the top part. She made a prototype first to get the fit right, then cut the pieces from the skirt and the lining pieces from black flannel. We love that [elly] used the tiny pocket from the skirt in one of the ear flaps, because it will surely come in handy one day.
[elly] doesn’t provide pattern pieces, but that’s okay — between the explanation of how she arrived at the hat band circumference and the step-by-step instructions, it should be easy to make one of these for yourself from whatever fabric you’ve got.
Before you go cutting up an old coat, consider whether it could be fixed.
Remember when [Ted Yapo] fixed the zipper box on his son’s winter coat by printing a replacement?
Or how about the time
[Gerrit Coetzee] cast his own pea coat buttons? | 58 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316004",
"author": "Severe Tire Damage",
"timestamp": "2021-01-27T03:45:09",
"content": "Nice to see sewing viewed as a hacker activity — especially this kind of creative repurposing.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6316025",... | 1,760,373,208.381877 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/26/dreaming-of-a-transparent-pcb-christmas/ | Dreaming Of A Transparent (PCB) Christmas | Al Williams | [
"Holiday Hacks",
"LED Hacks"
] | [
"artistic pcb",
"flex PCB",
"flexible PCB",
"flexible printed circuit board",
"Printed Circuit Board"
] | [Carl] wanted to put his force sensors on a transparent PCB and had to ask his board vendor for a special sample. Flexible PCBs are available on transparent substrates made of PET, but they are not as common as polyimide boards. As [Carl] found out, these boards are a bit thicker, a bit less flexible, and don’t hold up to very high heat as well as the standard boards. Undeterred,
he designed a 3D Christmas tree
using the clear boards. The result that you can see in the video below looks pretty good and would have been hard to duplicate with conventional means.
When you build the board it is as a flat spiral, but lifting it in the center allows it to expand into a conical tree shape. The circuit itself is just an LED blinker, but the flexible board is the interesting part.
Don’t let the heat put you off, as though the boards deformed at temperatures around 215C and require careful soldering, your projects will probably not run at that temperature.
There was a time when any sort of flexible PCB was a big project. Now it is easily done and not particularly expensive. [Carl] mentions he violates some best practices for the sake of speed and aesthetics, but the result works fine and it looks pretty cool.
We’ve noticed that [Carl]
really likes flexible PCBs
. We’ve also noticed they wind up in a lot of
artsy projects
. | 1 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6316237",
"author": "robertfoss",
"timestamp": "2021-01-27T19:11:46",
"content": "PCBWay doesn’t seem to offer transparent flex on their site. Are there other vendors that offer it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
}
] | 1,760,373,208.287994 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/26/chasing-down-bad-caps-to-save-a-troubled-psu/ | Chasing Down Bad Caps To Save A Troubled PSU | Tom Nardi | [
"Parts",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"capacitor",
"capacitor failure",
"ESR",
"oscilloscope",
"psu",
"troubleshooting"
] | We know what you’re thinking. It’s a bad power supply, of course it was capacitors to blame. But even if we all intuitively know at this point that bad caps are almost always the culprit when a PSU gives up the ghost, it’s not always easy to figure out which one is to blame. Which is why this
deep dive into a failed ETK450AWT by [eigma] is worth a look
.
The first sign of trouble was when the computer would unexpectedly reboot with nothing in the system logs to indicate a problem. Eventually, [eigma] noticed a restart before the operating system even loaded, which confirmed the hardware was to blame. A quick look at the PSU output with a voltmeter showed things weren’t too far out of spec, but putting an oscilloscope on the 12 V line uncovered a nasty waveform that demanded further investigation.
Connecting all the dots.
By carefully following traces and comparing with common PSU diagrams, [eigma] was able to identify the SG5616 IC that checks the various voltages being produced by the PSU and generates the
PWR_OK
signal which tells the motherboard that everything is working normally. As before, all of the DC voltages at this chip seemed reasonable enough, but the pin that was measuring AC voltage from the transformer was showing the same ripple visible on the 12 VDC line.
Even
more
digging uncovered that the transformer itself had a control IC nestled away. The 13 VDC required by this chip to operate is pulled off the standby transformer by way of a Zener diode and a couple capacitors, but as [eigma] soon found, the circuit was producing another nasty ripple. Throwing a few new capacitors into the mix smoothed things out and got the PSU to kick on, but that’s not quite the end of the story.
Pulling the capacitors from the board and checking their values with the meter, [eigma] found they too appeared to be within reasonable enough limits. They even looked in good shape physically. But with the help of a signal generator, he was able to determine their equivalent series resistance (ESR) was way too high. Case closed.
While
swapping out blown capacitors in older electronics is something of a rite of passage
for hardware hackers, this case is an excellent example of how even the simplest of fixes can be tricky to troubleshoot. | 36 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315918",
"author": "Severe Tire Damage",
"timestamp": "2021-01-26T21:15:41",
"content": "rite of passage",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6315951",
"author": "Mike Szczys",
"timestamp": "2021-01-26T23:12:33",
... | 1,760,373,208.456795 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/26/how-does-a-circuit-breaker-break/ | How Does A Circuit Breaker Break? | Al Williams | [
"Teardown"
] | [
"circuit breaker"
] | Even if you aren’t an electronics person, you probably have a working knowledge of circuit breakers. When the lights go out, you find the circuit breaker and flip it back to the on position. Most people understand, too, that the breaker will trip if you overload the circuit with too many things plugged in or with an accidental short circuit. But how does this common device actually work? Keep in mind, circuit breakers need to be super reliable and have been around long enough that you can imagine they are pretty low tech. [Learn Engineering] has a very clear video about
what goes on inside a circuit breaker
that’s worth the eight minutes to watch. You can see the video below.
The handle is a mechanical engineering marvel, using two springs and a special design so that even a tiny force will cause it to snap to the off position. That takes care of a human tripping it. However, you have two other cases where you want to turn it off: overload and short circuit.
The short circuit case is easy to detect with an electromagnet that will have a strong magnetic field when so much current flows. However, the overload case isn’t that abrupt. For that, the breaker uses a bimetalic coil that expands as it heats.
There is one other detail. When the breaker opens at high currents, an arc forms. There’s a special component inside to help dissipate the arc. There’s a lot going on in that little box.
Of course, nowadays there are fancier breakers that detect
arcing
as well as shorts and overloads. We’ve also seen at least one other
breaker teardown
in the past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7XztOokA9Q | 32 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315890",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2021-01-26T19:47:04",
"content": "That’s why chipmunk speed was invented… 2x",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6315903",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-... | 1,760,373,208.519737 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/26/cable-mechanism-maths-designing-against-the-capstan-equation/ | Cable Mechanism Maths: Designing Against The Capstan Equation | Sonya Vasquez | [
"Engineering",
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"bowden cable",
"cable",
"Cable Bot",
"capstan",
"engineering",
"friction"
] | I fell in love with cable driven mechanisms a few years ago and put together some of my first
mechanical tentacles
to celebrate. But only after playing with them did I start to understand the principles that made them work. Today I want to share one of the most important equations to keep in mind when designing any device that involves cables, the
capstan equation
. Let some caffeine kick in and stick with me over the next few minutes to get a sense of how it works, how it affects the overall friction in your system, and how you can put it to work for you in special cases.
A Quick Refresher: Push-Pull Cable Driven Mechanisms
But first: just what exactly are cable driven mechanisms? It turns out that this term refers to a huge class of mechanisms, so we’ll limit our scope just to push-pull cable actuation systems.
These are devices where cables are used as actuators. By sending these cables through a flexible conduit, they serve a similar function to the tendons in our body that actuate our fingers. When designing these, we generally assume that the cables are both flexible and do not stretch when put in tension.
Since these cables are flexible, they can only exhibit a pull force, not a push, so cables often come in pairs to actuate along both directions. Here, they’ll be opening and closing the jaws of the Chomper.
Here, the joystick controls the yellow jaw of our Chomper by means of two cables, either of which can be put in tension. One of the key elements behind cables is the ability to reroute the direction of the applied force by controlling the cable through thin sheaths or
conduits
like so:
In this setup above, we can still control the Chomper remotely through the joystick and the mechanical control cables, albeit, with some added friction. Ideally, the conduits routing the cable are extremely flexible and do not compress when a compressive force is applied to them. That might sound like sort of magic component–but it’s not! It’s actually just a long skinny extension spring like
these parts from DR Templeman
. These parts go by a few names:
continuous-length extension spring, spring guide
… but I’ll generally refer to them as
spring guide
when referring to them in animatronics projects. This spring guide is extremely flexible, but also resistant to being compressed since it’s made from stainless steel.
If the above example seems a bit far-fetched, take the braking system on your bicycle as an example of a cable-actuated setup. Here, your hand squeezes the brakes on one end of the bike, which moves a length of cable running through a sheath on your bike, which moves your brake calipers and eventually squeezes the rim of your wheel hub to slow you down. Instead of a second conduit, however, an extension spring provides the return force to open the brake calipers when we release the handle.
All in all, these mechanisms really shine in situations requiring tight clearances, backlash-free control, and a limited angle of rotation. Properly designed, cable drives can be made to be both backlash free
and
back-drivable. But they’re no miracle elixir here. They have limits, and the
capstan equation
is fundamental to understanding your biggest challenge when it comes to their design: friction.
You vs. Friction: Conduit Edition
Wouldn’t it be neat if we could control anything remotely, using mechanical control cables from a distance? I totally agree! But it’s worth asking, what’s preventing us from weaving our cable and conduit in and out of some arbitrary setup? The answer comes down to friction. Friction is our enemy here, putting a limit to how much we can physically bend the conduit before it becomes too difficult to move. But the specific relationship to our problem is rather unintuitive! To build up a rigorous understanding of how friction affects the cable, let’s start by working a sample problem.
Let’s get rid of the conduit for a minute and start with a crude model using just two ingredients: a cable and a cylinder. In the image below, we’ve wrapped the cable partially around a fixed cylinder, and we’ve put both ends of the cable in tension so that the cable hugs the cylinder. Keep in mind that the cylinder can’t rotate, so if we wanted to move the cable, we’d have to fight friction here and rub up against the cylinder.
Now let’s start by putting both sides in tension with two tension values: T
Load
and T
Hold
. We’ll keep the tension constant on T
Hold
, but let’s slowly increase value of T
Load
. If our cylinder were actually frictionless pulley, trying to create a mismatch in tension would be impossible; the tension on one side would always be equal to the tension on the other side. But because our cylinder is fixed, it is, in fact, possible to increase the tension on one side while keeping the tension on the other side constant, all while the rope doesn’t slip in the process. This happens because static friction on the cylinder is acting against the tension increase up to a certain limit.
If we zoom in on a cross section of rope to examine the forces acting on a small sliver, we can see how static friction is acting against T
Load
, which is equalizing the tension mismatch so that the cable doesn’t slip.
Free body diagram of an infinitesimal cross section of cable measuring with infinitesimal angle dθ.
So here’s the big question: for a fixed value of T
Hold
on one side of the cylinder, just how much am I allowed to increase the T
Load
on the other side before the cable slips and starts rubbing on the cylinder? (Heads-up! The full derivation requires some calculus and differential equation knowledge, but, for the curious, have a look at
this PDF
.)
TL;DR: the answer is the Capstan Equation. It tells us that, for a given holding tension on one side, the maximum amount of tension we can put on the other side of the cable
without slipping
is given by:
Moving both T’s over to one side gives us something a little more interesting: a ratio between two tensions.
Let’s have a look at this equation’s inputs. µ
s
is the cable’s coefficient of static friction, a material property that we can look up
in a table
or material datasheet. θ is the total bend angle between your two tension vectors, T
Load
. and T
Hold
, measured in radians. T
L
and T
H
are the magnitudes of each respective tension value.
Also, an important side note: the bend angle θ is cumulative. In other words, if you add another fixed cylinder into the mix, you have to add up the total bend angle there too. That’s true even if the angle bends in the opposite direction as shown below:
So the total angle that we’d put in the capstan equation is given by θ
1
+ θ
2
.
What’s key here is that only two properties, bend angle and coefficient of static friction, will dictate just how much extra tension we can add on one side before the whole setup slips. So what can we glean from this equation?
The first key takeaway is that the cylinder size has
no effect
on the amount of friction mismatch. In other words, a small radius cylinder will produce the same resulting value that a large radius cylinder would, provided that the overall bend angles are the same. That’s
not
intuitive! I should mention, though: the equation above assumes that the cable is infinitely flimsy, which is a good approximation unless our bending radius is
really
small, like a few multiples of the cable diameter. In that case, the force required to bend the cable does matter. But, for most situations, we can ignore it.
Another key takeaway is that the relationship is exponentially related to the bend angle! So while one wrap around the cylinder might not add much friction, adding a second wrap more-than-doubles the maximum tension ratio between the two cable ends. For an example, with a cable who’s µ
s
= 0.3, two wraps is 6.6 times more friction than one wrap. Three wraps is 43.4 times more friction than one wrap [
math link
]. But if our µ
s
= 0.2, than three wraps is only 12.3 times as much friction as one wrap. In short, exponential relationships are not intuitive and add up quickly, and picking a cable with a coefficient of friction that’s as small as possible (like this
nylon-coated cable
) is key to keeping the excess friction low.
On its own, this example feels pretty obtuse, so let’s tie it back to our original problem with our cable-driven chomper using conduits. To translate the takeaways from problem to our setup, we simply substitute the cylinders above with conduit, and–voila–the exact same equation applies to this setup also! Since both the cylinder and the conduit are fixed, the capstan equation applies to this situation too. Here the cumulative bend angle is coming from the total bend of the cable that’s in tension.
Notice that I only marked angles θ
1
and θ
2
on one conduit, not both. That’s on purpose. For a clockwise torque applied to the joystick, only one cable is being put in tension; the other one goes slack. In other words, only the bends on the cable in tension add to the friction cost. If we applied a torque on the handle in the other direction, the friction costs would come from the bends in the other conduit. In practice, we’d probably route both of these conduits together as a single bundle, but it’s important to realize exactly who’s responsible for the friction depending on the direction of the input.
Designing Around Friction Costs
Applied to our Chomper setup, the Capstan Equation tells us just
how much harder we have to tug on one side of the cable before we can get the other side of the cable to start moving
. If we know the our cable’s coefficient of static friction and can estimate the max bend angle of our setup, we can estimate the maximum tension value our setup will ever encounter, which, in turn, helps us spec a motor with the appropriate amount of torque.
But there’s another, even simpler takeaway from this equation that we can use as a general rule of thumb. When it comes to designing your own cable driven mechanisms that use conduit, we want to remove any unnecessary bends anywhere else in the cable. In other words, conduits aren’t a catch-all solution for routing a pull force anywhere else in our system. Every bend that we add to them adds a friction cost, and that added friction can be computed with the capstan equation.
Now that we know how friction and bend angle are related, how could I adjust my design to reduce some of the unnecessary friction that the motors will need to fight through? (I confess that I didn’t know the capstan equation when I made this setup.)
My first shot at motorizing my two-stage tentacle
An extra 90° bend that didn’t really need to be there
If your system needs to route cable through a host of bends, consider introducing pulleys to do some of these bends for you. Since pulleys roll freely, they don’t add friction, and, therefore, do not contribute to the cumulative bend angle in the capstan equation.
A Teaser: The Inverse Problem
A Capstan Drive. Project Credit: Wooden Haptics
While the Capstan Equation is a huge bummer for preventing us from endlessly weaving our conduit through hard-to-reach sections of our design, a few cases exist where that friction is extremely useful. Since the tension on one side is exponentially related to the tension on the opposite side, with only about four wraps, we can actually use the capstan cylinder to drive the cable directly without worrying about the wire slipping.
This marvelous property gives way to a mechanism called a
capstan drive
, a cable wrapped around a small shaft that can be used as an actuator. Here, we’ve put the Capstan Equation to work. We’re counting on that exponential relationship so that our cable doesn’t slip while the cylinder is rotated. These mechanisms are just too cool to gloss over, so we’ll revisit them in a future post. Until then, we hope this brief intro helps you think a bit more carefully about routing cables in your next push-pull cable conduit project, tentacles included or not.
References:
Wikipedia:
The Capstan Equation
Science Direct:
The Capstan Equation
Evaluation and Analysis of Push-Pull Cable Actuation System Used for Powered Orthoses
CS235: Applied Robot Design, Lecture 7–Introduction to Cable Transmissions
https://woodenhaptics.org/ | 20 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315856",
"author": "kdev",
"timestamp": "2021-01-26T18:31:23",
"content": "Due to their backdrivability and low/no backlash, capstan drives are great for devices with haptic feedback. I remember working with a 3D demo of a haptic pen powered by a capstan drive, where you could “fe... | 1,760,373,208.625262 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/25/buzzer-does-input-and-output/ | Buzzer Does Input And Output | Al Williams | [
"Microcontrollers",
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"haptic feedback",
"piezo",
"piezoelecricity",
"piezoelectric",
"switch"
] | Piezo elements have the useful property of being bidirectional; that is they can move when you apply electricity to them, but they can also generate electricity when you move them. [Carl] takes advantage of this fact to make
buttons
that can provide haptic feedback. You can see a video of his efforts below the break.
He made two versions of the buttons. One uses a 3D printed housing and the other used a 3D printed spacer in a sandwich configuration. It took a few tries to get it right, as you’ll see. The elements take and produce relatively high voltages, so the bulk of the work was adapting the voltages back and forth. In fact, he even managed to fry his CPU chip with some of the higher voltages involved.
We’d probably look for an easier way to sense the button push, since it seems like a good bit of circuitry just to do that. But the whole circuit provides an input button, haptic feedback, and the option of using the buzzer as a buzzer, so at least it is relatively economical if you need all of those features.
The last time we saw a piezo speaker detecting something it was looking for
knocks on a door
. If you want to know more about how transducers like this work, you’ll
enjoy this video
. | 2 | 2 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315675",
"author": "Staple_nutz",
"timestamp": "2021-01-26T04:08:36",
"content": "I’d built a project for my brothers track car about 4 years ago that detects engine knocking. It displayed the scale of the knock sensor on a number of LEDs (about 12 green, yellow & red all up) as we... | 1,760,373,208.557398 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/25/nasa-challenge-offers-prizes-for-sprouting-astronaut-food-systems/ | NASA Challenge Offers Prizes For Sprouting Astronaut Food Systems | Maya Posch | [
"cooking hacks",
"News",
"Science",
"Space"
] | [
"CSA",
"deep space food challenge",
"nasa"
] | Humans have unfortunately not yet evolved the ability to photosynthesize or recharge from an electricity source, which is why astronauts well into the future of spaceflight will need to have access to food sources. Developing ways to grow food in space is the focus of the new
Deep Space Food Challenge
that was just launched by
NASA
and Canada’s Space Agency (CSA).
With a total of twenty $25,000 USD prizes for US contestants and ten $30,000 CAD prizes for the Canucks in Phase 1 of the challenge, there’s some financial incentive as well. In Phase 2, the winning teams of the concept phase have to
show off their kitchen skills
, and in the final Phase 3 (deadline by Fall 2023) the full food growing system has to be demonstrated.
The possible systems here would likely involve some kind of hydroponics, aeroponics or even aquaponics, to save the weight of lugging kilograms of soil into space. None of this is truly new technology, but cramming it into a package that would be able to supply a crew of four with enough food during a three-year mission does seem fairly challenging.
The NASA rules are covered in their
Phase 1 Rules PDF document
. While international teams are also welcome to compete, they cannot receive any prizes beyond recognition, and Chinese citizens or companies with links to China are not to allowed to compete at all. | 53 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315552",
"author": "Beaker",
"timestamp": "2021-01-25T19:49:47",
"content": "Rules link is broken, but I found it here:https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5fd5ab003c1f6275809f31d9/t/600f1be36dd229640beea664/1611602916036/FNL_NASA_DSF_Phase_1_Rules+rev+1.pdf",
"parent_id": nu... | 1,760,373,209.116561 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/25/the-politics-of-supersonic-flight-the-concorde/ | The Politics Of Supersonic Flight: The Concord(e) | Jenny List | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"History",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"airliner",
"concorde",
"France",
"supersonic",
"uk"
] | Every nation has icons of national pride: a sports star, a space mission, or a piece of architecture. Usually they encapsulate a country’s spirit, so citizens can look up from their dreary lives and say “Now
there
‘s something I can take pride in!” Concorde, the supersonic airliner beloved by the late 20th century elite for their Atlantic crossings, was a genuine bona-fide British engineering icon.
But this icon is unique as symbols of national pride go, because we share it with the French. For every British Airways Concorde that plied the Atlantic from London, there was another doing the same from Paris, and for every British designed or built Concorde component there was another with a French pedigree. This unexpected international collaboration gave us the world’s most successful supersonic airliner, and given the political manoeuverings that surrounded its gestation, the fact that it made it to the skies at all is something of a minor miracle.
A Bright Future Of Supersonic Travel
Boeing’s Dash 80 prototype sets the template for today’s jet airliners. Boeing Dreamscape,
Public domain
In the 1950s, the direction of post-war aviation had been set by the first generation of four-engined jet passenger aircraft. Planes such as the De Haviland Comet, Tupolev TU-104, Sud Aviation Caravelle, and Boeing Dash-80 prototype are the visible ancestors of today’s airliners, but just as the future of jet fighter aircraft lay in supersonic designs it was envisaged that so too would the future of civil aviation.
By the 1980s, we would zip around the world at twice the speed of sound, and naturally the aircraft manufacturers of the day wanted a slice of that market. Governments and major manufacturers worldwide set their designers researching the feasibility of transforming design elements created for supersonic military aircraft into civilian airliners. By the end of the 1950s the French Sud Aviation and British BAC had advanced to the point of in 1960 investigating a joint venture, and were surprised to find that each other’s designs had arrived at a substantially similar shape and configuration.
A common design was agreed, and the respective governments contemplated a formal treaty. At this time, the British government was being blocked by the French from European Community membership, and was seeking anything that would sweeten their eventual membership. They thus pushed for a deal, and inserted punitive clauses for breaking it in the resulting 1962 treaty. The aircraft would be built as a cooperative effort between the two countries, with both governments funding the development in the expectation that they could get a head start over the Americans in equipping the airlines of the 1970s.
The Battle Of The Extra “E”
The aircraft that emerged had the familiar thin fuselage and long curved delta wing, and had four Rolls-Royce Olympus 593 turbojet engines derived from those used on the Avro Vulcan bomber mounted under the wings. For use at supersonic speeds, these engines had special intake ducts designed to slow the air down to subsonic speeds. And although they were fitted with afterburners for the climb to cruising altitude, these intakes gave the Concorde the ability to “supercruise”, or cruise at mach 2 supersonic speeds without afterburners engaged.
One of the prototype Concorde aircraft complete with “e” is in the Imperial War Museum, Duxford. Ronnie Macdonald from Chelmsford, United Kingdom,
CC BY 2.0
It is inevitable that such a project, at the edge of what is possible, will incur significant overruns. The Concorde was no exception. The first estimate of £70 million soared to a billion and beyond. That the project survived at all was due only to the expense of pulling out due to that punitive clause.
The sometimes testy relationship between the two countries’ political leadership was reflected in its name, variously being referred to with the French spelling of “Concorde” or the English “Concord”. The version with an “e” was finally adopted.
The two prototype aircraft made their maiden flights in 1969, with the French Concorde in Toulouse being the first. These two planes flew into a different environment from that envisaged in the 1950s. Concerns about noise and pollution, as well as the Oil Crisis in the early 1970s, led to much of the interest of the airlines in supersonic luxury travel melting away, and by the time the first production aircraft were under way only the two national airlines remained. The two governments were left having spent eye-watering sums to produce only a few aircraft, and opted to swallow the loss by passing them to the airlines. They were sold to the public as that source of national pride, and to this day that is how they are seen rather than as a colossal sinkhole of public money.
The Unthinkable Happens
The memorial to those killed in the Concorde crash, Gonesse, France. Marbus1966,
CC BY-SA 4.0
Concorde’s use for special charter flights meant that it would often fly over parts of the UK outside of its normal scheduled routes, and even when it was a couple of decades old it would cause people to stop and watch it go by. “National icon” is a phrase that is sometimes used inappropriately, but for Brits and presumably the French too, it definitely applied to Concorde during those decades. It seemed to be a fixture without an end to its service.
But in July 2000, the aircraft suffered its first and only fatal crash. An Air France charter flight hit a piece of runway debris at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, causing a fuel tank failure and fire that led to the aircraft crashing with the loss of all on board after only two minutes of flight.
The fleet was grounded while investigations were carried out and all aircraft were fitted with fuel tank modifications, but their return to the air was short-lived. In 2003 the entire fleet was retired by both airlines, causing a brief controversy. Civilian supersonic airline flight had not become travel for the masses as was once predicted, and while still a source of national pride, the aircraft had become something of an anachronism. Meanwhile we’re left to queue for our twin-engined subsonic widebody aircraft flights, and hope that one day
Reaction Engines
might rekindle the dream.
Header images: foundin_a_attic,
CC BY 2.0
, and
Arpingstone
, Public domain. | 29 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315518",
"author": "abjq",
"timestamp": "2021-01-25T18:24:22",
"content": "If you have nothing better to do with around 9 hours of your life, and want to know more, then this is an interesting read:https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-question.htmlThe rule is, you can’t ... | 1,760,373,208.991684 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/25/esp32-s2-and-rp2040-hack-chat-with-adafruit/ | ESP32-S2 And RP2040 Hack Chat With Adafruit | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns"
] | [
"adafruit",
"ESP32-S2",
"espressif",
"Hack Chat",
"ladyada",
"RISC-V"
] | Join us on Wednesday, January 27 at noon Pacific for the
ESP32-S2 and RP2040 Hack Chat
with Adafruit!
It’s always an event when we have Adafruit on the Hack Chat, and last time was no exception. Then, the ESP32-S2 was the new newness, and Adafruit was just diving into what’s possible with the chip. It’s an interesting beast — with a single core and no Bluetooth or Ethernet built-in, it appears to be less capable than other Espressif chips. But with a faster CPU, more GPIO and ADCs, a RISC-V co-processor, and native USB, the chip looked promising.
Among their other duties, the folks at Adafruit have spent the last six months working with the chip, and they’d now like to share what they’ve learned with the community. So
Limor “Ladyada” Fried
,
Phillip Torrone, Scott Shawcroft
,
Dan Halbert
, and
Jeff Epler
will stop by the Hack Chat to show us what’s under the hood of the ESP32-S2. They’ve worked on a bunch of projects using the chip, and they’ve taken a deep-dive into the chip’s deep-sleep capabilities, so stop by the Chat with your burning questions about low-power applications or anything ESP32-S2-related and ask away.
Plus, a late and exciting addition to the agenda: they’ll be talking about the recently released RP2040, the first custom chip from the folks at Raspberry Pi. We’ve already started talking about
the Raspberry Pi Pico
, the dev board that uses the chip, and Adafruit will share what they’ve learned about the RP2040 so far.
Our Hack Chats are live community events in the
Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging
. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, January 27 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. | 20 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315513",
"author": "NP",
"timestamp": "2021-01-25T18:05:23",
"content": "Note: your time converter page has the event set for 12am, not pm.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6315577",
"author": "Dan Maloney",
"t... | 1,760,373,208.919288 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/25/lenticular-lens-makes-things-invisible/ | Lenticular Lens Makes Things Invisible | Al Williams | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"invisibility",
"lenticular"
] | Sure it is a cheap stage trick, but using a lenticular lens at the right angle and in front of the right background can render what’s behind it invisible. That’s not news, but [Ian] spent some time
investigating how to make the best one
he could. His instructions cover how to create your own with polycarbonate, the right lens, and some optically clear adhesive. You can see some details about the shield along with some demonstrations in the video below.
The first iteration of the design worked, but it had some distracting lines and curvatures. The second version uses a large sheet of polycarbonate and liquid adhesive to attach the lens. It looks much better.
The effect works best when you have a bold horizontal pattern behind you and, of course, only works from certain sight angles. Even then, you can see when [Ian] is moving behind the shield, but it is pretty muted. However, the final version did look better even though UV curing that big sheet of plastic looked painful.
The final few minutes of the video shows some real world user testing that looked like a lot of fun. There are other ways to bend light to get
limited invisibility
. We’ve seen these lenses used for
faux holograms
, too. | 7 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315508",
"author": "Fred",
"timestamp": "2021-01-25T18:00:37",
"content": "This only works with a linear patterned background from a very limited set of viewing angles. You know what is also effective when you have such a background? A still image with that background printed on it... | 1,760,373,209.032104 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/25/failed-test-could-further-delay-nasas-troubled-sls-rocket/ | Failed Test Could Further Delay NASA’s Troubled SLS Rocket | Tom Nardi | [
"Current Events",
"Featured",
"Slider",
"Space"
] | [
"Artemis",
"Blue Origin",
"commercial space",
"nasa",
"sls",
"Space Shuttle",
"SpaceX"
] | The January 16th “Green Run” test of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) was intended to be the final milestone before the super heavy-lift booster would be moved to Cape Canaveral ahead of its inaugural Artemis I mission in November 2021. The full duration static fire test was designed to simulate a typical launch, with the rocket’s main engines burning for approximately eight minutes at maximum power. But despite a thunderous start start, the
vehicle’s onboard systems triggered an automatic abort after just 67 seconds
; making it the latest in a long line of disappointments surrounding the controversial booster.
When it was proposed in 2011, the SLS seemed so simple. Rather than spending the time and money required to develop a completely new rocket, the super heavy-lift booster would be based on lightly modified versions of Space Shuttle components. All engineers had to do was attach four of the Orbiter’s RS-25 engines to the bottom of an enlarged External Tank and strap on a pair of similarly elongated Solid Rocket Boosters. In place of the complex winged Orbiter, crew and cargo would ride atop the rocket using an upper stage and capsule not unlike what was used in the Apollo program.
The SLS core stage is rolled out for testing.
There’s very little that could be called “easy” when it comes to spaceflight, but the SLS was certainly designed to take the path of least resistance. By using flight-proven components assembled in existing production facilities, NASA estimated that the first SLS could be ready for a test flight in 2016.
If everything went according to schedule, the agency expected it would be ready to send astronauts beyond low Earth orbit by the early 2020s. Just in time to meet the aspirational goals laid out by President Obama in a 2010 speech at Kennedy Space Center, including the crewed exploitation of a nearby asteroid by 2025 and a potential mission to Mars in the 2030s.
But of course, none of that ever happened. By the time SLS was expected to make its first flight in 2016, with nearly $10 billion already spent on the program, only a few structural test articles had actually been assembled. Each year NASA pushed back the date for the booster’s first shakedown flight, as the project sailed past deadlines in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. After the recent engine test ended before engineers were able to collect the data necessary to ensure the vehicle could safely perform a full-duration burn, outgoing NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said it was too early to tell if the booster would still fly this year.
What went wrong? As commercial entities like SpaceX and Blue Origin move in leaps and bounds, NASA seems stuck in the past. How did such a comparatively simple project get so far behind schedule and over budget?
The Rocket to Nowhere
Arguably, the most pressing problem with the SLS program is that it has no clear purpose. As a congressionally mandated project, NASA must continue on with its development regardless of whether or not they actually have a use for it. Critics have often referred to the program as the “Senate Launch System”, as they believe the Shuttle-derived concept was conceived primarily as a way to make sure the manufacturing facilities used to build the engines, propellant tanks, and solid rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle would remain in operation even after the program was retired.
The deep space asteroid mission was canceled in 2017.
Without a clear mission for the SLS, it’s been difficult for NASA engineers to make any long-term development plans. What payload does the booster need to carry, and to where, are key questions that need to be answered. NASA is no longer pursuing the mission to recover a near Earth asteroid, and a human mission to Mars is still decades away. The SLS is scheduled to launch the
Europa Clipper
to Jupiter in 2025, though the Falcon Heavy is already being considered as a backup should it not be ready in time.
While its ultimate effectiveness is debatable, the design of the Space Shuttle was driven by a very specific goal: to transport large objects to and from low Earth orbit inside of its cargo bay. Every decision made during the program’s lifetime revolved around that core tenet. Without similar guidance, the Space Launch System has found itself adrift.
Put simply, the single defining characteristic of the SLS is
the sheer mass it’s capable of putting into space
. The rocket’s base Block I configuration is designed to put 95,000 kg (209,000 lb) into low Earth orbit, and the later Block II version 130,000 kg (290,000 lb). But while these are impressive figures, it’s not immediately clear what type of mission architecture would require such massive modules to be launched in a single-shot. The 50 years of experience gained since the Apollo era has taught us that modular systems, launched on competitively priced boosters and assembled in orbit,
is the key to creating a sustainable space infrastructure
.
Squandered Reusability
From the beginning, the Space Shuttle was designed to be an almost completely reusable architecture. Aside from the External Tank, every component of the system could be recovered, refurbished, and flown again. The idea being that it would be cheaper and faster to reuse the same vehicle than it would be to build a new one for each mission.
Unfortunately
the complexity and cost of the refurbishment process was greatly underestimated
, due in part to technical and material limitations of the era. In the end, the Shuttle never launched as affordably and as rapidly as its designers had hoped, but the lessons learned during the program helped shape modern reusable spacecraft such as Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser and the Boeing X-37B.
But despite the current trend towards reusable rockets and spacecraft, NASA is taking a step backwards with the SLS by using components which were designed for refurbishment and discarding them the end of each flight. The RS-25 engines installed on the first SLS rocket are not newly manufactured, they are literally the same engines that were
pulled from the Shuttle Orbiters when they were put into museums
. The same is true with the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs); the new elongated boosters are using segments from the Shuttle’s original SRBs, but instead of coming down on parachutes to be recovered, they will smash into the ocean and sink.
Each flight of the SLS will destroy four Shuttle-era RS-25 engines and two SRBs, simply because they were taking up space in a NASA warehouse. From a historical standpoint, this is abhorrent. But more practically speaking, integrating these decades-old components into a modern launcher has proven to be far more difficult than anticipated. While they’ve seen some upgrades since the retirement of the Shuttle, it’s no exaggeration to say that some of the people working on the SLS today were not born when its engines were built.
As of right now, NASA only has enough RS-25 engines leftover from the Shuttle program to support four SLS flights. To address this, the agency has already
contracted Aerojet Rocketdyne to produce a new version of the engine
called the RS-25E that’s designed to be expendable. Unfortunately, these design changes come at a steep price. Each RS-25E will cost NASA nearly $150 million, which is more than what SpaceX charges for a flight on the Falcon Heavy. With a per-launch price that will easily exceed that of the infamously expensive Space Shuttle, it’s difficult to imagine how SLS can possibly remain competitive with reusable commercial vehicles set to begin operation within the current decade such as SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s New Glenn.
A Calculated Risk
After examining the data, NASA says the automated abort during the January 16th engine test was due to
intentionally conservative test limits intended to avoid unnecessary stress on the booster
. In a press conference, Administrator Bridenstine said that had this been a real flight, the engines would have remained firing for the full duration necessary to reach orbit. He went on to explain that there is an inherent risk involved should NASA or prime contractor Boeing decide to rerun the full duration test fire, as the propellant tanks can only be filled and drained a finite number of times.
Orion heading to the Moon during Artemis I
While nothing has been determined yet, these statements would seem to indicate that NASA may decide not to repeat the test fire and push ahead with the Artemis I mission to ensure they make the current November 2021 launch date. Conventional wisdom would say this is unwise, but as the first flight won’t have any human occupants, the usually risk-averse space agency might be willing to roll the dice if it means they can avoid another costly delay on a program that’s already facing fierce criticism.
On the other hand, live streaming the explosion of their first Space Launch System rocket to millions of viewers all over the world is hardly going to improve matters. A catastrophic failure during Artemis I would also very likely result in a delay to the crewed Artemis II that’s tentatively scheduled for August 2023. The resulting domino effect would likely make it all but impossible that NASA could make the already
ambitious deadline for putting the first woman and next man on the lunar surface by 2024
. | 74 | 19 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315462",
"author": "Artenz",
"timestamp": "2021-01-25T15:18:48",
"content": "In other words: Orange Rocket Bad.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6315488",
"author": "aaronfish",
"timestamp": "2021-01-25T16:29:2... | 1,760,373,209.273848 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/25/repairing-200-raspberry-pis-for-a-good-cause/ | Repairing 200+ Raspberry Pis For A Good Cause | Tom Nardi | [
"Raspberry Pi",
"Repair Hacks"
] | [
"Bash script",
"donation",
"ebay",
"raspberry pi",
"repair"
] | If somebody told you they recently purchased over 200 Raspberry Pis, you might think they were working on some kind of large-scale clustering project. But in this case,
[James Dawson] purchased the collection of broken single-board computers with the intention of repairing them
so they could be sent to developing countries for use in schools. It sounds like the logistics of that are proving to be a bit tricky, but we’re happy to report he’s at least made good progress on getting the Pis back up and running.
He secured this trove of what he believes to be customer returned Raspberries or the princely sum of £61 ($83 USD). At that price, even if only a fraction ended up being repairable, you’d still come out ahead. Granted all of these appear to be the original Model B, but that’s still a phenomenal deal in our book. Assuming of course you can find some reasonable way to triage them to sort out what’s worth keeping.
To that end, [James] came up with a Bash script that allowed him to check several hardware components including the USB, Ethernet, I2C, and GPIO. With the script on an SD card and a 3.5″ TFT plugged into the Pi’s header for output, he was able to quickly go through the box to get an idea of what sort of trouble he’d gotten himself into. He was only about half way through the process when he wrote this particular blog post, but by that point, he’d found just 40 Pis which wouldn’t start at all. He suspects these might be victims of some common issue in the power circuitry that he’ll investigate at a later date.
A metal ruler made short work of bent pins.
A nasty, but repairable, problem.
The majority of Pis he checked were suffering from nothing worse than some bent GPIO pins or broken SD card slots. Some of the more abused examples had their USB ports ripped off entirely, but were otherwise fine. Another 10 had dead Ethernet, and 4 appear to have damaged traces leading to their HDMI ports. While we’re interested in hearing if [James] can get those 40 dark Pis to fire back up, so far the results are quite promising.
Donating hardware is always a tricky thing
, so for now [James] says he’ll be selling the repaired Pis on eBay and donating the proceeds to the Raspberry Pi Foundation so they can continue to
develop hardware that will (potentially) accomplish their goal
of giving students all over the world a functional computer. | 37 | 12 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315424",
"author": "fabien tuizat",
"timestamp": "2021-01-25T12:06:31",
"content": "merci",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6315426",
"author": "AnotherMaker",
"timestamp": "2021-01-25T12:17:12",
"content": "That is a... | 1,760,373,209.350651 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/25/hide-and-seek-ai-shows-emergent-tool-use/ | Hide And Seek AI Shows Emergent Tool Use | Lewin Day | [
"Machine Learning"
] | [
"hide and seek",
"machine learning"
] | Machine learning has come a long way in the last decade, as it turned out throwing huge wads of computing power at piles of linear algebra actually turned out to make creating artificial intelligence relatively easy. OpenAI have been working in the field for a while now,
and recently observed some exciting behaviour in a hide-and-seek game they built.
The game itself is simple; two teams of AI bots play a game of hide-and-seek, with the red bots being rewarded for spotting the blue ones, and the blue ones being rewarded for avoiding their gaze. Initially, nothing of note happens, but as the bots randomly run around, they slowly learn. Over millions of trials, the seekers first learn to find the hiders, while the hiders respond by building barriers to hide behind. The seekers then learn to use ramps to loft over them, while the blue bots learn to bend the game’s physics and throw them out of the playfield. It ends with the seekers learning to skate around on blocks and the hiders building tight little barriers. It’s a continual arms race of techniques between the two sides, organically developed as the bots play against each other over time.
It’s a great study, and particularly interesting to note how much longer it takes behaviours to develop when the team switches from a basic fixed scenario to an changable world with more variables. We’ve seen other interesting gaming efforts with machine learning, too –
like teaching an AI to play Trackmania.
Video after the break. | 10 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315396",
"author": "beatjunkie",
"timestamp": "2021-01-25T10:01:07",
"content": "“and recently observed some exciting behaviour in a hide-and-seek game they built.”The article is from September 17, 2019. Not so recent, isn’t it?",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies... | 1,760,373,209.160691 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/24/no-more-cows-iconic-1990s-download-site-finally-shuttered-by-tucows/ | No More Cows: Iconic 1990s Download Site Finally Shuttered By Tucows | Jenny List | [
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"1990s",
"tucows",
"windows 3.1"
] | In the early and mid 1990s there were a host of big players in the nascent public Internet that played their part in guiding the adventurous early Web users on their way. Many of them such as Netscape or Altavista have fallen by the wayside, while players such as Lycos and Yahoo are still in existence but shadows of their former selves. Some other companies broadened their businesses to become profitable and still exist quietly getting on with whatever they do. An example is Tucows, now a major domain name registrar,
who have finally announced the closure of their software library
that was such an essential destination in those times.
The company name was originally an acronym: “The Ultimate Collection Of Winsock Software”, started in 1993 by a library employee in Flint, Michigan. As its name suggests it was a collection of mostly shareware Windows software, and the “Winsock” refers to Windows Sockets, the API used by Windows versions of the day for accessing network resources. It seems odd to modern eyes, but connecting a 486 PC running Windows 3.1 to the Internet was something of a complex process without any of the built-in software we take for granted today. Meanwhile the fledgling Linux distributions were only for the extremely tech-savvy or adventurous, so the world of open-source software had yet to make a significant impact on consumer-level devices.
The passing of a Windows shareware library would not normally be a story of interest, but it is the part that Tucows played in providing a reliable software source on the early Web that makes it worthy of note. It’s something of a shock to discover that it had survived into the 2020s, it’s been so long since it was relevant, but if you sat bathed in the glow of a CRT monitor as you waited interminably for your CuteFTP download over your 28.8k modem to finish then you probably have a space for Tucows somewhere in your heart. If you fancy a trip down memory lane,
the Internet Archive have a very period-ugly-looking version of the site from 1996
.
You may no longer have a 486 on your desk,
but if you want to you can still build one
. | 28 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315368",
"author": "Ostracus",
"timestamp": "2021-01-25T06:17:36",
"content": "“The passing of a Windows shareware library would not normally be a story of interest, but it is the part that Tucows played in providing a reliable software source on the early Web that makes it worthy... | 1,760,373,209.500854 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/24/what-makes-a-good-antenna/ | What Makes A Good Antenna? | Jenny List | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"antennas",
"nanovna",
"quarter wave",
"radio"
] | It sometimes seems as though antennas and RF design are portrayed as something of a Black Art, the exclusive preserve of an initiated group of RF mystics and beyond the reach of mere mortals. In fact though they have their difficult moments it’s possible to gain an understanding of the topic, and
making that start is the subject of a video from [Andreas Spiess]
. Entitled “How To Build A Good Antenna”, it uses the design and set-up of a simple quarter-wave groundplane antenna as a handle to introduce the viewer to the key topics.
What makes this video a good one is its focus on the practical rather than the theoretical. We get advice on connectors and antenna materials, and we’re introduced to the maths through online calculators rather than extensive formulae. Of course the full calculations are there to be learned by those with an interest, but for many constructors they can be somewhat daunting. We’re shown a NanoVNA as a useful tool in the antenna builder’s arsenal, one which gives a revolutionary window on performance compared to the trial-and-error of previous times. Even the ground plane gets the treatment, with its effect on impedance and gain explored and the emergence of its angle as a crucial factor in performance. We think this approach does an effective job of breaking the mystique surrounding antennas, and we hope it will encourage viewers to experiment further.
If your appetite has been whetted,
how about taking a look at a Nano VNA in action
? | 13 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315367",
"author": "MW",
"timestamp": "2021-01-25T06:14:03",
"content": "There are some additional things to consider for antennas, in addition to the RF stuff:– make it mechanically stable enough (mentioned briefly). For example, if it will be mounted outside, it has to hold up in... | 1,760,373,209.437776 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/24/hackaday-links-january-24-2021/ | Hackaday Links: January 24, 2021 | Dan Maloney | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Hackaday links"
] | [
"boston dynamics",
"c++",
"cgi",
"CNC router",
"graphics",
"hackaday links",
"Open Hardware Summit",
"stem"
] | Code can be beautiful, and good code can be a work of art. As it so happens, artful code can also result in art, if you know what you’re doing. That’s the idea behind
Programming Posters
, a project that Michael Fields undertook to meld computer graphics with the code behind the images. It starts with a simple C program to generate an image. The program needs to be short enough to fit legibly into the sidebar of an A2 sheet, and as if that weren’t enough of a challenge, Michael constrained himself to the standard C libraries to generate his graphics. A second program formats the code and the image together and prints out a copy suitable for display. We found the combination of code and art beautiful, and the challenge intriguing.
It always warms our hearts when we get positive feedback from the hacker community when something we’ve written has helped advance a project or inspire a build. It’s not often, however, that we learn that Hackaday is required reading. Educators at the
Magellan International School
in Austin, Texas, recently reached out to Managing Editor Elliot Williams to let him know that all their middle school students are required to read Hackaday as part of their STEM training. Looks like the kids are paying attention to what they read, too, judging by
KittyWumpus
, their ongoing mechatronics/coding project that’s unbearably adorable. We’re honored to be included in their education, and everyone in the Hackaday community should humbled to realize that we’ve got an amazing platform for inspiring the next generation of hardware hackers.
Hackers seem to fall into two broad categories: those who have built a CNC router, and those who want to build one. For those in the latter camp, the roadblock to starting a CNC build is often “analysis paralysis” — with so many choices to make, it’s hard to know where to start. To ease that pain and get you closer to starting your build, Matt Ferraro has penned
a great guide to planning a CNC router build
. The encyclopedic guide covers everything from frame material choice to spindle selection and software options. If Matt has a bias toward any particular options it’s hard to find; he lists the pros and cons of everything so you can make up your own mind. Read it at your own risk, though; while it lowers one hurdle to starting a CNC build, it does nothing to address the next one: financing.
Like pretty much every conference last year and probably every one this year, the Open Hardware Summit is going to be virtual. But they’re still looking for speakers for the April conference, and just issued
a Call for Proposals
. We love it when we see people from the Hackaday community pop up as speakers at conferences like these, so if you’ve got something to say to the open hardware world, get a talk together. Proposals are due by February 11, so get moving.
And finally, everyone will no doubt recall the Boston Dynamics robots that made a splash a few weeks back with their dance floor moves. We loved the video, mainly for the incredible display of robotic agility and control but also for the choice of music. We suppose it was inevitable, though, that someone would object to the Boomer music and replace it with something else, like in the video below, which seems to sum up the feelings of those who dread our future dancing overlords. We regret the need to proffer a Tumblr link, but the Internet is a dark and wild place sometimes, and only the brave survive.
https://commiemartyrshighschool.tumblr.com/post/640760882224414720/i-fixed-the-audio-for-that-boston-dynamics-video | 9 | 7 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315312",
"author": "John Conner",
"timestamp": "2021-01-25T00:28:19",
"content": "SkyNet by Boston Dynamics",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6315322",
"author": "Mike",
"timestamp": "2021-01-25T01:53:30",
"content": ... | 1,760,373,209.39163 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/24/physically-huge-sd-card-technically-has-some-benefits/ | Physically Huge SD Card Technically Has Some Benefits | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"sd card"
] | SD cards were developed and released just before the turn of the millenium. Since then, we’ve seen smaller formats, miniSD and microSD, become popular for portable devices. However, sometimes bigger is better. [Useless Mod] dared to dream that dream,
and put together a (physically) gigantic SD card.
In card is a full 10x scale reproduction of a SanDisk Extreme Pro SD card, complete with packaging, too. Built out of layers of laser cut MDF, it’s spray painted and given a high-quality label to complete the effect. The write protect slider instead serves in this case as a latch to open the assembly. Inside, there’s a simple regular SD card slot, wired up to the bigger card’s giant contacts made with copper tape. These interface with an huge 10x scale SD card slot, which acts as an adapter, allowing the giant SD to be used with regular hardware like cameras.
The giant SD might seem silly, but it has plenty of useful features. There’s flashing LEDs behind the label that make it easy to find if you drop it, along with an Apple Watch hidden inside that means it can be located using the Find My iPhone service. We’d have loved if it featured a RAID array full of 10 or more SD cards, as well, just to justify its enormous size. That said, [Useless Mod] points out that it’s big enough to keep a DSLR dry in a rainstorm when fitted to the hotshoe, so there’s that.
It’s a fun build, not a serious one, but one that we enjoyed on its merits. We suspect that, regardless of the card inside, you’ll have little luck recording at 4K with such long wire lengths in play. If you’ve ever had more normal compatability problems with the format,
consider that it could be size causing your issues.
Video after the break. | 27 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315277",
"author": "JWhitten",
"timestamp": "2021-01-24T21:05:13",
"content": "It’s a trick. I’ll bet that guy is just really short :-)",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6315279",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2... | 1,760,373,209.558741 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/24/collapsible-pattern-projector-is-a-bright-idea/ | Collapsible Pattern Projector Is A Bright Idea | Kristina Panos | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"first surface",
"pattern projector",
"projector",
"sewing patterns"
] | It’s fantastic that we’re living in the age of downloadable PDF patterns, it really is. But printing out a bunch of sheets of paper and taping them together is a tedious and tiresome process that can introduce error right from the start. This goes for any type of pattern, from sewing to R/C planes.
[Quinn]’s quarantine project is designed to cover both of those and everything in between.
It’s a pattern projector made from stuff already on hand
— a couple of offset projectors to scavenge parts from, and a large, trapezoidal mylar mirror from an old rear projection TV. At maximum zoom it projects a 4′ x 3′ image onto the tabletop, which sounds perfect for a whole lot of sewing patterns. At minimum zoom, the projected image fits on a foam core board.
We love that this dreamy setup can be stowed away so easily on hooks in the ceiling. [Quinn] had to perform a few hacks to make it all work together, including fabricating a bracket and some adjustable ties to hold the mirror aloft at just the
right
correct angle.
Need something smaller?
Check out this Pi-powered pocket projector
. Want a cinema-quality setup?
You just have to find the right auctions
. | 13 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315261",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2021-01-24T20:10:11",
"content": "My fabric maker (seamstress) wife would have liked to see an application of a projected pattern in use.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6315325",
... | 1,760,373,209.695574 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/24/your-nes-classic-mini-controller-on-your-desktop-computer/ | Your NES Classic Mini Controller, On Your Desktop Computer | Jenny List | [
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"attiny85",
"nes classic",
"nes classic mini",
"usb"
] | The NES Classic Mini was one of the earlier releases in what became a wider trend for tiny versions of classic retro consoles to be released. Everybody wanted one but numbers were limited, so only the lucky few gained this chance to relive their childhood through the medium of
Donkey Kong
or
Mario Brothers
on real Nintendo hardware. Evidently [
Albert Gonzalez
] was one of them, because he’s produced
a USB adapter for the Mini controller to allow it to be used as a PC peripheral
.
On the small protoboard is the Nintendo connector at one end, an ATtiny85 microcontroller, and a micro-USB connector at the other. The I2C interface from the controller is mapped to USB on the ATtiny through the magic of
the V-USB library
, appearing to the latter as a generic gamepad. It’s thought that the same interface is likely to also work with the later SNES Classic Mini controller. For the curious all the code and other resources
can be found in a GitHub repository
, so should you have been lucky enough to lay your hands on a NES Classic Mini then you too can join the PC fun.
The mini consoles were popular, but didn’t excite our community as much as could be expected.
Our colleague Lewin Day tool a look at the phenomenon last summer
. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315193",
"author": "dwillmore",
"timestamp": "2021-01-24T16:16:04",
"content": "This seems to be pretty much what Mm was asking about the other day:https://hackaday.com/2021/01/22/mouster-brings-usb-to-retro-computers/#comment-6314936Hilariously, this comment will go to moderation ... | 1,760,373,209.638433 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/22/mouster-brings-usb-to-retro-computers/ | MouSTer Brings USB To Retro Computers | Tom Nardi | [
"Peripherals Hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"amiga",
"atari",
"mouse",
"production hacks",
"retro computer",
"usb hid",
"vintage computer"
] | Folks who like the take the old Amiga out for the occasional Sunday drive usually do it because they have wistful memories of the simpler times. Back when you could edit documents or view spreadsheets on a machine that had RAM measured in kilobytes instead of gigabytes. But even the most ardent retro computer aficionado usually allows for a bit of modern convenience.
Enter the mouSTer. This tiny device
converts a common USB HID mouse into something older computers can understand
. It even supports using Sony’s PlayStation 4 controller as a generic game pad. While the firmware is still getting tweaked, the team has confirmed its working on several classic machines and believe it should work on many more. Considering the prices that some of these old peripherals command on the second hand market, using a USB mouse or controller on your vintage computer isn’t just more convenient, but will likely be a lot cheaper.
Confirmed retrocomputing superfan [Drygol] is a member of the team working on mouSTer, and in a recent post to his
retrohax
blog, he talks a bit about what’s happened since
his last update over the summer
. He also talks a bit about the challenges they’ve faced to get it into production. Even if you’re not into poking around on vintage computers, there are lessons to be learned here about what it takes to move from a handful of prototypes to something you can actually sell to the public.
We especially liked the details about the mouSTer enclosure, or lack thereof. Originally [Drygol] says they were going to have the cases injection molded, but despite initial interest from a few companies they talked to, nobody ended up biting because it needed to be done with relatively uncommon low pressure injection. While 3D printing is still an option, the team ended up using clear heatshrink tubing to create a simple conformal protective shell over the electronics. Personally we think it looks great like this, but it sounds like this is only a temporary solution until something a bit more robust can be implemented.
As you might imagine we’ve seen
DIY projects that aimed to bring modern input devices to vintage computers like the Atari ST
, but the diminutive proportions of the mouSTer and the fact that it’s a turn-key product is sure to appeal to those who want to minimize headaches when working with their classic gear. | 27 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314607",
"author": "Clyde",
"timestamp": "2021-01-22T19:49:16",
"content": "Where are people sourcing these flangeless DB9 connectors? Last guy I asked said he had to invest a significant chunk of change into getting a company to produce a run of custom cables.",
"parent_id": n... | 1,760,373,209.891359 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/22/meet-the-magic-eye-vacuum-tube/ | Meet The Magic Eye Vacuum Tube | Al Williams | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Radio Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"6E5C",
"EM80",
"magic eye",
"tube",
"tubes",
"vacuum tube"
] | Vacuum tubes ruled electronics for several decades and while you might think of them as simple devices analogous to a transistor or FET, there were many special types. We’re all familiar with nixie tubes that act as numeric displays, and there are other specialty tubes that work as a photomultiplier, to detect radiation, or even generate microwaves. But one of the most peculiar and distinctive specialty tubes has an intriguing name: a magic eye tube. When viewed from the top, you see a visual indication that rotates around a central point, the out ring glowing while the inner is dark, like an iris and pupil.
By [Quark48] – CC BY-SA 2.0
These tubes date back to the RCA 6E5 in 1935. At the time, test equipment that used needles was expensive to make, so there was always a push to replace them with something cheaper. They were something like a stunted cathode ray tube. In fact, the inventor, Allen DuMont, was well known for innovations in television. An anode held a coating that would glow when hit with electrons — usually green, but sometimes other colors. Later tubes would show a stripe going up and down the tube instead of a circle, but you still call them magic eyes.
The indicator part of this virtual meter took the form of a shadow. Based on the applied signal, the shadow would be larger or smaller. Many tubes also contained a triode which would drive the tube from a signal.
There’s a
great web site full of information on these venerable tubes
and it has examples of these tubes appearing in plenty of things. They frequently appeared in service equipment, radios, and tape recorders. They even appeared in pro audio equipment like the
Binson Echorec echo-delay unit
.
Before the Magic Eye
The magic eye actually replaced an even older technology: neon bulbs. Modified neon bulbs appeared in the early 1930s as Tune-A-Lite produced by a company named Duovac. You can read more about them at the
Radio Museum
. Interestingly, some of these had a mute output that could turn off the radio’s speaker when there was no signal present, like a modern-day squelch circuit.
The operation of the bulb is like a thermometer in that the tube is long and narrow and the glow rises in the tube as the voltage applied increases.
See One on a Monitor Near You
There’s nothing like seeing one of these old gems with your own eyes, but the video below will give you an idea of how a 6E5C eye appeared. The green glow reminds you of a 1950s science fiction film or what Hollywood thinks a nuclear reactor gives off. Some magic eyes like the EM80 had a different shape,
check out this teardown video
for a closer look.
Get One
Like most old stuff, these are available if you know where to look. eBay and Amazon both have quite a few at various prices. There are even a few kits for things like preamps that use magic eyes as VU meters. Even if you have a magic eye that appears burned out, you might try increasing the supply voltage as [M Caldira] does in
this video about reviving weak magic eye tubes
.
If you can’t find an actual tube, you might try faking it with
persistence of vision using LEDs and a motor
.
We’ve only seen a few magic eye projects in the past. There’s the
spectrum analyzer
. There was also a tear down of an
antique capacitor tester
. | 61 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314571",
"author": "Michael Black",
"timestamp": "2021-01-22T18:20:59",
"content": "A nixie tube isn’t a tube.It’s like a very fancy neon bulb.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6314585",
"author": "steelman",
"... | 1,760,373,210.108472 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/22/hackaday-podcast-102-raspberry-pi-microcontroller-microphone-killswitch-and-a-45-degree-3d-printer/ | Hackaday Podcast 102: Raspberry Pi Microcontroller, Microphone Killswitch, And A 45-Degree 3D-Printer | Mike Szczys | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"Podcasts",
"Slider"
] | [
"Hackaday Podcast"
] | Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys sift through a week of excellent hacks. Big news is of course the Raspberry Pi microcontroller which Elliot had a few weeks to play around with on the bench before the announcement — it has some fascinating programmable modules (PIO) built in! Philips designed an LED light bulb that under-drives the LEDs for efficiency and long life. And Amazon added a nice little hardware disable circuit for the microphone in the Echo Flex — a rather extreme teardown shows how they did it. Plus we talk about an open source long-range RC protocol, wall-sized pen plotter art, and a 3D printer that angles the nozzle to avoid needing support.
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
(~65 MB)
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
Google Podcasts
iTunes
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS
Episode 102 Show Notes:
New This Week:
All Remoticon workshop videos have now been published:
2020 Hackaday Remoticon
Here are some of our favorites:
Keynote:
Alfred Jones Talks About the Challenges of Designing Fully Self-Driving Vehicles
Remoticon Video: Circuit Sculpture Workshop
Remoticon Video: Learning The Basics Of Software-Defined Radio (SDR)
Remoticon Video: Learn How To Hack A Car With Amith Reddy
Remoticon Video: How To Reverse Engineer A PCB
Remoticon Video: Basics Of RF Emissions Debugging Workshop
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
3D Printing Without Support Material Thanks To An Additional Axis
3D Printing In Five Axes Makes The World Flat
3D Printering: Non-Planar Layer FDM
LEDs From Dubai: The Royal Lights You Can’t Buy
What Happened To The 100,000-Hour LED Bulbs?
Pen Plotter Draws Maps Directly On The Wall
Is Your Echo Flex Listening?
ExpressLRS: Open Source, Low Latency, Long Range RC Protocol
GitHub – pascallanger/DIY-Multiprotocol-TX-Module: DIY Multiprotocol TX Module
3D Printing Air Filter System Does A Lot
Quick Hacks:
Elliot’s Picks:
The (Probably) Most Thoroughly Commented Linker Script For The SAM D21 MCU
Doing WiFi With Software Defined Radio
Apple II Prints Off The Breaking News
Mike’s Picks:
Handheld Farkle Really Sparkles
Arduino Wannabe Should Have Used A 555. Oh Wait, It Does.
DIY LEGO Record Cleaner Is Revolutionary
Can’t-Miss Articles:
Raspberry Pi Enters Microcontroller Game With $4 Pico
TV Detector Vans Once Prowled The Streets Of England
Second-Hand Television SHINEs, Takes Down Entire Village’s Internet | 2 | 1 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314713",
"author": "CMH62",
"timestamp": "2021-01-23T00:46:32",
"content": "I’m currently watching the SDR video. Just finished the part on hardware and about to listen to the software section. Thanks for highlighting that Remoticon talk.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
... | 1,760,373,209.961308 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/22/porting-firefox-to-apple-silicon-tales-from-the-trenches/ | Porting Firefox To Apple Silicon: Tales From The Trenches | Maya Posch | [
"News",
"Software Development"
] | [
"Apple Silicon",
"arm",
"firefox"
] | For any smaller and larger software product that aims to be compatible with Apple’s MacOS, the recent introduction of its ARM-based Apple Silicon processors and MacBooks to go with them came as a bit of a shock. Suddenly one of the major desktop platforms was going to shift processor architectures, and with it likely abandon and change a number of APIs.
Over at Mozilla HQ
, they assumed that based on past experiences, Apple’s announcement of ‘first Apple Silicon hardware’ would also mean that those systems would be available for sale.
Indeed, one week after the November 10th announcement Apple did in fact do so. By then, Mozilla had worked to ensure that the Firefox codebase could be built for Apple Silicon-based MacOS. Fortunately, through the experiences of running Firefox on Windows-on-ARM, they already had gained a codebase that was compatible with 64-bit ARM. Ultimately, the biggest snag here was the immature Rust language and dependency support for Apple Silicon, which set back the first release.
When it came to the distributing of Firefox on Intel- and ARM-based Macs, the decision was made to package both versions of the application into a so-called Universal Binary. While this pads out the size of the installer, it also means easier distribution and would not affect the built-in updater in Firefox. This also allowed for an easy fix for the Google Widevine DRM module, for which no Apple Silicon version was available at first, allowing the same module for Intel to be used with either Firefox version via the Rosetta 2 binary translator in MacOS (as
we covered previously
).
After this it was more or less smooth sailing, with some Rosetta 2-based glitches and MacOS Big Sur-related bugs that spoiled some of the fun. What this experience shows is that porting even a big codebase like Firefox to Apple’s new platform is fairly straightforward, with lack of support from toolchains and other dependencies the most likely things that may trip one up.
The Rosetta 2 feature, while helpful, also comes with its share of gotchas as the Firefox developers found out, and of course there is a lot more optimization that can (and should) be done for such a new platform. | 16 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314550",
"author": "Mog",
"timestamp": "2021-01-22T17:04:30",
"content": "Apple Silicon coming as a shock shouldn’t have to anyone with a finger even slightly on the pulse.Those of us on the MAME team were well-prepared for the release of Apple’s transition to ARM, and MAME amounts... | 1,760,373,210.015052 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/22/this-week-in-security-openwrt-favicons-and-steganographia/ | This Week In Security: OpenWRT, Favicons, And Steganographia | Jonathan Bennett | [
"Hackaday Columns",
"News",
"Security Hacks",
"Slider"
] | [
"steganography",
"This Week in Security",
"zoom"
] | OpenWRT is one of my absolute favorite projects, but it’s had a rough week. First off,
the official OpenWRT forums
is carrying a notice that one of the administrator accounts was accessed, and the userlist was downloaded by an unknown malicious actor. That list is known to include email addresses and usernames. It does not appear that password hashes were exposed, but just to be sure, a password expiration has been triggered for all users.
The second OpenWRT problem is
a set of recently discovered vulnerabilities in Dnsmasq
, a package installed by default in OpenWRT images. Of those vulnerabilities, four are buffer overflows, and three are weaknesses in how DNS responses are checked — potentially allowing cache poisoning. These seven vulnerabilities are collectively known as
DNSpooq
(
Whitepaper PDF
).
Favicon Fingerprints
One of the frustrating-yet-impressive areas of research is browser fingerprinting. You may not have an account, and may clear your cookies, but if an advertiser wants to track you badly enough, there have been a stream of techniques to make it possible. A new technique was added to that list,
Favicon caching
(PDF). The big problem here is that the favicon cache is generally not sandboxed even in incognito mode (though thankfully not *saved* in incognito mode), as well as not cleared with the rest of browser data. To understand why that’s a problem, ask a simple question. How hard is it to determine if a browser has a cached copy of a favicon?
The exact scheme the authors suggest is to use multiple domains with discrete favicons, each one representing a single bit. Each user can then be assigned a different value by sending them through each domain through a redirect chain. As the favicons are loaded, that bit is set to true. You may wonder, how does that data get read back by the server? The client is handled in a read-only mode, where each of those favicon requests return a 404. By watching the requests come in, the server can rebuild the unique identifier based on which favicons were requested.
When I first read about this technique, a potential catch-22 stood out as a problem. How would the server know whether to put a new connection into a read mode, or a write mode? It seems, at first glance, like this would defeat the whole scheme. The researchers behind favicon fingerprinting have an elegant solution for this. The favicon for a single fixed domain works as a single bit flag, indicating whether this is a new or returning user. If the browser requests that favicon, it is new, and can be funneled through the identifier writing process. If the initial favicon isn’t requested, then it should be treated as a return visit, and the ID can be read. Overall, it’s a fiendishly clever way to track users, particularly since it can even work across incognito mode. Expect browsers to address this quickly. The first step will be to sandbox cached favicons in incognito mode, but the paper calls out a few other possible solutions.
Orbit Fox
The long-standing pattern in WordPress security is that WordPress itself is fairly bulletproof, but many of the popular plugins have serious security problems just waiting to be found. The plugin of the week this time is
Orbit Fox
, with over 400,000 active installs. This plugin provides multiple features, one being a user registration form. The problem is a lack of server-side validation of the form response. On a site with such a form, all it takes is to tweak the response data so
user_role
is now set to “administrator”. Thankfully, this vulnerability is only exposed when using a combination of plugins, and the problem was disclosed and patched back in December.
Patch Tuesday
Another patch Tuesday has come and gone, and the Zero Day Initiative has us covered with
an overview of what got fixed
. There are two patched vulnerabilities that are noteworthy this month. The first is CVE-2021-1647, a flaw in Microsoft Defender. This one has been observed in-the-wild, and is a RCE exploit. If your machine is always online, you probably got this patch automatically, since Windows Defender has its own automatic update system.
The second interesting problem is
CVE-2021-1648
. This vulnerability is the result of a flubbed fix for an earlier problem. From Google’s Project Zero: “The only difference between CVE-2020-0986 is that for CVE-2020-0986 the attacker sent a pointer and now the attacker sends an offset.” Thankfully this is just an elevation of privilege flaw, and has now been properly fixed, as far as we can tell.
Hacking Linux, Hollywood Style
Hacking Hollywood style occasionally works. You know the movies, where an “elite hacker” frantickly mashes on a keyboard while blathering nonsense about firewalls and reconfiguring the retro-encabulator. Sometimes, though,
keyboard mashing actually finds security problems
. In this case, a screensaver lock can be broken by typing rapidly on a physical keyboard and the virtual on-screen keyboard at the same time. The text from the bug report is golden: “A few weeks ago, my kids wanted to hack my linux desktop, so they typed and clicked everywhere, while I was standing behind them looking at them play… when the screensaver core dumped and they actually hacked their way in! wow, those little hackers…”
Zoom Unmasking
Imagine with me for a moment, that you work for Evilcorp. You’re on a Zoom call, and the evil master plan is being spelled out. You’re a decent human being, so you start a screen recorder to get a copy of the evidence. You’ve got the proof, now to send it off to the right people. But first, take a moment to think about anonymity. When your recording hits the nightly news, will Evilcorp be able to figure out that it was you that leaked the meeting?
Yes, most likely
.
There is a whole field of study around the embedding, detecting, and mitigating of identifying information in audio, video, and still images. This discipline is known as steganography, and fun fact, it’s named after the trio of books, “
Steganographia
“. The first written in 1499, Steganographia appears to be mystical texts about how to communicate over the distances via supernatural spirits. In a very satisfying twist, the books are actually a guide to hiding encrypted messages in written texts, the whole thing hidden using the techniques described in the hidden text. For our purposes, we could divide the field of steganography into two broad categories. Intentionally hidden data, and unintentionally included indicators.
At the top of the list of intentional data is Zoom’s watermarking feature. The call administrator can enable these, which includes unique identifiers in the the call audio, video, or both. The video watermarks are pretty easy to spot, your username overlayed onto the image. There’s no guarantee that there isn’t also sneakier watermarking being done. Next to consider is metadata. Particularly if you pulled out a cellphone to make the recording, that file almost certainly has time and location data baked into it. A GPS coordinate makes for quite the easy identifier, when it points right at your house.
Unintentional steganography could be as simple as having your self-view camera highlighted at the top of the call. There are more subtle ways to pull data out of a recording, like looking at the latency of individual call members. If speaker B is a few milliseconds ahead in the leaked version, compared to all the others, then the leaker must be physically close to that call member. It’s extremely hard to cover all your bases when it comes to anonymizing media, and we’ve just scratched the surface here. | 29 | 6 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314503",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2021-01-22T15:49:28",
"content": "“The long-standing pattern in WordPress security is that WordPress itself is fairly bulletproof, but many of the popular plugins have serious security problems”Ah, so that’s why HaD is so basic.",
... | 1,760,373,210.576065 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/22/amds-threadripper-is-the-beating-heating-heart-of-most-powerful-diy-laptop/ | AMD’s Threadripper Is The Beating, Heating Heart Of “Most Powerful” DIY Laptop | Lewin Day | [
"laptops hacks"
] | [
"diy laptop"
] | There are plenty of powerful, “desktop-replacement” laptops out on the market if you’ve got the money to spend. Sometimes, though, that just doesn’t scratch that crazy itch in the back of your head for true, unbridled computing power. When you’ve got an insatiable thirst for FLOPS,
you’ve got to strike out on your own, as [Jeff] did with this Threadripper laptop.
The aim was to pack an AMD Threadripper processor into a nominally portable laptop format. For this build, the AMD 1950X was chosen for its affordability and huge computing power, as well as a TDP of 180W. This high heat output has stopped the chips ending up in portable builds until now, but [Jeff] didn’t see this as a problem, but a challenge.
What results is a wild, lashed together build of high-power parts into what could charitably be called a laptop – though we’d recommend against putting it on your lap. With a 4K 18″ screen, keyboard, touchpad, and many Dell Powerbanks kludged together into an HP Media Center case, it fits the usual form factor, albeit with more exposed heatpipes and cables than the typical consumer may be used to.
[Jeff] claims this is the current most powerful laptop in the world, as builds that use the 3950X throttle it back in their applications. We don’t have the data to compare, but we certainly wouldn’t be stacking our own portable rig up against it in a fight.
DIY laptops have a long history at Hackaday, going all the way back to 2007
. If you’ve got your own wild build,
be sure to drop us a line.
Video after the break. | 52 | 27 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314446",
"author": "Faisca",
"timestamp": "2021-01-22T12:40:51",
"content": "Nice machine! Congrats.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": []
},
{
"comment_id": "6314451",
"author": "creisey",
"timestamp": "2021-01-22T13:09:10",
"content": "tha... | 1,760,373,210.193499 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/22/fixing-nrf24l01-modules-without-going-too-insane/ | Fixing NRF24L01+ Modules Without Going (Too) Insane | Donald Papp | [
"Radio Hacks"
] | [
"antenna",
"homeassistant",
"nRF04L01+",
"pcb antenna",
"rework",
"RF",
"troubleshooting"
] | Good old nRF24L01+ wireless modules are inexpensive and effective. Well, they are as long as they work correctly, anyway. The devices themselves are mature and well-understood, but that doesn’t mean bad batches from suppliers can’t cause hair-pulling problems straight from the factory.
[nekromant] recently got a whole batch of units that simply refused to perform as they should, but not because they were counterfeits. The problem was that the antenna and PCB design had been “optimized” by the supplier to the point where the devices simply couldn’t work properly. Fortunately,
[nekromant] leveraged an understanding of the problem into a way to fix them without going insane in the process
. The test setup is shown in the image above, and the process is explained below.
nRF24L01+ module fixed about as well as it can be, by adding an appropriate capacitor on the PCB antenna, and a 1.0 uF capacitor across the power pins for good measure.
This issue wasn’t new to [nekromant], as previous batches had suffered from a “magic finger problem”, where
bad performance is magically solved by placing one’s finger on the antenna
. This had been fixed in the past by soldering in a missing 1.0 pF capacitor, but the newest batch of nRF24L01+ units was so bad that something more needed to be done. Simply adding a 1.0 pF capacitor was no longer enough, and it’s unclear exactly why.
For reasons likely related to the PCB antenna, each radio required adding a capacitor in a value usually somewhere between 1.0 pF and 2.2 pF. But there was no way to tell which value any particular board would need. To solve this, [nekromant] made a small test rig to profile each device in turn by sending packets and measuring how many failures were recorded. After profiling each device, fixing them was a matter of informed trial-and-error. Once putting a finger on the PCB antenna begins to
worsen
a device’s performance rather than improve it, that module (along with whatever value of capacitor was last soldered onto it) could be dropped into the “OK” bin, and the process repeats until the pile is gone.
[nekromant] points out that the obvious lesson here is to be careful about picking suppliers, but that’s increasingly difficult to do with modules like these. An annoying manual board rework process is one thing for a small hobby project, but would be quite another issue entirely if several hundred or thousand units were involved.
Counterfeit silicon wasn’t the issue this time, but maybe
brush up a little on spotting counterfeits
all the same. | 24 | 11 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314417",
"author": "Dave",
"timestamp": "2021-01-22T09:27:34",
"content": "Just use RFM95, no need for Ghz.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6314504",
"author": "Alphatek",
"timestamp": "2021-01-22T15:49:32",
... | 1,760,373,210.310434 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/24/a-big-set-of-logic-gates-for-teaching-the-basics/ | A Big Set Of Logic Gates For Teaching The Basics | Lewin Day | [
"Misc Hacks"
] | [
"educational",
"logic"
] | Teaching students about logic gates is often done in two parts, once on the whiteboard for the theory, and again on the breadboard for the practice. [shurik179] wasn’t a fan of the abstraction between easy-to-understand symbols on the whiteboard, and small IC packages full of many gates in reality.
Instead, he built a set of real-world logic gates that can be wired together as a teaching tool.
Each “gate’ consists of a PCB roughly the size of a business card that features LEDs to indicate the state of its inputs and outputs, and a silkscreen indicating the name and symbol of the gate in question. There’s also a master PCB, which features three seed values, A, B, and C, to feed into the system. Students can set these values to 1 or 0, and feed them into the gates, which are wired together with 3-conductor servo cables, and observe the input on the built-in LEDs.
It’s a great way to demonstrate logic gates in the classroom. The design also allows the PCBs to be flipped over to show the actual electronic components responsible for implementing the logic, serving as a great bridge towards better understanding of real electronic design. Of course, it’s not the only way to learn –
even Fallout 4 has a fully fledged logic toolkit these days! | 22 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315126",
"author": "Bob",
"timestamp": "2021-01-24T12:22:46",
"content": "The double wires are a bit aesthetically displeasing. I know, that’s not trivial to dodge. Maybe use a thin coax/microphone cable. Or some other trick for a shared ground. Just for looks, you know, cause the ... | 1,760,373,210.249923 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/24/an-alternator-powered-electric-bicycle-gives-rotor-magnetic-field-insight/ | An Alternator Powered Electric Bicycle Gives Rotor Magnetic Field Insight | Jenny List | [
"News",
"Transportation Hacks"
] | [
"alternator",
"electric bicycle",
"hall effect sensor",
"motor"
] | For anyone involved in the construction of small electric vehicles it has become a matter of great interest that a cheap high-power electric motor can be made from a humble car alternator. It’s a conversion made possible by the advent of affordable three-phase motor controllers, and it’s well showcased by [austiwawa]’s
electric bicycle build
video (embedded below).
The bike itself is a straightforward conversion in which the motor powers the rear wheel via an extra sprocket. He tried a centrifugal clutch with limited success, but removed it for the final version. Where the interest lies in this build is in his examination of Hall effect sensor placement.
Most alternator conversions work without sensors, though for better control it’s worth adding these magnetic sensors to allow the controller to more directly sense the rotation. He initially placed them at the top of the stator coils and found them to be ineffectual, with the big discovery coming when he looked at the rotor. The electromagnet in the rotor on a car alternator has triangular poles with the field concentrated in the centre of the stator, thus a move of the sensors to half way down the stator solved the problem. Something to note, for anyone converting an alternator.
Should you wish to give it a try,
a year ago we published a primer on turning car parts into motors
. | 63 | 14 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315092",
"author": "Murray",
"timestamp": "2021-01-24T09:37:44",
"content": "Another oddity of alternators is the output waveform: triangular. Driving these motors may benefit from triangular inspired PWM.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"c... | 1,760,373,210.40097 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/23/when-appliance-hackers-hit-the-music-scene/ | When Appliance Hackers Hit The Music Scene | Anool Mahidharia | [
"Musical Hacks",
"Roundup"
] | [
"acoustic barcode",
"barcode hacking",
"crt hacks",
"fan synth",
"music",
"recycling",
"sound effects",
"weird sound generator"
] | The art-music-technology collective
“Electronicos Fantasticos!” (commonly known as Nicos)
is the brain child of artist/musician [Ei Wada] in Japan. They revive old, retired and out-dated electrical appliances as new “electro-magnetic musical instruments” creating not just new ways to play music, but one that also involves the listener as a musician, gradually forming an interactive orchestra. They do this by creatively using the original functions of appliances like televisions and fans, hacking them in interesting ways to produce sound. The project started in the beginning of 2015, leading to the creation of a collaborative team — Nicos Orchest-Lab — around the end of that year. They have since appeared in concerts, including a performance at “Ars Electronica”, the world’s largest media arts festival in 2019.
For us hackers, the interesting bits can be found in the
repository of their Work
, describing sketchy but tantalising details of the musical instruments. Here are a few of the more interesting ones, but do check out their website for more amazing instruments and a lot of entertaining videos.
CRT-TV Gamelan
– A percussion instrument made from old CRT monitors. Coloured stripes projected on the screen cause changes in static-electricity picked up by the players hands, which then propagates to an electrical coil attached to their foot. This signal is then patched to a guitar amplifier.
Electric Fan Harp
– They take out the fan blade, and replace it with a “coded disk” containing punched holes. Then they shine a bulb from under the rotating disk, and the interrupted light is picked up by an optical receiver held by the player. Controlling the fan speed and the location of the receiver pickup, they can coax the fan to produce music – based on the idea “What if Jimi Hendrix, the god of electric guitars, played electric fans as instruments?”
Barcoder
– This one is quite simple but produces amazing results, especially when you pair up with another Barcoder musician. The output of the barcode reader is pretty much directly converted to sound – just wave the wand over printed barcode sheets. And it works amazingly well when pointed at striped shirts too. Check out the very entertaining videos of this gizmo. This led to the creation of the
Barcodress
– a coded dress which creates an interactive music and dance performance.
The Striped Shirtsizer
Striped Shirtsizer
– This one is a great hack and a synth with a twist. A camera picks up video signals, which is then fed to the “Audio” input of an amplifier directly. In the video on the project page, [Ei Wada] explains how he accidentally discovered this effect when he wrongly plugged the “yellow” video out connector to the audio input of his guitar amplifier. At an outdoor location, a bunch of people wearing striped shirts then become an interactive musician-audience performance.
The Kankisenthizer
Kankisenthizer a.k.a Exhaust Fancillator
– This one consists of an array of industrial exhaust fans – although one could just as well use smaller instrument cooling fans. On one side is a bright light, and on the other a small solar cell. Light fluctuations picked up by the solar cell are then fed to the guitar amplifier. The array consists of fans with different numbers of blades. This, coupled with changing the fan speed, results in some amazing sound effects.
There’s a whole bunch more, and even though the “instructions” to replicate the instruments aren’t well documented, there’s enough for anyone who’s interested to start experimenting.
Thanks for a great tip, [danielbpm]. | 12 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315082",
"author": "Robert",
"timestamp": "2021-01-24T08:18:35",
"content": "Of course their Japanese.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6315101",
"author": "Christopher Friend",
"timestamp": "2021-01-24T10:48:4... | 1,760,373,210.453968 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/23/naming-names/ | Naming Names | Chris Lott | [
"Software Development"
] | [
"comments",
"naming conventions",
"si units",
"units",
"variable naming"
] | We have all heard that good variable names are important for creating readable programs — advice that will serve you well when you come back to your code two years later, or even twenty. Sometimes, when you are so deep in the zone and begin to question a variable name that you made three levels up the calling hierarchy, it can be helpful to take a step back and review your variable naming conventions. The wikipedia article on
computer program naming conventions
is a good starting point, where you can dig into the nitty gritty of Hungarian notation like
bFlag
, case separated names like
camelCase
, and so on. But sometimes you have to go meta, and need names to describe the names themselves.
For example, in everyday usage the terms
parameter
and
argument
are often used interchangeably. But strictly speaking, a parameter is a placeholder, the variables in a function declaration for example (see image above). An argument is the actual value itself, say the number 50.334 in the example.
We recommend that
units of measure
should always be clearly specified in your comments, perhaps even in the variable names if you’re mixing different systems in the same program. At Hackaday we prefer to use SI units, check out
NIST SP 330
if you’re interested. But invariably, there are going to be exceptions for years to come. We like to deal with those at the edges during I/O if possible, thus keeping a consistent set of units in the core of the program.
What about the terms
number
and
value
? We like to think of a number as being a kind of value. For example, a function’s return value could be a number, say a velocity. Or it could return an enumeration or a boolean. Sometimes the perfect meta-name for something will collide with a reserved keyword in your programming language, names like
string
or
data
for example. In these cases you have to be creative and find suitable synonyms, perhaps
text
and
payload
.
Using consistent and precise language can be tedious, but it can be just as helpful as good commenting and variable naming practices. Do you have any examples where precise terminology such as this has been been helpful or perhaps tripped you up? If so, share in the comments section below. | 100 | 20 | [
{
"comment_id": "6315032",
"author": "jcwren",
"timestamp": "2021-01-24T03:04:26",
"content": "The use of the royal “we” is cracking me up.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6315037",
"author": "Dissy",
"timestamp": "2021-01-24T0... | 1,760,373,210.709212 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/23/openscad-prints-woodworking-aid/ | OpenSCAD Prints Woodworking Aid | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks"
] | [
"openscad",
"woodworking"
] | Home-based 3D printing is getting pretty unremarkable. Sure, printers aren’t as ubiquitous as, say, PCs. But you wouldn’t be any more surprised if your neighbor had a 3D printer than if you found out they had a drill press. In fact, sometimes the real value of 3D printing something isn’t to make a working part, but to make up something that helps you create other things using methods other than printing. That’s exactly what [iqless] does when he uses his printer to make
some jigs
to help him easily build shelves. (Video, embedded below.)
The issue is making dowel joints for the shelve’s feet. Sure, you could just drill a piece of scrap wood as a template, but with a 3D printer you can do better. Using OpenSCAD, it is possible to create a parameterized jig that fits exactly the job at hand.
There are several advantages to this approach. First, you can iterate on the design without having to rebuild a new jig. Of course, if a jig gets worn or broken, you can simply print another one. Finally, because the script is parameterized, it is easy to create a new jig for similar circumstances that have different dimensions.
If you have done a lot of OpenSCAD, you probably won’t see much new here, but if you haven’t created parameterized scripts, the video can show you how easy that can be.
We’ve looked at
woodworking gadgets
from 3D printers before. Or you can — sort of — print in
plywood
, if you like. | 24 | 13 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314995",
"author": "Mr Name Required",
"timestamp": "2021-01-24T00:39:41",
"content": "As an OpenSCAD fanatic myself, this video really ticks a few boxes for me:1) He pronounces OpenSCAD properly2) Makes you aware of how to get to the cheat sheet help right from the start3) The exa... | 1,760,373,210.510339 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/23/obstacle-climbing-rover-built-with-the-power-of-lego/ | Obstacle Climbing Rover Built With The Power Of Lego | Danie Conradie | [
"Robots Hacks"
] | [
"all-terrain",
"inchworm",
"lego",
"rover"
] | When we want to prototype a rover, we’ve developed a tendency to immediately reach for the 3D printer and Arduino or Raspberry Pi. It’s easy to forget the prototyping tool many of us grew up using: LEGO. The [Brick Experiment Channel] has not forgotten, and in the video after the break
demonstrates how he used Lego Technic components to prototype an impressive little obstacle climbing robot
.
The little Lego rover starts as a simple four-wheeled rover trying to climb on top of a book. Swap in a four-wheel-drive gearbox and grippy tires, and it clears the first obstacle. Add a few books to the stack causes the break-over angle to become an issue, so the rover gets an inverted-V chassis. As the obstacle height increases, batteries are moved around for better weight distribution, but the real improvement comes when an actuating middle joint is added, turning it into a wheeled
inchworm
. Clearing overhangs suspended beams, and gaps are all just a matter of finding the right technique.
Thanks to Lego’s modularity, all this is possible in an hour or two where a 3D printer and CAD might have stretched it into days. This robot does have the limitation of not being able to turn. Conventional car steering or Mecanum wheels are two options, but how would you do it?
The [Brick Experiment Channel] knows a thing or two about building Lego robots, even for
stealing keys
. | 7 | 3 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314972",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2021-01-23T21:20:03",
"content": "I’ve been itching to do something with Tri-Star wheels for a while…. probably since seeing Damnation Alley LOL",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": ... | 1,760,373,210.86392 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/23/a-deep-dive-into-the-chemistry-of-retrobright/ | A Deep Dive Into The Chemistry Of Retrobright | Dan Maloney | [
"chemistry hacks",
"Retrocomputing"
] | [
"restoration",
"retr0bright",
"retrobright",
"yellow plastic",
"yellowing"
] | Considerable effort is often required to rejuvenate the yellowed and grungy plastic cases of retrocomputing gear. One generally does well to know their enemy in order to fight it, though, which is where
this guide to the chemistry of plastic yellowing and whitening
(PDF) comes in handy.
“The Retrobright Mystery” was written and sent in to us by [Caden Xu], a high school student who also goes by the alias [Saltypretzel]. The paper begins with an excellent description of the chemistry of plastic yellowing. We had always heard that the yellowing in
ABS, or acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene
, the plastic most commonly used for cases back in the day, was primarily caused by brominated compounds added to the plastic as flame retardants. It turns out that’s only a minor contributor, with the bulk of yellowing occurring thanks to a complex chain of reactions starting with free radicals liberated from the butadiene copolymer through a reaction requiring oxygen and energy.
Reactive radicals from the decomposing synthetic rubber, added to ABS to increase its flexibility, unroll the benzene ring in styrene copolymers to form a conjugated compound called 2-hydroxymuconic acid. The alternating double and single bonds in this compound tend to absorb light towards the blue end of the spectrum strongly, so the accumulation of 2-HMA in the plastic over time thus makes it reflect more and more yellow and red wavelengths, giving aged ABS its unhealthy bronze glow.
Luckily, just as ketchup smears and grass stains, both rich in conjugated compounds like lycopene and chlorophyll, can be bleached out of existence, so too can yellowed plastics. [Caden] notes that Retrobright, which contains a powerful dose of hydrogen peroxide, does its whitening trick by breaking the UV-absorbing double bonds in 2-HMA. There’s little that can be done about the embrittlement of the ABS caused by the breakdown of butadiene copolymers, but at least it’ll look good.
We found this guide quite comprehensive and instructive, and it should only help retrocomputing fans in their restoration efforts. For those less interested in the chemistry, [Bob Baddeley] published
an overview of the yellowing of plastic
and manufacturing steps to avoid it, and we covered
the more practical considerations of Retrobright treatment
too. | 54 | 17 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314892",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.1",
"timestamp": "2021-01-23T18:14:10",
"content": "“There’s little that can be done about the embrittlement of the ABS caused by the breakdown of butadiene copolymers”I’m interested in knowing what little CAN be done. Got a couple of items where the ... | 1,760,373,210.946927 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/21/game-boy-replica-built-in-brass/ | Game Boy Replica Built In Brass | Lewin Day | [
"Nintendo Game Boy Hacks",
"Nintendo Hacks"
] | [
"brass",
"game boy",
"nintendo"
] | Nintendo’s Game Boy is legendary for being the meat in the handheld gaming revolution, as well as being nigh-on indestructible whether in the custody of children or soldiers in the Gulf War. However, [Jiri] decided to see if he could whip up a tribute of his own,
in brass instead of plastic.
The hardware is based on the Odroid GO emulator firmware for the ESP32, running on a 2.2″ color TFT screen. It’s a great base for a custom build, which avoids gutting any precious classic hardware. It’s then assembled behind front plate milled out of brass, with delicate point-to-point brass wires giving it an artistic circuit sculpture look. The brass did prove difficult to work with at times, acting as a heat sink which prevented easy soldering of the standoffs in place. To get around this, [Jiri] used a hotplate to heat the plate from below, keeping it warm enough so that a hand iron could do the job.
The final result is a fun Game Boy emulator in a stylish case – though one you shouldn’t throw in a back pack lest it short out the exposed conductors. It would make a great gift for any lifelong Nintendo fan. [Jiri] is no strange to circuit sculpture, as we well know –
we’ve featured his tools and methods before
. Video after the break. | 17 | 5 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314404",
"author": "piojag",
"timestamp": "2021-01-22T08:41:57",
"content": "Keep in mind that brass is toxic, if you want to touch it – wear gloves.",
"parent_id": null,
"depth": 1,
"replies": [
{
"comment_id": "6314407",
"author": "Elliot William... | 1,760,373,210.994245 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/21/the-us-air-force-wants-your-3d-scanner-ideas/ | The US Air Force Wants Your 3D Scanner Ideas | Al Williams | [
"3d Printer hacks",
"News"
] | [
"3d scanning",
"Air Force",
"us air force"
] | One key piece of technology from
Star Trek
is the replicator, a machine that 3D prints up almost anything using some hazily-defined high technology. You have to wonder though, how did the patterns for Earl Grey tea or a spare part for a shuttlecraft intercooler come to exist in the first place. Maybe someone designed them, or perhaps they scanned the real articles. The US Air Force is betting on the latter, and they’ve asked for white papers and proposals for innovative methods to
scan objects for 3D printing.
It isn’t surprising military planners would like to have effective 3D printing. After all, you can’t carry every spare part you might need into a theater of operation. Not to mention spares for your friends in joint operations or for enemy gear you might happen to capture. Having a truck that could turn out whatever your troops need is an attractive proposition.
We’re curious though, a printer you are likely to haul out to a forward operating base will probably print using filament, and while that is great, we all know there are limitations to parts you create with these machines.
Still, maybe they envision giant industrial metal or ceramic printers that would airdrop parts anywhere in the world in a day or two. The objectives are ambitious:
Demonstrate a cutting edge automated 3-D scanning system capable of quickly and accurately scanning complex Additive Manufacturing candidate parts to produce 3-D models. The solution should address any anticipated hardware and software tools necessary to scan parts with complex geometry, various surface color and reflectivity, and provide a means to address part geometry that cannot typically be scanned; e.g. blind holes and internal/hidden geometry.
The innovative solution sought will be able to process scan data quickly and efficiently and require minimal human interaction during the scanning, modeling and data processing. The proposed solution should address its ability to fully operate and be able to be updated while not connected to an internet source. Additionally, it should be sized to accept, manipulate and process parts of at least 500mm in diameter, height of 1000mm
and weight of at least 50 kilograms
So automated, high-resolution scanning for very large and heavy parts. You can deduce a little about the printer they imagine, after all, 50 kilos of PLA is probably bigger than the specified build volume.
If you want to get in on the action, you had better hurry. White papers are due soon. We don’t see much 3D printing for jet fighters, but we do see a lot for
RC aircraft
. Some of them are
quite advanced
. | 41 | 10 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314342",
"author": "RW ver 0.0.3",
"timestamp": "2021-01-22T03:41:59",
"content": "Easy, just decompile the intro from Another World, so you can see how 3 lasers picked up the car keys in his pocket and scanned his DNA at the same time…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j4gO9sR7zs",
... | 1,760,373,211.189735 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/21/keeping-an-eye-on-the-water-heater-pilot-light/ | Keeping An Eye On The Water Heater Pilot Light | Danie Conradie | [
"home hacks"
] | [
"ESP32",
"ESP8266",
"esphome",
"mqtt",
"pilot light",
"water heater"
] | [WJCarpenter]’s gas water heater uses a small pilot light that needs to stay burning permanently to ignite the main burners as required. Four or five times a year, the pilot light goes out and needs to be manually lit. This involves an expedition from the upstairs bathroom to the basement, always in the early morning, after having spent a few fruitless minutes waiting for hot water. Having grown tired of this exercise, [WJCarpenter] built
Water Watcher
, a pilot light monitoring system with some ESPs and a light sensor.
Water Watcher consists of an ESP8266 connected to a light sensor taped to the inspection window of the water heater. It reports the status of the pilot light over
MQTT
to an ESP32-based M5 Atom Matrix in the main bedroom, which displays it using a 5×5 RGB matrix, as demonstrated after the break. Both ESPs run
ESPHome
, so programming is as easy as giving it a YAML config file. [WJCarpenter] tested a few different light sensors, until he found the TSL2591, which is sensitive to the right wavelengths and has enough dynamic range for watching a pilot light.
This might not be a complicated hack, but we do not doubt that it reduces frustration a bit on those fateful mornings. Be sure to check out the Water Watcher project page, it’s an entertaining read! | 44 | 18 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314283",
"author": "irox",
"timestamp": "2021-01-22T00:16:07",
"content": "Lovely hack.Normally when I start to see my pilot light go out every couple of months, it’s time to replace the thermocouple which is usually pretty quick and under $10. Then I don’t have to worry about the... | 1,760,373,211.116255 | ||
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/21/making-silicone-molds-big-ones/ | Making Silicone Molds – Big Ones! | Lewin Day | [
"hardware"
] | [
"molding",
"silicone",
"silicone mold"
] | If you’ve got one of something and you want more, duplicating it with a silicone mold can be a great way to go. This is applicable to 3D printing something you need many copies of, and a whole variety of other usecases. [Eric Strebel] prides himself on his abilities in this area,
and has put out a guide to producing very large silicone molds in a simple and reliable manner.
The overarching process is simple, but followed properly, it produces great results. [Eric] starts by building a mold box out of wood, coated in shellac to ensure it doesn’t stick to the silicone. The master part is then stuck to the base, surrounded by a lasercut cardboard strip which acts as a seal and key. Once properly degassed silicone is poured in and cured, the second half can be made. The mold is flipped in the mold box, the seal key removed, and release agent applied to the silicone surfaces. With another pour and cure, the mold is ready for casting new parts.
While simple, if the correct equipment isn’t used or steps skipped, you’ll end up with a useless mold full of air bubbles or surface irregularities. It’s useful to see just what it takes to get a mold of such scale (13″ x 19″!) completed without flaws. We’ve featured [Eric]’s work before,
such as his fine detail improvements on the Apple Pencil
. Video after the break. | 11 | 4 | [
{
"comment_id": "6314272",
"author": "Tom",
"timestamp": "2021-01-21T23:43:16",
"content": "Excellent video. Eric is a master. The difference between kinda knowing how something works to actually getting tip top results is huge, particularly on a large scale.I’m a bit confused about the economics of... | 1,760,373,211.04068 |
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